Zombie Cat Science

Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.

4Black Cat Luck

My next two lives had very shitty luck. In the first one, I was overjoyed at first because I was a boy. No possibility of painful bleeding puberty for me, whoo! Then I became a lot less enthusiastic as I promptly grew sick and died.

Next, I was a girl again, and feeling a lot warier and more ready to protect my life. Frankly, being a baby sucked, and I was in no mood to go through it all over again, at least for a very long time, thank you very much!

I decided being a girl was not so bad; I'd stick with it this time, provided the body wasn't disabled in some way.

I'd at least garnered lots of information, though, so that made it a lot more worth it. For one, with each life it took time for the brain to develop enough for me to become fully lucid, but, perhaps because of the memories being written into my new brain, it took less time than before to reach a semi-lucid state as I recognized my own 'out of it' state. This was actually not a good thing in my book, because skipping almost entirely right to toddler-hood was a lot more enjoyable than being a baby who could barely crawl, thank you.

I also realized that to a degree, I had to relearn language, despite having memories of it, because the brain needed to form connections in the parts responsible for understanding grammar and syntax and the like; the reason why some people if they receive an injury to the head might find themselves only able to sing their words instead of speak, and the like. This unnerved me, because what if I received such an injury and the damage to my mind carried over to my next life? But I immediately discarded this, because if it carried over I wouldn't have to relearn how to talk beyond re-teaching my muscles to behave correctly. Muscle memory I think was an exception to my having full memories, probably because I had an entirely new set of nerves and my body was all out of proportion. At least I didn't suffer any sort of body disphoria from the body difference, which was nice if unnerving. It meant the unconscious part of my mind responsible for self image – of keeping track of where all your limbs are in space and such even with your eyes closed – didn't carry over. It meant my gender identity was more fluid than it ever had been before.

I had a male-leaning to gender-neutral gender identity in my first life, but was startled and disturbed to find my new body felt completely comfortable. I even found myself identifying as a girl, which was beyond confusing.

It was a bit odd then that the first time I'd been a girl hadn't been comfortable; I suppose I must have been transgender in that body then, unfortunate enough to be born with a mismatched body image that time. That was some extremely bad luck, considering the chances of being born trans are very low. On the other side of things, sexuality, that probably changed with every new life too, although I hadn't lived long enough to figure out my orientation.

Honestly it seemed like a big hassle and I was not looking forward to it – I'd been asexual in my first life and proud of it. Maybe that sort of thing stuck.

I came to study at school, after a couple years had passed. Ninja wanna-bes had to share the school with civilians at first and just learn basics like reading and writing, but, at last I was getting my life on track. And to be honest, having two years to decide whether or not I wanted to really be a ninja was nice. I was not a killer at heart, but, on the other hand I really wanted to study these things for science's sake. The ability to do that as a civilian would be greatly reduced, and I would be open to attack by angry ninja who didn't want me to know these things. If I had to live I might as well live.

My new family was very different. This time, it was a very powerful clan, the Uchiha. To be honest, the more I learned of them the less I was a fan. They were the police, which just screamed for corruption.

One, police in any world are, frankly, prone to corruption (skip this paragraph if this line of thought bothers you). This can be limited or eliminated possibly if you draw the cops from the local community, remove the option for lethal force except when the situation clearly calls for it (no traffic cops with guns), reduce options for monetary influence, require video cameras at all times, but, I wasn't yet sure if they even had video here. Local, community run militias were a much better option than police, who are more concerned with enforcing government laws and collecting tickets to make money for the government. Mind you, I like government and am not one of the crazies who want to fuck over it if it doesn't perfectly do everything I want, and I didn't necessarily disagree with tickets as tool to save lives by encouraging buckling, but I didn't think tickets warranted the use of force and they could be used as literal scams where the cops struck up agreements with companies to rake more money out of the poor who couldn't afford to pay for the ticket outright and were stuck repaying it well after they'd given the initial amount, or even after they collected enough finally to pay the initial amount outright. Too often, cops shoot someone simply for 'disrespect'. This sometimes meant vulnerable people, like the deaf, getting shot because they simply didn't hear the order, or because they were Black and 'looked threatening' while they were on the ground with their hands in the air defenseless. The story of the cop who shot someone, then put a tazer in their hand just to frame them, unaware they were being video taped, came to mind.

