A/N . Cross-posted on AO3. Weekly updates of varying lengths.
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Part 1: Uchiha Yujirou
I met with Death one day.
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Uchiha Yujirou will die in ten months. Though at that point, sitting in a crowded restaurant filled with more civilian than shinobi, he hadn't realized it yet. Across the table, Genma-nii was complaining about a rude client from one his recent missions. Genma-nii stops, looking suddenly pale and worried.
"Yuji-chan?"
Yujirou blinks and suddenly the world is a little louder. Yujirou blinks again and his senses overload, too aware of everything breathing around him. Genma-nii shoots up from his seat and puts two fingers to his temple and everything fades to black.
When he comes to again, his first thought was, is this what death feels like? But upon recognizing the feeling of soft blankets against his person, his thought changes. (He was sure he was not at his own place in the Uchiha compound. And neither was he at Genma-nii's. Genman-nii couldn't afford this kind of material. And for that matter, neither could he.) How am I not dead?
"Two tomoe? Are you sure? And there wasn't anything unusual before it happened." It was the unmistakeable voice of his clan head.
"Yeah. He suddenly froze and the next thing I see was his bleeding red eyes. I caught his whisper before I knocked him out. He said, 'Nii-san, I don't want to die yet.'" There was a pause before the familiar voice continued. "Is there something I need to know Fugaku-sama?"
He could feel the change in the air at his Nii-san's subtle accusatory tone.
"What exactly are you try to-"
"I'm not saying anything. Merely asking. Afterall, my brother's kid just unlocked his bloodline limit, and he jumped to the second level at that too. From what I understand, the Uchiha's Sharingan eyes is triggered by extreme emotional trauma." Nii-san's voice remains even-like his usual drawl that seemed to reek of disinterest, yet the biting undertone was palpable.
It had always irked Nii-san how Yujirou wasn't allowed to leave the compound to stay with him in his apartment. It was conveniently located in the shinobi housing district not very far from the Hokage's Tower and the Ninja Academy. It would definitely be easier to get to school from there than from the clan compound. Uchiha-sama has never really explained it to him, but Yujirou knew that it wasn't like the Uchiha Clan Head was against it. It was simply that he really can't allow Yujirou. And then it was just too inconvenient for Genma to live within the compound. It would be unusual, granted, but not against law. Nevertheless, the fact stands that the Uchiha clan grounds was too far fromeverything else and it would simply be too troublesome for Genma-nii. And thus, the idea was never put on the table. Well, communication was an Uchiha's strength, said no one ever. And really, while it was a public decree to have the Uchiha Clan be put in one corner of the village, no one ever really thought of it as an actual forced isolation. After all, other clan compounds exist. What the Uchiha kept in secret though, was the fact it was illegal for any one of them to live anywhere else but the cage the Council had hand-picked for them. Even widows and widowers who had married into the clan was trapped under the law. And as for keeping that fine print within the clan… well, their pride as Uchiha will not permit it, if it got out that the Hokage and the Council were suspicious of them.
Yujirou knew all this, of course. He didn't know the exact details as to why. But almost every Uchiha was aware of this pseudo-exile from inside the village. He's not a prodigy like Shisui or Itachi, but he was still an Uchiha. Maybe he's not as stuck-up as the Elders (because really, no one could be as stuck-up as those geezers) but he still held himself up to the Uchiha standard-even if Genma-nii had explicitly told him that he's allowed not to meet those said standards.
Yujirou was an Uchiha and he was proud of it. Genma-nii will probably never understand it. But that's okay. It changes nothing between them.
"You forget, Shiranui-san. You really have no hold onUchiha Yujirou. You are neither blood-related nor even family. You and Kenta may have treated each other as brothers. But no matter how deep that camaraderie is, Konoha recognizes you as mere acquaintances, bonded only by your duty to protect the village. Furthermore, you are an active-duty shinobi. You spend more time on the field, outside Konoha's walls, more than you are in the village. Tell me, when was the last time you took a break longer than two days before heading out on another mission? Not to mention you still go dark.-" Well, that was new. Yujirou knew Genma-nii was good. He was one of the Yondaime's personal bodyguard before. But ANBU? "-Quite frequently, I believe. Just imagine Yujirou receiving your body scroll one day with no explanations. You wouldn't doing him any favors then would you? And we all know the mortality rate of people who choose the mask. Keeping him with the clan will ensure his growth as a shinobi. He would have the education every Uchiha receives and he will be stronger for it. We know how to look after our own. Unlike some." There was something in that retort, but Yujirou wasn't quite sure what.
