Chapter Text
It's a ward so skillfully constructed that he knows at once that one of the grandchildren of Kagami has to have created it. Such a beautiful genjutsu as this, so perfectly formed and so superbly blended into its environment, never exists unless one of those two cousins makes it. If not for the spider-thin cracks webbing out from the center of the ward line, Itachi knows he never would have even realized it was there. The question is, which of the two crafted it? Shisui or Mana?
Mana, he decides after another moment's inspection. Shisui's genjutsu has always been faultless, but exquisite detail of this degree—from some angles less a jutsu and more a work of art—has always been Mana's hallmark. Though in the past Shisui had always been the most proficient of what had been an already-powerful trio of genjutsu fluents, in recent years the edge given to him by experience has begun to wear; he’d admitted so himself last he and Mana had gotten into a genjutsu spar. Itachi is not surprised by the sight of her work.
But this begs a second question: for what reason has Mana placed a genjutsu ward here? It’s a desolate cliffside, and the only people who come here are her, Shisui, and Itachi himself. Had she been trying to hide something? There are worse places for that, he supposes; it is, after all, a very unknown location. But this does not seem quite right, either, because Mana knows very well that her friends frequent this spot. And not just any friends, but two of the few ninja in all of Konoha who are capable of seeing through her illusions. No… it’s far too deliberate.
She’d meant for one of them to discover it, then. Intrigued, Itachi lifts his fingers in the half-tiger seal and wonders what he'll find. “Kai,” he says aloud.
As the glass pane of fake reality shatters into pieces, immediately the world he had once known shatters along with it. He is standing in a pool of blood. Rivulets of it are running across the cliffside—some streaming into the thirsty earth, some spilling over the edge of the precipice—but at its center is a familiar figure, flat on her front in a sea of red. The iconic uchiwa crest on her back is splattered with blood. Her sword is missing. Her skin is gray.
Itachi spends what seems like a small eternity blankly staring down at the sight before him. That’s why the ward line cracked, then, he thinks with muffled and staticky enlightenment. She’s dead.
Slowly, he steps forward. He kneels down beside the corpse of his friend and touches its shoulder. Then, very gently, he pushes on it, and Mana’s body rolls over. His dreadful suspicion is confirmed at once when he looks at her face, and horror like an icy boulder drops through his gut.
A bloodied stone, once clutched tightly to the chest by stiff fingers, tumbles from her hand and rolls to a stop against his sandal.
Itachi picks it up, heedless of the gore now smeared across his own fingers, and examines it. It's a smooth stone, likely retrieved from the bank of a river somewhere, of the sort often found at the bottom of a shinobi’s belt pouch. There are infinite uses for rocks in a ninja's daily life, but mostly they're used for throwing. Itachi looks up and begins scanning the surroundings anew, searching for the traces of another person’s passage. He wonders what enemy she might have been trying to aim her final act of defiance at.
“Forgive my impropriety.”
Itachi goes deathly still. The familiar cadence of this voice is unmistakable. He holds that posture for a long moment before he slowly turns his head, disbelieving, to look upon Mana’s face. She is as still and pallid as she was when he had found her, and he stares with apprehension at the frozen line of her lips. It is common knowledge that corpses cannot speak. What—?
But then he lifts his eyes. Behind Mana’s body another Mana is sitting, legs folded in seiza and hands held together primly over her stomach. She is almost exactly as she always has been—soft-spoken and composed, beautiful and deadly as only a kunoichi can be—but for one thing: where once her face had been set with a straight and piercing gaze, dark and intelligent, now there are only two sets of gore-clumped eyelashes. They sit like drawstrings pulled shut over an empty bag; even with her eyelids closed, the emptiness of the sockets they cover is morbidly conspicuous. Blood is streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin like a flood of red tears.
“I do not have time. I am unable to write. This is the only way I may leave my message,” this second Mana murmurs. “Please regard this as my will.”
Itachi looks down at the stone in his hand in realization. He flips it over and activates his Sharingan, whereupon he finds an extensive genjutsu array on its other side, stained with blood and roiling with chakra. She’d carved out a genjutsu projection as her last will and testament.
“To start, I will tell you what I know. I was summoned to a meeting by an ANBU of Root who claimed that Lord Danzou had a message for me. When I came to the promised meeting place I was attacked by no fewer than ten shinobi, nine of whom I killed in self-defense. The last I believe I mortally wounded, but she took my eyes, and I am unable to confirm what became of her. If I succeeded in executing my last genjutsu against her, you may find her in the eastern woods, where I instructed her to hide herself. If such is the case, you may yet be able to retrieve my Sharingan. If this message finds its way into the hands of an Uchiha, I ask as your clanswoman for you to do so. If you are not of the Uchiha clan, please, deliver this message to them on my behalf.”
