[Naruto] Winter Cherry, Summer Snow: Konoha Arc

- He told her just one lie in his entire life, and kept it up for the rest of it.

“My heart isn't here.”

“But I never said where it went.”

She was once Konoha's little princess, the First Hokage's great-granddaughter. She could tug on the Third Hokage's beard, quarrel with Tsunade, and mess up Kakashi's already unruly hair. Everyone in the Anbu knew she had gotten her chunin rank through connections. Every day, she did nothing but orbit the black-haired boy.

He was a prodigious young Anbu, aloof and taciturn, with an almost divine air. Everyone said he was hard to approach, until they saw him indulging the girl who didn't seem all that bright. When she hooked her little finger around his, his ears turned bright red, but he didn't pull away.

They ate watermelon together and promised on a daisy-covered hillside to spend the whole summer together. He taught her ninjutsu and made her rice balls. When fireworks burst above the hilltop, he said, “Let's leave together.”

But tensions between the Uchiha clan and Konoha grew worse. He was forced to slaughter his entire clan, forced to say, “I've never liked you,” and forced to use Tsukuyomi to erase all her memories of him.

Two years later, his face appeared on a wanted poster, his name came up in the interrogation room, and they kept asking her, again and again, “What exactly is your relationship with Uchiha Itachi?”

She didn't remember him, but she remembered a very warm embrace, the words “Don't go,” and the touch of a kiss on her forehead.

He didn't come back to take her away from anyone. He came to rescue her from the blades of the Konoha High Command.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Akatsuki.”

She thought he was crazy. Or perhaps she was crazy too.

With hope in her heart and an order to follow, she left her home and stepped into the depths of darkness. She didn't know what awaited her, but that person was once again by her side.

Theme: This is a love letter, one that took a very long time to write.