A/N: I really liked writing this chapter, cuz I got to research the Uchiha clan history, which is actually really complicated. Anyway, r &r, thank you!!

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I followed Tsunade out of the hospital room, anxious about my future confrontation with Sasuke. The moment my foot hit the hallway, I heard a yelp and a blonde blur ran to me from a few yards away.

"Are you okay, Seluni? What's wrong? You're not leaving Konoha are you? Cuz Granny Tsuande probably healed you all up but you don't have to leave. Beside, I wanted to show you this ramen place I love!" Naruto stopped for breath. I took the opportunity to glance down the hallway, where a grumpy Sasuke and a slightly shorter, yet equally pissed off Gaara stood side to side, expectantly. How did Naruto get them both to calm down?

"Excuse me, Naruto," I cut in as he began another rant. After looking to Tsunade for reassurance, I walked over to the two men, swallowing a lump in my throat.

"Um, Gaara, Tsunade wants me to talk to Sasuke for a bit," I spoke to the floor. Why did this feel like I was betraying him?

Gaara stiffened and put a finger on my chin to raise my face up to his. He was definitely still upset, but without a word, he gave me a quick kiss and disappeared.

I determinedly met Sasuke's dark stare.

"Can we go somewhere privately to talk?" I asked. His stony look was so like Gaara's that I wasn't the least bit intimidated, although passerby in the hallway seemed to steer away from him. He nodded, though, and led me down the hallway and several sets of stairs. I was amazed at how quiet he was, considering his rant from the day before. I also kept silent, trying very unsuccessfully not to concentrate on the man's confident swagger and the way his ass looked as he walked. Stop it, Seluni, I scolded myself, he's cute, but he's trouble. Don't even think of him like that.

Sasuke paused at the front door to let me catch up, then, surprisingly held it open for me. A bit puzzled, I eyed him warily as he let me pass through. What did he expect me to do, thank him? This guy shouted at me yesterday and tried to hurt Gaara twice. Therefore, no matter how polite he pretended to be, I wasn't about to be gracious. Nor was willing to let my guard down.

The sun shone down brightly over Konoha, instantly increasing me headache, and filling every street and corner of the village with light. It was just as crowded as Sunagakure, but everyone wore bolder clothing, and less of it. Back in Suna, I had gotten so used to conservative layered clothing that all this freedom was strange. Only in training was it appropriate to wear more revealing shorts or mesh, like Temari often donned.

"You want to keep walking?" Sasuke interrupted my reflection, waiting expectantly for me on the street.

"Sorry." I walked up and let him lead me across the village. All the streets looked the same to me, crowded and lined with shops. Thankfully, Sasuke seemed to know exactly where he was headed, leading me silently down the main street and a few less crowded blocks before turn abruptly into an open area, similar to a large park. There were flowers scattered about, a forest ahead, and a small pond with a dirt trail traveling past it.

"This is beautiful," I said aloud, to myself more than to Sasuke, who had continued walking down the dirt path.

I caught up and walked beside him. We traveled in silence yet again. Being around Gaara so much had seemed to make me more prone to silence, even to the point where I could tell what Gaara was thinking when no one else could. With Sasuke, however, I knew as much about him as I did about this whole village; basically nothing.

"Why do you let him hurt you?" he said suddenly. A little taken aback, I studied his stern face.

"What do you care?" I asked suspiciously. This was not the way I thought the conversation would start.

"You're the last female Uchiha. I'm the last member of the main family. It's my business to know."

I stopped walking, following him with my eyes as he continued down the path.

"Sasuke, stop." He turned to face me, his face blank as ever. "So you know I'm an Uchiha then?"

"Of course you are. You have the Sharingan, the strongest bloodline limit in Konoha, only acquired by an Uchiha."

Finally we were getting somewhere.

"Then . . . what about these marks on my face? I don't see you with them. In fact the Inuzukas are the only ones I've seen with them."

He shrugged and continued walking. Now I was getting aggravated. I took a breath to calm down and caught up to him again.

"Well I'm sorry, but I thought you had some answers - "

"Who were your parents?" he asked.

"I don't know. I was raised by the Raikage, thinking I was his until only a few weeks ago. I never had these eyes or these marks or any idea – "

"You have no proof otherwise then?"

