Beloved Child - MoonWitch96 - Naruto [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: How We Massacre You: I

Chapter Text

Uchiha Aiko slumps forward, and Itachi's eyes are full of tears, his pupils spinning. Bile rises in his throat.

He did not see what he did to his Imoto.

He heaves. He should have seen what he sent her. Something went wrong. Aiko is not screaming. Not crying. She is still. Itachi sees that her chest stops.

He killed her.

Itachi nearly screams. Nearly howls, as his trembling hands grip at his little sister. She isn’t breathing. He doesn’t know medical justu beyond basic diagnostics. Nothing for a stopped heart. He has only ever stopped hearts, never started them again.

He feels more like a monster than when he cut his mother’s and father’s heads.

It wasn’t supposed to be Aiko. I did this for her.

Itachi does the only he does know. He places a heel of his palm over his shaking hand, and he starts to manually pump her chest. He hears a crack in his haste, but he doesn’t stop. He keeps going. If he stops, he admits that he murdered his sister.

Madara lands next to him.

“... Itachi! ITACHI!”

Itachi realizes with a start that he is howling, crying, as he tries to revive his sister. Madara is screaming his name. Itachi barely cares to listen.

" Aiko, Aiko, Aiko ," he realizes that it is her name, desperate. He does not sound like himself. Not even human as her name runs together, in a snarling howl, " aikoaikoaikoaiko ."

Madara throws him aside.

Itachi is already reacting, scrambling, howling . He only stops as the green light comes from Madara’s fingertips. Itachi sobs, and pleads to anything that will listen.

His Ancestor makes quick work. He carves her open.

Her still, still heart is visible to him.

Itachi keens.

There is something wrong with it. The shape of it is wrong. A small, visible, near-perfect tare lays in his sister’s heart. He knows enough of hearts to know that is dangerous.

"The shock of it sent her into cardiac arrest. Her heart was too weak for it."

Something white comes from Madara’s hand. He seals her heart. Her chest. Green hands stay, linger.

It takes a moment.

Then Aiko’s chest moves, once, twice.

She breathes. A rattling noise. But it is audible. She’s alive.

“It’ll hold her until they reach her,” mummers Madara, and he carefully arranges Aiko, hand lingering on her cheek.

Itachi crawls to her.

“Aiko,” he rasps, and he has to feel her pulse for himself. It is weak. But it is enough.

“We must go.”

Itachi places a kiss on his sister’s forehead.

He cannot look back as he flees into the night.

Chapter 2: How We Massacre You: II

Chapter Text

She wakes screaming.

But it's the pain in her throat that wakes her. The raw devastated ache of it.

Because she can suddenly breathe and she’s still seeing red, red, red-

And then her vision isn’t red. It's too f*cking much and she feels like her eyes are pulsing like a heartbeat and she is screaming louder because eyes aren’t supposed to do that.

She’s sobbing. She shuts her eyes, hoping the dark will help, but she can still feel the heartbeat in her eyes- She presses the heel of her palm into them with the hope that pressure will make it stop.

“It’s alright, it’s alright-,” whispers a soft voice. She does not know this voice.

“MY EYES, MY EYES,” she shrieks. Her voice is so high in her fear, in her pain.

Amelia shakes her head, confused, even as she registers that the person is speaking Japanese, yet somehow, she understands it perfectly. She could read it well enough- but her understanding had always been shaky when it came to the understanding of the spoken word. She screams louder. And louder.

Because all she can do is scream.

Chapter 3: How We Massacre You: III

Chapter Text

When she wakes, she realizes something is wrong.

Her arm. Her arm is tiny, thin, and pale as snow. It should be larger, her arm freckled and slightly tan from her summer internship in Greece.

How long have I been out? She thinks it is nonsensical. Because her arm is not thin, nor smaller from weight loss. It's too small overall.

She stares at her arm, at her hand. Wills it to move. It clenches into a fist. Follows what she tells it to do. It is her’s.

“Uchiha-hime?” a soft voice.

Amelia blinks.

And blinks again.

Why the hell did they just say Uchiha? Like from Naruto?

Chapter 4: How We'd Massacre You: IV

Chapter Text

She is called Uchiha Aiko. Or that’s what everyone is calling her. There’s been an incident- her family has passed. In her confusion, they think the trauma of it all has caused her to forget everything. She is of the main branch of the Uchiha, the only daughter of the former clan head.

She is the only survivor of the Uchiha Masscare, even if no one has said it aloud.

She is seven. She is confined to the hospital, and apparently, she currently resides in Konhoha. The Village Hidden in the Leaves. Because of f*cking course she’s a gender-bent version of Uchiha the Chicken-Butt Sasuke. The fact that she had stumbled around, confused, unsure, devasted, and very sure someone, somewhere, was just f*cking with her.

But so far, no, everyone has been perfectly sincere, completely sure of their place in the Elemental Nations.

The jury’s out if she isn’t actually experiencing a brain hemorrhage and hallucinating all of this.

“Hokage-sama,” she says, dully, when the Third comes to see her.

He smiles. All old and grandfatherly sweet.

She hates him.

It's a hate that rises from the pit of her stomach. Or perhaps that’s just the broth she’s been spoon-fed the last few days.

“I heard you’ve had some confusion, Aiko-chan.”

The familiar way he calls her is f*cking unearned.

She resisted the urge to spit in his face. Mother-f*cker had been complicit in the Massacre. He may have been manipulated in the circ*mstances around it, and may have been lied to, but he still allowed it to f*cking happen because it was easier than to do even a little bit of investigation as to why the Uchiha were planning on a rebellion. Hundreds of otherwise loyal people were dead because of this man, even if had never been his intention. At least the eye-fetishist Danzo was crazy and power-hungry enough to commit the genocide with intent. The Uchiha blood on Sarutobi’s hands was there because he couldn’t logically see how people he had an emotional attachment to were manipulating him. It was disgusting. In his false ignorance, so much suffering happened.

So f*ck this man.

f*ck him straight with his own Bo staff.

She hated him.

“A little, Hokage-sama,” she replies.

“Rest assured, child, we will do our best to care for you.”

“Of course, Hokage-sama.”

She hated him.

It is worse because she cannot make him go away. Only suffer his presence in silence.

Chapter 5: How We'd Massacre You: V

Chapter Text

The Daimyo of the Land of Fire comes to see her.

Because what?

But apparently, when you are the last surviving member of a founding family of your military arm, you tend to get noticed.

"I am terribly sorry for your loss, Uchiha-hime," mummers the man. His face is sorrowful.

He gives her a soft hand pat. It's the most human contact that she’s had. That awkward, not quite comforting pat. The nurses and doctors, now that she is lucid, have taken to treating her clinically. Apart.

It’s driving her mad.

So she flips her hand, much too quick to be normal to her, and grips at the man’s hand. She is gentle. She’s already shattered a glass of water with her new abnormal strength. Behind him, Asuma Saratobi stands like a statue and then twitches at her gesture. The fire Daimyo does not flinch.

Her mind is whirling.

I am so spectacularly f*cked.

"I have requests, Lord of Fire," she mummers. She feels as if she is asking from very far away. She isn’t sure if that's the correct way to call him.

The fire-daimyo blinks.

"Oh? I will try, Hime, to fill them."

“I request the burial histories of my house, a copy of the Clan charter and treaty of Konoha, and missions roosters of any Uchiha and affiliated ninja… and the Konoha Police arrest records, as the Head of the Clan of Uchiha, I have a right to this, ” She blurts her demands. She feels like she is twitching. Is she twitching?

The statue that is Saratobi Asuma twitches. His eyes are wide. His chakra, which she can f*cking feel like what the f*ck, feels like smoke. But it agitates, swoops in his surprise, or his own alarm at what she asks. The Fire Daimyo’s chakra is much smaller, barely a blip in her apparently sensitive radar, overwhelmed by the eleven presences in the room.

Who I CAN'T SEE.

Aiko's chest is heaving.

The fire daimyo looks at her. His face is now impassive. Gone is the sorrowful man. Her heart is in her throat. His eyes are round, and there is something in his eyes that is fickle. His head tilts. His mouth is measured. He squeezes her hand and then pulls away.

"... Your requests alarm me, Uchiha-hime," he says, after a moment, “You are young, and to ask this is beyond what I think you understand.”

She licks her lips.

"A founding clan is all but dead. You should be alarmed from the beginning," she returns, steady, "One could wonder who else will fall by such an astounding force. Such a will to destroy a foundation of Konoha, of the Land of Fire itself."

His eyes are dark. His fingertips drum against his silk-clad thigh.

"Asuma, Chiriku, you will stay at the Hime's side. Serve her as me, as I gather what she has asked of me."

She twitches.

Looks at Asuma. She sees his father in his face. She struggles to see the same blindness. If he is still part of the Daimyo’s bodyguards, he is still on the outs with his father. Will that be enough? She is not sure.

“Would you be willing to stand against the Hokage, to serve the Land of Fire and Konoha?” she asks, bland. She is honest, stubbornly so.

f*ck ninja BULLsh*t.

His smoke shudders. His dark eyes grow wide. The other man, Chiriku, his chakra is fire. But like the fire of the hearth, steady and calm. It, however, is starting to flicker. Grow.

“Asuma goes beyond his surname, Uchiha-hime. He will not fail you,” the words of Chiriku are calm, and measured.

She bares her teeth.

Asuma bows his head, subservience.

“May they serve you well, Uchiha-hime.”

Chapter 6: How We'd Masscare You: VI

Chapter Text

Her eyes move quickly. Rapidly. Her pen works nearly as quickly.

This- this is familiar. Her own body is unfamiliar to her, but the rhythm of research, of notes- that fits me like a perfect dress. Flattering, comfortable and I think my metaphor is getting away from me. She was not a fanciful writer. She was a researcher, and the most poetic she could get was never for her own merit, but rather to capture the spirit of those she translated. This was a cold, hard fact. Discrepancies and cross-referencing. Her strength.

Never give a classist a reason to sludge through the minutia. We will f*cking rip you apart.

Asuma next to her bed, stands guard. The other man, a monk, apparently, and much better at minute bullsh*t in records, Asuma's words, sits diligently with a chair next to her bed. He too makes notes.

"When did you realize?" Asuma's words are a whisper.

He sealed the room to high heaven, but. Well, who knows how good ROOT is?

Even she doesn't. And she has the advantage of the f*cking source material. Dubious memories of it, really.

"Uchiha no longer take as many away missions," she mummers. She lies.

She doesn't remember Uchiha Aiko. She doesn't remember the 'beloved child' of the Uchiha. But she does remember the nebulous 'isolation' of the Uchiha.

"Hime- it'd be best if you don't lie to us. When did you realize something was amiss?"

"... Itachi-ni-kun was crying."

She looks up. That wasn't a lie. In the manga, as Itachi slaughtered his family, he wept.

Asuma's face is pale.

"Itachi never cries. Not in front of me. He feels like he can't. The elders have been agitated. They've had many meetings. But, the rest of Konoha have acted much the same against the Uchiha. Itachi would never do this on his own. Itachi may have been an Anbu commander, but he is not a leader. He is not a man of plans. This was an order."

"Uchiha-Hime, you believe that someone in Konoha has ordered the slaughter of the Uchiha?"

"I know they did."

She throws notes at Asuma. He gingerly catches it. Reads. Dark eyes go wide.

"Isolation. Refusal to allow us to rebuild our ancestral grounds at the center of the village. Uchiha were being dismissed from central postings, and away missions, being forced to take over the underfunded and staffed Konoha Police force more so than before. There has been Increasing villager and officer altercations."

He stares at her notes.

"sh*t."

"We have been slowly beaten down. Pushed and pushed. The Uchiha are proud. We would not take this treatment forever. And now most of them are too dead to do anything."

"A slaughter. But why would your brother-"

"There are two things that Itachi loves more than anything. One is Konoha. The other is me."

"... Someone threatened you. And Konoha. The Uchiha or Konoha and you," mummers the monk. His eyes are wide.

"Itachi-ni-kun chose. Or was forced to."

"What do you want, Uchiha-hime?"

"For the monster who made my brother choose to die. For no one to make that choice ever again. There is something rotten in Konoha. We are being poisoned from our very roots."

Asuma blanched. She bore her teeth.

"Then let's burn the rot away, Uchiha-hime," murmured Asuma, eyes a flame.

Chapter 7: How We Massacre You: VII

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"Who do you need?" Asuma looks tired.

His hands twist and pull at the unlit cigarette he holds. His dark eyes are surrounded by bruised skin, pale from lack of sleep.

"Ideally? Every Clan head," she mummers, "But that's too many variables. Too many conflicting loyalties. I can afford Nara-sama, Hyūga-sama, Aburame-sama and Hatatke Kakashi."

Asmua gaped.

"With the Nara, the other two follow. I need the Hyūga for their sight. I need the Aburame for their hives. I need Hatake-"

Because I can trust him.

She falls silent. Saying that aloud to these two makes the statement weaker. They could argue against it. Kakashi is loyal to the Third and the last connection to all the people he lost.

But he's Kakashi-sensei.

"Aiko-Hime?" Chiriku's voice prompting.

"....Obito-ni-kun loved him. He gave him our eye. I will honor the action. An Uchiha alone in the world is a sad thing. "

Well, that's Targeryens but the sentiment stands. I just need him. I know it's foolish. But Kakashi did what he could for Sasuke. I need someone like that in my corner.

I need to- I need to assure myself that the timeline had been f*cked to high heaven because of my lack of dangle parts. Because of-

Because of my memories of Amelia.

Always a beloved child.

Aiko blinks back tears.

"... he's loyal to the Third."

"Yet you stand here," she replies to Asuma.

Dark eyes catch dark eyes. His face takes in hers.

"Who first?"

"Hyūga-sama."

Chapter 8: How We Massacre You: VIII

Chapter Text

Hyūga Hiashi is a hard-looking man.

There's a stiffness in all that he does. From the hold of his expression to the way his f*ck kimono sleeves swish against him. Even his chakra feels stiff. Perfect output she thinks, steady and stiff.

His expression is annoyed.

Or maybe his expression is confused and it comes off as annoyance.

In her hospital bed, she wonders how to play this.

"The Hyūga clan expresses its sorrow, child," his voice is as stiff as the rest of him, "And I do not appreciate being abducted from my bedroom in the middle of the night."

She goes for f*cking blunt. If he will set that standard, who is she to do otherwise? She's too done for anything else. She sits up on her knees and bows her head to touch her mattress as soon as Chiriku gives her a nod that the seals are up.

"Child-"

"The Uchiha pleads for the Hyūga clan's aide."

Silence.

"Uchiha-hime," there's a hesitation in his stiff voice, "Lift your head."

She raises her head at the respect in his address and the surprise in his voice. His pupil's eyes are curious now. His irritation at the 'summons' shifting. He is looking at her with something almost like… unease? Is he seeing the daughter he tortures in her place? The pale wane of her small face and desperation in the light of her dark eyes?

