Title: Spiral For Three
Extended Summary: In those days, it isn't a proud thing to be a kunoichi, or an Uzumaki. Mito is both, and learns that the number of men a kunoichi kills for the sake of one man does not relate to how much she loves him.
Pairings (but it's not pairing-centric): Madara x Mito, Hashirama x Mito
Warnings: Heed T, or PG-13 guide.
Darker themes (because feudal Japan isn't pretty), mentions of physical intimacy, hints of mental instability.
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Part I
. The
Downward .
Spiral
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The Warring States Era, Sengoku Jidai - Year 146
Average shinobi lifespan, thirty years
Average kunoichi lifespan, twenty-two years
Uzumaki clan, twenty-four male adult members
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"Your leg goes over his side," he explained. "Like this."
The young man stretched a lean, scarred calve over the folded pillows, which the students could only assume represented a human being. He would demonstrate further, but he was not paid for the lesson, and it was admittedly awkward as the only male in the room, role-playing a female, teaching "intimate" positions to a room full of pubescent girls who learned only so they could kill many men later on.
At twenty-seven, Uzumaki Tatsuya was practically ancient for a shinobi. His aged-ness meant he was the authority figure with the new ninja on all things secretive and just a bit scandalous. Tatsuya taught at the little shack that serves as Whirlpool Country's finest and only schoolhouse for kunoichi, mostly because the older, actual kunoichi were all off on assassination and espionage missions.
"And then you twist. Like so."
He licked his lips nervously as he scanned over the audience for their reactions. Scrunched up faces and blinking eyes peered back.
That wasn't all. Nestled at the back of the sea of grubby-faced urchins was the student furthest from the goal of becoming a polished assassin. A bit of drool dribbled from the corner of chapped lips, as the bright-haired, sentient form of Uzumaki Mito dozed off in the middle of Tatsuya-sensei's demonstration of the most important part of seducing a client.
He'd need to speak to her after class, he thought wearily, sighing right before he skewered the pillow with a small sharp dagger tucked under his sleeve. This never failed to elicit a chorus of soft 'ughs' from the girls nearing thirteen, and nervous giggles from the younger ones on reserve for taking kunoichi missions.
So, after the rest of the children piled outside to practice throwing shuriken, Mito was called to Tatsuya's teacher's desk (a large plank of molding driftwood) to talk.
"Was the lesson not to your liking?"
"It was okay." Mito brushed her thick hanks of shocking red hair away from her thin, white face.
She could grow up to be very pretty, Tatsuya thought, if only she put in the effort. Of course, good looks were just as good as a shorter-life sentence, since the pretty ones inevitably burned out their looks and usefulness faster. And Uzumaki Mito, with her petite build and natural, feminine reticence, would be in high demand indeed.
He held in a sigh, and tried again. "Your father will not be pleased to know you were dozing today, through the entire lesson. These are standard skills for kunoichi. You'll need to know them."
"I won't be doing those things," she informed him matter-of-factly. At nine years of age, Mito's sweet, clear voice was nevertheless laced with the bearings of the clan leader's daughter, firm and confident. "I'll have an arranged marriage, since it is custom. There's no romance necessary in that, Cousin Tatsuya."
Her cousin and teacher had only heard of the eerie precociousness of the youngest daughter of the clan chief. "Right, but you still need to make your husband love you. He won't listen to you or our clan's requests unless he loves you very, very much."
"And he will love me if I—?" Mito made an explanatory gesture with her hands.
Despite being thrice her age, Tatsuya flushed pink. "Yes. I suppose it couldn't hurt."
The girl stood silent, ruminating over this new piece of information. "Father will be satisfied, then."
Her father, the head of the Uzumaki Clan, was a stocky, short man with fingers like sausages that were nonetheless surprisingly dexterous at performing their clan's signature fuin seals. Tatsuya was secretly terrified of Kushina's father and his Uncle, although they were technically only related by blood through Tatsuya's late Aunt, the clan leader's wife and Mito's mother. The man was loud in public, but in private, had a shrewd sense of justice and retribution. Aunt Sayuri gave birth to three boys and Mito (all resembling her side of the family) before passing away from lung disease. In the Uzumaki clan, and also many of the other (even the more illustrious Senju and Uchiha) shinobi clans, dying due to disease or hunger was considered a waste and disgrace. For that reason, the leader, Koumizu Uzumaki, rarely mentioned his deceased wife.
