Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.


"Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore."

-Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate


Hashirama sends her five letters that she doesn't read in the span of five months. She is lost in her sealwork now, where she ought to have been all along, but the sixth one sent just a week after the fifth is stained with something looks like a smudge of blood and a torrent of tears.

Seeing it makes her heart break down just a little.

She concedes and opens the letter. It is an inane little thing about the weather and the products of his flower garden project stained with his grief and marred by the many times he's crossed something out. Still, she can read between the lines.

She opens the fifth letter.

'Mito.' It says. 'Haha-ue wanted me to tell you…' a splatter of ink 'that she found you her most wonderful visitor in a very long time. She would like to have told you herself, but she and Chichi-ue are very happily together now. It hurts so, in my heart to lose, and I know you don't read these since you haven't replied, so I'm not burdening you with much of my grief. I just wish there was someone I could tell. So many people depend on me that it's hard to think of saying that I feel hollow inside. Still, I hope peace treats you kindly and that your family is well. Hashirama.'

Her heart drops to her stomach.

She opens the fourth.

'Mito.' It says. 'I am so very tired and lonely and frightened, and I do not know what to do or even if I am doing the right thing at all. Chichi-ue has been Clan Head all my life, and I don't know what the right thing is. I want so badly to speak of peace, but all anyone ever wants to talk of is war. You once believed in my dream, but now you've seen more of our situation. Do you still believe that there's peace on this Earth for me or any of us? Hashirama.'

She opens the third.

'Mito.' It says. 'Mito, I am sorry that Tobi offended you by saying such horrible things. He is entirely repentant I promise. When he next sees you again, I will make him apologize to you on his knees. You've saved so many of our family. I thank you. Hashirama.'

She opens the second.

'Mito.' It says. 'Will you never speak to me again? I sent you a letter and you did not reply, though Uzumaki-dono has written to say that you received it. Have I offended you somehow? Sometimes, when I think too long of how you left, I cannot help but feel that you hate me. I know you were not happy when you left, but please, write back to me sometime. Hashirama.'

She takes a deep breath and opens the first.

'Mito.' It says, after it asks after her health. 'You never told me you were Uzumaki Mito-hime, and neither did Haha-ue or Chichi-ue or anyone else who knew. Toka suspected, but even she didn't enlighten me. I feel very foolish about this somehow, even if you didn't have any reason to tell anyone. You're my friend, and I didn't even know who you were. It's only now that I'm beginning to realize that I don't know that much about what you like at all. I'm not complaining. I know it was safer that way, but we are friends aren't we? You'll talk too instead of just letting me spill my thoughts all over the place in every conversation, won't you? Please, Mito, I know that a princess must have many friends to take up her time, but can we be friends again? Hashirama.'

She reaches across her writing desk and pulls out her inkwell.

There is much she has to say to her foolish mainlander friend, namely that she does not hate him in the slightest, and no, she's had a period of silliness, but she does read his letters.

"Who're you writing to, Mito-nee?" Aruta pokes his head in through her door and wherever Aruta goes, Ashiro is not far behind.

"Yeah, who is it?" Ah, there's Ashiro. As she thought, the Twins are not far apart.

Mito throws Hashirama's letters in her desk drawer before her brothers tumble through the door. "No one you two need to be concerned about."

"Ah but Mito-nee!" They shriek as one. "We want to know about your," they take a deep breath, "handsome, dashing, charming, interesting, foolish, strange, foreign, mainlander friend too!"

Mito resists the urge to hide her face in her hands. "Why do I even like you?" She wonders aloud. Of course the Twins already know who she is writing to. They've probably already read her mail, knowing them.

"You don't like us." They chirp as they drag her out of her seat and down the hall. "But you do love us because we're your only little brothers."

"I love Kanae-chan." Mito protests. "I don't love either of you enough to fill a water jug." Not true. The Twins might be terribly annoying and buoyant and fond of all the wrong things like cheating at card games, and taking what doesn't belong to them-other people's spending money-but they are her little brothers, and she loves them dearly.