"What does the Uchiha Clan need?" Asks Hyūga Hiashi and his brow is furrowed.

She sees pity. f*cking good.

"Your eyes. Please. Please find that which was taken from the Uchiha."

His white, pupilless eyes go wide.

"Asuma-san," she mummers.

Asuma hands Hyūga-sama the papers of how many Uchiha have gone missing since the Kyubi attack. The stiff man stops breathing.

"The night of the attack, not a single Uchiha was outside of the compound. Save one."

This was planned.

Doujustu theft is implied without words. For a man that had lost his younger brother to an attempt of this, she hopes that Hisashi reacts as viscerally as she needs him to. His stiffness increases. Like a cat's fur standing on end, his hair rises. His chakra, steady and stiff, cracks.

"The Uchiha helped start the village."

No one is safe.

Her words are calm and measured. Her intent is not.

Hyūga-Sama breathes in a deep, hacking breath.

"Suspects?" He asks, and his voice is trembling.

Fear.

"There is something rotten in Konoha. We are being poisoned from our very roots."

His head jerks up from the papers. His doujutsu is active.

"Uchiha-Hime-" he blinks, "What was done to you?!"

Aiko freezes.

"What?"

"Your heart."

Her hands goes to her chest.

"What about my heart?" She shrieks.

She had thought he saw something of Amelia. But her heart-

"Oh great sage, this- "

Hyūga-Sama twists his head and throws up all over her hospital room wall.

Aiko shrieks again.

"A healer," rasps the man, as soon as he's finished and he banishes the sick, "A Healer shall be sent by the Hyūga. And your other request shall be followed."

"What is wrong with my heart?" She asks, and she is shaking.

The man looks at her.

"I don't know. But the Hyūga stand with the Uchiha, Uch- Aiko-hime."

f*ck. What the f*ck is wrong with my heart?

"The Uchiha thank you, Hyūga-Sama."

Chapter 9: How We Massacre You: IX

Chapter Text

"It… It is a mass of some sort of flesh that is foreign to you. I have never seen anything like this. It does not seem harmful. To remove it- considering how it has bounded to your heart- it may do more harm than good, Hime-sama."

She twitches.

“Is there any indication that… That the Villiage council would be aware of what was done?”

What the f*ck is wrong with Uchiha Aiko’s heart.

Hyūga-sensei is an old woman with steady and soothing hands. The most gentle anyone has treated her physically. Not what she expected from this clan. Maybe it's because she is not from their clan. Maybe it's because it's obvious sh*t just went down and she gave the Hyūga a warning that she is treating her so softly.

Maybe it's Hyūga-sensei.

"Our eyes barely detect it," muttered Hyūga-sensei, she ran a careful, gleaming green hand against Aiko's chest, "If you were not looking for it, I doubt anyone can detect what is on your heart. Your heart is working well, perfectly normal for a child your age."

Aiko frowned. As far as she knew no physical modifications had been done to Sasuke this early in life.

The only difference is my memories, which triggered the night of the Massacre, and my f*cking lack of dangle parts.

A sudden thought, so dark and insidious hit her. Aiko nearly followed Hyūga-sama's example and threw up.

"Is it only affecting my heart?" She places a trembling hand across approximately where her ovaries would be.

Hyūga-sensei's pale, seeming pupilless eyes went wide.

Her hand carefully removed Aiko’s hand from herself.

“Hime-sama,” she whispered, “May I examine you?”

Asuma-san, next to the bed- It hit him suddenly what Aiko was hinting at. His chakra shifted, cracked, alarmed.

“Please.”

A soothing green hand across her lower abdomen. The Hyūga let out a shaky breath.

“Nothing, Hime-sama, nothing has been done to you there.”

Aiko breathed.

“Is the… flesh on my heart life threatening?”

“No, Hime-sama.”

She breathed.

“Than it is of no consequence. If… After the funeral, Hyūga-sensei, may you examine me more thoroughly? We have no time.”

“I would be honored, too, Hime-sama.”

“Aiko. My name is Akio.”

The Hyūga smiled.

“And I am simply Hina, Aiko-Hime..”

“Thank you, Hina-sensei.”

Chapter 10: How We Massacre You: X

Chapter Text

Aburame Shibi is her biggest gamble.

But, the most frightening thing is that she does not fear death.

She should.

Been there, done that, 0 out of 10.

She is trying to out-maneuver a hierarchy she barely understands. The Aburame is her best offensive-defensive.

But in the future one of your own is entangled in Root. He may not be the first. And they threatened your child to get him. So. I must make the leap of fate.

"Uchiha-Hime?" The man's voice is calm. Stilted.

His chakra is a constant buzz. A fluctuation of chirps and hums. Like… Like a conversation. His body speaks to his hive. She is fascinated.

But there are more pressing things for her to attend.

"Aburame-sama. We have something in common."

He does not speak. She hums. She pitches it best she can to the feeling she gets from his insects.

Aburame-Sama, Shino's father, straightens. His posture going nearly Hyūga like. She tilts her head.

"There is something rotten in Konoha. We are being poisoned from our very roots."

The man stills even further.

She feels, more than hears, his insects vibrate in agitation. Sweat starts to bead on his brow. She pitches her hums to the buzz. It reacts.

He has already lost someone. Did Shino's near brother volunteer already?

"In a few days, the Uchiha will have their funeral. I invite all clans. That is the main purpose of this meeting."

"...Where will the Funeral take place?"

"The Valley of the End."

"Most… Unorthodox. "

"It seemed fitting."

And it did. But it was also outside of the village. Safer for what she hoped would happen.

"Very well. As for this rot- what made you suspect this?"

"... Asuma-san?"

Aburame-sama read quickly.

Aburame-sama does as Hyūga-sama had. He vomits.

Aiko watches it all with grim certainty.

When he looks up, his eyes are full of tears.

"Did… the poison aid with your-"

"They did not. My brother acted as best he could."

His tears fell.

Yup. Shino has lost his brother. This man a son.

"Many sorrows, Uchiha-hime."

"And yours, Aburame-sama. But I want not your sorrows. I want peace of mind. Where does the Aburame clan stand?"

"... There is a boy. A boy in the ranks. I want to bring him home," his voice is regretful.

She nods.

"Defend Konoha. And you will save him. If he is there, get to him first."

He bows, so far to the floor, his forehead touches the ground.

"For Konoha."

Aiko hopes.

Chapter 11: How We Massacre You: XI

Chapter Text

Nara Shikaku scares the piss out of her.

Not the man itself. He is supposed to be one of the good ones. He is the father of one of her favorite characters.

She can admit freely that it is his representation that makes her afraid.

Because if he does not know already, what does that mean for how much Konoha manipulates its own higher-ups? And if he does know how could he let it pass?

She breathes. Forces herself to do so. He is not a gamble, like the Aburame.

He is her make or break. If he is in any way aware of Danzo's child-snatching actions, she will burn this village with her bare hands if she has to.

She supposes she might be the real Sasuke, dangle parts or not if her response is to spit in the face of Itachi's sacrifice and go against his wishes.

But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. A thirteen-year-old should not have been the deciding factor whether or not his family died. He should never have placed this burden on my shoulders in the first place. I don't want to murder him. I will not be a tool in his martyrdom.

He should have never valued his Village or a single person above the many.

She does not hate Uchiha Itachi.

She has a great amount of pity for him. For the trap, Danzo had laid. For the pressure, the Uchiha had placed upon him. The trap had ensnared everyone in the village after all. The Uchiha should have left Konoha instead of digging in their heels to slaughter the discontent and disrespect. But the part of her that was mostly Sasuke resented the fact that he had not confronted either side enough. Ni-kun should have protected me better.

It should not have fallen to him to do so.

Yet it had fallen to him to decide between Konoha and the Uchiha.

The Uchiha or her.

She thinks that Itachi has chosen wrong.

He didn't even protect his sister. Not truly. She is wrong. Warped by his Sharingan. She is not her. Uchiha Aiko is dead. As is Amelia Soto.

Always A beloved child. Always A child of a forest.

And Konoha was rotting from the inside out.

f*ck Danzo. f*ck the Third. f*ck everything.

"There is something rotten in Konoha. We are being poisoned from our very roots."

Nara Shikaku blinked dark, focused eyes at her.

"Those roots have been disbanded with the end of the Third Shinobi war."

She tilts her head.

"Then why are the Uchiha dead?"

"Uchiha-san-"

"Asuma-san. Please."

Shikaku reads faster than anyone else.

"f*ck."

"Why are the Uchiha dead?" She repeats, dully.

Shikaku looks at her.

"There is something rotten in Konoha. We are being poisoned from our very roots. The Uchiha were first."

She sobs. It is the first time someone has acknowledged what has been to the Uchiha beyond the visceral fear of what that means.

"Has anyone in your clan who showed promise disappeared?"

Shikaku knees give out. She watches him with pity. The same pity looks at her from his eyes.

"How- how did you even connect this?"

"Itachi-ni-kun was crying the night of the massacre. The Uchiha have been refused our ancestral grounds at the center of the village. Every single member of the Uchiha was in the compound. Except me."

Shikaku breathed.

"By the Saga."

"When Konoha started, the Senju and the Uchiha had a dream. We have lost that dream. The will of Fire is being suffocated. It is about to turn to pure ash."

"... From the dark and ash, light can return, Uchiha-hime. "

The respect is soft. Given from a tired voice. The wisdom is something she desperately wishes will be true. She looks at him, eyes dry now.

"Will Shadows wait for the light of the fire to rekindle itself? Or will they stand aside until it is restored? It would be the wisest thing to do."

He stares at her.

"That is the funniest thing about shadows, Uchiha-hime. We are nothing in the dark. We grow the strongest and larger in the light. But the Nara, the Yamanaka, and the Aikimichi will not stand idle in the dark. We fight for Konoha."

"They believe the same. But they do not fight for the Konoha that the Uchiha and the Senju had dreamed of. They take the obsession of a nobody, of a man that covets the powers of the clans of Konoha. The Leaf has already suffered this once. The Third has not learned his lesson. His attachment has allowed for his War Hawk to take the children of Clans. To murder my clan. For... For our eyes."

"That is not my Konoha," spits Nara-sama.

And at that moment, she finally realizes what his chakra feels like. It is warmth, it is large and as unintrusive as the shadows his clan controls. And it is a comfort. A comfort that she has yet to receive since she woke.

She bows low and touches her forehead to the mattress.

"So we will fight. For our Konoha," she whispers.

She lifts her head.

Shikaku returns the gesture from his place on the floor. Touches his forehead there.

"For our Konoha."

Chapter 12: How We Massacre You: XII

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She is struck by how young Kakashi is when he is dragged into her room by an Asuma and Chiriku. They are frog-marching him. Even though she can only see a fraction of his face, she can see he still has lingering baby fat. He was only just out of his teenage years. She wondered morbidly if Rin was dead yet. It had to be. Why else would Tobito help slaughter the Uchiha? The timeline was so slap-dash she doubts even her newly eidetic memory would have been able to piece it together without the context clues. f*ck. Was Tobito already set to make his roofy everyone into their perfect happiness sh*t coma plan? Or when did the plant f*cker make it his plan? Was it always his plan? f*ck THE MOON BITCH. It was ridiculous when it wasn't her reality. It is even more so when it is.

Kakashi feels like a storm, like a lightning strike.

She feels it all with a sharpness, with an awareness she does not think the original Sasuke had held. Nothing in her memories made him a sensor beyond the vague parameters of the Sharingan, or perhaps the ‘Rinnegan’ or whatever the BS OP eye that he gets as a freebie later in life. But she can. With eachbreath, she tastes it all on her tongue, chakra. It’s both overwhelming and overloading, but Aiko is going to f*cking cope if it kills her.

Because it very likely will.

“Good morning, Kakashi-ni-kun,” she chirps.

He stumbles as Asuma and Chikuru let him go and seal the room. She feels her smile grow, sharp and feral.

“I greet the only other member of the Uchiha clan.”

He stares. Charcoal grey eye wide.

“As clan head, I am requiring your assistance with the Uchiha Clan funeral rites.”

“What- What?” his voice breaks. Not like he was afraid, but for how high-pitched it goes. Like a surprised dog. In Fannon the whole Hakate clan had had doggish or wolfish traits.

She shouldn’t find the thought adorable, considering the circ*mstances. She also really wants to meet Pakkun with a very distressing urgency.

Ninja support animal. HEH.

“As the sole rightful posser of an active Sharingan, you are an official member of my Clan, Kakashi-ni-kun. However, as I am of the main Uchiha branch, you are not the clan head. I am calling you to an official Clan Meeting.”

Kakashi looks a touch pole axed. She waits. He does not answer. She breathes.

"Do you acknowledge your possession of the Sharingan?"

"...Yes."

"Were you not on specific instructions of one Uchiha Obito, to be allowed this Dojutsu? Preformed by shinobi- medic Nohara Rin, permitted by the Fourth Hokage?"

He swallowed thickly. All she could imagine was a man with her new face standing next to a small boy slicing the necks of innocents.

"...Yes."

"Then, Hakate Kakashi, of Clan Hatake, you are also of Clan Uchiha, my kin as per the wishes of Uchiha Obito. You are ordered on behalf of your Head to attend the rites of our Kin. Acknowledge."

He stared at her. She glared back. He stares. His dark eye grew wide. She burns with her emotions. Feels her tears start to form. Maybe being stoic was the wrong move. But she feared bursting into tears will make him think of Obito. And cause a complete shutdown. He tends to run at ninja speed, away from his memories.

Trauma and all that jazz.

She bares her teeth.

"I said acknowledge."

"Acknowledged, Uchiha-hime."

She nods. Sharp jerk of her head.

"Our Kin is in the morgue. Take me now."

She shoves herself out of bed. Her hospital kimono is workable. Asuma slips the IV out of her arm with practiced ease. She looks at Kakashi, stock still. She bares her teeth.

"Lead the way, Kakashi-ni-kun," she crones, flanked as she is.

Chapter 13: How We Massacre You: XIII

Chapter Text

The morgue is only a corridor away. Death was but a hundred feet from where she had woken up in this strange f*cking new world.

Aiko- Amelia- whatever the f*ck her name was, always beloved child, felt…

Grief.

That is the only thing she felt when she looked over the corpses of her body’s kin. Grief and it is unrelenting and real. It comes from this body of hers, it comes from her heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings, it comes from a thick and heavy feeling in her chest, from the tears that threaten to spill over her eyes like a wave crashing through the ocean bank in a hurricane. She doesn’t remember any of these people.

None of the faces spark recognition.

None.

But she still feels grief, as if she did remember them. Still feels raw and small as she looks over the corpses that Itachi and Obito had slaughtered. She remembers her family- Amelia’s family, whatever, and she sees them in these strangers’ faces. She had had a large family as Amelia…. And there are over a hundred people, young and old, from wrinkled old grandmas to infants, slaughtered in their cribs, having nothing to do with the planned coup.

All dead.

Slaughtered.

On the orders of a war hawk, obsessed with f*cking eyes.

