Chapter 4: Trust

Asami was quiet. She didn't believe him yet, he wagered. The easiest way would have been to show her his Sharingan, but that would've immediately marked him as the one and only Uchiha Sasuke, and he wasn't sure he wanted to venture down that path just yet. Anonymity had always been his first line of defense.

"Who were his parents?" Sasuke asked. "He said his mother gave him his name. That must mean he remembers her."

"She died in the attack against Konoha. Sand and Sound ninja…"

Flashes to the Chuunin Exam tore through Sasuke's mind as he remembered the explosion in the Hokage's booth and the monstrous Gaara losing his grip on Shukaku. Though the attack was not something Sasuke was at the forefront to witness, he had come back to see the village in shambles and in desperate need of rebuilding. Many had died that day and there was no shortage of photos for villagers in light of the Third's passing. He could've only imagined that many died that day with no one to remember them. Especially those who lived on the outskirts.

"Did she have the Sharingan too?" Sasuke asked.

"The red eyes? Isui can't remember. He was too young. It's doubtful though. I don't think she had ever been to Konoha, let alone be a part of the infamous Uchiha clan."

The theory that Itachi had spared a clansman or clanswoman of the Uchiha was fading quickly. But the idea held little water anyway since Itachi had killed their parents under the Leaf's orders, only sparing Sasuke for the sake of being the older brother he was first and foremost. Sasuke couldn't imagine Itachi spared an unknown Uchiha of a far branch when his own mother and father were cut down.

But what other explanation was there? The boy was too young to have been around during the massacre and whose parents wouldn't have been spared by Itachi.

"What does Isui remember about his mother?" Sasuke asked.

"Nothing much," Asami said. "He was maybe only one or two at the time. And when they were being chased by the Sand and Sound, she hid him before getting caught and killed. Luckily Isui was such a quiet kid, even as a toddler, they never knew she was carrying a child with her. She wrote his name into his blanket, presumably wanting him to keep his birthname, wherever he decided to go."

"Do you know where she was killed?" Sasuke asked.

Though he couldn't see, he could almost feel Asami's eyebrow raise in skepticism. "Why?"

"I want to see if I can find anything there that might give Isui the answers he needs," Sasuke said. "The only way to help him understand the powers of his eyes is to learn from what branch of Uchiha they came from. Even if she wasn't Uchiha, she might lead me to who was."

"You…" she started. "You really want to help him, don't you?"

"I do," Sasuke said. "I owe a debt to the Fire Nation and its people, and I can help Isui better than just about anyone else considering Kakashi is busy serving as the Sixth."

The ropes fell away from Sasuke's forehead, neck, and only led Sasuke to the conclusion that Asami must have been struggling with Isui and the Sharingan for a long time to accept help from a stranger in a snap of a few fingers. In moments of desperation, people sometimes did the most unsightly of things, but Sasuke had no desire to trade away this good will for nothing. He could've easily escaped his binds, but this way, Asami had formally placed her trust in him.

"Thank you," Sasuke said, pulling the blindfold away from his eyes.

"She died in the south east side of the forest near the waterfall," Asami said. "That's where I found Isui and buried her. And this is how I marked it..."

Asami took a pen and drew a curved 'x' onto the back of Sasuke's hand.

"Thank you," he said gratefully.

Sasuke whistled a five-note tune, and a red-tailed hawk spiraled into the night sky above. With an added note escaping the 'o' of his lips, the bird dove down like a bullet and found its way into perching on Sasuke's shoulder. With a dab of ink, he scribbled a quick note onto a small parchment before rolling it up and tying it onto the foot of his trusted messenger.

"What are you doing?" Asasmi asked, her voice ringing with alarm.

"My best friend is very close to a girl in the Hyuuga clan. Tracking is a specialty of mine, but if there's anything left from a decade ago that I wouldn't be able to trace with my abilities alone, she would undoubtedly be the best person to help with that."

"What's her name?"

"Hyuuga Hinata."

A/N: Dang... short chapter. I could've combined this with the previous one. But at least Hinata's making an appearance in the next chapter! Will she work well with Sasuke? Will Naruto tag along? The possibilities are endless :O