Her first thought upon realizing exactly where and when she'd been reborn was: well, better luck next time.

Only five months into her new life and she was already depressed and waiting for death.

She thinks her reaction was justified, though, seeing as she was reborn into the Uchiha clan barely a year after Itachi Clan-Killer Uchiha. Now, most people in her situation would probably try to figure out how to avoid the whole "dying in a bloody massacre" thing, but the newly dubbed Eiko Uchiha was not most people. Honestly, on her list of fictional worlds she'd want to be reborn into—which is a real thing, by the way, with Pokémon topping the rest—Naruto wasn't even in the top ten. Or twenty.

No, actually, it was on a completely different list: fictional worlds she would not, in a million years, want to be reborn into. While it wasn't top of that list either—that honor belonged to Game of Thrones—it was definitely up there somewhere.

So, no, she had zero interest in finding a way to survive the massacre. She had planned to just breeze her way through this life, and hope she got reborn into a more desirable fictional world, like Pokémon. Hell, she'd take Doctor Who at this point.

So, when she turned twelve, and the Uchiha heir turned thirteen soon after, Eiko waited with bated breath to, well, take her last breath.

A year passed, and she was still breathing. Another year, her heart was still going strong. Another year and she still nods to her very much alive clansmen (even Itachi himself, that one time) as she walks through the still bustling clan compound.

When she is nineteen, Eiko finally comes to the conclusion that Itachi is not, in fact, going to massacre their entire clan, and that she's apparently going to have to continue being alive in this surprise AU world for the foreseeable future.

Well, shit. Now what?

Lethargy had been her closest companion in this life, but now that Eiko has accepted her new fate, this fact is biting her in the ass. She never worked hard on anything, didn't even try beyond the absolute minimum, and now she has to figure out a way to actually do something with her life. What she has now—a lackluster academic performance, an underwhelming genin career, a reputation as the most average Uchiha to ever live, and a family that she has long been estranged from—is not enough to give her an even remotely enjoyable life.

To be fair, why would you waste your efforts on something when you knew you couldn't have it no matter how hard you tried? She just happened to be wrong about what she thought she couldn't have.

The fact is, she's wasted years in this world doing nothing to ensure a good life for herself, and now she's scrambling to find a way to salvage a way out of the miserable hole she's dug herself into because nothing in her life is okay. Not actually too far off from how she lived her first life, if she's being completely honest with herself.

She promises to try harder in her next life, assuming she's given one.

Even if it's in godforsaken Game of Thrones.

"You want to quit?" Fugaku asks, seemingly bewildered by her sudden request.

Eiko can understand his confusion. Before this moment, she'd shown no sign of being unhappy with her position as one of his secretaries. Or, actually, a more accurate way to phrase that is that she's always been unhappy, but no one could have possibly known that since they would have never seen her happy in the first place to know the difference.

Now that she's determined to at least be content in this life, there's no way she's staying here. She normally would have refused any sort of police/military-related work on principle, but the "knowledge" of her coming death allowed her to accept whatever job was given to her, because it's not like her beliefs would matter once she was dead.

(Actually, now that she thinks about it, she might have chosen this job simply for its proximity to Fugaku. After all, if she remained close to him, there'd be no way Itachi would miss her when he inevitably slaughtered the clan.)

"Yes, I want to quit," she says cheerfully, and she can see Fugaku's obvious unease at her odd attitude, which is in direct opposition to her previously dour and jaded countenance. "The sooner the better."

"And is there any particular reason?" Eiko can see the way he scrutinizes her, trying to figure out the motivation behind her sudden change. She thinks his eyes lingers on her stomach, and she wonders if he thinks she's pregnant or something, and then wonders why he would think pregnancy meant she needed to quit. Does the ninja world not have maternity leave?

She shakes her head, dismissing her train of thought, then considers her words for a second before deciding to give him a kernel of truth: "I want to be happy."

He stares at her for a moment, shocked by her admission, before he nods solemnly, though his expression seems to soften.

She'll be expected to come into work for the next two weeks, but she still leaves with a smile and a letter of recommendation.

She used to have an aunt in this life. She hadn't known her very well, having only met her maybe five times before she died during a mission when Eiko was nine. The fact that they were pretty much perfect strangers to each other didn't seem to bother her aunt too much, considering she left her house to Eiko in her will.

Both Eiko and her parents had been completely caught off guard by that revelation—especially her mother, who seemed to have expected her sister to leave the house to her.

By the time Eiko was nine, her relationship with her parents had already been distant. She had been unwilling to even bother getting to know her family, and any of their attempts to speak to her were easily brushed aside. However, she had felt bad for hurting their feelings so much with her continued aloofness, and so when she finally became a genin four years later, she moved out of her childhood home and into her aunt's last gift to her.

Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.

Eiko had justified her decision by telling herself that, since her parents were still fairly young, maybe without her there as a constant reminder of what they might have perceived as their own failure to be good parents, they might be willing to try again. Hopefully, they'd get a normal child the next time.

At the time, she had still believed that Itachi was going to kill everyone and that she must have just misremembered the timeline, but she had hoped that her parents could at least get a few good years with another, perfectly ordinary child.

She hasn't seen her parents since.

Actually, no, that's not completely true—she'd seen them every now and then in the village, had met eyes, and then she'd turned away. A couple of times, it looked like they might have tried to talk to her, but she'd long since mastered the art of disappearing in the crowd.

But Eiko is trying to get better now, trying to fully accept herself as she is, to come to terms with the world she's in now, so she thinks maybe she should start with the people that brought her into said world.

So that's why she's making her way through the compound now, the completely opposite direction of her house, walking down paths that grow more familiar the longer she walks. Her journey is slow-going, and if asked, she would claim that it's because it's been a long day, and she's just tired. She would forever deny that it's because fear has begun to settle in her heart. Eiko had dismissed her parents' every attempt to connect with her, and she's afraid that it's been too long now.

She's afraid that they've given up on her.

But slow-going her journey may be, it's still going, and Eiko counts that as a win.

Much later than she should have arrived, but much sooner than she had hoped to, she stands before an old familiar door. Steeling her nerves, she gives perhaps the world's most pathetic knock, and waits. She waits so long she thinks either no one is home, or her knock was too soft to hear. Before she can decide whether she should knock again, the door creaks open.

Her mother is shorter than she remembers, with wrinkles crinkling at the edges of her eyes that she doesn't think were there when she saw her last. Of course, it has been about six years since she's seen her mother up-close like this, and time does tend to change people.

Her mother is staring at her, and Eiko can't quite read the look in her eyes, though she assumes it must be surprise—that would, after all, explain the slightly dropped jaw. Eiko feels like she should say something, but no words come to mind. Absently, she hears the vaguely familiar voice of her father, but the words don't quite make it through the haze that overwhelms her brain. He comes into view, then stops dead in his tracks at the sight of her. Finally, Eiko manages to scrounge up enough strength to quirk her lips into a facsimile of a smile, and opens her mouth to speak and—

There's hair in her mouth. Eiko was just trying to speak, but now there's hair in her mouth, and she thinks her shirt is getting wet, and something is clutching at her top, and something else is holding her in place—

Oh. She's being hugged.

Her parents had moved faster than she could keep up with and have sandwiched her between them in a tight embrace. Her mother is sobbing into her shoulder while her father has wrapped his arms around them both. Eiko is surprised for a moment that they are being so vulnerable out in the open like this, before she realizes she's somehow been ushered into the house without her notice, the door closed firmly behind them. When her mother's sobs begin to fade, Eiko can't help but ask, "Why are you..."

Her mother's voice is barely above a whisper, and Eiko's almost positive she wasn't meant to hear it as she says, "you're so beautiful when you smile."

Something in Eiko breaks at that, and soon she's sobbing, too.

When things have calmed down, Eiko is seated at the table, a cup of tea in her hands. Her parents are both seated across from her, looking at her with awe in their eyes. Trying to be discrete, Eiko sweeps her eyes around what little of the house she can see from where she sits, looking for any sign that her parents might have done what she hoped and had another child. She almost gives it up as a lost cause, before her eyes catch sight of a toy kunai behind the couch.

How cliché.

"What's their name?" Eiko asks, watching confusion bloom on their faces. She nods her head in the direction of the child's toy, and it's her father who answers her.

"Nobuyuki," he informs her, and Eiko allows a rueful smile to form on her face.

Faithful happiness. She wonders if he lives up to the name.

Her mother looks vaguely shamefaced, as if she should be sorry for wishing their second child to be what Eiko never was. Eiko herself sees no problem with this, as she had wished the very same thing for them when she left, so she makes sure to assure her mother that she takes no offense.

"I didn't come here to make you feel guilty," she says, looking her mother in the eye.

"Then why?" her father asks, without judgement or suspicion, just simple curiosity. She looks over at him, finally noticing that his hair is now more gray than it is black, and wonders if it's because of her and the stress she's caused them.

"Closure, maybe," she tells them uncertainly. "I don't really know. I just know that I'm trying to get better, and I don't like the way I left things off with you guys. You guys deserved better than what I gave you. I'm glad you got a second chance with Nobuyuki."

Her words are awkward, but she hopes that they can read the sincerity in her voice. By the way her mother's eyes have misted over somewhat, she thinks they could.

