Akane suspected that she might have spent an entire lifetime underestimating what desperation could do for a person. All those tales of perfectly civilian mothers finding the inner strength to lift cars now seemed perfectly plausible when she discovered what a desperate will to live and the sole deep certainty that the assassins she faced needed to die so she remained among the living could do for her.
She'd managed cremation.
She still wouldn't call what was basically her altered kanto jutsu fire bending-but considering she'd set two enemies alight with small concentrated bursts of blue fire that consumed them completely and turned them to ash?
The results spoke for themselves.
It was more than worth the year and change she'd spent working religiously on the technique.
Especially when she realized how completely she'd been caught off guard.
Usually her nanny apprenticeship was the most boring part of her day. Kaede Uchiha was a nice enough old lady, she'd taught Akane everything she needed to know about swaddling babies and changing old timey cloth diapers. She was also stern instead of mean, which was a distinction Akane knew to treasure.
Everything was still gross, baby vomit and poop being what it was, but the babies were cute. Akira, the third son of the clan head's current wife, was her favorite. He was exactly half her age at four and a half years old and an adorable dumpling who was a sucker for eskimo kisses. Granted Akane had to hide when she did that-Kaede had not been amused the first time she'd seen Akane give him one, the resulting lecture had gone on for almost an hour, but keeping the secret just made it more special between them.
Little Yoshimatsu wasn't really in the running just because he was so young he didn't really have a personality yet and preferred to sleep all day.
He was pretty lazy even for a two year old, Kaede struggled to get him to walk and she was having a lot more trouble getting him to talk.
That had been what she'd been doing, holding Yoshimatsu and trying to get him to repeat after her by bribing him with slices of apples when a man came through the window and skewered her and the baby on his sword.
Akane hadn't even realized she stepped in front of Akira and made the only hand sign she needed to set the bastard baby killing Senju in front of her on fire with the hottest flame she could make.
She'd finally worked out how to influence the flames with her chakra as she made them. She'd take the burst of fire created as she exhaled and send it past a diamond shaped screen of chakra she created with her thumbs and point fingers.
Akane had simply been stuck on the level of heat she could force her fire into. She could manage the initial burst mostly white hot and so strong it'd melt steel, but it still wasn't the level she'd been pushing for since she'd started on the technique.
She'd barely noticed the color of the flames past the assassin's screams as she snatched up Akira and ran for the door. She almost made it before she had to dodge some kunai as another Senju came through the window and blocked the door.
Then he had to dodge as Izuna made a very unexpected but welcome appearance and attacked him with a sword.
Akane had to put Akira back down for another jutsu, but the Senju kept throwing Kunai she was barely dodging-despite engaging Izuna in a sword battle and when she got close enough to try, taijutsu-it ended up being a terrible idea when the much larger adult ninja kicked her leg hard enough to break her thigh despite chakra enhancement.
Officially down if not quite out for the count, Akane worked past the pain for another handsign as the sick fuck made it passed Izuna long enough to stab Akira with a Kunai.
Later she learned the heat of her flames cauterizing the wound was the only reason Akira survived. The Senju turned to ash.
Then chakra exhaustion and pain caught up to her and she knew no more.
Akane didn't find out exactly what happened until she woke up in the new outpost the Clan head had chosen as their new home. Most people were crammed into barracks as teams of Uchiha Shinobi worked on widening the outpost walls to turn it into a proper compound.
As the so-called savior of two Uchiha heirs, Akane had the dubious honor of sharing a crammed main family room with aforementioned heirs-and her brothers, but that was because Naoya had refused to leave her and stared Tajima Uchiha down. It helped that he'd apparently gotten to the third Senju assassin before he finished the job the other assassins had started in the main house and counted as a savior of his children as well.
Akio just sort of hid behind their older brother and held her hand.
Akane appreciated it.
Especially when he told her Akemi was dead.
Akane didn't think she'd processed it quite yet. Her quiet demure sister who Akane was just really getting to know since she took to braving the general stuffiness of the Susano branch to spend time with her nieces. Akemi had a pair of twin girls for her first pregnancy that Akane had privately decided were the cutest Uchiha alive. Akemi glowed when she talked about them, it was clear to anyone with eyes how much her older sister loved her children, and being a mom was something Akemi found rewarding, no matter how exhausting it was to take care of twins while she was pregnant again.
Akane hadn't appreciated the almost nonexistent period between Akemis pregnancies, but she knew her sister was feeling pressure from her mother in law to have sons instead of daughters. Her mother had been babysitting her grandchildren so a pregnant Akemi could take a break when she was attacked. It was the only reason her nieces were alive.
