Fugue State, Chapter 1: Afterbirth

desc:

Uchiha Itachi is instructed to slay his entire clan, root and stem. He begs for his brother to be spared and is given that boon. So, he slays his entire clan cleanly, root and stem, and spares his brother. 

He can’t be held responsible for one of the others getting back up. 

Uchiha Masuyo wakes up in the wrong body, in the wrong world, and bleeding out. So much for a good start. 

(self-insert into the body of an uchiha mid-massacre. danzo doesn’t deserve a clean win.)

tags:

M

categories: Gen

warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings

Original Female Character(s) & Sasuke Uchiha, Original Female Character(s) & Kakashi Hatake

Original Female Character(s), Original Female Uchiha Character(s), Sasuke Uchiha, Kakashi Hatake, Itachi Uchiha

isekai and transmigration, Self-Insert, canon typical violence, funerary rites, like a lot, i'm not exaggerating the first bit of this fic is literally burning the uchiha’s dead, Uchiha Massacre, Uchiha Clan, BAMF Original Female Character(s), grief and mourning, multiple povs, no bashing, everyone is getting treated as complex people who can and will make mistakes that sometimes ruin lives, cough third hokage

ch1 notes:

so i have no idea what this is. i was supposed to be writing fluffy clouds and then this burst from my head fully formed. 

basically something i've always been kind of bored by is si/ocs trying to prevent the uchiha massacre. not because it isn’t right of them, but because the si always seems to be too young to conceivably pull it off. so i decided to put someone into the body of an uchiha at a point after she literally can't do anything to prevent it. and then made her deal with the aftermath.

i marked this fic as mature for a reason. there will be a lot of mentions of death and handling of dead bodies in the beginning. not too graphically, but enough to where i don’t think it’s light reading like my usual stuff. things get better, and there are some op stupid cheat eye powers in the future, but the beginning is dark. enjoy!

—

Chapter One: Afterbirth

She is given flesh much in the way everyone is. Without being asked if she wanted it, covered in blood and sobbing. 

Her numb fingers press against the slick wooden floor, her body so heavy and her shoulder uncomfortably pressed into the ground by her weight. There is pitch black darkness around her, lit only by the moonlight trailing through the window. She gasps for air, feeling iron hot pain lancing along her throat. 

She scrabbles her hand up to her panging throat, something dark covering her fingers that looks too clear in the darkness. She blinks away tears, feeling her neck. 

It’s wet and warm, too warm. She can feel the edges of a slice there, before her rushing mind catches up and she presses firmly down on it. There’s pain, but she sluggishly moves past it. Better to be in pain than bleed out. And— god. Please. Please, why is there so much blood? 

She takes a shuddering long breath past her gasping sobs, trying to tell if there’s blood coming through the cut and down to her lungs. It feels empty, and her cut doesn’t suck at her hand either, like a hole would. 

What is happening?

She grunts, pulling her left arm out from under her and pressing her free hand flat along the bloody floor, pushing herself up to a sitting position. The small act feels insurmountable, her arm shaking with exertion. Something slit her throat. Something slit her throat and it may still be here, in her house—

Her house? This isn’t her house.

She looks around, eyes stinging with tears. She’s in the living room, her mother’s little paintings on the walls and the kitchen off to the left. The door is open, through the hallway. Why is the door open? Kaa-san hates leaving it open. Kaa-san told Masuyo she’d—

This isn’t her house. Her name is not Masuyo. 

Masuyo looks to her left, towards the coffee table by the couch. On the ground, she sees a socked foot. She follows the foot up and behind her, straining her back and her neck. She sees a kimono clad leg, then a torso, then—

Masuyo’s mother is staring at the ceiling, eyes open and unseeing. Blood seeps lazily from her pale neck and down her throat, staining the embroidered uchiwa at her chest. Laying beside her is her little brother, Masao. He has rounded cheeks, and his mouth is parted just so. His eyes are shut, as if he’s sleeping. 

He is not sleeping. 

Uchiha, she thinks as she looks back slowly at the uchiwa on her mother’s chest. Not her mother. Her mother is alive, tan skinned and would never be wearing a kimono. She has no brothers. Her name is—

Uchiha Masuyo.

