"Mikasa, run!"

Fear.

An axe?

Blood.

Rope?

She was on the floor.

She was cold.

She couldn't remember what had happened, her mind swimming from shock.

Everything was a blur.

Her head was pounding, her eyes feeling as though they were pressing against the thin skin of her eyelids, about to fall out in a gory spatter.

She didn't move from her spot on the floor, even when she heard knocking, the door opening, a child's voice.

The pounding in her head grew worse.

Then there was shouting, and she forced her head up, forced herself to open her pounding eyes and look at the boy that had just killed one of her captors.

The look on his face made the pounding stronger, bringing flashes of color and faces she'd never seen. Blonde hair and whiskers, a wordless snarl under blue eyes. Black hair and large tear troughs, and eyes that went from black to red. More faces, more expressions that all fit the one the boy wore.

Make it stop.

The boy killed the second one, and words began pouring through, in a language her mother had tried to teach her, but couldn't, and yet she could understand.

Mother, Father, Itachi, Shisui, the clan, make it stop, make it stop…

He came closer, to her, saying words that she couldn't quite hear.

No, the eyes, red, finally, too late, the snake, go away, please, make the pain stop, make it stop…

He cut away her bonds, and she still couldn't make out what he was saying, his voice a muddled blur to her ears, too difficult to hear over her own throbbing, pounding head.

"There were three of them."

Too much blood, experiments, revenge, a water boy, a red girl, an orange man, revenge, no, Itachi, no!

The boy noticed too late, and the knife was out of reach for him. She couldn't help but stare powerlessly, her head still pounding, pounding, pounding like a war drum.

No, no, not Itachi, he couldn't, but he was, all Danzo, no, Tobi, no, still dead, pain, grief, make it stop, make it stop!

She picked up the knife, her hand trembling, and the words broke through her mindless haze.

"If you win, you live! If you don't fight, you can't win!"

Her eyes widened, and there were memories, memories of pain and suffering and light and laughter and ninjas and monsters and she knew how to kill this man.

She rushed forward, her hand destroying the handle of her weapon, screaming as she shoved the knife through the exact place she knew would kill the man from lessons she had never taken, but had in another life.

"…Mikasa?" The boy came closer, and she looked up to stare into his open-soul eyes.

Mother father the clan Itachi Shisui dead dead Danzo dead Orochimaru dead not dead but dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead—

Mikasa fell to the ground, her knees giving out from underneath her, and her sight went dark.

She was Mikasa Ackermann, a simple girl in small house in the woods of Wall Maria.

He was Uchiha Sasuke, the heir to a clan and one of the most traumatized and mentally unstable shinobi the Village Hidden in the Leaves had ever produced.

The memories of Uchiha Sasuke, locked away in the back of Mikasa Ackermann's head for nine long years after reincarnation, were freed by a sight all too familiar, by a pain all too new.

A legend was reborn that day.