First Arc: II

Home, as it turned out, was the Uchiha compound. I'd wondered - my knowledge of the show was patchy (something about a rabbit? I stopped watching after the time skip, most of my later-Naruto knowledge came from other fics if I'm honest with you) but I did know that Sasuke had been living by himself by the time he'd graduated the academy. Seven and recently orphaned seemed a bit young to me for him to be independent and alone, but apparently my views and the ninja village's views didn't match here; I was escorted to the Uchiha clan gates, given a packet of legal and financial documents that I would probably get round to reading when I was hungry enough to need money, and left to my own devices.

What the fuck, Konoha. We were talking about a child. I mean, not really, because we were talking about me and I was at least nominally an adult, but as far as anyone in the village knew, child. Seven years old. Seven! No wonder Sasuke in canon grew up to be such a screwball of issues and insecurities. He still slept with a fricking plushie for crying out loud.

The plushie in question was, of course, a soft and floppy weasel. Shisui brought it back for him from a mission to Tea country and Sasuke decided it was the best thing ever. It had its own headband. Shisui laughed his ass off and Itachi rolled his eyes and poked me in the forehead but I knew he liked it, he was just being annoying like big brothers always are and -

I cut the memory off before it could go any further and shoved it roughly to the back of my mind. I couldn't see my escort anywhere, but these were ninja I was dealing with; maybe they actually were being vaguely responsible adults and keeping an eye on me. Or maybe they weren't. Either way, I didn't feel like crying in the middle of the street, so I tucked the document packet under one arm, stuffed my hands in my pockets, and angled myself down the path to my house.

I kept my eyes forward as I walked. There were no bodies - which was good! I didn't want bodies. The funerals would be happening over the next few days; they'd waited for me to be present as the new clan head, but the bodies had at least been collected and cleaned and all the rest of it.

Eyes harvested, you know how it goes.

Still, though, the lack of bodies made the rest of it surreal. Everywhere looked like there should be people around, gardens still neatly tended, a light left on and visible through the window, tables and chairs carefully stacked by the bakery my mother got her mochi from - but, no people. It was creepy.

The house, when I got to it, was even creepier. What did Sasuke do in canon? Did he stay there, did he take one of the smaller houses?

"I'm home," I mumbled to no one, pushing the door open and flicking on the light. I glanced up from kicking off my shoes, eyes catching on the bare floor where the tatami mats had been cleared away, and my lungs froze as I realised where I was.

This was the doorway I'd watched from as Itachi killed my parents, over and over and over. This was the doorway I'd been trapped in as he stabbed me and I drowned and the blood dribbled out over my chin as my chest screamed from the pain of it. Over and over and over.

"No," I said, and slammed the door. "Nuh-uh. No. Goodbye. No."

There was a back entrance from the garden to the kitchen. I scrambled over the fence, sidestepped the sozu fountain, and resolutely ignored the grand shoji paper doors to the main part of the house. The kitchen door was small and held very few memories. Perfect.

It was only after I was inside that I realised I was still without shoes and had to gingerly brush the soil off my feet with my hands. There wasn't a genken in the kitchen, unsurprisingly, so I made do without slippers. Otherwise though there was a kettle, tea, probably enough food in the cupboards to make dinner, and, if I pushed the kotatsu to one side, space to lay a futon on the floor. I'd have to venture into the main part of the house to get supplies - maybe I could clear out the sideboard and store clothes in it? - and to use the bathroom, but otherwise I was golden.

"This is fine," I said. "This is better than fine. This is exactly what I need. I like studio apartments. Cosy. Yes."

I put my hands on my hips and surveyed my new living quarters. Add a tall stool by the counter - it may be normal to the Sasuke part of me to kneel on the floor, but a) I needed the kotatsu out for space reasons and b) no - maybe a mirror and some slightly more cheerful and less reservedly imposing pictures for the wall, it'd be delightful.

