Her hair is twisted into a plain simple bun, the same bun she wore when she went on missions, slashing at her masked foes, blood splattering in her face, obscuring her vision. It is her own little form of defiance, a symbol that no matter what, she is a shinobi, not a wife but a killer. Her mother had protested against it, constantly explaining that this is an Uchiha wedding, not just a wedding but an Uchiha wedding. They are not commoners like the Hyugas or the Naras, they are special, they are almost of royal blood and to show that to the little people of Konoha, they need extravagance. They need a bride decked in sparkling diamonds and jewels as red as Sharingan, they need long, thick silken kimonos and they need a pretty little girl to play the role of the next matriarch. And that's the recipe for power politics between the clans.
Mikoto, her name means precious, it speaks of nobility. She was supposed to be the rightful heir, she could have been the next leader of the Uchiha and who knew, she could have led them to victory. But there is a reason why she is named after the so-called greatest woman in Uchiha history, the first Uchiha Mikoto, the wife of Uchiha Madara. She is never meant to be her own person, a wife first and then a killer, she is supposed to honour the sacrifices of her predecessor. To die protecting him, to serve him, to act as a uterus and a safety blanket.
In fact that was what the first Mikoto had done. She had saved her husband by blocking a poison arrow aimed at him by an assassin nin and through that triggered a revolution. Her husband angered by the audacity of an assassin, not his wife's death but the blatant disrespect for his strength drove the clan into action. With the blood of their enemies they minted the Sharingan, their scarlet eyes a symbol of the murder they had committed, cementing fear into the hearts of their enemies and of the town, thus creating the fame for the name, the respect the clan so yearned. This was what a woman was supposed to do, a wife was supposed to sacrifice herself for her own family and do what she could to protect and to help the clan.
This is a story she has constantly heard, one that had been repeated through the course of the day. Her mother mouths it as she helps to tie the large red obi on the back of her kimono, her little cousin mouths it as she hems the edge of her kimono, raising it an inch to allow her to move with a little more ease, her father tells it to her before she can move out into the hall, a warning for what she must do. Mikoto closes her eyes and prays.
Small steps on a red carpet, she totters uncertainly, clad in black heels. The audience titters and Mikoto forces herself to look into their eyes and challenge them to continue, it's the Shinobi way and the way she has been trained, to never back down from a fight and to never accept any taunt slung her way. Back straight, she tells herself, eyes blank, a smile painted upon a pale unmoving face, she must be the Uchiha poster girl, this is her duty as the only child of the main family. This time as she moves forward, her steps are lighter, more cat like, this is like the time her sensei forced her to run over the unsteady poles across the river. A slight shifting of her weight would cause her tip over the edge and fall to her death or shame, which was worse, she could not really choose.
Compared to the previous weddings she has attended as the daughter of the Clan head, she fails to feel the intimacy. She remembers the sly little glances cast towards each other as bride and groom finally see each other after an arduous day of preparation, the soft smiles of family members as they watch the bride and groom kiss or mouth those 'I love yous', the muffled chatter of the bridesmaids as the whisper behind the cover of a pale hand or a bouquet of cheap flowers. This is different. She moves without the anticipation of a bride and while the wine is older and lacks the artificial sweetness of cheap booze, while the flowers are arranged more exquisitely, there lacks the true joy of a marriage, only visible through these slight nuances. The bridesmaids stand in a neat row with strained smiles and pity in their eyes, her parents look towards her and her groom with expectation and mild impatience and as she glances around, she can see the slight glint of a kunai or a shuriken as it's owner readjusts it in their hands, ready to pounce should there be any trouble.
This has been the only time since she was eight that she has not carried a weapon. Weapons are not proper for the Uchiha Matriach, her mother explained as she carries her resignation towards the Hokage. Let someone else do the fighting for you, that is what is proper of a lady, her father answered her as she had refused to do so. She had her forehead protector thrown away with her ninja gear while her weapons, the kunai, the senbon had all been given away to her little cousin, the little girl who would one day lead the life she yearned for but never received. By a subconscious action, Mikoto finds her hand brushing her thigh, the exact location where her senbon would have been stored and finding it lacking, casts her gaze over a sea of people to forget her sudden incapacitation.