Itachi swallows as Mana’s image speaks on. He watches the steady drip-drip-drip of the blood from her chin. The jagged tear in the front of her shirt has exposed the mangled hole in the metal mesh beneath, and yet more blood is leaking out from between the cracks of her laced fingers, which have slowly begun to loosen as the message goes on. Her straight-backed seiza gradually crumples; and then, as she begins to hunch forward in pain, Itachi can see quite clearly all at once the viscera of her abdomen. She had not folded her hands over her stomach for propriety as he had initially thought. She has been holding in her guts the entire time.
“I have two final requests beyond the retrieval of my eyes,” Mana says, now through grit teeth. Sweat has begun to mix with blood on her face, and the color of her clammy skin has gone from pale to ashen. “If my Sharingan can be reclaimed, I wish to bequeath them to my kinsman Shisui. He is a holder of the Mangekyou as well. Let no one impede him from taking them, for I desire that they be his. There is no one more worthy to entrust their power to than him.”
After saying these words she falls forward, but as she collapses she manages to put her arms out and assume the prostrate posture of dogeza. “I beg of you,” she croaks with hands overlapped and forehead pressed into the dirt. “My last wish is this. I have a message for Shisui. Put this stone down now and give it to him so my final words to him may be private.”
Jarred out of his daze, Itachi immediately turns his wrist and lets the stone slip from his open palm. The second Mana vanishes from his sight like a column of dust blown apart by wind, leaving only a lifeless body as his company.
Silence settles in the air, heavier than a lead mantle, and is punctuated only by the distant roar of the river below.
“Hokage-sama, forgive my interruption. An officer of the police force has arrived and is seeking entry.”
Shisui’s eyebrows rise as the chuunin in the doorway speaks with pursed lips and a harried tone. The Sandaime steeples his fingers and looks at him.
“I am still in the midst of a meeting. Can it not wait?”
“I am sorry, Lord Third. He is most insistent.”
“Very well,” Hiruzen sighs after a brief silence. “Shisui, let us pause for a moment.”
“Sir.” Shisui bows his head. The chuunin nods and slips away. Hardly a second later a dark-haired man with an active Sharingan takes his place. He must have been waiting.
“Pardon my rudeness, Lord Hokage,” the officer says breathlessly. It is clear by the flush of his face that he has sprinted the whole way, and he is disheveled enough to give both Shisui and the Sandaime pause. The fingers he is using to grip the doorframe are trembling faintly.
“What's wrong? You’re very flustered,” Hiruzen observes with a creased brow. “Has something happened?”
“Sir. Yes. I apologize profusely for interrupting you,” the officer answers before quickly turning to Shisui. “Shisui, you are urgently needed. Please come to the Uchiha district at once.”
“Pardon?” Shisui blinks in surprise. “I’m sorry, but I’m currently in a meeting with the Hokage…”
The officer’s grip tightens so forcefully that his knuckles instantly turn white. Just the smallest of splinters splits off from the wood of the doorframe; alarmed, Shisui and Hiruzen exchange glances. The officer takes a deep breath and speaks again. “As your clan head, Fugaku-taichou bids you return to the compound with the direst exigency. Shisui, beg leave of the Hokage to finish your business another day. You must come at once.” A pause; he swallows. “It is an unprecedented emergency.”
Shisui sees the desperation in the man's eyes and turns to Hiruzen. "Lord Third, I apologize. I seem to have received a very urgent summons."
"Very well. We will continue this debriefing later," the Sandaime permits. "Report to me when the matter is resolved."
"Yes, sir. Thank you. I'll take my leave."
"Hurry," the officer urges once they've exited the Hokage's office. Rather than walk down the hall to the nearest exit, he goes straight for a nearby window. "Let's go."
"Just what has happened to warrant this?" Shisui asks incredulously. However rocky relations between the Uchiha and the village are, it takes ridiculous nerve to burst into the Hokage's office and demand he stop a meeting for a personal summons. It's impudent enough that even a clan on the verge of rebellion ought to have thought twice about it. Shisui is half-surprised that Hiruzen had even permitted it.
"Not here," the officer utters lowly before he puts his head down and launches himself into a shunshin. Bewildered, Shisui has no choice but to follow suit. He arrives back at the clan grounds some ten-fifteen seconds before his escort.
