((A/N: Yo! I got a lot of good answers to the last question in the reviews this time around. You guys are so great and supportive to Rae and her struggles. I don't feel the need to reply to any of the reviews because there were no questions, they were all simply descriptions of what you all felt Rae's personality was like, but I do want to say a quick thing to Ori Heartlyng. They had mentioned how they thought Rae was helping Naruto because she subconsciously thought of him as someone just like Gaara(before he lost control of Shukaku), and I want to state that you are absolutely correct! I was going to make it a point to add in the story somewhere where Rae realizes the reason she felt so strongly drawn to Naruto was because she realizes that he is just like Gaara, but apparently you smart cookies are already catching onto that.

Also Rae would totally appreciate your undying understanding of her situation, Kejmur. Hugs for you.

On another note, though, you all are amazing! This story has almost 130 followers, almost 100 favorites, and roughly 50 reviews! You guys are so, so amazing I'mma cry. The only thing that would make me break down now is if someone made fan art or wrote a fan story of this(*innocent whistling*).

Anyway, this has gotten long enough already, so let's get on to the chapter! The chapter which is over 4.5k words, as per my usual promise, and thanks to you guys giving me a hell of a lot of motivation to work with. By the time this chapter is posted, I already have roughly 300 words started for the next chapter! Hopefully I can get the next chapter finished a bit earlier than this one was. Thanks you guys, I love you all.

I don't even know if you guys read these long ass A/Ns lol. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, honestly...

Enjoy the chapter!))

There were many things people could handle when in a stressful situation. Some would say being stressed can make one stronger or faster, or give them the strength to go on for just a little while longer. Something like a last minute energy boost, right?

Rae doesn't think it's too helpful. She stands in her room - her room, not Keiko's - pacing back and forth, arms swaying at her side as she turns on her heel once more to continue her pacing. She glares down at the ground, as if staring at it would make it burst into flames. Let's be real, someone out there might be able to actually do that, but when nothing happens, Rae just scowls.

She crosses her arms over her chest, turns on her heel, then uncrosses her arms again. She crosses them again a second later, just to give her arms something to do.

She doesn't like this. She doesn't like feeling like she has so much energy, but nothing to do with it all. Not two hours ago she had gotten into that argument with the adults downstairs - not my family, never my family - and had stomped her way up to her room. She felt petty, like she was acting so much younger than she really was, but as she paces back and forth in her bedroom while glaring down at the floor, she can't help it.

She crosses her arms.

What was the point of it? Why do they care so much about what she does? She doesn't know them, they don't know her. There was no point to them watching over her shoulder at her every move. She felt constricted, like she was locked up in a prison of solitude, and they were doing their damnedest to keep her locked up here.

She uncrosses her arms.

They aren't her parents. They aren't her family. They tore her family away from her, they tore them away and told her to suck it up. They told her to get used to the way things are now, because 'this was her home'. No. Never a home. Never her home.

She crosses her arms again, stuffed tighter to her chest this time. She just felt as though there were so much energy coursing through her body that she couldn't help but be in constant motion. She uncrosses her arms, goes to cross them again, but brings them up to either side of her head instead. She pauses in her tracks as she stares down at the ground, less of a glare on her features this time around as a wary panic begins to settle on her features.

She just doesn't know what to do.

And she squashes down the urge to cry. It was difficult, she really, really felt like letting out a strangled scream and breaking something. Rae knows this thought process is no good and probably unhealthy for her mental state, but she can't seem to apply the logic to her emotions at the moment. So she grips her white hair tightly in her clenched fists and stared, wide eyed, down at the ground. She knows she's hyperventilating.

And then she just stops. Her eyelids flutter down to a less wide-eyed stare, her grasp goes loose and she lets go of her hair as she simply looks down at the wooden floor without really seeing the wooden floor. She calms her breathing to a simple quick panting, as if she had just finished running around for an hour or two.

Her hands fall to intertwine together at the back of her neck and she lifts her head, staring at the door that would lead to the small hallway outside. With the sudden silence in the room, she can hear Jirouko crying softly from his crib in the room across from Keiko's own room.

