Chapter 1 – Collateral Damage
oOo
The dark-haired girl grabbed at her mother's face with her too-small hands, pudgy fingers getting caught on strands of thick brown hair that so resembled her own. Her mother laughed and then winced when the girl tugged a strand of hair a little too sharply.
"What shall we have for supper, love?" her mother picked up the gurgling two-year-old and settled the girl on her hip while moving around the kitchen with the practiced ease only a mother possessed.
"Noodles? Stew? Maybe some fish? The war cut back on imports, but even those nasty, mean, scary ninja can't keep us from enjoying fishing season!" She attacked her little girl with kisses and tickles and the toddler squealed in delight, her pale purple eyes going wide.
"No-o!" she squirmed in her mother's grip, trying to escape the offending fingers that forced her to laugh regardless of her own opinion on the matter. "Ice cream!"
Her mother paused, blinking.
"Ice cream?" she questioned, a finger going to her lips. "I know times aren't perfect, love, but things aren't so bad that we get to have only sweets for dessert!"
Her daughter frowned, pink lips forming a pout as she stared at her mother with wide, pleading eyes. It was too adorable to bear, and her mother visibly struggled beneath it, her eyes closing in weak effort to resist.
"M-maybe we can get ice cream at the Market tomorrow," she tried to bargain, and her daughter's hands tugged on her mother's sleeve.
"Now," she insisted, lower lip trembling.
The front door opening and closing broke the spell, and her mother whirled in a circle with new resolve. Her daughter's pout became genuine as the practiced expression faded away.
"Daddy's home!" her mother exclaimed happily. "How's that for perfect timing, eh?"
"Where are my two favorite women in the world?" a deep voice called from the hallway.
"In the kitchen, love!" her mother called brightly, nuzzling her daughter's face until the little girl's pout erupted into giggles.
The woman mock gasped.
"I know," she suggested brightly. "How about we make Daddy buy us both ice cream? We can all go together after dinner!"
Her daughter brightened immediately, her head whipping around and zeroing in on her father with impressive intensity.
"Daddy!" she greeted him, and he answered her open arms with a growl of affection, swiping her from her mother and depositing the two-year-old on his shoulders while shooting a poisonous look at his wife.
"Very funny, dear," he rolled his eyes and swooped down to kiss her on the cheek while she hummed contentedly.
"That's what you get for coming home so late," she scolded, only half joking as she turned back to get out a few sparse ingredients. Her husband had been out ever later into the night as time went on, and he was in for quite a scolding if she caught so much as a whiff of alcohol on him. Dinner was short and sweet, and the little girl was sent to bed happy and distracted from sweets as her parents went to bed hungry once more.
Months slowly passed, and goods grew sparse. Merchants and customers could and would haggle for hours before settling on a price. Crime rates went up in proportion to the number of thieves and robbers desperate to feed their families, and the little girl spent her happy days blissfully ignorant of the state of her home settlement worsening around her.
Even if she knew, she probably wouldn't have cared, because her Daddy still swept her up in the air and let her sit on his shoulders, and Mama still carried her around on her hip, although her hips were a little bit bonier these days, and her dinner portions grew smaller, but never enough to give her tummy aches at night, and maybe they were at war, but she was still happy, so life was okay. Life was even good.
Until… it wasn't.
The girl woke with a start, aroused by something that wasn't a part of her dreams. She glanced around her room warily, the pleasant dream-like memory of her younger days fading away. What had woken her? She was three now, (three!) so she could sleep in a bed all by herself, a fact that she held no small amount of pride for. She sat up slowly, her large eyes turning to glance out the window of her bedroom. She watched a tall figure emerge from her house, wearing his nice shoes and dark clothes.
She blinked slowly, clearing the last bits of drowsiness away in that way children always could at the prospect of something exciting, and squinted hard at the figure. Her lips pressed against the glass of the window, a round patch fogging up as her red lips formed a little circle against its cool surface. She was tempted to draw in the misted portion of the window, easily distracted by such fun things, but resisted when she recognized the tall man with his grown-up clothes and the slightly uneven gait.
What was Daddy doing leaving the house so late? And why was he going toward the glowing red lights that gleamed from a few streets in the West District? She'd been warned never to go that way when she was exploring, but that didn't mean much, because she wasn't allowed in the attic either, and grown-ups were allowed in there. Not that she was pouting about it. She was a big girl now. She didn't pout. (Not even a little.)