"Well, fuck you too, Fugaku-sama. You know just as well as I do that Kenta and Miyu were going to name me his godfather. He should have gone to me the minute it was confirmed Kenta was KIA."
Yujirou decided it was about time for him to intervene. The conversation was reaching levels that could only spell a bigger problem. Also, it was getting really uncomforta le being talked about like he wasn't there. And there was no doubt that the two older ninjas outside the room has been aware of his waking since the very first second of it. So, he started to get up. He has barely lifted his body up when the door to the room open to reveal his should-have-been-godfather (a fact he hadn't known before.)
He couldn't help it. He studies the face of the only man he truly considers family. He never really met his parents. He's heard stories about them. But that's it. They felt more like characters from a book than his parents. Miyu died from birth complications, living only long enough to say his name. Kenta died on a mission three weeks after Yujirou was born. He never really met his own son, was never informed of his beloved's death. For as long as he could remember, there was only Genma-nii. He was an Uchiha, yes. He was raised and provided for by the clan, though Genmna-nii had stubbornly fought them for the duty. But the clan was big, members reaching up to a hundred. He knew the clan took care of their own, and rather ferverently at that. But it wasn'tfamily.
It was Genma-nii who taught him how to stick leaf onto his forehead. It was also Genma-nii who scared off the older, meaner kids when they started bothering him (against his protestations). Genma-nii walked him to the Academy on his first day despite only getting back home from a long mission two hours before It was also a mission where he had pushed himself just to be able to make it before his first day in ninja school started. Although the Uchiha taught him the clan taijutsu and forbade him from telling Genma-nii about it, it was Genma-nii whou taught him how to fight like a real shinobi-fight dirty and without hesitation, never feeeze, kill them before they kill you. And even though it took a lot of paperwork, Genma-nii got the permission to take him out of the village for three days when he turned five to see a travelling puppetry group in the nearby village.
Shiranui Genma was completely and utterly devoted. Raidou-san has teased him about it one of the few times they met. Shiranui Genma doted on him and the brunet never denied it, never tried to make excuses. He took care of Yujirou, as family should.
Like usual, his light brown hair, barely reaching his chins was tamed under the bandana holding his leaf plate. His signature senbon-chewing was absent. Unsurprisingly, since it would have been hard to argue with the clan head that way. Hazel eyes land on him and the older man's whole demeanour relaxes.
"How are you feeling, squirt?"
Like I just died.
He wanted to say.
Like I just died and got thrown back ten months into the past.
Everything felt like a dream… or rather, a very bad nightmare.
Maybe he is dead.
Or maybe this is just a very, very elaborate illusion.
He needed time to think.
"Can I go home now?"
The answer was no. Yujirou didn't even have the energy to argue. But he needed to be alone. Genman wanted to stay, but he had a mission that night. Ah. That's right. This one should only have gone for three days. But complications delayed it by a week. By that time, Yujirou's class was outside Konoha's walls doing survival training. He wouldn't get to see Genma-nii for two months after (and now he knew why: ANBU).
In (what he was still assuming) was his last ten months, Yujirou only got to meet him six times. No, there's five meetings left now.
Genma-nii was out of the village when Itachi slid his blade straight through Yujirou's heart. And ah, that was his last thought wasn't it. Nii-san, I'm scared. I don't want to die yet.
Briefly he starts to wonder how his Genma-nii took in the news. Who told him? How did they say it? Spoken like a mission briefing? Did they try to placate him beforehand? He wouldn't have liked that. A delivery of cold, hard facts and Genma-nii would have treated it as a mission report and he would've kept his mission-persona. He would be professional and not emotional about it, Yujirou thinks. Up until he's alone, at least.
He saw forty-seven dead Uchihas before he himself was killed. (It was what got him his first and second tomoe respectively.) Some of them were younger than him-younger than him in ways that he knew Chojo was only starting to speak and that Bunta turned three two days before and he had been invited to the small gathering as he was their neighbor. He could only think that it was a massacre. A complete wiping out of their blood from the face of the earth.