"What do you think, Plushie-tan," I said, fetching the weasel from my room along with an armful of high collared shirts and white shorts. We'd need some changes to that ensemble, oh yes we would. "It's our new home. Do you like it?" I dumped the clothes in a pile on the floor and put the weasel in pride of place on my futon.

Plushie-tan leaned listlessly to the side. I took that to be approval and sat cross legged next to him, curling my toes under the blanket. It would be better if the bed was western style, at least then you could pretend it was also a sofa, but a futon was what I had. I predicted a lot of sitting on the floor in my future, and resolved to move the stool up the priority list - there was casual dining and then there was eating every meal in bed, and one of them felt a bit too much like depression for my liking.

"It's not much," I admitted, "But it's just a start. We'll get better from here, you'll see."

We had to. I didn't know if anyone was watching still so I didn't list anything out loud, nor would I risk writing anything down - even in English, or any combination of code I could come up with. I knew that Itachi was still a good guy and loved me and would never betray the village, but to everyone else he was evil incarnate and a complete wild card. If his brother, the brother Itachi not only left alive despite killing the entire rest of the clan but also dragged into a genjutsu that no one else was party to, if that brother started acting and behaving suspiciously? Well, that would probably set alarm bells ringing. Even though the Hokage knew that Itachi was acting on orders, he couldn't afford to let the rest of the clans know. He'd have to treat me as a potential flight risk. Traitor risk? Whatever you called it. Sleeper agent, maybe.

And if not the Hokage, then Konoha was still home to Danzo. He hadn't got Sasuke in canon, but a baby Uchiha left all on his lonesome would be a tempting target - I couldn't risk catching his interest either. Not to mention everyone outside Konoha. Was Orochimaru after a Sharingan yet, or would that come later once his body started deteriorating? And Obito's mad crusade against the Uchihas, did that extend to me? Not a clue. Hell, for all I knew Sasuke was fending off regular kidnapping attempts before the show opened, and the only reason he had the skills to survive was because Itachi's crazy mind-fuckery motivated him to train like heck and be the rookie of the year.

I gripped Plushie-tan convulsively tighter.

In a world where eyeballs were passed around like balloon animals at a clown convention, I was in possession of two highly prized specimens and I had approximately zero ability to protect them. How many Sharingan were there in the world now? Itachi had two. Danzo had too many. Kakashi had one. Obito had one. Madara? Was he a thing? Was he just Obito, or was there actually a Madara before Obito started pretending to be him? Shit. I had enough foreknowledge that if anyone found out I'd be screwed, but not enough to actually know what was happening.

But, point was: if you wanted a sharingan, I was the obvious target. And I wasn't even safe if I dropped out of ninjaing and stayed a civilian; even if the village allowed it to happen on the surface, Danzo would never let a resource like that be wasted. The best I could hope for would be to be put out for stud when I was old enough to have kids.

My mind baulked. Penis. Ugh.

"Plushie-tan," I said, swallowing around an uncomfortably dry throat. "I think we need to train like heck and be the rookie of the year. You know, to. Make the clan proud." And survive and shit. Hell.

I was seven now. I had - how many years was it until Sasuke graduated? Three? Four? Six? - some years. During that time I had to lay a foundation for any knowledge I didn't want to hide that I had, get strong enough to have a hope of keeping my eyeballs in my face, and work out a plan for what I was going to do when canon started and plot things happened.

And get a stool for my tiny kitchen home.

It'd be fine.

.

Spoiler: it was not fine.

The funerals were painful, but manageable. Uchiha liked fire - understandable, I did too, it was infinitely superior to water and anything remotely wet or cold or dark - so cremation was the order of the day, and with no clan and no elders, the speeches were blissfully short.

The bodies burnt before I had chance to check if the eyes were missing or not. I knew they were, at least some of them, but now I had no way of saying how I knew.