The Twins nod along though. "You might not love us." They sigh dramatically. "But everyone loves Shiko-chan, you have to! She's so sweet it would be a cruelty not to!" And then they are bouncing down the hall and since they still have a hold of her hands, all she can do is follow. "But come to dinner, Mito-nee! Obaasan's made ikayaki and it's the bestest ikayaki on the entire Island!"

Mito laughs and lets them drag her along. "I love you both more than the ikayaki."

They look up at her with wide hazel eyes. "You do?"

They are only fourteen, not yet grown into their long gangly limbs and enhanced chakra levels, though they want so badly to run away to sea. Perhaps in another year, Chichi-ue will let them.

For a moment, Mito is struck by a sense of sadness. Isao nearly died, and he is just about the same age as the Twins.

Yet he'd been fighting so long that he's accepted it. What would have to happen for peace to be assured? What can she do to help Hashirama's dream of peace?

No child should ever have to fight and bleed and die before being a child.

"But of course." She smiles at the Twins. "How could a plate of squid, however excellently prepared, ever merit the same amount of love as my only little brothers?"

Aruta pouts. "Shiko-chan would disagree."

Ashiro swings their joined hands back and forth and nods along. "Shiko-chan's in love." He singsongs. "Shiko-chan likes Ichiro-usahaya no Habiki-sama!"

"I do not." Kanae flicks water droplets at Ashiro. "He is a very nice dancer, that's it."

"Shiko-chan's in love!" The Twins cry together. "She'll go back to the waves! Where those of the formal name Kanae always go!"

"Boys." Haha-ue intercedes before Mito's little sister, the baby of their family, decides to upend the tureen of seaweed soup over her brother's heads. "Don't tease your sister, of course she doesn't love Habiki-sama. You all are far too young to decide to love anyone."

"Aw, but Haha!" Ashiro clutches his heart. "She blushed when he said she danced prettily!"

Habiki-sama complimented her sister? This is news to her. Mito spares Kanae-chan a glance.

Her little sister's hiding her face behind her hands, her face as red as her hair. "Haha!" She wails. "Tell them that's just because Habiki-san is far too pretty! He's not even partly human and it's not fair."

"Habiki is what?" Kyoya-niisama is joining them for dinner today then, dressed in a simple off white haori and slate gray hakama pants. He wears no under kimono, so his chest is bare. In the low light, downy feathers carve light patterns over his alabaster skin. "Do not tell me that you think Habiki is pretty, Lovely Girl."

Kanae pouts further. "It's your fault, Niisama"

Kyoya-niisama raises one finely arched brow at her. "My fault?"

"Now he calls me Lovely Girl too." Kanae jabs a triumphant finger in his direction. "And he only calls me that because he heard you call me that."

Niisama frowns. "I will be having words with Habiki."

"You'll have more than words." Masato-nii grouses. "You'll be having blows as well and stinking up the bay with all that blood."

"Blood does not stink." Niisama replies. "You are merely far too green and cowardly, Porcupine Child."

Masato-nii bristles impressively. At twenty years of age, he is no longer a child, but two words from Niisama is enough to get under his skin. "And you are an uncouth savage." Masato-nii is a craftsman not a warrior.

Niisama does not always respect that.

Niisama shrugs. "I am an albatross. Am I expected to have a man's manners?"

"You are my son, and half of your blood is the blood of a man." Chichi-ue steps through the door, looks around at the scene, and shakes his head. He might shake his head at us, but his eyes are smiling. "And that means you will not bait your little brother, Kyoya."

Niisama inclines his head in Chichi-ue's direction. "If that is your wish."

Niisama might not listen to anyone else in the world, but he'd drop everything for two people and two people only-his respected father, and his beloved Lovely Girl.

It is just the way of things, that Niisama loves Kanae-chan the most out of all of them. He is an attentive and caring brother to the rest of them, though he and Masato-nii never see eye to eye. He loves all of them, in his icy way of his, Mito knows that.

It is just that if Mito asks him for the moon, he'd laugh and tell her that he cannot do it, but if Kanae-chan asks him for the moon, he'd be out the door before she's even finished her request.

