One Year After

Mikoto's voice was a vague echo at the back of his skull. It sounded like she was crying, maybe screaming. He thought he heard his name, but he couldn't be sure, not really, not with the blood pounding through his head and the fire flooding his veins.

The bars of the cell blurred in front of him, and he fought against his body's urge to succumb to that blessed unconsciousness. He needed to be awake; he needed to stay awake.

A shudder wracked its way through his body as the needle was removed from his spine, and he would've sworn that the floor disappeared beneath his feet. His lungs swelled — he knew he was gasping, desperately trying to get air into his body, but he couldn't feel it. Numbness crowded his insides. His field of vision changed suddenly, the blurring bars sliding until they were replaced by the familiar expanse of the ceiling. He couldn't tell whether he had moved his eyes himself or if his head had lolled backwards.

A blinding light flooded the space in front of him. He could hear garbled voices, deep and rough and downright demonic. The light suddenly disappeared, and he was stuck staring at the spots of darkness it left behind.

Mikoto was still screaming. Or, he thought Mikoto was still screaming. She always screamed when they came for him, either way, begging them to stop, begging them to leave him alone. They would move onto her next, he knew, injecting her with the same thing they were injecting him with. It happened every time. Every. Time.

The numbness began to fade, a familiar prickling sensation taking its place. Which means the convulsions will start soon. He tried to focus on moving his fingers, tried to see if he had any control over his own body. He managed to twitch his left thumb just before the first spasm started.

It was low, but he thought he could hear her now: Shisui! Shisui! A cell door banged open. Something scraped against the ground. He imagined it was Mikoto edging backwards, pressing herself flat against the wall. Please,she cried. Please don't do this.

Leave her alone, he silently pleaded, please just leave her alone.

He passed out just as she started shrieking.

• • •

Hours passed. Shisui eventually regained control over his limbs, felt like he could breathe again. He blinked up at the ceiling, his body aching terribly. They had left him lying on the floor, as usual, and he pushed himself up carefully, gingerly.

He peered over at the cell across from him, squinting his eyes against the darkness. Mikoto's still form was lying on the ground.

"Au —" He coughed suddenly, a violent action that made him fold in on himself and left his chest aching. He gripped at his shirt and groaned, tried to breathe through the pain. He looked over at Mikoto again and swallowed hard, letting the saliva coat his sore throat. "Auntie?" he tried.

She didn't answer. He could just make out the shallow rise and fall of her ribs. So she's still alive.

Shisui sighed and pushed himself back against the wall of his own cell, cringing against the pain flooding his body. He couldn't do anything to help her, but he felt mildly better now that he could keep an eye on her. It made it feel like he was doing something at least, even though, in reality, that something amounted to very little.

Shisui laughed to himself. How the hell did this even happen?

He didn't know where they were being kept, exactly, but he'd gathered they were still in the Land of Fire. Danzo's occasional presence had made that clear. He also had a hunch that they might be underground, but he had yet to confirm that as a fact. Not that it mattered, entirely. Not given what was being done to them.

Shisui still didn't know the specifics, and neither did Mikoto. They merely came, injected them with whatever was in that damned needle, and then left. Shisui, frankly, wasn't sure what the point was. It was an experiment, clearly, but what the end goal was he still wasn't sure. He flexed his hand experimentally, watched as the veins bulged beneath his skin, then looked back over at Mikoto.

Whatever they were doing to them, Mikoto wasn't responding as well as he was. The trials themselves were hellish for both of them, but he found himself rebounding from them within 24 hours. Mikoto, meanwhile, would sit prone for days after, completely unresponsive to everything around her. She was growing weaker, he could tell — he wasn't sure how much more she would be able to put up with. He watched her shallow breathing and idly started to wonder at what point her body would give out completely. Days? Weeks? Years?

He didn't want her dead, of course, but he'd begun to wonder if death wasn't a better fate than this.