Why expect this world to be any better, any less corrupt? It didn't even have a democracy, unless you counted a small council of elders voting for Hokage.

The one thing that confused me was that ninja weren't the rulers but bowed to the daimyo? Or possibly were independent entities but with their small size meant much the same as they had to depend on farmers from other villages to trade with. The hokage was like a general of an army, but in the real world an individual member of an army can't summon fireballs on their own and devastate villages. Hereditary positions of power tend to be established by generals who conquered other generals, and it's only then that the less military minded descendants appoint others to be generals for them. This meant that this current order of things, if it had started before ninja had become so prominent (a possible explanation for a rise of separation of power and military, as rulers often send sons to learn military strategy and tactics, was that ninja used to be just a subset of the military) was not entirely stable. I did recall from history class that ninja villages were only founded quite recently, with Konoha being the first. A related possibility was that with sufficient economic power, you could simply hire legions of ninja and keep control that way, and some must have risen that way.

This current imbalance of power had to give any daimyo quite a bit of paranoia. It was no wonder then that there was only a single ninja village per country; if there were many villages, they'd be even harder to control. I wondered if they even realized that being in one location like this was like putting all your eggs in one basket. It was asking for potential trouble. As well, it reduced your power; if you recruited from every village you'd have a larger pool of talent to draw from.

"Kumaiiii! What are you doing, come play with me!"

"Hm?" I opened a lazy eye from my wool gathering and peered down at little Sasuke. He was the Uchiha clan head's kid, a little spoiled maybe but I didn't mind him. I liked children. "I'm sleeping in a tree, what's it look like." Not recommended for most people, but I do not turn and shift in my sleep, just when I'm trying to sleep, so I was unworried about falling out. I closed my eye again.

"I can do that too!" he exclaimed.

"No, don't do that." I opened my eye to see him already clambering up a nearby tree. "Shit!" I leaped down, but too late; he grabbed a branch that was too small for him and it snapped under his weight. I made a dive for him, but tripped.

He hit the ground with a dull thud and laid unnaturally still.

Oh no no no no. I crawled over to him and checked his head, bleeding heavily. He didn't seem to be breathing. I leaned my palm over him and tried the healing palm jutsu. My chakra reserves were much better in this body, but my control, perhaps for the same reason, had started out worse. I managed the green glow far more briefly and more erratically than I liked. Still, I think it worked, as he took a shallow breath. His eyes were open but glassy.

"Sasuke? Please respond."

I yelled for help.

He was in a vegetative coma.

I fell into another bout of depression, an extremely bad one. It was a familiar black mood, and I knew it had spelled the end for me once before. Frustration came over me. Perhaps all I needed to do was kill myself often and rapidly enough and the death would finally stick.

Visiting him in the hospital, though, I reconsidered. Maybe I could take advantage of this to give him back his life. There were soul techniques. His brain still had him somewhere in there, if possibly too damaged to live beyond breathing at the moment. If the problem was just that he'd lost his soul or had it damaged somehow, and you needed that in this universe to stay conscious, perhaps I could kill myself and solve his coma problem at the same time by giving him mine? The poor fucker would likely end up getting some of my memories, but, so far my reincarnations hadn't totally rewritten the brain, so, better a few mismatched memories than dead, right? I could maybe, tentatively assume the living corpse jutsu Orochimaru spoke of having worked on replaced the poor subject's mind with his; he'd spoken about overpowering them. I'd just have to let him overpower me instead.