"I told you I don't."

"No keepsake or clue about your parents?"

I shook my head, trying to stay calm. I knew he would be asking these same questions like everyone else, but I couldn't help but feel like I was being interrogated. But something about the Sharingan was nagging me.

"Hey Sasuke, if you have the Sharingan, why aren't your red eyes like mine?"

He looked confused for a second, displaying his first emotion all morning. He stopped and looked me in the eye, and I watched his black eyes swirl into crimson, trimmed with dark pinwheel-like spots. The Sharingan gave the appearance of eyes with no depth, like a reflection in a shallow pond. It was fascinating to watch, and it took me a minute to realize I was still staring into his eyes. I turned away awkwardly.

"So you can turn it on and off. Why can't I change mine back then?"

"Have you tried?"

"No, but – "

"Just concentrate on the color of your old eyes. Green, right?"

"Um, yeah." I looked at the grass ahead of us and focused on the color. Feeling no change, I looked to him for support, but I realized that I didn't see his bright chakra anymore. My sight was back to normal.

He nodded. "There you go. Green."

I touched my face absently. "That's all? I didn't feel a thing."

We began walking again. "You won't feel it change," he said, "Now, you might just know when it's activated by your vision, but then you get used to feeling the difference. But you shouldn't keep them on for too long. It damages your eyes and causes pain."

Oh. That would explain my headache I had since the Akatsuki incident. I had hardly noticed that it was gone.

"Thank you," I said, for the first time feeling a bit grateful to him. He didn't have to teach me how to use them, after all.

"Is your Sharingan just the same as mine, then?"

"What we have is the Mangekyo Sharingan, an advanced version. Its technique varies from person to person. I can use mine to hypnotize my enemies, or send their minds to an illusionary dimension that I control."

"I think I did that. When I fought Deidara, I kind of sent his mind somewhere, and I killed him in the illusion, and ended up killing him in reality."

He nodded, his mind elsewhere. "That's a powerful technique," he mused, "Like my brothers', rare, but not unheard of. But I want to know how your Sharingan advanced."

"What do you mean?"

He licked his lip and looked away, thoughtful for a second before regaining his composure. "Not many Uchihas ever obtained the Mangekyo Sharingan because of the sacrifice you have to make for it. My brother earned it by killing off our entire clan. I did by killing my brother."

"Wait, the entire clan is gone?"

"Yes. They're all gone but me." His steady voice proved he had come to terms with that fact long ago.

"And now me, too." I responded, still in a bit of shock. What a blow that was. To think I finally found out a part of my past, and any trace of it was gone.

"So you understand why I wanted to speak to you?"

"Yeah, I – wow. I just never thought I'd be part of something this big."

We had reached the beginnings of the forest, with impossibly tall trees and lush with green. The path seemed to narrow as the forest deepened, at some points even wearing away to the point where it was indiscernible. But still, Sasuke knew the way like a map, and we soon came across a small sign along the trail. It was round and had a small symbol on it, like a white and red fan.

"This is one entrance into my clan's compound," he said, noticing my gaze. "It's still unoccupied, but I want to show you something here."

"Well, what is it?" I was hopeful of seeing the place. Maybe I would find a clue here to who I was . . . maybe I'd recognize something there. Was it ridiculous to think that?

After about a ten minutes' walk in the forest, the path became wider and I could see gray buildings through the trees. There was no gate, yet the forest seemed to thin out just to allow the compound to exist. With a crunch under my feet, we stepped onto crumbled pavement and into the area.

It was a depressing scene before me. I didn't know what I had expected, but the compound must have been abandoned for years. The buildings were crumbling and seemed about to collapse at any moment. There was debris all over, from tipped wooden carts to fallen telephone poles, to food stands that stank of rotted wares. There was no wind here; one side of the compound was bordered by a wall, bearing the same fan symbol repeatedly, which had completely collapsed at parts.

We walked in silence down the wide main street, past dozens of houses, each with the same ominous emptiness as the next. The balconies loomed over us accusingly, and I felt like an outside invading a sacred, sorrowful place. I didn't say a word of comfort to Sasuke; what could I say? This entire place seemed to be asleep and on the verge of collapse, and I felt even a whisper would cause it to crumple completely.