Bile rises in her pale throat. She is surprised that it is Kakashi that seems to realize it. He is one awkward as f*ck man. She could tell that by the skittish way he looks at her, how it glosses over her Uchiha features, her girlish face, and sees the dead he thinks he had failed. But he reaches out- reaches out and places his hand on the back of her neck. Squeezes. It nearly makes her laugh because she realizes that he is holding onto her like a dog does a puppy, holding onto the scruff of her neck. But it is both the gesture and the warmth of his hand through his glove that makes the bile go away. That makes her quick little heart ease.

She breathes.

She just breathes.

“Kakashi-ni-kun. There’s a kunai,” she says simply, she swallows, “A Kunai that resides in the Head’s office in the compound. If you would retrieve it?”

He doesn’t move his hand. With his spare one, he performs a series of hand gestures- A poof of smoke-

She just stops her squeal at the sight of Pakkun. Because doggo. Yas small toe beans and he says they’re soft-

“Pakkun, I need you to fetch something for Aiko-hime here,” he drawls. He squeezes her neck again.

She should feel offended at him manhandling her, but she knows Kakashi is one of the good people in this very f*cked up world, and she feels herself relax at the squeeze. Pakkun looks at her. Her drawn pale face, at her burning eyes.

“Describe it, will you pup?”

Warm trickles down her heart. She breathes.

“It’s a three-pronged kunai. Red, with the Uchiha fan where the hilt ring should be. It would have the scent of dried blood and chakra… Does chakra have a scent?”

“It does, pup. Everyone's chakra smells different.”

“Should smell like fire-based chakra then,” she says, simply, she swallowed thickly, “I need it for the funeral rites. Kakashi-ni-kun is going to help. Thank you.”

Dark warm eyes. All animal, but something in them is also very real emotion, very real possessiveness as Kakashi shifts just a touch closer to her.

"When I come back, you can touch my paws. They're very soft."

She can't help her smile then.

"I would be delighted… My name is Aiko."

"And I'm Pakkun, pup."

He scampered off.

Chapter 14: How We Massacre You: XIV

Chapter Text

She stares over the bodies of her kin. Of people.

She breathes with Kakashi's hand on her neck.

The Hokage interrupts the cleaning of the bodies.

She does not remember the Uchiha.

Yet she feels a hatred so strong she nearly grips her wet towel and flings it at his f*cking head.

"Aiko-chan."

The familiarity burns something in her. Around her, every one of the men at her side stiffens. Chakra fluctuates. She feels like she is the eye of a storm, two forest fires, and a cold typhoon in front of her.

"Hokage-sama."

He smiles. It does not rise to his eyes. He turns to Asuma.

"Good to see you, son," it is the first time the Third has acknowledged his son in her presence.

Asuma swallows. Audible.

"Hokage-sama."

"Come now, Asuma, I am your father-"

"I am in the official capacity of the Daimyo. I respectfully ask for professional boundaries."

The Third frowns.

"May I ask why the Daimyo has assigned two of his personal bodyguard to you, Aiko-chan? Did you express not feeling safe- we can assign an official squad-"

"Uchiha-Hime is of personal interest of the Daimyo," Chikuru's voice is serene, even, "And we have been told to serve her as we would him. A squad assigned would be going against the Daimyo’s will."

The Third blinks.

"I see. May I ask what prompted such worry on our Daimyo’s part?"

"Two founding clans of his Military branch are now down to an official member. That is the concern," she bares every one of her teeth. It is not a smile.

The Hokage blinks rapidly.

"His concern is noted," he swallows, and that is only emotion connected to his wayward female student, she is sure.

She hates him so f*cking much she might spontaneously combust from it.

Kakashi squeezes her neck.

Aiko breathes.

"I have a concern, Aiko-chan."

I f*cking bet you do you blind old fool.

"Hokage-sama?"

"Kakashi-kun, why are you here?"

Aiko does what she must. She steps in front of Kakashi. She would defend him and wish that the same actions would be done for her.

"Kakashi-ni-kun is of the Uchiha Clan," she says, and she knows she is near spitting her words.

The Third gaps.

She bares her teeth.

Chapter 15: How We Massacre You: XV

Chapter Text

She is a terrifying little thing.

Beautiful and snapping little pup full of grief and confusion and anger. Kakashi feels a kinship, hard and fast, when her blazing dark eyes meet his. When her teeth mash and snarl at the Third.

Her blazing emotion is all Obito.

Her gentle hand as she cleans her kin's slit throats is all Rin.

He doesn't… He doesn't know what to do with this.

She is calling him Clan.

Something long suppressed in him is chanting- pack pack pack. And like any good pack member, he trails after the one with all the ideas. Kakashi has always been better at following someone’s lead than anything else.

Any command has led to disaster.

Friend killer Kakashi.

"Aiko-chan- Kakashi-kun is of the Clan Hakate-"

"He holds the Sharingan. He is my kin."

"A medical transplant-" pity is in the Third's eyes. Long, has Kakashi survived that gaze.

The pup steps forward.

"....Obito-ni-kun loved him. Chose him. He is Uchiha."

Kakashi stills.

"I read the report given to the Uchiha. He gave Ni-kun the eye. That is special. I don't… I don't remember much. But I know that. You are Uchiha, Kakashi-ni-kun."

Her eyes dark and clear, pitch and burning, look at him with such intensity. A half whine builds in his throat.

Pack pack pack.

".... Kakashi-ni-kun? Thank you for being loved by Obito-ni-kun."

Pack pack pack.

She's just a pup.

"He is my Clan. My only clan left."

"That isn't-"

"I am the Clan head of the Uchiha. Not even the Hokage can interfere with official clan business. Kakashi-ni-kun is my family."

Something in him growls and snaps at the thought. He’s too young to be thinking of pups. But this little pup had latched onto the slimmest connection to her slaughtered pack- He slides himself closer. Even if part of him twitches at the close proximity. She slides an inch toward him, and his chants of pack turn into a dull roar.

She reaches for his hand. And when they touch, Aiko clings with all that she is.

He remembers once, Obito mentioned the two sides of the Uchiha. The curse of hatred.

Their astounding ability to love.

Aiko is literally named 'beloved child'. It suits her so well it staggers him. Kakashi thinks both of them had lived so f*cking brilliantly in Obito.

And it lives on in this pup.

He will strive to keep it alive.

For Obito.

Chapter 16: How We Massacre You: XVI

Chapter Text

She does not fear death.

She should.

But Aiko is so furious she does not care. She wonders if that means she is suicidal. She is unsure. She has facilitated between her horror and her anger.

She has settled into pure, undiluted fury.

It’s easier, she realizes. If she keeps circulating back to her horror, she will fall and she will not get up again. She has no time for her horror or fear. Only her fury. Because in her anger, she feels as if she could burn the world to the ground. She breathes, sharply, through her nose.

“Are you here because you received your invitation to the Uchiha funeral?” she asks the Hokage.

She turns her back on him. Not in trust- she will never trust him. But in dismissal. She continues her task and focuses on the bodies of the people she does not know. Kakashi twitches, and then he follows. His entire form is tense.

Aiko’s hands are shaking.

She ignores them.

“Yes. You have already received permission from the Daimyo for its location. I feel that-”

“It was the place of a goodbye for a man of my clan who lost his way there,” she nearly laughs as she looks back at the man, she lifts her chin, “And so I may swear that I will never lose my way as the last loyal Uchiha alive. It is one of the few places in Konoha that can house all the clans I have invited. I would never dare think I could request the courtyard before the Hokage tower. Even as the current clan head of Uchiha.”

She smiles.

With every one of her teeth. The Third Hokage looks down at her with furrowed brows.

“You should have asked, Aiko-chan.”

She hums.

“It is done. I’ll see you at the funeral, Hokage-sama. As you can see, I am very busy.”

“You could have left this to the morgue-”

“It is against clan law,” she drawls, “Good day, Hokage-sama.”

She turns away.

He leaves, she feels him leave, and she feels her shoulders drop.

She keeps her eyes and hands on the task at hand.

Chapter 17: How We Massacre You: XVIII

Chapter Text

The funeral of the Uchiha is at dusk. Twilight. A goodbye, to light, life, and perhaps to the corruption that was festering away at Konoha. The Pyre is made, and she gently asks Kakashi-ni-san to be the one to carry the bodies of her biological kin into it. She isn’t physically strong enough. And she wants no one else to touch them. He accepts.

All she can do is follow the morbid practice of stabbing their eyes through before they head to the fire.

Aiko withstands the grit and squish of the sensation, the blood that drips across her white kimono and her pale, pale arms and hands.

She calls out the name of the person as she is physically destroying their last eye. The funeral Kunai of the Uchiha is a brutal thing, sharp, longer than the standard kunai, and made with the effect of not only destroying the eye but also the connective nerves and tissues. She wonders, faintly, how my of the eyes she pierces are actually eyes that belong to the name she calls out?

How many eyes are already laced in Danzo’s arm, face, or sequestered away in a lab or some Root base for future study?

How many people died to replace the eyes?

She knows, with ache, she will likely never know.

This. This part of their plan, the actual funeral, will take hours.

She has hundreds of eyes, and names to go through.

Konoha, or at least the older members of it, stand in quite vigil as she goes. No sound is made. Just her voice, strong and high and devastatingly childlike, the squelch of the kunai, the quiet shuffle of feet as she moves, and the roar of flames and ash as body after body is added to the pyre. Kakashi-ni-kun makes no sound, not of effort, or of movement.

He leaves that to her. A battle is on the horizon, she knows. But for the moment, there is only the Uchiha.

That is the least these people deserve.

Chapter 18: How We Massacre You: XIX

Chapter Text

She has thought this through.

Or at least, that is what she tells herself as she stands in front of Danzo, three men at her back, ready and knowing that this, this might kill her.

She isn’t afraid of death.

She is opposed to it, vehemently, but she is not afraid.

The Elder looks down at her, his ‘single’ gaze roaming across the pale expanse of her cherubic face, unknowingly gazing down at the perpetrator of his downfall. She looks up at him, and she can admit that she hates him so much it disgusts her that she can hate someone so much.

In her life as Amelia, she has never known an emotion so strong as this.

Not towards a single person. Never this much anger, never this much sorrow. She was too average a person, too protected by the world she lived in, despite the fact that she died in a horrific incident that should have never been possible.

“Uchiha-san,” his voice is polite, but, at the very same time, without respect towards her.

She breathes deeply.

“I am Uchiha-hime,” she replies.

Something flashes in his single true eye. She wonders, with more anger burning inside her, if he has his Uchiha eyes open in his head, in his flesh, and if he is seeing her through several eyes that do not belong to him. Bandages, though appearing opaque, may not be enough for the Uchiha eyes.

“I am an Elder of Konoha,” he tells her.

She stares at him.

I can’t regret this.

Yet, her hands tremble.

“No,” she replies, easily, “You are a traitor to the country of Fire.”

“Child what-”

Underneath him, a shadow locks him in place.

Aiko smiles beautifully at the man who slaughtered the Uchiha. She grips the edge of his hand’s bandages and pulls.

Dozens of human eyes, all red, all gleaming like rubies in his molted flesh, hit the light of the funeral pile of their owners.

She sobs.

“YOU HAVE SLAUGHTERED MY CLAN FOR OUR EYES!”

And it is then that Konoha and Root break into war.

Chapter 19: How We Massacre You: XIX

Chapter Text

Kakashi's mission is simple.

Protect. Those who leave behind their teammates are trash. Pack. Pack. Pack, something in him chants.

He moves. He f*cking moves like his elemental affinity. As fast as he physically can. At his heels, his summons surrounds him, the first line of defense, even as he moves his hands quickly in projectile attacks. On his back, Akio clings like a limpet, also stuck to him via a combination of a makeshift harness made from some of his extra flank jackets and chakra. Aiko breathes in his neck, quick devastated little bursts. He feels tears leaking into the skin, or perhaps her sweat, stress-induced.

Wooden limbs still f*cking reach for her.

It seemed that in his greed, Danzo had not solely kept to the blood of one Founding Clan. Bile rises in his throat. At one point, this man had asked for Sensei’s child to be under his thumb. At another, he had nearly ensnared Kakashi. He has killed the Uchiha. He has killed Obito’s family. He has vilified Itachi, barely above real genin age.

This monster wants to kill this girl. This girl who snarled and bared her teeth for him, just to have a connection, somewhere, somehow in the world that had slaughtered all of them.

Kakashi keeps moving.

He would not fail.

Chapter 20: How We Massacre You: XXI

Chapter Text

It is the Aburame Clan who destroys the tree limbs that tried to kill her. It is the Aburame that strangles Roots of filth and rot that haunt this new Village she has woken in.

It is also Aburame-sama who takes Danzo’s head, a loud piercing, and buzzing cry coming from him as he does so. For the son that was taken from him. For the truth of the Village.

The tree limbs that are still alive freeze.

Aiko breathes, as the Roots around them start to freeze. The war of Root against the True Will of Fire ends as the snake's head is cut. Swiftly, quickly. Some Root members keep fighting. Most still and are silent, turning to face the corpse that once commanded them. In the crowd, Aiko sees f*cking children. Some younger than her. Corpses line the Valley of the End.

Aiko breathes.

She f*cking breathes a harsh breath into her small lungs. The Aburame Clan head has the f*cking head in his hand, grip so hard his knuckles are white. With his other hand, he reaches over and rips off the arm that holds the red, swirling eyes of the Uchiha.

He walks to her.

She feels them.

She realizes it as Kakashi is gently on her feet. She feels the echo of the chakra of every single one of the eyes. She wants to cry. But instead, she stands tall. She takes the head, the arm. She sinks to the ground and stares at every eye. Her own eyes- her own eyes. She feels them. She feels something in her eye.

She is Uchiha.

Sharaingan. She stares at each and every eye she sees, memorizes the swirls and unique number of swirls. One eye is redder than the others, some are thinner, wider, some have longer lashes, some shades of red are crimson, or ruby, garnet-

She sinks to her knees and places the arm, and the head into her lap. Next to her, Kakashi nudges Pakkun to lean against her side. Aiko nearly sobs at the kind gesture. Her weight sags slightly against the dog.

“... Hyuuga-sama?” she said, tiredly, looking up from the severed arm in her tiny hands, on her blood-splattered lap.

The white-eyed man flinched. But looked at her with age-old eyes. She breathed.

“May I ask for assistance from you?”

“... You may ask, Aiko-hime. The Hyuuga will answer.”

She smiles tiredly.

“I need to remove my clan’s eyes from him. But- But I have neither the knowledge nor the delicate sight to remove them well. I don’t want… I don’t want them to burn together on the same pyre.”

A familiar hard-looking old woman pushed past the Hyuuga clan leader. Her face grim, her ‘unseeing’ eyes looking straight at Aiko.

“I’ll assist you, Aiko-Hime. The wretch will not burn with your kin.”

Aiko bowed her head.

“Thank you, Hyuuga-sensei.”