She wondered if she should go follow him and tell him to take her on an adventure with her, but then decided, no, she should stay in bed. She was big now, almost like Mama, and it was her first time sleeping alone in her own room. There was no point in messing any of it up by risking getting in trouble. Nodding to herself, because that was a very astute and mature decision if she thought so herself (which she did), she drew a squiggle in the mist on the window before turning back away from her dad and his grown-up business.
She walked back to her bed with a yawn and had just placed her knee on the mattress when a flickering glow caught her eye from outside. Her head turned slowly, just in time to see a shattering bright light flicker before a resounding eruption exploded outside the window.
She shrieked as the walls of the house caved inwards, fire enveloping the modest building in huge red flames in the span of a moment. She slammed into the door of her room as beams toppled, shrapnel flying as the smell of smoke filled her nostrils and throat.
The ground shuddered, the crackling of flames growing louder and louder, and the girl whimpered in between coughing fits, trapped underneath the rubble. She touched her head and her fingers came away sticky with warm blood, something she was shocked to see. An earth-shattering roar rattled the windows and doors before a smothering wall of energy seemed to slam into the house and shake it from its foundation. She gaped, more in awe than afraid, because this blanket of energy was strong, but it wasn't angry. It was… desperate. It was a feeling she'd never felt before, but it was a feeling she heard in the voice of Mama from outside her bedroom. Not anger, but fear.
"Baby, where are you?! Are you hurt?!" Her mother's frantic shrieks scared her more than the explosion and she found herself shocked into silence, her eyes wide and a warm red liquid sliding down her temple and dripping from her chin. She wasn't sure why she didn't cry. Maybe it was proof that she really was a big girl now. But more, she just wasn't very scared. Her head hurt a little, but she was still in awe of that energy, so heavy, so thick, and so very desperate for escape. It smothered her, pressing against her chest and slowing her thoughts like a heavy, sluggish blanket.
"Mama?" she blurted, once the coughing subsided and she could breathe properly again. She didn't understand what the flashes of bright color meant and had no idea what was going on. Was this the 'war' concept her mother always referenced before spoiling her with treats? Excitement rushed through her. Did this mean she was about to get ice cream? Or was it a new game? She found herself smiling in anticipation, her heart jumping with excitement. A part of the ceiling collapsed and she heard her mother scream before the sound was cut off by a gurgle.
"Mama!" she repeated, recognizing the sound. She wasn't sure whether she was supposed to be excited or afraid, but the prospect of a reward won out over her fear. She wriggled her way free from the rubble and crawled across the floor toward the corner the sound had come from. She found her mother lying supine on the ground, her back arched awkwardly over a mound of rubble she rested upon, that may at one time have been their wooden coffee table. Now it was impossible to tell. A large beam impaled the woman's stomach through its center, and a puddle of red slowly spread from beneath her across the floor.
"Mama, what's the new game?" she asked excitedly, taking her mother's hand and tugging on it. "Let's play, Mama!" She knew that the red pool was a sign of hurt, because she had hurt her head, but it was just a little hurt, and now it was just warm and pounding a little, so her mother must be feeling very warm and pounding, just like her. Was this the costume they had to wear for the game? Red streaks and spots? She did love messy crafts the best.
Her mother's head slowly turned toward the sound of her voice, frothy blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes feverishly locked on her daughter's face, speckled with dark red.
"Oh, baby," her mother whispered, before descending into a coughing fit of expelled blood. "Baby, I'm so sorry." Her hand squeezed her daughter's, and the girl's eyes lit up, her smile widening, even as tears leaked from her mother's eyes.
"That's okay, Mama, I'm a big girl! We can play tomorrow if you're sleepy!" She should be understanding. It was very late, after all. Past both of their bedtimes.
Her mother's face crumpled into equal parts happiness and despair.
"That's right, love. We'll play tomorrow. Mommy's sleepy, but you just keep smiling okay?" Her voice began to gurgle as her throat filled with blood.
"That's it, baby," she whispered as her daughter giggled, her white teeth contrasting with the dark red blood on her face. "There's that pretty smile I love."
That was where her father found her, hours later, when he finally returned, tired and dirty with soot, and above all else, afraid. She was smiling and clapping her hands together, fingers sticky with blood that didn't belong to her. His wife lay at her side, her body mangled and broken, half of her face burned almost beyond recognition.
His daughter let out a squeal of laughter, reaching out to her mother's body.
"Mama! Let's play now! Daddy's here, he's back!" She let her arm flop against her mother's shoulder, speckles of blood decorating her tanned cheeks as her hands splashed in the pooling blood. Her father roughly grabbed her and jerked her away from the corpse's side, his eyes shadowed. Pain and loss bloomed in his gut.
"No!" he snarled, ripping her hands away from his wife. "Bad girl!"
