Back Once Again

Smiling slightly, she touched Kisame's arm. "Yeah? Well, I'd be lying if I said you weren't somewhat of a father figure to me now. In fact, the whole Akatsuki would serve as my family," She announced happily. "Although, I have to admit i'm most fond of you two. For different reasons, of course," She added in at the end, blushing very slightly. The sun was now dipping just below the horizon, signalling that night was on its way.

Kisame started sniffling as he started crying and hugged Kurai tightly as he seemed to cry a river, obviously very touched by her statement, providing yet another comical scene. Itachi smiled slightly as he pulled the brim of his hat down slightly.

Trying her best to hug him back without getting crushed, she let out a slight laugh. "Aw c'mon now, you're getting my shirt all wet!" However, she didn't try pushing him away. As strange as it was to be hugging THE Kisame Hoshigake, it was nice to know she was appreciated. "I-If you hug me any tighter i might just burst like a balloon, Kisame-Chichi," She chuckled, adressing Kisame as her father. She hadn't meant to do it, it was just an instinctive reaction.

Kisame immediately let go of her when she said he might crush her, though he did give her a shark-like grin when she addressed him as her father. Itachi silently thought back to the confrontation he and Kurai had with Kurai's father and he started to wonder what happened to her mother. Itachi, without moving his head or body, expertly turned his eyes to look at the Sand Village, wondering if the reason why Kurai didn't want to go to the Sand Village was because her mother was there. *It would explain her hatred for the village and why she refuses to go there* he thought to himself logically.

Rubbing the back of her neck, she glanced at the Sand Village entrance, squinting as she saw someone hobbling out of it. It was a woman, in her mid-30's by the looks of things. There were deep dark circles under her eyes, made so much more obvious by her VERY pale skin and she was little more than a bag of bones covered by some skin. Her hair was pitch black, like Kurai's, only her eyes were a stony grey color. She wore a tattered old grey dress which was ruffled and matted with dirt. She looked ahead, saw Kurai and her eyes widened. Kurai didn't look so surprised. Instead, she instinctively grasped a kunai tightly in her hand, squaring her shoulders like a lioness.

Itachi noticed Kurai grab a kunai and turned to look at what she was staring at and looked at the seemingly very ill woman that had a similar appearance to Kurai herself. Itachi immediately put the pieces together and assumed she was Kurai's mother. Faster then either Kurai or her mother could keep up with, Itachi appeared behind the woman and grabbed her by the back of her shirt, picking her up and bringing her over to Kurai, binding her down with ninja wire on the way. When he reached his girlfriend, Itachi dropped the bound woman into the sand in front of Kurai and stared down at her silently, his red and black three-tomoed Sharingan spinning angrily. "Who's the woman Kurai-Otome?" Kisame asked the black-haired girl, referring to Kurai as his daughter as he looked down at the woman with a predatory grin.

Clenching her free fist tightly, Kurai barely managed to reply to Kisame's question. "This piece of filth is my drug-riddled excuse for a mother," She hissed through gritted teeth. The woman, now recognised as Kurai's mother, looked up at her daughter with hope in her clouded eyes. "Please Kurai. I just need some change! For food, I swear! I've been clean for months now!" iHissing in disbelief, Kurai ripped a fragment of her mothers sleeve off, revealing various pricks from where she'd injected. "Liar!" Kurai hissed, now visibly shaking with rage. "Kurai, you don't understand--" She didn't have time to finish her sentence. Kurai lifted her hand and struck her mother across the face, leaving a painful looking red mark. "DONT BOTHER,"

"NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE!" The woman yelled in protest. "If he hadn't beaten her, he would've CRUSHED me. Kurai was young. She could withstand a beating. Me? I was frail! I could trip over and break my leg!" The woman pleaded with them, her voice strained with all of the 'pain' that she was feeling.

Kurai snorted, yanking down the fabric of her shirt again to show her mother the scar. "You WATCHED him do this to me! You weren't even stoned and you managed to SIT THERE and WATCH as he smashed one of the windows and slit my shoulder open!" She yelled, using all of her willpower to stop herself from jumping her mother there and then. "You COULD have stopped him, he listened to you! But no, as long as he kept up your drug funds, you couldn't care LESS about what that bastard did to me!"

The woman opened her mouth to reply as she began coughing again. This time was different though. Blood began to trickle from her lip down her chin as she wheezed and felt a burning pain in her side as her breaths came in short, laboured gasps. The coughing didn't stop, if anything, it got more and more violent until she was basically lying face down in the sand. Kurai could've quite easily left her mother there to choke to death, but even she had her limits. Breaking out of Kisame's grasp, she kneeled by her mothers side, mumbling various colorful words under her beath as she began casting a VERY basic healing jutsu. It was weak, but it stopped the woman from dying there and then. Kurai stepped away, looking genuinely disgusted with herself for helping her 'mother'. "If i ever see you again, I shit you not, I will skin you alive..." She muttered as she turned her back on her mother, walking back to Kisame. Then, she did the most surprising thing of all. As soon as she reached her new father, she burst into tears.

Kurai's mother watched them leaving, frowning deeply at Itachi's words. "FINE! You do whatever the hell you want! Don't come running to me when she's too frail to get herself out of bed and you don't want her around anymore!" She was now stranded there, waiting for someone to come along and 'rescue' her.

Kurai, now bundled up against Kisame, whimpered slightly. She'd let herself break yet again and saved the woman who'd screwed her up so badly. She was so ashamed of letting Kisame and Itachi see her crying, she had already buried her head in Kisame's cloak. She didn't want them to abandon her if she ever got too weak to fight. She didn't know if either of them were looking at her, she couldn't bring herself to check. So she just let Kisame carry her wherever they were going, still ashamed of herself for saving the very person she hated the most.

The woman screamed in protest as she shook her head rapidly back and forth, trying to shake the onslaught of terrible emotional pain that was heading her way. The sheer abuse that Kurai had pushed through would've snapped a normal persons mind in two. The sheer volume of physical abuse and emotional cruelty would've even have made the most emotional people cringe. There were things in there she had never spoken of to Itachi and Kisame. Things associated with so much pain, that it broke bits of her mothers sanity whenever she had to experience them. It wasn't long before she totally lost it.

The womans screaming refused to stop as the next memory began to play. Kurai was about 7 and she sat by the living room window. There was a huge black bruise on the side of her face and her face was dirty. The tears she had been crying made marks down her cheeks. Since her mother was seeing this through Kurai's eyes, all she could feel was the throbbing pain of the bruise and the sting of the salty tears on her split lip. Suddenly, the door swung open, and her father stumbled in totally drunk. Seeing his daughter there, he grunted and yanked her up by her hair, proceding to punch her in the gut several times before throwing her like a ragdoll against the wall. He continued to pummel the small girl with his fists, drunkenly yelling various insults at her as he did so.

The memories continued to play over and over, snapping the womans sanity time and time again. Each attack seemed more and more brutal than the last. The one that she was experiencing now was about a year later. Kurai was now 8, and this time didn't have any bruises. However, she was anything other than happy. Her father was trying to SELL her to someone, ranting about how he didn't want her anymore and her being concieved wasn't even intentional. He wasn't even drunk this time. Not being able to just stand there and take all of this, Kurai ran off and ran out of the Sand to the very tree she had found earlier on. Her mothers heart felt like it was being ripped to shreds judging by just how much emotional pain Kurai was in.