Shikako has a lot of coping mechanisms.
It’s a natural consequence of a ninja career-there’s no other way to function in the face of constant trauma.
There are those she shares with a lot of other ninja; training until you drop when you’re having nightmares is basically a time honored tradition in Konoha.
But eventually everyone develops variations, personal ways to deal with their demons.
Ino turns to rearranging her wardrobe before going back to bed. Kiba once admitted, half poisoned out of his mind-that he has a lot of chew toys masquerading as Akamarus in his room. Sasuke just sharpens everything pointy within reach, and Naruto, strangely enough, goes over his budget.
Shikako brainstorms seals to deal with the monsters in her dreams. Most of them were stupid no good terrible ideas that weren’t even feasable-but it helped convince her tired brain she had plans to deal with her enemies and go back to sleep.
It has never occurred to her that she would use one of those half assed seals.
But on the third day with no sleep-adrenaline flagging despite the active threat of the S-rank criminal in front of her and down to her last few drops of chakra, desperation overtakes her judgment.
Shikako can’t go through another Tsukuyomi.
She can’t.
The seal she slaps over her own forehead looks like a third eye. Half remembered mysticism from her first life bleeding into seal theory and a highly questionable chakra matrix.
But Shikako can’t go through another Tsukuyomi.
And when Itachi catches her gaze-she doesn’t.
She’s not too sure what happens instead is any better.
(That’s a lie.)
(Shikako can’t go through another Tsukuyomi.)
X
Itachi’s first Sharingan sharp memory is of blood and death and fear.
It horrifies him.
He’s too young to really process what he’s done, too young for the blood on his hands. Too young for the way the Sharingan memories feel so much more vivid than any of the ones before it.
He can’t help but compare them, the way they make all his other memories, memories of his mothers warm embrace, of his fathers fond approval, seem washed out and flimsy.
Like they were all a dream–and only the blood and death were real.
He doesn’t understand at the time.
He doesn’t understand why his father is proud, why his mother is so afraid, why everyone congratulates him like he did something good when Itachi has done the worst thing in the world.
It makes him sick.
It makes his hands tremble at night. Wakes him from nightmares of those crystal clear memories. He relives it over and over.
He can’t make it stop-it’s a memory, one his Sharingan ensures he will never forget a single detail of.
Things never get better.
Itachi doesn’t live in a world where he can choose not to kill. His clan has made it clear. As the heir Itachi is expected to be the best of them, he’s meant to be an Uchiha everyone can be proud of.
(The best killer they could make of him)
There were always eyes on him. Watching, waiting, so certain he’d be the pride of the Clan.
Itachi had never had the choice to disappoint them.
X
She is drowning. Chakra is everywhere-in everything, even inside her.
It’s so foreign.
In her past life there had never been anything like chakra at all. She’d had the internet, and anime, and her job in a lab that her family and friends teased her about being a nerd over.
Her new family is different (Not better. Never better-but she didn’t even know how she died. She couldn’t remember. Was that a mercy? What could have been so horrible she’d blocked it out so completely?)
She loved her family. It had always been the best part of her. A part she refused to change. She’d always needed them to anchor her. She’d always needed people-even when she didn’t quite like them. Death hadn’t changed her enough for that to fade.
(She knew she’d died young.)
(Had she died alone?)
X
He made Shisui sad.
Itachi doesn’t want to look at him. His cousin with his Magenkyo. A Magenkyo he’d had ever since his genin team was murdered. A Magenkyo that offered damnation masquerading as salvation.
Shisui is always too kind. He gives too much of himself for others (Itachi chooses to ignore all the ways they were so painfully similar)
His cousin, his best friend, does not want to watch him die. Shisui has already lost too much. He was too smart to be fooled by Itachi’s lies of close calls.
(He was so tired.)
(There is so much death on his hands already. So much blood in his nightmares he drowns in it. It will never end-he doesn’t live in a world where he gets to choose not to kill. He doesn’t get to keep the pieces of his soul every death takes from him.)
(He’s so tired. There is so little left of him–there was only ever one way it would stop.)
“Itachi, look at me,” Shisui demands.
Reluctantly-Itachi did.
“You have to find a reason to live,”
Reluctantly-Itachi did.
He couldn’t do that to Shisui-he couldn’t abandon him the way he wanted to-Itachi had to find a reason to wake up every morning and keep going.
Eventually he started telling himself he’d do it for Sasuke. His little brother was the only innocent in Itachi’s world. The only one with no blood on his hands.
His brother would be enough, he’d be Itachi’s reason to live (he’d be worth the pain of Itachi’s continued existence.)
X
She’d bled into a god. The god had bled into her-she’d been a star.
Glowing, distant, at peace.
It had been everything she’d ever wanted her death to be.
X
“Train me!” Sasuke demands.
Itachi’s foolish little brother still thought it was a good thing. A game to be played and please their parents with. Sasuke doesn’t know what he’s asking.
