I stared at her in amazement. Here was someone who'd suffered tremendous loss, who had every reason to choose bitterness and revenge, and instead she'd chosen compassion and service. She embodied everything I'd failed to become, everything I might have been if I'd made different choices along the way.
"How do you do it?" I whispered. "How do you forgive so easily?"
"It's not easy," she said, returning to her chair. "Some days I wake up angry about what I've lost. Some days I wish I could make someone pay for taking my parents away. But then I remember what they taught me—that every person contains the possibility of both great good and great evil. The choice of which path to follow is what defines us."
"And what if someone has already chosen the evil path? What if they've done things that can't be undone, hurt people who can't be healed?"
"Then they have a choice to make," she said simply. "They can continue down that path, or they can turn around and start walking in the other direction. It doesn't erase what came before, but it determines what comes next."
Her words echoed something Naruto had said during our final battle—that it was never too late to choose a different path, that redemption was always possible for those willing to seek it. At the time, I'd dismissed it as naive optimism. Now, hearing the same sentiment from someone who'd lost as much as I had, it carried more weight.
"What if they don't deserve redemption?" I asked.
"Who decides what someone deserves?" Yuki countered. "And more importantly, does it matter? If someone chooses to do good, to help instead of harm, to heal instead of hurt, then good things happen regardless of whether they 'deserve' the chance to do them."
She moved to check my bandages, her touch gentle and professional. "Besides," she added as she worked, "I think you're being too hard on yourself. The Sasuke Uchiha described in these bounty posters might be a monster, but the Sasuke I've been treating is just a wounded man who seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders."
"You don't know what I've done," I said quietly.
"No," she agreed. "And I don't need to. Whatever happened in your past, whoever you were before, right now you're someone who's chosen to let a stranger heal him instead of lashing out in anger or fear. That tells me more about who you really are than any poster ever could."
I wanted to argue with her, to list my crimes in detail until she understood the magnitude of what she was forgiving. But looking at her face—open, compassionate, utterly sincere in her belief that people could change—I found I couldn't bring myself to shatter her faith.
"Your grandfather," I said instead. "Does he know?"
"He suspected," Yuki admitted. "He's treated enough criminals over the years to recognize the signs. But like me, he's more interested in healing than in judging."
"And you're not afraid I'll hurt you? That I'll revert to my old ways?"
"I'm afraid of a lot of things," she said honestly. "I'm afraid of being alone, of failing to live up to my parents' memory, of not being strong enough to help everyone who needs it. But I'm not afraid of you."
"Why not?"
"Because," she said, finishing with my bandages and stepping back to examine her work, "I don't think someone who was truly evil would ask that question. A real monster wouldn't care whether I was afraid."
Her logic was both simple and profound, cutting through layers of self-doubt and recrimination to reach something fundamental about human nature. Maybe she was right. Maybe the very fact that I worried about the harm I might cause was evidence that I was still capable of choosing not to cause it.
"Thank you," I said, meaning more than just the medical treatment.
"For what?"
"For seeing something in me that I can't see in myself. For believing in redemption when I've forgotten how to believe in anything."
"That's what healers do," she said with a gentle smile. "We see the potential for health even in the sickest patients. And sometimes, believing in someone's ability to heal is the first step toward making it happen."
As she gathered her supplies and prepared to leave me to rest, I called out once more. "Yuki?"
"Yes?"
"If I told you something that would change how you see me—something that would make you hate me—would you want to know?"
She paused in the doorway, considering the question carefully. "Are you planning to hurt me or anyone else in this village?"
"No. Never."
"Then no," she said finally. "I don't want to know. The past is the past. I'm more interested in who you choose to be from now on."
After she left, I lay back against the pillows and closed my eyes, overwhelmed by the complexity of emotions swirling through my chest. Relief that she didn't know the full truth. Guilt that I was keeping it from her. Gratitude for her continued kindness. And underneath it all, something I hadn't felt in years—hope.
If someone like Yuki could look at me and see potential for good instead of inevitable evil, then maybe redemption wasn't the impossible dream I'd thought it was. Maybe the path forward didn't require erasing the past, just choosing to walk in a different direction.
For the first time since beginning this journey, I began to believe that I might actually be worthy of the forgiveness being offered to me. And more importantly, I began to believe that I might be capable of forgiving myself.