This is inspired by this tumblr post ( post/146729866285/oh-shit-i-just-had-an-awful-thought-about-the) (spoiler warning for the post, it basically lays out the entire plot of the story, with a few deviations) So, enjoy! ^^
**EDIT: The document pasted wierd (and twice rip me) so I fixed formatting**
Itachi hated that it had come to this. It could have been anything else and it would have been better. Not anything, he reminded himself. You still have Sasuke. He shifted on the roof of a small shop where he had paused to collect himself before carrying out his mission. It's just a mission. You're a member of the anbu, it's just another mission. Itachi stood on shaky legs, a small part of him wishing they would give out, but a bigger part knowing that they had to hold him. It's for the best. It's the only solution.
He climbed to the top of the electrical pole in the center of the compound, wishing he could appreciate the calm summer night. The full moon shone over the compound and the peaceful quite that came from everyone settling in for bed. He reached the top, glaring over the whole compound, grimly planning his order of attack. He saw a tiny body moving, only a few yards away, he felt a painful knot growing in his stomach, knowing that it was Sasuke.
At least you have Sasuke.
Itachi stood, erasing all his feelings, all his opinions, all of his compassion, just for tonight. He climbed down, moving quickly to his home – former home. He entered quietly, sword drawn, knowing that this would by far be the most trying fight of the night. He entered the living space, and made brief eye contact with his parents, knowing from his father's calm demeanor that this would be harder than he expected, but for different reasons.
He carried out the first part of his mission. He made Sasuke hate him. Itachi hated himself, too. Soon. It's going to be over soon, was the only coherent thought that was really in his mind that night. Sasuke is already so strong.
He left his katana in the chest of the girl next door. The shop owner's son's innards were on just about every piece of merchandise. The man who lived a few streets down – a second cousin or a first cousin-once-removed, or something like that – had been a fine victim to test Itachi's new skill, amaterasu.
Itachi finished his mission just before dawn, exhausted both mentally and from using his sharingan for so long. He knew he still had a long night ahead of him and, taking one last look at his village that he loved so much, he left.
Every breath she took hurt. It was the most overwhelming, agonizing injury she had ever had. Of course it hurts. You should be dead. And why wasn't she? She laid there on her bed, next to her dead husband, with a sword through her chest. Every shallow breath, every faint heartbeat burned, sending flames through her half dead body.
She tried not to think about the sword in her chest. Or the boy who put it there. She thought about her husband. Two months. I married him two months ago. She tried to remember the wedding day, when she was still so young, so happy. She missed him. Why wasn't she with him? She felt tears welling up, and started to wonder how she had the life in her to cry, when even breathing had become such a chore. She tried to ignore her longing to be dancing with her husband in the afterlife, knowing her tears only made clinging on to life so much harder. She realized that somewhere in her struggle earlier in the night, her face had been lacerated as well, making her tears contribute the fire flowing through her.
She fell asleep or finally passed out from the pain and blood loss - she wasn't quite sure which – but she came to much too soon, greeted with sunlight streaming in through her bedroom window. She used to love being woken up by the gentle sunlight. She used to love rolling over to see her husband's gentle sleeping features in the golden light. She used to have a husband.
In the new daylight, she could see the katana rising from her broken body clearly. It was red with her blood, her husband's blood, and – she was sure - the blood of so many more Uchihas. She could see her chest struggling to rise for each shallow breath. She wondered when it would stop rising. It's only a matter of time now.
She turned her head just barely to the right, using all of her strength to move her stiff muscles, staring at her husband's lifeless body, his once gentle face now harsh and lifeless. She closed her eyes wondering just how her heart was still moving around the weapon lodged in her chest.
"-It's fucking sick…" Her eyes shot open at the sound. A voice. A voice of a real, living person. She heard footsteps growing closer. More than one person. Please, please come this way. "Yeah… I think the victims are back here. The family registry says there are two inhabitants - a husband and wife. Find the bodies." A squad of three anbu members slide the door open and her heart skipped a beat. I'm alive.
"Yeah, they're back here. Looks like they were taken in their sleep." The squad walked over, starting to examine her husband's body. She slowly turned her head towards the ninja and blinked.
"Fuck, she's alive."
}:{
They put her in intensive care, in a private room. So many people came to see her, though. Nurses and doctors. "You're so lucky," they'd declare, "You were impaled straight through your heart." Reporters and anbu and investigators. "You're so lucky," they'd say between questions, "You survived a massacre!" Citizens of the Leaf who were mourning the tragedy. "She's so lucky," they'd chatter, "The murderer only spared one other member of the whole clan!"
