Rebirth and survival
Uchiha Nagi was dying, half eviscerated by a man in an orange mask with eyes like her own kin. He hadn’t spoken a word as he cut her down, she just another insignificant death among many, and that was probably what saved her life. She’d been unimportant so he’d been careless with her, had struck a deathblow but not a quick one, had left her with her insides spilling out of her torn open stomach. It wasn’t a quick or easy death to face. She was alone, and dying, and so very, very afraid, and something buried deep in her soul had felt this before. Then she remembered.
Chrome woke up to an all too familiar pain, and a child’s body. She pulled her insides together half out of reflex, all too used to weaving her organs from illusions. It took her a moment’s disorientation to identify Uchiha Nagi’s memories, to realise that she had been reincarnated. It took another moment to realise that someone had just tried very hard to kill her and probably thought they’d succeeded, that had she been anyone else they probably would have suceeded. She realised that and in the next breath knew that whoever it was would be coming to check for survivors. She wove a mist illusion of her own corpse just in time, as the man in the mask returned to make sure of the dead. It was a long half hour, lying very still in her own blood, waiting for help to arrive.
…
Everyone was dead. Everyone but her cousin Sasuke, just a year older than her. They’d actually thought he was the only survivor until she’d dispelled her illusion and collapsed at the feet of the Anbu rescue squad. According to the doctors it was a miracle she was alive, her survival clearly a fluke. Apparently Sasuke’s had been nothing of the sort. Apparently her cousin Itachi, Sasuke’s older brother had been the one to kill everyone, and he’d left Sasuke alive on purpose. At least that was the story, and what Sasuke had seen seemed to match it. Chrome had her doubts. She’d seen the man who’d almost killed her and he hadn’t moved like Itachi. Still she held her silence, said nothing untrue, only that she had seen a man in a mask with a sharingan, and it had all happened very fast, but she said nothing of her doubts. There was something else at work here and, she was mist. She knew better than to play all her cards before she knew the game.
…
She’d never been particularly close to cousin Sasuke, he’d been clan heir, and a boy, and honestly more than a little self centred, while she’d just been another of many other cousins, shy and a bit of a loner. Now he was all the family she had left, and yet she still didn’t feel all that close to him. He was fixated, on power, and revenge, and Itachi, and she knew he would not hear her doubts. He didn’t think much of her, took subtlety for weakness, and dismissed her as more or less irrelevant to his plans. It was like he’d forgotton, Itachi had let him live, but she had survived even after they’d tried to kill her, whoever they really were. Still Chrome was a mist, she knew the value in being underestimated. She let Sasuke, let the whole village think her survival was a fluke. She hid her flames, and she pretended, pretended her attacker had slipped up and not wounded her as badly as he thought, pretended she’d used genjutsu instead of mist flames to hide the fact she was still breathing, and she was rewarded by the way people dismissed her and left her to her own devices. While Sasuke got the attention, and respect and scrutiny of the surviving Uchiha heir, the last hope for the continuation of the clan, Chrome was free to act as she wished.
She didn’t need Sasuke’s respect. She had already learned in another lifetime that family was something you chose, not something you were born to, and she could feel that her chosen family were here somewhere. She just needed to find them. Maybe that would fill the gaping hole left by the loss of her clan.
…
She found Tsuna first of course. He was always at the heart of everything. He’d remembered for years, had been in her academy class the whole time, and she couldn’t imagine the pain of knowing your family was all around but didn’t remember you. Tsuna had grown up in the orphanage, and had known who he was from the age of two, when he’d fallen in the river and nearly drowned. He’d been alone and without family, and he’d known, exactly what he was missing. The lonlieness must have been unbearable, before some of his guardians started to remember. Even now things still weren’t quite right. Some of them still didn’t remember, but Tsuna had forbidden her from trying to wake them, had said they would remember in their own time, and it wasn’t fair to push. He really was too noble for his own good sometimes.
Tsuna had led her to Mukuro sama, who was thankfully one of those who had already awoken. He’d been aware for two years, and had spent most of those two years using his mist flames to run rings around Councilman Danzo and his ethically dubious unauthorised Anbu operation. He had been as glad to see her as she was to see him, neither of their flames felt quite right separate any more and it felt so good to feel them twine back together under the shelter of Tsuna’s sky. Her clan might be dead, but she had her twin-of-the-soul back, and her boss, and some of her friends, and the rest were only a matter of time.