I looked for anything to recognize, wrecking my mind to find a memory of the tall, closed main gates, or of this large building, or that walkway. Nothing felt right, nothing felt familiar here.

Sudden movement caught my eye, and I whirled readily to face it. But it was just a black cat appearing from an old home, the animal as silent as the rest of the compound. It sat and watched me with yellow, knowing eyes. Even as I turned to catch up with Sasuke, who hadn't noticed the intruder, I could feel its gaze on me.

We reached a particularly large building, fashioned as a temple, set in the far reaches of the compound, away from the houses. I followed Sasuke up the disintegrating stone stairs, achingly aware of the pain he must be going through to return here.

At the front door he finally stopped and turned to me. I expected to see a tear, a frown, anything other than his blank face looking back at me. What emotions was he hiding so well behind that façade?

"This is the Nakano Temple, the temple of our clan." Our clan; that still sounded bizarre to me.

"It's large for a temple," I mused, looking over the vast building, overcome with vines and as ruined as the other buildings.

"Many secrets of our clan are hidden within. What I want to show you is inside."

He pushed open the old doors, creating a loud creak that seemed to echo throughout the compound. I held my breath as I followed him into the dark room, almost expecting the compound to react to the sudden disruption.

A burst of fire from within caught my attention. Sasuke was blowing flames into several torches on the floor, the flames creating a mesmerizing dance of orange light on the empty room.

I followed him deeper within, looking at the eerie images on the walls, of scowling idols, that fan symbol, and painted flames. At the rear of the temple was a golden statue of a god with a cruel face.

As I neared Sasuke, I heard him muttering to himself, "In the right corner of the rear of the room, under the seventh tatami mat . .." I began to back up. I didn't like this place. I had gotten a frightening feeling of this room from the start, and I suddenly feared whatever it was Sasuke was looking for. I got anxious being alone with him, especially in this old ominous temple in a part of the village that had been abandoned since a mass murder.

Sasuke looked up as I began backing away. Then something caught his eye behind me, and he frowned. I hesitantly turned to look. The black cat had appeared in the doorway, its yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

"Tsukai. What are you doing here?" He sounded angry.

The cat swaggered up to my side and sat down.

"Forgive me, Uchiha Sasuke, for being here," it said in a perfectly human voice (it ignored my jump of surprise), "But I have a message to give to this woman."

"I banished you all from these grounds eight years ago," Sasuke snapped, still half hidden in darkness.

"Far be it from us lowly cats to disobey a direct order from an Uchiha," it said sneeringly, "But my task to deliver this message to Uchiha Seluni was given to me long ago, while you were still in diapers."

Now the cat had both our attentions.

I knelt down to speak to it, my curiosity pushing aside my awe of a talking cat.

"Who are you?"

"She is Tsukai, one of the guardian cats of our clan. They were ordered not to return to this compound. Your message better be important, cat."

Tsukai seemed to glare at Sasuke for a minute, if cats can glare. "You never were a friend of ours, Uchiha Sasuke," it hissed, "We are ashamed to call you master. Your father Uchiha Fugaku was a most respected leader, and valued our alliance. Yet you – it is a shame you disgrace your family this way, casting us out and forgetting our past kindness."

"Don't you dare mention my father's name, you coward! You cats called yourselves the sentinels of my clan, yet where were you when they were killed? You and your precious elder cat fled to the armory while they lay here dying!" Sasuke was at the point of shouting. I stood shocked, feeling like I was encroaching on a long lasting argument.

The cat turned its brilliant yellow eyes to me. "Maybe I should speak to you in private, Uchiha Seluni. I don't believe this boy is in any condition to hear your message."

"Sasuke, this is important to me. Please."

He turned to face the golden statue, his fists clenched.

"Okay, let's have it."

The cat sniffed and walked to the left wall. She pressed her paw on one carved flame in the stone, which fell back to reveal a small dark shelf. She stuck her head in and pulled out a small scroll in her teeth, placing it at my feet.

I picked it up gingerly, examining the yellowed paper and sealed kanji around it.

