TITLE: Florescence
SUMMARY: To be an older sister, was a full-time job. Her career as a Shinobi was simply a hobby. SI/OC AU.
AUTHOR NOTE: Super quick update before I shoot off to lectures! This is sort of a time jump to a more reasonable age where I can start fucking about with the plot and have Mio interact with other characters without it being very one-sided as a baby. Thank you to everyone who favourited or followed! I haven't got a beta-reader or anything and don't... actually know how to go about finding one, not gonna lie. So there are going to be a few errors because it's me and I'm dumb.
Also this is my stab at Naniwrimo, so this is going to be hilarious.
Kizashi noticed early on that his daughter had this uncanny ability of always being right.
Now, at first, he thought it was just coincidence or even worse, something she inherited from her mother. This need to always be right.
She was very similar to his own mother, the very same knowing smirk that curled their lips, the same sly shaped eyes and feline grace. Even at a young age he had to double check over his shoulder to make sure that she wasn't gracefully stumbling after him. Pudgy feet almost silent as she strolled through their house.
"Papa?" Mio murmured, heavy-handedly colouring her scribbles until the crayons were nothing but nubs.
"Mm?"
"You're a nin-jee right?" Her tongue curled, struggling with her words at times, her nose wrinkled as she paused and Kizashi watched fascinated. "Nin-joo, Nin … Nin-jaa."
"Ninja?" He murmured, a small smile curling his lips at her satisfactory nod. Her mistake acknowledged and improved upon, happily going back to squishing the orange crayon in hand. He didn't know who she was drawing, but who wore that much orange? "I'm a shinobi of Konohagakure, you know what that means?"
"That you kills people," Her blunt words sent electricity down his spine and made his stomach drop to his feet.
Her innocent and childlike voice, declaring him a murderer, it made him sweat under the collar as his profession was lit up in bright lights. Was that how his daughter saw him? Her tongue sticking out as she continued to colour, her words having meant nothing to her as if they hadn't meant anything at all.
Her eyes only met his after she'd finished her drawing, his mouth opening and closing whilst he tried to find a way to explain his job to his daughter. Mio took it out of his hands though when she smiled at him, walking over with her picture in hand, leaning against his knee and looking up at him with her big dark green eyes. "You kills people to save peoples, right? "
The tension seeped from his shoulders somewhat.
"Where did you learn something like that?" He murmured, plucking the picture from her hands and trying not to grimace at the squiggles of yellow and orange that clashed awfully. The streaks of blue melting between the two bright colours.
Mio had no qualms in climbing into her papa's lap, making herself comfortable with her back against his chest.
"Hana's mum told me," Mio stated before beginning to babble, pointing out things in the picture and Kizashi dutifully nodded. Not that he was actually paying attention, his eyes glazed.
Goddamn Inuzukas.
"Papa! You're not listening!" Mio hissed, her bony elbow unforgiving against his ribs, her head tilted back as she glared up at him.
"I am! I am!" He insisted. No, he wasn't.
"What I just say?" His daughter demanded, by the gods, they'd given him a mixture of his beloved wife and his mother. They had said, his own friends had warned him that daughters were there to punish fathers for their misgivings in youth.
He was more inclined to believe it now.
"Go easy on your papa, hm?"
He glanced up, a relieved sigh slipping past his lips as his wife watched them from the doorway to the kitchen. Her own smug and knowing smile pulling at her lips, conspiring glances shared between the two little ladies that he lived with. Under their thumbs actually, quite happily too, most of the time.
"Why don't you go wash your hands and I'll make you some snacks?" Kizashi murmured to his daughter, giving her drawing back to her carefully. He still didn't know what it was actually meant to be but it obviously meant a lot to her witht he way that she clutched it.
"You still in trouble," Mio muttered.
Mebuki watched, entirely amused at the cold sweat that seemed to slip down her husband's forehead at their daughter's ominous words. The tiny redhead clambering down and strutting off. Intent on washing her hands quickly so she could have the snacks she was promised.
After she'd disappeared from view, the two looked at one another.
"She takes after your mother." Was all Mebuki offered.
"She has your temper." Was all Kizashi gave back.
Neither were questions, both simply facts that they could agree on.
Mio had been a precocious child from birth with many quirks which she refused to part with, like saying I love you, whenever they left her sight for extended periods of time. It didn't matter whether it was simply for daycare or bed time, it was unfailing and unexplained. Affectionate but there was a reason behind it which they didn't exactly follow.
She had a fascination with fire as well, refusing to go to bed unless it was by candlelight. The nights which they'd tried not to pander to her whims were wrought with fitful sleep and nightmares which saw their daughter crawl into their beds before dawn broke.
"She's been asking about the Academy," Mebuki told him as the toilet flushed from the other room. Their eyes sliding over, to make sure that little eyes and little ears weren't watching and listening like they tended to do. His wife tilted her head, considering her words carefully. "More than usual as of late."
He sighed, wiping a hand down his face.
"We can't exactly stop her." He pointed out.
"If we did, she'd try to find a way around us." Mebuki threw in as well.
It's not to say that they didn't want their daughter to follow her dreams, it was more that they knew what the life of a Shinobi entailed and most of the time, wouldn't wish it upon a child. The time of war was heavy upon their shoulders and soldiers barely on the cusp of adulthood were sent out as canon fodder.
"Better for her to go with our blessing?" Kizashi offered, rubbing the back of his neck as he ruminates all the possibilities. "I don't want her having to hide something from us."