Her eyes went wide, her mouth puckering, and he had to look away from the child who had smiled like some sort of demon at the side of her dead mother. Tears welled up in her eyes. What had she done wrong? Should she have gone back to bed? How could she when rubble and broken beams blocked the way? Why was Daddy so angry? Why was he looking at her like that? She didn't like the way his face twisted and his eyes got so cold.
"Come," he ordered in a quiet voice, slightly gentler after realizing he had scared her. Not a demon, he corrected himself. Just his innocent daughter. He should count it as a blessing that she didn't understand. "We're going away."
oOo
It didn't matter whether she was naïve, as it turned out. As soon as she was old enough to understand, that memory haunted her as it would for the rest of her life. She followed her father obediently, masking her revulsion with smiles as her mother's last words echoed in her head.
There's that pretty smile I love.
It had only taken her a year to realize the truth of what happened, and that her mother was gone, not coming back, and that she had lied. She was just sleepy, her mother had said. Not being stolen away by the cold clutches of death. Not breathing her last. Not leaving her only daughter motherless. The girl knew she shouldn't have learned the truth so soon, shouldn't have understood what was going on at the age of four, but she attributed her sudden increase in maturity to her father's decisions after that terrible, terrible night.
The district he lingered in, and the sort of people he spent his time with, taught her much about the darkness of Kusagakure, and taught her much about the true meaning of death and fear, lust and money. Things she should not have known, she was taught, because she could do nothing but follow her father into the dark, the red lanterns no longer a mystery or an adventure, but a cage. Perhaps it was a fitting fate for a twisted child who would laugh at the site of her own mother's death. That wasn't normal. She wasn't normal. She should have known… should have… realized. It wasn't okay.
She found that her self-disgust warred with her contempt for her father, as he dealt with his grief the same way he dealt with his family before, though neither she nor her mother had known about it.
He spent his days in Grass's akasen, trying to drink himself into amnesia before pressing a few coins into the palm of one of the giggling women that smelt spicy and stale at the same time. At four years old, she understood what he was doing, and understood that he was wrong. It was all wrong.
She would be left on her own for hours at a time, sitting in the front room and chatting with the ladies of the brothels. They were kind, she was forced to grudgingly admit, and had very interesting stories, but that didn't excuse her father's actions. It didn't excuse anything.
A few times she would wander the streets, searching for food or drink, though never for long, because the streets here in Kusagakure were dangerous at night. She learned that the first time she was mugged by a boy that couldn't have been older than thirteen. It was quick and brutal. A swift punch to the eye and her meager pocket change was gone.
Her father hadn't noticed her blackened eye when she returned, but the ladies of the brothel were kind and full of sympathy, and offered her some ice wrapped in fine cloth on her way out.
"He'll remember," they promised kindly as she followed her distracted father out the door with a little wave and a fake smile. "This is where people come when they've forgotten themselves, but he'll remember and come back to you."
She smiled her adorable childish smile and thanked them for their lies, but inwardly wondered if she really even wanted her father to come back. She wondered what her mother would say if she saw them now, spending nights in brothels and constantly moving. She wondered if it were possible for a man to come back when he had done this same thing even before his wife died. It had been a year, and unarguably the worst of her life. A year living on the streets of the horrible slums of Grass ruled by crime and chaos and blood. A year that would haunt her for many to come.
Perhaps it was time she confronted him about it. She was tired of toddling obediently after him night after night with no real home he felt comfortable staying in.
The next night, as she watched her father press silver into the hand of a smiling woman with her lips stained a dark plum, the girl left the brothel, nodding at the women's familiar warnings as she left and headed down the alley that served as a shortcut to the local tea shop. She would not be out long. She knew better now.
She ruminated over a cup of hot tea, carefully thinking over the words she would use to confront her father. Too passive, and his eyes would move past her as if she were not there. Too abrasive, and he would punish her and accuse her of a childish tantrum. She would have to be careful. She would start with a smile, she decided, and hope he wouldn't be reminded of the expression she wore at her dead mother's side.
Her smile always caught the women's attention in the brothels. It would make them smile back at her, pat her on the head, and croon solace softly into her ear. She would smile at her father, and then she would ask him in the presence of the others, so that an audience could bear witness and he would be forced to answer.
Daddy, why are you with these ladies now that Mama's gone?
Why do you give them money to sleep in their silk beds?
Daddy, why are you making me feel lonely?
Daddy?
Her eyes turned to the sky, and a shiver trailed down her spine when she realized how late it had gotten. She slipped from the stool quickly, leaving a coin on the counter, and darted between the streets, keeping her head down and praying she would not be noticed. She knew better, yes, but she had forgotten.
