#which is making me think ab itachi and shisui in tora au

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Fuck. Tora au brain freeze. Having thoughts. Someone shoot me I can't fixate on too many things at once somethings gonna end up being dropped.

[oh-no-its-bird]

TORA AU TIME YES ITS THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN !!!

Ok so first, quoting this from a previous tora au post:

Personal take here: I don't think Itachi likes being in charge! That boy is a born, built, and bred shinobi who follows what he is told to a perfect T, no matter how blatantly horrifically awful the order is! Even if hates it with all of his heart! He'll still fucking do it! And then only blame himself for it and not the guy who fucking ordered it! Because he'll still obey that guy after! Which also adds another fun layer of irony bc hes supposed to be clan head one day! To me, Itachi is a fascinating subject of having an unshakable, unbreakable iron will— and also having absoloutley no spine To be fair tho was also like. Fuckin 13. He was fucked up and was tricked at a very, very young age and unfortunatley that one mistake came to chain him to that one specific way of thinking. If he came to grow out of that way of thinking, he'd first have to admit he'd made a mistake, which wasn't gonna happen bc it was too late for regrets. But anyways: With Tora here Itachi has another "voice of reason" to help steer him away from other voices who might otherwise bind him. There isn't as much pressure on only him + Shisui to here and now choose what they (and only they) will choose to do to save the entire clan or Konoha Tora is a natural leader and quick to take charge, and Itachi is ok with that. When Itachi chooses to speak, he is listened to carefully and his opinions are taken seriously, which is all he can ask for tbh. Otherwise he's allowed to sit there and look pretty till given a nice, neatly wrapped plan approved by 2 people he can really, truly trust. So he's doing a bit better mentally than canon Anyways, in this AU I think Itachi should actually get to semi-retire as a shinobi and actually Sasuke gets to be clan head bc his brother ain't built for it. Plus it can play more into the stuff I was talking ab earlier about Sasuke struggling a lot more than those around him to learn different stuff (sealing especially) only to come out as one of the most terrifying in what he eventually masters. Let the second son inherit!! Let Sasuke have a defining character moment where he decides he wants to help guide the clan, and he's forced to kind of get over his brother worship to confront Itachi to say he doesn't think he'd make the best clan head. And Itachi let's out this sigh of relief he did not know he has been holding for his entire life and tells Sasuke he's proud of him.

With that in mind ^

I think the ultimate ironic pairing for the finale of the Tora AU would be Tora and Itachi ending up together, but with Itachi as the retired ninja housewife and Tora the big boi breadwinner

The ultimate fuck you twist call back to all Tora's parents talk of Tora needing to find a "good man to take care of you" + irony from them originally cheering Tora on when they learned he and itachi were friends bc they thought he'd snag him as a husband and the culmination of Itachi's "I don't really want to be in charge actually" arc

I love a full circle !!

Sasuke is Itachi's best man and Shisui is Tora's and Kakashi gets to walk Tora down the isle instead of his parents who he has no real attachment to

Actually POV I fucking kill off the Haruno's and Tora and Sakura have to deal w the death of their parents, who they both had very complicated relationships with but relationships nonetheless

Mmm I kinda like that, putting that in my back pocket for now

I honestly don't even know how the romance would happen, tbh I'm not the biggest romance fan but I just love the progression of it in the narrative. I think it'd be a cool end to their story, I'll sweat the little details later

Maybe they aren't even in love fr fr

Oh my god wait no hear me out

HEAR ME OUT

Itachi getting out of being clan head via marrying Tora. Don't ask me how this works. They aren't even like in love or anything but Itachi is using Tora as a political shield to fuck off and enjoy his housewife retirement actually.

Tora is similarly using this for one of his infamous political plots somehow, it's all part of his master plan and as usual itachi is just happy to go along for the ride

,,,the perfect queer platonic besties end to their arc ,, I love it this is my new ideal endgame

Sasuke drops that he's gonna fight Itachi to be clan head and Itachi one ups him by going "oh cool. Guess I don't need to marry Tora then."

Queue Sasuke spit take "You don't need to WHAT"

"Yeah we were gonna get married as part of a 10 step plan to help Tora take over the clan council + get me out of being clan head by abusing some old laws Tora found."

"??????????"

"I guess I'll tell Tora we don't need to do it anymore. I'm happy for you, little brother."

"???????????????????"

Anyways yeah, thinking ab tora au again.

