Chapter 2: Relive, Rebuild, Regain

Mai's breath caught in her throat. Sasuke? The Head of the Clan? Wanted her to annul her marriage to…Itachi? She swallowed, trying to control her breathing. Itachi. Annulment. She-she didn't know what exactly to think. To say. Itachi? She hadn't been able to bring herself to think, not for years, that wherever that man was, she was still bound to him. Married.

And now…annulment?

"I-Itachi?"

The figure stepped out of the shadows and confirmed her suspicions. Her heart beating in relief, she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck, sobbing.

"Itachi! They're all-they're all dead. I checked. Your father…and mother. I-I didn't see Sasuke. We have to find him, Itachi, before-"

She choked on the rest of her sentence, nauseated by the sight of the bloody, broken couple on the floor. Fugaku-san and Mikoto-san. They had been so kind to her, so, so kind. And now they were gone. Her fingers curled into Itachi's shirt for a moment before she came to her senses and pulled away.

"Itachi, we have to find Sasuke. He's alive, he has to be. We need to get-"

She was suddenly pinned against the wall.

"He's still alive, Mai."

There was something wrong with his voice. There was something terribly, terribly wrong with his voice. It was too worked up, too hoarse, and not soothing, familiarly masculine as she knew it to be. If she could have, she would have backed away. As it was…

"Itachi…what are you-"

His eyes. They were scarlet against the blackness of the dark room. And they were changing. No longer were there three tomoe, like every other sharingan Mai had seen before.

"Itachi-"

She would have doubled over in pain if she could, when he punched her in the stomach at full force, were she not held in place by his hand pinning her arms above her head. He seemed to tower over her as she coughed, his eyes like fire in the night.

"You will raise him. You will guide him. You will teach him the ways of the sharingan, though you yourself have not awakened it…You will be the instrument of his revenge."

What was he saying? She felt everything slowing, her heartbeat, stuttering and calming, barely delivering blood to the rest of her body. Had he hit a pressure point? What was he talking about-sharingan? Revenge?

Her thoughts were muddled as she leaned on her husband's strong shoulder, eyes opening and closing numbly as she tried to clear the hazy curtain that had settled over her vision. Was she dying? What had he done to her? He-

Itachi caught her wrist, surprised by the speed with which she had managed to put her poisoned hair pin to the only exposed skin within her reach, his cheek. He looked at her with obvious disgust when he realized that it was one with a pale, ice blue showering of stones hanging from it. It would put him to sleep for at least three days, but it wasn't meant to kill.

"Fool. Had you not hesitated, had you not been unable to take the life of your beloved husband, you might have succeeded."

Mai looked blearily at him, swaying dizzily and then slowly scrunching her face in pain. He had broken her wrist when he stopped her. Why didn't she feel it until-

"Goodbye."

She was, in her dumb state, enraptured by his eyes, so much so that she hardly noticed his lips moving, his deep, sad voice so harshly, ruthlessly cutting her-

And she saw, somewhere in the part of her mind that could still register such thoughts, him lift a single kunai and slash her throat.

No sound escaped her lips, but her eyes met his, and that was when she truly descended into hell.

"…Annulment?"

Clearly, thought the Hokage, it was a terrible mistake to suggest it. It was too soon. It was dangerous. And from the blank look that had conquered her face, it was something that she couldn't even think of. He knew everything that had occurred, of course. He was the Hokage. He himself had attended the wedding of Uchiha Itachi, the prodigy and future leader of the Uchiha clan and Uchiha Mai, a powerful kunoichi in her own right, beautiful in the way of a lady and with the bloodline to match. Arranged though it was, the pair were clearly in love.

It had been a day out of a fairytale. And it had ended in the most brutal of nightmares.

Mai took a deep breath, willing away what came next in her recollection. Really, she didn't quite remember it, it was so horrible that her mind had all but erased the trauma from memory. But the feeling of it. She remembered that quite well. As if it had not been enough to kill her, he had used the Mangekyou on her as well. In her dying moments. Or so he thought.