Chapter 21: How We Massacre You: XXI

Chapter Text

She sets each eye on a makeshift cushion made of her sleeve. Ripped off and carefully folded to be enough of space for each and every eye. Silently, Hyuuga-sensei hands her each eye, one at a time. Aiko stabs them through. She doesn’t know whose eyes she destroys. Their chakra, growing fainter by the second… She has no one to compare it to. But she keeps her hand steady, and she stabs them through, and throws the eyes into the pyre that is still burning.

She whispers instead, with each eye, “My kin, the best of the Uchiha.”

She reaches for the last eye. Ripped from the socket of the thief himself.

This eye she knows. It is the only eye she can know, and she hates that she remembers nothing of the young boy who would have known her. She doesn’t remember him. She tries. Desperately. She has nothing.

“Uchiha Shisui,” She calls, clearly, freely.

She stabs down.

Somewhere, out there in the world, Itachi had the other eye in a crow, Shisui’s last legacy. But this one, this one she has to destroy. She burns the remnants and knows that is one less thing Obito can get his hands on.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The valley of the shadow of death is a place of scarcity, danger, pain, and the unknown. This is uncharted charity for the sheep, but not for the shepherd,” she calls out, and she falls silent.

The Konoha… Konoha, those she has strung together, fall to their knees.

And they silently mourn with her.

Chapter 22: How We Massacre You: XXII

Chapter Text

Hours later, she raises on numb legs when the pyre is nearly embers. The sun is rising. The Third Hokage seems to be in a daze.

Aiko does not give a single f*ck.

“You knew,” she says, simply, to the Hokage.

The Third stares at her.

“What have you done?” he says, and his voice is small.

She bares her teeth.

“You allowed a second madman to use the people of Konoha. Twice, you have failed the village. All for sentiment,” she spits.

The man stares at her. Konoha is at her back. She squares her shoulders. One kimono sleeve was drenched in blood. The other is a grim banner of her kin's blood. She holds Pakkun tightly against her chest, and the dog presses against her neck.

“You killed my clan. You killed them. You allowed this!”

“Aiko-”

“We were a founding clan. We started Konoha, and you killed us. You allowed Danzo, your friend, your subordinate that has already committed treason when he attempted to assassinate you, to corner us, slander us, corral us in like pigs to the slaughter, and you allowed that man to order my brother to kill us all. We who set the first stones in Konoha. We who took hands with the Senju and created this Village with our grief and love of the wars we wanted to never occur again. Itachi-ni-kun was crying. But he did it. He took my mother and father’s heads before me. He slaughter infants and elders in the crib who had been pushed to their breaking points. He did that to protect the village, to protect me, and you painted him as the madman.”

“I-”

“NO! YOU DON’T GET TO SPEAK! MY BROTHER IS THIRTEEN AND YOU ALLOWED HIM TO TAKE THE ORDER TO MURDER HIS FAMILY!” She shrieks, and, this feels as if it is truly Uchiha Aiko exploding out from behind the control the memories of Amelia Soto had brought, “DANZO MUTILATED THE CORPSES OF MY KIN, OF MY FAMILY, AND THAT OF THE SENJU! AND YOU ALLOWED IT. YOU LOOKED THE OTHER WAY JUST LIKE YOU DID WITH OROCHIMARU!”

The old man flinches back. Her chest heaves.

“As Uchiha Clan head, I telling you will step down.”

The other Clan heads circle him. Wolves, ravenous and cornered. They echo her words, hard face. The third Hokage looks around, eyes wide.

“I will step down as Hokage,” he whispers, quietly.

Aiko sneers. She turns from him. Uncaring of anything from him. She looks at the other leadership of Konoha.

“I nominate Senju Tsunade as the Fifth Hokage. I nominate Nara Shikaku-sama as temporary head of a Konoha Emergency Council for day-to-day affairs until we have our new Hokage,” she says, simply, “A Senju and an Uchiha once made the Village. Let them continue their legacy. Or what is left of it."

She watched, from the corner of her eye the Old man slump. She kept her head tall. She felt Kakashi flanking her. Pakkun was a warm weight in her bloody splattered arms. The Clans of Konoha stand as one. They were starving, afraid wolves who had been cornered, and laying before a feast of flesh that they were frothing to tare into. She bares her teeth in a wild smile that feels like it has been ripped onto her face.

The Hokage had no other choice.

Aiko had made sure of it. He has no excuse. No clever plan to twist this and become right. She has taken his veil and torn him asunder. All of his sins are at the forefront. Slowly, she sinks back into Kakashi who stood at her back. He stands stock-still. His chest is heaving. She feels so tired. She had dragged this together in under fourteen days. Gathered as much intel as she could with her limited resources.

But never underestimate a classist against a research deadline.

"... A mission must be made to retrieve my wayward students. They are both candidates," whispered the Hokage, voice hoarse and small.

She hated him so much she could kill him. She whirls to him. Bared her teeth sharply. He looked at her and flinched back.

"Much as I hate to say it, Aiko-hime," says Shikaku gently, "Jiraiya-sama is a viable candidate. It is best if the strongest ninja returns to the village anyway."

f*ckingnepotism, she seethes.

“By that logic, Itachi comes home as a candidate for Hokage as well,” she spits.

“Uchiha Itachi is to come home, anyway,” Aburame-sama said, simply, "Or two clans of Konoha will leave it. No more. No more sons or daughters shall be taken from us because of that f*cking Monster."

She breathes.

The Village was united. The wayward sons and daughter of Konoha would come home. Itachi would be brought home, so she could rip him a new one for the Aiko she had been before she remembered Amelia. As much as she hated to think it, Jiraiya technically was an asset. She wanted Tsunade more, for the ideals she had tried to instill, but the best Seal Master alive wouldn't be remiss either. She nods.

More hours passed.

There is so much to discuss, so many logistics of rebuilding the Village she had upended. They come to tentative agreements and planned a larger, more formal meeting that would come together after they all got some sleep. She is only seven in her body, and she has not slept more than six hours since she awoke in the hospital. She would rather sleep in a ditch than return to the hospital.

“Kakashi-ni-kun. Is there a hotel I can stay in? Near here?”

“Mah, mah, Aiko-hime, what’s wrong with my apartment?” his hand is on the back of her neck again, “It’s even near the Academy for later.”

She cannot help it.

She dissolves into tears. Sobs.Sobs hard.

“Nothing, Kakashi-ni-kun, nothing at all.”

Chapter 23: How the Fire Burns: I

Chapter Text

She wakes in a dog pile of both actual dogs, and Kakashi standing vigil over her.

Creepily.

But sweetly standing over her. She blinks groggily. Bull nudges underneath her chin. Obliging, Aiko quickly nudges back, even as she's gently curls her hands into Guruko’s back. Stitches are to be given freely. That is pupper law. She is warm, if a little smelly from the dogs, but she couldn't have thought of a more comforting thing to sleep amongst deadly dog summons with the Copy Cat Nin standing guard. She has slept for hours, she guesses and feels blissfully relaxed.

“That could be very alarming,” she mumbles, smartly. She yawns, slightly, even as she rubs her face against Bull's neck.

Kakashi's exposed eye creases in a smile. She smiles back.

“Aiko-hime, we have a mission.”

She blinks groggily. Blinks one more time.

“ 'M not a ninja. Did that change overnight?”

She blinks some more.Wolf boy what.

“Under the Konoha-”

“An academy student can be drafted?” she interrupts, lips pursed.

He eye smiles at her again. She sighs. Buries her head in Bull’s back now. The big boy growls lightly at Kakashi.

“Yeah. Congratulations, Aiko-Hime, you’ve been temporarily upgraded to Genin for the Retrieval mission of Senju Tsunade, and Jiraya of the Sanin, for the candidacy of the Fifth Hokage. Under the order of the Special Konoha Council.”

She holds back a swear. Somewhere, she bets that Itachi’s sibling-complex instinct is going berserk. Because she is being shoved out of the village at seven. And she's in charge of the f*cking Sanin.

A bitter drunk and a horrific pervert. f*cking hell.

“Team?” she asks, sighing.

“Me, you, my dogs of course, and an adorable Kohai of mine… And a very hip nin.”

f*cking hell it better not be-

The Mighty Guy summersaults into Kakashi’s small apartment, through the suspiciously open window and Aiko knows true cringe as he gives a mighty pose. Arms akimbo, fists on his hips, a green suit that- WHOA MIGHT GUY PACKS LIKE THE GOBLIN KING- and Jonin flank jacket.

He smiles.

It gleams, a little starry twinkle. A visual flash of impossible light.

That has to be a justu. Wonders if he likes f*cking with people. He has too, for Kakashi to be his friend.

“THE MIGHTY GREEN BEAST OF KONOHA, MIGHT GUY! REPORTING FOR DUTY, TEAM-LEADER KAKASHI-DEAREST-RIVAL, SO HIP SO COOL!”

She sighs.

“Nice to meet you, Might-san, I am Uchiha Aiko,” she replies, giving Kakashi an already exhausted look.

Another eye-smile. Yup. Kakashi is a sweetie, but a total f*cking troll.

“NICE TO MEET YOU, SWEET HIME-SAMA! CALL ME GUY-KUN!”

I will do no f*cking such thing.

“Is the mission now?”

God f*cking damn it the sun is barely up. Oh. Wait. Is it barely setting? sh*t. I missed the meeting.

“YOSH! IT HAS BEEN DECIDED SWEET HIME-SAMA THAT THE TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! AND AS THE SURVIVING VICTIM OF THE UCHIHA GENOCIDE AND UNCOVERER OF THIS HEINOUS BLIGHT ON OUR VILLAGE-”

“I need to leave the Village because I’m ripe to be murdered, aren’t I?”

f*cking point out one asshole, and it's all 'stabby stabby' up in this bitch.

Guy stopped. Gave her a grim look, a smile fading. She feels like she just kicked a puppy.

“Well, road trips are fun, right?”

He perks right back up.

“I will endeavor to make this the most fun for you, sweet Hime!”’

She smiled despite the lack of both coffee and daylight.

“Where’s our last team member?”

Yamoto sprouts from the woodwork.

Literally.

Sweet baby Jesus why? Also, very f*cking cool, tree-man.

She sighs as Guy eagerly introduces himself. She needs coffee. Or perhaps an Advil.

Do they even have advil in Naruto-Verse?

Gods save me.

Chapter 24: How the Fire Burns: II

Chapter Text

The Heads of Clans see her off.

She should be freaked out, really. Logically, Aiko knows the fact that she can f*cking die at any given moment.

It’s the f*cking Naruto verse.

Death is… Like, right there. Her tragic backstory is nearly everyone who’s genetically related to her f*cking is genocided. She woke to that. However, in the last two weeks, she… She hadn’t expected anyone to f*cking care about her. Her. Aiko and Amelia all mixed into this hodgepodge of a person. All have gifts. All of them soothe something wild in her heart, the people of this hellscape she had awoken in.

Aiko bows, deeply.

“May the Will of Fire keep burning,” she tells them all.

All of them bow back.

“We shall keep it safe until your return, Aiko-Hime,” says Shikaku, voice a deep and cadence thing.

For the first time since she awoke in this world, Aiko feels a smile grow on her face. Wide, free, and truly happy.

Because it's a promise that would be kept.

Chapter 25: How the Fire Burns: III

Chapter Text

The Might Guy makes the best cup of coffee. Aiko might have to keep him, quirks and all, for that sole fact alone. How he does it over an open fire, she has no f*cking clue.

But, he has her undying devotion. Wholesale.

“Guy-san will you marry me?” she asks, adoringly into her coffee thermos.

Kakashi face plants. They are barely a day from the village gates, and it is morning. The Might Guy beams. Yamoto watches them all with careful confusion.

Maybe the brainwashing hasn’t worn off?

“Yosh! While I appreciate the enthusiasm of your youthful burning affection, I do not believe you are at the age to make a sound decision. Ask me again when you are older, Aiko-hime.”

“I bet we could repopulate the Uchiha with a burning youth that would be a beautiful legacy,” she deadpans.

Guy… Guy f*cking blushes, and laughs. Covering his mouth like a shy little kid. Aiko beams at him. Drinks more coffee, sweet and rich, not bitter. She is in love.

Quietly, Kakashi bleeds killing intent.

Something in her stomach turns, but Aiko holds it in. Sips more coffee.

“I will slit his throat right now,” he says, seriously, “Take it back, Aiko-hime. Now.”

Aiko realizes she is a little insane. Because she finds his threat of bodily harm adorable, and touching.

When in Rome.

“Oh, our youthful love could never be, my lovely Beautiful Savage of the Leaf Village!” she says, and she keeps her deadpan, “You must defeat my claimed brother to have my hand in a challenge!”

Guy’s eyes twinkle and he laughs as Kakashi whimpers.

Aiko drinks more coffee.

Chapter 26: How the Fire Burns: IV

Chapter Text

“Now that we’re out of village proper, I thought you should know… Itachi is considered an active nin. He’s acting on behalf of the Jiraiya-sama,” says Kakashi, and he looks at her carefully, “We have been told in our mission brief, that to find him, Jiraiya-sama is our best bet.”

She winces.

She can admit it. She remembered that fact. But forgot about the fact that she isn’t supposed to know that little tidbit.

“Tsunade-sama first,” she insists.

Part of her is terrified to meet Itachi. Would he see her, and know her not to be his sister? Would he see her, and kill her for it? Worse, would he see her, know that she knows of his guilt, and then- then would he beg for death?

“Yosh!” Guy says, bright, but she sees caution in his face, in the light of his eyes, “There is no shame to wish for your brother first, Aiko-hime.”

She swallows.

“He chose Konoha first,” she replies.

That causes them all to tense. She sighs.

“So Konoha is your first choice?” and that is Yamoto, apparently going by Tenzō still, asks her.

He looks at her steady, dark eyes calm and measured.

She swallows.

“Yes,” she returns.

“You are allowed to be selfish, Aiko-hime,” Yamoto’s deep voice is careful.

“This is partially selfish,” she replies, and she looks down at her hands. The hands she looks at and still doesn’t recognize as her own, “I don’t know how I can look at him, yet. I need to… I need more time.”

“Mah, mah, Aiko-hime,” Kakashi drawls, and his hand drops on her neck. Careful, warm weight, “Tsunade it is.”

“We will follow your direction, the most beautiful and fair flower of Konoha! Aiko-Hime, we will find the Slug Princess first.”

She sighs again. Leans against him.

“Thank you.”

Chapter 27: How the Fire Burns: V

Chapter Text

“Never thought I'd see you with another Uchiha, Kakashi you brat,” Honey eyes glared down from her barstool.

Aiko swung her legs innocently, her slim legs easily moving in on the Yamada’s contribution of functional pants and armored kimono tops had been very fitting for the task at hand, as nice as some of those fancy kimono had been given by the plethora of kimono that the Hyuuga had donated ‘fitting her status'. She has never worn real silk before, and she thinks she looks forward to wearing them when she returns to Konoha. Which, considering they have found Tsunade in less than two months, might be sooner than she thought.

