Akane didn't expect to wake up again.

It was so surreal. She had died-she had known death before. The first time it had come to call in a bodega at the wrong end of a desperate robber with a gun. Akane had died-and Naoya had found her and brought her back.

She was happy at first-even past the excruciating pain, even after accepting she'd cost her brother an eye, even feeling like a newborn that couldn't even go to the bathroom without assistance.

She was alive, and that felt like a win.

Until it didn't.

Akane tried so hard to be grateful.

She had so much going for her, so many people that loved her and wanted to help. With the memory of Samantha's mothers lonely sickbed, Akane knew she was very lucky.

She even had her mother back in her life. Maybe someone else would struggle to forgive a woman that had walked away when Akane needed her most, but Akane wasn't like other children. She remembered her childhood, she knew the months of sobbing and heartbreak her mother had vented desperately slamming sodden boards into clothes by the river. Until Akane could walk, and her mother had started hiding her tears. She knew her mother couldn't actually stop herself from caring for her children, male or female. But that lie was one her mother clung to for her sanity, so Akane found it hard to begrudge it.

It was preferable to have her mother bathe and change her, it wasn't unfamiliar, and it probably wasn't half as shameful as it had felt at first. Akane tried hard to adjust to her new reality.

It wasn't like she was completely useless. She'd even thought of creating child care centers to free up time for some overwhelmed mothers in the clan. Mostly inspired by watching Aiko and Emiko always visiting with the twins in tow. She was still doing her best to improve the clan, to be useful.

If she was honest; Akane knew it was the pain that broke her.

The low grade agony that trembled through her body that no amount of pain medication could help. Living in fear of the random spasms that threw her body into convulsions so violent it didn't seem like Naoyas sacrificing a limb for her was the better choice.

It cost her sleep and sanity. Her temper was shorter. She'd surprised Emiko with its existence when the woman had tripped and dumped the porridge that was meant to be her dinner all over her instead.

It had been the last straw and Akane had found herself caustically bitching at Emiko and calling her useless in an angry way she'd never treated anyone in either of her lives.

Her new disability was turning her into a stranger to herself. It was hard to think of the word, to think of herself as disabled.

Her body-the body she had been so proud of, the body she had meticulously cared for, trained, and strengthened, had been rendered useless.

She couldn't move on her own.

It was almost worse that her family gathered around to see her as she was. It was ungrateful and maudlin to think that, to prefer to be remembered for the competent warrior she once was instead of a useless person on a bed. Akane had counseled so many bedridden shinobi that it was better to live. That it was selfish to take the easy way out when there was so much life they had yet to live-they just had to find a new way to live it.

She wondered if any of the shinobi she'd talked to had ever wanted to punch her in the face the way she found herself wanting to when Akira had the sheer gall to give her her own spiel. It had taken effort to hold in the nasty accusations that bubbled up in the face of Akiras grim concern.

The reason her spiel worked was because those shinobi had only ever seen one way of life. They thought their contributions to the clan where limited to their success on the battle field. It wasn't too hard to show them they could still contribute in a concrete way, to help arm other shinobi or till the land to feed themselves or any Uchiha who needed it. Those weren't Akanes issues at all.

Akira even tried to tell her he would do anything in his power to help, like their injuries were similar in any way. Akira couldn't move his legs-but the Uchiha were a shinobi clan. What counted as disabled was very different in her current world. Akira could use chakra to stick his legs to some cleverly adjusted crutches and fairly successfully walk with his hands.

In the clan, a disabled warrior was one that would be a sitting duck without chakra, or simply one that could no longer access their own. Akane was doubly qualified because the poison that tormented her day and night, and destroyed her fine motor control, also kept her from accessing her chakra at all.

Akira had looked at her with eyes too old for his young face, "I just can't watch you give up on yourself-not when you wouldn't let me. Please fight for yourself, Akane-please."

Akane had to physically bite her tongue to keep the torrent of unkind thoughts inside.

Mostly because he was right.

Confronted with Akira and his own disability, one he'd adjusted to and navigated successfully-Akane couldn't deny she didn't see that future for herself. Living like she did in the hospital was painfully contrasted against her first long term stay. There wasn't a point of recovery. There wasn't something that would mend and give her control of the rest of her body again.

