Uchiha Sachi, fix-it extraordinaire (Naruto)
Sachi Uchiha's life was always sectioned into a "before" and "after" format.
Sachi Uchiha stared at the Uchiha fan.
She can't help but think she should recognize it.
Of course she should, it's her clan's symbol after all. However there's just something more here that she doesn't get.
She's looking through her memories, trying desperately to find the missing piece and-
Quickly, like an innocent match had been lit and promptly thrown onto a tree into the dense woods - Sachi remembered a time before she was Sachi.
Oh.
So that's where she recognized it from.
She liked Itachi.
Well she didn't at first - she despised being compared to him.
She doesn't really care anymore.
Before she remembered, she saw Itachi as the bane of her existence. She coldheartedly shot down all his attempts to build a relationship with her, she thought he was pitying her.
She sees clearly now. After she remembered, she no longer saw Itachi as if he was some playground bully - instead she sees a socially stunted child who wants friends and family and many precious people.
Well, who was Sachi to deny him that?
Itachi approached her, just as he always did after training.
Sachi carefully rakes his eyes over his form.
To anyone else Itachi would be carefully composed -
but well, she's been in close contact with him since they were in diapers.
Luckily, she just knew his body language all that much more because of it.
He was nervous - resigned - she could tell he wanted desperately for today to be different, for some reason.
If she had to draw a comparison - it'd be like opening a door while it rained, closing it, and opening again hoping it would be sunny.
She can tell he subconsciously has already deemed it as a useless effort - but well, he's a bit more desperate stubborn then to give up just because of some small-time factor like that.
Today the gods seemed to favour him - because today is indeed the day it's going to suddenly be sunny.
"...a new dango place- opened downtown, and...I wanted to know if you wanted to- come and see it with..me?"
If he had said this before she would have sneered and walked away, seeing this as some manipulation tactic to lull her into a false sense of security - because come on! He only gets that stuttery with me so obviously he's up to something!-
Now she looks at him blankly.
She notes the way his entire body tenses, as if expecting some sort of cutting blow.
It doesn't come, and that just makes him tense more.
She's never had dango. Not even before. Not even after.
She thinks it'd be nice, to try it with him.
It'd be symbolic, maybe.
"....Okay."
Itachi looked at her - shock radiating from him in waves, but she knew him well enough to see that small drop of hope in those eyes of his.
The dango wasn't that good. She doesn't like sweets. But Itachi did like them - no matter how nervous he was while they had it. So Sachi decided then and there dango was her favourite food, her stomach can survive just fine if it makes him happy.
Really, it's the least she can do.
Sachi is on a mission.
Not a literal one, seeing as she's four and not currently even in the academy, let alone at the age to get missions, but you get the gist.
She gets a few curious glances her way. before they move on. It does nothing to deter her.
She sits politely on the stairwell leading to a specific rundown floor in the shittiest building on the edge of the red-light district, where only one genin would live, because it's all he could afford.
She has two sandwiches packed up with her. One she was slowly eating, and another she hadn't opened.
About three hours after the academy let out - and about ten minutes of her waiting on the stairwell - a freshly minted genin wearing orange goggles trudged up the stairs of each floor looking like death frozen over, before pausing, noticing her.
He started screeching.
"Sachi-Hime?! What are you doing here?! Am I finally being kicked out of the clan?! That can't happen! I just made genin! Did I take too long or something? I thought I made the cut-off!-"
"Why don't you," she says, cutting him off impolitely in such a manner that'd probably make the clan elders choke. "Take a sandwich, sit down, and tell me all about this cut-off you were talking about, yeah?"
He regarded her suspiciously, before eventually losing some sort of internal battle as he took a sandwich hastily and then poured out his life story to her.
Ah kids and the wonders of food bribes.
A little blackmailing, emotional manipulation, and a lot of political maneuvering later - and Obito lived with Shisui's family now.
He looked a little dazed at this, and Sachi smiled at him to ease his worries.
For some reason, he blanched. Weird.
Hatake Sakumo died two years before Sachi was born.
She's upset that she can't do anything about that.
