Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You were 6 years old when you first noticed the quiet boy that frequented your father's shop. 

He always stood silently at the counter, always waiting his turn without a single word, no matter the crowd; the one who kept to himself, except for asking a few technical questions about the displayed weapons; the one who didn't ever pay any mind to your—or anyone else's, blatant staring, only purchasing what he wanted and leaving just as quietly as he came in. 

The minute you saw him, your mind immediately clicked to the academy girls that passed hushed whispers and shy glances at his fleeting figure walking through the academy's training grounds. You wanted to get a look too, but you couldn't find the room to fit in when they all swarmed the windows, like moths to a flame. In midst of their whispers, you could pick up a few stray words sprinkled in.

Something, something, Itachi... 

Was that... his name? Or were they just calling him a weasel?

You couldn't help but think that as you curiously looked at the other girls, wondering if you would ever be able to see the human weasel they were all so captivated with. 

Well, you did. And true to the quiet squeals you heard, he really was eye-catching, almost as if his presence alone demanded the attention of the universe. He seemed like someone important, someone worthy of such revelry. 

But... in the walls of your father's smithy, the same weasel was nothing but a total weirdo. 

You'd expect someone with such fame and attention to get haughty or prideful, maybe even a huge chunk of arrogance mixed in that personality of theirs. They'd walk around like they owned the village, or flaunt their presence like it was gift sent from God, Himself.

And yet, whenever you saw him in the smithy—always on a Friday, he'd be standing in that same spot: never moving, never changing. Almost like a ghost haunting a house, never to leave. His spot itself was nothing short of strategically curated—farthest from other customers but close enough to turn to your father for any inquiry.

He never strayed much from that spot, only ever moving around to check a certain sword on the wall before going back to his spot like he was some kind of potted plant. 

The more you watched him, the more you noticed how different he was from your perceived version of him. 

He seemed about a year or two older than you, with hair darker than the night sky and side locks neatly cut to almost reach his chin. The rest of his hair was long enough to be collected into that small ponytail he always tied on the lower back of his head. His eyes were a similar shade of pitch black, just like his hair, but the faint tear troughs near them gave him a much more tired, mature vibe. 

If you had to use one word to describe him, it would be... pretty.

Not just pretty as in random pretty, but more like a stop and watch kind of pretty. An almost ethereal kind of facial harmony existed between his symmetrical features, giving him that perfect image he so effortlessly embodied. 

But sometimes, those obsidian eyes of his would reflect a deep shade of maroon—something that never failed to catch you off guard. 

You swore it was the lighting in the smithy playing tricks on you, but the shift in color was so distinct that it was hard to blame it all on the lighting. 

However, the day you got to have a closer look at the emblem on his back, you knew for certain that you weren't crazy for imagining the changing of his eye color.

An Uchiha. 

It was getting rarer and rarer to see an Uchiha out in the open like this. In fact, you weren't even sure when was the last you had seen an Uchiha walking about in the streets. You didn't think you had seen him anywhere else in the village except for your father's smithy or the academy.

And it didn't seem like anyone else paid it much mind either, which was odd. It was weird to see him without the fanfare of his countless admirers scurrying behind him, trying to catch a glimpse. Last time you checked, everyone loved watching this guy like he had two heads instead of one. 

In the smithy, however, it almost felt like he was someone only you could see. 

You would have thought of that as true had your mother not noticed him as well. It happened out of the blue, but she had managed to pick up on how you always watched the older boy with an attentive gaze.

"Oho, looks like our little [Name]-chan's got a cruuuush~" she sang, her cheeks lifting up from the magnitude of her teasing grin. You could feel your own cheeks flaring up in heat the moment you heard your mother, "Wha–?! I-Its not like that!" You defended, not even sure what gave that away. 

You didn't like him like that! Not in the way your mother loved your father! Ew, that was so gross—so blegh! 

"Oh, really?" She chuckled, ruffling your hair in order to tease you even more. You couldn't help but push the hand away and back away from her a little. "Y-Yeah, I'm sewious!" You sputtered to defend yourself, but your 6 year old lisp wasn't helping much.

The boy wasn't even that far from you two, and you were not going to risk him hearing you!

"Come on, he's actually cute." She reasoned, "Why don't you try talking to him, sweetie?" Your mother tried suggesting, but you were already shaking your head, just as you were shaking in your tiny boots.

There was no way you were going to talk to him.

He was clearly older than you, came from a famously strong clan and was way cooler than a loser hermit like you, who could hardly speak a full sentence without hiding behind her mother's skirt. 

Just because you thought he was pretty didn't mean you had to go and introduce yourself! Why couldn't you just appreciate his pretty face in silence and remain quietly in the shadows?!

Thankfully, your mother dropped the topic and didn't bring it up. If she had forgotten about it or if she had chosen to let you keep your peace, you didn't know. But you certainly appreciated the fact that your parents let you continue in your weird, borderline-creepy ways without stopping you. 

It wasn't as if you like–liked him, anyways...!

You just... appreciated the symmetrical features he bore!

As the daughter of two artisans, you couldn't help but appreciate beauty when you saw it, that was all.

Besides! There was no denying it that he was pretty!

Just like your father, who was the very pinnacle of beauty in your little neighborhood. In fact, your father was so good-looking that even after his marriage, he had people swooning over his angelic features. Every time you looked at him, you couldn't help but sigh to yourself over your pathetic luck.

If only you could have inherited your father's beauty...! 

You would have worked wonders with it! Never would you have had to lift a single finger, if you had inherited your father's beauty. You could have just married some rich guy and lived the rest of your life as his pretty, trophy wife. But no! God decided to grant you the shorter end of the stick and made you a carbon copy of your mother.

If your father and that Uchiha boy were the definition of pretty, then your mother was the definition of ordinary. And by extension, that made you ordinary and boring too. 

However, the issue lied in the fact that not only did your mother have a very simple face, but she also ended up marrying a total eye candy. So it only made both your mother and you, the favorite targets of your relatives.

Your grandmother often told you that when your mother was young, she was affectionately called ugly duckling by your relatives. They said it was a shame that your grandmother's beauty went to waste. Because it was obvious that your mother hadn't inherited any of it, and came out looking as plain as cardboard.

Unfortunately, you were no different. 

And so, from the day you were born, your nickname came along with you. 

The uglier duckling. 

Wow, what a bunch of assholes. They really knew how to lower a kid's morale, huh?

You just hoped that regardless of your plain face, one day you would find someone who would love you the same way your father loved your mother. 

Unfortunately, that dream of yours remained just that: a dream. Because not only did you find out at the age of 11 that your little puppy crush had ended up killing his entire clan in cold blood, but also because the man that you got engaged to (the son of a family friend) was a total piece of shit. Armed with the audacity that only a man could possess, he thought his prettier-than-yours face earned him the right to threaten you with the idea of breaking off the engagement whenever he didn't get his way. 

You were half tempted to just break the engagement off yourself, but you found no need for that when, at the ripe age of 19, after having taken over your mother's business as the local seamstress, you died in a very—and you mean, very pathetic manner. 

You got crushed to death. 

It was quick and painless. You had been with your father buying groceries when you heard the hollers in the street, the whole neighborhood running and screaming about how there had been an attack on the village by an orange haired man. That was when your eyes widened in horror—huge chunks of rubble were raining down like a simulation of the doom's day itself!

And just as fast as the rubble was falling, it happened, almost in the blink of an eye. 

One moment you were gawking at the debris making its way towards your father, and the next—you pushed him out of the way. You didn't even know you could move that fast. But at that moment all you could think about was how sad your mother would be if your father were to die here.

There was no way you could possibly comfort your grieving mother all by yourself. Your father had to be the one next to her, holding her to his chest as she mourned.

He had to...!

He had to survive, no matter what. 

You watched your father's eyes widen, not in fear of the falling rock, but in horror as he saw his ordinary, unremarkable daughter lunging towards him, hand outstretched as you pushed him out of the way. 

You only had a split second to realize what had happened when you heard the screams echoing in your ears—just before the rubble fell on your body and crushed you to death. 

It was quick and painless, yes.

But it was also... a very pathetic way to go.

All it took was one squish, and you died. Like an ant under your shoe, you got killed just as easily. It wasn't even sad! The fact that your parents wouldn't have a body to mourn over was more saddening for you than your own death.

Oh, well... A nobody like you was bound to die in a boring way like this.

You weren't anyone special or notable, and you doubted your life would have ever ended in a flashy way like those ninjas. 

And so, your simple and mundane life came to an end, just like that. You were sure the only thing to greet you from now on would be the darkness of the afterlife. The same eternal darkness you so expected to see after all that fiasco (honestly, you didn't think you had done anything special that would earn you heaven. But then again, you had never done anything wrong, either, to earn Hell. The only plausible option left was limbo). 

Only... it never came.

Instead, you were greeted with light.

Your eyes blinked wearily, like a bear returning from its hibernation, half convinced that this was just what the afterlife looked like. In the back, you could hear the hustle and bustle that you had only ever heard back in the smithy. Metal hitting metal, the clanging sound of weapons being stacked over each other, the senbon needles clinking together as your mother stacked them in their spot. The chatter amongst the customers as they counted the kunais they purchased.

You tried to look around, but you felt your breath get caught in your throat when you looked up ahead.

Your parents were there, exactly where they’d always been, working in the smithy as though nothing had happened. There was no rubble, no screaming villagers, no crushed bodies, no blood, no nothing.

Just... people—life. 

Your hands trembled, your knees felt like they would give out any second and for a moment, you thought you might be dreaming. Or perhaps this was what people meant when they said your life flashes before your eyes before death.

Yeah, that had to be it...!

Your brain was probably showing you a final moment of mercy. Mercy that you deserved from the world instead. You kept trying to convince yourself that this was just your brain replaying your memories. You didn't even realize what was happening around you as you were stuck in your thoughts. It wasn't until you heard the chime of the door that you realized that someone had just entered the shop. 

That was when you saw him. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you caught sight of a lone boy scanning the shop with a curious glint in his eyes.

... The quiet Uchiha boy.

Your heart stopped for a second.

No...

He couldn’t be here. Not him. Not that–that... murderer.

You knew what happened to him. You saw what he did. You knew what he did to both his parents and his whole clan. He wasn’t supposed to be here, eyes big and filled with childlike innocence, as if he was just another, normal child.

As if it was just another Friday at the smithy, back when you were young. He walked up to the same spot you had always seen him at, with those dark eyes fixed on the weapons hanging off the walls in your father’s shop... just like how you remembered.