Then I would finally be dead, and I'd have done a good deed in the process. Alright. Made me wish Orochimaru had shared more, but, I had something to work off of. I just had to go through the obnoxiousness of inventing a new jutsu.

Or did I? With my body leaping habit, maybe all I had to do was kill myself next to him, and my soul would try him out as a possible residence all on its own. Mentally I rolled over the few soul related scrolls I'd read. There was the summoning (pretty surprised and pleased he'd let me have a look at that, if creeped out by the details. Unfortunately I'd died before I could thoroughly look over it) but that was useless. Then there was a jutsu for the user to detach their soul from their body temporarily. He had probably figured I couldn't get up to much mischief with that, as it alone was pretty useless, but might get inspired for something he personally could benefit from. On the other, it was S rank and I was a kid, so maybe he figured I just wouldn't be able to do it. There hadn't been a lot of information on the scroll besides the hand signs. Perhaps I had a natural affinity for it with my situation.

It was exactly what I needed, though my soul was certain to re-attach within a second or two, so, I'd have to develop it. The next step seemed obvious, though: pour chakra into it for maintenance and for my soul to have something to manipulate. If I weren't careful, I'd just, I dunno, accidentally re-develop the Yamanaka mind control jutsu. That really wasn't what I was aiming for. Although that was spiritual energy, not the soul, wasn't it? Otherwise no one would be teaching it to their children.

I went through the hand signs. Tiger → Ram → Rat → Horse → Boar → Hare.

Detaching my soul felt... weird. I stared back at my body for a moment, which for no good reason fell unconscious. I felt the chakra draining, and the moment it ran out my soul snapped back into place. I immediately realized a flaw. If I hadn't been touching my body when it ran out, I might have simply died and gotten reborn as a baby again. Bleh.

I cast myself into him, pulled all my chakra up, prayed to science, and, severed the connection to my old body.

Eyes blinked open wearily. A heavy in take of breath. Head pounded with horrid pain. A hospital room steadily coming into focus. Did it work?

Did what work?

Sat up. Looked down.

Oh gods. Kumai-chan! She was sprawled half limp on top of me across the bed, knees on the floor, drooling blankly on me. I yelled frightfully, "Ahh!" and pushed her off me, squirming off the bed to get far away from the corpse, grossed out.

Medics immediately came in.

Well, that was a little silly, getting grossed out by my own dead body. Wait, what? I clutched my head in pain. I remembered her, me, leaping in, and was utterly confused. I mentally went through recent memories, more and more baffled. I killed myself? But I remember climbing the tree, and Itachi poking me earlier over breakfast...

"You're awake! What happened?" One medic said, another checking 'Kumai', also once known as Neko, not that they knew that.

"She's dead!" said the other medic, shocked. "Not a mark on her."

"She used a jutsu to kill herself and revive me." I knew this. We. No, there was only one voice here, not two, so not we. It was very strange. Was I Sasuke who simply received some of her/his memories? Was I her who had received his? I still remembered – or rather just now 'remembered' for the first time with the new memories, how to think more analytically. That was part of Neko's personality, the habit of mentally reviewing all the details and looking for new angles. That automatically made me more alike. Heck, considering how much time they – we, ugh, spent on it, it was in danger of consuming the less developed habits and making me her twin. 'She' wasn't really the right pronoun for someone who was potentially you and also currently not identifying as female, but there probably wasn't one in this bizarre instance.

Since it was their wish to die and let Sasuke live anew, I groped for Sasuke's memories, reveled in it, his impulses, tried to let him lead to let them fade far into the background. Last thing we needed was to get suicidal again. Being a little boy with a loving family, if a bit strict, was nice, fun... much better than being a fucked up adult who repeatedly killed them-self.

I stared at the body.

"Thank you, Kumai." I bowed, before someone grabbed me and ushered me out away from the disturbing sight. They hoisted me into their arms for a hug and I clung tightly back. Itachi! Big brother, you came from your busy schedule to check on me!