"Sasuke . . . how do you open it?"

"Only you can open it," interrupted the cat.

Sasuke walked over and knelt in front of me. "Activate your Sharingan," he instructed. I tried concentrating on the color red, and looked up at him. It obviously hadn't worked.

"I thought you knew how," he sighed, "You have to feel what emotion you felt when the Sharingan first activated. Try again."

What emotion I felt? Back in the cave, I was angry, confused, and miserable. I had thought Gaara had died, thought I would never see him again . . .

"There you go," Sasuke said. I looked at him again and saw his chakra swirling around once more, brighter than anything else in the room.

"Now copy me." He performed three hand seals and placed his hand on the ground. I watched a small amount of chakra flow into his fingers and disperse into the ground.

My hands seemed to move of their own accord, easily forming the seals and placing my hand on the tag, as if I had been doing it all my life. I felt the strange sensation of my chakra flying into the seal. The kanji peeled and disappeared, leaving the scroll unhampered.

I wanted to feel happy about finally learning a jutsu. But all I could feel was my heart pounding as I pulled open the scroll. It was hand written in sloppy script, and I had to lean towards the nearest torch to read it.

My dear Seluni,

I hope your new parents have kept your rightful name, even though I hardly had the right to name you. I am Uchiha Yashiro, and I am your father. The fact that you are reading this letter is proof that you know who you really are: an Uchiha, or at least half so. I am almost ashamed to write this letter to you now, revealing my worst secret and my guiltiness in conceiving you.

Your mother's name was Inuzuka Tenrousei, and the love of my life. I unfortunately met her after I had wed a woman in the Uchiha Clan, as is custom. Tenrousei and I began an affair, which was forbidden not only because of my marriage, but because your mother's clan was considered 'inferior' to ours. After a few months of secret meetings and deception towards our families, your mother knew she was with my child, pregnant with you.

It was a horrible decision to make. Should we keep you and raise you in exile, risking punishment from the police, and living in dishonor for your birth, or should we renounce you as a child, maybe never seeing you again, but sparing you from that dishonor? The decision was made clearer when your beautiful mother died during delivery. I would never blame you for this accident, Seluni, but, there was no way to keep you anymore.

Please do not think badly of me for giving you up; I was heartbroken to do it. But you must understand that the life of an orphan in this country is worth more than that of a child born out of wedlock. I was for the best for both of us.

I hope that you can forgive me; for giving you up to the band of travelers, who swore to find you a good home. My lies and guilt haunt me every night and every time I see a green eyed Inuzuka. Her clan never found out that I was the man she was seeing, nor did they ever find the baby she had died for.

I will always keep a spark of hope that you will find out who you are, and someday come home. I remember you having your mother's bright green eyes from the moment you were born, and I would give anything to see those eyes again. I pray that I can be here to tell you this all myself, yet being a rational man, I knew this secret must be kept substantial in case we never meet. I trust this letter in the care of our precious guardian cats, whom have yet to fail me.

I love you, and I'm sorry.

Uchiha Yashiro

I read it a second time and then stared at the paper for a minute, hardly believing what I had read. I was a child of an Uchiha and an Inuzuka, a bastard child who was given away to spare them dishonor. After all this searching, to finally find an answer like this . . .

I couldn't stop the tears from falling. Tossing the letter in Sasuke's direction, I slumped to the floor, my hands in fists. My mother died giving birth to me, my father was killed in the murder of the Uchiha Clan. What did I even gain from coming here?

I turned to watch Sasuke read the letter solemnly. He glanced up at me when he was finished, rolling the scroll back up. He seemed about to say something, but thought better of it. The silence between us now was awkward.

"We'd better leave now," he said, offering me the scroll. I looked at it in disgust, quite unwilling to keep it. But I knew I should, and pocketed it, wiping my eyes of the tears.

"May I take my leave, Uchiha Seluni?" the cat said.

"Of course, Tsukai, thank you."

She glanced up at Sasuke. "My task is complete. I will not return to this compound." The black cat darted out the door into the afternoon light. Meanwhile, Sasuke and I still sat in the darkness.

"Sasuke? Can we leave now?" I asked quietly.

His dark eyes met mine. "We can always come back."