Crows

A/N: Alrighty so I mentioned this little one-shot in the most recent chapter of Zaman, so I figured I'd just post it in case anyone wanted to read it! Since I provide exactly zero context of anything in the fic itself, here's some background on my OC (tw suicide mention)

Her name is Asuka Dari (yes, yes I have a character named Asuka in Zaman, I'm just wildly uncreative with names let me live). She's the same age as Itachi and grew up in a non-ninja household. Her father was a chemist and her mother a samurai. She entered the Academy because she thought shinobi were neat, and ended up excelling in her studies. She graduated in two years, but during that time befriended Itachi, who also sped through the Academy (ughhh she's so Mary Sue, you cry. We need more kunoichi prodigies in the Naruto universe, let's be real here). In true Kakashi/Itachi fashion she became a jonin by 13 and ended up working directly under the Hokage. She's a chakra sensor and specializes in elemental ninjutsu. Her main elements are fire and earth, but she managed to master all 5 thanks to her understanding of how chakra works. Long story short, she got along really well with Itachi and they became very close friends. She became close with Shisui too because, well duh. Then the Uchiha Massacre happened! Same year, her mother died in a border skirmish which led her father to suicide shortly after. She kinda went off the deep end. She took a ton of A and S rank missions in a row which resulted in her getting bad enough chakra exhaustion that she was comatose for a bit and after she woke up, she got chronic migraines that were triggered by heavy chakra usage for the rest of her life. Oh yeah, and her hair started graying REAL early thanks to the trauma of that one year. After that...event, she was taken off of active duty on placed on psych leave, where she stayed for 2 years as she recovered. Thanks Yamanaka clan for grade-A psychiatry!  After she recovered, she went back on active duty as a Tokubetsu jonin and helped Kakashi out with his team a bit here and there since she wanted to keep an eye on Sasuke. Sasuke doesn't like her all that much since she reminds him of Itachi. She likes to pretend that it doesn't hurt her :) 

OKAY word vomit done, that should get us all caught up. here's the fun, angsty fic:

Asuka found a crow perched on her porch a day before she saw Itachi for the last time. She took her time with the bird, running her hand gently down its soft feathers. She had not seen a crow as a messenger for years–not since Itachi and Shisui. Finally, she dared herself to read the message attached to the crow's foot. It was sealed, of course, the seal only broken by her specific chakra signature. It rolled open at her touch. The message was short–just a set of coordinates transcribed in perfect looping handwriting and a date–but it was everything Asuka needed to know.

She let the crow fly away, watching it disappear into nothing but a speck in the afternoon sky. Easing herself down at her kitchen table, she located the coordinates on a map. It was close enough to use a shunshin, but perhaps not both ways. By foot though, the voyage was a little less than five hours, and she had a feeling that whatever would transpire at her location would warrant a pensive trek back home.

Asuka hated Itachi. She could speak those words as fact and not be lying. She hated him for what he did: killing his entire family, leaving his brother to suffer, and leaving her all alone without a care. She hated him for his betrayal; they had been inseparable and the closest friends. Itachi, another shinobi thrown into the world of killing, politics, and blood too early, understood her better than anyone else could, and she him. Of course, nothing was that simple. She had once explained to Shisui that she would never fully hate Itachi, no matter what he did, and that held true in a sense. Because as much as she hated him, she missed him, and beneath it all, she was confused. She knew that she was missing an essential perspective on Itachi's actions, but Konoha kept its secrets well.

––––––––––––––––––––––

Asuka arrived at the location when the sun was a quarter past its zenith. As soon as her body materialized in the space and her vision focused, she saw a figure sitting at the edge of a rock face, legs dangling over the side. Itachi wasn't wearing his Akatsuki cloak. His head was tipped backwards, face looking towards the sky. She could still see his defined tear-troughs and gentle, feminine features. He was more gaunt now, missing the childlike softness he possessed when he was sixteen. Asuka moved towards him before extending her chakra sensing abilities.