Fugaku frowned. He wasn't having the best of days that day, and the Hokage's summons had been entirely unexpected. Sighing, he set his paperwork aside and got up to go and see what the old man who hadn't spoken to him outside of meetings involving the village's Clan Heads for at least a year wanted now. The walk to the Hokage's office was full of the cold stares and suspicious glares that had become the norm over the last five years.

When he arrived at the Hokage's office, it was to find himself standing there in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that had stretched out for about five minutes as the Hokage looked at him as if he'd never seen him before.

"Tell me Fugaku," the Sandaime Hokage, whose father Fugaku had named his second son after in better times, said finally breaking the seemingly interminable silence that'd had Fugaku near snapping. "If you absolutely had to choose someone right now, is there anyone who can take your place as Chief of Police?"

The question both threw Fugaku and disturbed him.

"No!" Fugaku exclaimed, wondering if he was answering the question or refusing to allow even this to be taken from him the way the site of his previous home which had been his father's home before his, and his grandfather's home before that had been taken when the Uchiha District had been moved from the devastated city center to the outer reaches of the village, back behind everything and as close to the ass end of nowhere as you could get in Konoha.

"If you needed to find a replacement Clan Head right now," the Hokage said, not reacting to the vehemence of Fugaku's reply. "Is there one amongst the Uchiha who could do the job without being challenged by others in the clan who feel they could do far better than the Clan Head you selected?"

He couldn't know about...He couldn't. They'd been careful. They'd guarded their whispers in hidden places behind privacy seals. All there had been were words, but...

"A great deal of disturbing information has come to my attention." The Hokage said, seeming to take Fugaku's shocked, fearful, and above all, worried silence as an answer.

Fugaku tensed, readying to fight for...For what? The Hokage was old, too old for the hat he wore, and he might get lucky. But, if he did get lucky, he wouldn't make it out of the Administration Complex alive and the village would turn on his unprepared clan. Sure, there had been whispers, resolution that some sort of action must be taken to take back the village that the Uchiha had founded, but there was no concrete plan, no path to victory that he could yet see. Especially now, unprepared and on the fly.

"I had a choice between leaving well enough alone and letting my unwitting informants toss their little pebbles in the pond, tossing a few pebbles in the pond myself alongside those my informants are tossing in, or tossing a massive rock in the pond, destroying the previous pattern, and sending a tsunami crashing towards the far shore." the Hokage continued, seemingly unaware of Fugaku's inner debate, and utterly puzzling the man who stood before his desk in the position of subordinate though it chafed at him. Especially now when he was almost certain that he was soon to be executed for treason so the failing Hokage could make a show of strength, possibly using him as a scapegoat for the Kyuubi attack whose perpetrator had as of yet not been found.

"I have opted to try for the third choice, which will likely irritate my informants to no end when all their carefully laid plans go spinning into the dung heap. My informants have been growing too complacent, and that complacency will trip them up in the long run, resulting in the destruction of Konoha. Quite likely far sooner than my informants who're trying to play it safe to maintain their supposed advantage would've anticipated. What you decide today will determine whether or not my rock will land in the pond or simply fall at my feet." the Hokage said, drawing Fugaku out of his inner musings.

"And, exactly what is that supposed to mean?" Fugaku asked in the almost cold tone that the Uchiha used with outsiders, doing his best to keep any of the fear he was feeling for himself, his family and the future of his clan out of his voice.

"Tell me," the Hokage said, seemingly ignoring Fugaku's somewhat impertinent question. "What is the state of the Senju clan in Konoha right now?"

"They're all over the village, married into every clan including my own, and have their fingers in just about every pie." Fugaku replied, not even bothering to keep his contempt for the clan who had made the Uchiha second class citizens in their own village out of his voice.

"They don't have the Hokage's hat." the Sandaime pointed out, looking amused for some reason.

"They just as good as!" Fugaku exclaimed. "They chose you and they trained you."

"Tell me Fugaku," the Hokage said, seemingly ignoring his outburst. "Who is the Senju Clan Head?"

Fugaku thought on this a moment, wracking his brains for an answer that he feared he'd forgotten. He feared making a mistake which would make him look like an idiot, but he also realized that the silence was stretching out too long, which would also make him look stupid should he wait long enough for Sarutobi to answer the question.

"They...They don't have one." Fugaku finally hazarded.

Based on the look the Hokage gave him, Fugaku could tell that he had hit upon the right answer, which had opened the door for a number of questions to crowd into Fugaku's mind as he wondered exactly how a clan as great as the Senju could function without a Clan Head without...

"It is no coincidence that I'm not the Head of the Sarutobi clan, and that both candidates that I considered for my replacement when I retired nearly seven years ago were clanless orphans. One of whom was a confirmed bachelor." the Hokage said mildly. "After seeing what happened to the Senju because my predecessors were Hokage, I had decided to never ask a Clan Head to take up this position."

