Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a sound of weeping at the edge of her hearing. Far enough to be distant, but too close to be ignored, it leaks through the haze of sleep and stirs a faint lick of consciousness to life within. Foggy, she opens her eyes slowly and wonders why.

The house is quiet and the windows are bright—still day, then, Mana thinks. Lethargic, she rolls over. The playmat is scattered with an assortment of toys, none of which she pays any mind to as she flops onto her other side. Now that she's facing the other way she can see into the kitchen where Chieri is sitting at the table. She must have been doing dinner prep at some point—there's a bowl of half-shelled peas before her—but right now she's crying, and it looks like she's been at it for a while. Mana watches a moment, vaguely wondering, before she puts her head down and closes her eyes again, interest faded.

She doesn't actually get to sleep again, though, because Chieri continues to sob into her hands and it keeps her awake. Mana thinks this might have irritated her in another circumstance, but in the end it doesn't really matter as long as she's not being bothered directly. Chieri can cry if she wants. That's fine.

Some time passes like that, but Mana doesn't care to mark its passage. Then eventually the front door opens and a man emerges into the living room from the hall. He's got a silent step, so Chieri doesn't realize he's there until he's already heard her weeping. Concerned, he drops his pack by the wall and goes to the doorway.

"Chieri?" he questions. Chieri gasps and jumps. "Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm home."

"W-welcome back," Chieri hiccups, hastily scrubbing her face with her sleeve as she stands. She's miserable enough that water immediately begins to leak from her eyes again anyway.

"What's wrong?" Ren asks. Chieri dithers for a moment, caught between the reflex to wave it off and the need to confess. He just stares her down. Eventually she cracks.

"Nii-san, am I a bad mother?" she chokes out.

"What? Why do you say that?" he wonders, startled. He glances back at Mana, who is still sprawled on her side on the mat behind him and is soaking up the quiet afternoon sunlight. Chieri follows his gaze towards her daughter and crumples into tears again.

"She hardly eats," Chieri sobs, "she doesn't talk, she doesn't play, she never smiles. No matter how I try or what I do it's always the same. She's nothing like Shisui was at that age. Shizu must have done something different. She must have raised him better."

"That's not it, Chieri," Ren protests. He goes over to the playmat and lifts his niece up into his arms. Mana, now thoroughly removed from napping posture, holds in a sigh and flops over his shoulder instead, exasperated. "It's not anything you've done. The doctors said from the start she would sleep more than the average child. It's because of the disorder."

"But why does she have the disorder?" Chieri cries. Ren, taken back by the ferocity of this outburst, pauses. "What did I do to give her a chakra deficiency? Why is she sick to begin with? What did I do during the pregnancy to make her this way?"

"It was nothing you did," he answers slowly. "You didn't give the illness to her. It's not your fault, Chieri."

"But then why?" she sobs. Ren sees the look of pure, overwrought stress on his sister's face and thinks it had been a mistake to take this last mission. She's been left alone to care for the kids on her own too long. A sense of guilt immediately overtakes him. He of all people should know firsthand the strain of juggling childcare and illness—it had been bad enough taking care of his son when his wife had been sick, and Shizu had been an adult. Even in the months leading up to her passing she hadn't been nearly as dependent as a three-year-old like Mana would be.

"It could have been anything, Chieri," Ren says softly. "Even if it is hereditary you would have had no way of knowing."

Chieri's lip trembles. Though she doesn’t want to admit it, Ren is right. For an adopted waif, plucked up off the streets from nowhere, who could say what sort of medical history lies hidden in her past? As it is, it's not certain that Chieri is even biologically an Uchiha. She's no ninja—she has no Sharingan.

"But what if she spends her whole life like this?" Chieri whispers as she reaches out to take her daughter from her brother. Just lifting her toddler and feeling again how light she is makes her chest constrict. Mana is so much smaller than a child her age ought to be. No matter how she tries to feed her the girl barely eats, and it’s affected her growth, and Chieri knows it.

Ren opens his mouth, pauses, and then closes it again. Unable to find a reply, after a moment all he can do is put a hand out and rest it on Mana's head. He pushes her bangs up and away from her face; Mana only stares silently back at him, dark eyes blank and gaze empty.

"Here! I'll give this to you!"

As far as gifts from six-year-olds go he's done pretty well. At this age it wouldn't have been uncommon to receive something like a bug or a lizard, but his offering is a cheerful yellow dandelion: pretty and harmless, perfect for a three-year-old girl. Mana takes it from his outstretched hand.

"Hmm…" Her cousin puts his hands on his hips and stares down at her. Mana stares back, holding the dandelion on her lap. There's a beat of silence.

"Do you like it?" he queries after a moment, eyes hopeful. Mana thinks vaguely that he's a cute kid. He's got a strong big brother instinct; he seems like the type who would enjoy doting on his siblings. It's too bad for him that he doesn't have any. He won't ever have them, either, since his mother is dead. 

Absently, Mana glances down at the flower in her hand. The sight of its bright petals stirs a memory from beyond the fog; then abruptly she finds a long, asphalt road rolling out in her mind's eye, flanked by clovers on one side and dandelions on the other. If she were to follow that road, she thinks, she would find a creek and a pond. Fireflies come out there in the summer. When she'd been young her mother—her real mother—had caught one in her bare hands and showed her its glowing bottom.

A shooting pain lances between her temples. 

"Eh?" The boy startles as his cousin's brow crumples and her face collapses into a terribly ugly cry. Mana throws the dandelion away and falls onto her front, eyes burning. She lets out an inconsolable sob. 

"Huh? What? But—" Shocked that his present has provoked such a reaction, he watches flabbergasted as the girl begins to wail. "What's wrong?" he asks as kicks off his sandals and climbs onto the veranda, but Mana pulls away, weeping uncontrollably. He reaches out to try and grab her around the middle, presumably to pick her up or give her a hug, but she hits him with one of her stubby little limbs and shrieks, "Go away!" 

Her puny little swat isn't even remotely painful for him, of course, but the little boy takes on a look of hurt regardless. Mana suddenly remembers being rejected by her own baby cousin Hannah long ago in that other life, and she might have felt bad for him if this new recollection didn't send her into a screaming fit of pounding head-pain. Screwing her eyes shut, she rolls onto her back and writhes, just once, before even that's too much energy to muster. Then she just whimpers instead. Her limbs feel heavy and her whole body is cold.

Chieri, of course, is never far in these moments, and a beat later she emerges from the kitchen to see what's going on. Shisui is still kneeling on the veranda with a look of terrified shock. He looks up at his aunt.

"I-I didn't…" he stutters, utterly stunned. "I don't…"

Chieri, though, realizes immediately what's happened. She scoops up her daughter, who hangs limply from her arms like a rag doll, and recognizes the criteria for an emergency hospital visit instantly. Shisui's already old enough to be commuting to the Academy on his own, so for the first time in his young life she decides to ask him if he can stay home alone, at least until Ren returns.

"Shisui," Chieri says, "can you watch the house for me? Your father should be home soon."

Later on she tells him it wasn't his fault—that Mana's just sick and sometimes she gets like that. He can't tell if she's telling the truth or if she's lying the way that adults sometimes do to make children feel better, but either way he remembers the way Mana had looked at his dandelion and he doubts. 

After that the poor boy avoids her like the plague, which Mana really can't blame him for. There's bound to be trauma in seeing your toddler cousin have a seizure and then get whisked off to the hospital all because you were thoughtful enough to hand her a flower. It goes without saying that Shisui never tries to give her a present again.

It’s a tired life, full of grief and constant unwellness, and sleep is the only break she seems to get from it. No matter how much she rests, though, she never seems to feel better, and the more she sleeps the more Chieri seems to worry. 

Mana can’t help but think that she’s a pitiful woman. Widowed and living in her elder brother’s home, she’s been cursed with an extremely ill first child and there are no female relatives around to give her help or advice. Even though the other young child in the house has started school now it hardly seems to matter; they’re in and out of the hospital all the time anyway, perpetually dancing an exhausting dance between home and doctors. Ren is often absent, as he seems to be a working person whose hours can be both long and varied, so no matter how tired or upset Chieri gets she has no one to lean on. It’s thankless work, too, because Mana doesn’t know her and can’t really think of her as her mother. If she’d had a normal child, perhaps Chieri could have enjoyed a daughter’s love as reward for her toils. As it is, Mana’s just a burden. It’s wholly depressing in its own way, separate from her grief over her past life.

That afternoon she feels exceptionally bad. Three long days at the hospital have finally concluded and now that they’re back home, lying quietly together on the futon, the whole house is still and silent. As for Chieri, she’s flat on her back, but she’s not resting—she’s staring vacantly at the ceiling with the empty gaze of a person gone beyond her limit, calcified into stillness by despair and sleep deprivation. Mana looks at her and can’t help but think it would have been better for both of them if she hadn’t been born. She doesn’t love this life and she only causes this woman unhappiness and distress. If she weren’t around, Chieri probably wouldn’t have to suffer so.

There’s a hiccuping noise that Mana belatedly realizes is coming from her own throat. Chieri stirs from her glassy-eyed daze and immediately turns over, which Mana just can’t comprehend. Why keep spending so much effort on such an unloving child, no good for anything but hardship? Chieri doesn’t seem to be asking the same question, though, because she immediately puts a hand on Mana’s back.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?" she murmurs as she begins rubbing her fingers in a soothing circle. Mana doesn't know how to reply; she just stares back at her, miserable. Chieri's brow creases with sorrow.

"Oh, honey," she sighs as she presses her lips to the girl's forehead. "Oh, sweetie. I know. I'm so sorry. I know it's hard."

As she speaks she looks almost as wretched as Mana feels. As Chieri presses her forehead to hers and silently sheds tears, more grieved by her daughter's illness than Mana herself is, Mana wonders what a thing it must be to be a mother. Not her mother, perhaps, but a mother all the same… 

Nothing much else is done that day. Shisui returns from the Academy and is surprised to find the kitchen silent and empty. At this hour it's usually already full of light and sound and smells as Chieri prepares for dinner. Curious, he wanders the house in search of her, ducking into the laundry room and peeking at the garden before he finally pokes his head into the first floor bedroom. He finds his aunt dead asleep on her bed, totally unconscious; Mana is wrapped in her arms, face pressed against her mother's neck.

Shisui blinks and stares for a moment, surprised. He stands there. Then, silently as a shinobi, he slides the door shut. 

Chapter Text

Mana finds herself watching Chieri. In the course of this she discovers many new things. For one, it turns out that her caretaker is actually, upon closer inspection, a captivatingly beautiful woman. Her face is pretty, of course, set with large round eyes and long, lovely eyelashes, but more than that she has both a sweet voice and an incredibly elegant deportment. In her old world the woman probably would have made a killing as a model or a music idol. 

She learns other things, too. Mana has never had any awareness about the greater Uchiha clan, but once she takes a moment to appreciate how polished Chieri's manners are she abruptly realizes that she's been born to a family of some status. Chieri's etiquette is so refined, from seiza to tea serving, that there's no possible way that they're from anything but an extremely old and wealthy tribe. Her bearing is unbelievably regal. Commoners just don't teach their children to behave like that.

Thirdly, she finds out that Chieri is actually a music teacher. Perhaps in the past Mana had never known this because she'd always been sleeping, but young students bearing traditional instruments actually come to visit Ren's house all the time, and Chieri tutors them in both the koto and the shamisen. Mana is fascinated once she learns this. Though never of any sort of teaching proficiency, she had been an amateur musician in her last life, and music had been one of the great joys of her existence. 

Chieri is greatly surprised when Mana breaks in on her practice that morning. She doesn't have any students today so it's not actually a problem, but as the little girl pushes on the sliding door with both hands to open it and then toddles inside, the only reaction she can muster is one of shock. That must  be the most energy she's ever seen Mana exert in anything.

"Hey, sweetie," Chieri says worriedly, already removing her finger picks and placing them aside so she can spring into action. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

Mana responds by coming over and seating herself beside her. The girl looks with interest at the zither instrument laid out before her. Then she stares up at her mother.

"You want to watch mama play, sweetheart?" Chieri realizes belatedly. Mana nods and Chieri is speechless. Mana's never shown such interest in anything. Abruptly tearful, Chieri takes several deep breaths as she replaces her picks. Then she smiles a fragile smile at her daughter, full of scarcely-credulous joy.

"All right," she says determinedly, "sure, sweetheart. Let me play for you."

And perhaps it's because of her emotional state, but the next twenty minutes' performance is captivating in both its skill and musicality. To think that Mana had been living with such an accomplished musician all this time. If this had been a recital, she thinks, the audience would have been clamoring well beyond just one or two encores. She can't believe such a sound has been sitting in the corner of their bedroom all this time, and she immediately thinks that Chieri deserves some kind of award for such stunning and virtuosic playing. Mana has no idea what to give her, however, being disposed of any meaningful belongings like money or goods. In the end all she can do is reach out, latch onto Chieri's middle, and try to convey her admiration and gratitude like that. Chieri freezes, having never been hugged in such a manner by her daughter. When Mana looks up tears are streaming down her face. 

"Mana," Chieri chokes out before she picks up her daughter and clutches her in a hug. "Oh, sweetheart."

Not my mother, Mana thinks distantly. No woman could ever replace her real mother. But still… there’s no reason to be cold to Chieri, either.

In the following weeks Chieri is surprised to find the whole affair of food, once a struggle of the utmost difficulty, becomes gradually less burdensome. Until now meals have been an ugly battle, complete with finger-biting and the occasional actual screaming tantrum, but something in her daughter seems to have mellowed out. The first time she catches Mana feeding herself—rather than being force-fed, as she is at most meals—Chieri actually breaks down sobbing again. The same thing happens when Mana starts pushing plush toys around on her mat. It’s subdued play, to be sure, and most of the time it actually seems more like Mana is just tying and untying different kinds of ribbons—all pilfered from Chieri’s sewing basket—around the necks of her stuffed animals, but that hardly matters. Chieri’s just moved that Mana even knows where the sewing basket is. She finds herself holding her breath and wondering how long this newfound development will last. But last it does, and hope begins to take root in the quiet household of Uchiha Ren.

But though her daughter grows incrementally healthier—healthier than she ever has been in the past—it doesn’t mean she finds herself very much cured. Even though episodes grow less frequent as time passes, her condition is still precarious enough that when the time comes to enroll the clan children of her year in the Academy, well. There’s no question. Chieri has to arrange a meeting with the clan head. Uchiha Fugaku comes to dinner. 

Mana gets to witness her mother in full entertainment mode, and the prep is something that Mana remembers even to this day: the cleaning spree (massive), the decorating (fresh flowers for every alcove), the dinner prep (intensive), the grooming (even Mana gets her hair done up), all of it. She works with the efficient force of a well-to-do stay-at-home woman doing every possible thing to save face. Even now, decades later, Mana still uses that day as her gold standard when she is called upon to host any truly fancy Clan Affairs. 

Of course, the finishing touch to all of this is to pretend like absolutely no labor has occurred, and Chieri greets their guest with breezy and elegant ease, completely as if she hadn’t been scrubbing the hallway floor on her knees a mere ten minutes ago. Mana, for her part, sits very still and quiet, having no idea how to interact with great and important clan people. This seems mostly acceptable to the adults, who receive her extremely coached “Good evening, Fugaku-san” with mild approval. 

After pleasantries are exchanged Fugaku is seated at the table. It’s only Mana and Chieri at home right now—Ren is working as always, while Shisui is taking part in an overnight camping exercise as part of his graduation exam—so it's not a very large dining party. Perhaps Fugaku finds the sight of them a little lonely, this young widow and her small daughter, because his stern gaze seems to soften as the meal goes on. Mana doesn't really know anything about clan heads, not even this one, but she gets the impression that he's probably actually a family man himself. Maybe he’s imagining what it would be like if his own wife and child had been left on their own because of the war.

Eventually talk turns to business. “You wished to speak to me regarding your daughter’s enrollment in the Academy?” Fugaku queries.

“Yes, that is correct. If I may be so bold, I would like to seek permission to withhold her from shinobi training,” Chieri petitions in extremely humble speech. Her request is so full of special verb forms and beautifying prefixes that Mana finds she can’t actually fully understand what her mother is saying. She turns her head to stare up at Chieri with a mystified look.

“Oh? And why is that?” Fugaku regards her curiously. It’s far from a common request. The Uchiha are, through and though, very much a ninja clan.

“Mana was born with a very severe illness that prevents her from using chakra,” Chieri explains. “More specifically, she suffers from a chakra deficiency disorder. She experiences chronic chakra exhaustion, often acutely enough that her life is endangered. We have had several close calls already… I fear that if she is made to learn the ninja arts we will be unable to preserve her health.”

“Is that so?” Fugaku regards the child sitting across the table thoughtfully. She is awfully small for a six-year-old, he thinks. She’s not much larger than his own son, and Itachi is half her age. “...That sounds like a rather difficult condition to manage.”

The thinness of Chieri’s responding smile cannot quite be suppressed no matter how polite she is trying to be, and she lifts her hand and strokes her thumb across her daughter’s forehead without replying. Fugaku looks at her face and perceives the sort of exhausted, soul-crushed endurance that he usually only chances to see on the longest and most difficult of guard missions. “Is there no cure for your child’s illness?” he wonders pityingly.

“As of now, there’s no such thing. I am told it is an uncommon condition. It is neither well-documented nor well-studied…” Chieri pauses. “Infants who suffer from it usually die at birth.”

“Ah.” Fugaku sees the distantly remembering look on Chieri’s face and supposes that the little girl before him had probably nearly gone the same way. “I see. That’s exceedingly unfortunate. If that’s the case, I see no reason to deny your request.” Even basic physical activity consumes chakra as a rule. It would be impossible for anyone with such an illness to learn even taijutsu, let alone ninjutsu or genjutsu. As it is, it seems the girl is struggling even in daily life; the Academy would be a death sentence.

Chieri gives him a look of utter relief. She bows her head. “I’m extremely grateful. Thank you very much.”

“Since she is unable to become a ninja, what do you intend to do for her education?” Fugaku inquires as he waves a hand. Chieri tilts her head slightly, as if the answer should be obvious.

“She will study homemaking,” she answers, “as I did with my mother. If, fates willing, she lives to adulthood, she will have learned all the skills she needs to be a proper bride from me.”

“Ah, of course.” Fugaku immediately nods. Mana, meanwhile, blinks repeatedly. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble matching her. From the looks of things, she’ll grow up to be a beauty.”

“...” Mana looks from her mother to Fugaku and then back again. Chieri just smiles prettily and politely demurs, as a proper mother would be expected to do upon receiving praise for her child. Mana opens her mouth, but the adults immediately begin talking again before she can. She stares for a long moment. Then she slowly shuts her mouth again.

There's not much choice but to go along with housewife training once it begins. The tasks a six-year-old can accomplish are limited, of course, but Chieri starts to bring Mana around on various chores to explain things anyway. Despite her initial misgivings, however, Mana finds that she doesn't actually hate it. A lot of it is actually pretty essential knowledge, and in another life it had taken her until some time in her twenties to acquire such wisdom; it's rather nice to have someone go out of the way to actually explain it holistically. She doesn't even really mind the fact that Chieri repeats herself in all these lessons at least twice a week—if Mana had been a normal child, she would have probably needed to tell her at least that many times. Besides, she's learning some genuinely new information, too. How to darn socks, for example—she'd always just bought new ones when holes opened up in hers—or canning and preserving produce. Of course, she's still so little and clumsy that most of this learning is just sitting nearby and performing simple jobs while Chieri singlehandedly runs the whole household, but still.

Chieri also begins teaching her daughter manners. Mana’s good enough at please and thank you, but there are all sorts of mysterious etiquette rules that she has no idea about. Some of this is because they had never existed in her old culture, while others are because she'd been a dirt-crusted commoner in her last life and had never had any occasion to employ such highfalutin manners to begin with. There are rules even for kneeling in the hallway and opening sliding doors—how to announce yourself, how low to bow, what to do with a tea tray if you have one—that Mana never realized mattered.

There is more to homemaking than just cooking and serving, however. That morning Chieri brings out a ledger to the coffee room table and seats herself before it. Then she lifts Mana in her lap and assesses whether her daughter understands what money is. She does, of course, so Chieri begins to explain in very general terms the concept of a budget and the necessity of keeping one. Mana finds herself growing exceedingly impressed by how comprehensive this education is. In her last life she hadn't started properly keeping a budget until she'd bought her first new car.

At some point during this quiet lecture the front door opens; Shisui wanders through the living room shortly after. He's got his new headband on, which Mana has learned indicates that he's a full-fledged ninja. At first this had confused her because as far as she knows being a ninja is the thing that Ren does—a full-time paying job with terribly long hours and extensive travel requirements—and Shisui is, she is fairly sure, a nine-year-old. But apparently in this world there's nothing strange about that in the least. 

“Oh, Shisui," Chieri says when she catches sight of him. "You should learn this, too. Come here for a moment.”

Shisui turns to answer this summons and then pauses when he sees his cousin is present as well. He hesitates for a moment. Poor boy, Mana can't help but think. He still hasn't forgotten the dandelion incident.

Maybe Chieri can see this, too, because she smiles a bit. "It's okay, Shisui," she reassures him. "Mana is feeling well today. She won't scream at you."

Mana makes a face at her phrasing. It's been several years since she last screamed at anyone at all, and Mana knows for a fact that she is an extremely well-behaved six-year-old. She used to teach them. 

Shisui comes over and sits beside his aunt at the table. And then, after another moment's hesitation, he reaches out and pats Mana's head like it's something he's always wanted to try at least once but never did due to the great danger of it. Mana regards him with a flat look. What is she, a wild animal?

Shisui sees her face and rapidly withdraws his hand. Mana also finds this vaguely annoying. He really does think she’s feral. Does he expect her to bite him or something? 

"She doesn't like me," Shisui informs his aunt.

"Hm?" Chieri looks down at her daughter. Mana tries her best not to seem exasperated. She doesn't particularly like or dislike Shisui, truth be told; they don't interact enough for her to have much of an opinion on him to begin with. 

Her apathy seems to show on her face because Chieri just tilts her head. "No, I don't think so," she says as she puts her fingers on her daughter's forehead and combs her bangs back. "She just doesn't talk a lot. Some days she doesn't say much even to me, you know. I wouldn't worry about it."

"..." Shisui eyes the little girl doubtfully but doesn't say anything else. Poor boy, Mana thinks again. From what she can tell he really likes taking care of younger kids: even before during the dandelion incident he had only been trying to be a friendly older brother. If Mana had been a normal child it probably would have worked well—he is pretty nice, honestly, and seemingly not prone to inappropriate roughhousing, which is saying quite a lot for a boy his age—but unfortunately for him, she's a total freak of nature. 

"Anyway, Shisui, now that you're a genin you'll have your own income," Chieri remarks. "You should learn how to manage money, too."

That day they get a peek into the costs of running the household. Mana takes one look at how detailed Chieri's recordkeeping is and thinks that Ren sure is lucky to have such a meticulous person managing his finances. Somehow up until now she'd always thought of Chieri as a pitiful lady being forced to rely on her brother's charity to live, but that actually isn't the case, is it? In reality these widowed siblings seem to be enjoying quite an effective symbiotic relationship.

"So how are things now that you've graduated, Shisui?" Chieri inquires once the bookkeeping lesson has concluded. Mana turns in her mother's lap to look at him, curious as well. If she'd been healthy, she would be learning to do what he's doing now. In this world where this chakra force she’s so deficient in allows people to use magic and perform superhuman feats, Shisui is, according to all indications, one of the elite even at his young age.

"It's fine," Shisui says in the telltale way of an underchallenged student trying not to let on how bored he is with the class. Chieri stifles a laugh and reaches out to rub his hair fondly. He takes it like a champion—doesn’t even make a face—and in so doing clears some of the bad credit he’s managed to accumulate in the past hour. As it is, if he’d been mean to Chieri, Mana probably would have found a way to bite him for real.

"Things will get better when you become a chuunin," she reassures him. "And I can't imagine it will take long. Do you at least like your team?"

At this question a genuine smile curls on his lips. “Yeah,” Shisui says happily. “I got assigned to a team with my friend. We get to take missions together now.”

“That’s great.” Chieri, pleased to see her nephew make such a sunny face, giggles a bit. “I’m glad.”

“Me too.” Shisui grins. “We’re heading out on our first assignment tomorrow.”

Chieri still smiles, but it fades just a bit at these words. She looks down at his squinted eyes and sees that their color is still dark. But for how long? She’s proud that the boy has worked hard and graduated so early, but he’s done so at his own peril; the conflict, after all, is still raging on. And this war, Chieri knows, is an insatiable thing. As long as it goes on it will take as much from him as it has from her.

Chapter Text

Mana is sitting under the window and squinting over her embroidery hoop, trying to master her stubby little fingers well enough to lay straight stitches—had it been this difficult in her last life? She doesn’t think so—when Ren lets out an exclamation in the hallway. Surprised, she looks up in time to see her uncle racing through the living room with his son under his arm and a wide grin on his face. He beelines straight towards the kitchen, where Chieri is standing contemplatively before the pantry and wondering what to make for dinner.

“Chieri!” Ren shouts excitedly. Chieri makes a face at the volume of his voice before turning to look at him. Then she glances at Shisui, who is hanging by his waist in his father’s grip and grinning as widely as Ren is. She creases her brow, puzzled, but smiles nonetheless.

“Nii-san, I thought the medics told you to take it easy,” she admonishes lightly. “You’ll rip your stitches again if you play around too much.”

Ren has zero care for this. “Never mind the stitches! Shisui, show her!”

“Obasan, look at this!” Shisui obliges and points at his eyes. Chieri sees their red hue and blinks in surprise.

“The Sharingan? On your very first mission?” she questions, disbelieving, before immediately doing a thorough visual assessment of her nephew’s person. He looks a little scuffed up—there’s a large tear in his sleeve and a bandage on his arm—but he doesn’t seem to be in any sort of distress. “Are you all right?” she asks worriedly.

“I’m fine,” Shisui answers proudly. Ren takes his free hand and ruffles the boy’s hair wildly. “We were in a tight spot, but I got us out of it!”

Chieri stares long and hard at the boy’s face, but she sees nothing concealed there—only a wide smile of achievement. She blinks at him, quite surprised. “Oh my. I see.”

“That’s it?” Ren complains. He shifts his grip so he’s holding Shisui under the armpits, thrusts him out in front of her as if to give her a better look, and gives the boy a little shake. Shisui laughs delightedly. “Look! Just look at him! He might be the youngest in the clan to ever awaken the Sharingan, Chieri. I didn’t get mine until I was years older than him!”

Mana lays down her sewing practice and makes her way to the kitchen doorway to check out the ruckus. She doesn’t know what a Sharingan is, but it seems to be something that ninja have. Either way it appears to warrant commemoration, because Chieri eventually smiles again and ruffles Shisui’s hair, too. It’s getting fluffier and fluffier by the second.

“Congratulations, Shisui,” she tells him kindly. “Shall we have something special for dinner to celebrate? What do you want?”

“Okonomiyaki,” Shisui answers with the readiness of a boy who knows exactly what his favorite food is. Chieri laughs a bit.

“Okonomiyaki, then. All right.”

A strange feeling bubbles up in Mana’s chest as she peers in on this encounter from the outside, as of yet still unnoticed. Then she finds her eyes beginning to burn. A distant memory of another celebration fills her gaze, overlaying the scene with different people and a different locale. She stills as sound fades from her perception; she spends a long moment staring without seeing. Then she silently turns away back towards the living room, where she climbs up onto the couch and lies down. A sudden headache has begun to bloom between her temples, throbbing right behind her eyes. She shuts them tightly, curls up onto her side, and stays like that until she falls unconscious.

Mana spends the next several months relapsing terribly. It's not severe to the point where she's in and out of the hospital again, but as far as good fortune goes that's about the extent of it. Her head is constantly pounding and everything aside from lying on her side in a quiet room becomes immensely irritating. Chieri tries to re-engage her in sewing and music to distract her from her illness, but any interest Mana had begun to show in these activities seems to have fled completely. She returns to old sleeping habits to ease the endless discomfort of it, and from then on is so preoccupied in them that time seems to utterly evaporate. 

One day she wakes up after a long and restless sleep on the couch and finds Shisui in a green vest sitting at the other end of it, expression blank and gaze very distant. Mana blinks slowly. That's the same sort of vest Ren wears, though perhaps not in the exact same color. When had he gotten one of those? She sits up, but Shisui doesn't react at all. He's got a thousand-yard stare, completely lost in thought, and she wonders how long he's been sitting there. Had he just gotten home? There's a grubby-looking mission pack sitting on the floor beside his legs. He looks tired and beat-up enough that he probably had just seated himself on the nearest available surface the moment he’d returned.

Mana examines his face in profile. The boy she's seeing now is a far cry from the grinning, laughing kid she'd seen hanging from his dad's arms. His features haven't really changed much at all, and he's still got all of the baby fat and rounded features of an almost-ten-year-old—or has his birthday passed already? She thinks it has, actually—but somehow he seems to have aged immensely regardless. She wonders what's happened. Those aren't the sort of eyes that belong in the face of a child. In fact, they look rather like her own, she thinks after a moment more of inspection. That can't be healthy…

"Oh." Shisui blinks when she crawls over and puts a hand on his arm, curious to see him closer up. When he turns to look at her his gaze refocuses, but that doesn't seem to bring much light back to them. Yeah… he really has aged. "What is it?"

Mana is tired. Her head is full of fuzz and she doesn't really have the will to deal with much of anything right now, let alone some other person's trauma, but something about his posture—slumped, leaning forward with elbows on knees as if too heavy to sit up without support—makes her feel a sense of empathy. She lowers her hand and then shifts a bit to let her short little legs hang over the edge of the couch. She doesn't say anything, but she sits beside him regardless, similar in mind if not in stature.

Shisui stares down at her for a puzzled moment, not quite sure what to make of these actions. Still, he thinks after a moment, that's the most regard his weird little cousin has really ever spared for him to date. She doesn't speak, but then again she rarely does, and she looks exhausted and unhappy enough most days that he thinks she might not really have the energy to anyway. Maybe the fact that she's actually gotten up and moved from the other end of the couch to sit with him is pretty significant. Well, he thinks. That’s nice of her.

After a moment he turns his head and goes back to staring straight forward again. They stay sitting like that for a while longer.

Mana gets the full story a few days later when Ren comes home. She’s lying on her side on the rug in the living room, curled up in her favorite spot under the window, when Shisui speaks up. 

“Dad, can I talk to you?”

Ren must have nodded because a moment later she hears two pairs of footsteps enter the room. She’s in plain sight, but apparently the household is so used to seeing her lying around unconscious that they don’t even check to see if she’s sleeping—they just assume that she is. Mana wonders if she should roll over so they can see that her eyes are open, but they begin to speak before she can.

"What's up?" Ren asks with a sort of quiet, parental calm that gives Mana a sense of what sort of face Shisui must be making right now. 

"Something… something's happened to my Sharingan," the boy says, hushed, after a long moment. 

"What do you mean?" There's a shifting of cloth that might have been Ren reaching an arm out. "You already have all three tomoe, right?"

"I do, but… it's—it's not the tomoe. It's something else."

Another silence, and then a sudden intake of air. "Shisui," Ren asks, "what happened on your last mission?"

And then Mana finds herself wishing she'd been sleeping after all. This isn't my business , she thinks with low-key panic, as Shisui begins to speak about his recent rivalry with his teammate Tadasu. Friendly enough, or so he'd thought, until this last mission when they'd been competing—

It's one thing to overhear someone talk about a tragedy. It's another thing to overhear him confess to it in supposed privacy to his father. Mana learns a new word that day: migoroshi , see-killing, the act of letting another die without helping. 

"I thought there would be time," the boy mumbles, voice trembling, "and I was angry, and I thought it was fair because he left me to deal with with my enemy on my own—I thought I could just help him after my fight—I thought we were just getting even with each other—"

Mana lifts a hand to cover her mouth, stunned by what she has just heard from the mouth of a child. Is that the job this boy has been training for since he was six? That's the job he's been doing these past months? Killing people, getting killed—is that what ninja do? He's barely even in the double digits. He's ten . 

Mana's head spins as she processes his story. Competing with friends isn't meant to end this way, she thinks. In any rivalry there are bound to be heated moments, and there are times when fights need to be put aside, but… that is the sort of lesson that's meant to be learned during games, or in a team sport, for stakes not nearly so dire—over a match, or maybe a tournament. Certainly not a human life. She thinks of her old students in her old life and imagines any one of them in this situation. Then she feels abruptly like she might puke.

Apparently she makes a noise to this effect because Ren and Shisui suddenly go silent. A moment later she finds herself being lifted up from the floor by her uncle, who takes one look at her ashen face and immediately takes her up in his arms. At this age Mana thinks people really probably shouldn’t be babying her this much, but Ren puts his hands under her bottom and carries her anyway. She supposes she’s so small and sickly, though, that people will probably keep at it until she becomes physically too big for them to do so.

She wants to smack Ren on the back and tell him to go back to taking care of his own child’s far more pressing issues, but Shisui himself has already jumped up and is eyeing her with concern. That’s no good, she thinks as she grips her uncle’s shirt. Someone needs to set up a meeting with this kid’s teacher—and talk to him about what happened—and look for a children’s counselor, maybe, so he can properly process that it’s not his fault—but no, it’s too late. She can see the matter begin fading from their eyes. Ren is already distracted and searching for Chieri. Shisui volunteers to go check the second floor. Mana buries her face in Ren’s shoulder and curses herself for making noise. 

Does Shisui ever talk to anyone about Tadasu again? Does anyone help him find proper closure for this incident? If someone does, she never sees it. She doesn't see what’s happened to his Sharingan, either, because as it turns out ten years old is already plenty old enough for young shinobi to learn how to smile fake smiles and hide their hearts from others.

Chapter Text

The Kyuubi incident happens on an evening that, in most respects, had been just like any other. She is ill, but there has never been anything novel about that; consequently she doesn’t remember the details of that day all that well. As far as she can recall she’d spent most of it bedridden. Back then there had been days when her levels of chakra, so vital to movement and life, would go so low that she’d become unable to even move her limbs. On those occasions it would fall to Chieri to sit her daughter up, feed her, take her to the bathroom, and on some occasions even bathe her. At eight years old Mana thinks they’re long past the phase where this should still be happening, but there’s nothing to be done. She really is just that sick. What had she done in her past life, she wonders, to have deserved such a debilitating illness in this one? She thinks about it as Chieri puts one arm around her child’s shoulders, slips another under her legs, and carries her off to the bathroom. 

She’s still thinking about it long after her mother has finished rinsing her head with water, dried her, dressed her, and is rubbing her hair with a towel. She probably would have kept thinking about it long after being put to bed, too, if at that moment there had not been an enormous bang. The whole house rocks and Chieri, startled, falls over with a small gasp. Several seconds later screams begin to pierce the air.

"What?" Chieri asks the air, frightened, as she straightens. As she stands she pulls Mana up with her. Confused and unstable, Mana clings to her mother’s front. Chieri drags her daughter with her and peers out the narrow bathroom window. Then her face goes pale.

“The Nine-Tails?” she breathes out with disbelieving horror as she sees the burnt orange fur of the chakra beast's tails whipping through the air. "What is—but how…?"

The air rocks with another horrific explosion. Chieri sucks in a breath. Then she spins around and lurches for the door.

They race down the stairs. There’s barely even time for Chieri to stop and put on shoes; she is shoving herself out the door as fast as she can go without actually falling over. Her movements are so clumsy and panicked that Mana is rather taken aback by her lack of composure. The first lesson of being a lady, after all, is grace and dignity in all situations; Chieri never fails to model this for her child at all times, so Mana is immensely puzzled as her mother goes tripping her way down the street. At least, she is until they’ve made it about thirty feet from the genkan. Then the whole front door simply explodes. Rubble and debris erupt in all directions; dust blows out like a cannon; Chieri crashes into the ground and by sheer luck saves herself from being beheaded by a flying piece of rebar. 

Oh, Mana thinks as she tumbles from her mother’s arms and then collides with a pile of wood. The splintered edges tear through her fabric of her thin housedress like tissue paper. That’s why she's in such a rush.

“Mana!” Chieri begins scrambling forward on all fours before she’s even managed to get her feet back from her own tumble. 

As another spray of wreckage hurtles over from beyond the house Mana is suddenly struck with profound fear. Chunks of rock and road, glass, shingles, tree limbs, and even a cast-iron pot come raining down around her, crashing all about like thunder and leaving dents and pockmarks in the ground. But she can't curl up or protect her head, nor can she hide behind cover or crawl to safety—she cannot use any of her limbs at all. She can only lie on her side in a shredded nightgown as death from above drops out of the heavens, struggling in vain to move her unresponsive body. Terrified tears spring to her eyes. It's possibly the sharpest emotion she's felt in months—maybe even years—and she lets out a helpless shriek as a chunk of the house shoots over her head and just barely misses crushing her skull. 

Chieri dives over her daughter just in time to shield her from another volley of debris. The air churns with splinters and dust and paper. Then a brick launches itself directly into the side of the woman's head; Mana is horrified when Chieri collapses in a heap atop her.

"Mom!" she screams, quite hysterical. Red liquid leaks from her mother's temple, dribbles down the side of her face, and then drips onto Mana's forehead. She lets out a frantic sob. "Mom?! Mom!"

"Hang on!" At that moment a shinobi with the crest of the military police on his sleeve is beside them so instantly it is as if he has teleported. He moves as if to kneel but abruptly his eyes snap to the side; all of a sudden he whirls around. Mana then witnesses a man kick a wood beam the size of a small tree clean in two. The two halves of it spin off and then embed themselves into the ground on either side of them. 

What the hell? she thinks, utterly flabbergasted. That shouldn't have been even remotely possible. This person's tibia should be in shattered pieces right now. She knows that ninja have superpowers, but she's never seen them used in person before now.

"Ma'am?" The shinobi spins back around, crouches beside Chieri, sees the blood flowing from her scalp, and then grimaces. "Ma'am, are you all right? Can you hear me?"

"I’m fine," Chieri mumbles in reply. She gropes disorientedly around before finding her daughter's arm and gripping it. "We have… we have to get out of here."

"The southeast shelter!" a distant voice calls. "All civilians, take cover in the southeast shelter!"

The police officer takes on a determined look. He squats and pulls Chieri up; while she kneels and gets her bearings back, dizzy, he lifts Mana and throws her over his right shoulder like a sack of rice. Then he puts his left arm around Chieri's waist and hauls her to her feet.

"Come on," he says as he turns and, so encumbered, begins following the shouts of distant colleagues. Once they’ve arrived at the shelter the man deposits his charges in a quieter corner, as away from many others as he can.

"Thank you so much, Sorata-san." Chieri, though weary, summons the energy to bow her upper body. It seems they're acquainted. "You saved us."

“Not at all, ma'am,” Sorata returns with a bow of his own, though he has to place his palm against the ground to keep his balance when he squats; his calf has been cut open and what’s left of his pant leg is soaked in blood. Then Chieri turns her head to look over her child, which allows him to to catch sight of the sticky clot beginning to form on her temple. His brow creases. “Chieri-san, you need to get that looked at right away. Let me see if I can't find a medic."

“Please, have my daughter examined first,” Chieri murmurs as she shifts Mana in her lap. She’s careful not to touch the girl’s back, which has been gashed open and is currently also bleeding quite profusely. Mana, for her part, is desperately clutching the front of her mother's blouse. The blood from Chieri's head wound is still smeared across her forehead.

"I'm sorry," she chokes out. "It's my fault. Mom. I'm sorry." 

"Shh," Chieri hushes as she strokes a hand through Mana's hair. "It's all right, sweetheart. Don't cry."

"You should have left me." Mana, heedless, begins to sob. "You got hurt because of me. You should have just left me behind."

"Stop that. Don't say nonsense." Chieri's voice suddenly takes on a sharp tone. "How could I possibly leave you behind, Mana?"

"But—"

"I could never leave you," Chieri says. She presses her palm to the back of Mana's head and lowers her lips to rest on her daughter's forehead. "Your life is too precious."

Mana, who has never been anything but a burden—who has never for a moment been grateful for rebirth, who has thought over and over again that it would have been better for everyone, but especially better for Chieri, if she had never been born—finds herself suddenly robbed of breath. 

"Too precious?" she croaks out. Her fingers are tangled in the fabric of Chieri's clothes. She can feel the beat of her mother's heart pulsing steadily under her hand. Chieri breathes out a sigh.

"Oh, Mana," she murmurs even as her gaze begins to grow hazy. She takes hold of her daughter's hand as her head begins to fall forward and her eyes flutter shut. "I love you."

Even with the emergency summons it takes weeks to recall most of the nonessential Leaf shinobi from the borders, but eventually Ren finds his way back to the village. What he discovers there is a sight straight out of a nightmare. It's exactly the sort of scene he has always feared to see painted upon his home: buildings in shambles, women and children and elderly on the streets, men digging out corpses from piles of rubble…

"I never thought it would happen for real," Ren says distantly to the pair guarding the gate—what’s left of the gate, at any rate—as he stares out over the wreckage. "The war is over. I thought we'd be spared this."

But even after winning—even after paying for their victory with blood and fire and steel—somehow the horrid vision has come true anyway. Death and destruction has been visited upon the Leaf anyway. He doesn't know what else to say. The guards are silent, too.

“Tell me, are any of the units from northeastern Fire Country in-village?” Ren eventually queries, wondering after the location of his son. The kunoichi beside him tilts her head.

“There’s one of the eight-man cells, but other than that, no. As you might have guessed, the situation’s a lot more volatile over there, given Kumo’s latest movements.”

“None of the chuunin scouts have returned?”

“No, not yet. With the recall order I do expect several of them will be arriving soon, but their reconnaissance tasks were of higher priority than the operation in the south. Their return is probably delayed compared to yours because they had to finish their rotations.”

“I see.” Ren is quiet for another long moment. Then he thanks the sentries and turns his eyes to the village. Thoughts of Shisui fall aside; his son, evidently, had been far from the village during the attack, and the boy is a very competent ninja besides. At this point Chieri and Mana are far more the worry—he needs to locate them first. Whether he’ll find them dead or alive, of course, he can’t know, and he begins making his way to the Uchiha district with a shroud of anxiety permeating his mind. The feeling of it only grows as he walks along; the damage is worse the closer he gets to the compound, and when he finally arrives he finds the whole of the clan grounds utterly leveled. His house, which had once stood on the main street right by the district gates, is little more than a pile of splinters. He stops to gaze at the rubble. It goes without saying that Chieri and Mana are nowhere to be seen.

“They’ve pitched tents over on the other end of the compound,” one of the workers clearing rubble replies when Ren inquires about the location of the displaced Uchiha clan civilians. “If your family is anywhere, they’re there. And if not…” The man hesitates as if wondering if it’s his place to speak. Ren nods at him to go on. “If not, the military police are headquartered there as well. They’ll have a list of missing and deceased clansfolk.”

“All right, I’ll take a look. Thank you for your help.”

With all the buildings flattened the bustle of the Uchiha camp is visible even at quite a distance. The MP’s tents are dark and all marked with the clan crest, standing in contrast to the civilians’, which are every color and hue of the rainbow. There’s a single grand tree standing solitary at the very center of the encampment, tall and lonesome on an empty horizon. It seems to be the sole survivor of its fellows. Ren looks at it and thinks that he has perhaps perceived the reason why the clan has chosen this particular stretch of wasteland to linger upon. Several dark heads of hair are clustered in the shade of its boughs, sitting on blankets and eating the midday meal. 

Feeling suddenly impatient, Ren activates his Sharingan. Unlike the Byakugan it won’t increase his range of vision, but what it does do is allow him to perceive chakra, and some part of him hopes he'll catch sight of something in the crowd. It's an improbable hope, of course; a civilian like Chieri would hardly have enough chakra to be visible at this distance, and he can’t imagine Mana would be any better. Still, he can’t help but do it anyway, and he walks a few more steps as he begins scanning the crowd. 

Then he pauses. When he begins moving again he lengthens his stride; in no time at all he is standing over the prone form of a familiar figure, smoldering faintly with a dark orange chakra fire. It’s not Chieri, but it’s someone worth seeing regardless.

“Hm…?” The man on the blanket stirs when Ren’s shadow falls over his face. Surprised—he’d thought for sure he’d been sleeping—Ren reflexively shifts his weight before crouching down by his friend’s head and speaking.

“Touma, it’s me. Are you all right? You have hardly any chakra at all.”

“Mm,” Touma mumbles before running a hand over his face and rolling onto his back. He doesn’t sit up to give his greetings; he just puts his palm on his forehead instead. “I’m fine… just tired. All but a few of the clan medics have died. I’m doing the work of five different shinobi.”

Even without the Sharingan that much is plain to see. Unlike the perennially bedheaded Ren, Touma is the type to keep himself well-groomed even when he's in the field. The fact that he is both uncombed and unshaven is proof enough of his fatigue. Ren, troubled, puts a hand upon his friend’s shoulder. Touma mutters a noise of gratitude. A beat passes.

“...I hate to bother you while you’re resting, Touma, but have you seen my little sister?”

“Ah, Chieri-san? Yes, I have,” Touma confirms, much to Ren’s relief. He exhales a long breath, letting the tension drain from his shoulders. Touma smiles a bit.

“Then she’s okay? Mana, too?”

“Ah…” Touma’s smile fades slightly. Ren’s relief sharpens right back into alertness.

“What is it?” His mind whirls through possible scenarios before fixing upon the thought of his niece, who has always been in ill health. “Don’t tell me Mana—”

“Mana-san is fine,” Touma hastens to reassure. “She was hurt during the attack, but she’s healing up well. She was treated quite immediately, so the wound won’t even scar.”

“Then it’s Chieri? What’s wrong with her?”

“Chieri-san… waited a little longer to get herself looked at. She’s doing all right, but her symptoms are persisting a little longer.”

Ren sees the grimace Touma suppresses and immediately guesses what’s happened. “Spinal? Head?”

“Ah… yes. She was struck on the head.”

“Severely?” Ren’s brow creases when his friend responds by frowning. “That bad?”

“Well, it’s only been a few weeks, so we’re still seeing how things develop,” Touma hedges. “But… yes. It was severe. She lost consciousness for several hours afterwards, and her memory of the event itself is a little spotty. We’ve been keeping an eye on her.”

Ren rakes a hand through his hair. Ninja are no strangers to concussions and traumatic brain injuries, so even if he isn’t a medic himself he knows how unfavorable this slew of symptoms is. He immediately begins casting his eyes about. “Tell me where she is. I want to see her.”

“Of course. She and Mikoto-san are watching the children right now.” Touma grunts a bit as he summons his willpower and sits up. “Here… I’ll take you to them.”

Chapter Text

It goes without saying that the clan is left reeling in the wake of the attack. Though the Police Force is mostly intact owing to the fact that they'd been spread all over the village doing rounds at the time of the Kyuubi's escape, many retired and civilian Uchiha have been killed—including several of the clan's most senior doctors, which leaves Ren's old Academy friend Touma to pick up a worryingly large portion of the clan’s health care. When Mana sees him she gets the vague sense that something about him is familiar, but she can't quite place where she’s seen him before. Maybe he’s been around the house, or perhaps he’s been by to look over her condition once or twice. She can’t quite remember. Regardless, though, with the death of her usual doctor Touma becomes her new physician full-time. 

Touma’s newfound struggles, though, are only a small bit of background contributing to the strange air of the following months. There are other medics not of the Uchiha clan in the village, but none of them come to help lighten his load, which Mana finds very strange. They certainly know where the Uchiha are—every now and then she sees some of the village shinobi lingering at a distance from the camp. Once even a crowd of civilians gather, but they disperse when the military police come out to hold their end-of-day meeting beneath the big tree. She wonders what it must mean, and why the adults around her seem so grim-faced when they think the children aren’t looking. It's not like there's any point to hiding how upset they are. The compound’s been destroyed. There’s no way of concealing it.

Still, despite all that, a new sort of normal has begun to take shape as Konoha rebuilds. By now most of the shinobi deployed abroad have returned to the village, and carpenters and craftsmen and tradesfolk from all across the country are swarming now that rubble and ruins are more or less cleared. The wooden bones of houses and buildings are rising from the earth all around; the village children, let loose from classes in the meantime, are running all about between the lots of this slow resurrection.

Mana, being both extremely small for her age and a stranger to the Academy students in her actual cohort, finds herself naturally grouped with two clan children several years her junior. The girl who calls herself Izumi is gregarious and immediately sets out to become her friend; the boy named Itachi, on the other hand, is far more reserved, and other than a short greeting he seems mostly content to sit quietly nearby with his little brother in his arms. 

Mana can't help but feel a pang of grief when she looks at them. Her kindergarteners had been just the same way. Some loud, some shy, some laughing, some silent—but even with this mix of personalities and traits many of them had become friends anyway, just like these two. Even the way Itachi protectively holds his baby brother to his chest reminds her of how the children would tell her stories of newborn siblings. She thinks about baby brothers and sisters, come to school with parents to pick up children, and pictures a scene just like this one: a quiet boy from the back of the class, clutching the side of his little brother's carrier, rubbing the infant's head delightedly—

"What's wrong, Mana-chan?" Izumi asks when she sees the girl sitting with her hands over her face. Mana doesn't reply. Her attention is consumed by the task of fighting back tears and keeping her breath even. Her eyes sting and terrible pressure builds in her forehead, but she grits her teeth and summons all the will she can. If she gets sick here, she thinks, Chieri will have to deal with it again. She can't get sick and make Chieri deal with it again. Not this time.

"Mana-chan…?" Izumi puts a hand on her shoulder and asks. "Are you okay?"

Blinking furiously behind her palms, Mana takes a breath. Then she takes another. She breathes and breathes until her heart slows and her eyes finally cease to burn. And then, feeling suddenly terribly exhausted, she leans back against the wood of the half-standing fence and finally uncovers her eyes. 

"I'm okay," Mana says weakly. An awful headache has begun to bloom between her temples and her limbs suddenly feel as if they weigh a hundredweight, but she thinks she won't collapse. 

"Do you want me to get Mother?" Itachi queries when he sees the pallor of her face. Izumi hovers worriedly.

"No," Mana says vehemently. If Itachi summons Mikoto then Mana's own mother is sure to come along. “Don’t call her.”

Itachi and Izumi spend a long moment staring at the look of forbidding determination on her face. They glance at each other. Then Izumi stands. “I’ll be right back,” she says, and Mana gets the sense she’s telling Itachi to wait here and stand watch. Itachi immediately takes on a put-upon air, but nevertheless he rises and moves over to sit beside Mana while Izumi jumps to her feet and dashes off towards the tents at the other end of the camp. A few beats pass in silence before he lets out just the faintest of sighs and turns his attention back to Sasuke, clearly uninterested in making small talk. 

Mana, no great conversationalist herself, is unperturbed; she takes the chance to observe the siblings unobtrusively. The first thing she notices as she examines him is that Itachi, too, has strangely aged eyes. She wonders if that’s a common thing amongst children in this life. Such weighty gazes in such young faces everywhere she goes—is that just the way this world is? Nevertheless, he seems to be happy as he examines his little brother’s sleeping features. There’s a kind of glow in his face as he looks at Sasuke that feels familiar, but she can’t quite name it, and all at once an odd sense of fierce longing ignites in her chest. Despite how heavy her arms are she feels them twitch involuntarily. Itachi’s eyes shift.

“Do you want to hold him?” he eventually asks with an aura of resignation, which gives Mana the impression that he is well-used to having others demand a turn with the cute baby. She opens her mouth to deny it, but the words that come out are not at all what she intended: “Yes, please.”

Itachi sighs again, a little more audibly now, and shifts. Then he holds out his arms, and in them Sasuke’s swaddled form. Mana accepts him carefully, willing her limbs to hold steady as she does. It’s fortunate they’re sitting down on the ground, she thinks, or this might be a much scarier endeavor…

Sasuke instantly bursts into tears. Itachi looks like he’d anticipated such a development and poses himself to take the infant back, but Mana goes still and is abruptly bewildered. A scarier endeavor, she thinks. But why? What about holding a baby is so scary? She stares into Sasuke’s reddening face, round-cheeked and delicately featured, and—and despite the unhappy contortion of the boy’s features, she suddenly beholds a sort of wonderful beauty. All at once she can see it. She’s holding a miracle in her arms. A whole entire tiny human being alive in her very own arms—wailing, true, but warm. He’s animate. He’s real. 

For a long moment she is astounded. Then she does the only thing she can think to do. It’s the only thing she’s learned to do at all in this life: she imitates Chieri. Itachi blinks with surprise when he sees such an unemotive girl pressing her lips to his little brother’s forehead, but it’s such a sincere kiss that he can hardly stop her. Maybe even Sasuke himself is surprised by it because after a moment he ceases crying and falls silent as well. Mana draws back.

"He's perfect," she says and is only a little surprised by how much she means it. No wonder Itachi was so happy. It makes sense that his face was aglow. How could it be otherwise?

I could never leave you… Your life is too precious.

That's what it was, Mana thinks as she lifts a wavering hand and uses its small, childish fingers to brush through the unruly dark hair atop the baby's head. The glow in Itachi's face was the glow in Chieri's face. It's the glow she always has when she's looking at her, even in the throes of suffering and sacrifice. She looks up and meets gazes with Itachi.

“Thank you,” she says when he takes Sasuke back. Itachi stares at her, eyes dark, for a long moment. She stares back.

“I guess he likes you,” he says eventually. “He usually cries the whole time when someone else holds him.”

Mana blinks slowly. Another beat of silence passes. And then, just ever so faintly, the corners of her lips lift in a small smile.

“Here, Mana-chan. These will make you feel better.”

What she receives from Izumi’s outstretched hands are a sketchbook and a magnificent sixty-four pack of well-used but still quite serviceable crayons, only slightly beaten-up at the corners. Mana regards her with utter surprise.

“You’re giving these to me?”

“Yeah. You don’t have any, right? Since your house got destroyed. Our house was damaged, too, but we were still able to get some of our things from it. I still have some of my other stuff, so I’ll let you have these.” Izumi smiles.

“Thank you,” Mana says, a little mystified, as she accepts her offering. In circumstances like these it’s no small gift. Like as not it will be another several weeks before something like a sketchbook and crayons will be readily accessible to Leaf villagers again. The shinobi are on high alert, so right now the only merchants allowed within the gates are those bringing necessities like food and construction materials.

When she opens the sketchbook she finds it much depleted, owing to the fact that Izumi must have ripped out her own drawings before handing it over, but there’s still a goodly amount to work with. Mana considers her present carefully. Drawing is a low-energy, low-effort activity. It’s no substitute for sleep, but it’s not strenuous, and it would be enough to spare Chieri the worry that napping usually causes…

Around midday she sets down under the boughs of the big tree, thinking she'll just doodle some simple pictures, when she finds her gaze drawn upward: the sun is streaming downward through the gaps between leaves. Beams of white radiance pierce through the air and the ground all around her is speckled with spots of light. Blinking with wonder, Mana gazes up at the green and golden glow of the leaves and is stunned by the utter grandeur of it. This can't possibly be, she thinks. How could a sight like this exist? In a village half in ruins, beside their dinky little tents, with nothing at all of beauty or note to be seen anywhere—what is this? 

The clansman sitting against the trunk some feet away from her speaks when he catches sight of her passing her fingers through the ray of light streaming into her lap. She blinks at him, confused, and he repeats himself. 

"Komorebi," he says. It's an unfamiliar word. When he reaches out Mana hands him the drawing pad and a crayon. He takes them and writes out the word, first in hiragana—which Chieri has already taught her—and then in kanji. Two of these characters she also knows: they're used in the days of the week. The first, "tree," is for Tuesday, and the third, "sun," is for Sunday—but the character in the middle she has no idea about.

"Moreru," the man tells her. To leak or to let out, she thinks. To escape, to come through, to shine through—

"Ohh," says Mana. Komorebi. Tree-leak-sun: the light of the sun that filters through the leaves of trees. In this world they have a word for such a phenomenon. Awestruck, Mana turns her gaze back upwards. The man chuckles. 

Mana tries to draw out the sight of the shining canopy, but unlike with sewing and music she has no built-in knowledge from her past life to guide her attempt. Frustrated by her lack of success, she puts down the sketchbook and pouts blatantly. She's too engrossed in her endeavors to try concealing her emotions, as would be proper, but perhaps she's young enough that the clansman finds this endearing more than immature.

"You should find a teacher," he suggests, now about finished with his lunch, as he brushes the crumbs from his sandwich off his shirt. "You have talent. Those were good tries."

Mana doesn't think so, and she raises her eyebrows skeptically, but the man seems sincere. "I mean it," he insists. "If someone taught you I bet you could do it. Ask your parents."

Mana considers it. Well… it would be something new. Rather than retreading paths she’s already taken, if only in another lifetime, might it not be interesting to learn how to do something she’s never done before? Chieri is a music teacher. She knows about the arts. If there’s someone in the clan who could teach her daughter, she would know, wouldn’t she?

“Okay,” Mana says slowly. “Maybe it would be fun. I’ll… ask my mom.”

Chapter Text

“All right. I’ll get everything listed here. I may be a bit—there’s a lot to buy.”

“That’s all right,” Mikoto answers as she hands over a money pouch. “Take all the time you need. It’s only because you’re doing my share of the shopping… I’m indebted to you.”

“Not at all. I’m the one indebted to you,” Chieri returns gracefully. “Thank you for watching Mana again today, too.”

“Rather than me watching Mana-chan, it’s more like Mana-chan is watching the baby.” Mikoto waves a hand and laughs lightly. “Honestly, she’s been a big help, especially now that Itachi is at the Academy. He always kept an eye on Sasuke for me when I was busy. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.”

“Itachi-kun is really such a reliable boy…”

Chieri and Mikoto spend a moment longer in the doorway, quietly giggling together over mutual praise for their offspring. Now that all the families have more or less moved into their new homes and classes have started up again, the responsibility for the childcare of clan children has been taken back by their individual parents, but Chieri and Mikoto seem quite content to continue combining labor and resources. Mana thinks it’s a fantastic state of affairs, especially compared to the past. It seemed as if Chieri had been in a state of near-constant drowning, but now as it is, Mana had actually caught her mother sleeping on the couch when she’d come home two days ago. With Mikoto's help the burden upon her seems to have lightened considerably.

"Would you like to help me start on lunch when you finish your assignment, dear?" Mikoto queries of the girl sitting at the coffee table with her math worksheet. Mana idly solves the next problem, severely underchallenged by elementary arithmetic, and nods.

"Yes, Mikoto-san."

Housewife training, as it so happens, has expanded its curriculum now that Mikoto has joined the fray. In addition to essential childcare tasks like feeding and changing, the addition of manpower has allowed the mothers more leisure in meal prep, which in turn now means they can slow down enough to let a child try her hand at various vegetable-peeling and water-boiling tasks. Mikoto seems impressed with both Mana's dexterity and cooking acumen, but Mana suspects that that may be because she erroneously believes Mana is Itachi's age—that is, six instead of nine—and is falsely attributing three years' development of motor function to innate talent. Well, that and an entire remembered lifetime's worth of experience. Mana just wonders if she'll spend the rest of her life being mistaken as sixty-six percent of her actual age. She really should have put more effort into eating as an infant; her growth has clearly been stunted. 

Well… it's only a matter of time until Mikoto realizes the truth. Chieri is bound to figure out the misunderstanding eventually. Until then, it doesn’t really actually affect anything anyway. Even as a supposed six-year-old she’s being allowed to handle knives and cook with fire. But maybe that’s not unusual, either. Apparently Itachi has been training with real knives ever since he first got his hands on his father’s spare equipment, and that, it seems, is not at all a recent development.

Chieri returns just as Mikoto and Mana are plating the food, so after placing the baby in his high chair the ladies all sit down to enjoy their meal. Mana, seated next to Sasuke, alternates between taking bites of chicken and wiping sauce off of every nearby surface—his tray, his shirt, his face, her own shirt, her own face. The boy is a prodigiously messy eater and has no concern for sparing his neighbor.

"Whew…" Chieri sighs later once they've finished eating and relocated to the sitting room. She beats her shoulder lightly with her fist and leans back on her hand. "I'm tired."

"Did you do a lot of shopping?" Mana queries through the doorway as she hands the dirty dishes to Mikoto, who is already starting the faucet at the sink. Mana's offer to help is waved away lightly, so the girl instead returns to the tea table and stands at Chieri’s back. Then, remembering how she and her previous mother used to trade shoulder massages, she reaches up and presses her thumbs into Chieri's back. Chieri lets out a noise of pleasant surprise.

"Ah, thank you, sweetheart," she sighs lightly. “Mmm. Yes, it was a bit. I had a lot to carry.”

“I can help if you take me with you next time.”

Chieri, touched by this offer, places a hand on her cheek and smiles radiantly at her daughter. “Thank you, Mana. That's so thoughtful of you. You are such a good girl,” she praises. “You’re always thinking about me even though you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick lately,” Mana protests. Miraculously, this is actually quite true. It’s probably been months since her last episode, now that she thinks about it, and that is possibly the longest she’s ever gone in good health for all her short second life.

"Yes, that's right. That's why I don't want you to do anything that might make you ill again. Just let Mom take care of it, okay? If you lift heavy things you might use up too much chakra."

“It doesn’t have to be heavy. You can just let me carry a basket.”

“No, sweetheart, it’s all right. It’s a long walk from the market. You would get tired.”

Mana knows it would be bad manners to continue insisting, so despite her manifest dissatisfaction she subsides and takes a seat beside her mother. She tries not to make an irritable face. There are many advantages of being a carefully-raised girl from a well-to-do family, after all, and she knows without a doubt that in any other hands she’d almost certainly already be dead… but every now and then in moments like these she can’t help but feel a bit irate anyway. 

Chieri, perhaps sensing this, smiles a bit and reaches over to put her palm against Mana’s face. “You are my treasure, Mana,” she murmurs as she strokes her cheek with her thumb. “I just want you to be healthy. Just humor me.”

And Mana, despite hearing this excuse every time, finds herself once more melting under her mother's hand. Chieri smiles again.

Taking care of Sasuke makes Mana feel both happy and sad at once. It’s not the usual sort of grief of remembering her past life usually inflicts upon her—though there is a day when he vomits all over her lap while playing, which brings about a bizarrely wistful recollection of the time one of her kindergarteners had sicked up all over her shirt during recess—but something about him seems to fill her with a strange sort of longing instead. Watching him play, watching him careen wildly about in the hallways, watching him climb up on furniture and pull on curtains and get into laundry baskets—picking him up when he falls over, holding onto his hands while he sits, carrying him about in her arms and rubbing his back while he naps—as joyous as it is, it’s oddly melancholic, too. Something about it is familiar, though. She thinks she might have felt a similar feeling when she had been a teacher. She'd been caring for the children of others then, too. She'd never had any offspring of her own.

"I'm home," a young voice calls in the distance. Sasuke's eyes light up and his back goes pin-straight; in a second he is scrambling for the doorway as fast as his little legs will take him, babbling wildly and tugging on Mana's skirt to make her follow. Mana does so obediently, supervising watchfully as the boy slides and stumbles on the hardwood floor. Then they reach the genkan. Sure enough, the very beloved brother Itachi is there: he's removing his sandals and climbing up out of the entryway. As he does so a familiar face speaks out behind him.

"Pardon my intrusion," Shisui says as he stands in the doorwell. He and Mana meet gazes when Itachi bends down to say hello to his brother. After a beat Shisui raises a hand in greeting. Mana does the same.

“Ah, Shisui-kun? Welcome.” Mikoto, finally arriving from the kitchen, is beating her hands on her apron as she appears. “My, it’s been a little while since I last saw you, hasn’t it? You’ve been training very hard lately.”

“Sorry for always keeping Itachi out late, Mikoto-san,” Shisui answers. “I made sure to bring him back on time today.”

“Not at all. Thank you for looking after him. He’s improved tremendously since he began training with you. Fugaku and I are both very grateful you’ve taken him into your care.”

Mana hasn’t actually seen much of Shisui at all lately, but it seems he’s finally managed to find himself a younger sibling-figure to dote on just as he’s always wanted. At least she figures this must be so; he's wearing a content sort of grin that Mana never sees on his face when he’s around her. 

"You must be hungry. Why don't you have a small snack before you head home for dinner? You've probably used up a lot of calories today."

As preternaturally mature as Shisui is, he is still very much a growing boy with an extremely active lifestyle. His face is instantly alight at the mention of food. Mikoto lets out a knowing laugh and invites him up out of the genkan. 

"She said a small snack, not a full meal," Mana finds herself remarking after they've relocated to the sitting room and found themselves supplied with tea and goodies. Shisui laughs around a mouthful of food and waves a finger at her.

"This is a snack. If I were eating a meal, I'd be having more than this."

"You'd eat even more?" Mana and Itachi ask at the same time, incredulous. Then they blink and glance at one another. Shisui lets out a delighted laugh.

"You know, Mana, you and Itachi are pretty similar, aren't you? I wonder how I never noticed before." He grins at them.

"What?" Mana makes to disagree, but Itachi speaks just as she opens her mouth. She turns to look at him; his lips are pursed and his eyebrows are raised. It's nearly a perfect mirror of her own exact expression. Astonished, she pauses.

"No wonder Sasuke likes you so much," Mikoto giggles. She is holding said child, wriggling and writhing, on her lap. She'd let him go to his brother, but the threat of hot tea is too grave. "Shisui-kun is right. You two could be twins. Are you sure you aren't actually my daughter?"

"What?" It's Mana's turn to speak incredulously now.

"Maybe Chieri stole you when I wasn't looking. You've actually been Itachi's sister all along."

Mana is immediately aware, at least in a distant way, that she's being teased. But even though she knows it’s a joke—that it would be enough to smile, or even to just to shrug if she doesn’t want to laugh—she doesn’t. In fact, before she even really realizes what she's doing, her fists are balled and her chin is jutting out. "No, that's not true. She's my real mom."

"Are you sure? Because I think—"

"No, you're wrong," she interrupts. The table at large pauses with surprise. Shisui doesn't think he's ever seen her interrupt an adult once in her entire life—even at her age, the girl is nothing if not rule-bound, just like a proper daughter of the Uchiha clan. As for Mikoto, she's startled to have encountered a side of the child she's never known. Even after over a year of babysitting, she doesn't think she's heard Mana speak so forcefully about anything.

"I see," she says after a moment, and then smiles gently. "You're right. I was mistaken. You're not my daughter, you’re Chieri’s."

Upon appeasement Mana returns immediately to her usual docility. Shisui can’t help but comment on it once they’ve left Mikoto’s house and have begun the walk back home.

“You’re usually really easy, Mana,” he remarks, “but you spoke up pretty well just now, didn’t you?”

“If you say so,” Mana answers a bit crossly. If pressed she may have admitted to being embarrassed for getting upset over an inconsequential jest that no one believed to begin with, but as it is now she mostly just wants to save face. 

Perhaps Shisui can sense this, because he smoothly changes the subject. “Anyway, it’s pretty late, isn’t it? You’re usually not there when Itachi and I get back from training. Did you lose track of time and forget to go home?”

“No, I was waiting for Mom. She always comes to pick me up.” There’s no earthly way Chieri would ever let Mana walk home alone, even if it is just down the street. In a way Mana finds it a little lucky that Shisui had shown up when he did. She could have made the journey on her own, of course, but she knows without a doubt she would have been in for the scolding of a lifetime if she’d actually dared to go home alone.

“Huh.” Shisui turns his head to peer down across the road. “She must be running late. Maybe we’ll cross paths.”

Mana looks, too, because she can’t imagine her mother had intended to keep her waiting any longer than she already has. She doesn’t know if Chieri’s ever waited so late in the evening to come pick her daughter up. But though they walk on she never appears, and by the time they reach the front door Shisui and Mana are exchanging concerned glances. Something’s not right.

“Maybe something happened to one of the neighbors and she went to help?”

“Or maybe ojisan came home? Maybe he’s injured?”

“I don’t think so,” Shisui says doubtfully as he unlocks the front door. “It hasn’t even been a week since he left. Something would have had to have gone seriously wrong for his team to have turned back this early. And if that were the case, he definitely wouldn’t be here.”

True enough. If something urgent enough to force a team home prematurely occurred, no ninja in his right mind would make a pitstop by his house; the only possible places to go would be either the hospital or the Hokage’s office.

Mana opens her mouth to continue speculating, but Shisui freezes abruptly after sliding the door open. Blinking, she leans in to peer into the genkan under his arm. The dusky late-evening shadows make it hard to see, especially since her mother’s blouse is a dark navy blue, but the white of her skirt draws Mana’s gaze and helps her focus on Chieri’s form. Once her eyes have fixed on her outline Mana can see that her mother’s shoes are on, and that her bag is sitting on the step all set to go, but the woman herself is sprawled on her side on the hard stone of the entryway. Alarmed, the grandchildren of Kagami both step forward. A stray beam of fading sunlight falls across the young mother’s form when Shisui shifts his position. Then Mana can perceive it: the dark pool spread out under Chieri’s cheek is not hair, as she had first assumed, but blood.

Chapter Text

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having dizzy spells?” Ren demands again.

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Chieri answers miserably as she wilts under the furious gaze of her only brother. “I’ve had headaches and dizziness all the time since last October. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Chieri, are you crazy? That’s exactly the sort of thing you need to think about after a head injury. Now you've hit your head again!”

“But it wasn’t getting in the way of daily life. It wasn’t at all severe until now.”

“That doesn’t matter! We specifically told you—”

“I know, nii-san, but Touma also said—”

“Hey, Mana, come with me for a sec,” Shisui suddenly appears out of nowhere and says. Mana blinks and then, after failing to reply, finds herself being lifted by the armpits and carried out to the backyard. Shisui sets her down on the veranda and drops into a friendly crouch beside her. “Say, look at that tree over there. Do you see it?”

“What?” the girl asks blankly. When she continues to stare at him, uncomprehending, Shisui nudges her gently with his elbow to look.

“There, that one. Way out at the edge of the tree line. The one with the weird scraggly twig sticking out right in the middle of the trunk…”

“Oh.” Mana sees it. It’s rather higher on the tree than one would usually expect for a sucker, but she thinks it still qualifies. “I know what that’s called,” she remarks idly. “It’s an ad-ven-ti-tious shoot.”

“Where did you learn a word like that?” Shisui asks, a little impressed, when the girl carefully sounds out the syllables. Mana just shrugs.

“What about it?” She doesn’t think a tree sucker is particularly worth bringing a family member outside to witness. Shisui smiles.

“Watch this.” In the blink of an eye he produces a kunai, which he then sends sailing across the yard with an easy flick of the wrist. It flies straight and true the whole way before embedding itself with a distant thunk in the bark of the tree. A beat later the shoot shifts and then falls off into the grass. Shisui grins expectantly at her.

“That’s good,” Mana says after a pause. “Suckers are bad. You helped the tree.”

There’s a short silence. Shisui’s grin fades; then his eyebrows rise. He regards his cousin with a bemused expression. Mana returns it. “What?”

“Oh, sorry… I was just surprised. Most people would comment on the throwing distance first.”

Mana blinks. Then she turns her head to look at the distant glint of the kunai again. “Why? Are they not supposed to go that far?” Though now that she thinks about it, their yard is pretty huge. Since the clan moved to the outskirts, all the houses on the outer edge of the Uchiha district are right up against Konoha’s outer forest. The treeline is well over sixty meters away.

“They can, but you have to use wind chakra to cut the air resistance if you want them to fly that distance. Most people don’t learn how to do it unless they have a bukijutsu specialization.”

Oh, so he was demonstrating a difficult technique? Mana realizes her mistake and belatedly lifts her hands to clap for him. Shisui lets out a hearty laugh.

“That’s all right,” he assures her mirthfully. It’s flattering in its own way, he supposes, that she shows no surprise whatsoever at his ability to execute advanced skills. It doesn’t mean as much as it might have if she’d been a ninja, of course, but it’s vaguely heartwarming all the same. “I wasn’t really trying to show off anyway. Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“You were paler than a piece of paper.” He pokes at her hands, which had been clenched around the hem of her blouse. They’re not so white-knuckled now that she’s opened her grip. “I thought maybe you needed a distraction.”

Mana realizes at once what he’s saying. Maybe Ren and Chieri do, too, because they immediately lower the volume of their argument to gentler tones. Mana opens her mouth. Then she shuts it again. The racing of her heart, which hadn’t realized until now had been so pounding, gradually begins to slow.

“Mana?” Shisui questions. His eyes are really dark, she thinks. They’re so dark she can hardly distinguish the color of his irises from his pupils. But somehow they seem to convey compassion regardless.

She swallows. “I’m… I’m okay,” she says. “Thanks.”

“Don’t you want to stay in your own room, sweetheart? It’s already been a year since we moved, but you haven’t slept there once. Do you not like it?”

“No, I like it, Mom,” Mana answers, and it’s true. Chieri knows her tastes perfectly. From the desk chair to the lamp to the cute scallop-edged curtains, Mana’s bedroom is exactly the sort of bright and pretty place that she would have loved even in her previous life. Warm creams and browns and just a little bit of pink, full of natural light—there's even a wide, cozy rug spread out beneath the window, perfect to sprawl on while drawing, or reading, or taking naps. Chieri must have remembered the way Mana had always been sleeping under the old sitting room window. That's the sense Mana got the moment she'd laid eyes on it.

"Really?"

"Really. You know I like it. I spent the whole day in there today, didn't I?"

"But somehow you're always in my room for bedtime," Chieri says bewilderedly even as she lifts the futon cover so her daughter can crawl under and curl up at her side. Mana lets out a little sigh as she takes hold of her mother's sleeve and buries her face in the cloth of her nightgown. It smells fresh and pleasant. It must be the new laundry detergent Chieri had mentioned discovering earlier that week.

"Do you want me to go away?" Mana asks in a mumble.

"What?" Chieri lets out a puzzled noise. "No, of course not."

"Then I'll keep sleeping here. I'm not too big yet."

Chieri tilts her head. "Well, I guess that is true," she allows after a moment's thought. Evidently she means what she says, too, because that's all that she says about it. She lowers the blanket over Mana's shoulders and begins to run her fingers through her daughter's hair. Mana reflexively lets out a happy noise; Chieri giggles.

"Oh, pretty girl," she murmurs as she reaches up to pull on the string for the ceiling light. Save for a thin beam of moonlight that leaks through the thin gap between curtains, the room goes dark.

"Aren't you just calling yourself pretty, Mom?" It's no secret that Mana takes after her mother in appearance. One would have to be blind to be ignorant of that.

"Every now and then you say such witty things, Mana. I wonder where that cheek comes from…"

Mana looks up. Though Chieri has just called her cheeky, Mana can hear the amusement in her mother's voice, so she figures she can't be too upset. Mana rolls onto her back and lets out a little giggle of her own. Chieri smiles and places her hand on Mana's cheek.

"It's not from me, so it must be from Shigeru," Chieri murmurs. Mana blinks with surprise at this mention of her father; Chieri hardly ever speaks of her late husband. "He was usually so serious, but every now and then he would crack a joke out of nowhere. Now that I think about it, you're the same way, Mana."

"Oh," Mana says. She doesn't know quite how else to reply. Chieri lets out a little breath, not quite a sigh, and gently brushes the pad of her thumb over her daughter's lower eyelid.

"Anyway, Mana, you're mistaken," Chieri teases with a chuckle. "I'm not just praising my own looks. Your eyes are beautiful… they look just like his."

"Like Dad's?"

"Yes. Like Dad's eyes," she murmurs. She finds herself recalling them: the shape of them, their hue, the way that they would shift Sharingan red in the morning and then turn back to dark brown when he would return at night. She remembers how the light of them would focus every time he looked at her. Mana's eyes always used to be so blank when she'd been younger, but these days she has light now, too. Maybe that's why the resemblance seems stronger recently.

"He experienced a lot of hardship in his life, but he was always very sincere to me." Chieri's gaze goes distant. "Shigeru… I wish I could meet him again."

Something about the tone of Chieri's voice makes Mana's throat go dry and her heart begin to race. A wave of dread, unbearably intense, crashes over her; the sensation is so disabling that for an eternal instant it feels as though she has forgotten entirely how to breathe. She gazes fixedly at the ceiling, frozen. In the dim lighting she can just barely make out the wooden frame of the square ceiling lamp. There's a darkened shadow, just a smudge, visible on the shoji covering the light bulb. Perhaps a bug has gotten stuck inside and died.

This thought jolts Mana out of her benumbed stare. At once she rolls over onto her side and opens her mouth to speak to her mother, but in the course of Mana holding her breath Chieri seems to have fallen asleep. Mana looks on dumbly as her mother lies still and shut-eyed. The thin beam of moonlight leaking through the crack in the curtains falls ominously upon Chieri’s throat, bisecting the space between her head and her shoulders like the silvery thread of a ninja’s wire.

Mana is sitting at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes, when Ren swears and drops the box he’d been pulling from the cabinet. Mana doesn’t actually know any swears in this world’s language, of course, but she recognizes it for what it is by the tone of his voice. Startled, she turns and looks over her shoulder as various bits and bobs go clattering across the floor. Ren meets eyes with her and abruptly checks himself.

Chieri arrives from the sitting room to the sight of her brother snapping his jaw shut and sheepishly averting his gaze. She takes one look at the way he’s clutching his bicep and crosses her arms. “Ripped your stitches, nii-san?”

“...Maybe,” Ren admits grudgingly after a short pause. Chieri just sighs and waves for him to sit down.