Her parents remain silent for a long while, too long to be comfortable, and when it looks like her mother might begin trying to beg for forgiveness, Eiko decides to break the silence first.

"Tell me about him, please."

Eiko has spent the past few weeks getting to know her parents and her brother, visiting them every few days at her childhood home. After a particularly long day of playing "shinobi" with the exuberant five-year-old, Eiko returns to her own house and realizes how empty it feels.

When she had moved into her aunt's old house, her mother had already moved most of her old belongings...somewhere, Eiko isn't actually sure of the details. What she does know is that the house was empty when she moved in, and it remains empty still, even after six years of her living there. Oh, the necessities are there, of course—table, a couple of chairs, a couch, a futon in her room—but nothing else. If not for the complete lack of dust, one would think the place to be abandoned.

It shouldn't be just a house, right? Not after all this time. It should feel like a home, shouldn't it?

Yes, Eiko thinks it should. This is her life now, so she needs to treat it as such. She needs to be able to come "home" and see signs of life, not just spartan decorating.

'How does one go about making a house feel homey?' she ponders.

Maybe she'll buy a plant, or something.

"This one definitely screams 'you'," the man before her tells her seriously, holding the oddest looking lamp Eiko has ever seen in either of her lives.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" she asks him, equally seriously. Of course, she does know him, not that she's ever tried to speak to him—or vice versa. How could she not know him? She'd spent years on the lookout for his death, knowing that when his death came to pass, so too would hers soon after.

Except his death never came, and neither did hers, and now he's here, the Shisui Uchiha, offering her a very truly ugly lamp.

She's vaguely offended that he seems to think that it would interest her at all.

"Not even a little," he says with a grin. "Shunshin no Shisui, at your service. And may I just say what an absolute pleasure it is to make the acquaintance of such radiant beauty."

Eiko shuffles awkwardly, unsure of how to respond. Should she even be talking to him? She doesn't mean that in a "she shouldn't mess with canon" sort of way. Eiko is fairly certain that canon is pretty much nonexistent at this point, and even if it weren't, she's already decided to just live in the moment—find her own happiness, and all that jazz. So no, she's not afraid of messing up canon, especially not at the expense of being able to live her life the way she wants to.

But just because she doesn't have to worry about canon, that doesn't mean she wants to garner any unwanted attention.

She's only just beginning to cobble together what is left of her life into something resembling normality, she doesn't need strangers watching and judging her for her many broken pieces, and Shisui attracts wandering eyes like a moth to a flame.

It's just not worth it.

And yet she can't stop herself from retorting, "you may. But this time with a little more feeling, and a little less bullshit."

Amusement shines in his eyes then, even as he feigns outrage. "You wound me. If I were a lesser man, I'd have shattered to pieces at your cold, baseless accusations."

Eiko snorts, turning back to the vase she'd been inspecting before Shisui had stumbled upon her, content to let the unexpected interaction end here. Shisui, however, seems to have decided that she was interesting enough to continue pestering as he ambles closer to the vase, tilting his head this way and that.

"Nope," he says bluntly. "Definitely not this one."

"I'm not getting that ugly lamp," she drawls, rolling her eyes.

"It's not ugly, it has personality."

"It has a tongue."

"Like I said, personality."

"Why are you even talking to me?" Eiko finally asks, eyebrow raised.

"To save you from your own dreadfully boring taste in home decor," he japes.

"No, seriously. Why? We don't even know each other."

He meets her gaze, seemingly searching for something, before he shrugs nonchalantly, "You just looked like you needed company."

Did she? Probably. She's been slowly getting accustomed to spending time with other people, but she's mostly only been hanging out with her family, so maybe she's starting to crave the company of others.

Instead of saying this, she simply returns his shrug.

"How about this one?" she asks him, holding up a bright orange porcelain ball-thing.

"Dreadfully boring. Your taste is terrible. Honestly, you are so lucky I was here today, I don't know what would have happened to you otherwise."

Eiko grins a bit at that, shaking her head at his antics.

Somehow, she feels lighter than she has in a while.

AN: well that was fun. I was originally going to post this as a drabble series, but I decided I didn't want to write any more for this than what I have here, so I just it into one big—or maybe average—sized chapter. I also don't know how well it came across, but her meeting Shisui isn't the start of some "and his love healed her" story or whatever, Eiko's just glad to have successfully interacted with a person outside her comfort zone (basically, anyone not her family or maybe Fugaku). There is a reason why Fugaku seems, idk, soft? in this story, as well as a real reason Shisui approached Eiko, but I'm keeping that to myself on the off chance I decide to write a sequel. Doubtful, but I like to keep my options open. But for now, this is where this story ends.