"True," Tatsuya replied. "I guess."
Mito scrunched up her small nose, twisted her lips in thought, and Tatsuya felt almost as if she were just a young girl again. Almost.
"Then that means I should practice." There was no tremble, no waver in her words.
She looked up, eyes big, her imploring expression so perfect Tatsuya thought she should be the one giving lessons, not him.
"How do I practice, Tatsuya-sensei?" Mito asked in her sweet clear voice.
"With whom do I practice?" Her small pale hand moved to brush Tatsuya's sleeve, only to elicit a jerky flinch from her cousin.
"I… well…"
And then Mito smiled, a small gentle upturning of her chapped, pink lips. "Cousin."
The look in her eyes as if she'd won an amusing game.
"Will you tell Father I slept in class today?"
It wasn't a question.
Her hand was still poised in the air, waiting to brush against him again.
"No," he murmured quickly, hastily. "No, I won't."
"Good," she nodded, and the small smile disappeared, only to be replaced by a hard, piercing look Tatsuya had only seen on the most experienced kunoichi. She was the picture of poise. "I thank you."
Tatsuya watched Mito's petite form walk outside to join the children throwing darts at wooden targets. And then he turned back to his desk to write a recommendation that Uzumaki Mito, besides basic physical and chakra training, need not attend any more kunoichi classes.
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Sengoku Jidai - Year 149
Average shinobi lifespan, twenty-nine years
Average kunoichi lifespan, eighteen years
Uzumaki clan, twenty-six male adult members
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Four years later, Mito was plunged into the adult world, if only through perverse chance, she thought. Either that, or fate had a strange way of playing with people, because Mito has been in this room before, at this gold-lacquered table, staring across to a pair of slit, molten gold eyes.
Somewhere in her dreams. Maybe.
She knew this man was important. Important in the world outside her world of the small Uzumaki camp, and thus important to her father and the clan's future.
But when he spoke, his name meant nothing to her.
The cold sound, not like the growl she expected, fell dead-dead-dead against the floor, never reaching her ears. All she could think about was what would be for dinner tonight, because the gnawing in her stomach (or was it a bit higher in her chest?) was growing insistent, pressing at her brain to think of some solution—at home, it would be fish or burdock or gritty rice.
She opened her hands to accept the presentation of her betrothal gift, and noted the raw pink of her nail beds, brushed so fiercely by her nursemaid that the ten had bled years of dirt and kunai grease the night before. At least that regimen finally did the trick—her nursemaid had never looked so proud.
The yui-no gift slid toward her, a thousand lewd promises tucked in silk thread and incense.
"I humbly accept," Mito murmured, a liar and a kunoichi, though the two terms were redundant through and through.
Her fiancé gazed unsmilingly at her, appraising her every tuck and curve. Mito knew that every feature was beautiful. He made a soft sound, to indicate her physique was pleasing to him. Underneath the glamour of henge no jutsu, her chakra pulsed, smoothing soft curves over skinny knees and jutting hipbones.
At thirteen, Uzumaki Mito knew how to fake being seventeen.
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It was never easy to tell whether or not she would need to "leave" her husband in a few hours or a few days.
It didn't matter. Mito followed her father's instruction. She never let them have her, any part of her—not physical, not emotional. What she was good at, she discovered, was satisfying their vanity, by curtseying and blushing and pouring tea at all the right times, and, yes, lingering eyes and rouged lips as well. There was no usage fee for looking.
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Sengoku Jidai - Year 149
Autumn
Notable Skirmishes, Fire Country Warlords vs Whirlpool Country Daimyo
Water Country Civil Conflict
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Exactly two weeks after their vows, she disposed of her first man (her fake-husband that tried to touch her two times) because her father had told her three days into the marriage that Mito had far better options (being beautiful like her mother), but it was true that she had better have some practice beforehand.
Two months later, her father sent her as backup for her second eldest brother.
Uzumaki Keito was out in the fringes of Fire Country, with a rag-tag band of small allied clans, trying to claim land for the Whirlpool Daimyo Lord. Rumors spread that the Fire Country's own most powerful warlords had pooled their money and sought the expensive aid of the Uchiha clan, whose Sharingan eyes struck fear into a good sixty percent of the allies, destroying their morale and breaking their ranks.
