Okay, well, he had, but never like this. There’s a difference between slightly frustrated prodding and cold, frigid silence. Rena understood this difference, and it scared her out of her wits.

They had been training for an entire day. It was late into the night now. Rena had been doing an absolutely horrible job. Obito said some things he regretted, in retrospect. He didn’t understand how she could master any moves her mother taught her as if they were the simplest things in the world (and honestly, some of them were fairly difficult), and yet she couldn’t do the simplest of Uchiha fire tactics. He even said things about her mother, doubting her fidelity and Rena’s lineage.

At this, her Sharingan flashed on like two sad little red lights in the empty pallor of her face.

Obito said that yes, there was that, and that she had better be thankful she could even do that. He stormed into the house, leaving her alone in the dark.

She sat against a tree covered with markings from kunai and shuriken and such, clutching her knees and crying. How was she ever going to graduate Ninja Academy like this? What if she never graduated? She shivered, from a mixture of that thought and from the freezing rain that had starting falling all over Konoha. She still refused to go inside.

The Sharingan eyes stared back at Rena from the reflection in the puddle forming beside her. She had all three of the pupil dots already, wasn’t that good? Wasn’t that something to be proud of? But... couldn’t she do better? She remembered how proud her father had been each time she’d activated one. But still, she reasoned with herself, what was the use of having increased perception when I can’t even fight back against the moves I can anticipate because I don’t have the power to back it up? She knew full well that it would be easy to copy the moves with her Sharingan. In fact, she’d tried. She could do the hand motions. She knew them like the back of her hand. But she had a problem with her chakra. She was a chakra powerhouse, but she had so much of it she didn’t know how much to exert and where to exert it. So it was useless. Besides, she didn’t like using the Sharingan to cheat at stuff like that. She didn’t want to be a weak ninja who was only as powerful as the moves she saw. Her father had forbade her from doing so.

She kept staring at her reflection. She didn’t know anything about chakra and all that, she only knew she was disappointing her father and that she was a giant failure. How could she gain the power than she longed for, and the recognition that came with it? How could she stop her father from thinking of her as the worst Uchiha ever?

Well, there was one way. The thought flicked on in her mind like a light switch. What she lacked in raw power she made up for in stealth. She had learned to be quiet and listen, because you learned so much from people when they thought they were alone. By doing this, she had learned that there was another part of the Sharingan— the Mangekyou. And there was only one way to get it.

But, how could she? She did have a best friend. Ever since she was little, even before Ninja Academy, there was Yoru. Yoru was the loud, boisterous one, and Rena followed her like a little shadow. When she was around Yoru, she felt like she could do anything. Her marks in the Academy and bloodline and everything else that made her feel worthless simply didn’t matter to Yoru. She could just come as she was and say what she felt. She got these feelings around Yoru... feelings she was still too young to really understand. All she knew was that she never really felt happy around anyone else but Yoru. And that was enough.

Yoru would never feel the pain that I feel. Rena said to herself. She was a good student; everything came to her easily. And, if she cared about me, wouldn’t she let me do this? I would do the same for her, if it were the other way around.

So, Rena sat there a bit longer, wallowing in despair and hopelessness, trying her best to convince herself with her twisted friendship logic that everything would be okay if she did this. She would have mastered the Sharingan, right? And her father would be proud again, right? It would all work out just fine if she killed Yoru...

Clutching her equipment bag, she rose from her spot by the tree and set out into the night. Yoru’s house was only a few rooftops away, and Rena knew her rooftops, even then. Nobody bothered you much up there.

Using her chakra to keep herself on the wall, she looked into Yoru’s window. She pulled a kunai out of her bag and used it to fiddle with the window clasp until it broke open.

She slid in through the window fairly quietly, and made her way over to Yoru’s bed. Was she a heavy sleeper? Rena didn’t know, but at that moment, she was hoping that she was.

No such luck. Yoru rolled over, staring at her with pale green eyes mostly obscured by a mess of copper hair.

“Rena...? What are you doing here?”

She froze, paralyzed with fear. Her mind started making an analysis of the situation. Can’t kill her here... she might scream or something. No, that wouldn’t be good. Better if I lure her out somewhere. She slipped her kunai back into her bag, hopping that it was too dark and Yoru was too groggy to notice.

“Hey, Yoru. I came to visit because... I wanted to sneak out or something, you know? I thought it’d be fun, and...” she forced a smile.

Yoru hopped out of bed, clapping her hands together as she ran to her closet, looking as if she were in search of something clean. “Excellent!! This is going to be awesome! Where did you have in mind, Rena?” She was trying to keep her voice at a whisper but wasn’t succeeding.

“I don’t know... there’s this cool place in the woods, by the river...” River. Perfect. I think.