“Honey, would you take those and put them on the counter for now? Go wash your hands while I get the medkit,” she instructs her daughter, who begins clearing the table of vegetables. “Nii-san, go ahead and…”

Chieri doesn’t even finish speaking before Ren pulls his sleeve off and pops his arm out from under the hem of his shirt. Mana comes over after washing her hands to watch curiously as her uncle removes the bandages around his wound, which has sluggishly begun to ooze dark red.

"Whoa," she says, impressed by how vibrantly inflamed the edges of the injury are. Clearly he's not been resting this arm much at all. She gingerly reaches out towards one of the intact stitches and watches as small bits of dried blood flake away at her touch; Ren watches her in turn, a little impressed himself at the fearlessness of such a tidy and delicate little civilian girl. Such a temperament, he thinks, would have made her very suited to the shinobi way of life, if only she'd been able.

"Here we are…" Chieri returns with a medicine box in one hand and a suture kit in the other. She sets both down on the table and pulls up a chair before lifting their respective lids. Ren sticks his arm out; Mana takes a spot at the edge of the table and observes while Chieri begins rinsing the laceration with saline. She's clearly an old hand at fixing stitches and begins narrating her actions at once, just as she would while teaching Mana about any household task. Mana, for her part, attends this lesson with particular interest. Unlike cooking and sewing, suturing was never a skill she had had in her previous life.

“All right, were you watching carefully? Now you try.”

Mana finds her small hands being guided to take hold of forceps and a needle holder. Alarmed suddenly to be in the driver’s seat, she glances up at her mother, who offers an encouraging nod, and then at her uncle. Ren is clearly unbothered by the prospect of becoming this young child’s practice dummy and continues to hold his arm out. His gaze is silently assessing.

Mana hesitates for just a beat longer before she marshals herself and begins evaluating the wound before her. After all, if she has a willing patient and an experienced supervisor, what better thing is there to do but to practice? This is clearly a valuable skill in the household of a ninja.

“Make sure you line up the edges of the skin… yes, like that. Now push the needle through… Good. Okay, be sure not to pull it too tightly…”

It takes focus and some assistance from Chieri’s guiding hand, but in the end the last stitch is tied and sits only very slightly lopsided. Chieri lets out a noise of approval while Ren lifts his limb and examines their work carefully. Then he nods and reaches out to ruffle Mana’s hair.

“Good work, Mana,” he praises cheerfully. Mana is pleased to have succeeded in her task and smiles.

“Well done, Mana,” Chieri agrees as she begins to tidy up. She disposes of the supplies and puts aside the tools for later sterilization. Then she puts a hand on her brother’s back and half-laughs, half-sighs. “Nii-san, be more careful, won’t you? Please.”

By precedent Ren would usually just scoff at this, but today he finds himself pausing. His sister’s tone is lightly chiding, just as it always is when he has these mishaps, but mellow—not at all blaming or judgmental.

“...I’m sorry, Chieri,” he says as he is struck with sudden guilt. Chieri blinks in surprise at this out-of-character apology. Then Ren rubs the back of his neck and looks her in the eye; understanding fills her features.

“Don’t worry about it, nii-san,” Chieri tells him kindly, and then stands up on her tiptoes to press a light kiss on his cheek. “I’m sorry, too. Let’s both be careful from here on out.”

Chapter Text

“You must be happy today, Mana-san.”

Mana blinks and looks up from her drawing pad. Then she belatedly realizes she’d been humming and flushes, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Rinako-shishou.”

“Whatever for? There’s nothing wrong with that.” Uchiha Rinako chuckles. “Has something good happened?”

“Oh… it’s nothing.”

“Really? You’re that pleased over nothing?”

“Shishou…” Mana holds back the urge to roll her eyes. She purses her lips instead. Rinako chuckles again.

“Oh, you know I’m teasing. But truly, I’m curious. Tell me, what has managed to put my sullen little student in such a good mood?”

“It really is nothing,” Mana sighs, a bit resentful of the appellation “sullen”—but only a bit. She knows she has a melancholic personality. “But if you truly want to know, shishou, Mom let me walk on my own to lessons today.”

“Oh, did she now? That overprotective mother hen?” As always, Rinako doesn’t hesitate a moment to malign Mana’s mother. At this point the outrage Mana had felt upon hearing Rinako do this for the first time is nowhere to be found. In fact, she finds herself letting out a rather unladylike snort of agreement instead. Rinako smiles mischievously at her.

“She’s been fatally neurotic ever since we were little girls, but perhaps there’s hope for her after all,” Rinako muses. “Who knows. Maybe you’ll be actually allowed to leave the compound before you turn twenty.”

“You don’t think she’d actually try to keep me confined to the Uchiha district until I have my coming-of-age ceremony, do you?” Mana asks with dread.

“Well…” Rinako winces. This time there's no hint of jest in her expression at all.

“You can’t be serious, shishou! That can’t be allowed. Besides, by the clan’s reckoning, won’t I already be an adult by the time I turn thirteen?”

“Yes, but you’re not thirteen. And more to the point, are you a shinobi? The clause of adulthood only takes effect if you’ve been recognized as a ninja.”

“Oh my gosh… I really will be stuck in the compound until I turn twenty,” Mana laments. “You know I couldn’t become a ninja even if I tried.”

“Well, worse comes to worst, you could always get married,” Rinako attempts to console. “That would make you an adult when you turn thirteen, too.”

Rinako appears to be perfectly serious as she says this. Mana pauses. Well… being that her cousin Shisui had begun working as a child soldier at age nine, it’s no surprise at all that child brides, too, exist in this world. She looks up from her drawing and spends a short moment reflecting upon this.

“Do you have a boy you like, Mana-san?” Rinako asks curiously when she sees how her student has gone both still and silent. Mana blinks.

“Hm? No…”

“Oh my, truly? There’s no one on your mind?”

“If there were, would I even have a choice about it?” Mana wonders aloud in reply to this. She’s known since age six that she is destined for an arranged marriage.

“I am fairly sure Chieri will take your preferences into account. Given that her opinion was not respected when her marriage was arranged, I doubt she would want you to go through the same experience.”

Mana does a double-take. “Wait, really? But I thought Mom really liked Dad.”

“Oh, to be sure. And it was very fortunate that they got along. But an arrangement doesn’t end with your husband, you know—you have to consider the family you’re marrying into. Chieri did like Shigeru, but she wasn’t short-sighted enough to ignore who her in-laws would be. Not that it mattered in the end, of course…”

Mana stares, bewildered, before considering the fact that no one in her house ever speaks of her father’s family. Now that she thinks about it she’s never met any relatives from his side, either. It had never occurred to her that there might be a reason for that.

“Anyway,” Rinako says smoothly, sensing that they’ve begun to encroach upon complicated territory, “let me look at your work. How is it coming along?”

"Oh…" Mana holds it up for her to look at. "I'm trying, but it's not really coming out right. It's been looking pretty weird ever since I put the buildings on the left in."

"You haven't drawn your eye level in," Rinako observes. “Why not?”

"I already know where my eye level is…”

“Draw it anyway. I’ll show you something interesting.”

Mana, though feeling vaguely doubtful, glances up at the street before taking her ruler and sketching it in. After she has done this, Rinako reaches out and puts in the lines along the right-hand side. Their ends converge at the center of the page and end at the aforementioned eye level, just as they ought to have.

“Very good. You drew it while keeping the vanishing point in mind.” Rinako nods. Then she points at the left side of the paper. “But something here isn’t quite right. Let’s extend the lines on this side, too…”

As Rinako works, Mana glances between the drawing and the street. She frowns. Then she gasps.

“Oh, have you realized it already?” Rinako queries with a small smile. “That’s right. Even though these buildings are on the same side of the street, they’re not actually parallel to each other. Therefore…”

“There’s more than one vanishing point!” Mana declares animatedly. “No wonder it looked so strange.”

“You catch on quickly,” Rinako compliments. “That's right. If buildings twist along a street like this they're not always going to line up the way you might initially imagine. And if that's the case…"

“I shouldn't skip sketching in the eye level line anymore.” Mana has already picked up her eraser and is going to town on the left side of her sketchbook. “I understand. Thank you, shishou.”

Rinako laughs and sets her chin on her hand. When Chieri had first come to her and told her her daughter had begun taking an interest in drawing, she hadn't been entirely sure how the matter would proceed—after all, for all Chieri's skill in music, the woman has no talent whatsoever with paint or pencils. Mana, on the other hand, has proven to be natural.

Another ten minutes pass before Rinako glances at her watch and stands. "Well, Mana-san, it's about that time… hm?"

Mana glances up and follows her teacher's gaze down the street. Then she blinks at the sight of a familiar figure making its way towards them.

"Shisui?"

"Hey, Mana," Shisui greets when he comes to a stop before her. He bows to her teacher. "Good afternoon, Rinako-sensei."

"Hello, Shisui-kun,” Rinako greets him warmly. “Have you come to pick up Mana-san?"

"Yes. Obasan asked me to get her."

"What? But she said she was fine with me walking here on my own," Mana objects. "Why did she change her mind?"

Shisui laughs a bit at her sour expression. “Well, it was still light when you left…”

“It’s still light now! It’s not even five!”

“The sun will set soon, though.”

“Yeah, in half an hour! Home’s barely even ten minutes away.”

"She also told me to bring you an extra jacket because you might get cold when the sun goes down," Shisui informs amusedly. He reaches behind his back and produces a blue windbreaker.

"Oh my gosh, Mom." Mana plasters her hands to her face, mortified. Shisui laughs again.

"Please don't tell me she interrupted your training to make you come do this," Mana pleads after they've parted ways with Rinako. 

"Ah, no, I was home to begin with. I got back from a mission about an hour ago." Shisui chuckles and pats her back placatingly. Mana scowls anyway. "Man, Mana, you really do look like Itachi when you do that… It's uncanny."

"Why do people always tell me that when I'm in a bad mood?" Mana wonders exasperatedly. She and Itachi do have similar hair and eye colors, but that could be said of anyone in the Uchiha clan. In her personal opinion she doesn't look anything like him at all. Shisui just grins.

"That's because the thing that you and Itachi have most in common is that you're both incurably grumpy," he cheerfully informs. He's so chipper that Mana can't help but give him a disgusted look. "See? Case in point."

"Ugh." She has no retort for this. It was true when Rinako said it, after all, and it's still true now. Better to change the subject, then. "Well… anyway, thanks for coming to get me. How was your mission?"

"Hm? Oh, not bad. People finally seem to be getting used to the idea of me being a jounin. I didn't have so much trouble captaining the squad this time."

A jounin, Mana knows, is the highest rank of ninja one can obtain in the General Forces; Ren is a jounin, too. She tilts her head curiously. "But didn't you become a jounin over a year ago?"

"Getting closer to two years now, actually. But that doesn't mean much to them. In their eyes, I still look like an Academy graduate." Shisui speaks with the good-natured but long-suffering air of a young overachiever who has had to repeatedly re-confirm his rank his entire life. "Most people my age are still genin or chuunin."

"Huh." Mana tilts her head. "I guess I can understand that, but still… you wouldn't be such a celebrity if it weren't true. Why wouldn't they believe you?"

Shisui lets out a startled laugh. "A celebrity? Is that what we're calling me these days?"

"It's true, isn't it? Everywhere we go in the district people seem to know who you are. They never stop asking Mom about you. They're always saying Ren's son this, Kagami's grandson that…"

"Hmm…" Some of the mirth drains from Shisui's face. He turns his gaze upwards and looks at the sky pensively. 

"...What's wrong?"

"Ah… no, it's fine. I know people talk—Dad did warn me that they would. He and I are the only shinobi left in our line, after all."

This is true. Ren and Chieri's older brother had died in the war, and he'd been followed shortly after by both his sons and then his wife to boot. The drama of Kagami's firstborn and the extinction of his entire bloodline, carried out all within the space of a year, had apparently been the talk of the clan for a good while. That had been before Shisui and Mana's time, though.

Mana wonders briefly what things might be like if she’d had the chance to become a ninja. Would people in the clan have concerned themselves about her advancement, too? She doesn’t know if she’d have appreciated so many prying eyes. Even Shisui, who is quite possibly the most laidback person she knows, does not seem particularly enthused to be reminded of their scrutiny.

Eventually their house comes into sight, though, and these thoughts flee her mind. Mana abruptly recalls her pique and puts her hands on her hips while Shisui opens the door.

“We’re home—oop,” he calls, and then twists out of the way as Mana goes huffing past. She heads straight to the kitchen and opens her mouth to voice her grievance to her mother. 

“Mom—” she begins heatedly, but then cuts herself off at the sight of Chieri standing at the kitchen counter. Her left hand, hanging at her side, is clenched in a white-knuckled grip; her right is pressed hard against her forehead. She is gritting her teeth and taking slow, deep breaths as she stands. Mana’s heart shoots into her throat. 

“Mom, are you okay?” she rushes towards Chieri’s side and asks. Chieri lowers her hand and blinks blearily. Then she turns her head to look down at her daughter.

“Ah, you’re back. Welcome home, Mana.”

“I’m home,” Mana replies worriedly. She latches onto her mother’s sleeve. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Ah, I’ve just got a bit of a headache.” Chieri attempts to take on a dismissive tone, but her voice comes out much too pained to sell the pretense. “I just took some medicine, though. I’m sure it’ll clear up soon.”

“Maybe you should lie down, obasan,” Shisui, looking rather concerned himself, appears in the kitchen doorway and suggests. “We can finish taking care of dinner if you want.”

“Oh, but—” Chieri tries to decline, but Mana immediately begins dragging her mother by the arm out to the sitting room and towards the couch. Before Chieri has time to put up any real resistance her daughter and her nephew have already sat her down and are passing her a throw blanket. She smiles a bit wryly.

“Oh, all right… Mana, most of the ingredient prep is done already, so all you need to do is wait for the bamboo shoots to finish soaking. I’ve already boiled and peeled them. Shisui, do you—”

“I can help,” Shisui confirms. “Sometimes we forage bamboo shoots in the field, so I know how to cook them.”

Ren has been away for some time now on a long mission, so that evening there’s only the three of them at dinner. Mana wishes he were there, though. Surely her uncle would know what to do about Chieri’s worsening condition. As it is, all she can do is pester her mother until she agrees to go visit Touma again the next day.

“I wish I didn’t have to, though,” Chieri complains lightly as they settle into bed that evening. “It’s supposed to snow tomorrow.”

“You have to go. He’s right nearby,” Mana insists stubbornly. “I’ll walk with you.”

“But you’re meant to watch Sasuke for Mikoto tomorrow. You can’t.”

“I’ll just tell her I’ll be a bit late.”

“No, Mana, that’s very rude,” Chieri chastens sternly. “You can’t change a commitment at the last second like that.”

“But it’s a matter of health!” Mana protests. “It’s an exception! Besides, Mikoto-san will understand.”

“Absolutely not. You can’t take advantage of her kindness like that, Mana. You will be on time for your appointment tomorrow, understood?” Chieri fixes her with a severe look.

“But Mom—”

“I’m more than capable of walking to the doctor’s on my own. You don’t need to be so overprotective.”

Mana is so dumbfounded by these words that she actually spends a moment staring speechless at her mother. Then when she finally regains her wits she says, “Mom, you’ve got to be the last person in the entire village who can say something like that.”

“Excuse me?” Chieri raises an eyebrow and rolls over to face her daughter more directly. “I don’t know if you should be taking that tone with me, Mana.”

There’s a note of warning in her mother’s voice that does not often surface in daily conversation. Mana finds herself abruptly cowed and she averts her eyes; but as she does so she bites her lip in frustration. Chieri lets out a sigh.

“I’ll be fine,” she reassures as she reaches out a hand and rests it on Mana’s arm. "Now that they've finished renovating Goro-san's shop I'll be able to cut through the shortcut lot and be there in no time. I'll hardly be outside at all."

Chapter Text

Sasuke rolls off the couch just as the phone begins ringing. “Mana-san,” he whines, “hand!”

“Sure, sweetie.” Mana extends her fingers even as she rises and begins making her way to the hall. Sasuke follows after her and then latches onto her palm with both hands. He beams, mightily pleased. 

“Hello?” Mana greets after removing the phone from its cradle and placing it beside her ear. Sasuke, who begins swinging Mana’s arm back and forth repeatedly, looks on curiously as she speaks.

“Ah, hello? Mikoto-san?”

“No, I’m sorry. Mikoto-san is currently away. This is Ren’s niece, Mana.”

“Oh, my, Mana-chan.” As the woman on the other end continues to speak, Mana finds she recognizes her voice: it’s Touma’s wife Risa, who assists him in patient scheduling and recordkeeping. “I called your house but no one was there, so I thought I’d ask Mikoto-san if she knew what was going on.”

“Pardon? What do you mean?”

“Well, your mother had an appointment earlier this morning, but she never came. We were wondering if something had come up—perhaps if you had gotten sick again—but…”

“No, I’m fine right now…” Mana speaks slowly, but her heart begins to race. A sensation of terrible dread overtakes her. She knows at once that something has gone terribly wrong. “Mom didn’t see Touma-sensei?”

“No, honey. We waited for her but she never arrived. But by the sound of it, you don’t know either, do you?”

“No…” Mana’s mind is instantly awhirl with possibilities. Then she finds herself going pale. “Oh… oh, no.”

“Mana-chan?” Risa asks. And then, just at that moment, the front door opens and Mikoto steps inside.

“I’m back,” she calls lightly. At once Mana drops the phone and prises her hand—gently—from Sasuke’s grip. Then she lunges for her coat and scarf. Mikoto blinks at her with alarm. “Mana-chan?”

“I’m sorry, Mikoto-san, I have to go,” Mana gasps as she yanks them on. “Tell Risa-san I’m sorry. Sorry, Sasuke, I’ll see you later,” she adds hurriedly before jamming on her shoes, pushing past Mikoto, and sprinting out the door.

“Mana-chan?!” Mikoto calls after her, but Mana barely hears it. She runs at full tilt through the snow all the way down the street, chest pounding, and then turns at the corner. She comes up to the house.

“Mom!” she yells as she throws the front door open, wondering with barely-suppressed terror if she’ll find Chieri bleeding in the genkan again. But the entryway stands empty and silence meets her call, so Mana kicks off her shoes, clambers up the step, and goes running from the kitchen to the laundry room to the bedroom. She shouts for her mother the whole way. There’s no reply at all. 

Before she scrambles up the stairs to search the second floor Mana abruptly remembers her common sense and dashes back to the genkan. If her mother is still in the house, after all, her shoes should still be there. Mana takes a look and then goes even paler than she was before. Then she snatches her own shoes back up and pulls them on before flying out the door again.

As she hurtles through the streets, swiveling her head back and forth wildly in search of Chieri, she thinks furiously about the situation. If her mother is unconscious she’s not likely to respond even if Mana calls. But it’s been hours since her missed appointment—if she’d fainted on a main road surely by now she would have been discovered by passersby. Therefore she must be in a place others aren't likely to have found her. But where would that be? Had she stopped somewhere on the way before going to Touma's house? Mana can't imagine she would have done so in this snow. She'd been reluctant enough to go outside at all. Last night she'd complained about it.

Last night—

"Now that they've finished renovating Goro-san's shop I'll be able to cut through the shortcut lot…"

Mana inhales sharply and turns back from the main road. She runs a block and then ducks into the narrow alley between buildings, and after walking through she emerges in the space by the back entrance of the greengrocer's. Enclosed by walls all around and cast in shadows by the eaves of the surrounding buildings, it's cold, dark, and totally hidden from view of any of the surrounding streets. Mana pauses, breathing heavily, before stepping out past the pile of crates sitting like a mountain behind Goro's shop.

She’s there. Sprawled on her front, bag spilled open, half-buried in the morning’s snowfall—

“Mom!” Mana dives for Chieri’s side and rolls her mother over. Snow spills from her mother's hair over her face; her lips are blue. “Oh, no. No, no, no. Mom? Mom!”

Chieri is by no means a large woman, but Mana is already small for her age, and even a slender lady is more than a match for a sickly prepubescent girl. Mana lifts Chieri’s arm and pulls on it with all her might, trying to tug her mother's torso onto her back, but it’s useless even when she finally does get the right leverage. She tries to use her whole body to lift her, pushing on the ground with both her arms and her legs, but it isn’t enough to raise Chieri off the concrete. Gasping, Mana rests a moment, and then stubbornly tries again. It’s just as futile the second time.

After enough of this straining, Mana—who is already tired and not very active to begin with—sways forward and then, with chest heaving, finds herself collapsed under her mother’s weight. Sweat is pouring over her forehead and getting into her eyes, but even though all the running and exertion has heated her to the point that it feels like her coat and scarf are suffocating her, the bite of the cold is fierce even in this back alley. Mana feels tears begin to gather in her eyes. 

"Help…" she chokes out. The weak word is immediately swallowed up by the wind. Exhausted, Mana puts her face down in the snow and pants breathlessly. Then she grits her teeth, inhales the chilled, stinging air, and lifts her head again. “Help!” she screams at the top of her lungs. "Help me!"

This sound surely must carry farther, but several moments pass without any response. Mana's heart sinks. Are they too far from the main road after all? No, it can't be. Someone has to be nearby enough. She inhales again. "Help, please! Help me! My mother needs help! Please help me!"

Silence again. The tears gathered in Mana’s eyes spill over. Fine. Fine, then. If she can't lift Chieri, she'll have to drag her. She can do that much. Just to the main road—just out of the alley—and then for sure someone will find them… 

Mana takes a deep breath, wipes her face, and struggles out from beneath Chieri's limp form. She grabs hold of her mother's coat with both hands and hauls on it with all her being. Chieri shifts about half a foot. Mana's strong face cracks.

"Please," she sobs out loud. "Please, someone, anyone. She's my mom. She's my only mom. Please help me."

And then, just as Mana has fallen back onto her bottom and begins wailing into her sleeve, the back door of the greengrocer's shop opens.

She’s coughing up blood by the end of the week. Furious application of iryou-ninjutsu is enough to preserve the tissues affected by frostbite, but even though Touma dispenses antibiotics as strong as he dares, they do hardly anything to arrest the progression of the illness. Ren and Shisui, both having paid their dues in the trenches of the Third War, know very well what this means; dread immediately settles over the household, and they wonder how long they can conceal the truth from Mana. But Mana knows very well herself what awaits now. She'd sat beside deathbeds often enough in her last life.

There’s a brief conflict in which Ren attempts to keep her away due to fear of contagion, but when he turns away Mana pitches a fit so screaming and hysterical that she actually collapses for the first time in years. She's only unconscious for a minute or so, though; she wakes again almost immediately, flat on the floor with Ren hovering over her. Though her head is pounding and it feels like someone is driving screws into the space behind her eyes, she immediately perceives her way forward. Perhaps Ren does, too, because after this uncle and niece exchange long and calculating stares. Then Ren lets out a frustrated sigh.

"You really would have made a great shinobi, Mana," he concedes with a mutter. "Ruthless."

"Sorry, Uncle," Mana apologizes half-heartedly. It's a dirty move against a man who's bound to be very stressed already, and there's definitely no grace at all in threatening someone who's only trying to look after her wellbeing. But if holding her own health hostage can get her access to Chieri, she'll do it. 

“Yeah, well,” Ren grumbles sullenly as he picks her up from the floor. “Not sorry enough to respect my authority.”

“No, I guess not. Sorry,” Mana says again, a little more sincerely this time. She usually does her best to avoid occasions of outright disobedience, so she honestly is a little regretful. Ren just sighs again. Then he runs his hands through his hair and looks down at her, troubled.

“Mana,” he begins gingerly, “your mother…”

He trails off when Mana looks back at him. To a man of his occupation the shadow in her eye is hardly an unfamiliar sight, but it’s not one he would have ever expected to see on the face of a civilian girl this age. His brow creases. Then he squats down to meet her eye level. “Mana, are you all right?”

Mana realizes that her heart has been perceived and immediately slides her gaze away. “I’m going to go see Mom now,” she says, expression flinty, before pushing past.

Another week passes. Shisui is pulled away on a mission, but Ren manages to stay home. Whether by luck or by grace he and Mana both avoid catching the coughing disease; as far as good news goes, though, that’s the end of it. At this juncture Chieri has become nothing so much as skin and bones. It’s a miracle that she can even sit up. But she does sit up that day, and when she asks Mana to come sit by the futon and turn around so Chieri can dress her daughter’s hair, well. Mana comes and offers her head immediately.

Chieri’s fingers tremble as she gathers Mana’s hair into a plait, which she then coils into a low bun. This she ties off with a silky white ribbon; a rasping sigh escapes her lips when Mana turns back around to look at her. She spends a long, silent moment gazing at her child. Then she croaks, “Nii-san.”

Ren straightens at once. “Yeah?”

“You take care of my daughter.” Chieri lays her palm on Mana’s cheek. “Whether… whether she’s healthy or she’s ill. No matter what, you have to.”

Ren doesn’t answer. There’s a long pause. Mana holds her breath.

“Ren,” Chieri says.

“I…” he swallows. For perhaps the first time in her life Mana sees her quick-witted uncle lose his composure. He stares with a wide-eyed gaze at his sister, unable to formulate any response at all. Eventually he manages to reply, “I-I will.”

“Do you promise?” Chieri questions forcefully. It’s the most strength Mana’s heard her speak with since falling ill. “Without you, she has no one left. Do you promise to care for her?”

All at once Ren’s expression seems to crumble. The weight of these words is too much to shoulder; he knows what it will mean when he says yes. He clenches his fists and lowers his eyes. Perhaps, some distant part of him thinks, refusing can forestall the end. Perhaps withholding his word will be enough. The fate of a woman who extracts such a vow is inexorable. If he doesn’t promise, can’t she be prevented from going? Won’t she live until he says it?

But then he exhales. Ren is a widower; he knows better than that. Chieri will die whether he speaks or not. It’s not a matter he can delay by playing senseless games. He knows he must take this oath; he has done it before. No mother will ever pass in peace without it.

“I promise,” he utters. A desolate silence follows. Then his head sinks into his hands. He spends a long moment in that posture, crushed beyond words.

“Ojisan…” Mana mumbles. Just the sight of him makes her eyes begin to sting with heartbreak. Her vision blurs, but even though she feels in that moment she has been so cut as to bleed forever, no tears fall from her face. Ren lets out a wavering breath.

“Sorry,” he mutters and stands with a palm still over his face. She couldn’t make eye contact with him if she tried; he holds his hand like a shield and turns for the door. “I—I need to step outside.”

“Oh, nii-san,” Chieri sighs weakly and shuts her eyes. The power in her frame drains away with his departure. Mana stares at the door for a long moment. Then she turns back to look at her mother. She asks in a small voice, "Mom?"

"Mm…?" Chieri lifts a hand and lays it across her throbbing forehead.

"Mom, I—" Mana starts. But her words stick in her throat and she stops. A beat passes, and then another, but seconds pass and pass and Mana can't express herself at all. Chieri, fighting off overwhelming exhaustion, pries her eyes open with sheer willpower.

"Mana—" she coughs as she meets gazes with her daughter. Then she stills. She blinks; then she blinks again. 

"Mom?"

"Mana, your eyes…" Chieri reaches out. As she does, though, her body pitches forward, and Mana has to catch her by the shoulders. Mana's brow creases. 

"Mom? What's wrong?"

"Your eyes," Chieri breathes as she slumps forward against her child, too spent to remain sitting upright. "I see… I see now."

"See what? What about my eyes?"

"Oh, sweetheart," she murmurs. "They… they're just like your father's."

"...Mom?" asks Mana again after another beat passes. Chieri doesn't reply. Trembling, Mana lifts her arms and wraps them around her mother's back, but she doesn't return the embrace. Mana listens in the sudden stillness, but there's no movement or sound at all. The faint thump of Chieri's heart, the ragged gasp of her breath—all is silent.

Chapter Text

When she wakes it’s a horrible feeling, as if she’s run a whole marathon without drinking water, and her body feels aching and tight and burning all at once. As if flipping a switch she suddenly perceives the cacophony of noise around her, and there are hands all over her: on her chest, holding her head, gripping her shoulders. She begins gasping for air.

“She’s back, we got her, we’ve got her,” the medic shouts over the chaos. Someone presses a medical jutsu to her ribcage. There are fingers on her throat over her pulse. Oh, Mana thinks as she is seized simultaneously with indescribable relief and horrific pain, is this the hospital?

In this world the tissues of the body are only able to function with a sufficient amount of chakra circulating through them. In milder cases of chakra exhaustion the body survives by conserving the chakra normally used for other functions—movement of the arms and legs, for example—to fuel the essential organs: the heart, the lungs, and so on. But in the cases where exhaustion is so total that not even depriving the rest of the body can preserve the operation of these systems, what happens? The answer: cardiac arrest. Mana has just had a heart attack. 

Apparently this is not actually the first time such a thing has happened. In fact, that is how she nearly died at birth, and it even happened twice more later on as well—once when she’d been one, according to Ren, and again when she’d been three or so. Mana doesn’t remember these first incidents at all, but something in her distant memory seems to stir when he mentions the last. She finds herself recalling a foggy afternoon after an extended hospital stay, spent quietly sleeping beside her mother on the futon.

Her mother…

Just thinking about Chieri sets Mana’s head aflame with excruciating pain. Ren calls for help and is forced to watch as she relapses again—and again, and again, repeatedly over the course of the next several days. They post a 24-hour watch outside her room, keeping a fire affinity medic on hand for transfusions at all times, but they still end up having to resuscitate her two more times. 

I’m in hell, Mana thinks, and then plasters shaking hands over her face when she hears footsteps at her bedside again. This is no longer mere exhaustion. It’s something beyond that. It’s depletion, dissipation, total consumption—annihilation, she thinks, at any moment now. At any moment now her body will use up its chakra again and she will wink out of existence, extinguished forever. She can’t take another round of this horrible cycle, dying and being brought back from the brink again and again. She's going to break into pieces before she does.

“Please just let me die this time,” she finds herself whispering when a hand places itself upon her midsection. She thinks at first it’s just another medic checking on her reserves, but the fingers still. Then suddenly her hands are in a vice grip and Ren is pulling them towards his chest, leaning over her face with eyes afire.

“No,” he tells her fiercely, tilting forward until their foreheads are nearly touching. “No, Mana. I will not let you die. You must not die.”

“Ojisan,” Mana pleads, worn down to the very draff of her will. “Please.”

“No, Mana, never. I promised your mother. I promised.”

“I’ll tell her myself.” She begins to cry. “I’ll tell her I made you let me go. Please just let me go.”

She’ll die, she thinks, and this time—this time she’ll forget everything and she’ll start again—

“No!” His grip tightens further, enough for Mana to be reminded that her uncle is a ninja. He’s got the strength, she realizes with anguish, to keep holding on to her. His strength is a superpower; he can keep her anchored single-handedly to this world no matter what. He won’t let go.

He doesn’t. She’s in the hospital for another half-month, and though she almost expires there, she does not. The medics struggle, the transfusions go on, and she lives. He brings her back home.

“Oh, Shisui… welcome back.”

“I’m home, Dad,” Shisui greets his father, who is sitting cross-legged at the low table in the sitting room with papers spread about and his head in his hands. “...Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” The response is resolute, if mechanical—he's the very image of man in mission mode. Shisui, for his part, recognizes someone keeping steady at rock bottom and knows better than to pick at him. 

“What about you?" Ren asks. "How was your mission?”

“Long,” Shisui admits tiredly. “I’m okay. But it was long.” He turns his head to look at the window. “...I didn’t make it back in time to catch the cherry blossoms. There’s nowhere in the village they haven’t scattered already.”

These words prompt Ren to spend a long moment staring silently at his son. Shisui belatedly realizes what second meaning he has unwittingly conveyed and puts a hand on the back of his neck. “Dad… I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would end up lasting months.”

Ren, though, is shaking his head before Shisui even finishes speaking. “No, you don’t have to be sorry. That’s just the nature of a ninja’s work…” He goes silent again. “I remember being your age, anyway. Seniority rules no matter what your rank. I know that a young shinobi has no standing to refuse a mission assigned to him.”

That’s the truth. Shisui hangs his head a bit, but he’s glad that Ren understands. Not that he had expected Ren to be unreasonable; his father has always been a fair and even-handed man. 

A beat passes as this exchange settles. Then Shisui comes over to the table and sits down across from his father. "What are you doing?"

"Clan governance," Ren answers disdainfully. "For the past two days. It's taxes right now."

"Oh, no." Shisui's face floods with dismay. "It really is spring, isn't it."

Ren's only response is a bitter laugh. A moment slips by in silence; Shisui takes the time to observe his father unobtrusively. As the head of household there had been no way for Ren to completely dodge the burdens of clan administration, but taxes had always been left quite happily to the exacting hand of his younger sister, whose bookkeeping mastery had trivialized even the most convoluted of dues. No wonder he's so beat down right now—that's a combination of blows capable of surpassing any coordination ninjutsu. 

"What was yesterday?" Shisui queries. Ren drops his head onto the table before he replies. 

"Bereavement procedures."

"Ah." The family registry, on the other hand, has always been Ren's responsibility—no one else has the authority. The two-part combo, it seems, is actually just an entire series. "...Maybe you should take a break."

"Don't worry, I'm done for today," Ren sighs and then raises his face once more. "I'm going to rest now. You should, too. You returned at a good time; let's do wills tomorrow."

In another world that might have been a strange thing to say to a teenager, but Shisui doesn't bat an eye. Since any Uchiha who becomes a ninja is required by the clan to submit updated testaments yearly—mostly for the purpose of protecting clan properties in case of a sudden death—he already has, even at age fifteen, written his own will no fewer than six times. 

"Okay," he agrees easily. With over half a decade's practice this is no longer a big deal. Once he'd figured out the template it had become entirely a matter of copying and pasting the previous year's document. And sure enough, when tomorrow rolls around Shisui finishes the entire thing in about ten minutes flat. For Ren, though, it predictably takes much longer. He's still working on it when the doorbell rings.

"I'll get it," Shisui volunteers before rising and making his way to the front door. When he opens it he finds a young girl in purple standing on the step, fidgeting nervously with the small gift bag of sweets in her hands. Her coloring is a little lighter than the standard Uchiha's, but something about her seems rather familiar regardless. He tilts his head.

"Um, good morning," she greets hesitantly.

"Hey there," Shisui returns amiably. "How can I help you?"

"Um… is this Mana-chan's house?"

Though he feels a small flicker of surprise to hear his cousin's name at this juncture, Shisui's expression remains even. She must be a friend of Mana's; perhaps that is why he recognizes her. "Yeah, Mana lives here."

"Oh, good." The girl's face brightens a bit. "Um, my name is Izumi. I'm a friend of Mana-chan's," she introduces, confirming his suspicion. "I haven't seen her around lately, so I was worried and I wanted to ask about her. Is she sick?"

"Ah…” A pause. “Actually, she is. She had a bit of a relapse recently, so she hasn't been out much."

"Oh, no." Izumi takes on a look of faint upset. Shisui perceives then that a very sweet person has come to inquire after the wellbeing of his family member; his gaze immediately softens. 

"Do you want to come in?" he steps aside from the doorway and invites. Izumi nods before entering; Shisui goes to the kitchen and retrieves a cup as she begins removing her sandals. Luckily that morning's tea is still warm, so he can reach for the kettle without stopping to heat it up.

"Oh, welcome." If Ren is surprised by their sudden unexpected guest he doesn't show it. He lowers his papers with a friendly smile when Shisui leads her to the sitting room and offers her a cup of tea. "Please have a seat. Ah, thank you." He accepts her offering of sweets.

"Pardon my intrusion," Izumi replies politely as she takes a place on the couch. "I'm Izumi."

"You've come to pay Mana a visit, Izumi-san? I'm sorry we put you to the trouble. Thank you."

"Oh, not at all. I've just been wondering is all. She hasn't been out anywhere in the compound in a long time… not even Itachi-kun says he's seen her recently."

Ren and Shisui share a silent look. Then Shisui says, "I'll go up and tell her you're here. Do you mind waiting a moment?"

"No, of course not. Thank you very much."

Shisui climbs the stairs to the second floor and turns to the left. Passing by his own room, he goes to the next door and knocks lightly on it. "Hey, Mana. It's Shisui."

There's no answer. Shisui puts a hand on the doorknob and cracks the portal open enough to poke his head through. The room he finds is dark: none of the lights are switched on, nor have the curtains been opened to admit the morning sun. If not for the small lump visible on the bed he could have easily mistook the space as uninhabited. But the pile of blankets shifts; then Mana's face emerges from behind the comforter's folds, weary and sleep-crusted.

"You have a visitor," Shisui tells her softly. "Izumi-san wants to come up and see you."

Mana stares at him. Her gaze is so blank that Shisui can't help but wonder if she's heard his words at all. She lowers her head again without speaking.

"Mana?" 

She makes no reply. Shisui lingers for a moment longer but she doesn't speak. Eventually he has no choice but to close the door again, thwarted.

"Sorry, Izumi-san," Shisui apologizes glumly when he returns to the sitting room. "She's sleeping. I don't think she's up for guests right now."

"Oh…" Disappointment swamps the girl's features, which makes the men exchange guilty glances. Ren clears his throat.

"Why don't you come again sometime?" he suggests gently. "Even if she's not feeling well right now it can only make her happy that you were looking for her. You're more than welcome to stop by again if you're up to it."

"All right…" Izumi stares at her lap, unable to hide her dejection. But then, after a brief moment, she puts on a fortified smile. "Then I'll impose upon you again some time. I'm sorry to have been a bother."

"No, not at all. Thank you for thinking of Mana for us. We appreciate it."

Another long silence falls over the room after Izumi departs. Shisui and his father spend a short moment gazing at the bag of oyaki now sitting on the coffee table. 

“Did she speak to you?” Ren eventually asks.

“...No.” Shisui pauses. "Dad… Mana doesn't seem too well."

Ren lowers his face into his hands again. Shisui can't recall the last time he saw his father do that so many days in a row. Several beats pass in silence. Then he drops his hands and picks up his will, which he has been staring at, unfinished, for several minutes now. 

"Shisui," Ren murmurs, fighting a waver in his voice, "if I can barely help Chieri's daughter now, what will happen to her if I'm dead?"

Chapter Text

"It was the same when your mother left. I had to promise her the same thing. And when I sat down to write my will for the first time after Shizu passed, I remember asking this question then, too," Ren says with a distant gaze. "'What will happen to Shisui if I die?'"

Shisui creases his brow as he comes forward to sit beside his father. Ren sighs and throws an arm over his son's shoulder. By convention this move usually precedes a forceful noogie, so Shisui reflexively braces himself, but Ren just sags forward a bit instead. "You're nearly as tall as I am now," he murmurs. "People won't think of you as just a young shinobi for much longer. You're already a man."

"Dad…" 

"You were only three when Mom died, though… I didn't know back then you'd grow up so well. I didn't think I'd be able to care for you properly. And I knew that I could leave you at any time.” He’s silent for a long moment. Then he covers his face with his other hand. “But as I was sitting there at the table, stressing over my will, my little sister showed up at the door. 'Nii-san, I'll take care of the house and the kids, so let me stay with you.'"

Shisui does not actually recall much of life before Chieri had come to live in their household. She had been with them for so long it seems as if she had been there from the start. Truth be told, he can't really even distinguish if the feminine voice in his early memories is Chieri's or Shizu's—he remembers very little, if anything, of his mother. “Did she really show up just like that?” he wonders. “You didn’t even discuss it first?” 

Ren laughs wistfully. "Just like that. Shigeru had already died months earlier, she'd just gotten out of the hospital after nearly losing her baby… but she came straight to me and said she'd help. And she was a godsend. When she was there I knew that even if I did die on a mission, you’d be okay. She would have taken care of you.”

Shisui can't help but remember his aunt. All of a sudden he can recall a thousand different things about her. The way she'd pass him lunchboxes before he left for training. The way she'd peer into his face after missions, searching for any signs of distress. The way he would sometimes come home and find her fixing up his gear, sewing tears in his clothes or patching holes in spare belt pouches…

Shisui and Ren spend several minutes blinking in silence, struck dumb with awareness of how cavernous a gap has opened up in their household. There are no words to speak to it. What could they possibly say?

"Now that my child is grown," Ren eventually whispers aloud, more to himself than to anyone else, "the least I can do is return the favor."

Shisui stares for a long moment at his father's face in profile. He thinks of his aunt's smiling eyes. Then he says, "If you die, I'll take care of Mana."

Ren blinks in surprise. He turns his head back to look at him. 

"I'll take care of Mana," Shisui repeats. "I'll take responsibility for her if you aren't here."

A beat passes; then Ren smiles. But even as his gaze fills with gratitude, his brow creases with doubt. Shisui frowns. "You don't think I can do it?" 

"What? Oh, no, that's not it at all," Ren reassures when he sees just the faintest trace of insult form on his son's face. "No, not in the least… Truth be told, Shisui, I suspect that when your growth spurt ends you'll surpass me as a shinobi. Even now, honestly, sometimes I look at you and wonder if I could defeat you. If I were back in my prime, maybe…"

This bald admission prompts Shisui to give his father a startled look. Ren chuckles and reaches out to ruffle his son's hair. 

"Not only did you start working at an earlier age than me, you have a mastery over the Sharingan that I never could have claimed as a teenager. No, Shisui, I have no doubt in your capabilities at all. I'd entrust Mana to you in a heartbeat if I could."

"But you can't? Why not?"

"Because if I die, there's someone whose claim over Mana supersedes yours." Ren's voice goes flat with displeasure. "And she knows it. Even if you dispute her and bring it to the clan, they'd take a grandmother's side over a cousin's any day."

"Mana's grandmother?" Shisui is astounded. He hadn't known that Mana had still had a grandmother left. If that was the case, why in the world had Chieri come to Ren instead of remaining in her husband's household? Between an often-absent ninja brother and a mother-in-law with experience in childcare, the latter seems to be a far more commonsense choice. "If Mana has a grandmother, then shouldn't she—"

"As long as I live I will never let that woman have Chieri's daughter," Ren all but spits, cutting him off. "That witch isn't fit to care for anyone's child."

Shisui holds up his hands with wide eyes. Ren takes a steadying breath. Then he runs his hand through his hair.

"Sorry, Shisui. You wouldn't know about it. But suffice it to say that Shigeru's mother is not a good person," Ren informs. "The only thing she knows how to do is step on people in her quest for power."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she forced the marriage between Shigeru and Chieri against the will of almost everyone else involved. That harpy is obsessed with prestige. She married into the line of clan chief Tajima's younger brother, and after she had sons she went around collecting the daughters of famous Uchiha clansmen as their brides." He exhales forcefully. "She was furious when the clan chose to appoint a new head by vote. She's been trying to hoard enough power to bring the position back to her husband's line—and therefore one of her sons—ever since. Kagami's only daughter was just another pawn in her plan to seize control of the clan."

As a grandson of Kagami, Shisui is well-used to having clansfolk forcibly concern themselves with his business, but fending off the intrusion of nosy strangers has nothing on this. He regards his father with alarm. "Are you serious? Why didn't Grandmother protect Chieri-obasan?"

"Well, as you know, your grandmother wasn't a native Uchiha. She married into the clan from the village, and she was one of the first people to do so. That was fine while her husband was alive, but after he passed…" Ren pauses for a moment and is lost in childhood recollections of his mother being bullied by the clan. "Well. It may not make sense to you now, but it made a difference back then. Shigeru's mother is a purebred Uchiha. Mother hadn't had any hope of standing against her. And I… I didn't know how to stop her, either. I was only a second son; nii-san was the one who had had all that political know-how. But by then he had already died, too." He lets out a bitter laugh. "That calculating bitch struck us when we were at our weakest. Do you see what I mean, Shisui? That’s the kind of woman she is. If she can use her granddaughter to advance her objective, she will, and she won’t care what it takes. Certainly she won’t care about Mana.”

Shisui takes a long moment in silence to consider this. If that was the case it’s no wonder Chieri left her husband’s family when she became a widow. He never realized her aunt had come to them with such matters haunting her back.

“...Then what can we do? If that’s the kind of person she is, I don’t want Mana to go to her, either.” That poor girl has so much hardship to shoulder already. Being the unloved pawn of some power-hungry matriarch is the last fate he’d wish on her. 

Ren puts his hands on his head and rakes them over his scalp. Shisui notices the streaks of gray that have begun to sprout at his hairline. “If Mana were a shinobi, by her next birthday she would be an adult by clan law,” his father mutters. “If she were an adult, she would have the power to say whether or not she would prefer to stay with you or go to her father’s family…”

“But Mana’s not a shinobi. If she were, it wouldn't be a problem—she could even live by herself if she wanted to," Shisui points out. "Regardless, she can’t become one. It’s impossible.”

“I know. That’s the sticking point in all of this. But so long as she’s a minor she’s at risk. At this rate I'll have no choice but to adopt her out to someone trustworthy, or…” Ren’s brow creases with thought. “Or arrange her marriage. The only way for a civilian Uchiha to make use of the adulthood clause would be to get married, after all…”

“You’re joking. Adopt her out or marry her off to some stranger? Those are both horrible options,” Shisui instantly objects. “You can’t send her out of the family right after her mother’s died. If it were me, I’d never recover from that.”

“And I’d never spit on Chieri’s memory like that, either,” Ren agrees tiredly. “Not after I promised…” Several seconds pass in a dejected silence. Is that it, then? Are those the only two options—?

Suddenly Ren straightens and speaks his son’s name. “Shisui.”

“Dad?” Shisui finds his own back going straight when Ren turns his body to face him directly. His father fixes him with a grave look.

“Shisui, you said you’re willing to take responsibility for Mana. Do you really mean that?” he asks probingly. Shisui pauses, taken aback by this abruptness, but then answers.

“I mean it. Obasan always took care of me no matter what, and if I’m able to help you, Dad, then I will.” There’s a beat. Then he says, “Besides, Mana doesn’t deserve to be cast aside like that. She’s my family. Since I have the power to help her, I should.”

Ren is silent for a long moment. Then he lets out a long breath, reaches out with both arms, and places his hands on Shisui’s shoulders. “I don’t know what I did to deserve a son like you. How did you become such an honorable young man?” he murmurs as he bows his head. “Thank you, Shisui. Then I will entrust her to you. My sister’s daughter… when I’m gone, take care of her.” 

Slightly taken aback by his father's heavy reaction, Shisui pauses. Then he thinks. Then, belatedly, he realizes just what it is he’s implied his assent to. His father’s reaction is heavy because the reality is heavy. They can’t adopt Mana out and they can’t send her off to a stranger… but if not to a stranger, well, what’s to stop them? That’s a different story, and Ren has exactly one unmarried son.

It’s only discipline cultivated by a lifetime of training that keeps Shisui’s emotions from showing on his face. He sits there, expression stoic, as he furiously processes what has just happened. Then he opens his mouth to speak. But as he does so Ren sags and lets out an exhausted laugh. It’s a guttural sound, full of raked-raw relief, and as he puts a hand on his forehead he unabashedly begins shedding tears right then and there. 

Shisui stares at the unconcealed vulnerability on his father's face. Then, slowly, he shuts his mouth. 

That day when Mana is summoned downstairs for lunch her uncle is unusually insistent. On most days if she huddles under her sheets long enough he goes away, but this time Ren actually comes into her room and scoops her up wholesale, blanket and all. This prompts her to spend a short moment reflecting on the mistaken assumptions of her past. She’d always thought that people would stop picking her up like a baby when she became too big to be carried on the hip, but this is very clearly not the case; he carries her all the way down just like that, princess-style. In his arms, just like her mom would hold her when she was too sick to move…

By the time they come to the bottom of the stairs Mana is clutching the side of her head and moaning. “Ojisan,” she mumbles tearfully, squeezing her eyes shut against the horrific throb in her forehead, “my head really hurts… I don’t want to eat. Can I go back to bed, please?”

Ren halts. He hesitates there long enough that Mana wonders hopefully if her plea has succeeded. But instead of going back and returning her to her room, he says softly, “We’ll get you some medicine, Mana. But you should eat. You haven’t had anything in nearly two days.”

“Ngh…” She clutches at his collar with her free hand and wonders if it would be worth getting angry. By the time Ren has made it to the kitchen, though, such a thing is so far from the realm of possibility that it’s gone completely from her mind. She drops her head against her uncle’s shoulder and hangs in his arms like a ragdoll instead, too exhausted to do anything else. The unmovable weight of her limbs is a frightfully familiar sensation. How many days had she spent like this when she’d been younger?

She’s deposited into a chair at the dining table, but since she can’t actually hold herself up she spends the whole meal propped up against Ren’s side. It takes some trying—he’s not nearly so practiced at this as Chieri had been—but he eventually manages to feed her some headache medicine, and over the course of the next fifteen minutes or so he’s able to spoon a small bowl’s worth of chicken porridge into her mouth while he’s eating his own meal. Surprisingly enough, the pressure in her head gradually begins to ease. The furrow in her brow softens slightly.

“...She looks a little better,” a familiar voice says, and oh, is that Shisui? Now that she thinks about it, she’d seen him earlier, hadn’t she? He must be back from his mission.

“Yeah… though now it looks like she’s just gone back to sleep.” A calloused hand smooths her bangs back. “She really does look just like Chieri as a girl…”

“Should we just tell her tomorrow? I know she’s been resting the whole day already, but…”

“Well… there’s nothing we can do right now regardless. Telling her she’s getting engaged won't make a difference when she’s not even conscious.”

Ren’s hand comes to rest on the back of her head, which he holds to his chest with a sigh; they stay like that for several beats. Mana, had she been able to open her eyes, would have stared at him, disbelieving, straight in the face.

Chapter Text

The next morning at breakfast Mana comes down when called. Both Shisui and Ren are surprised by not only how prompt she is, but how awake she seems to be: her face is filled with awareness, and her blank gaze has become strangely focused. There's a sharpness in her expression that hasn't been there in a while. The men wonder what’s happened, but perhaps there’s a worry that putting words to the wonder will make it disappear. Neither of them comment. 

Either way, though, the timing is fortuitous. "Mana," Ren says, and then pauses when the girl instantly sets a soul-piercing stare upon his face. Her eyes are so expectant that he can't help but wonder if she already knows what he's going to tell her. He blinks but then continues, “There’s something you need to know.”

She handles the initial news of “you’re getting married” well, but when she hears who her partner will be her eyes grow as round as saucers. Shisui exercises all of his self-mastery to retain a neutral face, but Mana turns to stare at him with open astonishment. Several beats pass as she gapes wordlessly. Then she drops her chopsticks, utterly astounded.

“But cousins can’t get married,” she says.

“Oh, you know that rule?” Ren regards her with surprise. “That’s true, actually. But it’s permissible if you receive dispensation from the clan head—that law only exists to prevent too much bloodline density. Though I doubt you and Shisui would meet any opposition regardless… even though you’re cousins on the registry, Chieri wasn’t the biological daughter of our parents, and I don’t think we’ve had a cousin marriage in at least four generations anyway. You’re clear on both fronts.”

Mana, whose native culture had decisively prohibited any such unions as incest, hadn’t been presenting a legal challenge to the match so much as she’d been stating what she had thought to be an immutable fact. But now that she’s heard it she is not at all surprised to learn that the Uchiha have such articulate clauses for consanguinity in their marriage laws. Marrying within the clan, after all, seems very much to be the norm—Ren and Chieri, at any rate, had both found Uchiha spouses—so eventually the pool of partners would have to give rise to marriages with close degrees of kinship. Such occasions had occurred often enough in the history of her old world, so the fact that the practice exists here, too, is actually not as shocking as it might seem at first glance. 

Mana shuts her mouth and thinks intensely as Ren begins to explain why this arrangement is taking place and how it will serve to protect her. She finds him at once credible. Even if she hadn't had additional outside information about her mother's marriage from Rinako, Ren has no reason whatsoever to lie—and the fact that he has, without hesitation, offered up his son to defend her demonstrates well enough just how convinced he is of the threat. Save for matters of moral discipline, Mana has never observed Ren meddle overmuch in the affairs of anyone, let alone those of his only son; there's no way he would interfere in Shisui's life so egregiously otherwise.

Mana looks again at the only son in question. Something about his perfectly even, unreadably attentive expression sets her gut turning at once with uneasiness. In all the time she’s known him, Shisui has never been sparing with winks or smiles, but when they make eye contact a second time he offers her nothing but an utterly straight face. 

"...When?" Mana queries to gather more information.

"Well, as long as the engagement is standing I don't think she would actually try to take you from him," Ren begins doubtfully, "but in the event that I do pass, I have an inkling she'd make an effort to break the arrangement if it's not already sealed by the clan. Since that's the case, it's better to set a wedding date from the start. You'll be marriageable by your next birthday, so I expect we'll do it then."

Mana just barely refrains from slapping her hands over her mouth. That's not even a full year out. "Won't they say the engagement period is too short?" she asks weakly. "What if… what if people talk?"

"Hm? No, I don't think they would… My engagement with Shizu only lasted about five months, but no one gave us trouble. And in this case people will almost certainly look at the politics first before they start picking at your character for an explanation," her uncle remarks dryly.

"Oh…" Mana has absolutely no idea how to answer that.

"Anyway, it doesn't take too much to make an arrangement official, but you were right when you brought up the cousin law—Fugaku-san will almost certainly want a meeting first. We should account for the delay. Luckily since it's spring plenty of people are still doing registry work… it shouldn't be too hard to see him today. Are you feeling well enough to go out, Mana?"

Mana is dumbfounded and can only nod silently in reply. Ren seems satisfied, though, and from there nonchalantly resumes his breakfast. Unsurprisingly, he finishes first, too.

"I'll go get the family seal and all the other documents together," he says and then excuses himself to the office. Shisui lets out a long breath upon his father’s departure. Then he lifts a hand and pinches the bridge of his nose. He remains like that for several beats, lost in deep thought, before eventually lowering his arm. But as he does so he meets gazes with Mana again, and he realizes at once what his moment of laxity has shown her; her eyes are wide and full of anxious dread.

On the way to the clan meeting hall, which sits at the base of the hill upon which the Nakano Shrine is built, Mana gets a piggyback ride from Ren. Her head is overflowing with thoughts about the reality of loveless marriages the whole way. After all, what is the fate of a woman trapped with a husband who does not love her? At best perhaps loneliness, maybe isolation, maybe resentment. But at worst? The possibilities are endless. Her head fills with the sound of angry shouting and shattering liquor bottles; God knows she’d seen that happen often enough. Oh, but would that happen with a partner like Shisui? Anything can become possible as a person ages and experiences life, but if he retains his current temperament, the dysfunction would probably take a different shape—something quieter and less furious. Infidelity, perhaps. Mistresses and illegitimate children, missed birthdays and cold dinners… extended absences, neglected offspring—a weeping daughter—unloved and dysphoric sons—

Ren cannot see the face his niece is currently making, but Shisui glances over and perceives quite clearly that a horror show is playing out in her mind’s eye. He feels a pang of regret for letting his guard down in front of her; she's clearly been frightened. 

Fright, however, is evidently not the only thing she is feeling. When they arrive at the meeting hall he sees the way her gaze latches onto the signplate over the door of the clan library, and the next day after Ren leaves Shisui’s not entirely surprised when the girl throws on a coat and sneaks out—as well as a civilian girl can sneak, anyway—the kitchen back door. As she makes her way down the street he briefly considers shadowing her—should someone that sickly be allowed to move around the compound unsupervised?—but forty-five minutes later she returns unscathed. Her arms are full of scrolls and books.

As expected, it’s clan law, Shisui thinks when he passes by her room and catches a glimpse of her materials through the crack of her open door. Over the next several days he watches a desperate struggle play out. Accompanied by a thick kanji dictionary, she investigates minors’ rights first, but that’s abandoned in a single afternoon; unsurprising, all things considered. She trawls through various family laws next, and then after that the marriage laws themselves. As she studies more and more he can see how her hopes for a counterplay are repeatedly checked. The search on marriage laws becomes a deep dive into spouses’ rights. The prospects of wives are evidently unfavorable; the next day after that is a study on divorce laws. That seems to be a bust, too, and she eventually circles back to minors’ rights again.

Things seem to have come to a head by the time he comes home after training one day and finds her collapsed over the sitting room table. Shisui is a little surprised by the sudden reappearance of Chieri’s bookkeeping implements; he hasn’t seen them in months. As he takes Mana by her shoulders and peels her off the ledgers, he looks over their open pages. He sees at once what she’s been up to: it’s a summation of the value of the assets left to her by her mother. Mana has been calculating how much money she has.

There’s only one thing she could be doing that for, Shisui muses a tad forebodingly as he rouses her with a few gentle shakes. Seeing how unsuccessful her investigation into clan law has been, though, it’s no surprise she would turn her attention to the next most expedient response. He waits for her to blink and come back to awareness before speaking, but as soon as she regains her bearings her face crumples with defeat.

Ah, she knows already. Shisui looks on with pity as she begins fighting back tears. There had been no need to try and interfere. She knows she's too sick to run away; as she lies here on the floor, held upright only by someone else's arms, the reality is staring her in the face already. No matter where she looks, she won't find a path. She can't evade this arrangement. She struggles a valiant moment longer not to cry, but eventually she has to admit defeat; water begins spilling down her cheeks. 

Shisui wonders briefly if he ought to be upset by her earnest wish to avoid marrying him at all costs, but strangely enough he can’t bring himself to be at all offended. He has no particular desire to get married right now, either, and she's even younger than he is. It's no surprise she feels the same way. Why should he be offended? If anything, he could almost respect her. He knows ranked ninja who aren't half as diligent in their mission prep as this girl; coupled with her fierce refusal to give up the cause until the very last avenue has been cut off, it feels as if she's fighting with a Will of Fire all her own. As a shinobi himself, how could he blame her for using her wits and determination to grasp for the outcome she desires? What a tragedy for her to have been born so sickly. With resolve and rigor like that she could have become a peerless ninja.

"Hey, Mana," he says softly, "you okay? Should I call the doctor?"

"No," she mumbles as she lifts two trembling hands to cover her face. "I'm fine. Just…" There's a long, desolate silence. "I think I need to sleep now," she eventually says, and then turns with shaking exhaustion towards the couch. 

"All right. I'll help you gather this up, then."

Mana just nods silently. If she's at all embarrassed to have been caught planning to run away by her fiance, he can't tell; she keeps her head firmly turned away, hiding her expression behind a dark curtain of hair. Shisui gathers his aunt's ledgers back into their box before returning them to their place on the bookshelf. By the time he turns back Mana has already crawled up onto the couch and pulled a throw blanket over her head. 

"...Dad should be back by evening. Call me if you need anything, okay?"

"Okay,” Mana mumbles back in reply. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Shisui pauses, but she doesn’t say anything else. He lingers a beat. Then, seeing that no further interaction is forthcoming, he turns away towards the stairs and leaves her huddled there in silence.

Chapter Text

"Mana-chan, how are you feeling?" Mikoto asks kindly. Mana is undeceived by her pleasant tone, but holds in a sigh and answers politely anyway. 

"I'm doing fine."

"That's good. I’m glad to hear that.” A beat, and then the anticipated line: “Do you suppose you’d be up for a walk? The weather’s lovely today. It would be good for you to go outside and get some sunshine, I think.”

Mana opens her mouth to give her customary refusal, but then Mikoto adds with careful brightness, “I just finished putting together lunch for the boys. Would you be willing to take it to them for me? I’d go myself, but it’s time to put Sasuke down for his nap…”

It would be extremely impolite to point out that Mana is perfectly capable of putting a toddler down for a nap on her own, so she resigns herself to a trek to the training grounds. "Yes, Mikoto-san," she says blandly.

The weather is hot enough now that Mikoto stops her and puts a ribboned sunhat on her head before she heads outside. The basket and furoshiki she is entrusted with are also loaded with supplies to stave off heat: not only is there the bento, there’s two full thermoses of ice-cold barley tea and a set of wide uchiwa fans, all decorated with bold, summery patterns. Mana spends a brief moment in the genkan staring down at her arms before going out, trying hard not to think about how the fulfillment of old dreams—to be allowed to carry small loads, to be sent out of the compound all alone—feels so terribly empty when Chieri’s not the one seeing her off at the door.

At her pace the fifteen-minute walk is closer to twenty-five, but Mana goes slowly anyway, knowing that anything faster than a steady step will probably end with one of the boys carrying her home half-conscious. It’s actually quite annoying that the time requirement of any task she undertakes always seems to have a 1.6 multiplier applied, and she misses dearly the days of her past life when she’d had the freedom of health to actually get things done in a reasonable time frame. But what can she do? This has been her life for over a decade now. She supposes she should just count herself lucky that she’s well enough to be taking walks at all.

Eventually the roar of a distant waterfall fills her ears. This is followed shortly by the clang of metal, and then, visible in the clearing ahead, the flash of a plume of fire. Mana pauses a moment and wonders if it’s safe to get closer, but all of a sudden the sounds of battle cease. Several seconds pass. Then a voice calls, carrying clearly through the trees, “Who’s there?”

“I’m Uchiha Mana,” Mana immediately answers. “I’m looking for Shisui and Itachi.”

“Eh, Mana?” A beat passes before Shisui suddenly drops out of the canopy before her. Itachi lands beside him a half-second later. The acrid scent of singed hair immediately fills her nostrils, and Mana wonders idly which of the two had had the close call. “What are you doing here?”

Mana holds out the basket and large furoshiki with both hands. “Mikoto-san sent me with lunch.” 

“Oh? Sweet,” Shisui exclaims, at once delighted to see that sustenance has found its way to him completely of its own accord. “Nice! We didn’t bring anything with us because we thought it’d spoil in this heat. We were just going to walk into the village to find something when we were done.”

Even the stoic Itachi’s face brightens at the sight of the food, which is enough to make Mana smile a bit despite her otherwise sullen mood. Well, she thinks as she hands her burden over, maybe it hadn’t been so bad to come out after all. Though now she has to walk back… she sighs a bit at the thought of spending another half-hour in transit just to return to Mikoto’s house. If only there were bicycles in Konoha. How is it that this world has such technology as phones and radios but lacks, of all things, bicycles? Perhaps that’s an effect of living in a ninja village where everyone but cripples like her can use chakra to zip across the landscape faster than the eye can see.

“There’s enough here for a third person, Mana,” Shisui observes once he’s unwrapped the boxes. “Mikoto-san must’ve meant for you to eat with us.”

“So that’s why there’s a picnic blanket in here, too,” Itachi remarks, and indeed, a folded square of gingham fabric becomes visible once he lifts the obscuring uchiwa from the basket. “She has been lecturing me about eating while standing up lately… she wants you to be a witness, I assume.”

So even an oft-praised model son like Itachi gets nagged by his mother? For some reason Mana finds this exceedingly amusing and is forced to hide her sudden smile behind a hand. Shisui, though, has no qualms in aiming a belly laugh straight at the boy’s face.

“That’s what you get for using mission manners at home.” He wags a finger at him. “You should know better than that.”

They go to the treeline at the edge of the clearing and set up under the shade of a large maple, directly in view of the waterfall flowing over the opposite cliff. Shisui and Itachi immediately set upon the food with an enthusiasm only young men working physically demanding jobs are capable of; Mana, meanwhile, bites into a boiled egg and stares at the torrent of water. This might be the first waterfall she’s ever seen in this life, now that she thinks about it. Though this spot is known to be one of Shisui and Itachi’s favorites for training, this is the first time she’s actually come in person. What fierce scenery—jagged rocks, roaring water... Perhaps they like the intensity of it. It must make a good backdrop for fighting.

Her companions inhale nearly their entire servings in the time it takes for her to get started on her sandwich. Mana worries for a brief moment that they’ll be bored waiting for her to finish, but then they start trading shoulder bumps and elbow prods. This swiftly leads into shoving, which then, of course, sparks a full-blown wrestling match. Not serious grappling, as far as she can tell—in terms of size Shisui literally stands head and shoulders above Itachi—but more along the lines of play-wrestling. Mana holds in a snort as they yell and go rolling away towards the grass, realizing at once that she needn’t have fretted. She’d spent enough time in her last life watching students roughhouse to know that they’ll be at it until someone stops them. Or, she supposes, until someone dislocates a shoulder. Either seems likely.

Still, they’re awfully energetic for a pair that’s been engaged in exertion since sunrise. Mana supposes that’s what it must be like to play with one’s friends; tired or not, it’s probably enough amusement that neither one of them cares. She spends a few minutes observing as they tumble and grab and pry at one another’s limbs. In a way it’s quite fun to watch; ever since the earliest of days these two have always been heavy with uncanny maturity. Now they’re just boys, horsing around as all youths do. Itachi lets out an indignant shout as Shisui yanks on his ponytail, and Mana smiles again. They look much happier like that. 

Eventually she finishes eating, but she doesn’t want to interrupt. She decides to wait until they’ve had their fill of horseplay and begins tidying the picnic remnants in the meantime. A bright yellow butterfly wavers its way across her gaze just as she’s finishing up. Mana tilts her head; then she stands up and wanders after it.

She follows it lazily, turning only very loosely when it swerves or reverses course, but eventually it leads her far enough from the trees that she finds herself standing at the cliff’s edge. She stops short of the precipice and is forced to watch as the little insect flutters up and away to the other side of the ravine. A brief twinge of disappointment overtakes her with this departure; she spends a short moment staring dejected at the empty air left in its wake. But the feeling fades when her eye is eventually drawn once again to the deluge surging over the opposite bluff. 

It's magnificent. The clamor of the water is even louder up close, and as it pours itself continually over the edge, she can see even from all the way up here the furious power with which it crashes down to meet the river below. How many thousands of gallons must that be? A moment without time passes as she gazes down into the gully, mesmerized by the sheer force of it.

“Hey!” Then a hand abruptly seizes her by the arm. Mana’s heart shoots straight up into her throat, and as she jumps with a loud gasp she drops her fan in fright. It skids at the edge of the ridge before spinning off past the cliff face and then down towards the waters below. Dumbfounded, she watches its descent with shock. Then she turns to look back over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?!” Heedless, Shisui hauls her backwards and throws his other arm across her collarbone, locking her firmly in place against his chest. It’s at once a damp and unpleasant feeling—it’s very hot right now already, and he’s been sweating all day. Shisui pays no mind to this, though. He exclaims and then asks her a question she doesn’t understand.

“Minage? ” Mana repeats blankly. She runs the word against the entries of her internal dictionary, but she can’t quite come up with a meaning. She gets the feeling that she’s heard it somewhere before, so it must be fairly common—she just hasn’t committed its definition to memory yet. Maybe she can break it down. Nage probably comes from nageru, to throw, so then mi would be—

“Eh?” She whips her gaze back towards the cliff’s edge. “Throw myself off? Jump from there?”

“...You weren’t going to?” Shisui stares at her just a smidge breathlessly. Itachi, who had still been flat on his back in the grass when his opponent had abruptly body flickered away, sits up with wide eyes and watches from afar as Mana stares down at the rocky ledge with a completely different view. Cliffs of fall, she thinks as the sudden memory of a verse, penned long ago in a different dimension, comes to mind. Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap may who ne’er hung there.  

“Even a shinobi would die if he jumped from there,” she says. That's a suicide cliff. That’s a place to break your neck and drown and be swept away by the Naka River, thwarting all chance of retrieval—a place to end oneself completely, never to be found again by anyone in the world of the living. A place to erase one’s existence.

“Of course he would,” Shisui berates angrily. Unusual for him—that's not a tone she thinks she's ever heard him use before. "There's no better spot in Konoha to kill yourself than that one."

A moment of silence passes. They stand still like that for several seconds. Then Mana slowly turns her head to look up at him. Despite the awkward angle they manage to meet gazes, and Shisui finds his breath abruptly arrested. How would you know that? her eyes ask sharply.  

His heart stops. Then his mind is at once awhirl with deflections. I don't know what you're talking about—it’s just a turn of phrase—I’m not the one who was standing over there—

“...If I wanted to commit suicide, I wouldn’t do it where people would see me.” Mana pulls on his arm to release herself, and he’s stricken enough by her piercing stare to simply let her go. She steps away from him and then points at the opposite cliff. “I was looking at the waterfall.”

“Oh,” Shisui says in a strangely small voice. The sound of it is almost childlike. Mana’s brow creases as she is suddenly overcome with the recollection of a distant afternoon from years ago. Lying on her side, facing the wall, she’d heard a little boy’s voice choke out an unfamiliar name. Tadasu—

Tadasu, she thinks. That’s the name of Shisui’s old genin teammate. She’d learned another word when they’d spoken about him: migoroshi, see-killing, the act of letting another die by not helping. Tadasu… he’d passed just after Shisui had turned ten. 

She realizes at once what these things must mean. Had anyone ever spoken to that young boy about Tadasu again? No, she thinks as she sees through the sudden crack in the mask that usually sits so seamlessly upon Shisui’s face. No… she doesn't think anyone ever did. They must not have. The situation speaks for itself.

Mana opens her mouth, but then a figure moves in her peripheral vision and her eyes snap automatically back towards the treeline. Itachi, who had been shifting his weight, immediately goes still when he she looks at him. There’s an awkward beat as she remembers that he’s still there. Oh… there’s no way Shisui would ever be willing to talk about such a thing in front of his favorite little brother-figure. It would be cruel to force him; she can’t bring it up now. She shuts her mouth.

“Well, that was an overreaction,” Shisui declares several seconds later, apparently having regathered all his scattered thoughts and feelings and neatly tucked them all away. What masterful composure. He turns and slaps her lightly on the back. “My bad, Mana. Sorry I made you drop your fan. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s all right,” Mana says softly as he begins steering her away from the cliffside and back towards the picnic blanket. “It was just a fan. We can always replace it.”

“Right.” Shisui throws an arm over Itachi’s shoulder when they make it back to the trees. “Sorry, Itachi, turns out it was nothing. Did I startle you?”

“No…” Itachi answers with a slightly mystified air. Mana can’t blame him. That was about three different sides of Shisui she’s never seen before in her life, and she lives with him. Itachi doesn’t ask, though. In the end they gather up the blanket and leave; when Mikoto asks what happened to the third uchiwa upon their return, he tells her that it had accidentally blown away with the wind.

Chapter Text

After she rings the bell she’s left to fidget on the doorstep for several moments, but eventually Rinako opens the door. A brief silence ensues as they stare at one another. Then Rinako sighs, smiles a bit, and invites her inside.

“How are you, Mana-san?” Rinako asks once she returns with tea. She places a cup before her guest and seats herself across from her.

“I’m all right, shishou. How are you?”

“Very healthy, thank you. I’ve been doing well.”

“That’s good to hear. Thank you for the tea.”

“Yes, of course. Go ahead and try it; I just got it yesterday…”

They chat for a few moments, going through the ritual exchange of pleasantries for a first meeting in a long time. Eventually, though, they go quiet. Several silent moments pass.

Mana picks up her tea and sips it again; Rinako watches her wordlessly. Then she points to the canvas bag slung over the girl’s shoulder and asks, “Did you bring your supplies?”

“Um… yes, I did.”

“Came for a lesson, did you?”

“Er…” Mana pauses, not quite sure how to safely reply. She hasn’t had a lesson with Rinako in almost a year. They haven’t spoken at all since the funeral. All things considered, Mana could probably consider herself disgraced enough to never be accepted as a pupil of Rinako’s again.

“That’s good,” Rinako tells her as she puts her chin in her hand. “I was just thinking of something new to teach you. Let me give you an assignment.”

Mana blinks. She’d come fully prepared to grovel, but somehow they’ve skipped past everything and come straight to the resumption of tutelage. “Uh? I mean, um, yes, shishou.”

“I’ve taught you a couple of different techniques with a couple of different mediums, but this is a different kind of assignment. You’ve never done something like this before. Do you still want to give it a try?”

“Of course, shishou. That’s how you learn.”

“Exactly,” Rinako murmurs, and then points at her again. “That’s how you learn. You said it yourself, so you can’t take it back, hm?”

“Yes, shishou.”

“All right. Then your assignment is this: make me an illustration of darkness.”

Mana had been bracing herself for something unexpected, but even with preparation this demand is still exceedingly strange. She regards her teacher perplexedly.

“You can use any materials you like,” Rinako continues. “Pencil, ink, paint, pastels. Anything’s fine. But you can’t do any research. Don’t look at anyone else’s work. You have to make something yourself first.”

“Darkness, shishou…?” Mana has the sudden thought to fill in a black box in her sketchbook and just hand it over, but as expected, that’s far too impudent no matter how absurd the assignment may seem. Rinako chuckles knowingly.

“In this case darkness is what you want it to be. You need not be constrained by common sense. Whatever darkness is to you, Mana-san, is what you should show me.”

“Whatever darkness is to me…” Mana puts her fingers to her lips thoughtfully. Her brow creases and she folds her arms.

“Oh, have you thought of something?” Rinako asks when the girl straightens some few minutes later. 

“Yes, I think so. Shishou, will you come with me somewhere?”

“Oh, you’re going right now? And you want me to come along?”

“Yes, please.”

“Hm.” Rinako cocks her head to the side with a curious look, but the face she makes is far from displeased. Indeed, she begins to smile. “Well! All right. Let’s go, then.”

They bundle up well with coats and scarves, and they bring umbrellas, too, since snow has begun to fall. It’s a slow walk, as all strolls with Mana are, but the silence as they go is companionable. They’re well out of the Uchiha district and into the forest before Rinako speaks again.

“I received your wedding invitation last month,” she remarks. “Ren-san gave it to me.”

“Oh, yes.” Mana’s face is dispassionate. “We sent them out a few weeks ago. Do you think you’ll come?”

“Why, yes, of course. Winter weddings are so rare. I don’t think I’ve actually been invited to one before… I’m excited to attend one for the first time.”

"I'm glad. We'll be pleased to have you."

On a normal day Rinako thinks she might have teased this girl mercilessly for such unconvincing acting, but she can tell that her manner is rehearsed for a reason. She's silent for a moment. Then she reaches out and puts a gloved hand on Mana's shoulder instead.

Eventually they find themselves exiting the forest. They arrive at a clearing at the edge of a cliff, ringed on all sides by the roar of waterfalls, and Rinako lets out an exclamation of delight. The thrill of discovering a previously unknown landscape overtakes her at once, and she spends several moments sweeping her gaze left and right and up and down in every direction she can. The drama of the topography is undeniable—as a whole, positively cinematic. A very good spot to paint indeed. 

"My, Mana-san, how did you find such a place?"

"This is Shisui and Itachi's favorite training spot," Mana answers as she leaves her teacher's side and makes for the cliff ahead. Rinako follows her, and when the girl goes to sit, she rolls out her mat and they plop down together. Mana drops her umbrella handle onto her shoulder, takes off her gloves, and pulls out her sketchbook.

"Lucky it's free today, then, if it's their favorite."

"They're on missions right now," Mana replies as she stares out ahead for several moments. Then she begins putting down thumbnail sketches. "Though Shisui should be back soon."

Rinako doesn’t answer. Her eyes have been drawn downwards, along the sheer drop, towards the water below. They’re close enough to the edge that she can see it easily. No need to strain her eyes or twist her neck… plunging down to the bottom of the ravine with her eyes is as easy as a glance. The snow floats lightly as it drifts down to meet the river, but all at once she feels heavier than a hundredweight, and Rinako finds her gaze lingering there, ponderously burdened. Then, with effort, she lifts her face again. The thundering sound of water is suddenly overwhelming, enough that she wants to cover her ears, but she doesn’t. She shuts her eyes and reflects on what it is she has just seen instead. 

“I came here for the first time in the summer. Shisui got angry and yelled at me.”

Rinako opens her eyes again. “Did he? That doesn’t sound like him.”

“I was standing here on the cliff. He thought I was going to jump.”

Rinako tilts her head. Well, it is true that Mana is upset that she’s being forced to marry, but is she upset enough to commit suicide? Rinako examines the girl’s face for a long moment. Then she says, “I wonder why.”

Mana is quiet for a long while. Then she flips to a fresh page, apparently having decided upon her scene’s composition, and withdraws a ruler from her bag. She begins to put down lines. 

“I think I know.”

“Oh?”

“He said this is the best spot to kill yourself in all of Konoha.”

There’s an extended silence. Then Rinako regrips her umbrella and straightens her back. Well, then. No wonder Mana had asked her to come along.

“I was going to ask him about it, but I think I figured that out, too,” Mana continues after a beat. “And the timing wasn’t right, so I didn’t say anything. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”

“About why he said that?”

“No. Well, a little,” Mana allows. “But not for the most part. No… since he’s looked around and he knows where he’d go, I figured he’s been thinking about it for a while. But even though he’s thought that much he hasn’t done anything. I was wondering why.”

Rinako’s own career as a shinobi had been very short-lived, but she’s not overly surprised to learn that Ren’s son has found himself on this path. Many ninja do, and many walk it to the end. She wonders what will happen now that he’s been outed. She’s seen lives saved that way, but she’s seen them lost, too, regardless of it.

“I’m glad I didn’t say anything to him,” Mana tells her.

Rinako’s voice goes soft. “Why is that?”

“Because he’s too duty-bound, and now I’m part of the problem, too,” Mana answers. “It would have been like slapping him in the face. Things are probably bad enough already without that.”

“Hm…” Rinako strokes her chin thoughtfully.

“I was thinking about it the whole time, but it doesn’t really look like darkness at all,” Mana remarks as she inspects the drawing, too. “It’s just a normal landscape in the end.”

“I’ve thought this in the past, but your art really does tend to the technical side. Your understanding of perspective has grown a lot since you first started… I bet you would be good at genjutsu if you learned it.”

“Well, if it’s like making art…?”

“It is. I was a genjutsu specialist, too.” Rinako smiles a bit. Then she puts the sketchbook down on the table and places a hand on Mana’s back. “But you know, Mana, I think that’s what makes this a good drawing. Look at how plummeting these cliffs are… and look at the way the water’s sliding down the rocks. There are so many different angles and directions, but the motion is still descending. You couldn’t have done that if you didn’t have technique.”