She wasn't on a soft food diet so they could work their way back up to solids-there was just a soft food diet so she didn't accidentally choke herself to death with an I'll timed convulsion for the rest of her life.

Akane was helpless and that was her new reality.

Except it didn't have to be.

The realization hit her with the same violence of the water bullet she'd once taken to the ribs.

This wasn't her old world where the limits of science meant there was only so much recovery in the cards. She lived in a world with chakra. The very same tool that gave Akira run of the compound despite his useless legs. There had been so many fantastical things she'd seen in that series. Techniques, artifacts, bloodline limits that did the impossible.

Her horrible untreatable pain didn't have to be the new normal.

Naoya sighed with relief later that night when he came home from his latest mission. He hugged her limp body fiercely and just held on. Akane had teared up when she first realized she could never hug him back despite her best efforts.

But she didn't have to be that strong anymore-she had hope again. This was just another storm, her second life had been full of them, and she would get through it the way she had every other setback that had come her way.

So Akane let herself cry.

"I was so scared I would never see the light back in your eyes again," Naoya admitted quietly.

Akane had known she hadn't been the only one suffering from her state, but her heart broke for her family for everything she put them through, and what they would go through until she was all better. But there was light at the end of the tunnel, even if they didn't know it yet.

"Did I ever thank you for saving me," Akane said, instead of trying to explain the reason for her newfound optimism. Her brother hugged her even harder in response. "Thank you for saving my life Naoya. You're the best big brother in the world.

She'd make it up to her family somehow. She'd come up with a plan-she had a great track record for those. It was what she was going to use to figure out a way back to chakra control and mobility. Even if she could never walk again-Akane would happily take Akira levels of mobility.

She just needed a good plan. Starting from the basics-what she knew and what she had to work with. As miraculous as Naoya bringing her back to life with Izanagi was-she would never ask her brother to sacrifice another eye for her, and sadly all other Mangekyou abilities she knew about were rather destructive in nature-instead of anything that would heal.

Maybe bloodline limits were completely off the table because of the warring states political landscape. No clan would try and heal another's shinobi they didn't already have long established treaties with them. The Uchiha didn't have any close ties with a clan that showcased any healing abilities-so another stumbling block would be even finding one in the first place.

So that was a no on the bloodline limit front. Next up we're techniques. Ironically the Senju were known to have the best healing techniques in Fire country. No Uchiha had successfully stolen one though-healing techniques were the kind that required intimate knowledge of what the technique actually did to the human body and Akane didn't have much hope for that working out. She hadn't even made it through high school biology, she didn't think she was smart enough to reverse engineer a healing technique.

Which just left artifacts.

Akane was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to find any of the ones she'd seen on the show-but much like her struggle and eventual success with cremation-she didn't see what was stopping her from outright making one of her own.

In her twenties, as Samantha, she'd briefly attempted polyamory-thinking that the idea of free love would suit her, mostly at the behest of her then boyfriend. It hadn't. She was much too jealous of the other women who also shared her partner, and she hadn't liked the person that jealousy was making her become. So she'd made a concentrated effort to befriend those very same women and broke up with her boyfriend. One of those women had been a witch.

It had seemed kind of kooky to Samantha at the time, but Rosalia made her teas to treat her small ills that worked, and she had very little problem with burning lavender incense or cinnamon candles to cleanse her space of bad vibes. The only fracture in their friendship, and where Samantha had drawn the line, was Rosalia's insistence that her ancestors wanted her to learn the cleansing rituals of Rosalia's people.

Akane hadn't thought it would be too bad until Rosalia started teaching her about the power of blood. Living now, as she did, in a world with ghosts and magic galore, Akane had to admit Rosalia's ancestors had been on to something. Because what Akane needed was something to cleanse her body of the poison in her system-and the first and only lesson she'd sat through had taught her how to create a vessel for that very thing.

Fire and blood, Akane had remembered thinking-just like in Game of Thrones.