Mito doesn't find that to be so strange or bitter. She'd drop everything if Kanae-chan asked her for the moon too. Kanae inspires that sort of motivation in people.

"Now now, is this how to treat our family?" Obaasan pats Niisama on the head, and he preens under the gentle touch with a self satisfied look in his water-blue eyes. "I slaved away making ikayaki for all of you to fight over who took my youngest granddaughter dancing last night?"

A chorus of "No, of course not, Obaasan" rises, punctuated only by Chichi-ue's guilty look.

Obaasan sets the food on the table, careful to keep Niisama's live squid just a little bit away from everyone else's cooked food. Niisama eyes it with relish, clawed fingers tapping the stone table. Kanae-chan snuggles in under his arm to watch the show.

Niisama eating live food will always be a bit of a bloody mess.

"Now." Obaasan examines the empty place at the table with her sharp green eyes, a hand on her hip. "Where is Korui? You would think that after twenty-two years that boy would learn not to miss dinner."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Korui-nii rushes in trailing soap suds behind him while still scrubbing ink stains from his hands. "The emergency seal pattern was down, and I've spent all afternoon trying to get the mori into some semblance of agreement…" He looks once around the table and takes the only empty spot beside Kyoya-niisama. "I'll be on time tomorrow."

Everyone around the table breaks out into a sudden fit of laughter. "That," Mito gasps. "Is the biggest lie I've ever heard you tell."

Korui-nii sends her a disgruntled look. "Bah." He waves his fingers in her direction in a shooing motion. "Go away, little sister."

Obaasan's ikayaki is more delicious than anything Mito's ever had, before or since.


"Masa-nii!" Kanae bounces up and down in front of Masato-nii's workbench. "Masa-nii you said you were going to finish today."

He had been working on her hairpins off and on for the better part of several months, whittling the large rib bone down into the smaller tubes fit for a little girl's hair.

Mito had been sitting next to him, discussing the merits of eight point sealing versus seven point when Kanae burst in.

"Masato." He corrects her gently. "Masa just means exalted, and I doubt I am your most exalted Niisan."

"But then I'd be calling you Exalted Leader Niisan." Kanae mutters. "Surely, I don't think of that every time I talk to you either." She clambers onto the bench next to him anyway. "Oh, Masa-nii don't be grumpy. You know I love you."

"Yes, of course you do." Masato-nii prods their little sister's cheek with the blunt end of his chisel. "You will just always take Niisama's side on things because you love him better."

"Masato-nii." Mito cuts in. "You shouldn't bait Kanae-chan like that." She sets her hand on her brother's shoulder. "We all love you. You know that."

He sighs and sets his work down on the table. "Of course." The twist of his lips is a little sardonic. "No one minds of course, that the King's third son is the family disappointment."

"Masa-nii!" Kanae crosses her arms and frowns, swinging her legs back and forth almost violently. "No one thinks you're disappointing."

"Everyone's just too polite to mention it." Masato-nii crosses his arms and stares back at them. "But of course, neither of you can be disappointing. Mito-chan is the Pearl of Uzu and Kanae-chan's the Little Storm." He runs a hand through his sweat soaked hair and sighs. "Niisama is the fabulous hanyou. Korui-nii is the perfect heir. The Twins are so mischievous that you'd have to love them. Where does that leave me?" A craftsman, not a warrior.

A little different than the rest of us.

"It leaves you to tell me not to stink up the bay." Niisama's standing in the doorway, dripping with seawater and blood. There are several large gashes across his torso, already closing right before their eyes, and a patch of hair missing from his scalp. It looks like he went and had it out with Habiki-sama anyway. He didn't lose all of his hair though, so it most likely ended up as a draw. "Unfortunately, I don't listen well, Little Brother."

"Oh please." Masato-nii snorts. "You all have to look away whenever Asuran visits because no one wants to know-" He takes a deep breath as though ready to dive into a rant.

Mito has the strong desire to cover up her ears. Whatever her brother did with his lover is not her business and she doesn't want to know about it in lurid detail.

