I'm Done With Juries!
So in celebration, I've written a fic! XD Yeah, typical of me, I know.
Title: No Turning Back
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG/PG13 - for mentions of death and blood along with some mild language.
Genre: General, Suspense? Horror? Angst? I have no idea at this point.
Disclaimer: I own nada.
Warning: Crossover with Naruto. If you don’t like, don’t read. If you don’t know Naruto, then it won’t make sense. Slight AU and altering of canon events. Takes place before the xxxHOLiC manga, so there’s no Watanuki. Sorry.
Summary: When ambushed in his own home by the Legendary Snake Sannin, Uchiha escapes, bringing with him a large bundle that contained his most treasured object. On the run, he happens to stumble upon an odd plot of land and a woman who said she could grant a wish - any wish - for a price.
Dedicated to The Violent Tomboy, who wanted me to try an xxxHOLiC/Naruto crossover. The only thing that I didn’t like about this shot is that it focuses waaaay more on Naruto than on xxxHOLiC. (shrugs) Oh well.
Enjoy!
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Working at Yuuko's shop was like walking down a winding road. Sometimes the ground was straight, sometimes, uneven. Every once in a while, he would stumble across a crossroad, each path leading him to a different encounter.
Crossroads
“No Turning Back”
By Hikagi
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He was running as fast as he could through the dark streets of Konoha, blood pounding through his ears as his breaths came in short, labored gasps. His sandals were flapping against the paved roads, echoing loudly through the empty air. He didn’t bother using chakra to help mask his trail, seeing as that would do little to help. Besides, he couldn’t afford to waste anything at this moment - not time, not chakra, not even air.
Because Orochimaru was here; Orochimaru was in Konoha. The Legendary Sannin had gone after him in hopes of obtaining a powerful weapon - in hopes of obtaining the Sharingan.
He had to inform the Hokage.
The thirteen-year-old kept on running, trying to stick to the scarce shadows provided by the numerous buildings. As he darted down the next block, he took a chance and looked back in the direction of the Uchiha Compound - the now desolate Uchiha Compound. For a minute, his vision swarmed with the faces of his dead relatives: Father, Mother, Teyaki-ojichan, Uruchi-obachan, his other cousins, aunts, and uncles, cold bodies strewn across the ground, blood covering the houses from wall to wall…
Stop that!
He shook his head and tried to find the telltale signs of shadows following after him, the subtle spikes in chakra signatures as they moved across the rooftops. He would have used the rooftops too, had it not been for the lack of cover it entailed. Instead, his attention was caught by the moon - the full moon that, in all its glory, was giving off an eerie, malevolent, otherworldly glow that sent shivers down his spine. And it could have just been a trick of the light, but he could have sworn that it was red.
The Uchiha ignored this and continued on his journey to the Hokage’s Tower. Had he not been so low on chakra and injured, he could have afforded to immediately teleport to his destination. But Orochimaru had also placed a foreign jutsu over nearly half of Konoha that detected and prevented any means of teleportation, and he didn’t know where it started or where it ended. Trust that stupid snake bastard to make his life more difficult than it already was.
And to make things worse, he was carrying something large in his arms, wrapped in the closest thing that had been available when he was making his escape from his own home. And while an object of its weight wouldn’t have hampered him in a normal mission, the Uchiha had nothing to keep it secured to his body. That meant that at least one of his arms was useless until he found a rope or something similar to tie it to his back. Leaving it behind was out of the question.
Which meant that now, he couldn’t use the normal two-handed seals to help mold his chakra, and he wasn’t sure if he trusted his experimental one-handed ones yet. Mobility would be reduced significantly if he were to take steps to avoid confrontation and deliver his cargo into safe hands.
Pausing in an abandoned ally, he shifted his bundle around, placing the majority of its weight in his left arm as he brushed his bangs out of his eyes with his free hand. He winced when a cut made his nerves shoot with pain, but he ignored it when the unpleasant sensation faded. Slowly, his erratic heartbeat calmed slightly and he tried to open his ears and the rest of his senses while he gave his eyes a break. His Sharingan had been on since before he left, and he wasn’t going to take any chances - not when there was so much at stake here.
Partially, it was his fault that this had happened. Had he been paying more attention to his surroundings and kept a more vigilant watch, Orochimaru would probably not have been able to infiltrate so easily into the Complex. He wouldn’t have then proceeded to tear the thirteen-year-old boy’s life apart, and his best friend wouldn’t have gotten involved in the process.
Absently, he clenched his fist as his thoughts turned to his friend. His now dead friend - the Uchiha had killed him with a kunai to the heart when Orochimaru had placed a mind-controlling jutsu on him. And now he was forever cursed with the Mangekyou Sharingan, his hand stained with yet another person’s blood…
Maybe the Snake had planned for this all along. Maybe by running to the Hokage, he was playing right into the hands of his enemies. Maybe he had merely been lucky to have been able to salvage the bundle in his arms.
…Maybe, somehow, he would survive this predicament.
