( @a-nb-u​ yoU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE? AN ENABLER. I’m now in hell and it’s all your fault. 12k in, have a 1.2k excerpt of me screaming)

It begins like this—

Shisui comes down near the river, near the cliff, and feels a call. But he can’t, can’t yet, he needs to tell the clan, to tell them about Danzo and his eye, and what he was just about to do, oh dear Amaterasu.

And it’s not a surprise to see Itachi coming out like a shadow of the trees.

It should, but it isn’t because Shisui knows Itachi, knows that the kid doesn’t care until he suddenly does and it’s not surprising that he felt something was wrong.

(Shisui would have preferred not to involve him. But. But he can work with Itachi and his feverish mind is already trying to piece things together).

It begins like this, Shisui and Itachi and a river, a cliff and an end that’s already written.

But. But, it does not end like it was written.

Shisui is already explaining to Itachi what happened, words stumbling out of his mouth and his body half frozen from fear and half pounding from the adrenaline when Itachi just stares at him and tells him-
tells him to take his eyes.

And Shisui would like to protest, but an all-too rational part of his mind points out that Danzo expects Shisui to die or for another clansman to go after him. He does not expect Shisui to come back to stab the bastard enough times that he dies.

He does not expect another Uchiha to give up their eyes to Shisui.

So it begins like this— Shisui, Itachi, a river and three eyes that are exchanged. One goes to Itachi crows, the last of Shisui’s original sharingan, to be protected. Two, the ones Itachi gave up, take their place as Shisui’s new eyes.

And so it begins, Shisui with a newly awakened Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan blazing, Itachi blind but smiling anyway, and a river and a crow cackling caw.

–

This, reflects Shisui a bit hysterically, probably wasn’t my wisest idea.

Not that the evening wasn’t just a pile of Shisui being an absolute dumbass from beginning to end, but he just might have topped it off.

Request a meeting with an elder that’s so anti-Uchiha he might as well start parading around with requests to kill all them off? Check.

Thinking the meeting would go well just because he’s the man’s teammate grandnephew? CHECK.

Having the meeting go to hell by getting his eye stolen? Re-check.

Thinking about killing himself for the good of the clan? Check.

Having Itachi give him his eyes and awakening the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan? Check.

So. At this point of bad decisions, deciding to go to Mikoto with Itachi being obviously fucking blind and him having an also very obvious Eternal Mangekyo? Totally on par with the rest of the evening.

If I get out of this alive, I’m passing the motion that Mikoto gets the actual title of clan head. She’s too terrifying to be anything but.

“I am so very sorry Mikoto-sama, but see I can’t stay any longer as I have a rendez-vous I absolutely cannot miss!”

The fact that Mikoto had a fucking awakened Mangekyo shouldn’t surprise him by this point and yet Shisui was still taken aback by it.

Oh and the fact she was baring her teeth at him.

Very pointy teeth at that.

“What, pray tell, is that rendez-vous you cannot miss Shisui-kun, to the point you’d not give me an explanation for Itachi’s state?”

The savage grin Shisui gave her in return was exactly the same she gave him first – savage, ready to spill blood and kill all on his way to vengeance.

“There’s a certain elder that took something precious of mine a few hours ago. I intend to get it back with benefits.”

Mikoto-sama looked at him, eyes going black again, but a satisfaction gleaming in them.

“Go then, Shisui. Avenge my son, avenge our clan-”, she cuts herself off, before going again. “Avenge our Yondaime.”

She does not say “Avenge Kushina” but that is what she is thinking. For the Uchiha to be accused of that accursed 10th of October under the benevolent eye and pressing words of Danzo, when both her and Fugaku were nothing but loyal to their Yondaime and his wife?

Someone is cleaning up after them. And in the same time, striking at their clan, at her dear son.

She won’t let him get away anymore.

And if, as Shisui departs in a flurry of Shunshin, as fast as the lightning, she looks over to a photo of a smiling redhead and thinks of what-ifs. Well.

That’s her own problem and only hers.

–

Danzo isn’t easy to kill off – he survived three shinobi wars, and two as a full grown jounin with a kill-on-sight order on his head.

He is, still, utterly predictable.

Oh, he’s good, good enough to get Shisui at first, good enough to create his own shinobi forces under the Sandaime Hokage’s willfully blind eyes.

Good enough that he’d have started the whole culling of the clan, one at a time, and would have gotten Shisui and Itachi as his willing pawns.

The thought curls Shisui’s stomach, but he’s an excellent shinobi too and it makes no difference to put those feelings behind than it was to put Itachi on the ground on his home.

Danzo. Danzo however much he might promote the ideal of an unfeeling shinobi as the ideal for Konoha, was too much directed by them.

Specifically, pride. Arrogance, even, that by taking Shisui’s eye he would manage to take over Konoha quietly, that nobody would fight back.

Too bad for him then.

Arrogance in that he’d go to the Sandaime and regretfully tells him of the supposed meeting he had with Shisui and how Shisui gave him his eye because Shisui couldn’t convince the clan to change their way.

Oh, it’s believable and Danzo an excellent actor, and the Sandaime too entranched in his ways, too tired to not trust his oldest and best friend.

It works, Shisui can see, and he thinks the faint metallic taste in his mouth might be betrayal, but it might as well be the blood from biting his tongue through the pain of transferring Itachi’s eyes.

And, like he said, Danzo is predictable. He doesn’t expect retribution, not yet, not until Shisui’s body is found and the clan is informed.

It’s easy, then, to put the pretend-Anbu to sleep around Danzo as he makes his way to the old training grounds of Konoha that are home to his Root.

(absurdedly easy, and for the first time Shisui considers that maybe there was a reason Uchiha of old were ready to steal each others Mangekyo. To have that heady power just at your fingertips, a bat of your eyelashes away…

no wonder Madara went mad.)

It’s even more easy to weave a slight genjutsu around Danzo, who have yet to put Shisui’s sharingan to his head, and make him go into circle around.

Make him face Shisui, and make him see just what exactly he has awaken.

Killing him after that is easy, the tetanized frame of the elder and the genjutsu rendering his flimsy guard useless.

The grimace of Danzo’s face marring it into death is a thing of beauty, and Shisui thinks it might just make a good present to appease Mikoto-sama.

(the pool of blood reflecting the moon gives it a red shine, and Shisui thinks it poetic that he should awaken his own Eternal Mangekyo under a blood red moon).