Akane had an entire family that loved her enough to donate some blood, and what's more-they were Uchiha. Madara had once shared with her a creation myth about the Uchiha that said the first of them were priests. That the Sharingan was a gift from their gods and that was why their ultimate techniques were named in honor of them. The first god in that pantheon was Amaterasu.

A god of fire and sun.

Akane couldn't do everything she wanted herself, but Aiko's skepticism as she described her idea to make an artifact and what it entailed was strangely comforting for its familiarity. Her older sister always thought her ideas were insane right up to the very moment they worked.

Naoya was called away on the night of the new moon Akane had chosen to begin the process, but Akio wasted no time in picking up the slack. He'd left a vial of his blood just in case and Akane truly appreciated Naoyas unwavering support.

Emiko had taken the twins for the night because her mother insisted on attending. They gathered, probably illegally-well probably not illegally because who in the clan power structure would even think to outlaw rituals in the clan shrine, but it certainly felt like something she shouldn't be doing. Maybe it was the secrecy of it all,she felt like most Uchiha wouldn't approve of disturbing the dead. Shrines where their holy places for a reason.

But Akane had still chosen the place because if anyone would want the Uchiha to have a powerful artifact the would help them recover from poisoning-it was all the Uchiha who had given their lives for their clansmen. Akane was claiming the ritual had come to her in a dream, and giving the Uchiha ancestors full credit.

It was better than trying to explain how the knowledge came about anyway.

When Akio closed the salt circle she'd requested he make using chakra, Akane knew she'd made the right choice.

She could feel their warmth. Not the warmth of a long hug she associated with her own chakra, but the heat of almost touching a candle. Her family was alight with a beautiful golden flames to her eyes, and around her past the urns that contained their ashes, were soft golden pinpricks of light like starlight in the night.

They were Uchiha.

Fire and blood, Akane thought, determination building as they continued the ritual. Akio took her limp body from her mothers arms as her family gathered around the unprocessed clay and Aiko began to speak the incantation Akane had dictated for her.

"I, Aiko Uchiha, ask my fellow Uchiha, those of my line-and those simply kin, please give us your blessings. I call upon you and ask for your blessing upon this artifact, shaped by the blood we share, intended for the use of all Uchiha harmed in this way, powered by chakra and blood. Let it do as fire does and purify, forever more."

Akane watched the pinpricks of light around her flicker and sway-they had been heard.

"Start shaping the clay now," Akane instructed. She watched in awe as her mother poured Naoya's blood on the dry clay she'd asked Cho for. Then she cut her palm, adding her own. The lights slowly gathered around it, as if feeling the call-blood to blood. Aiko went next, gritting her teeth and cutting her palm open to add her own blood and shape the clay into an innocuous cup-but it didn't need to be glamorous, it just needed to work.

When it was Akios turn to add his blood to the cup, her brother handed her over to her mother and Akane had to ask Aiko to hold her head steady so she could watch the way the cup began to glow golden and warm like a bonfire. The comforting heat of it melted into her bones, and even the low grade of agony her body had been operating on since her poisoning simmered down to a dull ache.

It was going to work-Akane knew it in her heart. She could see it unfolding before her eyes. When it was her turn Akio made a careful cut on her finger and gently traced the characters for Amaterasu down their roughly made cup. When it came to the last character Akane could feel a familiar warmth once again running through her veins.

Instinctively, she knew what to do. Akane sent her chakra out, bringing the golden flame that had been overlaying reality from the spiritual plane to the material one. She heard her families audible shock-but it was a distant thing, Akane was busy.

She had to control the burn, keep it steady and pulsing with life, heat, and intent. She was forging her artifact into reality. Concentrating the blessings of countless Uchiha ancestors into one solid form.

Akane didn't know for how long she stayed there, guiding the golden flames into solid shape but the sun was high in the sky by the time it came to an end and she passed out from the strain.

It took approximately five seconds of regained consciousness for the excitement of the ritual to rush right back. Even finding her mother anxious hovering at her side didn't bother her in the least.

"Where's the cup?" Akane asked eagerly.

"Akane," Her mother began hesitantly.