The house, once I'd retrieved what I needed from it and settled myself firmly into just the kitchen and the closest bathroom, was great. I kept the doors closed, I made sure to walk round the outside on sunny days and lever open some of the windows to air the rooms I didn't use, and otherwise I ignored them. If priceless artifacts of clan history were being eaten by moths and rotting away, well, I wasn't there to see it.

What I was there to see was the garden. In traditional Japanese style it made use of water features and plenty of natural beauty, with only a few spots of colour to break up the green - white camellia flowers in winter, pink cherry in spring, brighter pink lotuses for two short but very pretty weeks in summer. Even red maple in autumn, if we're counting leaves as well as flowers. In traditional ninja style it was dotted here and there with some of the most poisonous substances fire country - and, in fact, most of our neighbours - could grow. I vaguely recalled my mother taking me round to point them out once, along the lines of 'don't touch those Sasuke, you'll die'.

I can't claim to be the best gardener, but I think I did alright. None of the koi died, and rustically unpruned was an achievable look. I hadn't yet got to grips with all the poisonous plants, but I recognised a few from academy teachings and a few others from the assorted scrolls and libraries I'd raided, so. Progress.

Yes, fine, I went through the parts of the clan compound that didn't leave me reeling from bad memories and I shamelessly stole anything that looked shiny, interesting, or useful. It happens in every self insert. Shocker; those of us that write self insert fics tend to be people who like to read. It's comforting. You'll be pleased to know that I won't bore you with the many hours I spent reading the night away with only Plushie-tan for company, but you'll be sad to know - I hope, unless you're rooting for me crash and burn, which, rude - that those hours yielded jack-all in the usefulness front.

Paranoid ninja not writing things down. Paranoid ninja hiding the things they do write down. Paranoid ninja sealing shut the things they write down and not writing down how to get past the seals.

Fucking ninja.

I did manage to get a handy immolation jutsu to use for the funerals, though given that you needed to lay your palms ritualistically on two major tenketsu to activate it and it took almost a minute to heat up, I wasn't going to be using that one in battle much. Also poetry. A lot of poetry.

And a stool! It took me a week or so, but I did find a stool for my kitchen counter so I could now officially sit down to eat. I was winning.

So, with this list of fabulous successes, you might be wondering why I say it wasn't fine. To which I answer: the academy.

I might not know how children are meant to act but I'm pretty sure they're not meant to act like this.

They were just… weird? I knew, theoretically, that things happened much younger in Konoha than I was used to back home - genin were considered adults, I'd been living alone since I was seven, tiny people could be promoted to chunin in a war, ANBU armour came in size extra small - I knew all this. But I guess I just assumed that Konoha foisted a lot of responsibility on kids and the kids were… still kids?

I'm not explaining this well, but the point is that the academy students were way too mature for their age. I guess if I'd come across child soldiers in my first world I'd think the same thing about them, but it still threw me how someone less than four feet tall could reason their way through a logical argument about how to kill people the way a seasoned adult would. Sure, they lacked some life lessons and experience to draw on, and very few of them were what I would call emotionally well rounded - though not many of the adult ninja were either so huh - but they grasped concepts of murder, decision making, strategy, hell even politics better than a lot of people I'd known who were three times their age.

And then they'd turn around in the same breath and make a fart joke. I was so confused.

Maybe I just didn't know how kids worked? Maybe this was normal? Maybe Nara Shikamaru was not an alien creature masquerading as a lazy pineapple child and was in fact a genuinely average human being?

No. Genius or not, Shikamaru was too smart. Nothing about him even began to approach normal, and if you'd ever been subjected to him staring you down because you dared try to sit next to Chouji at lunch time, you'd know exactly what I was talking about.

I didn't know if it was chakra at work, or just intensive social conditioning, but I could kind of maybe see why the village treated people as adults at a much younger age than I was used to. I didn't agree with it, and I still stand by the fact that leaving canon-Sasuke by himself severely messed with his head, but I could see how it could happen.

I could not see how I was meant to fit into it.