Yes, he thought as he took in a deep breath and vaulted across the street, careful to absorb all the shock in his knees. I will survive. I will get through this. (1)
But two hours of running, dodging, evading, hiding, and out-maneuvering his opponents had taken its toll on his body. He was becoming tired, oh so very tired, and his legs were protesting every step he took. There were spots in his eyes, bright specks of light that became more persistent the more he blinked to be rid of them.
Dammit! Was this the extent of his powers? Was this all that he could do? Were his skills so lacking that he could not find a way to save his own skin?
The pain from the multiple lacerations he had received during his brief struggle against Orochimaru was beginning to steadily grow. His left arm was becoming numb, and the Uchiha suspected that one of the Snake Sannin’s kunai had been coated with poison. He shifted his burden to his other arm.
No, he reasoned as he sped down an unfamiliar, unoccupied street, glancing at every which direction so as to not be caught unawares by an ambush. He had been the top of his graduating class. He had been called a genius - a prodigy. Surely, he was capable of far more than this!
But the blood loss was starting to get to him, and he was sure that he was leaving a trail of crimson for his pursuers to follow. Mildly, he noted that his left arm was hanging all but useless by his side, a warm, wet substance dripping from the kunai wound. He was starting to get dizzy and his steps weren’t as steady as before.
He was also in an unfamiliar sector of Konoha. It looked like a residential area, but he couldn’t be sure. One would think that spending thirteen years in a village would be enough time to become antiquated with all of its nooks and crannies, but he had spent all of his time training to become a better shinobi. He didn’t know nearly enough about his home town.
Up ahead, there was an odd, wooden fence that surrounded the borders of a small plot of land. While fences weren’t uncommon in the area, the Uchiha was surprised to note that he had never seen anything that seemed to…glow, for lack of a better word, with a sense of invitation. Pausing only long enough to briefly analyze the wood, he was surprised when he found a high-leveled genjutsu placed over the entire complex.
Looking around and sensing that his enemies were near, he studied the closed gates and made a quick decision. He took a few steps back and prepared to launch himself over the fence, taking a chance that the owners of the place might see him and raise an alarm. Or worse yet, that the genjutsu would trigger a trap and alert his pursuers to his current location.
When he landed, he was met with a sight he hadn’t been expecting. There was a woman - civilian, his paranoid mind told him - sitting on the front porch of a traditional-styled house with a ceramic mug in her hands and a bottle of what appeared to be sake next to her.
“Hmm?” the woman said, raising her eyebrows as she took a sip of her drink. “We seem to have a pair of interesting guests this time.” She cleared her throat and stood up, taking the bottle with her as she opened the rice doors and stepped inside. “Maro, Moro - bring them in.” The doors closed shut behind her.
“Okyakusan!”
“Okyakusan!”
The Uchiha hadn’t even noticed the two young girls until they were nearly upon him, twirling around the young shinobi with a strange grace that he couldn’t begin to fathom. When he tried to gauge their chakra levels, he was surprised to find that they had none.
“Mistress wants you to come in!” the pink one chirped, grabbing his left arm and dragging him in one direction. He tried not to wince when pain shot through his nerves and refrained from stabbing her with a kunai as instincts demanded.
“Mistress wants you to come in!” the blue one echoed, taking his right arm in her hands, causing him to nearly drop his bundle. He hissed and jerked out of their clutches, performing a faultless back flip into a nearby tree.
He didn’t know what was going on, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. And kami be damned if he was going to blindly follow another person’s orders (a non-shinobi one at that!) without accessing the dangers first.
Which, at the moment, seemed to be a pair of young girls dancing around the tree he was sitting on.
“Waaaaai!”
“Waaaaai!”
“Look, it’s blood!”
“It’s blood, it’s blood!”
In the back of his mind, he was worried that all the noise was going to attract attention, but after a subtle probe at the genjutsu, he noticed that a sound-proof barrier and a series of seals had been placed on the fence, preventing anything unwanted from entering or leaving. Which led him to the question of just how he had managed to enter in the first place and what the hell kind of a civilian required so much security around their land.
But he was already on the strange woman’s property, and he had a feeling that she wasn’t going to let him go as easily as he had gotten in. Resigned, he slowly let himself relax and climbed out of the tree’s branches. The girls had taken the hint that he didn’t like being touched and, after twirling a few more circles around him, had shown him the way inside.
A short while later, he was walking into a strange, hazy room, his bundle still held protectively in his arms. The lady from earlier was lounging in a large, cushioned chair and smoking a pipe. Mildly, he wondered if the haze was from the wisps of smoke she exhaled, and if that would damage his lungs or his cargo’s.
“What is your name?” she asked when he had settled down on a cushion one of the girls provided.
“Itachi,” he heard himself say before he could stop himself. “Uchiha Itachi.” (2)
“Welcome, Uchiha-kun.” She gave him an undecipherable look before turning her attention elsewhere. “And the treasure in your arms?”