“What the fuck,” she says in a voice too high, and too ragged to be her own. 

Uchiha. Uchiha. Uchiha. Her mind repeats the name like a chant. Her name is Uchiha. She is dead. Not dead. Itachi—

Pain spikes from her throat, and she carefully loosens her fingers over her cut before she makes it worse. Her entire body is numbly aching. It must be the bloodloss.

The massacre. This is the massacre. Itachi is killing the Uchiha clan, and she’s one of them for some fucking reason. She can remember playing with Masao, and when she turns she can see an overturned shoji board on the coffee table, pieces scattered along the floor. Itachi slit her little brother’s throat.

Except, she didn’t do those things, did she? She’s not Masuyo. She had been at her real home, reading. 

Her throat. She needs to worry about her throat. Semantics don’t matter right now. Whatever is happening, she feels very alive and very much like she’s about to bleed out. 

Masuyo shuffles on her knees to the coffee table, ignoring her mother’s foot as she passes it and ignoring the way a shoji piece slides away when she knocks into it. With a heaving breath she grasps the corner of the table and pushes herself up shakily. 

She sways, enough to where she has to catch herself before she falls, but she stands. 

Her throat. She needs something to hold over her throat. 

She looks towards the kitchen and begins to walk, mind set on one of her mother’s rags. She notices she’s shorter than she should be, and that her body is shaped differently. Her hips are skinny and her feet seem smaller. 

She grabs a rag from the drawer her mother keeps them in, a pale one with flowers around the sides. She presses it to her throat. 

Outside the kitchen window she can see three bodies laid out on the street. Her neighbors, she thinks. The happy grocer couple and their daughter. 

She looks away.

Masuyo leans her side heavily against the kitchen counter, wondering if Itachi will come back to kill her. Or Obito. Obito had been involved, hadn’t he? She can’t remember. 

Should she get help? Should she hide? Will Danzo have her killed when they find her anyways? 

Sasuke is probably stuck in a genjutsu right now. Did they find him soon after the massacre? Is Itachi still there with him?

Masuyo thinks she may have better chances of living if she’s found with him, at least. And if she doesn’t, she’d rather not die surrounded by the dead. If Itachi cuts her down when she steps out the door, well. This isn’t her body anyways, is it? Maybe she’ll wake up.

Masuyo shuffles out of the kitchen, keeping her eyes away from her— from the bodies as she goes through the open front door. 

The air is still in the Uchiha compound, the smell of blood half as strong out in the open as it was in her house. The clan head’s house is nearby, down the street. Kaa-san was always proud of how closely they were related to them, her and Fugaku-sama sharing the same grandfather. 

She keeps her eyes straight ahead as she walks, ignoring the open doors and the few scattered bodies. Ignores the chance that doing this will bring her face to face with Itachi. She is nothing but a pair of legs, and legs walk. So she walks. 

Her eyes burn, and she blinks, feeling more tears fall. Sasuke is in that big house, she thinks, eyes only on the open door. The open door seems to be an indicator that Itachi has already been there, and the compound is so silent she’s sure she’d hear if he were arguing with his brother. 

Masuyo had always liked Itachi, Izumi always talked about him being so kind. Why would he do this? Why did he—

That’s not her thought. She stamps it down before it can take hold. This isn’t her body. Fuck. 

She presses the rag to her throat more firmly. Maybe the real Masuyo will wake up alive instead of her, maybe all she’s meant to do here is keep this stupid body alive until the ANBU find her. 

Even in whatever fugue state she’s in, she doubts that. 

Masuyo climbs the steps of the clan head’s house with weak, dirty-socked feet, and hopes for it anyways. 

—

Hound steps through the door of Itachi’s home and wonders, for a moment, if Itachi truly could be capable of this kind of depravity. Could he kill his own parents? His own brother? The rest of his clan, perhaps, but his brother?

He feels separate from his body. That’s the practical thing in missions like this. 

“Itachi’s chakra isn’t within the compound,” Panther says quietly just behind him. “The only two signatures are here.”

