Uchiha Sasuke no longer existed.
Itsuki was his name. A drop-out academy student with no assets,enabling him to work in the shadows.
Uzumaki Karin was at the top of her class.
With intelligence as high as hers she was put on a pedestal, and she used...
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It was a Friday afternoon. The rain had reached a state of calm, pouring over the village like a bag of feathers floating through the air. Less rain meant more activity, so the village was bustling with sales, training, and only a semblance of crime; not as noisy as Konoha, but not as quiet as it usually was.
Sasuke had taken note of many things since his arrival from looking out the window. Amegakure was quiet, but not uneventful. He'd see people talk in low whispers then go into the next building or alleyway, then come out with something brand new wrapped in parcels or stuffed in a box. Business was shady and on the low, and as the days passed Sasuke realised that it was just how people did sales in Ame.
He took note of the attires. Amegakurans never worse bright coloured clothing, and if their hair was colourful, they covered it with a hood. From head to bottom their clothes were muted, probably to blend in with the dull surroundings.
The neon signs bothered him because he didn't know what they were for and he was to far away to see the streets below. All he knew was a few of them were bars, and some were open establishments that didn't need hiding.
But if Amegakure was known for it's secrecy and dullness, then why were there so many bright signs?
Two months passed by the same way, with Sasuke looking out the window, going downstairs to eat, and going back up to sleep. It was like his mind was on autopilot, doing the barest minimum to get him through the day without breaking down.
Whenever intrusive thoughts about his family came to mind, Sasuke pushed it away. And as time went by without a single thought of his late mother– or a flashing memory of the dead bodies that littered the Uchiha compound like dirt–Sasuke was beginning to feel like he was dead too.
Though that was about to change, because Kisame had gotten a talking to from his boss, who was not pleased that Sasuke did not spend every second of every day training.
He rolled his eyes when he opened the bedroom door and saw Sasuke wallowing under his duvet–as usual. It had become a habitual sight to see the young Uchiha boy like this. Sasuke only got up to do three things, and that was to eat, bathe, and stare out the window like that would somehow bring whoever died back to this world.
At first, Kisame had allowed Sasuke to be as sad as he wanted, because he was empathetic enough to let him grieve in his own way. He met the boy with blood stains on his hands and tears in his eyes, so whatever had happened before the boy was dropped in Ame, Kisame knew it was something that gave him every right to grieve.
But Kisame was an ex-mist shinobi and there was a limit to his empathy that Sasuke had crossed.
Granted, he was scarred, but so what? When Kisame was Sasuke's age, his parents were slaughtered by missing nin, and Kisame did not remember crying or staying in bed for days. Kisame remembered going for training like nothing ever happened, and telling himself that death wasn't unorthodox in the Shinobi world. If Sasuke were a normal civilian boy, his actions would have made sense. But he wasn't. He was an Uchiha; a shinobi that was going to grow up to become the Akatsuki's greatest weapon.