Itachi fought the urge to hold the bundle closer to his chest, like what his mother might have done when he was a baby.
“My brother,” he finally answered, “Uchiha Sasuke.”
Her lips quirked upward and Itachi unconsciously stiffened. “I’d welcome him too, but I see that you’ve placed him under sleep.”
He shifted in his seat - an act of nervousness that steamed from his apprehension and betrayed his feelings. “If I may ask, who are you?”
The woman took another long drag from her pipe. “My name is Ichihara Yuuko, and you are in my store. I can grant any wish as long as I receive the right price.” She smiled slyly as is sensing his thoughts as he watched the smoke rise up. “And don’t worry. This smoke won’t affect your lungs. It’ll probably help heal your cuts, though.”
Itachi watched her, trying to find any trace of a lie in her eyes. His Sharingan might not have been designed like the Byakugen to see the inner coils and read into deception, but he was damned good at reading other people’s body languages anyway. Ichihara didn’t seem to be lying, but he couldn’t be too sure. (3)
It wasn’t until he was evaluating her words that he suddenly noticed that he wasn’t as tired as he was before, and that his head wasn’t dizzy from blood loss. He looked at his left arm and noticed almost disbelievingly that his injuries were being healed by the tendrils of smoke in the room.
She seemed to wait for his analysis to be done, because as soon as he reached his conclusion that his eyes were playing tricks on him, she spoke up again.
“What is it that you desire?”
He turned his attention away from his arm and looked straight forward. “I want my family back,” he instantly replied.
She paused as if mulling that idea over in her head. “That I cannot do. The dead will forever remain dead. And even if I had the means to do so, the price is much too great.”
Itachi glanced down at his brother’s sleeping face. “I want Sasuke to be safe,” he said, coming up with the next best thing. “I want him to be strong enough to protect himself.”
“Are you sure?”
The shinobi nodded, clutching his brother closer with a ferocity he never knew he had. “I don’t want to lose the only family I have left.”
“Very well. In exchange, I need compensation.”
The black-haired boy glared. “I don’t have any money.”
Ichihara waved his response aside. “It’s not money that I want.”
“Then do you require my services?”
The shopkeeper laughed, amused by his offer. “Services of a shinobi? Ohohoho! That sounds marvelous!” She gave him a wry smile and shook her head. “But no, I need a payment that matches your wish.”
“Meaning…?”
She leaned forward in her seat and even though he was halfway across the room, Itachi felt the need to scoot backwards. He beat down the urge, seeing that he was only being paranoid again.
“I need something important to you.”
Itachi was pressed to find that something until he thought about how Orochimaru had been controlling his best friend.
“Then…what about my eyesight?”
“The Sharingan?” Itachi nodded, not raising the question of how this civilian knew of his bloodline. “Hmm. I suppose that will do.”
“Right now?”
The woman raised a thoughtful finger to her chin. “No. I’ll be acquiring your eyesight as the years go on.”
“I see.”
She made a motion and the two girls from earlier appeared by her side. One held an open scroll while the other carried a brush. They placed both before the shinobi. “Then, if you’ll sign here, our contract will be established.”
Itachi eyed the brush, wondering where the ink was before he moved to take it. “How will I be sure that I can trust you?”
“You can’t,” was her flat reply.
“Very well.” He figured that the brush had some sort of jutsu in it, and he was proven right when he wrote his name and the ink appeared on the scroll in a reddish script. “Is that it?”
“No,” Ichihara said, stuffing more opium into her pipe. “I also need you to write your brother’s name.”
“What for?”
“He is a part of the contract.”
Itachi nodded. Her explanation made sense, even if this whole ordeal seemed like one big hoax. He had no idea just how the shopkeeper was going to collect his Sharingan over the years, since the only way to acquire it was to either be born as an Uchiha and activate it, or perform surgery and transfer it to another person like Uchiha Obito and Hatake Kakashi had.
“Can I ask you one more thing?” he said as the ink dried and the girls picked up the contract and brush.
“What is it?”
“I want to know what will happen to him.” Itachi didn’t specify, but he had the feeling that the strange lady would know what he was referring to.
“I need payment.” He had expected this.
“How about this?”
He reached around his neck and slipped off his ANBU mask - the one that he had been gifted with when he had become captain. One of the girls took the porcelain object and presented it to Ichihara.
The woman smiled, eyeing its decorations and carvings. “I like it. Sure.” She got up from her seat and made her way to the Uchiha and gestured. “If I may?”
Itachi grudgingly let her take Sasuke from his arms.
“Truthfully,” she said as she traced the outline of his face, “it depends on which path he will take, and that will be decided by you, since you have agreed to the contract. He has the potential to become one of the strongest shinobi of his days; depending on circumstances, his power might one day rival yours.
“However, his future lies on two paths. If you tell him the truth about the massacre, then you can be with him and train him personally. If you tell him a lie, then you will leave and he will seek after you for revenge. Either way, his path will cross the Snake’s.”