Hound follows the smell of blood, tanto drawn. The house is in pristine condition, nothing overturned or moved to show struggle. No signs of chakra usage as he passes the living room and trails through the sliding door at the back of the room. A courtyard of well manicured plants. Still no signs of battle.

Itachi’s parents were jonin. Mikoto-san had been in ANBU when Kakashi joined the ranks. Did they give in? Did he kill them while they were asleep?

He goes left, following his nose and the quiet sound of breathing. 

He stops before a half opened door, tanto at the ready. He peers into the room with a slight turn of his head. 

A training dojo lit only by a window on one side. Two bodies. A swift sweep identifies them as Uchiha Fugako and Mikoto. Kushina would have— Hound cuts the thought off. He looks at the back wall.

A girl clutches a bloodied rag to her throat, staring red eyed at Hound. Uchiha Sasuke lays with his head on her lap. Unconscious and breathing. Not bloodied compared to the girl. 

“Are you here to kill us?” the girl asks in a quiet croak. She looks genin aged, and with a slight step forward he can see calluses on her hand indicative of weapon training. No headband, no gear. She’s in pajamas. 

“Did the person who attacked you look like us?” Kakashi asks. He wants her to say no. He wants for the signs of Itachi’s techniques and chakra to have been a coincidence. He hopes he wouldn’t have worn his ANBU armor if he had done this. 

“Uchiha Itachi did this,” the girl replies dully, sharingan eyes spinning slowly. They don’t look like the typical kind he’s seen. A more advanced stage? “And he wore armor just like yours, with a mask to the side of his head, like the one on your face.”

“Were you here when he killed the clan head?” Hound continues. Panther, Yugao, makes a slight movement. Her hand is hovering over her medical supplies. She likely wants him to stop asking questions so she can make sure the genin doesn’t bleed out.

“No. I woke up after he cut my throat, and then I tried to find out if anyone lived. I found Sasuke-kun and—” her voice breaks, eyes glancing at the clan head and his wife, before back at him. Hound wonders if she knows she has her sharingan on. She’ll remember all of this for the rest of her life. 

He’s going to remember all of this for the rest of his life.

Hound sheaths his tanto and signs “Go ahead” towards Yugao. If she could sigh, he knows she would. He steps to the side so she can enter the room, palms out. 

“We aren’t going to hurt you, Uchiha-chan. We need to take you and Sasuke-kun to the hospital. Does your throat hurt?” 

Hound listens with half an ear as Yugao coaxes the genin, getting close enough to lift the rag from her throat. The cut there looks deep enough to be fatal, enough so that he’s surprised the girl is alive. 

“Hound, take her, I’ll take Sasuke-kun,” Yugao says, tone calm even as she presses the rag back to the girl’s throat with swiftness. 

He is the faster one when it comes to shunshin. Hound follows the order quickly, even though he’s the one who should be giving orders. A good taicho knows when to listen. 

“Ah. I am going to die, aren’t I?” the genin mutters to herself as he takes her into his arms. Her hand stays firm on the rag. “I don’t want Sasuke to be alone.”

Hound doesn’t reply, hoping she doesn’t throw up as he shunshin’s out of the house and onto the roof. She whimpers through the next few bursts of speed, Hound landing only for seconds on the next few rooftops before he lands at the ANBU entrance of the hospital. 

“What’s your name?” Hound asks, realizing he should have done that earlier. 

“Uchiha Masuyo,” the genin, Masuyo, says after a moment. “Genin of team Tsuyoshi. They’re all— my teammates were Uchiha.”

Hound nods and steps through the doors of the hospital. He’s swarmed almost immediately by medic nin, as per usual. Usually he’s the one they’re prodding at, though. 

“Hound, report?” the charge for tonight, Sugimoto-sensei says as she lifts the rag from Masuyo’s throat. She doesn’t curse at the sight of it, medic nin don’t do that in front of patients who aren’t Kakashi, but she does frown deeply. 

“Incident at Uchiha compound. First patient of two, other suspected genjutsu injury. First patient is genin Uchiha Masuyo, primary injury laceration to the throat. Notify the morgue of mass influx of body scrolls.”

Sugimoto-sensei pales, but nods, looking back down at the genin.