“It makes me happy that you say that, shishou, but the assignment…”

“Oh, you’ve done the assignment perfectly well,” Rinako informs with a small smile. “Ah, now that you’ve completed the lesson, let me show you something. Believe it or not I actually finished it just before you came. Come take a look.”

Curious, Mana follows as Rinako leads the way down the hall to her atelier. When the door opens they find themselves beside a table crammed with brushes and paints. Inks and pencils, piles of tape and paper, stacks of unused canvases—they’re piled up everywhere, on chairs and stands and a wheeled cart. More canvases are leaned up against the walls, short and tall, and easel stands dot the room here and there atop spreads of newspaper. Rinako takes her to the one standing by the window.

The image they find there is one of a lonesome door. It’s an interior door, of the sort that seals a room inside a house, sitting shut at the end of a hallway. Mana stares at it for a long while. Then, in all of an instant, tears begin to spill over her cheeks.

“I was feeling sad and lonely after my friend died,” Rinako murmurs as she reaches out to encircle Mana in her arms. Mana falls backwards against her as if in a faint, too overcome to think a single syllable about propriety. “But I didn’t have anyone to tell about it. And even if I had, I didn’t have the words to explain it. So I brought it to the paint, and the paint brought me to this door…” She gazes at it for a long moment. Then she lifts a hand and runs it across the bare plane of its imagined wood. “And the door has no handle. As I was painting it, I realized that. And then I understood what it is about Chieri’s passing that grieves me the most right now. This door leads to her room, but there is no way to enter from this side… and now that she’s gone, she will never be there to open it for me again. It’s closed forever.”

A keening noise rises in Mana’s throat. Then before she can help it she finds her jaw hanging wide open. A horrendous wail escapes her, huge and raw and ugly; she lifts a hand to cover her mouth, but it does nothing to stifle the sound. At once she’s taken over with sobs. Their grip lasts for what feels like an eternity, and their force is so violent and heaving that she feels she'll puke if she goes on a second longer; but what the painting has unearthed cannot be reburied. Rinako seems to know it, too, because her face crumbles in anguish. They stand together before the easel and begin to weep inconsolably.

An endless amount of time later, after they've cried and cried until the last orange remnants of the sun have vanished and left them standing in the light of the moon, they stop. Mana is so weak-limbed that Rinako is the only thing holding her up. It reminds her in a heart-wrenching way of how Chieri would hold her up, too, when she was sick and needed to dry off after a bath. 

“This is the reason why I asked you to draw darkness,” Rinako eventually whispers. Her rasping voice breaks the long, exhausted silence, and Mana, hiccupping, looks up. “This is the privilege of those who make art. When life shows you the incomprehensible, be it sorrow or joy, you may bring it to your work. Learn to put these things on your canvas, Mana-san. That is the lesson I want you to learn.”

Chapter Text

The day of the wedding dawns with steady snow. This is the backdrop for Mana’s first-ever encounter with Shigeru's side of the family. At first she's a little awed by the size of their party and the great number of women; having grown up in a family of small numbers, she wonders what it must have been like for her mother to live alongside such a gathering of beautiful sisters-in-law. Once her grandmother appears and begins directing the effort to get the bride dressed, however, the deceiving sparkle immediately begins to fade.

It's fortunate that Mana's usual first reaction to strangers is to sit very still and quiet. The matriarch murmurs approvingly over her as hair and makeup begins, praising her lightly for practicing her manners as a gentle and obedient bride, before beginning a lengthy treatise about how now that she's an adult and she's getting married she has to do her best support her husband in all his endeavors. Mana promptly zippers her mouth shut for the rest of the morning, immediately recognizing safety in silence, and spends the entirety of this time smiling vaguely and nodding demurely. Many things begin to make sense about Chieri's flawless manners. No wonder Ren despises this woman with such passion, Mana muses. She is so—haughty, uncompassionate, censorious—vaingloriously belittling, snide—and—

Domineering, she thinks. Iron-fisted. A woman whose word is never disobeyed. Every daughter-in-law in the room steps as if the floor is made of shattered glass. Their faces are picture-perfect—they look like fairy ladies come to life—but the hollow darkness Mana witnesses in her aunts' eyes is enough to make her hands tremble. This is why, she thinks faintly, Ren had refused to risk her being taken in by Shigeru's side. This is why she is being made to marry Shisui. He is preserving her from this.

The wedding kimono is the heaviest garment Mana has ever worn in either of her lives. Undergarments, padding, wrapping, lining—the under robe, the enormous obi, the over robe—it's all beautiful pure white silk, exquisitely embroidered, but there are layers upon layers of it. She spends a small eternity having her female relatives tie and tuck and fold and smooth everything into place. The Uchiha really are something else, she thinks as yet another cord goes around her waist and is knotted into place. By the time she’s done and they’ve dropped a large white hood, patterned with cranes, over her hair—this world’s equivalent of a veil, she supposes—her chest feels very heavy and her shoulders are already aching.

There’s no superstition about keeping the bride and groom separate in this culture, so nearly as soon as she’s put together she’s shuffled outside to join Shisui, who has been dressed in a far more comfortable-looking montsuki haori and hakama combo. She would have eyed him enviously if her grandmother hadn’t been looming judgmentally over her shoulder, watching with a cool face as Shisui is slapped on the back and shoved around lightly by boisterous male relatives from his mother’s side of the family. One of them even crows and gives him an affectionate noogie when Mana appears.

“What?! You lucky dog! Look at her! She’s so small and cute!” He laughs raucously as he puts Shisui in a loose headlock; their umbrellas go tumbling onto the snowy ground. “You little brat! Guess you’re not so little anymore, eh? You’re really a proper man now!”

This fellow seems totally immune to the cold stare of Mana’s grandmother, which all other parties can’t help but find a little impressive. Mana herself, now that she has escaped the wretched misery of the dressing room, begins to regain coherent thought. She sees this reaction and wonders if Shisui’s social status will go up because she has a favorable physical appearance. Chieri had been an undeniable beauty, after all, and for better or for worse Mana herself has a very petite stature—better, probably, since the beauty standard here seems to elevate littler women. “Small and cute” might not be so bad an assessment, then, if that’s the case. Perhaps he’ll find it easier to gain credibility and influence in the clan as a married person. Older folks might take him more seriously.

That could be okay, Mana considers thoughtfully as Shisui bends over to retrieve his umbrella. This arrangement has been enacted very much for her specific benefit. It would be good if Shisui could get something worthwhile out of it, too. But then again, Shisui is more than exceptional enough as a shinobi that he probably doesn’t need to rely on such things as a pretty wife for status… who is she kidding? Mana lets out a glum sigh.

“Hm.” Mana’s grandmother regards her with a brief side-eye. Mana immediately pastes her Yamato Nadeshiko smile back on, imagines Chieri at her most proper and splendid, and tries to channel enough of that same grace to ward off incipient criticism. The great matriarch, appeased, releases her granddaughter from her side. She nods once before finally departing to join the other guests—though not without a critical look that silently warns the bride will pay for it if she gets her kimono wet. 

Mana, lacking her own umbrella, glues herself to Shisui’s side at once. This, of course, causes Shizu’s family to immediately begin hooting and hollering. For a girl whose life until now has consisted almost exclusively of quiet inner rooms, the experience is an extremely unpleasant combination of loud and flustering. She flinches; this, in turn, seems to trigger a defensive reflex in Shisui, who automatically puts himself between the hazard and the defense objective. And isn’t that some impressively ingrained training, Mana thinks as he shifts his body a half-step forward: she can see in his face that he has had exactly zero real-time thoughts about it. Unfortunately, this only serves to encourage the cousins further. Shisui belatedly blinks and turns his head; his relatives cheer; Mana feels at once that she could melt into the ground and die. 

Before this can go on much longer, though, an uncle from Shizu’s side eventually appears like rumbling thunder and begins knocking heads together. In short order Shisui’s hecklers are brought to order; then, after brief apologies to the couple-to-be, they’re summarily dragged away. Mana just barely manages to stop herself from burying her face in her hands and ruining her makeup.

“...You okay?” Shisui asks when he sees how her fingers are quivering. Mana lets out a short laugh in reply. There’s an excruciatingly unbearable silence; then Shisui clears his throat awkwardly. Feeling quite bad that his cousins have disturbed her so, he casts about for anything he can say. “Uh. Well, you look really pretty today, Mana,” he offers after a short pause. 

It’s kind of him to say, Mana thinks as she takes a deep breath and shoves her hands into her sleeves to hide their shaking. It’s kind. But somehow it’s the last thing in the world she wants to hear right now. As it is, her shoulders are aching under the weight of her enormously uncomfortable costume, her jaw has been clenched all morning while listening to her grandmother, and she’s still a useless dependent without any utility to her partner whatsoever. What choice is there but to be pretty?

And then, after thinking all of this, Mana exhales. She lifts her lips in as sweet a smile as she can muster. Then she says in her most gentle and ladylike voice, “Thank you.”

Shisui regards this blandly pleasant reaction with a bit of an uneasy look. He’s never considered himself overly close to Mana, but he has lived long enough under the same roof as her to know that that is not quite the response it ought to be. “Are you okay?” he asks again. 

“Oh, yes, just…” She fights back the urge to rip off her prettily-patterned hood and chuck it onto the ground. All at once she finds she can’t control the rapid expansion of anger suddenly flaming out from beneath her collar. “Just being a kind and obedient bride.” 

As soon as she spits the words out she regrets it, and she grimaces; but contrary to her expectations, Shisui's face rapidly takes on a knowing look. “Long morning?” he asks sympathetically, and Mana has the sudden insight that he’s spent his whole life having people shove their unsolicited advice in his face. Right, of course. The only living grandson of Kagami surely has had no shortage of similar experiences. He knows what’s going on.

“She’s horrid,” Mana tells him. “I’ve never met a more horrid woman in my life.” If not for her, none of this would be happening. The arrangement, the engagement, the wedding—none of this at all would have had to happen if not for her. If not for her, Mana wouldn’t have had to become another shackle for this hapless boy to wear for the rest of his life.

"I'm sorry," Shisui says. He means it, too—she can tell that he does, and it's enough to make all her ire drain away. He's sorry? He's the last person who should be sorry. Everyone else should be saying sorry to him.

"I wish we hadn't invited her," Mana mumbles, though this time quite heatlessly. She knows they hadn't had a choice. There is no chance she could have ever dressed herself in this monstrous outfit without intergenerational knowledge and assistance. 

"Shouganai," replies Shisui, and really, what else is there to say? It's a word that encapsulates everything about this situation. It is what it is; it cannot be helped; there was no other way. 

They're both silent for a long time.

"I know I can't tell you not to worry about that sort of stuff," Shisui eventually speaks again in a regretful voice. As easygoing as he is, after all, he is an Uchiha, too. "But I don't really care about that sort of thing. You can just be normal when other people aren't around."

Though this solves none of the root problems and Mana is still a depressingly dependent barely-not-a-child bride—by this world's standards, anyway—she does, at least, feel a bit better knowing that her arranged husband is not an ass. All data does seem to indicate that Shisui has an overall kind and honorable personality, and he’s close enough in age to her for it to not be overly weird. She knows he doesn't deserve this, but from a purely selfish perspective… things could be worse. Much, much worse. 

“Thank you, Shisui,” Mana says softly. “I’d be in a really bad spot if not for you. I'm grateful.”

Some fiery part of her still wants to fight, but they're beyond that now. Any more anger will only do harm, and she'll be inflicting it on the person who deserves it the least. From now on she'll be better served by putting it as far aside as she can. It's in her interest to get along with him as well as possible, anyway; in this clan and culture her quality of life rides entirely upon the decency of the men heading her household. From here on out she’ll continue to be totally at his mercy, too, whether she likes it or not.

Perhaps Shisui can see these thoughts on her face because he sobers. “I understand that you don't have any choice in depending on me,” he says with a certain kind of formality that makes her think he's using his captain's voice. He is a jounin, she supposes, so he probably does have to assure squads of his reliability as a leader fairly often. “But I promise I didn’t agree to this lightly. I’ll be a proper spouse. You won’t be mistreated.” Then, despite everything, he cracks a reassuring grin. If she hadn’t been wearing such an elaborate hairstyle and headdress she thinks he would have ruffled her hair, too. “I’ve got your back, so don’t worry.”

Well, Mana thinks, what more could she possibly ask of him? “Okay,” she answers, and though her brow creases, she smiles back. “I can’t do a lot, but I’ll do my best to have your back, too.”

Chapter Text

The ceremony itself is actually restricted to the most immediate family, so it's only a small party that comes into the shrine proper. Things proceed as they were rehearsed, and after the sipping of the three sake cups, there's a vow in which Mana has had absolutely no input—the clan provides it, Shisui reads it, and all she does is stand beside him and bow once he finishes. They offer flowering evergreen sprigs to the shrine gods before the ceremony concludes by having the guests sip sake of their own. Then it's back out and to the banquet with all the rest of the guests—and there are a great many guests. Despite their diminished number, they are technically of the line of Kagami, so as far as clan affairs go this wedding is very much a public one.

The upside of the banquet is that Mana can change out of the monster kimono—and the loathsome hood—into a marginally more comfortable one. More colorful, too: the heavy padded white over-robe is traded for a red one embroidered with golden fans, white cranes, and pastel flowers of every color. The newlyweds are then placed at a table in front of a golden folding screen, looking over the rows of guests. Despite the season and the snow—which has ceased to fall now as the sky begins to clear—the courtyard is positively swarming with people. Mana stares out at the sea of clansfolk and wonders if every Uchiha in the village hasn't turned out today.

"It wouldn't have been so big a deal if we'd found different partners," Shisui remarks from his seat beside her, perhaps more to himself than to her, "but since we're marrying each other, they probably think we're doing it to solidify the family line. I suppose when it comes to the clan, power really is everything…"

"What do you mean?" Mana wonders bemusedly. She hasn't the faintest clue what he's talking about.

"Oh.” Shisui blinks and turns his gaze towards her. He tilts his head before he smiles a bit at her lack of guile and begins to explain. "Well, I don't think it's very common knowledge that obasan was adopted, so as far as everyone else is concerned this is a genuine cousin marriage. Like Dad said, you can get a dispensation for those, but generally they're only granted for the sake of preserving a bloodline. So combined with the fact that it's happening right as soon as you've reached marriageable age, my guess is that they're probably assuming we intend to reinforce the political influence wielded by the line of Kagami."

Mana is bewildered. "Does our family wield political influence?" 

"Yeah, though not as much as it did when Dad was younger." Shisui props his chin up on the heel of his palm. "Originally Grandfather was meant to be the clan head, you know."

"Eh?"

"Yeah. After Uchiha Madara left the village, there was an interim head, but that was only supposed to be temporary while the clan elected a new leader. Grandfather was nominated by several people, and when they put it to vote he won by a pretty large margin. But he passed before he could take it up, so the position went to Fugaku-san's father, and that's how he eventually became the clan head instead."

"So you mean if Grandfather hadn't died early, right now Uncle would be the head of the Uchiha clan instead of Fugaku-san?"

"Theoretically," Shisui muses. "Though I don't think we could say that for sure, because really the title would have passed to his brother, and after he died it would have gone to his brother’s sons. But then again, since both of our cousins died childless, I guess the position would have made its way to Dad eventually."

Mana stares at him for a long moment. Since the whole of the Uchiha are rather old and noble to begin with, she'd had a vague awareness she'd been born with something of a pedigree in this world, but she hadn't realized that the family had such status even within the clan itself. 

"Oh," she says eventually, not knowing quite how else to reply. "...I guess the family's shrunk a lot since then. If bloodline is important, I suppose it makes sense that people are interested about it."

"Right," Shisui agrees. With the number of Kagami's children reduced to one and Ren being a widower without any inclination to remarry, any more offspring from him is unlikely. This makes Shisui the only remaining descendant of Kagami who can continue the family line, a fact which that clan at large is apparently hyperaware of. They seem to think that marrying Mana is a measure to prevent an outsider mother and her family from swaying the allegiance of any potential children. Knowing what she does now of Shigeru’s family, Mana thinks this actually isn’t such an unreasonable conclusion. “Things are like this because of the war. There are a lot of families in this sort of situation right now.”

Mana looks up at Shisui's face and thinks, again, about the massive injustice of it all. But not for her, and not just about the wedding—she thinks about everything that's gone on in Shisui’s life. Through no action of his own and from a criminally young age, this person has been saddled with a dangerous job, the lives of comrades, the scrutiny of the clan, the continuation of his family name… and now, of course, a sickly wife not of his choosing. He's so burdened by his responsibilities that he doesn't even regard his life as his own. It’s good, she supposes, in that it stops him from jumping whenever he passes by that cliff, but—but what kind of existence is that? That’s terrible. 

That’s terrible, and now she’s one more load on his back that he can’t put down. She should be grateful that he's even willing to be gracious to her. There are men twice his age who would have been more than ready to take out their frustrations on her.

"What's wrong?" Shisui wonders, slightly alarmed, when Mana's face crumples. What a face to make on a wedding day, he thinks, and then glances at the crowd below them out of the corner of his eye. It's lucky there are so many of them. If the banquet venue weren't outdoors and spaced apart around roaring braziers for warmth, their table would have been placed much closer to the guests’, and every single one of them would have been able to see her make this expression right up close. "Hey, Mana…"

Mana catches the note of caution in his voice and remembers where she is. Her face immediately smooths over with pleasant blankness, which is a great improvement over the previous moment, but the misery in her eyes seems to increase fourfold as it happens. Shisui barely manages to keep the pity from showing on his face. Poor kid, he can't help but think. As far as he's been led to believe, a civilian girl getting married is supposed to be something equivalent to a shinobi's advancement—the achievement of a lifetime, a joyous event meant to become a happy memory capable of sustaining one through hardship all throughout life after… but all day she's just been anxious and miserable. There’s been nothing joyous about it at all. Sick, orphaned, forced into marriage… he thinks about it and then shakes his head a bit. Nothing ever seems to go Mana's way.

Eventually the guests begin lining up to give their congratulations. Shisui ends up doing the bulk of the socialization here; the most Mana does is give greetings and say thank you. No one seems to find this strange, though, as if it's expected for her to sit there with a bland smile and repeat set formal phrases like an answering machine. The infamous grandmother, at least, seems to approve of it. After she offers fawning congratulations to the young scion of Kagami’s line, replete with reminders that their two families have been and now continue to be linked by marriage, she implies they should grow friendlier in daily relations. “After all,” the woman says as she flicks a finger at her granddaughter, “she’s good-looking enough, and well-behaved, too—perfectly acceptable for your status, wouldn’t you say?”

Mana and Shisui stare unspeaking for a long moment at the woman standing before them. Then they look at each other. Before they can gather enough wherewithal to even attempt responding to this, though, Mana's grandmother nods regally to herself and sweeps away.

Once the greetings end and the meal has begun in earnest, Ren approaches the couple’s table. “I’m going to kill that woman,” he announces lowly. 

“Don’t, Dad,” Shisui mutters as his father begins reaching into his sleeves. “The whole of the military police is here. You’ll get arrested.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Ren answers. “Watch me. Just watch me.”

“Please don’t,” Mana requests tiredly. “It’s too inauspicious. Besides, think of how people would talk.”

“She’s inauspicious. And forget what others would say, listen to what she’s saying now.” Her uncle’s face twists stormily. “Fifteen minutes ago she was up here kissing ass, and now she's down there sneering about how a sixteen-year-old could never beat out any of her adult sons… her nerve is unbelievable. How is it possible that Shigeru came out of such a two-faced trash bag mother?” 

Ren's impassioned mutterings would have gone on, but at that moment his children simultaneously choke on their laughter. They can’t help it; Mana slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle her eruption of giggles, while Shisui puts his head in his hands and tries not to chortle too loudly. Their reactions prompt Ren to take on a look that’s a cross between amused and chagrined. On the one hand, he’s happy to have gladdened them in the face of such blatant insult, but on the other, there's a harpy out there politicking up his son's wedding. Directly after putting down his niece as a trophy wife, too.

“Anyway, ojisan, I was meaning to ask you something,” Mana says to distract him from his anger.

“Me? What is it?”

“Who's that man at the center back table? In the third row, with the ponytail. He's not a clansman, is he?”

Both Ren and Shisui regard her with looks of surprise. “How do you know that?” Mana, who has been a functional hermit her whole entire life, hardly socializes with anyone beyond Rinako, Mikoto, and her family. How would she be able to tell who is or isn't a member of the greater clan? Unlike Ren and Shisui, she has no context for that.

“Oh, um…” Mana blinks. Then she looks at the man again. Actually, how does she know that? He’s as dark-haired and dark-eyed as any of the others around him, but something about him just feels… different. Like he’s a vaguely different shade of paint, or like his texture is just slightly mismatched… The longer Mana looks at him, the more confused she feels. Going by his physical appearance, there’s nothing odd about him at all. He’s dressed properly, his mannerisms are proper… But—no, truly. He really isn’t like the others around him.

“Mana?”

“I dunno,” she says bewilderedly. “But he’s different. He’s not an Uchiha. I don’t know how I can tell.”

Ren and Shisui trade glances. Then Ren says, “Well, you aren’t wrong. That’s my friend Nara Shikaku. He just recently became the head of the Nara clan. It happened unexpectedly, so he hasn’t had a chance to forge many ties with the other great clans yet… I invited him so he’d have a chance to meet some Uchiha from outside the Jounin Corps in a less formal setting.”

“Oh,” Mana says. She looks at Shisui. “Do you know him?”

“Shikaku-senpai? Yeah, he’s a great ninja. Clever and competent, super easy to work with. Rumor has it he’s going to be the next Jounin Commander.”

Mana isn’t overly familiar with the organizational structure of Konoha’s shinobi, but she does know enough to recognize that anyone with command of the village’s most elite ninja is probably not a person to mess with. Well, isn’t that something? A newly-inaugurated clan head, slated for a position of high power, networking at her wedding…

“He’s got a son around Sasuke’s age,” Ren adds. “Who knows. If they make friends when he enters the Academy, maybe you’ll get a chance to meet him.”

Mana, who has an ingrained fondness for all children, reflexively smiles a bit at the thought. It might be one of the only three genuine smiles she’s made all day, and it’s fleeting; after another moment it fades away, and her rose-tinted lips flatten again. But lasting or not, it was real, and perhaps that is what matters.

Chapter Text

Shisui's room is the same as it always is; the only difference is that the futon laid out at its center is large enough for two. They spend a moment standing by the door. Then they look at each other.

"It's our first sleepover," Mana says, deciding that playing dumb would be the best method to push through. At sixteen there's no way Shisui wouldn't know, but conceivably a sheltered, sickly, just-turned-thirteen girl could be ignorant of what traditionally occurs on a wedding night. The look Shisui gives her is one of utter relief.

"Yeah, I guess so," he says, far less tense than he had been mere moments ago. "We've never had a sleepover before this, huh."

Oddly enough, this is true. Mana wonders how it could be possible that they are cousins—functional cousins, anyway—who have never had a sleepover, especially since they've lived under the same roof all their lives. Actually, considering how common it is for family members to sleep together in this culture, isn't that actually terribly abnormal? She considers it thoughtfully as she wanders in after Shisui, who makes for his desk.

Several moments pass in awkward silence. Neither of them quite knows what to say. For lack of anything else to do, Mana eventually just sits down atop the futon without getting under the covers. She’s casting her eyes about, wishing she’d thought to bring a novel or a sketchpad, when eventually her gaze falls upon a short stack of comics by the wall.

"Shisui, can I look at these?" she immediately points and asks. Surprised, he glances over his shoulder to see what she's speaking about.

"Huh? Oh, sure. It's an old series, but it's pretty interesting."

Mana wastes no time reaching out for the first issue. She rolls onto her stomach and opens up the first page. The art style is typical of shounen manga, with angular character designs and sharp, dark shadows, but she finds the premise surprisingly thoughtful: it concerns a young boy, a newly-minted guardian of the Great Spirit Tree, and his daily encounters over the course of his work. He meets an animal familiar and befriends it, and then has various fateful meetings with others around the Spirit Tree—fellow guardians, priests and priestesses, folk from the town, travelers. It seems to be mostly episodic in format, but it's surprisingly engrossing, and it's an easy read without too many complex dialogues—likely due to the fact that this comic is clearly an artifact of Shisui's Academy days, back when he still actually had had the time to read comics. Regardless, she's reaching for the second volume before long.

"Hey, Mana…" Mana blinks and looks to her left, where Shisui had at some point sat down beside her. He tugs a bit at the cover, but since Mana’s atop it, he can’t pick it up. "It's getting late and I'm kind of tired now. Do you mind if we turn out the lights? I know you're still reading, so you can use the desk lamp if you want."

"What?" Surprised, Mana looks up at the clock on the wall. 12:32? "Oh, sorry," she immediately apologizes as she shuts the manga and puts it back. "I lost track of time. You have training in the morning, right?"

"I mean, I don't think Dad'll be too upset if I sleep in late tomorrow. I did just get married, after all," Shisui answers with a look of amusement. Mana's face flushes. She gets up and dashes to the light switch.

"I'm going to turn it off now, okay? Good night!" She quickly flicks the switch. Shisui laughs good-naturedly at her; she slinks back to the futon, embarrassed, and puts her pillow over her head after crawling under the covers. She stays like that until the air becomes stale and stuffy.

When she eventually pokes her head out she finds that Shisui has turned onto his side and is breathing evenly. Surprised that he has managed to fall asleep already, she looks at his back for a long moment. Then she turns onto her own side, stares at the wall, and reflects. Maybe it's not so surprising. It had been an exhausting day, full of happenings and heavy emotions. A grand wedding, the scale of which she never could have imagined for herself in the past… it had been just what one would expect of the Uchiha clan. She doubts that she would have ever had such a huge ceremony and feast if she'd gotten married in her previous life. An occasion fit for a princess, lacking nothing…

"Except you, Mom," she finds herself whispering aloud. Suddenly overtaken with a fiery longing for Chieri, who she has abruptly remembered for the first time in nearly the whole day—has Mana ever gone that long without thinking of her mother before?—she reaches up and grabs her pillow. Then she stuffs her face in it and takes deep breaths. A burning sensation has begun in her eyes, a familiar sting of grief, and she presses her nose harder into the fabric, holding her breath. She stays like that for a long while and wishes desperately that she could have stopped time, if only to spend a moment longer in those last minutes with her mother. She'd had so much to tell her and no time to say it. Those merciless seconds, passing on and on while her words had remained stuck in her throat… She tries to keep back the tears but they come anyway, hot and sticky on her cheeks, and she lets out a sigh. Eventually, though, her head begins to feel light and fuzzy; then, all at once, consciousness slips away.

After a long moment of contemplation Shisui opens his eyes and rolls over. "Mana?" he asks quietly, wondering about this grieved whisper. But Mana does not respond; he hesitates. Then, figuring that she probably does not want to talk, he rolls over again and lets her be.

In the morning Shisui realizes he's made a huge mistake.

At first he doesn't realize anything is wrong. He wakes before she does, but that's not unexpected; he's an early riser by habit. He takes the opportunity to get dressed, moving silently to avoid waking her. Mana, though, appears to be a heavy sleeper, and does not so much as twitch, let alone stir. Even after he sneaks out to the bathroom and returns she is still curled up on her side, face buried in her pillow…

"Huh?" Shisui pauses in the doorway and stares for a long moment. Then, alarmed, he goes over and kneels on her side of the futon. There's an unmistakable red stain on the fabric.

"Mana?!" He quickly removes the pillow and is taken aback by how much blood has soaked through it. There's so much that it's transferred to her face, smeared all across her nose and cheeks and eyelids. Had she had a nosebleed? 

"Hey, Mana? Mana?" He drops the pillow and begins shaking her shoulder urgently. "Mana!"

Her head lolls to the side and she stays fixedly unconscious. Astonished, Shisui holds a hand over her face to check for breath, which he does find. Only marginally relieved, he shoots up to obtain a damp cloth.

"Nnngh…" Mana finds herself blinking awake while Shisui is wiping her face with a warm, wet towel. Ren is hovering behind him worriedly. 

"Mana? Are you awake?" Shisui draws back and asks when her brow scrunches up. Groggy and disoriented, Mana puts a hand on her forehead.

"I don't feel so good," she manages to croak out after a moment. Her head is pounding terribly and her mouth is dry and gritty. A piercing pain lances between her temples, right behind her eyes, and she groans, feeling cold and sluggish. It is as if a frozen boulder is sitting on her gut.

"I'm going to call Touma." Ren, seeing the acute misery manifesting itself on her face, immediately goes for the door. "Shisui, can you stay here and watch her?"

"Of course." Shisui sits back on his haunches as his father swiftly exits. A moment passes. 

Shisui looks at the bloody pillow, lying discarded to the side, and then to Mana's face, which has gone from stained red to paper-white. Even though he’s seen her go through countless bouts of illness since the time she was a child, he’s never been her first responder before. When they’d been kids Chieri had stood like an all-seeing hawk over her daughter’s health, and after she had passed, Ren had been the one doing the bulk of the care. Usually by the time he gets involved the situation is already under someone else’s control.

"Do you need anything?" he asks after a moment. "Water, maybe?"

Mana, with eyes squeezed shut, mumbles a bit. Shisui leans in. "Sorry?"

"I'm cold," she repeats weakly. "Blanket."

"Oh." The futon cover had been pushed aside in all the fuss, so right now she is lying exposed in her housedress to the open air. He retrieves the comforter and lays it over her. "That's good?"

"Yeah… thanks."

When Ren returns with Touma that is how he finds them. Shisui stands up and steps back as the doctor moves in. He makes eye contact with his father.

"What happened?" Ren asks quietly. Shisui shakes his head.

"I don't know. She seemed a little upset last night, I guess. I think she was missing obasan. But…" he deflates a bit. "I guess I should have checked on her after all. I thought she was just sleeping."

When Touma is through assessing his patient, he confirms that she’s stable enough to not be in any immediate danger. Then he gestures and the men all step out into the hall. 

"It seems like it's her usual chakra exhaustion. She must have had an acute episode last night."

"Should we have brought her to the hospital instead?" Ren asks worriedly. Touma's brow furrows.

"Yes, well, it does seem quite possible that her levels reached that threshold… but since she was sleeping, she must have recovered just enough chakra to stabilize. She'll be all right here at home for now, but from the looks of it you may have had a near-miss. It's a little concerning, truth be told… such a thing hasn’t happened since last year when Chieri-san passed."

"Oh, please, no." Ren blanches. His mind is at once taken over by the memory of his niece lying spent on her hospital bed, crying and begging him to let her die. He doesn't think either of them would be able to survive a second round of that.

"...But something's different this time," Shisui says slowly. His interjection interrupts Ren's thoughts and causes Touma to look at him.

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't a symptom of chakra exhaustion," he answers as he holds up the blood-soaked pillow, which he'd snatched up as they'd been leaving the room. 

“What—” Touma regards it with an astonished look. Having gone straight to Mana’s side, he hadn’t seen it when he went in. “What happened?”

“She was sleeping with her face in her pillow. When I came back from the bathroom and looked at her it was already like this,” Shisui explains. “Her face was covered in blood. I think she must have had a nosebleed or something.”

“A nosebleed…?” Touma’s eyebrows scrunch together again in thought. Ren and Shisui wait for him to produce an explanation, but one beat passes in silence, and then another.

“Touma?”

“I’m sorry,” Touma says slowly after a long moment. “I’m just trying to think through what links chakra exhaustion and epistaxis could possibly have. It’s not obvious to me, but with this timing, I’m not inclined to just write it off, either…”

“It’s not because of her disease?”

“I’m not sure,” Touma admits. “I’ll do some research when I go back, but as you know, Ren, most of those born with chakra deficiency disorders die during or shortly after birth. Mana may be one of the first to have ever survived so long past infancy. That being the case, there hasn’t been much opportunity to study it; I very much doubt I’ll find a robust body of literature describing how the illness presents itself in adolescence.”

“Is this happening because she’s entering her growth period?” Ren asks with alarm. 

“That also cannot be ruled out. Many changes occur in the chakra pathway system during puberty. The tenketsu, the eight gates… all of these undergo developmental changes that may affect—or be affected by—a chakra-based illness such as hers.”

A silence descends as the men contemplate these words. Then Touma reaches out and puts a hand on Ren’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he says firmly. “I’ll investigate this properly. Even if there isn’t research about this specific illness, there’s been no shortage of study on the chakra pathway system itself. It may take time, but there’s bound to be something we can make use of. Just leave it to me. If there’s anything out there to find, I will find it for you.”

With these words Touma departs, but despite his reassurances Ren continues to stand as if stupefied there in the hall. Then Shisui sees it: the steady mission face, worn so well over the past year, slowly begins to crumble. A look of overwhelming dread starts to creep across his father’s face.

“Dad?” he asks quietly. He puts a hand on his father’s sleeve.

"She's got no one left but us, Shisui," Ren whispers after a long moment. "I promised Chieri she'd be cared for."

Shisui has suspected for a little while now that turning his attention to Mana’s care has been one of the only things helping Ren to cope with his sibling’s death, but it is becoming clear now that it won’t be good if his father pours too much more of himself into it. Now that he thinks about it, Chieri had gone through days like these, too, back when he’d been small. Being the solo caregiver of a gravely ill child… Perhaps it’s time for his father to take a break. 

"Don't worry, Dad," Shisui says softly, resolve strengthened. "She will be cared for. I'll see to it… I promise."

Chapter Text

When Mana next wakes she finds herself snug in her own bed and clutching her favorite blanket to her chest. Blinking slowly at the familiar paintings on the walls around her, she wonders what exactly had happened. She vaguely remembers becoming extremely ill, and then also seeing the familiar face of Touma, but for the most part has no recollection of the past… she glances at the clock and sees that it is three in the afternoon. Assuming she hadn't lost an entire day, it seems that it's been several hours.

Mana curls onto her side and stares for a while at her dresser. Her head, which had been so full of static, is now remarkably clear, and the stone in her stomach is gone. Her limbs still feel rather heavy, though, and she feels no inclination to exert herself by getting up, so she stays lying there on her side for an indeterminate amount of time. As she does she hears the distant chirps of birds outside the window. Occasionally their song is punctured by the familiar thunking sound of kunai. She shuts her eyes and listens.

The slant of light breaking through her curtains has changed both color and angle by the time she opens her eyes again. She perceives that both the birds and the kunai have gone silent; then, realizing that it’s well into the evening now, Mana runs a hand over her face and realizes that she probably should get up at some point, if only to go relieve herself. Still, the prospect seems immensely tiring, and she has to spend several moments marshaling her willpower before she works up the resolve to rise.

Just then, though, her bedroom door cracks open and Shisui peers inside. "Oh, you're awake," he says when he catches sight of her face. He pushes the door the whole way open and stands at the threshold. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Mana answers, relieved that an ally has appeared at just the right moment. "Not 100%, but… definitely better."

"That's good," Shisui replies with a troubled smile. He doesn't say anything else, though, and only continues to gaze at her with concerned eyes.

"Um, Shisui…" Mana says after a moment, wondering how to phrase her request. With Chieri she had never even really had to ask, and Ren had also frequently displayed the fatherly superpower of knowing exactly when a kid needs to pee. Shisui, though…

"What's up?" His stance is immediately attentive. He looks ready to jump into action at any moment. Mana’s brow creases a bit guiltily, but she smiles with appreciation nonetheless.

"Could you help me go to the bathroom?" she petitions. "I don't think I'll make it if I try to go by myself."

Shisui doesn't bat an eyelash. "Yeah, of course," he says and comes forward to help her sit up. He snags the knitted cardigan draped over her desk chair as he goes and drops it over her shoulders when she sits up, which she appreciates immensely; she always feels inordinately cold after a bout of chakra exhaustion.

Mana swings her legs over the edge of the bed and pauses for a moment, knowing better than to attempt standing right away. Before she has a chance to move, though, Shisui scoops her up in his arms and lifts her just like that. Just like the last time this had happened to her, Mana finds her heart instantly shot through with memories of her mother lifting her in the exact same way. She begins to blink rapidly.

"Are you okay?" Shisui notices this and pauses, worried.

"Yeah," Mana says thickly after a long moment. "I was just thinking that—I mean—Mom used to pick me up like this, too. That’s all."

"I see…" Shisui's brow creases. After a moment he exits her room and begins making his way down the hall.

"I'll stay here," Shisui says as he gently sets her on her feet, making sure she has a hand on the door frame for stability. "Call me if you get dizzy or need help, okay? Even if you're on the toilet."

"Okay. Thanks," Mana replies, privately quite impressed by his attitude. Then again, she thinks to herself as she shuffles inside and shuts the door behind her, he is a shinobi. He's probably experienced his share of chakra exhaustion, too, both first- and second-hand.

Luckily the bathroom visit concludes without incident, and after she washes her hands Shisui picks her up again and deposits her back in bed. "I'll go downstairs and start dinner," he says as he stands. "You probably want to eat up here, right?"

"Yes, please."

"All right. I'll bring your food up when I'm done."

"Bring your food, too," Mana invites a little shyly. Somehow it doesn’t feel right to make him wait on her so one-sidedly. Sharing the meal would be much less awkward. "Let's eat together."

Shisui blinks in surprise. Then he smiles at her. "Sure," he agrees. "Let's eat together."

Some forty minutes later Shisui returns with two trays balanced on one arm, mugs, and a pitcher in his free hand. Mana sets down the book she had picked up and tilts her head appreciatively at this waitstaff-like level of coordination—though then again, for a ninja, such feats are probably more along the lines of parlor tricks. Shisui sets one tray on the desk, along with a mug and the pitcher, before passing Mana the other tray. The other mug is summarily filled with water and placed on her nightstand.

"Thank you for cooking," Mana thanks gratefully as she is handed chopsticks and a spoon for the soup. Now that she's had some time to wake up she realizes that she is positively starving.

"Don't worry about it," Shisui replies as he drops into the desk chair and slings an arm over its back. He takes a moment to watch her and make sure she's eating well before turning to his own food. Mana resolves to go out and get ingredients for okonomiyaki when she's well. 

"Hey, Mana…" Shisui says a few minutes into their meal. Mana looks up from the miso she is draining and makes an inquisitive noise. "Can I ask you something?"

"Mhm," Mana says through her bowl of soup. Shisui snorts a bit and grins at her. But then his levity fades and furrows his brow. He puts his chopsticks down and turns in his chair.

“Do you know what the symptoms of chakra exhaustion are? Has anyone taught you?”

“Um…” Mana pauses to think. “No, not explicitly, I don’t think. But I don’t think anyone really needed to. It happens often enough that I already knew on my own.”

“So you can tell when you’re having an episode?”

"Um, probably… yeah, I think so."

“What is it like? Could you describe it?”

“Well… I do notice that I get really bad headaches when it starts,” Mana offers. “Or sometimes I get dizzy and lightheaded. After that I get really tired and cold."

"Were you like that last night?" he queries. 

"Uh," Mana says. Now that she thinks about it… "I guess so."

Shisui frowns. "Why didn't you say something?" 

Mana sits a moment in silence, a little puzzled. "I don't know," she says eventually. The thought of waking him up hadn't even crossed her mind. "We had already gone to bed. I guess I didn't realize it was happening? Or maybe I thought I would get better if I just slept for a while. That was usually what I did when I didn't want to bother Mom," she adds truthfully. "I just slept until I felt better."

Shisui gives her an alarmed look. "You just went to sleep without telling anyone?"

"Yeah."

Shisui stares at her like she’s gone crazy. "You’ve nearly died of chakra exhaustion several times now, Mana… Why would you do that? You might not have woken up." Just thinking about it makes him feel a stab of anxiety. He imagines what it would be like to walk into a room to check on your napping daughter and then find that out of nowhere she had died in her sleep. He doesn’t have to stretch his imagination too far, either—yesterday had come alarmingly close to that exact scenario. "You shouldn't do that."

Mana just stares in response to this. In the early days, every day had been like that. It’s still like that sometimes. Telling someone each time she got a headache and felt tired would have been, in her opinion, eminently impractical. It still seems impractical, in fact.

Shisui sees her doubtful gaze and frowns at her. “Next time it happens you have to tell someone,” he insists. “Come and tell me, okay?”

“Sure, but…” Shisui is on break right now, but he is very much a working man and is frequently gone for weeks at a time. “What if you’re not here?”

“Then tell Dad.”

“Okay. But what about when he’s working, too?” This is also a common occurrence. Ren takes fewer long-term missions owing to his age and various injuries accumulated over the years, but he is a working person, too. He’d taken some leave after Chieri had died, but he’d slowly been picking up missions again in the intervening months.

Shisui’s brow begins to crease at this unexpected obstinacy. “Then go next door to the neighbor’s, or to Mikoto-san’s house, and have them look after you until Dad or I can come help.”

“But what would you even do?” Mana wonders, at this point more to herself than to him. “Nothing really fixes it besides sleeping and eating anyway. If we make sure that we’ve always got some food prepared, there’s no reason I can’t just take care of it myself.”

“Next time you have an acute attack like this we can give you chakra transfusions,” Shisui says measuredly, now beginning to feel very slightly irritated. Mana gives him a contrite look.

“Sorry. I’m not trying to make you mad,” she apologizes, and then pauses. “You can give people chakra transfusions? You know how?”

“Not yet, but I’m pretty confident that I can learn.” Shisui’s ire subsides with her apology. “It’s a medical jutsu, but if you have enough chakra control those aren’t too hard to figure out. I was going to look into it once you were feeling better.”

“Oh…” Mana stares at him for a long moment. “You were going to do that for me?”

“Well, I’m still going to do it, actually,” Shisui says, and then gives her a strange look. “What, is that weird? Do you not want me to or something?”

“No, I just…” Mana goes silent, not entirely sure how to articulate the mix of emotions she feels upon hearing this. After a moment she holds her mug up to her face and looks to the side. "That's really nice of you. Thanks."

After another night's sleep Mana is right as rain, much to Shisui and Ren's relief. They spend about a day hovering worriedly—or, more accurately, Shisui hovers while Ren reluctantly goes to work—but she simply returns to her daily routine, completing simple household tasks and drawing pictures in her room. Shisui insists on cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner all, so she doesn't have a chance to make okonomiyaki. 

"..." That night Mana opens up her bedroom window and, despite the chilly air, stares up at the full moon for a little while. Her gaze drops along the curve of its round circumference, tracing its edge, and then takes in each of its dark and bright spots, eyeing them as if to paint. In this culture they say that these spots make a rabbit, but when she looks up at it she still sees the man in the moon.

"Married life's not much like I expected," she tells him as she props her chin up on her hands.

Is that bad? she imagines the moon asking back.

"No, not really," she answers after a bit of thought. "Actually, it's… a little nice."

Chapter Text

The next day Shisui tells her he's going out. Mana is pleased by this; she would have felt terribly guilty if he'd spent his whole break stuck at home watching her. Plus, that means she finally has a chance to go shopping for the okonomiyaki. 

"Take it easy, okay?" Shisui warns sternly as he's putting his sandals on in the genkan. "Remember, you promised! If it happens again you have to tell someone."

"Okay," Mana confirms mildly. Her mind is already fixed on her shopping list. They already have flour and eggs at home, so she'll need cabbage, green onions, tenkasu, pork belly slices…

She wanders around the house for about fifteen minutes after he leaves, gathering a shopping basket, writing out her grocery list, and preparing to go out. Then she leaves a note on the table in case Ren comes home while she's gone. As she passes through the hall towards the genkan, though, she halts when she catches sight of herself in the mirror. She lingers there for a long moment; then she turns back, heads up to her room, goes into her drawers to begin rummaging around. Eventually her fingers brush against silk, and she pulls out a white ribbon.

Mana grabs a tie and pulls her hair into a bun. Then she takes the ribbon and ties it in her hair. She pauses a moment to check if it’s lopsided; after finding no fault, she nods to herself and returns to the first floor. This time she passes by the mirror without stopping, goes to the door, puts on her shoes and coat, and sets off towards the market. When she arrives, she goes for the greengrocer’s and begins looking through the cabbages.

The shopping trip is shaping up to be entirely uneventful when she hears a sudden angry exclamation at a stall further down the road. Startled, she turns her head and sees an officer of the police force leaning over the counter and speaking lowly to a cashier. Curious, she approaches.

“...and then that was it. They just left after that.”

"Really?" Mana asks. She peers up at the stall owner and the officer as she arrives at the counter. Surprised by her interjection, the two adults glance down at her.

"Oh, sorry, little lady," the shopkeeper says. "Did you need something?"

"May I buy tenkasu, please?" she asks, pointing to one of the plastic bags of tempura scraps sitting on display. 

"Thank you. Come again," the stall owner says with a smile as she hands him her money. Mana bows her head back. Then she looks at the police officer.

"Is that true?" she queries as she puts her purchase in her basket. "They really said that?"

"Yes, Miss, it's true," the officer sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "If only they knew the truth. Ayato was bedridden for months after the Kyuubi Attack, and Sorata nearly lost his leg while helping evacuate civilians… that kind of talk is just beyond the pale."

"Sorata…" Mana tilts her head as the name tickles at her memory. Uchiha Sorata, wasn’t he…? Mana stills as she remembers. “Oh… Sorata-san.”

"You know him?” The officer blinks with surprise.

“I didn’t really, but my mom did." Mana reaches up to touch her hair ribbon. "We… we were the ones he got hurt helping during the Kyuubi Attack. He carried me because I couldn’t walk.”

The officer and the shopkeeper go silent as they regard her solemnly. Then the owner says, “Then those hecklers were twice the fools I thought they were to begin with. As if saving such a lovely young lady could be called ‘sitting on their asses.’”

“Sometimes I wonder if this village will ever comprehend what the Police Force does for its sake,” the officer says with open disgust. “Sometimes I think they never will.”

Eventually Ren and Shisui’s break ends and they have to return to work. At first they’re extremely reluctant to leave her, but absent any actual imminent illness, they can’t justify taking any more time off. For the first time in all her second life, Mana is left home alone. She’s under strict orders to go to Mikoto at once, of course, should anything occur, but other than that there's nothing more they can do. They can't dump her at the clan head's house to board every time they go out on missions, after all. Sasuke only needs so much babysitting.

She rattles about the house aimlessly for about half a day before she realizes that this is an opportunity. Ren and Shisui have been taking care of the household since Chieri’s passing, and since she’s been sick they’ve been enforcing strict bed rest on her, but now that they’re gone nothing can stop her from picking up the reins her mother had left behind. After all, if she’s going to be deadweight for the rest of her life, she thinks with grim determination, the least she can do is make herself useful to her new spouse and father-in-law. There’s no way for her to pay them back otherwise. 

So she does: she takes down the ledgers and she begins balancing the checkbook. Ren’s slipshod recordings of the past year’s expenses, consisting mostly of scrawled lists and an overflowing box of receipts, is carefully deciphered, organized, and re-recorded into a new ledger. She finds a pile of IOUs and realizes that they’re behind on several clan dues, so she gathers these outstanding expenses onto a spreadsheet for her uncle’s review when he returns. As for the horrendous pile of invoices and statements sitting on the table, she breaks them down by category and files them all away into her mother’s old organizers. She separates the real letters from junk and flyers and throws out everything that’s trash. By the end of the week some semblance of order has returned to the recordkeeping shelf of Uchiha Ren’s household.

Not all of her endeavors go so smoothly, though. Organizing and cleaning are things Chieri had often involved her daughter in, so these Mana can more or less manage with competence; but other maintenance tasks she is not so familiar with. For example, when she notices a dripping noise in the laundry room, she naively investigates behind the washing machine to see if she can’t figure out what the cause might be. Twenty minutes later she’s soaked from head to toe and sobbing on the phone to Mikoto for help. Plumbing, as it turns out, is a glaring lacuna in Mana’s homemaking education, so Mikoto takes the time to explain to her a variety of things about washers and sinks. Refrigerators and toilets, too, just in case.

But despite the mishaps she manages to keep from knocking the house down. Once she finds her feet, in fact, she hits her stride. She hunts down and replaces dead lightbulbs, cleans out stray cobwebs and dry bugs, and even manages to scour a whole set of burnt pots and pans from the kitchen. She beats out the futons and washes the laundry piled up in everyone’s hampers. She even fills the birdfeeder for the first time in ages. When Ren returns from his mission some fifteen days later, he sees a fresh flower arrangement by the genkan alcove for the first time in over a year and pauses. 

“Ojisan!” Mana comes running to the door at the sound of his voice. Ren blinks when his niece comes to a bouncing stop before him, dressed in an apron and holding a wooden spoon in her hand. “I knew you’d be back soon. I made dinner.”

“Uh,” Ren says eloquently. He looks at the flowers again. Then he glances down at his feet, noticing now how all the pebbles and dry leaves that had been littering the entryway have vanished. The floorboards, too, are unusually shiny. They haven’t looked like that in months.

Mana sees this sweeping assessment and looks at him intently. “I did some cleaning while you were gone. What do you think?”

Ren removes his sandals and steps up into the hall. He walks through the sitting room. He arrives in the kitchen. And then, after seeing not only a grease-free range and terribly shiny sink, but also an entire warm dinner laid out on the table, he finds that tears are abruptly streaming from his eyes. 

“Ojisan?” Mana asks with alarm. Ren stares down at her face and is so stricken by the girl’s resemblance to her mother that he’s robbed of words. Even the way that her eyebrows have lifted with surprise reminds him achingly of Chieri. He drops to his knees in front of her and seizes her in a fierce hug. “Oh, um—?”

“What a great job, Mana,” Ren chokes out. “You’re amazing. Chieri… Chieri would be so proud of you.”

Shisui notices the change at once when he returns. He’s several days later than his father, so the flowers aren’t quite as fresh, but the difference is still unmistakable. Not just in the house, either; when Ren greets him at the door, Shisui perceives a marked note of cheer in his voice that he hasn’t heard from his father in… how long? It’s been a while, certainly.

“I’m home,” Shisui says. He is extremely careful as steps up from the genkan and takes off his pack. Ren looks at him curiously.

“You good?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just—” Shisui’s gaze lingers on the returned light in Ren’s face. “...Some muscle soreness. I pulled something bad in my back. It should be better in a week or two, though.”

“Oof. Back injuries are the worst,” Ren sympathizes before reaching out and taking the bag from his son. “Here, I’ll get it. The bath’s still warm—you want to go in before me? If you’re sore, it might make you feel a bit better.”

“No, I’ll pass,” Shisui declines. “I think I’m just going to rinse off and lie down. I’m exhausted.”

“You want to eat before that? Mana made a bunch of onigiri with the leftover rice this morning. They’re pretty good—she used a couple of different fillings.”

“Maybe in a bit,” Shisui says, and Ren sees such unconcealed weariness in the teen’s face that he immediately lets it slide.

“Okay, then don’t worry about it. Go shower and rest. You want pain meds before you head up?”

“Ah, yeah, I’ll take some. Thanks.”

The next morning when Ren and Mana go to breakfast they’re surprised to find Shisui absent from the table. Odd of him—even on post-mission mornings he tends to rise early, as is his habit. They exchange looks.

“He did seem pretty beat down last night,” Ren says after a moment. “It must have been some mission.”

“What time did he get back?” Mana, who sleeps early each night as a matter of health, asks as she begins withdrawing dishes to set the table.

“Ah, don’t worry about my serving, Mana, I’ve got an early start today. I was just going to grab some of the rice balls and go.” Ren opens the fridge. “As for what time, maybe around eleven or so? Either way…” He pauses. “Would you go check on him?”

“Sure." Mana places the plate in her hand on the table and heads up the stairs. When she reaches the second floor she knocks on Shisui's door before cracking it open. She finds him face-down on his futon, lying prone on his stomach.

“Mm?” He lifts his head wearily to look up at her. “What’s up…?”

“Oh, you are awake,” Mana says with surprise. Then she frowns at how wan his complexion is. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good… you need something?”

“No, just… you didn’t come down, so ojisan wanted me to check on you,” she explains worriedly. Shisui stares at her for a short moment. Then he rolls gingerly onto his side and runs a hand over his face with a sigh.

“I’ll be down in a bit,” he mutters tiredly. “Don’t wait for me… I’m going to take my time.”

“Okay…” Brow creased, Mana returns to report to Ren, who has slung on his gear and is stuffing an onigiri in his mouth. “He’s actually awake already, but he said he’s going to take his time, so don’t wait for him.”

“Huh,” Ren says through his mouthful of food. He chews rapidly and then swallows. “Well, as long as he’s up, I suppose… I’ve got to get going, though. Let him know I’ll be back before the end of the month, okay?”

"Okay," Mana agrees hesitantly. Ren reaches out to tousle her hair before he makes for the door.

"Thanks for the food!" he shouts. "I'm off!"

"See you," Mana calls back.

Despite being told not to wait, after cooking the food and serving the rice Mana finds herself sitting at the table and staring at the stairs. Five minutes turn to ten. Ten minutes turn to twenty. After half an hour has passed, she stands. Something, she thinks, is wrong.

Chapter Text

When she arrives at the second floor she finds that Shisui's bedroom door is ajar. She looks inside and sees only an empty futon, so she turns her gaze down the hall towards the bathroom. Frowning, she makes her way over.

"Shisui?" Mana calls. "Are you in there?"

"Yeah," comes the response, faintly strained with pain. Mana's brow immediately furrows.

"Are you okay? Do you need help?" she queries as she puts her hand on the doorknob.

"...Yeah, could you give me a hand?"

Mana pushes the door open and is met with the sight of a truly unnerving amount of blood. Shisui is sitting shirtless on the bath stool in the wash area, grimacing with his back to the mirror; red liquid is flowing down from between his shoulder blades, leaking out from torn stitches. He's got a big smear of it across the back of his neck and his hands are quite coated, too. From there it runs in rivulets down his forearms, where it drips from his elbows onto the tile floor. Mana is taken aback and falters in the doorway. 

"Sorry," Shisui apologizes when he sees her look of alarm. "I know it's nasty… I didn't want you to see it." Ill though Mana often is, he doubts she ever had cause to see as gory an injury as this. It's not something he had ever intended to show to such a sheltered girl.

"You were trying to change the dressing?" Mana immediately deduces when she catches sight of once-pristine bandages lying abandoned by his feet. They're stained now, though, as they soak up the edges of the bloody puddle forming on the tiles beneath him. How gruesome. 

"Yeah… I just stretched a bit too hard," he sighs as he squints. He looks like he'd like to wipe the sweat running down his forehead, but he doesn't want to spread the blood to his face. Mana sees a clean towel sitting folded atop the rack, so she goes over and stands on her tiptoes to snag it. Then she unfolds it and helps him wipe his face.

"Thanks," Shisui says, a little surprised by how easily she's regained her composure. After she's dried his brow, Mana circles around to study his wound, which is running at a diagonal nearly the whole length down his back.

"What happened?" she asks after a moment, quite disturbed. Not only is it long, but it's deep. It looks terribly painful. "Your armor didn't protect you?"

"Mm. Well, that's the thing," Shisui sighs again. "I wasn't wearing it when this happened."

"Were you at camp?"

"Yeah, we were ambushed. In the chaos of everything I ended up jumping in front of one of my teammates."

So it was an injury obtained by protecting another. Somehow that isn't surprising. After what he's been through, Mana thinks as she recalls that bitter word migoroshi, Shisui probably would be the type of person to try and take a bullet for a comrade. 

"It was my own fault," Shisui adds as if to defend his squadmate, misjudging her silence. "I let my guard down as much as he did."

"I'm glad you came back," Mana eventually says in reply, still staring at the cut. She lays her palm on the skin beside the wound; it's clammy. "This looks really scary." She's no shinobi, but even she looks at this injury and sees nothing but a close brush with death.

"...Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" Shisui sighs again. "Sorry."

"No, don't say sorry…" If anything, Mana is the one who feels sorry for him. "Here, let me help you."

Mana goes to the bathtub and starts the faucet. She rinses off her palm and then fills up the hand pail with water. Then she goes into the hall and retrieves one of the dark wash cloths, which she dunks into the water.

"Just bandage it up enough so I can go to the hospital and get the stitches redone," Shisui requests. Then he grimaces again. "Boy, am I going to get an earful for this. If it were anywhere else but my back I could have managed it on my own, but…"

"Do you want me to suture it for you?" Mana queries as she hikes up her skirt so she can kneel on the tile behind him without bloodying her clothes. Then she begins wiping his back clean, periodically wringing bright red water from her cloth as she goes.

"You?" Shisui glances over his shoulder, startled. He takes one look at the baby-faced girl behind him and can't help the look of doubt that immediately takes over his face. "...You want to sew this shut for me?"

"Mom showed me how once," Mana answers. "On ojisan's arm." She knows this story will immediately be credible; Ren is infamous for his ability to rip stitches, after all.

"..." Shisui stares at her pensively. Mana supposes she can't blame him. If she had a wound this severe on her back she doesn't know if she would trust a thirteen-year-old with it, either.

"Well, you probably should go to the hospital anyway," she says after a long pause. "It'll probably hurt a lot without anesthetic." 

Shisui seems to find this of no great import because after a beat longer he considers her carefully. "You really think you could do it?" he asks. Mana gives him a bit of a look before she shakes her head and puts it aside. Then she lowers her chin in thought and goes back in time to that day in the kitchen. Her mother's hands over her own, helping her pull the needle through before tying that last stitch… 

"Well, I'm fairly sure I remember all the steps. Wash your hands, sterilize the needle and thread, clean the wound…" she begins listing. 

"...Okay, give it a shot," Shisui permits after another long moment of thought, quite as if against his better judgment. "I've got a suture kit in my room. It's in the bottom right drawer of my desk."

"Okay."

This is a much larger injury than the cut on Ren's arm had been, but she doesn't have to redo all of it, so she's not overly intimidated. Once she's washed her hands, gathered her supplies, and rinsed the cut out, she sets to work, lining up the edges of the wound as well as she can. Shisui watches over his shoulder in the mirror from the corner of his eye. It is far slower than it would have been if he could have done it himself, of course, but she's both gentle and meticulous, which is leagues better than the alternative. Impressively enough she's not grossed out at all, which is saying something; Shisui knows that this injury is deep enough for her to be seeing both fat and even a bit of muscle. 

"You're surprisingly tough, Mana," Shisui remarks after a moment. He sees her eyebrows rise in his peripheral vision.

"Are you saying that to me?" she asks disbelievingly. "When you're the one being repeatedly stabbed with a sharp piece of metal?"

"I didn't have anesthetic when they sewed it shut the first time, either, you know," he comments in reply. "That only happens when you're traveling with an iryou-nin."

Mana just shakes her head again in answer. She would accuse him of machismo, but his tone is so matter-of-fact that she can't even respond to it. Instead she focuses on her stitches and making sure they're evenly spaced. It takes several more minutes, but eventually she makes her way to the end.

"Not bad for a first try, Mana," Shisui praises, impressed, once he's taken a moment to crane his neck and look into the mirror. It's a neat little row, well-placed and not too tight. "Thanks. You saved me a trip to the hospital." And a sizable lecture from a medic, too.

"Sorry it took so long," Mana apologizes as she goes back over to the faucet to get more water. "Mom could have done it faster."

Shisui finds the way she wrinkles her nose in displeasure quite reminiscent of the time he'd taken a young Itachi on a training exercise. Itachi had made that exact same face while struggling to learn tracking skills… It's such an endearing memory that Shisui finds himself throwing his head back and laughing. 

"Sorry," he apologizes when Mana pauses midway through redressing the injury to give him a strange look. They really are two peas in a pod. "Don't worry about it. You did a good job."

"...I'll help you change the bandages next time, too. Ask me, okay?"

"All right. Thanks, Mana," Shisui thanks again, and once he has had the chance to finally wash and dry his hands, he ruffles her hair vigorously. "I really appreciate it."

Mana stays behind to rinse off her knees and legs—and to toss water all over the washing area to clean it—while Shisui goes and changes his clothes. They meet again on the staircase. Shisui finds it vaguely impressive that she's managed to keep her pure white skirt spotless after all that bloody mess. Slow sutures or not, he thinks, Mana is pretty skilled in her own way.

"Oh…" the girl says when she returns to the kitchen and sees that all the steaming food she had laid out has gone cold. She doesn't even have to speak; the disappointment on her face is manifest. Shisui sees her glum look and cannot help but be reminded of Itachi again. Well, he considers after a moment, even an exceptional shinobi like Itachi might feel pressure if he got dropped directly into, say, a jounin's regular duties without guidance. His aunt had been a terribly competent homemaker, too—the house had run smooth as a machine when she'd been alive. As well as Mana seems to be doing so far, there's no doubt she must be finding the shoes large to fill. It certainly would be a lot for a young girl to take over all on her own.

"Here, I'll microwave these," he says as he picks up the rice and the side dishes. "You can reheat the soup on the stove."

Mana brightens a bit, apparently having momentarily forgotten that reheating food was an option. That's cute, he can't help but think. It's also very Uchiha of her to think that everything needs to be perfect on the first try. She would have fit right in if she'd had the chance to become a shinobi. He thinks of her quietly focused face, staring straight and unflinching at that massive wound, while kneeling behind him with hands coated in blood not her own…

"Hm?" Mana blinks and looks up inquisitively from the stove when Shisui pats her back. Yeah, she's a tough kid.

"Oh, nothing," Shisui says with a smile. Although with all that said… "Hey, Mana."

"Yeah?"

"Could you do me a favor? About today…"

"Don't tell ojisan?" she queries knowingly. He's not surprised. She's insightful as a shinobi, too.

"Yeah. I think lately he's…" Shisui pauses and searches for a word to describe his father's recent mental health. Between Chieri's passing and Mana's relapse, Shisui doesn't know if layering on the knowledge of his son's recent near-death experience would be entirely helpful. Ren is a ninja and a very resilient man, but it's been a hard year. "He's stressed lately," Shisui settles on.

"That's true," Mana agrees quietly as she switches off the stove. She thinks for a moment. Well, since she's in on the secret now it probably will be fine. She can assist him if he needs it… there’s no need to get Ren involved as long as Shisui has help. "Okay, I understand. I won't tell him."

Chapter Text

"Mana, have you seen my spare holster?"

Ren looks up when he hears his son’s voice in a distant shout. Curious, he adjusts his pack as he makes his way down the stretch of road leading to his house. Rather than approaching the front door as he usually would, though, he circles around to the backyard instead. There he finds Shisui standing over a spread of gear on a tarp. Ren spies the pile of cloths next to the set of whetstones lying in the grass by his feet and figures his son has probably just initiated end-of-month weapon maintenance.

"Oh, sorry, I have it!" Mana sticks her head out from a second-floor window and calls back. "I saw the stitching on the strap was coming undone, so I fixed it. I'm done with it, now, though, do you want it back?"

"Yeah, just toss it down, that's fine."

Mana's throw is not terribly far, nor is it particularly well-aimed, so Shisui has to shunshin forward several feet in order to catch it. Ren shakes his head a bit when he sees it. He thinks this every time he watches his son perform a body flicker, but Shisui really does have a flawlessly beautiful shunshin. Perfectly smooth, unmatched in speed… Ren doesn't think he actually knows anyone whose technique can surpass Shisui's anymore.

"Thanks!"

"Yeah, of course!"

Rather than announce himself, Ren takes a few minutes to look on from afar. Shisui still seems to be moving rather stiffly, but appears more or less able to stoop and pick things up from the ground. Mana looks energetic; at the very least, she's up and about and talkative. Both of them, though, appear somehow warmer towards one another. Ren doesn't think these two have ever necessarily been on unfriendly terms, of course, but there's a certain ease in their interaction now that he doesn't think he's seen before. They seem a little less reserved with one another, at any rate; there's more camaraderie in their speech. He tilts his head and wonders what could have happened between them in the time he's been away.

"I'm home," Ren eventually announces when he's had his fill of observation. Shisui looks up from his shuriken.

"Oh, Dad, welcome back."

"Welcome back, Uncle!" Mana calls. Ren looks up at the bright joy he hears in her voice and finds that a lovely smile is spread across his niece's lips, sunny with fondness and welcome. He raises a hand and waves.

"Did you do something to Mana?" Ren asks his son a few beats after she disappears from the window. "She seems different."

"Me? I didn't do anything to her at all," Shisui, surprised by this inquiry, denies. In reality it's actually Mana who's done something to him. But then his gaze turns thoughtful. "But you're right. She does seem different, doesn't she? She's… cheerful."

"She hasn't been like that since before Chieri died," Ren remarks distantly.

"...Yeah, I think that's true."

They share the next thought—how long will it last? When it comes to Mana it always seems as if both happiness and health are fleeting. Shisui thinks about the bloody pillow and of how abrupt and severe the turns in her wellbeing always seem to be. Since the time he's been a child he's never been able to pick out the pattern of her unwellness; even giving her a flower is as likely to nearly kill her as it is to make her happy. 

But even as he and his father both hold their breath, the good fortune seems to stretch over the next several weeks. They leave for another round of missions; when they return Mana is blithely sewing a tear in the side of a shirt. They go out for training and come back—she's watering the plants in the garden. They spar in the backyard and go in to get water; they find Izumi at the kitchen table with tea, speaking animatedly about her genin teammates while Mana shells peas and listens curiously. Neither of them miss the way her face sometimes slackens after she laughs, as if she's surprised to hear the sound of her own mirth, but even when her gaze turns inwards and her face becomes reflective, she seems stable. Like she has two feet on the ground, like she's standing in the surf but is no longer drowning in it… she is awake. She gets out of bed in the morning all on her own.

An undeniable air of hope takes hold in Ren's household. Even Mana herself seems to begin wondering if a good thing has come at last. Spring turns to early summer; she looks outside and thinks the sky seems higher than she's ever seen it before.

Mana smiles a bit when she sees the green grass and impulsively jumps barefoot into the yard. She takes a moment to wiggle her toes in the dirt, letting the feel of dry, crumbly dust coat the bottoms of her feet, and then smiles again. Then she remembers she’d come out with a purpose and patters over to where Shisui is pulling kunai from the training post.

“Shisui, it’s lunchtime,” she taps on his shoulder and informs when he doesn’t turn around. Odd of him; usually he’s already whirled about well before she gets anywhere close to his back. Shisui blinks and turns to look at her.

“What? Oh, right. Sure, I’ll be in in a minute…” He pauses as Mana peers up at his face with a look of surprise. “What is it?”

“Hm?” Mana says distractedly before she realizes she’s been staring. “Ah. Sorry, I’ve just never seen the Sharingan up close before.” Chieri hadn’t had it, after all, and she’s never seen Ren’s, either. She supposes there's no need to use it inside the house.

“Oh,” Shisui says. Mana turns away, but then a moment later glances at his face again. “You can look if you want. I don’t mind,” he says and then laughs when Mana immediately returns to staring at him dead in the eye. That's the sort of fearlessness only an Uchiha could have, he thinks amusedly. To look so directly at a Sharingan without a second's hesitation… even his fellow ninja in the General Forces sometimes can't help but avert their gazes if he speaks to them with his doujutsu active.

“I wonder what it must be like to see with the Sharingan,” she ponders aloud after another moment or so of this inspection.

“You can see a lot better when you have it,” Shisui muses in response. “Even the smallest things. You can see chakra, too,” he adds, and then glances her up and down just to check. Nothing seems out of the ordinary about her chakra circulation; she seems healthy.

“Huh.” Mana crosses her arms and tilts her head. Then she says, “You should try drawing a picture with your Sharingan active.”

This suggestion immediately has Shisui making a face. “I have no idea how to draw,” he answers doubtfully.

“Then paint,” Mana suggests. “It doesn’t have to be a skillful painting to be a good one.”

“No way, Mana.” Shisui waves a hand as they begin walking back towards the house. “That’s your thing, not mine. I’m not an artist.”

“Hm…” Mana goes quiet as they approach the veranda. She stops by the garden hose to rinse off her feet—he hadn’t noticed she wasn’t wearing shoes, he’d better be careful not to leave out any weapons she might step on—before making her way back to the sliding doors in pensive silence. Shisui begins to frown when he sees the speculative look on her face. And then, sure enough—

“How do you use the Sharingan, Shisui?” Mana inquires. 

“Why do you want to know?” he asks carefully. Mana furrows her brow in confusion.

“Why…? I’m just curious is all.”

“...After you awaken it, you use chakra to activate it, and you use chakra to maintain it, too. It’s not something someone like you could do, Mana,” he answers after a moment. “If it were you, you’d die.”

“You think?” Mana touches two fingers to her eyelid and wonders if that's true. She is as much an Uchiha as he is, after all…

“Absolutely,” Shisui says flatly. “Mana, just staying up late after a busy day drains your chakra to the point it puts your life in danger. You know that already. How could someone like you possibly use the Sharingan?”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Mana replies, growing a little irritated by his tone. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? You nearly died the day after our wedding.” 

“You’re overstating it. I was sick, but I didn’t nearly die.”

“I beg to differ. You had a nosebleed so bad it soaked through a whole pillow and covered your entire face with blood. I thought you’d suffocated to death in your sleep when I found you in the morning.”

Mana pauses. She hadn’t known that. She hesitates a moment, wondering how exactly that had panned out, but when Shisui shakes his head exasperatedly at her she immediately loses all inclination to investigate. Certainly not by asking him, at any rate.

“I see,” she mutters, and then crosses her arms and heads inside. Shisui watches her go and immediately feels a flare of pique.

“What are you upset about?” he asks as he follows her into the kitchen. Ren looks up from his scroll with a look of surprise as Mana seats herself across from him and begins to scowl. “Mana? Hey. Please don’t be unreasonable.”

“I’m being unreasonable?” she repeats incredulously. “I’m not. You’re the one who started a lecture. All I did was ask you how it worked.”

“With what intention?” Shisui retorts as he drops into the chair beside his father. Ren, unused to hearing his easygoing son speak in such a manner, looks with raised eyebrows between him and his niece. "Mana, is it any wonder I don’t want to tell you about it? You've been healthy recently, but who knows how long that will last. Take your health seriously for once. Don’t you realize what Dad and I go through whenever you get sick?" 

"Oh no, leave me out of this." Ren recognizes the words of a quarrel and excuses himself to the bathroom at once. Mana stares at Shisui for a long moment. Then her eyes turn downward.

"Shisui, I'm not ungrateful," she says with a quiet sort of voice that instantly fills him with a cold tingle of regret. "You and ojisan have sacrificed a lot for me. I wouldn't be living if not for the two of you. But…” She stares at her lap and is silent for a long while, as if wondering if she’s allowed to say what she speaks next. Eventually she steels herself and mutters, “I'm not a goldfish. You don't have to treat me like one."

“...What does that mean?” Shisui can’t tell if the words that come from his mouth then are worried or defensive, and a growing awareness that his heart rate is rising makes itself known in the back of his mind. “Mana—”

Mana raises her face and stares him hard in the eye. The words die in Shisui’s throat; several seconds of silence pass. Then she looks away again, and Shisui suddenly finds he has nothing left he can say.

The next morning Shisui goes down the stairs and is utterly surprised to find Mana sitting in the genkan, pulling on her sandals. As a rule the girl is early to sleep and late to rise; he doesn’t know if there’s ever been a time when she’s woken up earlier than him. “Mana?” he blurts out in astonishment.

Mana stills at the sound of his voice. Then she looks back over her shoulder and gazes back at him neutrally. There’s a long pause.

“Ah… what are you doing?” he asks lamely. 

Mana gives him a long, unimpressed stare. Something about the face she makes has the remarkable quality of expressing a variety of thoughts and emotions, but the reply she gives is positively laconic: "I'm going outside."

"Oh. Well…" Shisui comes forward from the doorway and lingers over her awkwardly. Mana stands and raises an eyebrow. In the face of her uncowed gaze, even when she has to crane her neck to stare up into his eyes, his usual responses somehow seem suddenly impossible to say. Be careful? Don't push yourself? Do you need someone to walk with you? No, none of these—

"Were you going to leave without telling anyone?" The words tumble out before he can think them all through, and he cringes internally at the exact same time her face sours. No, why had he said that? That just sounds accusatory, that's the last thing they need—

"There's a note on the table," Mana informs, speech clipped, before she turns and opens the front door. Shisui takes an internal moment to smack himself across the face. "I'm off."

"See you later…" Shisui completes the set of farewell phrases weakly. The door shuts before he’s even spoken the last syllable. Shisui continues to stand there above the genkan several minutes after she’s left; then he falls onto his behind on the floor, puts a hand on his face, and groans. What the hell had that been? Where is his composure? That wasn’t like him at all.

Shisui is still there when his father eventually comes down. Ren pauses, taking in the sight of his son sitting in nightclothes before the doorway with a palm glued to his face. He looks at the genkan itself and takes note of the fact that Mana’s sandals are missing. Then he raises an eyebrow. That, he thinks, is trouble.

Chapter Text

Mana stalks forward down the street, face stormy, for a long while. She walks and walks; and then, after she walks some more, she finds herself near the lake training grounds where the shinobi practice fire release techniques. Her surprise clears the dark cloud from her vision, and she spends several moments staring bewilderedly at the glittering surface of the water. Then she glances around. This is the other end of the Uchiha district. How had she gotten here?

She’s still looking about in a daze when a high-pitched voice shouts her name. She turns reflexively, but no one’s there—or at least, she thinks that until a pair of little arms throw themselves about her knees. “Mana-san!” Sasuke exclaims as he squeezes her legs. Surprised, Mana looks down; he stares back up at her and blinks cutely.

“Oh…?” Mana fights to keep her mirth from showing. She’s seen less obvious puppy eyes on actual canines. The question is, what does he want from her? “Hello, Sasuke. How are you?”

“In a mood to go to the park,” Mikoto remarks, entertained, as she comes forward in a far more composed manner. “I suppose he’s bored of running errands with me now… Good morning, Mana-chan. You’re out and about bright and early today.”

“Good morning, Mikoto-san,” Mana replies. She very intentionally refrains from answering any unasked questions of why.

“Hey, Mom, if I can’t go on my own, can’t Mana-san just watch me?” Sasuke pleads. “She watches me at home! Why can’t she watch me outside?”

"No, Sasuke, Mana-san hasn't agreed to look after you today," Mikoto scolds lightly. "She has things to do—"

"No she doesn't! She's just standing around," Sasuke protests, and Mana bites her lip and tries not to burst out laughing. Oh, the tongues of small children. "You're not busy, Mana-san, right? Don't you want to go to the park, too?"

"Well…" Mana says coyly. Then she lifts her gaze and smiles slightly at Mikoto, who begins shaking her head. Then she sighs.

"Oh, all right. But only until I finish my chores," she tells her son sternly.

"Yes!" Sasuke releases Mana's legs and pumps his tiny fist in the air. Mana covers her mouth with her hand, shoulders shaking.

"Now, what do you say?"

"Let's go, Mana-san! I mean," Sasuke hastily says when his mother's gaze becomes sharp, "thank you, Mana-san!"

"You're welcome, Sasuke," Mana answers mildly. Sasuke cheers again and grabs her hand. Then he begins hauling her forward.

"Don't run!" Mikoto calls, but they're already twenty feet down the road. "Don't make Mana-san sick!"

"Mana-san, does running really make you sick?" Sasuke asks, wide-eyed, when Mana tugs against his arm gently to slow him down. They fall back to a walk.

"Sometimes," Mana replies. Sasuke gasps. 

"Did I make you sick?!"

"No, not yet. I can run a little bit. But if I do it too much, it can be bad."

"Why?"

"I have a chakra problem," she explains. "And since moving around a lot takes chakra, I have to be careful.”

Sasuke stares up at her like she’s an alien. She can see in his eyes how incomprehensible the idea is to him. "So you've never played tag?" he presses. "Or ninja?"

Well, yes, she has, but if Mana answers strictly as Mana, that would technically be a lie. She contemplates how to answer this before she just smiles a bit instead. Sasuke gapes.

"Then what do you do?" he asks disbelievingly. "How do you have fun?"

"Well, I read books, or I draw or paint pictures," Mana lists on the fingers of her free hand. "Or I sew, or cook, or sing…"

"Sounds boring," Sasuke informs doubtfully. Mana giggles a bit.

"Really? I like it."

By the time they reach the park and Sasuke charges whooping towards the monkey bars, Mana finds her angry mood completely dissolved. She smiles as a warm wind sweeps through the air, rustling the leaves in the trees and setting her skirt aflutter. What good fortune it had been to meet Sasuke and his mother today.

"Mana-san?"

Mana blinks out of her reverie and turns. She finds Touma standing beside her with a look of surprise, which she returns.

"Sensei?"

"How unexpected," Touma remarks. "Good morning, Mana-san. I didn't think I'd see you here today."

"Good morning. I'm just watching Sasuke for a bit while Mikoto-san runs errands," Mana replies and gestures to the child in question as he scrambles up and down the playset. "What brings you here?"

"It's my son's birthday," Touma answers a little pridefully as he points to another little boy tearing up and down the grass. "He said he wanted to go to the park with me as his present."

"That's cute," says Mana amusedly. She has a feeling this park trip is not going to end here. There's at least two candy stores, a wagashi shop, and an ice cream stand between here and Touma's residence. Whether or not Touma knows this as well, Mana can't be sure, but his grin is so glowing that she doesn't think it matters either way; that kid is definitely going to get his sweets. She laughs a bit.

Then she goes quiet. They turn their attention back to their charges and pass several moments in silence, watching. After a while, Mana eventually speaks.

"Touma-sensei, may I ask you something?"

"Yes, of course. What is it?"

"What exactly is wrong with me? I know I'm sick, and I've been told all my life that I have a chakra deficiency. But what does that actually mean? Why can't I do all the things that a normal Uchiha can do?"