She has cheated. Thanks to Jiraiya and Naruto's hunt for Tsunade, she knows all she has to do is follow the rumors and debt left behind for

The Great Slug Sannin was drunk off her massive tit*, noted Aiko shrewdly, even as she swung her legs a little more cutely. Aiko eyed her sweet-smelling sake with some longing, her own simple carbonated ginger ale feeling woefully bereft of sweet, sweet alcohol. Aiko smiled guiltily at the way Kakashi-ni-kun tensed beside her.

“Mah, mah, Aiko-hime, no sake until you reach Jonin, at the very least,” he said calmly, hand dropping warningly on the crown of her head.

“There’s watered-down sweet sake on festival days, Kakashi-ni-kun.”

“No,” he barked, chorused, with, of course, Guy’s rant and fear for her liver.

Mother f*cking hens.

She blinks, watching as Tsuande what is blood-alcohol poisoning, eyes start to gleam with some amusem*nt. There was some life in her bitterness. She wouldn’t have taken in her lover’s niece, or the sweet-looking pig in the younger woman’s arms if there wasn’t. Aiko wasn’t sure about her ability to Thearpy-no-justu her out of her trauma like Naruto, her soul brother or whatever, but she was somewhat charming herself. Maybe she could get her there without the violence.

Maybe.

“You want to try the hard stuff, brat?”

She tilts the sake cup towards her. If Kakashi of the Thousand Justu wasn’t next to her, she totally would have reached for the offered cup.

Aiko hummed.

“I think, I already have. I’m not sure, amnesia is a pain, I’ll tell you.”

Abort! Abort! Mayday, mayday, Aiko thinks with some humor as the Sanin’s sweet face grows dark.

“Ah. You’ve come for some medical bullsh*t. Sorry, Uchiha-brat, I ain’t a mind specialist, and I’m retired.”

Aiko sighs.

“If I wanted my memories, I would be hunting another Missing-Nin, not you, Tsunade-Hime.”

Tension. Aiko thinks she could drop-kick it from the way poor Shinzue gaps at her. Or from the way Tsunade straightens up. Kakashi-ni-kun whines.

Aiko knows he’ll get over it. Probably.

“Come again, brat?!”

Aiko hums.

“I’ve come to ask you to be Hokage, Senju Tsunade, on behalf of the Konoha emergency Council, that Konoha deems you, worthy of becoming the Godaime Hokage. Malztoff, Tsunade-Sama, you are to take your grandfather’s job.”

The bar is smashed into a thousand splinters. Aiko barely blinks as Kakashi-ni-Kun makes sure not a drop of debris touches her, hauling her by the scuff of her kimono top. Sweet of him, really.

“Saratobi Hiruzen has been deemed unfit, complicit, and partially responsible for the Massacre of the entire Uchiha Clan,” Aiko finds it so f*cking interesting that it brings the great woman to a near standstill, her eyes widening as she stares at the only… What, actually one of three Uchiha that are alive, down, “He let his old buddy massacre the Uchiha for their eyes. After he dug around the Senju compound burial grounds, of course.”

“Son of motherf*cking bitch.”

Aiko smiles grimly.

“Apparently, it is between you and Jiraya, Senju-hime, and I rather put my money on you.”

“f*cking sh*t odds, brat.”

She tilts her head.

“The Village needs you.”

“f*ck the Village.”

“f*ck your apathy,” she spits back.

“Mah, Aiko-Hime-”

“No. It is apathy and bullsh*t like this that got the Uchiha killed. Danzo would have never found a foot-hold in his f*cking psychopathic eye fetish if the Third had been paying attention. By the time he knew, he looked the other way.”

Tsunade gapped at her. Aiko felt the kiddy facade slip right off her face.

“So, old hag, are you going to come beat the Villiage into shape or are we to declare you a f*cking missing nin? I will petition for that f*cking sh*t every day of my natural life until whatever stupid f*ck is put in the Hokage hat declares you as such.”

“Are trying to blackmail me, you little bitch-”

“No. I’m f*cking warning you! Danzo was a candidate for the f*cking hat still until the Battle of the Uchiha Funeral!”

Tsuande stared. Aiko’s chest heaved, as she shoved Kakashi’s hand off of her neck.

“Who the f*ck knows who else will be put up. The old generation of Konoha has to shut the f*ck up. And we need to rebuild.”

“Why me?”

“Because a Senju and a Uchiha once had a dream. That dream has gone to f*cking sh*t.”

“I’m- I can’t. I’m one of those old farts, brat, I can’t-”

Aiko readily falls to her knees.

“Once you tried to build the village to be safer, better. People held you back. People shut you out. Yet you changed the world, Senju Tsunade, just like your grandfathers did. I know with those people dead, you could do even better.”

She stared at her, on her knees. Aiko simply dropped her hands down and kow-towed.

“What-”

“Senju Tsunade, I, Uchiha Aiko, Clan Head, beg you. Please, please come home.”

Silence.

Aiko heard the click of her heels as she fled. Shizune fled with her.

She lifted her head when they were gone.

“Hime-sama,” said Guy, soft.

“Well,” she said, throat closing slightly at her failure, she swallowed down her stupid tears, “If heartfelt and combative don’t work, Plan C it is.”

“... What is Plan C?” asked poor Yamoto, voice soft.

Aiko smiled grimly.

“Sheer motherf*cking annoyance.”

Chapter 28: How the Fire Burns: VI

Chapter Text

“Senju Tsunade, you are required to return to the Villiage,” she tells her, and she hikes up the towel around her.

The air is steamy, fragrant, and thick. Aiko has piled her hair loosely at the top of her head. If she were not so fearful of Itachi’s reaction to her, she would have chopped it off with a kunai by now. She sighs. Tsunade f*cking spits out her sake, and bolts upwards in the hot spring water. Her towel, clinging for dear life, is probably stuck with chakra.

Ganbatte, little towel, she thinks, amused.

“We are in a different country than yesterday,” says Tsunade, blinking quickly. Water and sake drips down her chin, “Why am I seeing you, Uchiha-brat?”

Aiko tilts her head.

“Maybe I’m your Conscious.”

She blinks innocently at her.

“Yeah, f*cking try again.”

“Kakashi-ni-kun is an Anbu grade tracker,” she replies. She pauses, “He has nine Ninken. Pakkun, the leader, has very soft paws. He lets me hold them when I feel bad.”

Tsunade blinks quickly at her. Her jaw works.

“You chased me to the Land of Hot Water to tell me to get back to Konoha.”

“I will chase you until you get over yourself.”

“You f*cking brat, you don’t get the right to-”

“You are not the only person who lost people. The Will of Fire is but an ember, Tsunade-hime. We need you.”

“f*ck you, brat!”

The woman storms off. Aiko sighs but sinks back into the water. She wasn’t wasting the bath. Shizune, still in the water, blinks at her.

“Your cause is a good one,” the older girl says, tentatively, “But Tsunade-sama will not return. She… She is too lost in her grief, Uchiha-hime.”

She looks at the girl. Shakes her head.

“My own grief is my motivation. Go to your teacher. We will follow until something changes in her.”

“For what it is worth, I hope you succeed, Uchiha-hime.”

“My name is Aiko.”

“And mine is Shizune.”

She smiles, slightly.

“Nice to meet you, Shizune-san.”

“Nice to meet you, Aiko-hime,” she replies, and she smiles in return.

Chapter 29: How the Fire Burns: VII

Chapter Text

If she had thought that her second life would involve a cross-countries chase, she would have packed more. Laundry is a bitch when you have tiny, tiny hands. Especially in the Land of Wind. In the words of Ani ‘Baby Killer’ Skywalker, she hates sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

And she has no f*cking washing machine, My kingdom for a f*cking washing machine.

Just a river, and she wonders considering that they are in a desert, how illegal is it to wash clothes in a potential drinking water source. Yamoto had fretted, Guy had offered his hands to wash her clothes, and Kakashi had patted her head with an eye smile.

She was tempted to take Guy up on that offer, but, she rather eat sand than let him scrub her underwear. And it was weird to just… Not, do the rest. Hence her pruning fingers.

"Maybe we should try for Jiraiya," that’s Kakashi-ni-kun. Smiling with his eye.

“I am too invested,” she returns, as she scrubs stubbornly at her clothes.

“Mah, mah, I believe, ‘old bitch better f*cking brace herself’ is not the right mindset, Aiko-hime.”

Mullishly, Aiko scrubbed harder.

“It totally is.”

“Yosh! Dear rival, we must defer to Aiko-hime.”

She blinks.

“Wait. Am I in charge? When did that happen again?”

“When you staged a coup against the Third Hokage,” says Kakashi, dryly.

She blinks again.

“Well, when you put it that way. To be fair, he was collateral. I just wanted to kill Danzo.”

“You are terrifying,” and that’s Yamoto, simply said.

She smiles.

“Thank you, that is very sweet of you to say, Tenzo-san.”

Chapter 30: How the Fire Burns: VIII

Chapter Text

The Uchiha are dead.

There are three of them in the world, or at least, three of them that are fully alive.

In their ashes, a single girl stood up and bared her teeth, her heart torn open for the entire Village to see. Obito had never seen anything quite like it. His little cousin has surprised him. When he slew the Uchiha at Itachi’s side- He had softened. Itachi’s single-minded determination for Aiko to be safe, for her to live while their kin died…

And then, his foolish little cousin had nearly killed her. He stilled her fragile heart, and all of his work to save her had been for nothing. The Uchiha blood spilled would be for nothing.

The grief had been so much like his own.

He saved his baby cousin because he could.

He was reminded of his own devotion to Rin, to his own useless feelings about not being able to save her that day, and he refused to let that grief touch him again. And yes, this reality was only temporary until he saved everyone- He had not expected this. For anyone else to worm their way into his heart. Itachi had come close.

But his sister had clawed her way in after taking everyone who failed her to task.

She and her little monetary crew, chase after a legend, and he follows out of curiosity, out of the wish to protect her when she had been thrown from the safety of the Village walls by showing the world the Love of the Uchiha, the hate of them in her grief.

Kakashi is with her. She calls him brother, because of my eye.

“I hate sand,” she says, simply. Her voice is a soft, gentle thing. Obito likes the cadence of it, how kind she is in her voice.

Kakashi snorts. She is riding on his back. The fact that Kakashi has taken over her training, but an Academy girl could not keep up with Anbu level ninja. Something warms in him. He misses Bakashi. He always will, even if part of him hates Kakashi for not saving Rin. But Kakashi holds his own grief with what he thinks is the death of Rin and him. He will let Kakashi keep that sin and grief until he makes the world Perfect. That is his cross to bear.

“Aiko-hime, that is your problem.”

Aiko snorts.

“Why is she even in Wind? Don’t they hate Tsunade?”

“Well, Aiko-hime, I think that is why Tsunade has feld here. She expects it to be the last place we look.”

“At least gambling is illegal here. She’ll suffer as much as I am. Why, why couldn’t the Uchiha have more melanin in our skin. I feel like a lobster.”

His lips twitch. Her cheeks are red, but she isn’t sunburned. The ninja around her were too careful of that.

“We will need to reapply soon, Aiko-hime!” calls out green-clad ninja, Might Guy.

“Seriously, Guy-san, we might actually have to get married. Can you cook? I bet you cook,” her voice is teasing.

He feels his hands twitch. Kakashi growls.

“When we have access to a kitchen, Aiko-chan, you may sample the best of my fair! I make a mean super-fiery curry udon!”

“He makes a mean case, Kakashi-ni-kun. I mean. He makes coffee. He has steady income as a Special Jonin-”

“I will disembowel him,” Kakashi replies, without missing a beat.

“Not Guy-san. We like Guy-san.”

“Stop trying to marry him, and I will stop the threats of death.”

“He can take you.”

He can’t take me, Obito thinks, amused despite himself. It was obvious that Aiko wasn’t serious. She was just bothering Kakashi. His affection for his baby cousin only grows at that fact.

He follows silently, carefully.

Chapter 31: How the Fire Burns: IX

Chapter Text

So, Tsunade has a gift.

“Gambling is illegal in the Land of Wind,” she tells The Legendary Sucker, whose gift it was, apparently, to find gambling dens wherever she went.

Illegal or not.

Tsunade twitches, but doesn't spit out her sake this time around. Gently, Aiko places her bet. Roulette. She bets 23 red, pointing out, and tossing a small bag of gold ryo at him. The woman manning the wheel doesn’t even blink at her, child or not. Only nods evenly and places her golden chips onto the number. Tsunade, not missing a beat, slid a glass cup her way. Aiko wiggles in place. She doesn't flinch when Tsunade catches Kakashi’s hand above her shoulder.

Aiko tips her glass at the glaring man and sips at it.

The burn of alcohol is mild. Sweet sake, cold, and low in alcohol content. It’s in some sort of carbonated beverage. Lime touch. Plum sake, and pretty little candied plums at the bottom. It’s more soda than alcohol, and even though she is a little wary of drinking at such a young age, she remembered vaguely in her mind that this type of sake was often served to children even on Earth, and this was watered the f*ck down. The girl that was Amelia Soto feels tension slip off her back.

Aiko hums.

I miss tequila. I wonder if they have the right plant to make it?

“Your youthful liver, Aiko-hime,” mourned Guy-san.

Tsunade snorts.

“She’s fine,” she snaps, even as she places an obnoxious amount of money on a Row, green 0 and 00, “Konoha’s hospital was left as the most advance in the world by the time I f*cking left. One little bit of sweet Sake isn’t gonna kill her. We used to serve worse on festival days, this wouldn’t make a baby drunk, let alone a healthy seven-year-old.”

Aiko sips more sake, slightly spitefully.

“Thank you, Tsunade-sama,” she sighs into her cup, savoring it.

To her child's taste buds, its sweetness is just right. As Amelia, she bets she would have winced at the sweetness.

“Your persistent, I give you that, Brat.”

She shrugs.

“I am but a young girl in a world that would destroy me. A stubbornness is all I have.”

Tsunade snorts.

“What is even your goal?” the old woman says, and her voice is serious. Less slurred. Her cheeks may be flushed with alcohol, but her honey-brown eyes were crystal clear, “Having me be in Charge won’t change what happened.”

She sighs.

“Nothing ever will. I watched as my thirteen-year-old brother decapitated my mother and father. I barely remember anything before or during the incident, because Itachi genjustu f*cked with my head,” she swallowed, hand shaking as she stared at the bubbles of the carbonation cling to the candied plums, “But. I read like a f*cking mad to understand the circ*mstances that led to my clan being slaughtered. When I did, I saw you. How you single-handedly revitalized our hospital system. Your policies, implemented or not, all centered on aiding the ninja force, not just as soldiers, but as human beings. You left us because the village failed you. It has failed me, and my family. It's why I’m asking you to come back because no one knows better than you what that failure has cost some of us. And because I think you can do better than anyone else at the moment.”

She sips more alcohol.

“Your pitch needs work.”

Aiko sighs.

“I’ll keep practicing, Tsunade-hime.”