The red-light district was a dangerous place for children at night. At least in the early evening she only had to worry about being robbed or cheated. In the dead of night, even the homeless orphans tucked themselves away into their dark corners and ducked their heads, praying they wouldn't be seen.
The night was when bad men hurt little girls. The night was when madmen killed. She had seen a boy killed once, at the hand of a man driven delirious from the war. The sight had shocked her to her core, and she had run to the ladies of the brothel and thrown up while they held her messy dark curls from her face and soothed her with gentle words.
Now she knew what war was, and she despised it. War had killed her mother. War had stolen the compassion from her father. War bred nothing but evil and death and lust and destruction, and people like her and the other civilians suffered the collateral damage for it. Maybe that was why a thirteen-year-old boy would resort to violence just for a chance to buy a loaf of bread.
Someone should do something. Their leaders didn't. Did the leaders of Grass even know of its condition? Or did they just not care? Maybe she could do something, but not yet. Not at just four years old. Soon, though. Soon. She touched the healing bruising around her eye from the teenager's callused fist. Very soon. Before she was forced to see someone else murdered right before her eyes.
She tried not to dwell on the fact that her father had never noticed her state, neither when her eye was blackened nor when she was sick with grief and disgust at the loss of a life. She liked to think he would've cared had she bothered to tell him, but the memory alone made her hands grow cold as ice and she had no desire to recount it.
The matron of the brothel, an ancient looking woman who was once the mother of a Grass Chūnin, had been the one to tell her about war, the thing that made soldiers insane and killed mothers in their homes. She told her it was important for young girls to understand their history, no matter how painful, because women held true strength, and were the true rulers of the world, if she only looked closely enough. History was a fickle thing, she'd muttered bitterly to the girl, while her father remained in the back room, and fools who didn't pay attention were only doomed to repeat it.
If women were the rulers of this bloody world, the girl wasn't so sure what she thought about becoming one, because the world totally sucked. No one was safe anywhere in Kusagakure. Kusa wasn't allied with either Cloud or Leaf, so they were never warned which village would become the next victim of collateral damage. The only thing the two opposing hidden villages could seem to agree on was that while one village pushed the other's borders, Kusa and Rain would be their common battle ground. Best not to dirty their own shoes, the Matron had spat with disgust.
The Matron explained to her that it was actually Mist ninja responsible for that failed mission. What Mist was doing so far from the Land of Water was a mystery to her, but apparently it had something to do with releasing a terrible demon within Leaf. Did Mist ever think of what would happen when that mission failed on the outskirts of Kusagakure? Of course not, the Matron had scoffed, as if the notion were ridiculous and the girl was foolish for questioning her so.
Apparently war exchanged morals for ruthlessness, and while Leaf ninja worried and fretted over the death of their kidnapped Chūnin, and while Mist lamented the sudden massacre of their legendary masked Anbu and Jōnin, nobody cared in the slightest that a giant three tailed manifestation of deadly chakra had just been released into her homeland.
Not their business, they would decide. This was war, so sacrifices would have to be made. Their strategists would pretend to lament for Kusa's 'unfortunate circumstances,' before concerning themselves with cutting their own village's losses. As if the whole situation wasn't their fault to begin with.
And that rampage, the Matron explained, was what caused her mother's death.
She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.
That rampage that caused her mother to be torn apart and mangled while she played in the woman's blood like a sick demon, like some twisted, evil, ruthless—
She swallowed and buried the thoughts with a forced smile, even as fear raced through her veins and the moon steadily rose, casting unwanted moonlight over her head.
There's that pretty smile I love.
An icy gale of wind ruffled her clothes.
She ducked her head, trying to look like nothing at all. To blend in with the darkness, to be minding her business just like any other person, moving from one destination to another. It was somewhat of a cruel ray of hope when she rounded a corner and the brothel came into sight, only for it to be ripped from her view as a hand clamped on her shoulder and dragged her into the darkness.
"I'm not for your pleasure!" she screeched, the words tearing from her lips, and with a twist of bitter irony she hoped the shout had reached the brothel. The few passersby around her glanced in her direction, but turned away without making eye contact, their gazes downcast and their hats pulled low. She was just another victim of the war in their pitiless eyes. Just another life lost because of a battle that had nothing to do with them. She hated them. She hated them all.
Her attacker shoved her up against the wall, and she felt the breath leave her lungs with a whoosh. She gaped for air before her panicked eyes met the man before her. He was young, for a soldier, but the very fact that he was a ninja at all made the blood drain from her face. She couldn't escape. Not from a trained killer.