You could feel your heart pounding in your ears as your gaze locked onto the back of his head. Unlike all the times you hid while watching him, you couldn’t find yourself looking away this time. It was almost as if your brain was begging for proof that this was actually happening. That you really were back here again. 

But then... he looked back.

For a moment, you felt like you were going to throw up. A chill ran up your spine as soon as you saw him return your gaze with one of his own. 

But what froze you wasn’t the eye contact. It wasn't even the fact that you immediately recalled the carnage this boy would grow up to leave behind. No... it was the fact that his eyes shined with confusion for a few seconds before his lips twitched, ever so slightly, into something you had never seen before.

A smile.

It was small, almost hesitant. As if he wasn't even sure how to respond to your blatant staring in a more respectful manner. But that alone was the proof you so desperately needed and wanted. 

Uchiha Itachi had never smiled at you. He barely even noticed you.

That single expression shook your world upside down. It changed everything you thought you once knew about life and what came after it.

This wasn’t a memory. This wasn’t a dream. And this certainly wasn’t the afterlife.

This was... your second chance at life, itself.

 Your second life was... rather short. 

As opposed to your first life, in which you had nothing to do with being a ninja, this time you figured you'd put your—almost—clairvoyant-esque memories to use by trying to change the impending doom that awaited the people of this village. 

Your attempts at becoming a ninja weren't exceptional but they somehow managed to make the cut. Unlike the infamous Uchiha Itachi, who was rumored to be a prodigy amongst prodigies, you were nothing but... average. 

Chakra control? Average. 

Chakra reserves? Average.

Fighting skills? Average. 

Physical prowess? Average.

Mental prowess? Average. 

At this point, you felt like you were a caricature of absurd normality. Even a random passerby had more skills to offer than you! And here you were, with your 5/10 rating in every aspect of being a ninja. Maybe it would have been fine—just like it was in your previous life—if you didn’t already know how much the world was going to need your foresight.

There were literal massacres that were waiting to happen, wars that were in the making, people that were destined to die, and if you failed to succeed, you weren't sure you'd get another chance to fix everything. 

Unfortunately, there wasn't much you could do at this point. You weren't an Uchiha or a Hyūga, or even a Nara or an Aburame. You were you. Simple and probably not even cut out for this kind of work. Only, you had a duty. As a fellow Konoha citizen, it was your job to help everyone you could.

However, your naive attempts to help didn't amount to much, because not only did you fail to stop the Uchiha massacre (Uchiha Itachi was one slippery bastard!) but also because you only really managed to reach the level of chunin in your second life, when not even a year after your promotion, you ended up dying in the attack on Konoha by Sunagakure.

You really, really thought that was the end. A second life, you can understand. But a third? That was just impossible. 

... It turned out, life had a fun way of turning impossible to probable, just for the sake of toying with you. 

And so, after ending your second life at the age of 16, you restarted yet again.

Back to square one, when you were 6 years old, standing in the smithy watching the Uchiha heir carefully choose a small pack of kunais and another pack of shuriken.

This couldn't be happening...

You shook your head in disbelief, not trusting your own eyes. But one prick off the senbon needles your mother had been so carefully arranging and you realized the truth. 

This really was happening. 

Almost immediately, your mind went blank. What the hell?! Was dying twice not enough? Did you really end up back here for the third time?

This had to be a joke! It just had to! 

It took you about a whole ten minutes to calm down. Even though you had kept Uchiha Itachi waiting to pay for his purchases, you figured you had bigger problems to deal with than running the counter in your third life.

And even though it was hard to focus, you tried to return your attention back to the problem at large. 

You tried your best to look at the bright side of it. You kept telling yourself that this was it. Third time's the charm, right? You were ought to succeed, right? You had knowledge of future events, and basic understandings of being a ninja, you could even pass as a prodigy if you showed your skills early on in the academy. 

Unfortunately, that didn't age very well. 

It was a true shame, really. You really thought you might be able to do something by your third life, but this one was even shorter than your second. 

Apparently, no one had ever told you the unspoken rule about never listening in on a conversation between two powerful-looking old men.

You didn't know that stumbling your way into the deeper parts of the woods in the name of training and accidentally listening in on a conversation between a one-eyed old man and the Hokage would get you executed right then and there.

If someone had told you, you probably could have avoided that.

Well, it wasn't as if it was an issue, because not even a few seconds later, you woke up back to that godforsaken sight.

Back at the smithy.

Back in the body of 6-year old you.

Back to watching Uchiha Itachi purchase his kunais and shuriken. 

Your fourth life began just as abruptly as your third ended. 

This time, however, you were more determined than aghast. You were done making mistakes! You were going to succeed in saving everyone in this life and finally get out of this stupid timeloop! 

... You didn't break out of the loop by your 4th life.

If anything, you ended up dying at the age of 10 when a random drunk ninja tried to perform a trick with his kunai, only to end up sticking it through your jugular instead.

... It seemed like determination didn't always equate to survival. 

Although, it wasn't as if your fifth life was any better either. Because apparently, getting struck by a poison-laced shuriken during a mission and not having a medical-nin on the team to extract it leads to death pretty fast, or so you learned. 

Your sixth was just a mockery. How on Earth does one even die at the hands of the Akatsuki, only for taking the wrong route?! How shit of a luck did you have?!

One after the either, each death seemed more absurd than the last. You hadn't even gotten close to helping anyone when you could hardly keep yourself alive in the shinobi world.

Was it really this hard to stay alive as a ninja, or were you just really bad at it?

Clearly, being a ninja wasn't your calling, and the fact that you kept dying to such stupid reasons solidified the thought in your head.

By your 16th life, you had realized that maybe this wasn't going to end as soon as you thought it would. There had to be some way to get out of this loop, right? Perhaps, God decided to give you this ability to help people that were suffering...? To right the wrong and give those people a second chance that truly deserved it?

That had to be it! All you had to do was persevere and help those who were unfortunate. Soon everything would be okay, right?!

Why else would such an ability exist?

By your 22nd life, however, that idea quickly got tossed in the bin. This was clearly divine punishment. Or a mockery from the Devil, perhaps? Only the Devil would be capable of thinking of something so sinister as to torture a poor, mortal soul like this. There's no way God would ever put you through this.

You weren't his strongest soldier. Hell, you weren't even a soldier to begin with!

You were a simple villager, who was constantly getting fucked over by whatever divine entity thought it was funny to give a mortal, unlimited lives. 

You had no way of checking your hypothesis but that seemed to make the most sense to you.

Your 45th life... Well, that one was actually pretty boring. The only notable thing about it was saving a fluffy white cat that almost got crushed under a tree. Other than the fact that it was an oddly misplaced cat, you really didn't think much about it.

However, when the white cat revealed itself to be a nin-cat, more specifically the leader of a solitary cat summoning clan, that was when your random act of kindness ended up getting you, your very own summoning contract. 

Out of 'gratitude', you were given a contract of a feline. Not a lion or a tiger, or even a leopard or jaguar. Instead, it was a small, brown puma named Tokimaru. 

Tokimaru was smaller than other summoning cats, much smaller. He had a weak bite force and his chakra reserves and control were bad enough that even yours looked better in comparison.

He was the literal runt of his litter—someone that you had to train through your own efforts to actually get somewhere. Not the strongest, but you managed to make it work.

You were pretty sure the other cats had given you Tokimaru's contract as a form of mockery for your lack of strength, even if you had saved their stupid leader. The idea alone should have broken your spirits.

But to be honest, you didn't really seem to mind.

Sure, Tokimaru was a bit of a snarky fellow, a little too cautious around you and extremely snappy, growling at every second you got too close, but... he was also loyal—extremely so. 

To the point that he never once left your side, even when you were ambushed by Sand ninjas, even when your own teammates had chosen to abandoned you because of your broken leg. You could feel your imminent death approaching once again.

And yet, Tokimaru still fought. 

He fought with all he had, even though it was a lost cause. He tried his best to keep your body warm, to keep your breath going, to keep your heart beating. Watching him work so hard just to keep you alive almost made you want to live, but you knew your time was up. 

There was no saving you in this life. 

Your only regret, however, would be leaving him to fend off the remaining Sand ninjas as you bled to your 45th death. You could only pray that your death would annul the contract, just as you sent him back to his realm before he got killed too. 

However, this life served as an important lesson to you: Tokimaru was a useful comrade, one that outmaneuvered even ferocious lions and powerful tigers, with his loyalty alone. 

And so, you made a promise to yourself that day. You didn't know how many more lives you were going to live, but in every single one, you were going to choose Tokimaru. Not have him handed as a mockery, or a begrudging debt payment, but as a companion.

As your contract. 

You'd earn Tokimaru back, even if you had to spend a hundred more lives doing so. 

From your very first life up until your 53rd one, you had been curious as to what even was the deal with Uchiha Itachi. 

You wanted to know why that quiet boy you always saw at the smithy, decided to randomly kill his family one day and then leave only his younger brother. Was it love that stopped him from finishing the deed? Or was it the psychopathic wish to watch Uchiha Sasuke suffer in his own grief and sorrow? 

You'll admit your efforts towards finding out the truth had been... rather useless. 

You had given your everything in the academy classes, and after a certain point, thanks to your numerous lives, you were finally allowed to graduate at a much, much earlier time than most other student. But even that wasn't enough because your target was never graduating early.

It was getting scouted into the ANBU Black Ops.

But no matter how hard you tried, they didn't seem to care for you. Even when you graduated just a year older than at the age Uchiha Itachi did (that is, the age of 9), you were still shoved into a normal genin team where your teammates treated you like a baby.

It felt like to be initiated into ANBU, you had to have either the skills of fucking Senju Hashirama himself, or you had to have solved something as big as the Brain-Chakra Theory. There was no in-between. 

So technically speaking, your inability to enter ANBU wasn't exactly a surprise. Honestly, you were well aware even after 53 lives, you still weren't good enough to be considered a prodigy, maybe someone considerably above average, but never a prodigy. 

And it made sense too, especially considering that your chakra reserves were kinda crappy to begin with. So even though you knew some pretty advanced jutsus for your age, it still didn't change the fact that you were like a single-shot gun in most fights. 

You were only be able to perform one advanced jutsu before your body would collapse from chakra exhaustion. While your control on chakra itself never reset even with every new timeline (considering the spiritual energy was linked to your experiences and intellect), every other ability of yours did. It didn't matter if it was your chakra reserves, your physical strength or your taijutsu, you were practically forced to start anew each time.

How wonderful. 

So maybe it was for a reason that you couldn't get scouted into ANBU. Because even if you gave it your all, you'd still have to at least show some sort of skill that would make you stand out, but the only skill you could offer was your excellent chakra control (that too only because of living 53 lives).