Tsunade knocks back her sake. Aiko bites into one of the candied plums. The wheel spins, and she wins on a single.

Tsunade laughs.

It isn’t a pretty sound. Aiko echoes it, just as ugly, just as bitter in her laughter.

Chapter 32: How the Fire Burns: IXI

Chapter Text

She is both impressed and surprised that they reach Sunagakure, on Tsunade’s heels. She knows for a fact that there’s still some lingering animosity between Suna and Konoha, even though they technically were in peacetime, treaty and all. But her passport is stamped, they grumble, but they are allowed into Suna.

She is admiring its high cliffs, the so different culture-

“Is that a scorpion on a skewer?” she asks, curious.

“Yes, Aiko-Hime.”

“I kinda want to try it. Think it tastes like chicken?”

“Why would it taste like Chicken?”

“That’s what everything kinda tastes like. Or so they say.”

Yamoto’s lips twitch. Somehow, Kakashi had found it hilarious to drop her and Yamoto, the most culturally lost people, alone together as he and Guy rustled A, someplace to stay, and B, some clothes that would save her from skin cancer.

“Oh! Look, a nursery. Wanna go into it?”

“For children?”

Her lips twitch.

“For plants, Tenzo-san.”

He stills. His eyes followed her gaze.

“Do you like plants?”

“Yes. I do.”

He- He doesn’t smile. But there is warmth in his eyes.

She beams in response.

Chapter 33: How the Fire Burns: X

Chapter Text

That… That is a wild Gaara, she is pretty sure, who is suddenly right next to her.

The red-headed boy is dead-eyed, exhaustion lined into the several creases underneath his piercing green eyes. No eyebrows. Blood touched ‘love’ on his brow. He is pale, too pale really, and he looked exhausted…

He’s already killed people. His uncle has tried to kill him.

“...Do you want it?” she asks, a little dry, she is holding a cute little cactus, and his eyes are locked on it.

The boy twitches.

Behind her, Yamato also twitches.

For the first time since she’s left the village, she is very well aware that she is in a dangerous situation.

I’m in Danger, she thought in the tone of Ralph Wiggium.

Silently, Gaara extended a smooth, uncalloused palm. Carefully, very aware that his mother’s protection could snap out at any moment, she carefully placed the small flowering cactus into the boy’s waiting palm. She smiles.

“It’s an Echinocereus,” she says, helpfully, as Gaara stares down at the little plant.

His eyes snap up. His eyes narrow. Focuses on her smile.

Whoops.

“You are not of Suna,” he says, voice surprisingly deep for a seven-year-old. He is holding the little pot tightly in his hand.

She bows, deeply.

“Aiko of Konoha,” she replies, simply, she gestures gently at Yamato, who is already waving their papers.

Gaara barely glances at it, only looking back at her.

“... Aiko,” he whispers, his voice tighter.

Child of love, Beloved Child- Oh no, triggered an unstable boy with psychopathic tendencies, she thought, with grim amusem*nt as her eyes looked up at the mark on his forehead. She looked back at his eyes. They were fixed. She fought a shiver.

“Your name?” she asks, blinking quickly.

“Gaara.”

She bows, deeply.

“Nice to meet you,” she replied.

He twitched. He didn’t bow. She didn’t expect him to.

“I’ll leave you to your shopping, Gaara-san,” she says, carefully. She takes a half step back.

A hand snapped out and locked on her wrist. She was across the shop before she could do more than blink. Yamoto made a noise, a half strangle in the back of his throat. She lifted a hand behind her back. The man froze, hands on his hip, already half crouched. Gaara blinked, slightly, and the hand on her wrist tightened. She breathes, softly, through her nose.

“Ah, is there something that you need Gaara-san?”

“Child of love,” he says, nearly spitting.

sh*t.

“Yes. That is what my name means,” she replies.

“Why are you named that?”

She holds back a twitch.

“I’m not sure,” she replies, carefully, “I could never ask my parents.”

“Why not?”

“They’re dead.”

The grip on her wrist goes even tighter.

“You… You are alone?”

His gaze snaps to Yamoto.

“Who is he?”

“I am Aiko-hime’s guard,” Yamoto is inching closer.

Gaara tugs her, closer. She does flinch when she feels grains of sand against her.

“Are you weak?” The boy says, spitting.

She twitches.

Let's see. Psychopathic tendencies. Trauma. All communicating in the fact that he needs to prove his self-love through the death of others- and a BORED, CRAPPY TENENT THAT IS CROONING f*ckING sh*t IN HIS UNSTABLE MIND.

She takes a breath.

“Yes,” she answers, “I am weak. But you do not seem to be.”

His grip was tighter. Any more and he would snap her wrist.

“No,” he whispers, hoarse and trembling, “I'm not weak.”

“That's lovely for you.”

“... It is how I know I am loved,” he says.

“I-”

“How do you know? When you are weak?”

“Gaara-San, let go of Aiko-hime.”

“Tenzo-san, please refrain from causing an international incident with the locals. Gaara-san isn't hurting me.”

She is lying. But, even though Yamato is uniquely equipped to handle the first tail, she rather not have an internal national incident with the country that would be bamboozled into invading mine.

The grip on her wrist is steady.

“Who is he to tell me what to do?” He hisses, “Why does he protect you if you are weak?”

She frowns.

“It is his mission.”

“His purpose?”

“No,” she counters, despite herself, “It isn't anyone's sole purpose to protect me. Tenzo-san was assigned to me. My clansmen asked for him.”

“Why are you protected? If you are weak?”

Aiko holds in a shrug.

“My clan is an old one. We are nearly dead.”

“Oi. What the hell are you doing to the Uchiha-brat!?” and that’s Tsunade, slamming open the door of the shop, chest heaving.

Oh f*ck, Aiko thinks, at the escalating situation, There’s going to be property damage.

Chapter 34: How the Fire Burns: XI

Chapter Text

There’s property damage.

Half the street is ruined in a rush of sand, in the monstrous strength of a Sanin, and a rush of trees that burst from Yamato.

Gaara is hissing at the Sanin, sand writhing. Desperately trying to reach for them both. Yamoto is inching toward her. Tsunade smushes her to her chest. Aiko does not like the fact that she has been a f*cking ragdoll the last ten minutes.

She struggles to breathe against Tsunade's ample chest.

“The f*ck’s your problem, Creepy-brat?! This is the last Uchiha!” says Tsunade, “A precious princess of the Hidden Leaf!”

“I’m not the last Uchiha, Itachi is fine,” she tells Tsunade, wiggling in place.

The older woman just squishes her tighter, and oof, that has to be a rib creaking. And Obito is fine. Brain-washed and a little… Tobito, but technically fine. There’s three of us!

“Nobody asked you! Now stay still. A foreign shinobi f*cking manhandled you!”

“Your adamant protection of a vital asset of our Village confirms your ability to have the Hokage hat,” she says, dryly.

“Aiko, I swear by the Sage I will hurt you!” she hisses.

Aiko smiles.

“You said my name! I must be wearing you down!”

Tsunade gives a wordless shriek.

Chapter 35: How the Fire Burns: XII

Chapter Text

Sand Shinobi descend.

Oh sh*t, did I accidentally cause an international incident?... Tsunade did it. It’s her fault.

“This is your fault,” she tells the older woman.

Tsunade squeezes her to her chest. Scowling.

“You’re the one that got manhandled by some kid with no eyebrows.”

Tsunade woke up today and chose violence. So, normal day.

“He wasn’t being violent.”

“f*ck he wasn’t… I guess the breaking of an entire street of a foreign village is probably telling you that I’d be a sh*t hokage,” said Tsunade, smirking.

Aiko wouldn’t allow her smugness. Crusty old women. She sucks in a struggling breath.

“This is still a step up from looking the other way during human experimentation, a direct assassination attempt on the Hokage themselves, mass abduction, and genocide. You’re doing great, Godaime Hokage.”

Her lips twitch, just like the vein in her forehead. Aiko thinks it's a suppressed smile.

She’ll take that as a win.

Even when Tsunade drops her like a hot potato.

Chapter 36: How the Fire Burns: XIII

Chapter Text

Aiko realizes something is wrong with her about ten seconds after she stands on her feet.

She knows her heart is roaring in her ears.

Her chest hurts. It's hard for her to breathe. She blinks.

My heart. f*ck. sh*t.

“Tsunade?” She asks.

She feels faint.

“Yeah? What, is the adrenaline finally kicking out? Hey, brat- ”

She blinks up at her. Past the black spots.

“... I have something grafted onto my heart,” Aiko blinks rapidly, “A white mass is how it was described.”

Tsunade stops. Stares. Her honey-brow eyes went wide.

Aiko wobbles on her feet.

Beyond them, Gaara gives an enraged yell.

“Just thought you and Shinuze should know.”

Aiko drops.

Chapter 37: How the Fire Burns: XIV

Chapter Text

The Uchiha girl is caught by tree limbs before she can fall flat on her face.

“Aiko-hime!” The blank-faced man says.

Something is screaming in Tsunade's ears.

There's a mass grafted onto my heart.

Her grandfather's technique in the hands of some random-

Human experimentation.

That is what the little girl had said. That is what her Sensei had allowed.

Looked the other way at.

The proof is here. Her grandfather's DNA in one of Orochimaru's experiments. She had heard of the boy, near man now. She had heard and raged quietly in her self-imposed exile. But seeing it in person is another beast. To know that Danzo had probably had a hand in him, as he had all the blank face markers of a recovering Root member, made her despair. Danzo’s actions against her polices had cost her Dan, and her brother, and maybe Orochimaru-

And now this girl. This stubborn, naive little girl who looked at her and saw the part of her that had died with her brother, with Dan.

Who begged at her feet.

Who invaded her exile with harsher words and even harsher truths.

“...Tsunade-shisho!” Shinuze's voice came into prominence. The girl who would have been her family by marriage, who was her family in truth, looked up at her, eyes wide and panicked.

Her green hands were over the little girl's chest. Now that she wasn't snarling, or mouthing off at her, she realized how tiny the girl was. The last Uchiha. The last Senju. One young and angry. The other old and jaded.

Gods what a f*cking pair we make.

“I- I don't know what's wrong!”

Tsunade didn't see a f*cking drop of blood. Yet, her hands trembled.

The Uchiha and the Senju had a dream, once.

Tsunade drops to her knees.

They joined hands once.

For the first time in a long time, Tsunade's hands glowed green.

Chapter 38: How the Fire Burns: XIV

Chapter Text

Tsunade feels sweat on her brow. She hasn’t performed surgery on a human being since Dan’s death. But she is f*cking Senju Tsunade, and she realizes quickly what’s wrong. The thing on Aiko’s heart- It isn’t the f*cking problem. It’s a temporary measure to save the girl’s life.

Aiko has a defect in her heart.

A ventricular septal defect and it's a miracle that her lungs haven’t flooded with blood. She wonders if the stress of the month of chasing after her has gotten to her. She has no way of telling when the f*ck white flesh had been added to her heart, how often her heart had been in danger. From what she can tell, the girl has already had a heart attack at some point in her young life. The tissue damage to the heart, somewhat healed, tells her that much. Dated to about-

The Uchiha were slaughtered. Sensei looked the other way. She chose me because she thinks my loss is similar to hers.Tsunade had done her research, the first time the girl had come spewing hope and f*cking sparkles at her. Her heart attack happened as her brother was forced to slaughter their family. The flesh graph- maybe it was already in place, maybe it had been done that night. Tsunade grits her teeth, and Shizune helps keep Aiko alive, hands steady, quickly trying to sterilize the environment as much as possible. The boy with her grandfather’s DNA, he is keeping the f*cking creepy brat at bay, even as he roars. Jinchūriki of the One-Tailed Beast that is in Suna’s hands, she f*cking bets, but she doesn’t give a f*ck.

Her world is centered around the girl laid out in front of her.

Shinuze was suppressing tears, as she worked as her assistant. Tsunade wishes to cry too. The white flesh, she realizes, with a startled swear, isn’t just keeping Aiko’s heart together by a patch job-

It works with her, following the pathways of her green chakra-

“Grandfather,” she whispers.

She had had a handful of chances to observe her grandfather's curious healing techniques. Tsunade had spent the majority of her youth attempting to replicate, if not the method, the results of what he had been capable of. Because his methods had been so unique to his overpowered biology, that even she in her genius had been incapable of it. Somehow, someone had f*cking been able to do it. And had woven it into Uchiha Aiko's fragile heart with no one the wiser.

The Senju and Uchiha had a dream.

Tsunade finally feels tears slip from her eyes.

This girl is my Clan, she thinks, as surely as the boy who defended them, he too implanted with her Grandfather’s DNA. The Senju lived on, in these two people. She doesn’t care who the f*ck did this to Aiko, just as she doesn’t give a f*ck that the boy defending them was made by Orochimaru’s twisted hands. Maybe Danzo had supported her former teammate, if f*cking Danzo had been after the Uchiha's eyes, if he had sported her grandfather's wood release- maybe he was the reason Orochimaru had f*cking gone down that twisted path of his. Maybe he had been experimenting with the flesh of the Uchiha and the remains of the Senju for decades, and Aiko was just one of many. The only living proof of it.

Tsunade would figure it out.

But at the moment, it didn't f*cking matter to her. It only meant...

The Senju live. In Aiko. In the boy defending us. The Will of Fire made by our Clans- We have been bound by this horror once again.

“You don’t get to leave me now, Aiko,” she tells her, and she releases her seal, and feels a rush of power flow through her.

She will do everything in her to keep this girl alive.

The girl’s graph, the DNA of her grandfather, works.

Chapter 39: How the Fire Burns: XV

Chapter Text

It's the flash of chakra, Tenzo’s, flared clearly nearly halfway across Suna that gets Kakashi’s attention.

Because that’s ANBU Morse code.

Enemy Engagement. Charge Down. Medic on Hand. Surgery.

Aiko.

Every fiber of Kakashi’s being seized, and he is moving before he can even so much as put down the cloak he had picked for his pup. Gai is at his heels- He doesn’t know Anbu Morse code. That has never been his ambition. But he knows him, and Gai is chasing after him the second he realizes Kakashi isn’t next to him.

Kakashi’s mind is screaming.

His instincts are running wild. His pack, is in danger, again, and he cannot take the death of another pack member. He can’t.

What he finds is Tenzo, holding back a f*cking mass of sand. What he finds is serval Suna shinobi, hesitating at the edges of a battle against a jinchūriki in a feral state. He finds Aiko, chest open, Tsunade and her apprentice over her, the Sanin’s Yin Seal free and black across her face. Feet from the battle, just barely safe as dangerous surgery is done in the middle of the street, with nothing but Tsunade's hands as instruments.

Something in him keens.

But all he sees is a pivotal point, and like many times before, Kakashi reaches the conflict that would take from him too late.

Around Tsunade, Shizune, and Aiko-

Life sprouts.

Chapter 40: How the Fire Burns: XVI

Chapter Text

Aiko’s heart is healed, and Tsunade watches as her hands, covered in the girl’s blood, carefully hold her cheek. Around her, the trees made by Aiko are the very start of a forest, baby trees that grow in the desert.

