A/N: just a short little oneshot i came up with late at night..

When he first saw her, she wasn't a ninja. She wasn't attractive, she wasn't smart. She wasn't important. She made no impression. She was crying—he never found out why, nor did he care. She was just another person in the village he was passing through. She meant nothing.

The second time he saw her was when they really met. He was leaning against a tree early in the morning while his team slept. She was a ways off in the forest, just a little splash of color amongst the green, and suddenly she looked up at him. He glared at her, analyzing her. She was no threat, he concluded, but he kept up his glare in order to keep her from prying near their camp. She edged slowly closer despite his steely gaze, until he was close enough to see that she was holding a small basket. Obviously, she was gathering herbs.

Her eyes met up with his and he permeated such a haze of hatred that she took a startled step backwards. Confident she would leave them alone, he looked away. Imagine his surprise when she instead stepped forward into the clearing in which Taka was camped and held out a round, capped container. His hand went immediately to his katana, but she shook her head and said quietly, "I'm not a threat to you."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing." When he still did not take the container in her outstretched hand, she placed it on the grass where she was standing. "You four are traveling ninja, aren't you?"

His hand twitched over his weapon, but he stopped himself. She was an innocent. He didn't kill innocents.

"Ninja tend to get hurt more than regular people. Wouldn't you say that's true?" She smiled at him, and in an instant he was reminded of a blonde-haired dobe with the same smile. "It's healing balm. Take it."

Then she turned and left. When he could no longer see her, he stood to investigate the container of balm.

"Sasuke-kun?" asked Karin, stretching.

He didn't answer. He opened the container, sniffed it, and then handed it to Karin. "Put this in your pack. And wake Jugo and Suigetsu. It's time to get going."

Tsunade looked over the patient's injuries with an apprehensive face. They were serious. She was unsure if the patient would even make it.

A shame, thought Tsunade. She's so young.

She exited the room only to be immediately harassed by Naruto, as the boy began immediately spouting off questions.

"Is she alright? How long until she wakes up? Has she said anything?"

"Naruto."

The blonde boy blinked at Tsunade's stern and somber face. "Ne?"

Sakura, who was sleeping in a chair nearby, sat up slowly and yawned. "Tsunade-sama?"

"I don't think there's much else I can do," said Tsunade. "She's dying."

She was a traveling merchant, selling her medicinal wares on behalf of her aging sensei. He never asked where she was originally from, nor did he care enough to try and find out. When he met her next, however, she was no longer in the clothes of a pedestrian. It had been almost two months since she had given him the balm in the forest, and though in every other aspects she looked the same—long brown braid and open, trusting blue eyes—she now wore a streamlined outfit befitting a kunoichi. There were no weapons on her, and he could sense very little chakra. What had changed?

He was alone this time when he wandered into her. It was raining, and he was severely weakened, a headache pounding in his temples. She found him lying on a dirt road, presumably sleeping. She awoke him by rapping her knuckles twice on his forehead, and he grabbed her wrist harshly, eyes flying open to reveal the Sharingan. She jumped initially at his quick reaction, then her face calmed and she said, "You'll catch your death."

"Have you been following me?" The blood-red eyes narrowed.

"Hardly. Sit still, please." She put her hand on his forehead and closed her eyes. The small green glow of chakra surrounded her small hand, and he felt his headache slowly melt away. Her hand lifted away and she added, "I'm sorry. I don't have much chakra."

His gaze was still narrow. "Why are you dressed like that?"

"If I look like a ninja, I don't get attacked by bandits as often."

She spoke as thought it happened every day. She over-exaggerated like that quite a lot, though it was nearly impossible to tell when she was doing it as she always spoke so honestly—every word she said sounded as if she meant it with every fiber of her body.

"My name is Maemi," she said.

He stood and began to walk away from her. "I don't care."

She nodded. "Okay."

And when he looked over his shoulder once, to shoot the girl a look of confusion, he again saw that smile. A pure smile. A naïve smile. An honest smile.

He would run into her a couple times over the next few months. Just occasionally as Taka traveled, she was there with her little cart of balms and herbs. There were a few times where she was nowhere to be found. It varied, but when she recognized him, she greeted him as if they were friends. It both agitated and intrigued him.

Karin would converse with her from time to time, relieved to have female company, but Karin mostly did the talking, chattering away until Suigetsu made some kind of comment. Jugo smiled at her when he was in a good place mentally, which was less and less often these days, but he never spoke to her, choosing to avoid her completely. Suigetsu found her almost as annoying as Karin, mostly because she always acted "so damn friendly to you, Sasuke. Why are girls always so quick to be friendly to you?"