“Masuyo-chan, are you having trouble breathing?” Sugimoto-sensei asks as they usher him forwards to carry her into room three. There’s a nin hunting down blood bags, one headed towards the morgue and another rushing to the lower level archive for the genin’s file. 

“No, the laceration didn’t cut deeply enough. I didn’t feel any sucking when I pressed my hand to it and breathed,” Masuyo says. Hound enters the intensive room and lays her down on the bed, stepping back and out of the way of the three nin who circle her immediately. 

“My clan,” Masuyo starts, wincing when Sugimoto-sensei begins healing her throat. She looks pleadingly at Hound. “The morgue. Someone needs to watch the bodies. Their eyes.”

“Masuyo-chan, please stop talking. Your muscles can’t heal when they’re moving.”

Masuyo continues, much to Sugimoto-sensei’s annoyance. Her strange sharingan is still spinning, an hourglass turning into a fan. It goes faster and faster now. “Please, ANBU-san. There’s too many of them, I don’t know if I’ll be able to check them all. And Sasuke-kun is too young.” 

“Someone will watch them,” Hound, no, Kakashi finds himself promising. A stupid promise. He doesn’t know if anyone will. “Sugimoto-sensei, her sharingan.” 

“My what?” Masuyo asks faintly. An IV is being inserted into her small arm. 

Her chakra is developed enough for an Uchiha of her rank, but she’ll exhaust herself if she leaves it on longer. And he doesn’t think her remembering any more of this will help anyone. 

Sugimoto-sensei presses a glowing pair of fingers to Masuyo’s temple, and she slumps unconscious. 

Hound steps out of the room before he can make any more doomed promises, spotting Yugao carrying Sasuke to the room next to his cousin. 

“Panther,” Hound calls, watching her lay the boy onto another hospital bed and look at him. 

“Reporting to Hokage, check on team and assist in body retrieval,” Hound signs. Yugao nods firmly, and he shunshins away. 

Why was the genin so worried about her clansmen’s eyes? He realizes, belatedly, that she had called him ANBU-san. He’s going to need to speak with Lord Third about this… mess. He can’t allow himself to live in the reality of it yet, so he doesn’t. 

He can’t shake the smell of iron from his nose as he crawls through the window of the Hokage’s office. He can’t stop seeing Mikoto-san’s slack face. 

—

Masuyo wakes to an aching body. It’s not an ambling rise, she doesn’t get to linger in that in-between place where everything is soft and calm.

She sleeps, she is awake in a snap, and there is an old man at her bedside.

Not the worst old man, half his face isn’t covered in bandages, like Danzo is meant to. But not the best man either, because this old man is the Hokage.

“Hokage-sama,” Masuyo says quietly, nodding her head in a bow. Her throat doesn’t hurt with the motion, so she takes that as a win. 

Sarutobi Hiruzen is close to what she imagined, and exactly as he should be according to her stolen memories. A wizened face marked with sunspots and wrinkles, with dark cunning eyes. Shapeless pristine Hokage robes cover his frame, making him look more swallowed by them in this moment than stately. 

It may be his posture doing that to him. Or the way he’s looking at her with some kind of idle sorrow. Not enough to show regret, but enough to make him look very old. 

“Masuyo-chan. I fear we have much to speak about,” Hiruzen says carefully. 

“My clan’s bodies, are they safe?” she asks, shuffling to sit up straighter in the hospital bed. 

“Are you worried for them?” Hiruzen replies, not answering her question. 

“There’s too many eyes.” Masuyo feels sick thinking about the number of corpses. Her memories tell her there were almost five hundred members of the clan, they were one of the biggest in Konoha bar the Ino-Shika-Cho coalition. She needs to check every single one for their eyes if she’s going to be stuck here. “I don’t know— there are too many and they could go missing. I can’t let them be burned without them. Kaa-san said they can’t enter the Pure Land without them.”

Kaa-san hadn’t said that. Masuyo doesn’t care.

“Their funerals will be handled, Masuyo-chan, I promise you. No eyes will go missing while they are within the morgue. Is that your only concern?” Hiruzen asks, a concerned twist pulling at his mouth. 

That is one of too many concerns, Lord Third. Masuyo wants to hit him in the face for even asking, and then to hit Danzo harder. 

