Revelations
You're angry
I know this
The world couldn't care less
You're lonely
I feel this
And you wish you were the best
The hospital visits between the "last" Uchiha continue on for a week. Kiyomi comes to see the younger boy every day at exactly seven o'clock in the evening. Sometimes, she brings a deck of cards or something to doodle in, but other times, she's just sitting in the chair at his bedside, slicing up fruit and eating the slices herself, but occasionally, she'll offer Sasuke bits and pieces.
By the eighth day of meeting up like this, Sasuke barely waits for her to sit down before he blurted out his question, "Are you strong?"
If only she could say that she was surprised. No, the only shocking thing is that he waited for as long as he had to even ask. The younger boy exhibited small but telling signs of being spoiled. Putting on a show of carefully cleaning her blade until the metal shined in the hospital lighting, Kiyomi picked up on his mounting frustration and after several more minutes, she finally glanced up. "Why?"
"I have to get stronger!"
Following her gut instincts, she set aside her basket of kiwi. "Why?" she repeated. Silently telling him to voice his reasoning. "If what can be believed from the rumor mill, you're already decent at the Academy and will rise in the ranks quickly. So, let me reiterate: why do you need to be stronger when you'll eventually get stronger on your own?"
"Because Itachi is too strong!" The shouted words are guttural. As if he'd swallowed jagged glass; pained and wavering, he clutched at the front of his hospital gown until the fabric bunched up and his knuckles turned white, his dark eyes clouded with torment. "I can't...As I am right now, I'm too weak. I don't have enough hate."
Suspicions growing and silent alarm bells ringing in her mind, Kiyomi's voice was clipped as she stated, "Explain what you mean."
Perhaps it was because they were the remaining members of a once great and prosperous clan, maybe it was because Sasuke just needed to talk to someone about what he had endured, but he confided in her that Itachi used Tsukiyomi on him and forced the Academy student to witness his brutal murdering of the Clan, and even worse, the deaths of their parents at the ex-ANBU's hands.
It was taking everything in Kiyomi to remain in her seat, to keep a calm and passive demeanor. Sickened to her core at what Itachi had done to his own brother as opposed to what he hadn't done to her, things just weren't adding up in her mind. There were pieces of the puzzle that she didn't have access to. "I can understand your want to be strong enough to fight him."
"I don't want to fight him. I want to kill him!"
"But very few people are on his level." Tilting her head in a considering motion, a nonverbal way of confirming that she acknowledged and heard his outburst, Kiyomi continued on to say, "And killing him would be just playing into what he wants you to do."
"Tch!" Sasuke turned his head away momentarily, a frown marring his face. "Sounds to me like you're just a coward."
"And it sounds like you are a spoiled little boy too used to getting his way." Kiyomi countered, finally retrieving the fruit from where she'd set it down. "We'll be revisiting your habit of demanding things at a later date. Luckily for your sake, however, I already had the thought to take you under my wing and supervise your training…" Sasuke began to smirk. "But I expect you to be diligent in your studies. The minute your grades begin to slip..."
"Yes, yes, they won't slip, I swear!"
His exuberant response might have been cute had it not been about learning techniques to murder his older sibling. Although still uneasy, Kiyomi decided that right now, informing Sasuke about her suspicions regarding Itachi's apparent instability could wait. Not even Lord Third had been told that she thought something was off about what happened. That there was someone else in the clan compound.
Kiyomi's instincts just cautioned her against revealing anything.
'But when I finally tell someone, will it be too late?'
Thoughts like this plagued her for the rest of the visit.
Before she returned to her own room, she always checked up on her daughter, Saeri, just holding the babe close to keep the child warm because the baby wasn't able to do that on her own, which upset Kiyomi even more because Sae-chan didn't deserve to suffer, with Manabe attentive and alert nearby.
At night, Kiyomi dreamed, her dreams were strange and violent.
People in strange garb running around and fighting.
A ritual of some kind in a graveyard and a man reminiscent of Orochimaru with his affinity for snakes, only unlike the Hebi Sannin, he could actually communicate with the serpents.
There was an older man in the dream sometimes with a long beard and glasses, he always appeared to be so kind and understanding…
Flashes of being too big to really fit in the cupboard anymore and the phantom sensation of spiders crawling over her face.
Needing new glasses but after asking for that earned a cuff to the head so she learned to be quiet and not say anything at all.
I must not tell lies.
A flash of sickly green light and a man was falling into the, the-
'What is this? What's happening to me?' Pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes, Kiyomi tried to calm down. When she pulled her hands away, her heart nearly sank into her shoes as the familiar sight of the place when she'd...died.
She was there again.
"I thought I would be seeing you soon."
Turning around, Kiyomi is unsurprised to see the same woman that she met the first time in this place but then anger burns through her veins. Without conscious permission or the realization of what she's doing, she's storming towards the other female and getting in her face. "You lied to me. Told me that my child was dead. What the heck is wrong with you?!" Kiyomi demanded, fists balled up at her sides. "And what's the big idea showing me that battle with the warrior wearing glasses and carrying a stick? I don't appreciate my sleep being interfered with like that."
"I'm not going to spoon-feed you the answers all the time. You're just in denial. After all, you were born with a lightning bolt scar on your hip, same as 'the warrior wearing glasses', even though that exact scar was found on his forehead."
A sneaking feeling crawled up Kiyomi's spine, a niggling realization, and feeling of dread.
"No…"
The woman sank down to one knee. "My one and only Master." Although she couldn't put her finger on why Kiyomi felt that she was being mocked. "I have been with you since the moment you were born in this life...And the one before. I will likely be with you in the next as well."
Absorbing the words with a horrifying type of shock, its processed in the female Uchiha's mind that this strange woman was talking about reincarnation. "I...am the daughter of Uchiha Hitomi, one of the last remaining members of…"
"Yes, you are. In your previous life, you were male and the son of Lily and James Potter." Waving a hand, a picnic blanket appeared on the forest floor. "Now, come, my Master. I've much to say to you and little time in which to do this. I'm already going against the rules by interfering so much."
Numb, Kiyomi let her take her hand and pull her down to sit on the blanket. "You keep calling me 'Master', but what is your name?"
Brushing a lock of hair out of her line of sight, the woman looked at Kiyomi steadily. "Humans call me Death."