But there was a limit to how far chakra control could take you if your other stats were total trash. 

And placing you in front of such powerhouses like Itachi or Hatake Kakashi, or even the famed Uchiha Shisui, it only killed any hopes you had. Comparing yourself to someone else was tough—hell, even kid Itachi showed you the truth that was laid out so perfectly. 

Until you could find a loophole to somehow catch the Hokage's eye—or whoever was in charge of initiating kids in the ANBU, you'd have to settle with just progressing like a normal genin. 

So with no hopes for success through your plan A, you figured you'd focus on something else.

Your new plan? Get an inside glimpse in the Uchiha clan's workings. 

That was easier said than done, especially considering how fucking paranoid and secretive the Uchiha were. They literally went apeshit when a villager even got a feet too close to their compound. How could you possibly expect to get a scoop from their inner networks if they were all so secretive?!

But... the opportunity presented itself to you when you came across Uchiha Izumi. 

She was a girl about two years older than you, placed in the same team as you because you both managed to graduate in the same year. Becoming Izumi's friend was a piece of cake, especially since you were on the same team as her. But that wasn't even the best part.

With Izumi came along the inside network that you were so vying for. 

It wasn't even a goal that was listed in your to-do list. Honestly, you were just trying to befriend the main players in the Uchiha massacre, but Izumi was so much more easier to get along with than Itachi, that you couldn't help yourself. 

It also didn't help that you and Izumi had a shared love for fashion, so it really didn't take that long for your friendship with Izumi to blossom.

It started off small.

Little tips shared during team training became occasional hang-outs in the afternoon after missions, that soon turned into planned meetings, before finally they coalesced into unplanned, sporadic meet-ups everyday.

Soon enough, you both would be at each other's house almost every other day, talking about the most arbitrary things like normal girls your age. 

Eventually, Izumi began telling you everything, ranging from the gossip she'd hear around the compound, to showing you her actual Sharingan that she had unlocked after watching her father die at the age of 5. 

It was odd, honestly. 

Even in your original life, you never got to have such a close friend. You were well known in your neighborhood, sure. But that was only because you were amicable towards the neighborhood aunties and helped the kids by building them little ramps and whatnot with the knowledge working at your father's smithy had given you. 

But that didn't mean that you had a close friend like Izumi. At most, you would consider your original life's friends as mere... acquaintances.

It was just how your life had been up until this point. 

Spending time with Izumi made you realize how much you needed to save the Uchiha clan. These people that you had been constantly told to ostracize, were no different than you were. Most of them were a bit stoic and definitely on the extreme side of many things, but many of them were also kind, gentle and loving, like Izumi. 

If you had to stop the Uchiha massacre, you'd have to start with Izumi. She was your best friend, and more than anyone, she deserved to live a full life and grow older like anyone else.  

Unfortunately... your first attempt, which consisted of having her stay over at your house on the night of the massacre, didn't end well. 

Uchiha Itachi really did live up to his name as weasel, because he was one slippery bastard. 

Even though you had attempted to stay up all night to protect Izumi in case that guy showed up, you quickly found yourself a victim of Itachi's genjutsu. When you woke up from the genjutsu, Izumi's dead body was lying next to you, a soft smile on her lips like she was dreaming happily. 

Your second attempt consisted of just telling her straight out that Itachi would kill her, but she immediately went quiet upon hearing that. She withdrew herself from you and didn't talk, even when you attempted to visit her. The last time you visited her in that life, you found her corpse lying in a puddle of her own blood. 

Your third and fourth attempts were to get her to join you outside the village. You naively thought that if you just got her out of the village, she'd live. Unfortunately, that wasn't true.

Uchiha Itachi? More like Uchiha the-fucking-hound Itachi because that bastard managed to sniff her out there too and killed her when you got caught in another genjutsu trap. Although she didn't die with a smile on her face like she did in the others, you were awoken to the sight of her corpse yet again. 

Your fifth attempt? That one was... rather stupid. You tried to knock Izumi out and hide her in your house until the massacre, but not only did that get you arrested for kidnapped, Izumi still fucking died! 

At this point, it seemed like Itachi had a personal vendetta against your friend. Which was weird, because from what Izumi had told you, she managed to get along with Itachi well enough. They weren't close friends but they weren't sworn enemies either. At most, you could call them close acquaintances. 

So why Itachi was hell bent on killing her, going as far as to hunt her down when you hid her, never made sense to you. 

But you weren't going to give up so easily. If Itachi was going to sniff her out everytime, then you'd protect Izumi until the end. So you figured the next best thing would be to fight Itachi head on when he came to attack Izumi and give her that short window to escape. 

Did you have faith in your plan? Absolutely not. You knew for certainty that a prodigy like Itachi was going to beat the ever living shit out of you. There was no way you could compete with him, not even if you lived a thousand lives. Hell, you might die in the first five minutes even if you managed to avoid looking into his Sharingan. So, knowing that you couldn't hold him off, your only option was to get Izumi enough time to run away, just enough for her to get away from that monster. 

Even if it cost you one of your many lives. 

But when the time came, your pleas for Izumi to run away fell on deaf ears. She seemed to stare at Itachi with a knowing look in her eyes. 

"IZUMI, GET AWAY!" You screamed, using every jutsu you had in your arsenal to keep Itachi at bay, even if your body screamed with chakra exhaustion (if Uchiha Itachi didn't take you out, your pathetic chakra reserves surely would). You could tell that none of your jutsus were doing much damage to him, but the fear that one look at his eyes and you'd be caught in a terrifying genjutsu had you crying. You had tears streaming down your face as you kept begging her, but she just remained silent, keeping her gaze stuck to Itachi. 

"So this is your decision, Itachi-kun?" Izumi quietly asked, but never earning a response from the boy.

"IZUMI?!" Your screams didn't have any effect. She just sighed, as if she knew this was coming. "Okay..." I understand." She accepted, before she walked over to stand in front of you. 

"Just... keep her out of this, Itachi-kun," she said to Itachi, and you could see his cold eyes glaring daggers at you. But at that moment, you could have cared less about Uchiha Itachi, you couldn't give a shit about the rest of the world around you. 

All you could see was Izumi's brave facade cracking as her hands shook with tremors. You could see the tears pooling in her eyes. But she never once stood down. She never once ran.

She... she looked as if she had accepted her fate. 

Why did Izumi act like she knew this was going to happen?! Why was she okay with this?! Why wasn't she running away—

"[Name]-chan... Live a long and happy life for me, okay?" 

You still remember her soft, tear-stricken smile as she turned to you to say that. 

Those were Izumi's last words to you as she used her Sharingan and knocked you out. 

By the time you woke up, she was already dead. And so was the rest of the clan. 

Again. 

You had spent 6 whole lives trying to save at least Izumi, but you always ended up failing. You thought that maybe if you just gave it your all, you could at least save one person. 

At this point... did the Uchiha clan even want to live? Or had they accepted their fate? 

No... No, they couldn't have. Izumi had so many dreams: she wanted to become a strong kunoichi, she wanted to confess to Itachi, she wanted to visit your father's smithy and request for a custom sword, she wanted to buy some new dresses for her mother, she wanted to take you to her father's grave and introduce you to him as her best friend, she wanted to get a nin-cat contract like you too...

She had so much to do, so much she had planned! How can you accept that she didn't want to live?! That she had accepted her fate?!

You asked yourself that question once more in your 7th attempt to save her. You had given the whole of the Uchiha an anonymous tip that Itachi had betrayed them and was coming to kill them, hoping that even if Izumi had resigned to her fate, the others wouldn't have. And that they would drag her out of the compound too. 

Except, when you reached her house, Uchiha Itachi had just sliced his sword through her. You watched her body fall to the floor, blood pooling around her and a faint smile still present on her thin lips, as if she had been dreaming about something nice yet again. 

Itachi didn't stop you when you dragged yourself towards Izumi's bleeding body. 

Your knees gave out as soon as you saw her, lifeless yet happy. Like this was something she was okay with. Like this was something she was happy with. 

Your hand brushed a few of her bloody brown locks away from her face, as if you were trying to fix her up one last time. Like you always used to before she had to go for a clan meeting.

"I... don't understand you, Uchiha Itachi." You started, almost absentmindedly, like you were having a passing conversation with an acquaintance—not your friend's killer. 

He didn't respond, but you still continued. Lifetimes of frustration and confusion festered inside of you, but you could only bring yourself to speak of it so lightly. 

"No matter how many times I try, no matter how many lives I live... you're someone I can't understand." You could feel him narrow his eyes at you, but you didn't care. You simply turned to him with a dead look on your face, "Why? Didn't you once have everything? Friends, family, talent, fame... Why do you do this every time? What do you even gain from this?" 

"Leave now and I might spare you."

That was all you got in response. But you were too far gone to listen. "No... That doesn't make sense..." You muttered, looking at Izumi's blood pooling at the ground, as if that would provide you any answers. "It's almost like... the massacre is tied to your existence. You always kill them, even when I change the location. Even when I hide Izumi away..." 

But then, a thought entered your mind. It was twisted, it was fucked up, it shouldn't have even entered your mind, but it did. At that moment, that was the only solution that made sense to you. 

"Maybe... I should just... kill you."

Your face slowly started lighting up, as if you had realized something astronomical. As if you had suddenly recieved an epiphany. 

"Yeah...! If there's no you, there can't be a massacre! No you means that Izumi can finally live!" By now, Itachi had his sword pointed at you, ready to cut you down if you dared strike. 

But then... you did something that shook him to the core. You took the kunai in your pouch and smiled softly to yourself. For the first time in your many lives, you actually had a concrete plan that made sense to you, that actually seemed to guarantee your friend's life in exchange for Itachi's. A plan on how to stop the massacre. If Uchiha Itachi was the root of all evil, then maybe you should just nip the evil in the bud. 

He's too strong for you right now but... he might be weaker, easier to strike as a child...! 

An unassuming child simply browsing weapons at your father's smithy... how easy would it be to just stab him in the neck and let him bleed out!

"If you attack, I will not show any mercy." Itachi reminded, and you kept eerily smiling, "You know, Itachi..." You called out, finally looking up and offering him a wide grin that stretched ear-to-ear.

"Your mother should have killed you in the womb." 

Those were your last words before you stuck your own kunai in your head and killed yourself. 

The minute you woke up again at the smithy, back in the body of 6 year old you, you knew exactly what you had to do.

And it all started with Itachi entering the shop, as always. 

You could feel the blood rushing in your ears, your heart hammering against your chest, your breath tightening, just like your resolve to kill an 8 year old Uchiha Itachi.