"I'm so glad you're okay, little brother. Never scare me like that again."

I was glad too. I seized on this opportunity to to get his attention. "Play- I mean, train with me?" He almost never did! It was so lonely.

"Of course I will." Yes!

The other me had played with me – damn that was a weird thought – but they were gone now, hopefully. That made me kind of sad. Why did you have to do that, Neko? Why did you have to hate yourself so much? I could have maybe woken up from the coma on my own!

No you/I wouldn't have. They were getting ready to pull the plug on us! And be careful, this could develop into multiple personalities, silly.

We are not silly. We are very serious.

Ugh, my thoughts are so scattered, disjointed. I rubbed my head again. I was aware of where all the thoughts were coming from, could choose from where to 'pull' them, but it felt like two different sources. Which it kind of was.

"This is important. Do you know what jutsu Kumai used? How did you know she used a jutsu, were you aware this whole time?"

"Um, I don't know what she used," I lied. "I just swear I woke to her whispering 'no Jutsu!' and falling over dead on top of me."

"Perhaps she gave her life energy to you. She was always a strange, but intelligent girl. None of us ever suspected she could do this, though. It must have been an entirely new jutsu she developed by herself." A small frown appeared on Itachi's face. "Disturbing that she didn't tell anyone. Her mother will be upset."

..ah... yeah... I felt guilty. I had never -

Sorry, Neko had never been good at attaching, or acting on attachments. But Sasuke was different. It would be different, this time. I would be happy, I hoped.

"Don't worry, it isn't your fault," he insisted. "I'm selfishly glad she did."

I had no idea just how selfish he was.

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5Pawprint Collecting

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My head settled down after awhile. Hanging out with Itachi, which Neko had never done, although Sasuke had admittedly almost never done that himself either, helped. I felt entirely like Sasuke then. He only hanged out with me the once before going back to his old habits though. It was difficult to tell which was which, but, thankfully there were clear differences between Sasuke's habits and Neko's, and I hoped that meant I was just a very confused Sasuke with some of Neko's memories. Neko was just going to disappear, just as they wished. So there were little artifacts, more advanced thinking than before, but I'd always been a fast learner, right? Nothing too strange...

Itachi was still better. To some degree, maybe I let him be, afraid, for as time went on it became harder and harder to distinguish myself from what Neko once was. To another, I simply couldn't match him; his chakra was so much more developed than mine, his skill. I hated disappointing Father, but, it seemed like nothing I did, even scoring top of class, ever pleased him. So I tried to put it out of mind until I could think of something to make him notice me for more than my brother's shadow.

The Academy was fun, once you started learning actual ninja jutsu, like the Main Three, which I had brief familiarity with reading before in the previous life with Root. The replacement jutsu was interesting. Replace with something of similar weight to you? Like with the transformation, I had the idea of replacing myself with air for a use-anywhere get-out-of-jail-free teleport, although one likely limited by line of sight (or was it? More like line of chakra.). You'd just have to calculate the right volume and mass. Then again, air didn't weigh very much. Only about a kilogram for a cubic meter.

So, my length, times width, height, that'd be my volume. If I just needed to displace the same volume as myself, that would make things easy. But they'd said weight, not volume. Might actually be mass that mattered. So, my weight times weight of air times cubic meters? Hoped I wasn't butchering this math. Well, cubic meters got pretty crazy quickly. Emptying entire rooms of air didn't sound like a good idea. Although, against an enemy that could be quite a lethal tactic. The physics of this world were quite abuse-able.

There were tests I could do, perhaps. I could take a log, weigh it, substitute with it, then chop it up into pieces and see if that made a difference in chakra use.

Damn it, I was thinking like Neko again!

And yet, who could resist?

Trying it out with the log, I grinned as I found out it did, a little. I guessed because I had more surface area and separated parts spread out from each other that my chakra had to grab on to.