Touma turns his head and finds that Mana's gaze has become distant. He looks at her for a long moment. Then he says, "When I first became your doctor, Chieri-san told me about the circumstances of your birth. When you were born, she said, you were not breathing, nor was your heart beating. At the time she was under the care of a Hyuuga medic; that medic used the Byakugan to examine you. What he found was that you had an astonishing lack of chakra in your body, and while the medics raced to transfer enough into your system for your organs to begin functioning, they came to the conclusion that this had happened because you were no longer receiving chakra from your mother. Over the next several days this impression was reinforced when they found that you frequently slipped into acute exhaustive arrests simply by crying, and they began to suspect that you were suffering a chakra deficiency disorder."

"Because I would cry myself into chakra exhaustion?"

"That's right. No one expected you to live long enough to ever leave the hospital, but by a miracle, your mother said, you slowly began to stabilize. Eventually she was able to take you home, and throughout childhood she watched you closely and brought you to the hospital whenever it seemed you were in danger… You can probably recall the rest yourself, I expect."

"Mom fought really hard to keep me alive as I was growing up," Mana mumbles. "And now ojisan and Shisui…"

"Yes. You are a rare case, Mana-san," Touma tells her softly. "Truth be told, as I study more and more of the literature on chakra deficiency diseases, the more and more exceptional you become. By all counts you should not be alive right now.”

“...Is that so?”

“By what the books say, at any rate. I have not found record of a single survivor. You are the only one, at least as far as Konoha knows. It is simply impossible to live without chakra… but even though you frequently experience life-threatening chakra exhaustion, you seem to somehow be scraping by regardless.”

“Can’t it be that my illness is only intermittent, then?”

“That must be the case, since the proof of it is standing right here before me,” Touma murmurs with a furrowed brow. “And since all of your predecessors died in infancy, there’s hardly enough data to assert that your disorder only presents itself in a single certain way. But the truth is, Mana-san, that I simply don’t know. I wish I had a more satisfactory answer for you… but I don’t.”

Several beats of silence meet these words. Then Mana queries, “What would happen if I were to use chakra like a ninja does, sensei? Would someone like me die right away?”

“I suspect performing any real ninjutsu of substance would fatally deplete your reserves of chakra, yes.” Touma frowns. “But if you mean simply the act of molding it in your body? I’m not sure. I suppose it depends on where it is in your chakra pathway system that the point of failure, so to speak, is interfering with your natural functions. Are you actually failing to produce chakra, or is your body simply not making proper use of the chakra it produces? Are you producing chakra normally but overconsuming it? Unless I know, I can't say for certain.”

“Is there a way to determine that?”

“I’ve been looking into that, too,” Touma admits. “The tenketsu, the eight gates, the pathways themselves… Truth be told, the possibilities are rather endless. All of my theories, though, are still quite half-baked. I’ve learned a great many disparate facts about gate function and pathway malformation, but I don’t know if I’ve as of yet managed to synthesize it into anything worthwhile…”

Mana takes a moment to reflect before she replies. “All right,” she says thoughtfully. “Thank you, sensei. I’m sorry to be a bother while you’re spending time with your son.”

“No, Mana-san, not at all. In truth, I am the one who should be apologizing to you…” Touma is quiet for a long moment. “I’ve been your physician for years and this is still the best I can do for you. You must think me terribly incompetent.”

“Not at all, sensei,” Mana answers then, and quite sincerely, too. Even in her old world there were any number of illnesses that had confounded entire research teams of doctors. The fact that Touma, who is one the few physicians caring for the health of the entire Uchiha clan, has managed to accomplish even this much research despite his workload… She thinks it speaks quite a lot to his care and his determination. 

Still, there’s one last thing she wants to check. But not by asking him; no, she parts ways with her doctor and makes her way up to the playset instead. “Hey, Sasuke.”

“Hm?” Sasuke, hanging upside down from a climbing bar by his knees, looks at her curiously. “What’s up?”

“Can you tell me about the Sharingan?” Mana inquires lightly.

“The Sharingan? Sure!” Sasuke immediately perks up. Eager to show off his knowledge, he begins speaking before Mana even formulates a question. “The Sharingan is the bloodline limit of the Uchiha! Only people from our clan have it. You can’t get it if you’re a normal person.”

Yes, that’s true. “But not every Uchiha has it, right?”

“Yup. Even if you’re an Uchiha you can’t use it unless it’s awakened. But my brother has it,” Sasuke gloats wholeheartedly as if Itachi’s accomplishment is his own. “He’s the youngest person in the clan to ever have the Sharingan.”

Mana blinks with surprise. To her knowledge that office has always belonged to Shisui, who had awakened the Sharingan at age nine after going out on his very first official mission. Then again, Itachi had been all of seven years old when he’d graduated from the Academy… it would be no surprise if the boy had managed to usurp that particular position.

“I wonder how he did it,” Mana ponders aloud. Oddly enough, Sasuke’s face falls at these words, and he straightens his legs and drops with a flip to the ground. He sticks the landing, too, which Mana automatically applauds.

“I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me,” Sasuke, heedless of this, sulks. “I told him I wanted to awaken my Sharingan, too, but he didn’t say anything about it at all.”

“Really?” How curious. Itachi adores his little brother. For what reason would he withhold that information? He wouldn't without a reason…

Mana finds her mind suddenly drawn back to the distant past. Her mother's face aimed down at Shisui's with a look of astonishment—

“The Sharingan? On your very first mission?” she questions, disbelieving, before immediately doing a thorough visual assessment of her nephew’s person…

“Are you all right?” she asks worriedly.

"Mana-san?" Sasuke jumps and waves the top of his hand in front of her face. "Hellooo?"

"Oh, sorry, sweetheart." Mana shakes herself out of the memory. "I was just thinking about where I need to go after this."

"You don't need to go anywhere," Sasuke contradicts skeptically. "You were just standing around."

Mana lets out a snort. He's adorable, but sometimes he really is a brat, isn't he? "No, Sasuke, I really do have things to take care of today."

"Really? Prove it," the boy challenges. "Where are you going to go next?"

"Where…?" Mana's eyes grow focused. "The clan library first, I expect."

Chapter Text

The look of worry Ren sees on his son's face is unusually blatant. Strange for him; since the time he's been a boy Shisui has always been very even-keeled, even in urgent situations. His exceptionally collected temperament is one of the foremost reasons his superiors had promoted him to jounin at such a young age, after all… As it is, Ren's seen Shisui calmer while bleeding out from a leg artery. The teen looks between the clock and the front door again; in a moment, Ren thinks, he might actually start biting his lip.

"Hm…" Ren crosses his arms thoughtfully. It hadn't been too much of a surprise for Mana to skip breakfast, but lunch has already come and gone now, too, and they're approaching the dinner hour. "She was at the park, right? You didn't follow her after that?"

"No, she was just watching Sasuke… she didn't seem like she was in any trouble, and Touma-sensei was there, so I let it be. I thought she'd come home after."

“Well, if Touma was around, I doubt she’s collapsed somewhere unconscious, Shisui. I don’t think you need to be quite so tense.”

"I'm going to go take a look around the compound." Heedless, Shisui stands. Well, his father thinks, that's probably the best move right now anyway. Sometimes after fighting with Shizu the conflict had resolved if Ren gave her space, but more often than not an apology had been needed before any progress could be made. The same is probably true now.

“If you don’t find her, stop by Mikoto-san’s. Maybe she invited her to dinner.”

Shisui does a lap around the Uchiha quarter, searching with the Sharingan for the familiar shade of Mana's chakra. He stops by the park first, of course, but she's not there, so he circles around the lake and the residential streets before he finds himself standing resigned on Itachi's doorstep. Itachi isn't home right now, though, so a different person answers the door.

"Oh, Sasuke," Shisui says in a slightly surprised greeting. "Wow, you're big enough to get the door now, huh?"

Sasuke's cheeks swell indignantly. "Of course I am," he declares loudly with all the pomp only a five-year-old can muster. He's clearly offended. "M'not a baby!"

His childish lapse in diction is perfect fodder for teasing, and on a usual day Shisui thinks he would have jumped right on it. But it's not a usual day at all; right now an abnormally intense anxiety is gnawing at his gut, worse than standing and reporting objective losses to the Jounin Commander with half the Corps staring at him. He tries not to grimace.

"Ah, Shisui-kun?" Mikoto finds her way to the door and comes to stand beside her youngest son. "Good evening. I'm sorry, Itachi's on an overnight mission right now…"

"Ah, no, that's okay. I wasn't looking for Itachi… is Mana here right now?"

"Mana-chan? No, I haven't seen her since early this morning."

This time Shisui can't stop the concern showing on his face. If she's not here, then where? At Rinako's, maybe? Or—he swallows and thinks about the picture of cliffs he's seen hanging on the wall in her room. She's been back there, he thinks. She's stared into those depths and put them down on paper… But no, she wouldn't. She hadn't even been trying to jump. 

As he thinks this, though, her voice echoes in his ear and he swallows again: not where people could see me. If she were alone, then, would she—?

"She's not at the library?" Sasuke inquires. Then he crosses his arms and exclaims, "I knew she was making it up!" 

"Sasuke, why are you so convinced that Mana-san had nothing to do all day?" Mikoto asks exasperatedly. "Why would she lie to you?"

"Because she was just standing around! You saw her—"

"The library?" Shisui interrupts. "She went to the library?"

"She said she was going to go after we left the park, but I don't think—huh?"

Mikoto and Sasuke turn their heads in surprise and find themselves staring at an empty doorstep. The air is so still and so silent, filled only with the distant chirp of crickets, that for a moment they can't help but wonder if anyone had ever been there at all.  

The clerk closing the entrance to the clan hall doesn't know who Mana is by her name, but when Shisui asks specifically after his wife the woman's face lights up.

"Yes, she was here," she informs happily, apparently quite pleased to be able to answer the inquiry of this rising star of the Uchiha. "It was much earlier in the day, though. She seemed to be researching something, but I don't think we had everything she needed… Perhaps she went to the village library after she left?"

After offering his thanks Shisui books it across the village like he's been summoned by the Hokage. When he flickers to a stop at the library entrance and accidentally scares an exiting genin in the process—oops, he thinks absently as the boy gasps and drops the scroll he's holding—he finds his gaze snagging on a window. Quite surprised to have glimpsed the figure he is searching for within seconds of arriving, he comes forward and peers through the glass just in time to catch sight of Mana rising from a chair.

He enters at once and makes his way into the building. By the time he gets to the window he'd seen her through, though, the girl herself is gone. She's left a spread of open books scattered all across the table, however, which seems to indicate that she probably intends to return. Figuring waiting in place would be more efficient than searching the stacks for her, Shisui takes a chair at the table and glances over the titles laid out before him.

"What? Mana…" he mutters, incredulous, when he realizes that every book here is a reference about chakra use. Is this girl actually trying to kill herself? From children's illustrations about ninjutsu to Academy-level how-to guides, the whole gamut of chakra-for-beginners is there. The sight of it is almost enough to make him consider starting another argument with her right then and there; but then his gaze drifts farther beyond and he glances over the other references on the table. The how-to guides give way to a medical dictionary, a collection of essays, and an extended treatise about gate malfunction and treatment. Shisui's eyebrows fly up.

"Shisui?" Mana asks, startled, when she returns and finds him standing, chair forgotten, and looking intently over her books. "What in the world are you doing here?"

"Mana." Shisui’s face smoothens into careful neutrality. Mana abruptly remembers that they're still quarreling and realizes that she's been caught totally red-handed. "...It's almost dinnertime, but you never came home, so I was looking for you."

"Oh…" Mana says awkwardly. She threads her fingers together and braces for another scolding, but Shisui is silent. Perplexed, she lifts her face and finds him gazing at her with a terribly piercing stare. "Um. I'm sorry? I mean, I’m sorry. I lost track of time."

The Structure and Function of the Eight Gates, Shisui reads on the spine of the book under her arm. His mind begins stringing together facts at once. She'd spoken to Touma earlier in the day. She's researching chakra consumption and the gates. She's been here for hours, reading with enough intensity to lose her sense of time and skip meals… When has Mana done such a thing before? In the days after Ren had first declared their engagement to the clan, when she had searched desperately for anything she could do to put a stop to it.

Many changes occur in the chakra pathway system during puberty. The tenketsu, the eight gates… all of these undergo developmental changes that may affect—or be affected by—a chakra-based illness such as hers.

“Are you all right?” Mana asks, quite bewildered, when his wordless gaze goes on uninterrupted.

“...Yeah, sorry. I’m fine. Are you ready to head back? I'll help you carry your books."

"Oh, uh…" Mana turns her head and takes in the sight of the utter rabbit hole she has just been pulled out of. She refrains from scratching her head. After she'd finished her research on the Sharingan she’d come here thinking she might look into the actual process of using chakra as a skill, but then she’d remembered Touma mentioning gates and had somehow ended up reading about obscure and deadly malfunctions of the mechanisms that regulate the chakra pathway system. It feels oddly reminiscent of the time she’d looked up the purpose of bone marrow and then fell off the other end of an extended hyperlink chain with knowledge about fourteen different types of leukemia. Back when she’d still lived in the age of the internet, she’d wandered through information warrens like that with some frequency… She supposes that even across lives and dimensions, some parts of personality just don’t change.

“That’s all right, I don’t think I’ll take any of these with me,” she says after a short moment. “Maybe, uh, maybe just this one.”

The atmosphere as they leave the library and begin making their way back toward the Uchiha district is quite awkward, and not only because an unresolved conflict is letting off smoke in the air between them; Shisui’s brow is creased and his eyes are heavy with thought. She peers up at them and thinks about how they’d been the start of this entire fracas. Shisui’s Sharingan…

“Hey, Shisui.”

“Hm?” His preoccupation fades as he glances down at her.

“The Sharingan…” Mana begins hesitantly. She doesn’t know if bringing it up at this particular juncture is wise or not, but after all that she’d read at the clan library today, she can’t help but ask him about it. “...It’s not really a good thing, is it?”

Shisui blinks. Then he blinks again. He doesn’t know if he’s ever heard that particular sequence of words strung together in his life. The Sharingan… is not a good thing? Can an Uchiha even say that?

“What do you mean?”

“Earlier today Sasuke told me that Itachi had refused to tell him how he awakened the Sharingan. But Itachi dotes so much on Sasuke that I was curious why, so I went to the clan library and read about a lot of the famous clansmen…”

“Yeah?”

“No one seems to have ever awakened a Sharingan in happy circumstances.” Mana reaches up and begins fiddling with  one of the ends of her hair ribbon. “Thinking about it, Mom was pretty worried when you came home with the Sharingan, too.”

Shisui’s face goes distant with recollection. As she watches in real time while his mind’s eye replays the memory, she wonders who he’d had in his sights when those irises had first turned red. His teacher, a teammate, a friend? A boy named Tadasu?

“I guess that’s true,” Shisui finally says after a long moment. He puts a hand on the back of his neck and rubs it. Admitting it out loud puts a terribly noticeable waver in his voice, so he clears his throat a bit before he continues. “Itachi probably didn’t want Sasuke to know about it. That seems pretty in-character for him… I don’t think Itachi even knows how to tell his family about his problems.”

Mana can heartily empathize with that, but she figures confessing such a thing to a family member of her own would be, case in point, quite uncomfortable. Besides, the last thing this moment needs is yet more commentary about how she and Itachi must be twins separated at birth. She doesn’t think either of them will ever escape the joke at this point.

“I’m sorry I was cross with you about it.” Heedless of her musings, Shisui suddenly stops and turns to her. “I think I must have been more uncomfortable than I realized when you asked. This must be the reason why.”

Mana looks at him with surprise. Then her eyebrows slant downward. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No, don’t be. I don’t think I even knew myself…”

The couple that returns is a sight more amicable, and Ren smiles a bit when he sticks his head through the door in time to catch his son ruffling Mana’s hair in the genkan. Not that he’d particularly doubted they would make up, of course; these two both, he knows, are exceptionally kind-hearted. 

“We’re back,” they chime in unison. The familiar timbres of their individual voices blend harmoniously, and Ren’s smile grows into a bit of a grin.

“Welcome back,” he greets in return, quite certain that all will be well in his home tonight.

But after dark, once the bustle of dinner has ended and everyone is abed, Mana finds herself quite awake as she recalls what she’s learned in her readings today. The Sharingan is activated through immense emotional pressure, she thinks as she's rolling restlessly in her sheets. The Sharingan consumes chakra upon activation. The Sharingan continues to consume chakra as long as it's active… it's negligible for most adults of the Uchiha bloodline, but…

She sits straight up. She thinks about the sting of grief, the burning eyes, and then rushes to the bathroom. She locks the door before placing both hands on either side of the sink and staring intently into the mirror. She still doesn't know how to use chakra at will—those books had done nothing to help her—but instead she thinks about loss. About anguish, about the things she'd been thinking when she'd first come into this world, when she'd experienced all the bereavement of an adult's life in the tiny body of an infant—

Her eyes tingle as if to shed tears. Then they turn red. Black tomoe spin into place around her pupils.

"Oh my gosh," Mana flatly says to her reflection. "You cannot be serious."

Chapter Text

There had never been any chakra deficiency disorder at all. All this time it had been the Sharingan. She'd activated the Sharingan before her body had been ready to handle it. She'd nearly killed herself as an infant because of course a baby hadn't had enough chakra to feed a Sharingan. And then throughout childhood, as she'd been grieving the loss of her last life, she'd continued to activate it repeatedly, draining her tiny reserves dry each time. As she'd aged she'd grieved less often, so she'd activated the Sharingan less often, and that's why her health had improved—until her mother had died, anyway.

Then what about the incident on the morning after the wedding? What had that been about? What had she been thinking about? 

—until her mother had died, anyway—

Mana thinks hard about Chieri. She thinks about all the things she usually tries her hardest not to think about: about her mother's smile, her beautiful voice, the comforting warmth of her embrace… the dark bags under her eyes, her thinning limbs, her pale face, and of that moment when she’d fallen forward, so silent and still. She can recall it with photographic clarity. In no time at all her lip is trembling. 

She looks up at the mirror. The Sharingan has changed; the three tomoe have been replaced with a strange pinwheel-like shape, round with four shapes like teardrops around her pupils. She has no idea what this is, but she knows without a doubt that this strange Sharingan is the cause of everything. It must be.

But what about the blood? Shisui had said she'd gotten a nosebleed. Did this strange Sharingan cause nosebleeds?

"Mana?" A sudden voice speaks. Mana nearly jumps straight out of her skin. She whirls around, pressing a hand to her chest, as a soft knock sounds on the door. Then the handle wobbles. "Mana? Are you in there?"

Mana begins to panic silently. That's Shisui's voice. He must have heard her when she'd gone running down the hall like a maniac. What had she been thinking? She's lived with ninja all her life. She should know by now how lightly they sleep; of course she'd woken him up.

"Mana?" he asks again. She whirls back around towards the mirror as he knocks once more, more insistently now, and wonders desperately how to turn it off. If she were a shinobi she would just cut off the flow of chakra, but she really doesn't know how to manipulate chakra and she hasn't figured out how in the past ten minutes, either.

"Mana, please answer me," Shisui requests, voice growing sharp. Mana tangles her hands in her hair, agonized, and wishes desperately for time. If she just had time, she could figure it out—if time would just stop for a second she could find a way—

"Mana, would yo—"

Shisui's voice cuts off mid-speech as if muted. Startled, Mana looks at the door and wonders what's happened. Had he left? No, he can't have. There's no way he would. She lowers her arms and lifts a hand to swipe at the tears that have begun to leak from her eyes. She pauses when her fingers come away feeling slick and sticky. Then, slowly, she looks down at her hand. 

It's bloody.

"What?" She gasps and looks at the mirror. Blood is trickling out from the corners of her eyes, not tears, and in the suddenly red-tinged darkness her strange pinwheel Sharingan seems to glow. Mana lets out a hysterical laugh, beyond afraid of what she is seeing, and tangles a hand in her hair again. She has no idea what is happening.

And then, all at once only an instant later, she staggers. Her limbs go weak as the familiar sensation of a frozen boulder dropping through her stomach sends to her knees. Time, which had been standing so strangely still, suddenly seems to begin flowing again.

"—u say something to me, please?" Shisui's paused voice plays. Disoriented, Mana uses one hand to take hold of a towel hanging from the rack on the wall in an attempt to stop herself from falling face-first onto the bathroom floor. The other she uses to grab for a fistful of toilet paper, hoping she can scrub her face clean before he sees it. The result of this incredibly disjointed movement is, of course, disastrous.

Shisui hears a magnificent crash and the breaking of glass, followed shortly by the thud of a body. At once he forces the lock, using brute strength to break it open, and flings the now slightly-splintered door open. He finds the towel rack crooked and spilling its contents into the sink. The glass holding their toothbrushes has fallen and shattered on the tiles; pieces of it have scattered in every direction, including the portion of the floor upon which Mana is lying collapsed. She lets out a groan, splaying one hand over the shards in confusion; with the other she holds a bloody wad of bath tissue over her face. 

Shisui wastes no time and immediately moves forward to lift her up by the armpits and out of the mess of broken glass. He pulls her out into the hall; Ren's door opens as Shisui kneels down at Mana's side.

"I'm okay… I'm fine," she mumbles, winded, and resumes trying to clean her face.

"You are not fine, Mana," Shisui rebukes as he takes the toilet paper from her hand. Mana immediately screws her eyes shut and he pauses, perceiving fear in this action. Then he takes a deep breath, puts a hand on her shoulder, and asks in a far more even tone, "Are you having another episode?"

"I…" She bites her lip and tenses up reflexively to deny it, but then resigns herself to the situation. "I… yeah.”

Ren approaches and looks at the disaster in the bathroom. Then he glances down at his son, who motions for the first aid kit. Ren retrieves it from the medicine cabinet.

As Shisui begins inspecting the cuts on her arm and face—she'd landed right atop a massive chunk of that glass—Mana presses a hand to her forehead and lets out a long, shaking sigh. This is a mess, she thinks. Possibly one of the biggest messes she's ever experienced. It's a disaster… and she still can't turn off her mutant Sharingan. She can feel it tugging on the thinning threads of her consciousness even now, steadily lapping up the very last dregs of her chakra.

"Mana?" Ren asks quietly as she bites her lip and feels anxious tears begin to track down her cheeks. At least they're real tears this time, she thinks as she swipes at them and feels their consistency between her fingers. "Are you in pain?"

"My head feels awful," Mana answers, which is not a lie. A massive migraine has begun to ramp up between her temples… right behind the eyes. At least that makes sense now.

"Here, Shisui, let me do that," Ren says, reaching out to take the bandages and antiseptic from his son. "Have you figured out chakra transfusions yet?"

"I haven't tested it out yet, but I've got the theory down," Shisui answers as he hands them off to his father. He shifts and tries to pull Mana up so her back is against the wall. "Here, Mana, can you sit up at all for me?"

Mana weakly lifts a hand. Shisui tries to help her, but then she just topples forward into his arms and hangs limply. "Sorry," she mumbles regretfully.

"Don't be," Shisui murmurs back, and then easily shifts her whole weight himself. Once she's propped up Mana sighs and hits the back of her head against the wall with a quiet thud, exhausted.

Shisui begins making hand seals, recalling the scroll he'd borrowed from the hospital, and then gathers chakra in his palm. His hand lights up. As he presses it to Mana's stomach he activates his Sharingan, intent on examining what exactly is going on with her circulation.

Her pathways are are all sputtering in the spastic way characteristic of acute chakra exhaustion. Some of that erratic movement is alleviated when chakra from the transfusion reaches the different tenketsu throughout her body, but with his hawkish gaze he notices right away that the irregularities are persisting in the two pathways that lead to and through the brain. His mind flashes back to the library, to the books open on the table, and he finds himself swallowing. Of the eight gates, he knows, exactly two exist in the brain: the Kaimon, the first gate, and the Kyumon, the second.

Gate instability. That really is it, isn’t? A feeling like ice cold water crashes over him. But if Mana is suffering from gate dysfunction—if that’s why she had been researching chakra in the library—then that is a disaster. Gate instability affects the entirety of the chakra pathway system. The entire body will collapse without all the eight gates' proper function. He thinks about the Second War and Suna poison, and of how scores upon scores of Leaf-nin had died well after leaving the battlefield. He still remembers the day he’d first read in his textbook about the Battle of Black Sands. A toxin that obliterated the chakra pathway system by targeting the gates… At best, survivors would be crippled and rendered unable to mold chakra again for the rest of their lives. At worst, they would bleed black from every orifice and then die of febrile seizures. That is what gate dysfunction does to a body.

Precisely as he's recalling these gruesome deaths Mana's forehead lands on his collarbone. Snapped out of his thoughts, Shisui looks down at her. She presses her face against his chest, breathing heavily through her nose, but no matter how she tries she can't quell the massive wave of terror rising in her breast. Her mind's eye is fixed on that image in the mirror. Those strange abnormal Sharingan, glowing in the dark. The world in a red tinge. Blood leaking from her eyes. She's never seen such a frightening sight in her life.

Shisui feels her fingers close around the hem of his shirt. Then she begins to cry.

"Mana," he says, utterly horrified. It can’t be. There’s no way.

"Call Touma-sensei," she chokes out in reply. "Please."

"Touma… Touma, are you up?"

Touma grunts as his wife's insistent shaking finally stirs him from sleep. "What is it?" he utters blearily up at her. She is kneeling beside him in her nightgown, disheveled. 

"You're needed. Ren's here. He says it's an emergency," she explains quietly. It takes him a moment to process these words through the haze of recently-shed sleep, but when he does he sits up.

"Ren's here?" He runs a hand through his hair as he throws off the covers. "What's going on?"

"He says it's Mana," she replies softly as he makes his way quickly downstairs. They move silently so as not to wake the children and then arrive at the front door, where Ren is standing in the darkness of the street, arms crossed and face impassive. Just like them, he is still dressed in his nightclothes.

"Ren. What's happening?" Touma questions. 

"It's Mana again," Ren explains, and then reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "She collapsed. I would say it's the same as last time, but… it's not."

"What do you mean?" Touma asks as his wife goes to the laundry room to obtain him a shirt. He begins putting it on as soon as she returns and hands it to him.

"Something's different. I don't know what it is," Ren admits. "We tried doing a chakra transfusion like you recommended before, but then she began breathing really heavily. She looked like she was in pretty terrible pain," he grimaces, misliking even the memory of it. "After that she started to ask for you. Shisui looked at her with the Sharingan and he seemed to see something because he got a really terrible look in his eye. I tried, too," he adds, a touch frustratedly, "but I didn't know what I was seeing, and… I know it's late, but considering everything, I just…"

"Don't worry about it. Let's go see what's happening," Touma says as he puts a hand on Ren's shoulder and steps out. "Sorry, Risa. I'll be back."

"Be careful," she bids quietly.

They shunshin back to Ren's house in under a minute, and as they're climbing the stairs up to the second floor Touma catches a glimpse of the catastrophe in the bathroom. Then they turn into Mana's room, where Shisui is sitting at the foot of the bed. He is staring intently with the Sharingan at Mana still, frowning severely. Mana, for her part, is lying on her back with both of her hands plastered to her face. There are bandages winding all the way up her forearms, Touma observes as he exchanges nods with Shisui, and gauze has been taped to her cheek, too. He takes a seat at the bedside. Ren parks in the doorway and crosses his arms again.

Before Touma can open his mouth to speak, Shisui puts a hand out. Then he gestures to his eyes before pointing at his forehead silently. Touma furrows his brow but gets the message, so he activates his own Sharingan and examines Mana up and down, first looking at her stomach and then at her forehead as directed. At first he's not sure what he's seeing. There are two different colors of chakra circulating in her pathways, which he figures is due to the transfusion that Ren had mentioned, but…

Then he notices it—the drain. It is continuous, siphoning away the borrowed chakra at a steady rate. He follows the faint flow of it up from the stomach, where it goes through the chest and towards the head. There it gathers in two spots, one on the right and the other on the left. It is dim and hard to see—a Byakugan would be better suited to study such subtle amounts of chakra—but it seems to pool there in both halves of the brain before simply dissipating, dispersed into nothing. She's leaking chakra like an open faucet.

Alarmed, Touma glances at Shisui. Then he leans forward and puts a hand on Mana's arm. "Mana-san?" he asks softly.

"Touma-sensei?" Mana mumbles and shifts at his touch. 

"Yes, it's Touma. Mana-san, could I get you to lower your arms for me just for a moment?" Though slow owing to her general state of exhaustion, there is still chakra flow in her hands, and he wants to be sure of what he's seeing.

Mana obliges without opening her eyes, and Touma abruptly takes note of the fact that the overhead lights have not been switched on and only the nightstand lamp is lit. "Are you having a migraine, Mana-san?" he queries. 

"A terrible one," she mutters affirmatively, now massaging her temples instead. "It's killing me."

It really might be, Touma thinks grimly as he watches her brain continue to eat up chakra unceasingly. "How much chakra did you give her, and how long ago?" he asks Ren and Shisui lowly.

"Only a bit," Shisui answers with a shake of the head. "It was a few minutes ago. Maybe ten."

"Give her more," Touma instructs firmly. That would buy some time. "As much as you can spare until her reserves are full. Are you working tomorrow?" 

"Not anymore," Shisui answers just a smidge tightly, for which Touma thinks no one could blame him. If it were him, he'd do the same.

"As soon as you're done with that I'd like to talk to the two of you in the hall," Touma murmurs quietly as he switches spots with Shisui. Shisui flies through a set of seals and then presses his hand to Mana's stomach again, expression even. If not for the tight fist he was making with his other hand he would have almost seemed unruffled.

"Wait," Mana says.

The men pause and turn to look at her. Mana puts her hand over her face again. And then, in the dim light, they see a small glint as her eye cracks just the slightest bit open. "Touma-sensei, I need to talk to you," she says. Perhaps the transfusion is helping; there's more force in her voice than would be expected of one in her condition.

"Right now?" Touma asks.

"Right now," Mana agrees firmly. In the shadow of her hand he sees her gaze dart right and then left—towards Ren and then Shisui. "In private."

Chapter Text

Ren and Shisui exchange startled glances. They look at Mana. Then they look at Touma.

"Are you sure, Mana-san?" Since she is technically of age, she's well within her rights to ask for privacy, but… "Shisui-kun still needs to finish the transfusion."

"Then after he's done. I want to talk to you alone," she says, and then adds more quietly, "please."

Well, then. "Of course," Touma answers briskly. "Ren, Shisui-kun?"

"All right," Ren murmurs. He straightens stoically and ducks back into the hall. 

"...Give me a moment. I'm almost done," Shisui mutters, markedly displeased by this. Several beats pass in silence as he works, transferring his chakra to her.

"That should be enough," Touma remarks when he sees that Mana's reserves have been filled. It's not even a fraction of what a jounin like Shisui has at his disposal, but for a civilian, Touma thinks with a frown, her capacity for chakra is surprisingly large. Even putting aside her breeding—many Uchiha are ninjutsu types with genetically prodigious chakra pools—it's rather abnormal. Far more than any Academy student, it’s more along the lines of a genin… or maybe even a lesser chuunin. 

Shisui cuts off his technique, stands, and exits. He shuts the door behind him without saying anything. Touma pauses for a moment before taking a seat at the bedside and addressing his patient once more. "We're alone now, Mana-san."

Mana uncovers her face and sits up at once. "You can stay laying down if you need to," Touma says, but she ignores this and turns in bed to face him. And then she opens her eyes, which freezes him right in place. He is so taken aback that he can only stare. Mana wrings her hands.

"Please help me," she pleads. "I can't turn it off. I don't know how to use chakra. No one's ever taught me how."

Touma is astonished for only a moment longer before he shakes his head and comes back to his senses. "All right," he agrees steadily. "Make the tiger seal. Do you know what that looks like?"

"Um," Mana says as she clumsily clasps her hands and then sticks both her index and middle fingers out.

"Lift your thumbs as well. Straight up." After she does so, Touma takes his index finger and points it at his forehead. "All right. In the case of the Sharingan, you'll need to interrupt the flow of chakra to your eyes. Right now you may be feeling a warm sensation, or perhaps a tingle, in your forehead. By making this seal and concentrating on that feeling, you can disrupt the chakra flow. It's not an action easily described in words, so you may have to try a few times. It may also help to say 'kai' aloud."

"Kai," Mana says uncertainly, which does nothing. "Kai," she repeats a little more forcefully. When this still fails to produce any effect, she scrunches her eyebrows together, shuts her eyes, and focuses on the pressure between her temples. It's not nearly so grinding a headache as it was before Shisui had lent her his chakra, but it's very noticeable, and she's sure that if she leaves it unaddressed it will morph right back into another excruciating migraine. Squeezing her eyes shut in concentration, she says again, "Kai."

At once the pressure eases. A sigh of profound relief automatically escapes her lips. She turns back to Touma and opens her eyes again.

"Very good," he says. Mana puts her hands on her head and lets out an extremely drained laugh.

"Thank you so much, sensei," she exhales with blistering sincerity. "I was scared out of my mind… I thought I was going to die. I had no idea what was happening."

Touma hears the desperate relief in her voice and nods, though his head immediately begins to swirl with a multitude of questions. "You are very welcome, Mana-san." He pauses. "I don't suppose you could tell me from the start about what's gone on here tonight?"

As Mana concludes her tale Touma leans in disbelief against the back of his chair. "It's been the Sharingan all this time," he repeats dumbly. He doesn't know what else to say. By all accounts Uchiha Mana is the last clansperson in the world who could have been expected to awaken the Sharingan.

"Yes. I don't know how it happened so early," Mana lies, "but it's definitely been awakened for a while. It had three tomoe when I looked in the mirror."

"That would explain why you have such an unusually large chakra capacity for a civilian," Touma realizes. "It's not that your body has been failing to produce enough chakra, but that you've been consistently draining it to the very limit since infancy. Your reserves grew to compensate."

That makes sense, Mana thinks. Then she twists her fingers together again and says, anxious, "But there's something wrong with it. It's… abnormal. You saw it, didn't you?"

Touma takes a moment to gather his thoughts on this. Then he says, "Perhaps… now that you know how to release the Sharingan, Mana-san, I'd like to take a look at it. It seems you're able to activate it despite not having any chakra control. Could you show me how?"

"Okay…" Mana says, and then looks away as she thinks of something upsetting to imagine. The look on Shisui's face as he'd left, she thinks abruptly. Oh dear… she has no idea how she's going to deal with that when they're done here.

"Incredible." Touma shakes his head when she lifts her face once more and shows him a fully matured Sharingan. "How did you do that?"

"It seems to activate when I get upset," Mana sighs and rubs the back of her neck. "Specifically when I recall unhappy memories."

"The original awakening of a Sharingan occurs when the brain releases a special type of chakra associated with powerful emotions," Touma informs pensively. "It is also known within the clan that an awakened Sharingan often activates in moments of emotional agitation… When you recall these memories, then, you've been unwittingly causing the Sharingan to manifest. A shinobi would realize right away, but for you who's had no training…"

Yes, that sounds very plausible. Though it had been decided in her childhood to withhold her from the Academy for the sake of her health, it seems that if she'd had the chance to attend she would have been equipped with the knowledge to prevent this entire situation. That is some terrible irony, she thinks tiredly.

"What did you do to activate that other form?" Touma queries. "Did you think of something else?"

"I…" Mana hesitates, already feeling her gaze begin to blur with the mere mention of it. Chieri's death lies heavy on her heart, dark like the blackest of shadows, even now. "I thought about the day my mother died."

Touma inhales sharply and Mana knows that she's changed her eyes without meaning to. He holds out a hand, ready for her to topple forward onto the floor at any moment.

"Are you all right? Do you feel faint at all?" he questions urgently.

"No, I'm fine. It's not changing it to this form that made me collapse. It was… something else."

Touma withdraws his hand. "What do you mean?"

"I… I don't really know what it was," Mana confesses. "But it was really scary. Everything felt strange, and it looked red… and my eyes started to bleed. Then it was all suddenly normal again, and I collapsed."

This description more than anything else convinces Touma of his suspicions. "All right. Please deactivate it for now, then. I think I know what's going on…"

…But he doesn't quite believe it. Mana struggles again for a few moments to turn off her Sharingan, but once she manages Touma clears his throat. "I'll preface this by saying that I don't know much about it," he begins delicately, "and I don't have any firsthand experience with it. But from what I've seen and what you've told me tonight, I believe you've managed to awaken a further form of the Sharingan known as the Mangekyou Sharingan."

"The Mangekyou Sharingan?" Mana repeats.

"Yes. It's not easily obtained and it's extremely uncommon in the clan even now. The number of people who have attained it in our day can be numbered on one hand… Even now the only one who immediately comes to my mind is Shisui-kun."

"Shisui?" Mana regards him with surprise. "But I've seen his Sharingan before. It's normal."

"You have a 'normal' Sharingan, too," Touma points out. "As far as I can tell it isn't necessary to activate it to use all the regular powers of the Sharingan, so I'm not surprised you haven't seen it. I doubt he ever shows it off needlessly… a Mangekyou is not a trifling thing."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, as you've probably surmised, it can only be obtained through profound personal suffering," Touma explains softly. "But perhaps most saliently, Mangekyou Sharingan are said to give rise to a myriad of unique, powerful jutsu. I suspect the strange phenomenon you described to me may have been related to the special power of your personal Mangekyou. That's my guess, at any rate."

"Oh…" Mana lifts a hand to touch her eyelid. A distant memory of a young boy's voice rises in her mind. Something's happened to my Sharingan, he'd said, and then confessed to having caused the death of his friend.

"That's all I know if it, unfortunately. But like any special power, it's probably wise not to flaunt it," Touma concludes.

Mana can agree with that. The two spend a moment in a grave silence. Then Mana says, "I'd like you to keep this a secret from ojisan and Shisui."

Touma cannot say he finds this request unexpected, but he regards her worriedly regardless. "Are you sure that's what you want to do? They're bound to be very worried about you."

Mana hangs her head. "I know. I know, but… just for now, Touma-sensei. Please." She swallows. "I'll think more about what to do. But for now, I—I don't want them to know."

"All right," Touma agrees. He can respect that. To know that someone has a Mangekyou Sharingan is no small thing, either—as much as it is a great strength, it is a great weakness, too. The very fact that it exists in a person is its own kind of terrible wound. "It is your health and your secret to share, not mine. I will not tell them about it unless you permit me to do so."

She gives him a look of profound relief. "Thank you, sensei."

"Of course, Mana-san." 

There's a pause. Then, abruptly, they both feel their weariness and the lateness—or earliness, at this point—of the hour. Touma leans back and lets his head dangle over the back of the chair while Mana sighs and puts her temple on the wall.

"Are you feeling all right for the moment? Do you need any other assistance?" Touma eventually rallies and asks. He sits up and looks at her closely.

"No, I think I'm fine for now," Mana answers honestly. "I don't feel nearly as terrible as I usually do after one of these episodes. It must be because Shisui gave me his chakra."

"Yes, probably," Touma agrees. He stands. Then he gives her a considering look. "Mana-san."

Mana immediately straightens. "Yes?"

"I will not teach you any ninjutsu, or how to use the Sharingan," he begins, "but for the sake of your health, I believe you will need to learn basic chakra control. If you wish to keep your doujutsu a secret, I will instruct you in rudimentary chakra use."

Mana brightens instantly. "Thank you, sensei," she thanks profusely. Just thinking of trying to learn out of books again had filled her with dread. A real, live teacher would be a much better help.

Touma nods again. Then he moves for the door and twists the knob. "Then I'll return now. Good night, Mana-san. We'll speak again soon."

"Yes, sensei. Good night."

As soon as he steps into the hall he is confronted by Ren and Shisui's twin looks of expectation. Touma clears his throat as he shuts Mana's bedroom door behind him.

"What did she say?" Shisui asks without preamble. Touma grimaces. He understands Mana's decision, but that will not make this any easier.

"I'm afraid," Touma begins carefully, "that since Mana-san has requested I keep the details of our conversation private, I'm unable to tell you that."

This proclamation is met with identical looks of disbelief. Ren and Shisui glance at each other. Then Ren gives his friend a hard look. 

"You can't?" 

Pinned with this stare, Touma has to take a moment to swallow heavily, but he fortifies his will and replies firmly. "It is private, Ren. I am sorry."

"Private even from her spouse?" Shisui queries, not even hesitating to play this card. Touma gives him a regretful look.

"Yes. If this were an emergency, or if she were obviously of unsound mind or judgment, I would be able to let you know… but as it is, Mana-san is a perfectly competent adult and is well within her rights to prevent me from speaking about her health to you."

Shisui's gaze darkens. "So you're saying the only thing we can do is ask her directly."

Touma holds back a wince on Mana's behalf. "Yes, well… that would seem to be the case." Then he scrubs a hand across his face and lets out a sigh. "I apologize, my friends."

When he lowers his arm Touma finds that Ren and Shisui both have subsided with guilty looks. "No, it's all right," Ren says quietly as he puts a hand on Touma's arm. "I'm sorry to drag you into this in the middle of the night. You've been caring meticulously for Mana since she was a child. You wouldn't stop now."

"Thank you, sensei," Shisui adds softly. "Is everything all right now? Will we need to keep an eye on her overnight?"

"She should be fine with some sleep," Touma replies. "You may want to check in on her every now and then, but any immediate danger has passed." He pauses. "It is very good you learned how to perform chakra transfusions, Shisui-kun."

The only response Shisui can muster to this is a thin smile. It's a look that makes him resemble Chieri remarkably.

"I'll head in early to report you've had a family emergency," Ren says a while after Touma has departed. They are standing silently in the hall, staring over the mess in the bathroom. The potted plant that had been sitting atop the towel rack has tumbled into the sink and cracked into pieces, scattering dirt over the white porcelain and exposing its roots to the air. Glass is still littered all over the floor, too; the base of the cup, more intact than the rest of it, sits innocuously in the center of the debris. Its edges, wicked and sharp, are tinged red with blood.

"Thank you, Dad," Shisui says, and then shuts his eyes and puts his forehead on the doorframe.

Chapter Text

Despite everything Mana wakes at her usual hour. Blinking blearily through crusted, swollen eyes, she glances listlessly at the nightstand, and then the empty chair still sitting at her bedside. Then she rolls over and buries her face in her pillow.

She is not ill and incapable of moving as she usually is following a bout of chakra exhaustion, but she stays abed anyway, tired in a different sort of way. Eventually she falls back into a restless sleep, and when she wakes next the hour is later. Mana looks at her bed stand. 12:27. She listens carefully, but hears nothing: there are no footsteps in the house nor training sounds in the yard. No one seems to be around, at least for the moment.

She shifts onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. She can't stay in bed forever… she knows this. Then she bites her lip. But if she gets up, what can she do? She knows Ren and Shisui are going to be extremely unhappy with her. After all, considering everything they've done to help her, they have a right to know what’s going on. Mana understands very well that without Ren and Shisui supporting her, she would be alone in the world and she would have nothing. 

I believe you've managed to awaken a further form of the Sharingan known as the Mangekyou Sharingan.

Mana finds herself remembering again without meaning to the sight of her bloody eyes in the mirror. Shuddering reflexively, she throws an arm over her face and sucks in a deep breath, which she holds until her chest is tight and her head feels light. Eventually, though, she has to let it go. As she does so, heaving heavy breaths in and out, she tangles a hand in the fabric of her nightgown.

It's extremely uncommon.

A Mangekyou is not a trifling thing.

It can only be obtained through profound personal suffering.

Once again tears begin to leak from her eyes. "What do I do?" she croaks aloud to herself, and then cringes at how rough and rasping her voice sounds. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turns onto her side. Then she presses her nose into the mattress, clutches at the front of her house dress with her other hand as well, and lets out a quiet sob. 

She has to tell them. Of course she has to tell them. It wouldn't be fair not to.

It can only be obtained through profound personal suffering.

But if she tells them… 

I can't, she thinks. Her heart is beating wildly. Her ears ring, her head pounds with tension, and her mouth is filled with saliva. The more she tries to hold her breath and control breathing, the more the burning weight in the center of her chest seems to grow. She curls up, feeling the pressure almost like a real physical pain, and gasps silently. Sweat begins to bead on her skin. She wonders distantly if this is what is called a panic attack.

And then, in the midst of all this, a hand lands on her shoulder.

Horrified, Mana's eyes shoot open. Shisui is kneeling at her bedside, eyes wide with alarm. Mana freezes, utterly petrified to have been caught.

"Mana?" he asks urgently as he reaches out with his other hand to pull the hair from her mouth. Spit-covered, it plasters itself to the clammy skin of her neck and sticks. "What's wrong?"

"I…" Mana works her jaw silently as her frame continues to convulse and shake with suppressed sobs. She stares at his tear-blurred image, unable to speak. Then she slaps her hands on her face, mortified. Oh, no. No, no, no.

"Mana? What's going on?" He takes one of her wrists and gently pries it away. "Hey. Please say something. What's happening? Are you hurting somewhere?"

"No!" she bites out, utterly and absolutely unprepared to deal with him. "No, no, I'm—" she heaves out a breath and then sucks in another. "I'm fine. Don't… don't worry. Everything's fine."

Hiding her face behind her remaining hand, she begins forcing herself to take deep, measured breaths. She counts to herself. Then she counts again. In, out, in, out… 

After what seems like an interminable amount of time later, her massive shakes have diminished into trembling and her hyperventilating gives way to small, hiccuping gasps instead. Drained, she lowers her hand and opens her eyes.

Shisui is still there. He is still holding onto her wrist as he stares down at her, brow deeply creased, and Mana's heart jolts in her chest when she sees it. She averts her eyes. Then, ashamed, she opens her mouth and croaks, "Shisui."

"...Are you okay?" he asks after a short pause. He shifts and then seats himself on the bed by her head. Mana exhales a long breath.

"I'm… I'm okay." She can't bring herself to look him in the face, so instead she turns her head and stares at his leg. "I… didn't you have a mission today?" she asks lamely.

This question seems to displease Shisui immensely, and when she risks a glance out of the corner of her eye he is staring down at her with a face that could almost be described as angry. "I told them I had a family emergency," he says flatly. "Someone else took care of it."

"O-Oh." Mana quickly looks away again. "I… I see."

Even though her anxiety seems to have calmed a bit, at least for the time being, Mana finds that she feels little better. Now a writhing feeling of guilt has begun to twist in her gut instead. Despite all the tears she has just finished shedding, water begins to gather in her eyes again.

"Mana?" Shisui, seeing this, questions quietly. Mana, hardly believing he would still ask even after everything, lets out a short laugh. It's a mirthless thing, miserable even in her own ears, and she finds that the sound of it chases away any words she thinks she might have said. Instead she reaches up with her free hand and puts a hand on his knee.

"I'm sorry," she mutters and then presses her forehead to its side. It's the only thing she can do. "I'm sorry, Shisui. I'm really sorry."

For a long moment there's no response. But then, eventually, Mana feels his palm come to rest on the side of her head. Weary, she looks up at him, but he turns his gaze downward, half-lidded, and says nothing. He runs his fingers through her hair just once instead.

Shisui takes the next day off as well. If things are awkward as they eat breakfast together with Ren, who steadfastly acts as if nothing is wrong, they're positively uncomfortable by the time he leaves for work. Mana can only take so much of it before fleeing the house for the yard. She escapes to the treeline, right to the bounds of open space, and finds herself staring up the trunk of a grand tree. It's not the biggest in Konoha, she thinks, but it's certainly a splendid one, tall and magnificent. She wonders what it must be like at the top. 

Then, in all of a moment, she makes the decision to climb. She has a sketchbook and a case of pencils with her, and she regards them critically before devising a plan. The pencils she pushes down the front of her blouse, wedging them in place between her breasts with the elastic band of her bra. Then she takes the ribbon upon her head, that last gift from her mother, and lets her hair fall down her back as she threads it through the rings of the sketchbook. After this she ties its ends together to make a loop before passing her arm and head through it. Then she shifts the sketchbook so it lays against her back. After checking everything over and being satisfied that nothing will come loose or fall out of place, Mana nods with conviction, kicks off her sandals, and gathers up the hem of her skirt to tuck it into her waistband. Then she turns her gaze up towards the canopy.

She has to take a bit of a running start to jump high enough to seize the lowest branch, but she manages. Struggling to find purchase, she kicks and flails for a moment, but ultimately manages to swing her body up onto the bough. Excited by this success, she shifts her weight and then cautiously stands, putting her hands on the trunk for stability. Then she looks around for the next branch.

Shisui observes this foolhardy endeavor from an open second-story window with eyebrows aloft and lips slightly parted in disbelief. Once again, he finds that he has no earthly idea what Mana could possibly be thinking. Two days ago she'd been at death's doorstep. One day ago she’d been sobbing herself to pieces on her bed. But today, all of a sudden, she's scrambling up the branches of this tree in the backyard with reckless abandon. Hair flying everywhere in the wind, bare skin scraping up against every rough surface, and—is she even wearing shorts under her skirt? He squints at her for a long moment. Then he puts a hand on his forehead and hopes for her sake none of the neighbors look outside while she's up there.

Has it even occurred to her that he's supervising this whole thing? He wonders. She can't possibly believe he'd be doing anything else. He'd taken off a second day off work specifically to watch her. She'd been so ill yesterday that there's no way he'd take an eye off her until he was sure she was well again anyway. 

"You seem plenty well now, though," he remarks under his breath. As he continues to watch her rather slow and graceless upward climb, however, he can't help but feel a faint sense of nostalgia. In the days before he'd learned how to tree walk—those very, very early days of boyhood—he'd had to climb trees this way, too. Carefully, searchingly, calculatingly… pulling on branches, testing his weight on the limbs, creeping forward, sitting with legs straddling the bough… he smiles a bit despite himself.

Halfway up Mana pauses to take a break, panting and trembling with exertion. No surprise there, he thinks. He sighs and wonders if he'll have to go rescue her. Will Mana ever remember that she's not healthy? 

He waits and watches as she sits there in the tree, leaning back against the trunk and staring at her lap. But eventually her bowed head rises and her gaze lifts upwards again, way up to the top. He sees the way her nose points up into the air and knows in an instant that this girl won't stop until she's seen the view from the heights. Oh, bother, he thinks.

Mana, for her part, has nothing in her eyes but the light. That sunlight filtering through leaves, that komorebi that had warmed her face so long ago in childhood, on that distant day when it had felt like beauty and life had finally sprung up again out of nowhere around her… she can see it again today. It's the same kind of light. 

She rises and begins climbing once more. She climbs, and climbs, and climbs a bit more until she finally reaches the spot that even she knows she shouldn't try to go beyond. Invalid though she is, she is a child of Konoha; even she has more sense than that. But that's fine, too, she thinks with pleasure as she finally sits again and rests. She untucks the ends of her skirt and lets the loose fabric fall, admiring the way the wind stirs its folds as it dangles below her. Then she pulls her sketchbook off over her head, opens it, and withdraws the pencils from her blouse. Long ago she'd regretted being unable to capture the sight of that bright canopy. Since she's sitting here now, she'll have a chance to try again.

That can't be very comfortable, Shisui thinks for the second time as he glances up and sees that Mana is still hunched over her sketchbook. Her back is to the house so he can't see her face, but he does catch a glimpse of it in profile whenever she raises her eyes to study the leaves above her. She seems to be in it for a long haul; the only thing he sees there is focus. After realizing this, he decides that instead of sitting idly up here and watching her draw the day away, he's probably better off doing some kata in the yard while keeping an eye on her from the ground. He figures she's trying to avoid him right now, but he doubts she'd notice him even if he decided to do handstands and backflips right under her.

He doesn't do that, of course, because then he wouldn't be able to see her. He stays closer to the house and begins working through his forms instead, glancing up periodically to see if the white of her skirt, just barely visible in the gap between boughs, is still swaying with the breeze in its place.

Enough time passes that the sun begins to fall. Shisui, as a result, gets absorbed enough in his practice that he's surprised when a clatter sounds across the yard. Snapping his head around to search for the source of the noise, he squints and realizes that Mana's case of pencils has dropped from above and exploded its contents all across the ground. A beat later the sketchbook comes tumbling down as well, flipping over itself and smacking into branches as it goes, before it falls flat and open upon the roots of the tree. Shisui experiences a brief moment of alarm when he looks up at the gap in the leaves and sees only green instead of white, and he wonders if the girl herself is going to come crashing down next. But then there's a rustle and he sees through the canopy that she'd simply tossed her art supplies down before beginning the slow return journey back to earth.

He stands still for a long moment, watching her make cautious progress, before he lets out a breath and wanders towards the foot of the tree just in case he needs to catch her. He stops and stands over the sketchbook, wondering if it's open to the picture she'd been drawing, and is quite surprised to find that completely by chance it is.

It's a sketch of a sight familiar to any resident of Konoha: countless leaves, supported by spidering branches, are stretched out across the paper. He examines the way their undersides have been penciled in at every angle. She's managed to capture the foliage with lifelike accuracy. Bright white spots pepper the spaces between leaves, opened up with careful strokes of an eraser, and despite the lack of color on the page Shisui somehow gets a sense of how glowing green and golden those spaces must have seemed in her eyes. Mana really is a skilled artist, he thinks. 

Then his eyes drift to the lower reaches of the drawing, towards the darkness at the base of the page, and he spies a set of large smudges. That's a pity, he thinks, as he sees how all the delicate lines and careful shading have been blurred and smeared together. Had it happened when she'd sent it spilling down the branches? He squats down to take a look, and when he examines the paper more closely he sees that it's actually become wavy with moisture, almost as if it had been struck by several raindrops. Shisui pauses. But there isn't a cloud in the sky, and it hasn't rained… 

Not raindrops, then, but teardrops. Shisui suddenly finds himself putting a hand on his shirt as he recalls the sight of Mana crying desperately into his chest. Those had been the tears of a person wracked with fear for her own life, fraught and anguished. He touches the sketch and wonders why she is refusing to speak to them about it. He's been in no few number of hopeless life-or-death situations himself, and he'd only managed to survive them by relying on his comrades. Does she think she's somehow protecting them by concealing the truth of her illness? If she is, he thinks as he stands, it's a tragically misguided idea. 

But somehow that is also very characteristic of her, Shisui muses as he looks up again and catches sight of the pale soles of Mana's feet. He can see even from here that the legs they are attached to are terribly scratched, and he wonders about that, too. Aren't girls usually more careful to take care of their skin? Even some kunoichi are like that, sometimes to the point of impracticality. But like every other aspect about her health, Mana just doesn't seem to care. His mind drifts back in time to the day after their wedding, when they'd eaten dinner together in her room. He'd told her to say something next time she noticed she was feeling ill, and even now the utter blankness of her replying stare lingers in his mind. She hadn't spoken a word, but those eyes had said it all: what good would that do? 

He positions himself behind her, out of her line of sight, and lingers there until the last moment—just until he's sure she won't slip in the last few feet. She puts her hands on the last branch and lowers herself into a hang. The moment her toes touch grass again, he lets out a satisfied exhale and shunshins silently away.

"Oh, oops." Mana, oblivious, looks down and sees the carnage of her pencils, broken-tipped and scattered in every direction. It hadn't occurred to her that the latch on the case would open if it hit a hard root instead of the grass, and she crouches down to gather them back up with a regretful grimace. Once she has them, she goes over to her sketchbook and picks it up. 

Shisui steps onto the veranda, hidden in the shade of the overhang, and watches her face as she runs her fingers across the smudges in her drawing. Then he blinks, surprised, as a smile—bittersweet, but pleased nonetheless—stretches across her features.

Chapter Text

"...sui. Shisui?"

"Huh?" Shisui comes back to his senses in time to see Itachi looking at him strangely for just a second's time. Then, as ever, the teen's face melts back into its usual impassive stare.

"Sorry, sorry." Shisui holds up a hand and gives his head a good shake. "What's up?"

"You seem troubled," Itachi remarks as he leans back against the tree trunk and crosses his arms. Shisui knows there's no fooling him, so he just lets out a sigh and shrugs his shoulders.

"Yeah, I guess. There's a lot going on at home."

"I thought it was unlike you to skip out without warning on a mission like that. I assume Mana-san was sick again?"

Well, he doesn't waste any time getting to the point, does he? "Got it in one," Shisui confirms with a sigh.

"Is she still not feeling better?

"No… she's all right now. Yesterday she was even tree climbing." Shisui snorts. "I really have to hand it to her. No matter how many times she dances with death, as soon as she has her feet she's right back to business as usual…"

"She was that ill?" Itachi wonders at how casually Shisui says this. Far too casually—it's one of his telltale giveaways.

"...Yeah, but we took care of it in time," Shisui answers after a short pause. He puts a hand on his neck and looks towards the sky. He doesn't say anything else.

"There's more," Itachi states blandly. Shisui gives him a dry look.

"There is. But for some reason, she just… won't talk about it. With me or Dad."

"And that's why you're not focusing?"

"You don't have to put it like that," Shisui complains. Once again, Itachi's managed to cut to the heart of things like a surgeon.

"Well, you aren't," Itachi points out.

"So uncute," grumbles Shisui. 

"I don't need to be cute."

"Help a man save face for once. Don't you ever ease up?"

"No."

Shisui and Itachi stare at each other for a short pause. Then Itachi snorts and Shisui laughs. They fall into a companionable silence.

"Itachi, can I ask you a question?" Shisui eventually asks.

"What is it?"

"If you were sick and you knew you were going to die, would you talk about it? Or would you keep it to yourself?"

Itachi gives his friend a long look. Shisui just sighs. "Humor me."

Itachi goes silent. Apparently he intends to honor the request, because he spends the next several moments gazing introspectively at his hands. Shisui watches unobtrusively, taking in the way Itachi's brow begins to furrow and the way his eyes flick to the side.

"I've never been seriously ill," he says slowly a long while later, "so I don't know for sure. But if I consider myself honestly… no, I don't think I would."

"Why?"

Itachi wonders if it's wise to answer this question, but something about the solemn gravity of his friend's face compels him to reply with candor. "A number of reasons. For one, it would be extremely dangerous. Others could use that information to manipulate me or the people around me, or to engineer circumstances that take advantage of my illness and impede me in my goals… Above all, it would be a majorly exploitable weakness."

True enough. Depending on the type of disease, a crafty enough adversary could find a way to aggravate or even hasten the effects of the illness. "But if you were able to keep it a secret," Shisui proposes, "so no one with ill intentions would find out, what would you do then? If it could be guaranteed that only the trustworthy knew, would you talk about it?"

"There could be no such guarantee," Itachi contradicts, though not with discourtesy. “But so as not to undermine the premise… No. I still don't think I would. Not immediately, anyway."

"How come?"

Itachi considers this for a long moment, too. Several beats pass. Then he says, "Because that knowledge is a wound, and it would be hard to trust that to another."

A new normal takes shape in the household. At first Mana had worried Ren and Shisui would treat her coldly for preventing Touma from telling them about her Sharingan, but once life following the accident resumes they're mostly the same as always. Every now and then Ren pauses when speaking to her, but each time it happens she can see him almost visibly hold himself back; as for Shisui, he's taken to staring at her for long stretches of time when he thinks she isn't aware. But neither of them ask, and she doesn't tell, and somehow they go on, unchanged in veneer if not in substance.

Mana, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, rolls with it. She, too, returns to her daily routine: cooking, housekeeping, reading, making art. The only difference is that now she also visits Touma's house for weekly chakra control lessons. She keeps this under wraps for a while by scheduling visits during the times the men are out working, but she knows it's only a matter of time until they find out, so she begins searching for ways to demonstrate that she's still healthy.

"Perhaps you could begin an exercise routine of some sort," Touma suggests one day while they're working on the leaf-sticking exercise. Lately Mana has become able to keep it in place without making a seal, so they've begun to practice maintaining control while simultaneously performing other activities such as walking or talking. "Not anything so intense as training, but perhaps you could start taking walks or some such. It would be good for your overall health in general, actually. You've lived a largely sedentary lifestyle since childhood, so now may be the time to start establishing exercise habits."

This strikes Mana as very good advice, so she decides to give it a try. After completing her chores and doing early meal prep so she can immediately begin making dinner upon her return, she puts on a hat and steps outside. Then she pauses, unsure of where to go. Until now her life has consisted entirely of the house, Mikoto’s home, and the main road upon which all other points of interest rest. The only times she's ever left the compound was to go to the training grounds or the library.

But maybe that's all right. Since the Uchiha quarter sits on the outskirts of the village, there's plenty of nature that could make for good exploring. Perhaps she could just wander the compound a while before going home. Mana nods to herself. Then she picks a direction and begins walking.

For the first few weeks she simply rambles along the residential streets, looking at houses and shops. The Uchiha are a fairly numerous folk, so she probably shouldn't have been surprised by how varied their businesses are, but she is. She'd known about the grocers and most of the food-related establishments, but in her wanderings she finds the local tailor, the kimono shop, and a kanzashi-maker—very apropos for such a traditional clan, she thinks. There's also a carpenter, a potter, and even a livestock supply store at the end of an isolated road near the edge of the compound. She likes that spot in particular, since their distance makes the trek good exercise, and she can amuse herself by watching the animals wander about in the pasture while resting. When she looks at herself in the mirror at night she finds that her usually-pasty complexion has begun to take on a sunny tan, which she finds inexplicably pleasing.

Eventually Mana's explorations branch out into the other end of the compound. She finds a delightful number of little treasures here—a cute roadside shrine, a short decorative bridge over a small field of irises, a koi pond—and she wonders why on earth she hadn't come by earlier. It's only when she finds herself standing at the gate of the clan cemetery that she realizes why she'd been staying away. Faltering, she hesitates on the path, but eventually enters.

Mana has not visited the cemetery since the day she buried her mother, but she remembers the way to her grave as if it had only been yesterday: down the center road, right towards the outer forest, and up the hill path. As she climbs the winding stairs and passes over stone terraces, she suddenly becomes aware of how hot the late summer sun is. Even though autumn should be starting any day now, it beats down upon her back and her clothes start to grow heavy with moisture; beneath the fabric of her hat, her hair begins to prickle and itch with sweat. She wipes her forehead, grimacing at the way her bangs clump together on her skin.

When she finally reaches the top of the hill, however, she finds herself standing in the cool shade of a massive oak tree. Relieved, Mana removes her hat and seats herself on a stone bench by the path. Unlike in the other parts of the cemetery, there are no other visitors upon the hill, owing to the fact that the only graves here belong to Uchiha Kagami's line. He'd been such an esteemed member of the clan that the entire hilltop had been reserved for him and his family. 

She lingers for a long moment on the bench before she finally stands and makes her way to the corner where Chieri and Shigeru's shared headstone lies. It's not the first time she's been here, of course. Mana squats in the grass before the grave and remembers paying her respects here with her mother. Half of the headstone had still been blank back then; though the left side had been carved with her father's name, the right side—her mother's side—had been hung with a plaque bearing the character kotobuki, for long life. It still seems strange to her that it's gone, replaced now with Chieri's name and date of death instead. 

Mana ends up spending more time here than she intends to, half because she fears leaving the protection of the great oak's shade, half because she suddenly finds herself caught up in memories of her mother. By the time she comes back to her senses the sun has begun setting.

"Crap." Mana realizes her mistake and shoots to her feet—and then staggers and falls back on her behind, too weak-limbed to stand. Blinking bewilderedly, she sits confused for a long minute before—

"Oh!" Now that she's back in the present moment she realizes that a familiar ache has begun in her forehead, right behind her eyes, and she quickly cuts off the chakra supplying her Sharingan. Her eyes fade back into their usual dark hue. She takes a moment to think. Then she grimaces.

"Oh boy…" she mutters, running a hand through her hair, which is now rather gross with dried sweat. She'd been so caught up in her thoughts she hadn't realized her doujutsu had been active the whole time, eating up chakra. Just her luck—for some reason the Mangekyou seems to drain over twice as much as the regular Sharingan. Mana wonders if she will have the strength to make it home.

Both Ren and Shisui are out on missions right now, she considers, which is both good and bad. On the one hand, no one's going to be there to worry about her being late, which is very good. On the other hand, no one's going to notice she's gone and come rescue her when she doesn't come home, and that has the potential to be quite bad indeed. She considers the situation carefully. 

In the worst case scenario, she'll probably have to stay here overnight and wait for her body to regenerate enough chakra for her to make the return trip. Well, she thinks, it won't be pleasant, but she will probably survive. The nights are still more or less warm and though she won't be able to eat dinner, which will not be helpful for the chakra recovery front, there's a small water pump down the stone steps she can drink from. It had been placed for people to use while cleaning graves, but she doubts anyone will care if she uses it to rehydrate—which she probably should do now, she realizes, since she hasn't drank anything all afternoon.

It's slow going, and she has to move very cautiously on the stairs—this whole situation will get approximately a hundred times worse if she manages to fall and concuss herself—but she makes it down the pump without incident. It is immensely tiring to get it going, to the point where she thinks she may pass out if she tries any longer, but eventually the water flows and she's able to take a good, long drink. She splashes her face, too, and rinses off all the sweat dried there. She's definitely looking forward to a bath when she gets home.

Once she does this she flops onto her back right there on the pavement, too tired to sit up. She turns her head to look at the graves she is sprawled in front of and grimaces. This certainly is not her most shining moment of reverence and respect.

"Sorry," she apologizes quietly to them. "I'm not feeling well. I'll get up and leave in a bit, okay?" Maybe she'll come back on another day and do a bit of weeding as thanks for their understanding.

Some time passes like that. Mana turns her gaze upwards and looks at what is now the night sky, clear and blazing with pinpricks of light. The river of stars—the Amanogawa, it’s called in this world—stretches out as a band of hazy white light, rising up from the horizon and soaring out into the heavens above. Despite the circumstances she finds a wide smile stretching across her face at the sight. She hadn't realized such a fantastic stargazing hill existed right here within the Uchiha district. She knows it's a widespread view in the clan that the compound had been rebuilt here on the outskirts as a way to alienate the Uchiha, and maybe it’s true, but she wonders if there isn’t good to be found in it, too. Here the clan can plant itself in the beauty of nature at the edge of Konoha, free to sprawl and spread and grow up in the wonder of it. The graves have always been here and this space has been the Uchiha’s burial grounds since the time of the village’s founding, and perhaps that is another reason why people are so displeased about it—perhaps it seems like a punishment, or an exile, or a banishment. But is it such a bad thing for them to be close to their dead? In a way, this almost feels better. Here they can enjoy the beauty of these stars together.

For the second time today Mana wonders why she'd avoided coming here. It hadn't actually been bad to visit her mother's grave, she reflects. If anything, something in her heart feels a little more settled for the time she's spent here today. As if something frozen has thawed, or as if a knot in her shoulders has come undone… she tilts her head and wonders how to describe it. Either way, she knows she'll be back.

Chapter Text

"Whew…" Several hours later, covered in sweat and dust and bug bites, Mana stumbles into the genkan. Her back and neck are aching from having spent the whole night on stone, her head is fuzzy with fatigue, and she is ravenous. Food, she decides as she kicks her sandals off and leaves them askew in the entryway. Then a very long, very hot bath. She drops her bag and her hat in the hallway and goes straight to the fridge, where she pulls out a platter of leftover onigiri and digs in without even washing her hands. 

Normally she uses the upstairs bathroom, but just the thought of climbing the stairs fills her with exhaustion, so she stuffs another rice ball in her mouth and goes to start the faucet in the downstairs bathtub instead. Then she shucks off her disgusting grass-stained clothes right there and throws them down outside the door. She goes in, sits on the wash stool, and reaches out for the hand pail. 

Fifteen minutes later Mana finds herself jerking awake. Gasping and sputtering as she pulls her face out of the bathwater, she blinks dazedly and wonders when she'd gotten into the tub. The faucet is still running and water is overflowing into the washing area; she hastily reaches out to shut it off. 

"Wow, you nearly died just now, Mana," she coughs and mutters to herself before wiping her hair from her face and slumping over the side of the tub. Even she has heard stories about sleeping or drunk people who drown in the bath; she'd nearly just shared a similar fate. Imagine surviving the Sharingan only to be killed by the bathtub… maybe this hadn't been the best idea.

Deciding to get out for her own safety, she pulls the drain plug and stands. All of her clean clothes are upstairs in her room, so after drying off she instead ducks into the laundry room, where she seizes the first garment she lays hands on and pulls it over her head. It's massively oversized and she swims in it for several moments before managing to find the right openings to stick her arms and head through. The hem falls nearly all the way to her knees, long enough to be a dress. Shisui's, probably. 

Well, good enough, she thinks. Then she goes out to the living room and collapses unconscious on the couch.

When she wakes next the windows are orange and there's a blanket draped over her. Groggy, she rubs a hand over her face. Then she sits up, blinking dazedly, and sees Shisui stir-frying vegetables through the doorway to the kitchen. When she turns her head to the right she finds Ren is sitting on the floor and sharpening kunai. He looks up. 

"You're awake?" He pauses in his work to eye her critically.

"Um," Mana answers dumbly. Then she glances back to the kitchen, where Shisui is now peering over his shoulder. They make brief eye contact before he turns back to the stove. Mana quickly looks back at her uncle. "Welcome home, ojisan…?"

"I'm back," Ren replies placidly. He resumes running his knife over his whetstone.

"Dinner'll be done in ten," Shisui calls. Mana hears the scrape of chopsticks on a pan.

"Oops," she mumbles to herself, immediately feeling quite terrible for letting her breadwinners come home to an empty dinner table. That had been one of her most hated parts of working life—coming home exhausted and having to cook her own meals. As far as being a housewife goes, this definitely gets a failing mark…

She lets out a frustrated sigh and runs her hand through her hair. Or, well, she tries to, but then soon finds that it's in that unfortunate state of dry-enough-to-snarl but too-wet-to-untangle. Right—she'd completely forgotten to dry her hair before falling asleep, hadn't she?

Holding in the urge to groan, Mana draws her knees up to her chest and smacks her forehead upon them. Then she puts the blanket over her head and falls back onto her side, already exhausted despite having just woken up. She stays that way until Ren uncovers her.

"Are you going to eat?" he queries, not batting an eye at her in fetal position. Mana drags both hands down her face before acknowledging to herself that she really should not skip another meal.

"Yeah…"

Her sense of failure is only magnified when she follows Ren into the kitchen and finds that the bowls and glasses and chopsticks are already out. Mana immediately kicks herself again. Even if she hadn't made dinner the least she could have done was set the blasted table. She takes her seat and puts her head in her hands.

"How'd your mission go?" Ren asks as he picks up his glass for Shisui to fill.

"It was fine. Completed without complications. How about you?" he asks, handing it back. Then he fills Mana's, too. "Here, Mana, water."

"Thank you," Mana mumbles.

"Same old, same old, routine as can be. It was damn hot, though."

As Ren and Shisui begin exchanging details about their missions, Mana starts to eat mechanically. Despite the fact that Shisui is a pretty decent cook, the only flavor she can taste is guilt. That's a shame… usually she loves stir-fried green beans with ginger.

"How about you, Mana?" Shisui asks. "What'd you get up to while we were gone?"

"Huh? Oh…" Mana looks up. "Um, not much. Just the same as always, chores and cooking and stuff…" She furrows her brow, trying to think of any interesting details she can report. "Oh, I got some tomatoes from the plants in the backyard. They were pretty good. We should be able to pick some more soon, so you can try them, too."

"I see," he says. "That'd be nice."

There's a short silence. Mana, coming back to her senses, blinks and abruptly perceives the deliberate nonchalance in his voice. Ren, too, is holding himself with careful casualness. Both of them, however, have their eyes firmly fixed on her face, and Mana becomes aware of what a sight she must be right now. Half-dressed, crazy-haired… 

"Um." Fighting back a flush, she begins casting about for anything to say. "Oh! I also went on a walk," she says, overbright. "But like ojisan said, it was really hot, so by the end I felt pretty nasty." That is definitely the understatement of the century, but it's not technically a lie so she can say it with a mostly straight face.

"I did see your hat in the hall," Ren remarks, "on the floor. I was a little surprised since you're usually so meticulous."

Mana pauses. Does that mean they’d also found the extremely gross clothes she'd left outside the bathroom? Oh, no. "S… sorry," she giggles nervously. "I was a bit of a mess when I got back. It was, um, really hot."

"So it was…" Ren agrees, and then turns back to his food. Shisui carefully glances away while he takes a drink. Then he looks at her again. There's another short silence.

Oh, forget it, Mana thinks. "I'm sorry, ojisan, Shisui," she blurts. 

"Eh?" Ren and Shisui, not having expected this, regard her with twin looks of surprise. "Why?"

"Because I made a mess, I slept the whole day, I didn't make dinner and I didn't help set the table, and…" Mana rambles off all at once. "And I took your shirt without asking! Sorry, Shisui."

Astonished, the men stare at her for a long moment. Then Ren puts a hand over his mouth and begins to chortle. Shisui bursts out laughing.

"I have a million shirts, Mana," he manages to get out between breaths. "You could keep that one and I probably wouldn't even notice."

"Only you would call a hat on the floor a mess." Ren shakes his head. 

Taken aback by the sudden change in atmosphere, Mana regards their mirth with a bewildered look. Shisui reaches over and ruffles her hair affectionately.

"Don't worry about dinner," he tells her. "I like to cook every now and then."

"But…"

"You really are just like your mother," Ren says with nostalgic fondness. He props his cheek up on his hand and smiles at her. "Sweet through and through."

The next morning Mana heads off to her appointment with Touma so distractedly that she doesn't realize there are two extra sets of sandals in the genkan.

"Where's she going?" Ren asks, surprised, as she wanders out the door without saying so much as a word of farewell. Evidently she's forgotten that their long absence had concluded last night. Shisui raises his eyebrows.

"I don't know. She didn't say she was going anywhere today," he answers, a little concerned. He pauses. "She's been pretty off since yesterday, hasn't she?"

That is an understatement. It had been a real surprise to come home and find her passed out on the couch at one in the afternoon, half-dressed and still slightly dripping from a bath. There had even been a little puddle on the floor.

"...Maybe you should go walk with her. It's a little suspicious."

Indeed it is. "I'll be right back," Shisui tells his father.

Mana is both a civilian and very short-strided, so it feels like barely half a step before he's caught up with her. "Hey, Mana," he says, tapping her on the shoulder. Mana jumps nearly a foot in the air. "Whoa, hey. It's just me."

"Shisui?" Mana stares before abruptly remembering that both he and his father are back in the village now. She pales a bit.

"You left without saying anything," Shisui says, and then takes note of how the color has left her face. "You good?"

"Um, yeah. Sorry, I think I just forgot you were back. I thought I was still alone."

"I figured. You mind if I walk with you for a bit?"

"No, of course not. Let's go." Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Mana steels herself and resumes the trek towards Touma's house. It doesn't take Shisui much longer to figure out their destination. 

"...Hey, Mana."

"Yeah?" She presses her fingers together.

"How long have you been going to see Touma-sensei?" 

"Since the bathroom incident," she confesses readily. He deserves at least that much honesty. "Once a week."

"You've been scheduling appointments during the times we're gone?" he deduces.

"Yeah."

There's a brief silence as Shisui puts his hands in his pockets. They walk a bit farther. Then he says, "You had an episode while we were away, didn't you?"

"Yeah. It wasn't too bad, though." Well, for certain values of "not too bad." Timing-wise it had been pretty terrible, but other than that it's been the mildest incident yet—not a speck of blood involved. Mana wisely keeps this commentary to herself, but Shisui senses her bullshit anyway.

"Did you go ask anyone for help?"

"No. I couldn't have gotten up if I had tried," Mana answers honestly, and indeed she had tried. "It would have been more dangerous to go anywhere, so I just…" She grimaces and specifically does not say the words slept it off. "...Um, laid down until I felt better."

Shisui pinches the bridge of his nose. "This happened while you were outside?" 

Mana considers her next reply carefully. She gets the sense that if he finds out she spent the night flat on her back amongst gravestones with this timing, she'll never be allowed to leave the house again.

"Don't lie," he warns when he sees the heavy thought on her face.

"I won't," Mana promises. "Yeah, I was outside. But I made it back all right, so… everything was okay in the end." 

They come to a stop right outside Touma’s door, but she doesn’t go to knock. They turn and stare at one another instead. Then Shisui reaches out and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Mana,” he says softly. “Mana, I’m really worried about you. Can’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Mana lifts her head. A long moment passes as she looks up into his eyes. Then, in all of a moment, she thinks, I can. Surely she can. Surely Shisui, at least, can know. Who in her life besides perhaps Ren has stood by her so unfailingly? He has sacrificed so much for her. He has sought her wellbeing at every turn. There’s no reason at all not to say it. Everyone else on the street is far away. If she speaks softly, no one else will hear—she can tell him now—

Her mouth opens. Breath rises in her throat. Then it lingers there: one second, two seconds, three. The air in her lungs grows stagnant. No sound leaves her lips.

Tears begin to spill over her cheeks.

“Mana?” Shisui asks, alarmed, as water begins to run down her face. Mana’s face cracks like the shell of a bird’s egg dropped down from the great heights of a tree, smashed into pieces by the pull of the earth. She lowers her head into her hands.

“You must be so sick of me,” she whispers, and all at once Shisui can see her standing as if shot through by arrows. “I… I must be the worst thing to ever happen to you. It would be better for you if I just…”

It’s Chieri all over again, she thinks, and then lets out a desolate sob.

Chapter Text

Mana returns to the cemetery. On her first visit back she brings gardening gloves and offerings, which she leaves on the three graves she'd slept by after pulling up weeds all about. She does the same atop the hill as well, weeding first around the graves of not only Shigeru and Chieri, but Shisui's mother Shizu, her grandparents, the aunt and uncle she’d never met, and her two cousins. This takes more time than the graves by the water pump, especially since the area here is far more grassy, and she labors in silence, mind heavy with thought. But something about the volume of the work and the steady exertion of it seems to settle her over time, and by the point she’s finished and sitting down with a bottle of barley tea beside her mother’s grave, the stormy swirl of emotions in her chest has settled into something a little less tempestuous.