You grabbed a nearby kunai and found yourself fixing your grip around it. There weren't that many customers around anyways, and both your parents were working further back in the actual smithy. So at least in that part of the shop, it was only you and that... that monster. 

You readied your kunai in your hand and sneaked behind him. Itachi was sharp, yes. He had the Sharingan, yes. But even he couldn't top your 60 lives worth of chakra control that let you mask your presence to the point that not even sensor ninjas could detect you. 

You slowly inched closer and closer, all while the boy was busy observing the weapons on the wall. 

Just a little closer and you might be able to stab him between the neck, a spot you were sure would kill him. 

Slowly but surely, you made your way, inch by inch, step by step, until you were within attacking range. Your legs discovered newfound strength as you pushed off the floor and lunged at him with your kunai. 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, [NAME]?!" 

Your father's voice rang loudly, allowing Itachi to turn around just in time of your attack, making you miss by a hair's breadth. 

However, you weren't allowed to jump back again to attack because your father immediately grabbed your hand tightly and pushed you to the ground in an attempt to hold you down. He had to press a knee to keep your thrashing body in place.

"LEMME GO! I'LL FUCK-FUKHING KILL HIM!" You screamed, all while watching how Itachi looked at you. As if that monster didn't even expect it. That fucking smug bastard... 

You wanted to hurt him...! You wanted to hurt him so bad that he would beg for the mercy of death but you wouldn't give it to him. He'd pay for the pain he put Izumi in! He'd pay for all the loops he made you go through, only to end with Izumi's death as your inevitable fate. 

Your father's struggle in holding you down and your mother's horror-filled gasp upon arriving at the scene was enough to gather a crowd. Although, you're sure half of that crowd was gathering because a 6 year old child was throwing every profanity in existence at that damned Uchiha. 

Soon, you were disarmed, but the news spread like wildfire that the Uchiha heir had almost been attacked in broad daylight, that too by a 6 year old civilian girl. Not even a few days later, the Hokage was forced to summon both your parents and Itachi's to the Hokage's office for a meeting. 

With how big of a problem this had spiralled into, especially in the eyes of the Uchiha that were already secluded and evidently scrutinized by the whole village, the attack was less of a child's scuffle and more of a planned attack on their heir. 

If only they knew that the child they were advocating for would grow up to slit their very own throats...

You couldn't help the anger that simmered in your chest, quietly bubbling as you watched your parents bow in front of Uchiha Fugaku and Mikoto—Itachi's parents.

You didn't feel an ounce of shame in your actions, because you were the only one who knew the future this child had. He would soon bite the same hand that was shielding him right now. This monster didn't deserve to live after what he did to Izumi, or how he left that poor little Sasuke, an orphan at such a young age. 

Uchiha Fugaku, no matter how much your parents apologized, was not a man to relent. 

He needed to ask why a little, unassuming civilian girl attacked his son with the full intent of killing him, that too in the village, in front of everyone. 

Fugaku crouched in front of you, his eyes sharp and scanning your face for any sort of unease. But all he saw was unabashed anger directed towards little Itachi sitting a bit further away, looking visibly confused. "You, girl." Itachi's father began. "I will ask you once, so answer me honestly: why did you attack my son with a kunai? If you're honest, I won't punish you or your parents." 

You didn't even bother thinking about the consequences of your words. Frankly, you didn't give a shit if you got punished, you were far too drunk on your own anger to care. "Because... he dezewezz to die. He's a mons-ster. If you let him live, he'll kiwell you all."

Even your parents couldn't hide the horror on their faces when their 6 year old lisped out that Uchiha Itachi deserved to die because he was going to grow up to be a killer. 

You still remember Fugaku's expression contorting into that of anger, not just at your words but of what he thought the village kids saw of his son. His son, who was a warm-souled pacifist, was going to kill him?

You remember how he turned to your parents, fully enraged and growled out a curse, "Put this brat in the damned asylum! She's lost her mind! Damn it! Calling my son—my Itachi, a future killer of his family?! What kind of people do you expose your child to?! Moreover, is this what you teach your kid—" Mikoto stepped forward to calm her husband, but he was absolutely livid. 

As a result, because of Fugaku's influence and the council's wishes to bury the event as nothing but a psychotic child, who had been poisoned by the hatred aimed against the Uchiha, you spent the rest of this pitiful lifetime locked up like a feral animal. 

You died at the age of 19, having done nothing but spent the entirety of that life entrapped in the house because your parents thought you were too dangerous to let out. 

You spent yet another life rotting—suffering, because of that damned bastard. 

There was no way you were just going to let go of this. Uchiha Itachi was going to pay, and you would make sure of it.

You would make sure to be discreet the next time around. You wouldn't attack him out in broad daylight, like a heretic, no matter how much the anger in you tempted you to. 

And, after spending so many lives trying to join ANBU, your 62nd life gave you that exact opportunity.

But now, you wanted nothing more than to hurt Itachi. Screw saving the Uchiha clan if locking you up was how they were going to repay you for your help. You just needed to take out Itachi so Izumi could live, the rest of them could die in a ditch for all you cared. 

However, you greatly underestimated the fact that Itachi was a prodigy—the very best of best, at that. No matter how many ambushes you planned, no matter how many times you tried to poison his water or his stupid food or rations, this bastard just wouldn't croak. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, it didn't help that he also had some sort of guardian angel protecting him. And by guardian angel, you meant an Aburame that poisoned you in one of the lives where you were hunting Itachi. From what you could observe, he protected Itachi from any external dangers. If anyone had appointed him or if he was just obsessed with the Uchiha, you didn't know. 

But what you did know, was that you were starting to lose count of how many times you had died hunting Uchiha Itachi. 

At one point, you started to realize that your original plan had begun to deviate from killing Itachi to save Izumi, to... just hurting Itachi in any way you could. And you could tell that this idea was slowly but surely consuming you. 

When you stopped focusing on securing Tokimaru as your contract as your first task in each new life, when you didn't wave back at Izumi, when you stopped helping the neighborhood kids... that was when the hate began settling in. 

At first, you did everything you could to convince yourself to let him go. Itachi was just someone you couldn't win against, no matter how hard you tried. But it was difficult. You no longer just wanted to see him die, you didn't even care about his death. Now, you only cared about his suffering and prolonging that for as much as you could. 

Sarutobi Asuma once told you something that stuck to you: "We humans don't want what we need. We want what we desire. But... not everything we want is something we'll get. Somethings... are just meant to be a thought." You still remember his words as he passed you a cigarette, even after lifetimes had passed since you had last talked to Asuma, yourself. You didn't even think he knew who you were in this timeline. 

Perhaps the same could be said about you, when it came to Itachi.

He was almost like an itch you couldn't scratch. Hurting him was no longer a wish, it became your obsession. It became a need you had to fulfill. 

You hated that man. You hated his guts.

He had everything and yet, he ruined everything. He killed Izumi, he hurt so many innocent people, and yet he wasn't the one stuck in this godforsaken loop. He wasn't the one being punished by some higher entity, even though he had done so much wrong. He wasn't the one being forced to relive every single moment all over again, every day. He wasn't the one being killed hundreds of times over but never truly dying. 

At times like this, when your own thoughts became too loud, you would just imagine taking a rock and smashing his skull in, until you would be able to see his brain, until you would watch the life drain from his body, and watch him suffer. 

You knew this man wouldn't be able to understand even a fraction of your suffering. But for the sake of your sanity, you still wondered about it.

50 lives.

You wasted 50, whole lives just trying to land one single hit. To inflict upon him even a fraction of the pain you had to go through because of this man.

You tried everything, from sticking an explosive tag to his favorite dango stand, to aiming poison senbons at him. You even went as far as to hunt him down for three days straight, laying trap after trap in his way.

But each time, he evaded your every attempt like some sort of slippery snake. Each time, he dodged death like he could see it coming with those cursed eyes. 

Whether that was by not showing up to the dango stand that day, or by having that Aburame guardian angel of his kill you off before you could take aim, or even ignoring the traps you laid out. 

Just like how your regressions felt like divine punishment, his ability to dodge your attacks felt like divine intervention. 

After wasting about 50 whole lives doing nothing but attacking Itachi, you came to a conclusion.

If you couldn't win against him physically... You'd ruin his final moments. You'd ruin his death. The literal moment his soul would leave this world, you would take that comfort, that peace away from him. 

You wouldn't let this bastard see the face of his brother for the last time. You wouldn't let him lay at rest.

Uchiha Itachi did not deserve to win, and you would make sure of that, even if it meant playing dirty. 

So, you hunted down the exact place where he would die. The place where he would fight Sasuke and die in the process—a specific Uchiha clan hideout.

As you trudged your way through the shattered hideout where they were to have their final battle, you couldn't help but feel your heart drop. 

This place... should be intact before the final fight. Why was it already turned to rubble...?

Almost instantly, your eyes widened in horror and your feet broke out into a sprint as you rushed towards the battlefield.

Unlike your hopes and desperate prayers, you didn't find Itachi's somewhat emaciated self, still clinging to life as he awaited his fight against Sasuke. 

No... all you found was his corpse, lying next to an unconscious Sasuke. 

You didn't care about the third presence you could feel around you, all your eyes could see was Itachi's corpse lying in the center... lying dead... completely peaceful. 

Your feet seemed to have a mind of their own as they carried you forward, even though you weren't sure you could stomach being any closer to that bastard. 

How dare he...? How fucking dare he...?!

How dare he lie there so peacefully?! 

You tried to calm yourself, your shaking fingers finding themselves in your pockets, fishing out your pack of cigarettes. It was a habit you had picked up from Asuma. You didn't smoke too often, but right now... right now, you really needed one. 

Just as you lit your cigarette, you slid down the wall and sat yourself on the corpse's right. You tried to take a deep puff, you tried to calm yourself down. You tried so, so fucking hard that you wouldn't lose your cool, but the more you saw his peaceful expressions, the more your blood boiled. 

At one point, not even the nicotine from the cigarette could help calm you. You were vibrating with anger, and your breath was starting to grow more and more uncontrolled. 

"Why...?" You croaked, one knee pulled to your chest. You rested an arm on that knee, only to support your aching head with the same hand.

"Why can you... Why can you die, Itachi?" 

You didn't get an answer. Not from him, not from God, not from the Devil, not from anyone. 

No matter who you called, no one answered. 

By now, you were biting down on your cigarette, your teeth mashing and your hand supporting your head was used to clutch your hair in a pathetic attempt to calm yourself, "God damn it...!" You cursed, but there was no one to hear it. 

Even after all this time, Uchiha Itachi won. Even after all his sins, Uchiha Itachi died. Even after all his mistakes, he was given the gift of death.