Itachi slammed his fist down, not noticing that he made a dent in the floor. “I signed the contract in order to keep him safe!”
“I know,” she snapped in an impatient tone, and Itachi was forcefully reminded of his late mother when she was in her lecture mode. She sighed and began again, a little more calmly, “If you tell him the truth, then you will have to rescue your brother yourself. If a lie, then the Fox will do it for you. What ever the case may be, he will grow stronger.”
Itachi didn’t ask who the Fox was because he was running a mental list of anyone who might fit the descriptions (he ruled the Kyuubi out because the thought of a demon lending a human its help sounded preposterous and highly unlikely), but he trusted that the unknown person would at least be strong - strong enough to help his brother. (4)
He was startled out of his musings when Ichihara bent down to return Sasuke to him.
“You’ll need to do something about him,” she said. “You need to come up with an excuse about what happened.”
“I know,” he replied. He had placed Sasuke under a genjutsu so that the child would not struggle or make unnecessary noises during their escape.
“So, what will it be? The truth, or a lie?”
“Sasuke…” Itachi paused, his mind furiously working until it came to a conclusion - one that went against what he wanted, “will probably do better if I wasn’t around to coddle him all the time.”
“And…? What will you tell him? What will be the reason that his entire clan was murdered?” It seemed that Ichihara knew things she couldn’t possibly have known under given circumstances, but Itachi was past the point of caring. And if she could see the future, then it wasn’t really surprising that she could see other people’s pasts.
But what to tell Sasuke? How was he going to make a believable lie that would fool not only the younger Uchiha, but the rest of Konoha? He was going to have to come up with something that the Hokage might be inclined to hold as truth.
Itachi’s mind was suddenly taken to one of the days that Sasuke had been needling him for shuriken practice.
‘We are unique siblings. I am the barrier you must overcome, so you and I will continue to exist together,’ he thought, recalling his exact words.
Itachi looked at the sleeping bundle that was Sasuke and slowly raised his head so that his eyes stared unflinchingly at Ichihara’s.
This was for the best.
“To test my utsuwa.” (5)
She gave him a feral grin that reminded him of the infamous interrogator, Morino Ibiki.
“Very well. I will provide the means to deliver him safely. The rest is up to you.”
Even if it were a lie.
The shopkeeper then exited the room and the walls shifted and morphed, forming the exact replica of his house when he had left, down to the splatters of blood on the walls and the broken furniture thrown around.
His mind made up, Itachi turned on his Sharingan and stood, walking over to the door, his intended scenario playing out in his mind. He then set his brother down on the floor and unwrapped the blanket that he had draped around the sleeping eight-year-old. Placing a hand on his shoulder to wake him up, Itachi steeled his nerves and prepared the Mangekyou.
Because by now, he had gone past the point of no return.
“You've always wanted to surpass me,” he whispered as Sasuke’s eyes met his and the boy was thrown into the world of illusions of the Tsukuyomi. “That's why I'm going to let you live.”
There would be no turning back.
He squashed the feeling of guilt that was threatening to rise up as he set the stage for the beginning of his brother’s future. “If you want to kill me, despise me, hate me, and lead a loathsome life… run away, run away and cling to life.”
Sasuke would only remember what Itachi wanted him to.
No, none at all.
Fin.
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1. Oh god, I was laughing so hard at the cheesiness when I wrote this line. It reminded me of that one animated video about the dancing alien girl. (sweatdrops) Nvm…
2. So. Who thought I was talking about Sasuke at first? C’mon, I want to see how many of you I’ve tricked. XD
3. Yuuko is referred to as Ichihara because I don’t think that Itachi would presume to call anyone by their first name (honorifics or no) in such a situation.
4. Ah, the irony. No?
5. Utsuwa: power, ability, what ever you wish to call it. The manga never really gave a reason why Itachi killed his family except for the excuse he told Sasuke. So instead, I came up with this elaborate (cough) plan on what could have happened, had things gone differently than what we believed.
All other Japanese words or terms are from Naruto and refer to ninja clans, titles, weapons, and techniques.
When TVT made her request, I thought that it was a good idea. I immediately set out to write one that featured either Naruto or Sasuke and their wish to become acknowledged or stronger. In Sasuke’s case, Naruto was going to be on the verge of death from one of their missions and Sasuke was going to have to leave Konoha and never return in exchange for saving his friend. I don’t remember what I had planned for Naruto.
Blah. But then, I read a few fanfics (more like thirty) over the weekend that involved time travel and alternate dimensions, when I was suddenly hit with this idea instead. And I started writing, intent on getting at least a thousand words out of the shot. But as I kept writing, I realized that it wouldn’t do if Itachi just showed up and started talking to Yuuko. So I had to create a back story.
And then it got waaaaaay too long - longer than my previous two shots combined! And after five hours and over four thousand words, it is finally finished! (collapses)
Anyway, I hope it’s to your liking! Please tell me what you think?
x-posted to xxxholic and FFN
Previous chapters/shots can be found under Crossroads (FFN) or at the challenge table (LJ).
