AN: SO I'M BACK WITH A THING THAT I POSTED INSTEAD OF UPLOADING 'ITB'. Honestly, I have no idea where I'm going with that story. I also have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this one but hey, it'll only be 5 chapters at most. Probably.
Man, I need to plan things better.
Uchiha Mikoto is raven-feathered hair, glass eyes and paper skin. She is fire-wind and candle-warmth; poison-laced words and soft embraces. Uchiha Mikoto is fire and hearth and home; she is mother and wife and woman and killer.
Uchiha Mikoto is a lie.
(She is a fabrication, yet not – a character woven and worn by a girl not meant to be, that shouldn't have been. Uchiha Mikoto is a character the girl played, yet something she soon became.
She is Mikoto; Mikoto is her. And yet, she isn't – not really, never was.)
She is born on a hot summer's day, wailing and screaming and all-too-aware of the world around her but never remembering enough.
"Troublesome child." The woman holding her admonishes as she carefully cleans the newborn, the infant quieting down as she does so. "Mikoto." she whispers, glancing at her birth-giver's still form; taking in the hollow sorrow overtaking the woman's husband; gazing into eyes all-too-aware (but unable to remember, would never remember - )
"Mikoto," she repeats, fixing a solemn gaze upon the bundle in her arms, "That is your name – what your mother has named you. And we shall see to it that you live up to your namesake."
Uchiha Mikoto is born on a hot summer's day to a mother that loved her but was unable to meet her and a father that adored yet resented her.
( And ah – what a noble figure she would grow into. )
She is four-turning-five and far too intelligent for her age. Her father keeps mum about her progress, shielding her from intrusive eyes with polite smiles and honeyed words and she wonders why the world around her seems so familiar with the men and women and children running around on rooftops and effortlessly leaping into the air.
( Once, she asked her father – once – and he smiled at her with indulgence, his eyes strained as he patted her head and sent her off to play with the other children who had the same raven-hair and onyx eyes as hers. Something had dawned on her then - a startling, nearly crippling realisation that sent her stumbling onto the ground.
Her father had fussed over her, dusting her off, and she's left dizzy and confused when her father asked if she was alright, the revelation already receding from her mind as a half-forgotten memory.)
.
.
.
Mikoto is four-turning-five and she meets the future clan head for the first time.
( Uchiha Fugaku is nine-turning-ten and he is stiff and awkward and far too proper for a child. )
She stares at him, looks at him – seeing further into his soul than he would've liked – and smiled. His cheeks flushed at the sight, unused to having a girl that isn't his mother or aunts or first cousins smiling kindly at him, and startled when she took his hand in hers and dragged him off to play with her and the other children.
( He is wary and unsure at first, but she is sunshine and gentle winds and he is running around with the other children in a matter of minutes – not quite laughing and grinning but joyful and content in his reserved ways.
His parents reprimand him when they see the dust on his clothes and the dirt on his hands but they are content, at least, to see their always-too-proper son acting like the child he is.
'For now,' they whisper, 'For now, let him be the child he is.' )
When she is seven-turning-eight and he is twelve-turning-thirteen and they have known each other for years and one was never seen without the other, there are whispers of their engagement amongst the clan elders.
( Mikoto says nothing when she hears this, her expression carefully blank as she stares at nothing in particular. Fugaku shifts, concerned, and she simply grins at her to-be-betrothed with light eyes as they make their way to the Academy and fire-red hair catches her gaze. )