"To the police headquarters," the officer says when he catches up. "Come on."
Once they arrive they hasten through the main lobby and rush around several corners until they've made their way to the very back of the building. The officer throws open the door to a crowded room, which is abuzz with fervid, if quiet, talk.
"He found the body, so he went out with the investigation team—"
"...all this way, injured like that?"
"...killed an entire ten-man-cell single-handedly…"
"And the eyes… are they really gone?"
Shisui finds his gaze sharpening at these words. Perhaps his sudden intent focus gives away his presence; at once heads begin to turn. The throng of people parts towards the walls like water once they realize that Shisui has arrived. Fugaku, standing at the end of the large hall, looks up and turns his head.
"Shisui,” he says.
"Fugaku-san." Shisui strides forward to meet him and then notices that he is standing beside a medic before an examination table. He catches sight of sandaled feet on one end and the drape of a square white sheet at the other and comprehends at once what they are standing beside: a body. Someone has been killed. And more than that, judging by the talk; someone's eyes have been stolen. Shisui's face becomes grave. An unprecedented emergency indeed.
"Good. Now that you're here we can talk," Fugaku murmurs, and then raises his face. "All right, you lot, clear out—who told you to hang around here? Go to your posts." Police officers immediately begin scrambling to exit. "Inabi, Yakumi, remain here and guard the doors. When the investigation team returns, send them in at once. I want to know what they've found."
"Sir." Inabi and Yakumi salute in unison.
"All right, what can you tell us?" Fugaku asks the medic once they have left. The medic sighs and runs a hand through his hair. The look on his face is pure stress.
"The body was already at ambient temperature when it was brought in," he answers, agitatedly tapping a black scroll—presumably the one the body had been sealed in—against the side of the table. "It's been over twelve hours at least. The cause of death, of course, was blood loss. Her abdominal aorta was severely injured. Though seeing that she was armored—" he shifts and Shisui catches sight of a large hole in the corpse's mesh undershirt— "I suspect her attacker failed to sever it completely. This is likely why she lived long enough to get away and leave a final message."
Shisui's brow furrows at the sight. Nagging familiarity assaults his senses when he sees the slender hand lying on the table, and his mind begins stringing together facts at once. A clan member has been killed, and the use of feminine pronouns indicates that she was a woman. A woman with the Sharingan, clearly, if her eyes have been stolen. But most significantly of all is the fact that this person’s death had prompted Fugaku to call for Shisui in particular, and most urgently at that. But as esteemed as Shisui is by the clan, he is not a police officer himself. So then why? There can be only one reason.
He is the next of kin.
Fugaku and the medic step back when Shisui shoots forward and snatches the sheet away. He finds exactly the face he had expected to see there, gray as stone and streaked with blood. “No,” he breathes as he sees the hollow sag of her eyelids. At once the world seems to take on a precarious tilt, and for a long moment all he can do is stare. “Mana…?”
Several beats of silence pass. Then, slowly—hugely, swollenly, as if gulping down an ocean—Shisui swallows. He turns to look at Fugaku. “Her Mangekyou has been stolen.”
“Yes. She was killed for her bloodline limit,” murmurs Fugaku, who is as grim-faced as Shisui's ever seen him. Then he holds out a fist. His fingers are wrapped around a wad of cloth—someone’s spare bandana by the look of it—which he offers to Shisui. “She told us what happened. Here. It’s her will… she left a message for you.”
Mechanically, Shisui holds out a hand to accept it. The fabric falls away to reveal a bloody stone; Shisui recognizes his cousin’s signature trick at once. “If you can cast genjutsu on places, why in the world can't you cast them on objects?” she had asked in disbelief all those years ago, back when she had first been learning the basics of the art. Shisui had begun to explain the principles of why, but then she had picked up a tree leaf right then and there and proved him—and the whole lot of genjutsu scholars—utterly wrong. Thus had been born that day another prodigy of the Uchiha: the child kunoichi who invented the technique of trigger-object illusions. Shisui had never thought of using them as a means to deliver messages; even in death, it seems, his little cousin is a genius.
Fugaku presses the cloth to Shisui’s palm. Normally Shisui would excuse himself from the presence of the clan head first, but the moment his eyes fall upon this stone he finds himself turning away without a word. He wanders away to a side door instead. Neither Fugaku nor the medic stop him when he opens the door and shuts it behind him. The room he arrives in is an empty space without windows or furniture—just a strip of hardwood floor before a spread of aged tatami mats—but it does not matter. Shisui steps past the threshold and seats himself on the ground. He has a feeling he ought to sit.