She would lay in the hospital bed recalling the events of that night - when the boy entered her room, when her husband shouted at him to leave, when her husband's life was drained through the hole in his chest. She remembered the glare in his eyes, how she screamed, and how when he plunged his blade in to her heart she could hear him whispering that it was all for good. She told the reporters. They said it was such an evil. She was so lucky to survive.
Her chest was healing, slow but promising. They said that within a month she could be back to normal, and that she could live in a small apartment in the Leaf's shopping district. She had never lived outside of the compound before. They said that when she recovered she could make a speech and meet with the hokage if she wanted. She's never done that before, either.
It had been almost a month, but it still felt like that night. She was still constrained to her bed with a hole in her chest. She still felt so empty. It wasn't getting better.
That evening, nurses changed her bandages, chit chatting and trying to lighten the mood, as always. They finished, gathering up their things and leaving, giving a few last words of encouragement. Like always.
Just after the nurses had gone, she heard the curtain slide open. She glanced upwards, expecting a nurse or doctor or a reporter.
She had expected any number of people to enter her room, just as they had been for the past month, but the man who entered her room didn't belong to any of the groups she had expected. There was an air about him that was slightly off putting, but she smiled, ready to answer another dozen questions about that night.
He hobbled over to her, his face remaining oddly stoic - almost eerily so – and placed his hand on hers. His shaky voice made him seem even older than he looked as he whispered, "Good evening, Mrs. Uchiha."
He kept blacking out. Was that a sign of weakness? Would a ninja – an Uchiha, especially – be able to keep conscious? The other ninja wouldn't be like this he thought. They would have resisted.
In his moments of consciousness, he tried to understand his surroundings. He tried to focus, looking around the dark room through blurry eyes and a fuzzy head. He saw a lot of red. There were accents of the black shadows of his parent's small shop – his home – but it was all drowning in a swirl of red. You're going to die before the other ninja can save you.
If he had any energy left in him, he would be sobbing by now, crying out to be saved. But, his energy and his tears had been drained out of him a long time ago. So he laid there, on the floor of his eerily quiet home waiting for his life to vanish too. He took a deep breath, hoping to calm himself, but the extra exertion just irritated his wound. Think like a ninja.
A ninja would have saved his family.
He looked down towards his abdomen, getting his first look at the wound. Through a pounding head and blurry vision, all he could see was that his stomach blended with the rest of the room – drowning in what seemed like an endless sea of red. He blinked trying to regain some kind of clarity. With somewhat clearer vision, he could see that the sea of red was an eerily accurate description of himself. His stomach was completely opened. He felt nauseated, seeing his organs moving ever so slightly. Trying to escape the gravity of his wound, he tried looking around the store again. It was still red, too.
The canned goods shelf was covered in what had to be his mother's blood, and there were still streaks of his father's near the cash register. And he knew behind the counter was their bodies. He looked away from the sight, trying to escape his thoughts. He looked towards what had always been his favorite section of the store- the small, but well stocked, toy aisle. To his dismay it was covered in a sheet of red too, making any hope of even seeing a toy impossible. But Momma and Papa weren't over there…
He squinted, trying to stay conscious for just a little longer. He saw the trail of blood, leading from just near the shelf to the puddle of blood where he laid now, on the floor in the middle of the room. And on that shelf he saw it. He didn't really understand the sight at first, thinking it was just another blood soaked toy. But it moved ever so slightly – or his blood loss was effecting him even more than he thought. Blood loss or not, there was no denying that one of his internal organs was sitting on the toy shelf. His stomach he guessed, trying to think about what could be missing. There was a quiz on vital organs last week. You should know this!
He rested his head back on the ground, trying to ignore the fact that at least one of his organs was spread across the other side of the room. He felt the room spinning, and for the first time that night his body was able to shed tears. You're never going to be a great ninja. You're a disgrace to the Uchiha.
}:{
"…They had a kid, too. The body's over here." He came to, the pounding in his head only made worse by the intense light. Heaven still has headaches?
His eyes opened to see a pale anbu mask just inches from his face. "He's… alive. Get the medic! The kid's alive!"
I'm… alive?
}:{
"You're a miracle, kid." The doctor entered the room, clipboard in hand. "Are you feeling better at all?" she asked.
He opened his eyes, greeted with the bright artificial light of the hospital room. He was groggy, but it was a different grogginess than his blood loss induced unconsciousness. He saw what must have been a hundred different tubes inserted in various places. But, most importantly, he didn't see any red. "I'm alive?" his voice was reduced to just a squeak - like it hadn't been used in years – and he was afraid he would have to repeat himself.
The doctor smiled tenderly and replied, "Yes, you're alive. You made it through surgery very well."