In the midst of faces, only one seems to stand out of the sea of people. Mikoto sees him and pushes back her smile, it was not proper to randomly smile at someone as she was walking down the aisle, it could be misconstrued as lust or even worse love. The family could be disgraced. Instead she shoots him a glance and watches as Nara Shikaku returns a laconic grin, her old team partner and friend, the only one who was here not for the fanfare or the food or the open bar but for her. She moves forward as she feels his sad smile on her shoulders and imagines the clenched fists, the finger nails which bear deep into the calloused flesh of his palm.
"Why do you even do this?"
He had asked her, one arid day as they lay under a tree. They had finished training and Mikoto's skin was slick with sweat, tendrils of hair even escaping from her tightly pinned bun. Shikaku's eyes were open, staring towards the vast expense of the blue sky, veiled by the narrow branches of the tree.
"Do what?" She frowned, fiddling with the tight bun, finally releasing the pin from her hair, allowing it to flow down to her back. From his tone, the tightness of his voice, she intuitively knew, she knew the anger and the pain locked up in the simple question and she decided to avoid it. Behind the chauvinistic front, the tough guy act and the IQ, was a man who still could not comprehend the most basic part of being a shinobi, sacrifice. And so she smiled and said, "Aren't we lucky that we were the two unfortunate bastards to be sent to Kumo?"
"That's an oxymoron, you troublesome woman."
Hearing the smile behind his sour tone, Mikoto closed her eyes and dug her fingers into the dirt, letting the cool soil run through her fingers, imagining that she was just a girl and Shikaku was not just a partner.
She finally meets him at the end of the hall. Uchiha Fugaku, the pride of the Uchiha branch family. Though not a genius, he had worked himself hard, graduating top of his class and making jounin by eighteen, later working his way up in the police force to finally make deputy head. Rumour had it that while he lacked the skill for ninjutsu, he made up for it with his taijutsu and his interrogation skills. But then again, those were rumours and Uchihas do not degrade themselves by believing gossip. She had once seen him fight and personally felt that he fought like the common thugs he arrested, the callouses, the bruises and scars bore testament to it. He had punched his opponent before he had time to react and later randomly stabbed him with a kunai until the man had stopped twitching. It was boorish, crude and lacked the civility and grace of someone who was going to be the head of the Uchiha. However the Uchiha council had spoken and like breeders they had picked him for his 'tenacity' and 'loyalty', key catch phrases to justify the marriage. Why they would do something like this, Mikoto couldn't understand, not did she try to understand, there was no point after all. The council's verdict could not be retracted nor would it be after so much preparation.
However if she could, she would have tried to fight it. She is clearly the better fighter, a more subtle and efficient killer, compared to the village lout who is going to be the clan head. What she cannot comprehend here is how a man who is unable to fight like an Uchiha, a brainwashed buffoon who thinks only of loyalty and the clan, a man who so clearly is supposed to remain as a subordinate can become the new leader. Disdain, Mikoto forcibly tints her eyes with disgust and repugnance, her own touch of disobedience to defy the clan she is bound to.
And as Fuagku's brown eyes meet her grey ones and within them Mikoto cannot see anything, no essence of emotion, no pity, no sadness, reflected in their shallow depths, she sees only a façade, a puppet controlled by a family name. Even as she moves towards him and as he mouths the expected 'I love you', she hears nothing in his voice, not longing, not despair, not even hope or greed or lust. His voice is a perpetual drone, pitched at certain areas to convey sincerity.
The hall is beautiful, filled with flowers and their sweet scent but as Mikoto returns Fugaku's words with a soft kiss, she knows that nothing here is real and that everything here is a husk of a life that she will begin to live. The life of a wife and not of a woman, the life of the first Mikoto Uchiha, to be the next perfect role model for the girl who will take her place, a girl who will possibly not dare to contradict the verdict of the Uchiha council and who will walk the same carpet she did in shaky heels and a long white silk kimono.