Part 12

It was almost too easy to control the kyuubi those days.

Since the day in the dungeon, in which Hashirama had subdued the nine-tails by merely looking at it, it had retreated into the depths of her soul. Mito knew it still was there but it did not try to break free, did not fight her until she was too exhausted to stand straight. It was the pull of Hashirama's chakra, the pull both Mito and the nine-tailed beast seem to feel equally strong, that kept it at bay for most of the time. Just in case, Mito added another layer of protection to the seal on her body, this time using Hashirama's chakra. For a strange reason both of them refused to think of the Senju's power over the beast seemed complete, as if he had mastered it by fighting and defeating it in the Valley of the End. Mito was pretty sure that it was a mix of his and Madara's blood and chakra that had this particlar effect, but it was impossible to tell.

…

In the middle of a perfectly normal week day Senju Tobirama's elder brother looked up from a wad of papers he was working through, sighed, and waited for his attention. When the younger sibling glanced up as well, Hashirama smiled and pointed out of the window, and his next words chilled Tobirama to the core.

"One day, this will be yours to protect."

Underneath the window, Hidden Leaf was slumbering peacefully. First he thought he might have misheard. But Hashirama glanced at him with a mixture of pride, love and sorrow in his face and Tobirama knew what he had said he had meant to say.

"Do not joke about such things," he snapped at the Shodaime Hokage. "You will be there for many more years to guard Hidden Leaf. And there still is your daughter. Any child of yours is worthier the title of Fire Shadow than I am."

"You think so?" Hashirama frowned. "Either way, you would be nominated temporary Hokage as long as Reika is underage. Not that it matters. I am allowed to nominate my successor, and I choose you."

Tobirama sank back into the chair he had been sitting in and thought.

"I am a fighter, Hashirama, not a diplomat. Occasionally, I teach, or I do paper work, or guard duty. Nothing special."

"They say you are the strongest shinobi of our times."

"Who says that?"

Hashirama grinned. "You know. Rumors. The people. Bingo books."

Laughing, Tobirama threw his head back. "They say that because you are my brother."

Hashirama became serious. "Do not act around me as if you were stupid. I know you better. You reformed our schooling system and it was your idea to hold the inter-village chuunin trials. You opted to make the Uchiha a special police force to keep them happy and subdued. You call upon water in places where there is none. You wield a sword made of lightning. Everyone loves you."

"Your wife made the Academy what it is today, every suggestion I made was implemented and executed by her. The Uchiha – well, that idea failed spectacularly anyway. And I have good chakra control. There is nothing more to it."

"I understand your hesitation," Hashirama leaned back in his chair. "But I cannot accept your excuse. Contrarily to me, you have been taught to lead. You have been educated in everything I had to teach myself. I place a burden on your shoulders – but I have seen enough to know it will be safe there. You can carry it, little brother."

Tobirama bowed his head. "Let us not talk about this now. You are still there. As long as you are alive, I will not take the Hokage's post."

His brother merely smiled.

"You will make Hidden Leaf great."

…

"Lady."

She did not turn around when she heard the ANBU's voice. Mito just stared out of the window, her arms wrapped around her torso tightly.

"I bear terrible news."

When she still did not answer, the ANBU cleared his throat uncomfortably and went on. The thought that crossed her mind was entirely irrelevant and yet she latched onto it, held onto it like a drowning person to a plank: He clearly was not used to be the harbinger of bad messages, while Mito herself had done little else throughout her life. Still, the white porcelain mask showed nothing of his emotions. White. It screamed at her in its emptiness. There had to be something that could be done – white – white and red, perhaps, it would look like blood-

"There was an assassination attempt on the life of the Shodaime Hokage where he stayed for the annual Peace summits of the Hidden Villages. I regret to inform you… The Honorable Fire Shadow… He did not survive, Lady."

Mito did not turn around. When she spoke, her voice sounded cold to her own ears, alien and dead. "How is the condition of Senju Tobirama?"

The ANBU did a good job in masking his surprise. "Lady. He is gravely injured but Suna's and Konoha's best healers were already there when I left."

"Good."

"Do you have an order for me, Lady?"

Mito startled, surprised at the openly displayed emotion in his voice. But she shook her head. "Thank you for delivering the message. It must have been hard, leaving your comrades and the Niidaime Hokage in order to head back to inform the Council. You may return to your duty, wherever it might take you."

The man stood up straighter, and his voice suddenly was more than respectful. "May good graces bless you, Lady. I will remain here to ensure your personal security. Please call me if you need anything."

Mito almost twitched a smile. "Thank you." She knew enough about ANBU not to reject his decision. He disappeared into the shadows, as any good ANBU was able to do. Mito turned back to the window, tightened her arms around herself and willed the world to stop turning while she waited.