His eyes started to burn and he mindlessly rubbed at them with the back of his hand. It was pitiful, really, the situation they were in. He never thought highly of Danzo to begin with, knew that the man had a vendetta against the Uchiha clan that he was just itching to carry out. Shisui had always thought it was possible that the man would kill him, but he hadn't particularly expected Danzo to go so far as to reduce him to some type of human lab rat. He'd honestly rather he just had him killed with the rest of his clan.

He dug his fingers hard into the corners of his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose. He could've gotten away. He knew he could've gotten away. But getting away would have meant leaving Sasuke and Itachi, and there was no chance he would ever willingly abandon those two. If their escape meant his own imprisonment, he could live with that. The issue, of course, was just that he didn't know if they'd made it out.

He'd woken up in a cell after the massacre, chakra seals wrapped around his wrists. Mikoto was across the room in her own cell, begging him for information about her boys. Did you see Sasuke and Itachi? Do you know if they got out? Did my boys make it out?

He couldn't give her an answer. The last he'd seen them, Itachi had taken Sasuke and run out of the store. He didn't know what happened to them after.

So they might've gotten out? she'd asked, her eyes alight. They might've survived? He remembered the dozens of chakra signatures that had swarmed the compound.

Sure, he'd said, his voice hoarse. Yeah, they could've gotten out.

He didn't believe it, not really, but he'd started to talk himself into the possibility. Because, if he didn't, then he'd have to believe that something terrible had happened to Itachi and Sasuke, that a kunai had been shoved into Itachi's chest while a sword was used to slit Sasuke's throat, or that Itachi had been gutted while Sasuke's spinal cord was severed. And he couldn't bear to even consider those possibilities. So he let himself dream, let himself believe that maybe, just maybe they'd managed to escape. Itachi was smart, after all — one of the smartest people he knew, in fact. He could've gotten out with Sasuke. He could've.

He liked to think they went somewhere far away from the village afterwards. Hiding out in some small town where no one knew the Uchiha name, living a life free from the constraints of the village and the shinobi life. Perhaps Itachi even went so far as to become some philosophizing nomad, dragging Sasuke along while he preached about pacifism and peace.

He didn't think it was likely, but the thought made him smile, nonetheless.

He wondered if they ever thought about him. They thought he was dead, surely, buried somewhere with the rest of their clan, but he still liked to imagine that they'd occasionally see something that reminded them of him, something that made them turn to each other and say "hey, remember that time when Shisui..." It was stupid, really. He'd never been so sentimental about dying and being remembered before, but he'd had quite a lot of time to ponder his own mortality down here. And while he wasn't particularly afraid of dying, he realized he was, in fact, afraid of being forgotten; of being lost. So while he knew he might end up spending the rest of his life rotting in some underground cell, being injected with who the fuck knew what, he liked to think there was still someone out there who cared about him, who remembered him.

It was a nice thought, at least.

• • •

Two Years After

"Shisui?" He looked up at Mikoto. Everything was tinged an ugly mauve color, and he had a sinking feeling that it was his own eyes that were the problem, and not anything in the room itself. Mikoto's frail fingers were wrapped loosely around the bars of her cell. He could see each wrinkle in her skin, could practically see the blood flowing underneath. She gave him a concerned, motherly smile, reaching out towards him despite the distance separating them. "How are you feeling?"

Shisui blinked down at his hands, his eyes burning hotly in his skull. "Fine, I think." He cocked his head at her. "Is my Sharingan still active?" he asked. "I can't tell anymore."

She nodded at him. "It's changed color again."

He picked at a strand of string hanging from his shirt. "Yeah, I guess it does that now," he mumbled.

"Does it feel different?"

He shook his head and pulled harder at the string, watching it tear away from the fabric. "I could feel my normal Sharingan. It burned my eyes a bit," he explained. "But I can't feel this."

She hummed. "It's been a few days since you last deactivated it."

He knew that, of course. But he supposed she was saying it less to inform him of the fact and more to point out that something bad was surely going to come from it.

The string came loose and he twirled it between his fingers. "I can't figure out how to make it go away," he admitted. "I can't divert the chakra from my eyes." Shisui started to chuckle. "And now everything's purple."

Mikoto was silent for a moment. "What do you mean?"