She doesn't wait even a second before she is flinging her door open and making her way down the hallway to her baby brother's room.

Creaking open the door, Rae doesn't bother flicking the lights on. The sudden bright lights would only further agitate Jirouko, and Rae has had enough stealth training in her kunoichi classes that she can safely traverse a slightly dark room - the lights from the room downstairs was spilling up into the hallways, and into Jirouko's now open bedroom door.

Rae stands beside the dark blue cradle, takes just a second to hate everything about the strict color scheme of the Shimizu clan, and reaches down to pick up her brother.

"Shh, hey, hey," Rae whispers in a soothing tone, turning to sit on the floor with her back to the baby's crib. Jirouko is still crying in her arms, but quieter now. His deep blue eyes are open, and he looks up at his big sister in slight confusion. Rae wonders why he was crying. Maybe he could tell that bad things were happening. She took just a moment to think about whether babies could understand emotions even if they couldn't understand words, then lets out a gentle smile and pushes a few whispy blue strands of hair away from Jirouko's face. He reaches up and clutches at her hand with both of his own chubby hands.

He's still crying, although it was down to sniffles and hiccups now. Rae begins bumping her leg up and down gently, hoping to soothe his sadness.

"Why are you sad, baby? Is it because of the loud noises downstairs? Those big clumsy adults are pretty loud, huh?" Jirouko lets out a tiny laugh that Rae feels lifts her spirits just a bit. She wipes away the tear tracks on his face and allows him to grab and cuddle her hand close to his face, no matter how much she wanted to pull away and wash the snot and saliva off of her hand.

"You're a gross baby sometimes, you know that?"

He lets out another innocent bubble of laughter. Rae feels lighter and happier, and she wants to smile down at him. Instead, Rae's smile flickers for just a moment before falling from her features altogether. She leans her back against the crib and lets out a heavy sigh.

"You don't deserve this, Jirou-chan. I know I have problems, but you're too young to be wrapped up in all of this. You don't deserve having to deal with those jerks downstairs." She looks down at his smiling face, his deep blue eyes rimmed red from his crying session. "...you don't deserve having to deal with me."

He clutches her hand tighter to himself, and Rae has the sudden thought that maybe he can understand her, understand what she's saying. When he sticks her hand in his mouth and bites down on her middle finger, she takes it back and considers cursing. She doesn't, of course, but the thought does flash through her mind for just a second.

Rae has dealt with kunai cuts and taijutsu bruises before, so she was trained just enough to not scream or yank her arm away from the giggling baby, but she does allow the pain to register clear on her face as she tries to gently pry her hand away from his mouth. He doesn't even have teeth yet. Rae is honestly shocked on how much soft gums hurt when they bit down on you with all their might. She has a new wary fear of really old people.

When he giggles and clutches her tighter, simply chewing on her finger - softer, this time, it doesn't hurt anymore - she just gives up and lets him. There's no point in making him cry when she had come in here to make him stop crying. Besides, maybe she needed that bit of pain to bring her back to the real world.

Her thoughts are quiet, now. She doesn't think of the past, of Keiko, of Suna, or even of Konoha. All Rae thinks about in that instance was her adorable baby brother. chewing away on her finger. She makes a mental note to let the adults downstairs know that Jirouko had started teething at some point. She would rather not have to talk to them again, especially not so soon after the mess up that had occurred just hours before, but she would always put Jirouko's health before her own comfort. She knew she was just being childish by wanting to ignore them, to give them the cold shoulder and hope that they felt bad for...

For what?

No, Rae knows what she's angry about. They should feel ashamed for trying to make her become Keiko.

Her lips thin out on her features, and she furrows her brows as she thinks.

Is it really their fault? Rae wants to be angry at them, but not because of what they're doing - okay, not only because of what they're doing, but she's still pretty pissed about all of this clan stuff. She is angry at them because she wants to be angry. She wants to feel the bitter hatred in her gut because of what they forced her to leave behind. It's their fault. They are to blame for her misery.