"Yes. Yes, that's fine. Annul it."

The Hokage looked at her in concern. Fiercest ninja in the village though he might have been, he was not without a heart.

"You do not need to make this decision so hastily. Please, think over it."

But Mai was an Uchiha, she was not the one who inherited the Will of Fire, she was that Fire. She would not so easily be underestimated.

"Annul it."

She was standing firm in her decision. She would no longer be bound to that man. Taking the Hokage's quiet nod as a dismissal, she turned on her heel and left. Demoted to genin and divorced. She was an Uchiha. She was taught to stand up in the face of all adversity, to overcome. As such, it was only after she had arrived at the apartment she shared with her soon to be former brother-in-law and ascertained that Sasuke was not, in fact, there, that she cried.

After that, she trained.

Uchiha. To all others it was a clan of powerful warriors, famous for their unusually large amounts of chakra and their fearsome eyes. But to a member of that clan, the name was everything. Strength. Pride. Power. Hers was a bloodline born of suffering, of violence, of enduring ambition. Her, one of the last remaining Uchiha, demoted to a genin?

Her mother and father, God rest their souls, Fugaku-san and Mikoto-san, and the ancestors she had dreamt of as a child would all be rolling in their graves.

No, she would not stand for it.

It was the first time since that night that either of them had dared return to the Uchiha compound. Sasuke or no, though, she would return. In all technicality, anyway, she was the Mistress of the Clan, and so she would remain until the ink dried on the papers that would terminate her marriage. Sasuke wasn't of age yet, either, so even then, as his acting guardian, she would have been the leader, was there any clan left to speak of.

With this thought steeling her, she threw open the towering doors to the compound, the faded clan symbol of a red and white splitting down the middle as she used her shinobi strength to push the gate open. And she stepped into a place untouched by time.

Out of respect for Sasuke and Mai, the compound had been left nearly entirely untouched. The bodies, of course, had been taken away for cremation, the way it had been for the Uchiha clan since the days of the Hidden Leaf Village's creation. It was their way of life, to live as fire and in death be consumed by the flames.

Everything was as she remembered it. Bloodstains and all.

"Fugaku-san…Mikoto-san…"

The house she had lived in, the Main House, where Sasuke and his parents and Itachi had lived was the same. The blood stain on the floor, where Fugaku's body had lay protectively over his wife's was still there. Closing her eyes almost nauseously as she remembered coming home just before Sasuke did to find them there.

He had wanted a few extra minutes of shuriken practice. How could she have denied him? In any case, she had wanted to be home in time to assist Mikoto-san with serving dinner.

Quietly, very quietly, and with a solemnity not undue to her surroundings, she opened a door with a shudder that seemed to run not only through her shaking body but through the entire, weary house.

It was their room. Her and Itachi's.

"No."

She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. Oh, she was glad that Sasuke had left on his first mission outside of the village. She couldn't have brought him with her. As it was, on her own, it was all she could do to will herself back into some semblance of calm.

No, not calm. Quiet.

She did her best to not look at the rest of the room, instead heading for her side-she winced at the thought-of the bed. She sat down out of habit; it was somehow ingrained in her, no matter how much she wished it wasn't. Swallowing back a hard-hitting, heavy emotion, she reached under the bed to pull out the essence of her very pride. Her fan.

The reason she had achieved the rank of ANBU wasn't because she was of a natural talent exceeding even the usual standard for Uchiha ninja. It was because she had worked her ass off everyday and in the evenings as well for years, from her academy days into her days as a chunin. It was her way of compensating, of living up to her clan's name. What else could she do but attain a high rank, if she was to shame her clan by never awakening her sharingan?

She had trained and trained and trained and at last was rewarded when her family passed onto her the weapon of her namesake, the first Mistress of the Clan, Uchiha Mai. She had been, as Mai was, of dual nature chakra releases, able to manipulate both fire and wind.

