Alone
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and I don't wish to. By the way, please don't get annoyed with this story. This goes with a trilogy I wrote, so hopefully, I will have the rest up for you to read. Thank you. Please be nice.
Part 1: Once Alone Always Alone
I can't believe this, I can't believe I'm in a place where I don't even know where I am, she thought as she walked out of a restaurant where she had been working for the last few months. She walked toward her home, but her mind was flying over the fact that she was alone totally in the world and never knew who she was here. She pulled out a pack of Tarot cards and sat down in a corner the store and did a reading.
She looked up as someone walked in and she went to get her apron. "Don't bother," the owner whispered to her softly. "I will have Shinko do it, continue with your break."
She went back to her cards and stared down at a card that had a skeleton on it. "Death, new change, new life, new changes to come," her voice was soft and someone walked up behind her, she jumped.
The man blinked at her and then down at the cards. "You are a fortune teller, are you not?" his voice was low and dark.
She nodded and he sat down in front of her pushing some coins into her hand. "Read."
"For you?" she nodded and shuffled the cards and then had him shuffle them and then cut them. She set the cards up on the table in a cross like pattern. "This form is called the Celtic Cross, now then let me start. Your present position card which in the center is The Tower and it is the symbol of danger and malice, you have done something you are not pleased with." She continued and blinked as one card came up, it was a strange card she would not have expected. "It is the Lovers card, but from all these cards, you are going to force this person to part from you."
His eyes moved over hers and pulled her toward him when he stood with a knife to her throat. Her eyes were wide. "Take your cards and put them away," he whispered softly, his voice was almost dark and evil. She did as she was told, putting the cards in a bag that hung at her waist. She stared up at him in shock she had no idea what she had done to him, she was soon being dragged into the alley behind the restaurant.
"Hey, Itachi, where did you go?" a man who was completely blue walked out, he stared Miki and then blinked. "Oh, the fortune telling girl."
"Please, it was just a fortune, if it was a bad reading, I'm sorry, you can have your money back," she gasped as she was let go and was breathing hard.
"I don't care," the one named Itachi blinked as he put his weapon away.
Her eyes were wide as she tried to make sense why she was snatched like this. She was forced to walk with the man named Itachi who was staring at her. "You are very good even if you are considered a fake."
"Well, it is the only thing I'm good at. Where I came from, everyone called it witchcraft," her eyes were down. "So I guess being a witch isn't such a bad thing, considering that once you're alone, you're always going to be alone."
Miki stood in front of a group of several different men who were looking at her and then were whispering. "So this is the witch, she doesn't look powerful."
"She only has precognition," Itachi whispered and looked away. "Aside from that she's not quite what you made her out to be."
"You don't get it, she has something about her that makes her powerful."
"I'm just a stupid fortune teller, nothing SPECIAL!" She finally yelled. "I'm just that and nothing more. I have no special abilities or anything a Ninja has, just let me be!"
"I think I agree with her," another person whispered and walked away. "Return her to where you found her."
Miki's Point of View
My life changed the moment I met Itachi and Kisame, in fact other than the rest of the group of Akatsuki, these two were more human. "What is your name?" Itachi asked me when we walked out of the room.
"Miki," I whispered softly and he stopped staring at me.
"That name has to go, from now on your name is Hitori," Itachi whispered to me as we walked toward where I had met him. "I will come for you tomorrow."
"I have to work," I whispered.
"Not anymore," his voice was dark, it was empty too, like he was trying to hide his emotions from me.
I arrived at the restaurant and stood at the door for a few minutes, he arrived as he said he would and took me away from this little town. I was never to see it again, the elderly man who ran the store watched as Itachi gave him money to forget about me. I was given the rest of my pay for that week and I was to get what little I owned, which was merely the kimono I was wearing and my Tarot deck.
I never minded walking, and Itachi would not ask if I was tired of it, we would stop to rest along a bank of a river. That was when he cut off my hair, I had long brown hair that hung loosely tied back by a black ribbon, he took out a kunai and cut off to the point that I resembled a young teenaged boy. He pushed some clothes into my arms and pointed to a secluded place where he and Kisame would not see me change.
Changing into these clothes, I walked out in black and tired to look at them as they were eating. I was given something to eat, my eyes moving over the two of them curious of what they meant to do with me. "We aren't going to hurt you," Itachi whispered and then got up, his eyes were now a dark red. "I just wish to know how you are able to use your powers when you have no Ninja abilities to call upon."
"I have no idea, it is just there," I walked ahead a few feet and turned to look at them. "I have always walked a lonely path when it comes to my abilities. I don't generally know who or what I am, I just know what I can do. Seeing the future is not really common, is it?"
"You have a point," the blue skinned, Kisame nodded and smiled at me. "You are very strange in how you think you are totally alone."
My mind flew back to my other world, to the world where I knew I was utterly alone, people stared at me and called me names that hurt. I made no real difference between friend or foe, I was just a tool to be used then thrown away when I was no longer helpful. Itachi and Kisame were no different, once they tired of me, I was sure they would want to kill me.
Itachi's Point of View
Hitori's mind was different, she was empty of emotions toward me or any one else who spoke with her before we found her, I saw her for what she should be. Her reading of me in the cards was strange and almost too accurate, when I was ordered to do away with her by Akatsuki, I could not do it. Something stilled my hand, it was either the fact I found the orders to be stupid because she utterly forgot the reading or because she interested me in a manner I never took much stock in.
