Warnings: Mature themes, including sexual abuse.

Turn of Blade, Twist of Fate

Chapter Two: Something To Hide

By Nessie

Yuugao began to visit Rin on a daily basis, usually between training sessions when she was having lunch. At first she never initiated conversations, preferring to listen as Rin recounted an interested story from the morning shift at the hospital. She was not wholly uninvolved in their meetings and would respond as manners required. For the most part, though, she would stay in her element of observation.

Her teachers wondered what had inspired her to freely associate with the older girl, whose battlefield reputation (the only thing Yuugao had only ever expressed eager interest in) was far below that of other working kunoichi in the village.

Rin, however, was also good at using her eyes. "You're always so quiet, Yuugao. Why don't you ever ask me what you want to ask me?"

Surprised by the bluntness and not used to it, Yuugao hesitated as she always did before speaking. Even though she resented the fact that her greatest weakness was her difficulty with putting her thoughts into words, she felt more comfortable talking to Rin than she ever had with anyone else, even Aunt Eiko. "It's isn't polite," she quietly answered, "to question people on their hardship."

Rin's eyes, rather than saddening, gleamed with some unrevealed amusement. This was perhaps the efficient counter Yuugao had to her aversion for speech; she was capable of reading the emotions of others even if she did not outwardly express her own.

"That may be true," said the older girl, casting her gaze on the wall Yuugao leaned against. "However, I believe it is better to learn from another's experiences if you can, instead of waiting for the same unhappiness to come to you. I do the same as you, Yuugao – I hide everything I feel from everyone I know." Her smile came slowly, and there was a bittersweet quality to it. "We're taught that, as women and ninja, that's the best way to live. But after all I've been through, I disagree."

She blinked her reverie away and looked at Yuugao again. "So go ahead. Ask me."

Yuugao stared as she comprehended her sempai's words. The feelings flitted across Rin's face like a shifting kaleidoscope, dazzling but brief, each one adding more confusion to her muddled mind. "What does it all mean?" she began suddenly. "The wars, the deaths, the way you try to help some survive even while most in our village are sent to ensure that some don't? Don't you ever feel as though your life is worthless – especially now that you no longer fight?"

Her breathing hitched and came faster. It was possible she had never said so much at once in her life. "Are you haunted by your teammate's death? Do you feel disgraced by Kakashi's request for you to retire? What do you—" she had to stop, winded by her own breakthrough of communication. "What do you live for?" she demanded at last, and it was clear that this question was the one she craved an answer to; because deep, deep inside, it was the question Yuugao posed to herself.

Rin's smile had broadened so much that she had actually started to laugh. Yuugao instantly felt the gumption inside begin retreating back to its unreachable place. But Rin, though they had only met half a month before, stepped forward to pull Yuugao into an embrace. And Yuugao, for once, did not stiffen or try to break free.

"I live for moments like this," Rin murmured, her tone plainly fond. "I don't think you'll go back to how you were, Yuugao. It's like you've found your voice."

Shock prevailed for several moments, until at last Yuugao lifted her arms and used them to encircle Rin's taller frame, returning the hug.

It was the true beginning to their friendship.


Rin proved herself a loyal and dedicated companion over the next two years. It was fortunate the purple-haired girl had found another female to connect with because puberty did not wait. Yuugao's body underwent changes she had not been warned of by her now-taciturn aunt, and Rin was there to keep her informed and advised on how to cope with her form that grew and morphed even as she continued her work as a Genin. By age thirteen, the Uzuki daughter had obtained a nearly perfect figure, from her sizeable bust (which she hated, for binding them each morning was a chore) to her slim hips and lengthy legs.

In seeming retaliation to these physical alterations, Yuugao continued to wear her hair short, since it was the one aspect of her appearance that she could fully control. Rin often commented that it was so unique and beautiful she should consider wearing it long, but the comment always went ignored.

It was a surprise to Konoha later that year that the Chuunin Exams were going to be administered differently. Instead of villages testing their own individually, Genin from surrounding countries were to travel to Konoha (the largest ninja town and the most accessible) and compete with each other in an attempt to prevent another war from tearing the lands apart.

Yuugao began to break away from her team and trained either on her own or with Rin, who was decidedly more enthusiastic about the Exams than Yuugao, even though she had already achieved Chuunin status.