Tears drip.

The Senju live.

Kakashi and Gai skid to a stop next to them. She leans down. Kisses the girl’s forehead. Around her neck, she lifts off her grandfather’s necklace. Carefully, she places it around the girl’s neck.

“Alright, you win, Aiko. But just so you know, I will annoy the f*ck out of you when it's your turn. Shizune,” she snaps, “Kakashi! Gai!”

“Yes, Tsunade-sama?” They return in a chorus.

Kakashi is vibrating in place, the co-dependent moron. She would make him permanently a part of Aiko’s protection detail, she knew. But she would be the girl’s official guardian, if only because she couldn’t trust anyone with her world-shaking shenanigans. Her heart was roaring. Seven years old, and she had caused Tsunade’s hands to be coated in blood again. This child caused Tsunade to once again put life in her hands.

“Protect the Uchiha-brat,” she orders.

“With our lives,” Gai responded, with a careful determination that made her remember his father.

Tsunade stood. Her seal was still active. The jinchūriki was still raging. Her hands were covered in Aiko’s blood.

“Monitor her status, Shinuze. She’s stable, but I want her in a proper hospital room. The thing standing between her and that is that f*cking thing.”

“Permission to assist, Tsunade-sama?” and that’s Kakashi.

She cracks her knuckles.

“Sharagian out.”

The red eye gleamed in the twilight.

“With me, Hatake.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

Tsunade did not stumble at the title.

She only charged forward, heels clicking against the cobblestones of Suna’s roads.

Chapter 41: How the Fire Burns: XVII

Chapter Text

She grips her clansman around the scruff of his Jonin vest. All but tosses him at Kakashi. Her heels crack the ground. The Sand Tanuki roars.

Tsunade bares her teeth.

She tilts her head, her eyes narrowing. Casually, she side-steps its wild punch.

Something isn’t right with this brat’s seal, she realizes, as the Sand Tanuki cackles.

She cracks her blood-crusted knuckles. She remembers her grandfather’s stories of subduing the bijū well enough. She was Uzumaki, on her grandmother’s side. She knew a f*cking sh*t seal when she saw one. The poor f*cking jinchūriki was probably f*cking being driven insane by the f*cking monster in him. She didn’t know what the f*ck he wanted with Aiko, but she didn’t care.

“Tree-Boy,” she snarls, and she is ashamed she doesn’t know his name, but she will know the poor son-of-bitch-brainwashed child as well as she will Aiko, in the coming years, because he is her family, damn anyone who will tell her otherwise, “Subdub with your limbs, Kakashi, f*cking use what your brother gave you and try to ensnare the damn thing in genjustu.”

“And you, Hokage-sama?” and that’s the Tree-Boy.

Her family.

He even looks a little like her grandfather. Not completely, but she sees him in the shape of his eyes, and the color of his hair.

“I will rewrite his f*cking seal, you give me some room to work,” she orders.

“Yes, Hokage-sama!” they chorused.

It was a curse.

It was a demand from the little girl whose heart nearly gave out in pursuit of her.

It was the dream of two people who Tsunade had loved, and who had loved her in turn.

Tsunade moves, and punches with the force to desolate mountains, even as she bites her blood-crusted thumb to get her blood following.

She rewrites a jinchūriki seal, on the fly, the Clan of the Senju and the Uchiha with her.

The Will of Fire, burning.

Chapter 42: How the Fire Burns: XVIII

Chapter Text

Gaara falls.

He falls in the wake of three people. Only three people were enough to bring him down.

Temari feels her heart thunder in her ears. She was terrified of Gaara. She hated him for killing her mother.

She doesn’t care.

That’s my baby brother, she thinks, horror nearly eating her alive.

When she sees him fall, the mass of sand dropping around him, when she sees the monster who could stop her brother, blonde pigtails flowing like a banner behind her as she jumps to catch her brother, Temari was running.

She is crying.

Slips past Baki without a care. Kankuro at her heels.

“GAARA!” it takes her a moment to realize that the desperate, shriek is her own and her Kankuro’s.

Tree limbs catch them both.

Temari doesn’t care. She is screaming, struggling. Biting at the wood to get to him.

That’s my baby brother!

The Monster is holding him. Holding him by the scruff of his tunic as if he is trash and not Temari’s brother.

“Shut up,” snaps the woman, honey eyes narrowed, “The boy is sleeping.”

Temari shuts up.

Gaara barely sleeps.

She hiccups.

The Monster is a beautiful woman, a sweet face, younger than her father. She sighs.

“Who is he to you?”

Temari hiccups again.

“He’s my baby brother.”

Something- Something goes soft in the woman’s brown eyes. She hums.

“You’re baby brother was manhandling my family,” she tells her, her face grim, “She had a heart attack because of him.”

Temari sobs.

“Please don’t hurt him. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t-”

“I won’t.”

Despite everything, Temari believes her.

“What… What now?” she asks, desperately, eying Gaara.

The Monster, the woman, sighs.

“Now, I have to talk to the very angry Kazekage, brat,” she replied, and with a snap of her fingers, Temari and Kankuro were free.

The woman tossed Gaara at them. Temari catches him desperately, grunting at the weight and falling on her butt. She takes Kankuro with her. She is lucky that they are cushioned by so much sand.

“Tree-Boy,” says the Monster, the woman, “Keep an eye on the Kids. I need to talk to our neighbors about how not to treat the gift my grandfather gave to them. And, I need to negotiate Aiko’s stay at the hospital.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

Temari blinks. Blinks again.

She’s the leader of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

Temari grips Gaara, and Kankuro, tightly to her.

Quietly, she feels Gaara grip her wrist. His eyes flutter.

“Temari?” his voice is so soft, quiet. Drowsy.

Temari squeezes him to her chest.

“Shh, little brother, it’s gonna be okay.”

He shakes in her arms. And she feels, not sees when he begins to cry.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Temari only squeezes him tighter.

Chapter 43: How the Fire Burns: XIX

Chapter Text

Kakashi is ready to f*cking bite someone’s throat out.

“Kakashi? Sit the f*ck down, you have Chakra exhaustion.”

“Hoka-”

“Don’t Hokage-sama me, brat, I changed your diapers.”

Kakashi feels his jaw snap shut. A blush fills his cheeks. He sits.

Thank everything sweet and good for masks, he thinks. And the fact that Aiko was too out cold to hear that tidbit.

Guy looks like all of his wishes have come true. Kakashi might just bite his throat out. If he did, Aiko wouldn’t marry him. Two birds, one stone, as it were. Tenzo was next to their new Hokage, unsworn as she was, but what’s a little paperwork to him? The second that Aiko had said she would be the next Hokage, Kakashi had taken her word for it. Tenzo was being held by the scruff of his neck, and Kakashi had the faint idea that he has just been adopted.

Heck, he thinks Aiko’s been adopted.

Will be funny to see her face when someone does it to her, he thinks, positively. Sitting is awfully infective, he realizes. Because he’s starting to slump over. And obviously, that means that’s better. He wiggles closer to Aiko, whose face is soft in her unconscious state. If he wouldn’t get an earful for ‘chakra exhaustion’ & ‘sanitation’ after major surgery, he would have summed his Ninken. Aiko would love to touch Pakkun’s paws after all of this.

He squints.

“Who are you?” he mutters, realizing that’s there’s more pups. All looking shifting uneasily next to Guy.

The blonde girl clutched the little one-tailed Jinchūriki tightly to her. Her face was scared.

Poor pup.

“Suna no Temari,” she snaps, teethed bared.

She’s like Aiko, he thinks fondly. If she wouldn’t bite him, he thinks he would pat her head.

Then the name registers.

“Suna no? As in, the Kazekage’s Clan?” he asks.

She nods, quickly, tightly.

We took the Suna’s Royal Children Hostage. Accidentally. Oops.

“Of course you are,” he says, blandly.

“What’s wrong with that?” snaps another pup, some kid with brown hair and glaring eyes.

Kakashi feels his head lull lazily to the side.

“Nothing,” he drawls, “It’s just your brother attacked a princess of Konohagakure. And now our newest Hokage has you, your Jinchūriki- Technically, it seems your hostages. Accidentally. Sorry.”

The little girl scowled.

“What’s a Jinchūriki?” whispered the redhead.

Kakashi blinked. And blinked again. That is obviously above his pay- The green eyes look at him. He is reminded of another boy, whose Village sealed a bijū inside him. Kakashi wonders, absently, since Tsunade was Hokage if that meant he could… If he could see Naruto. The name sent a pang through him.

He frowned.

Quietly, he explained.

The redhead stared. And starred.

Kakashi thinks he broke him.

Oops.

Chapter 44: How the Fire Burns: XX

Chapter Text

Tsunade smiles.

With all of her teeth.

“Yeah. No,” she spits, “We can discuss everything after my charge is in your hospital. With her full guard.”

The Kazekage looks past her shoulder. Tsunade feels her eye twitch. She feels like she could eat everyone who isn’t her ninja alive at the moment. Then, of f*cking course-

The old hag. Chiyo. She must be an elder of Suna. She steps forward and Tsuande holds the impulse to kick her across the village.

“You,” Spits the old bag, “Dare, come into Suna, demanding-”

Tsunade takes a single step forward. Cracking her knuckles.

“I am a candidate for Hokage of Konoha. I demand basic courtesy. I came as a guest with my traveling party, allowed in at your gates,” she spits, and holds her chin high, her fists ready, “And then your jinchūriki attacks my clanswoman, a princess of Konoha. This could mean war, Elder of Suna. But, if you are willing to pay recompense, and allow us access to the space I require, we can prevent that.”

The Kazekage makes a sharp gesture. The old woman snaps back a step, her little hands in fists. Tsunade rolls her eyes.

“Hospital room,” she snaps, “Full guard.”

“... We shall receive the future Hokage with the full courtesy that it demands,” he says, voice soft. His eyes flicker behind her again, “If you release my children back to us.”

She blinks.

Throws a look over. The girl that she liked, the little blonde who was clutching desperately at her brothers. They are princess and princes in their own right.

Well, isn’t that a coincidence, she thinks, faintly.

She feels her lips peel back over her teeth.

“Aiko-hime will require company,” she says sweetly, “At least until she is awake. Not to mention, I have to monitor your son. It’s so crucial after altering his seal.”

The entire Suna side stiffens, and the Kazekage opens his mouth-

Tsunade is so f*cking done.

“I’ll remind you, that the First tails was a gift of good faith of Konoha, given by my grandfather himself. Your slap-dash sh*tty sealing has shown little respect for such a gift. In my generosity, I have corrected such an error. But I remind you, Kazekage, a gift poorly treated can be retrieved. The children stay with Aiko-hime.”

The man’s jaw works.

“... Until your girl wakes,” he agrees.

She tilts her head.

“Konoha accepts your terms.”

Chapter 45: How the Fire Burns: XXI

Chapter Text

Aiko wakes, and she wonders if her world has changed once again.

She feels tears slip down her cheeks, and she wonders again if it is the same, small, waned face she had become familiar with in the mirror. She feels her hands tremble, and she wonders if the small hands she had gotten used to-

“Aiko,” a deep, worried voice. She looks over.

Kakashi. His face is worn, or at least the bit that is visible. His hand was on her wrist, and the careful rhythm of heartbeat monitors sounded out.

“Hi,” she mumbles back, voice hoarse and small.

Her world is still the same. She is so grateful she can’t stop the tears. His spare hand carefully rubs away the tears.

“... How are you?” his voice is so f*cking young to her.

“Like I’ve just had a heart attack,” she replies, softly, “Did I?”

Something works in his jaw- both his eyes are exposed. Red and grey.

“Mah, mah, Aiko-chan, it looks like you did,” he replies, voice carefully. His fingertip rubs softly against her pulse.

Aiko realizes something, as her eyes flicker to his hand, as she feels him clearly past her drowsiness.

This isn’t Kakashi. His chakra is different.

Deliberately, she tries to keep calm. She can’t control the fact that he can feel her pulse or hear her monitors, however. They elevate. She breathes deeply and flexes her hands on the hospital bed’s cotton sheets.

“That’s terrible,” she says, softly, “Was it because of the thing grafted on my heart?”

His eyes flicker to her monitors. His brows furrow. Not-Kakashi’s hand clenches at her wrist.

She swallows thickly.

“No. Tsunade determined that it wasn’t a danger to you. It saved you,” he tells her, duo-colored eyes intent.

She feels her hand tremble. He soothes her hand on her pulse.

Who the f*ck are you? She thinks, and worse, Where is the real Kakashi and Gai and Yamato and Tsunade?

“Is that so?” she replies.

He nods, firmly.

“I’m grateful for it then,” she concludes softly.

The Not-Kakashi eye smiles.

“I’m glad you're okay, Aiko.”

She stares at him.

“Thank you,” she says to the man, even as she tries to wiggle her way out of his grip. He presses her hand into the mattress.

She stills.

He stares at her with careful eyes.

“What made you realize?”

She trembles. She doesn’t see a point to lie.

“...Chakra,” she whispers, she swallows, “Kakashi-ni-kun is like a storm. Yours is different. A swirl, a spiral of flames and water and-”

The Not-Kakashi hums.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“What do you want? What happened to everyone?”

“Only resting for a moment. No harm done. I just wanted to see you. Talk to you.”

She tilts her head.

“Why?”

He hums again.

“I like you, Aiko-chan.”

“That is very kind of you.”

He laughs. There’s a maniacal edge to it.

“You actually mean that.”

The grip on her wrist tightens a squeeze. She gives a shaky nod. He laughs again.

“One last thing, Aiko-chan. I’m here to promise you something. I will need you to promise me first, you won’t tell anyone I came to see you.”

She swallows.

“I promise it will be a secret. What’s your promise?”

He lowers his mask.

Kakashi’s face is not his face. It swirls in her vision. The look of another Uchiha looks down at her. She knows, without a shadow of a doubt, what that mottled flesh of white means on half of his face, and that one of his eyes isn’t dark, but pale with a holy swirl.

An eye of a goddess.

Obito.

“You will find a perfect world one day, Aiko-chan. You shouldn’t try too hard in this one. Stay alive for me, little hime. Today was too close.”

f*ck.

His red eye spins, and she falls to the dark.

Chapter 46: How the Fire Burns: XXI

Chapter Text

She wakes with a hacking gasp. Bolts upward and her f*cking chest aches. Nothing dramatic, but sore like she’s done a million fly lifts or benched way past her limit. Sore, and not in a fun way. She breathes. She is started at how much easier that is, and she wonders, faintly, as she touches her chest, why she hadn’t realized that her body was not functioning as well as it should have until after it had been addressed. She had a healthy body as Amelia. Tsunade is next to her, clutching at her hand. Head on her bed. Kakashi is slumped by the window, a pile of- where the f*ck did he get the Sand siblings?! Curled on his lap is Gaara snuggled into Kakashi’s neck. Temari’s and Kankuro’s heads are in pressed against his side. What the f*ck. Gai is outside, guarding? Shinuze and Yamoto are with him, just out the door.