After taking a breath to steel himself, he sets the bandana on the floor and unwraps the stone. Then he reaches out and sets his palm upon it; between one blink and the next Mana is there, sitting in seiza two feet away. Even though he knows to expect it, a feeling like lightning cracks through him when he looks at her face. Down from top of his head to the very soles of his feet, heat lances through him and splits him in two directly across the heart. The unwavering gaze he had always seen there—the dark irises, the eyes so clear and unflinching—
A monolithic pressure swells in his chest. It feels at once as if rabid wolves are clawing at his innards. Then a silent scream begins: past all hope of articulation, beyond the realm of words or rational thought, it explodes like so fierce a fire that all the oxygen in his lungs is sucked away. All that escapes from the vacuum of this interior conflagration is a choked gasp, breathless and strangled. The unwavering eyes once set in that face—the face of his last childhood companion, the only family left to him—is gone.
He listens to her recount her own murder with a sort of muted clarity. This particular phenomenon has not happened to him since Tadasu died, but he still recognizes it. It is the kind of derealized awareness that all shinobi in the field know: the compartmentalized operation that keeps bodies alive when minds are fit to shatter, the state of dissociation that allows one to look on from a distance at the realest of unrealities… even when she hunches over and shows him her guts spilling out into her lap, he does not flinch or look away. The whole thing is beyond shock now; the threshold of atrocity has been met already. He is already at the limit place.
And then, after she collapses onto the ground and begs for privacy so she can speak her last words, several silent seconds pass. Shisui holds his breath. She turns her face so her cheek is against the ground. Then she says his name: “Shisui.”
Even though he knows it is a genjutsu he finds himself coming forward on his knees. To reach out, to take her by the shoulders and pull her up from the bloody puddle, to put a hand under her back and support her so she need not mumble into the mud—he wants to so badly. He knows she wouldn't have liked it—she had never been an affectionate person, not even as a child—but even still. However tetchy her moods, no one really wants to die alone. Not even an overserious and sullen shinobi like her.
“This isn’t a saying we have in this world,” she whispers, and as she speaks her tone becomes unfathomably distant. “But whether it’s here or there, it’s true. I lived by the sword and now I’ll die by it. I could have seen it coming.” She remains silent for a long moment. Then she says, “I did see it coming. There was only ever one way it could end. I knew it from the start.
“I’m not upset. I’ve never loved this life, and I’ve thought before that would have been better not to have been born into it. If anything, this was a relief. Now everything can stop, and now I can rest…”
Shisui’s eyes fall as she speaks. It is not the first time he has heard Mana say such a thing. If she had survived this, he suspects it would not have been the last time, either. She might have even joked about it. She has said it before, after all: “Still kicking? Too bad.”
But then Mana speaks again. “That’s what I thought,” she whispers, and her breath, already labored, grows uneven. “That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. I’m sorry I said it. Shisui, I know you’ll wonder, so before I die—I just want you to know—”
The noise she makes then is not quite a sob—a sob would have required more strength than she’d had—but it is the nearest word he has for it. “I said I had nothing in this life, but that isn't true. I thought about you at the end and I realized it," she chokes out. "I didn’t have nothing… I had you.”
The silence of the gap that follows is pure devastation. Shisui lifts his eyes again and stares at her face. Blood is leaking from her lips.
“I’m sorry. I tried everything. I fought them with everything I had, I promise I did, I…” A shuddering cough shakes her frame, and she has to gasp for breath several times before she can speak again. The words she exhales next are hardly audible. “I am sorry. You deserved better. I should have treated you better. You were always there, but I never…”
Shisui waits for the rest, but it never comes. The illusion persists but the words end there. One minute passes, and then two; Shisui stares at the body, now a matched set with the one lying on the examination table outside. Then he lifts his hand from the genjutsu stone. Mana’s image vanishes.
When the door behind him opens the sunlight of the afternoon has been replaced with dim, artificial lamplight. “Shisui,” a voice says softly. “Itachi’s back. The investigation team… they're here. They brought her Sharingan back.”
Shisui turns woodenly and looks. He thinks he ought to open his mouth to speak, but no words come out. Several beats pass.
“...Come outside. The medic wants to talk to you.”
That evening the Naka Shrine is filled to the bursting. Fugaku is seated at the head of the room with his heir on his right and Kagami’s grandson on his left. Heads crane, desperately seeking a glance, but the young man’s eyes are shut as he sits unspeaking. He murmurs something unintelligible when Itachi leans over to speak to him, but other than that he is no different from a statue. That is, until Fugaku clears his throat and calls the meeting to order.