She goes to the Yamanaka flower shop - and sees a 19 year old Inoichi at the counter; which puts her off kilter momentarily.
She gets a single blue hydrangea.
Credit to Inoichi, because he wisely chose not to ask who a four year old had to seek forgiveness from in the first place.
Instead he opted to throw in a small discount, despite her family name being obviously of money.
Honestly, what a nice guy.
She visits Hatake Sakumo's grave every day and places a new blue hydrangea each time.
Hatake Sakumo had a grave, and wasn't on the memorial stone. It wasn't a well cared for grave either - people saw him as dishonourable, no doubt the work of Danzo's gossip network.
She wasn't even in the womb when this man died, driven to kill himself with his own hand in order to repair his honour - so his son could live freely - but she resents the fact that no other clans reached out to a clan head being ostracized by the village.
Hell, she resents the fact no one total reached out to Hatake Sakumo - the man, because he didn't deserve the bad faith on his name.
She talks to him. Tells him about her day. He doesn't need to hear it. She doubts he cares.
She does it anyways. She hopes he finds peace, wherever he is.
She goes there each day without fail.
By the third lunar cycle (and 87 flowers later - they all died within a few hours, so she'd take and dispose of the old one and replace it with the new one she bought each visit.)
She noticed someone watching her.
Well not really, she just sort of - heard someone. Breathing a little quietly, but enough that her slightly better than average hearing picked it up.
She continued on as normal, because truly only one person watching her at Hatake Sakumo's grave would lack the training to not get caught.
Next time she's the flower shop, while buying her usual cut flower - she asks for a potted hyacinth.
Inoichi - bless that man, all he does is raise an eyebrow and comply to the request.
When she visits Hatake Sakumo's grave she burns the old flower after switching it out for the new one, and talks about her day as normal.
Right at the end of her visit, she talks in measured and even tones.
"I was going to give this to your son - Hatake Kakashi I think? - I don't really know a lot about flower theory-" true, she really didn't. "but I thought they looked pretty. I felt like it'd be rude to just give them to him though, since I don't really know him, and he might take it like I'm pitying him or something. Worse, the clan elders might purposefully misinterpret it as a courting present just to get on my nerves. Either way I chickened out when I thought about it." absolutely true, she actually intended to give him this in person at first. "Regardless I felt like it's important he saw that someone cares, at least - so do you mind if I leave this for you? Just in case he visits and sees it? I'll leave a note and everything! Oh I really hope you don't mind"
She hesitantly and carefully places the flower at the bottom of his grave, attached with one of those little note tags giving a bastardized version of the speech she just did. She bows and closes her eyes.
She straightens her back and walks away,
Not that the note matters of course, since the intended recipient was watching her from the trees the whole time, but well - she had to keep appearances yeah?
The next time she came by, the hyacinth was gone - in it's place only a note remained. The handwriting was jerky - probably from emotion, but still neat and easy to read.
"Thank you."
She grins widely and warmly. She resolves to buy him more plants in the future and privately keeps the notes Kakashi wrote in a box under a creaking floorboard under her bed.
Her father was a soft-hearted man.
He just - never really knew quite how to express that, because of his own upbringing being so tense and his pride not allowing him to admit he wasn't perfect at everything.
Sachi can tell he tries.
Like how she can tell when he spots Itachi and her getting dango - his stop to say "I expect you to be better during training from now on, Sachi. If this is how you spend your free time." obviously wasn't meant to be taken as poorly as it was - it actually probably meant from the lack of reprimand for the dango and the mention of training something more of - I expect you to work harder now that you've found something to protect.
However, she wasn't raised in a military dictatorship - at least, not the first time.
She plans on failing the academy, completely purposefully.
She'll be obvious about it too.
She wants to own a flowershop. That, or work at the ones the yamanakas own. What can she say, she's inspired.
She figures that'd suit her just fine - and if the elders kick up a fuss?
Well, Not-Quite-Sachi of before was a women of little talents, but she considered her main one something of a terror when she felt the need to ultilize it -
Stubbornness.