"Oy oy, what you doing?" an orange-wearing loudmouth peered over my shoulder.

"Nothing important, Naruto. Just practicing. As you should be." I reminded him.

"Teme! Stop acting so cool all the time!" Was he insulting me or complimenting me? Idiot. I refrained from calling him an idiot out loud, though.

I had met some other children, but was discouraged to hang around with non-Uchiha. I didn't get this weird tension towards outsiders, didn't like it, but, things seemed peaceful enough for now. I had met Naruto, who was the class clown and dead last. I found how full of himself he was a bit annoying, always going on about what a great ninja he was. For some reason, he took a dislike to me and called me 'teme'.

Well... I may have sniped sarcastically at him a couple times. I didn't mean it too aggressively, sometimes pausing and moving away from impulsive insults with involuntary memories of babysitting little children welling up. A confused part of me, despite my best efforts, viewed him as someone younger than me instead of a peer my own age. Acting out didn't mean a bad kid. He just had bad guardians, whoever they were. Since all the discipline heaped on his head wasn't working, some positive attention would probably bribe him into good behavior much better.

Some girls had crushes on me, for some weird reason, but it seemed harmless. I didn't mind, honestly, they were just little kids.

Err, we were just little kids. It was normal. Speaking of...

"Forehead!" a squad of mean girls chanted. "You'll never get a cute boy looking like that!"

This society had some gender issues, telling women to obsess themselves over looking pretty, telling them they were weaker and only a few exceptional ones would ever be equal to the men. It was no wonder there was a two to one boy:girl ratio in the final years of the academy.

Feeling annoyed as a feminist, I turned my head around and faced the bullies.

"Hey, knock it off! I know you might have been told otherwise, but there's more to life than prettiness and boys. People tell you lots of things, like 'Girls have to like pink' and 'Fight like a boy', 'Girls are weaker than boys' and 'nobody will want you if you are not pretty', but it's just not true. Girls do tend to be smaller and less interested in physical activities, but once, I saw a woman who could lift the weight of a lion without any chakra. She had giant, beefy arms, and people mistook her for fat because she didn't look what they thought an athlete should look like, but she was one of the strongest and most healthy women around. And she was physically stronger than all the men in her land. So don't believe all that bullshit."

I was thinking of Olympians from Neko's old world. Bulky weight lifters tended not to get advertising endorsements if they were women, even if they could lift 550 pounds, even if they were the strongest human as measured by weight lifting capacity in their country like Sarah Roble(s? I forget, Roble or Robles), which was pretty damn impressive. To call someone like that unhealthily overweight was nothing short of ridiculous, but people did for those unlucky enough not to fall under the correct 'thin lanky model' body type. You really couldn't get to be a fantastic weight lifter and still be a tiny skinny little stick, although other athletes like ballerinas could manage that.

It was actually true that testosterone makes you cry less though, just not stop crying altogether. In some societies great tears and emotion were a sign of manliness. This... might actually be one of those societies actually, I hadn't been paying attention. Obviously it didn't apply to children, who didn't have much testosterone, just grown men.

One of the girls wailed, "I don't wanna look fat!"

I sweated. "Uh, that's not what I meant."

"R-really?" the pink haired girl they'd been tormenting mumbled, staring wide eyed at me. "The strongest?" Good, maybe she'd focus on that instead of fan-girling over me.

I double-checked that no teachers were watching me or listening in. "Aye. There's nothing wrong with romance, or liking boys, or being a fan girl, and no one should make fun of you for that or think less of you for it, but you should think if you really want your whole life to revolve around it. If you're really determined to anyway, make use of it and become a romance novelist or something." Pausing, I added, mostly for my own sanity and hoping they'd leave me be. "And, if someone doesn't want to be bothered or touched, you should leave them alone. If someone touches you without your permission, you should threaten to tell on them. That can scare even adults." Consent was a huge issue, so, might as well tell the 101 if they hadn't heard it before. Might help protect them from pedophiles, rapists or kidnappers, who often go after the most vulnerable and submissive first. I glanced at Naruto. "You hear that too?"