~ Ika
Title: No Turning Back
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG/PG13 - for mentions of death and blood along with some mild language.
Genre: General, Suspense? Horror? Angst? I have no idea at this point.
Disclaimer: I own nada.
Warning: Crossover with Naruto. If you don’t like, don’t read. If you don’t know Naruto, then it won’t make sense. Slight AU and altering of canon events. Takes place before the xxxHOLiC manga, so there’s no Watanuki. Sorry.
Summary: When ambushed in his own home by the Legendary Snake Sannin, Uchiha escapes, bringing with him a large bundle that contained his most treasured object. On the run, he happens to stumble upon an odd plot of land and a woman who said she could grant a wish - any wish - for a price.
Dedicated to The Violent Tomboy, who wanted me to try an xxxHOLiC/Naruto crossover. The only thing that I didn’t like about this shot is that it focuses waaaay more on Naruto than on xxxHOLiC. (shrugs) Oh well.
Enjoy!
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Working at Yuuko's shop was like walking down a winding road. Sometimes the ground was straight, sometimes, uneven. Every once in a while, he would stumble across a crossroad, each path leading him to a different encounter.
Crossroads
“No Turning Back”
By Hikagi
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He was running as fast as he could through the dark streets of Konoha, blood pounding through his ears as his breaths came in short, labored gasps. His sandals were flapping against the paved roads, echoing loudly through the empty air. He didn’t bother using chakra to help mask his trail, seeing as that would do little to help. Besides, he couldn’t afford to waste anything at this moment - not time, not chakra, not even air.
Because Orochimaru was here; Orochimaru was in Konoha. The Legendary Sannin had gone after him in hopes of obtaining a powerful weapon - in hopes of obtaining the Sharingan.
He had to inform the Hokage.
The thirteen-year-old kept on running, trying to stick to the scarce shadows provided by the numerous buildings. As he darted down the next block, he took a chance and looked back in the direction of the Uchiha Compound - the now desolate Uchiha Compound. For a minute, his vision swarmed with the faces of his dead relatives: Father, Mother, Teyaki-ojichan, Uruchi-obachan, his other cousins, aunts, and uncles, cold bodies strewn across the ground, blood covering the houses from wall to wall…
Stop that!
He shook his head and tried to find the telltale signs of shadows following after him, the subtle spikes in chakra signatures as they moved across the rooftops. He would have used the rooftops too, had it not been for the lack of cover it entailed. Instead, his attention was caught by the moon - the full moon that, in all its glory, was giving off an eerie, malevolent, otherworldly glow that sent shivers down his spine. And it could have just been a trick of the light, but he could have sworn that it was red.
The Uchiha ignored this and continued on his journey to the Hokage’s Tower. Had he not been so low on chakra and injured, he could have afforded to immediately teleport to his destination. But Orochimaru had also placed a foreign jutsu over nearly half of Konoha that detected and prevented any means of teleportation, and he didn’t know where it started or where it ended. Trust that stupid snake bastard to make his life more difficult than it already was.
And to make things worse, he was carrying something large in his arms, wrapped in the closest thing that had been available when he was making his escape from his own home. And while an object of its weight wouldn’t have hampered him in a normal mission, the Uchiha had nothing to keep it secured to his body. That meant that at least one of his arms was useless until he found a rope or something similar to tie it to his back. Leaving it behind was out of the question.
Which meant that now, he couldn’t use the normal two-handed seals to help mold his chakra, and he wasn’t sure if he trusted his experimental one-handed ones yet. Mobility would be reduced significantly if he were to take steps to avoid confrontation and deliver his cargo into safe hands.
Pausing in an abandoned ally, he shifted his bundle around, placing the majority of its weight in his left arm as he brushed his bangs out of his eyes with his free hand. He winced when a cut made his nerves shoot with pain, but he ignored it when the unpleasant sensation faded. Slowly, his erratic heartbeat calmed slightly and he tried to open his ears and the rest of his senses while he gave his eyes a break. His Sharingan had been on since before he left, and he wasn’t going to take any chances - not when there was so much at stake here.
Partially, it was his fault that this had happened. Had he been paying more attention to his surroundings and kept a more vigilant watch, Orochimaru would probably not have been able to infiltrate so easily into the Complex. He wouldn’t have then proceeded to tear the thirteen-year-old boy’s life apart, and his best friend wouldn’t have gotten involved in the process.
Absently, he clenched his fist as his thoughts turned to his friend. His now dead friend - the Uchiha had killed him with a kunai to the heart when Orochimaru had placed a mind-controlling jutsu on him. And now he was forever cursed with the Mangekyou Sharingan, his hand stained with yet another person’s blood…
Maybe the Snake had planned for this all along. Maybe by running to the Hokage, he was playing right into the hands of his enemies. Maybe he had merely been lucky to have been able to salvage the bundle in his arms.
…Maybe, somehow, he would survive this predicament.