"Training first, we'll send her a year later." There would be no compromise on this.
Mebuki's sharp emerald eyes promised him painful punishment should his answer be anything but a dutiful 'Yes dear'.
The chant of "snacks, snacks, snacks" reached them before their daughter does.
Her smile is wide as she announces her presence rather than slinking into the room unnoticed. Her wine coloured hair softly curls around her chin and her eyelashes flutter enticingly, beckoning her parents to feed her whatever snacks that she desired.
"Can I have mochi ice cream?"
"After you have a piece of fruit." Mebuki haggled easily, dropping their adult conversation with ease as Mio slipped her hand into her mother's.
The girl wrinkled her nose. "No apples."
"Nectarine?"
She considered it. "Acceptable."
Mebuki checked her watch once more, wondering whether or not she should simply leave at that point. She'd been sat at the table for nearly forty minutes and her company had yet to arrive. Ten minutes? That was understandable, but as the hand of the clock moved, so did her patience.
She'd already had two cups of tea and the server was starting to give her think stink eye as they moved into what was probably the busiest time of day for them.
"Mebuki!"
Mikoto hustled towards her with the determination of a bull, slipping through the throngs much to their annoyance.
Then again, Mebuki had to place her tea down so she didn't spill it all over herself since her shoulders were shaking with laughter, Mikoto didn't really seem to give a fuck about them. It was the first time since they'd become somewhat friends that she'd seen the other woman with a hair out of place.
She looked absolutely run ragged as she slipped into the empty seat across from her.
"uvI'm so sorry I'm late, Fugaku tried to pass it off that I hadn't told him about tea today and that I was supposed to be looking after Itachi," Flapping her hands before immediately setting about fixing her bun, a few strands having come loose but she looked as pretty as ever. "That man, I swear."
"Kizashi's more than happy to take both of them, you know?" It was something she'd offered multiples time, god knows her husband would love having another baby to dote on. "I mean, you'll probably have to wrestle to get Itachi back at the end of the day, but."
"Ah, I'll give the offer some thought."
Admittedly, the two didn't have a lot in common.
It was motherhood though which had dragged the two of them together, the only two kunoichis within their overlapping social groups to have had children. Mikoto was weighed down with the advice and expectations as a Clan Matriarch, she was, after all, birthing clan heirs. Mebuki on the other hand hated that there was so little support for herself and refused to rely too heavily on her mother-in-law.
Tsume was also a frequent visitor at their little tea breaks, happy to provide her own little tidbits and dry humour into the fray. Kizashi and Tsume went way back, having been good friends in the Academy.
"Fugaku wants to start training Itachi."
Mebuki's mind came to a screeching halt.
"He's only two… three, nearly?" She couldn't wrap her head around it, not entirely. Mebuki wasn't from a Clan, at least, not a Shinobi careered one. The Uchiha ran the Police Force as well so more often than not, if a boy didn't end up in the Shinobi roster then they acted as a civilian member of the police.
Mikoto looked to be on the verge of crumbling as she waved down a server for tea.
"I don't know what to do," She confessed quietly. The two of them silent as the young server came over to pour them another tea each, gossip was always thriving in Konoha and they took precautions to make sure they weren't overhead.
A small seal was attached to the underside of the table as soon as Mikoto had sat down. A gift from Minato, she'd told her, it prevented them from being overhead.
"The Clan is placing more and more pressure on Fugaku to start training Itachi, he's already shown some talent," Sipping her tea, Mikoto stared off without actually having anything to focus on. She hissed as the tea scalded her tongue. "I mean, ...he's just a baby though, my baby."
"Mothers know best." Mebuki put in, firm and unwavering.
There was a sharper edge to Mikoto at her words, even if her eyes weren't focused as she nodded.
"Exactly, I want him to enter the Academy, I want him to have a childhood, to make friends and graduate at the proper age," A small smile pulling at her lips before she looked over at Mebuki. "To be lumped into a Genin team and have to do D-rank missions, to have to catch Tora."
The two kunoichi's shuddered.
Despite the difference in ranks, Mebuki quite happy remaining as a Chunin and Mikoto (unwillingly) retired when she'd reached Jonin, everyone had to undertake the retrieve Tora mission at some point in their Genin career.
"They want you to have more kids, right?" Mebuki murmured, innocent and demure as she sipped her tea.
The other woman knew better by now to be taken in by the guise.
"Well, all I'm saying is," A devious smirk pulled at Mebuki's lips, the one which her husband had come to fear. "That you're in control of your body, and if they want another heir, then perhaps they should think about treating the current one better."
"They'd insist that Fugaku take on a mistress."
"And you'd insist on chopping off his-"
"Mebuki!" Mikoto glanced up in shock, her cheeks turning a vivid pink.
"Fugaku loves you, despite the grump that he is. He wouldn't do that to you, and you know it," With a small smile, she placed one hand over Mikoto's. Despite not having all that much in common, they were friends and they had one another's backs. "So go tell him, because have you ever even told him how worried you are?"
There was a reluctant, "Well, no."
Mebuki leaned back in her chair.
"There you go," There was another pause as they waved the server over for a refill once more, Mikoto vowing to give them a tip. "Mio wants to join the Academy at some point as well, we'll have to do a playdate at some point."
"Itachi does need to socialise with people his age."
CHAPTER WORD COUNT: 2064
STORY WORD COUNT: 3413