He looked down at his abdomen again, placing his hand over his gown, where he could feel the swollen stiches beneath the soft fabric. He looked at the doctor again, amazed. "… And… my stomach?"
"It's in there."
He grinned, tears starting to form in his eyes, "I'm alive!" He looked around at all the machines keeping him alive, but there was no mistaking it. You're alive. Maybe you'd be an alright ninja after all!
"We do have some things to ask you about and we need to talk to you about the surgery when you're ready…"
He wiped the joyful tears from his face, realizing how childish he must have seemed. "It's okay."
"Alright," she shifted some papers on her clipboard, "First, how old are you?"
"Ten. I turn eleven in June."
The doctor smiled, making a note on her papers, "And so grown up already. You're going to be a very good ninja someday."
"I couldn't even save my parents…" he mumbled, lowering his gaze.
She looked shocked, almost hurt at the boy putting himself down, "There's nothing you could have done, dear. The attacker was a former anbu."
"I wasn't even valuable for the other ninja to come back and save me," he wanted to be done with this conversation.
"Oh, honey," the doctor place her hand on his, "This is hard to say, but none of the other ninja survived. They couldn't have saved you."
His head shot up, baffled at the idea the powerful Uchiha clan could be taken out by one person. "You mean… It wasn't just mom and dad?"
The doctor explained the massacre to the boy, how the whole clan had been taken out in one night, "I'm sorry, dear. We'll leave the rest of the questions for another time, you need time to rest." She rose, exiting the room and leaving the boy all alone.
He laid there, listening to the sounds of the bustling hospital – the sounds of life – contemplating that night. He had survived when the other ninja didn't. But why me? He wasn't a trained ninja by any means - heck, he wasn't even a genin yet.
He ran his hands along his stomach, thinking of all his working, living organs being perfectly intact inside his body. His hand moved to his chest, and he couldn't help but smile when he felt the flutter of his heart. He had survived.
He closed his eyes, listening to the steady beeps of his heart monitor and taking deep breaths. Just as he was starting to daydream about returning to the academy, he heard the curtain to his room slide open. He opened his eyes, startled that the doctor would be back so soon.
To his surprise, instead of the doctor a feeble old man stood in the doorway. The man, who almost reminded the boy of his grandfather, smiled and started hobbling towards the bed.
He returned the man's smile, beaming from ear to ear, filled with the joy of just being alive. The man, let out a breathy chuckle at this and sat at the foot of the boy's bed. The man's assistants stood by him on each side of the bed. His smile grew as the boy noticed that the assistants were members of the anbu – it was like meeting super heroes!
The man's rusty, whispered voice tore the boy from his thought, "Good morning, son," he stroked the boy's face, making him slightly uncomfortable and he could feel the mood shift. "You should meet my subordinates, I think they'll be playing a very big role in your life."
He felt as if he had melted on to the floor. And in almost every sense, he had. It had stopped hurting a long time ago. His right eye felt like it had been sewn shut, but he knew that the reality was much worse than that. He kept his left eye closed, and prayed that he would be found.
He tried to remember the events of that night – So you know what to tell the anbu when they find you, he told himself. You were sitting down to diner when you heard the door open. You grabbed a kunai, but before you could even see the fucker, you were surrounded by flames. They burned more than you could have ever thought, but what hurt more than that was hearing your wife's screams. You heard her say your name first, then your son's. Then nothing. The flames – you could see they weren't normal flames now, they were black, they had to be some kind of jutsu – subsided soon after that. You were welded to the ground where you are now, but you were alive. You saw him enter the room, apparently making sure he got us all. It was the boy down the street, Itachi – was that his name? You had heard he was stirring trouble with the clan's higher ups, but taking down an innocent family? Fucking sick.
So he laid there now, in the middle of the remains of his kitchen, torn between being excited to be alive and wishing his body would just give up already. He wasn't sure that he even had a body anymore – it all just felt like fire and blood and he couldn't tell which parts were the scorched floor and which parts were his own burned flesh. He could feel his blood pumping through his body, which was essentially just a hunk of scorched rock by now.
It's a good question – Do I want to be alive right now? Considering the question seemed pointless – he was alive, whether he wanted to be or not, and everyone else was gone, whether he wanted them to be or not. But, thinking of anything else was better than thinking about his injuries. He certainly didn't want to be alive like this, if you could call this state "alive". He certainly didn't want to be without his wife or his son, and he didn't want to spend one more moment thinking about how they had been taken from this world. But, did he want to be dead? That seemed like a pretty drastic step.