The way she asked the question — she sounded so concerned, and, for some reason, Shisui found that absolutely hilarious. He wiped at his face, the laughter now coming out in uncontrollable spurts.

"What's so funny?" she asked, sounding mildly insulted. He could only shake his head.

"Everything looks purple. I can't see any other color." He grinned at her. She was frowning, and Shisui felt like she wasn't quite appreciating the ridiculousness of the situation. Another swell of laughter bubbled up his throat. "I really hope that goes away. I fucking hate purple." The laughter rattled in his chest, and he tried to quell it, he really did, but it launched itself from his lungs nonetheless. He keeled over cackling, gripping at the cramp spreading across his side.

"Shisui, dear —"

"We're going to die down here, aren't we, Auntie?" He sighed, the sudden laughter leaving him as quickly as it had arrived. "We're going to die, and the last color I'm going to see is purple." He blinked down at the floor, a final, ironic chuckle breaking free from his lips. It all didn't seem quite as funny anymore. The floor blurred in front of him. "What are they doing to us?" His voice sounded small, desperate. "What the hell are they doing to us?"

"Shisui." Her voice was stern enough that it made him look up. Mikoto had pressed herself fully against the bars, glaring at him. Tears collected in the corner of her eyes. "Don't," she ordered. "Don't you give up." It was a command if he'd ever heard one.

Shame flooded through him, eating its way into his bones. He looked away and nodded, the side of his face scraping hard against the floor. "Yes, Auntie." He stared at his purple hand. "I won't."

• • •

Four Years After

Shisui was brought into a separate room in the middle of the night. It was white, sterile-looking. A man sat him down in an uncomfortable seat, chaining his hands to the table in front of him, and then promptly left.

He was left there for hours. He'd nearly fallen back asleep entirely when the door banged open.

Danzo walked over to the table, peering at him curiously. "How are you, Shisui?"

He felt a deep shock charge his nerves. Shisui bared his teeth at the man — he would've lunged at him if he wasn't thoroughly restrained. "Fuck off."

Danzo gave him an amused smile. "See, that was always the problem with your clan." He sat down across from Shisui, leaning back. "You're all so volatile."

Anger churned through his body. "What the fuck have you been doing to me, you sick fucking —"

"I've given you a gift." Danzo leaned forward. "You clearly have yet to comprehend that, though."

Shisui threw his head back, a tired laugh escaping his lips. "You're insane," he marveled. "You're actually fucking insane."

"You don't feel different, then?" Danzo asked. "I've kept you in a cell for the past four years. You should be a ghost of your former self. And yet you've barely lost any strength or body mass. And your Sharingan — I doubt it's ever been stronger." He smiled. "Don't you find that interesting?"

Shisui looked back down at the man. "Not particularly."

Danzo only shrugged, leaning back again. The chair creaked underneath his weight. "You'll come around." He twirled his cane. Shisui tried to focus on how gratifying it would be to rip that cane out of his hand and smash Danzo over the head with it. Breathe, Shisui, breathe.

"I wanted to discuss your Sharingan with you, actually," Danzo started. "I hear you've gained quite an impressive amount of control over it."

Shisui glared at him. He leaned forward. "Fuck. You."

Danzo smiled. "You'll soon realize how strong I've made you. I promise you, we've only just scratched the surface of your capabilities." He placed a hand lightly on the table. "You'll want to talk to me eventually. But until then," he got up, "I hope you and the woman continue to enjoy your cells."

Shisui stared at him. You and the woman. He meant Mikoto. Mikoto, who was lying weak and feeble in the cell across from him. She'd lasted four years under these conditions, it was true. But he wasn't sure how much longer she could stand.

Danzo turned to leave just as Shisui jerked forward, reaching towards the man. His hands strained helplessly against the cuffs.

"Wait, wait!" Danzo stopped, his hand on the door. "If I talk to you," Shisui breathed, "will you let her go?"

Danzo tilted his head, considering. "I might," he allowed. "See, it all depends, Shisui Uchiha." He turned back to him, eyeing him carefully. "How much do you know about the Nine Tails?"