-"Are you ok Naruto?" Inochi asked with concern as Naruto fell from a tree.

-"Not againnn." Naruto winced in pain.

Just after joining the ANBU Inochi decided to teach Naruto chakra control as he would be joining the ninja academy soon. He was now just 6 years old, but Inochi thought that entering him into the academy will make him stay in a schedule which would be of great help if she is ever gone for longer periods of time on a mission.

-"Should we stop then?" Inochi asked softly. She has been asking Naruto to train on water which would probably hurt less, but Naruto being proud, declined it everytime.

-"NO! I really want to show my friends that I can climb a tree without using my hands."

"Friends huh.." Inochi was delighted beyond imagination when Naruto first told her that he had made friends. It was about a month ago, and since then he had been going out about everyday to spend time with them. Inochi had some doubts as almost every villager saw him as the demon fox, so she reached out to each of his friend's parents and talked with them. Some still didn't approve of their child being around Naruto, but as Inochi promised repeatedly that their children won't be harmed in any way, they gave in.

-" Do you have fun with your friends Naruto?"

-" A lot oneesan. Everyone is so nice to me! We even show off our ninja skills sometimes. I am the best in arm wrestling till now, do you know? However Sakura-chan sometimes wins too. Once Choji won and we got a treat from his dad." Naruto started talking about the bouts and games he has with his friends." Sasuke is very good too. He is the fastest among us. He is probably the only one who is good at kunais too" Naruto boasted about the skills of his newly made friend.

"Sasuke huh. Itachi's brother. Seems like he will grow up to be as skilled as him." Inochi thought.

It had been more than a year since Itachi and Inochi started working under Team Kakashi. Since then, they did not share many conversations about their lives, but they did many times talk about their brothers. Inochi realised that just how she loved Naruto, Itachi loved Sasuke, maybe even more. It was a bit confusing for her, as she never thought that two siblings who had a loving family, can be this close as Itachi's love for Sasuke was too much, as if Sasuke was the only one remaining in his family.

Inochi visited the Uchiha house too, to talk with Sasuke's father, Uchiha Fugaku who was the head of his clan, to talk about Naruto.

The Uchiha clan did not really like Naruto as it was because of the nine tails attack that they were shifted to the outskirts of the village and were being monitored. Uchiha Fugaku, was thus not delighted when he heard that his son was engaging with Naruto. However more than being disappointed with his son being friends with Naruto, he was interested in talking about Inochi's sharingan. Inochi was feeling uneasy talking about her sharingan as all the bad things she had suffered was related to it, so she somehow managed to avoid the topic everytime he brought it up. Finally as she got up to leave, thinking that she would have to never talk about her sharingan ever again, she was stopped by Fugaku and was asked to come by whenever she was free as he was interested in her sharingan.

A month passed by, but Inochi did not even set a foot in the Uchiha compound. Inochi hoped that the Uchiha leader would forget about her, but just two days ago, during a mission, Itachi told her that his dad would be waiting for her which completely threw Inochi off the track. She realised that her sharingan was probably too interesting for Mr Uchiha to forget.

It was Sunday today, and Inochi had to visit Mr. Uchiha.

- "So today's the day.... "Inochi sighed. She finally mustered up her confidence, asked Naruto to continue training without her, and headed towards the Uchiha residence.

*Knock knock*
-"Mr. Uchiha? It's Inochi Nohara"
*Knock knock*

Itachi opened the door. A young Sasuke ran up to Inochi and hugged her.

-"Inochi neesan! You atlast came!"

Sasuke took a liking to Inochi, when she first visited the Uchiha home. Since then, his eyes would always gleam whenever he saw her. He would get jealous of Naruto whenever he ranted about how Inochi played with him and taught him jutsus, which his own brother did not.

Itachi was a very attentive brother, but since he joined ANBU, he used most of his time in training and doing missions. Because of this, Sasuke felt lonely and ignored, which was even worsened when he heard how Inochi, who was in the same team as Itachi, always gave time to her younger brother Naruto. Sasuke still loved his brother a lot, but he thought if he showed more love to Inochi, Itachi would get jealous and at last give into his conditions.

- "Inochi, father is right now at a clan meeting, so would you mind waiting for a bit? He will be back in a few minutes." Itachi asked while showing Inochi the way to the guestroom.

-"Shouldn't you be present at the meeting too?" Inochi questioned, as she knew that Itachi held a respectable amount of power in the clan meetings, being a child prodigy, ANBU captain as well as the son of the clan leader.

- "It wasn't that important, plus father asked me to receive you as he did not want to miss this opportunity to talk to you."

"Damn, he REALLY wants to have a talk about my sharingan. Somehow it feels like I am in some kind of problem" Inochi thought, getting shivers down her spine.

