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0. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it, and dies at the combined effort of Sasuke and an undiagnosed illness at the age of 21.
1. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it, and then goes further and spares himself and Sasuke the suffering of survivor’s guilt.
2. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. Every person has their breaking point. He commits suicide the next day, at the same ledge as Shisui. The fate of the Uchiha clan is unknown.
3. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. Every person has their breaking point. He returns home and cries and cries and cries, until his mother is awoken despite his attempt at staying quiet. She takes him in her arms and listens to words whispered under tears. She carries him into his brother’s room, lays him beside Sasuke, and tucks him in like she hasn’t for years. In the morning, Konoha is informed of Danzou’s and Sarutobi’s deaths by the blood-stained Hokage’s ceremonial robes clutched in Uchiha Mikoto’s hands, Sharingan unfurled into its flower-petal perfection. Uchiha Itachi passes away due to an autoimmune disease at 45 years old.
4. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He goes back to the clan compound, gates closing and locking behind him. They remain so for the next three days, until Uchiha “Madara” arrives at the district with a heart full of hatred. Only empty streets and houses greet their prodigal son. The fate of the Uchiha clan is unknown, but Uchiha Itachi dies in combat, aged 53.
5. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it, but when he sees his half-asleep brother stumble onto the bloodied streets, he puts him into a gentle genjutsu and carries him all the way to the Red Lantern district. There, he approaches one of the windows always left unlatched, and enters Kiyohana-san's room. Fortunately, she is not entertaining at the moment, but she is still awake. He lays Sasuke down on the plush bed and disappears without trace. They told him to kill all the Uchiha, fine. Kiyohana is not an Uchiha but her maternal grandmother had been and she looks like one, the single-tomoe Sharingan in her left eye enough to prove it. She had awakened it many years ago, when a client decided to get rough. She had also declined the invitation to live back at the compound.
Sasuke grows up surrounded by many aunts and uncles and cousins however many times removed, because Uchihas remain Uchihas even without shinobi skillsets or a clan name. They are a clan of love, and that love can be so intense it spills over into people who aren't Uchihas in blood, too, but who married in or who are only technically in-laws to Uchihas. They are civilians, Academy drop-outs, career chuunin. Some of them know their clan jutsu and kata, most don't. Sasuke grows up as a Clan Heir with an amalgamation of non-clan skills, with a prostitute Clan Head attending meetings with the Council in his place, with the knowledge that a singular Sharingan belonging to someone without his surname does not an eye-thief make. His future jounin-sensei visits a brothel to learn how to finally turn his eye off. Uchiha Itachi abandons his name, but a tea merchant by the name of Itaru dies at the age of 81, surrounded by family.
6. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it, but as much as Konoha tried to isolate them, human Uchihas were not the only ones living in the district. Sasuke wakes up to a symphony of ninnekos’ purrs and birdsong. Housecats clad in dark blue and purple keep his attention while a black panther and a group of hawks drag mutilated bodies off the streets. He is a kitten still, not yet a fledgling even, and it is the adults’ responsibility to care for their young.
In the mornings, Uchiha Sasuke is escorted to the Academy by Hina, who has the coloring of a white tiger despite being at least 100 kilograms too light for it. Her eyes are closed while she naps on his desk or near the training grounds, but her stare is piercing if she elects to open them. Inuzuka Kiba from his class becomes his best friend and fiercest enemy. A magpie or a rook, but never a crow, sit on his shoulder as he walks through the market. He buys a lot of raw meat, so as not to deplete Konoha’s wildlife too much. He play-fights using claws and fangs made with pure chakra. He falls asleep in a pile of warm fur and feathers. He is never alone. The week before graduation, he signs every Summoning Contract they bring him. When he is 32 years old, the crows bring him theirs, too.
7. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it, thinking the clan animals will take care of his brother. They do. Mei, the black panther who used to be Uchiha Mikoto’s closest companion, wakes the cub with a wet tongue to the face. She is his mother now, as the one closest to him. This world isn’t safe for human Uchihas anymore, but there are other worlds. Summons are usually born in the Summons’ Realms, but a summon’s lineage had to begin somewhere. World-born animals can ascend after tribulations or imbuement with Natural Energy.
One reverse-summoning technique later, Uchiha Sasuke is brought to Nekomata’s court, who is second only after the Matatabi. The Bakeneko prepares to scare him off from becoming a Summoner at such a young age, but Mei did not bring the cub there to become one. There are some difficulties in rearing a kitten that is biologically different from every other inhabitant of the Fortress, just as there would be difficulties in rearing a blind or deaf or otherwise disabled ninneko. It takes years for the kitten’s claws to sharpen, fangs to grow in properly, for ears to ascend to their proper place, for irises to learn how to turn from slits to circles. He is Uchiha no longer, for cats do not belong to clans or families or legacies, they only belong to themselves and who they choose. He signs the Contract, on the summons’ side.
Had Uchiha Itachi not died in a humiliatingly stupid accident at the age of 24, he might have one day heard the tale of Izuno Wasabi’s cursed ninneko, a youkai by the name of Sasuke, who some claim had to have been human once.
8. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it. Sasuke spends a week at the hospital, and then a week at the compound. The news of the massacre have spread far and wide, and it is unbecoming of the last Uchiha not to appear in public. The hokage tells him to return to the Academy after the weekend.
He never does, though, because on Sunday evening three people dressed in mottled fur jackets ride into Konoha on horses whose shiny black coats are a match only to their riders’ hair. There are three per person, but none are used as pack animals. As the group comes to a stop, the animals stomp their feet impatiently, steam coming out of nostrils and fire in their uncovered eyes. Their skin is not the porcelain Sasuke is used to seeing accompany Uchiha features, but a sun-kissed tan.
"Before the Shinobi Villages – before Shinobi, really – some of us yearned to settle down, hold territory amongst the others. So they did” his Uncle-cousin-however-many-times-removed tells him as he pokes his forehead. "We’ll make a nomad out of you yet.”
Sasuke does not return to the Academy. He learns the best war-steeds are mares instead, and how to shoot a moving target while you yourself are a moving target, and how to deliver a foal. How to survive in the wilds of the steppe and a dozen other environments, how to build a tent and dismantle it, how to tame a bird of prey despite not quite being a tamed human.
Uchiha Itachi at age 25 is the equivalent of a lame horse. Sasuke puts him down with a single arrow to the eye from hundreds of meters away.
9. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it. The Hyuuga and the Uchiha were once a single clan, and they can help him when he awakens his own doujutsu. The Hyuuga also love their formalities and rites and traditions, and since he wasn’t born one, there’s only one other way to become a clan member. The hokage signs off on his engagement to one Hyuuga Neji, who is only one year older but who has had a slave’s seal etched into his forehead for two already.
They don’t quite get along, at first. It takes them some time to realise they are each other’s only helpline. By then, they both know Neji’s position in the clan, the infuriating politics, that their match was made to sniff out both bloodlines. But until they are both legally adults and married, Sasuke is not quite a Hyuuga yet, no seal marrs his skin. They cannot control his actions, and, well. They’ve always supported him learning traditional Uchiha arts, he’d be the last anyways.
The week before Sasuke is slated to become genin, meaning adult, meaning of marrying age, meaning of sealing age, almost a year since they’ve found an actually trustable adult in the form of Neji’s jounin-sensei, Sasuke brings his palm to his betrothed’s forehead and burns his skin enough to remove any impurities. They are both terrified, but arrive at the hospital, where the bandages under Neji’s hitai-ate are smothered in healing salves. A week later, Hyuuga Neji, no, just Neji, is the first Hyuuga-by-birth to marry out of the clan in centuries. Uchiha Itachi does not attend that sham of a wedding, but he does observe the proper wedding reception held years later from afar. The grooms are amidst partially scarred faces they both grew up around, this time each silhouette embroidered with a red-white fan. Becoming an Uchiha is easy for any Hyuuga. They were once a single clan, after all. Itachi? Sasuke has heard enough not to give a shit about older brothers.
10. Uchiha Itachi is 13 years old when he is ordered to kill every Uchiha other than himself and his brother and given 3 days to fulfill it. He does it. The following morning, an ANBU has to knock out one Uchiha Sasuke to be able to bring the traumatised child to the hospital. A few days later, the doctor discharges him. Sasuke refuses to leave. He bites and snarls and kicks when they try to force him to leave the building and return to the place of slaughter. The Hokage gets involved, tries to reassure him Itachi’s gone, but Sasuke knows better. There is one place in Konoha the jounins avoid like the plague, and Itachi is a jounin. He cannot overpower the shinobi set to get him out of his fortress, but he can threaten to hurt himself if they do.
Uchiha Sasuke makes himself into a permanent resident. Had Tsunade stayed in the village, perhaps there would have been a mental health ward for him to reside in. Beds in a hospital are in limited supply, so the nurses reorganise one of the storage rooms and pitch in to create something of a bedroom. He refuses to go to the Academy, since that would mean leaving the building, so Iruka-sensei comes by every weekend with worksheets. Sitting alone in a basement room is not acceptable, thus Mondays he spends sitting next to the receptionist, Thursdays with maintanance workers or cleaning staff, and the rest with medical professionals of all kinds.
He learns first aid and basic medical knowledge without trying, simply by accompanying everyone everywhere. After seeing your family members mutilated, the sight of injury or illness is nothing. He refuses to touch a kunai, but he does train his body in the rehabilitation center’s gym and meditates whenever the doctors tell him not to bother the patients. Someone eventually points him at an anatomy textbook to dissuade him from following them into the virology labs. He does not want to know how to perform the Great Fireball Technique but he does pester the medical-nins about Mystical Palm.
What he does not practice, he knows in theory, and so despite never attending the Academy training grounds even once after the massacre, he graduates. He leaves the hospital for the first time only after leaving his newly-earned forehead protector inside. His teammates are the pathetic dead-last, supposedly good at traps, and the rookie-and-kunoichi-of-the-year with a predatory grin and a killer punch. The sensei takes one look at his self-made headband with the kanji for doctor in place of Konoha’s symbol and sighs very loudly. Uchiha Itachi is 21 when he is hunted down, diagnosed with microscopic polyangiitis, and healed against his will by Tsunade’s apprentice. He passes away at 99 years old.