(Itachi’s adorable little brother is asking Itachi to help make him a killer. A good one; Uchiha standards for these things being what they are.)
Sasuke is too young to understand. He doesn’t know what it would cost him. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for.
Itachi wouldn’t resent his little brother for that.
(Just like he wouldn’t resent the way Sasuke's existence was like an anchor around his throat-keeping him tied to the world he hated so much.)
(A world that was doing its best to ravage everything Itachi had ever held dear.)
Sasuke is the only reason Itachi hasn’t purposely taken an enemy kunai to the throat, after all.
X
There was another god.
A temple.
Death and fear and agony so strong she could taste it.
It was worse than any hell she’d ever dared imagine.
X
“The Uchiha Clan has to die for Konoha”
The Uchiha Clan has to die for Konoha. Itachi knows that. He’s tried not to-He was still trying desperately to think of a way that doesn’t end in the spilled blood of his family.
But–the Uchiha Clan has to die for Konoha.
The Clan-but not Sasuke.
Itachi could never kill Sasuke-Sasuke is the only reason Itachi was still alive. He’s the only reason Itachi had been able to stand the pressure, from ANBU, from his Clan, from Konoha.
Itachi will never kill Sasuke.
And he doesn’t have to.
One child does not a clan make.
Itachi will be a nuke-nin after. He wouldn’t be recognized as a clan member in the least. Especially not after killing off all the rest.
The Uchiha Clan has to die for Konoha.
(It was always so ironic that he has to kill so many people when all Itachi truly wanted was the very end he’d granted them.)
X
It was so hard to exist sometimes. To not fall into the cold numb space in her soul that held the Shadows her clan was known for.
Living aches sometimes. Like a sore tooth-especially when she caught sight of someone’s too bright hair or unnatural eyes and felt so, so foreign in her new world.
(Does she even have a reason to exist?)
(Why fight so hard? Why put in so much effort? This world had been just fine without her…)
X
Sasuke has every right to kill him.
Sasuke had been the reason Itachi had dragged his miserable existence as far as he has. Itachi killed their clan–if anyone deserved to avenge it, it was the sole other survivor.
Sasuke is his reason for living. If he decided he wanted Itachi dead? Then Itachi has no reason to live at all.
(And if it meant Itachi would finally get his peace? So much the better)
It was coming anyway. Twenty years of indifference to his body has come to call in the form of a terminal disease.
(He tries not to feel bitter he hadn’t been born with the thing.)
(Born sickly and weak. Never able to be a ninja in the first place. Never meant to be a killer.)
(It was an impossible dream.)
X
Maybe her choice in career should bother her more than it does. She’d come from such a peaceful world. One where every life lost was a tragedy-let alone something as henious as murder…
But Shikako has never been a humanitarian.
She loves people–for their flaws and complexities. For the stories their lives spun, and the way they could orbit her own life. In theory she believes every human being deserves to live, that every person has intrinsic value.
But in practice?
She has always been indifferent to strangers at best. People-without a reason for her to be invested in their existence, mean nothing at all. They are abstract ideas. Shapes without depths or shadows. There is always potential there–but only for what they could mean to her.
But most of that potential would never be realized and she is more than okay with that.
It isn’t misanthropic, there is no dislike or hatred for her fellow man. She would choose to help complete strangers if it doesn’t cost her anything, she tries to be a good person.
It’s telling that she doesn’t try very hard.
Anyway-being a killer doesn’t cost her what she had once feared it would. Being a ninja is so much better for being good at it.
(She’d always been the type to give her all. Anything worth doing–was worth doing well, whatever it took to get there.)
And it was so much easier once she’d learned to make some very final decisions.
X
The seal stutters and dies on Shikakos forehead.
She looks into Itachi’s Mangekyo–not quite able to drum up her usual fear in the face of everything she’s just learned about the man.
Itachi had been suicidal before Shikako had even been born in this world.
The painful ironies between them throb like wounds. It’s strange and sad, Shikako has never had much pity for others inside her-but Itachi dredges up the most she’s probably ever felt.
“Sasuke can never know,” Itachi says. He isn’t asking.
Someday Sasuke will know the truth of the massacre. Some day Shikako will help him kill Danzo. He’ll forgive his brother. Part of why Sasuke hates Itachi so much is because he’s never figured out how to stop loving him, regardless of everything Itachi has done.
He’ll see Itachi’s actions as the only way forward for him. His older brother doing his best to protect him the way he always had.
Shikako would never break his heart by telling him Itachi was using him as a tool to finally kill himself the way he’s wanted to since he’d taken his first life at four years old.
“He won’t hear it from me,” Shikako says. “I would never hurt him like that.”
“I never saw you,” Itachi continues, his instructions lacking all inflection and emotion. “I will never see you again.”
“I can only hope,” Shikako snarks reflexively-almost despite herself.
Itachi disappears before it occurs to Shikako to wonder when she’d gotten so cruel.
X