It ran in not-quite-Sachi's family of before, but she utilized it differently from them. While they wielded it like an extra arm, an old friend they needed to use in order to live - Sachi wielded it as if it was a fast acting poisonous dagger.
When she dug her heels into the ground and decided that she didn't want to do something, nothing short of herself deciding it wasn't worth her time anymore could be done to make it otherwise. Death itself couldn't stop her - and why would it even be an option, when she was the sole daughter of the clan head?
Right now, Sachi was digging her heels into the ground with a ferocity that made Itachi glance - literally, she was subconsciously funneling chakra into her feet.
Woops.
Point still stands though - Sachi was going to work at that flowershop, and nothing could be done to stop her.
Ah, well - she expected this conversation to happen much sooner, really.
The academy started a month ago.
For all purposes - she looked to be a model student. She paid attention and took notes during class, she helped others when they had questions - she didn't slack off - she gave her classmate's tips - but her grades were awful.
Written tests, taijutsu training, flower arranging, survival training - she failed all of them miserably. Others in her class even joked that Itachi took all her talent while they were in the womb.
Her father just stared at her, listing these facts.
"Why are you sabotaging yourself."
He didn't phrase it as a question.
She didn't take it as one.
She looked him in the eyes, stubbornly - challengingly, even - and said, voice full of conviction-
"I'm going to work at a flower-shop. A peaceful, mundane flowershop. Where I don't need to worry about my life every other day. I'm a pacifist at heart Father, and I'm not going to go into a career built on killing."
His mask was truly unbreakable, because all he did to this bold declaration was raise an eyebrow.
"Itachi is a pacifist too."
He said it like he was stating a fact.
Like it didn't come out of nowhere.
Itachi isn't failing - you are, why? He doesn't say.
"Itachi is...unaware that there is options for him outside of being a shinobi, and no one has ever rectified that for him. He is doing well yes, but he's miserable - anyone with eyes can see that."
Neither of them so much as blinked for a long tense moment.
"Leave my office."
From her father, for no reprimand or rant to come after such a gutsy conversation? That was practically his glowing approval.
She smiled despite herself as she walked out of the doors to his study.
Hopefully, he brings Sachi's appraisal up with Mother - she always was the better of the two when it came to things such as emotional conversations.
A week later, Sachi was unenrolled from the Academy and given a tutor with a history for teaching civilian aristocratic children. She takes what she can get.
Itachi suddenly has new vocal desires to be a medic, and not a frontline one either. Just a normal medic.
She's proud of him.
She tells him that to his face.
This earns her one of his once-in-a-blue-moon-smiles.
In July, Sasuke was born.
Suddenly, the place in her heart she didn't let people into before - Sasuke was part of it.
He wasn't her entire word no, but he was Itachi's. You could tell - from the way he interacted around him.
So she extends her heart just a little more, making a place for Itachi's anchor - and privately, she may also extend a piece of her heart and set it in the hands of her little brother as well.
But no one needs to know that.
October 10th passes without incident, and Sachi sobs with relief.
Obito now had a stable-ish family that talked out his emotions with him, and so he didn't blow up at Kakashi as much anymore.
Kakashi calmed down - not completely, but enough that he gave Obito a little more leeway than before.
When the bridge mission came up - Sachi pulled all of her political power and (with minor bribes and some convincing [read; manipulation]) Itachi's combined to put as much backup as they could.
Obito lived, only his arm got caught under the boulder and because uchiha healers and Rin were both on the mission - he survived until they reached the hospital.
Kakashi apparently woke his latent mother-hen potential, and started hovering around Obito in concern; to Obito's bewilderment and Rin's amusement.
The yondaime survived - so Danzo probably is going to be rooted (ha! she could be funny, see?) out in a matter of months. He's terribly efficient, that guy is.
Kushina is still the vessel of Kurama - and Sachi supposes that's an issue she'll need to get to eventually, but right now?
She's just a six year old whose biggest worries should be trying to get a part-time job at the yamanaka flower-shop.
She kind of likes how simple her life is now. She likes it a lot, actually.
She wouldn't trade it for the world.