How could you-

…

The room was dark when he returned, walking down the stairs from the roof of the main house and down into Tobirama-Sensei's – now his – office. It still was hard to accept. The pain was fresh, the wound too new to not feel the sadness at the loss of his teacher and role model ooze out of it like blood dripping from a severed artery. Hiruzen was just close enough to eighteen to feel like a man and still long enough seventeen to feel like a boy. He had been a shinobi long enough that he knew what had to be done, and yet he was child enough to want to run and hide behind his mother's skirts. Koharu and Homura had stood next to him during Tobirama-Sensei's funeral, and they had again been at his side today. And still he felt utterly and entirely alone.

"Tobirama chose well," Uzumaki Mito, widow of the First and sister-in-law to the Second Hokage, said quietly as she stepped out of the shadow behind Tobirama-Sen– behind Hiruzen's desk. He probably should not have been surprised but still, he jumped at the sound of her voice in the silent room. She regarded him with a soft expression, red hair and green eyes and red-and-white, elaborate robes. Suddenly he wondered why she always wore the same colors. It felt like repentance, somehow. "Although you seem a bit… Jumpy today."

She was trying to cheer him up and Hiruzen was thankful.

"Let us establish that I would have liked to have… Say, five years more of preparation before he dumped the job on me."

Mito chuckled, a warm, soft sound that reminded him of days when his team had sat at her table, laughing, bickering and drinking hot chocolate. She did not look a day older despite her age. Koharu had explained to him once but he chose to see it that way: Senju Mito was ageless, always would be.

"You, Hiruzen," she said, taking the heavy robe he had dropped onto the next chair and smoothing out the few wrinkles almost lovingly. "You will be alright. You will grow with your tasks, you always were a fast learner." Her hands lingered on the heavy cloth and her eyes turned incredibly sad. "He would not have wanted you to become Fire Shadow during times like these. War is a time in which children grow up too fast. You will have to struggle to stop yourself from drowning. But it will be worth it."

She took a few steps and bridged the distance between them. When her arms came up around him, he stood stiff and awkward until she released him again.

"Tobirama never was wrong," she said. "You will do well."

He thought of her words six years later, when his shinobi returned to Hidden Leaf exhausted and victorious. It felt like a long, long time ago, an eternity. Hidden Leaf was awash with sounds and lights as the people celebrated their victory, and Hiruzen stood on the roof of the main house and watched his village, wondering whether he had achieved something by ending the war or had failed because it had taken him so long.

…

"Granma, why do I have to do this?"

Tsunade was small and delicate, her sweet face and soft waves of golden hair contradicting her loud voice and her incredible energy. Mito looked up from her scroll, saw her first grand-daughter and how she pouted over the thin brush and the paper, and suppressed a smile. They did not have the patience – but she had not had it, either. Reika had easily inherited Hashirama's earth affinity, and Tsunade had her grandfather's face and gradually perfecting chakra control, but neither of them had ever mastered more than the basic sealing techniques. It made Mito both sad and elated because she saw how her art was dying. Her heritage and Uzushiogakure's legacy was being forgotten while at the same time so many new things touched her heart.

"Because you need to learn patience, love," she said patiently and turned her eyes back to the scroll. Tsunade's seals were smeared and messy, scrawled over the entire parchment. Sulking, the girl leant over her assignment again and started gnawing on the end of the brush.

"When I was your age…"

Mito started and bit her tongue immediately. How she had hated the phrase adults had thrown at her when she had been young! She had never wanted to use it herself. Oh, it had been such a long time, how many years had passed since Hashirama had died? Tobirama? Somewhere along the road she had lost track of time. The only way to measure it now was by looking at others: at how Reika had graduated from the Academy and left for her first mission and how Hiruzen had grown since he had taken up the Hokage's mantle from Tobirama. How Reika had laughed when she had told her she was getting married, how her face had been so much like her father's when she presented her first daughter to Mito. How Tsunade had grown, this small child who drew her pictures first and then told her stories about stupid Jiraiya, the boy who pulled her hair, and Shizuka and all her friends from the Academy. How all those people had wound their way into her heart just when she had thought she was too old and too tired to learn to love again. In a way they had saved her, had made sure Mito did not lose herself after Hashirama had died. Tobirama had visited her every week and Koharu had offered to baby-sit, still a girl herself, and Reika had laughed and smiled and grown so fast her own mother had been stunned. They grew so, so fast, slipping through her fingers like water, like time, and not for the first time Mito wondered whether her own mother had felt the same. The sorrow still was fresh, but the wound was old. Phantom pain. So she still was alive, and she still was breathing, but what was she doing? And, whatever it was, was she doing it right?

"Come to think of it," she told Tsunade, "What about you finish the last row and we'll go inside and see if we have the ingredients to prepare sweet potato cake for dinner? We can surprise Mummy when she comes home."

It was easy to lure Tsunade with her favorite meal, Mito reflected as eagerness spread over the child's features. The happiness that came from seeing her grand-daughter happy aside, Mito was quite sure that they would find all the ingredients needed for dinner neatly stacked in her pantry.