Aiko breathes.

She feels like she’s forgotten something. It’s a nagging feeling in the back of her head. She blinks. The window is open, she realizes, and she realizes it is night and cold in her room. It looks like a hospital.

She is growing to hate the hospital.

Tsunade squeezes, and exhausted honey-brown eyes look up at her.

“Hey, Brat.”

“Tsunade-sama?” she can't hide how her voice panicked, “What’s happened?”

“Well, Aiko-Hime,” she says her voice turning suddenly formal, “You managed to heart-attack your way into a Godaime Hokage.”

She blinks rapidly.

“Oh, good. Go team Godaime!” She weakly lifts a fist.

I thought it would take some more casual stalking. I did it. I therapy-no-justued Senju Tsunade! I f*cking did it!

Something in Tsunade’s face sharpens.

“This is your second.”

Aiko blinks quickly.

“My second what?”

“Heart attack.”

“Oh. Well. That’s horrible. Why? Or is the several generations of incest finally biting the Uchiha’s genetic health?”

Despite herself, it seems, Tsunade smiles.

“Got it one, brat. You had a genetic defect- a hole in your heart. The Massacre, the Battle of the Uchiha Funeral, chasing after me- It strained your already weak heart. The likelihood of a heart attack after a prior one is exponential. Especially since you didn’t properly get care for in the aftermath of the first. The flesh added to your heart was keeping you together. It also aided in the healing process… Much like my grandfather, it's as if you never had an attack in the first place now. I suspect that you have been implanted with his cells. A DNA test will be done with the sample I took, but I am 98 percent sure we are genetically related now. You have the Senju in your heart.”

Aiko blinks.

Blinks again. White flesh. White flesh. Uchiha Massacre- Obito. Obito injected me with- White Zetsu flesh.

“Brat?”

She feels her headache. Something is nagging in the back of her head. She panics.

“What if it’s not just that? What if it’s something else?! What if-”

Tsunade holds her face in her hands. The action startles Aiko so hard she stops mid-spiral. Honey-brown eyes stare at her with conviction.

“I don’t care. You, Uchiha Aiko, are now my kin. Officially, you are to be added to the Senju codex. You are my heir apparent, Aiko. You will be the head of two clans when I finally bite it.”

She gaps.

“Wait wha-”

Tsunade’s smile is sly.

“And if I have anything to say, little sh*t, you will be Hokage eventually.”

Aiko panics.

“Someone called dibs!” she blurts thinking of Naruto. The protagonist of this world. Her soul brother, or whatever.

“What? Who the hell calls dibs?! You’re going to be Hokage and like it you little sh*t!”

“I- I don’t want the stupid cone hat!”

Tsunade squeezes her face.

“Too late.”

“But-”

She let’s go of Aiko’s face, and jerks something around her neck up.

The necklace.

The f*cking subdubbing necklace that belonged to the first.

Aiko gasps.

Tsunade smiles. With all of her teeth.

“The Uchiha and the Senju joined hands once. You and I will do it again. We are that legacy, Princess of Senju and Uchiha, and you will hold that mantle well. So I repeat. Too late.”

Uno Reverse you stupid bitch.

Aiko wails as Tsunade cackles.

Chapter 47: How the Fire Burns: XXII

Chapter Text

Kakashi wakes to Aiko crying, and well, it’s how he accidentally sends the Sand pups tumbling. Only the red one is spared, and that’s because the boy is clinging to him like a limpet. Really, the Sand pups need to learn about personal space. They climbed onto him and wouldn’t let go. Apparently, even though he helped take down the redhead, he was the better option to be around. Between him and the Sanin. He doesn't get it. Or like it. He's got one pup to deal with, and he's barely handling that.

At least they can't reasonably follow behind us. Political nessascities in Suna and all.

Anyway, has a kunai in each hand, and he is rushing towards Aiko when-

He blinks.

He’s on his back.

Tsunade-sama snorts. A single finger is in his direction. Which, it’s rude to point.

“Yeah, no,” she says, and her voice is mirthful, “Aiko is just panicking because she’s going to be my heir as leader of the Senju and Hokage.”

“No, I won’t!”

Tsunade-sama just cackles.

He sighs. Pats, absently, the red pup who is very much awake and-

“Beloved child,” he rasps, “I’m sorry.”

Aiko stares.

“Um. Apology accepted… Why is the boy who ‘manhandled’ me hugging you Kakashi-ni-kun?”

He gives a helpless shrug, still on the floor.

“I guess I just have a kind face.”

“Kakashi-ni-kun, no one can see your face.”

“Bet they can feel it, Rokudaime.”

Aiko makes a noise like a kicked pup and he feels bad. He usually tries to avoid that.

I might be a little loopy from chakra exhaustion, he thinks. It's the most rational thought he's had in a minute.

“You’ll be the Hokage after Tsunade-sama,” she says, simply.

Kakashi takes back all his bad feelings. It’s his turn to make a wounded noise.

“What!?”

Aiko only looks at him.

“Who else would I trust?”

The answer hits him like a hammer. He blinks. Blinks again. Tsunade-Sama's face is thoughtful.

“You know, Aiko, you are too young to take the hat soon. And I'd like to retire in 10 or 15 years…”

The Godaime looks at him. She tilts her head. Smiles with teeth. Kakashi yelps.

"Wait- I uh-"

"I'd think you'd make an excellent Hokage," mummers the red pup.

Aiko only starts cackling herself. As someone who wasn't actually related to Tsunade, the sound is eerily similar.

I’m going to be Hokage holy f*cking sh*t. I’m doomed.

Chapter 48: How the Fire Burns: XXIII

Chapter Text

I have like twenty years to convince the Village to put the magical cone hat on Naruto's dumbass head-

Aiko likes her odds. She performed a regime change in two weeks. Convinced Tsunade to come back in like, six months with annoyance and worming her way into her heart.Or her into mine, as it f*cking were. Twenty years? She's got this. Her thoughts aren't tinged with panic. At all. Classiest she maybe, but paperwork on a subject she doesn't care about? That isn't life and death for her?

f*ck that sh*t.

“Kakashi-ni-kun?”

“Yes, Aiko-hime?”

“Who are they?” She asks.

She doesn't point, because it’s rude and she really doesn’t want to lift her hand above a certain point. Major chest surgery and all, magical healing bs or not, she’s sore. And hopes she doesn't let on that she knows anyone. But, well, she needs to know why the Sand siblings are in her hospital room. It feels important. And weird.

But mostly need to know.

“We're hostages!” Says Kankuro, brightly.

The smack from Temari is justified, Aiko thinks.

“Hi Hostage-san. I think I meant your names, not your current purpose. I'm Uchiha Aiko.”

“Oh- I'm Suna no Kankuro!” he says.

She blinks. She thought he was supposed to be more of an asshole. But, then, he is like nine. Maybe he gets pissy later?

“I'm Suna no Temari,” Temari all but snarls.

Aiko gives a nod. There's the attitude she expected.

“Nice to meet you. I like you best Temari-san. You're smart enough to be angry.”

“Your grandma attacked my baby brother,” she does snarl that time.

Aiko knows she's not sane. Which is why she thinks, cute first, then yikes.

“Not my grandma. Gaara-san attacked first. Considering his level of aggression to any adult attempting to intervene, I am assuming he isn't treated very well, even if he is the third son of the Kazekage himself,” Aiko says softly.

Temari stares at her wide-eyed. She looks at Gaara. Her lower lip wobbles.

“It's because they put that thing in him. It's not his fault.”

“Shouldn't be an issue now, Sand Princess. I did rework his seal. Red Brat, how's your head?” drawls Tsunade.

Aiko blinks.

She did what now?

Gaara, still atop Kakashi tenses.

“...Mother- I mean the One-Tail he- it's like he fell asleep. He stopped- he stopped talking.”

Aiko holds in a gasp. She blinks quickly.

“The what now?” She fakes.

Tsunade levels her with a squint.

“You need to be a better liar, Aiko-hime.”

She winces. She knows she is a decent enough liar. But, well, excuse her for the fact that she f*cked up major plot beats on accident this time and she just woke up.

“Yes, Hokage-sama. So. You're the Sand Jinchūriki?”

The redhead boy is still so tense. He nods.

Welp, I already f*cked up this story side. f*ck it.

“My family was treated badly by my village. They're dead because of bad choices. I think bad choices went into how they made you Jinchūriki. Wanna be friends?”

Jade eyes went wide.

She blinks and he's in her space again. Knowing who is in the room, knowing their skill sets, she knows it's because they allow it. She doesn't flinch. Only looks at him steadily.

“Really? Even though- Even you're a truly beloved child? Do you want to be friends? With me? I hurt you. I would have killed you.”

She softens. She isn’t sane. This boy, this poor boy turning into a monster, is so young. So she extends a careful hand to him. He stares at it. Slowly, tentatively, he grips her hand. His hand, so damn small, trembles. She knows how strong he is. Yet, it was still shaking as he held her.

“All the people who called me beloved once are gone. I had to make new connections. New people who love me. I would be really happy if you were one of them.”

He stares. Swallows. His hand clenches her.

“I'm sorry for hurting you.”

“I forgive you, Gaara-san.”

“... I'd like to be your friend. You'd be my first.”

Something small and fragile is in his jade eyes. Desperation. Madness, trauma? Yes. Aiko swallows. She knows her own black haze is similarly tinged.

How could it not be?

“... the person who killed my family,” she whispers, “They made me forget a lot. I don't remember if I had friends, before. It's like you're my first friend.”

He smiles.

Small.

Fragile as glass.

But Suna no Gaara smiles.

Aiko smiles back.

Chapter 49: How the Fire Burns XXIV

Chapter Text

Temari stares. Gaara bares his little teeth.

Their father flinches back. He always does. Even though he tried to make a monster of Gaara, a weapon. He fears the very monster he tried to create. When that same child showed him his own mind, her father always flinched.

Temari hates him the most in the world.

“I'm staying with Aiko-hime.”

Temari inches closer to her brother. Who is curled carefully at the princess of Konoha’s side. He took her hand and did not let go. Only when Tsunade-sama demanded it to check on her heart.

“If he stays, I'm staying,” she snarls with her brother.

Kankuro grips the back of her robes.

“If she stays, I’m staying,” echoes her other little brother.

The Kazekage levels a glare towards the girl in the bed. Temari, thinks Aiko-hime is so pretty, but in an unsettling way. She has a doll that has skin made of porcelain, an antique that once belonged to her mother and she thinks that Aiko looks like it. She’s never seen a person actually be that pale before. She has just been hurt. Really hurt. Yet her posture is textbook perfect. She has never seen anyone save her father sit in a throne, but Aiko-hime makes her old hospital bed look like one.

“Who I am to deny the hospitality of our esteemed royal family of Suna? Your children have been most wonderful company. I would love to keep them with me, Kazekage-sama,” she bares her teeth, but it isn’t a smile. Not really.

Her father glares harder.

Aiko does not flinch. Temari, right then and there, decides she likes the girl. Even if her grandmother, not grandmother, is terrifying and makes Temari want to hit something.

“Visiting hours are oooover,” sings the Wolf boy, named Kakashi.

Temari really likes him. She especially likes the soft way he handles Gaara. For once in their life, her father is forced to do something someone else wants.

It’s glorious.

But it also tells Temari that her father is weaker than she thought. It's the seed planted, an idea that later grows.

Chapter 50: How the Fire Burns: XXV

Chapter Text

“We need to find Jiraya-sama,” she mentions, gently.

Tsunade’s jaw works.

“Yeah. f*cking, I guess,” she snarls, “Whatever you want, Aiko-hime.”

The old woman points a finger, and then she pokes Aiko in the forehead.

Aiko flinches so violently, so unexpectedly, she nearly drops off the bed. Tsunade looks at her with wide eyes. Aiko is shaking. Hard. She realizes there’s some trauma response in her after all. Gaara, holding her arm after having caught her, drags her to him with wide jade eyes. Aiko’s eyes squeeze shut. She realizes she’s hyperventilating about a second later when Kakashi gathers both her and Gaara to his arms and her mouth presses against his Jonin flank vest. Aiko can’t help her whimper. Can’t help as she grips desperately at his flank vest in her hands.

Kakashi soothes her with a gruff sound from deep within his chest. A hand down her long black hair.

Aiko sobs.

She remembers RED.

“Aiko?” Tsunade’s voice is so gentle, that Aiko hates it.

She buries her face into Kakashi’s torso.

“Aiko?” whispers Kakashi.

“...I’m sorry,” she whispers and breathes deeply as Gaara curls around her, “Itachi poked my forehead like that. He would- it he would do that. It was- It was something he did because he loved- I think he did it that- t-hat night. He-”

She feels her throat close. She shakes harder, and Garaa presses his little body flush against her side. He hums. Kakashi stiffens.

“Tsunade-sama, official request to bring Aiko-Hime back to Konoha as the rest of our team retrieves Jiraiya-sama. She- She needs more time before she sees-” he barks.

“NO!” she howls, lifting her head, “I have to see him. If I run- how do you even know it’ll be better later?! It has to be now.”

Gaara squeezes her.

“Who is Itachi?”

She flinches. Looks at him.

“He’s my older brother,” she whispers, “He… he… He did something bad. The last time I saw him. Now he has to come back to Konoha. I have to bring him back.”

Gaara blinks.

“Why?”

She swallows.

“It wasn’t his fault. He shouldn’t suffer because of the choices others made him make.”

The boy goes stock still.

“Do you still love him? Even though he hurt you?”

She flinches. She knows what that question means to someone like Gaara.

“... I- I think I do. But I’m afraid. What he did- it-”

“Was it bad?” asks Gaara, softly.

She squeezes her eyes shut and throws herself into Kakashi’s vest. Burrows her way into it.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she repeats, softly. But it was his choice, she thinks, and that is the worst of it, “But even if it wasn’t, I changed because of it. He’s going to hate who I’ve become.”

“If he doesn’t want you, I’ll keep you,” says Gaara, firmly.

He jumps as his sand protects him from the karate chop that Tsunade aimed for the top of his head.

“Oi, oi, Brat, that’s my heir you’re threatening to kidnap! If her brother tries anything, I’ll break all his limbs.”

Gaara glares up at Tsunade.

“At least crush them as well. I know you are capable of it.”

Tsunade squits at her as she giggles. It’s all hysterical giggles, Aiko thinks, but a giggle nonetheless. The woman carefully places a hand on her neck. Soothes a hand down it, gentle and soft as a butterfly's wing.

“I won’t do it again,” The Hokage says, simply, “I’m sorry. Any other triggers of behavior we should be aware of?”

Aiko thinks.

“No? Other than maybe seeing the Sharigan again.”

Tsunade nods.

“Good. Now,” she cracks her knuckles, ominous, her teeth-baring, “We have to discuss the elephant in the room. Sand Brats, we can’t keep you here forever.”

The three children groan.