Blurry Perception
After a mission gone wrong, Hinata found herself alone, injured and without her memories. When she found someone who knows who she is, she latches onto him. Too bad she doesn't remember he's a wanted missing-nin by the name of Uchiha Sasuke.
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Chapter 1: Lost Souls
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"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
~ Mark Twain
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Red simmering into black. Rage twisted around despair.
It tore apart her soul,… shaving away her sanity. Slowly, slowly… until there was only a thin shred left.
After she lost him, there was a persistent ache that accompanies each beat of her heart. It tugged at her relentlessly before shoving her down the black abyss of sorrow. Then red hot rage slashed her shredded heart until she's a quivering mess before she was plunged back into the dark pit of fear. This vicious cycle of hollowed depression and heightened fury was how she's been living her life since the war ended.
During her more lucid moments she wondered whether bipolar disorder was something that can be triggered by sheer circumstances. Then the pain grabbed her in its spiky tentacles again and she stopped thinking.
And the torture continued.
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The sunlight that filters through the forest's canopy prickles uncomfortably against her eyelids, blanketing her body in a cocoon of stifling heat. She moves her head to avoid it but a shot of pain snakes through her brain and she grits her teeth, tears pooling in the edges of her closed eyes. Her head feels like it has been smashed with a really big… something. She forces her body to turn, curling on one side before forcing her upper body to peel itself from the dusty ground, propels by one shaky hand.
Her breathing is loud and erratic, while her heart is pounding hard in her chest, a painful beat that makes her shudder in agony. Her hand comes up sticky and dripping with blood and she groaned, her dark hair plasters against clammy skin. When she thinks it over later, the lack of fear and panic would have been a great indicator but at the moment she quickly runs one hand, her fingers trembling and shaking, over her torso.
She winces when her fingers find a still oozing wound, just under her rib cage. She presses her hand against the flow of blood and half hidden by her blood-stained shirt, her fingers glow a muted shade of green.
Random thoughts blaze through her muddled brain, piercing through the hazy clouds drifting through her mind.
Why am I bleeding?
What had happened?
Who… am I? Why…?
Then everything turns black.
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A lone silhouette flickers for a second before it melts back into the wavering shadow of a tree. The moon peeps from behind the cover of heavy clouds and for one moment the stark lines of a building is illuminated, a contrast to the lush background behind it.
A pair of midnight eyes continues to scrutinize the movements of various guards scatter throughout the area. He is aware from his recon sessions that precisely after midnight, there will be a three minute window to slip in undetected. A frown flashes across the pale features, his hand playing with the scroll as he counts down the seconds in his head. Adrenaline is already surging through his bloodstream, in preparation of the upcoming events.
The frown deepens when he notices that the guards are noticeably more alert tonight. During his last visit, the guards were more interested in the upcoming warm glasses of sake than the actual guarding but these guys today are patrolling their designated areas with grim determination.
What had changed between 3 nights ago and today?
Other than that, he can't see anything else that could compromise his mission today so he pushes the thought away and focuses on the matter at hand. 5 minutes before the window, he tugs a scroll open, slides his thumb across the sharp edge before swiping his blood across the waiting parchment. His hand moves quickly through the seals and after the smoke clears, an ordinary looking black cat rests on its haunches, waiting silently for its orders.
The man ignores the animal and goes through another series of seals. "Kage bunshin."
He quickly uses Henge on his clone, before turning his attention back to the guards below. He then nods at the waiting cats. "Go. You know what to do."
They jump down and start to wander, slowly making their way into the building. The alert guards give the meandering cats a varying degree of suspicious glares but turn their attention elsewhere after one of the cats start rubbing itself around one of the guard's ankle.
The frown disappears and his lips quirks upwards when they predictably break rank for the change of guards. Up in his hiding place, the man is unmoving but there is a hint of a quick grin when the two cats disappear into the building. A mere seven minutes later, the grin widened when he is holding the rare scroll in his hand. He tucks it securely away and jumps into the waiting darkness.
