The Sound Village was this unpleasant hole dug underground. The place was a mess of dimly lit corridors and almost random unidentified bedrooms just about everywhere throughout.
There was a kitchen, a few sets of bathrooms, and numerous candles with their wax bleeding onto the floor.
It was basic, and once you got past the fact that the entire institution was kept underneath layers of earth, seemed completely uninteresting. Of course, no one would actually say that, not loud enough for Orochimaru to hear. His surveillance littered the walls, as if an eye stabbed through every crack in the floor, took a place in the shadows where there wasn't a mess of candles to provide some light. Even though that old man never left his room.
People had the same fear of Ashita. They were convinced she had an eye on them even more than her father. Their glare just gravitated to her pale, paper white skin, her night black long hair and those cruel looking snake eyes she had no choice but to wear. No one seemed to be aware that the young woman got the worst of it. That Orochimaru's stare was perpetually burning a hole in her back and no matter how hard she tried to swipe it away; it would always be there. Like a horsefly that just couldn't find death. That fell in love with the little woman, all ninety three pounds of her.
It helped to go outside. In that forest, the tension broke up and the glare boiling all the way up from underground wasn't so damn intense. Ashita spent almost every second of her time there, when she wasn't unconscious beneath her thread barren sheets or tangled up in the occasional mission, which was fairly rare anymore because Orochimaru, since his health had shrunk into this awful cancerous sickness, wanted her near as possible.
Every night, he demanded that his daughter sit with him for dinner; she sat in a chair next to his bed, with a plate of rice and vegetables in her lap, inching through awkward conversation and the curious, malignant glance Kabuto shot to her every once in a while.
He had Ashita there like a shiny little trophy. Just to remind those who might have been confused that she belonged to him and anyone who even attempted to be her friend would probably end up in a ditch somewhere.
But then there was Sasuke, who didn't give two shits about protocol. The Uchiha boy was special anyway. If anything, he was the most important and his happiness became everyone's happiness. It was easy to hear whispers through that snake pit about 'Prince Sasuke', or 'The Anointed One.' A lot of it spawned from a deep-seeded, emerald green condemnation everyone seemed to have. There was not one person there who wasn't looking for Orochimaru's approval.
To get that old bastard to like you was like winning the lottery. It practically never happened, and when it did, that overwhelming prize was only handed out to one person. Right now, that was Sasuke. The girls wanted him and the boys wanted to be him.
That is, everyone except Ashita.
She was special anyway.
Her father's affection was an unobtainable goal. Her body had been scarred trying to catch his attention, and it had been scarred in a failed escape attempt. Ashita got all the way to the end of the forest, only to get dragged back home and whipped. There were deep welds in her lily white back, like chasms torn through the earth. They were fault lines on an otherwise perfect canvas and brought sick to Ashita's stomach every time she thought about them.
She was the only one Sasuke would spend any time with. In a way, they were both entirely too serious and quiet; contemplative. Ashita didn't suck up to him; she didn't try to become his girlfriend by putting on too much make up and wearing her kimono too low. This mutual respect existed between them, one that made the pair drop honorifics and have normal conversations.
In fact, the two were almost disgruntled siblings.
Really, if you asked either one of them why they became friends, there wouldn't be any clear answer. They might think back, remember how they met and where exactly, but that wouldn't be a reason.
It just kind of was.
All the chicks hated her.
Past all of that, life in the Sound Village was dull. Every day was a rehash of the day before. The weather would get colder and warmer. Leaves dropped from the trees and grew back months later. Flowers bloomed and died under thick rays of sunshine, but nothing really ever changed.
Ashita had dreams of escaping. This relentless cycle of watching her old man die, only to find some kind of temporary cure, and start dying again but just a little bit worse that time. Sometimes, she'd stand outside and stare up at those tall trees with an ocean of grass and dew at her feet, imagining a world without him. Without his hateful hole in the ground. Maybe even without Sasuke Uchiha and their collective hoard of haters.
It was this gorgeous place where she could be anything. A writer. An actress. An artist. A girl without porcelain pale skin and snake eyes. A girl with normal parents and a normal life and who lived in a normal village. With real friends and a future without a grey cloud of uncertainty bruising up the entire thing. Like what normal people had.
But fate had given her a ripe black eye. At the end of day, all she could really do was go back inside and bring her father a plate of dinner, and they'd pretend like they loved one another, even though there wasn't a more blatant lie.