"Yeah. You're talkative all of a sudden!"

I smirked. "Well, it annoys me." Maybe, with luck, I'd encouraged some of these girls to actually go on to be ninja instead of giving up, and to not try to steal kisses like weirdoes from me. And some boys listening in to behave themselves better. I could see Shikamaru eying me out of the corner of his eye, pretending to watch clouds.

"Ahh, so cool," a girl swooned, to my extreme embarrassment. "Come hang out with us!" I'm not that cool! I'm pretty lame compared to Itachi, for one.

"Uh, I have to go." I quickly made an excuse and I slunk away.

I arrived home, bouncing a bit. I had collected a new cat pawprint and wanted to show it to Itachi. It was a silly game, but fun, one of the few times he didn't fucking ignore me. It was kind of weird how the Uchiha all lived in a little corner to themselves, but, I suppose they liked it that – huh?

...everyone was crying. Or mother was, at least. Father was glaring at Itachi, of all things!

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Shishui is dead. I'm thinking of calling police here."

I looked back and forth between them. "You don't blame my big brother, do you? He loved him like a brother, he'd never hurt him."

This seemed to ameliorate Father a little, glare lessening. "Possibly true. But circumstances were suspicious." He was back to glaring again with those words.

"How did he die?"

Itachi sighed. "He committed suicide."

"He had a full life ahead of him, he had no reason to."

Oh. Err, this was awkward, but, I found myself believing that he did commit suicide. All the pressure and expectations could get to a person, it didn't matter if he had 'more' than other people. He'd seemed happy, but, that didn't necessarily mean anything. I felt guilty for not trying to spend more time with him. Maybe I could have cheered him up somehow.

"Sasuke. I think it's time you learned the family technique," Fugaku spoke, surprising me. He was actually taking an interest in me? "The Great Fireball Jutsu."

Oh. This was to spite Itachi, wasn't it? I bit my lip lightly. I suppose I had no choice. "I'm interested." I was seven years old, I supposed that was old enough, not that I was any judge.

He led me outside, and I made my first attempt. Mere smoke came out, which I thought was pretty good for a first try. I grinned at him.

He stared back at me in disappointment and I lost my grin, feeling empty inside. "Try again," he ordered, a hint of rage in his voice. I gulped.

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Things worsened from there. Itachi became hostile to many of the clan, and they were distrustful of him. I managed the Fireball jutsu, but it wasn't considered as good as Itachi, and the new interest Fugaku showed in me wasn't a healthy one. In frustration, I acted out.

"You, me, let's do a prank," I pretty much ordered Naruto, trying not to sound angry but not really succeeding at all. Like so many other things, it seemed.

"Wha? Really, you wanna hang out with me?" He sounded so overjoyed. I was honestly baffled why, when I'd been a massive grump or neutral at best. Partly because, well, I'm grumpy in the mornings, always have been, partly he gets on my nerves when he calls me names for no reason. It made me feel a little bad.

"Yeah, why not?" I shrugged, feeling grumpy for different reasons today. I just wanted to piss off my parents, getting in trouble at school seemed a good way.

"Oooh, I got a really good one!" He did a little dance.

"Does your dad like it when you do pranks?" I said with amusement, imagining a James Potter-like fellow egging his son on. Not the biggest fan of James, but, eh, Naruto didn't bully anyone with his pranks, I liked that.

"Oh, I don't know if my dad liked pranks." Naruto stopped moving. "I'm an orphan from birth."

Oh. Crud, I didn't mean to upset him. I decided to try and cheer him. "Ah, I bet that means you're all independent and self sufficient, huh? Pretty cool."

"Whaaa? You think I'm cool? I mean, yeah, of course I'm independent! I need nobody! Believe it!"