She held it out in front of her and noticed with a black sort of shame that her wrist trembled at its weight. That was simply unacceptable.

Through sheer force of will, she snapped the steel war fan shut, strapping it to her back where it belonged, and pulled on the special gloves she had developed, relishing in their familiar feel. Gingerly, she reached back and felt the edge of one of the blades of the fan. It was exactly as it had been on her last mission as an ANBU. Carefully, she ran her finger along the little iron band that stopped her fan from over extending. And nodded to herself, pleased, upon noting that the different texture, subtle, nearly invisible to the naked eye, was still there.

Deciding that there was no time like the present, Mai strode out of the room, pausing only for a moment at the crimson black stains on the floor, and then glaring, sickened, at her own blood on the wall. She felt her throat tighten, and slowly straightened up.

"Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Maybe not for years. But I swear, I swear that I will put your memories to rest. Until then…please watch over your son and I."

She had, of course, meant Sasuke, but the little part of her that couldn't let go of the past stopped for a moment and added a quiet, solemn, "Both of them."

And then she went to that most familiar of places, and it was the first night of many that she would inhabit there. Willing herself into some shabby semblance of her former strength, she snapped her fan open. And she trained.

Elsewhere, Sasuke was on a mission. And not just any mission. The most important mission he had ever been on.

He huffed as he tried to evade senbon needles-sharp, thin, and deadly-blood pounding, breathing heavy, teeth gritted as the majority of them embedded themselves in his skin. He had to do better. He had to protect his friends, even if it cost him his life. That was how he had always been taught, and he knew that Mai would approve.

"Damn-"

He inhaled sharply through his teeth as he tried to move. Pain had erupted from a seemingly vitally placed needle, and it was impeding his movement. This was bad. This was very, very bad. What would he do? What could he do?

It was then that he realized something…curious. He blinked, almost catching sight of a sleeve in one of those mirrors of ice. He tried to focus his perception on his sight and found that, if he concentrated, he could almost follow his opponent's movements.

"I can see…all of your movements. I can see you."

He launched a kunai knife at a mirror and the blurry figure stopped.

"I don't know how you are doing it…but you are indeed able to see me. It will not do you any good, though, because that alone is not enough. It will never be enough."

For just a fraction of a second, Sasuke caught sight of his own reflection in the ice. His eyes, desperate and-as loathe as he was to admit it-afraid, had turned a dark and furious red.

He could see.

Mai had been notified in advance that Sasuke would be returning from his mission later in the afternoon. It was only common courtesy, after all, considering how well-acquainted she was with his sensei. A little dog had come ahead to let her know, and had given her an interesting tidbit of information…one that set her heart ablaze with pride.

"Mai? I'm back."

Stiffening suddenly, she leapt more nimbly to her feet than she had in what seemed like an age and then bounded out of her room to envelope Sasuke in a gentle embrace. She knew all about his injuries, or at least, she knew their general location and gravity, thanks to Kakashi's ninja hound, and was careful to avoid those spots.

Sasuke stood ram-rod straight for a moment, surprised, before wrapping his arms around her a little tentatively and incredibly awkwardly before sighing and hugging her in a way that made her pause. And when she pulled away to take a better look at him, he locked gazes with her and willed his eyes to change.

Mai was silent for a moment before the faintest traces of a smile appeared on her face.

"You've grown."

And somehow, to Sasuke, who was always the subject of praise at the academy, among his peers, and among those ranking above him, those words meant the most of all.

"I made a promise, Mai. To my honored mother, my honored father, my clan and their pride, and to you. I will keep that promise."

Mai closed her eyes to shut away the truth of the similarities between the brothers that she loved and instead opted to gently kiss his forehead.

"I will teach you."

She knew that there was no hope of ever dissuading him from his plan. She knew that. Why, if there had been, she would have thought less of him. Sasuke knew that. And he knew, that even though she herself did not possess the sharingan, she was the best, at this stage, to train him. Kakashi-sensei had never had to awaken his own sharingan, only use what had already been developed. He was proud to begin under her tutelage.