His eyes had a crazed look to them, and her mouth fell open, pink lips parting in terror, about to release a scream, when his other hand clamped over her mouth. She tasted sweat and grime that reeked of filth. How much blood had soaked those hands? The thought nearly made her heave.
"Not for my pleasure?" he hissed in her ear, his voice little more than a chilling rasp. "Stupid child. Even the cannon fodder sent to the front lines have enough silver for one of those whores." He jerked his head in the direction of the brothel, and she felt true fear rise within her like frost sliding through her veins.
She sank her teeth into his hand and he howled, throwing her to the ground. She tumbled to a stop, skinning her knees and palms. They burned as she picked herself up slowly (too slow!) and painstakingly, her cheeks flushed as she tried to make a desperate run for it, adrenaline shooting through her body like lightning.
Just because she was in a hopeless situation didn't mean she couldn't get lucky, and she would never stop trying. He grabbed her ankle and yanked her back, and she went down again with a squawk of protest, her chin clipping the ground and making her teeth clack together painfully.
"I don't think so, you pale-eyed brat. I want your life." The vicious hiss made her shudder as she was dragged backwards, kicking and flailing.
Her opinion of that statement sent a massive rush of adrenaline straight into her system until she was in his grip and nearly frozen rigid. His eyes flashed again, illuminated by the waxing moonlight, and for the first time, the girl felt true fear that seized her entire body and locked her joints into place. She looked into that man's eyes and she saw insanity and blood, and she felt with chilling certainty that she was going to die in this alleyway tonight.
He clenched and unclenched his injured hand as he choked the air from her lungs, his good hand tight around her neck. She clawed at his fingers uselessly, panic rising in her chest.
Don't wanna die! No no no no! Don't wanna!
"Your stupid clan murdered my team, you filthy little shit. You think your eyes make you special? Make you any better than anyone else?" He was snarling into her ear, hot breath against her neck, and she had never been more scared in her life.
Her eyes began to roll back in her head. Her nails were leaving jagged, bleeding lines on his hand, but he didn't even seem to notice, crazed by the war and the loss of his comrades, so far gone that he was getting revenge for them on a child who didn't know a single thing about what he was talking about.
"War breeds monsters, brat," he snarled, as if she didn't already know. As if she weren't looking at one. "And the Hyūga killed hundreds." His dark eyes stared into her own as her eyelids fluttered, her grip over his hand weakening. "You don't deserve to live." The hissed sentence was probably going to be the last she ever heard.
Her eyes finally slipped closed, the world slipping away to darkness, and a solid thunk followed, barely reaching her ears and registering in her mind. The pressure around her neck vanished immediately, and air rushed into her lungs painfully, causing her to black out briefly before she coughed and wheezed, rolling over and vomiting tea all over the street.
She retched until her stomach was empty and then wiped her mouth on her sleeve, still gasping for air as she turned her head to the side, staring through dark, sweaty tangles of hair to see what had happened.
A kunai was driven straight through her attacker's eye, pinning him to the wall of the alleyway, his undamaged eye still open and his skull caved in like a rotted pumpkin. She almost vomited again at the very sight, but managed to focus her attention on her trembling hands, willing the meager contents of her stomach down. She finally sat back on her heels and pushed her hair from her face, turning to watch the dark figure standing behind the man with new apprehension.
He (or perhaps she? The girl couldn't tell) wore a dark cloak, his face covered by a white mask with strange green markings. He stood there silently, the man or woman that saved her life, and stared her down through dark slitted holes.
She smiled weakly, her lips trembling. It was much harder to than it had ever been before.
"Th-thanks," she whispered, wishing her voice didn't sound so weak and utterly pathetic. This person could just as easily kill her. Was he mad, too? She couldn't see his eyes, so she couldn't tell.
He just gave a short nod and began to walk toward her. She scrambled back, terrified, but he didn't so much as glance at her as he kept walking, striding past her as if she weren't there. She remembered stories of masked ninja silent as the night and the word sprung to her lips before she could stop it. She had no idea what idiotic, death-seeking part of her possessed her to speak it aloud.
"Anbu-san," she called hesitantly, and suddenly a painted face loomed directly in front of her as she was pushed up against the wall for the second time, a white mask inches from her nose. She went a little cross-eyed, her heart pounding so wildly it was a wonder he didn't hear it.
She hadn't even seen him move.
"Little girls shouldn't know that title," the hiss that was breathed into her ear made her blood turn to ice in her veins.
