Three days passed in a blur of healing sleep and quiet conversation. Yuki checked on me regularly, monitoring my recovery with professional competence that belied her youth. She brought me meals, changed my bandages, and filled the silence with stories about the village, her training, and the patients she'd helped treat alongside her grandfather.
I found myself looking forward to her visits with an anticipation that felt foreign and dangerous. For someone who'd spent years believing he deserved nothing but isolation and punishment, the simple pleasure of friendly company was both intoxicating and guilt-inducing. How could I accept her kindness when I was the cause of her pain?
On the fourth morning, I woke to find her sitting in the chair beside my bed, but something was different. Her usual bright demeanor had been replaced by a thoughtful solemnity, and she held a worn piece of paper in her hands that she kept glancing at nervously.
"Good morning," I said carefully, noting the tension in her posture.
"Is it?" she asked quietly. "Good, I mean?"
My stomach clenched with dread. Somehow, she'd learned who I was. The only question was how she'd react to the knowledge that she'd been caring for her parents' killer.
"Yuki—"
"Sasuke Uchiha," she said, her voice steady but carrying undertones of hurt and confusion. "The Last Avenger. Former member of the terrorist organization Akatsuki. Wanted for crimes against multiple nations."
She held up the paper—a bounty poster bearing my likeness and a list of my alleged crimes. Where she'd obtained it, I didn't know, but the evidence was damning enough. My face stared back from the page, cold and arrogant in the way of all wanted posters, a far cry from the wounded man she'd been tending.
"How long have you known?" I asked.
"Since yesterday," she admitted. "A traveling merchant showed grandfather this poster, asking if we'd seen anyone matching the description. Grandfather said no, but I..." She shook her head. "I recognized you immediately."
I waited for the explosion of anger, the demands that I leave, the revelation that she'd already contacted the authorities. Instead, she just sat there, studying my face as if trying to reconcile the person in the poster with the man she'd been caring for.
"Are you afraid of me now?" I asked.
"I should be," she said thoughtfully. "According to this, you've killed hundreds of people. You've destroyed villages, toppled governments, and brought terror wherever you've gone." She paused, her brown eyes searching mine. "But you don't seem like a monster."
"Maybe monsters are better at hiding than you think."
"Or maybe," she said quietly, "people are more complicated than bounty posters suggest."
Her response surprised me. I'd expected fear, anger, or betrayal. Instead, she seemed almost... curious? As if my identity was a puzzle to be solved rather than a threat to be eliminated.
"Why haven't you turned me in?" I asked.
"Because you haven't hurt me," she said simply. "In the four days you've been here, you've been nothing but polite and grateful. You haven't threatened me or grandfather, you haven't tried to escape, and you haven't shown any signs of being the monster this poster describes."
"Maybe I'm just waiting for the right moment."
She shook her head. "I don't think so. I've seen real evil, Sasuke. I've seen what cruelty looks like, what hatred does to people. You're not cruel. You're sad."
The observation was so accurate it took my breath away. "Sadness doesn't excuse the things I've done."
"No," she agreed. "But it suggests that you regret them. And regret is the first step toward redemption."
Redemption. There was that word again, offered by yet another person who should have been my enemy. First Naruto, then the old woman in Shirogane, and now Yuki—all of them somehow able to see something in me that I couldn't see in myself.
"You should hate me," I said desperately. "You should want me dead. I—" I stopped myself before I could confess my role in her parents' deaths. Some revelations were too cruel to voice aloud.
"I should do a lot of things," Yuki said with a sad smile. "I should hate the ninja who destroyed my village. I should demand vengeance for my parents' deaths. I should be consumed with anger and the need for justice." She stood up and moved to the window, looking out at the herb garden where morning light filtered through green leaves. "But hatred is exhausting, and I'd rather spend my energy on healing than on hurting."
"Even when the person you're healing might be your enemy?"
"Are you my enemy?" she asked, turning back to face me. "Have you come here to hurt me or my grandfather? Are you planning to destroy our village?"
"No," I said immediately.
"Then you're not my enemy. You're a patient who needs healing, and I'm a healer who provides it. Everything else is just... noise."