Yes, he thought as he took in a deep breath and vaulted across the street, careful to absorb all the shock in his knees. I will survive. I will get through this. (1)
But two hours of running, dodging, evading, hiding, and out-maneuvering his opponents had taken its toll on his body. He was becoming tired, oh so very tired, and his legs were protesting every step he took. There were spots in his eyes, bright specks of light that became more persistent the more he blinked to be rid of them.
Dammit! Was this the extent of his powers? Was this all that he could do? Were his skills so lacking that he could not find a way to save his own skin?
The pain from the multiple lacerations he had received during his brief struggle against Orochimaru was beginning to steadily grow. His left arm was becoming numb, and the Uchiha suspected that one of the Snake Sannin’s kunai had been coated with poison. He shifted his burden to his other arm.
No, he reasoned as he sped down an unfamiliar, unoccupied street, glancing at every which direction so as to not be caught unawares by an ambush. He had been the top of his graduating class. He had been called a genius - a prodigy. Surely, he was capable of far more than this!
But the blood loss was starting to get to him, and he was sure that he was leaving a trail of crimson for his pursuers to follow. Mildly, he noted that his left arm was hanging all but useless by his side, a warm, wet substance dripping from the kunai wound. He was starting to get dizzy and his steps weren’t as steady as before.
He was also in an unfamiliar sector of Konoha. It looked like a residential area, but he couldn’t be sure. One would think that spending thirteen years in a village would be enough time to become antiquated with all of its nooks and crannies, but he had spent all of his time training to become a better shinobi. He didn’t know nearly enough about his home town.
Up ahead, there was an odd, wooden fence that surrounded the borders of a small plot of land. While fences weren’t uncommon in the area, the Uchiha was surprised to note that he had never seen anything that seemed to…glow, for lack of a better word, with a sense of invitation. Pausing only long enough to briefly analyze the wood, he was surprised when he found a high-leveled genjutsu placed over the entire complex.
Looking around and sensing that his enemies were near, he studied the closed gates and made a quick decision. He took a few steps back and prepared to launch himself over the fence, taking a chance that the owners of the place might see him and raise an alarm. Or worse yet, that the genjutsu would trigger a trap and alert his pursuers to his current location.
When he landed, he was met with a sight he hadn’t been expecting. There was a woman - civilian, his paranoid mind told him - sitting on the front porch of a traditional-styled house with a ceramic mug in her hands and a bottle of what appeared to be sake next to her.
“Hmm?” the woman said, raising her eyebrows as she took a sip of her drink. “We seem to have a pair of interesting guests this time.” She cleared her throat and stood up, taking the bottle with her as she opened the rice doors and stepped inside. “Maro, Moro - bring them in.” The doors closed shut behind her.
“Okyakusan!”
“Okyakusan!”
The Uchiha hadn’t even noticed the two young girls until they were nearly upon him, twirling around the young shinobi with a strange grace that he couldn’t begin to fathom. When he tried to gauge their chakra levels, he was surprised to find that they had none.
“Mistress wants you to come in!” the pink one chirped, grabbing his left arm and dragging him in one direction. He tried not to wince when pain shot through his nerves and refrained from stabbing her with a kunai as instincts demanded.
“Mistress wants you to come in!” the blue one echoed, taking his right arm in her hands, causing him to nearly drop his bundle. He hissed and jerked out of their clutches, performing a faultless back flip into a nearby tree.
He didn’t know what was going on, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. And kami be damned if he was going to blindly follow another person’s orders (a non-shinobi one at that!) without accessing the dangers first.
Which, at the moment, seemed to be a pair of young girls dancing around the tree he was sitting on.
“Waaaaai!”
“Waaaaai!”
“Look, it’s blood!”
“It’s blood, it’s blood!”
In the back of his mind, he was worried that all the noise was going to attract attention, but after a subtle probe at the genjutsu, he noticed that a sound-proof barrier and a series of seals had been placed on the fence, preventing anything unwanted from entering or leaving. Which led him to the question of just how he had managed to enter in the first place and what the hell kind of a civilian required so much security around their land.
But he was already on the strange woman’s property, and he had a feeling that she wasn’t going to let him go as easily as he had gotten in. Resigned, he slowly let himself relax and climbed out of the tree’s branches. The girls had taken the hint that he didn’t like being touched and, after twirling a few more circles around him, had shown him the way inside.
A short while later, he was walking into a strange, hazy room, his bundle still held protectively in his arms. The lady from earlier was lounging in a large, cushioned chair and smoking a pipe. Mildly, he wondered if the haze was from the wisps of smoke she exhaled, and if that would damage his lungs or his cargo’s.
“What is your name?” she asked when he had settled down on a cushion one of the girls provided.
“Itachi,” he heard himself say before he could stop himself. “Uchiha Itachi.” (2)
“Welcome, Uchiha-kun.” She gave him an undecipherable look before turning her attention elsewhere. “And the treasure in your arms?”
Itachi fought the urge to hold the bundle closer to his chest, like what his mother might have done when he was a baby.