"You'll go upward in rank!" she exclaimed during one practice session, when she was practicing synchronizing her replacement clones as they threw kunai. "You won't have to walk dogs or feed deer anymore!" Rin gave Yuugao a nudge in the shoulder. "I know I was stoked about that before my Exam."

Yuugao did not feel any particular excitement, if only because her confidence was so high. She knew down to the minute how long and how hard she had worked herself; three times as much as the generally unmotivated boys on her team (new boys – as she had predicted, the other two had dropped from the shinobi profession to apprentice as butchers together). They would be promoted, as she would, but they would not go much further. Yuugao, on the other hand, intended to go all the way.

In the week before the Exams, her training intensified. Rin complained of her ruthless regime and worried that she would overexert herself or cause herself injury, but she sparred and did as her friend commanded.

Hiroshi-sensei was a factor Yuugao had no say over. Since she refused to train with the team on the plea that her teammates' defensive skills were inferior to Rin's and detrimentally low for a weapons specialist, he insisted on supervising her separate training sessions.

Yuugao had been training at night in a wooded area set well apart from the inhabited land of Konoha. Because she had heard past proctors out in the forests after sunset, she was fairly certain there would be a nighttime trial in the Exams. Normally both Rin and Hiroshi-sensei would be there to offer assistance where she asked for it or not), but tonight – three days before the first test – Rin had left at dusk to cover a late shift at the hospital.

Hiroshi was still present, however, watching Yuugao fly up in the tree branches. She was little more than a shadow beneath the leaves, throwing an arsenal of blades summoned by scroll at marked targets thirty feet in the air. She could feel Hiroshi's ceaseless witnessing and disliked it, but Yuugao knew better than to ask him to depart. It was not too difficult to ignore him, either, because she was finding that she enjoyed training in the dark. There was a freeing sensation in the cording of muscles as she tossed shuriken and senbon, while the chilled breeze cooled her sweat and the moon lit her way.

Yuugao had only been on day mission up until now, but her young mind wondered if she would not fare better in the pre-dawn hours.

Thinking this, she paused on a low branch to tie her hair back with a bit of string from her kunai pouch. The deep-colored tresses fell no further than the point of her chin but strands had been getting caught in her mouth, annoying her to distraction. She brought her hand up to gather it at the base of her neck.

Yuugao did not feel a threatening presence until her slim wrist was caught in a much larger hand. She tried to whirl, reaching for a remaining weapon, but the movement was predicted and intercepted. With an audible intake of breath, the girl lost her footing on the branch, and the weight shift upset her attacker as well. Both went tumbling forward from the tree, the yards taking seconds to fall through, and Yuugao landed on her stomach, breaking her fall with a bit of chakra pooled into one hand. She could feel bone cracking in her ribs with the impact, and the assailant landed on top of her, his nose digging into her right shoulder blade.

Winded, she almost did not recognize the voice when a rough curse met her ear. But, she did recognize, and Yuugao twisted on the ground until her eyes met another pair: bright yellow and practically burning in the dark.

"Hiroshi-sensei…"

"What is it with you, Uzuki?" But the eyes, frightening as they were, were glassy and faraway. "You never want to train with the team. If you did, you'd have known before now it was me."

That was not true. Hiroshi's single flawless talent was his capacity for stealth. It had been the one thing Yuugao had admired him for, unlike the hero-worshipping boys her taught.

Her breath came raggedly. Yuugao didn't know what was going on, not even when Hioshi pushed her onto her back, taking no care to be gentle. She struggled on instinct, but he kept her pinned to the spiky grass with his hands on her wrists, one leg flung over her knees to limit squirming. Strong though she was, a girl more than half the age of an experienced shinobi could not hope to compare with his physical power.

"Haven't I told you, Uzuki, you look so much like your mother?"

She tried shouting, but Hiroshi did not concern himself. Though there was distant rustling in the woods, she was unused to raising her voice, and the sound didn't carry.

"She was beautiful too," he continued. Yuugao knew he did not speak to her any more than she was glad of his touch. She saw him holding himself over her, a smear of stain against the starry summer sky. His eyes were two stars as well, malicious and intent with lust. Muscles spasmed all through her, but she could not even kick.