“What do you think, Mom?” she asks the headstone beside her as she recaps her drink. Then she stares up into the canopy above, feeling oddly mellow in her melancholy. It’s sunny today, too… the komorebi is falling in spots upon her face. “Look at how healthy your Mana’s become.” 

She sits there quietly for a long while. Then, eventually, she rises again and brings out the offerings from her bag. Not knowing the preferences of the others, she lights incense for most of them, but for her parents she brings something more personal: warabimochi with extra syrup for her father, which Chieri had always brought as his favorite, and a riotous mix of red and yellow poppies for her mother. Then she sits awhile and stares at Chieri’s grave again. But even if she speaks to it, she thinks with sudden acuity, no matter what she says, it will never reply. She could talk all day about everything that has transpired since her mother’s passing, and about the things that weigh on her heart now, but it would do nothing and mean nothing at all. 

Mana rises. Putting her hat upon her head, she wanders away from her mother’s grave. Once she’s gained some distance from the headstones, she turns back and looks over the hilltop instead. The great oak is as grand as ever, rising like a tower above the bones of her kin, and Mana wonders how long it has taken for this tree to have reached such stature. How long ago had it first sprung up from the earth? Had it already been like this by the time the Uchiha had made their way here? Did Kagami pick the shade of this tree to rest in himself, or had someone chosen it for him after he’d already died?

After a while she comes forward to stand by his grave and wonders. How had such a young man managed to give rise to this entire hilltop? Dead at 25—and yet in that time he’d managed to win renown in the clan, serve directly under the Second Hokage, father two children, and adopt an orphaned waif. In her past life she would have been his elder by some years and she can’t imagine doing even half of all that. What sort of man had he been? Chieri and Ren had both been very young when he’d died, so they never could tell any real stories of him. His had been a time before photography, too, so she has no idea what he would have looked like—but abruptly she finds that she would like to imagine.

The next time she comes she brings a sketchbook and pastels. She sits up against the trunk of the tree, right beside his headstone, and wonders. She starts with thumbnail sketches, doodling stick figures, and plays with various poses in her mind. She recalls all the ninja she’s seen about the village: walking, jumping, standing on tree branches, throwing kunai, practicing forms… Sometimes Ren and Shisui spar in the morning. Maybe Uchiha Kagami used a sword, too, just like they do, so she starts there, sketching it in roughly. As for his appearance… both Shisui and Ren have dark, curly hair. She thinks also about old armor, the kind that lives in paintings and aged armories, and dresses this loosely invented figure in it. She fills in details according to her whim, arbitrarily makes a night scene, and highlights his face with a beam of moonlight, using dark blues and purples to make the shadows on his skin. And he’s got the Sharingan, too, of course. 

When she’s done she finds that she has a rather more cinematic piece than she’d planned, but she likes the feel of it. For a drawing made on a whim it has a surprisingly good composition, and despite herself she shows it off to her grandparents’ grave with a feeling of faintly childish pride. Maybe if Kagami had been alive he would have taped it up over his desk or some such, the way Chieri had always taped her crayon drawings to the bedroom walls…

Mana stills in that pose, kneeling in front of the headstone with arms extended.

When she returns home that evening she turns left in the living room, down the seldom-walked hall, and silently slides the closed door open. A feeling of immense nostalgia washes over her as the sight of bamboo-patterned washi, pulled across the closet door, meets her gaze. She looks up and sees the square-shaped ceiling lamp, which she had so often stared up at on sleepless nights, and finds that the black smudge is still in the same spot. A thick layer of dust has settled over everything, from the desk under the window to the koto in its box in the corner. It’s quiet.

The drawings have been severely sun-damaged, Mana observes as she goes up to the wall and kneels in seiza. Everything on this side of the room is sun-bleached, in fact—she turns her head and sees that the curtain over the window is hanging open, and likely has been for the past two years. She exhales and runs her hand over the yellowed weave of the tatami. If it’s been that long, the mats are probably long overdue to be flipped.

She sits there for a long moment, lost in remembrance. Her tree picture is here, followed by the drawing of a cat. There’s an interesting progression from objects to people in this timeline of art, Mana thinks, as the animals and plants give way to childish sketches of Chieri in various scenes—cooking, sitting, singing. There’s exactly one picture of Ren, who seems to be standing on the veranda, and even a crude family portrait of herself, her mother, her uncle, and Shisui. Mana is somewhat surprised to see it. She doesn’t actually remember drawing that. 

Mana lifts her sketchbook and tears out the drawing of Kagami. Casting about for tape, she finds a discolored roll on the desk and tears a piece off. Then she goes to the end of the line where the drawings cease and fixes the sketch there. Once she's done that, she steps back and tilts her head at the sight before her. Kagami doesn’t match the others at all, not in skill or color, but somehow it feels right to have him there. Satisfied, Mana turns to leave. She makes sure to draw the curtain shut before she goes.

“Ojisan, here, bento.” As far as lunches go, it’s spartan, consisting only of rice balls of a few different fillings. It would be troublesome to make him carry around a dirty bento box for the rest of the mission, so they’re only wrapped in plastic and tied up in a cloth—very much a ninja’s meal. Ren smiles.

“Thanks, Mana,” he says as he takes it and ruffles her hair. Mana smiles back.

“I have one for Shisui, too, but I can’t find him. Could you give it to him for me, please?” She holds up her other set of onigiri. Ren takes this as well.

“Sure.” He peers down at her. “Are you and Shisui quarreling again?” He doesn’t think he’s seen them exchange more than a few sentences in the entire past week. “Quarreling” might not be the right word, though—neither of them seem peevish enough for that. But at any rate it’s clear something is amiss; he wonders again just what exactly had happened on that morning when Mana had wandered away from the house on her own. 

“No,” Mana says, and then turns her gaze away. “No… quarreling would imply we were both at fault. He’s done nothing wrong.”

“Mm.” Ren unslings his pack from his shoulder and places the lunches inside. While he’s kneeling in the genkan, he says, "You don't seem very happy."

"Of course not. We were getting along fine before, but now it’s just—” She lifts her hands, searches for words, and then drops them again. Then she hangs her head in defeat. “Now whenever he spends time with me he only gets stressed out. At this rate he'll start to hate me.” And he’ll have a right to, she thinks distantly. Even if he could put aside the massive injustice of being saddled with her against his will to begin with, no person will love a thing that only brings him unhappiness.  

"Do you want to go back to how things were before?" Ren questions as he straightens again. Mana just stares at him defeatedly. She doesn’t know how she could even begin to formulate a reply to that. Ren cocks an eyebrow at her.

"...You don't think I like making Shisui unhappy, do you, ojisan?"

“Well, do you?”

“No,” Mana tells him tiredly. No, she doesn’t.

"I thought probably not, but it never hurts to ask." Ren shrugs as he leans against the wall. He considers her for a long, pensive moment. Then he says, "Mana, have you considered being more communicative about your health?”

It's a gentle suggestion, even-handed and unjudgmental. Mana's shoulders immediately seize up with tension anyway.

"From the way I see it," Ren continues quietly, "you both like each other. You don't fight about money or chores and neither of you seems overly jealous. The only real source of friction right now, as far as I can tell, is the fact that you won’t talk about what happened when you spoke to Touma.” He pauses. Then he says softly, “A lot of strain comes from your illness, Mana. Not that I blame you, of course… If anything, the more I reflect, the more I come to realize that my fault in this is greater than I’ve acknowledged. I put so much pressure on Shisui after Chieri died…” He goes silent for a long moment. Then he lets out a sigh. “And now because of it his sense of responsibility for you has grown into something that I can’t alter anymore. But regardless, you’re sick and he feels the weight of it. If you just brought him into the loop, I think it would go a long way in easing the tension.”

Mana bites her lip and stares at her feet. She inhales a deep breath through her nose. Then she takes another, and then another. “I know it’s my fault,” she whispers as her throat begins to constrict. “Ojisan, I—I wish I could say it. I’ve tried. But I… I can’t.”

“Is there a reason why?”

Mana clenches her fists tightly. Even just this has begun to make her tremble uncontrollably, and dreadfully familiar pressure is beginning to build in her chest. Ren, growing concerned, stands up straight and puts his hands on her shoulders. She starts to shake anyway. Tears gather in her eyes.

“Because I’m scared,” she chokes out, unable to look him in the eye. "Because I don't want anyone to know. I don't want anyone to know anything about it."

"Mana…"

"I know it’s stupid," she breathes, and then covers her face because she suddenly feels as if she can't bear to be seen. "I know I'm troubling you, both of you, I know even if I told you you probably wouldn't even care, I know it doesn’t matter, I know I should just get over it, but I—I—"

"Hey," Ren interrupts then, tugging her forward and enfolding her in his arms. "Mana."

"Y-Ye—yes?" she hiccups out, just barely holding on to her composure. She desperately measures her breaths, fighting back the onset of hyperventilation.

"It's okay. I understand now. Don't worry about it," he says. He puts a hand on the back of her hair and holds her head to his chest, just as he'd done when she'd been a child.

"But I—but I know—" she inhales hugely. "But nothing will be solved until I do, and he—you—you both deserve to know—"

"I don't mind," Ren says firmly. "Now that I've talked to you about it I don't mind. So don't worry about me."

"But still… but Shisui…"

"I can't speak for him, but I can say this," Ren replies. "Sometimes you make it worse when you push. I think where you are right now might be one of those places. Shisui's smart and he's a shinobi. If we tell him that, he'll understand."

Any reply Mana might have tried to make is lost to inarticulate weeping. Ren puts his chin atop her head and exhales a deep breath through his nose.

"I'll talk with Shisui about this. And I'll tell him what you said, too," he says after several beats have passed. "That you understand how he feels and you don't want to fight with him, but you can't tell him yet. Is that okay with you?"

"Okay," Mana answers hoarsely. She clings to him for a long beat. Then she says, "I know… I know you have a mission. I'm sorry."

"That's all right," Ren responds. "Everything will be all right, Mana."

He holds onto her until her breathing evens out. Then, a moment longer after that, they separate. "Will you be okay?" he asks as he brushes the hair from her face.

"Yes… yeah, yes." Mana scrubs her face and nods. Her heart is thundering and her head feels light, and the vice grip clenched about her core has hardly loosened at all—it feels as if she might break down all over again if so much as a leaf lands upon her back—but the warmth of her uncle’s palm upon her shoulder is a grounding weight. Sensation begins to return to her limbs, and gradually she finds she can feel the floorboards beneath her feet once more. 

"All right. That's good. Let's talk again when I get back, okay?" Ren puts his hand on her head one more time. "Take care, Mana."

"Okay. Be careful, ojisan."

Ren smiles as he opens the door. "I'm off," he says.

"See you later," Mana replies with a watery smile.

She doesn't. They never speak again.

Chapter Text

“I think you’re probably ready to begin tree walking.”

Mana regards this declaration with surprise. She’s seen tree-walking plenty of times before, of course, but never in her life had she imagined she would ever do it herself.

“Does that still fall under the umbrella of rudimentary chakra control?” she asks hesitantly. Somehow in her mind that seems like a very ninja sort of skill, and Touma had been adamant that he would not teach her the shinobi arts.

“It does, actually, and you might consider it as a sort of capstone for our time together. You've certainly been a quick study." Then again, Mana has never shown herself to be anything but exceedingly competent and clever. Is it any wonder the daughter of such a noble ninja lineage has proven herself capable in their craft? "Tree climbing entails not only controlling the direction of your chakra flow, but also the amount you conserve or expel when manipulating it. It requires a very active awareness of how chakra is moving in your body.”

“So after this I’ll graduate from chakra lessons?” Mana queries. Touma smiles a bit.

“You could say so, yes. At this point you’re already plenty adept in activating and deactivating the Sharingan. All you need now is more bodily awareness. Once that happens, hopefully we’ll be able to avoid any more unexpected fainting spells.”

Though the explanation of the technique is quite simple, Mana finds out soon enough that it is very hard to execute. She’s not nearly so foolish as to practice in the backyard, of course, so her cemetery visits rapidly increase in number, and the great oak becomes more than just a place of shade. Despite the difficulty, though, Mana finds it very exciting to think that she might one day be able to find herself in the boughs of such a towering giant. Unlike the tree she’d climbed in the back yard, there are no branches even remotely low enough for her to scramble up. 

The side effect of this new practice, though, is incredible physical and mental exhaustion. It’s undoubtedly the most physical exertion Mana has ever consistently performed in her life, far more so than climbing hills or pulling weeds. She rests early, rises late, and still finds herself nodding off during the day. Her appetite is exceptionally healthy, though.

“Ooof,” she groans one late afternoon, stretched out on the veranda like a cat. There’s not a single inch of her that doesn’t ache, and she feels all in all like a giant bruise. Her back mostly is a bruise, actually, all the way up to the shoulders, and she’s had to take care to wear high-collared shirts to conceal it for the past week. Not today, though; Shisui's gone until next month, and Ren is taking assignments in sequence, so he won't be back until another two days after that. 

Now that summer has finally cooled off and the trees are afire in shades of autumn red, the slightly-chilled weather has become perfect for sunbathing. Mana sprawls on her front and basks accordingly, content to lounge with the sun on her back. Not unexpectedly, she falls asleep before long. Normally this would not be an issue, but then the unexpected happens: a guest arrives.

“—na-san. Mana-san?”

Blinking awake, Mana slowly lifts her head. She is surprised to find the familiar figure of young Itachi standing in the yard, dressed in casual clothes and looking slightly awkward.

"Itachi?" Surprised, Mana sits up and reflexively rearranges herself into seiza. It's been a while since she's seen him, but Shisui talks enough about him that she feels a reflexive surge of affection upon seeing his face anyway. All annoying jokes aside, she knows he's a likable person; and anyway, it's not his fault that people compare them all the time. "Hello. How are you?"

"I'm well, thank you," he responds politely. A far cry from his friendly banter with Shisui, she thinks. But she's not the best friend in this equation, so she takes his courtesy for what it is and smiles at him.

"I'm sorry to intrude. I didn't mean to interrupt your afternoon," Itachi says after a short pause. Clearly he feels bad for waking her. "I rang the bell, but there was no answer, so…"

Oh, Mana thinks, and immediately perceives the truth of the situation. "Did Shisui ask you to check up on me while he's gone?" she queries. Not too unexpected, all things considered. This mission is set to be one of his longest absences to date.

"Ah… yes." Itachi shifts a bit. "Just while I'm still in the village. He wanted to make sure you were all right."

"I must have given you a scare, then," Mana says apologetically. "I’m sorry. I was sleeping."

"Not at all…" Itachi demurs. There's a beat of silence.

"Why don't you come up? I'll make tea," Mana invites and stands. "Don't refuse!" she interjects when he starts to shake his head. "I promise I'll give you snacks as payment for your company. We have dango," she adds, knowing for a fact that he has a sweet tooth. And sure enough, after she returns with tea and treats, he's sitting on the veranda. Smiling, Mana sets a plate beside him after serving him his drink.

Just as he’d been when they'd first met, Itachi is quiet and is not overly inclined to idle talk. They spend the first several minutes in silence, sipping tea and looking over the yard. Mana wonders about what sort of conversation would land with him. Since he's a ninja, training is always an option, she supposes. Or…

"How's Sasuke?" Mana inquires. "I haven't been over to watch him since summer ended, now that I think about it."

The change in demeanor is instant. The corners of Itachi's mouth lift up into a small smile, his eyes grow soft, and he starts speaking at once about his little sibling. Mana puts a hand on her cheek and listens fondly. Shisui always refers to Itachi as a cute kid brother, but he seems to fit the mantle of a kind elder brother quite well, too. Most of all, though, it's simply nice to see the glow of love on his face. 

"That's great," Mana giggles. "I bet by the time he enters the Academy the girls won't be able to get enough of him." Not that that means anything at this age—cooties are still very much a thing.

Itachi chuckles wholesomely in reply. They fall into another silence, though this one far more relaxed, and take a moment to enjoy the sunlight together. Mana shuts her eyes, content. As an introvert by nature she doesn't mind long stretches of solitude, but it's nice to have company even though the men are gone.

"Mana-san."

"Hm?" Mana opens her eyes and regards Itachi curiously. Itachi, for his part, looks her straight in the face.

"Are you healthy right now?" he questions. There's something oddly refreshing about the way he asks. No strange sideways dance of eyes, no heavy weight of worry—simply a question, meant to gather information. Whatever reply she makes will certainly be reported back to Shisui, but Mana doesn't think Itachi cares much to hide that fact. He's just doing what his friend asked.

"Yes, I am, thank you," Mana answers warmly. She's happy to be telling the wholehearted truth for once.

"What happened to your back?" 

"Hm? Oh." Mana puts a hand on her shoulder, which is still visibly black and blue. It's in that extra ugly phase of healing. "I fell on it."

"How?"

Well, Mana thinks, what's it called? Refuge in audacity? "I slipped while tree climbing," she answers baldly. 

Itachi takes this to mean exactly what she had intended him to. "Shisui did mention that you liked to climb trees," he muses before looking out towards the forest at the edge of the yard. Mana smiles and points at the one from her canopy drawing.

"This one here has a great view."

"I see."

A brief pause passes. Then Itachi, business complete, stands. Mana doesn't find it surprising he's not one to linger.

"Thank you for the tea," he says. "It was delicious."

"Will you come again?" Mana asks. If so, she should restock on dango. Itachi pauses.

"...I have a short mission starting tomorrow, but I should return by Friday."

Mana smiles. "I see. Well, if you have time, come keep me company again."

"I'm home," Shisui calls. Mana looks up from the stove top when he wanders into the kitchen, stretching his arms over his head.

"Welcome back," she greets, despite everything still pleased to see him again after such a long time. Shisui looks at her for a short moment. Then he grins an easy grin and he lowers his arms. Time, she can’t help but think, really does have a way of healing raw edges. There’s still a weight here, certainly, but somehow it’s become far less crushing in its severity.

"You're back rather late—hm?" Mana holds still when he suddenly appears behind her, as if having teleported, and pulls on her sweater. She blinks as her collar tugs gently against her throat. Shisui peers down her back.

"It's all healed up now," Mana informs with a wry smile, now knowing exactly what he had been doing. "Did you meet with Itachi before coming home?" 

"Yeah, among other things," Shisui answers. He releases her and goes to sit at the table instead. "He says you fell out of a tree."

"Well, I didn't fall out of it," Mana clarifies as she shuts off the fire. His timing is impeccable, she thinks as she reaches for two bowls. "That implies height. More so I fell off it."

"How did you manage that?" he snorts, and then accepts the stew she hands to him. "Mm, that smells good. Thanks."

She sets out cups, too, as well as a pitcher and some rice. Then she sits down across from him, gives thanks, and immediately scoops a heaping serving of it atop her bowl. She sets upon her meal with gusto.

"You're eating well tonight," Shisui notes with faint, though not unpleasant, surprise. Mana, who usually eats like a bird, has always been very skinny, but somehow in the time he's been gone she seems to have filled out a bit. She's still quite slender, but not so pale and lean. Maybe all that tree climbing has been doing her good after all.

"Believe it or not, this is actually the norm for me recently." Mana laughs softly.

"Huh. That's good." Shisui smiles a bit himself before digging in as well. 

"Did your mission go okay?" Mana asks between spoonfuls.

"Mm, well, for the most part," Shisui says. His gaze grows distant. Mana peers at his face curiously and Shisui wonders if this is something she needs to hear about. She hardly interacts with anyone outside the clan anyway, but…

"A few members on my team got into a spat," he says after a short pause. "It was a little unexpected how heated it got."

"What were they fighting about?" Mana wonders. She supposes it's not unexpected that there are ninja who don't get along with each other even in Konoha, but as far as she knows the Forces are generally harmonious. There's an emphasis on teamwork that even a civilian like her knows about.

"It seems like one of them has a relative that was recently in trouble with the police, and he ended up making some comments that my subcaptain took offense to." He pauses. "It was a little hard to interject because we were both Uchiha. He seemed to think I was speaking out of a bias. It wasn't that big of a deal in the end and it was all sorted out eventually, but I guess I was just surprised by the hostility." Or maybe it was the fact that things had so immediately morphed into an "us versus them" situation. Shisui, though an Uchiha, has never been a member of the Police Force, so he'd been surprised to be lumped in so summarily.

"Hm." Mana's brow creases with thought. 

Shisui sees distant recollection in her eyes and, sensing something interesting on the horizon, perks up. "What is it?"

"Oh," she says. "It was a while back, but I remember hearing that some people were talking badly about the Police Force’s response to the Kyuubi Attack. That was already a while ago, but I was just wondering if that's the common view these days."

"..." Shisui furrows his eyebrows, troubled. "How long ago?"

"It was a few months after the wedding, I think? So it's been about a half a year now, I guess."

The conversation eventually turns to other things, but this bit of it lingers in Shisui's mind, smelling faintly of trouble.

He immediately forgets, though, because trouble of their own shows up on the doorstep three days later. A heavy knock sounds on the door. Mana is eyeballs deep in a great cleaning effort for the first floor bedroom—and isn't that in itself an interesting development—so Shisui answers it. Two men in chuunin vests are standing on the doorstep, expressions weary. 

"Shisui?" Mana calls once she's managed to extract herself from laundry hampers and upturned tatami mats. She doffs her dust-covered apron and removes her mask before poking her head down the hall. "Is ojisan back?" They'd been waiting on him last night, but he hadn't arrived, so they'd figured his return had probably been delayed by some thing or another.

She pauses when she catches sight of the two unfamiliar men who look up at her when she speaks. Mana's hands and feet immediately come together as she straightens her back. Her heart skips a beat.

There's a long moment of silence. Shisui, who had been facing the door, slowly turns to look back at her, and Mana's breath dies in her throat.

Chapter Text

She spends what seems to be the entirety of the next two days switching off the Sharingan. It feels as though every other stray thought activates it, and she has to spend almost the whole wake with either her eyes closed or her face covered. By the time they've made it through to the funeral it feels as though her head is barely attached to her body. As a whirlwind of clan members come and go to offer condolences after the ceremony ends, she finds herself outright clinging to Shisui's arm to stay upright. No one seems to find it unusual or worrisome enough to comment about—and why would they, she thinks faintly, because Ren is dead—but Touma, who is among the mourners, takes one look at her face and pulls her aside.

"Mana-san." Touma casts about for a chair and has her sit. She does, heavy in her own skin, and braces her hands upon her knees. She locks her arms to keep her body upright, bows her head, and breathes.

"How are you holding up?" he asks quietly. He bends forward and puts a hand on her shoulder.

"I don't know how it's possible," Mana mumbles back, "that I've seen so many Sharingan active all day. None of them are struggling like this. Is something really wrong with me after all?"

"As ninja," Touma murmurs softly as he touches the eyelid of his own red eye, "our bodies are accustomed to channeling chakra. It's as much a physical activity as it is a mental one. It makes sense that there's a difference in stamina."

"I guess I've only managed to make it this far because of the lessons, then… If this had happened a year ago I probably would've been bedridden."

"You might benefit from a bit of rest right now regardless," he notes with concern. "Should I bring you back to the house?"

"No, because then Shisui…" She looks back and sees he is speaking quietly with a sudden group of visitors from the Police Force. She automatically makes a motion to stand, which Touma quickly quells by telling her to sit a bit longer. "I can't leave Shisui here alone."

"Mana-san," Touma cautions when he sees the pattern in her eyes. Mana groans and puts her hand over her face. 

"That's probably the other difference between you and the others here," he sighs as she deactivates it again and begins biting her lip. He can see how her skin has been torn by the stress of the past days; she'll probably start bleeding soon at that rate. "Their eyes are not exacting the same level of burden as yours are."

"Shisui's been fine," Mana mutters. And indeed, Touma thinks, everyone here today has now had the chance to see Shisui's Mangekyou Sharingan. Touma reflects on this for a moment. Despite their completely different lives, these two are struggling equally to hide their eyes—he doubts Shisui has been wearing the Mangekyou today on purpose. The "eye that reflects the heart" indeed.

"Shisui-kun's a jounin," Touma reminds gently. "One of the greatest jounin of our time. Not to mention he's likely trained extensively with his Mangekyou. He's bound to be coping better because of it."

"Do I need to train mine, too?" Mana sighs heavily at the thought, thinking of blood and glass. "Is that the only way to really finally get this damned thing under control?"

"...I don't know. I suspect the only way you could find out more would be to ask Shisui-kun directly."

That's very likely true. But fraught waters lie upon that course, so they discard the subject. Mana takes a breath and stands.

"I'm going back," she says, clearly exhausted but determined nonetheless. "I've been gone awhile already."

In that moment Touma perceives that the only thing capable of removing this girl from Shisui's side is an outright collapse. "Ask him for chakra," he advises softly. "Sooner rather than later, if you can help it. You won't last at this rate."

"In a bit," Mana murmurs, and then gently pulls away. She goes back to the crowd, weaving through the people, and takes up her place beside Shisui again. Touma lingers and watches from afar as she threads her black-sleeved arm through his. The two share a tired glance, unspeaking and brief, before turning their faces back to their guests. Touma runs a hand through his hair and lets out a long sigh.

Small mercies: neither has to cook. When they return home the kitchen table is filled from one end to the other with meals, left by relatives and neighbors and friends. They're too tired to speak a word to each other, so dinner is eaten in silence. Then, of one mind, they both begin trudging up the stairs straight to bed. Mana changes in a daze, nearly snaps herself in two by walking directly into her desk, and then abruptly remembers Touma telling her to ask Shisui for help. That had been—hours ago. 

She staggers over to her door, opens it, and goes into the hall. Shisui's room is only a door away, but it feels abruptly like a death march, and she has to stop halfway, lightheaded. As she stands plastered to the wall the decision not to put on a sweater before venturing out inspires great regret within her. 

Eventually she makes it to his door, which she knocks on feebly. She braces herself on the doorframe, panting and trembling with cold, and looks up when the door opens.

Mana is wrung right out, but the look she sees in Shisui's eyes has her repenting of her decisions at once. There's no way she can bother someone wearing that much anguish on his face with her ridiculous chakra problems. She'll go sleep it off. 

"Hey." Shisui's hand lands on her shoulder as she begins to turn away back towards her room. His voice has the telltale rasp of someone who has been interrupted right before an enormous cry, and Mana feels extremely terrible for it. "What are you doing?"

"I…" Mana bites her lip, tastes blood on her tongue, and then winces. "I… wanted to ask you something, but—but it's fine. I… sorry to bother you."

Shisui scrubs his other hand over his face. Then he spends a long moment staring at her. His eyes are still red—they have been all day—and Mana abruptly realizes he can see everything like that. She can't carry even a pretext of hiding chakra exhaustion as long as his Sharingan is active.

"Come here." Shisui sighs and seizes her arm. Not roughly—he's never been rough, not even when they had been children—but certainly forcefully enough that she has no choice but to go along. "Lie down a sec."

"I'm sorry," Mana mumbles as Shisui wearily begins making hand seals. His Mangekyou has been going on and off all day, too—he's bound to be tired and low on chakra himself.

"Why?" he wonders aloud to the ceiling, asking it as if it might have the answers to a great mystery of life, before he reaches out to place his hand on her stomach. "...I can't give you too much today. Sorry."

Mana looks away at the wall, too ashamed to even reply. Not only can this man not mourn in peace, she's making him split his already-diminished chakra with her. She really does only exist to be a burden on people, doesn’t she? Some days she asks this question more than others, but today it feels less like a query and more of a self-evident truth. 

It seems he really can't spare much, because although her grinding headache abates, Mana still feels absolutely shattered when he finishes—and now that she's lying flat she doubts she'll be able to rise again until morning. But she can't just stay here, she thinks as she gathers all the will she possibly can. She tries to sit up.

"Just sleep here tonight," Shisui tells her tiredly, watching this desperate effort with faint concern. "You're going to hurt yourself." And while he could possibly do another transfusion, that would be putting him farther into his reserves than he ever prefers if he can help it.

"I'm sorry," Mana says again, feeling tears gather in her eyes, and—she slaps her palm over her face once more. These fucking eyes, she thinks as she cuts it off yet again. 

Shisui, still watching with his Sharingan, sees the brief flare of this activation and, despite everything, finds himself immediately going on alert. "No, you'd better stay," he says. He gets up to grab a second pillow from the closet. Then he returns and falls onto his side beside her, watching her carefully. Thoughts of the two gates in the brain are already swirling in his mind. "I'd feel better if you did. Just sleep here, please."

He drops the pillow on her chest. Left with no choice, Mana accepts it miserably, buries her face in it, and curls up on her side. Struck with a sinister sense of deja vu, Shisui stares at her back for only a second longer before he reaches out and pulls her onto her other side.

"What…?"

"Sorry. Just… face this way."

Mana complies, but after only a second of eye contact she finds herself hiding behind her pillow like it's a shield, too guilty to look him in the face. Heedless, Shisui spends a few more minutes watching her hawkishly. But her chakra flow stays steady, and eventually he sighs and shuts his Sharingan off. It's a needless use when he's already drained, but he flicks a chakra string at the light switch anyway, too spent to rise.

"Don't suffocate like that," he murmurs as the room goes dark. Then he pulls the covers up, puts his head down, and shuts his eyes, too exhausted to do much of anything else.

Several minutes pass in silence. Mana eventually slackens her grip on the pillow; as she lifts her eyes from the fabric, she looks up and sees by the light of the moon that Shisui is dead asleep. She spends a moment watching his face regretfully, knowing that she's prevented him from grieving properly in private, before she lowers her gaze again and squeezes her eyes shut.

The night seems to pass in the blink of an eye. Before she rests even a fraction of what she needs sunlight is falling on her face; they'd forgotten to shut the curtain the night before. Displeased and very, very groggy, she furrows her brows and exhales through her nose. Then she opens her eyes.

Shisui, she finds, is staring up at the ceiling with a hand on his forehead and a look of profound unhappiness, possibly having been woken by the sun as well. After a moment's observation, though, she thinks it's also possible that he's been doing that for a while. Mana wonders how long he's been awake.

His eyes flicker in her direction when she shifts, but they drift back upwards a moment later. Mana puts a hand on her chest and lets out a deep sigh. Some time passes like that. Neither of them speaks. 

I want to go back to bed, Mana thinks to herself.

"You can," Shisui murmurs, voice still rough with sleep, and it takes Mana a moment to realize she's actually said that out loud. He lowers his hand to cover his eyes. "I think I might, too."

Well, it's not as if there's anywhere to be… or anything to do. Even shinobi get bereavement leave for the death of a parent, after all. 

Mana thinks vaguely she should at least go back to her room and stay there, but before she actually manages to finish that thought she falls asleep again right there, just like that. When she wakes next the curtains have been shut, but Shisui is still there beside her. In fact, he's on his side now, too, facing her with eyes screwed shut and face tracked with tears. He's gripping the futon hard enough that his knuckles have turned white, and his breathing is very deep and very rigid—very quiet, so as to avoid alerting anyone that anything is at all wrong. 

Mana's heart is immediately pierced as if by a sword. Recollection instantly floods her mind. Countless nights, nights as if unending, of swallowing sobs. Sucking in breaths until her chest was bursting with them, and holding even that back, too, until the muscles of her jaw ached with clenched tension… How many hours and hours had she spent like that after Chieri had died? She has never forgotten what it is to cry silently like this, not once, and to see the devastation of that suffering visited upon Shisui’s face fills her with heartbreak.

Frozen, she lies there and wonders what to do. Should she close her eyes again and wake up more obviously? Should she give him a chance to turn around? To be caught crying like this is one of the greatest of fears. Mana knows it deep in her heart. If it were her, she would absolutely loathe to be caught like this. And yet—

Shisui inhales sharply, instantly aware of her wakefulness, when Mana silently shoves her pillow aside. She reaches out anyway and pushes herself under his elbow. Then she throws her own arm over his side and presses her forehead against his sternum, absolutely incapable of articulating what she wants to say. She squeezes with all her might instead, hoping that this will convey her intention. 

Shisui goes stiff. She can feel him open his mouth to speak, and then shut it, and then open it again. There's a long silence. Then a shuddering sigh escapes his lips. He lowers his chin to rest atop her head. They stay like that for a long time, unspeaking, until Mana shuts her eyes and drifts off to sleep again.

Chapter Text

"Oh, Itachi." Shisui looks up with mild surprise when the teen, still dressed in his armor, appears by the back porch. Shisui turns to sit sideways in his chair and motions him up. Itachi removes his sandals and climbs onto the veranda. "You're back from your mission?"

"Yes, I returned earlier this morning." A pause. Itachi's brow furrows. "I only just heard the news. I'm sorry."

"Thanks," Shisui sighs. He turns and pours himself more tea. "You want any?" he asks, motioning.

"No, I have a debriefing soon. I can't."

"You came here that tight on time?" Shisui queries with raised brows. "You could've waited. I'm not going anywhere."

"I wanted to check on you," Itachi answers, and had he been any more expressive Shisui might have called his tone defiant. A smile stretches across his lips despite himself. 

"Thanks, Itachi," Shisui says and then lets out a small chuckle. Itachi responds to this by making a face that seems a cross between irked he's being laughed at and relieved that Shisui's laughing at all. Shisui smiles again.

"Are you all right?" Itachi queries, never one to mince words. 

"I'm fine. We've got enough to eat for the rest of the month, probably," Shisui snorts and eyes the refrigerator, though not ungratefully. "Your mom gave us some food, too."

"...That's good." Shisui's use of the plural first person pronoun abruptly reminds him that another person lives in this house. "What about Mana-san?"

"Asleep upstairs. Sick again," Shisui informs as he sips his tea. "Not surprising. Her health usually deteriorates after big events like these. She got sick after our wedding, too," he adds.

Itachi finds it strange sometimes to remember that Shisui is technically a married man. He'd gone to the wedding, of course, but since he'd been a young boy Mana's existence has never been much more than a background phenomenon—less like a wife and more a sort of sickly satellite person who exists in proximity to his friend, sometimes relevant but not very notable unless Shisui has something to say about her. She's pretty and pleasant enough, he thinks as he turns to look down at the spot on the veranda where they'd eaten dango together. And Sasuke likes her, too—she's clearly very kind-hearted. But at the end of the day she mostly just exists as a babysitter in his mind. It’s been that way since they were children, and it still seems that way now to him, too. Nothing's changed at all since then.

Or maybe something has? Itachi blinks when he catches sight of the look in Shisui's eye. Dark and heavy with grief, but also slightly warm, and not in the sort of brotherly affectionate way it usually is when he talks about her. It's a strangely tender look, indescribably soft, and—Itachi blinks again.

"What?" Shisui asks as his friend continues to stare at him. He touches his cheek. "Is there something on my face?"

Yes, Itachi thinks, feelings. "No," Itachi says, "don't worry about it."

"If you're tired you should rest. After your debriefing, anyway."

"You're one to talk. It can't be easy caring for a sick person at a time like this." Itachi tilts his head. "If you need help, I'm sure Mother wouldn't mind stopping by. I can let her know if you want."

"Nah, it's fine." Shisui waves a hand. "Mana mostly just sleeps when she's not well. Taking care of her's not much more than making sure she eats and drinks water now and then."

"Well, if you say so." There's another pause. Itachi considers the person before him carefully. He looks tired in the way that all the griefworn inevitably are, ungroomed with dark bags under his eyes, and as he sits there sedately drinking his tea Itachi finds him a far sight from his usual easygoing self. None of this is unexpected, but he asks anyway, "Do you need anything? You don't have to deal with this alone."

Shisui pauses. Then he sets down his cup, stands, and comes forward to clap a hand on his friend's shoulder warmly. "Itachi, you're a great guy," he says. "I'm really grateful to have a friend like you. You know that, right?"

Itachi shifts. If he'd been anyone else, he might've blushed. Instead he just clears his throat… and smiles, just a bit. Shisui laughs.

"I'm a lucky person," he says after a moment, crossing his arms and letting out a long breath. "Everyone loses their parents eventually, but not everyone can say they've got people around to help when it happens." He's silent a beat. "Yeah, it's good not to be alone. I'm glad to have you guys." He lays a palm on his shirt absentmindedly.

"'You guys'?" Itachi questions. Shisui pauses. Then he rubs his nose with a small smile.

"Don't worry about it."

Barring the season after her mother had died, it's one of the most protracted cases of chakra exhaustion Mana's ever dealt with. This is because, she soon discovers, dreams can actually activate the Sharingan. It's so horrible that she doesn't want to believe it at first, and she actually goes so far as to ask Shisui, sitting cross-legged beside her, if it's true.

"Oh, did I show you my Mangekyou by accident?" Shisui asks, conveniently misunderstanding the impetus of this question. He touches his eyelid. "Yeah, it happens, unfortunately. That's why I've been having trouble recovering chakra the past couple of days… I keep waking up thinking of Dad."

You and I both, Mana thinks with terrible dismay. No wonder she's not getting better and "just stay here tonight" has turned into an extended three-day sleepover in Shisui's bedroom. Luckily Shisui doesn't seem to mind this much—and with this latest confession Mana begins to suspect that he's been having bad dreams and likes having her here for comfort—which is fine, she supposes, except the problem is now she's gone two nights in a row without showering and she doesn't know if she'll be able to take it if she has to ask for assistance with taking a bath. Oh, she doesn't doubt for a second he would help her if she requested it—and it would hardly be the first time someone’s had to assist her—but that is the great peril, isn't it: it could actually happen. 

"Though with that said, I think I do have enough to share with you today," he adds, "so hopefully you'll be able to get up and move around a bit."

Mana wonders if he can read minds. Either way, she shoots great beams of gratitude at him with her eyes regardless, which makes him laugh a little.

"Even at a time like this you can't catch a break, huh, Mana?" he murmurs after a moment. He reaches over to ruffle her hair with a troubled look on his face. "I don't know how you cope. If it were me, I'd hate having to rely so much on others."

"Well…" Mana isn't sure how to respond to that. On the one hand, she's well beyond the point of getting angry about it anymore. On the other… she turns her head to the side before she can linger overlong in those thoughts. It's the unending paradox of being Mana, she thinks. The more aid people pour into her, the more she hates it and wants it to stop—but as they give and give, the less and less she can do about it. She's fantasized about removing herself in this life more than she ever had in her past one, she thinks with a sigh, but she's never come half as close to actually doing it here as she had when she'd lived on Earth. On Earth she'd been by herself and no one had been in any sort of position to prevent her. But here…

"Mana?" Shisui questions this extended silence. The dark cloud he'd seen gathering over her face abruptly clears at the sound of his voice, and her distant gaze refocuses on his face. Her eyebrows slant downward, quite sorrowed, but in contrast the corners of her lips lift.

"At least I'm not alone," she says in this bittersweet way, though perhaps more to herself than to him. Though she'd loved it and the people in it, by the end the last life had been hard in its own ways, too.

Regardless of who these words are really aimed at, however, Shisui's smile takes on a bit of a different quality. "That's true," he murmurs quietly. He reaches out again and places a hand on her forehead. "You're not alone."

Eventually Shisui returns to work. Normally Mana wouldn't mind this because it gives her flexibility to go about as she pleases, but she's still recovering by the time he has to leave, resulting in an arrangement of endless clansfolk coming through to supervise her. Ren's death is still recent enough that there's a whole contingent of volunteers willing to come help out, which is very kind but also socially stressful for a girl whose usual human interaction has been limited to her two—one—often-absent family member, her art teacher, Mikoto, and occasionally Izumi. Barring interactions with shopkeepers, Mana thinks she might actually spend more time with gravestones than she does other people, which is… actually kind of sad, now that she thinks about it. Is it an effect of being both sickly and homeschooled? Maybe she should make an effort to socialize more.

The silver lining in this, though, is that Touma appears near the tail end of this month-long conga line of visitors. It's an excellent chance to consult him about her newly-discovered problem.

"...and I always thought there wouldn't be any actual danger so long as I was in a position to sleep for a while, because I'd assumed I'd be safe from any further chakra consumption as long as I was unconscious."

"It is true… sometimes I do wake up with the Sharingan on." Touma considers this carefully. "I never realized how troublesome and dangerous it would be for a civilian Uchiha to awaken the Sharingan, but as your situation evolves it becomes clearer and clearer to me that this is the case."

"If it were the Sharingan alone I honestly think we could have managed," she sighs, wringing her hands. "It's the Mangekyou that's the real problem. It's just so chakra-hungry. I don't know what to do."

"I wish I had the wisdom to advise you on this," Touma sighs. "I know you don't want to tell him, but you don't suppose Shisui-kun would know a way…?"

"Even if I don't tell him I already know that Shisui's been waking up with the Mangekyou, too, just like me," Mana says regretfully. "In fact, I don't think he's actually managed to make it back to full chakra capacity once since ojisan passed. I hope he's been okay while working," she adds with a sigh.

"Shisui-kun is an extremely capable ninja," Touma reminds, "and I suspect he knows his own limits perfectly well. Besides, plenty of shinobi spend their entire lives getting by with only a fraction of the amount of chakra he has. It should be more than enough to complete a routine mission."

"I guess there's no reason for him to be struggling as much as I am," Mana says gloomily. Then she sighs and turns her gaze towards the ceiling. "More chakra… it might be the only way."

"It won't be possible for you to obtain the same sort of reserves as someone who's been training since childhood," Touma reminds, and then purses his lips at her. "And I haven't changed my stance on teaching you ninja arts, either, Mana-san. That's something you need a proper instructor for."

Mana is silent. Then she puts her hand under her chin, gaze thoughtful. Even if Touma won't teach her, the library…

"Mana-san, I really don't like that look." Touma senses danger and interjects. "And I will remind you of what I said when I first began to teach you basic control: people can die studying jutsu unsupervised. Especially the novices."

"...Right, of course." Mana smooths her expression over. Then she gazes up at the ceiling again and creases her brow. "Still, we have to find a way. If I'm careful I can probably minimize the amount of danger I put myself in, but… at this rate I'm going to die in my sleep someday. Isn’t there something we can—" Mana blinks when she looks back down and finds Touma making frantic abortive gestures at her. She pauses, puzzled.

Then the sound of footsteps rings out in the hall, loud and deliberate. Touma winces and looks away; Mana feels the blood drain from her face. Slowly, she turns her head. Shisui is standing in the doorway, pack in hand and face carefully neutral.

Chapter Text

"S… Shisui." Mana puts a hand over her mouth in horror. She'd said "die" just now, hadn't she? Specifically "die in my sleep."

You might not have woken up. You could have died in your sleep.

"I'm home," Shisui says simply. "Hello, Touma-sensei."

"...Hello, Shisui-kun. Welcome back."

"You're… you're home early," Mana greets weakly, darting a glance at Touma. Touma shakes his head and holds up his hands to ward off responsibility. Well, she thinks morosely, he had tried to warn her.

"We completed our objective ahead of schedule," Shisui explains. "And when the others heard that Dad's 49th was coming up they decided we could head back early for my sake."

Are they approaching 49 days already? That means they're due to go visit Ren's grave soon. Mana cringes. She should have anticipated something like this. 

"I'm really tired, so I'm actually just going to head up early," Shisui continues. "Sorry to interrupt you. Thank you for coming, Touma-sensei," he adds.  Then he turns and heads straight for the stairs. 

"Oh no," Mana moans and puts her hands on her head once he's gone. "Oh, he's going to misunderstand that in the worst possible way. Oh, no."

"...There's not actually much to misunderstand, though. It's true. If no one's around to give you a transfusion you really could die in your sleep by triggering the Mangekyou too many nights in a row." 

"Don't say that," Mana says, and then puts her hands over her face. "Oh my gosh."

"Mana-san…" Touma pauses for a long, doubtful moment, wondering if it's his place to speak. Eventually he decides against it and stands instead. "Since Shisui-kun's back now, I'd better head home."

"Right. Right, Sensei, thanks for coming," Mana mumbles, distracted. The look of pure stress on her face makes Touma feel a stab of pity. He puts a hand on her shoulder. 

"I'll keep thinking of options we can try," he murmurs. "Take care, Mana-san."

Mana walks in circles in the living room for several minutes before cowardly deciding to hide herself in her room for the rest of the evening. Her sense of guilt, however, builds intensely as she changes her clothes, and by the time she's made it to the bathroom and is brushing her teeth she's already begun to crack. She returns her toothbrush to the cup by the sink. Then she stares at it for a long moment. That cup used to be glass before it broke. Shisui had replaced it with a plastic one after she'd gotten hurt.

"Ugh!" Mana throws up her arms. Then she opens the bathroom door and walks down the hall. Shisui's door is ajar and spilling light into the hall. Hesitant, she pauses a moment before creeping forward to peer through the opening. He's sitting sideways at his desk, still slightly damp from a shower, with a faraway stare. He is also, unfortunately, facing the door directly.

"Mana." He blinks when her face appears in the gap. 

"Shisui." Called out, Mana immediately comes forward. She wrings her hands. "I'm sorry."

"What?" His absent look fades as he focuses on her face. "Why?"

"You just got back from a mission," she mumbles. "You've been away for weeks… you didn't need to hear any of that. I'm sorry. I should've been more careful."

There's a moment of silence. Shisui stares at her blankly. Then he sits back against his desk and covers his mouth with his palm. "Are you being serious, Mana?"

"What?" she asks anxiously.

"Are you… actually apologizing for—not hiding things from me better?" he questions incredulously.

"...Well, no—but I mean—" Mana flushes. "I mean…"

Shisui is silent for a long moment. Then he lets out a laughing sigh and reaches out to put a hand atop her head. 

"You know, the last thing Dad said to me was about you," he tells her. Mana is immediately robbed of breath. "He said to try not to be too upset with you for not talking about your health."

"He… he did?"

"Yeah. And that you didn't want to fight with me," Shisui says, gaze going distant, "and that you were worried I would start hating you because all you did was make me stressed."

That… is true. She had said that. She stares at him, wide-eyed, and holds her breath. Shisui sees her look of apprehension and smiles at her with a creased brow. 

"Don't worry," he reassures her. "I don't hate you at all. I… don't want to fight with you either, Mana. How can we fight?" His smile turns slightly bitter. "We're all we've got left. We can't fight."

It's a statement as sobering as it is true. Both Chieri and Ren are gone now. They're the only family the other has. Mana finds herself blinking repeatedly at his words, holding back tears, and doesn't quite know what to say. It doesn't matter, though, because Shisui chooses that moment to stand. 

"We could talk more, but I'm pretty beat," he admits after a moment. "I've been on the road all day. I'd honestly rather go to bed right now… is that okay?"

"I… yes, yeah, of course." Mana swallows and wipes her eyes with her sleeve. 

"You staying here tonight?" he queries as he heads over to the closet to pull out the futon. It's a casual question, but she can hear the note of invitation—or possibly even request—in his voice, and she wonders with worry if he's still not sleeping well. He's been gone for a whole month. Has he been sleeping badly this entire time? 

"Yeah," she immediately agrees, "I'll stay here."

"Okay, great."

In short order the futon is spread, the lights are out, and Mana's got her arms around the extra pillow. 

"Oof," Shisui grumbles when his back hits the floor. "Man, my shoulders are killing me." 

"Do you want a massage?" Mana offers as she curls up on her side, thinking of how she used to give her mother shoulder rubs after long shopping trips, and then pauses. Would it even make a difference if she gave him one, though? Actually, now that she thinks about it, it might be more likely that she'd break her fingers in the attempt…

Shisui, perhaps following a similar train of thought, lets out a little laugh. "Maybe tomorrow. I'm exhausted." He smiles a bit before rolling over to face her. "You know, you always sleep like that."

"Huh?" Mana gives him a questioning look.

"Curled up in a ball. I always wondered why. You're small enough that you could sprawl and there'd be plenty of space leftover, even with me here."

"Oh…" Mana takes stock of her limbs and finds that that's true. "You're right. I don't know… I guess this is just more comfortable." Or maybe she doesn't feel like she should be intruding that much on his space regardless if there's leftover room or not.

"Hmm. Really?"

"It's comfortable for me," Mana allows. Someone tall like Shisui would probably find it cramped.

"Well, if you say so."

Several moments pass in quiet darkness, and the silence is extended enough that Shisui thinks that Mana has already fallen asleep. But then she says in a quiet whisper, “Shisui?”

“...Yeah?”

“Thank you. For… for being patient with me. I—I don’t take it for granted. I’m grateful.”

Shisui inhales once and then lets out a long breath. Then he answers in a murmur, “Yeah, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“And, um—”

“What is it?”

“I just… I wanted to let you know that things are okay,” she mumbles in a rush. “With me, I mean. Touma-sensei and I have been working on it and it’s been going really well. We’ve made loads of progress since the summer. So—so, um, don’t worry, okay?”

Shisui is silent; a long pause follows. He thinks he'll just let it go. But even as he does the words tumble out before he can stop them: “If that’s the case, why would you die in your sleep?”

The quiet accusation of it is clear even in his ears, and he winces. So much for being patient, he thinks, and then wishes he could take it back. Hadn’t he just said they couldn’t afford to fight? Frustrated, he lets out a regretful sigh.

But then slender fingers reach out in the darkness and take hold of the fabric of his sleeve. “I won’t,” Mana whispers, and her voice suddenly sounds so much like steel that he has a sudden vision of her kneeling behind him in the bathroom. Hands covered in blood, face unflinching… He can still see her eyes: clear and unclouded, she’d stared straight into one of the most dreadful injuries he’s ever suffered in his life and sewed it shut, one steady stitch at a time. “No… I won’t die. Not like this.”

The path to the cemetery is a familiar one at this point, but the difference now is that she has a companion. Shisui, of course, probably could go back and forth to the clan burial grounds four or five times in the time it takes for her to walk there, but he seems content to go slowly. That's fair, Mana thinks. She hadn't been wild to go back at first either. In fact she hadn't even attended Chieri's 49th; she'd been sick, so Ren had done it without her.

"You know, I thought this during the funeral, too," Shisui says after they've paid their respects, "but it's really well-kept up here. Is there a caretaker or someone who came by to clean the graves?" If so, they'll have to prepare some sort of thank-you gift.

"Ah, no," Mana says, "that was me."

"You?" Shisui asks idly. Then he pauses. Then he blinks and gives her a startled look.

"Yeah. I come here pretty often," Mana says, and then begins to rub her neck, embarrassed. "It was pretty messy at first, but maintaining it hasn't been that bad."

Shisui, befuddled, looks from her to the graves and then back. "You did all that on your own?"

"Yeah. It was good exercise." 

And Shisui has no idea what to think of that, since that is markedly not something he thinks a dying person would be capable of. Though that in turn begs a question…

"When did you start? And why?" he asks, greatly intrigued. Mana's always been a bit strange, but of all places why hang out in a graveyard?

"Over the summer," Mana answers, "I took a walk and ended up here mostly on accident. As for why…" She raises her face towards the great oak and points up at its towering canopy. "I like the nature here. It's also probably one of the best stargazing hills in Konoha." Recently, thanks to her tree climbing practice, she's even been able to watch the heavens from the branches. She tilts her head with a smile. She should do a painting here at some point. Watercolors would be perfect.

"You were out here that late?" Shisui asks. Mana looks at him sidelong. Unlike the last time they had skirted close to this subject he doesn't seem upset—mostly just puzzled. Probably he’s wondering when she'd had the time to do that. She never stays out late when others are home, after all.

"Yeah," she agrees after a moment. To say anything else would be damning, she figures, so she doesn't. But Shisui isn't a jounin for nothing, and his critical thinking skills are acute. She watches in real time as he casts his focus back through his mental timeline, reviewing the summer, and recalls—

"Don't tell me—when you got sick while we were gone…" He looks at her amazed. "You slept here overnight?" 

Ah, there it is. Mana scratches her head. "Just the once," she confesses, and then laughs a bit despite herself just at the memory of it. "The bugs were seriously awful, but… I don't know, other than that it wasn't that bad. Honestly, I'd do it again." Moments of wonder and awe like those are rare and spread across a lifetime. She knows to take them where they come.

"You can't camp in a graveyard," Shisui objects, incredulous, though when Mana raises an eyebrow at him he finds himself holding back a laugh of his own. It's one of her thousand-words-in-a-look faces: I regret to inform you, but I already have. "Oh, man. Only you, Mana."

"I was courteous," she says crossly. "I'm still lighting incense once a month for the graves I slept by. You can go check if you don't believe me."

"I believe you," Shisui assures her. "I'm more just in awe. Anyone else would find that seriously inauspicious, you know."

"Do you believe in that sort of thing?" Mana questions curiously. She wouldn't have thought so, but people have surprised her before.

"No, not particularly," he admits. "I mean… it's not like anything's haunting you, right?"

"No ghosts yet," she confirms with a small laugh. He snorts and smiles. 

"I guess I shouldn't be that surprised," Shisui says after a short moment of silence. "As much that goes on in my life you don't know about, after all, the same is true in reverse."

"I think it's like that with all people," Mana replies thoughtfully. "And even if we saw each other every day we'd still have our inner lives no one else knows about anyway. Some people go their whole lives never showing their true selves to others, after all.”

“...You do say some profound stuff sometimes, Mana.” He wonders how someone with such a sheltered upbringing can display such a worldly bearing. If she’d been a shinobi he wouldn’t have batted an eye, but as it is… Unless she’s speaking from her own experience? Heaven knows she’s secretive enough. “Is it like that for you?”

“For me? Hm…” Mana considers this. Well, it is a very reasonable question. A most reasonable question, really, all things considered. “You're half-right, I suppose?"

"Half?"

“Yeah, I’d say so. Obviously there are things about myself that I’d be happy to forget completely,” she says distantly, “and even putting that aside, I’m not one hundred percent authentic with everyone all the time anyway. But I don't feel overly artificial or anything like that." She sighs a bit and raises her eyes towards the canopy again, looking at the light. "Is that believable? It probably isn't. You must think I'm full of bullshit.”

Shisui reflects. He thinks of Mana's quiet voice, just barely audible down the hall, speaking quietly with Touma about death. He thinks of the horrified look on her face when she'd realized he was there. He thinks of averted eyes, locked bathrooms, blatantly false claims of "I'm fine"—and of standing with his father in the hallway beside a shut door, silent and anxious. Just remembering makes his heart ache.

But then he also thinks of happy waves and lovely smiles. He remembers greetings of "welcome home," paid with pleased eyes. He recalls sitting beside her in bed—At least I'm not alone—and of that unspeaking embrace the morning after the funeral, full of silent understanding. 

I won’t die, he hears her voice whisper. Not like this.

A long moment passes. Then Shisui is seized by a sudden impulse to reach out and put his palm against hers. Mana's gaze is distant, but her reflex to hold hands has been well-honed by time babysitting Sasuke, so her fingers close around his automatically. There's a beat. Then she blinks and looks at him inquisitively. She doesn't let go, though.

"I believe you," he murmurs.

The walk back home is pensive and quiet, but there's a surprising lack of tension. Shisui is mindful to slow his pace and shorten his stride to match Mana's, and he contemplates how easy it would be to leave her behind. He doesn't, though. He can't; their fingers are still linked. They walk the whole way home like that, unspeaking hand-in-hand.

Chapter Text

She’s peeling potatoes at the kitchen table, resolutely trying not to cry at the memory of Chieri helping her fix Ren's stitches, when time stops.

“…What?” She’s astonished enough by the sight of a bottle of vinegar, hanging tipped mid-air past the edge of the table, that she speaks aloud. She’d known the instant she’d smacked into it with her elbow that there would be a shattered mess of glass all over the floor, but there isn’t. She stares at it for several seconds. Then, hesitantly, she reaches out. It fits smoothly in her grip; she slowly places it back onto the table. 

The air is utterly silent. There’s not a noise to be heard: no sound of wind nor birdsong, nor the hum of the oven, nor the tick of the timer. Bewildered, she turns to look over her shoulder and sees a sky painted red outside the window. At that moment warm, sticky tears begin to slide down her cheeks; then a dull ache begins to throb in her forehead, right behind her eyes.

Oh, good heavens, Mana thinks. My Mangekyou can stop time.

When Shisui comes downstairs and finds Mana sitting slumped on the floor against cabinets, holding her head with one hand and a bloody paper towel with the other, he pauses with alarm. Then in a movement so flawlessly fast and smooth as to be its own shunshin, he comes forward to kneel at her side. “Mana,” he says urgently as he takes hold of her shoulder. He activates the Sharingan; she lifts her head. 

“Shisui,” Mana says with surprise. Despite her position on the ground she seems oddly composed, and Shisui finds his brow furrowing as he studies her chakra flow intently. 

“Are you having another episode…?” The light filling her pathway system is faint but strangely steady—no spasms to be seen. He peers intently at her forehead, at those two gates always flaring behind her brow, but there’s nothing abnormal at all.

“I think—uh, I think it’s passed,” Mana says after a short pause. “Sorry, I was just sitting for a moment to get my bearings. It’s only been a minute or so. I was going to call you if I needed help.”

“Do you need chakra? Wait, hang on—” He grabs onto her forearms when she stands, but beyond a slight wobble she rises without issue. “Ah? Er, are you okay?”

“Um, yes, I think so,” Mana says distractedly. Her eyes flicker to the table, where they glance over the bowl of half-peeled potatoes before coming to a lingering stop on the bottle of vinegar. 

“Don’t worry about dinner,” Shisui, misunderstanding the furrowing of her brow, immediately instructs. “Don’t cook. Sit down.”

“Ah, sure, but—” Mana allows herself to be steered out towards the living room and pushed down onto the couch. “But I’ve already got something in the oven—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Shisui says firmly. “Stay here.”

“Ah, Shisui—”

"I've got it, Mana. Just lie down for now."

Bemused, Mana draws up her legs and lies down on her back. Shisui returns and hands her a leftover rice ball from the fridge, which she obediently begins to eat at his prompting. Then she turns her eyes up towards the ceiling, face thoughtful.

It takes Shisui some time to notice, but eventually he does. At first he hadn’t taken it to mean anything—Mana dozing at the kitchen table, or lying on the couch, or curling up in her bed early in the evening before nightfall—because even since the time he’d been a little boy the sight of her napping around the house has never been unusual. But when he breaks arm on a mission and finds himself furloughed for a month, he realizes that something more is going on.

After frustratedly failing several one-handed attempts to open a jar, Shisui eventually gives up trying to hold it between his knees, stands, and takes it with him up the stairs. “Mana,” he calls as he approaches her door, “can you help me with something?” He can't knock, but luckily the door handles in their house are levers rather than knobs, so he’s able to open it with his elbow.

“Hey, could you hold this for me—” Shisui begins asking but then stops short when he sees his wife plastered face-first to her desk. Normally this would not have been in the least bit alarming—Shisui can’t even begin to count the number of times in his life he’s found Mana sleeping on tables—but what is is the small mountain of bloody tissues heaped in a pile beside her head. 

He stops and stares. Then he feels his gut begin to twist. He can't do the chakra transfusion jutsu one-handed—he can't make the seals. If it were any of his usual techniques it would be fine—at this point he performs some without using any seals at all—but iryou ninjutsu? There's no way. Shisui is no slouch in any of the shinobi arts, but he knows perfectly well that even he lacks the skill to mold chakra precisely enough for a medical technique without relying on hand seals; such an act would require mastery on par with that of the Shodaime himself.

He comes forward. Just before he grabs her around the waist to shunshin her to the hospital, though, Mana shifts. Then her eyes blink open. "Did someone call me?" she mumbles drowsily. She sits up slowly; then she turns her head. "Oh, Shisui…? What is it?"

Shisui spends several seconds flicking his gaze between her face and the blood-covered tissues beside her, but Mana is so half-asleep that she seems completely oblivious. Drowsily, she tilts her head a bit. Then she notices the jar in his hand and her eyes fill with understanding.

"Oh, here…" She reaches out and takes it from him. Then she grips its base with both hands and holds it out. Dumbly, Shisui lifts his fingers and twists the top off in a single easy motion. Mana beams, pleased to have been of service, and hands it back.

"Do you need anything else?" she asks keenly. Being perhaps the neediest, highest-maintenance housemate alive, Mana is always excited to encounter chances to help Shisui back. In fact, the prospect is so energizing that she gets to her feet, fatigue forgotten. "Are you hungry? Is a snack enough, or did you want me to make something?"

Shisui responds by carefully placing the opened jar on her desk. Then he reaches out with his uninjured arm, pushes her bangs back, and examines her face closely. Mana reflexively stills as he activates his Sharingan. "Oh, um?" 

"Did you pass out?" he asks slowly as his brain whirls with thought. The gates in the brain, the first and second gates—they are still fine. More than that, though her chakra is low, it's not any worse than it would be for an average shinobi after a day of ninjutsu training. She's not in any danger by the looks of it.

"Eh?" Mana asks bewilderedly, to which Shisui responds by drawing back and indicating the pile of tissues. 

"Ohh, ah…" Mana scratches the back of her head and averts her gaze. "No, I just felt tired so I put my head down. Er… have I been out for a while? I didn't mean to fall asleep. Sorry."

"No, don't apologize…" he says. A beat passes. Then Shisui puts a hand on his chin. It's… not a crisis, he thinks. Certainly something is going on, but even though these episodes are becoming scarily frequent, whatever countermeasures she and Touma have deployed are evidently working. Five bouts of mild exhaustion, after all, beats out one acute arrest any day. Still…

Nosebleeds, he thinks. Being more a nin-genjutsu type, Shisui's never seriously entertained the idea of learning to open the gates, but he has enough knowledge about the consequences of it that something about the thought nosebleeds nags at his attention. Should he ask a taijutsu specialist? Most of the Police Force rely on kenjutsu in close combat, so he’ll likely have to ask someone in the General Forces… Does he know anyone amongst the jounin? There’s always Maito Gai, he supposes, though Konoha’s Green Beast was never part of his cohort. He’s not that much older, but even a few years is still enough to create a sizable distance… 

Shisui spends a moment in thought. But still, from what he's seen, Gai is not an unfriendly sort. He resolves to ask next time he sees him.

"To do with the Shoumon?” Shisui repeats. The Pain Gate… what a name. “That’s… the fourth gate, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Gai replies before cocking his head to the side curiously. Shisui of the Shunshin is a renowned all-arounder, so he surely would be capable if he put his mind to it, but when it comes to close combat the Uchiha as a clan are heavily grounded in bukijutsu. How strange. "But that would only be after learning to open the first through third. I would wait a bit before giving the gates a try, though… Aren't you just recovering from a broken arm? You might reinjure yourself."

"Oh, no, don't worry about that," Shisui reassures. "It won’t be a problem. Sorry to take up your time, Gai-senpai… Thank you for answering my question."

He offers a short bow and smiles over his shoulder at Gai's small wave of farewell. After a beat Asuma turns in his seat and watches as Shisui departs.

"They say the Uchiha are haughty, but he was pretty sociable," he remarks once Shisui is out of earshot. "He seemed down-to-earth to me."

"Indeed…" Gai strokes his chin thoughtfully. "Well-mannered, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah. Surprising to hear a guy raised by the sword supremacists ask about hand-to-hand stuff, though… I thought his clan hated taijutsu specialization. Isn't it too Hyuuga or something?"

"Apparently not." Gai crosses his arms and begins to frown. "...Something's strange, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"About the talk in the village. By the rumors, that should've been a much uglier encounter. Or it shouldn't have happened at all."

"Well, if he's the norm, I guess. But is he? I've met some really rude Uchiha, let me tell you."

"Who's to say he is or isn't?" Gai's face has become serious now. "Besides, rude doesn't have to mean malicious." Silver hair flickers across his mind's eye.

"...Yeah, that's true. And Obito was a good sort, too, when he was with us."

They go quiet. A long silence falls over the jounin lounge, heavy and pensive.

Shisui, meanwhile, makes his way to the Hokage's office with mind awhirl. If Touma has found a way to treat the Kaimon and the Kyumon in the brain, which help regulate chakra, that would explain why Mana's chakra situation seems to be stabilizing. But the first and second gates, apparently, aren't the only problems; the Shoumon appears to be the issue now. And while chronic nosebleeds are only minor as far as vascular disorders go, the potential for graver malfunctions is not at all a likable prospect. Shisui thinks again of the Battle of the Black Sands. There'd been a rare photograph in that textbook, he remembers, of the corpse of one of the poison victims. Shisui's seen some nasty things in the field, but not too many sights in his career have measured up to that one.

"Shisui-san. The Hokage will see you now."

After his long break from duty Shisui's a little surprised to have been summoned for a private briefing right off the bat, and he wonders what task the Sandaime has for him. Normally this wouldn't have bothered him in the slightest, but a strange sense of foreboding overtakes him as he enters the office. A sense, he soon finds, that soon proves well-warranted.

“...is the scope of your assignment. Will you take this mission?”

The quick affirmation that Hiruzen expects to hear never comes. A beat passes, and then another, but there’s silence. Intrigued, the Hokage lifts his gaze and sees not a face of smooth professionalism, but a creased brow and slightly parted lips.

"Shisui?" he prompts.

"Yes, Lord Hokage," Shisui immediately answers, and then is silent again. How curious. 

Hiruzen steeples his fingers. "You may speak freely."

“...Lord Hokage, by my estimate, controlling the movements of Kirigakure so near to the coast would be a task of several months, if not a year or longer. Especially if the rumors about the involvement of the infamous Byakugan thief Ao are to be believed. Am I mistaken?”

“No, that’s quite correct,” Hiruzen replies. “Even among the jounin there are few I would trust to handle such a long-term objective. Considering the very intel you have just referenced, too, I had planned to match as his opponent someone with significant mastery over his own doujutsu… You were the first in the Corps to come to mind.”

“You flatter me, sir,” Shisui answers, and goes very quiet again. Hiruzen waits patiently. Then eventually the young man speaks, and it's perhaps the last thing he would have ever expected Kagami’s grandson to say: “Lord Third, though it shames me, I wonder… I wonder if you might not pick another to lead this mission."

Hiruzen blinks with astonishment. Shisui does his best to keep a straight face. In all his life as a shinobi he's never once refused a mission, let alone an assignment directly from the Hokage himself; the Sandaime seems to be aware of this fact as well, and as his surprise fades he lowers his hands with a sharp look.

"I take it your reluctance stems from the length of the mission?"

"Yes, sir."

"Has your injury not yet sufficiently healed? Some weeks' delay will not critically affect the timeline of this assignment."

"No, sir, I've made a full recovery."

"Then why?"

Shisui hesitates for a moment longer, wondering, before he braces himself and just confesses the situation for what it is. In all Shisui’s time as a shinobi Hiruzen has been exceptionally grandfatherly and kind; he should be willing to listen at least. "The truth is, Sandaime-sama, my spouse is not in good health."

"Your spouse?" For a moment Hiruzen is puzzled—in these days it's not at all common for a youth like Shisui to already be married—but after a moment he thinks that it probably isn't too far-fetched for the son of a noble clan to have been matched immediately upon reaching adulthood, either. In fact, now that Hiruzen thinks about it, at this age Kagami had already been a father.

"Yes. She has always been unwell even from childhood, and… and recently her illness seems to be advancing in an unexpected direction. I worry that if I take on an extended mission with this timing…" Shisui pauses and recalls leaving the village shortly after Chieri had fallen ill. By the time he’d returned his aunt was already months in her grave. "If I leave now, I fear I will be absent at a critical time."

"Is that so? If that's the case, why have you taken such missions in the past?"

"In the past my mother-in-law cared for her, and after she died, my father and I shared the responsibility. But since he, too, has now passed, I have been left to look after her without assistance."

In that moment the blatant emotion on the young man's face, not even the slightest bit concealed, reminds Hiruzen so acutely of his old friend that he takes several seconds to gather himself. Young Shisui has always greatly resembled Kagami, of course—perhaps even more than Ren himself had—but this expression in particular makes him look more like his ancestor than ever. After all, Hiruzen reflects, Kagami had doted on his own wife with abandon. He'd cherished the woman even above the opposition of his clan, and he'd been so obstinate in his affections that he defied the elders and married her in full rebellion. There had been no small amount of trouble about it, Hiruzen recalls, and there’d been a short season in which his standing had wavered quite dangerously. But Kagami had stayed the course regardless. Would Shisui do the same? 

"Do you mean to say that even if I gave you another mission, you would decline it if it were of a similar length?" Hiruzen asks probingly.

Shisui just bows his head. The replying expression is just barely not a grimace, but Hiruzen can see his determination. The Sandaime decides to push the envelope a bit further.

"Then if I were to assign you a double rotation at the Academy…?"

A double rotation at the Academy consists not only of teaching but also menial desk duties in Missions Administration. An elite ninja—whose teaching duties are meant to be towards genin, anyway, not Academy students—is grossly unsuited to such tasks; unsurprisingly, members of the Jounin Corps universally regard such assignments as a long-term punishments, typically awarded for defying the will of the village. 

Despite this and the stigma attached to it, however, Shisui immediately jumps on the out Hiruzen has provided him. "I will cooperate. Thank you, Lord Hokage, for this grace."

Academy duty, he thinks with relief, will keep him right in the heart of the village, and barring occasional overnight training exercises, he’s almost guaranteed to be home by evening every day of the week. And if it's a double rotation that means he'll be around for an entire semester: for his purposes, nearly a perfect arrangement. Efforts to look after Mana should be considerably less hampered in such circumstances.

Hiruzen, for his part, spies the gladness in Shisui's eyes and shakes his head. Yes, he thinks. Like Kagami indeed.

Chapter Text

Rinako looks at the huge sky, embroidered with pale clouds, and takes in the sight of its feathered edges ringed like a crown about the heights of a massive oak tree. Its trunk is tall enough to brush against the chests of giants, and it stands in splendor above a hilltop. The grass spread out beneath its boughs is dappled with glorious sunlight; the graves, too, so glow under these rays that they seem to be their own small monuments of light. They are tiny next to the grandeur of the tree above them, but somehow this only makes the sight of them seem more precious. With so great a guardian standing over them, how could they not? 

Tears begin to prick at the corners of her eyes. Oh, but the majesty of it. The stillness. The yearning, the radiance—the aching beauty—

“Good word,” Rinako whispers as she reaches out to touch the paper. Nothing, not even the shortest stroke, has been excluded: the vision is complete. So complete, she thinks, that her heart had already begun to weep at the first glimpse of it. “Oh, by the heavens. Mana-san.”

“Do you like it?” the teen queries.

“Like it? Mana-san, I—” Rinako stops, tries to gather her words, and then she shakes her head breathlessly. “I’m speechless. I…” She shakes her head again. “What did you do? Your art—what has happened to make your art like this?”

This painting is not the only one, Rinako thinks, as she tears her eyes away and sweeps her gaze across Chieri’s room. Not Chieri’s room really, of course—not anymore—but the room she’d slept in with her daughter, who has now begun to fill it to the corners with her craft. It’s starting to look shockingly like Rinako’s own atelier. Brushes and paints, inks and pencils, piles of tape and paper and stacks of unused canvases—supplies of all kinds lie scattered across every free surface. Drawings are taped to the door; frames, lined up one atop the other, are mounted on the wall from the floor to the ceiling; yet more canvases lean up against the desk. Rinako searches amongst the pieces for the place where the change had occurred, agog.

“Oh…” Mana says as she looks alongside her teacher across the timeline of her art. She eyes the drawing of her grandfather Kagami. Then she stares at the painting beside it; her face begins to fill with realization.

“What? Did you remember?”

“Oh, ah…” Mana shuffles her feet. Yes, she thinks, there is a difference, isn’t there? The old paintings, the ones that Rinako has been used to seeing, are all reasonably detailed—Mana has put time and good effort into all of them—but time and good effort, she thinks, can do nothing to match the acuity of a Sharingan. No wonder she seems to have entered a new era of creation. After seeing the world through the lens of the Uchiha doujutsu, how could she not?

“...It’s a secret,” Mana finally says.

“What?” Rinako exclaims in a tone of slight outrage. “Are you joking, Mana-san?”

“No, really, I mean it… Don’t ask me. I won’t tell anyone. I’m taking it to my grave.”

“What? Why in the world would you do that? Mana-san, this is some of the most splendid art I’ve ever seen.” Rinako reaches out and takes her student’s hands. “I can barely take my eyes off it. Don't you want others to know how you managed to make a masterpiece like this? You have to tell me what you did.”

“Shishou, no." Mana tries to draw back, but Rinako's grip tightens. "Shishou, I—”

“Please, Mana-san. As one artist to another!”

“Shishou—”

“I’m your teacher, aren't I? Won't you please—?”

“I said no!” Mana shrieks, and then wrenches her hands away and slaps them over her mouth. Rinako's eyes widen. She goes still.

"...Mana-san?"

"I mean—" Mana says. In an instant tears are dropping from her cheeks. “I mean—I—I’m so sorry, shishou, I—”

“That’s all right, Mana-san,” Rinako answers softly. “It’s not so large a matter as all that. What’s wrong?”

"I just—I—" she stutters and wrings her hands. Then she buries her face in her palms. "I don't want to talk about it, Rinako-shishou, please."

Rinako stares at her student for a long, silent moment. Then she says, "All right. You don't have to tell me." She pauses. "But you do need to start thinking of a title. Sooner rather than later, yes?"

Mana raises her eyes with a hiccup. "A—a title?"

Rinako crosses her arms and lifts an eyebrow. "For your exhibition, of course."

"What?"

"The art exhibition. For your paintings."

Mana stares. Then she asks, "Where are you going to find someone to hold an exhibition for some nobody teenager's piddly little paintings?"

"I know a fellow. He's an elder of the Kurama clan. It's his hobby to help give exposure to up-and-coming artists… if he likes what he sees, of course."

"...And you think he'll like my work?"

"Oh, Mana-san," Rinako sighs, smiles, and then turns her gaze back to the watercolor scene on the table before them. "I don't think that at all. I know it."

Gossip erupts in the clan when word of Shisui's assignment to the Academy gets out, but Mana, a functional hermit, is oblivious; other than the fact that Shisui has begun asking her to pack a lunch daily, she notices no other immediate change. Shisui himself, at any rate, seems no different than usual. Though hackles rise and indignant whispers begin to follow in his wake—and what an odd feeling it is to have so many clansfolk, usually so interested in critiquing his every move, so affronted on his behalf—he is as easygoing as ever. After all, he is exactly where he has chosen to be. What need is there to be upset?

Mana, for her part, is instantly absorbed in her new task. Preparing not quick-and-dirty mission meals, but proper bento boxes with tiers and partitions and all—well. She hardly ever gets the chance. When she takes out the old lacquerware containers and colorful wrapping cloths, waves of nostalgia begin to crash over her. She kneels before the open cabinets on the kitchen tile and finds herself remembering all her childhood cooking lessons. Bento boxes, Chieri had often instructed, had their own special rules. The Four Fives, her mother had called them: goho, the five ways, gomi, the five tastes, goshiki, the five colors, gokan , the five senses…

“...You think of all of that while packing lunch boxes?” Shisui asks, bewildered, as he sets down his miso soup. Mana, who has already finished her own breakfast and is waxing poetic about the art of perfectly matching the right colors and textures to the proper flavors and cooking methods, waves her chopsticks in the air.

“Of course. That’s how it’s done. You don’t take me for a half-measure, do you?” 

“I mean, as long as it tastes good and the proper nutrition’s there, anything is fine more or less… It’s going to be eaten in the end anyway. What does it matter if you use red bell peppers over yellow ones?”

“Because they’re different colors, obviously,” Mana answers incredulously. “And so what if you’re going to eat it in the end? The point is that it’s supposed to look nice until then. How else are my sentiments of omotenashi supposed to reach you?”

Shisui chuckles as he finishes off the last of his rice. “I already know you’re mindful, Mana. It’s good enough that you’re making a lunch just because I asked… You don’t need to prove it to me.”

“Oh, but is that fair? Lazing around while my breadwinner’s out there sweating every day.”

Shisui laughs again as he rises from the table and deposits his dishes in the sink. Then he leans on the counter, smiling, and watches as Mana carefully lowers the garnish over the bed of rice. Even now she has a steady hand and a focused gaze.

"Thanks, Mana." Shisui reaches out and ruffles her hair when she completes her creation, puts on its lid, and ties it up in a carrying cloth. He receives the bento with his free hand, but his other he slides down the back of her hair so he can pull her forward and put his forehead against hers. As far as physical affection goes that's possibly the touchiest thing he's done since childhood, and some distant part of him wonders anxiously if she'll find such a gesture awkward, but Mana just smiles sweetly at him in response. As expected of a cute and doted-upon daughter… displays of affection don't faze her at all. Well, Shisui reflects, Chieri had spent a lot of time hugging and snuggling her as she'd grown up. Ren, too, now that he thinks about it. She must be used to it.

“I hope you have a good day,” Mana bids as she sees him off at the door.

“Thanks, Mana. You, too. Take it easy, all right?”

Mana smiles at him again and waves. Shisui grins and opens the door.

“I’m off!”

“See you later!”

She waits several beats after the door shuts before she turns back to the kitchen. There she sets about cleaning the remnants of the morning meal: washing the dishes, wiping off the table and the counter, returning the utensils and cookware to their proper places. After that she quickly knocks out the remaining chores—vacuuming, dusting, hanging the laundry out to dry, etcetera—so that by midmorning all of her usual tasks are complete. Satisfied, Mana nods heartily to herself before making her way back up the stairs to her room. 

When she arrives she heads for her desk and opens the top drawer. From there she withdraws a deck of playing cards, which she removes from its box and holds in her hand. When she turns around back towards the open space in the center of her room, her irises are a deep red. 