"D-don't yell at me!" she screamed back, her eyes squeezing closed tightly to rid herself of the frightening image. "You're scaring me! Stop it! Let go!" And then she descended into a fit of coughing, because that was far too much strain on an airway that had been cut off just moments ago, the dark shadows of bruising already beginning to appear on her bronze skin at the hollow of her throat.
"Who are you, Hyūga child? Your clan is far away from here." his voice rumbled beneath those bottomless black holes in his mask. Even this close, she couldn't see his eyes. He looked like a monster, but she wouldn't think of him as one until he hurt her. The man still stuck to the wall, he was the monster. This new threat… she wasn't so sure yet.
"I don't have a clan!" she insisted once her coughing somewhat subsided, still squirming under his tightening grip on her shoulder. "I don't even have a last name! That hurts! Let go!"
"How do you know what this mask means?" he rumbled, ignoring her protests.
"Screw off!" she yelled one of the phrases she'd learned from the nice ladies at the brothel. If the man was surprised, he hid it well. He paused for a moment, bottomless mask holes staring her down, before loosening his hold on her shoulder.
"Come with me."
Her surprise was great enough to render her silent as she gaped stupidly at the man.
"No! I don't wanna!" she finally resumed her squirming as soon as the shock faded.
"You are not being kidnapped. You are being offered an opportunity." He turned his back to her, waiting for her to process his words.
She blinked. An opportunity to what? Disappear with a cloaked man into the depths of the red-light district? Hah. No. She might be four and somewhat unable to control her mouth, but she wasn't that stupid.
She just looked at him.
Her skepticism concerning this 'opportunity' must have somehow bled into the subsequent silence because he offered one more sentence before beginning to walk away.
"Are you confident you will survive here without it, non-Hyūga?"
She swallowed, her gaze turning to the man with a knife through his eye. That man had been stronger than her, but still no more than a passing nuisance to the man currently walking away from her.
"I know going with a killer won't improve my chances," she answered tersely, allowing some of her learned maturity to bleed into her voice. She supposed she had the whores to thank for that, curing her of her naiveté. "Who are you?"
He paused, glancing back, and she saw a flicker of something—fascination? Intrigue?—flash across dark eyes before they were swallowed in the shadows of his mask once more.
"Wise words from a mere toddler," he observed. "You've already proven you know who I am."
Anbu. She pressed her lips tightly together. Her and her big mouth. But in all reality, what had the odds been of him actually being one? According to the Matron, they were never seen, only whispered of in rumors, almost legendary in all but name.
"Choose for yourself what you want to become." The masked man nodded at the corpse pinned against the wall. "Like him… or like me."
She didn't have to look at the corpse again to make her decision.
oOo
"Say your farewells."
So the Anbu had been honest when he told her this was not a kidnapping.
They stood outside the brothel, and she remembered earlier in the day when her smile was intended to confront her father. Now it would be used to tell him to let her go. A niggling sense of doubt in her mind wondered if he would actually be relieved of her absence, but she crushed it. He was lost, but he still loved her. She was sure.
Resolve formed, she opened the door of the brothel.
She didn't look back, but she knew the Anbu man had not followed her in. The Matron was inside, sitting in one of the plush chairs next to a nightstand, hands folded across her lap. Her eyes had been trained on the door for a little over half an hour, and they did not shift in order to rest on the girl. The Matron had been waiting for this young one, expecting her to return perhaps with another blackened eye, perhaps with her money gone or at worst, crying and in pain, or simply to not return at all. She had been prepared to demonstrate to the little girl's father exactly how disgusted she was with his coping skills and treatment of his only child. But this… no, she had not expected this.
"Child, your father is not finished with his business here," she informed the girl, but the child just smiled at her with her adorable smile.
It wasn't as comforting to see on a blood-spattered face.
"Okay," she answered easily, before walking past the ancient woman and entering through the beaded curtains anyway. Pushing them aside with torn nails and blood-soaked fingers.
"Child—!"
"Daddy," she called, her voice ringing out over the sound of shifting silk and feminine giggles.
The noise cut off abruptly, and suddenly the inner curtain of beads was pushed aside, revealing her dark haired, unshaven father with his shirt untucked and hanging loosely on his frame.
"What are you doing back here?" he demanded sharply, and she smiled at him, though she could feel that it didn't reach her eyes. Smiling was hard sometimes, she decided. Some guilt filtered into her expression, because she didn't want to hurt him, but she also didn't want to die. More than anything, she didn't want to die.
"I'm going, Daddy," she told him, and her breath caught in her throat on the last word. As always, her smile softened the features of her father's face, and he sighed quietly, crouching down to her level.