I was allowed some slack. Sasuke had gone through a major life change; I wasn't expected to be the same as I was before Itachi killed everyone. At the same time, Sasuke had actually been quite a childish child, and suddenly flipping that into a mature adult personality would be too stark a change to pass off. Going the other way though and acting overly childish would be immediately spotted and questioned.

So I settled for not… doing either? I don't know, my Sasuke-memories of how things were before did very little to prepare me for this. I figured it was safer to keep my distance, that's all. I didn't actually mean to be rude and an asshole, but there were a couple of western culture things which apparently didn't translate, and by the time I'd sorted myself out and remembered the important things - like pointing, pointing bad - my reputation was well and truly established.

The fact that I was training or reading every minute of every day because I didn't want to die and also had no friends didn't really help either, because now I was standoffish, rude, and showed everyone else up at target practice. Great.

"I'm just glad I've got you, Plushie-tan," I said, talking to the stuffed toy weasel I still kept on my bed as a twelve year old. "I think you're the only one who ever listens to me, you know? If it wasn't for you, I'd've gone mad years ago. You and the fish. I should be nicer to the fish. It's not their fault they live in water like actual savages, I'm sure they'd breathe air if they could."

I dropped out of the handstand I was doing on the kitchen counter and bent over backwards until my socked feet hit the floor. Ninja-flexibility. Me and my twig body were owning it.

"Special day today, though," I continued, swinging neatly into a low crouch and continuing my morning routine. "We get put in teams. I might end up with new people to talk to, you never know." I chewed my lip, a bad habit I'd never managed to break myself out of, then gave my head a rough shake. "Maybe not."

Knowing that in the original story Sasuke had been on a team with Sakura and Naruto made it difficult to treat them impartially. I knew who they'd become in the future - or at least, in a version of the future that may or may not still happen - and I knew that it had taken them a while and a convenient time skip to get there. As of now though they were both annoying. I mean. Really annoying.

Ok, so maybe I came by some of my asshole reputation honestly, sue me.

It was true though. Naruto was loud and obnoxious, Sakura was louder and also obnoxious, except when she was talking to me in which case she was quiet and breathy and still obnoxious. How the fangirl phenomenon had started I had no idea. Why it had fixated on me I had no idea. How to make it stop I had no idea. Whether I was a grown woman with a boy's memories or a boy with a grown woman's memories, the whole concept of it weirded me out.

Just. Why. I was awkward and I had shitty hair. Go crush on Chouji, he's made of sweetness and light and he shares food. He's worth braving Shikamaru for, that's how good he is.

But still: Sakura and Naruto were the two main characters the story'd focussed on, and I didn't know how to treat them. Naruto ended up saving the world, if I changed anything would I put that in jeopardy? I didn't even know how he saved the world. Probably with Sakura, but Sasuke… was there? Wasn't there? I think he survived, because I think he and Sakura had a kid, but I also think he tried to kill Naruto at various points and was the cause of a lot of heartache and pain. Following in those footsteps didn't sound like something a good person would do, so I should probably change at least some of the story line. Just… not enough to make the world end.

I hadn't yet worked out where that balance was, and as good a listener as Plushie-tan was, he wasn't great at providing answers.

"I need to get you a magic-eight ball," I told him, and flipped out of the last position in a satisfyingly boneless stretch. "I also need to get dressed. Don't look." I threw my pyjama top over him to cover his eyes, then padded over to the sideboard and pulled out an assortment of clothes. Black trousers, black arm protectors, black shirt pulled inside out so the grey lining showed instead… I had a theme. The only reason the shirt was grey side out was because it was Itachi's old shirt and I was attached to it, but black on black on black was a bit much even for me. Also, when I wore it this way you couldn't see where I'd unpicked the clan symbol from the back, and it wasn't quite so obvious to anyone else that I'd raided my big brother's room for clothes when I grew out of my own. I was meant to hate him for killing everyone and everything, it would look odd.

You've got to think of these things, see. Because ninja.