Fugaku barely bit back a snide comment regarding how one of the candidates for Yondaime had been the Sandaime's student, and the other had been a student's student and that his choice for successor would've always included nepotism of some sort or another. Something of what the Hokage had said was starting to sink in, and the implications were...disturbing to the man who had valued his clan most of all as clan and family were one and the same to him.

"You have often lamented over the fact that the Uchiha weren't given a place in the upper echelons of the village government." the Hokage said, looking older than his sixty-one years as he said it. "Would you take the position you desire, knowing that in doing so you leave chaos in your wake as your clan wanders Headless without someone strong enough to take your place? Knowing that your clan could lose cohesion and become just as scattered as the Senju and become what the Senju are today, a clump of somewhat distant families who often happen to share the same name, and just as often don't?"

Fugaku was taken aback by that question. Could he take the reins of power at the potential cost of the clan he had been raised to be loyal to since birth? Would the price of such a thing be so high? Why could he not be Clan Head, Chief of Police, and a leading voice in the village? Would the village even allow it considering their growing distrust of the Uchiha who had followed orders and led them to safety when they had longed to join the fight against the Kyuubi alongside their fellow shinobi? Could he crush anyone who spoke out against him given whatever position the Hokage was offering to hand him? A position that couldn't possibly be...No, it wasn't. The Hokage was most likely offering a spot on that "Council of Advisors" of his between his two teammates and that asshat Shimura who he was almost certain had been behind the Uchiha's exile to the village hinterlands. One voice in four, most often drowned out by the rest who were known to side with the Shimura in most matters these days.

"I'm going to put my hat on my desk and leave." the Hokage said, breaking Fugaku's train of thought before he could tell the old man what he could do with the "honor" he was offering him. "If you think you can do as Minato did and make the entire village your clan, or at the very least, follow Hashirama's and Tobirama's examples and place village before all else including Family and Clan, pick up the hat. Otherwise, leave the hat on my desk, and this conversation never happened."

"You have five minutes to decide." the Hokage said as he stood up from the desk, set his hat down, and left the room.

"You can't do this!" Koharu exclaimed the second the Hokage stepped out into the hall where she and the rest of the council were waiting. "The Uchiha..."

"Haven't betrayed us just yet." the Hokage finished. "Besides, I now know who the traitor amongst them is, and he will be dealt with when the time comes."

"But still..." Homura said.

"Do you know why Hashirama wanted Madara to be the Shodai Hokage?" Sarutobi Hiruzen who was tired, and old, and wanted to be able to set down the burden he'd carried for so long while there was life still in him asked. "It was because Madara had nothing holding him in place. He was lost, drifting, alone and angry much like the Uchiha are now, and there was nothing to tie him down to the village. Because there was nothing tying him down, he betrayed us."

"Just as the Uchiha will do if you give them half a chance!" Danzo exclaimed, looking at his old friend as if he thought he was an idiot.

"I'm not half so stupid as you think me Danzo." the Sandaime said. "I also refuse to see history repeat itself."

"So, you think that handing the hat to the Uchiha will fix things?" Danzo practically sneered.

"Giving the Uchiha the hat will force them to become invested, because it's 'their village'." the Sandaime replied. "The more invested they become, the tighter the entanglements that tie them to the village become. Eventually, those entanglements will enmesh them so tightly that they would be unable to break away, and betraying the village by, say taking it over for instance, would cut the throats of the Uchiha as well.

"And, if he doesn't react the way you believe he will?" Danzo asked, looking almost smugly certain that he'd be right. Quite possibly because of the hand signal he got from one of his little subordinates.

"Then, I shall ask one of the Uchiha's remaining allies to take the position and request that the man or woman place members of a list of trustworthy Uchiha I've gathered in positions of authority." the Hokage simply replied.

Fugaku looked at the hat that rested on the Hokage's desk in the exact same spot where the Hokage had set it down well over four minutes earlier. He'd immediately snatched the hat off of the Hokage's desk the second the door closed behind the old man and had started concocting platitudes that he was certain would convince the old fool that he was full of the "Will of fire" like Minato and the Hokage's old teachers. But, as time ticked by and the wait grew longer, other thoughts entered his head. Thoughts he had wished hadn't, considering the fact that a prize just about everyone coveted had been handed to him on a silver platter.

As he'd held the hat, and sat in the Hokage's chair in order to test it out and figure out which would be the coolest position to be in when the old man entered the room and found the hat in his hand or possibly on his head, he found that the pictures of the previous Hokages were in perfect positions to look down on him. The old man who'd retired and then retook the hat when he should've given it to someone else considering the circling vultures who'd spotted his weakness and took advantage of it every day, Minato who had given his life for the village during the Kyuubi attack which may or may not have been partially his fault depending on one's point of view, Hashirama, the legendary Head of the Senju who had founded the village alongside Madara, and Tobirama, his brother and co-head of the Senju who had been instrumental in making the Uchiha second-class citizens in their own home when they should've been at the top of the heap alongside...