"That's a good girl," he praised her, placing a warm hand on her head. "I shouldn't have yelled. Daddy has some business to take care of, okay? You go on."
Some business. Her smile was cold and sharp as she nodded. She loved her father, but if she was old enough to know that she had played in the blood of a corpse that was once her mother and his wife, how could he not realize she knew of his 'business' as well? She pushed her negative thoughts aside and locked them away. No one was perfect, and this was her father. She loved him, and he should know before she went.
"I love you, Daddy," she touched a small, blood stained hand to his cheek. He didn't notice. His tone was gentle but his eyes were haggard and unfocused.
"Love you too, kiddo. Go on." He gave her a gentle push toward the curtain and she turned, pausing to look over her shoulder at the haunted man who had yet to remember himself.
"Okay," she smiled. "I'm going."
And through the haze of drunken loss and the taste of lip stain on his mouth, the father watched his daughter leave and vaguely understood that something was happening, something strange, and there was more to the exchange than what he had gotten from it. Was she not just going back to the main room?
But the dark haired little girl with her mother's pale eyes was smiling and happy, so he would dwell on it once he was sober come morning. Her last whisper was lost in the sigh of the woman awaiting him in silken sheets.
"Goodbye."
She disappeared and her father turned his back to the little girl, his eyes moving to the woman on the bed. She smiled and gestured with one finger for him to approach, her tinted eyelids half closed and her stained lips parting to release a soft sigh. He walked toward her slowly, and paused at the edge of the bed when the woman let out a startled sound.
He froze.
The woman's eyes went wide and she gasped at the sight of the bloodied handprint on the father's cheek.
(Later she would tentatively ask if he would like her to fetch a washcloth and the little girl's father would run to the mirror and then to the door, hoarsely shouting a name for a little girl that wasn't there, his voice lost in the wind of Kusagakure.)
(She was gone.)
oOo
"Where are we going?"
The girl wasn't exactly fond of surprises in a place like this, and she wanted to dissipate the air of mystery around the Anbu man. She didn't know how long she would be gone and walking into situations blind was a good way to end up dead.
"Out of this wretched village," he answered flatly, and she scowled at the vague answer, but followed anyways, curious. They left the akasen and walked to the outskirts of Grass, away from the stone buildings and pillars and into the fields the hidden village was named for. The wind ruffled her clothes and she scratched at the crumbling blood on her face as it dried, irritated with the itchiness. The grass was about as tall as she was, though it only came up to about mid-thigh on her near silent companion.
"Come," he ordered, and she did so wordlessly, following him into the fields. After a moment of silence, he asked her a question.
"Why did you choose to leave?"
She stared straight ahead and smiled, saying nothing for a moment as she mulled the question over in her head.
He had given her a choice. To end up like a man with a dagger through his eye, or to follow him and gain an unseen opportunity. To her, that sounded like a veiled death threat, but he had already saved her once, and wouldn't bother to kill her again just because she gave the wrong answer. She didn't think she was worth that much to a secret soldier. Kids didn't really mean anything to anyone in Kusagakure, really. They died all the time because they were two weak, too slow, too clumsy, or too stupid.
Maybe it was that childlike stupidity that made her want to follow the Anbu. But he had seen something and had offered her an opportunity. The only time that happened in Grass was when elite soldiers took on an apprentice. She had been noticed for some reason, and she wondered if perhaps he intended to mold her into something worthwhile. Someone that was worth noticing. She wondered if he would mold her into someone that her father would be forced to acknowledge.
And maybe that chance was worth risking her life for. Not the best reason, perhaps, or the healthiest, but why should she care? She was more likely to die out on the streets as an adolescent anyways without anyone looking after her during the evenings.
But she didn't even know how to begin an explanation like that. And why should she tell Anbu-san all that touchy-feely stuff? As if he cared about her personal life. Why would he? He didn't know a single thing about her.
So she just smiled with a hint of ice in her expression.
"Felt like it," came the blunt, childish reply. She thought she might have heard a snort from behind the man's mask, and her smile widened. Well, who was he to protest her obvious lie? They were both liars, and both secret keepers.
Yes, they would get along just fine, she decided.
And then they stopped at a hill, pausing in front of a large tree that stood alone in the field of seemingly endless grass.
"Would you like to know what I am offering you?" Anbu-san asked in an oddly quiet voice.
"Mhm," she nodded, violet eyes wide and curious. No way he was going to give her straight answer, right? He was too mysterious for all that. He would say something like 'an opportunity to be strong' or some vague crap like that.
But she listened closely anyways, just in case.