The cards scatter as she tosses them into the air, but they freeze mid-fall before they can hit the floor. Unlike the first several times she’d practiced activating this jutsu, her eyes barely twinge, and she sets to tapping the cards with her finger one by one. Her warm up is a review of the skill she most has a handle on, and the flow of time immediately resumes for the first ten cards she touches. After that she practices something a little more difficult: touching the cards without restarting their fall. She loses several to the ground this way, so after all fifty-two cards fall she stops the technique and gathers them up. Then she throws them, stops time once more, and makes an effort to work through the entire deck again.

At first manipulating even fifteen cards had made her eyes bleed, but at this point she can work through the whole deck three times before she begins to feel a drain. In fact, now that she’s practiced so much, if she stands still in the jutsu without moving her body or altering anything in her surroundings she thinks she might be able to maintain the technique indefinitely—or at least, as indefinitely as her remaining chakra allows. When she makes precise movements like tapping the cards, the chakra drain seems to increase, but the difference is only slight; it’s not until she begins to perform larger actions like pulling out her chair or opening her door that she notices a more appreciable strain. 

As a result, until now her training has focused mostly on more dexterity-based tasks, but once Mana feels satisfied with this practice she decides to do a more thorough test of movement restrictions. She knows already that attempting to push heavy objects like her dresser will knock her out cold if she shifts it even half a foot, so she chooses to see how far she can move from the technique’s point of origin instead. After halting the jutsu once to open the bedroom door normally and clear the path, she goes back to stand by her bed as a starting point. Then she stops time again.

Crossing the length of her bedroom seems to incur very little penalty, but walking down the hall past Shisui’s room to the top of the stairs feels significantly more strenuous. She’s about halfway down the stairs themselves, though, when it feels as if she hits a sudden wall. Unprepared for the abruptly exponential increase in chakra consumption, Mana has just enough time to reach for the railing before a migraine erupts like fire behind her eyes. The jutsu expires at once.

Her fingers slip on the banister, but she has enough time to at least position herself to roll down the stairs rather than fall headfirst. The resulting tumble is extremely disorienting, however, and by the time she reaches the bottom she has enough momentum that she spills right over into the genkan. Once she finally rolls to a stop on the dusty step, she takes a long moment to blink dizzily at the ceiling. Then she lets out a breathless laugh, shocked to have emerged from this frightful accident unscathed.

Well, guess I know how far I can walk now, she thinks as she weakly swipes her sleeve across her face. Her arm muscles give out halfway through, however, so she only succeeds in smearing her bloody tears across her face. Several moments pass in silence, interrupted only by the sound of her heavy breathing. 

The hazy fog of chakra exhaustion gradually begins to blur her thoughts, but as she shifts her gaze to stare at the sandals lined up beside her, Mana finds herself suddenly recalling a scene from her past with terrible acuity. In this genkan, upon this very spot, hadn’t Chieri collapsed unconscious for the first time? They’d found her sprawled out just like this. She’d cracked her head on the edge of the step and bled all over the floor. Just recalling it sends a dreadful ache tearing through her chest. That had been the start of her mother’s whole awful decline.

For a moment Mana is so consumed in remembering that she forgets to keep a hold of her emotions. Within the next moment, however, she immediately realizes her mistake; before she can stop it she feels a familiar twist of chakra in her forehead. Oh no, she thinks as the Mangekyou's activation greedily sucks up her remaining consciousness. Her last thought before her vision blackens is that Shisui is going to have a conniption when he comes home.

Chapter Text

She awakens beneath blankets and knows at once that she’s going to be bedridden for days. Not only are her limbs throbbing with the various bumps and bruises gained from her little jaunt down the stairs, they’re utterly immovable—she can’t even twitch her pinky, let alone lift a finger. Added to that, she’s awoken with classic puffy eyes: a sure sign, she thinks, that she’s been crying in her sleep. She must have activated the Mangekyou again while unconscious. Maybe even more than once, she thinks as she blinks and gets a feel for how terribly crusty her eyelashes are. What a disaster.

She spends several long moments in silence, looking up at the darkness of the ceiling. The sound of a clock ticks distantly behind her, and she listens for several beats before she's abruptly struck with a sense of time. Time, how much time is left? How many times remain? How many more times will Shisui deal with this until he decides that enough is enough? Since birth Mana has been blessed with good caretakers, but she can remember the days before these. When Shisui finds out about the Sharingan—when he learns she had never really been sick at all, when he realizes he'd been pushed into this union on a falsehood—who will be left? Not Chieri. Not Ren. Not anyone. There had been no one in her last life; she will return to those days.

“Oh, man," Mana groans to herself. Just thinking about it makes her head spin and her body ache. How is she going to get through? Before, at least, she had been healthy, and she'd been lucky enough to get by back then; but Mana's barely halfway through puberty. And even if she weren't, women's rights—for civilians, at any rate—in her clan are nearly non-existent. She can't imagine how she'll make her way alone.

She's still wrestling with these thoughts when, to her utter surprise, the blanket lifts. A body shifts next to her. Then she realizes that she’s not alone in her room, as she had automatically assumed, but flat on her back in Shisui’s futon. Shisui himself pulls his head away from his pillow, upon which he seems to have fallen asleep face-first, and sits up. Without speaking he reaches out, pushes her bangs back, and looks tiredly at her forehead with the Sharingan. Then, after hovering over her for several seconds, he lets out a sigh and flops back onto his front beside her.

"Are you all right?" he mumbles into the fabric of the futon. His voice sounds rough and dry in a way that makes her think that he's speaking for the first time in at least several hours. He must have been asleep like that for a while. 

Mana is shocked enough that it takes her several moments to reply. Eventually she manages to croak out, "I… I'm okay."

"That's good…" He runs a hand through his hair and then lets out a long exhale. "That's good. I'm glad."

A terribly long pause ensues. Then Mana whispers, "Why am I…?"

"I had to transfuse you twice while you were out. It was easier just to keep you here rather than go in and out of your room."

Just hearing it makes Mana want to cry. She can see meters of her lifeline being chopped off before her very eyes. "I'm sorry," she says weakly. "It's my fault."

What can she possibly do to save this? Is there anything at all left to try? She's honed her chakra control and she's expanded her reserves. Having done all this, she had thought for sure that training the Mangekyou would finally bring things under control. Why do things keep going wrong no matter what she does?

"Hey." Shisui turns his head and sees tears beginning to leak from her eyes. "Mana? Are you in pain?"

"No," she denies.

Shisui looks at her doubtfully. "Really?"

"I'm sorry," she apologizes again miserably.

"What do you have to be sorry about?"

"For being stupid. For falling down the stairs."

For a long moment Shisui stares at the outline of her face in the darkness. Then he asks softly, “Did you fall down the stairs on purpose?”

"…No, but—"

“Then how could it be your fault?”

“Because I wasn’t careful…”

"So it was an accident. But even if it wasn't it wouldn't matter. I would help you anyway. I’m not about to leave you lying like a corpse in the doorway, Mana,” Shisui tells her quietly. “How could I do that to you?”

“But…” Mana says. Then she finds herself choking back a sudden sob. “B-but this happens every time. You have to be sick of it by now. All I ever do… all I ever do is make trouble for you, Shisui.”

“...Mana, you help me every day. You cook my meals, wash my clothes, look after my finances, clean my house… I wouldn't be living half as well as I do now if you weren't here. There wouldn't be time."

That… is probably actually true. He'd been busy enough doing regular jounin duties, but since starting at the Academy the amount of take-home work with which Shisui has been burdened is monumental; it seems school teachers are fated to be overworked and underpaid no matter what world they live in. In her past life, at any rate, Mana's own home had been a perpetual disaster throughout every part of the year but summer. A partner to split chores with definitely would have made a difference.

Shisui spends a moment longer gazing at her before murmuring, “Mana, without you, I’d be alone in the world. Both of my parents are gone and I don’t have brothers or sisters. Dad's siblings are all dead and his nephews are, too. If I don’t take care of you, who do I have?”

Thinking about it, she and Shisui are a pair of orphans, aren't they? There's no one to cling to but each other. Mana has known since the start, of course, that her livelihood would depend on how tightly she could keep hold of Shisui's sleeve, but it had never occurred to her that Shisui himself would ever need to grip her back. She's never even considered it.

"So just be honest," Shisui concludes wearily, "and tell me if you're hurting or not."

"But what can be done even if I am?" Mana asks, and Shisui is reminded of the day after their wedding, when she'd woken from a bloody-faced sleep and asked him what he could possibly do to fix it. 

Sighing, he reaches out to brush his thumb across her nearer cheek. She’d not just been bleeding from her nose this time, he thinks, but from her eyes as well. Her gate dysfunction disorder really is progressing. He'd been right to decline the mission and stay in Konoha. 

"Whatever is possible," he murmurs. He wipes the tears from her face before taking his hand and resting it upon her forehead. "Whatever I can."

The next day as he's making his weary way to school with half a night's sleep and a chunk of his chakra reserves missing, he dodges a wad of rotten cabbage leaves. He pauses. Then, after staring for several seconds at the putrid vegetable oozing slime at his feet, he turns to look at the fellow responsible for hurling this projectile. The man staggers a step forward before glowering furiously at him.

"...Why did you do that?" Shisui doesn't usually see civilians on his morning commute—usually he goes by the rooftops—but since he's tired enough today to be walking by the main road instead, it's not exactly unexpected to have met one. This is not entirely how he imagined such an encounter might take place, however.

"Wouldn't you—you—wouldn't you like to know," the man hiccups with a sneer, and Shisui perceives at once that he's speaking to a drunkard. Wow, he thinks, and is terribly unimpressed. It's six-thirty in the morning. By the turn of the hour kids will be running all over the street on the way to school. What is this guy doing?

Shisui turns away, inclined to leave the encounter at that, but the man sees this move to depart and plunges his arm into the trash can beside him once more. Shisui finds himself sidestepping another fetid spew of garbage.

"Okay, seriously, what is your problem?" Shisui is exhausted enough that his usual laidback attitude has been overridden by a notably shorter fuse, and he snaps at the man irritably. But who could blame him? He has a whole day of screaming schoolchildren ahead of him, and as much as he likes kids, that's not yet accounting for the extracurriculars he needs to supervise after that. Besides, now the road smells absolutely foul.

"You're my fucking problem, Uchiha," the drunkard spits. "You and your whole damn clan. You and your entire lot just need to piss off."

By now the ruckus is drawing eyes from all along the street. A man of lesser discipline might have raised his gaze to the heavens and asked why this is happening today of all days, but Shisui grabs hold of his anger, exhales a short breath to calm himself, and keeps his sight fixed on this unexpected new hostile. "Why do we need to do that?" he asks flatly.

"I'll tell you why, you worthless piece of—"

As the man launches into a string of expletives—and really, thank goodness the students aren't actually around yet—a shout rings out from down the road. The onlookers turn their heads and catch sight of a police officer running down the way. "You again, old man? Are you kidding?" he exclaims when he catches sight of the drunkard. "We just let you out last night! Are you seriously already making trouble again?"

Said troublemaker responds by flinging a soiled milk jug at the new arrival. The ensuing chaos is only added to when the officer's partner arrives, and Shisui ducks under two more rubbish attacks before the man finally finds himself pinned to the ground. So much for an easy morning stroll to work, Shisui thinks as the officer's partner goes around and begins taking statements. Then he pinches the bridge of his nose. He'll have to run to the Academy if he wants to make it now.

"You okay?" the officer asks when Shisui's turn to speak comes around.

"Yeah… I'm fine," he answers dispiritedly. The officer's brow creases at the uncharacteristic gloom of this reply. Kagami's grandson, after all, has a reputation for being upbeat.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"Yeah, sure…"

Shisui gives an account of the unprovoked assault, indicating both the rotten cabbage and the second wave of garbage. The officer's face darkens as he speaks; by the time Shisui finishes he's scowling outright.

"All because you're an Uchiha?" he growls. Shisui's own brow draws together at the degree of umbrage in his clansman's expression.

"Well, he did seem pretty drunk," Shisui remarks neutrally. "He might have picked a fight with anyone in that state." Probably seeing an Uchiha come by was just good timing to vent his anger about his previous—and apparently very recent—arrest. Shisui's never worked for the police force himself, of course, but by this point he is more than aware that the MP and the clan are more or less interchangeable in Konoha's general consciousness. Even ninja are prone to making that mistake; how much more a civilian?

Now that the whole debacle is over Shisui's irritation more or less has faded, but on the contrary, the officer's gaze only grows stormier. "Hey, listen, Shisui," he says. "I'm going to bring this up at the next clan meeting. Fugaku-taichou needs to know. Are you coming? You should give your report, too."

"The clan meeting?" Since they are technically open to any ranking ninja of the Uchiha clan, Shisui has participated in a handful of these gatherings over the course of his life as a shinobi. But between extended missions and a general disinvolvement in clan governance, he's never gone far out of his way to attend one. Though now that he thinks about it… with his father’s death, Shisui has become the official head of his household, hasn’t he? He probably should start showing up to them more consistently. "...Yeah, I’ll be there."

“All right, then we’ll see you. Be careful.” The officer claps him on the shoulder before bidding him farewell. As he goes, Shisui watches him and his partner wrench their newly re-arrested drunkard up from the ground. They begin shoving him roughly down the road towards the compound; the street is utterly silent as they go.

Shisui spends several more moments standing there even after the rest of the onlookers have departed. The sound of children's voices begin to fill the streets, but he doesn't move. His gut has begun to twist terribly uneasily.

Chapter Text

"You fight with your girlfriend, Uchiha?"

Shisui blinks and raises his face. When he looks up he sees two chuunin instructors standing over his desk. Though they're below him in rank the one on the left seems to be at least a few years his elder, so he decides to err on the side of caution and use humble speech. "Pardon me? I'm sorry, I was lost in thought." 

The older teacher snorts. "Argument was that bad, then?"

"...I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"Oh, come on. Everyone can tell. You're always bringing in your pretty little lunch boxes, but the past few days you've been eating store-bought sandwiches and staring at the wall in silence. It's obvious you managed to piss your girl off somehow."

Shisui stares. Then he tilts his head. He's no stranger to being observed by strangers, but if people are apparently paying attention even to what he eats at lunch, he’s underestimated the amount of scrutiny he’s under. He might have expected that degree of examination internally from his clan, but at the Academy? Evidently this assignment is not so laid-back as it might have appeared.

"We aren't fighting," Shisui eventually says. "She's sick so she hasn't been cooking, that's all."

"Uh huh." Clearly unconvinced, the chuunin waves a hand at him. Several beats of silence follow. After the minute mark passes Shisui has the thought they might be waiting for him to defend himself, but he just blinks at them placidly without replying. After a moment he takes another bite of his sandwich, too. He’s played this game often enough in his life; by now he knows better than to give into the pressure.

The younger instructor pulls on the elder's sleeve. "Come on," he mutters. "Why are you prying? Even if he did fight with someone it wouldn't be our business anyway."

"You're such a goody two-shoes, Iruka," the older one complains, but nevertheless disengages. He shoves his hands into his pockets and walks away; Iruka lets out a sigh and turns back to Shisui.

"Sorry," Iruka apologizes. "Mizuki's like that, but I don't think he meant anything by it. He probably just noticed that you seem different than usual. I guess he wanted to check on you."

Shisui thinks that this is very clearly not the case, but he also has the sense that Iruka’s perception has been skewed by habitual good faith. Not uncommon for companions of long acquaintance. He wonders if they're childhood friends.

"That's all right. It didn't bother me much," Shisui answers truthfully. Older shinobi have been trying to bully him and push his buttons since age nine. There's nothing more threatening than a prodigy less than half your age shooting past you up the ranks, after all.

Iruka scratches his nose. "...Sorry I haven't asked until now, but are you settling in okay? I know you've already been here for a bit, but if there's anything you don't understand or need help with…"

"No, I'm doing all right." Since he's only an interim instructor whose responsibilities are limited to special subject classes—unlike the permanent instructors, who are in charge of homerooms as well—the scope of his duties is not nearly as extensive. Still a lot of work, certainly, but not overly convoluted.

"Well…" Iruka shifts awkwardly. "If you need anything, feel free to ask, okay?"

Recognizing an olive branch when he sees one, Shisui offers a warm smile. "Thank you. I'll be sure to take you up on it when the need arises."

After that Iruka has to go for recess duty, while Shisui has been assigned an afternoon at the missions office. He's mobbed by students within thirty seconds of exiting the staff room.

"Shisui-sensei, come play ninja with us!" a first-year latches onto the front of his vest and cries. This assault is followed up by two companions in the rear, one for each leg, while a whole contingent of hopeful children peek in from the wings. Though the older years have been rather cold, the youngest ones seem to have more or less decided that Shisui-sensei is the best thing since sliced bread; this is not the first midday ambush he has encountered.

“Sorry, everyone, I’m on desk today.” Shisui lifts his frontside attacker up by the armpits and gently places him to the side. He doesn’t even bother with the two clinging to his pant legs. It’s a waste of time; he just starts walking instead, letting them hang onto his knees like they’re weights for resistance training. 

“Noo,” he hears a little girl wail. 

“But sensei!” another child cries.

“Not even for a few minutes?” 

“No can do.” He waves a finger. “Those missions won’t assign themselves, you know.”

“You should just ditch,” Inuzuka Kiba, walking with a ninken puppy stuffed down the front of his t-shirt, suggests practically. Several voices ring out in agreement. “My cousin took me to the missions office once. It’s super boring.”

“That’s a terrible idea, Kiba,” is Shisui's blithe reply.

“Why?”

“Why? Because I’ll get arrested, obviously.”

“What?” The boy makes an uncomprehending face.

“You know how we chase you down when you try to skip and lock you up in a classroom for detention after school?”

“Yeah?”

“They do that to grown-ups, too. They’ll throw me in jail if I try it.”

Not that the idea isn’t tempting. Kiba isn’t wrong, after all: mission assignment is brain-meltingly monotonous. And though most shinobi in the General Forces have spent at least some amount of time gaining resistance to the tedium of clerical work, Shisui's tolerance is extra-low. After all, he was a wartime shinobi who promoted to chuunin in under half a year—not to mention he'd made it up to jounin soon after that. He’s been in authority over others for almost the entirety of his career; usually he has underlings to delegate this sort of drudgery to.

“Then can we come with you to the office? At least until you sit down?” a brown-haired girl asks timidly.

“Sure, I don’t mind,” Shisui tells her kindly. “Maybe you might even see a client or two. Hey, did you know that people from all over the continent come to Konoha to make mission requests?”

“Huh, really?” comes a surprised interjection from the left. “It’s not just people from Fire Country?”

“You might think so, but that’s actually not the case. There are a lot of little countries out there that don’t have their own ninja villages…”

Shisui begins to explain the basics of mission economics. He loses a few kids from the pack as they peel off to find more interesting ways to spend their free time, but a surprising number of students stick around to listen to what he has to say. As a result, he has a small crowd swarming around him when he catches sight of the figure down the hall and abruptly comes to a stop.

The students automatically fall into a hush when the bandaged man notices their presence and begins to limp towards them. Shisui immediately lowers his torso into a bow.

"Good afternoon, Lord Danzou," he intones. Then he straightens. Though Danzou's expression doesn't change, Shisui has the same thought he always does whenever he happens to make eye contact with the Hokage's advisor: Yeah, this guy really doesn't like me.

Shisui doesn't know why. He's never much enjoyed riding on the coattails of Kagami's success, of course, but he knows that his grandfather had been a friend and teammate to all the elders of Konoha's current upper brass. Because of this the survivors of Kagami's cohort have always treated Shisui favorably; perhaps that is why Danzou, who has never shown him any sort of partiality, has always stood out to him. He'd not been kind to Ren, either, if Shisui's to believe his late father's stories. In fact, though Shisui's still too young to have had many chances to butt heads with the man known to the Jounin Corps as "the Warhawk," Ren had apparently clashed with him several times over the course of his career. Maybe that's why? Shisui wonders idly. Ren had been a certified hothead; Shisui can definitely imagine his father losing his manners if sufficiently angered…

"I had heard Hiruzen assigned you a rotation at the Academy," Danzou, skipping the return of any pleasantries, remarks without preamble. "So it's true."

"Yes, sir."

"What a waste of a jounin's capabilities." Though technically the substance of this remark is complimentary, Danzou speaks entirely as if paying an insult. Sheesh, Shisui thinks. Why is everyone out to get him today? Not that he'd expected anything less. Danzou has been like this ever since Shisui first entered the Jounin Corps. 

Danzou pauses as if expecting some reply, but Shisui, knowing when to pick his battles, just bows his head and holds his tongue. He can almost hear the old man's breath turning sour.

"If you're heading to desk duty, let me remind you to uphold the dignity of the village before the clientele," Danzou orders coldly. "Dismiss these students now before some foreigner sees them. I'd hate to give off the wrong image."

The students might have cried out in dismay if they hadn't been, to a person, utterly frozen. Shisui's lips flatten, but he bows again. "Yes, sir."

"Who was that?" one of his leg koalas whispers fearfully once Danzou has finally departed.

"He looked like a mummy," the other whispers back.

"That was Shimura Danzou-sama, one of the village elders," Shisui answers. "He helps Hokage-sama take care of the village."

"What a jerk," Kiba says. Shisui thinks as a teacher he should probably correct this behavior, but he can't bring himself to do it. Once again the boy has spoken to the heart of the matter. From the mouths of babes…

"Well, you guys, it seems like I'll have to let you go here," Shisui sighs a beat later. The little brown-haired girl stares up at him with a crestfallen expression. "Sorry, kiddo. If you want to see the missions office you can come with me next time. We'll make sure to dodge Danzou-sama if we see him again."

Left with no other choice, the children are forced to disperse. A faint feeling of dejection settles over Shisui as he watches them go. He'd felt rather cheered for their company, but now that they're gone nothing but the monotony of receptionist duty awaits. What a depressing afternoon.

When he comes home he finds Mana sitting on the couch. She’s got an open book in her lap, but she isn’t reading; she’s staring into space with the sort of glazed-over gaze Shisui usually only chances to see on the faces of shinobi sitting deep in the fuzz of physical exhaustion. Frowning, he deposits his grading on the table, unzips his vest, and hangs it on the wall before seating himself next to her.

“Mana?” He taps on her shoulder. Mana blinks and turns to look at him.

“Oh, Shisui. Welcome home.”

“I’m back. Why are you up? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“I was,” she replies. “But a while after you left I felt okay enough to move around a bit, so I got some cooking in.”

“And now you’re stuck in the sitting room because you’re too tired to go to the second floor?” Shisui asks knowingly. Mana looks at him crossly.

“I could head up anytime,” she grumbles. “But it’s not that urgent. There’s no reason I can’t sit down a bit first if I want.”

As she says this she sinks back further into the cushions; Shisui peers at her face and wonders if he’s detected an incipient fear of stairs. Seeing this, Mana scowls and shoves him. He hardly budges, of course, but she puts enough force into the push to make him hold up his hands in surrender. 

“All right, okay,” he says. “I believe you.”

Mana harrumphs a bit, but after a moment she sighs. Then she uncrosses her arms and smiles a bit self-deprecatingly. “How was your day?”

Shisui pauses and briefly considers complaining about Danzou, but after a moment decides against it. Unlike Ren, Mana has no idea who he is, and explaining feels like too much exposition for a casual end-of-day debrief. “Fine for the most part, I guess," he says instead. "Nothing groundbreaking happened, really.”

“I don’t know about that.” Mana turns to look at the enormous stack of papers he’s placed on the side table and quirks a brow. “That looks heavy enough to make a crater if you dropped it. Seems like a lot of grading.”

“I know." At once Shisui lets out a miserable groan. “I sat all afternoon assigning missions, and now I’m going to sit all evening marking these tests. I’ll never make fun of the chuunin instructors again… There’s way more endurance in desk-driving than I ever imagined.”

Mana looks at him with pity. “Let’s split the pile,” she offers. “I’ll help you.”

“What?” Shisui looks at her with surprise. “But…”

“It’s fine. If you’re worried about the students’ privacy, I’ll just skip the first page so I don’t see their names. Give it here…”

At first he wonders when she divides the papers with a 60/40 ratio and takes the larger portion, but once she’s been furnished with a pen and an answer key she sets to her task with such speed and efficiency that Shisui realizes the intelligence of this at once. She works systematically, marking the answers before recording the number of errors in the lower right corner of the paper, and she runs through her whole pile before flipping the key over and moving onto the next page. That’s smart, Shisui thinks. He’s been marking each individual test the whole way through before moving onto the next one, but that seems much faster. At that rate she might outpace him even with the discrepancy in their work volumes.

“Oh, did you need the key, too?” Mana misunderstands when she looks up and sees him staring. “Here—”

“Ah, no, it’s fine. I looked at it with the Sharingan.” Shisui quickly picks up his own pen and sets to work. Some time passes in silence while they focus on their papers, but even after applying full concentration Shisui glances up again later and sees that the gap hasn’t closed at all. In fact, she’s already on the second to last page of the answer key.

“You’re good at this, Mana,” Shisui remarks, quite impressed. “You must have been a teacher in a past life.”

Mana glances up with a look of surprise. Then she smiles a bit. “Maybe I was.”

Unsurprisingly she finishes soon after. After tallying the errors on each test—sans the first page—she neatly stacks the papers and places them beside Shisui’s pile for him to finish off in his own time. Then she sighs, leans back wearily, and closes her eyes. By the time Shisui looks at her again she’s out like a light. Not too surprising, all things considered… she had seemed pretty fatigued.

Eventually Shisui completes his pile as well, but he doesn't rise even after he's tidied everything back into the respective folders. Though he really would like to go outside and at least do some kata before they lose the light, the sleeping Mana has tilted progressively to the side and is now fast asleep on his shoulder. He considers moving her but almost immediately decides against it.

She really is pretty, he thinks as he finds himself examining the well-ordered features of her face. From the delicate curl of her eyelashes to the gentle curve of her lips, there's not a line on her that could be called misplaced. Shisui is abruptly glad that Mana is such a homebody. When he sees her like this it doesn't seem at all far-fetched to imagine someone trying to snatch her up off the street.

Some time passes like that. Shisui finds himself remembering the sight of Mana leaning on his father's side at the kitchen table. He remembers, too, the way Ren would put his arm over her and hold her head to his chest. He spends a long moment staring; then he slowly lifts his hand. 

Mana doesn't even twitch. Silence fills the air, interrupted only by the faint sound of her breathing, and Shisui carefully lowers his chin to rest atop her head. One beat passes, followed by another, but nothing happens. He exhales the breath he's been holding; the tension slowly begins to drain from his shoulders. And then, despite his rotten afternoon, Shisui suddenly finds himself thinking that today might be one of the best he's had all year.

Chapter Text

"Excuse me. Pardon my intrusion… may I ask for help, please?"

Shisui pauses as Iruka rises to greet the visitor at the door. Then he lowers his pen. 

"How can I help you, Miss?"

"I've come to deliver a forgotten item. It belongs to class 1-A's Uchiha Sasuke…"

"Mana?" Suspicions confirmed, Shisui stands. As the other instructors blink and turn to stare Mana gives him a surprised look.

"Oh, there you are. I was wondering where you were… I couldn't see you." Her brow creases as she eyes the stack of workbooks on his desk. They’re piled high enough to have obscured him from view.

"What are you doing here?" Shisui pushes his chair in and goes to stand beside Iruka at the door. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Mana says a smidge amusedly. "Like I said, I've come to deliver a forgotten item. Sasuke's book report." She holds out the clear file folder in her hand.

"Ah, in that case, I'll call him to come get it—" Iruka moves towards the PA system, but then pauses. "Oh, but it's recess right now… He might not be inside to hear it."

"That's all right. If you point me in the direction of the playground, I can hand it over myself."

Come to think of it, Shisui realizes, Mana has never been to the Academy, has she? Of course she wouldn't know where to go.

"Then let me show you the way," Iruka offers. "Here, come with me."

Shisui, of course, follows right along. "You told me before I left this morning you were going to spend the day at Mikoto-san's," he says.

"I did. And I was. But then she realized Sasuke left his homework on his desk, so I told her I'd bring it to the Academy for her."

"And she let you?" Shisui questions incredulously. What could Mikoto have been thinking? "You only just got out of bed yesterday."

"I'm fine, Shisui," Mana repeats. "Besides, I wanted to see Sasuke."

And sure enough, as soon as they get out and spot the boy running with a crowd of friends, Mana all but goes skipping forward to meet him. Mizuki blinks as she sails past straight into the throng of children, but when he glances back over his shoulder and sees Iruka and Shisui both standing by—and hears Sasuke let out a shout of recognition—he just raises his eyebrows and shoves his hands into his pockets.

"I swear I'm going to go prematurely gray because of you." Shisui groans, rakes both hands through his hair, and then activates his Sharingan to examine her from afar.

"Your girl, Uchiha? Guess you made up," Mizuki observes. "Come to think of it, you did have a cutesy bento again today, didn't you? Glad it worked out."

Shisui sighs. "I told you, we weren't fighting."

"Sure, sure."

"I'm surprised you live together," Iruka says. "I didn't think you would."

Shisui pauses to aim a confused look at him. "Really? How come?"

"Well, I'd heard premarital cohabitation is pretty severely frowned upon in the old clans… It didn't seem like there would be a lot of approval for living with a woman who isn't your wife."

Shisui tilts his head. "But she is my wife."

These words are met with a long silence. Mizuki and Iruka both stare at him.

"Your wife?" Mizuki eventually repeats. "Since when have you been married? Yesterday?"

"It's been about two years, actually," Shisui replies thoughtfully. "Well, technically a little less than that, I suppose. It was winter during the wedding."

"What? But…" Iruka gapes. "How old are you?"

"Me? I just turned eighteen."

"That's my age," he says, and then falls into a stunned silence.

Mana, meanwhile, is squatting happily in front of the crowd of students, oblivious to the conversation happening beyond. "Hello, Sasuke," she greets sunnily. "Long time no see."

"Hey! What are you doing here, Mana-san?" Sasuke asks. His classmates look on curiously.

"Is she your friend?" a blond-haired girl with a fearlessly straight gaze questions inquisitively. "She's pretty."

"That's Mana-san," Sasuke answers as if this explains everything in the world. Mana giggles. "Anyway, why did you come?"

"You forgot your book report," Mana explains as she presents the folder to him. "I came to give it to you before your afternoon classes."

"Oh," Sasuke says as he accepts it with a blink of surprise. Then he beams. "Huh. Thanks!"

"Of course, sweetheart," Mana answers warmly before leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. The boy immediately takes on a look of horror.

"Ugh! No, stop it!" Clearly mortified, he begins to whine. "Seriously, Mana-san, do you have to?" 

"Sorry, Sasuke," Mana laughs. "You're just so handsome I couldn't help myself."

"Ugh!" Sasuke says again, ears burning. He looks at his classmates, who are gazing at him with varied expressions of surprise. Meanwhile, the blond girl is staring at Mana with wide eyes. Sasuke grabs the side of his head. "Whatever! I'm going to bring this inside. You guys start the next round without me."

Mana rocks back onto her heels when he gives her an angry shove for embarrassing him. Before she can say anything else, however, he flees for the building at top speed. Mana laughs again, but a little more wistfully now. 

"You think Sasuke is handsome, too, nee-san?" the blond girl asks in a whisper. Mana looks at the child's shining face and chuckles again.

"Of course I do. He's one of the best-looking boys I know."

"I think so, too!" Delighted to have found a kindred spirit, the girl hops forward to latch onto Mana's arm.

"Holy shit," Mizuki says as he watches Mana laugh and begin talking to the rest of the children. "What the hell? Dude… she's cute."

"Hey." Shisui, momentarily forgetting to play the respectful junior, aims a stink eye in his direction. Iruka also regards him with a frown.

"Is that something someone with a partner of his own should be saying?" he chides. "Tsubaki-san would be sad if she heard you talking like that."

"Chill out, I'm just saying is all," Mizuki says defensively. "Besides, it's true, isn't it? What, you'd rather I call her ugly?"

"You could try not saying anything at all."

Shisui is about to grumble his agreement to this when Mana stands and begins making her way back over. The matter of Mizuki drops instantly from his mind; instead he reaches out and snags her arm when she approaches.

“Hey,” he says. Mana takes one look at his Sharingan eyes and knows that the jig is up. She grimaces. “Mana, you shouldn’t have come. You haven't fully recovered yet… the walk was too much for you.”

“I’ll sit a while before I head back,” she mumbles. Now that her task is complete her expression has begun to turn rather ashen, and weariness is beginning to creep into her face. “There’s a teahouse down the road. I’ll have something to eat and rest a bit first.”

“And pass out at a table and throw everyone into a panic?” Shisui mutters as he inspects her forehead. “I’d really rather you didn’t. Let me take you home.”

“What? But you can't do that. You’re at work right now.”

“It’s my lunch break, and my first afternoon period is free anyway. It’s fine.”

“But what if you’re late?" Mana protests. “You’ll get in trouble.”

“Mana, short of teleportation there’s no faster method than a shunshin. You can't possibly think that's a real concern.”

"Well, when you put it like that," she grumbles a bit. Then she sighs. "I'm sorry."

"Why did you push yourself? Mikoto-san could have easily brought it herself. There was no need for you to do it for her."

"I wanted to see Sasuke," she mumbles. "Now that he's at the Academy he doesn't need me anymore. I never get a chance to talk to him…"

Shisui looks at her face before letting out a long sigh. "All right," he murmurs as he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. She's forgone her usual bun and is wearing it loose down her back; somehow it makes her seem a little more disheveled than usual. "Come on. Let's get you home."

It’s been a long time since Mana last got a piggyback ride—not since Ren carried her to a meeting with Fugaku to approve her marriage, in fact—and as she wraps her arms around Shisui’s neck she lets out a dispirited sigh. But when he shifts her weight to rest upon his back, lifts her off the ground, and straightens, her attention is drawn away from her melancholy by a sudden awareness of how broad-shouldered the person beneath her is. And tall, she thinks as she looks down and sees the distance to the ground. This alone is enough to make her pause, quite bewildered, but then his chin brushes over her arm and she feels the prick of stubble. At once she finds herself blinking in astonishment. The dandelion boy—that little kid who’d been scared to pat her on the head for fear of being screamed at—is this him? That small child is old enough to have hair on his face?

Shisui turns to address his colleagues. “I’ll be back before fifth period. I might miss cleaning time, though… Sorry.”

“Oh, ah…” Iruka seems to come out of a daze. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover for you.”

“Thank you,” Shisui says warmly.

“Thank you for showing me the way, sensei.” Mana, after coming out of her own daze, offers a smile of her own, if a distracted one.

“It was my pleasure, Miss. I hope you feel better soon.”

“He seems kind,” Mana remarks once they’ve departed from the schoolyard. Shisui tilts his head a bit as he sets off in the direction of the Uchiha district.

“Of all my coworkers, Umino Iruka certainly has been the friendliest so far. Perhaps it’s because we’re similar in age. As far as I can tell we’re the youngest members of the faculty.”

“Is that so?” Mana says, and then goes quiet. She spends several moments watching the road pass beneath Shisui’s ground-eating stride. His step, she thinks, must be at least double the length of hers. In no time they’re making their way through the central market, which Mana can’t help but marvel at. It had taken her at least ten minutes to make it from here to the Academy grounds.

“Will you be late today?” Mana asks once they arrive at home and come to a stop in the genkan some fifteen minutes later. Shisui squats to let her off; Mana seats herself on the step and begins removing her sandals. “Or should I wait to eat dinner?”

“No, you’d better go ahead without me,” Shisui answers as he turns and seats himself beside her. “There’s a clan meeting tonight… I have a feeling it’ll run long.”

“Really? How come?”

“Just a hunch,” Shisui mutters as he puts a hand on her back. Then he pauses. “…Hey, Mana.”

“Hm?”

He brushes her hair aside to stare at the red-and-white crest on the back of her blouse. “No one talked to you on the way to the Academy or anything, right?”

“Huh? No, not in particular…”

“Okay. That’s good.”

“It is?” Mana gives him a strange look. “Why?”

He sighs and puts his hand over hers. “Don’t worry about it.”

After this exchange several moments pass. They sit like that in companionable silence before Mana eventually speaks again. “Thanks for bringing me home.” 

“Yeah, no problem. But Mana?”

“Yeah?”

“Please get some actual rest today, would you?”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” she sighs tiredly. “After I call Mikoto-san to let her know where I am, I’m going straight back to bed.”

“Good.” He squeezes her fingers. Mana’s gaze drifts downward. Even his palm, she thinks, had once been as smooth and small as hers, but now it's become big enough to engulf her hand. Callused with training, faintly scarred from long-healed scratches… all at once she can perceive the passage of time contained therein.

That’s a man, Mana thinks after Shisui has risen and bid her farewell. She watches from the doorway as he strolls to the corner, glances upwards at the rooftops, and then vanishes between one blink and the next. That’s a grown man.

She spends some time gazing across the empty street. Then she shuts the door, seats herself on the step once more, and stares down at her hand in silence.

Chapter Text

It's as Shisui is staring out over the dusky courtyard at the foot of the shrine hill, arms crossed and brow creased, that a voice quietly calls his name.

"Um, Shisui-san."

He blinks out of his thoughts and turns to find a girl in purple standing at the bottom of the steps. As she comes forward, fidgeting, she twists her fingers together nervously. Her coloring is a little lighter than the standard Uchiha's, and Shisui tilts his head to the side inquisitively at the sight of her. Then a spark of recognition ignites in his eyes.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she begins, "but would you spare me a moment of your time?"

"Hey, Izumi-san. Sure, I'm free. How are you?"

"O-oh, um." Izumi falters, evidently surprised that such a prominent clan celebrity remembers her, but after a brief hesitation she gives him a warm smile. "I'm well, thank you. How are you?"

"Very healthy—never better. What's up?"

"Ah, well," Izumi says, and is disciplined enough not to directly turn her face in the direction of the group of MP officers still lingering on the stairs. She flicks her eyes to the side instead. "Well, um…"

"Actually, do you want to talk over some dango?" Shisui recognizes the problem at once and proposes. "I haven't had dinner yet so I'm pretty hungry. I'll treat you."

"Ah, I'd love that. Oh, but you don't have to buy—"

"Nah, don't worry about it. We never paid you back for those oyaki you gave us. Think of it as a return gift."

Nevermind it's been years since then, but could a casual observer know that? He doubts it. Besides, seniors treat their juniors to food all the time anyway; no one would find it at all strange if a friendly jounin like Shisui bought some sweets for a genin from his clan. Izumi seems to come to a similar conclusion; beyond one more perfunctory protest she concedes with minimal resistance.

The dango shop is a perfect place to speak: far enough from the shrine that the dispersing attendees of the meeting are not likely to stumble over them, but still near enough to avoid arousing suspicion even if they do. Shisui buys a set of three-color dango for each of them before they go and sit at a quiet bench looking over the lake. Izumi unwraps her dumplings but doesn't eat. Shisui waits patiently.

"I've never seen you come to a clan meeting at the shrine before," she eventually says.

"Yeah, I usually don't. But since my latest assignment is in-village, I have the chance to attend them now."

"Does that mean you'll be coming to future meetings as well?"

"Yes, I think so."

Izumi bites her lip. The anxiety rolling off of her is almost palpable. She whispers, "Then does that mean… you also…?"

Ah, Shisui thinks, and then understands exactly what is going on. "It's as bad as I thought, then? Everyone you've spoken to so far…?"

"A-After the last meeting of clans all the elders are convinced and no one can tell them otherwise. Fugaku-san got reprimanded by the council for increased reports of police brutality. And after the anonymous complaint about racketeering, the MP captains won't stop clamoring about punishment."

"It's a baseless claim, though," Shisui remarks. "Even the most biased investigator will see that. It's so blatantly false that even a shallow frame-up would be next to impossible… What case could be made from an unsigned report with zero details? It's obvious someone is just trying to stir the pot.”

"I know. I said that, too. But no one listens to me," Izumi whispers. "I'm a ninja now so they allow me to attend, but I'm not thirteen yet, so I’m not an adult and no one cares what I have to say. And my mom… I—I talked to my mom and I asked her to say something, but she's in the Police Force, and she says she can't speak against the senpai. Especially since she's a widow and single mom, she says. We're lucky they even accepted us back after she married out of the clan, so we just need to keep our heads down…"

A voiceless girl too young to be taken seriously, Shisui thinks with a deeply furrowed brow, and only half-Uchiha at that. It's not surprising no one will hear her out; if her mother isn't willing to fight, then there really is no recourse for her. Izumi, already quite aware of this, clenches her fists and bites her lip. Her eyes are aflame with helpless indignation.

"None of the others listen to you, so you thought you'd try talking to me?"

"Yes. You're an adult and a jounin, and since you're married and a household head, I'm sure the elders would hear you out if you said something. Everyone in the clan always speaks well of you."

"I'm still pretty young myself, though," Shisui points out. "And I'm not a member of the MP either. They're pretty tight-knit, and I don't have a lot of sway in that crowd."

"But you could talk to people who do," Izumi says desperately. "And besides, Mana-chan said—"

Shisui's eyebrows rise. How does Mana figure into this? 

"Mana-chan said you never talk down to her even if she is just a civilian housewife. I'm sure Mom would listen to you if you spoke to her. And the others, too! There are a lot of clansfolk who don't want to go along with this, I know it. They're just too scared to speak up."

Shisui regards the girl with a bit of a dumbfounded look. "Izumi-san, even if you say that, I don't think…"

"Please, Shisui-san! I'd do it myself if I could. But I can't, and I don't want the clan to fight with the village. Not like this. Please."

She goes so far as to latch onto his sleeve, and Shisui is abruptly reminded of the day of his father's funeral. Mana's health had been so shattered in the wake of Ren's death that she'd spent the entire ceremony clinging to his arm, desperate to keep upright. She hadn't had the strength to stand, so she had leaned on him, and he had let her. He'd shared the power that he had—the power of a healthy body—because he'd known that if he didn't, she would fall. 

Izumi stares up at him with eyes wide. His lips part.

"I—okay. I can… I can ask around and see what others say. Just to get a feel for things."

When she goes to check the mail Shisui abruptly appears behind her and encircles her in his arms. Mana blinks in surprise but finds herself automatically leaning backwards. It’s a conditioned response to an oft-executed gesture of affection—from Chieri to Rinako to Ren, most of the people she’s been close to in this life have hugged her in such a way—but once she registers just who it is initiating this embrace, she’s somewhat taken aback. Compared to the past Shisui has definitely become much more touchy-feely of late—or, at least, he’s begun to initiate physical affection on his own instead of simply reciprocating it—but even with that considered it’s a terribly unexpected gesture. She cranes her neck and looks over her shoulder questioningly. “Shisui?”

“Hey, Mana,” he replies easily. 

“What are you doing?”

“Huh? Well, I’m giving you a hug…”

Well, that much is obvious. Mana raises an eyebrow, quite unimpressed at this attempt to play dumb, and he lets out a guilty little laugh. 

“Are we going to have a fight?” she wonders at this reaction. Has he accidentally beheaded her geraniums while training again? It would be strange if he has, though. These days when he does sword kata he goes away from the garden all the way to the treeline, specifically to avoid that very outcome. He’s not the type of person to make the same mistake twice.

“No, that’s not it,” he answers sheepishly. “I just… needed to tell you I’m going to miss dinner tonight, so go ahead and eat without me.”

Mana gives him a startled look. “Again?” That’s the third time this week.

“Yeah, sorry. Something came up.”

“Oh… well, that’s all right.” Compared to the days before his Academy assignment she still gets to share more meals with him now than she ever did before, so it’s not that big a deal. “Should I set out leftovers, or are you eating out in the village?”

“I’ll eat out, probably. Don’t worry about it.”

A moment passes in silence. For a moment Mana almost believes that’s it, but when she places the mail back down on the table and turns to face him, she doesn’t miss the way he opens his arms and subtly shifts to the side. One of his hands lands atop her head and vigorously ruffles her hair, but at the very edge of her peripheral vision she catches sight of the other smoothly reaching out for the stack of envelopes. From there it removes a small letter, which promptly disappears into his back pocket. 

Oh? she thinks as he laughs and begins chatting as if absolutely nothing has happened. The execution of this action is so flawless that she half-wonders if she hadn’t imagined it, and as she peers up at his face intently she catches not the faintest trace of duplicity; he just smiles warmly at her. From there he steers her towards the kitchen, where they end up sharing a cup of tea together before he eventually leaves to take care of his afternoon business.

Am I being cheated on? Mana wonders as she takes the teapot and the chawan with her up to her room. Affairs are a frequent consequence of arranged marriages; she’d certainly considered the reality of this when they’d first gotten engaged. She supposes it’s possible. After all, it would be quite normal for a young man his age to be interested in bedroom activities—and if that's the case, she knows he’s found no satisfaction from her. But… something about the idea of it doesn’t seem right. Sleight of hand aside, that interaction had felt rather sincere to have been executed by a cheater—and to be honest the image of an adulterer, even in a sham marriage like this one, just doesn’t quite parse when overlaid with Shisui’s face. It is possible… but it feels rather unlikely.

Well, he is a ninja, she thinks after a long moment, and a high-ranking one at that. Would it be a surprise for a shinobi to be keeping a secret or two? Probably not. It must not be her business, then. After a minute or two more she pours herself another cup and decides to let it be. It would be beyond hypocritical for someone like her to run up demanding answers, anyway.

Still, even after she’s taken out a sketchbook and resumed working on her latest piece, the matter of the letter remains in her mind. That and how often he’s stayed out late in recent weeks. Rather than concealing an affair, he really just seems like he’s stressed… he’s always sighing and running his hands through his hair when he comes home. Is he actually on some sort of secret secondary mission from the Hokage? It is a little weird that someone like him is working at the Academy. Maybe it’s a cover for his real assignment? 

Maybe she should make some okonomiyaki. She knows he said not to worry about his dinner, but it wouldn’t do any harm to have some on hand if he decides he wants it, would it? He doesn’t have to eat it tonight. He could have some tomorrow if he wants. She’ll just prep all the ingredients and put them together so they can grill it right away…

Of course, even with this thought, the dinner hour comes and goes without his return. Mana goes back to her room and changes into nightclothes. What had she been thinking? He had specifically said he would be home late, after all. She sighs a bit dejectedly as she lets down her hair and puts her mother’s ribbon aside. Really what she should do is just turn in early and go to bed. She and Rinako are meant to go meet with the Kurama clan elder tomorrow, after all.

Just as she’s reaching for the switch on her lampstand, however, she pauses. Then she turns towards the door, which she opens to the sight of Shisui standing with a look of surprise and a fist still raised to knock.

“Eh?”

“Welcome back. What’s up?” Mana greets curiously. Shisui stares at her. Then he lowers his arm.

“How did you know I was there?” he asks instead of answering her. Mana tilts her head.

“How…? I heard you coming, I guess.” She shrugs, but contrary to this dismissive answer Shisui’s gaze grows more intent.

“You heard me coming?” he repeats.

“Yeah, I—” Mana begins before faltering. She stops. Then her own eyebrows begin to rise. When she shifts aside Shisui comes forward to enter her room; his step is, as ever, silent.

“You heard me coming,” he says again. Mana takes on a bewildered look.

“I thought I did, but that isn’t actually possible, is it?” She looks down at his bare feet. There’s no way he made any noise on the way up the stairs. He doesn’t even have shoes on.

Shisui spends a long moment gazing at her. Mana stands still beneath his calculating stare, quite befuddled. Then, after seeming to consider a variety of thoughts, he asks her, “Mana, are you a chakra sensor?”

Chapter Text

"What's a chakra sensor?" Mana asks blankly.

"A sensor is someone who can detect the chakra of others from a distance. It's a talent that takes different forms for different people, but if you say you heard me, that probably indicates auditory sense."

"Oh…" Mana chews on this for several moments. Then she says, "Oh! Is that how I was able to tell that Nara Shikaku-sama wasn't a clansman? You know, back when we saw him at the wedding?"

"Considering you had no idea who he was to begin with, that seems likely…" Shisui regards her with a look of deep intrigue. "But how is that possible? You being a sensor, I mean?"

"I don't think I've done anything in particular… Is it something you need to train for?"

"Well, sort of. You can deliberately train to gain proficiency in different sensing styles, but there are also innately inclined natural sensors…"

"Then perhaps I was just born like that?" The Uchiha clan is blessed with all sorts of hereditary gifts beneficial for the practice of the ninja arts. It wouldn't surprise her in the least if she happened to inherit some other such talent alongside her Sharingan.

"I mean, sure, that would make sense… if you had an Academy education. But sensory capability can only grow in proportion to one's chakra pool. And while I don't usually walk around in my own home with my chakra signature in full cloak, I don't go blasting it to the degree that an untrained civilian would be able to pick it up, either."

Mana begins fighting quite hard to keep a neutral face. An Academy education, huh? Between Touma's lessons and her practice with the Mangekyou, Mana thinks she's probably gone well beyond the level of an Academy graduate's chakra reserves.

"Hmm…" Shisui stares at her for another long moment, and Mana can’t help but begin to fidget restlessly under the force of his gaze. In moments like these, when she inadvertently finds herself on the other end of Shisui’s unfiltered problem-solving stare, Mana can’t help but remember that he’s a famously deadly shinobi for a reason—and unintelligence is not it. Before she can become too uncomfortable, though, he relaxes his face and shrugs his shoulders. The motion is just a bit too smooth to be totally uncalculated, which at once makes Mana feel a strange sense of foreboding, but for the life of her she can't quite place what this performative nonchalance must mean. 

"...You seem a little mysterious lately, Shisui," Mana remarks after regaining her composure, perhaps more to herself than to him. Shisui pauses anyway. Then his brow creases and he scratches the back of his head.

"I'm sorry."

"What? Oh, no, it's okay. I didn’t say that to criticize you… I'm not mad or anything."

He regards her with surprise. "You're not?"

"Why would I be?" Mana gives him a puzzled look. "I play that game far more often than you do, but you never give me any flack for it."

A short silence ensues. Then something in Shisui's gaze seems to shift. He slowly turns his eyes to the side.

"Shisui?"

"Oh, ah, don't worry about it. Anyway, were you about to go to bed?"

"Ah, yeah, I was. But you needed something, right?" Otherwise he wouldn't have been trying to knock. "What is it?"

"Well, I—" Shisui pauses and then clears his throat. The suddenly bashful expression on his face is such a contrast to the cool assessment of his previous one that Mana can’t help but marvel at the difference. Has he always been this expressive? Somehow she feels he used to be more composed. It’s almost as if…

"Well, I was wondering if you wanted to have a sleepover,” he says.

Mana stills. Then her brow creases. It's been a while since she last slept in Shisui's room—not since she fell down the stairs, she thinks, and that was nearly two months ago. Before then she doesn't think she would have batted an eye. Now, though…

"...Mana?" Shisui asks after several beats have passed. Apparently he had been anticipating her easy agreement; her extended silence seems just as unexpected to him as the request had been for her. His eyebrows begin to slant downwards.

Wait a second, Mana thinks, and is suddenly overcome by a momentous suspicion. Is he—?

“Do you not want to?” he asks. The surprised disappointment in his voice is so blatant it’s nearly tangible, and Mana finds herself in an unexpected pickle. If she says no with this timing, he’ll think for sure that she really is upset with him—but she’s not, and she has no intention of giving him even the slightest impression that she is. There’s no choice, then, is there? She has to say yes.

“No, that’s not it. Sure, I’ll sleep over. I was just…” She thinks quickly. “I was just wondering what the occasion was, that’s all.”

Shisui gives her a startled look. “You don’t know?” he asks in a tone that suggests that he finds it quite incredible she’s forgotten. Mana hadn’t realized she’d forgotten something to begin with.

“Um, no?”

Shisui stares at her again. Then he bursts out laughing. Mana regards him bewilderedly, but he just slaps her back and chortles.

“...Are you not going to tell me?”

“You really have forgotten, haven’t you? Wow.” He pokes her shoulder teasingly. “You’re too young to be going senile, Mana.”

“Wait, really? What did I forget?” She does a quick tally in her head. “It’s not the anniversary. There’s still another week to go.”

“I’ll give you until tomorrow," Shisui decides with a bright grin. "If you don’t figure it out, I’ll tell you then.”

“Why can't you just tell me now?”

“Because there’s no fun in that, obviously.”

Attention quite diverted, Mana begins racking her brains to recall this mysterious something she can’t seem to remember. She’s still trying to figure it out even after Shisui has left, changed his clothes, brushed his teeth, and returned to stand snickering in her doorway. 

“I really can’t remember, Shisui,” she says helplessly. “Are you sure it’s something I know? I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Guess you’ll have to wait until morning to find out, then,” he replies cheerfully. Mana, now becoming slightly annoyed, purses her lips at him. Shisui chuckles fondly. “Ah, Mana. You’re so funny sometimes.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so," she answers sarcastically. Shisui just laughs again. Then he comes forward to sling an arm over her shoulders.

"You know, I don't think I've ever actually told you this even though I've thought it before," he says as they begin making their way towards his room, "but you look really nice when your hair is down." Now that she's older it makes her look a lot like Chieri—even more than she usually does—and even as a boy he'd always thought Chieri had been very pretty.

"Are you complimenting me to distract me?" Mana grouses. "It won't work."

"No, really, I mean it. It's lovely, Mana."

Taken aback by the sudden sincerity she finds in his face, Mana pauses. She says in surprise, "Oh."

"'Oh' what?" He snorts. "Well, I guess people call you pretty all the time. You must be used to it."

"No, that's not it, I just…" She blinks at him again. Then a small smile takes over her features. "Thanks, Shisui. You're handsome, too."

"Oh?"

Mana giggles amusedly when he cocks his head to the side with an expectant look. "Yes, terribly handsome," she praises. "Tall and strong and very manly."

"Well, I guess I am pretty great, huh?"

They laugh together heartily. By the time they reach Shisui's room and the futon is rolled out, Mana's irritation has all but faded. She crawls under the cover and curls up without hesitation.

"It's so cold in the winter," she sighs as she gathers the comforter around her, and then grumbles a bit when Shisui tugs on it to make her share. "No, stop. It's chilly…"

"It'll warm up in a bit. Don't be greedy."

She relents with a sigh and lets him take the other half of the blanket. It's probably true anyway; two people will generate heat much more quickly than one. Still, she can't help the full-body shivers that overtake her when cold air seeps in under the covers, and she rolls over and buries her face in the futon with a whine.

"You're going to suffocate, Mana…"

"You always say that.”

"If you sleep like that your neck will hurt like crazy, too."

"Oh, fine." She flops back over. He really seems to hate it when she turns her back to him while sleeping, so she makes sure to face in his direction. Shisui just laughs at her again.

“What now?” she grouches. “Haven’t you laughed at my expense enough tonight?”

“Sorry, sorry.” He smiles and reaches out to smooth her bangs back. From the time of her childhood it’s an action Mana has experienced again and again—as a matter of fact, she’s pretty sure Shisui picked up this exact gesture by watching Chieri and Ren do it to her over and over—but despite the familiarity of it Mana finds her heart skipping a beat. When Shisui does it, it’s different.

“Are you going to sleep already?” Shisui wonders when she, unable to properly process the sudden thumping in her chest, promptly shuts her eyes. Then again, he thinks, she had been about to get in bed to begin with.

“Yes,” Mana mumbles. “Rinako-shishou and I are going out tomorrow. I need to get up early.”

“Oh, that’s right. You did say you had a meeting. But you’ll be back in the afternoon, right?”

“Right.” 

Shisui removes his hand. “All right. Good night, then.”

“Good night…”

Silence falls over the room. Mana inhales deeply and begins doing everything she can—lying still, breathing evenly, relaxing all of her muscle groups—but even when sleep does come, it’s fitful; she drifts off, wakes up, drifts off, and then wakes again. After the third time she lets out a little exhale. There really isn’t time for this, she thinks unhappily. She wants to be rested for tomorrow. There’s nothing worse than attending an interview while sleep deprived.

She doggedly begins her way through another set of deep breaths. But then, even as her mind is churning wildly with thought, suddenly it stills. A hand comes to rest on her cheek; then a thumb brushes over her skin. 

For a breathless moment out of time Mana thinks Chieri is there, stroking her face as she so often used to do. But then her mind catches up to the present and she remembers that her mother is gone. Besides, that's not her hand—it's too large and too callused to be Chieri's hand…

She barely has to think to turn off the Sharingan when it activates. It's a smooth action now, well-honed by habit, which in itself Mana abruptly finds a little sad. The loss is still so heavy. She's acclimated to life with the Mangekyou now, but it seems she'll never be used to her mother’s absence. Before she can help it she feels a trickle of water at the corners of her eyes. 

The warm hand stills. Then, gently, it brushes the tears away, first from the left cheek and then the right. Shisui, Mana thinks. That's not Chieri, that's Shisui. 

Shisui, she thinks again, and then swallows faintly. As his palm comes to rest upon her cheek once more it's obvious that this touch is not brotherly. This affection is not familial affection. No… nor has it been for some time, has it? She thinks back. Hugs—hand-holding—the brush of his fingers against her hair… Well before she had realized the dandelion boy had grown up, he'd been like this, hadn't he? This has been a long time coming.

There's a long stillness, long and quiet, and even though she's awake Mana feels almost spellbound to keep her eyes shut and her breathing even. Anything else would break the moment. And over the sudden pounding of her heart, over the abruptly furious racing of her thoughts, the moment comes: inexorable, as smoothly and as naturally as the soft fall of snow outside the window—

His forehead comes to rest against hers. As their noses touch and she feels the warmth of his breath on her face, it becomes clear beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is no cheater. There is no affair. Shisui is not looking at someone else right now; he is looking at her.

It's a light kiss, very tentative, and just barely a brush of lips against lips. He lingers like that for a beat, holding his face to hers. Then he sighs, threads his fingers through her hair, and pulls her head forward into his chest. Several moments pass like that in silence; eventually, though, the faint sound of the hallway clock striking midnight floats up the stairs.

"Happy Birthday, Mana," Shisui murmurs into her ear. "I love you."

Chapter Text

"I'm so glad I got to have another year with you. I wish I could have a hundred more," he whispers, and then falls silent.

I guess that's what I forgot, Mana thinks dazedly as she lies there with his hand beneath her head and her forehead pressed against his shirt. It's my birthday.

A decade and a half of life with Shisui. Since the time this second life began he's always been around. They've lived together since the very beginning; even throughout the days they've spent apart, when he's been away training or on long missions, there's never been a time when she hadn't known that eventually he would return. As given that the sun rises, as granted that the moon waxes and then wanes… even when everything else has changed and all the others have gone—even after the first house has been destroyed, after Chieri has left, after Ren has gone—this person has always come back to stay by her side.

And now he loves her. When had it happened? What had caused it? They'd been matched purely out of utility. She'd married him for survival, he'd married her for duty… There had been not even a whiff of this love on that wedding day, nor even the faintest thought of it: only a quiet resolution to make peace and get along. Nothing at all like this.

She's frozen like that for a long while, utterly flustered. What should she do? How should she react? Is he going to keep holding her like this the whole night? She doesn't know if she can handle that. Her chest might explode if she stays like this. She can't—but—

But he's gone so still, she thinks once she's gathered herself enough to take a steadying breath. Even when he's home Shisui's always on the move, whether it be to his room or to the yard or to the kitchen—to study something, to practice something, to stretch something, to eat something or drink something. Even when he's still he's not at rest so much as he is just not moving. But now even his muscles are relaxed; his ever-ready stance has softened into unhindered repose. She can't really see him, pressed as she is face-first into the black cotton of his nightshirt, so rather she feels instead how deeply asleep he already is. Several moments go by but he doesn’t move at all, not to shift his weight or scratch his nose or any other such motion. He's dead to the world, clinging onto her as he lies.

Something about that, she finds herself thinking, is strangely wonderful. Ever since the time he was a child Shisui has always been working. In recent weeks he's been even more exhausted. If she starts squirming and tries to get away, he'll wake up, won't he? She shouldn't do that. She ought to let him rest. Who knows the next time he'll be able to sleep like this? 

All right, she thinks with determination. Then there's no need to move right now; they can stay like this. As she settles down she thinks it's actually even a little nice—much warmer than tossing and turning on her side of the futon had been—and maybe she can finally get some sleep like this, too, because really it's a gentle embrace. Thinking about it, though, Shisui's always been gentle towards her. She finds herself remembering the way he had patted her on the head for the first time—so ginger and fearful, as if one gram of excess force would cause a great cataclysm—and thinks he's come a long way since then. Back then he'd been scared to even approach her space. Now he's gone so far as to bring her into his own… 

Because of love, Mana thinks, and then finds herself turning the thought over in her head again and again. Because of love? Because he loves her. Because Shisui is in love with her...

"Mana… Mana? Hey, Mana."

"Mmm…" Mana mumbles and burrows her face into the fabric. A hand shakes her shoulder gently, though insistently.

"Hey, wake up. Mana?"

"Hnngh."

"Mana, don't you have to get up now?"

She finds herself being peeled away from her source of warmth. Groaning in protest, she opens her eyes blearily, not quite knowing where she is or what is going on. She comes to with the sight of Shisui's face hovering directly over hers.

"Mana?" Shisui asks when she continues to stare up at him blankly. "Hello? …Are you still asleep or something?"

As he speaks he pries her fingers open. Once her grip on the collar of his nightshirt is released, he's able to straighten up and draw back. When he gives her hand back Mana puts it over her chest and reflexively clutches at the front of her nightgown instead, dazed.

"Er… Mana?"

As she lies there vague memories of the previous night begin to trickle back into consciousness. Her face begins to redden; then she grabs the front of her dress with her other hand, too, and takes on a look of utter mortification. Shisui regards her with alarm.

"Are you okay?"

Mana opens her mouth and is about to begin spouting off—what, actually, she doesn't quite know—when the hall clock gongs. She stills. Then she flings off the comforter, heedless of the freezing air, and shoots upright. "What time is it?"

"What? Uh, it's a quarter to seven—"

"Quarter to—oh, no." Mana springs to her feet and dashes to the door. "It's nearly seven?! No!"

Before Shisui has even risen to his feet he hears the bathroom door slam, and by the time he makes it to the hallway Mana is flinging it open again, simultaneously drying her face with a towel and pulling her arm through the sleeve of her housedress. She flies past; then there's a loud clatter as she dives through her bedroom door and yanks open her drawers. When he peeks through her doorway after coming down the hall she's already frantically pulling a juban on over her underclothes.

"Shisui," she says—though since she's holding a whole set of kimono-tying cords in her mouth it comes out sounding more like "Hifooey"—when he appears. 

"Er, yeah?"

Mana grabs a tie and spits out the rest. "Downstairs in the laundry room—I was ironing my hakama—can you get it for me?" She turns to her mirror and furiously begins tying a knot around her waist. "Please!"

"Sure," he says bewilderedly. Caught up in the suddenly frenzied pace, he steps with chakra towards the stairs and returns several seconds later with the dark navy garment in his hands. In the space of a shunshin she's managed to go from stuffing fabric into her waistband to frantically flapping her arms and lining up her kimono sleeves. Shisui can't help but feel slightly impressed.

Then the doorbell rings. "It's shishou," Mana wails. "She's already here! Shisui—"

Shisui goes downstairs and opens the front door. Rinako, for her part, only tilts her head at the sight of him standing rumpled and bedheaded in the genkan before stepping inside. She tilts her head again when she gets to the top of the stairs and sees the mess of the futon through his open door, but then Mana cries her name and she turns at once towards her student's room.

"Shishou, help me!"

"Goodness, Mana-san, you're still not ready?" Rinako exclaims when she enters and finds the girl spinning in place to wrap her obi. She comes over at once, takes hold of the fabric, and gives a mighty tug to pull it taut. "Here, I'll take care of this. Quickly, start your face."

The contents of a makeup bag go clattering onto the vanity while Rinako ties Mana's belt, begins winding up the extra fabric, and tucks it under the bow. Shisui watches in awe as Mana steps into her hakama without missing a beat, letting her teacher begin fastening it around her, all while rubbing cosmetics onto her face. Once that's done, student and teacher both face the mirror and plop down at once into seiza; Rinako takes a comb and begins gathering up Mana's hair while Mana, channeling all the expertise of a woman from another life, quickly sets about filling in her eyebrows. In a way this is even easier compared to back then; her skin tone is far more even now, and she can skip color correction altogether.

Barely twenty minutes later Shisui finds himself staring down at a work of art. Perhaps literally, considering that both Mana and her teacher are accomplished artists; with an elaborately elegant updo, braided and pinned, and a glowing face, soft and rosy, his wife has become possibly the prettiest he's ever seen her in his life. He thinks maybe she might have looked as nice in her wedding outfit, possibly, but then he decides against it; compared to the all-white kimono, the pale blue one she's wearing now—paired with a dark red obi and the navy hakama, which is patterned across the front with a scattering of white flowers—suits her much better. He works his jaw and blinks repeatedly.

"Sorry, Shisui, we have to go," Mana, heedless, picks up her bag and goes hurrying after Rinako towards the stairs. "Sorry I can't make breakfast, but there's okonomiyaki in the fridge if you want. Everything's prepped already, you just have to grill it."

"Uh—" Shisui, flabbergasted, follows after them as they pull on their shawls. In no time they're standing outside and opening their umbrellas. He belatedly reaches out a hand. "Mana—"

"I'll be back in a bit!" she says, and then just like that, they're making their way down the street through slush and snow with such dignity and grace that he never would have imagined they'd been frantically digging through brushes and throwing accessories around just ten minutes ago.

"I'm so sorry, shishou, I woke up late," Mana apologizes profusely. After Rinako had specifically told her to be ready, too, she thinks with dismay. Her teacher is going to be furious. 

Contrary to Mana's expectations, though, Rinako just laughs a little. "Let me guess. Shisui kept you up late last night?"

Mana is so surprised that she forgets to be bashful. "How did you know?"

"What do you mean, how did I know? Of course he did. It’s your birthday, and he's smitten with you."

Mana drops her head. Even Rinako had picked up on it before she had…

"Oh, don't worry about it. My husband was the same way when he was still alive." Rinako smiles a bit. "What's the problem? Isn’t it a good thing to be cherished?"

"I forgot it was my birthday," Mana confesses. "He teased me about it all night."

"You really are just like your mother," Rinako snorts in reply. "How are people so diligent about appointment-keeping in their daily lives so good at forgetting their own births? Chieri was just the same way."

"I guess she was." Mana sighs wistfully. Now that the terrible panic of getting dressed has passed, she finds herself being suddenly overtaken by a strangely acute sense of melancholy. "No matter how many surprise parties we threw, she was always shocked every year. Every single time…"

A moment of silence passes between them. Then Mana lifts a hand and places it lightly—very lightly, so not as to ruin her freshly-applied makeup—on her cheek. Rinako observes this motion silently. Then she asks, "Are you well, Mana-san?"

Mana is quiet as she removes her hand and stares down at her gloved fingers. Her brow creases. But even as it does the corners of her lips lift, just ever so slightly, and she smiles at her teacher. It's a bittersweet thing, mixed with grief and gladness and—and something, she can't quite tell—all in equal measure, but it is a smile nonetheless.

"Yes, shishou. I'm well."

Chapter Text

On the way back from the Kurama clan Rinako asks to make a detour. Mana blinks perplexedly when she finds herself being led into a flower shop, but before she can ask her teacher what their business is here, a high and childish voice cries out her name. “Mana-san!”

Mana turns her head towards the counter, where a little blond girl sitting on a high stool beside the shopkeeper—her father, by the looks of it—lets out a squeal and rushes forward to greet her.

“Ino-chan!” Mana says, delighted, and immediately drops into a crouch to speak to her. “I didn’t think I’d see you here! How are you?”

“This is my family’s flower shop,” Ino explains helpfully. Then she puts a hand on her hip, points an accusing finger at Mana in all her finery, and exclaims, “You didn’t look like this when you came to the Academy. Why are you dressed like that? You look like a princess!”

“Oh, that’s because—” Mana opens her mouth to explain; before she can begin, however, Rinako lets out a mischievous chuckle.

“You have a good eye, young lady,” she says in a stage whisper. “You’ve seen past her hidden identity.”

Mana gives her teacher a startled look, but Rinako just winks. Ino sizes Rinako up.

“Who are you?”

“Me? I’m the most honorable Princess Mana’s faithful attendant,” Rinako declares. Mana's eyebrows fly up, but Rinako keeps an utterly straight face. “You see, my lady usually conceals her status, but today is a very special day. As it is, I’ve come to obtain an offering for her birthday. Might you be able to assist me, young lady of the flower shop?”

“Shishou!” Mana turns beet red. “What are you saying?”

“Why, you didn’t think we would return home without obtaining a token to celebrate the most blessed day of your birth, Mana-hime?” Rinako laughs heartily as Ino, after lighting up at the prospect of picking flowers for a princess, dashes off towards the interior of the shop. “Yet more splendid gifts await you when we return to the compound, I assure you. You are a lady beloved by all your subjects, after all.”

“I don’t have subjects,” Mana protests as she stands, and then buries her face in her hands when she accidentally makes eye contact with Ino’s father, who is watching this play unfold with raised eyebrows. “Rinako-shishou, please, you’re embarrassing me!”

“Nonsense, my lady! You must raise your head. Please do not conceal your beauty from the people around you—Konoha needs the light of your face like leaves need the warmth of the sun…"

At this point, as Rinako saucily flounces past to join Ino in looking at flowers, Ino's father begins laughing out loud. Mana lets out a noise approximating a whistling teakettle.

"Your shishou is a cheerful type, isn't she?" he chuckles as he folds his newspaper and places it on the counter.

"This must be her punishment because I was late getting ready this morning," Mana moans in reply. "This is her revenge."

"You certainly are very well-dressed. What's the occasion?" Ino's father asks with smooth curiosity. There's a man with the manner of a well-practiced gossip, Mana thinks. Then again, what better place is there to gather juicy tidbits than a storefront in the heart of Konoha's market district? If it's gossip he wants, he could not have picked a more strategic location.

"Oh, well…" Mana ducks her head a bit bashfully. "Actually, we went to attend an interview with an elder of the Kurama clan. Shishou is my art teacher and she wanted to arrange an exhibition for my works."

"Oh? And did you receive a favorable response?"

"Yes, actually. We still need to iron out the details and pick the exact pieces, but he was happy enough with what we showed him that he said we were free to present whatever else we wished."

Ino's father regards her with a look of mild surprise. "That's quite an endorsement. He must have been very impressed."

Mana, though embarrassed, giggles with pleasure. At that point Rinako swoops back in with Ino in tow.

"The exhibition will open in spring, just in time for the cherry blossoms. If you're interested, why not come take a look? Beautiful art by a beautiful lady in the most beautiful season," Rinako promotes shamelessly. "In terms of aesthetics, nothing else can surpass."

"Here, Daddy! Princess flowers!" Ino, meanwhile, runs around the counter and thrusts an armful of snowdrops and white and red anemones up at her father. Mana goes right back to trying to sink into the floor.

"To one princess from another, eh, sweetheart?" Ino's father smiles at his daughter as he opens up a drawer full of crepe paper and ribbon. Once he’s wrapped and tied them, he turns to accept Rinako's payment. "I'll certainly keep an ear open for more news about it. Thank you for your purchase."

"Here, Mana-san." Rinako swiftly fills Mana’s arms with the bouquet. "Oh, hush," she replies to the girl's objection. "If you keep that up I'll take you to a jewelry store next. You can watch in person as I buy you the most expensive thing I can afford."

Sensing an undercurrent of truth in this amicable threat, Mana promptly shuts her mouth. Rinako chuckles deviously as she dips her chin in thanks to Ino's father. 

"Congratulations on your birthday. Have a wonderful day," Inoichi calls in farewell. Once the door shuts he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. "Hmm."

"What is it, Daddy?" Ino queries as she comes forward and splays herself over his lap. Inoichi pats her head absently as he gazes out the window.

"Oh, nothing," he murmurs as he watches the backs of their departing customers. As they walk away, lightly pushing at one another’s shoulders, his eyes linger on the red-and-white crests sewed onto their shawls. "Say, Ino. Do you know that Uchiha princess?"

Rinako offers to take her out to a late lunch, but Mana declines, knowing that Shisui will have waited to eat with her; they split at the gate of the compound and return to their respective houses. Now that the whirlwind of the morning has passed she’s left alone with her thoughts, she finds herself thinking about her newfound situation at home. Then she lifts her hand and brushes her fingers across her lips. In this life the only person to ever kiss her on the lips has been her mother. Shisui had obviously thought she’d been sleeping, so he hadn’t expected anything back, but what happens if she’s awake? Would he want her to kiss him back? Should she kiss him back? Mana’s only just recently come to terms with the fact that Shisui is old enough to even be interested in that sort of thing. It had been one thing to imagine him pursuing some other person, but her? Her, Uchiha Mana?

Her hands are too full, so she rings the bell when she arrives at home. Then, because staring at the door fills her with a suddenly terrible anxiety, she lifts her arms and looks down at her flowers instead. Anemones don’t have scent, but the snowdrops smell nice. Subtle enough not to be overpowering, but still quite pleasant… like honey. Are snowdrops the December birth flower in this world? Thinking about it, Chieri had dabbled in flower arrangement as part of her housekeeping activities. She probably has a book about hanakotoba lying around somewhere.

The door slides open. Shisui emerges to the sight of Mana in the snow with her oil-paper umbrella balanced on her shoulder, gazing down with her arms full of bright blossoms, and pauses. Then he vanishes. Before Mana can look up and finish blinking in surprise, however, he reappears with a monstrously clunky camera.

Even such an antique device is enough to reawaken long-dormant conditioning gained from life in a social media world, and Mana finds herself automatically dropping her shoulders and angling her body to stand in the optimally photogenic stance. A flash of light goes off. Then Shisui lowers the camera and beams at her, mightily pleased.

“...Wait, where did you get that?” she belatedly wonders. As a noble clan the Uchiha are collectively well-off enough to project an image of generational wealth, but in this universe supporting as costly an endeavor as photography—especially photography taken with a portable, handheld camera such as that one—would be no small feat for a single household. And chunky or not, that camera is definitely portable compared to the others she’s seen in Konoha. They have money, but do they have that much money?

Shisui sees the concern on her face and lets out a laugh. “Mikoto-san let me use it,” he explains cheerfully. “I ran over this morning and asked her if I could borrow it.”

Mana pauses. Then she gives him a look of deep respect. Had he really just showed up on the doorstep of the clan head and asked to be given personal use of such valuable, cutting-edge technology? More than that, had he really succeeded? Family friends or not, that’s mildly mind-boggling. He’s so unassuming and mild that one would never guess just by looking at him, but Shisui really does have clout in this clan, doesn’t he?

Heedless, he just lifts the camera again and excitedly says, “Let’s take another one.”

“Can we? What about the film?”

“Mikoto-san said it’s nearly out so we can just finish the rest off. Come on!”

Mana has no further reason to protest, so she puts down her bag and portfolio case and poses in the street twice more before asking to be given a turn. Shisui looks terribly surprised to have the lens immediately turned back in his direction, but Mana thinks it makes for a good candid shot and takes the photo. For the second one she takes a bit more time to consider the composition, and she spends several seconds angling the camera so that the lines of the entryway frame him with more focus, but Shisui’s grin is so bright that it doesn’t seem to matter that this picture is more obviously posed.

“There’s only one left,” Mana observes after completing this second shot. “Do you want to use it? Or should I?”

Shisui takes on a look of inspiration. “Let’s take one together.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea. But how? Should we ask one of the neighbors?”

“Hang on, I know what to do.”

Several minutes later they have an alcove table and a stack of books standing in the genkan; atop this they place the camera. 

“But how will we click the shutter?” Mana wonders. Shisui responds by flicking his fingers. Several feet ahead of them, a pebble skitters across the step before leaping forward into Shisui’s palm. She stares; then she demands, “How did you do that?”

“It’s called a chakra string. You can use it to manipulate objects from afar. It’s actually a technique developed by puppet masters in Sunagakure… I haven’t trained with it much, but I can use them a little. It’s kind of similar to regular ninja wire.”

Mana stares at him again. Shisui offers her a cheeky smile. Before she can do something as momentously unwise as turn on her bloodline limit and make him do it again, however, he takes her umbrella, puts a hand on her shoulder, and moves her in front of him. That’s a clever way to cover how mismatched they are in dress, Mana thinks. Even when standing at full height she’s only tall enough to come up to his chest, so in this position he can conceal his more casual clothing while still showing his face to the camera. 

With the snowy street as their background, they take their last photo. Shisui hefts the camera happily into his hands once they finally retreat into the warmth of the house. "I can't wait to get these developed."

Mana is quite interested to see how her pictures turn out, too. If photography had been more accessible in this universe she would have liked to try her hand at it; it seems like a discipline that would mesh well for those with an interest in the traditional visual arts. Of course, she can't complain really—a Sharingan and a paintbrush probably is the closest second anyone in this universe will get—but compared to that world where everyone had cameras in their pockets, it's a very different situation.

"You haven't eaten yet, have you?" she queries as she puts her umbrella away. 

"No, I was waiting for you." Shisui smiles at her. "I cooked. Hot pot for the main, your favorites for the sides."

Mana lifts her eyebrows. "Stir-fried green beans with ginger?"

"And gyoza."

"Oh, man." Mana lets out a laugh of utter delight before she gathers up her purse and her portfolio and makes for the stairs. "Hang on, I'm going to go change!"

"Take your time," Shisui calls as she goes dashing up to her room. "Don't slip!"

Camera still in hand, he spends a few moments there smiling in the wake of her departure. Gradually, though, his lips flatten. Then he looks back to the doorway and turns his gaze towards the window; a single black crow is perched on the wall across the street, staring straight at him.

Chapter Text

“You want to do what?”