For weeks I would watch her work and for even longer I pondered whether I would speak with her or not. Before the reading that is, I suppose it was curiosity, the odd movement of her hands as she placed each card in front of me while I stared at the strange pictures. She told me what they meant and where they were placed in the forms she created. Each setting brought to light things that I believed were buried.
"You know, the cards don't really tell the future, they tell you things you need to know or you knew already, these can help you in the future, they are like stepping stones." Her voice was soft after we went to meet with Akatsuki, she walked away and had tried to look at me with empty eyes. "Even if I could tell you the future, nothing is set, you must make your own future."
I knew that, anyone could have told her that, but there was something else there in her that she was utterly unaware of. It fought inside her mind, something needed to be pushed out of her, it was torturing her from the inside out. I was wondering though why I who was so cold was almost concerned for her safety.
I, Uchiha Itachi felt something for Hitori, something that made me almost sick to my stomach. I could not even raise a kunai to her neck, I couldn't slash her throat, while I just slashed off her hair. I stood there hacking the hair to a shortened length, I could not even bring myself to make a wound on her. I just stood there staring at her as we started to walk again, she was eating some bread and looking off into space, she was not stupid, she knew we were leading her away from the place she called home. "Where are you from?" I could Kisame asking her.
"Don't know, even if I knew, I would not want to go there. I don't make personal attachments to places," her voice was distant, far more different from mine. "I was considered something evil." Her eyes were down when she thought about it, she hated her past, she hated her future too, she had no real place unless she made it. "There is a saying, talk little, listen much, I listened too much, I'm afraid that I learned too much."
"That doesn't make you evil," I finally spoke. "It means you are far more intelligent than those who accuse of you being something you clearly are not." Somehow I sounded angry, like I wished death on anyone who so much as laid a hand on her.
She looked at me stunned, then I saw a small smile. "It means that, but no one wants a woman who is too smart?"
I would want someone who matches me in intellect; those had been the words I had said to my father at one time when I was twelve. I was forced to attend a marriage meeting of one of the high born families; it had been a time I dreaded. The girl was two years older than me and worse was one of my classmates. She was a strange Ninja and the best medical ninja I knew, she was highly skilled and that meant though I was to marry her when I came of age.
I wonder now if Sasuke met his marriage match, when he turned seven I heard my father talking to the head of the Hyuuga family about his eldest daughter. I had learned that the arrangement had been made even at the time of his birth. I was sickened that my life and the life of my brother's was already decided, we had no choice on who we loved. When I thought about killing my family, it was to make it so that my brother decided his own future.
We finally made it to a village almost at dusk, we could not move about at night and I realized that even if we did, Hitori would need to rest. I discovered that the use of her abilities not only drained her, she would have visions in her sleep. I had decided to document her visions as she settled down for bed. I sat by her futon as she slept, I suppose she did not mind my hovering as I watched her closely. There was one thing I discovered, my Sharingan had no affect on her, I did not know if I was pleased or mortified.
I wrote down every vision, every thought as she spoke in her sleep, talking in her sleep was normal, I guess, at least for her. I wrote down the words as they came, then I too nodded off to sleep, I woke sometime later with a blanket brought about my shoulders and I saw Hitori sleeping on her side facing away from me, the blanket had been hers.
When morning did come, I discovered that even though I had told her to stay in the room, she would sit looking out the window. She stared out at the blue sky and I then realized something, someone had given her a piece of paper and on it she sketched a face, it was of Sasuke, then there were was something else, something that made little sense. A snake was in the background and she slowly stared at me with a sleepy gaze.
"What does it…" Kisame stood at the door as she got up.
"The boy is being used, he wishes to be stronger, but he is going about it the wrong way. Even if someone were to tell him, he would not listen," her voice was ghostly, almost half awake, that was when I walked up and shook her awake.
Her trances were coming now as days would go by, these trances were brought on by simple things, nothing I did or even Kisame. These were just strange moments when she would be sitting there, her eyes would loose their color and suddenly she would start saying something that was completely out of character, her voice was monotone and dark. Her face would change as well, even if I were able to stop her, I could not do it, she would continue like this for a few minutes, when she came out of it, she had no memory of what she had said.
If I had known what she truly was, then I would have made sure that she was hidden from the world. Any Ninja from any village could use her as a weapon, something that could cause wars as easily as one could turn on a radio. She would broadcast her readings only to me, she trusted me with this, I had no one to tell.
The boy, I knew who she was talking about, she was talking about Sasuke, the little fool was playing the pawn to Orochimaru's powers, but the boy had his own decisions to make, I was not going to smack sense into him. I was going to leave Naruto to do that, I had to make sure that Hitori was to be taken somewhere for safe keeping.
Hitori came out of her trance and sat staring at me blankly, I was going to have to start documenting these as well. We wandered toward a heavily wooded place, this was not going to be the place where I abandoned her, somehow I would kill her and myself if we did that. I found the abandoned house, I had run here after killing my family, this hidden place was overlooked by everyone. I made sure that it was kept in good condition, I walked through the old building and then gave my mark of approval. "Your new world is here."