"I am offering you protection from Kusagakure's Anbu services. It will not be easy for you, nor will I be lenient. You will learn to obey, and much will be expected of you. Do you understand?"
She was pretty sure she did, so she nodded. What she didn't understand was why he was giving it to her. He shook his head slowly, and she caught a glimpse of dark blue hair beneath the hood of his cloak.
"Learning to survive during a war is not easy," he warned her. "Look beyond this tree and then I will ask you again."
She blinked at him blankly before skirting around the tree where the hill dropped steeply on the other side. She slowly parted the grass in front of her and peered down the land.
Bodies. Hundreds of bodies lay dead and rotting on the ground. Bodies covered in dry and flaky blood, some missing limbs, others stuck full of weapons that poked out of them in odd places.
Just like her mother, red pooling around her like puddles of warm water, all over her hands as she smiled and laughed and her mother's eyes fluttered closed. She said she was tired, not dying, but then she was gone and she was still laughing, laughing like a sick, twisted—
"Do you understand?" Anbu-san's deep voice cut through her dark thoughts and her head snapped around away from the stench of death and the hanging silence that was suddenly too still, as if the wind itself stopped just beyond the tree.
The man saw something strange flicker in her eyes, an unnamable emotion, before just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.
The girl smiled.
"You show all the little girls of the alleys a bunch of dead bodies when you travel, Anbu-san?" she asked sweetly, and he stiffened imperceptibly before relaxing. He had expected her to cry, to scream, to run away, maybe even to vomit again, but a smile?
That was just fuckin' weird. Maybe she'd be strong enough for his mission after all.
"You're the first," he answered honestly, because he was curious now. This toddler who smiled after getting choked and puking and smiled after seeing the remains of a battle and who talked like she was five years older than her age when she was nervous or confused. And dare he say it, she almost looked… unimpressed. And wasn't that disturbing?
"Why'd you show me?" she asked him, plopping down to sit in the grass, because she was tired of walking. Maturity didn't give her stronger legs, and her feet were starting to ache from walking across the village.
"Children are protected from war," he told her as sternly as he could, crossing his arms and facing the bodies. "They don't see this destruction. Soldiers from all over the world, Grass, Kiri, Leaf, Rain, Stone… they all fight and die." He turned toward her, and she stared into the dark slits of his mask. "Where they're from doesn't mean much when they're all a bunch of corpses, does it?"
He leaned against the tree, feeling the thrum of its branches as they swayed gently in the mild breeze. "People are dying, and they will keep dying until the war is over. You're gonna see shit like that," he jabbed a finger over his shoulder. "…a lot more than you'd like, if you take this opportunity. You've been protected because you're young."
The girl thought about the young boy that had been killed right before her eyes, and about the homeless children that tucked themselves into dark corners at night. Were they protected from the war? When Grass soldiers shared quarters with civilians who barely had enough food for themselves and their families, were their starving kids protected from the war? Her eyes moved to the rows and rows of corpses, pausing on the still frame of a boy that couldn't be older than fifteen, his eyes blank and staring. What about him? No, she disagreed. Children were not protected in war. Not her, not any of them. At least, not here.
She snorted aloud.
"Anbu-san, you haven't been around Grass's sub-districts very long, have you?"
He didn't answer, but she hadn't really expected him to.
"Well, that's not really what I meant anyways," she informed him bluntly. "I meant why do you need me? Your super-secret soldiers keep me from dying, so what's in it for you?"
He blinked at her slowly and frowned, not that she could see it. She hadn't taken his opinion on war seriously, for whatever reason, but he knew she would learn in time the horrors of war, and he would simply have to hope it didn't drive her mad.
"Children are seen as innocent," he told her, evading the question with skilled ease and practiced evenness. "You are capable of many things an adult is not."
She stared at him for a moment, but then just shrugged.
"Okay. I got it."
He resisted the urge to give an exasperated sigh, because no, she definitely didn't, but instead simply nodded because she was just a child, and she would learn with time.
oOo
A/N: So here we see Kiri has extremely talented Anbu and Jōnin who managed to make it all the way to Konoha and escaped to Grass before their own plan backfired and stopped them. The Sanbi is on a rampage, and the collateral damage is extensive.
For the record, I tried to make a self-insert, because man, there are a couple of amazing SI stories out there, but ugh. If HarleyChase got dropped into Naruto, the world would burn. So, compromising with a character that shares lots of qualities but also has some key differences.
No beta, so mistakes are the fault of yours truly. Any OOC moments or historical flaws or geographical errors, feel free to politely pick at me for them, because the whole point of this stuff is to improve my writing. Next chapter we jump to Konoha and get a look at what young Itachi is up to!