And you? You were cursed by God, Himself.

You were kicked down, spat on and forced to live and die, live and die, live and die, over and over again. 

What about a murderer like him?! Why could he die and you couldn't?! Why could he commit every sin and then achieve peace by dying?! Why were only you cursed with immortality?! Why couldn't you die?! 

You got up with fervent rage coursing through your every vein. At this point, there was nothing stopping you. And at the same time... nothing answering you. So you took matters in your hand. 

You grabbed the collar of Itachi's corpse and brought him near your face. Then, you cursed him out with all your rage. You cursed him out, just like you were cursed. And by God, you were going to curse this man to burn in the pits of Hell itself.

"Fuck you...! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! Fuck you, Uchiha Itachi!" You shook his body, but he never reacted, never attacked, never defended... he just remained dead. 

Dead. 

Embraced into the arms of the Grim Reaper, himself. And here you were. Denied of even your mortality. 

"How dare you die so easily?! How could you just fucking die?! Why?! Why?! Why, damn it!!"

Every single one of your questions went unanswered. And that was when you snapped. With all the strength in you, you threw his body against the wall, watching it slam against it and fall down like a ragdoll. 

At this point, you had completely lost it. You didn't care if you were desecrating a corpse. To you, this man was the embodiment of the universe's cruelty. So you raised your leg and kicked him in the chest. 

Crack! 

You broke his rib, then another kick broke the second rib. Then another. And another. 

"God damn you! God fucking damn you, you Uchiha bastard! You fucking son of a bitch! Burn in fucking Hell! Burn in your fucking Amaterasu! God, fuck you! Burn! Burn! Burn!" 

For a moment, you stopped. 

A wicked, almost sinister idea entered your head. 

You should... carve his face out. Rip him—his body of his features, his identity and the face everyone knew. Cut his fingers off, take his fingerprints, steal his precious eyes. No one would be able to identify him. Not without running a DNA analysis... 

If you weren't respected by the Heavens or the Hells, then you'd steal the respect they bestowed upon their honored one. 

You'd take everything, until no one could recognize who he was. You'd rip him of his own identity, what he always prided himself in. 

But then, just as you took out your kunai, you stopped. 

Was this... what you truly wanted? To desecrate a corpse? All because he had everything you wanted? All because he got to retain his humanity, even after all his sins, all his wrongdoings, yet you were so cruelly stripped of it?

Would that even bring you any joy? Any happiness? Any satisfaction? 

Or would that just be more blood on your hands? The blood of a corpse you would disrespect? 

The kunai fell from your hands with a clang and you kept your eyes stuck to his form for what felt like hours to you. 

Then, out of nowhere, your eyes watered. They began to fill up with tears until a sob choked out of you. Before you even knew it, you were crying.

Just sobbing and hysterically begging for answers. 

You didn't know who the screams were directed towards. Was it God, was it Itachi, or was it whoever was watching you have this breakdown? 

"Hey...! Tell me, damn it!" You begged Itachi's bloody corpse, "Tell me! Why?! Why can't I die?! Why?! I never wronged anyone! I never hurt them! Why is this happening to me?!" 

Uchiha Itachi was a prodigy, they said. He always knew the answer to everything, they said. 

Well, he was one selfish bastard for gatekeeping the answer to your problems, from you. If he knew everything, then he should have answered you. Even if he had died, he should have answered. 

But he never did.

And you were killed by off yet again, by whatever that dark creature was, that was watching you. 

When you woke up back at the smithy, you didn't have a plan for your newest life. 

You didn't even know what your aim was. 

For a moment, your usually active brain tried to think of something–anything, to do. But you didn't even know what you wanted.

So you just gave up. You gave up trying.

You didn't save anyone. You didn't do anything. You didn't make a contract with Tokimaru, you didn't befriend Izumi, you didn't graduate from the academy, you didn't help your parents in the smithy. 

You didn't do anything. 

All you did was stare at your ceiling, all day, everyday. 

Until your parents tried to drag you to a doctor–crying, begging for you to seek help. Until you heard their arguments late at night, worrying about supporting their seemingly depressed daughter, worrying about finances, worrying about the burden you were starting to become on them. 

To ease their worries, you hung yourself. Quick, simple and efficient. That should've solved all their issues. 

But.. you only ended up back at the smithy, again. 

You didn't do anything this time either. You just repeated your last life. 

Didn't move, didn't make friends, didn't talk, didn't study, didn't help, didn't save anyone. 

When your parents tried to get you some help this time as well, you drowned yourself in your bathtub. 

Again. You were back at the smithy.

Your actions didn't change this time either. 

However, you chose to slice your own throat with one of your father's best handiworks in this life. You figured you'd give it a good use instead of letting it rust on the wall. 

You failed to see the horror on his face when he found your dead body lying in a pool of your own blood.

The next suicide was by a fast-acting poison. 

And the one after that by jumping off a cliff. That one was probably your most favorite. It was the least painful one. The next one was by sticking a kunai in your own throat. 

Life after life, you killed yourself, never letting your soul linger too long in each timeline. Even the few seconds of peace you would get before each reset were enough of a high that you kept chasing after it. 

But even that got boring after your 15th life spent rotting in your room, waiting for your growing self to become a liability to your parents and dying to help them out. 

When you finally stepped out of the house as a 10 year old, for the first time in 15 whole lives, you convinced yourself that it was solely to keep your parent's mouths shut. You didn't want to hear them talk about how much of a shut-in you had become from the day you turned 6.

They didn't know that they had lost their daughter at the age of 6, and they would probably never get that version of [Name] back. 

Outside of the house, you didn't really do anything special. You didn't exactly have any friends, considering you hadn't made a contract with Tokimaru or befriended Izumi in this life. But it's not like it matter, because even if you did bother with it, she'd just end up dead in a year from now. 

The only thing you could do now was stare at the sky. When you reached the river bank, you lied down and just waited, eyes closed as if letting the summer breeze blow over you would take your problems with it. But when your eyes opened, you found that nothing had changed. 

So you just went back to staring at the sky.

You didn't really know how long you stayed there, but watching the clouds roll by, watching the wisps of white curl into one another, watching the birds fly around each other in circles was interesting enough for you, especially after staring at the same ceiling for the past 15 lives. 

And so, you decided to spend your 127th life not by rotting in bed, but by rotting in a grass-covered river bank that gave you a perfect view of the summer sky. 

It was also in your 127th life that you first met Nara Shikamaru. 

You had heard about him from Asuma one too many times. He talked about him like he was his own son, that fond smile never leaving your memories everytime you thought of that weird, chain-smoking, bearded man who died before he could even meet his unborn child.

Shikamaru came in like a lazy cloud drifting into the sky, never making a sound, never causing a ripple. But his presence alone was felt by how he shaped the sky—how he shaped you in your most destructive lives. 

"You're in my spot."

Those were his first words to you. Simple and direct. No niceties, no unnecessary politeness. Just a simple fact that he was stating was enough to get you to scoot over, just enough for him to reclaim his spot. 

You heard him mutter a quiet, "What a drag," under his breath as he laid down beside you. His dark eyes never once looked at you, never once strayed from the sky. They just peered at the clouds with a look of utter boredom. 

In a way, you felt closer to him than you had felt to Izumi.

If Izumi was the Sun who warmed you with her shine, it was also the same bright sunshine that burned you. Watching that smile on her face remain constant even in death, when you knew that she had intentionally given up on living against Itachi was a hard pill to swallow. 

Shikamaru, however, was like the moon. He didn't shine nearly as bright, or nearly as hot. He just shined on his own, whether or not it brightened someone. 

He was easier on the eyes of the damned. 

And thus, in the summer of your 127th life, your simple routine began.

It happened like clockwork. Without even speaking to each other, both you and Shikamaru set up a quiet, unspoken routine of lying at the river bank and staring at the clouds together, everyday. Sometimes his friend, Choji would show up, but he hardly bothered you much, except for offering you some chips so you didn't care. 

All you did was lay there, quietly staring at the cloud while basking in the soft light of the moon—that was Shikamaru. 

For months, your cloud-gazing continued as a quiet, wordless ritual until one day, Shikamaru broke the silence.

"That looks like a rat." He stated it so obviously as he pointed to a cloud, that it was hard to think of it as an observation but rather, more of an irrefutable fact. And to think of the shape of a cloud as an absolute fact was certain humorous, even to your miserable self. 

His finger found another cloud to point, "That's definitely a hammer." And another one, "A flower... Hm, nah. Maybe not a flower. More like a rabbit?" He pointed at another, "That one looks like a shuriken." He took a minute to stop after that one, "Ugh, what the hell? Why am I thinking about shinobi stuff during my leisure?" 

After what seemed like eternity, your hand finally raised itself and your index finger curled open weakly to point at another drifting cloud amongst the many others that he had pointed at. 

"... A cat." 

Shikamaru didn't speak. He didn't even look at you. He simply stared at the cloud you had pointed at and hummed to himself, "Yeah, I see it. That's a cat, alright." 

It wasn't much. If you're being honest, it wasn't anything at all. A simple conversation about the shape of the clouds you both were watching shouldn't have carried the weight it did. But that lone conversation, that single exchange was enough to motivate you not to kill yourself this time around. 

Instead, you carefully dragged yourself out of bed and took the kunais from your mother's hands while she was stacking them. If you were going to live a little longer, you couldn't bear to be a burden on your parents, so might as well start helping in the smithy again. 

At least, that's what you told yourself. It wasn't as if you still gave a shit about the timeline anyways. 

You still didn't have any elaborate schemes or traps. You still didn't bother with saving the Uchiha clan. You still didn't step in when Naruto was called a monster or yelled at for simply existing. 

Your reason to live was simple and selfish: you wanted to look at the clouds with Shikamaru, just a little bit longer. 

So you did just that. 

Up until the age of 17, you didn't do anything but stick to his side. But when Shikamaru lost Asuma, you couldn't help but stare at him with a tired look in your eyes. 

He no longer wanted to look at the clouds. 

All he did was work and work. At first, you thought if you gave him some time, he'd go back to normal.

But he never did.

You hardly saw him anymore. If you did, it was only when he would be restocking on his weaponry. The friendship that gave you a reason to actually get out of bed and take a step in the big, bright world had so easily fizzled out, like a dying candle light.

So... you killed yourself. To go back to a time when he was still the same. To go back to a time when he would look at the clouds with you. You didn't want to comfort anyone, you could hardly comfort your own self at this point. But if your only escape from reality was starting to turn faulty, you were left with no other choice but to run. 