Maemi was only friendly, however. She even laughed when Karin suggested, in what was supposed to be a hushed tone, that Sasuke was attractive.

"Well, how would you describe him then?" demanded Karin, hand on her hip and frowning at the girl that all four members of Taka found increasingly strange.

She looked at Sasuke, really looked at him, and said one word: "Damaged."

Naruto was upset; Sakura was quiet; Tsunade was tired. The girl was their only link to Sasuke, and despite that Sakura and Kakashi no longer had faith in the young Uchiha's ability to be saved from the darkness, Naruto had never stopped believing.

In the hospital bed, the dying girl began to cry.

It was raining on the day he kissed her. It was brief and so soft that she wasn't even sure he had really kissed her. When he stepped away, he was frowning.

"I just wanted to see what it would be like."

"You could have kissed that girl you travel with."

"She's…annoying. I have no interest in her."

"Ah, so you're saying you have an interest in me?" Her tone was light. His was heavy.

"No. You just don't annoy me, and I don't have to travel with you. It was simpler this way."

"I see."

They spoke no more of it, and when he left a few hours later with Taka, she cried.

When they were apart, they didn't cross each other's mind. He didn't think of her, she didn't—or rather, tried not to—think of him. It was when they were finally face to face after a long period away that she melted, and she always gave him that smile. He was indifferent in regards to the emotional connection for the most part, but she was useful. He didn't want bonds, and she knew. She sensed his boundaries and stayed on the edge of them—close enough to touch if he chose, but far enough away that she was not encroaching. As his soul slowly eroded, and he began to care less and less for her feelings, he realized that he had previously actually started to like her. How else would he be able to feel as he disconnected from her?

The last time he saw her, she didn't smile. He saw her on a wooded path not far from Konoha, and for the first time in nearly fifteen visits, she didn't smile.

"You're alone," she observed monotonously.

He frowned at her change in personality. "Yes."

"I know who you are."

"I never told you my name."

"You didn't have to." Her hand was resting lightly on a tree trunk, but she clenched it into a fist when she began to speak. "I've heard the stories now. I know."

"What could you possibly know about me?" he snapped.

"Your entire family was killed," she whispered. "Murdered by your brother. From that moment, you devoted your entire life to revenge. You killed him, but it wasn't what you expected, was it? Now you want to purify your clan, rebuild your clan, it's all about your precious clan. The other three who were with you, you abandoned them, didn't you? You don't care about anyone anymore."

"I never pretending to care, from the moment I met you."

"There's a difference, Sasuke Uchiha. Your heart is blackened now where it wasn't before. I can see it in your eyes, in the way you look at me. You dived headfirst into the darkness, and now you have succumbed to it. You have resurfaced a different man." She stepped toward him, eyes betraying the hurt she was hiding. "You really think all this killing will purify your clan? From this moment in history on, the Uchiha name will be associated with nothing but death and destruction. Is that what you wanted to accomplish, Sasuke?"

The obsidian-haired boy said nothing.

"I thought I understood you. I was so horribly wrong. You care for no one. So kill me."

She hadn't expected such a quick agreement to her suggestion, and in a split second she knew it was foolish to have expected anything different. His katana slashed across her right shoulder, horizontally across her stomach, and she began to cry.

"I loved you."

The steel stopped slicing through her flesh and he backed away. She regained her common sense, turned, and began to run. She reached the Konoha gate, crying and bleeding and hopeless, and as three ninja—a tall man wearing a mask, a pink-haired kunoichi, and a blonde boy with whisker-like markings—rushed over to her, she whispered his name.

The girl, whose name they didn't know, slipped away while they were talking in the hallway. With death came peace, an escape from the pain, and she exhaled her last breath in a sigh.

Sasuke wiped her blood from his blade, but could barely bring himself to care that he had sealed the fate of yet another. She had said that she loved him, and he, for some reason, had then been unable to deal the final blow. Unable to watch her die.

There was no way, however, that she would survive her injuries. Even if she made it to Konoha.

Before darkness overtook him and banished his memory of the girl forever, he had the fleeting thought that he would miss her smile.

A/N: he didn't really fall in love with her (that's just not in Sasuke's personality) and i thought it would be kindof cool to show how he progressed through what i like to call the Sasuke Uchiha Slow-Descent-To-Madness through the eyes of someone who fell in love with him through a series of random chances.

anyway, reviews would be appreciated. thanks.