He had always been a pretty simple man, and he thought that his death would be similar to how he lived his life – simple and generally unproblematic. But now, everything seemed so blurred – was he not even be allowed a simple death now? Even if he did survive tonight, life seemed like it would be much more complex after this. His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps. Footsteps. From an actual, living person who can walk.
"Everything is scorched. It's… disgusting."
"Let's just keep our heads, we've got a lot more work ahead of us."
"What kind of jutsu…"
"Wha… Get in here! I think the body moved!"
He tried to open his left eye, he could hear the sound of the raw skin of his eyelids sticking together. Through blurred, red vision, he could make out a moving blob, an anbu he assumed. He could hear the rest of the squad rushing in to the dining room, murmuring medical jargon. He parted his lips slightly, trying to figure out if he even still had vocal cords. He did. It came out raspy and weak, but he definitely still had a voice. "H...e…..lp"
"He's alive."
}:{
The clean, stark white sheet of the hospital bed felt so odd against his skin. Sure, there were bandages covering most of his body, but he knew that under them he was charred black and scarred. They said they would do a skin grafting tomorrow morning, and that it would be a "vital step in his recovery". He tried to shift his weight in the bed, watching as the tubes that lead in to his arms swayed along with his movement. It hurts, it fucking hurts. He gave up trying to be comfortable, and tried to just focus on breathing. It still felt hard to breath, hard to live, even though he had technically been saved, it still felt like a battle.
The door to his hospital room opened slightly, and the doctor swayed in. "Good morning, Mr. Uchiha. I came to talk you about the... um, incident. I'm going to ask you a few questions, if that's okay. We did check, and your vocal cords are fine, but do remember to take it easy, your body has been through a lot of trauma. Now, do you have any memories of last night?"
"Yeah, I remember it."
"Would you mind elaborating?"
So he told her what had happened, how the flames had enveloped the house and his family, and how he saw the ass who'd done it. She asked about his life before the incident – that's what they were calling it was an incident, but he'd heard the nurses calling it a massacre in their gossip. 'Incident" adds a nice feeling, doesn't it? He told her about what he considered to be his pretty average life. She told him about how they planned to treat him, how he "seemed to have a strong will" and that he should be able to recover just fine after the necessary procedures. He said okay.
The doctor gathered her things and started heading out the door after what seemed like an eternity of probing questions. "Thank you Mr. Uchiha, I'll be back soon to check up on you." She pulled the door closed, and he let out a sigh, glad to be done thinking about that night.
After what seemed like just a few moments, the door creaked open again, this time accompanied by a feeble man walking in. His eyes went wide at the sight of the man; he had never expected to see him, especially not under these circumstances. He knew what the man's arrival meant, and it felt as if the very air of the hospital room knew too. It had become even harder to breath, and the man had reached the side of his bed, and started examining the IV.
"That was quite a touching story, Mr. Uchiha. You must really miss your wife."
"What do you want?"
"I believe you know very well. You've proved difficult, I can't believe that even the amterasu wouldn't get rid of you." The man had stopped playing with the IV tube and had instead turned to focus his attention solely on the patient's face. "But, I suppose that can be fixed."
"Fuck off, Danzo."
}:{
Danzo exited the now eerily quiet hospital room, and nodded toward the nurses. His assistants joined him in the hallway, matching his pace.
"Did you find out information on the other two survivors?"
"Yes sir," The main on the left responded, handing him a small folder.
"Then why don't we pay them a little visit too?"
Itachi sat down in the teahouse, sliding in to the worn leather seats, and scanned the menu.
"So, Itachi Uchiha likes tea houses, huh? This kind of place doesn't really seem to suit guys like us." The waitress brought the two men a cup of tea, and Itachi sipped his slowly, ignoring the buzzing of his new partner. He noticed a small rack of newspapers for sale by the door, and stood, casually walking towards the rack. He threw some change on the counter to pay for the paper and returned to his seat.
"Newspapers too? How old did you say you were?" Kisame continued on, undeterred by Itachi's unresponsiveness, "You're going to get eaten alive, kid."
Itachi continued to ignore the chatty ninja, and glanced at front page. His grip tightened, crinkling the paper, although he could have cared less about what the rest of the paper had to say. His stomach dropped, and Itachi was hit with an overwhelming wave of nausea. He thought back to that night, How could I let that of all things happen?
He knew. Itachi knew what was going to happen, and he knew that it was his fault. He was trying his best not to cry, and he was starting to feel suffocated by the air of the small tea shop.
Itachi slid out of his chair, and left the shop without warning, much to the surprise of his new partner. "What was his problem?" Kisame stared at the now empty seat. He reached for the newspaper, reading the headline:
"Survivors Found After Uchiha Massacre, Hospitalized"