At least, that's what you told yourself. You knew your death would have a bad impact on Shikamaru when he had just lost Asuma, but frankly... weren't you allowed to be a bit selfish? You just wanted to go back to the days when you could easily watch the clouds with Shikamaru, when he wasn't weighed down by grief and responsibilities, when things were still better off. 

So for the next three lives, you kept going back everytime Asuma's death creeped closer. 

You would have finished the job the fourth time too, but you were forced to stop yourself over something you had heard in the passing. 

You found yourself on the road to some random town in the Land of Fire, running an errand for your father you had already completed a dozen times before. You weren’t even sure why you bothered with the errand. Maybe you just needed a different set of walls to stare at—or perhaps, a different scenery.

With Shikamaru busy due to his chunin duties, Konoha's skies were starting to bore you too.

In a tavern that smelled of old beer and despair, an old woman with eyes like cloudy marbles found you. Her voice was low and raspy. She sounded like Asuma after he just finished two packs of his cigarettes back to back.

"You seem lost, child." She spoke as if she knew you. Her eyes bore right into your own, capturing you in their stare. 

You didn’t answer. You were too tired for whatever cult she was trying to initiate you into.

However, the woman didn't seem to get the picture. Her staggering feet followed you out into an alley.

"Do you seek salvation?" She asked. 

"No." You immediately answered. You wanted nothing from a creep like her, and yet she didn't seem to catch the cue. “He can see your suffering. He can offer you release, a salvation–!”

“I’m not interested in your salvation,” you mumbled, trying to sidestep her and get out of this ghost town as fast as you could. You weren't eager about living but you'd rather not waste a life when you still had a few more years until Shikamaru became depressed and you had to inevitably reset. 

But you were cut off from your walk back when her hand reached out and grabbed onto your arm.

Her grip on you was shockingly strong. “You seek an end to your suffering, don't you?" She smiled eerily, her gammy teeth visible from the angle you stood at, "You will only find it by giving back what you have stolen! Empty your soul into this wretched world, and it will give you your release!” She kept croaking but you were done listening. 

You finally snatched your arm away, and quickly made your way outside the alley. This woman gave you the creeps, and that's saying something, considering you've seen monsters like Orochimaru and the Akatsuki.

But... even as you walked away, you couldn't help but realize that something about those words stuck to you.

Give back.

Empty your soul.

It was the most ridiculous thing you had ever heard. You hadn’t stolen this life, it had been forced upon you—shoved down your very throat until you were practically choking on it. 

And yet, her words never left your mind.

So you decided to ask the one person you felt like you could relate to, to some extent. 

"Hey..." You started one day, your eyes never leaving the sky above you. Shikamaru, having been exhausted from one mission after the other since his promotion, finally managed to find the time to sit down and relax next to you—his... friend? Acquaintance? Comrade? Fellow cloud-gazer? 

Honestly, there weren't many titles for you two to label each other with. So you settled with friends. 

Shikamaru glanced your way from the periphery of his vision as he awaited you to continue. 

"If you were immortal... If you couldn't die, what would you do?" That was probably the first time you had asked something out of your own volition.

Shikamaru went into deep thought as soon as you asked that. It took him a minute, but he finally answered. "Honestly, being immortal sounds like a total drag..." You couldn't help the small huff of amusement that left you, "It does, doesn't it?" 

Just then, the young Nara shrugged aimlessly, "I don't know, I think I'd just sleep half the time. Maybe travel, Kumo's clouds would probably be a lot more fun to look at than Konoha's. I'd like to play shogi with people from around the world, too." He then waited before concluding, "Honestly...? I think I'd just want to sleep forever." You turned to stare at him, "You can't sleep forever. That's just death. You're supposed to be immortal, remember?" 

Your words caused Shikamaru to sigh, "Yeah..." He took a moment to himself before forcing a lazy, mocking smirk, "Wow, I never realized how boring immortality would be..." 

It was then that your voice lowered just a little more than usual, and you asked him something that you can still remember to this day. 

"Wouldn't you... use your immortality to give back to the world?" 

Shikamaru looked at you. For a long time, all he did was look, and then he finally answered.

"I don't owe the world anything." Shikamaru looked back at the sky as he continued. "If I ever did something like that, I'd probably do it 'cause cloud-gazing became too much of a drag." 

He then went on to speak mindlessly to himself, "I mean, if I'm immortal, I'd probably have lived for hundreds of years, right? Even cloud-gazing would get boring by then." 

Your eyes widened in surprise. It felt like someone had poured a bucket of cold water over you. 

"I don't owe the world anything." 

There was something fundamentally wrong about those words. You couldn't really put your finger over it, but it felt... blasphemous. Like it was a mockery of fate itself. 

And yet, it also felt like the first, raw truth you had heard in over a hundred lives. 

You looked back at Shikamaru, really looked at him.

Shikamaru was the only son of his parents, the sole heir of his clan, right? He was born in a family of shinobi, a family that helped shaped the very foundations of Konoha. His father was a man who stood next to the leader of the village as a member of the advisor council. His lineage was literally woven into the fabric of the village.

Shikamaru was born into a legacy of duty, of purpose, of owing. 

And yet, he... he actually believed that he didn't owe the world anything. That the responsibility he was born into, the intelligence, the power he was bestowed with—he had no obligation to use it for the world. 

Shikamaru's life was his own. His decisions—his opinions and his actions were all his own. To hell with duty and responsibilities, he didn't owe anyone, anything. Not his worries, not his guilt and certainly not his efforts. 

Call it immaturity or having the luxury to be mortal but... if a child of such purpose, of such a legacy and lineage didn't owe anything to the world, why did you owe anything? 

You thought about that for days. 

When you woke up, when you went to sleep, when you worked at the smithy, when you walked to the river bank to meet Shikamaru, even when you gazed at the clouds... Those words never left your mind. 

When Asuma finally died in this timeline, you didn't immediately kill yourself. Instead, you waited. You thought about Shikamaru's words regarding your immortality. 

Did he still think he didn't owe the world anything? Did he still believe his life was his own? That the abilities granted to him didn't have a price? 

You wondered if this was the right time to ask him that...?

(It wasn't.)

The moment you did, Shikamaru stared at you with a look you weren't sure you had ever seen on his face. 

"What... did you just say?" 

"I'm asking if you still think you don't owe the world anything. I mean... you said that the last time I asked you about immortality, what you'd do if you were immortal. You told me you wouldn't use the knowledge you'd have to help give back to the world. Do you still think so–?" 

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" For the first time in all your lives knowing him, Shikamaru screamed at you. "You fucking psychopath! How could you just–?!" 

You blinked in shock. This wasn't the reaction you had expected. "I'm just... asking if your opinion has changed..." That was when Shikamaru glared at you, "What are you trying to say...? That I didn't work hard enough to save him? Is that it? That it's my fault he's dead, because I didn't 'give back' to my full potential...?" 

You really didn't understand why he was taking your words in the wrong way, when you never said anything like that. "Shikamaru, I didn't say–" 

Your words fell on deaf ears, the fight having left his body and the only thing left behind was the gnawing horrors that you had set ablaze in his head, "Just... leave me alone. I–I don't want to talk right now." 

You didn't think you'd ever say this but...

Shikamaru was slowly becoming someone you couldn't understand. 

His answer to you... was that even the truth? Did he really think that, or was that the immaturity of a mortal child? If he constantly experienced the loss of Asuma, the loss that forced him to let go of his immaturity... if he experienced true immortality, would he still think the same?

Unfortunately, your attempts to ask him didn't go very well because he seemed pretty angry. 

In an attempt to escape this wretched timeline and Shikamaru's blatant hatred towards you, you snapped your own neck and killed yourself. Shikamaru would probably be traumatized and ridden with guilt upon learning about your suicide, but that was the least of your concerns. 

You needed to know if his answer was something his mature, loss-accustomed self, thought too or if that was just the naive ramblings of a child. 

But... there was something that stopped you from asking him that question again, even though he had yet to watch Asuma die. Was it... fear of getting yelled at again? No, that couldn't be it. You had died to literal attacks and serial killers, getting yelled was the last thing that would bother you. 

Then, what was it? Why was it that you had already lived 5 years in this new timeline but you didn't have the courage to face Shikamaru, even as a child? 

As you lied on the river bank, your 11 year old self too tired to talk to Shikamaru but too tired to kill yourself either, just stared at the clouds all by yourself.

It was at that moment that you remembered: any day now, Itachi would kill the Uchiha clan.

Hmm... how exhausting must it be to kill a whole clan. More than his reasonings, you were now interested in his chakra reserves. To be able to kill a whole clan without causing a ruckus and alerting the rest of the members in the compound would require him to either knock them all out one by one or to put them in a genjutsu, which honestly sounded like a hassle.

How on Earth did he even pull that? I thought the Sharingan was a pretty chakra-exhausting doūjutsu... He must have the chakra reserves of a literal God to put every one of them in a genjutsu. Tch, how fun must it be to be that blessed...

You thought, staring at the sky in quiet contemplation. For once, you tried to put your mind to rest and closed your eyes. But it seemed as if your surroundings didn't seem to respect your attempts of taking a small nap, because not even second later, you heard a loud squabble between a child and an adult just a few meters from where you were. 

It seemed to be coming from the market place not far away. More specifically, the meat bun shop that you often saw flooded with kids on your way to this riverbank. Must be another thieving child or something similar. 

Whatever, you had more pressing matters to deal with–

"What's wrong with selling it to me, huh?! See, I've got all the money! I know how to count, 'ttebayo! I know that's how much it costs!" 

"What part of no do you not get, you fucking cursed brat?! Want me to beat it into that thick skull a' yours?!" 

Ugh... Naruto. 

You thought to yourself. The host of the Nine-tailed fox. Only that brat could be this loud first thing in the morning.

As grating as the voices of both the stupid old shopkeeper and that Naruto's were, you tried to tune them out for your own sanity. You wanted nothing to do with anyone right now, all you wanted was to sit in silence, stare at the clouds, feel the breeze and think in all your cosmic misery.

You tried to tune them out. You really did. 

But there was a limit to how much you could shut their voices out before you became akin to a literal vegetable, or a potted plant. You didn't want to get up. You just wanted to lie there and become one with the dirt under you. 

However, you couldn't take their screaming any longer, and you didn't have a lot of spots in Konoha that gave you such a nice view of the sky, ones that didn't require you climbing the literal Hokage Monuments.

So you lifted your miserable body off the ground and dragged yourself to the source of the dispute. The closer you got, the more you felt like your ears might bleed. Gosh, they were loud! 

"–like I said, why not?! Why can't you sell it to me?! I'm a customer too!" From the periphery of your vision, you could see an 8 year old Naruto yelling back at the shopkeeper who looked closer to popping a vessel and beating Naruto right then and there. 