I resisted the urge to face palm. If he really ended up believing that he'd just get into even more trouble. "Well, ah, nobody is truly independent. Other people grow our food and collect our water, build our houses for us, spin our cloth and weave our clothes, and we all depend upon the plants to live and breath and the sun to grow them."

"Oh! And the Hokage protects us." Naruto added cheerfully, back to total enthusiasm mode. Well, he wasn't hard to cheer, now was he? He wasn't so bad, when he wasn't being a pest. "That's why I'm going to be Hokage someday, believe it!"

"Yes he does," I agreed with him, figuring he'd like that. He did, beaming at me. Oddly I found myself feeling less angry now, and tried to remember the last time someone smiled at me who wasn't a fangirl or a teacher. I even found myself smiling back at him a little, my eyes a little wet.

We ultimately chose a pretty simple prank, switching the furniture in the classrooms around so one room had all desks and another room had all chairs, and one completely bare with nothing at all. It was the first of several, as I vented my anger into it.

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.-

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Bloody Paw Prints

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The Uchiha Clan died, and something in me died with them, by Itachi's hand.

He tortured me, showing me their deaths over and over again, and something snapped, and I felt strange, Neko's black, suicidal mood coming over me in an uncomfortably familiar way.

"I'll kill you," I roared. "I don't care what you do to me. I'll make you hurt!"

For a moment, I imagined I saw him look pained, and I hesitated. Neko had always been pathetically soft hearted, and just wanted people to stop hurting one another.

That was all he needed to escape, and I cursed myself, trailing behind. ANBU appeared, and one said something rather strange to the other: "We were too late! Did he know about the tip-off and strike early?"

"I don't know!"

Tip off?

There was one other strange thing. Someone who wasn't a Uchiha, a total no-name, lay dying in the compound. She stared up and me and coughed, "I didn't manage to prevent it after all. Better luck next time," before slumping dead.

Was there someone else like Neko out there, capable of reincarnation naturally? How had they known about the massacre? This didn't make sense. Maybe they had overheard Itachi's plans somehow, I supposed?

Well, it would be years before I could meet them again, in any case.

Why? Why had he done this? To test himself? To make himself stronger? Was it like they said among themselves, that Itachi had snapped? He had often been a very cold brother, deliberately avoiding spending time with me and poking me in the damn head; I saw this more sharply now, now that I wasn't letting the hopeful part of me that had grown up with him, loved him, do all the thinking. That was dead to me now. What good had it done, to love unthinkingly and unreservedly?

Thinking quietly... I had been ignored as the Uchiha girl. I had tried to convince myself otherwise, but I had been ignored as Sasuke, too. It seemed like every life I came to, I was destined to be pointless. Or, no, not quite. Itachi wanted me for something, didn't he?

He wanted me to grow strong for him, so he could kill me.

I suppose that was more than anyone had ever wanted for me. Definitely the most attention I'd ever received. Did that make him the best family I had ever had? I hoped not, but somewhere, in my sick, messed up heart...

I think a part of me still loved him.

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Note: I know there are a lot of Itachi fans... but there's definitely, in the small glimpses we got pre-massacre, room for an interpretation of an Itachi who really was not very nice to his brother, even if he loved him and was forced to kill his clan so at least one member could survive. You can love someone, be forced to do something shitty, and still be abusive to them in your own free not-coerced time. 'I have to hurt you for your own good without even telling you why' is the oldest abusive line in the book, and 'You are less important use of my time than other things' is another. All the Uchiha had serious problems, except maybe Shishui. Of course, there's also room for a very loving Itachi, since, well, we don't see much of him, unless I misremember. Mind, I haven't read the manga in a looong while, and I don't know every detail the later chapters revealed. Don't cry me a fountain if this didn't exactly follow canon, since that sort of isn't the point. You want canon, read the manga.

This was one of those sections that got briefly gone over due to a desire not to rehash every little detail of canon.