Chapter Text
Sasuke Uchiha has been missing for 15 years, somehow spirited out of the Uchiha Compound when he was at the tender age of 6. He’d be 21 this year.
Ryuunosuke Satou has maybe just turned 28, he's not entirely sure what the date is, and he is in the Land of Rice, just outside of the most northeast part of the Land of Fire’s border. In his hand he clutches a letter from his agent, a Konoha civilian middle-aged woman named Shiori Yamada, given to him by the most harried looking pigeon Ryuunosuke thinks that he’s ever seen. It lies on the branch next to him, a puddle of barely moving feathers, squawking about wolves and insufficient pay. It must have followed his path through the mountain range that cuts through the north of the Land of Iron down into the westernmost border of the Land of Rice. He wonders how long ago this letter must have been sent.
The trip through Iron had been… informative. For all his years Ryuunosuke has spent precious little time amongst the samurai, and had he been a shinobi he doubts they would have been so accommodating. But no matter. The land had been cold and the people had been warm, and already he has the makings of his next novel. A tale as old as time, the story of two samurai pulled apart by their families at war. He wonders how many letters he’ll get for this one, and laughs.
He tosses a half opened bag of mealworms to the pigeon at his feet and it begins to squawk again with renewed vigor, decrying the taste of seal stored food. Ryuunosuke ignores it in favor of splitting the letter open.
Tanizaki , it starts, addressed with Ryuunosuke’s “last name” despite all the years that he’s worked with Shiori, I cannot in good conscience allow you to publish this.
Well. Ryuunosuke can’t say he’s surprised. He figured it would have been a tall order anyways, what with it being a thinly veiled “historical romance” between two men that could be suspiciously described as the Nidaime and his Uchiha student. It’s not like he isn’t saying anything that people haven’t thought, and for many more years than he has been alive on this land. So what if he went and embellished some points? He’s getting paid to write romances, not stodgy political examinations of bureaucratic institutions long since past.
This isn’t even—couldn’t you have— Here the letter is crossed out with thick blots of ink, illegible to his eyes. He skips over the ranting. At best they’ll file an injunction to get us to pull this story. Do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with Konoha bureaucracy? The chances of this making anywhere near enough money to pay for the lawyers fees are almost laughable. Really? A forbidden romance between Tobirama Senju and Kagami Uchiha? Why didn’t you at least change the names?
Here Ryuunosuke snorts. He knows for a fact something was going on between those two, if the letters sealed away somewhere in Shisui’s house were to be used as evidence. It’s not his fault that everyone likes to pretend that the lives of kage past and present were somehow immune from the minds of authors writing speculative fiction.
The Uchiha Clan will be after your ass like white on rice the second this even hits bookstore shelves. Couldn’t you have waited for all that shit to settle before sending me this manuscript? Are you actively trying to get me killed?
“That shit” with the Uchiha could be any number of things, really. Ryuunosuke hasn’t been keeping track. He’s aware that with the disappearance of the spare heir that the clan had clamped down on their own members, and had become characteristically obsessive with chasing any lead for missing Uchiha. He’d been made aware of it when he had received a summons to explain his unfortunately titled novel “Falling for You”, which had described the events leading up to the death of a young genin on a mission to destroy vital infrastructure of a neighboring enemy nation, and how his remaining living teammates had realized their feelings too late. The timing had not been… ideal. In the Uchiha’s quest to account for all of their missing clan members they could not find the bones of one Obito Uchiha near the remains of the still yet untouched Kannabi Bridge, and Ryuunosuke had been able to wiggle out of that dilemma only by bringing up the myriad of other missions from other hidden villages to destroy enemy infrastructure as well as his obviously young age to prove that he had not been involved. He’d been on the Uchiha shit list ever since.
This had also, incidentally, resulted in one of his first “fan letters”. “Fan” was perhaps being too generous to the writer, but who was Ryuunosuke to deny someone a reply? Where the writer had none too subtly extolled the profound accuracy of a civilian author describing undercover shinobi missions Ryuunosuke had simply replied with an excerpt of one of his hitherto unpublished novellas. He figures that the fan must have been some sort of shinobi, and carefully penned down the final encounter scene of two shinobi that had just survived a C rank mission gone dreadfully wrong, as they indulged in their passions under the rain in the forests of the Land of Rivers.
He hasn’t received a letter from that particular fan in a while. He almost wishes he could have seen their reaction, but he lets Shiori act as his middleman for a reason. That, of course, was not the last of the fan letters he’s received, but usually the others focus on more pedestrian things. Like asking for autographs or trying to guess the direction of his various series. As he understands it he has a rather dedicated group of housewives following his works, and more often than not he’s willing to entertain their suggestions, if only to have ideas on the backburner for his one shots and such.
Ryuunosuke pens his reply on the back of the letter.
Shiori: At best I can offer you the dubious gift of being the one to have to go through “Pride and Prejudice” and change all the names. You could even change the locations to your heart’s content. I had hoped for my work to remain unmolested, but it seems we must bow to the whims of those that remain artistically challenged. I plan on going through the Land of Lightning soon, if you need me you know how to get in touch.
He is not, in fact, going to the Land of Lightning. Oh, he’ll make a good attempt at it and head north through the Land of Frost, but he fully intends to get on a ship and sail around the coast of the Land of Hot Water before going towards the Land of Water and eventually Kirigakure. He’s fuzzy on the dates but… It couldn’t hurt to check on the Fourth Mizukage, just in case. Maybe he’d even write a short story about a missing nin and a hunter nin just for the hell of it.
He tosses the folded letter to the pigeon, which is now pecking at the remains of the mealworms. “Take this back to Shiori. I’ll be here for a few weeks if you need me.”
“Where are my sunflower seeds?” The pigeon pecks at the letter, refusing to put it into the little carrier strapped to its back.
Ryuunosuke produces a bag of seeds from the sleeve of his haori and shakes it. “Devil bird that you are, I am not one to fail my end of the bargain. Take these and begone.”
The pigeon doesn’t need to be told twice and it takes the letter and the seeds.
Ryuunosuke gets about a week to enjoy the sake of the Land of Rice before he gets his next letter.
It’s a summons.
He sighs.