- "While you are waiting, would you mind telling me how you awakened your sharingan?" Itachi asked while handing Inochi a glass of water.

Inochi paused for a second. Shaking off all the nervousness, she made up her mind to be completely honest about everything, as she couldn't really see a downside to this "So here goes nothing-"

-"well, its a very sad story. In short, I saw my parents get killed when i was 4 years old. It probably wouldn't have triggered my sharingan if they were killed in a regular mission...but......" Inochi took a deep breath before confessing ".....it was completely because of my stupidity that they died."

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(Flashback)

Inochi was 4 years old when she first witnessed how cruel the shinobi world was. It was just like any other day, Inochi played and laughed with her family and went to sleep. However, at night, she heard the door sliding shut. She investigated the noise and found out that her parents were leaving the house. She wanted to wake her sister Rin up, but just ignored it as she knew that Rin was very much exhausted from her missions.

Out of childish curiosity, she followed her parents. She was still learning how to run like a shinobi and thus wanted to try it out in every possible situation. She decided to just go a few more metres and then return home. However, she suddenly felt a pair hands grasping her face and body. Scared, it took her a minute to realise that she was getting kidnapped. She screamed on top of her lungs but it was perfectly muffled by the hands of the kidnapper.

The kidnapper was fast, and quickly took her out of the village borders. Inochi had a number of feelings rushing through her at that time. The feeling of getting kidnapped was too familiar for her. This was how she got separated from her biological parents in the first place. She couldn't let her get separated again from her family, so she decided to fight.

She bit the hand that was on her mouth. The second the kidnapper removed his hand while groaning in pain, she screamed on top of her lungs. Seeing that screaming in a dense forest won't work, she elbowed the kidnapper holding her and tried to run away. She gained some seconds over the kidnappers but it didn't matter as they were much bigger and agile and thus caught up to her in no time.

By then her parents, who originally left the house to replace the gate guards for the nightshift, had heard someone screaming for help and went to rescue them. Inochi who was being chased by four kidnappers, now had only two leaf ninjas to protect her. Inochi knew that she and her parents were at a disadvantage, as staying there and running away could both be dangerous. She hid behind a tree as instructed by her mother and witnessed the fierce fight her parents put up against the kidnappers.

It was clear that the kidnappers were not holding back. In just a few minutes, the fight ended, with Inochi's parents killed as well as two of the kidnappers slained. Inochi saw the bloodied bodies just laying on the ground, and couldn't hold back her anger and guilt.

-" It's all your fault little girl, if you had just come with us, we wouldn't have had to kill these people"

-" I know right. even our ninjas got killed, its all because of you" the two shinobis mocked Inochi. As they approached her to take her with them, she said, in the most unfazed and monotone voice

-" It's all because of me" and glared at them. The bloody red eyes were enough to throw off the two ninjas.

-" Th.. the....the sharingan!!" both of the shinobi were too scared just by the eyes.

Almost every shinobi knew about the sharingan and the power it held, and only the legends were enough to scare the shit out of many ninjas. Inochi spared no extra second and jumped to take on the two ninjas. The two shinobi were too scared out of their minds to focus on the four year old, who was not only small and fast, but also beared the sharingan. As Inochi did not have any weapons, she used the most basic ways to kill them, which were obviously more painful than getting slain and killed in a second.

She first broke as many joints as possible to immobilize them and then choked them to death. Unfazed by her actions, she tried to return to the village, but as using the sharingan took a lot of chakra, she fainted. When she woke up, she was already on a hospital bed covered in bandages and tubes.

--------------------------------------------------------------

-"INOCHI!" Itachi snapped his fingers in front of Inochi's eyes a few times. Inochi, who got lost remembering all the stuff she had been through, suddenly refocused to the present.

-"Oh yeah...Sorry. Just got a bit... nostalgic you know." Inochi said jokingly. She did it without her knowledge, keeping a fake facade and not showing her true emotions. For some reason it helped her stay grounded to reality. She was told by Kakashi that accepting her grief was better, but she always avoided it. She found out it was a faster way to deal with depression, and the faster she got over her problems, the better.

-"Anyways, you were saying-" Itachi wanted to resume their talk when they heard someone enter the house.

-"Oh, Father, you are atlast here. Inochi has been waiting for so long."

-"Oh is that so? Sorry Inochi, it was a VERY long clan meeting indeed." Fugaku said in quite a distressed manner. Inochi could feel that something was off in the Uchiha home.

-"Oh no its fine."

-"Ok...." Fugaku let out a tired breath "so let's start", saying this, he sat down across Inochi. Fugaku's voice was quite a give away that whatever he was planning to ask Inochi, was very important to him.

And the realisation hit her even harder as a pair of sharingans stared at her, that right now it wasn't just a normal meet and talk, but a full blown interrogation.

********