"Teach me everything, everything you know."

Mai looked carefully at Sasuke and then pulled a familiar pair of gloves over her hands.

"This is the last night we will train."

He glanced up at her sharply, eyes full of questions.

"Why? Haven't I been doing well? It's only been two weeks. Have I done something wrong?"

His eyebrows furrowed as Mai had the audacity to laugh at him.

"What?"

She held up a single hand, the other shielding her mouth from his sight.

"Don't assume things. You have excelled. You have been able to adequately use the sharingan in battle and are now able to activate it by will. You have fully awakened it, which you had not done before, as you can tell by the presence of three tomoe. Tonight, you will activate it and fight me. You will not let your eyes revert. You will make no attempt other than what you normally would to conserve chakra. I haven't anything else to teach you after that. Perhaps then it would be best for you to go to Kakashi, for he has learned to utilize it. He would not, I think, have been able to help you develop it quite like I did, but it is he who will teach you to master it. Do you understand?"

He nodded. Mai smiled.

"Very well. Activate it."

His eyes melded into crimson-black and the bloodline of the Uchiha came whirring to life in his spinning tomoe. Mai's expression was fiercely proud, and in recognition of his achievement, she drew something he hadn't previously noted strapped to her back. Sasuke's lips nearly parted in surprise and a little awe.

"Is that-"

She nodded.

"This is the war fan of the first Mistress of the Clan, handed down within my family line since the Hidden Leaf Village was created, and the weapon given to me when…when I was betrothed to Itachi. It is a treasure of our clan, and I will use it against you."

Sasuke nodded once. It was an honor. Even if she couldn't wield it as she once had-he himself had nursed her back to health, he knew how she had been and thus was a little dubious of her ability-that she would draw that weapon, which he had only seen her do once before, to fight him was an honor.

She snapped the steel war fan open with a flick of her wrist, and in that instant, Sasuke knew they were being serious. Mai flexed her wrist, grimacing for a moment, and then letting a serene expression settle on her features. When she opened her eyes again, they were calm.

"Begin."

And they fought.

Mai's fan, which Sasuke had never seen in action, was, even in her debilitated state, a truly dangerous weapon. Even without the use of ninjutsu she was famous for, it was formidable. It acted both as a shield and a quick, decisive blade, leaving little room for evasion due to its size. It was dangerous up close and capable of defending against anything he hurled at it. A single, sudden sweep and kunai and shuriken were useless. If he timed them differently, perhaps…?

No, it was futile. If he attacked her head on? He did so and found that the fan was sharpened to a blade-like precision. This was a killing weapon. And its size, he realized, was probably underestimated by every enemy that ever came upon it. It wasn't unwieldy in the least. Not, at least, in the hands of a skilled, if rusty, user. He was tired. They had been fighting for hours, and it was truly the work of his sharingan that he had managed so far.

They didn't use ninjutsu, they didn't need to, but Mai expected him to expend chakra to reinforce his taijutsu, and to keep himself above the water in the odd chance that they strayed over to the lake. It was what she taught him the first day, glad that Kakashi had taught him how to climb a tree already. He dodged a swipe of the fan but failed to notice that what he thought was a blow was really Mai snapping it shut and his sharingan flickered and faded from his eyes as Mai lifted her closed fan and brought it down on him. It was the last thing he saw.

When Sasuke, at last, lost consciousness-it was a particularly heavy blow she had landed on him, after all-Mai let herself fall backwards onto the soft grass, exhaling slightly. And then, looking out over the familiar lake, she stood for a moment.

Then, she made a handsign and spewed flame over the lake, all but incinerating the night with her fireball jutsu. Had Sasuke seen it, he would have immediately thought of the time he saw his father do it, and how small his first fireball had been in comparison.

The very next day, Mai hunted Kakashi down, and asked that he recommend her for testing. He looked at her for a few moments and agreed.

Relive, Rebuild, Regain/End.