"You fucking brat–" He snarled, but your voice cut through the fight, "Excuse me. 10 meat buns." Both the shopkeeper and the jinchuriki turned to you, but with contrasting reactions. While the shopkeeper was eager to finally serve someone who wasn't cursed like the jinchuriki, Naruto himself seemed to be glaring at you, "Hey, I was here first! He's still talking to me–" 

It was then that you reached the very limits of your patience. You flickered your gaze down to his level, only to shoot him a glare so nasty and... angry, that he was sure not even the angriest of villagers had ever looked at him like that. Naruto shut up after that, much to your pleasure. 

But seeing that the shopkeeper seemed to be in no mood to entertain him, Naruto bit back his tears as he kicked some stray dust and marched out the store, sniffling all the way. You could see the shopkeeper perk up as soon as Naruto left, and he even handed you an extra bun for helping kick out the demon brat. 

Once outside, you just followed the ungodly loud sniffling and found a tuft of bright yellow hair that stuck out like a sore thumb in the drab colors of the village. As soon as Naruto sensed your presence, he immediately shot up, rubbing his eyes furiously just so he could glare at you with all his fervor, "W-What do you want?!" He yelled, but all you did was thrust the bag of steaming hot meat buns in his arms and stared right into his soul. 

"There. Now shut up." 

You left as soon as you did that, walking back to the riverbank with a strange feeling bubbling in your chest that you hadn't felt for a long, long time. 

Satisfaction. 

This wasn't the hollow satisfaction of a successful suicide, nor the burning joy of vengeance, or even the warm glow of altruism. It was the clean, crisp feeling of a problem successfully being identified and solved.

You had managed to shut up both the shopkeeper and the constantly screaming Naruto all with one simple act.

As you lied back down on the cool grass of the riverbank, you couldn't help but think. 

Wasn't that... too easy? All it took was a simple two-way execution of a simple plan. Manage both variables, give them both the illusion of their sole victory, and there. Problem solved. It's a triple victory for all of us. I get my peace, and those two think they outsmarted each other with me as their intermediate. 

You couldn't believe how easy it was to get the screaming to stop. How easy it was to just devise a simple plan and execute it. 

The clean satisfaction of the meat bun solution lingered. If a screaming child and a bigoted shopkeeper were variables to be managed, then why not... a grieving genius?

You had an itch in the back of your head, just like the itch that led you to your obsession of hunting Uchiha Itachi, ever since Shikamaru had yelled at you. But unlike the itch caused by your hatred towards Itachi, this one was more... curiosity driven. You weren't as emotionally involved as you were logistically involved. 

A deep, curious part of you just wanted to ask the smartest person in Konoha if he still thought the answer he gave you as a child was right. Or if he was backtracking on it simply because his answer was given from a place of immaturity and ignorance. 

The problem was simply in the set of information. Shikamaru's previous answer was corrupted by the grief of Asuma's death. To get the truth, you needed to fix that.

What if Asuma didn't have to die? What if he'd just have a close brush with death, close enough to force Shikamaru to awaken his growth, but far enough so that he wouldn't spiral into crippling grief and lash out at you again? 

And if it got you your answers, what more could you ask for? Besides, there was no denying that cloud-gazing was starting to lose its appeal. That actually seemed like a solid enough plan.

... It was worth a shot. 

Hidan was... to say the least, a very unpleasant man to fight against.

As if that bastard wasn't smug and foul-mouthed enough, he was also immortal. So any attempts to beat him up wouldn't really have that good of a result, because one little cut would lead to death almost instantly if he so much as licked the blood. It didn't help that his companion Kakuzu would prevent any interventions to take Hidan out of his stupid red circle.

The first attempt you pulled to save Asuma, you ended up dying yourself. Hidan caught you rather quickly and tortured you until very end.

The second attempt, you tried to get more back up before the fight could even begin. Unfortunately, this wasn't as easy as the meat bun problem. There wasn't a clear cut issue, and everytime you tried to outsmart them with sheer numbers, the Akatsuki showed you why exactly they were an international criminal organization. 

Fucking assholes, the whole lot of them. 

This forced you to look outwards; to look past the quantity and look at the quality of your tactics. What jutsus were there that you could use to take Hidan out before he could do the most of his damage? You didn't have a kekkai genkai to really–

Wait...

A kekkai genkai...

The Sharingan, or more specifically, the ability of a certain Mangekyo Sharingan. 

Amaterasu—the eyes of Uchiha Itachi. 

That power... if you could somehow get your hands on Amaterasu, you'd be able to take Hidan out before he even had the chance to preach about his stupid Lord Jashin. It was at that moment that you remembered a senior of yours. Hatake Kakashi—the sole user of the Sharingan despite not having an ounce of Uchiha blood. 

That led to a rather sinister, but justified thought considering the monster that Uchiha Itachi was, to enter your mind. 

What if I just... stole Itachi's prized eyes? 

You would be putting it to a much better use than Itachi himself. The most that bastard would use it on was familial genocide or terrorism. 

However... you were no match for Uchiha Itachi. He was leagues above you: stronger, faster, better chakra reserves, a kekkai genkai and an intellect that let him keep up with your mind even though he lacked the thousands of years of experience you had. 

On all accounts, you were weaker and bound to get defeated in the first few seconds. 

But... who said you had to fight him steal it from him? 

What if you could just... befriend him? Catch him when he was at his lowest and in one fell swoop, steal the eyes that he paraded around so proudly. Betraying people and stealing their eyes? Yes, that was wrong. But you couldn't care less. At this point in time, the last thing you cared about was your morals. And second, it wasn't as if you were stealing from a saint. That man was evil personified. If there was anyone that didn't deserve pity, it was this guy. 

At least, that's what you thought when you first started out that life. The life of a faux saintess. 

You joined ANBU like normal, got scouted early on for showing prodigious skills, and to your luck, got placed in the same team as Uchiha Itachi himself.

But that didn't mean your job was done.

Itachi was a closed book, never letting anyone too close. But you didn't care how he liked his friendships, you'd pry his companionship from him, if you had to.

And if that meant you had to reach out yourself, that's what you did. Even if Izumi's corpse flashed before your eyes everytime you smiled brightly at him, even if you had to scrub your hands in disgust whenever you helped him out with his gear or got too close to him. 

You had literally tuned his bitching out if he so much as spoke a word outside of work business. If he talked about missions and whatnot, it made your skin crawl to be this close to that bastard and not stick a kunai straight through his throat.

But you never let your thoughts show. Never let your actions become too overbearing or suspicious. You kept your distance. Far enough for him to not think of you as a spy, but close enough to not become completely obsolete in his life. 

You did small acts of kindness. Like taking over writing a report when he seemed tired, or taking over the more taxing jobs in the mission, or giving him some of your lunch even if he didn't like eating lunch on a mission. Small, little acts of kindness that chipped through his walls like moisture chipping the paint off the metal as it started to rust. 

But you could tell that he still didn't trust you. You could see it in his eyes, how despite being close enough to call each other by the first name outside of work, he still didn't think of you as a friend. He saw you... as an acquaintance. 

Oh well, you did your best.

The date of the massacre was coming close, and if things kept at it, you should be able to squeeze in one more mission with him. That would be when you make your move. That would be when you'd steal his right eye, rumored to be the wielder of the Amaterasu. 

Only... your plans were thwarted right in front of you. 

The date of the massacre changed. 

You don't know how, you don't know why. In all your 100+ lives, the date of this sick event had never changed, not even once. Could it be... your fault? Could it be because you befriended Itachi, the killer and that somehow led to a butterfly effect? 

You didn't know, but as you made your way to the Uchiha compound on the outskirts of the village, the moon's crescent shape mocking you during your growing horrors. 

The night of the massacre was a full moon. 

You had messed up. All that putting up with the damned Uchiha, all that kindness, all those mindless smiles, gone to waste because you miscalculated the butterfly effect it would have on the timeline. 

When you reached the compound, the first thing you saw was Izumi's house. The door was knocked open and if you looked close enough, you could see the blood on the floor that seemed to be shimmering in the moonlight. 

"I-Izumi..." Your voice instinctively called out. How long had it been since you had buried that part of you deep within yourself? How long had you tried to convince yourself that this much pain was okay, that you could handle it? That you had long gotten used to Izumi's death? 

Then... why couldn't you look away? Why could you feel the embers of that long extinguished fire finally bursting into flames again? Why could you feel your anger simmering in your bones? 

Itachi's blade was cold when it pressed itself to your neck. The cold was a good way to snap you out of your thoughts, especially when his voice was just as cold, "Leave now and I might spare you." 

How funny...

He had managed to change the date of the massacre, but he still didn't have the creativity to change his script from your 60th life. Didn't he say the same thing to you when you stood over Izumi's corpse for the seventh time in a row, all because he was too hell bent on killing her? 

You didn't lose your cool then, but you certainly lost it now. 

"You fucking bastard..." You sneered, your shoulders shaking with the magnitude of your rage. "How dare you–?! How absolutely dare you...?!" You turned to face him, but all you saw was the face of Izumi's killer.

"Why...?" You choked out, "I just can't understand it... Why?! Fucking hell, you son of a bitch! Do you not have any conscience?! How could you just—How could you kill them all?!" 

At that moment, you weren't thinking about stealing his eye or Amaterasu or saving Asuma or even asking Shikamaru about his take on immortality. 

You were just trying to understand why Izumi had to die every time? What did she do to deserve such a fate? What did any of the Uchihas do to deserve such a fate? 

You didn't get your answer in this life.

No... You wouldn't get it for another 5 lives. You wouldn't learn about the coup or Shisui's suicide or the rising tensions and whatnot for your next 5 lives.

But what you did get to learn from this life... was two things. And the first began with the tanto that pierced your chest. 

It wasn't Itachi's. 

No, but rather... it belonged to a masked figure. His darkly clad form stepped from behind and into the light. Itachi backed away as the masked figure made his way into your vision, but your body that had already crumbled to the ground, clutching the bleeding wound in your chest, could only do so much as heave out bloody breaths. 

"What's this? A lost child playing hero?" The figure began, his deep voice sending a chill down your spine. Although, you weren't sure the chill originated from the horror you felt because of the masked man or if it was because you could feel your life slowly draining from your body. 

"Finish her off, Itachi. We don't have all night." 

There was silence after the masked man made that order, with the only sound being the bloodied gasps that left your lips. 

"No. She's an outsider, I see no reason to drag her into this." 