"You'll go, Mito. Know that if we are victorious, the Daimyo has promised to make the Uzumaki clan chief among his forces, with a prosperous village of our own." Her father smiled. He rarely smiled, not now, with war and land and power to be won. Mito felt her heart squeeze in fright and hope.
"We will be like royalty, and you will be a true princess."
Mito wanted her father to be pleased, and, secretly, she decided that she rather liked the idea of being a princess.
The old stories her mother had told her of the small, nameless island countries on the great ocean had princesses in them. Their hair was always long and wavy. And though there was absolutely no hope of Mito's sheet-straight hair ever cascading down in glorious waves, she decided she would at least grow it long, one, because her brothers had always teased her that it was not right to have hair shorter than the one she'll marry, and two, because having princess hair would at least be a concrete step toward the goal.
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Sengoku Jidai - Year 149
Winter
Uchiha Casualty Count, five men, two women
Uzumaki Casualty Count, sixteen men, one woman
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The foreign general put his hands under her shirt, far more than any other had done, and Mito saw red-red-red, before a swift wind and the seeping wetness of blood—not her own—brought her back to reality.
The boy who killed her man had dark eyes and dark hair.
He also had a dark smile, full of promises that Mito did not think he would keep to any mere woman. Because that was exactly how he looked at her, as she tugged her clothes straight and flushed for the first time. He looked, but didn't see.
And to Mito, he was a mystery.
She had never seen her brothers at this age, as they were whisked away for war far before she could remember. She spent her days only with gurgling baby Uzumaki boys, and then she spent the more recent ones with lecherous old men.
It wasn't like he was a total mystery. She could guess—he, for one, looked like an Uchiha, through and through. And if the stubborn hair did not give it away, his arrogance and fierce protectiveness of his younger brother did. But one couldn't be sure, and she prayed that it wouldn't matter.
"I have brothers, too," Mito blurted. It was absurd, seeking out and then talking to the enemy. But she did not want to stop, because these sorts of battles were boring and, after the general's death, she was only here as an extra pair of hands, not as a kunoichi.
The boy cocked a dark eyebrow at Mito. It seemed to say 'So?'
"I mean," Mito said in her most careful, light (but not sweet. She had a gut feeling this boy would not be like her ex-husbands) tone. "That I think I can understand, how your younger brother feels about you."
This actually elicited a guffaw from the Uchiha, who laughed for a few seconds straight before stuffing his hands in his pockets and chucking a rock across the river. Correction. Into the river. The rock sank right away.
"I want to change some stuff about shinobi," he said, after his ears stopped flushing bright red.
To Mito, he might as well have said, 'I want to change the entire fucking world.' Then, she remembered.
"What about kunoichi?" Mito demanded, and immediately felt shocked at her own impertinence.
"Yeah, I guess I'll change that, too." He didn't glance back to her, focused on skipping another rock over the river.
"Promise?"
Uchiha Madara—for that was what Mito would later learn his name to be—did turn back to stare at her, really see, this time.
He smiled his brooding smile. "Don't your older brothers keep their promises?"
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Sengoku Jidai - Year 152
Uzumaki Clan, thirteen total male members
Notable Skirmishes, Uchiha vs Senju, without political instruction
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The strange thing about love-making between two people was that making love was literally the most selfish thing Mito had ever seen men do. But at sixteen, her father decided it was finally time for her to learn, properly. So he wed her off to someone safe—a soft-spoken sword smith on the edge of their small, tenuously-growing village.
The humble man had no clue who she was, how much the Daimyo liked her, how the Daimyo's son looked at her. Mito found that she liked the secrecy. It was like a game. But when he asked if he could touch her, Mito flinched away before eventually acquiescing to his soft caresses and tentative kisses. He kissed like a bird.
Still, that was better than kissing like a fish. The general had kissed like a dying fish, before actually dying on that day almost three years ago. Mito found her thoughts wandering to that eventful evening ever so often, and she sometimes imagined it was a different mouth pressed against hers, just for fun. This love business was a whole lot more bearable when she imagined brooding lips pressed in an arrogant smile against the column of her milk-white throat.
And so her surprise was laced with guilty pleasure when familiar yet unfamiliar spinning red eyes awakened her in the middle of the night.
The dark nodes spun in perfect spirals, like obsidian rocks skipping over a molten lava surface.