She isn't Keiko. She isn't their daughter. She isn't the girl they loved. The girl they loved is long gone, Keiko Shimizu died eight months ago. She's been dead ever since, and she won't be coming back. But is that their fault? Is it their fault for hoping against hope that their daughter might be alive somewhere in there, somewhere inside of Rae? Lurking in the back of her mind, ready to spring free the moment she can?

And then Rae pauses, a new fear overcoming her.

Is she? Are those memories really just watering around somewhere in the back of her head, begging to be set free? Will those memories come out one day?

She wouldn't know what to do if they did. She's been convincing herself for so long, so long, that she was Rae. Just Rae. She couldn't handle knowing that she used to be someone else once upon a time. She wouldn't know who she really was if that ever happened.

Her mind drifts back to the black and white journal she had seen in Keiko's room, the one with her own handwriting on it, and she couldn't help but wonder. If she read those journals, would Keiko's memories come back to her...? Would she recognize anything in the other girl's notebooks?

What was in the journals? She had been too afraid to look into them last time, but now...

Jirouko lets out a happy sounding coo and slobbers all over his chin, and Rae looks down at the boy. She finally sighs and pulls her hand back from the boy. She loves him, she really does, but there is only so much baby saliva she can handle for the time being. She had long since past reached her limit, even if he does look really sad when he reaches out for her.

She lifts the bundle up in her arms and puts him back in his crib quietly, wrapping his blue blanket around him - and really, Rae wants to scream at how much blue there was in this house, blue, blue, blue - and wiping away the drool from his chin with her hand. It was already dirty, so she figured it didn't matter for now. After making sure he wouldn't cry out if she left - she gave him his pacifier - she left the room quietly, shutting the door halfway so there was just a bit of light creaking into the room.

Then she makes her way down the hall and into the second floor's bathroom, rinses her hand real quick in the bathroom's sink, and begins to strip off her clothes at the same time as she turns on the bathtub faucet to warm. She hadn't showered that night anyway, so she figured she would clean her whole body instead of just her hand.

Once in the warm bath, just hot enough to possibly color her skin slightly red, she sighs, drooping her head down to rest on her chest. At the feeling of something smooth and cold pressing against her skin, she looks down at the necklace she wore. She hadn't taken it off when stripping from her clothing, and she wasn't certain if she wanted to take it off even now.

A pang of sadness stabs through her chest at the sight of the swirling desert colors. Red, yellow, orange, and just a bit of warm brown all mixed together to form a beautiful image of her home. She thinks it almost looks like a small planet, like she held all of Suna in her hand inside the tiny glass pearl, and she smiles. It lacks any joy or happiness, however, and she lets it drop. She would not give fake smiles to them, to her home and to her family. Suna deserved more than just a fake smile.

She grips the quarter sized ball of desert - of home - in the palm of her right hand and frowns.

Her wavy white locks fell just long enough for the tips of her hair to reach into the bath water, and Rae's frown only deepens. Why had she let it grow out so long? Why hadn't she cut it shorter sooner, or even after she had arrived in Konoha?

She remembers everyone telling her, though, of how much she looked like a little boy, and she remembers why she had originally wanted to grow out her hair. She had wanted Suna to know who she really was. She felt as though looking like a boy was like hiding who she truly was from them, and she hadn't wanted that. But Konoha...

Did Konoha even deserve to know who she truly was? Did they deserve to get to know her like Suna did?

She looks up at the mirror on the opposite side of the room, facing her direction and giving her a direct view of herself. Everything below the shoulders were sunk deep into the bubbly water, but Rae frowns. She looks like a girl. The long, wavy white hair framed her now delicate looking face in a beautiful way, and her eyes looked rounder than they used to be. Her neck and shoulders were slim, dotted with small peach-colored dots, like a graceful dancer's, not like a boy's should be. The one hand raised above the water that was clutching at her little piece of home was thin and delicate.

She felt angry.

No. This wasn't her. Rae didn't look like this. This was what they wanted Keiko to look like, this is what they wanted Keiko to be.