"Hmm... You're too soft." He mused, tapping his chin like a scholar in thought, "That won't do, you know? If you don't kill her, then I will do the honors." The masked man turned to glare at you, "She's seen far too much. Leaving her alive is a risk you are in no position of asking me to take." 

You could feel the growing animosities between them, and a part of you wanted to take the chance to run away but... where would that lead you? Your fate was sealed in this life. No matter where you ran, these two could just hunt you down and kill you, just like they had done with Izumi everytime you tried to protect her. 

You don't remember much of what they talked about. But the only other thing you can remember from that timeline, other than the fact that there was another man who helped Uchiha Itachi, was when Itachi's feet came in your vision. 

It was a moment in which you knew you were going die. And you were ready to hate him all over again, ready to curse him out for another eternity.

But the second you raised your head to glare at him one last time, your breathing hitched. 

There he stood. 

A child, no older than 13. His sword raised above his head and the faint moonlight showed you a glimpse of his face. 

He was crying. 

"I'm–I'm sorry... Truly, I am..."

Those were the last words you heard before he placed you in a genjutsu with the eyes that you once planned to steal. A gentle, kind genjutsu that showed you a life that you could only dream of living out until the end, with your friends, Izumi and Shikamaru by your side and Tokimaru as your trusty companion up until you died of old age. 

In a moment of a few seconds, he had given you peace that you had scorched the Earth to find. And when his sword cut down your neck, it didn't hurt. You didn't feel the pain, but you could feel the tremors of his shoulder as he was once again forced to dirty his hands with the blood of someone he called a friend. 

"I'm–I'm sorry... Truly, I am..."

That night confirmed two things: one, Itachi wasn't alone when he killed the Uchiha clan. He had a companion, a Boogeyman that made him point his blade at his own family. And two...

Uchiha Itachi wasn't blessed by the Heavens.

He was just as cursed as you were. He too, was a victim.

He may not remember each time he killed his family, but he surely bore the weight of his actions until his death in each timeline. 

But... why?!

It all boiled down to why he even went this far? What could have possibly forced him to take such actions? 

You decided cloud-gazing and asking Shikamaru about his views on immortality could wait, this new discovery of yours was far more exciting and ground-breaking than anything else. And you would be stupid not to capitalize on it.

You spent your next whole life dedicated to nothing but learning why the Uchiha Massacre happened. You joined ANBU and you didn't look back. You didn't interact with Itachi, you didn't confront him on the night of the massacre, you didn't mourn Izumi's death. 

You had one single goal: climb the ranks, get access to the dirty secrets of the village that the elders so desperately hid. 

And you finally learned the truth months before death took you in its embrace...

The old man you saw in your third life, the man who executed you on the spot. 

Shimura Danzo. 

The one behind the Uchiha massacre, the one behind human experimentation, the one behind collecting the Sharingan of the Uchiha like some sick, exotic collection. 

Shimura Danzo wasn't the darkness of the village that he so preached. He was a cancer to the village, actively using its resources and harming its civilians. 

If you didn't want to sit in your ignorance and continue to blame a child for the horrors that befell Konoha, you'd have to actually step in and live in the same shadow that Danzo thrived in. You'd have to become one of his soldiers—a member of ROOT. 

Well... at least you knew what to kill time with, even if it was about to be the most fucked up, mindlessly evil shit you were about to pull in all your lives. 

But it wasn't a huge problem. Morals stopped being your obstacles when you kept dying to the hands that were meant to protect the village and its people. 

Besides, dignity never stopped you before. Why let it stop you now? 

You spent around 20 lives trying to survive in ROOT because each time, you'd get executed for being too suspicious. It took you 20 whole tries to get it right. 

But you see, you have especially crappy luck. 

Because the moment you were successful, you faced another, far more annoying issue. 

You were starting to forget things. 

And maybe it wouldn't have meant much if the things you were forgetting were just useless, bed-rotting lives crap. Unfortunately, the memories that were leaking were more than important, they were memories of your failure. A reminder to not take this turn because it had Akatsuki members taking a stroll nearby, or to not enter that restaurant, because it led to you getting poisoned. 

So you sidetracked again. This time going on a sabbatical and taking a complete left from your usual stuff: you got involved in ninjutsu research. You travelled the world, you studied under several different teachers, you read theories from different nations and the tried to understand the fundamentals of the very thing you were working with. 

Chakra. 

The only advantage you had was that your chakra itself was stuck in the loop with your soul, or if you were to be more specific—your spiritual energy, the type of energy that was derived from the mind's consciousness. It was thanks to this that your mastery over chakra never reset with the timeline. 

Unfortunately, one life wasn't enough to cover every aspect of this, so you had to continue your research in your next life. The next life however, you didn't go directly into ninjutsu research, instead, you slowly transitioned into a new sub-branch of medical ninjutsu. 

Neurological Medical Ninjutsu. 

The bridge between memories and medical ninjutsu itself.

The idea that your chakra was also looping with you had you thinking... what if you could find a way to seal your very memories into your chakra itself? It made sense and it would allow you to carry your memories to every new life you started. 

It was a fool-proof plan.

Your research eventually drew the attention of the only other person in Konoha mad enough to push the boundaries of medical ninjutsu to their absolute limit: Senju Tsunade.

She found your theories on chakra-based memory encoding reckless, yet, at the same time, fascinating. For the first time in decades, something had cut through her grief and cynicism.

She was actually excited to see your research play out. 

Under her supervision, you made a leap you couldn't have made alone.

"The problem isn't sealing the memory," Tsunade explained, tapping a diagram of the brain's intricate chakra networks. "It's the sheer, chaotic data of the raw sensory input. You're trying to store something abstract, something you can't see or touch. Memories are metaphysical. Don't do that. Store the cold, physical manifestation of your data. Store the precursor that makes up the memory: the stimulus of the sight, the smell, the sound, the taste, and the feeling."

The idea itself was revolutionary. You didn't need to seal a thought or a memory. You just needed to tag the data stream itself—the electrical charge of a stimulus traveling from your optic nerve to your brain—by coating it in chakra, and then store that chakra-coated signal in your neural chakra nodes.

The theory was perfect.

The execution was... deadly.

In a controlled environment, you opened a random scroll. You focused, channeling a fine thread of chakra to coat the visual stimulus of the text. You felt the information get tagged, a perfect, chakra-wrapped packet of data.

Then you tried to file it away.

The chakra, far denser than the delicate neural pathways were meant to bear, flared. A blood vessel in your brain, strained beyond its limits, burst.

The last thing you saw was not the scroll, but the horrified understanding in Tsunade's eyes as she realized the brilliant, desperate girl she'd taken under her wing had just burned out her own mind in front of her.

You died as you had lived most of your lives: as a promising failure.

But this failure was different. You didn't wake up in the smithy miserable or despondent. You woke up with the blueprint, a messy, fatal blueprint. But a blueprint, nonetheless. 

The theory was sound, the application killed you, but the fact that it worked at all, showed that it had potential. All you lacked was the god-like control to execute it. And control, after all, was the one thing you had an eternity to practice.

It took you three more lives before you finally managed to seal a single visual stimulus. 

And although you couldn't store emotions just yet, you had a feeling that for this particular victory, you wouldn't have to store the pride and joy you felt that day. 

You couldn't believe yourself when you said it but... timelooping was actually fun. 

Sure, you were stuck in an infinite loop, not knowing when your end would come, or if it ever would at all, but all this... this hard work, this innovation, this effort, this struggle, this pride... you couldn't have felt this if you didn't have this ability.

And for a lonely creature like you, this pride and joy was the only thing that stopped you from spiraling into insanity. 

Noting down Danzo's preferred patterns to show loyalty was rather easy now that you had your new jutsu to help you remember his every move, his every muscle twitch, his every microexpression. 

That's why, even if you had to stoop low, you didn't mind. This was all for the sake of information. You were collecting information to change the timeline. So that, instead of stealing Itachi's eye, you could just nicely ask him to use Amaterasu on Hidan and call it a day. So that, instead of watching Sasuke go on a whole avenger's journey to discover the truth, things could be settled much more easily if he just stayed in Konoha. So that, with the Uchiha clan's presence, Pain's attack would be thwarted before it could escalate to what killed you in your first life. 

The first time you managed to save the Uchiha clan... you remember you cried. 

It wasn't a full out sob fest, but rather... tears dripped down your face. If Uchiha Shisui hadn't pointed it out, you wouldn't have known that you were crying. 

And that was well back in your 478th life.

Things had changed since then. A lot. 

You actually got to ask Shikamaru what his thoughts on immortality were. To your disappointment, it wasn't nearly as exciting of an answer as you had thought. 

All he did was cry. 

Seriously? You did not waste well over 200 lives to keep his stupid teacher alive, only for him to cry the minute you asked him that question. 

It was obvious you had no idea what to do when you just stood there, watching him cry like a baby as your question remained unanswered. If you wanted his tears as an answer, you would have gotten those two centuries ago. 

So lame.

But, the truth of the timelooping, past the weird goals you had set, past the strange milestones, was that... you never made it past 20. 

You never made it past the fight against Kaguya.

Even in the lives you ran away, even in the lives you joined the Akatsuki, even in the lives you chose to spend idly, even in the lives you married Hyūga Neji, even in the lives you did nothing but write crazy, utter nonsense novels that rivalled Icha Icha Paradise in terms of sheer stupidity, although never reaching its level of popularity (you never did understand why that obscene trash became so famous. It was nothing but glorified smut.)

However, you still couldn't escape the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Too scared of getting trapped and never being able to get out, you killed yourself before the genjutsu could capture you in its hold. 

One thousand and ninety eight lives.

You stood in your father's smithy, the familiar sounds a comforting hum, as the exhaustion of your lives washed over your 6-year old body

One thousand and ninety eight tries. 

Your last life was a pure vacation. You figured you'd burn out if you kept trying too hard, so you figured you'd relax at a nice faraway land and live out your 13 years of this life up until the very last minute. 

One thousand and ninety eight... 

You leaned back into your chair, your eyes closed as the memories your vacation repeated in your head.

The scene in the smithy was the same, exactly the same as it was the 1,098 lives ago. Everything and everyone was exactly where they always were.

The sound of metal hitting metal, the clanging sound of weapons being stacked over each other, the senbon needles clinking together as your mother stacked them in their spot. The chatter amongst the customers as they counted the kunais they purchased.

And finally... The door to the smithy opening with a chime. 

The minute you heard those small, quiet footsteps, you snapped your eyes open with a faint look of amusement settled in your gaze. 

You were 6 years old when you first noticed the quiet boy that frequented your father's shop. 

And you were 14,293 years old when you noticed him yet again...

For the one thousand and ninety eighth time.