She wasn't sure where her brothers had left Aiko and their mother-but she was almost scared to ask. She knew her mother must have been taking the loss of her daughter harder than she'd ever taken the death of any of her sons.
Daughters were supposed to be safe to love.
Her mother and her grief were too much for Akane to handle. Not when Akane was trying to process her own assault, having killed two men, and watched two fellow clan members die.
She had liked Kaede-the woman's primness and no nonsense attitude reminded her of her mother-but she'd had a softness too. Kaede had loved cuddling the children under her charge possibly more than Akane did.
And Yoshimatsu had just been a baby. He hadn't even gotten the chance to be a person.
It hurt.
Not as much as her sister and the nephew she'd now never meet, but it hurt all the same. Leaning into Naoya's embrace and grabbing onto Akios hand for dear life was all Akane could do weather the storm of emotions inside her.
She didn't know when she fell asleep. But she woke up feeling every scrape and bruise she'd managed to ignore before. Her thigh was on fire. It was wrapped in bandages so a healer must have gotten to her at some point. Her brothers were still there and they insisted she eat. Akane forced herself to comply despite her lack of appetite, she didn't want them to worry. She wanted to ask about her mother, her nieces, and her remaining sister, but she must have fallen asleep again before she could manage.
The next three days were terrible.
So many children were lost. So many funerals with tiny pyres. Her sister laid out with her mutilated stomach carefully covered.
Akane could barely look at her, she couldn't look at her shattered mother at all. She cried her grief into Naoyas shoulder-her brother hadn't really set her down unless he absolutely had to since the attack.
He'd told her he'd rushed over to the main house the second he made it back to the compound and found her lying damingly still on the ground. He'd thought she was dead for a long terrible second before he'd noticed her breathing. So when the last Senju assassin had made his way into the room, Naoya had been only too happy to kill him.
Her brother didn't remember activating his sharingan. By the time he'd noticed he had one they were making their way to the new compound. From what Akane remembered of the series, her brother had probably activated it in order to protect her. That was how Sasuke had gotten his, in protection of his closest person.
She wasn't surprised to find she was Naoyas. Her oldest brother may have been twelve years older than her, but he had never treated her as anything less than an equal. He was her best friend, though it was a secret she kept carefully from Akio.
As much as she adored her youngest brother, he was still a kid in so many ways, no matter what horrors he'd been through in their war with the Senju. Naoya was a fellow adult, and even if he didn't know that, he treated her like one no matter how childish Akane acted. He respected her decisions, her autonomy, in a way the rest of her family didn't. Maybe he was just someone who indulged his baby sister past all common sense to everyone else, but between the two of them was a mutual respectful affection she'd once shared with her best friend as Samantha, alongside the love they had for each other as family.
So she wasn't surprised Naoya was prioritizing taking care of her, even if she was impressed he was getting away with it. It probably wasn't the best use of one of the clan's senior warriors, which her brother was now at twenty three. Senior shinobi were key to both the war and relocation efforts. Let alone one with the Sharingan.
Akane had no idea how many odds her brother had defied by activating the clan's bloodline limit-something no one in their family had even dreamed of hoping for. Akane didn't think he'd even bothered trying to train it just yet-but she could hardly blame him in the wake of their loss and being forced to flee the only place they'd called home in her current life.
Construction was going slowly-between trying to take everything they could carry from their old home and holding the funerals, the atmosphere in the clan felt terrible.
She did find out Akio had dropped Aiko and their mother off with the Susano, leaving them to help Ryota with the twins.
The twins that would never know their mother. Fuck, she didn't think she could go see them without breaking down all over again. She had the perfect excuse not to, anyway.
Akane had to recover.
She wasn't the only one. Akira was also injured badly enough that he couldn't walk and needed constant assistance. Akanes prospects for healing were better, the healers were experts with broken bones-but the Kunai Akira had been stabbed with, while miraculously missing all his major organs had somehow nicked his spine and they had no idea if he'd ever recover use of his legs.
Izuna rarely left Akiras side since the attack-so they ended up spending a lot of time together as for some godforsaken reason Akane was still in charge of taking care of Akira, a healer had taught her to care for the awful life saving burn her jutsu had left him with. Which didn't feel great. The scarring was intensive.
At least she could still get him to smile with Eskimo kisses. A small victory, but one Akane found she desperately needed.