"Did you try activating it yet?" Akane asked, fairly certain the family had already tried to use it-if not in exactly the right way.

"Activating it? What do you mean, like a jutsu?" Akio asked.

"Pour some water in it, run your chakra through it, and swipe some blood on the Amaterasu characters," Akane instructed.

She wasn't sure how she knew exactly how to use the cup. But she did, she was so sure-like she'd carefully read and memorized the instructions. Huh-maybe it had come to her in a dream. She'd just spent an unknown amount of hours working hand in hand with an incredible amount of dead Uchiha after all.

Akio left the room, coming back with their new artifact full of water. Akane could feel the tension in the room rise as her brother began channeling chakra through the cup and nicked his finger. Aiko outright held her breath as Akio swiped his blood on the Amaterasu characters just as she told him, but Akane wasn't nervous in the least.

It had worked. She knew it for a fact.

Akane was the only one who didn't startle when the cup glowed gold and the blood disappeared. The cup, or chalice rather-cup seemed kind of insulting to their new artifact, had taken the blood into itself.

It briefly occurred to Akane that anyone else would be worried about their blood thirsty artifact, but she knew better. It seemed morbid-but it wasn't at all, the same way a fire needed tinder to keep it going, their artifact needed offerings of its own.

Chakra and blood, Akane giggled quietly to herself, it was the Naruto world after all.

"The waters boiling," her mother said with quiet awe.

"Someone feed that to me please." Akane requested, some nervous flutters working their way into her at last. She knew the chalice worked, but she didn't know how strong it was. She had a vague inkling it would grow stronger the more they used it, but she didn't know what the starting point was, or how long it would take to excise the poison when it had been in her body for months.

Her mother took the chalice reverently, carefully bringing the rim to Akanes lips so she could sip slowly.

It tasted like the purest water in the world. Warmth slid down her throat and into her body, Akane could feel it clearing the clogs in her chakra pathways away. Akane exhaled a small zippo lighter lick of flame just to prove to herself that she could.

Tears of sheer relief feel down her cheeks. Akio started bawling silently right along with her. Her mother wiped her tears away with trembling hands.

"You did it," She breathed, almost inaudibly. "The ancestors blessed us, you really did it."

Aiko was beaming, a delighted grin splitting her usually stoic face, "I don't know how you did it little sister, but I am so-so glad you did. I can't wait for you to stand up again."

"Neither can I," Akane beamed right back, cheerful in a way she hadn't been since she'd woken up to never ending pain that first day. "Please activate it a few more times for me?"

She made her long perfected puppy dog eyes at her brother. Akio ran out to fetch more water instantly.

All the pain hadn't magically disappeared, but her ability to access chakra without the direct assistance of the dead Uchiha spoke for itself. Akane would happily drink as much of the boiling water as she needed to.

Within two weeks Akane could sit up under her own power. She still had the maddeningly painful convulsions, although they were thankfully getting shorter and with more and more time between each one.

Naoya had swept her right up from her bed when he saw her. It felt so amazingly good to be able to hug him back. Her arms trembled with weakness from the effort-but Akane was undoubtedly getting better. She wasn't afraid of hard work or the pain it would take to get there.

She was finally getting better.

Which was why she realized immediately that it was very suspicious that Naoya didn't stick around to interrogate her about her healing process. Akane felt it spoke of how low she'd been brought before-in retrospect there were a lot of fairly suspicious things she hadn't paid any attention to.

Like the glaring lack of visits from her fiancée. But that was a problem significantly lower on her list of priorities than her brother's sudden secrecy. She couldn't think of one good reason for Naoya to keep anything from her-but Naoya was her best friend and brother both.

Akane knew her oldest brother, and she knew he was hiding something from her.

X

Low key the amount of times I be tearing up while writing this story is too many times. Way too many goddamn times. It's so sad-I can never even write angst, but like-it's so saaaaaaad. At least things end well-ish, I guess?

Next up we have the man, the legend, the monster; Tajima Uchiha. You also get way more deets about the assasination, Madaras reaction to Akanes latest near death experience, and like; more context for why the clan is run the way it is.

Also I could have sworn I updated this yesterday lol-my bad.