“My brother,” he finally answered, “Uchiha Sasuke.”
Her lips quirked upward and Itachi unconsciously stiffened. “I’d welcome him too, but I see that you’ve placed him under sleep.”
He shifted in his seat - an act of nervousness that steamed from his apprehension and betrayed his feelings. “If I may ask, who are you?”
The woman took another long drag from her pipe. “My name is Ichihara Yuuko, and you are in my store. I can grant any wish as long as I receive the right price.” She smiled slyly as is sensing his thoughts as he watched the smoke rise up. “And don’t worry. This smoke won’t affect your lungs. It’ll probably help heal your cuts, though.”
Itachi watched her, trying to find any trace of a lie in her eyes. His Sharingan might not have been designed like the Byakugen to see the inner coils and read into deception, but he was damned good at reading other people’s body languages anyway. Ichihara didn’t seem to be lying, but he couldn’t be too sure. (3)
It wasn’t until he was evaluating her words that he suddenly noticed that he wasn’t as tired as he was before, and that his head wasn’t dizzy from blood loss. He looked at his left arm and noticed almost disbelievingly that his injuries were being healed by the tendrils of smoke in the room.
She seemed to wait for his analysis to be done, because as soon as he reached his conclusion that his eyes were playing tricks on him, she spoke up again.
“What is it that you desire?”
He turned his attention away from his arm and looked straight forward. “I want my family back,” he instantly replied.
She paused as if mulling that idea over in her head. “That I cannot do. The dead will forever remain dead. And even if I had the means to do so, the price is much too great.”
Itachi glanced down at his brother’s sleeping face. “I want Sasuke to be safe,” he said, coming up with the next best thing. “I want him to be strong enough to protect himself.”
“Are you sure?”
The shinobi nodded, clutching his brother closer with a ferocity he never knew he had. “I don’t want to lose the only family I have left.”
“Very well. In exchange, I need compensation.”
The black-haired boy glared. “I don’t have any money.”
Ichihara waved his response aside. “It’s not money that I want.”
“Then do you require my services?”
The shopkeeper laughed, amused by his offer. “Services of a shinobi? Ohohoho! That sounds marvelous!” She gave him a wry smile and shook her head. “But no, I need a payment that matches your wish.”
“Meaning…?”
She leaned forward in her seat and even though he was halfway across the room, Itachi felt the need to scoot backwards. He beat down the urge, seeing that he was only being paranoid again.
“I need something important to you.”
Itachi was pressed to find that something until he thought about how Orochimaru had been controlling his best friend.
“Then…what about my eyesight?”
“The Sharingan?” Itachi nodded, not raising the question of how this civilian knew of his bloodline. “Hmm. I suppose that will do.”
“Right now?”
The woman raised a thoughtful finger to her chin. “No. I’ll be acquiring your eyesight as the years go on.”
“I see.”
She made a motion and the two girls from earlier appeared by her side. One held an open scroll while the other carried a brush. They placed both before the shinobi. “Then, if you’ll sign here, our contract will be established.”
Itachi eyed the brush, wondering where the ink was before he moved to take it. “How will I be sure that I can trust you?”
“You can’t,” was her flat reply.
“Very well.” He figured that the brush had some sort of jutsu in it, and he was proven right when he wrote his name and the ink appeared on the scroll in a reddish script. “Is that it?”
“No,” Ichihara said, stuffing more opium into her pipe. “I also need you to write your brother’s name.”
“What for?”
“He is a part of the contract.”
Itachi nodded. Her explanation made sense, even if this whole ordeal seemed like one big hoax. He had no idea just how the shopkeeper was going to collect his Sharingan over the years, since the only way to acquire it was to either be born as an Uchiha and activate it, or perform surgery and transfer it to another person like Uchiha Obito and Hatake Kakashi had.
“Can I ask you one more thing?” he said as the ink dried and the girls picked up the contract and brush.
“What is it?”
“I want to know what will happen to him.” Itachi didn’t specify, but he had the feeling that the strange lady would know what he was referring to.
“I need payment.” He had expected this.
“How about this?”
He reached around his neck and slipped off his ANBU mask - the one that he had been gifted with when he had become captain. One of the girls took the porcelain object and presented it to Ichihara.
The woman smiled, eyeing its decorations and carvings. “I like it. Sure.” She got up from her seat and made her way to the Uchiha and gestured. “If I may?”
Itachi grudgingly let her take Sasuke from his arms.
“Truthfully,” she said as she traced the outline of his face, “it depends on which path he will take, and that will be decided by you, since you have agreed to the contract. He has the potential to become one of the strongest shinobi of his days; depending on circumstances, his power might one day rival yours.
“However, his future lies on two paths. If you tell him the truth about the massacre, then you can be with him and train him personally. If you tell him a lie, then you will leave and he will seek after you for revenge. Either way, his path will cross the Snake’s.”
Itachi slammed his fist down, not noticing that he made a dent in the floor. “I signed the contract in order to keep him safe!”