Hiroshi's hands were wildly rough, squeezing and pinching and groping and pulling. It was when he untied the drawstrings holding up her uniform pants that her eyes, like his, filmed over with a sheen. She stilled in her shock, facing the east where the sun would rise. If dawn broke, she thought, would he leave her alone?

Memories pervaded her vision: Hiroshi passing her a kunai, his fingers lingering over hers beyond what propriety deemed right and thinking nothing of it. Hiroshi commenting on her stance, then gripping her hips to correct it. Mentions of her mother, thousands of them. The man had recited her every detail. Never had he breathed a word of her father, except for the few on her first day at the Academy.

"You were his friend," she finally whispered, but Yuugao felt removed from herself, as though she were only watching the event rather than being the victim of it. Observing, as she always did.

Hiroshi froze for moment at her murmured accusation. Then he lowered his head, and she squeezed her eyes shut as his lips passed down the smooth column of her neck before answering. "She chose him over me." And he moved.

Her hands gripped grass and dirt while he did as he pleased. The pain…Yuugao found herself thinking of her early childhood, when a fall down the stairs or a scrape from a thorn had sent her stumbling back into the house, crying for her aunt. She considered in her torment that Hiroshi was only the second person to ever witness her tears.

Yet when he got up and dressed, leaving her – a mass of filthy skin and loose hair, spotted with bruises, blood on the grass beneath her, breast binds all torn – Yuugao believed he had never really seen her at all. He had seen only a girl who resembled a woman. Not a heart and certainly not a kunoichi. Nothing.


Afterward, the Secret had something to hide.

She took the Chuunin Exams as planned. A scalding shower had hidden the evidence of any suspicious happenings from Aunt Eiko, and Yuugao's impenetrable silence was nothing anyone was unaccustomed to. Rin noted on the day before the first test that she had seemed unusually distracted, and perhaps that was true, though it was not that night that held so much of Yuugao's attention. She was more concerned with how it would affect her as a kunoichi, if there would be any repercussions at all.

Though his position as her sensei required him to be there, she did not directly associate with Hiroshi for the duration of the Exams. The mind puzzle in the first test was easily won, and her team triumphed over the Forest of Death due mostly to her special skills with chakra in relation to weapons. Her energy-powered shuriken had slain vicious beasts and incapacitated dozens of competitors for three straight days.

As she had expected, the Genin shinobi from her team lost their battles in the preliminary matches. She proceeded on to the finals after defeating a shinobi from the Land of Wind whose skills were well-honed but one-dimensional and no challenge for her variety of combat style. Her damaged rib did little to hinder her.

It was not until the mandatory physical examination following her win in the finals that any attention came to her. At first, Yuugao had not been able to understand why the middle-aged woman who performed the physical seemed so upset; the excitement of the Chuunin Exams had left her blissfully focused on the task at hand. With her goal met, she was thrown into the reality of what had happened to her. And when Rin rushed into the medical room, exclaiming that she had just been informed of the signs found on Yuugao's body, the younger girl felt the pressure begin to build.

"You have to tell me, Yuugao." Rin, though only seventeen, spoke with the authority of a grown, full-fledged doctor. "If it was one of the visiting shinobi, action must be taken. The Chuunin Exam Committee has to know so they can make sure nothing like this happens again. Who…"

But Yuugao bent over, her forehead pressed to her knees. The hands Rin's had on her shoulders began to shake. Belatedly she realized it was because her own body was trembling horribly.

"Yuugao?"

She allowed Rin to hold her while she released all of it: the anger, the fear, the sensation of betrayal, the guilt. While Yuugao was not so blind as to believe Hiroshi was not to blame, she believed too that, had she been more astute, she could have prevented his attack. In a way, she thought she had let it happen.

But Rin assured her she had done nothing of the sort, and while Yuugao was not sure of that, she was sure of one thing: Her rape was the reason she had begun to openly feel.

And what she felt foremost was hate.

After that day, Third Hokage was informed of a Konoha Jounin's treachery, and Hiroshi was dismissed from service and banished from the village. Yuugao's case was considered highly confidential, and no more than five people knew she was even involved. A committee was formed for annual psychological exams to be mandatory for any working Konoha ninja over the age of fifteen.

And Uzuki Yuugao began to let her hair grow.

To Be Continued