The other thing you've got to do is cut out the front of the freakishly high collar so you can breathe, because things - even fabric things - that block the nose and mouth area are no.

"All good, Plushie-tan. Clothes on, you can look again."

I drank a glass's worth of orange juice directly out of the carton and cracked a raw egg over last night's reheated rice in the rice cooker. Add fish for extra protein and follow with a kaki fruit because I still can't let go of the fact that breakfast should have something sweet in it, damnit, and I'm set. Today I'd find out which genin team I was assigned to and - more importantly - whether leaving Naruto to fail his graduation test was the right choice or not.

"See you later," I called to Plushie-tan, slipping my feet into - yup - black sandals and letting myself out the back door. "Wait, shit, headband -" I already had shoes on so I leaned in as far as I could, wiggling my fingers and tugging on the dark fabric with chakra until it fell off the side and into my hand.

"Now see you later. Ciao."

Headband on, fringe carefully pulled out so it wasn't making my forehead itchy, and I was good to go. Yes, I still had the fluffy Sasuke duck-butt. It appeared to be genetic, and the one time I'd tried growing my hair out I'd come dangerously close to looking like my mum. I did not have Itachi's ability to rock long hair and still look manly, oh no.

… I'm well aware that I spent two and half decades being a girl. The penis and I were still in a complicated relationship. I missed being able to wear leggings and crop tops. I also, in this body, looked ridiculous as a miniature version of my mum.

By the time I arrived at the academy, my nerves had soured any good mood I'd been in that morning. I couldn't see Naruto; what if he hadn't got the scroll and gone through everything with Mizuki and Iruka? Should I have done something to make sure he passed?

No, there was nothing I could do. Naruto was a mess, there was no way on earth he'd have learnt the standard bunshin. Besides, kage bunshin was his signature move, I couldn't risk him not getting it. Or not finding out about the kyuubi. Not having the bonding moment with Iruka, Mizuki not being exposed as a traitor - there were a lot of important things that happened last night, ok?

That hopefully happened. That better have happened or so help me Naruto there will be consequences.

To make things worse, Shikamaru was sat on the wrong side of Chouji. Technically I could squeeze past him to get to Chouji's other side, but that seemed a bit too pointed. I took the open seat next to Shino instead, inclined my head at him in the barest of hellos, and slouched down in what was not a sulk because I wasn't actually a child, thank you very much.

Chouji waved at me. I was too distracted to notice in time, and Shikamaru gave me the stink eye. Ino started berating him while Sakura cooed something nonsensical at me. I sunk further in my seat and wished Shino were a bit more intimidating so everyone else would go away.

At this point, thank fuck, Naruto appeared, headband squarely in place and presence so unapologetically loud it was impossible to miss. I have never been so glad to see you in my life, I thought fervently, quickly followed by what the hell get out of my face why are you so close.

"Uzumaki," I said, cutting across whatever he was saying. "Get your shoes off my desk. That's disgusting."

"Just wait bastard! I'll be a better ninja than you'll ever be, you'll eat your words when I'm done with you!"

"Shoes. Desk. Off."

"Naruto! Stop being so rude to Sasuke-kun!"

"I'm rude, what about - hey Sakura-chan, what about him being rude, huh?"

"Enough!" Iruka yelled from the front of the class. Naruto squawked and overbalanced, tipping forward in perfect position to crack his forehead against mine. I could've caught him, but I doubted he'd thank me for it, so I reached my chakra for the empty chair next to Chouji. One kawarimi later and I was where I'd wanted to be from the start, Naruto went face first into the back of the chair that had replaced me, and Shikamaru couldn't glare at me without losing his napping position.

"Morning," I greeted Chouji with a smug smile. "I brought strawberries."

"I brought chips," Chouji said and handed them over like the ray of purity and sunshine he was. Suck on that, Nara.

"Bastard!" Naruto yelled from his upside down position next to Shino, and the blood vessel on Iruka's forehead throbbed as he clenched his teeth.

Business as usual, then.