The entire yard goes silent with shock. Touma and Risa, their hosts for today, exchange wide-eyed glances. They’ve been rotating meeting spots amongst the residences of the physicians for a while now—since they always have clansfolk coming and going from their homes, they’re the least likely to arouse suspicion if an assortment of people come through in a day—so the couple have been in attendance nearly every gathering so far. But despite that this suggestion is still so left-field that not even they could have anticipated it.

Neither could have Shisui; he gives Itachi a long, evaluating look and wonders just what has happened at home to have prompted such an audacious proposal. At once muttering erupts across the lawn, and Shisui is glad that it’s common practice for ninja doctors to have privacy seals and audio genjutsu layered over their properties. As repositories of sensitive health information, no shinobi would ever question them for protecting their homes in such a way, and that is surely their only saving grace right now; even in whispers this many people make quite a ruckus when they all speak at once. And there certainly are a lot of them—more than Shisui would have ever imagined when he’d first begun reaching out to others on Izumi’s behalf. 

He supposes he has Touma and Risa to thank for that, too. Once they had won the other Uchiha doctors over—all three of them, shockingly enough—recruiting more allies had only been a matter of discreetly reaching out to likely candidates as they came for check-ups and prescriptions. This isn’t even everyone. A handful of civilian spouses are here, as well as an odd genin and grandparent or two, but the attendees are mostly those with enough stealth training to slip through the area unseen. Once their meeting is done here, they’ll go back to the others to relay information and gather opinions for the next gathering.

Nothing about Mana’s sickness has ever made Shisui happy—he'll never be happy about it, not after it’s nearly snatched her away so many times already—but he has to admit that he is thankful, if only reluctantly, for the way it’s connected them so intimately with Touma. His wife’s crippling ill-health is no secret in the clan at all, so no one would ever bat an eye to see him speaking in hushed tones with his family physician. Would it be an exaggeration to say that this smokescreen is what has made this entire enterprise possible? Perhaps, but he knows for certain the clan medics are the reason this movement is happening at all.

As flabbergasted as the medics are, however, no one looks more shocked than Hazuki and Sorata. Perhaps that’s to be expected; as the only two members of the military police in attendance, no one besides Itachi himself is in such close daily contact with Fugaku as they are. 

“You want to oust your father as the clan head?” Izumi’s mother asks weakly.

“That is the goal of a vote of no confidence,” Itachi agrees.

If they’d been civilians the crowd would already be rioting. As it is, Shisui has to wave his hand several times to lower the ambient volume. It is technically a clandestine meeting, audio genjutsu or no.

“What’s your reasoning?” Sorata gives the teen a hard look. Shisui has never been personally acquainted with Sorata, but his name was well-known in Ren’s household, especially in the days following the Kyuubi Attack; he’s the officer who had been responsible for saving Mana and Chieri during the evacuation. This alone would have endeared him to Shisui well enough, but the cool-headed query that follows once he’s brought his initial reaction under control is quite winsome, too.

“First and foremost, it’s become increasingly apparent that Father is unable to separate his responsibilities as the head from his responsibilities as the chief of police. But if you mean to question the immediate cause for my proposal…” Itachi is silent for some few beats. Then he says, “It’s because he’s set a timeline to carry out a coup d’etat. Come summer, the Police Force will execute an operation to take power in Konoha.”

Deathly silence falls again. Shisui drops his hands. Izumi reaches over to clutch Hazuki’s sleeve. 

“The negative reputation of the Uchiha in the village stems almost entirely from detrimental publicity centering upon the Police Force. Father has done what he can to answer these criticisms, but no matter what reforms he initiates or new protocols he implements, the Council has condemned him repeatedly, and public opinion has followed. Because of the blatant bad faith with which his efforts have been dismissed, he has been disillusioned with the possibility of a peaceable solution. I did not think initially that things would come to this—in the beginning he was not amenable to the idea of rebellion—but the situation has changed.” Itachi pauses. “If he were the chief of police alone, his stance would be understandable. As the chief he has been unjustly maltreated by the Council, and he cannot be faulted for listening to the grievances of the men in his charge. However, he has not given equal ear to the voices of the other members of the clan. The fact that this assembly is here in secret is proof enough of that. He gives undue weight to the opinions of the Police Force.”

The fact that Sorata and Hazuki are the only MP officers present only lend credence to his point. They seem to know it, too, because as Itachi’s speech goes on, their faces grow grimmer with every word. 

Once Itachi finishes, however, Touma lifts his hand. “All right. Temporarily putting aside whether or not this is the only viable solution, let’s say we construct a cohesive motion of confidence and manage to take it to a general clan vote. Do you actually think we could remove Fugaku-san from his position? As a group we constitute not an insignificant proportion of the clan, and we could perhaps, if counting generously, match the number of active Police Force members—though that would have to be a very generous count indeed. But what about the committee of elders? The retired officers? The spouses and of-age children of all three of these groups? There’s no way we could secure a majority against all of them. Ousting him is a pipe dream.”

True enough. And more than that, Fugaku is very well-liked in general, even by those here in the pacifist faction. He’s a skilled shinobi and a competent leader; if not for this sudden turn of events Shisui thinks he would never have dreamed of trying to unseat the man.

“You are correct. Nevertheless, we must bring the motion anyway. If it comes to the worst-case scenario, it will be the only way to save the clan.” Itachi’s youthful face is lined with stress and hard with reality. “The village may be willing to pardon those who demonstrate themselves against the revolt. A remnant of the Uchiha would be spared.”

This causes another burst of noise that Shisui, stunned by the baldness of this declaration, doesn’t even attempt to quell. “The bloodshed you’re implying is untenable,” a man in the garb of a chuunin exclaims. “That’s our clan you’re talking about. You’re insane!”

Itachi levels the man with a flat look. “Is the bloodshed an implication, or is it simply inevitable? Unless you think the coup will succeed. In that case, we’ll simply find ourselves at war instead.”

Shisui winces. Once again Itachi has managed to cut to the heart of things like a surgeon—even in the space of a few moments this is the exact same conclusion Shisui himself has come to—but his delivery leaves much to be desired. The chuunin reels back, sputtering, and Risa’s face goes white with paleness. The general mood of the yard is much the same. No surprise; Shisui doesn’t think there’s a clansman here without family in the MP.

“All right, everyone, hang on,” he finally interjects. “The stakes are high, but that’s all the more reason to retain our composure. No decisions have been made yet, and we don’t need to be hasty. Let’s hear out each of our options.”

A spate of denials rise up against the scenario in which over half the clan is executed by the village for sedition, but Itachi, armed with inside information, shoots down each objection with arrows of icy logic. The terrible reality of a fast-approaching extinction event becomes more and more apparent as the debate goes on, and before long Shisui can perceive a cloud of despair gradually begin creeping over the gathering. As emotions rise more than one Sharingan inadvertently activates, and eventually he has to hold up his hands.

“Okay. Then let’s do this,” he says resolutely. “Let’s put off the matter of the motion of confidence just for now. My rotation at the Academy is ending soon. Once it does, I’ll have the chance to speak to Lord Third. Though the Council is hostile, Hokage-sama is evenhanded, and he hasn’t taken part in most of the censures against the Police Force. Since that’s the case, I’ll use our meeting as an opportunity to reach out directly and see if there’s any sort of collaborative action we can take to improve the Uchiha’s relationship with the village.”

“Hm.” Touma’s expression is thoughtful. “Borrowing the Hokage’s authority could be an effective way to demonstrate that the Uchiha still have the administration’s confidence. The jounin and other upper echelons, at any rate, would take note of it.”

“In the best case scenario,” someone mutters. “But if things don’t pan out that way, we’ll be even worse off than we are now. Are you sure this is a good idea? Haven’t we just spent the last half hour enumerating all the reasons why Lord Hokage now has the grounds to wipe our clan off the map?”

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Shisui says firmly. “No one here approves of the conspiracy. We’re trying to prevent it, and he has every reason to cooperate with us. It’s for the best of everyone involved if this matter ends without bloodshed. Besides, I plan to use at least a little tact in presenting the issue to him… I’m not going to use ‘our clan head is inciting a rebellion’ as my opening line.”

An assortment of chatter follows this declaration; several minutes of discussion follows. Eventually, though, a general noise of agreement goes up amongst the gathered clansfolk. Shisui lets out a short breath.

“Then that’s that. Let’s meet again next month near the end of the New Year’s celebration. It won’t be strange to have a large gathering with that timing, and by then I’ll have had time to discuss our situation with Lord Third. Itachi, Hazuki-san, Sorata-san—”

“I’ll do what I can to set back Father’s plans,” Itachi says at once. “If I falsify a report or two about activities in ANBU and suggest unfavorable conditions, I may be able to convince him to delay for at least a bit.”

“Hazuki and I can gather information from our colleagues,” Sorata suggests. “Try to see if we can’t pin down what specific incidents have been the most inflammatory. Maybe we can devise some sort of countermeasure to address their grievances with the village.”

“Perfect. Pass along whatever intel you gather to me and I’ll work it into my meeting with Lord Third. As for everyone else…” Shisui pauses to think. “Well, there’s not a lot we can do to address the tensions with the citizenry at large, but many of us here work daily with other members of the General Forces. We have teams and coworkers. I can’t guarantee it’ll help very much, but we should do our best to be sociable. Help your friends with their ninjutsu, bring them to the clan practice grounds if they need space to train, lend them info about shurikenjutsu and swordsmanship—if we share our resources and our wisdom, it’ll be just that much harder for people to accuse us.” He pauses again. “Be prudent, though. There’ll be trouble from the elders if we talk too much about clan jutsu. As a rule of thumb, definitely don’t disclose any information about the Sharingan. Don’t talk too much about our summoning contracts if you happen to be on one. Try to keep it to bukijutsu and the other general ninja arts. Does that sound good?”

There’s a general chime of agreement, but then a single genin timidly raises his hand. He swallows heavily at the number of eyes that turn towards him, but he screws up his courage and asks, “What if the people around me already really hate the clan? I… I’ve been getting bullied pretty badly by the others since we graduated. I mean, my squadmates are nice to me more or less, but now that we’re not under supervision by the Academy instructors all the time, the other teams have gotten, um, pretty nasty…”

Shisui sobers. “In that case, your priority needs to be your own safety. There’s nothing you can do to help it if someone picks a fight with you, and the last thing we want is for them to have an excuse to walk all over you. Deescalate where you can, and refrain from retaliating if the situation permits it, but if it comes to it you have to stand up for yourself. If you get hurt it’ll add more fuel to the fire, so we definitely need to avoid that outcome.” Shisui glances in Izumi’s direction, but the girl has already understood her assignment and is eyeing the boy with a look of resolve. “Report to us if anything notable happens. You’re in a vulnerable position—you may need extra support to keep your situation stable.”

The use of mission parlance seems to make the boy amenable to accepting help, and after the kid voices his assent, Shisui nods in satisfaction. The other members of the meeting begin trading nods of their own.

“All right. We have our course for now. We’ll meet again soon—until then, stay safe, and don’t hesitate to establish contact if you need further guidance.” Shisui clenches his fist and takes a breath. Then he opens his hand and releases it. “The only way we’re making it out of this is by sticking together. Let’s make it work.”

Chapter Text

As she's standing in line at the greengrocer's, turning a cabbage over in her hands and pondering ideas for her exhibition's title, she hears a faint whisper: "...Kagami's grandson?"

It's never unusual to hear people talking about Shisui while out and about in the compound, but what is is the terribly furtive tone with which these words are spoken. Mana tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, keeps her gaze carefully straightforward, and tunes in at once.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, that's her. That's the wife."

Oh. So they're not talking about Shisui, but Mana. That's a little less common—as far as others are concerned Mana herself is wholly unremarkable—but she is irrevocably attached to a famous clansman, so it's not overly strange to be a topic of conversation. Curious, she wonders what they might be saying about her. Then she stills.

"She really isn't showing at all."

"Really. Hasn't it been over two years since the wedding?"

"Yes, that's right."

"She was young at the time so I understand if they wanted to wait, but she's old enough now, don't you think?"

"They might have been having trouble since he was out on missions so often, but he's been in the village for the past half-year, hasn't he?"

"Yes, ever since that Academy assignment of his. But I heard his rotation there just ended…"

"And there's still no sign of an heir? What will she do when he leaves the village again?"

"Miss?" the cashier calls. Mana starts and realizes that the space ahead of her has opened; the two gossiping aunts in the corner instantly go silent. They turn their heads away when she glances back over her shoulder, embarrassed to have been caught, before quickly putting down their produce and exiting the store. Mana, stupefied, watches them go with lips slightly parted. Then the cashier calls her again. She turns her head forward, dry-mouthed and silent, and steps up to the counter.

Outside, the first drops of rain begin to fall from the gray sky.

Sex is a reality of marriage.

As she sits on the veranda beside the brazier, bundled in a blanket and sipping tea as she watches the downpour through the storm doors, she turns this thought over again in her head. She’s been turning it over in her mind for a little while now, really, and the more she thinks about it the more and more precarious her position in her own home seems to become. If she considers it frankly, there’s no question about it. Really it’s not even a choice; if he asks her to sleep with him, she’s obligated to comply. Given the culture and locale he could even use force and no one would be able to say a word to him about it. She knows that for a fact: she's looked through the laws, after all, and marital rape isn’t even articulated as a concept. Luckily given Shisui’s character she finds that scenario quite unlikely. She can’t imagine him ever using violence to coerce her in such a manner, so as an actual concern this is hardly even a blip on the radar. 

The real pressure, clearly, is Shisui’s status as last-of-his-line. For a person in that position an immense expectation to produce offspring is a matter of course. Ren’s case had been proof enough of that; he’d experienced a frankly repugnant amount of nagging to remarry and have more children, and that was with a prodigiously talented firstborn male already in the picture. She can’t imagine how much worse it’s going to be for Shisui himself. 

She’s always had an awareness that that’s the sort of clan she’d been born into, but Mana replays the encounter in the grocery store again and finds that she just can’t wrap her head around it. Fifteen years old, married for two scant years, and they’re already looking at her askance for not having a baby? In her old life she’d experienced criticism from her relatives for not having a good man and a family, but back then they'd been mocking her for being an old maid. She’d been double the age she is now.

What’s worse, though, is that Mana knows that interaction had been light as far as gossip goes. That is not even the start of what social pressure can do. She'd thought that she and Shisui were still young enough a couple that there wouldn’t yet be a need to apply force in earnest, but clearly if they’re whispering now that grace period is ending. In another year or so's time she doubts they'll even bother to lower their voices. 

Mana considers it further. Though she supposes that his obligation could technically be fulfilled if he had extramarital children, as a situation that would be frankly awful for everyone involved, the kids included. Besides, even if push came to shove, it’s quite dubious that Shisui would even go that route. If she knows him at all he’d sooner resign himself to not having kids. That’s the sort of person he is.

And there is the sticking point, Mana thinks as she tips the rest of her tea back and finds herself wishing that it was something just a bit stronger. She’s never been much of a drinker, not in this life or the previous one, but right now alcohol would go a long way in taking the edge off the horrific anxiety holding her gut in a vice grip right now. At the end of the day the responsibility for this will lie on her. Depending on what she does, the quality of Shisui’s next several decades of life both social and domestic will be terribly impacted. If he wants heirs, the only place he can get them legitimately is her—and if she says no, he’s going to be miserable for all the reasons above and more. Anyone with even a basic amount of foresight can see that. 

She lowers her arms. So really, is there a choice at all? No, there isn’t. She can’t do that to him. How could she? A person that kind, a man that selfless, a partner that devoted, how could she ever make any choice that would harm him? They’ve been through so much together. She owes Shisui her life. He has sacrificed so much on her behalf. Isn’t this the least she can do? If he’s able to find happiness and fulfillment in this union, shouldn’t she let him have it? Whatever she feels about it is irrelevant.

Mana stares down at her empty teacup for a long moment in silence. Then she lets out a long sigh. Is that it, then? She holds up her hand and extends a finger. Because he owns me by clan law. She lifts another. Because he needs to have children. She sticks out a third. Because he’s not allowed to love anyone else. 

These are terrible reasons to have sex with someone. It’s degrading to both of them. This is why you don’t force people into marriages, Mana thinks as she sets her cup down on the floor beside her. Then she lifts her hands, buries her face in them, and stays like that for some time. 

She can hear him coming even before he opens the front door, but she feels so heavy that she can't even pick her head up, let alone grin and try to pretend that nothing is wrong. She remains like that even as he steps up from the genkan and calls out that he's returned.

"Mana?" Shisui queries when he comes through the family room and finds her sitting there in miserable silence. Mana bites her lip. Then she takes a deep breath, exhales, and pries her fingers away from her face. She offers him as much of a smile she can muster.

“Welcome home,” she greets weakly. Then she grimaces a bit and turns her head away. Oh dear.

“What’s wrong?” Shisui takes one look at her before pulling off his vest and sitting down beside her. Mana casts about for an excuse.

“Oh, uh, well, I didn’t prepare anything warm for dinner. I was just going to have leftovers. I, um, didn’t realize we’d have the chance to eat together.”

A flicker of guilt steals across Shisui's face, which Mana regrets. She hadn't intended to make him feel bad. Whatever it is that's keeping him away is troubling him enough; he doesn't need additional stress from her. Dejected, she pulls up her knees and buries her face in them. Shisui quickly puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind at all.”

“Okay,” she mumbles despondently. “Thanks.”

Several beats of silence pass. As expected, Shisui does not go away, and Mana resigns herself to having the conversation. There's no point in trying to beat around the bush; they'll have to talk about it eventually. She'd be willing to put it off if they could, if only because he clearly has a lot on his plate right now and could probably use a break, but she knows that's not practical. Given recent events it's going to become relevant sooner rather than later, and now that he's seen her upset she doubts he's going to let it lie.

“What is it really, Mana?" Sure enough, eventually he asks. “What’s on your mind?”

Mana sighs and lifts her head. "Heirs," she admits bluntly. 

"Heirs?" Shisui's expression goes blank with astonishment. Then, before he can help it, a look of unfiltered displeasure covers his face. "Did someone say something to you?"

“Well…” Mana props her chin up with her hand. “Not to my face.”

Several beats pass in silence, punctured only by the sound of the pounding downpour. Mana looks sidelong at Shisui and takes notice of the darkened fabric on his sleeves and pant legs. It must have been chilly to come home in this unseasonal rain. She unwraps her blanket and throws its other corner over his shoulders. He blinks with surprise, but then scoots in closer. They spend a few moments staring out the windows together in silence.

"...You should ignore what they say," he eventually says. "That's not their business."

"You know that's not possible, Shisui." Mana gives him a flat look. Maybe he could get away with that if he focuses all his attention on his work, but Mana is a housewife; she has no career to take refuge in. Her social status and clan standing are her life.

He goes quiet again. Mana lets out an embittered sigh and buries her face in his shoulder. It's not that she dislikes Shisui, she thinks as he wraps his arm around her side. Quite the contrary: she likes him a lot. Strange as it is, she thinks she may not even really be opposed to the idea of having a family with him, either. She adores children and she knows he’s the same way. Shisui's loved kids even since the time he was a kid himself; he's great at interacting with them, he gets along well with them, and despite the politics of it, his time at the Academy had shown that he enjoys teaching them all sorts of new skills… even as young as he is now he'd be a great dad, and he'd probably enjoy every second of it.

But there’s an intermediate step between wanting the family and having it, and she doesn’t know if she can get on board with that. Not just because she’s someone’s property. Not just because the clan says she has to.

“I didn’t choose you,” she eventually whispers. “And you didn’t choose me, either. How could we possibly not regret it?”

Chapter Text

Shisui is silent for several beats. But then he speaks, and what he says is not what she expects: "I did choose you."

"...You don't have to say that. I'm glad you're able to like me right now, but you were forced into it, too, just like me."

Shisui lets out a breath. Then he lifts his hand and puts it atop her head. "No," he murmurs with growing awareness. "No, I was pressured. You were forced. I could have said no and kept living, but you had no choice… You did it to survive."

He thinks back to the wedding. And then, in his remembering, he realizes that he'd seen it in her eyes. They'd been the sort of eyes he'd been used to seeing in the field. Looking back, it had been strange to find them on such a young girl in the village—in his own clan and in his own family, no less. The compulsion of her situation had been on her face: to be pretty, to be agreeable, to do whatever possible to be treated well… Abruptly Shisui wonders how much of Mana's life until now has been a desperate struggle to serve him. He thinks about all the things she’s done to make herself a likeable and competent wife. His meals. His laundry. His housekeeping, his bookkeeping…

A shinobi is no stranger to seeking the upper hand, but at once he feels as if cockroaches are crawling up his spine. After all, it is one thing to gain power over an enemy after defeating him in the field. It is another to be granted total authority over a civilian girl against her will, having neither strived for nor earned it, simply because someone else said so.

“I’m sorry.” At once regret rises up within him. Laying even a finger on someone in that situation is abhorrent, and he’d done it. He’d kissed her in her sleep and she'd had no say about it at all. She’s been straining for her life and he's only been thinking of what he wants to do. “I’m sorry, Mana.”

Mana stares at him. The unwavering eyes he’s always loved to look at have clouded over with murky emotion, and beholding the shadow on her face feels abruptly like being stabbed with a sword. Worse, even. Shisui's fingers curl into fists. Then he casts off the blanket, turns his body, and faces her in seiza.

"No matter what anyone says I'll always take your side," he vows. "I can't stop them from badmouthing you, but I'll be your ally no matter what. You can rely on me."

"Shisui…"

"I promise. You have my word."

Mana's brow begins to crease. "You don't really mean that, do you? You can't."

"Why can't I?"

"What will happen if you want a child and I won't give you one? What if I say I don't want you to touch me? What then?"

"Then I won't touch you."

“Are you serious? Just like that?”

“It would be physically impossible to derive any pleasure whatsoever from forcing you to sleep with me, damn what the clan tells me,” Shisui declares flatly. “I’d hate it and I won’t do it. That’s a fact.”

Mana stares at him again. Then she twists her fingers together. Her shoulders begin to lower.

“If you really love someone, you won’t treat them like that,” Shisui says, and then stops, and then swallows. Then he takes a breath and lifts his chin. “And I love you. I didn’t then, but I do now, and no one forced me to it. I decided it on my own.”

Several beats of silence pass. Then, slowly, Shisui reaches out to put his palm upon Mana’s cheek. She flinches when he leans forward, utterly unready to receive a kiss with this timing, but he doesn’t press his lips to her mouth; he lowers them to rest on her forehead instead. Then he draws back, and when Mana looks up to meet his gaze, scenes from the past flash across her mind’s eye. Young Itachi sitting against the fence with baby Sasuke in his arms, face aglow—the view from Chieri’s arms in the dark shadows of the southeast shelter, listening to her whisper reassurance even as blood streaks down the side of her face—

It’s a fierce light that fills his eyes as he gazes down at her. A burning resolution like fire, a look like he’d fight any one of those clansfolk to the death—through any suffering or sacrifice, at any cost. Not sentiment, not passion, but an adamantine will: I love you.

Mana’s lips part. Then she lifts her hands, covers her face, and begins to cry.

The deadline is approaching quickly. She has until the end of the week to finally submit a title and it can’t be put off any longer. Mana knows she needs to decide on something soon, but as she sits in the bright silence of her mother’s bedroom-studio, staring down at the desk and agitatedly tapping the end of her brush against a glass of water, she can’t bring herself to focus at all.

Eventually she lets out a frustrated sigh. Maybe she should try thinking about it from a new angle. Bracketing her previous ideas, she considers it afresh. In her old world musicians had often used their names as titles for their first albums, so maybe she could do the same for her work? She uncaps a bottle of black ink and dips her brush before setting it to paper. With careful intent, she stretches out the strokes of the character for “love” upon the page. Then she looks at it; it's entirely underwhelming. What a terrible idea.

Mana sighs and begins poking at the page with her brush, leaving dark splotches with every stroke. Aimlessly, she connects them into shapes. Her thoughts wander for a while, distractedly playing out inanities and nonsense, before inevitably they return to the place they have lingered for all the long past days and nights. The sight of Shisui’s face—the image of those eyes afire—rises again in her mind, and her brush stills. She spends a long moment like that, staring into empty air and confounded by her own heart.

When Mana eventually looks down again she finds with surprise that her doodle has evolved. At some point she'd begun dipping her brush in her drinking water, and along the way a tissue for blotting had found its way into her other hand, too. Startled, she inspects her work. She hadn't drawn anything in with pencil beforehand, but…

“Oh, wow.” Mana pauses and puts down her brush. Then she tilts her head, intrigued. The spaces of the upper half of the character have been filled in and drawn out to become hair, and its lower portion has given shape to a man’s brow. Though the piece is barely even half-begun, Mana perceives at once the image her hand has been working to free from the blank white space of the page. She quickly picks up her brush again, gaze sharp.

Some time later, after the bright noontime sunlight has darkened into shades of orange and red, Mana sits back and stares down at her work. Then she places her hand over her mouth because even though it shouldn’t have worked at all—even though she hadn’t planned any of it, even though the kanji is still black and solid and terribly visible within the image that has been painted atop it—it’s a captivating portrait. A man with dark hair, face tilted downwards, mouth hidden behind the rise of a high collar…

Stunned by the utter serendipity, Mana reaches blindly for a nib pen without looking up from the page. Then she fills in the eyes. The otherwise monochromatic palette of the piece makes the bright red of Sharingan irises as hypnotizing in ink as in life, and after she adds the tomoe and scratches in the crinkle of a smile at the corners of his eyes, she spends an untold number of minutes staring at the face of her husband. Because even though the piece is quite loose and the facial features of it are vague enough that a stranger probably wouldn't be able to identify the subject by name, she knows without a doubt who this is. She knows by his eyes: bright with joy, warm with affection, the sight of a man staring down at his beloved…

Beloved…

Mana stills. Then she looks at the kanji blended into the portrait. Mana—love. It's the affix love: manamusume, a dear daughter, manadeshi, a favored pupil. Then, slowly, she raises her head to stare at the art all around her. The swaying field of irises, the trees whose heights fill her eyes with light, the best stargazing hill in Konoha… Beloved sights in beloved places, spaces all beautiful and treasured in her heart.

"Oh," Mana murmurs. She reaches out to dip her pen in the red ink once more. Then she draws its tip across the paper in long, sweeping strokes, and in so doing writes out the thinnest okurigana alongside the slope of Shisui’s cheek. Their presence beneath a kanji stem changes the reading of the word, and Mana then knows at last what the title of this exhibition will be: Itooshii. Beloved.

A long breath escapes her. Half an exhale of relief, half a sigh of fraught emotion, Mana finds herself confronted once again by the weighty reality of Shisui’s recent confession. She’d known since the night of her birthday, of course, that he’d loved her, but in her mind a love born without freedom is nothing more than an illusion forged in falsehood—a sort of Stockholm syndrome bond, made up from nothing for lack of any other choice. But if it’s really real—if Mana really is the person he's chosen—

She tries to consider it impartially. Though it’s an unintuitive method, she considers how she would feel if she takes herself out of the equation. If, for example, Shisui had made that sort of face while looking at something else… Mana pauses. She might do a lot, now that she thinks about it. Maybe not everything, but—if he'd made that face over a food, she'd cook it. Or a book, she'd buy it. Or over a place, she'd paint it. If it were in her power to obtain she would probably try pretty hard to get it for him, whatever it may be. She looks down at the glowing radiance in her painting’s face and realizes that she likes seeing Shisui like that. She wants him to be that happy; whatever thing capable of bringing him such joy is worth giving to him.

The only problem is that he hadn't been making that face over an object. He'd been making it over a person. But Mana can't acquire another person for someone else… human beings aren't things that can just be casually given by one person to another. That’s the kind of thinking that had gotten her into this union to begin with, she thinks. Then she pauses.

But this isn’t another person. It's herself. And it's not casual at all—it's a decision only someone with authority over her own person could make. Mana chews on that for a moment. Despite the stance of her current culture towards her sex, she likes to believe that a woman with sufficient maturity and reason has the capacity to make decisions about her own being. In Mana’s own case, she thinks she knows enough of what it means to be another’s that it would count. So: she could give herself to someone else if she were willing. She could make that decision and it would be valid.

The question is, is she willing? She would cook or buy or paint, but would she assume authority over herself, make a decision that cannot be unmade, and give herself to another person?

"Oh," Mana blinks and says aloud as all is abruptly made clear. Yes, she would. In a heartbeat, even. If it makes him that happy she absolutely would. She traces a finger across the painted Shisui’s eyelid and thinks that regardless of whatever misgivings she has about the future, this person is someone she can trust. Even in this rightless, forced marriage—even under the judging gazes of gossiping clansfolk—she can make this decision freely. Her partner has carved out the space for her to do this.

She gazes at the painting. The contrast of black and red—deep red, ruby red, the red of the eye that reflects the heart—is all at once one of the most beautiful things she’s ever seen in her life. Yes… this painting will be the title card of her exhibition, and her exhibition will be its own kind of Sharingan. All the things she holds now in her heart, the reflections of all that her eye has seen, are spread out around her in every direction.

She sits for a long, still moment. Then she puts her elbow on the table, drops her hand onto her chin, and activates her bloodline limit. She looks over everything: the room, the artwork, Shisui's grinning eyes… Here in a world now crowded with cherishing, she wants to remember the sight of it forever.

Chapter Text

“I love you,” Mana says at breakfast.

Shisui stills with his food halfway to his mouth. Then he stares, because that word for love is not the one he'd used when he’d said it. That’s not the “love” of daily life. That’s the verb aishiteru: deep and enduring, so full of gravitas that just hearing it makes the air heavy with its weight. It's an expression of devotion so earnest and interior that he's not actually sure he's ever heard anyone say it aloud before.

His eggs spill from his chopsticks and land with a plop on the table. Not even Ren had ever told Shisui he'd loved him in that way. He's so stunned that he actually begins to stutter. "I-I—you—what?"

Mana's brow creases. "I love you," she repeats, and she uses it again: aishiteru. Shisui thinks he might have staggered had he not already been sitting. As it is he can only gape at her in shock. He's still gaping even after she's risen to rinse her dishes in the sink, deposited them in the rack, and come back to stand at the table beside him.

"You… love me?"

"Yes. In all my life no one ever gave me a real choice but you. So even though I wasn’t sure before, I've decided now, too, Shisui."

Shisui stares. And stares, and stares, and then blinks, and—

“Oh?” Mana tilts her head as her husband's irises turn a bright Sharingan red. Huh… she’d painted them better than she thought. She’s never used her own Sharingan to look at Shisui’s face, so she hadn’t had a photographic image in her mind’s eye when she’d illustrated them from imagination, but seeing him now makes her think she did a pretty decent job regardless. She must spend more time looking at him than she realizes.

Mana lifts her fingers. She hesitates a bit—she isn’t normally the one to initiate this sort of contact—but after a beat nevertheless reaches out cup his cheek with her hand. Then she gently brushes the pad of her thumb over his lower eyelid. Shisui blinks and takes on a look of surprise. It seems they’d activated inadvertently.

There's a long pause; Mana lowers her hand and they stare at one another in silence. Then all at once Shisui's face erupts into a huge grin, wide as she's ever seen it, and Mana lets out a sigh of pleasure. Yes, that exactly. That is the face she wants to see him make, again and again and again, for the rest of his life. That is the face worth giving anything for.

Shisui lets out an enormous laugh and grabs her around the waist. Mana yelps as she finds herself being pulled into his lap, but the sound of it is immediately cut off when he puts his hand on the back of her head, pulls her face towards his, and kisses her. Mana's heart instantly shoots up into her throat.

“A-Ah, um,” she mumbles, red-faced and breathless, when they eventually break apart. Shisui, though, is too giddy to be embarrassed; he just throws his arms around her and begins squeezing her to death instead. “Oof—ah, Shisui—”

“No, don’t,” he warbles when she begins trying to wiggle away flusteredly. He buries his face in her shoulder. "Do you mean it? Really?"

Mana hears the waver in his voice and stills. Then she wraps her arms around his back. "Yes, I do," she whispers. "I do, Shisui."

Aside from the night after Ren's funeral, Mana's never once seen or heard Shisui cry in her life. And even then he hadn't made any noise—the only reason she'd caught him weeping at all was because he'd thought she'd been sleeping. But now, as his shoulders start to tremble and his breath grows heavy, she does, and soon her blouse is wet with tears.

"Thank you," he chokes out. "I-I—I love you, too. Mana, I'm so happy. Thank you… thank you for choosing me back."

The meeting spot, a bench beneath a cherry tree several blocks away from the Kurama compound, is awash in pink petals. The bright sunlight and the warm breeze makes it a positively idyllic spot for an informal briefing.

“That’s what you meant when you said you had an assignment for me, sir?” the Yamanaka clansman asks.

“Don’t call it an assignment,” Inoichi answers dryly. “That makes it sounds like I’ve given you a mission, and the precise point of picking you to do this was to avoid that. We need to have at least some measure of plausible deniability if someone accuses Intel of investigating a civilian Uchiha.”

“But you’re a ranking officer of the Intelligence Division… don’t you have the prerogative to investigate a civilian if you choose?”

“Perhaps, but I'm not stupid enough to say that in this political climate. Didn't I tell you already? This is the wife of the major jounin Shunshin no Shisui. If we implicate her in anything we implicate him, and the Uchiha will go wild if they think we’re even trying to touch one of their golden boys.”

“Are you looking for information on Uchiha Shisui? I thought he had Hokage-sama’s support. Is there a need to keep him in check?”

“No. Her connection to him was purely coincidental… I only found out about it after the fact.”

The clansman hefts his clunky camera and sighs. “Well, you’re the head. What you say goes. Since it sounds like you’ve already done some preliminary investigation, what can you tell me about her?”

“Not much, honestly, but I’ll give you what I’ve got… Her name is Uchiha Mana, and she’s of the line of an Uchiha folk hero, Kagami. She married as soon as she came of age.”

“I’ve heard of Uchiha Kagami. Isn’t Shunshin no Shisui his grandson?”

“That’s correct. It was an arranged marriage, apparently.”

“An arranged cousin marriage? I wonder if the Uchiha are having an internal power struggle… that sounds like clout-gathering to me.”

“Quite possibly, but we don’t have any further intel on that. Anyway, she’s not a ninja, and she responds well to questioning—doesn’t seem like she’s had any interrogation resistance training, unlike some of the Hyuuga wives…” Inoichi strokes his chin. “Probably no one ever saw the need. From what I’ve gathered she doesn’t leave the clan grounds too often, and she seems pretty coddled. She had a chaperone with her when I chanced to meet her in the village.”

“Wow. Old-clan princesses really are their own breed.”

“She was amicable enough for all that. Bit of a different impression from what popular opinion might’ve led me to expect…”

“She wasn’t haughty?”

“Not at all. She didn't seem to be a person of much guile.” Inoichi rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Anyway, all of that to say that this exhibition has given us a rare opportunity to gain insight into the inner affairs of the Uchiha. It’s become increasingly difficult to gather info about them… we don't know the next time we'll have the chance to gather this intelligence. Hokage-sama will be pleased if an outsider can bring him a report."

"Understood. I'll see what I can get her to tell me."

They enter separately so not as to give the impression of having arrived together. Inoichi goes first; he crosses the threshold, pauses, and then sweeps his eyes across the gallery. There's a trio of Kurama clansfolk standing before a small portrait piece at the center of the room, but other than that the hall seems to be empty of visitors. Uchiha Mana herself is, as yet, nowhere to be seen, so after a few brief seconds Inoichi casually enters and makes his way to the closest painting. Then he pauses.

The glowing green-and-golden canopy stretched out across the canvas before him is so utterly and vividly real that for a brief moment Inoichi is tricked into thinking that he'd seen this tree with his own eyes. Impossible as it seems, it's even more precise than a photo: all of the excruciating details, down to the veins on a leaf turned so far to the side it's barely more than a line, are recorded with impossible accuracy. Despite that, though, the piece lacks the characteristic sterility of a photo; it's alive in every sense of the word, almost realer than reality—just like a genjutsu. A master genjutsu, the kind that captures all the senses, not just one or two. Inoichi thinks he can feel the sunlight on his face. The whisper of wind slipping through the branches, the taste of the midday air—

No wonder that clan elder had granted the girl permission to display any piece she pleased, he thinks. All things considered, he had expected to lay his eyes upon talent today. A sheltered civilian daughter of an honorable clan like the Uchiha would certainly have both the time and the means to grow her skills in the arts. But this is more than just a talented, wealthy noblewoman expressing herself with paint. It's the treatise of a lifelong devotee on the beauty of light, penned with exquisite eloquence. To even be capable of perceiving the sight set before him, let alone transcribing it… it must have been made possible only by years and years of discipline, spent mastering the art of observation.

An uptick of ambient noise brings Inoichi back from his musings. The three Kurama clansfolk have turned their faces away from the portrait and are murmuring animatedly to a newly-arrived figure dressed in plum and pink. The dark-haired head before them rises from a deep bow. Inoichi sees Uchiha Mana smile warmly at her guests.

The chaperone's not here? He quickly scans the room, but there's no trace of the older woman who had accompanied the girl to Yamanaka Flowers, and he quickly signals at the door behind his back. This is our chance.

Approximately ninety seconds later a head of brown hair enters the gallery. Inoichi had been careful to select a clansman lacking in the trademark pale hair and light eyes of the Yamanaka, so Uchiha Mana greets this new visitor with a bright and clueless smile. "Welcome," she says sweetly. “Please take your time.”

“Good afternoon. Are you perhaps Miss Uchiha Mana, the artist whose works are on display here today?”

“Yes, that’s correct. How may I help you?”

“I’ve come to write a story for the local newspaper. If you’re able to spare me a few moments of your time, would you be willing to guide me through your exhibition?”

The girl looks at him with utter surprise. “A story for the newspaper? About my exhibition?”

“Yes, perhaps with a short interview and a photo at the end, if you’re amenable. What do you say?”

Taken aback, she blinks at him several times. She looks to the left, and then the right, but no one’s standing beside her she can ask for advice; in the end she only gives him a bewildered stare.

“You should do it, Mana-san,” one of the Kurama clansmen says.

“Yes, you should. Your work is excellent. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Ojiue will be pleased if the gallery has more visitors,” the third one adds when Mana looks at them doubtfully. “Do it for advertisement if nothing else.”

Several seconds pass. “Well… all right,” she eventually acquiesces. 

Inoichi carefully keeps out of the way as his clansman begins following after their target. As he positions himself he evaluates the Kurama clansfolk carefully—though it’s confirmed that Uchiha Mana is not a ninja, he’s not certain if the same can be said of these three—and it’s some time before he’s able to finally activate his eavesdropping jutsu. Once he finally does, the two are standing before a painting of what Inoichi first takes to be a soaringly tall tree. Upon further inspection, though, he realizes it is actually, of all things, a utility pole—but one whose lines have all been severed and are hanging loose in the wind.

“There must be an interesting story behind this one,” Inoichi’s clansman remarks probingly.

“This piece is quite recent compared to the other paintings on display,” Mana answers. “I finished it quickly, too… Do you remember that fierce storm midway through last autumn?”

“Ah, this must have happened in the wake of the winds.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“It’s an interesting subject and a dynamic composition,” the Yamanaka clansman muses, “but what really captures my attention is its title. Why did you call it that?” He gestures to the nameplate beside the frame, reading Ichizoku—”Clan.”

“Why? I thought it resembled the Uchiha,” Mana replies matter-of-factly.

“Oh? In what way?”

“Well… it seemed quite proud to me,” she answers thoughtfully. “The lone power post looming above the destruction. All its fellows had fallen over, but this one was standing like a tower over all the rest.”

Mighty in the heights, lofty above all the others—yes, a very typical Uchiha perspective. Inoichi watches his clansman begin to nod his head knowingly, but Mana goes on. 

“It reminded me of our status, too.”

“Your status?”

“Yes.” Mana waves a hand demonstratively. “Don’t you see it? All the lines are severed… it’s cut off and alone, just like the Uchiha are.”

The clansman is stunned. He stares at her, dumbfounded, but Mana’s gaze has turned back to her work. She smiles a bit.

“I quite like this one, truth be told,” she confides. “It speaks so well. There’s nothing more useless than a disconnected utility pole… it does no good to anyone at all. There’s a lot of poetry in that, don’t you think?”

“Useless?” the clansman repeats. “The Uchiha are?”

“You don’t agree?”

“I don’t know anyone who would call the Uchiha useless.”

“No?” Mana eyes him curiously. “Well, perhaps not in battle. But in a social sense, I think it’s true. Some would even go so far as to call us an eyesore. Most of my kin would probably agree to that.”

Despite the distance between them Inoichi and his clansman barely refrain from exchanging glances. “They would?” the clansman asks. “What do you mean?”

Mana’s brow creases. “Well, this is only my personal view,” she answers, “but as I see it we just aren’t integrated into the village in the same way the other great clans are. That’s been the case since the time I was a little girl.”

“In what way?”

Mana frowns with thought, considering. Then she lifts a finger. “You can see it in how people responded after the Kyuubi Attack, for example. Like when the Uchiha clan physicians died and we didn’t have enough medics to treat our wounded. I remember the villagers lined up in a ring at the edge of our camp, watching us, but no one ever came forward to help…” Here she goes silent for several moments. Then she says, “If my mother had been treated for her injury right away, perhaps she wouldn’t have died later on. Sometimes I think like that, and I imagine others who lost their loved ones feel the same way…. that's what I mean.”

When speaking of the Kyuubi and the Uchiha public thought tended to focus on the lack of the Police Force response, so Inoichi finds himself somewhat surprised by this fresh perspective. But when he stops to think about it, the Kyuubi had appeared in the heart of the Uchiha district, and their compound had been totally annihilated in the process. It’s only natural they had suffered heavy civilian casualties.

“I see…” Inoichi’s clansman is somber. “I hadn’t realized such a thing had occurred.”

“I suppose it couldn’t have been helped. The Police Force was ordered not to engage, so all they did was manage the evacuation, but the rest of the village had to stop the Kyuubi by sacrificing their lives… Even if we lost a lot of our clanspeople, the MP itself came out mostly unscathed as a result. Anyone would resent that.”

Inoichi’s brow begins to furrow. Ordered not to engage…?

“Well, this certainly was fruitful,” his clansman remarks after they’ve reconvened away from the gallery. He flips through his notebook. “I could write an article even civilians would read with this material.”

“Well, publishing something is probably a wise move,” Inoichi says distractedly. “The Kurama will probably keep an eye out to see if your paper promotes their gallery or not.”

“What’s wrong?” the clansman queries when Inoichi begins tapping his foot. It’s a rare day when the head of the Analysis Team outwardly displays his agitation in such a manner.

“Are you free after this? I want you to do me a favor.”

“What is it?”

“Send word to Shikaku. I want to meet with him.”

The clansman regards him with surprise. “Certainly, but… you won’t contact Nara-sama personally?” As the head of one clan to another, that would be the courteous thing to do.

“No, there’s no time. I need to arrange a meeting with Chouza ASAP.”

“You’re meeting with Akimichi-sama as well?”

“Yes. Of the three of us, he’s the one who heads a noble family. He has the pull to make the administration call for a meeting of clans.”

A meeting of clans? He regards Inoichi with a look of surprise. Was the intelligence gathered today that significant?

“Are you even questioning it? Of course it is.”

“All right, but… if that’s the case, why do you need Nara-sama? Akimichi-sama alone would have enough influence.”

“That’s because, if I recall correctly, Shikaku used to be good friends with an Uchiha jounin,” Inoichi answers. “These days no one ever has much luck dialoguing with the Police Force, but if it’s Shikaku… perhaps his old friend told him something about the Kyuubi Attack before he died.”

“An old friend?”

“Yes. What was his name?” Inoichi tugs on his shirt collar thoughtfully. “Ah, I remember now—Ren. His name was Uchiha Ren.”

Chapter Text

“Wow, Mikoto-san, are you sure?”

Shisui smiles when Mana’s eyes grow round at the sight of the overflowing basket in Mikoto’s arms. She’s so overloaded with bamboo shoots that Sasuke is holding a separate bag, big enough to eclipse his entire head, beside her. Taking pity, Shisui reaches down to relieve the boy’s overburdened arms. Sasuke tries not to let anyone hear his sigh of relief.

“Yes, please, take them. Now that they’ve cleared out the thicket we’re up to our eyeballs in them. I’m handing them out to anyone I can.”

“Well, if you insist,” says Mana, who does a poor job of hiding how excited this sudden windfall of produce has made her. She’s practically bouncing in place as Mikoto passes her the basket. “Thank you very much, Mikoto-san! Let me put these in the kitchen.”

Mana turns to make her way down the hall, but Sasuke suddenly kicks off his sandals and climbs up from the genkan after her. “Sasuke!” Mikoto exclaims in horror as her son fearlessly invades another family’s house. “Now wait just a second, young man—”

Shisui and Mana blink in surprise as the young boy rushes forward and grabs the skirt of Mana’s dress. Mana looks down at him curiously.

“What is it, Sasuke?”

“Mana-san, I—” Sasuke swallows, fidgets, and then screws up his courage and speaks. “Mana-san, I’m sorry!”

Mana takes on a bewildered look. She glances at Shisui, who raises his eyebrows before holding out his other hand to take the basket. She hands it over and then kneels down. “What do you mean? Why are you sorry?”

“Because—because I hit you. When you came to the Academy.”

“Ohh,” Mana and Shisui say as they both simultaneously recall the action in question. Shisui had totally forgotten; it seems Mana had as well. No surprise, though… that had been months ago. Had he been holding on to it this entire time? Mana quickly reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. “I forgive you, sweetheart. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Are you sure?” the boy demands tremulously. At once Mana melts with compassion and enfolds him in a hug.

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s okay, Sasuke. Don’t worry about it anymore.”

Sasuke lets out a huge huff as he buries his face in Mana’s shoulder and, despite how much he’s matured lately, clings to her like he never wants to let go. But then again, Shisui thinks, he's over a decade older than him and he’d probably do the exact same thing himself. Is there any better place in the world to be than in Mana’s arms? Quite possibly there isn’t.

“He really is such a sweetheart,” Mana remarks after Sasuke and Mikoto have departed. She smooths out her skirt and smiles as she stands. “He and Itachi are so different, don’t you think?”

The comparison so startles Shisui that he lets out an unguarded belly laugh. “Oh, man,” he exclaims as he transfers his load into one hand so he can put his arm around her. “That is so true. Even when he was younger Itachi never would have given me a hug like that. I think the closest he’s ever gotten was that time he sprained his ankle and had to let me piggyback him home.”

“Is that so?” Mana regards him curiously as they make their way to the kitchen. “I don't think he would mind if you hugged him, though. You slap his back and give him noogies all the time already, after all.”

“Heh. I guess that’s true, too.”

After Shisui places the bamboo shoots on the table he turns and uses his other arm to give Mana a hug of his own. Mana places a hand on his chest and pats him distractedly while she eyes the mountain of raw ingredients with a pensive look.

“There’s a lot… I don’t think I can boil them all on the stove.” But boiling bamboo shoots is essential to making them edible; they’re poisonous otherwise. They can’t even be pickled until they’ve been processed.

“Should I build you a fire in the yard?” Shisui queries. “You could cook them like we do in the field. Whenever we foraged bamboo shoots we always had someone at camp boiling them over the fire.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea. Then all I need to do is find something big enough to boil them in.”

After this they spend several minutes rummaging in the cupboards until Mana, deep in the recesses of the pantry, lays her hands on the most enormous wok he’s ever seen. “Wow, is that heirloom cookware or something?” he asks, impressed, as she drags it out from under a pile of boxes with both hands. “It looks ancient.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. Something this big must have been expensive…” Mana muses and then hefts it by the wooden handles with a grunt. “Wow, it’s heavy. Guess that’s how you know it’s the real deal…”

The veranda doors are already open to admit the spring breeze, so after Mana gathers all her equipment, she sits down with her haul and happily goes to town peeling with a knife. She’s so cheerful that when Shisui returns with firewood she’s singing aloud as she works; he can’t help but smile and take several moments to watch her with the Sharingan. 

Once the fire is started, though, Shisui finds his smile fading. Then he sighs darkly. He knows he should go in now and start reviewing everything for the clan meeting tonight, but even with the weight of failed plans on his shoulders and the last-ditch motion of confidence looming on the horizon, he just can’t seem to find the will. As he sits in the yard in the bright spring sun, listening to the crackle of the fire with one ear and the lilt of Mana’s voice with the other, he wonders again if there really is no way to avoid cleaving the Uchiha in two. He covers his mouth and gazes at his wife with regret. Life in the clan is all Mana knows; if this bloodbath really is about to happen there’s no way she’ll come out of it unscathed… but at this rate it’s going to be all he can do to carve out a path to survival for the both of them.

He spends some time like that, just watching her in her labor. She heaps the shoots up in a pile, chops them into different shapes one by one, separates them into bowls, scoops powdered nuka into the water to neutralize their bitterness… if only rice bran could remove the taste in his mouth, too, Shisui thinks bitterly. At this rate too many people are going to die. The Police Force. Fugaku-san. Mikoto-san…

Eventually, after Mana’s spent quite some time squatting by the pot and stirring the shoots with a ladle, she moves to take it off the fire. The moment she begins to lift it, though, he sees a look of alarm cross her face. At once his eyes flit downwards and catch sight of the problem: the aged left handle. When the wok had been empty apparently it had been light enough that neither of them realized it was in need of repair, but now that it’s been filled it can’t take the weight. It’s about to break.

Shisui shoots to his feet at once, terrified by the thought of Mana being scalded by that much boiling water, but it’s too late. The handle snaps clean off. The bottom of the pot slams into the logs—water splashes up directly into Mana’s face, and—

And Shisui, with his Sharingan still active, sees a flare of chakra light up her entire body. Then between one blink and the next she’s on her bum in the grass a foot away, shielding her face with her hands, while the pot topples over and spills its contents at her feet. 

What? he thinks blankly. What was that? She’d just been beside the fire. How is she over there now? Had she teleported? But—

“Mana! Are you okay?” He’s by her side in an instant, taking her by the shoulders, but she stays frozen in that position with her hands over her face for several seconds. “Hey, are you hurt?”

“N-no…” she eventually lowers her arms several moments later and stutters. “No, I’m… I’m fine.”

He carefully inspects her up and down anyway, checking for injury. Though she appears to be fine physically, Shisui—ever-used to monitoring the fluctuations of her chakra pathway system—notices at once that a chunk of her chakra is missing. He lifts a hand to push back her bangs and inspects her forehead, but those serially malfunctioning gates in her brain seem to be totally inactive. The chakra is gone, but she’s not having an episode. The flow of chakra in her body is totally normal. Rather than having lost it in some sort of pathway spasm, it’s almost as if—when she'd lit up—

As if she’d used a ninjutsu.

A beat passes as gears begin to turn in Shisui’s head. Then he looks down at Mana’s face and sees unadulterated terror. The sight of it abruptly takes him back to a distant memory, to a dark forest on the eve of the Third War’s end, when he’d stood over a dark-haired Kiri jounin. All at once he can see it all again: his opponent’s severed arm, lying in the grass; the dry tree leaves settling upon the ground in the wake of his too-slow shunshin; his teammate’s blood, still warm and wet in the grass beneath his feet. An unforgettable scene from nearly a decade ago, preserved forever by the red-tinged lens of a newly-awakened Mangekyou Sharingan… That had been the moment he’d cut off the hand of Tadasu’s killer, slammed him down into the dirt, and lifted his sword to take off his head. 

What had he seen there? He remembers. A shinobi whose final defense had been destroyed. The eyes of someone looking upon an inexorable conclusion, of a man whose long run has finally come to an end… There hadn’t been breath to form words, nor even time to speak them, so those eyes had said it instead: it’s over.

It’s over, Shisui hears as he looks into Mana’s eyes. It’s all over.

And it is, he thinks, because now all at once everything has clicked into place. The fundamental misunderstanding comes undone at once, and he realizes with astonishment just how grave a mistake he’d made at the very outset. That evening at the library when he’d assumed to know the purposes of Mana’s research, he'd made a crucial misjudgement, and as a consequence the alignment of all subsequent data had been completely skewed. The answer had never been anything so complex as chakra disorders or gate malfunctions. No… the real truth had been before him all along. Constant acute exhaustion, an abnormally large chakra pool, inexplicable sensory ability… blood not from the nose, but the eyes. What else could it have been? Mana is a daughter of the Uchiha clan just as he is a son of it.

“Hey.” Shisui pats Mana’s cheek as her face begins to take on a rather deathlike pallor. “Hey, Mana, you have to breathe. Calm down.”

“I-I—” she just stammers in response. “I—”

A familiar haze begins to blur the focus of her eyes; Shisui recognizes the sight of a dizzy spell and realizes at once what’s happening. “Mana, you’re having a panic attack. Let’s go inside.”

“I—uh, but—” Mana’s eyes flit towards the fire. Shisui lifts a hand and pushes it against her cheek, physically directing her gaze away.

“I’ll take care of it. Come on.”

He has to all but drag her in. Once he sets her down on the couch he does go back to the yard to put out the fire—and to heap all the bamboo shoots back into the pot, now seasoned with grass and soil—but he returns immediately and seats himself beside her. Then he takes her by the shoulders, pulls her onto her back, and sets her head in his lap. Mana plasters her hands over her face again.

“Just breathe. You’re fine. Nothing’s going to happen.”

Left with no choice, she does. They’re huge, heaving breaths, full of strain, that betray how fierce a battle she’s fought with the Sharingan. This girl really should have been a ninja, Shisui thinks distantly. It seems she’d understood implicitly the momentous danger awakening a bloodline limit like the Mangekyou entailed. Shisui and Ren had concealed Shisui’s Mangekyou for nigh on five years before recording it in the clan chronicle and making it public to Konoha at large; it was only half a decade’s more training post the awakening that his father had finally permitted him to paint such a target on his own back. At that point Shisui had already been a jounin for four years; what recourse could a frail civilian girl have had? It’s been recorded as far back as the Era of Warring States how the women of kekkei genkai-bearing lineage would be abducted and raped by rival clans in an attempt to gain access to their powers. How could she possibly have any other choice but to take the secret to her grave?

After some fifteen-twenty minutes pass, Mana’s shivering hiccups eventually calm. When she lowers her arms her face is clouded with the exhausted stupor of an anxiety hangover; Shisui lets out a faint breath. Then he strokes his fingers across her hair until her eyes flutter shut. There’s much to say here, and it will not be easy. Better to broach it with composure on both sides.

Once Mana’s breathing levels out Shisui begins casting his eyes about; then he spies a newspaper atop one of Mana’s art magazines and tugs on its corner. He’ll have to get up eventually so he can begin reviewing for the evening meeting in earnest, but for now…

He spends some minutes scanning through the articles before he finds his eyebrows rising. Then he glances down at the feature piece advertised on the art magazine's cover. Greatly intrigued, he reaches out for this as well. 

Then he stills. Several seconds pass in silence. Eventually he speaks. “Who’s there? Come out.”

Silence answers. Shisui lowers his arm and looks over his shoulder at the veranda.

“She’s sleeping,” he informs, and the tone of it is very warning indeed. “She won’t hear you. State your business in my home.”

“...I come bearing a message from Lord Danzou. He has requested your presence for an urgent meeting.”

“Lord Danzou? Regarding what?”

“He wishes to speak about the village’s response to the recent actions of the Uchiha clan.”

“I am currently employed for the relevant assignment. Danzou-sama knows we have a course of action already. Please have him contact the Hokage if he wishes to be read in on further details.”

“You do not appear to be so engaged,” the Root agent observes with foreboding blankness. Shisui’s gaze darkens, but the force of military authority makes him stand; he shifts carefully, lowers Mana’s head gingerly onto the cushions, and then frowns with displeasure when he sees a crease begin to form in her brow.

“Where is this meeting to take place?” Shisui asks flatly.

“The shrine overlooking the eastern training grounds.”

“My engagement this evening is mission critical. I will excuse myself with enough time to prepare.”

“That is fine,” the Root messenger dismisses. “Please move at once.”

If he had been a man of lesser discipline Shisui might have scowled. But instead he gathers up his meeting materials and seals them into a scroll—though not without adding the newspaper and the magazine to the pile—before straightening up, permitting himself just the subtlest of glares, and flickering away.

Silence falls with his departure. Mana, keeping still, cracks her eyes open and looks out from under her lashes in a daze.

“Have you completed your preparations?” she hears a muffled voice ask a long moment later.

“Yeah, done and dusted. No issues,” a second responds. 

“Don’t take this lightly. It’s Shunshin no Shisui. He’s not going to go down easily."

"But it's the eight of us and Danzou-sama besides. That should be more than enough to deal with even the likes of him."

"Naive," is the replying sigh. "Listen, even with Danzou-sama there, you can't let your guard down. Uchiha Shisui isn't going to just lie down and let us kill him. He's one of the greatest shinobi of our time… he'll take you out in a heartbeat if you give him the chance." A pause. "We may very well lose comrades today. I hope you understand that."

"...All right. If you say so, senpai, then I'll take your words to heart."

"You'd better. Come on, let's go."

The voices go quiet. Mana can neither see nor sense any change in the surrounding area, so she spends several moments more lying frozen on the couch, eyes now wide and clear with shock. Then she lifts her hands to cover her mouth, terrified.

Chapter Text

Shocked, but not surprised—if he were to articulate it in a few words, these would be his choice. Shisui knows that Danzou dislikes the Uchiha. Danzou has never much cared for him, either. Adding in the fact that Shisui is one of the most powerful shinobi in the entire clan—the most powerful, some would maintain, though Shisui himself makes no claim to that—it only makes sense that Danzou would view him as a threat. In that sense it is not at all unexpected that the leader of Root would turn a hostile hand against him. He has long been prepared to deal with the consequences of this disharmony; it had only been a matter of waiting to see what form that distrust would take.

Not once in his life, however, had he imagined that said form would be the words Danzou speaks then: "Your Sharingan shall be in my safekeeping."

An eye thief? Shisui thinks, alarmed, as he catches the man's wrist and launches a genjutsu to disable him. An eye thief in Konoha, the Elemental Countries' capital of doujutsu wielders? Such a thing is so taboo that even the very idea of it is nearly unthinkable. The Hyuuga and the Uchiha are twin pillars of the Leaf. It is their strength—combined with the Aburame's and the Akimichi's—that has made Konoha's existence possible. What Konoha-nin would dare steal a bloodline limit and violate the sacrosanct treaty which has stood since the time of the village’s very founding? 

Perhaps it's the shock of it that makes him lower his guard. The moment the genjutsu catches Shisui looks away, thoughts awhirl with how to deal with this new development. By the time he gets the feedback that his technique has abruptly been severed—what? But how?—it's too late. Impossibly, his adversary appears before him as if an illusion somehow made real. 

The sucker punch stuns him utterly. Breath rushes out of his lungs, and before he has time to react he's struck across the face hard. Once, then twice, and then a third time; his head snaps back. A hand seizes him by the hair atop his head and throws him up into the air. He feels fingers on his eyelid. He's got no footing to dodge.

And then, in an instant, everything freezes.

He feels the change in the air almost instantaneously. All sound has ceased. No wind blows. Danzou's hand stills as if suddenly turned to stone and Shisui falls away from it. He hits the ground and collapses to his knees, winded and gasping. What? What is—

There's someone gripping his sleeve. He shoves away at once, pushing back on the unknown entity beside him with one hand and drawing a kunai with the other. Breathing heavily, he makes a three-point landing several feet away and looks around wildly. The world has taken on a strange red tint. Nothing at all is moving, not even the figure of his attacker. Danzou is frozen with his arm stretched up in the air, grasping for the eye of the man no longer suspended there. Everything is motionless… everything, that is, except for the person he has just thrust away. 

She lies on her back for a short moment, stunned, before shakily sitting up. Shisui's mind goes blank at the sight of her. Her navy blouse, her white skirt, her long ribbon—it's Mana, Uchiha Mana, face flushed red and trembling uncontrollably.

"Mana?" he asks dumbly. 

"Shi—Shisui," she barely has the air to gasp in response. She clutches at a stitch in her side. "Are you—are you okay?"

Shisui stares back silently and is unable to reply. He can't quite parse what's happening. Slowly, he straightens.

"Shisui?" she asks, insistent, and lurches forward. Her gait is unsteady as she approaches. Shisui drops his kunai and catches her reflexively when she trips over herself and falls into his chest.

"Are you okay?" she demands again, desperate, as she takes hold of his shirt with both hands and pulls on it. Shisui snaps out of his daze and gathers himself.

“I’m okay. I’m all right.” Shisui grabs her by the shoulders. “Mana, how the—what the hell are you doing here?”

Sharingan or not, Mana is not a ninja. Just seeing her now—drenched in sweat, coughingly breathless, hair falling loose as it escapes from its tie—is proof enough of that. There’s no way she could have made it to the eastern cliffs from the Uchiha district this quickly without using a Body Flicker. As it is, she looks like she’s been running so hard she’s about to puke.

“We need to go,” she just mumbles in reply. Once she’s found her feet—and a bit of breath—she glances fearfully at Danzou’s frozen figure. “Shisui, I—I can’t hold this any longer. We have to go.”

Holy shit, Shisui thinks once he realizes just what exactly these words mean. Then he mentally reviews what he knows of the Mangekyou and gawps at her disbelievingly. Amongst the assorted Mangekyou lineages, from which a variety of unique and powerful techniques arise, Shisui doesn’t know if the clan has ever recorded a bonafide time-stopping jutsu. Oh, there are powerful genjutsu aplenty—his own Mangekyou ability, Kotoamatsukami, is one of them—but nothing like this. 

“Shisui,” Mana pleads, and as she speaks dark red liquid gathers at the corners of her eyes. He tears his gaze away from her red-patterned irises and sees blood beginning to trickle down her cheeks. Then he looks at her chakra reserves and blanches. If he’d thought she’d lost a chunk of chakra using her doujutsu earlier today, he doesn’t know by what unit he’d measure this deficit. He hasn’t seen Mana’s chakra that low since that night she’d collapsed in the bathroom. In fact—

“Shit!” This time, as Mana abruptly sways and pitches to the side, Shisui swears aloud. Cursing himself for wasting time at her expense, he catches her around the waist. Then, doing what he has always done best, he shunshins away.

The very next moment the world returns to its normal hue. Danzou lets out a noise of shock as he finds himself grabbing at empty air.

"Mana. Hey." As he runs, hopping through the canopy, he shakes her repeatedly, but it's no good; she's unconscious. He examines her reserves again and inhales sharply. He’s seen her low before, low to scary levels, but this is beyond even the bathroom incident. There’s nothing remaining. There's maybe a hair left, thinner than a thread, standing between her and the embrace of death. Her heart could stop at any moment like that. 

Shisui blows out a breath, still trying to process everything that's happened. This situation, he thinks with chagrin, is becoming increasingly convoluted. He spends a brief moment performing a brutal mental triage before deciding to set evading Danzou and keeping Mana alive as his current priorities. Then he forms several shadow clones and sends them out as decoys. There’s bound to be pursuers, after all; he needs to keep them off their trail.

Eventually he makes his way to the clearing he'd set as his rendezvous point with Itachi. The teen is already there, leaning back against the large boulder and waiting with his arms crossed. Or maybe Shisui is just late, he thinks grimly. The clan meeting is set to begin in mere hours; they need to decide on a final course of action before it begins.

"Shisui." Itachi straightens when his friend appears, crouching in the grass. Then he pauses as Shisui lowers Mana to the ground and begins making hand seals. "...Shisui?"

"Itachi," Shisui greets as he presses his hands to Mana's stomach and begins siphoning off chakra to share with her. "The situation has changed. I was attacked."

Itachi's brow creases. He comes forward to kneel at Shisui's side and in so doing catches sight of Mana's bloodstained face. "What in the world happened? Why is…?"

"Danzou-sama sent a summons to the house, but they didn't realize she woke up after they spoke to me," Shisui answers. "And after I left, apparently they started talking. I assume she overheard their plans to kill me. I can't think of any other reason why she would have suddenly appeared like that."

This prompts more questions than it answers, and Itachi isn’t quite sure where to begin. He pauses a moment before deciding to start with the most obvious. "But Mana-san isn't a ninja. How did she…?"

Shisui exhales. The fate of Mana’s secret, he thinks with grim resignation, is about to leave her hands forever. Then he cuts off his jutsu and reaches out to shake her shoulder again. "Mana. Hey, Mana?"

She gives no response even after he slaps her cheek. She hasn’t actually gone into cardiac arrest, has she? Shisui bends down to listen over her chest. No—she’s still alive. She’s breathing, too, though very shallowly.

“What manner of injury?” Itachi asks when Shisui straightens again. 

“Chakra exhaustion,” he answers as he reaches out to wipe the blood from her face. “Her jutsu wiped her reserves out completely. I thought she was going to die on the way over.”

Itachi stares. Putting aside the fact that a civilian like Mana shouldn’t know any jutsu to begin with, that shouldn’t be possible. “But Mana-san isn’t able to use chakra.”

“Supposedly,” Shisui agrees, and then pinches the bridge of his nose. “But not, as it turns out, actually. She has the Sharingan.”

“The Sharingan?” Itachi starts at that. “But that’s…”

“Not just any Sharingan, either. It’s the Mangekyou."

His friend’s expression crosses the threshold from doubtful to incredulous. "The Mangekyou? That’s impossible.”

“One might think so, but that’s clearly not the case.” Shisui is silent a moment before he lifts a hand and holds it over his right eye. Then he begins to shake his head. “And if it works the way I suspect it does… it may be even more powerful than Kotoamatsukami, depending on how it's used."

"What? Just what kind of technique…?"

"Time," Shisui answers. "She stopped time right as he was about to take my eye. He had me, too. It would be his right now if she hadn't intervened."

There's a long silence. Shisui checks one more time to confirm if Mana is stable. Then, quietly, he begins to explain the situation.

"It seems he fears that the power of Kotoamatsukami could be used against him,” he concludes. “My doujutsu may be more of a stressor to relations than I anticipated. The clan also seems to be drawing unwarranted confidence from my fighting ability…” He’s silent for a long moment. The sound of an oft-present temptation, silent in recent years but now abruptly resounding again, begins to echo between his ears. When he’d been younger he had spent a lot of time listening to that voice. He’d taken the time, even, to plot out a possible course of action. If the opportunity ever arose, he had thought. If he ever had the chance. If he could ever get away with it without leaving too much of a mess… if he could ever construct some sort of valid reasoning for it…

Countless nights, nights and days and nights again, become present to him in the span of a single moment. All at once he remembers: standing on his team training grounds in deafening silence, waiting futilely for a friend whose face he would never see again—that final quarrel, the angry sting of betrayal when Tadasu had left him behind—and his foolish, juvenile, terrible retaliation. He’d heard Tadasu’s cry for help and turned away. Serves you right, he’d muttered under his breath. 

It had been a decision he could never, ever take back.

“If I eliminate myself from the equation, we might be able to stabilize the situation,” Shisui whispers. He stares blankly outward as if seduced. The roar of water fills his ears; plunging cliffs rise in his mind’s eye.

"I'm against that action," Itachi immediately objects. "It would be a temporary solution at best. You are the rallying point around which the anti-coup faction of the clan is organized; if you vanish, all the sentiment opposing the rebellion will be scattered and lost. Never mind succeeding in the vote of no-confidence… without you, we won’t be able to bring the motion at all."

That’s no good, Shisui thinks distantly. The motion of confidence is important. Without that failsafe there will be no stopping the slaughter of the clan. If that happens—

Shisui jolts back into focus as if struck by lightning. His gaze rises from the imaginary precipice and fixes itself on the sleeping face of the girl still cradled in his arms. Gut-wrenching horror immediately begins to tear his innards to pieces.

If that happens, she'll die.

Shisui is speaking before he even realizes it. “That’s unacceptable,” he says, and the unshakable conviction in his voice is enough to surprise even him. “We can’t let that happen. You’re right… even if Kotoamatsukami is a problem, removing me won’t solve the fundamental issue.”

The terrible tension in Itachi’s face is washed away by a flood of relief. “Then we should meet with the peace faction before the clan meeting tonight. We’ll finalize the plan to bring a vote against Father. At least this way we can ensure some of us will survive.”

He makes to stand, but Shisui’s face suddenly becomes introspective. A crease appears in his brow; Itachi frowns. “Shisui?”

“No…” Shisui answers slowly. “No, Itachi, that’s not it either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you get it? It’s the same thing. If removing me won’t solve the problem, simply eliminating the pro-coup Uchiha won’t fix anything, either. The root evil remains: our relationship with the village. Prejudice against the clan, combined with an imbalance of power…”

“...That’s true, but what can we do about it? We’re already out of time. He’s announcing the plan tonight. If we don’t act now we’ll lose our chance to respond at all.”

Shisui lifts a hand to his chin. Then, in a flash of inspiration, he whips out a storage scroll from his belt pouch and unseals his prep materials. They land with a small thud on the grass between them; he uses his free hand to snatch at the top of the pile.

“This, Itachi,” he exclaims, waving their new lifeline with one arm and clutching Mana’s shoulders with the other. Oh, he thinks, he could kiss her. “This is what we can do about it.” 

Itachi just stares. “A newspaper? And a magazine…”

Shisui lets out a breathless laugh. Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? He gently lowers Mana into the grass and stands. “I’ll explain. But first, Itachi, make a pair of shadow clones and have them follow me. I need you to stay here and keep watch.”

“Our first order of business tonight is an unexpected item,” Fugaku announces to the gathered clansfolk with a slight frown. He does a quick scan as he speaks, searching with displeasure for his truant son, and for a moment thinks Itachi has ditched again. Before he manages to let out an angry breath, however, his eyes land on his firstborn, who is sitting in the corner and murmuring quietly to a thoughtful-looking Shisui. At once Fugaku finds the constriction in his heart easing. Shisui has always been a reliable sort. It seems he’d taken Fugaku’s request to keep an eye on Itachi to heart and managed to remind the boy of where his true loyalties ought to lie: not with ANBU as a puppet for the village, but with his clan and his family.

“Ahem.” Then Fugaku clears his throat and brings himself back to the task at hand. “It’s unexpected news, but Akimichi Chouza has used his authority as the Akimichi head to call for an emergency meeting of clans.”

“A meeting of clans?” the MP officer sitting across from him questions with surprise.

“That’s right. As the leader of one of the Four Noble Clans he speaks for a large number of lesser families, so there’s no way the village could deny his request, even if it is sudden.” Fugaku pauses. “As a noble clan ourselves, the Uchiha will, of course, be expected to attend.” 

“An emergency meeting… for what purpose?”

“It’s uncertain. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Nara and Yamanaka heads have had several meetings with him in recent weeks, but to what end I couldn’t tell you. At any rate, I am notifying you all at this time that I will be attending on behalf of the Uchiha.” He pauses again. “If there are no objections, we will proceed to the main objective of tonight’s agenda.”

Well, Shisui thinks as he exchanges glances with Touma behind him, and then with Itachi. There’s an opening as good as any.

Itachi takes his cue and raises his hand. Fugaku’s eyebrows rise, but he acknowledges his son. “Itachi, you may speak.”

“Yes. Thank you, Father.” The teen is silent for a short moment, as if gathering his thoughts. Then he reaches into his vest, removes a thin scroll, and speaks. “On behalf of my fellow clansmen, I object.”

Astonishment ripples through the room. Fugaku regards his son with a look of bewilderment. “You object? On what grounds?”

“We wish to nominate a different representative to attend the meeting on the clan’s behalf.”

Bewilderment rapidly morphs into suspicion. Fugaku regards Itachi with a hard look. “What are you saying?”

“We believe there is a man more suited to represent the will of the Uchiha. Not only at this meeting of clans, but in the role of head as a whole.” Itachi unrolls the scroll and begins to read. “Uchiha Fugaku, in the interest of the just governance and continued preservation of the clan, we wish to initiate a vote. Your actions are partisan and you do not rightly hear the voices of your whole clan. We call for change.”

In an instant the ripple becomes a massive wave. Seated shinobi stand; talking erupts; the room turns over, rearranges itself, and then finds itself riven in two. Once the chaos settles Fugaku is gazing ahead in amazement. As ever, the Police Force stands behind him, and his fellows are clustered around his seat in his support. But the rest—the clan physicians, the civilian spouses, the genin and even some chuunin and more—have seated themselves in ranks at the back of Uchiha Shisui.

“What?” Fugaku breathes in disbelief. Hazuki’s daughter is helping an elderly couple reseat themselves on the tatami; Fugaku doesn’t have the least clue who they are. In fact, who are any of these others? He recognizes enough of them by face to know that they are indeed his kin, but none of them are frequent attendees of the Naka Shrine meetings. Not that anyone else might have guessed it—the whole party is coordinated to a tee.

As he is processing this shock, Fugaku turns his head. Then he spies exactly two of his MP officers seated in the front row behind Shisui, right beside his son. Fury overcomes his face. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Father, we object to your leadership,” Itachi replies. “We wish to unseat you and elect Shisui as our new head.”

Chapter Text

These words drain the blood from Fugaku’s face. Then he looks at the adversary that has suddenly appeared before him. 

Uchiha Shisui is not a joke—not for the headship. Well-liked not only in the clan but the General Forces as well, he is an elite shinobi with experience in both wartime and in peace. A top jounin and former prodigy, famed across the continent and feared by other villages, capable of leading both in the field and at home… in terms of renown he outstrips Fugaku easily, and he has had exposure to the administration in both the Jounin Corps and at the Academy. A young man, certainly, but previous heads have inherited control at ages even younger; Shisui’s eighteen years is no obstacle at all when compared to, say, clan chief Tajima, who had only been fifteen when his father died and left him to lead the Uchiha through the twilight days of the Era of Warring States.

Added to that, he’s sociable, charismatic, and has demonstrated remarkable decisiveness in clan life: first by marrying early to secure the future of his family line, then by taking over as head of his household following the death of his father. He is powerful. He has the Mangekyou. He’s the descendant of Kagami, the clan’s unfulfilled first choice to lead the Uchiha as a clan of Konoha.

A chill begins to crawl up Fugaku’s spine. 

“We won't follow you!” a voice exclaims. Fugaku is off-balance enough that he startles before looking at the police officer behind him. “You've never been part of the Police Force. We won't accept an outsider like you as chief.”

Fugaku lets out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. That's right. He shouldn't let his emotions get the better of him. He'd been startled to see the large number of clansfolk gathered on the opposing side, but Fugaku knows the MP’s loyalty. Even with two turncoats—his eyes flicker towards Hazuki and Sorata—they shouldn’t be outnumbered by a ragtag collection of naysayers. 

But Shisui’s answer is dispassionate. “That’s no issue,” he replies. “The motion is for change of the headship. We are not seeking Fugaku-san’s position as the Chief of Police.”

There’s a collective pause of bewilderment on the part of the MP officers. Shisui doesn’t blame them. Since the time of the Police Force’s founding the two positions have been inextricably linked—to lead the Uchiha was to lead the military police, and to lead the police was to lead the Uchiha. But therein laid the fundamental problem. With that being the case, is it any wonder that the village at large is unable to differentiate between the Uchiha as law enforcement and the Uchiha as a clan of Konoha? 

“Fugaku-san is not an incompetent leader. None of the members of this faction have any qualms with his direction of the military police.”

“What? Then what is the meaning of this vote of no confidence?”

“It is as Itachi said. Though Fugaku-san is an excellent police chief, his leadership of the clan is partisan. He has overly favored the opinions of the MP and failed to give proper weight to the wishes of the rest of the clan. Though it’s true that a large number feel strongly that our only recourse is to fight, a great many others believe we can still alter relations with the village without recourse to violence.”

Fugaku’s eyes immediately snap towards his son. Itachi returns his gaze, unflinching and unashamed.

“You leaked our plans.” The words are ashy in Fugaku's mouth. “You informed on us.”

“There was no choice. Your rebellion will cause untenable bloodshed. Rather than die in a failed revolt—or worse, survive to spark the war that will inevitably follow—I would put my faith in someone who is still seeking a better solution.” Itachi sweeps his eyes across the rest of the peace faction. “We all feel the same.”

“A better solution?” the police officer on Fugaku’s right scoffs. “You’re delusional. Don’t you think Fugaku-taichou has already tried to find a peaceful means to settle it? But the village has stepped on his every effort. They’re not interested in making peace. They don’t care a whit about us, our loved ones, or our daily lives. Overthrowing the administration and ending their persecution before they finally make up their minds to deal with us once and for all—that’s the better solution. No, it’s the only solution.”

“Yashiro…”

“That’s your view.” Shisui shakes his head. “Ours differs.”

“Don’t be naive, Shisui,” another man interjects then. When Shisui turns his head to look, he recognizes the officer who had taken his statement after being attacked by the rubbish-flinging drunkard. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You should know better than this.”

“It’s not naivete, Tekka-san. We can still make things right with the rest of Konoha.”

“Prove it, then,” demands Yashiro. “Show us proof that you’re not trying to upend the leadership of our clan for a pot of empty dreams.”

Evidently the military police believes Yashiro has gotten the last word; supportive murmurs and sharp nods follow in the wake of his outburst. Shisui, though, just removes his storage scroll from his belt again. After he spreads it open in front of him and carefully places his palms flat on the tatami before him, broadcasting to all that he is not unsealing a weapon and will not attack, his pile of prep resources materializes. He removes the top two articles and passes them forward to Fugaku, starting with the newspaper.

“As many of you know, my wife Mana is skilled in the arts,” Shisui begins. “Recently she collaborated with the Kurama clan to put on an exhibition of various pieces depicting daily life in the Uchiha district.”

Fugaku looks down at the headline in his hands. “Record numbers in the Kurama clan compound,” he murmurs. “An unprecedented flood of visitors to view the works of the prodigy artist of the Uchiha, Uchiha Mana, in her debut exhibition Beloved.”