Masuyo’s face crumples against her wishes, eyes burning. She’s afraid, and she’s angry, and she’s feeling grief for people she doesn’t know. Or does, but through stolen memories. She’s in the body of a dead girl ten years younger than her. Someone may kill her now to clear up loose ends.

She’s in Naruto. The fucking anime. Someone save her.

“Sasuke-kun, was he hit with a genjutsu?” Masuyo asks, since it’s a more believable question than asking him if he’s going to kill her. 

Hiruzen nods. “A genjutsu cast by Itachi’s sharingan, yes. He hasn’t awakened yet, it’s only been a few hours since you were brought here. The medics believe he will awaken, but they are unsure of when. His mind was strained greatly by the jutsu.” 

“Were there any other survivors?”  

Hiruzen shakes his head. Masuyo works her jaw, swallowing. She looks away to the pale wall in front of her bed. 

Should she say she knew about the coup? Probably not. That seems like it will only get her killed. Her memories don’t seem to recall her being invited to any of the meetings. She’d been too fresh of a graduate and too friendly with a few non-clan members. 

“Masuyo-chan, do you know why your clan was meeting together so often?” 

Ah. Here it is. 

Masuyo looks back at him. She decides a half truth is always better than an outright lie. 

“I have too many friends outside the clan,” Masuyo starts, making sure to sound bitter about it. The real Masuyo was bitter. “The elders didn’t like it, so I wasn’t allowed in the meetings. But I’m not stupid. They were planning something, weren’t they? And that’s why Itachi did what he did.” 

The Hokage sighs, straightening just so. Then he lies. “Itachi-kun acted out of his own interests, though the reason for his involvement is still unclear. I do not believe he intended for any but his brother to survive his massacre, though, Masuyo-chan. You are a very lucky girl.”

“I don’t feel lucky, Hokage-sama. I feel alone,” Masuyo says before she can stop herself. 

Hiruzen doesn’t seem to know what to say to that for a moment, so Masuyo lifts her blanket to check herself. She’s wearing hospital pants and a shirt. The thin, white kind she’s seen some of her family in when she’s visited them at Konoha’s hospital. Understandable, considering her clothes were so bloody. They likely had to cut them off since she was unconscious. 

“What time is it, Hokage-sama?” she asks, looking down at the IV in her arm. There’s no lines attached to it, though there seems to be an empty blood transfusion bag hanging from a pole by her bed. 

“It is five in the morning. The medics suggest you have at least a day’s bedrest, I do not think it wise to try to leave yet,” Hiruzen orders, watching her take in her situation. 

“The blood needs to be cleaned out of the compound before then,” Masuyo says, rubbing her face. “And I don’t know— I don’t know how the inheritance will work, or how much money having someone do that is. I don’t even know who the clan head is, because Itachi is alive and he was the heir.”

“I will handle that, Masuyo-chan, you do not need to worry about it at this time,” the Hokage tries to soothe, raising his hands in placation. 

How does she say “I don’t trust you it's your fault this happened you stupid asshole” in a way that doesn’t get him to order her execution?

“Did you have any more questions for me, Hokage-sama?” Masuyo asks, expressly not agreeing to let him do anything, nor to not leave against medical advice. 

The Hokage shakes his head, understanding what she’s doing. “Tell me what you remember of that night, and I suppose we will be done.”

Masuyo does as he asks, wondering where the fuck she’s going to find an estate lawyer. She guesses she’ll have to go through the clan head’s house and find out if they already had one. 

—

In the end, she does have to ask for the Hokage to help with some parts. The clan compound is a gorey mess and the real Masuyo was a child, for all that legally she was an adult to the clan and the village. She didn’t know about the clan’s assets, didn’t know about the laws related to clans outside of certain things being their business and not Konoha’s business. 

So. She lets him order the cleaning of the blood, and she handles the bodies. Even though he kept telling her not to do it, and even though she’s concerned her clan’s things will be stolen or “misplaced”.

He sends an ANBU with her to the morgue, one with suspiciously silver, spiky hair. She says nothing. It’s meant to be for her safety, in case Itachi returns to finish the job. Masuyo thinks it’s really because he thinks Danzo will send ROOT after her. 