“No doubt by now we’ve all heard rumors,” he says gravely, and as he speaks Shisui’s eyelids lift. There is no discernible difference in the color of his irises, but breaths hold at the sight of them regardless. “I will confirm their truth. We have indeed lost one of our own today. She was Mana, of the line of the great Uchiha hero Kagami—one of the best and brightest of her generation. A master of our clan’s arts, a jounin of international renown, and a holder of our prized kekkei genkai, the Sharingan…” Fugaku takes a long pause. “And she was murdered for it.”
The room erupts. Itachi can only listen with growing dread as Fugaku, recounting the tale of the theft of her Mangekyou, begins to spin an eloquently tragic tale. By the end of it he has painted Mana as such a saint-martyr that no one has any choice but to cry aloud for justice. What is happening? he thinks as his father, usually so cool-headed and measured, purposefully enflames tempers and stirs up outrage. What are these theatrics? Why is he speaking like this?
Heedless, Fugaku climbs to his feet. He bows his head just once, solemnly, before he lifts a hand. "I swear to you," he vows, "that these deeds will not go unpunished. The village has wronged the Uchiha for the last time. We must take a stand here."
Sharingan spin as the clan roars its approval. No, not the clan, Itachi thinks as he stares out over a sea of hateful red glares. That is not a clan any longer. That is a mob.
Itachi leans over again, whispering from behind his father’s legs. “Shisui.”
“What is it?”
“We have to do something. If this goes on, there will be no turning back for any of us.”
Shisui is quiet. His eyes are shut again. Itachi insists, “Shisui.”
“There’s nothing left to do, Itachi,” Shisui eventually replies. “There is no turning back now. Not for any of us.”
Itachi swallows and leans back as if struck. Don't you worry, he hears his friend’s voice say. He can still see the reassuring grin on his face. There’s still time. You’re exceptional, and I’m here to help you. We’ll put a stop to this! Just wait and see.
There is no such grin now. A look of terrible apathy has taken over Shisui’s face. It is unlike any expression Itachi has ever seen on his face in his life.
Fugaku, meanwhile, is proceeding with a speech. “But with her dying breath, Kagami’s granddaughter granted us a boon,” he declares. “She told us to retrieve her eyes. She gave them back to the clan. And now, with their power, we cannot be stopped. Because of her, the Uchiha have obtained for the first time in generations—” Fugaku’s voice lowers. “The Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan.”
A hush falls over the room. Fugaku turns to Shisui and says his name. “Shisui.”
Shisui opens his eyes. The tomoe of his Sharingan swirl, but the shape they take on is not the four-pointed pinwheel the clan has seen before. A set of round teardrop marks are now ringed around his pupil, set within the black of the original pattern. He looks out over the hall with them, gaze distant, and does not speak. Fugaku bends down and pulls the young man to his feet anyway.
“With the power of the Kotoamatsukami and the Omoikane combined, it will be a bloodless revolution. You are the key to gaining power in Konoha,” Fugaku tells him—or, really, tells the clan. He is not speaking to Shisui; he is only pointing his face in his direction. He puts a hand on Shisui's shoulder. “Shisui, your kinswoman has given you an unstoppable Sharingan.”
A long silence stretches out. Itachi holds his breath, looking up at Shisui from below and hoping beyond hope that the light will reignite in his friend’s eyes. But Shisui’s gaze remains shadowed, and Itachi gains awareness of a dark truth. Shisui's eyes had always been bright, it is true. But Shisui's eyes are no longer Shisui’s eyes.
Itachi thinks of Mana. The clan had always joked that they were twins separated at birth, but Itachi never once saw the resemblance. Downcast, listless, perpetually longing for death… he knows his demeanor is sullen, but Mana had been a thousand times worse than that. Itachi had—and has still—things and people he treasures. Mana, as far as he knows, never loved anything in her life. Oh, she had been an ideal Uchiha—intelligent, skilled, powerful, focused—but she had been empty. She had never pursued any dreams. She had never regarded any place as cherished. She had never called any person beloved. And now, he realizes with a growing sense of defeat, that emptiness is no longer just hers. Now it belongs to someone else.
Shisui has been addressed and now he must reply. He looks at Fugaku for a long moment. He glances out over the clan and sees a crowd of faces waiting expectantly. Then he turns his gaze away, out towards the middle distance, and looks at precisely nothing at all.
“Yes,” he agrees blandly, without protest or resistance or thought. “She has.”