Chapter Text
Itachi had been desperately negotiating with the 3rd and his dreaded council for weeks. The coup was coming and he was starting to fear that drastic measures would have to be taken. Danzo had already suggested some alternatives that horrified him, perhaps even more so because he didn’t know if he’d go through with them. However today he had something new to suggest. An idea, one his little brother had given him surprisingly. He had presented the coup as a vague hypothetical to Sasuke, just to see what he would say. The answer had been so obvious he felt silly for not even thinking about it. Sasuke had looked at him like he was an idiot, and said that if the problem is them being isolated shouldn’t they just try and make some friends? He truly was an idiot. He took some solace in the fact the rest of the Uchiha were as stupid as he was.
It was obvious in hindsight, of course isolation couldn’t be fixed by themselves. Unfortunately making friends was easier said than done. At least on the grander scale of the village as a whole. He had wracked his brain, but most of the other clans weren’t especially fond of the Uchiha either and his father was much too prideful to bow and ask for their help anyway. Meaning he had to present it in such a way that no one felt as if they were being forced. His proposal had slowly taken shape over the last few days. A last attempt to try and make a plan the Hokage could agree to, that would help him convince his father that a coup was not a good way to fix the problem of the Uchiha clan being isolated.
He took a deep breath. It was time to present the proposal to the Hokage and his advisors. He knocked on the door to the hokage’s office. “Enter.” The response was immediate. No surprise he had come at the same time every day. This time he had decided not to wear his anbu uniform. It was a subtle message, this proposal wasn’t from Weasel the faceless shinobi who ran all manner of lethal missions. It was from Itachi Uchiha, the genius of the Uchiha clan who loved his clan and his village. “Thank you for meeting with me, Lord Hokage.” He bowed his head slightly. The other occupants of the room nodded at him without a word. Unsurprisingly the 3rd and his advisors were past the point of unnecessary pleasantries.
They all gave him a wary look. Most likely concerned about his lack of anbu uniform. He would think they would know better, if he was going to betray them it certainly wouldn’t be as obvious as this. “I have a new proposal, it won’t solve the problems immediately, but I think it will put us on the path to a more united Konoha.” The 3rd raised his eyebrow with obvious interest, while his advisors scoffed. “A long term plan? This is the first time you’ve proposed something like that. What’s changed?” He was admittedly a little caught off guard by the 3rd’s question. Not that anyone would be able to tell. It wasn’t that the 3rd didn’t usually ask questions, it was just that normally they were more about the proposals themselves, and not about his reasoning for them. Still he wouldn’t be a very good shinobi if he didn’t know how to improvise.
“I talked to my brother. You’d never guess it by how he normally acts, but Sasuke can be very patient when he wants to be. He put an inkling into my head, and I’ve been thinking about how to make it work. Ultimately I tried to think about it with Sasuke’s mindset, and this is what I came up with. Though ironically Sasuke himself will probably hate it.” Sasuke was so eager to be a ninja, finding out that he’d have to go to the academy for an extra 5 years was going to devastate him. He pulled the scroll with all the details from a seal on his wrist, and placed it in front of the 3rd.
“The mind of a child is a wondrous thing, sometimes the answer is simple and innocent. Adults tend to struggle with those concepts.” The 3rd gave him a sympathetic look. “And unfortunately the shinobi world tends to make people into adults much faster than the civilian one.” He chuckled. How could he not he was 13, a civilian at 13 would barely be learning about how to take care of themselves, they certainly wouldn’t have the fate of their whole clan and the village on their shoulders. He chose not to respond and waited patiently for the 3rd to finish reading his proposal.
The 3rd was much too experienced to give any of his thoughts away simply reading through the proposal with a calm smile on his face, that he somehow wore to all of these meetings. After several minutes he reached the end and passed the scroll to his advisors for them to read. “It’s a good plan. It would certainly take some time to set up, but even outside of the situation with the Uchiha clan I think it’s worth a try, however will it truly appease the Uchiha in the short term?” It was a valid concern. The changes to the academy’s structure would basically force Sasuke and his classmates to interact more, given that Sasuke had the child of almost every major clan’s main family in his class the clans would certainly start to have better relations. However, even being generous it would take at least 10 years before that started bearing real fruit.
Which is why there was a bit more to the proposal. “Not on its own, but I have some proposals for father as well, including opening up the police force to non-Uchiha's. That will allow the Uchiha to take more missions, and help with how short-handed the police force can get. On top of that, I’ll be trying to convince Sasuke to try and become Hokage.” The advisors turned sharply away from the scroll to look at him with suspicion. He had after all never had any interest in becoming Hokage. One of his father’s biggest complaints was that no uchiha had ever been Hokage, which he thought was silly, because aside from Madara he didn’t think any had even tried. “I would appreciate it if you supported the possibility, whether or not Sasuke actually becomes Hokage is irrelevant.”
The angry expressions on the advisors' faces eased. He needed to make it clear that this wasn’t a power play. It didn’t matter if Sasuke actually became Hokage, just the possibility of it would be enough to get Fugaku to see reason and wait. He wasn’t trying to fix everything in one go. All he had to do was stall, keep everyone calm long enough for his proposal to start fixing some of the distance that his clan had unwittingly created. “Very well, tell your father that if he agrees to your idea of opening the military police to non-Uchiha’s I’ll personally sign my support to Sasuke as a future Hokage candidate. I’ll have to discuss the long term proposal with my advisors, and the rest of the council, but the short term plan is acceptable enough for me to handle here.” Itachi was too disciplined to let out a sigh of relief, but frankly this had gone far better than he had expected it to.