“Oh, really? Okay! Just give me a minute.” Yoru nodded at Rena, then turned back to her clothes. She threw something on, then turned to Rena (who was desperately trying not to shake like a leaf) and grinned. “How’s this?”

“Oh, it’s... great. Yeah. Come on, let’s go.” Rena could only look at her a second before turning away. Don’t feel anything. Don’t get too close.

Yoru shrugged, thinking nothing of Rena’s weird behavior (she could be a little moody, after all) and together they made their way down the wall and through the nearby woods. The rain had let down temporarily, but it was still damp and cold outside.

“Hey, Rena, why are we going out now? It’s all nasty out here.” Yoru asked casually.

“... I like rain.” Rena muttered in response. No one will be out here now.

“Oh, okay.” Yoru took Rena’s hand (which almost made Rena cry), and they walked along a path that was barely beaten, if it had ever been taken at all.

They stopped by the river. Yoru leaned against a tree, looking up at the sky. Rena simply stood.

“Hey, Re, it’s a good thing you came when you did. I was going to tell you tomorrow, but it’s nice right now. It seems right.”

Rena couldn’t stop shaking. She gave up on trying to hide it. Please don’t let her say it. Don’t make this so hard!

“I love you, Re.”

“... Would you die for me?”

Yoru blinked, caught off-guard. “Hmm?”

“Would you die for me?” Rena looked her in the eye, gaze unflinching.

“Well, yeah. We’re best friends. We’re going to be on the same team, and we’ll be chuunin together and then maybe we’ll be jounin or join ANBU and it’ll be really cool. So of course I’d die for you. I’ll always have your back, Rena.” She smiled.

Rena laughed. It was the sort of laugh where nothing’s funny, but you’re confused and hurt and broken up inside, so all you can do is laugh and you’re not quite sure why. “No. You won’t.” And before she knew what was happening, the kunai was in her hand again and it was going straight through Yoru’s heart.

Yoru didn’t fight back. She was taken completely by surprise, and it wasn’t like she had brought any equipment with her. Or maybe, part of her just didn’t want to fight against the one she loved.

Rena backed away, but Yoru’s body didn’t move. She had pegged her to the tree with the kunai. She’d stuck it all the way through. That was the only thought her mind was managing to process. She approached the tree quietly, when she was sure Yoru was really dead. She tried to pull the kunai back out, but she had gotten it stuck in the tree. She kept pulling and pulling, knuckles white and tears blurring her vision. It took awhile, but she managed to free Yoru. Rena took out her kunai and washed it in the river. It’d look bad if I just left a kunai here... I think. She looked down at Yoru’s lifeless body, still not quite sure what to do about it.

So she decided to test out some of the powers she had acquired through getting the Mangekyou. She used the Amaterasu, feeling the intense heat from the black fire as it burned away the majority of what used to be Yoru. There were a few remains left, but they were mostly ashy. She was left with no choice but to bury them. She wasn’t sure if that was the right thing... but after you’ve killed your best friend, a lot of things don’t seem right.

She clawed at the ground, lacking a shovel or anything that could serve as such. That’s when the impact of it all started to sink in. Her tears mixed in with the wetness of the dirt. She didn’t notice the way her knuckles were bleeding, or the way both the smell and the smoke lingered in the air. She was beyond noticing anything. Her senses had blanked out. She buried the remains (or at least, she thought and hoped she did), and walked away, not really knowing or caring where her feet were taking her.

They found her passed out on the ground in the morning, covered in mud and blood and smelling faintly of smoke. She hadn’t even made it half-way to her house. They also discovered that Kasegawa Yoru had went missing. Everyone suspected that Rena had been involved in it somehow, but no one ever considered her being responsible for it. She was only eleven, and not even a genin yet. What could she be capable of? They reached the conclusion that she had probably witnessed it, and had been unable to do anything to stop the kidnapper. Not that they could ever make that theory anything more than that, she refused to talk about it. And when she did talk, it came out as self-contradicting nonsense.

It was almost immediately after that when Obito gave Rena her first of many talks on the value of friendship. Rena began to realized what an enormous mistake that she had made. If she ever told her father what she had done... she doubted he’d ever forgive her. That tore her up inside, because she admired her father more than anyone else. She didn’t even want it anymore. She wished she could take it back. Why couldn’t she do anything right?

That was a question she asked herself every night as she lied in bed, afraid to close her eyes because that night liked to replay in her head over and over again until she awoke to the sound of her own screams. Eventually, she tried to give up on sleeping. It wasn’t like she could give up on sleep completely, she wasn’t superhuman (or tanuki), but she tried. Dark circles never completely vanished from her eyes, and her already quite twisted view on reality skewed even more. Most of her sanity had been lost that night, anyway. Not everyone can be cold and heartless like Uchiha Itachi. Rena had just been hurting and confused.

And now she always would be.