…

Uzumaki Kushina had flaming red hair and deep green eyes. It was difficult not to look at her and see a younger version of herself in her.

Mito had not forgotten the girl the rescue teams had found in the ruins of her burnt village. Rather the opposite. She had found a good foster family for the girl, and she had kept in touch with the foster parents over the years. But not once had she attempted to meet her. It was as much for herself as it was for her, she sometimes thought. In another life they could have been twins, but that was not the problem. The danger laid in looking at the other and seeing the sea and the village in each other's eyes, and it was something she did not think either of them would be able to bear. She was thankful her daughter had not inherited her green eyes and red hair. From what she had heard, the girl had married, and her granddaughter – fate, once again, was laughing at her – had the same strikingly familiar Uzumaki genes Mito carried, too. The girl that stood before her was a ghost from the past, and at the tender age of five she was an orphan already.

Both parents dead. No family left. And her eyes so green, so scared and so defiant.

Mito looked at her and felt her heart swell. She wished she could have been able to determine whether it was joy or pity.

…

Mirrors, Mito knew, were liars. What she saw was not what she felt; had not been for a long, long time. The woman on the other side looked beautiful and young, her flaming hair carefully done, her make-up perfectly set. But she felt old. Uzumaki Mito had helped to found a village, had lost her home and found love, she had given birth to a daughter and had watched her find her own life. She had fought the nine-tailed beast and had defeated it, had lost a family and found another. How strange it was that all the events that had happened such a long time ago suddenly were clear and fresh in her mind, as if her memory was trying to bring back all the times she had laughed and cried, fought and celebrated. Fifty years, Madara, Hashirama, fifty years and you are not here anymore. And how strange was it that she felt empty, alone, truly alone for the first time in almost five decades. Poor, stubborn, wonderful little Kushina. But the girl had been so strong, so adamant about the fact that she was old enough to carry the burden that was the kyuubi. Mito would not have allowed it had she not felt her time running out.

Lifting her hand, she did something she had not done for a long, long time: she bit her finger and scrawled the seal across her mirror, carefully, controlled, and the glass glowed and burned as the blood touched the surface.

(Kushina had mastered the seals as easily as she breathed. Uzushiogakure would not die, at least not with Mito.)

Her mirror image showed herself bare, without her seals. Without any pretenses. There she was, looking just the way she had felt when she had come to Hidden Leaf for the first time. Young, inexperienced and arrogant, and so desperately wishing to find something she could live for. It was as if age had not marked her at all: seventy years and her hair was full and bright and her skin was unmarked, her eyes the green flames she had seen in Kushina's. There is a fire inside each one of us, and sometimes we meet others and merge and illuminate a whole generation. She could only hope Kushina would find a person for her. There was a letter hidden in her drawers; the girl would receive it when the time came. Find someone you can love, because it is what makes us whole. Opening her eyes again, she looked at herself one last time: she did not feel ugly anymore, or unloved. She might not have been worthy of everything that had been bestowed on her but she had fought, and she had tried to do right by everyone. Sometimes she had failed. She had failed many times. But Reika was there, and Tsunade and Nawaki, and if anything, they proved she had succeeded at times, as well. Mito smiled. Suddenly, she felt beautiful, beautiful in a way she had not felt since Madara and Hashirama had looked at her. She might be an old woman in the body of a young one, but she was heiress to Whirlpool and last of the Sealing Masters of Uzushiogakure. She was the wife of Senju Hashirama, the First Fire Shadow, and of Uchiha Madara, who had given his life for the village.

Senju Mito smiled and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, Madara and Hashirama were looking at her from the mirror, and as she looked back a smile spread over Hashirama's face and Madara's eyes turned incredibly soft.

You can stop waiting now.

"You are beautiful, Mylady," Hashirama said. And because she still was young, and because her heart suddenly hammered so fast she could hear her own blood in her ears, she blushed. But she did not lower her eyes.

"Even though your hair's color still is hideous," Madara added and his touch ghosted through her hair.

Mito could have broken down and sobbed, screamed at them how much she had missed them, how much she still loved them. Or she could have started asking questions, could stall, prolong the moment until she felt ready. But her heart was dancing in her chest, and she was sure her cheeks and eyes were glowing. So she stood instead, smoothed down her heavy robes and looked at them. "Is it time?"

Both nodded.

Mito tugged the pins from her hair. Freed from their restraints, the long strands fell over her shoulder, cascaded down her back. She placed the pins onto the dresser carefully, three long, golden needles with beautiful floral patterns and three separate seal tags at their ends. The topmost of her robes went off, the loss of the heavy material making her feel as light as a feather. She placed the vibrantly red and white garment on her bed carefully and turned to face the two men. Both were watching her intensely.

"I am ready."

…

"Mylady?"

"Yes?"

"You did well."

…

As long as I breathe, I hope.