1. in secret
When Mirai closes her eyes she dreams of things long past. She dreams of a kind lord taking in an orphaned child. She dreams of an almost peaceful land of farmers, simple and a millenia way. She dreams of her, a lady of starlight whom she loves above all others. She dreams of arrows coming down, piercing and killing. She dreams of her hopes for the small life in her lady. She dreams of death.
Mirai never tells her mother, something tells her to keep silent and tell no one. It is the same thing that tells her that her dreams aren't just dreams. That they're as real as her memories as Mirai. The dreams Mirai decides when she is ten are Aino and Aino is her secret that must be protected.
Protected because she knows that memories can be taken and twisted. She'd seen it as Aino when he lady took memories and she knew it as Mirai the daughter of a genjutsu expert. The mind is not always secure. Protecting Aino protected her memories of her lady. And Mirai would die for her lady just as Aino had.
When she was younger she would cry sometimes with heartbreak. She knew as surely as she knew she had been Aino that her lady's time had long past. Her mother would be concerned and fuss, but Mirai would never tell her why. She couldn't explain her heart ached for people long dead and a love that was always destined to be one-sided.
Her lady loved the kind lord as fiercely as she loved her lady as it was meant to be.
Mirai knew that in her new life as Mirai, she could have loved her lady as she had always wanted to. As Mirai, as a kunoichi, such things were acceptable for all civilians were more wary of it. The 'what if' of if her lady had been with her now sometimes hurt as much as missing her did and so she cried when she was young and still gaining control of her emotions.
For all her loss and memories though her life is happy.
Mirai is happy and energetic eager to see the future. Aino has accepted her new life and though she will never love anyone as her lady she loves others. Her mother, a person she had never had in memory of Aino, a beautiful deadly woman. A father, dead but loved and shared in the memories of his loved ones. Her sensei, who was her father's students. Her teammates, silly as they sometimes were. A new lord, a Hokage, who shone like the sun and sometimes remained her so much of her old one she hurt. His lady, an aunt, who was elegant and refined as her lady had once been. Two uncles, one silent and one loud, who were her mother's former students.
Yes, in this life she has many loves.
But sometimes she looks up at the moon and she longs for things long passed that can never be again. She prays for her lady's happiness and safety even as she knows that for her lady the end had only been tragedy.
Sometimes though prayers are answered.
AUTHOR NOTES: Okay, so I just say the latest episode of Naruto: Shippuden about Kaguya's backstory and this happened.
So just to be clear this story is gong to be, God help me, my first attempt at sort of romance. It's going to have time travel, dimension hopping, timeline altering, reincarnation, mythology, and all sorts of epic battles.
So in case you aren't getting it this will be a story about all kinds of love, including that between two women, actually especially that between two women. It is a lesbian love story. If you do not like this DO NOT read it.
Thank you.