"Wait, how did you do all that?" the little girl asked. "With the kicks and the punches and the red eyes?"
Sasuke ignored her and just continued to trudge on through the icy forest. They had been walking for nearly an hour and she hadn't stopped babbling on about everything she could think of.
If anything, Sasuke felt proud he hadn't already snapped. Beyond the endless chatter, it was also a pain to keep the slow pace of the children, but he couldn't well abandon them to their fate in this cold, desolate land.
"What about the throwing knife, huh?" Her voice had that nasal tone of someone who'd broken their nose and hadn't yet set it right. He would have to fix that soon.
"How did you do it?" She kept on going. "I've never seen one like that before. Why is it shaped like that?"
She talked more than any of the other three children combined. It was still better than the other end of the spectrum. Walking to his left, the teenage girl who had introduced herself as Tilda kept batting her eyelashes and smiling at him.
It reminded him too much of his academy days and the fan girls he had to evade. Getting by them had made for good stealth practice as a kid.
After another minute of continuous silence on his part, the girl finally gave up.
"Fine," she huffed. "Can you at least say what's your name? I'm Dacey of House Mormont, by the way."
Tilda gasped beside him. She turned to the little girl, eyes wide. "M'lady," she said, bowing low. "Why didn't you say anything before? I—I could have…"
"There was nothing you could do," Dacey Mormont said, "and I didn't want to let the wildlings know they captured a Mormont. The gods only know what they might have done then."
Sasuke nodded silently at the words. Denying the enemy any and all information you could was always smart. The girl sounded older than her years despite her annoying nasal voice, though it made sense.
Given what he knew, this was also a world that forced children to wise up from a very young age.
"As you say, m'lady." Tilda bowed her head. At least the kid was good for something. The teenage girl's attention now was all on her. "I'm sure the whole of Bear Island will be glad to hear of your safe return when we get back."
"If we get back," Dacey corrected her. "We're still beyond the Wall and weeks away from home."
That dose of reality seemed to cast a damper in everyone else. The children shuffled their feet tiredly on the ground, sniffling silently, while Tilda had stopped staring at him or Dacey like they were gods to simply walk beside them, watching her steps with a pensive look on her face.
He needed to reward the kid for serving as his shield against yet another fangirl.
"Uchiha," he said into the silence. "Sasuke Uchiha."
"Oh." The girl perked up, then her face screwed up as if deep in thought. "Uh, I've never heard of House Uchiha. You're from Essos, no? Are you a noble?"
Sasuke thought about that for a moment. Tork had never heard of Essos, so he just shrugged. As for being a noble…
If the likes of the Hyuuga, Akimichi, and even the Nara and the Yamanaka considered themselves noble clans, then what were the Uchiha? Super nobles?
"I'm no mere noble," he said with a scoff. The day he thought himself at the same level of a Hyuuga was the day he stopped being an Uchiha.
Dacey made an 'oh' shape with her mouth, but at least she stopped pestering him until they set up camp that evening beneath a large oak tree.
Night fell quickly here, and the cold got all the more intense as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Exhausted by all the walking Sasuke forced them to do, the children quickly fell asleep bunched up in a heap around the fire he made.
Tilda had sang them to sleep and quickly dozed off after them. Dacey Mormont was the last one to go to sleep, insisting she would keep watch with him with tears in her eyes after he had set her nose straight. But she was only eight, and soon she was leaning on Tilda's shoulder and snoring like a drunk boar.
Then, only after they were all sleeping soundly around the crackling fire, Sasuke looked up at the source of chakra that had been following them for the better part of the day.
His eyes narrowed at the form of a crow sitting on a tree branch above their campsite. Three eyes. Sasuke had never seen a crow with three eyes, and he might have shrugged it off as a quirk of this world if it hadn't been for the tiny sliver of chakra the creature was giving off.
It wasn't the dark, potent chakra he had been feeling coming to the far north. That energy had a feel of its own. Dark and cold and malevolent.
This one felt more… aged. Not older, for the dark chakra felt as ancient as time itself, but simply more tired. Nearly spent. Yet twisted in its own way.
With a thought, Sasuke's eyes swirled into the familiar three-commas pattern of his base Sharingan. For a split second, he thought he saw the crow rear back in surprise and open his wings as if to fly away.
But then the genjutsu took root and the third eye of the crow gained the blood red colors of the Sharingan. It was past time Sasuke met whoever their stalker was.
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