“I know,” she snapped in an impatient tone, and Itachi was forcefully reminded of his late mother when she was in her lecture mode. She sighed and began again, a little more calmly, “If you tell him the truth, then you will have to rescue your brother yourself. If a lie, then the Fox will do it for you. What ever the case may be, he will grow stronger.”
Itachi didn’t ask who the Fox was because he was running a mental list of anyone who might fit the descriptions (he ruled the Kyuubi out because the thought of a demon lending a human its help sounded preposterous and highly unlikely), but he trusted that the unknown person would at least be strong - strong enough to help his brother. (4)
He was startled out of his musings when Ichihara bent down to return Sasuke to him.
“You’ll need to do something about him,” she said. “You need to come up with an excuse about what happened.”
“I know,” he replied. He had placed Sasuke under a genjutsu so that the child would not struggle or make unnecessary noises during their escape.
“So, what will it be? The truth, or a lie?”
“Sasuke…” Itachi paused, his mind furiously working until it came to a conclusion - one that went against what he wanted, “will probably do better if I wasn’t around to coddle him all the time.”
“And…? What will you tell him? What will be the reason that his entire clan was murdered?” It seemed that Ichihara knew things she couldn’t possibly have known under given circumstances, but Itachi was past the point of caring. And if she could see the future, then it wasn’t really surprising that she could see other people’s pasts.
But what to tell Sasuke? How was he going to make a believable lie that would fool not only the younger Uchiha, but the rest of Konoha? He was going to have to come up with something that the Hokage might be inclined to hold as truth.
Itachi’s mind was suddenly taken to one of the days that Sasuke had been needling him for shuriken practice.
‘We are unique siblings. I am the barrier you must overcome, so you and I will continue to exist together,’ he thought, recalling his exact words.
Itachi looked at the sleeping bundle that was Sasuke and slowly raised his head so that his eyes stared unflinchingly at Ichihara’s.
This was for the best.
“To test my utsuwa.” (5)
She gave him a feral grin that reminded him of the infamous interrogator, Morino Ibiki.
“Very well. I will provide the means to deliver him safely. The rest is up to you.”
Even if it were a lie.
The shopkeeper then exited the room and the walls shifted and morphed, forming the exact replica of his house when he had left, down to the splatters of blood on the walls and the broken furniture thrown around.
His mind made up, Itachi turned on his Sharingan and stood, walking over to the door, his intended scenario playing out in his mind. He then set his brother down on the floor and unwrapped the blanket that he had draped around the sleeping eight-year-old. Placing a hand on his shoulder to wake him up, Itachi steeled his nerves and prepared the Mangekyou.
Because by now, he had gone past the point of no return.
“You've always wanted to surpass me,” he whispered as Sasuke’s eyes met his and the boy was thrown into the world of illusions of the Tsukuyomi. “That's why I'm going to let you live.”
There would be no turning back.
He squashed the feeling of guilt that was threatening to rise up as he set the stage for the beginning of his brother’s future. “If you want to kill me, despise me, hate me, and lead a loathsome life… run away, run away and cling to life.”
Sasuke would only remember what Itachi wanted him to.
No, none at all.
Fin.
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1. Oh god, I was laughing so hard at the cheesiness when I wrote this line. It reminded me of that one animated video about the dancing alien girl. (sweatdrops) Nvm…
2. So. Who thought I was talking about Sasuke at first? C’mon, I want to see how many of you I’ve tricked. XD
3. Yuuko is referred to as Ichihara because I don’t think that Itachi would presume to call anyone by their first name (honorifics or no) in such a situation.
4. Ah, the irony. No?
5. Utsuwa: power, ability, what ever you wish to call it. The manga never really gave a reason why Itachi killed his family except for the excuse he told Sasuke. So instead, I came up with this elaborate (cough) plan on what could have happened, had things gone differently than what we believed.
All other Japanese words or terms are from Naruto and refer to ninja clans, titles, weapons, and techniques.
When TVT made her request, I thought that it was a good idea. I immediately set out to write one that featured either Naruto or Sasuke and their wish to become acknowledged or stronger. In Sasuke’s case, Naruto was going to be on the verge of death from one of their missions and Sasuke was going to have to leave Konoha and never return in exchange for saving his friend. I don’t remember what I had planned for Naruto.
Blah. But then, I read a few fanfics (more like thirty) over the weekend that involved time travel and alternate dimensions, when I was suddenly hit with this idea instead. And I started writing, intent on getting at least a thousand words out of the shot. But as I kept writing, I realized that it wouldn’t do if Itachi just showed up and started talking to Yuuko. So I had to create a back story.
And then it got waaaaaay too long - longer than my previous two shots combined! And after five hours and over four thousand words, it is finally finished! (collapses)
Anyway, I hope it’s to your liking! Please tell me what you think?
x-posted to xxxholic and FFN
Previous chapters/shots can be found under Crossroads (FFN) or at the challenge table (LJ).
~ Ika