Whatever. She can die after she makes sure Danzo doesn’t get any of those fucking eyes. 

“Hound-san,” Masuyo says blandly, staring at the piles of body scrolls stacked on three tables at the front of the morgue. She feels sick. She doesn’t know if that matters. “Could you please retrieve the clan registry from the clan head’s house? It should be in Fugaku-sama’s office.”

That, Masuyo does know. Her mother had taken her over to the clan head’s house when they added her brother to the registry. Or the real Masuyo’s brother. She doesn’t know. She can’t remember her real name, it’s like an aching hole is left where it was. There are photos for each member, in case of deaths on the field and no one being around to recognize them. Though some may be old or inaccurate now. 

It’s what she has. She’ll deal with it as she goes. 

“My orders are to protect you,” Hound, or rather Kakashi says. His voice sounds odd behind his mask. Monotone and muffled in a way that reminds her of voice modulators. 

“I guess we can both walk there then,” Masuyo murmurs, still staring at the scrolls. She starts counting them, feeling sicker the higher the number climbs. How many of them were children? How many were babies? Did he kill babies? Or did he have Obito do it? 

No. She thinks she remembers Obito handling the police force in the anime. Did they retrieve those bodies too? Those will likely have the most awakened eyes. 

Kakashi seems to slump, just so, before making a hand sign. In a burst of smoke a second Kakashi appears, before it shunshins away. 

Masuyo blinks at the pile of leaves drifting to the ground where the clone of him once was. Right. Shadow clones. She forgot about those.

Masuyo looks back at the dark scrolls, resisting the urge to start counting again. “I’m sorry your team had to seal all of them.” 

Kakashi doesn’t say anything. 

She shuts her eyes, ignoring the buzzing of the bright lights in the morgue and the quiet movement of the morticians working paperwork. 

It takes a few minutes, but the clone reappears with the thick set of binders in hand. There’s four of them, all detailing the members of the clan. Masuyo takes them into her arms and sets them down at the closest table of scrolls. She’ll start there. 

They left a clear examination table for her to release the bodies onto. Now she just needs to remember how to open a scroll. She vaguely remembers how chakra works. It’s going to be very embarrassing if she, a genin, can’t open a scroll. 

She grabs a scroll on the top of the pile and walks to the examination table. 

“Hound-san, what’s the best way to unseal one of these?” she asks quietly, looking over at him. “I’ve never used one before.”

Kakashi steps stiffly forwards, carefully taking the scroll from her hand and rolling it open on the table. Inside is what must be a seal, with a small box at the bottom with a description. 

‘Boy child of seven or eight, dark haired, laceration to throat.’

“Channel your chakra to your fingers and then press above the box,” Kakashi instructs, pointing above the description. 

Masuyo does as he says, drawing at the power in herself she knew she could touch from her fake memories, but wasn’t sure would work. 

It pools easily to her fingers, and she presses them above the box.

In a burst of chakra, a small child appears on the examination desk. She recognizes him, he was one of her brother’s friends at the academy. 

“Uchiha Ryoichi,” she says weakly. She looks down at the description box of the scroll and sees its blank now. “Do you have a brush, Hound-san?” 

He does. She writes down his name in the box and then checks his eyes with gloved hands, finding them untouched. She turns to the registry binders and searches for his name to mark him as deceased. There’s a section to neatly note the date of death and cause. 

“Laceration to neck by Uchiha Itachi sounds apt,” she mutters, more to herself than to Hound. Her hand already aches at the prospect of writing down so many causes of death. 

The smart thing may be to open all of the scrolls and check the bodies before she cremates them on the funeral grounds. But that would require carrying all of the scrolls to the clan funeral grounds. 

Well, luckily the Hokage has provided her with a pack mule. She reseals Ryoichi, ever present nausea subsiding only just a little once he’s out of view. 

“Hound-san, how many scrolls do you think you can carry at once?” 

—

ch1 end notes:

if i were in this position i too would make it my life’s mission to destroy every sharingan i can before danzo has the chance to start shit. checking every head for their eyes may be really bleak, but that beats having him come for me in a couple years with freaky arm eyes.