A number of police officers blink with surprise at these words. Shisui finds himself feeling a bit badly for Mana; having been discounted at age six by the Uchiha at large due to her inability to become a ninja, he knows that very well that the reason why anyone knows who she is at all is because she happens to be his spouse. He supposes it’s only to be expected, though. Only one kind of prodigious skill matters in this clan, and painting is not it.

“In my estimation, an unprecedented flood of visitors isn’t indicative of disinterest in what the Uchiha have to say.” Shisui motions to the magazine next. “Nor are feature stories like these.”

They look at the cover of the art magazine. Page two’s contents are proclaimed: Beloved, Bereaved: An Initial Investigation into the Effect of the Nine-tails Attack on the Uchiha Clan. Several officers exclaim in astonishment, which Shisui finds a small wonder. Sorata and Hazuki, in the course of investigating the grievances of their fellow MP officers, had reported time and again that the subject of the Kyuubi Attack was a universal complaint of nearly every officer interviewed. 

“Would the village care at all about this exhibition if they didn't have an interest in the Uchiha clan’s loved ones and daily life?” Shisui presses. “Just this alone was enough to prompt an entire journalistic investigation into the history of the Kyuubi Attack. Couldn't it be that we just haven't dialogued enough with the rest of Konoha? Because of one Uchiha’s willingness to reach out, there is a discourse about our clan that didn't exist before. It's too soon to say there's no other option.”

An astonished silence fills the room. Shisui gazes about and takes in the looks of amazement on the faces before him; then he finds a new plan beginning to take shape in his mind. For a fraction of a second he hesitates, but then instincts honed by many years of battle—of countless instants of fighting under fire, of do-or-die decisions—make him set his chin and open his mouth. Sente hisshou, he thinks. First strike, certain victory.

“But if this alone isn't proof enough for you,” he says softly, “I’d like to make a proposition, Fugaku-san.”

Countless pairs of eyes flicker towards his face, Itachi’s included. The weight of the peace faction’s gazes immediately makes itself known on Shisui’s back. Shisui continues anyway. “If you agree, we will postpone the execution of our motion until after tomorrow’s meeting of clans.”

That’s not the plan! We haven't discussed this! Though he doesn't speak these words aloud, Shisui can almost hear Itachi’s look of protest and alarm. Fugaku just narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“And that proposition is?”

“Let me attend the meeting as the Uchiha’s representative. Once the Akimichi and their people see to their business, I will use the opportunity to propose a plan to initiate reconciliation between the village and the Uchiha. The clan may use the results of this meeting to judge between us and decide who is a more suitable head.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“An exchange. The Uchiha will give ground to show the honesty of their intentions—considering the source of the tensions, I believe the Police Force would be the most effective place to start.”

The uproar is immediate. Yashiro is instantly on his feet. "You can't," he protests furiously. "That's absurd! Giving up control of the military police is giving up the only power we have to protect ourselves!"

"Were you under the impression that it would be easy? It's not a show of faith unless there's risk involved," Shisui answers sharply. "Regardless, I'm not saying the Uchiha need to give up the whole of the MP entirely. All we need to do is give shinobi from outside the clan an equal opportunity to join and to rise in the ranks."

Murmuring surges through the room. Fugaku's lips thin.

"I'm not satisfied. Even if they agree, we will be making ourselves even more vulnerable to the ill-intentioned. You will only give the village greater power to abuse the clan by doing this."

A tide of agreement rises up angrily behind him. Shisui spends a long moment wordlessly observing who is agreeing and who is not. Then he says, "Don't be so alarmed. If the Uchiha give something up, the village must give something in return. It would hardly be an exchange if the other side fails to reciprocate."

The murmurs fall silent and eyes widen in surprise. Fugaku's brow creases. "Something in return?"

"That's right. Before any changes to the Police Force are made, there is a condition I will propose must be fulfilled at the meeting tomorrow. Whether or not they agree will determine if we pursue peace," Shisui says, clenching his fists, "or whether your way is the better."

"Is that so?" Fugaku gives him a hard look. "And what is it you intend to ask for? What proof could the village possibly give to show that they are sincere in reconciling with the Uchiha?"

The whole hall is quiet now. The shinobi of the police force, clustered behind Fugaku's seat, stare intently at Shisui's face. The members of the peace faction, seated at his back, hold their breaths.

Shisui inhales deeply. Then he says, "The head of Shimura Danzou.”

Chapter Text

“Mana?” Shisui queries softly as he opens the door. His unfamiliarity with Touma’s guest room leaves him groping at the wall for the light switch, and eventually he just gives up and goes forward to kneel beside the futon by moonlight instead. The blanket shifts; then he catches sight of a glint as Mana’s eyes slowly open.

“Itachi?” she mumbles confusedly as she squints heavily up at his face. Shisui pauses. Itachi had taken off the moment his clone had dispelled and informed him of the results of the meeting. He’d met Shisui partway to let him know where he’d hidden Mana.

“No, Mana, it’s me.”

Mana’s entire body gives a violent twitch at these words, and Shisui surmises that she would have bolted straight upright if she’d had enough motor function to do so. As it is she can barely lift her hands. Shisui reaches out and takes them both anyway; the familiar touch makes her face crumple instantly into tears.

“Shisui,” she chokes out. “Oh, heaven, Shisui. You’re alive. Shisui.”

Shisui regards her with alarm. “Itachi didn’t give you a sitrep when you woke up?”

Mana just lets out a hollow laugh—nearer, truthfully, to a half-sob. “Itachi’s a liar. He’d say anything if it suited his purpose, no matter how long a yarn he’d have to spin.”

This is… definitely not an inaccurate statement, Shisui thinks. But he can’t help but feel surprised anyway. He can say that because he's known Itachi intimately from a young age; he wonders how Mana had come to understand this particular facet of his best friend’s character. They do have occasional tea times together, but has that been enough for her to get such a deep read on him? Apparently so.

“I’m fine. Everything is all right. But what about you? Do you need more chakra?”

“No,” Mana denies at once. “Don’t use any on me. Keep it. You need it more.”

The underlying terror in her voice makes Shisui’s heart constrict. He finds himself scooping her up into his arms at once. “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. I’m fine.”

“He was going to kill you,” Mana, with her face buried in his chest, whispers in reply. “You nearly died.” 

Shisui’s lips thin at the memory. “He caught me off guard, but the first time’s the last. I’m not the type to make the same mistake twice,” he vows lowly. “Honestly, Mana, I’m more concerned about you. The first thing that Danzou will try to do now that he’s failed to kill me is to try to get at you instead. Not every enemy has a suitable hostage candidate beside him… no sensible shinobi would overlook my weakness.”

“Ninja are barbaric,” is Mana’s answer to this. Her tone is unfiltered and lined with just the faintest edge of hysteria, but Shisui doesn’t wince and doesn’t disagree. From her point of view, he thinks, that's an undeniable truth. “But it doesn’t matter if I have chakra or not anyway. There’s no way I’m leaving Touma-sensei’s house until the situation resolves. No one in their right mind would try attacking the residence of a ninja physician, especially one from a noble clan. It’s suicide, socially and physically…” she pauses. “That’s what Itachi said, anyway.”

Indeed, Shisui thinks as he lays Mana back down on the futon. Itachi has chosen their safehouse well. Then he lets out a light sigh and stands to change his clothes. He thinks again for the umpteenth time that their family’s friendship with Touma’s is perhaps one of the greatest blessings of their lifetime; then, after changing, he sits down on the futon beside Mana and quietly begins to explain everything he’s been hiding. The clan meetings, the coup d’etat, the peace faction’s resistance, the motion of confidence that is meant to make him into the new head of the Uchiha clan… Once he finishes a long silence follows.

Eventually Mana reaches out and tugs on his shirt. Shisui blinks and leans forward, but she tugs on the fabric again until he’s hovering over her face with his own. Then she lifts her shaking arms, wraps them around his neck, and pulls his head to her chest.

“As long as you’re safe,” she whispers in reply. “As long as you live, Shisui, I will support you in everything.”

Several wordless seconds pass like that. For some time all he can hear is the rhythm of her heartbeat. Then, in a voice so faint as to be inaudible—so near-silent that he thinks the only reason it’s intelligible at all is because his ear is pressed against her breast—he hears her breathe the words, “Thank you, heaven, for sparing my beloved.”

Shisui finds himself surprised by the abrupt sting of tears in his eyes. Taken aback by this sudden surge of emotion, he inhales sharply and has to spend several seconds keeping his breath under control. But then, when he pulls back to look Mana in the face and sees that she has begun to weep again, he finds himself at once convicted by the truth that the person before him loves him more than he loves himself. His self-command instantly collapses.

“I’m sorry, Mana,” he chokes out. “It won’t happen again. Thank you for saving my life. You… you had my back. Thank you.”

Mana, crying soundlessly, does not have the strength to do anything beyond tug on his clothes again, so Shisui rolls onto his side, pulls her by the waist with him, and enfolds her in as tight an embrace as he can manage without crushing her. 

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but eventually he releases her and smooths her bangs back. After spending some moments gazing into Mana’s eyes, though, his brow creases. The dark irises are ever-so-slightly odd. Subtly flickering back and forth, they move in a manner that Shisui can’t help but feel he recognizes. But why? It seems almost like she’s searching for a place to anchor her gaze. As if she can’t find a place to focus her sight…

“Mana?” he asks softly. “Why won’t you look me in the eyes?”

Mana’s eyebrows draw together. There’s a long pause. Then she answers quietly, “It’s too dark. I can’t see them.”

When she says this Shisui understands at once what it is he finds familiar in these minute eye movements. He’s seen it before: opponents blinded by genjutsu, facing him by the sense of sound alone, standing in utter darkness and futilely trying to hold their eyes still—trying not to give away the fact that he’d caught them in the illusion, trying to conceal their helpless lack of sight—

“Oh no.” Shisui strings the truth together in an instant. He feels at once as if his stomach has dropped through the floor. “Your—your Sharingan? Your Mangekyou?”

Mana lets out a long breath. Then she says, “There’s a limit to the distance you can travel while time is paused. If you surpass the limit, the drain spikes exponentially. But I don’t know how to shunshin, and I knew it would be impossible to make it to you in time otherwise, so I had to activate and deactivate the technique repeatedly to move without hitting the chakra wall.”

“You overused your doujutsu,” Shisui whispers. He lifts a hand and places it on her cheek. “Your Mangekyou has caused vision loss.”

Mana doesn’t reply. There’s a long and terrible silence.

“How… how bad is it? Can you see anything at all?”

“I can see shapes in a shadowy kind of way,” she admits quietly. “And some colors if they’re bright. But since it’s nighttime now, nothing’s really visible…” Her voice goes quieter still. “Not even you.”

Shisui spends several seconds in stunned silence. Then he puts a hand on his forehead. He’s too speechless to reply.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mana tells him in a quivering voice. “It… it’s fine. It’s only this bad because I used it so much in training, and—and—it can't be helped. I wouldn’t have been able to use the jutsu well enough to help you if I—if I hadn’t t-trained it. So… so it was worth it. I don’t…” Mana swallows thickly. “I don’t… I don’t c-care.”

Fucking hell, Shisui thinks as tears begin to stream down her face. She’s gone blind. She went blind while rescuing him. His wife is an artist and she’s gone blind.

“Mana—” Shisui puts his hands on her shoulders when she bites down hard on her lip and tries to force back a fresh set of sobs. “Don’t… don’t do that, you’ll start bleeding—”

He stutters helplessly and knows at once that nothing he says can help. There’s a whole library of writings left by the previous holders of the Mangekyou—only available to holders of the Sharingan’s second form, of course—lamenting the loss of their sight; Shisui has read it all. The clan had cautioned him about the effects of overuse as soon as his Mangekyou had become public knowledge, but unlike him, Mana had had no such guidance for her bloodline limit. She’d burned up the rest of her sight’s lifespan to save him before he’d had a chance to tell her anything at all.

Shisui doesn’t know how he’s ever going to make such a thing right. Mana’s whole life has revolved around art. Her discipleship to the arts is the reason why their plan to save the clan has found any footing at all—there’s no way he could ever make it right. But now that it’s been done there’s nothing to help it; she’ll have to deal with the consequences for the rest of her life. Once the Mangekyou robs a user of sight, it’s gone forever. Those scrolls had been universal in their grief. Only one user of the Mangekyou was ever said to have found a way, but only after his brother had given—

Shisui’s eyes widen. Then he shoots upright. Mana starts and looks up at him—or tries to look up at him—from the floor. Shisui just puts his hand on her arm. 

“Mana,” he says breathlessly, “don’t cry. I’m going to go get Touma-sensei.”

When Danzou enters the meeting hall his gaze lasers in at once upon the back of the man for whom he has been searching. The whole of Root has been combing the village up and down for him since yesterday, but as Danzou sees him now he could hardly guess Shisui has been being hunted. He is standing at a table, at ease and speaking amicably, before the three men famously known in the General Forces as the Ino-Shika-Cho. Though Yamanaka Inochi interjects occasionally, Nara Shikaku appears to be handling the bulk of the conversation; every time Shisui pauses, Shikaku asks him something else. Danzou immediately activates an eavesdropping jutsu.

“—is the gist of it. The only thing I haven't pieced together yet is a motive.”

“As it happens, I may have an insight into this,” Shisui answers. “If you're not opposed, Shikaku-san, would you let me speak first? Depending on how things pan out, we may get the evidence right then and there.”

Danzou sees Shikaku’s eyebrows rise. But evidently whatever gaze Shisui fixes him with is convincing; after several seconds Shikaku nods.

“Very well. At the end of the day, it is your clan’s matter. If you wish to take the lead, we will cooperate.”

“Thank you, Shikaku-san.”

“Of course.” Shikaku lets out a long breath. Then he gives the teen a wry smile. “You've grown a lot since the days you were a bratty kid jounin. If only Ren could see you now.”

“I wish he were here, too. But…” Shisui’s head turns. Danzou’s breath catches slightly as killing intent, sharp and piercing like an arrow, strikes him directly in the chest. He lifts his gaze and finds Sharingan-red eyes fixed chillingly upon him, and for a moment is so taken back that he isn't quite sure what to think. Unlike his father, Uchiha Shisui has always been deferent to Danzou's authority as an elder; the boy has never so much as raised an impertinent eye in his direction, let alone speared him with such blatantly undisguised KI. After a moment, though, the Warhawk shakes it off. It's only to be expected. Shunshin no Shisui is not an idiot. Now that Danzou has tipped his hand, Shisui probably knows very well why Ren had died on a routine mission.

“But?”

“But even if he’s not here, I know what he'd tell me to do,” Shisui eventually turns back to Shikaku and answers. “Power has a purpose. Use it for its purpose.”

Its purpose and no more, sir. Danzou hears the memory of a voice whisper in his mind. Ren, Uchiha Ren, he’d always been dogging his steps at every turn. Always asking for oversight, always impeding his movements, always cautioning him not to abuse his authority. He’d been more of a hound than any Inuzuka summon. What must have Kagami told his youngest son to fixate him so on checking Danzou’s power? To this day Danzou doesn't know, but he almost wishes for a moment that he did. Perhaps he wouldn't have had to dispose of such a powerful jounin if he had.

Danzou pretends to be oblivious and goes straight to his seat at the council table. As he limps to his chair he asks his aide in a mutter, “Where is Uchiha Fugaku?”

The aide disappears and some few minutes of quiet inquiry follows. Then he returns and reports, “Uchiha Fugaku is not attending. He appointed Shisui to represent the clan in his stead.”

Trouble, Danzou thinks grimly. He doesn't know what sentence would be heavy enough to punish his agents for failing to silence Ren’s brat, but one thing is clear: Shisui has read the rest of his clan in on the situation. Not ideal—having the Uchiha direct their anger at the whole of the administration has been key in souring their relations with the village—but after a moment Danzou lets out a short sigh. It’s not what he planned, but it doesn't matter: the Uchiha have no credibility. Even if Shisui speaks up, it’s him and his outcast clan’s word against an elder’s. They've got no standing to make an accusation…

…is what he'd like to believe, but deep in his gut he’s beginning to experience a deathly unease. The Uchiha he can handle, but the Akimichi and their people are a different story. He can’t conceive of how, but the sight of Shikaku and Shisui in conversation has set warning beacons ablaze in his mind. How often he’d seen that sight before endless troubles: the Nara heir—no, he’s the head now—scheming with one of his favorite lieutenants… the boy’s so grown now that his image fits over his father’s perfectly. Shikaku and Ren. Even together they’d never had the power to oppose him, and yet…

“What were those two talking about? Have the Uchiha been in contact with the Akimichi or the Nara at all? If they’ve somehow come together over this…”

“We have no such intelligence. Even if they were somehow allied, Lord Akimichi called for the meeting well before the move on Shisui was made, and Shisui himself has been in hiding all night until now. Respectfully, where would they have found the time to coordinate?”

“True…” The reasoning is ironclad. Danzou subsides as if mollified, but the implacable sense of a fatal oversight is only growing. Agitated, he begins to tap a finger on the table. 

This sense only grows once the meeting is called to order and the representatives of the Four Noble clans take their seats across from the Hokage and his council; the lesser families, in turn, take their seats behind them. As always the Akimichi bloc has, in addition to their vassal clans, several minor families. The second largest contingent belongs to the Aburame, who seem to be playing host for a number of folks too plebeian to have found their way into the vanishingly small Hyuuga crowd. Their numbers are still better than the Uchiha’s, though—their quadrant is altogether empty.

Akimichi Chouza immediately cedes the floor to Shikaku, who raises an eyebrow at Shisui. Then he says, “Before we begin, the Uchiha representative has stated a wish to address the council. As the matter at hand is not unrelated to their status, we have agreed to let him speak first.”

All eyes in the room turn when Shisui stands. Shisui ignores them all in favor of staring Danzou in the face. Danzou makes sure to evade the focus of his red Sharingan eye.

“I don't know how they bring you up in your clan, boy, but in our manners it’s tasteless to flaunt your doujutsu,” the elderly Hyuuga head drawls with the characteristic bullying tone of an old man talking down to a younger one. “Save your showboating for the battlefield, not the governing table.”

Shisui doesn't seem to notice. “I apologize for my discourtesy. I am indeed on edge as if in battle. After all—”

Here something strange happens. The tomoe of Shisui’s Sharingan swirl, but the shape they take on is not the four-pointed pinwheel Danzou has seen before. A set of round teardrop marks are now ringed around his pupil, set within the black of the original pattern. The sight of it makes his blood run cold. A third stage of the Sharingan? He’s never heard of such a thing. How can—

Danzou finds himself going stock still as the sensation of cool air abruptly spreads across his skin. Only a second later he realizes that his face and chest are suddenly and inexplicably exposed. He shuts his eye at once, but there’s no concealing his arm. The three shackles are lying open beside his chair.

The reaction is instantaneous. Chairs immediately fall over; hands fly to holsters; Shisui lightly tosses a wad of bandages across the gap between their tables. They fall into a fluttering heap at Danzou’s feet.

“—We seem to have found ourselves in the presence of an eye thief,” the young Uchiha remarks.

Chapter Text

It’s a hideous sight: the mismatched color of the flesh is pocked with a row of wrinkled sockets, starting at the back of the hand and winding its way up the arm. Each bears an unmistakable red iris; the limb is lined with Sharingan eyes. Shisui lets out a long breath, suspicions confirmed, while the Hyuuga instantly let out shouts of horror.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Their head slams his hands onto his table. “Lord Danzou!”

“Incredible,” Shikaku breathes aloud. “Now it’s all come together. Starting first by interfering with their response to the Kyuubi Attack, simultaneously crippling their public esteem and destroying a large portion of their civilian population… a systematic operation to socially isolate the Uchiha clan from the rest of the village for the past eight years. Forcefully relocating their compound, artificially generating negative publicity, provoking the Chief of Police with false reports and humiliating the MP with public reprimands, all planned. And to what end? I see it now.”

“To turn them against us,” Inoichi realizes with slowly dawning horror. “To drive the wedge deep until they’re forced to fight back. To have them hanged as traitors… so that when all’s said and done, he’ll be free to harvest their eyes.”

The room falls so silent as to hear a pin drop. The heads look at the council. The council looks at the Hokage. The Hokage looks at Danzou.

“How did you come across this information?” Shikaku asks as Shisui silently removes a spool of wire from his belt pouch and begins looping it around his fingers. “We investigated with the resources of the Intelligence Division, but there was not even the shadow of a hint he’s been stealing bloodline limits.”

“A stroke of luck, as far as intel gathering goes,” Shisui answers. “He attempted to assassinate me. He told me his motive himself—obtaining my Sharingan for ‘safekeeping.’”

His words make the room erupt with riotous noise. The Aburame rise to their feet and begin speaking to one another in low voices; the Hyuuga, meanwhile, are instantly at the council’s throat.

“Hokage-sama! Esteemed elders! How has this been permitted to happen?”

“My lord, please, calm down. How could this council possibly—”

“—possibly enabled this?”

“—unheard of in Konoha. This is—”

“—any better than the Bloody Mist? The kekkei genkai killings—”

The din is deafening; the chaos as bodies shift and limbs swing is frenetic. But none of this cacophony pulls Shisui’s attention away. He watches, hawk-like, as his enemy’s gaze sweeps across the room. He sees the rapid thought wheeling across the man’s face. Then he moves; but the moment Danzou’s arm twitches, Shisui yanks his hand to the side.

An entire platoon of ANBU seems to fall from the ceiling when the splash of blood splatters itself across the two remaining elders’ faces. As Homura and Koharu leap to their feet with exclamations, Hiruzen finds himself being forced back by his bodyguards, who are holding swords out against the sudden appearance of taut ninja wire. But not a single string has gone astray; the web of it is narrow, and the only thing at its center is Danzou’s right arm, cleanly severed at the shoulder. Danzou lets out a gasp and falls forward before catching himself on the table with his other hand.

The mayhem in the hall instantly stills.

“Do you take me for an idiot, Danzou?” Shisui’s expression, usually so friendly and open, is so unsmiling and cold that those who know him find themselves taken aback. “That technique nearly killed me. Did you think I would let you use it again?” Shisui’s never used it himself—without the luxury of an extra limb’s worth of eyes to burn, he’s never encountered a situation worth using it—but even despite that his post-battle analysis last night had made it clear: Danzou had used the advanced Sharingan technique Izanagi.

The Warhawk just pants with a furious glower. “You—”

Shisui closes the distance between his table and the council’s with his signature flawless shunshin; between one blink and the next he’s crouched over the disarmed elder, sliding his sword from its scabbard on his back as he goes. Homura and Koharu, bloodied and affronted, make noises of protest at the sight of his feet on their table, but Shisui disregards them. He leans in and speaks to his adversary instead. “Surely you don’t think I can’t put two and two together? Why else would you gather so many Sharingan for use at once? There is only one technique it could be.” He angles his blade. “Forgive me for not holding back, but I have no interest in letting you run amok with our clan’s strongest genjutsu.”

These words seem to strike a chord with the entire room. Even the minor clans, despite not being blessed with bloodline limits of their own, nevertheless have their own hereditary techniques that they guard with their lives; their faces begin to take on stormy expressions. When Shisui shoves Danzou back and slashes his ninjato across his right eye, not even the elders dare to stop him.

“Of course, considering you used it last night, that one’s probably blind,” he remarks dispassionately as he flicks the blood from his blade with his wrist. “But it’s better not to be careless.” 

Danzou’s aide catches him as he falls back. The young man’s eyes flicker back and forth across the room. He does not retaliate.

“Hokage-sama, regarding the mission you gave me,” Shisui says as he rises, lightly jumps down from the table, and steps forward to stand over the fallen elder. “I have a report.”

Hiruzen is stone-faced. “You may speak.”

“The Uchiha have put forth terms for reconciliation. They agree that the imbalance of power in the Police Force is destabilizing relations and they are willing to make changes. In return, they are seeking justice.” Shisui lifts the tip of his blade to Danzou’s throat; Danzou, with clothes soaked in gore and face dripping blood, jerks back. “He is a kinslayer. He has murdered our people and gouged out their eyes to take for himself. Give us the head of Shimura Danzou.”

Before Hiruzen has time to open his mouth the Hyuuga are exploding again. “Hokage-sama!” Byakugans activate as their head hits the table again; splinters fly. “This is a betrayal to the very foundation of the Hidden Leaf! The only suitable punishment is death!”

The clamor breaks out again, this time twice as loud. Shisui’s blade, however, is steady—as steady his gaze, with which he stares unwaveringly into Hiruzen’s eyes. Not for the first time Hiruzen finds himself struck by the teen’s resemblance to his grandfather, and the look of him is nearly enough to make his breath catch. 

Hiruzen has seen that convicting stare before. Kagami had not often spoken against him in his lifetime; even back then he’d been well-bound by a rigid senpai-kouhai dynamic. Hiruzen knows that he had often held his tongue out of respect for Hiruzen’s seniority—and then, after the Nidaime’s death, his authority as the Hokage—but once, just once some years before he’d died, Kagami had spoken his mind against him. It had been so long ago. What had they quarreled about? Ah, he remembers now—ANBU.

“Lord Second founded the Special Forces to serve the Hokage and the village.” Though his face is turned towards the two bundles in his arms and his expression is soft, the disapproval in his voice is sharp as any knife. “What is he trying to accomplish by asking permission to establish this separate ‘Root’ division? He’s overstepping his bounds.”

“It’s not like you to be so suspicious of a comrade, my friend.”

“Nor is it like you to be so willfully blind. You aren’t stupid, Hiruzen… why is your vision always so clouded when it comes to Danzou?” Kagami looks away from his children and fixes his friend with a piercing stare. “Even I can see the ways he’s changing. Maybe you don’t want to acknowledge it because the object he’s fixed on is you, but even your obstinate sense of modesty can’t have prevented you from realizing he’s been possessed by a demon of envy.”

“You exaggerate, Kagami.”

“Do I? ANBU is a power belonging to the Hokage. He is grasping for your authority.”

The clear light of awareness, those eyes of unfettered discernment… Hiruzen remembers them even now. He remembers what he’d been thinking at that moment, too. He’d thought very little about the matter in which Kagami had been counseling him; he’d been too wrapped up in the fancy of the unit’s youngest with a pair of infants in his arms. The baby of the team with babies of his own, he’d thought. What a sight! He’d hardly paid any mind to Kagami’s words at all. But he hears them now in his mind, cold and steely and censorious, as if the man himself has spoken to him through the mouth of his descendant.

“He wants for himself that which is not his. What do you mean to do by giving it to him?”

Danzou, meanwhile, harks a voice from his own past. You took too long to reach a decision, the Second Hokage’s voice tells him. You must first know yourself.  

These words seem to bring forth a strange lucidity; he sees a portrait of himself in his mind’s eye. It’s the sight he’s seen every morning in the mirror for decades: wrinkled and discolored and old, swallowed up and covered in fabric, with more than half his face hidden. He’d always thought he’d planted his roots in the shadows because he was a shinobi—a man of self-sacrifice, untempted by glory, nobly turning away from the light to be a hero unknown by others—but the illusion built up by long years of self-deception seems to fall apart in shreds. He knows it then as he's known it all along: he hadn’t concealed himself for the good of others. He’d done it to hide his shame.

The glinting wires are still taut between the fingers of Uchiha Shisui’s left hand. Danzou looks up past the handle of the teen’s sword, up at the youth’s face, and sees what he had longed to see in the days of his own youth. At the moment when he’d failed to give his life to save his comrades—as he had ceased to tremble, knowing that he wouldn’t be the one to die—at the moment that shame had first been born… at that moment, he thinks, he’d wished to wear the face of a man who had conquered cowardice. 

He’d wished to wear the sort of face Kagami’s grandson is wearing now.

But before he has the time to begin to feel any real sense of regret the situation advances. In another world he might have been owed due process, but in this one he has no such right; at once the room agrees that a decision must be made, here and now. All eyes fall on the Sandaime. 

“Hiruzen,” Danzou coughs, “wait. You can’t—”

“He can,” the Hyuuga head rebukes. “Lord Third.”

“There will certainly be complications if a council elder dies suddenly.” Shikaku steeples his fingers and conceals the lower portion of his face behind his hands. “And if he dies we may struggle to uncover the true depths of his treachery. But that would be no greater loss than permitting him to live on and commit more evils would be.”

Inoichi is untroubled. “There are Yin Release techniques to read memories after death. And seals to preserve bodies from rot.”

“If you request it of the Uchiha, they may lend you his head,” the Aburame head remarks. “Why? Because they will wish to investigate the deaths of their clansmen.”

Hiruzen spends a long moment unspeaking. He looks down at Danzou; Danzou, bloody and gasping, looks back.

“Very well,” says the Third. “Their demand is for justice, and justice is their right. We shall comply.”

Even if he had not been bleeding out, Danzou could not have been paler. “Hiruzen—” he chokes out, but is cut off when Shisui puts a hand on his shoulder. The old man freezes as the teen bends forward; the bite of his blade is at Danzou’s neck.

“You are my elder, and I respect you as a shinobi. You played a long game and you played it well.” He leans in and speaks quietly into Danzou’s ear. “But so long as you covet the Mangekyou, you must never be allowed to live.

“Goodbye, Danzou.”

Chapter Text

“I’m home!”

Some seconds pass before he hears the patter of footsteps, but before long Mana is running down the hall to greet him. “Shisui,” she exclaims, face alight, before she comes to a stop at the genkan and stands on her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck. “You're back!”

Shisui is delighted by this warm welcome and drops his pack. Then he picks her up and spins her around in a hug. At once Mana is beset by giggles.

“Wow,” she says, impressed, when he puts her back on her feet with as much ease as she might set down a watering can. “You really could just pluck me up and toss me across a room if you wanted, couldn't you?”

Shisui arches an eyebrow. “Well, I don't know why I would ever want to do that, but I suppose I could. Honestly, I think I've carried rucksacks heavier than you, Mana… it wouldn't be very difficult.”

“Wow. Are your bags usually that heavy?”

“No, not usually,” he answers as they begin making their way inside the house. “That only happens on supply missions…”

Mana already has a pot of tea on in the kitchen, and once it’s steeped they sit down at the table with their respective mugs. “Did anything happen in the clan while I was gone?”

“Oh, oodles. But don't worry, I took care of what I could. Only four fifths more of it requires your attention, clan head,” she teases. Shisui gives her a chagrined look.

“Are you still making fun of me? It’s been nearly a year at this point, Mana. Give it a rest.”

“Oh, I will soon. But not quite yet. I’m not done getting back at you.”

“This woman,” he gripes good-naturedly.

“Can you blame me? I knew for ages you were hiding something, but couping a coup? It never even entered my imagination. I would have sooner believed you were having an affair than that.”

“Well, if I pulled the wool over your eyes, I don't know what we’ll call what you did to me,” Shisui snipes back. “I would have sooner believed you were dying of gate dysfunction… oh, wait.”

A bit of guilty look steals across Mana’s face, but at this point the secret has been so dismantled it's been free game in play-fights for a while now. “Yeah, well… touché.”

Despite everything, though, they still laugh. Shisui shakes his head a bit as he thinks about it again. His wife’s Sharingan…

Wait a second. Shisui’s head snaps up. Her Sharingan? Hadn't he seen her Sharingan earlier? 

Mana blinks and looks at him questioningly, but Shisui ignores her and begins thoroughly examining his surroundings. All the colors and textures are perfectly congruent; nothing is strange. 

“Shisui?”

Shisui turns and stares at Mana. Flawless as a painting as always, he thinks, and then lets out a small sound of confusion. No, nothing at all is out of place. But he could have sworn…

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” he answers confusedly. He crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his head. Then he tugs on his collar thoughtfully. “I just thought for a second that…”

He cuts himself off mid-sentence and goes still. Then he says, “Kai.” 

Shisui finds himself in the genkan once more; his pack is by his feet and his arms are full of his wife. Mana is still standing on her tiptoes before him, hanging from his neck and studying his face intently. Shisui blinks. Then he begins to laugh.

“Holy crap,” he exclaims. “Mana!”

“Oh, you're out.” Mana tears her gaze away from her scrutiny and tilts her head. Her eyes are a bright Sharingan red. “What gave it away?”

“My shirt,” Shisui says excitedly, removing an arm from around her waist to tug at the collar of his shirt—and failing because it’s trapped beneath the front of his flak jacket. “I pulled on my shirt, but I never took my vest off.”

Mana immediately lets out a groan. “Are you serious? Oh, that's so stupid…”

“How long did you have me? It must have been at least thirty seconds.”

“Let’s see,” Mana glances at the hall clock, “about a minute and a half?”

Shisui begins laughing again. “That’s crazy! Not thirty seconds, but ninety? Mana!”

“Not crazy enough to remember to make you take your jacket off,” she grumbles, but Shisui just sweeps her up in his arms again and spins her around, this time for real.

“No, you don't get it. Ninety seconds, Mana! Forget escaping, that's enough time to tie me up, pat me on the head, and then chop it off anyway. A minute and a half! That's a landslide defeat.” Shisui grabs her under the arms and lifts her up towards the ceiling, exuberant. “Don't you realize what this means? You just beat me in a genjutsu fight. And I'm a genjutsu specialist!”

Mana laughs a bit bewilderedly. She looks as if she’s wondering why a specialist would be pleased to have lost to a civilian, but apparently is happy that he’s happy and is content to go along with it anyway. Shisui finds this response inestimably lovable and lowers her back down so he can plant a kiss on her forehead.

“What a great day,” he declares happily. He'd been glad enough to have returned to the village, but to witness such a flawlessly powerful genjutsu… if Mana can manage a move like that on him, he can only imagine how deadly she would be if she’d grown up practicing the arts. There's no way she'll ever get kidnapped—not without putting up a truly nasty fight, anyway. She won't even need to touch her Mangekyou techniques to do it.

“Well, at any rate,” Mana smiles after a moment, “welcome home. I’m really happy to see you.”

And evidently she is, because after she says this she returns to studying his features intently. Shisui is puzzled, but he smiles. 

“Are you going to draw me?” he queries as he takes off his vest and drops it atop his pack. Mana’s face lights up.

“That's a great idea.” She claps her hands and goes bouncing off to her studio. Shisui lets out a chuckle and follows after her, intrigued.

“If you wanted to look at my face, don’t you have my picture already?” Shisui wonders, and then pauses once he enters the room behind her and sees said photo laying atop a blanket. Chieri’s old futon has been rolled out between two stacks of canvases and is still messily unmade. “Oh, it’s right there… Did you sleep in here last night?” 

“Well, it’s not like you were home, so it didn’t matter where I was,” Mana defends as she extracts a sketchbook from a scattered heap of supplies and takes it over to her drafting table. “Besides, I was working on something.”

Shisui lets out another great laugh and seats himself on the floor beside her. While she sets to work, he looks around; since she made it into her workshop he’s always loved visiting this room. Her handiwork is everywhere: hung on the walls, taped to the doors, leaned up against furniture and stacked right up to the ceiling… and not just her art, but her other belongings, too. Pencil cases decorated with pastel patterns, mugs with flower designs, hair ties and clips scattered all about… the fact that it’s always a disastrous mess somehow seems to make it better. Mana is never cluttered anywhere except in this space. He doesn’t know why, but being in her studio has always seemed like setting foot in a secret space others never get to see.

“Mana,” he wonders aloud some minutes later, “why did you start drawing, anyway?”

This question is compelling enough to make her pause in her work, which is rare once she gets going—he’s never found it easy to break her focus while she’s making art. But Mana stills and lifts her head. Several moments pass before she eventually replies, “Komorebi.”

“Komorebi?” repeats Shisui. “As in sunlight? Through tree leaves?

“Yeah…” Mana’s face becomes distant. He sees her gaze focus on an image in her mind's eye, and she lifts her hand to pass her fingers through an invisible ray of light. “Once when I was a kid I sat under a tree and saw the most beautiful ray of light. But I couldn’t touch it, so I tried to draw it… but I couldn’t draw it, so I kept trying until I could, and ever since then I’ve just kept trying.”

“Still? You’ve drawn komorebi a bunch of times, though,” Shisui says with surprise, remembering the day her sketchbook had fallen from a tree and showed him the most splendid sight of graphite sunlight he’d ever seen on a page. 

Mana tilts her head with a troubled look. “That’s true. But even when it turns out well, I never really seem to be satisfied. After I finish I feel happy for a while, but then I just need to try again… it’s like some kind of unscratchable itch.” She stares down at the pencil in her hand. “In a way I guess it’s my attempt to grasp for unreachable desires. It’s not the only reason why I draw, but I suppose sometimes I just do it to feel better when there are things I can’t have.”

Shisui stops and stares. Her face is engulfed with yearning, as if she’s been parched with aching thirst for a thousand years, and the sight of it makes his lips part. His gaze falls to the unfinished portrait beneath her hands. Then they flicker to his photo, that picture of him grinning in a snowy genkan, as it lies upon her bed.

“Hm?” Mana is surprised when he reaches out and takes the pencil from her, but even though she gives him a quizzical look Shisui doesn’t speak; he just places it on the table and takes both of her hands in his. Bemused, she allows him to tug her onto her feet, and when he leads her over to the futon—away from the chaotic menagerie of unfinished art and supplies—she follows.

Once he carefully puts the picture aside to preserve it from any crumples, Shisui sits down. Mana seats herself beside him, wondering what exactly is going on, before she finds herself enveloped in a hug. 

“I was gone for a while, wasn’t I?” Shisui murmurs. “I’m sorry. I’m back.”

After a few seconds they separate. Mana tilts her head and opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted when Shisui leans in and kisses her. Mana, who has now become accustomed enough to kisses that they no longer startle her, receives this with delight. But when they part to take a breath and she shifts, knowing that this is the timing with which these things usually end, Shisui surprises by putting an arm around her waist, pulling her forward, and pressing his lips to hers again. 

This one is longer and a good deal more intense, of a like which Mana has not experienced from him before, though his grasp is still gentle enough that she could pull away at any time. But even as her face begins to flush and her heart starts to race—even when her breath grows short and her chest begins to constrict—she doesn’t. She keeps locked with him until he finally pulls away himself. Then he pulls her head to his chest and puts his chin atop her hair.

“I missed you, Mana,” he murmurs. Mana wraps her arms around his back and buries her flushed face into the fabric of his shirt. 

“I missed you, too,” she whispers. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to be with you, but you weren’t here.”

There’s a short silence, breathless and heavy, and Mana begins to perceive what he is about to say next. Her breath catches in her throat and her stomach launches into such wild gymnastics as she's never experienced before in her life, but her chest is aching so deeply it hardly matters at all.

“Do you want to be with me now?” Shisui asks her. Quietly, invitingly, it's the most tender of solicitations, and as he places his hand upon her back it's possibly the most gingerly he’s ever touched her to date. She is reminded at once of that afternoon years and years ago when he’d patted her on the head for the first time, and before she can help it she begins to giggle. Oh, how could she have ever imagined in that moment what would happen now? To think that gentle boy would become this gentle man.

“Yes, please,” she tells him as he tilts his head to the side, curious to know why she is laughing. But her reply instantly causes a wide smile to stretch across his face, and when she looks up at his eyes—his eyes that are her eyes, seen now by her eyes that are his—the whole of love is there. Bright with joy, warm with affection, given and now made complete, it is the face she wants to see him make again and again for the rest of his life. It is the face worth giving anything for.

Shisui lets out an exultant laugh. He falls backwards onto the futon and tugs her down with him. Mana, laughing again now, too, lands in his arms, and there in that room where she'd first learned to love again—there in a place made crowded with cherishing—they lie down together.

SEVEN YEARS LATER

“Is that…?”

“What? Is it him?”

“Oh! It is! He’s here!”

The sight of the guards hanging out of the gatehouse, waving enthusiastically as he runs his way up the road, is a strangely nostalgic feeling. In his early days as a shinobi, when he’d still been low-ranking enough to be wasted on errands, he’d often played messenger boy between the front lines and the village; when he’d been expected, the guards had often been standing by to receive him and his news just like this. Grinning, Shisui slides to a perfect stop directly before them. Even after sixteen years he can still do it with exact precision.

“Jiraiya-sama’s not with you,” one of the chuunin says excitedly. “You’re alone?”

“Yep.”

“Then that means—” the kunoichi beside him grabs onto her colleague’s shoulder. “You found her?

“More than that,” Shisui answers, and then grins again as the trio of guards gasp with anticipation. “We convinced her. They'll arrive tomorrow.”

“What? That quickly?”

“Really? After all these years? She’s really—?”

“That’s right,” Shisui replies, and the guards gasp again. “Spread the news far and wide: Lady Tsunade is coming home.”

At these words all shinobi in immediate earshot whip their heads around. Shisui laughs and claps a hand on the tallest guard’s shoulder before pointing villageward and excusing himself to report to the Hokage. He finishes just as classes let out; he’s walking down the hall connecting the Academy to the administrative wing when two distant shouts meet his ears. 

Shisui’s eyes immediately fill with delight at the sight of the pair standing at the corner, and within an instant the two are sprinting at full force towards him. He crouches down and catches them both with an arm each.

“Dad!” his boys cry as they latch onto his elbows. Letting out a playful little roar, Shisui curls his biceps and stands, lifting the twins up from the floor so that their feet dangle in the air. The kids let out shrieks of glee.

“You’re home!” Nao exclaims as Rei begins to babble excitedly. 

“I’m back,” Shisui agrees happily, and then whips around in place several times while his children cling on and laugh riotously. Then he plops them back onto the ground and seizes them both in tight hugs. “I missed you guys! How are you?”

“I got a hundred today,” Nao gloats and then thrusts an extremely wrinkled wad of paper under his father’s nose as proof. Shisui automatically goes a little cross-eyed; Rei lets out an exasperated noise.

“What’s the point of getting a hundred if you crumple the test up like that?”

“Whatever, ninety-nine,” Nao sing-songs quite obnoxiously in reply. Rei, instantly provoked, shoves his brother.

“Hey.” Shisui catches Rei’s wrist while simultaneously flicking Nao on the head with his other hand. “Knock it off. Nao, stop baiting your brother. Rei, don’t take the bait.”

Then, before a fight can break out in earnest, Shisui stands and holds out his hands. The boys latch on instantly. “You guys have gotten even smarter while I was gone, huh? Guess you should get a reward.”

Nao immediately cheers. “Ice cream!”

“No, dango,” Rei disagrees vehemently.

“Do you have to fight about everything?” their father wonders aloud. “Let’s do dango.”

“Aw, why?” whines Nao as Rei pumps his fist. Shisui gives him a dry look.

“Take it as a lesson, kiddo. It’s good if you’re smart, but being a jerk about it makes people disagree with you just because they can.” Besides, if they go to the dango shop he can grab something for when he sees Itachi later, too.

When they get home Mana takes one look at the boys, both hanging onto Shisui with one hand while devouring dumplings with the other, and puts her forehead in her hand. “You gave them sugar? You just got back and you’re already doing this?”

“I’m home,” Shisui answers cheerfully. “They scored well on their tests.”

Huffing a little, Mana casts her eyes towards the ceiling. Then she lets out a sigh, smiles, and waddles forward to meet them at the genkan. Shisui takes note of the way she winces and puts a hand on her back as she walks. 

“We’re home,” Rei garbles at her through a mouthful of confectionery. 

“Welcome home, sweetheart. You had a test today?”

“I got a hundred!” Nao is quick to inform. Rei gives him an irate look. “And, uh, Rei did pretty good, too.”

Then, without any further ado, the boys kick off their sandals and head up into the house. Shisui and Mana exchange amused looks before he reaches out and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I made it back in time, huh?” he remarks as he places a hand on her stomach. “I’m surprised. I thought it would be here by now.”

“We are overdue,” Mana agrees, and though she is aglow with joy for his return, the fatigue in her face is undeniable. She massages her lower back again. “I wonder if it's another boy…”

“Imagine if it's twins again.”

“Oh, heavens.” Mana laughs, but there’s a marked note of warning in her voice, so Shisui wisely shuts his mouth and steps up from the entryway. 

“How was your mission?”

“It went even better than we could have imagined. She was up in arms at first, but as soon as she found out we weren't there to ask her to be the Godaime, she heard us out.”

“And then she agreed just like that? Even though she's been away for so long?”

“Well, there was more to it than that,” Shisui admits, carefully skirting around the great sum of money that had been paid to clear the last Senju’s gambling debts. “But I suppose she evaluated the situation and concluded it would be the smartest move. She's not a Hokage candidate right now, but if the current one dies, well…”

“So she only came back to save herself the trouble of further responsibility,” Mana remarks wonderingly, though without judgment. “Tsunade-sama is a surprisingly selfish person, isn't she?”

“Indeed…” Shisui scratches the back of his head. “But still, I’m not complaining.”

“Nor am I,” Mana agrees, and then is quiet. Then she says, “I’m glad, Shisui. Everything will be all right after all. Have you spoken to him yet?”

“I stopped by his house with the kids on the way home, but he was out.” Shisui lets out an exasperated noise. “According to Mikoto-san, Sasuke was recently recommended for jounin, so they went on an overnight training trip to prepare for the evaluation.”

“In his condition?” Mana regards him with alarm. “Was that wise?”

“Of course it wasn't. But you know him—there's no way he would let his kid brother know he’s sick. Hell, he probably would still be trying to hide it from us if we didn't already know.”

Mana pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs deeply. “Oh, Itachi…”

“Anyway, it sounds like they plan to be back early tomorrow, so I’ll give him an earful then. Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama should be here by then, too.”

“And after that you will drag him to the hospital to see her, won't you?”

“I will,” Shisui vows. “I didn't spend all that time accompanying Jiraiya-sama for nothing.”

After that they head in. Mana happily hands over all the clan governance work she's been managing in his absence, and despite how pregnant she is she’s so cheered afterwards that she nearly skips her way back to the kitchen. Shisui would tell her to lie down and let him take care of dinner, but she immediately seats herself at the table with a bowl of half-shelled peas and begins singing, apparently determined to finish her work. Rei eventually wanders in and starts helping her, though, so Shisui figures he can let it be and turns his attention to the duties of the headship that have piled up while he’s been gone.

Though he has to have a lengthy tickle fight with Nao, who blasts through his homework in twenty-five minutes and then demands attention until Shisui finally tires him out—and then, after this, have an insistent pre-dinner snack with his other son, who seems to be taking after his mother more and more lately in cooking hobbies—once all the distractions are out of the way it’s a surprisingly smooth endeavor; thanks to Mana’s gloriously well-organized note-taking, he’s able to knock out most of the outstanding work before dinner. The children are hyper beyond belief when it comes time to sit down at the table, though. Shisui sheepishly wrangles the boys into their seats while Mana, sitting primly in her chair, raises her eyebrows and lets him deal with the consequences of carelessly supplying sugar to his sons by himself.

Bathtime is similarly rowdy. Mana does do her best to assist here, but a cumbersome belly prevents her from getting too deep into the action, and eventually—with all the squirming and splashing and water on tile—she is forced to retire from the fight for fear of slipping and bringing about even greater disaster. 

“All right, that’s enough,” Shisui rebukes sharply after his wife has thrown up her hands and, by his leave, left him to stand against the twins on his own. For their part, both Rei and Nao are instantly cowed by the sound of the rarely-deployed but much-feared Captain’s Voice. “You two are plenty capable of washing on your own. You’re not babies. Acting like this at your age isn’t cute anymore, and it’s embarrassing that you needed both your parents in here. Stop wasting my time and clean yourselves, now.”

Even Nao, who usually overflows with temerity even well after Rei has already thrown in the towel, instantly sets about scrubbing his skin. Shisui lets out a sigh of relief once he finishes supervising them and hands them off to Mana, who has wisely seized the opportunity to take her own shower in the other bathroom; after this, Shisui finally gets a chance to wash up himself. Then, finally, he rejoins the rest of the family in the bedroom.

The boys have laid out their futons next to their parents’, but of course neither of them care to stay in their own beds and have crawled over to Mana instead. Nao, having exerted himself quite a lot in the excitement of his father’s return, curls up against his mother’s side and falls dead asleep. But Rei is still very awake and begins pestering the poor woman from the other side. He spends several minutes continuously prodding her cheek, pulling on her arm, slapping his palms on the blanket draped over her distended stomach…

“Rei, my love, if you keep pushing my tummy like that it's going to explode,” Mana mutters, beleaguered, as Shisui flicks off the lights. Rei tilts his head in wonder as his father comes over and lies down beside him.

“If it does, will the baby finally come out?” the boy queries. Mana puts a hand on her face.

“The baby will come out when it’s ready, sweetheart,” she says, and then inhales sharply. Shisui sees her features twist in a pained grimace and quickly reaches over to scoop Rei up.

“Come here, kiddo.” He deposits the boy on his other side and traps him under his arm. “Sleep over here.”

“No, I want to stay by Mom—”

“What about me? Come on, bud, I missed you,” Shisui wheedles. “I know Mom’s great, but how about Dad, huh?”

Shisui is terribly grateful that Rei is still at the age where this trick works; the boy immediately sticks himself to his father’s side and tells him that he loves him. Shisui is grateful in general, really, that his children have such affectionate personalities. Rubbing his hand along the boy’s back, Shisui smiles a bit and presses a kiss to the top of his head. Mana lets out a small sigh of relief as the room gradually quiets.

But the peace doesn’t last. Shisui finds himself jolting awake what feels like only seconds later. Blinking blearily, he rolls over to look questioningly at Mana, whose hand is fisted in the fabric of his nightshirt.

“Shisui,” she pants, and then screws her eyes shut with a short gasp. “Shisui, I think—”

The sleep instantly goes out from Shisui’s eyes. He sits up at once. “Oh, man, are you serious?” 

“Yeah, I—” Mana bites her lip and has to pause to take a long breath. “I think it started when Rei was—pushing on me—but it hasn’t stopped, and—”

Shisui lets out a slightly disbelieving laugh, but he quickly gets up and gathers the boys. “All right, kids,” he tells them as they mumble sleepily and make small noises of protest. “Sorry, guys, you can go back to bed soon. Hey, let’s go to Mikoto-san’s for a bit, okay? Come on…”

When Itachi enters the room he immediately makes eye contact with Mana. Mana, who is sitting disheveled on the bed with hair and clothes askew, stops devouring her enormous sandwich long enough to let out a noise of welcome. “Itachi,” she garbles at him through a mouthful of bread. “Hello!”

“Itachi!” Shisui, who is sitting at her bedside with a pink bundle in his arms, jumps up to greet him. “Hey, you’re here!”

“Good afternoon,” Itachi returns their greetings with a small smile. “It’s finally here, huh? Congratulations.”

“Not it, she!” Shisui beams and shows him his daughter. “She’s a girl. This is Minori.”

“Minori. How do you write it?”

“Mi as in fruit, ri as in jasmine—like Chieri-obasan. We named her after her.”

“That’s lovely,” Itachi replies, and is a little surprised by how much he means it. He peers down at the baby for a long moment. Then he cracks another smile. No wonder they seem so happy; she’s prettier than even Sasuke had been as a newborn.

“Here,” Shisui says, and Itachi suddenly finds his arms full with his best friend’s brand-new infant daughter. Itachi, who hasn’t held a baby since his younger brother, goes very still. He stares at Shisui, who grins and rubs his nose proudly. Then he looks at Mana, who takes another bite of her sandwich, chews, and then tilts her head at him questioningly.

“I…” Itachi says a bit dumbly. 

Shisui grabs another chair and puts it at the bedside alongside his. “Come on, sit!”

For lack of any other action, Itachi complies. Then, after he's seated himself and spent another several moments staring at the child, he remarks, “She doesn’t look like you. Not at all.”

“Nope,” Shisui agrees with a hearty laugh. “Mana really did do all the work this time. But that’s all right. I already have the two little hellion clones… the household could do with a bit more beauty, don't you think?”

“Speaking of the boys," asks Mana after she’s washed down her food with an enormous gulp of apple juice, "how are they?”  

“They’re fine. Sasuke was showing them bukijutsu tricks when I left, I think.”

“That’s good.” She smiles. Then she leans forward and peers at his face intently. “And how are you, Itachi?”

Itachi shifts when the combined force of the couple’s stare lands on him. Shisui leans forward with his elbows on his knees.

“Did you see Tsunade-sama?”

“I did…” In fact, he’d come here straight from his appointment. Shisui and Mana both give him expectant looks.

“After she examined me, she called it ‘an easy fix’... so she did the healing right then and there.”

“What? Really?” Shisui blinks. “And she cured you? Just like that?”

“Well, she said she wants to see me back for a follow up in two weeks, but… yes, it would seem so. The Hokage’s already been informed. Apparently he intends to announce me as his successor to the public at the end of the month.”

“That’s wonderful!” Mana cries as Shisui jumps up and lets out a triumphant whoop. “Itachi! Oh, what a relief.”

“Oh, man, this might be the best day of my life. Congratulations,” Shisui exclaims, and then attempts to seize his friend in a hug. 

Itachi promptly turns his body to the side and shoves Shisui away, carefully keeping the sleeping Minori out of harm’s way. “Be careful. Are you trying crush your own child?”

Mana and Shisui both pause and regard him with surprise. They exchange glances. And then, oddly enough, they burst out laughing. Itachi’s brow furrows with confusion.

“Well then, Godaime Hokage-sama,” Shisui teases with a smile. “Now that your good health has been confirmed, we were wondering if we could ask you something. We understand that you’re bound to have a lot on your plate going forward, and this is sudden, so you don’t have to answer us right now. But will you hear us out?”

Itachi is immediately overtaken with wariness. His gaze flits between Shisui and Mana wonderingly, but they both offer him identical smiles, and at once he knows what they’re going to request of him. His eyebrows fly up.

“You said no when we asked you for the twins,” Shisui begins, “and that was understandable. You were a lot younger back then, and we didn’t know how the matter of your illness was going to pan out, either. But we don’t have to worry about any of that anymore. You’re our most trustworthy friend, and Mana and I think you’d be a great choice if you agree, so we’d like to ask you again this time, too. Would you be Minori’s godfather?”

Though he’s seen its coming, Itachi finds his mouth going dry. He looks down at the baby girl in his arms—at her tuft of black hair, her delicate little features, her tiny pink hand—and is dumbstruck. Then he looks back up at her parents. They beam at him together, utterly earnest, and there’s no doubting for a second that they both believe in everything they’ve said with all their hearts. 

Still, he can’t help but repeat the request. “You want me to be her godfather?”

“Yes,” Mana confirms. “There are others we can ask if you say no, and we’ll understand if you do. But it would make us really happy if you accepted.”

“You’re the closest thing I have to a real brother, Itachi. If I were to ask anyone first, it would be you.”

“I…” Itachi is made silent by astonishment again.

There’s a long pause as he stares down at the baby, but Shisui and Mana just continue to wait patiently for his response. Several unspeaking moments go by. Shisui gets ready to remind Itachi that he can ask for more time to think about it, but before he can open his mouth Itachi speaks first.

“You’re really all right with asking me?” he asks searchingly. Shisui and Mana both light up, elated.

“Absolutely. You’re our first pick, Itachi.”

“Yes. Please, Itachi.”

“All right, then.” Itachi nods, and as if the words have flipped a switch, he begins rocking Minori in his arms in just the same way she'd seen him rocking Sasuke all those years ago, back when Mana had first met him. She lets out a noise of utter delight.

“Thank you, Itachi,” says Shisui warmly. “It means a lot. Really.”

“Well…” Itachi looks away for a short moment. Then he lifts his face and smiles at them both. “It means a lot to me, too. Thank you, Shisui, Mana.”

Mana and Shisui smile back. Before they can say anything else, however, Minori lets out a large yawn; then, slowly, she opens her eyes. The trio of them immediately straighten up and lean in to look at her. They move so eagerly that even though two of the three of them are shinobi, they all still manage to accidentally knock their heads together anyway. 

A short moment of astounded silence ensues. The three of them draw back and regard one another with shock. Then, after a beat, they begin to laugh—Mana, Shisui, and Itachi together, there with the baby blinking in the middle of them.

THE END

Chapter Text

It's a ward so skillfully constructed that he knows at once that one of the grandchildren of Kagami has to have created it. Such a beautiful genjutsu as this, so perfectly formed and so superbly blended into its environment, never exists unless one of those two cousins makes it. If not for the spider-thin cracks webbing out from the center of the ward line, Itachi knows he never would have even realized it was there. The question is, which of the two crafted it? Shisui or Mana? 

Mana, he decides after another moment's inspection. Shisui's genjutsu has always been faultless, but exquisite detail of this degree—from some angles less a jutsu and more a work of art—has always been Mana's hallmark. Though in the past Shisui had always been the most proficient of what had been an already-powerful trio of genjutsu fluents, in recent years the edge given to him by experience has begun to wear; he’d admitted so himself last he and Mana had gotten into a genjutsu spar. Itachi is not surprised by the sight of her work.

But this begs a second question: for what reason has Mana placed a genjutsu ward here? It’s a desolate cliffside, and the only people who come here are her, Shisui, and Itachi himself. Had she been trying to hide something? There are worse places for that, he supposes; it is, after all, a very unknown location. But this does not seem quite right, either, because Mana knows very well that her friends frequent this spot. And not just any friends, but two of the few ninja in all of Konoha who are capable of seeing through her illusions. No… it’s far too deliberate. 

She’d meant for one of them to discover it, then. Intrigued, Itachi lifts his fingers in the half-tiger seal and wonders what he'll find. “Kai,” he says aloud.

As the glass pane of fake reality shatters into pieces, immediately the world he had once known shatters along with it. He is standing in a pool of blood. Rivulets of it are running across the cliffside—some streaming into the thirsty earth, some spilling over the edge of the precipice—but at its center is a familiar figure, flat on her front in a sea of red. The iconic uchiwa crest on her back is splattered with blood. Her sword is missing. Her skin is gray.

Itachi spends what seems like a small eternity blankly staring down at the sight before him. That’s why the ward line cracked, then, he thinks with muffled and staticky enlightenment. She’s dead.

Slowly, he steps forward. He kneels down beside the corpse of his friend and touches its shoulder. Then, very gently, he pushes on it, and Mana’s body rolls over. His dreadful suspicion is confirmed at once when he looks at her face, and horror like an icy boulder drops through his gut.

A bloodied stone, once clutched tightly to the chest by stiff fingers, tumbles from her hand and rolls to a stop against his sandal.

Itachi picks it up, heedless of the gore now smeared across his own fingers, and examines it. It's a smooth stone, likely retrieved from the bank of a river somewhere, of the sort often found at the bottom of a shinobi’s belt pouch. There are infinite uses for rocks in a ninja's daily life, but mostly they're used for throwing. Itachi looks up and begins scanning the surroundings anew, searching for the traces of another person’s passage. He wonders what enemy she might have been trying to aim her final act of defiance at.

“Forgive my impropriety.”

Itachi goes deathly still. The familiar cadence of this voice is unmistakable. He holds that posture for a long moment before he slowly turns his head, disbelieving, to look upon Mana’s face. She is as still and pallid as she was when he had found her, and he stares with apprehension at the frozen line of her lips. It is common knowledge that corpses cannot speak. What—?

But then he lifts his eyes. Behind Mana’s body another Mana is sitting, legs folded in seiza and hands held together primly over her stomach. She is almost exactly as she always has been—soft-spoken and composed, beautiful and deadly as only a kunoichi can be—but for one thing: where once her face had been set with a straight and piercing gaze, dark and intelligent, now there are only two sets of gore-clumped eyelashes. They sit like drawstrings pulled shut over an empty bag; even with her eyelids closed, the emptiness of the sockets they cover is morbidly conspicuous. Blood is streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin like a flood of red tears.

“I do not have time. I am unable to write. This is the only way I may leave my message,” this second Mana murmurs. “Please regard this as my will.”

Itachi looks down at the stone in his hand in realization. He flips it over and activates his Sharingan, whereupon he finds an extensive genjutsu array on its other side, stained with blood and roiling with chakra. She’d carved out a genjutsu projection as her last will and testament.

“To start, I will tell you what I know. I was summoned to a meeting by an ANBU of Root who claimed that Lord Danzou had a message for me. When I came to the promised meeting place I was attacked by no fewer than ten shinobi, nine of whom I killed in self-defense. The last I believe I mortally wounded, but she took my eyes, and I am unable to confirm what became of her. If I succeeded in executing my last genjutsu against her, you may find her in the eastern woods, where I instructed her to hide herself. If such is the case, you may yet be able to retrieve my Sharingan. If this message finds its way into the hands of an Uchiha, I ask as your clanswoman for you to do so. If you are not of the Uchiha clan, please, deliver this message to them on my behalf.”

Itachi swallows as Mana’s image speaks on. He watches the steady drip-drip-drip of the blood from her chin. The jagged tear in the front of her shirt has exposed the mangled hole in the metal mesh beneath, and yet more blood is leaking out from between the cracks of her laced fingers, which have slowly begun to loosen as the message goes on. Her straight-backed seiza gradually crumples; and then, as she begins to hunch forward in pain, Itachi can see quite clearly all at once the viscera of her abdomen. She had not folded her hands over her stomach for propriety as he had initially thought. She has been holding in her guts the entire time.

“I have two final requests beyond the retrieval of my eyes,” Mana says, now through grit teeth. Sweat has begun to mix with blood on her face, and the color of her clammy skin has gone from pale to ashen. “If my Sharingan can be reclaimed, I wish to bequeath them to my kinsman Shisui. He is a holder of the Mangekyou as well. Let no one impede him from taking them, for I desire that they be his. There is no one more worthy to entrust their power to than him.”

After saying these words she falls forward, but as she collapses she manages to put her arms out and assume the prostrate posture of dogeza. “I beg of you,” she croaks with hands overlapped and forehead pressed into the dirt. “My last wish is this. I have a message for Shisui. Put this stone down now and give it to him so my final words to him may be private.”

Jarred out of his daze, Itachi immediately turns his wrist and lets the stone slip from his open palm. The second Mana vanishes from his sight like a column of dust blown apart by wind, leaving only a lifeless body as his company.

Silence settles in the air, heavier than a lead mantle, and is punctuated only by the distant roar of the river below.

“Hokage-sama, forgive my interruption. An officer of the police force has arrived and is seeking entry.”

Shisui’s eyebrows rise as the chuunin in the doorway speaks with pursed lips and a harried tone. The Sandaime steeples his fingers and looks at him.

“I am still in the midst of a meeting. Can it not wait?”

“I am sorry, Lord Third. He is most insistent.”

“Very well,” Hiruzen sighs after a brief silence. “Shisui, let us pause for a moment.”

“Sir.” Shisui bows his head. The chuunin nods and slips away. Hardly a second later a dark-haired man with an active Sharingan takes his place. He must have been waiting.

“Pardon my rudeness, Lord Hokage,” the officer says breathlessly. It is clear by the flush of his face that he has sprinted the whole way, and he is disheveled enough to give both Shisui and the Sandaime pause. The fingers he is using to grip the doorframe are trembling faintly.

“What's wrong? You’re very flustered,” Hiruzen observes with a creased brow. “Has something happened?”

“Sir. Yes. I apologize profusely for interrupting you,” the officer answers before quickly turning to Shisui. “Shisui, you are urgently needed. Please come to the Uchiha district at once.”

“Pardon?” Shisui blinks in surprise. “I’m sorry, but I’m currently in a meeting with the Hokage…”

The officer’s grip tightens so forcefully that his knuckles instantly turn white. Just the smallest of splinters splits off from the wood of the doorframe; alarmed, Shisui and Hiruzen exchange glances. The officer takes a deep breath and speaks again. “As your clan head, Fugaku-taichou bids you return to the compound with the direst exigency. Shisui, beg leave of the Hokage to finish your business another day. You must come at once.” A pause; he swallows. “It is an unprecedented emergency.”

Shisui sees the desperation in the man's eyes and turns to Hiruzen. "Lord Third, I apologize. I seem to have received a very urgent summons."

"Very well. We will continue this debriefing later," the Sandaime permits. "Report to me when the matter is resolved."

"Yes, sir. Thank you. I'll take my leave."

"Hurry," the officer urges once they've exited the Hokage's office. Rather than walk down the hall to the nearest exit, he goes straight for a nearby window. "Let's go."

"Just what has happened to warrant this?" Shisui asks incredulously. However rocky relations between the Uchiha and the village are, it takes ridiculous nerve to burst into the Hokage's office and demand he stop a meeting for a personal summons. It's impudent enough that even a clan on the verge of rebellion ought to have thought twice about it. Shisui is half-surprised that Hiruzen had even permitted it.

"Not here," the officer utters lowly before he puts his head down and launches himself into a shunshin. Bewildered, Shisui has no choice but to follow suit. He arrives back at the clan grounds some ten-fifteen seconds before his escort.

"To the police headquarters," the officer says when he catches up. "Come on."

Once they arrive they hasten through the main lobby and rush around several corners until they've made their way to the very back of the building. The officer throws open the door to a crowded room, which is abuzz with fervid, if quiet, talk.

"He found the body, so he went out with the investigation team—"

"...all this way, injured like that?"

"...killed an entire ten-man-cell single-handedly…"

"And the eyes… are they really gone?"

Shisui finds his gaze sharpening at these words. Perhaps his sudden intent focus gives away his presence; at once heads begin to turn. The throng of people parts towards the walls like water once they realize that Shisui has arrived. Fugaku, standing at the end of the large hall, looks up and turns his head. 

"Shisui,” he says.

"Fugaku-san." Shisui strides forward to meet him and then notices that he is standing beside a medic before an examination table. He catches sight of sandaled feet on one end and the drape of a square white sheet at the other and comprehends at once what they are standing beside: a body. Someone has been killed. And more than that, judging by the talk; someone's eyes have been stolen. Shisui's face becomes grave. An unprecedented emergency indeed.

"Good. Now that you're here we can talk," Fugaku murmurs, and then raises his face. "All right, you lot, clear out—who told you to hang around here? Go to your posts." Police officers immediately begin scrambling to exit. "Inabi, Yakumi, remain here and guard the doors. When the investigation team returns, send them in at once. I want to know what they've found."

"Sir." Inabi and Yakumi salute in unison.

"All right, what can you tell us?" Fugaku asks the medic once they have left. The medic sighs and runs a hand through his hair. The look on his face is pure stress.

"The body was already at ambient temperature when it was brought in," he answers, agitatedly tapping a black scroll—presumably the one the body had been sealed in—against the side of the table. "It's been over twelve hours at least. The cause of death, of course, was blood loss. Her abdominal aorta was severely injured. Though seeing that she was armored—" he shifts and Shisui catches sight of a large hole in the corpse's mesh undershirt— "I suspect her attacker failed to sever it completely. This is likely why she lived long enough to get away and leave a final message."

Shisui's brow furrows at the sight. Nagging familiarity assaults his senses when he sees the slender hand lying on the table, and his mind begins stringing together facts at once. A clan member has been killed, and the use of feminine pronouns indicates that she was a woman. A woman with the Sharingan, clearly, if her eyes have been stolen. But most significantly of all is the fact that this person’s death had prompted Fugaku to call for Shisui in particular, and most urgently at that. But as esteemed as Shisui is by the clan, he is not a police officer himself. So then why? There can be only one reason.

He is the next of kin.

Fugaku and the medic step back when Shisui shoots forward and snatches the sheet away. He finds exactly the face he had expected to see there, gray as stone and streaked with blood. “No,” he breathes as he sees the hollow sag of her eyelids. At once the world seems to take on a precarious tilt, and for a long moment all he can do is stare. “Mana…?”

Several beats of silence pass. Then, slowly—hugely, swollenly, as if gulping down an ocean—Shisui swallows. He turns to look at Fugaku. “Her Mangekyou has been stolen.”

“Yes. She was killed for her bloodline limit,” murmurs Fugaku, who is as grim-faced as Shisui's ever seen him. Then he holds out a fist. His fingers are wrapped around a wad of cloth—someone’s spare bandana by the look of it—which he offers to Shisui. “She told us what happened. Here. It’s her will… she left a message for you.”

Mechanically, Shisui holds out a hand to accept it. The fabric falls away to reveal a bloody stone; Shisui recognizes his cousin’s signature trick at once. “If you can cast genjutsu on places, why in the world can't you cast them on objects?” she had asked in disbelief all those years ago, back when she had first been learning the basics of the art. Shisui had begun to explain the principles of why, but then she had picked up a tree leaf right then and there and proved him—and the whole lot of genjutsu scholars—utterly wrong. Thus had been born that day another prodigy of the Uchiha: the child kunoichi who invented the technique of trigger-object illusions. Shisui had never thought of using them as a means to deliver messages; even in death, it seems, his little cousin is a genius.

Fugaku presses the cloth to Shisui’s palm. Normally Shisui would excuse himself from the presence of the clan head first, but the moment his eyes fall upon this stone he finds himself turning away without a word. He wanders away to a side door instead. Neither Fugaku nor the medic stop him when he opens the door and shuts it behind him. The room he arrives in is an empty space without windows or furniture—just a strip of hardwood floor before a spread of aged tatami mats—but it does not matter. Shisui steps past the threshold and seats himself on the ground. He has a feeling he ought to sit.

After taking a breath to steel himself, he sets the bandana on the floor and unwraps the stone. Then he reaches out and sets his palm upon it; between one blink and the next Mana is there, sitting in seiza two feet away. Even though he knows to expect it, a feeling like lightning cracks through him when he looks at her face. Down from top of his head to the very soles of his feet, heat lances through him and splits him in two directly across the heart. The unwavering gaze he had always seen there—the dark irises, the eyes so clear and unflinching—

A monolithic pressure swells in his chest. It feels at once as if rabid wolves are clawing at his innards. Then a silent scream begins: past all hope of articulation, beyond the realm of words or rational thought, it explodes like so fierce a fire that all the oxygen in his lungs is sucked away. All that escapes from the vacuum of this interior conflagration is a choked gasp, breathless and strangled. The unwavering eyes once set in that face—the face of his last childhood companion, the only family left to him—is gone. 

He listens to her recount her own murder with a sort of muted clarity. This particular phenomenon has not happened to him since Tadasu died, but he still recognizes it. It is the kind of derealized awareness that all shinobi in the field know: the compartmentalized operation that keeps bodies alive when minds are fit to shatter, the state of dissociation that allows one to look on from a distance at the realest of unrealities… even when she hunches over and shows him her guts spilling out into her lap, he does not flinch or look away. The whole thing is beyond shock now; the threshold of atrocity has been met already. He is already at the limit place.

And then, after she collapses onto the ground and begs for privacy so she can speak her last words, several silent seconds pass. Shisui holds his breath. She turns her face so her cheek is against the ground. Then she says his name: “Shisui.”

Even though he knows it is a genjutsu he finds himself coming forward on his knees. To reach out, to take her by the shoulders and pull her up from the bloody puddle, to put a hand under her back and support her so she need not mumble into the mud—he wants to so badly. He knows she wouldn't have liked it—she had never been an affectionate person, not even as a child—but even still. However tetchy her moods, no one really wants to die alone. Not even an overserious and sullen shinobi like her.

“This isn’t a saying we have in this world,” she whispers, and as she speaks her tone becomes unfathomably distant. “But whether it’s here or there, it’s true. I lived by the sword and now I’ll die by it. I could have seen it coming.” She remains silent for a long moment. Then she says, “I did see it coming. There was only ever one way it could end. I knew it from the start.

“I’m not upset. I’ve never loved this life, and I’ve thought before that would have been better not to have been born into it. If anything, this was a relief. Now everything can stop, and now I can rest…”

Shisui’s eyes fall as she speaks. It is not the first time he has heard Mana say such a thing. If she had survived this, he suspects it would not have been the last time, either. She might have even joked about it. She has said it before, after all: “Still kicking? Too bad.”

But then Mana speaks again. “That’s what I thought,” she whispers, and her breath, already labored, grows uneven. “That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. I’m sorry I said it. Shisui, I know you’ll wonder, so before I die—I just want you to know—”

The noise she makes then is not quite a sob—a sob would have required more strength than she’d had—but it is the nearest word he has for it. “I said I had nothing in this life, but that isn't true. I thought about you at the end and I realized it," she chokes out. "I didn’t have nothing… I had you.” 

The silence of the gap that follows is pure devastation. Shisui lifts his eyes again and stares at her face. Blood is leaking from her lips.

“I’m sorry. I tried everything. I fought them with everything I had, I promise I did, I…” A shuddering cough shakes her frame, and she has to gasp for breath several times before she can speak again. The words she exhales next are hardly audible. “I am sorry. You deserved better. I should have treated you better. You were always there, but I never…”

Shisui waits for the rest, but it never comes. The illusion persists but the words end there. One minute passes, and then two; Shisui stares at the body, now a matched set with the one lying on the examination table outside. Then he lifts his hand from the genjutsu stone. Mana’s image vanishes.

When the door behind him opens the sunlight of the afternoon has been replaced with dim, artificial lamplight. “Shisui,” a voice says softly. “Itachi’s back. The investigation team… they're here. They brought her Sharingan back.”

Shisui turns woodenly and looks. He thinks he ought to open his mouth to speak, but no words come out. Several beats pass.

“...Come outside. The medic wants to talk to you.”

That evening the Naka Shrine is filled to the bursting. Fugaku is seated at the head of the room with his heir on his right and Kagami’s grandson on his left. Heads crane, desperately seeking a glance, but the young man’s eyes are shut as he sits unspeaking. He murmurs something unintelligible when Itachi leans over to speak to him, but other than that he is no different from a statue. That is, until Fugaku clears his throat and calls the meeting to order.

“No doubt by now we’ve all heard rumors,” he says gravely, and as he speaks Shisui’s eyelids lift. There is no discernible difference in the color of his irises, but breaths hold at the sight of them regardless. “I will confirm their truth. We have indeed lost one of our own today. She was Mana, of the line of the great Uchiha hero Kagami—one of the best and brightest of her generation. A master of our clan’s arts, a jounin of international renown, and a holder of our prized kekkei genkai, the Sharingan…” Fugaku takes a long pause. “And she was murdered for it.”

The room erupts. Itachi can only listen with growing dread as Fugaku, recounting the tale of the theft of her Mangekyou, begins to spin an eloquently tragic tale. By the end of it he has painted Mana as such a saint-martyr that no one has any choice but to cry aloud for justice. What is happening? he thinks as his father, usually so cool-headed and measured, purposefully enflames tempers and stirs up outrage. What are these theatrics? Why is he speaking like this? 

Heedless, Fugaku climbs to his feet. He bows his head just once, solemnly, before he lifts a hand. "I swear to you," he vows, "that these deeds will not go unpunished. The village has wronged the Uchiha for the last time. We must take a stand here."

Sharingan spin as the clan roars its approval. No, not the clan, Itachi thinks as he stares out over a sea of hateful red glares. That is not a clan any longer. That is a mob.

Itachi leans over again, whispering from behind his father’s legs. “Shisui.”

“What is it?”

“We have to do something. If this goes on, there will be no turning back for any of us.”

Shisui is quiet. His eyes are shut again. Itachi insists, “Shisui.”

“There’s nothing left to do, Itachi,” Shisui eventually replies. “There is no turning back now. Not for any of us.”

Itachi swallows and leans back as if struck. Don't you worry, he hears his friend’s voice say. He can still see the reassuring grin on his face. There’s still time. You’re exceptional, and I’m here to help you. We’ll put a stop to this! Just wait and see.

There is no such grin now. A look of terrible apathy has taken over Shisui’s face. It is unlike any expression Itachi has ever seen on his face in his life.

Fugaku, meanwhile, is proceeding with a speech. “But with her dying breath, Kagami’s granddaughter granted us a boon,” he declares. “She told us to retrieve her eyes. She gave them back to the clan. And now, with their power, we cannot be stopped. Because of her, the Uchiha have obtained for the first time in generations—” Fugaku’s voice lowers. “The Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan.”

A hush falls over the room. Fugaku turns to Shisui and says his name. “Shisui.”

Shisui opens his eyes. The tomoe of his Sharingan swirl, but the shape they take on is not the four-pointed pinwheel the clan has seen before. A set of round teardrop marks are now ringed around his pupil, set within the black of the original pattern. He looks out over the hall with them, gaze distant, and does not speak. Fugaku bends down and pulls the young man to his feet anyway.

“With the power of the Kotoamatsukami and the Omoikane combined, it will be a bloodless revolution. You are the key to gaining power in Konoha,” Fugaku tells him—or, really, tells the clan. He is not speaking to Shisui; he is only pointing his face in his direction. He puts a hand on Shisui's shoulder. “Shisui, your kinswoman has given you an unstoppable Sharingan.”

A long silence stretches out. Itachi holds his breath, looking up at Shisui from below and hoping beyond hope that the light will reignite in his friend’s eyes. But Shisui’s gaze remains shadowed, and Itachi gains awareness of a dark truth. Shisui's eyes had always been bright, it is true. But Shisui's eyes are no longer Shisui’s eyes. 

Itachi thinks of Mana. The clan had always joked that they were twins separated at birth, but Itachi never once saw the resemblance. Downcast, listless, perpetually longing for death… he knows his demeanor is sullen, but Mana had been a thousand times worse than that. Itachi had—and has still—things and people he treasures. Mana, as far as he knows, never loved anything in her life. Oh, she had been an ideal Uchiha—intelligent, skilled, powerful, focused—but she had been empty. She had never pursued any dreams. She had never regarded any place as cherished. She had never called any person beloved. And now, he realizes with a growing sense of defeat, that emptiness is no longer just hers. Now it belongs to someone else.

Shisui has been addressed and now he must reply. He looks at Fugaku for a long moment. He glances out over the clan and sees a crowd of faces waiting expectantly. Then he turns his gaze away, out towards the middle distance, and looks at precisely nothing at all.

“Yes,” he agrees blandly, without protest or resistance or thought. “She has.”