She raised herself out of the tub, ignoring how chilly the air seemed in comparison to the warm water, and marched over to the sink. She didn't bother thinking through her actions as she stops in front of the mirror, grabbed the blue handled scissors - blue, blue, blue, so suffocating - and begins slicing off chunks of her hair. She first began haphazardly cutting off as much of the long strands as she could, but after a few moments, she began to carefully cut to style the hair. Just because she hated looking so feminine didn't mean she had to look ridiculous.

A minute of cutting later, she set down those insufferable blue scissors and looked into the mirror. There was white hair clumped onto her wet shoulders and chest, but she was satisfied with how she looked. Her eyes may still be a bit rounder than before, but with her hair so much shorter she looked once more like a slightly feminine boy. Her hair reached just above her ears now, tickling the nape of her neck just slightly, with her bangs swept off to the right side. There were two locks of hair on either side of her face that were slightly longer than the rest, sweeping down and resting a little bit below her ears.

Satisfied, she gave an excited smile.

It was ruined by the outraged scream her mother gave her a second later when she saw her new haircut.

It was at six thirty in the morning the next day that her punishment came. For what? For skipping out on Mikoto and her sons. What was the punishment you may ask?

To go hang out with Mikoto and her sons.

Only, this time, Mikoto would be there to escort her to the Uchiha clan grounds, to make sure she couldn't run away. At one point, Rae scoffed and muttered that she could totally outrun an old woman who had two kids, but she shut up pretty quick at the terrifying smile Mikoto sent her. There was no kindness in that smile, and Rae was reminded why she had admired Mikoto in the first place.

Rae had asked to bring along Jirouko as well, but the two adults behind her had adamantly denied her the opportunity to ignore Mikoto's children. Rae damned them to hell for seeing through her plans so easily. If she had Jirouko with her, she would have an actual excuse not to talk to anyone else, pretending to be too busy with a baby. Which, yes, she would totally be busy with Jirouko because, come on, he's Jirouko how can you not give him your undivided attention, but she wouldn't really have been too invested not to talk to anyone.

She she wasn't even going to be able to pretend she was invested in anything.

Nothing other than being grumpy, of course. Rae is going to make this just as miserable for the other kids as it is for her, just to spite everyone who is forcing her to socialize with other people her age. And yes, she glared at Mikoto, Rae is not going to give in even to Mikoto's scary smile.

"Are you excited, Rae-chan?" Mikoto asks with a deceptively gentle smile as she walks beside Rae. She had said it was so she be close to her favorite little Shimizu, but Rae thinks it's more likely that it's so she can grab her if she makes a run for it. Again.

"Ecstatic, Mikoto-sama," Rae responds in a dry tone. Mikoto looks down at her for just a second at the honorific that Rae had never used for her before, but just smiles again and goes silent. The rest of the walk is quiet and uneventful.

When Rae walks through the front gates to the Uchiha grounds, she looks around in barely concealed wonder. She didn't want to give them the impression that she was happy to be here, but she was just too excited to see what the inside of the compound looked like to hide it. When she glanced up at Mikoto, the older lady was giving her a knowing smile. Rae immediately frowned and tried her best to look angry and grumpy. She pretended she couldn't hear Mikoto silently laughing beside her.

When she entered the older woman's home, however, Rae dropped the act. The house was so neat and pristine, and Rae loved the deep mahogany colors, blending well with browns, reds, and blacks. There was the occasional light blue or various shadings of grey, and Rae couldn't help but feel like it was so much prettier than her own house. There was far too much blues and whites in her own home, it was suffocating and Rae felt as though the color itself was a prison to her.

She decided that her new favorite color would be red. New, being as it used to be green. She supposed green could be her second favorite color...

Mikoto cleared her throat, and Rae snapped out of her thoughts, looking up at the woman. She was smiling pleasantly.

"Keiko-chan," Rae felt betrayed, "I would to introduce you to my youngest son, Sasuke Uchiha." She lifted her delicate looking hand and gestured to the hall way in front of them. Following her line of sight, and momentarily forgetting that Mikoto had just called her by a stranger's name, she looked down the hallway in curiosity. She blinked once.

There, standing in the very front of the hallway with his tiny, chubby arms crossed across his chest, was a little boy with dark, dark hair and even darker eyes, glaring at her with all his might. He glared as if he could light her on fire with looks alone.