I just finished re-reading my vault fic chapter for it and am having Thoughts(tm)

[oh-no-its-bird]

Just wanted to say I adore all your au's but the idea of Tora and Shisui are sending me my two favorite boys interacting

They'd be so fun together!! I honestly think they'd have really good chemistry

I see them as one of those dynamics where people take turns looking at them and going "oh ok so HE'S the sane one, right?" but switching who they're talking about depending on the hour of the day. (The catch is neither of them is normal they're just so good at acting it that they've managed to trick even themselves)

They have to take turns being in charge in the trio with Itachi bc if either one of them is left in charge for long periods of time it inevitably goes to shit

They have a lot of genuine respect for each other (which is somewhat rare coming from Tora, who, while gives a lot of surface level respect to people bc ettiquite, doesn't actually tend to really respect a lot of people)

They have the perfect personalities to play off eachother as the "straight man" and point out when the other is being insane or just plain weird

Meanwhile, Itachi is looking at their individual crazy going "this is a perfectly normal idea told by two perfectly normal upstanding members of the community and I have no issues with anything u are saying right now"

<- which also makes Itachi the perfect tie breaker/in-between for them bc he is blind to any crazy they may say and will take them very seriously no matter how stupid or outlandish the idea proposed

I think Tora existing and kind of dragging Shisui into this dual partnership for "who's in charge" between the three of them also eases a lot of stress off of Itachi. He just has to sit there and eat his applesauce in the back seat of the car as Tora and Shisui argue ab how to take care of any given problem and occasionally ask if he has any ideas.

Personal take here: I don't think Itachi likes being in charge! That boy is a born, built, and bred shinobi who follows what he is told to a perfect T, no matter how blatantly horrifically awful the order is! Even if hates it with all of his heart! He'll still fucking do it! And then only blame himself for it and not the guy who fucking ordered it! Because he'll still obey that guy after!

Which also adds another fun layer of irony bc hes supposed to be clan head one day!

To me, Itachi is a fascinating subject of having an unshakable, unbreakable iron will— and also having absoloutley no spine

To be fair tho was also like. Fuckin 13. He was fucked up and was tricked at a very, very young age and unfortunatley that one mistake came to chain him to that one specific way of thinking. If he came to grow out of that way of thinking, he'd first have to admit he'd made a mistake, which wasn't gonna happen bc it was too late for regrets.

But anyways:

With Tora here Itachi has another "voice of reason" to help steer him away from other voices who might otherwise bind him. There isn't as much pressure on only him + Shisui to here and now choose what they (and only they) will choose to do to save the entire clan or Konoha

Tora is a natural leader and quick to take charge, and Itachi is ok with that. When Itachi chooses to speak, he is listened to carefully and his opinions are taken seriously, which is all he can ask for tbh. Otherwise he's allowed to sit there and look pretty till given a nice, neatly wrapped plan approved by 2 people he can really, truly trust.

So he's doing a bit better mentally than canon

Anyways, in this AU I think Itachi should actually get to semi-retire as a shinobi and actually Sasuke gets to be clan head bc his brother ain't built for it. Plus it can play more into the stuff I was talking ab earlier about Sasuke struggling a lot more than those around him to learn different stuff (sealing especially) only to come out as one of the most terrifying in what he eventually masters.

Let the second son inherit!! Let Sasuke have a defining character moment where he decides he wants to help guide the clan, and he's forced to kind of get over his brother worship to confront Itachi to say he doesn't think he'd make the best clan head. And Itachi let's out this sigh of relief he did not know he has been holding for his entire life and tells Sasuke he's proud of him.

Fuck right sorry we were talking about Tora and Shisui let's get back to that—

They're a terrifying, hyper competent duo who are here to get shit done. I've been thinking about Tora's chakra affinities latley, thinking it's mostly wind with a weak water affinity (and boy do I have thoughts about the implications of him having lost that strong connection to water in this life but that's for a different post) so his wind moves can feed into and off of Shisui's fire for some cool combo attacks. Just them fighting together really well in general is fun to think ab tbh

Tora has a decent (honestly kind of mean) sense of humor, but when he makes jokes he says it with a totally straight face. (Itachi is similar so when they're joking with eachother no one can ever tell bc neither are even laughing about it as they banter w dead faces)

But Shisui, having grown up with Itachi, can totally tell when he's joking and thinks he's funny. He's a pretty upbeat, smiley guy, but he always seems to be laughing about something around Tora for some reason (the reason is that Tora is funny you just can't tell)

Shisui is in general just really good at reading him. He catches on to what he's thinking really fast and will sometimes react to Tora's plans before he even explains them. Or he'll see some scattered clues to something and go "Hmm. This means nothing to me but it feels like something Tora would notice, so I'll make note of it"

I think over time both Shisui and Itachi would start to make similar expressions to Tora

(I love when friends subconsciously pick up on eachothers expressions and vocabulary)

Tora catches Shisui's "I'm going to cause problems on purpose" smile and Shisui catches his in turn. Tora catches Itachi's quietly smug gleam in his eye and Itachi gets his own (very punchable) smug smirk

Funny scene where Shisui makes the exact expression Tora always makes before declaring something terrifying and Kakashi instinctivley slaps him upside the head bc of it. Shisui goes ?????? What the fuck was that for ????? As Kakashi apologizes and stares at his own hand in confusion

Tora and Shisui are a comedy duo you can't change my mind