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She wakes up to a pounding head, aching limbs and the smell of blood everywhere. She quickly struggles to her feet, instantly wary as she pushes her back against one tree. All of a sudden, her vision clears and widens into perfect clarity. The girl gasps, what is that? She blinks, on the verge of hyperventilating and her vision shifts back to normal.
The urge to move is overwhelming so she listens to the voice screaming in her throbbing head, instinctively forcing her battered body to head south.
Mere seconds later, she stiffens, pale eyes darting around suspiciously. She couldn't hear anything but somehow she knows deep in her guts that someone is approaching. Fast. Common sense tells her it could be help that is arriving but a tiny shrill voice is screaming for her to move. Right this minute.
Feeling torn, she decides to compromise. Trying her hardest to make as little noise as possible (somehow she knows that is important), she squeezes herself under one of the bushes. In her preoccupation and fear, she did not even feel the pain as sharp thorns slice open her exposed skin.
She hunches her small body into a ball, trying to take up as small space as she possibly can when the hair at the back of her neck prickles uncomfortably. Straining her ears, she still could not hear anything but suddenly without even a tiniest rustle, a figure materialized maybe thirty feet away.
She freezes when the figure crouches by one of the trees, small movements of its head indicating that he's scouring the area. For her? She didn't have the answer to that question.
The girl didn't know how she knows it but his body language screams hostile. To cement the fact, she could see a glint of sharp metal appearing in one of his hand.
Rescuers do not move around the terrain without sound, with multiple weapons strapped on their person. She grits her teeth in desperation.
What did she do? Why are they after her?
She stays in position long after he disappears, maybe the next couple of hours until she is absolutely sure that the one after her is gone. Then she unlocks her screaming muscles and move cautiously into the darkening forest.
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Some may argue that his methods are crude and unpolished (especially the fact that he now favours sending distraction in the form of clones and such) but after being hounded from the age of six by screaming girls, known throughout the Five Great Shinobi Nations as a student of infamous teachers (both of them), the figure head of still talked about Fourth Great War (one of them anyway), he has no desire to advertise his presence in his new career of choice. Nowadays, he had never personally enter his target's place or reveal himself if he could help it.
Sometimes when he is alone, when sleep is eluding him, the idea of him, the Avenger, the Enemy of Konoha who turns out to be the one who pulls the village from the brink of ruination, the man who harness the Second's own chakra to help seal the newly formed Ten Tails away, the same person who had held that kind of power in his hand would choose without reluctance to cut off all ties, turn invisible and for lack of better word is slumming it, the idea is a little preposterous.
However, after years of drifting, he has found something he has never had before. A sense of humour, so to speak, enough for him to be amuse at the sudden turn of his life. He's a thief and a damn good one at that too. Years of shinobi training made it easy to slip in and out of places to relieve certain people of certain items.
He had started off as assassin for hire, doing whatever job comes his way before the call of larceny beckons like a seductive wink of a beautiful woman. In time, he comes to realize he had enough of spilling blood and prefers to steal if he had a choice.
The Uchiha crouches on a branch, half hidden behind the sparse green foliage as his sharp senses scours the area for foreign chakras. There is a sharp irritating feeling that refuses to leave and experience tells him that the job was not as successful as he thought it is.
He stands slowly, quickly dismissing the faint diminishing chakra to his right as insignificant before he detects incoming movement. Quickly calculating the possibility on his various options, he sighs.
Those Iwa-nin guards won't let him stay in the shadows much longer.
There goes his celebratory night of lazing it off. Damn.
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End of Chapter 1
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Preview for Chapter 2:
"They sent you of all people for me?" His disgust and repulsion feels like a toss of cold water right in her face but she straightens from her position, instantly alert when the meaning of his words sinks in. The desire to flee is overshadows by the glimpse of answers he holds in his grasp.
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