It didn't work, but Rae had to give him props for trying.

Then she squealed because oh god he's just as tiny and chubby as Naruto.

The boy looked incredibly confused for a second, his stance faltering, and Mikoto outright laughed. Rae looked up at the woman with a question in her wide, blue eyes and her mouth hung open in surprise. Mikoto gave an approving nod, and Rae gave a grin that would scare even the most hardened of criminals, running forward as fast as her legs could carry her. The little boy looked absolutely horrified for a second before he turned on his heel and tried to flee further into the house. Alas, as Rae's legs were longer than his, she caught up to him before he could take his second step.

She wrapped her arms around his abdomen and lifted him up into her arms. Rae takes back what she said earlier, he isn't as small as Naruto. He's even smaller. He was barely tall enough to reach up to her waist when they were standing earlier, and now, as he struggles uselessly in her arms, his legs aren't even long enough to kick her in the knees, although he was desperately trying to.

"You're so freaking cute! Oh god, oh god, I love you, I love you so much, my name is Rae, but you can call me Nee-chan, you must be Sasuke-"

The little boy gave out a startled yelp, and Rae could see his face and ears burning a deep red. In a strangled, terrified voice, he shouted at the top of his lungs,

"NII-SAN! HELP ME!"

Immediately, Rae hears silent footsteps thudding across the bend at the end of the hallway, steadily getting louder. Mikoto is barely stifling laughter behind her hands, and Rae is both curious and a little scared. She had heard that the elder son was already a trained shinobi, and had already seen combat many times. She wondered if he would be riddled with scars and battle hardened. She momentarily panicked and felt like maybe one hug from a little boy wasn't worth it to be killed by a dangerous, blood thirsty, killer-

-and then the boy rounds the corner, and Rae has to pause. The look in his eye is absolutely terrifying. Probably because he legitimately expected his little brother to be in actual danger, considering the bloodcurdling scream he had let out when Rae began calling him cute. His bare feet slid across the wooded ground for a second, as if to tell her how fast he was running to come to his brother's aid.

He looks at his brother. He looks at her. He looks at his mother behind the both of them. When they share a look Rae couldn't see, his posture relaxes instantly, and he drops out of the pose that Rae recognized as being ready for hand to hand combat.

She grins.

Still carrying Sasuke - albeit, now her arms were holding him up around the armpits as all of his kicking and thrashing had made him slide down in her hold slightly - she ran forward and stopped just a foot in front of the other child. He was an inch or two shorter than her, and Rae stuffed down the feeling of smug satisfaction for just a second before she reaches one hand out.

To his credit, the boy is too skilled to flinch when she reaches out for him, but he does look wary of her. She places her left hand on top of his shoulder, using her right arm to grasp Sasuke more firmly in her arms, even though he had stopped thrashing the moment he saw his Nii-san.

Then, the grin drops from her face and she is completely serious. Her brows furrow down and she narrows her eyes into slits, the deep blue hardening into something she hoped looked absolutely sinister. She could feel the tension in the room, even from behind her where she knew Mikoto was standing. She leaned forward until she was less than a few inches away from his face, and even though she could feel his breath on her cheek, she narrowed her eyes further and said in the most serious voice she could muster,

"You are the cutest ten year old boy I have ever seen."

He was not skilled enough to stop his dark charcoal eyes from widening, or from the red tint spreading across his features.

Sasuke reaches one chubby hand up and punches her in the throat.

((A/N: Happy April Fool's Day, by the way! It's only 3 A.M. where I live as I'm posting this, but happy April 1st anyway ya nerds.

Real quick: If any of you read this chapter earlier and are confused as to why you're seeing it again, it's because I forgot to add a lot of things I wanted to put into this chapter, so i took it down, fixed it, then put it back up. I also forgot to add the question at the end, which made me sad. Here's your question!

Question!: What three characters from the show would you enjoy seeing Rae meet? I, for one, am incredibly fucking excited to start writing about Madara, but, unfortunately, that won't be for a long while. Second question, who else is as in love with Madara as I am? Sexy bastard.

See you next time!))