II. In which dubious decisions are made.
The thing is, Sasuke was one of Eli's favourite characters of the show. But he was a mess who made terrible life decisions (and that's why Eli has liked him) and knowing you could have made them too is jarring. Until having remembered her past life Shizuka's childhood had been very much like Sasuke's, their personalities had been pretty much the same too. Even worse, she, like Sasuke, is pretty much obsessed with revenge, she's just going about it in a different manner. People will pay, even Itachi – but not in the way he wants – and she will have a good life in the process.
-o-
The medics keep her a day in observation and she uses that time to think, to try to remember as much as she cans of the manga and all those weird plot-twists (Sasuke was supposed to the reincarnation of some mythological personage… is that true in this universe? what does that makes of Eli?! ) and to plan. She'd like to write it down but there's no way she'll do something as dangerous, so she'll have to hope that the Uchiha genetics hold true and that she'll be able to keep it all straight in her head.
The next morning as promised she gets escorted to a small furnished apartment –in a building near the Uchiha compound. What is this man thinking?! There's no surprise about how Sasuke ended up like that – and introduced to her new landlady, who is a lovely but very old woman. Then she is left alone.
Probably there are ANBU (ROOT and otherwise) watching her.
If that's the case she can work with it, or around it. It may even prove to be a good way to make people worry –but no too much – and question their decisions.
She spends the next couple days holed up in her new little apartment that is actually pretty nice, the kind of place Eli would have liked to live in, sunny and cosy. She is still mourning –because it's good for her emotional health to allow herself to feel grief – and she tries to make simple meals she ends up eating mechanically at exact intervals of time, does what schoolwork she can do on her own, and lays sleepless on her bed at night.
Then one night she just suddenly gets up, puts on shoes, gets out to the street and walks in her pyjamas to her house.
Thankfully the cleaning crew had completed their work already so it's not that hard (it is hard enough already, ok?) to walk resolutely to her house thought the eerie empty streets, past the place where her parents died, and into her room. The familiar bed and smell of the sheets make it easy to fall sleep after having keep herself awake for so long. She needed it to be mildly worrying and not that abrupt, like something that someone like Sasuke would believably do.
-o-
Next morning she realises she entered Itachi's room. Oops.
-o-
She returns sheepishly to the pretty apartment and follows her routine, goes to bed, turns and turns, gives up, gets up, goes home and sleeps in Itachi's room again.
Then she returns to the apartment in the morning. Follows the routine. At night she makes herself a ball under the blankets, doesn't sleep, doesn't go out and is restless all the next day. She cleans all the barely lived in apartment until she gets blisters, forgets to eat her scheduled meals, and spends that night sleepless in a ball. She goes to her house in the morning to train in the garden and ends up sleeping a nap in the engawa.
She doesn't go back to the apartment.
And no one comes looking for her.
To think she was worried about sleeping in Itachi's bed, 'coz in her opinion that was a bit too high in the worrying behaviour list. Either she's under no surveillance or actually no one is concerned about her mental health (then again: Sasuke), so she'll keep living here and she'll move to Itachi's room permanently (because it's bigger thanks to oldest son privileges).
(She totally finds his secret stash of candy and eats it all.)
-o-
Now that she's sleeping regularly she has some nightmares, mixed incoherent scenes of That Night and the car crash that wake her violently and leave her gasping for breath. She also dreams of Eli's life. Those are bitter sweet and nostalgic, but overall good. She's also eating better. She still cries sometimes, and at moments the loneliness of all the empty space around her and Eli's interrupted life gets to her, but she keeps busy training, doing schoolwork –because even if she isn't planning to be absent from the academy for too long, she doesn't want to fall behind – and doing chores, and in this case the natural Uchiha pigheadedness is an advantage, because she decided to live here and so she will live here.
-o-
She still keeps the apartment because the landlady is a lonely old woman whose only income is the rent from the few tenants of the building and she feels bad taking it from her when Shizuka doesn't actually needs the money. It is such a weird feeling to don't have to worry about money –she had never before worried about money, this feeling is all Eli's – it is a weird but good one and she'll have to be careful to don't get used to splurge.
Keeping the apartment proves to be a good decision for various reasons:
1) That's where she'll receive the allowance that she really doesn't need but will use to pay the rent she feels somewhat emotionally blackmailed to pay, and to buy groceries. Because it is way easier to go there once a month that to go all the way to the bank in the administration building and ask to be let into her family account for just grocery money.
2) She really doesn't want to speak again to the Hokage (because he gives her a Dumbledore-ish feel she doesn't like), even less to tell him that she will live from now on her house in the Uchiha compound (even if someone must have told him already) so she can get her allowance there.
3) On the way back to her house from cleaning the apartment fridge so things don't gain sentience there in her absence, she found her first ally in this whole situation.
Old Man Gyu is the best thing that has happened to her since she woke up in the hospital. Old Man Gyu is the cutest less kittenish kitten ever. He sleeps all the time, when she plays with him he bates half-heartedly at the toys and loses interest at soon as he has to jump or chase it to reach it. He is afraid of heights, but when she holds him he just kind of hangs with his body lose from her arms. At night Shizuka lies on her side to sleep and Old Man Gyu sleeps in a warm reassuring ball pressed to her belly. She immediately named him Gyu in honour to a singer Eli liked.
She found him near to the gates and she doesn't knows if the cleaning team missed him when they took all the pets to new homes (and she paid an actual mission so they would find the animals new homes and she even let them sell the fancy koi from the ponds if they wanted, she's generous like that), or if he's one of half feral cats that her clan used to let roam the compound who decided to go back to a familiar place.
He is so cute that she's going to actually take the time to physically describe him: he's a very fluffy still not completely grown cat, white with darker fur on his face, ears, tail and legs, but his super cute little toes are white too. And when he bothers to open his eyes one can see they are a lovely blue. Shizuka is so in love with this cat she's going to leave cat food outside in hopes of attracting other cats, like in that game Eli played until the lack of memory space forced her to delete it from her phone. (It was a very sad frustrating thing to do because she needed only one of the little presents the cats left to complete the collection.) Shizuka is so going to be a crazy cat lady, you just wait.
Some author commentary:
- I'll be posting new chapters of this every other day until it catches up with the ao3 version, then i'll try to simultaneously update both
-I'm still not used to write at length in English and I forget things like pluralising verbs in the third person and such, so sorry for that. I really should pay more attention to the proof reading but I always find the mistakes after I publish the thing and ff . net is very hard to update.
- I like the idea of Itachi having a sweet tooth.
- Did Sasuke live in the compound? I don't know for sure but I saw an image in colour of the view of his window and there was lights in the windows of the buildings around it, so I'll assume he didn't (or that it was occupied after the massacre and that's less likely in my opinion).
- Did I dedicated three paragraphs to the cat? I absolutely did, I enjoyed it a lot and I should do it again and again until I make this a neko atsume crossover.
- Did you enjoyed reading it? I really really hope so