[edit] screwy timeline fixed! And yes, I'm alive. Sorry for the long absence, but robotics kind of ate my life from January until about two weeks ago and right now I'm in the middle of testing. So…hopefully over the summer I'll be able to work a little more regularly, but don't count on it as my access to a computer will be a little more limited.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Same old story, what's the use of tears? What's the use of praying if there's nobody that hears? Les Misérables
It was always the same. They never looked at her and saw a girl who, thanks to years of their neglect, would never grow to her full height, never have a child. All they saw was the seal around her neck and the cat's pupils in her eyes. They had never seen anything else, for she had almost never been anything else. She was never a normal child (with the voice of Death whispering in the back of her mind, promising all her she'd ever wanted if she would just let go, how could she?). She was never a normal kunoichi (her reflexes were such that anyone who approached her from behind or the side was liable to be maimed or killed, and others recognized that, leaving her in complete solitude). She was never a normal citizen of Kumogakure (for without the Nekomata, that is what Yugito would have been, and she cursed the demon every day of her life for it).
She never truly had parents. Her father was killed on a mission shortly after it was sealed, distracted and anguished by the grief of seeing the mark of the Nibi no Nekomata writhe around his young daughter's neck, burning into the skin, leaving a mark of bones and flames and death that she would carry for the rest of her life. Her mother had abandoned her to the Raikage after the demon had been sealed into her only daughter. Shortly after, she committed suicide, electrocuting herself with one of her most powerful lightning jutsu, leaving nothing behind save dim memories of a kunoichi with eyes as blue as the midsummer sky. Thus she was left alone, a slight girl with white-gold hair wandering the streets of Kumogakure, always under the watchful gaze of ANBU. Sometimes, she tried to outrun them, but this never brought anything but brutal beatings. Sometimes, she lurked in the shadows, somehow blending in with the darkness in a way most nin never would, watching children playing in the streets with a carefree gaiety she would never know. Sometimes, looking into pools of water on the street and seeing the black markings circling around her neck like a noose, she wondered what it would be like if she had escaped fate and the demon had been sealed into someone else (but there was no point in questioning fate, because what was done was done and in her mind, she always knew that).
She simply accepted the constant, snarling rumble of hatred and death in the back of her mind as something everybody dealt with, because nobody had ever told her otherwise. When she was seven, she asked one of her guardians about it, curiosity demanding she speak to one who had never said a single word to her, never looked in her direction. He, a battle-hardened soldier who had seen too many conflicts for memory to recall, recoiled in fear and demanded to know how long she had been hearing the voice (for this had to mean the seal was breaking, that the Nekomata was making its bid for freedom to reign over Kumo in flame and blood once more). To this her simple reply was "Forever." She had immediately been grabbed by one of the ANBU, ever-present in case of the Nibi making itself known, and hauled off to the Raikage. As soon as he had been apprised of the situation, he grabbed her by the shoulders and demanded to know what the voice was telling her and if it had identified itself. His sudden movement startled her, and with a strength no malnourished seven-year-old should have had she threw him off of her. The voice began to scream for blood, demanding swift and terrible retribution for the attack. Her eyesight started to shift, sharpening and becoming almost painfully bright, pupils slitting vertically across her darkening eyes. Cracks sounded from her fingers and teeth, claws and unnaturally pointed canines ripping out from the confines of normalcy, bright blood splattering on the walls. A hot burn began in the back of her throat, heat licking through her mouth and building behind newly reformed teeth. Shock forced her mouth open and black flame spilled out (it should have burned her, should have hurt, should have felt anything other than natural), reaching through the air and curling around his hands, clawing up his arms, somehow leaving both cuts and burns as it moved in for the kill. Yugito suddenly realized she was screaming, a terrible animalistic keen as she watched the fire (her fire) rip apart and consume the man in front of her, the first man she would ever kill.