She didn't know what the future held, but she had to hope it was better than the life she lived at the moment. Her sister dead, another sibling lost. Her mothers grief on top of her own, and trying to find a sense of normalcy as her brothers struggled not to cling to her out of the sheer gratitude of find her still alive.
Akane was barely processing all those changes. Let alone having taken two lives. She told herself it was kill or be killed. It wasn't like any Senju assassins discovered in the Uchiha compound would have been left alive anyway. What did it even matter that Akane had been the one to kill them?
Or so she tried desperately to convince herself every time she woke up from nightmares of their awful screaming. Being burned alive was an awful way to go. Being burned alive quickly was hardly any kinder.
At least her jutsu worked.
Sadly neither of her brothers made any headway in it whenever she tried to teach them. She supposed part of it was their own lightning natures, but suspected she wasn't the best teacher. Akane wasn't great at articulating how she managed to influence fire in the first place, let alone augment the heat bursting from her mouth exponentially until the lick of blue flames could consume anything it touched.
At least Naoya finally started making some headway with his Sharingan. He'd even taught her and Akio some fire jutsu he'd copied from some clan members. Akane had figured out the rapid fire phoenix bursts of flames pretty quickly and was making great headway on the majestic and very chakra intensive fire dragon quickly.
It was great training for her chakra stores if nothing else. Akio wasn't even bitter about her beating him at jutsu proficiency, amazing brother that he was. Maybe he was just used to it, but Akane couldn't help but wonder if her inability to practice taijutsu and beat him at spars while her leg healed contributed. Akio wasn't the sorest loser she'd ever met or anything, but he did get very pouty when she beat him at anything.
Then again, between training, missions, and building the new clan compound maybe Akio just didn't have time to pout. After the first couple of weeks when the funerals finished the clan had to get back in the swing of things and Akane was seeing less of her brothers than before.
Once they'd gotten her a pair of crutches, Akane was still tasked with taking care of Akira. She wasn't surprised considering how stretched manpower was in the clan, but she was getting paid the full time nanny salary instead of her old apprentice fee. Between that, and Aiko's kitchen gig, her family savings had never been higher. Meaning that they finally managed to actually save money instead of spending it all on food immediately the moment it was made.
Naoya's new Sharingan warrior rations were enough to feed the family, so Akio's regular warrior ones on top meant she was getting enough food not to be in a constant state of hunger for once. Their new home was smaller than the last one, only two bedrooms instead of three, but they'd left enough room to build additions to the home for when Naoya and Akio married and needed spousal space with their wives. In Uchiha tradition, brides married into their husbands homes, so when Aiko married Akane wouldn't see her older sister as often.
She prayed it didn't happen any time soon. Not that her mother was in any state to worry about her children's marriages. Akemi's death had devastated their mother. It was a trial to get her out of bed, a trial to feed her, to drag her for a walk around the new compound. But she and Aiko managed it well enough between them, and her mother was getting better. Slowly but surely, she would recover. She was always at her best when Aiko could kidnap her nieces from Ryota for a couple of hours and her mother could spend some time with her grandchildren.
It wasn't the best of times, but it also wasn't the worst of times. She still had the rest of her family to fight her grief and trauma for. Akane would get better, she would heal as surely as her leg was healing, and so was her mother and the rest of their family. They were strong, they had already survived so much, and they would only get stronger. It was a mantra Akane chanted often. Something to tell herself on sleepless nights and rough, rough days when nothing went right and simple things felt far too hard. They were strong, and it was only a matter of time until things got better.
Akane chose to believe that with all her heart.
Three months after the Senju assault on the former Uchiha compound, being informed of her engagement to the Clan heir, and her new found status as a warrior, Akane wondered if she had jinxed herself.
x
I know this isn't big for anyone else but this is week five of me updating on Sundays and I am so proud of myself, I've really struggled to stick to schedules in the past, but I'm seeing the light at the end of this particular tunnel. I'm also ahead enough in chapters that I'm like 80% sure I can keep it up. Especially since I recently finished the outline. This fic is set to finish in June of next year so I hope ya'll are willing to take this journey with me, it's gonna be a while.
That said, shit is about to get very real for Akane and her family. We're gonna see things from Aiko's POV next, I fully acknowledge that the names Aiko and Akio are close and confusing but by the time this really hit me i was 30k into this fic and there was no going back, so I'm sorry but it is what it is.
Also I got on Ko-fi if anyones feeling generous. Ya'll inflation is real and I live in NYC, so trust me I'm feeling it.
the page is Ko-Fi dot com /muaaimoi since ffnet is a hater that wont let me leave the link.
Im also thinking of taking commissions, what do ya'll think?