"Uchiha," she breathed.
"Madara," he replied.
Mito had no chance to scream or immobilize the intruder with wires of chakra before he disappeared into the night, leaving only a soft-spoken sword smith's bloody guts spilled onto the floor. That, and one strangely soured princess heart.
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Sengoku Jidai - Year 154
Year's End
Uzumaki Clan, twenty-one total male members
Kunoichi casualties, fourteen members
Kunoichi remaining, six total members, three active members
Notable Skirmishes, Uchiha vs Senju, ongoing
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After the bloodshed, there was finally a lull in missions for Mito and many other ninja. It wasn't peace, but rather a bitter stalemate between Uchiha and Senju. Other clans hovered cautiously on the sidelines, some in fear, others waiting for a chance to nip at the two great clans' heels.
The Uzumaki clan belonged to the latter group. And in truth, all Mito wanted to do was wait for the chance to tear the heel off the Uchiha clan, if she ever got the chance. Change the world her arse. Madara had done no such thing. Two of Mito's brothers and twenty Uzumaki kinsmen had died in battle six months ago, embroiled in a mission ambushed by just four Uchiha Sharingan-wielders. And the sword smith… he was innocent and defenseless with his shy, bird-like touches.
Her father, wounded gravely in spirit by the loss of his first and second-born, called her to his bedside.
"Mito, the only consolation I take from all of this is that you are still untouched." Father's head bobbed on his now too-thin neck. "Your maidenhood is valuable beyond compare in this day and age. I don't know what I was thinking… giving you to that…"
With growing alarm, Mito realized that her father was apologizing.
"I would do anything you ask. I would kill for you, Father," she said, and she meant it.
She knew how much he'd lost when he lost Mother. And now their family, his soul, was halved.
Uzumaki Koumizu shook his graying head. "You are eighteen now, Mito. When you were sixteen, I had you go to that sword smith only because he was the key to the fuin no jutsu's success in battle. He was the one to discover a metal that was compatible with our seal. But he was working on something even better, before he died. I want you to go back and get the sample of that new metal."
Mito felt her fingertips go cold.
"Father, what are you saying?"
"He told me he desired you long ago, Mito. If it's you, it will be fine to go back to his shop, and-"
"—N-No, what you said... before that…" Red hair fell over her eyes, and she fought the urge to bolt from her chair. All she saw was red-red-red, dead-dead-dead. Spilled guts and smooth straight hair and betraying lips and hearts.
She'd always thought her father had chosen the man for his kind gentleness, that Uzumaki Koumizu had painstakingly chosen a trusted man who would treat her well. But they'd both lied. Just when had her Father started lying?
The clan leader's gaze was unfocused, looking at his daughter but not seeing, completely blind to her shaking form. "Our clan would be invincible. The Daimyo would have given me a noble title. But above all, he promised to build Sayuri a proper tombstone. Just think! Sayuri…"
Her father repeated her mother's name a few times, but Mito did not stay to hear. Mito's legs carried her out of the chamber, fast as she could go. She retched the nonexistent contents of her stomach right outside the door.
The world was spiraling, spiraling like red, arrogant eyes.
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To be continued
Quick note about the title:
"Spiral For Three". Three (well, sort of only two) reasons for the "Three" motif. This was originally meant as a three-shot, but we'll see. There's also three main protagonists (though Madara is more of an antihero). Finally, the Sharingan commas also come in three, in the original form.
Note on the plot:
This is in no way meant to moralize the actions of that age-I think Kishimoto writes his bit for a reason. I just "feminized" it. It always struck me as pretty interesting how alliances are formed and dissolved throughout history. Clan politics and personal relationships balance on a fine wire.
I think Mito would naturally be drawn to someone like Madara, who holds power and promise-but also resent him for following the pattern of war and assassination. Of course, the reason why Madara did kill the sword smith was because he was manufacturing weaponry to assist another clan. Mito, of course, thinks that the man was an innocent bystander... until her Father let slip the fact that he, in a way, sold her. If you think marrying for convenience or other pragmatic benefits is a form of sale, then you agree with young-Mito. If you think it's just the way of the world, or that world, then you're more like the clan heads I imagine lived in the Sengoku Jidai.
This chapter was pretty doom and gloom. It gets better, promise. I'm excited to introduce Hashirama.