But, the Senju were Headless now, weren't they? In the meetings for the village Clan Heads, there was nobody to stand for the Senju who just...existed. Despite being one of the two Founding Clans, the Senju didn't carry themselves like a great Shinobi clan. In fact, most of the Senju were civilians.

Could he do the same to the Uchiha?

Could he take the hat and leave them Headless?

He was Clan Head both because of his lineage and because he was pretty much the strongest amongst the survivors of his generation. Those who stood stronger and wiser than him now were just children. All under the age of twenty. If he gave the position to one of those children, nobody in the clan would give them the chance to lead.

The clan would be in utter chaos as Uchiha who previously knew they didn't stand a chance tried to take and fill his position.

Then, there was the police.

While he could temporarily hand his title of Chief of Police to another, and had done in the past when he was incapacitated due to illness or injury and temporarily unable to work, there was not yet anyone who could take the position permanently that the other officers would be willing to listen to. He had been planning to pass the position down to whichever of his sons had shown the most interest, as the position had been passed down to him, along with an unexpected Headship which should've gone to his now dead older brother.

Without someone acting as Chief of Police, the KMPF would fall into disorder. If the Police were in disarray, the village would jump on that weakness, get their own back for generations of arrests, and fall into chaos itself in doing so.

He could fill all three positions...

If he sacrificed any and all sleep and gave up on seeing his family again. Clan Head duties included paperwork and the occasional meeting of Clan Heads as well as mediation between members of his clan when there was conflict, meaning he was constantly on-call even if the paperwork was done in under six hours per week. Duties as Chief of Police were far more intensive and covered the same number of hours as a full-time job and then some. Being Hokage was also more than a full-time job if he wanted to be effective, and the Hokage was also on-call 24/7 since he couldn't make excuses like "I need sleep" should there be a major crisis.

No.

Even though the position was being handed to him on a silver platter, now would not be a good time to become Hokage. If he did so, he would spend every waking moment putting out fires in his Clan, the police force, and the village as a whole, and be pulled from his sleep to do it some more.

He could try cracking down on everybody with and iron fist, but then he would have to do so constantly without letting up once, because the second he did so, many who resented him for doing so would do what they could to get back at him. If they didn't become outright rebellious while he was cracking down on them and do everything they could to either passive-agressively defy him or assassinate him outright.

No. That was no way to lead a ninja village.

That way led to trouble. Such as the trouble that Kirigakure was dealing with.

Gritting his teeth, Fugaku came to the decision to do what he needed to for his clan and the village as a whole before he lost the courage and let his greed as well as the wants of generations of Uchiha take over.

Fugaku wiped his fingerprints off of the Hokage's hat with his sleeve and set it down on the Hokage's desk in the same exact position it had been when the Hokage had laid it there. And, with bare moments to spare, he got up from the Hokage's chair, moved it back into its former position, and moved back to where he'd been standing when the Hokage had left, doing his best to wipe all emotion from his expression before the Sandaime who should've stayed retired returned.

At five minutes on the dot, the door to the Hokage's office opened and the Hokage entered. There was an odd smile on the old man's face as he made his way to the desk where the hat sat looking as if it had never once been moved. The old man picked up the hat, and in a move that was too quick for Fugaku to see without his Sharingan activated, the old man shunshined behind him. Fugaku turned and, before he could fully face the old man ready for whatever attack the Professor might launch at him, he felt something land on his head.

"Congratulations Godaime." the Sandaime said with a smile as Fugaku moved to remove whatever the hell it had been that had been dropped on his head.

"Wha...Bu-But, I can't." Fugaku said, stammering for the first time in years, certainly not since Mikoto's Uzumaki friend who never failed to make his brain break quit coming around near as often as she used to.

"Yes," the Hokage said as Fugaku reached up and pulled off the hat, ready to give it back to the old man he'd been convinced should've given it away, preferrably to him, only minutes earlier "We really do have much to discuss regarding how the transfer should be handled considering your other responsibilities."

"But, I chose not to." Fugaku said as he held out the hat to the old man who categorically refused to take it from him, feeling strangely irritated that his choice was being ignored and he wasn't being listened to in this matter, considering exactly what this matter was.

"Which is why you're Godaime." the Hokage replied. "Did you honestly think I would give the position to a man who was willing to throw his family away for power?"

"But, the Senju..." Fugaku started, wondering how or even if he should express his fears over the path that his clan would end up following should he become Hokage.

"Ah, yes. The Senju." the Sandaime said. "While it is true that neither Hashirama nor Tobirama had time to take up their duties as Clan Head after they'd been made Hokage and other arrangements had to be made to work around this, it had been Hashirama's final wish that the Senju would fully integrate with the village. The Senju decided to honor that wish, basically disbanded so they could be villagers rather than a separate clan, and haven't named a Clan Head since their co-Head had passed on."

In that moment, Fugaku dearly wished he could strangle the old man standing in front of him. He couldn't if he wanted to live long enough to go home and see his son though. The transfer wasn't complete, and he hadn't officially been named Hokage, which meant the old man still was, and that all troops still answered to him and would kill his murderer.