"No one cares who you love or who you don't." Niisama smiles. "But go ahead, I'd love to hear the details so that I may murder Asuran slowly for hurting my little brother's feelings even the slightest bit."

Masato-nii's mouth snaps shut like an oyster shell.

"Masa-nii." Kanae chirps in the intervening silence. "We avoid you sometimes, but not because you're disappointing." All eyes in the room turn toward the little girl who has picked up her hairpins and holds them up to the light.

They are truly beautiful, carved with little spiraling images and delicate waves. Masato-nii had cared so much for them even if he didn't show it.

"We avoid you sometimes because you're so grumpy." Kanae pats his hand. "We know you love us, but you don't make it so easy to spend time with you. No one thinks you're disappointing."

Masato-nii flushes from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck.

Kanae had only started to set her hairpins back on the table when Masato-nii interrupts once more. "They're done. You can take them now."

"Thank you!" Kanae flashes him a brilliant smile and then she bounces over to Niisama. "Look see, aren't they pretty?"

Niisama inclines his head. "Never as lovely as my lovely girl." A clawed hand tugs at one of Kanae's stray curls. "But yes, the Porcupine Child is very good at what he does. Of course, they're pretty." He and Masato-nii share a look over Kanae's shoulder.

Kanae laughs and takes Niisama's hand. "Shishou's holding a bonfire where he's boiling squid stingers, you should come and see. And oh you promised to…"

Niisama leans over, and sweeps her off of her feet, lifting her until she is sitting high on his shoulder. She laughs and claps, her hair a tangled riot of red curls. "I know what I promised you, Lovely Girl." Niisama brushes her hair away from his face. "Lessons with the Koto was it?"

Mito's little sister nods and claps excitedly. "Niisama knows me so well!"

Her excited chattering fades into indistinct mumblings as both she and Niisama disappear down the hallway.

"Did she not think that I know you all love me?" Masato-nii sits down heavily on his bench. "I know I am loved."

"She isn't wrong you know." Mito adds gently. "You are so often prickly that it makes it hard to show how we love you."

"I am unlike you." Masato says as he fiddles with another piece of bone. "I want nothing more than to be left alone with everyone. Perhaps that makes me grumpy and sullen."

Mito laughs. "No, that just makes you yourself."

He opens his desk drawer and pulls out a bone comb. "This one's for you, Mito-chan."

Mito takes it carefully, admiring the profusion of mainland flowers woven through the spiraling waves of Uzu. "Where did you learn about mainland flowers?"

Her third brother hasn't been away from home before, doesn't prefer sailing or traveling, so she is a bit at a loss. "Kyoya-niisama consented to bring me samples of the flowers he sees on his travels." Masato-nii shrugs. "He does not know what I want them for so they are not always well preserved, but the ones on your comb are poppies, or so I am told."

Poppies. Mito rolls the word over in her head.

"They were red." Masato-nii says suddenly. "A scarlet sort of red, like your hair Mito-chan."

"Thank you, Masato-nii." Mito tucks the comb away into her sleeve and kisses her brother on the cheek. It is just like her third brother to tuck away all of his softness behind his sharp edges, and only show his love by the little ways he thinks of others. "I always know that you are thinking of us."

Masato-nii blushes a bright, fiery red.


Winter is nothing more a distant memory, and spring has rolled around once more. Mito, now more than ever rather wishes that it hasn't, because spring means that the harbor is open again, and Tanaka-san is once more taking jobs by commission.

He is not the Viper of Uzu without reason. Normally, this would be less of an issue, but this year, he greets his king and queen with a bow and proceeds to ask for a different sort of favor than leaving the island so that he may descend once more into a court full of poisonous nobles on the mainland.

"My apprentice is old enough to come with me this year." Tanaka-san begins with Kanae-chan peeping out from behind his arm. "I would like your permission to bring her with me."

Now Mito knows that Kanae's been the poisoner's apprentice for years now, and her little sister has serious aspirations for a position in the border guard, but isn't twelve too young for a mainland visit, even with the ever capable Tanaka-san?

She holds her tongue about that though, because she had asked Chichi-ue for the same sort of favor last year, and he had not said no to her.

Who is she to rain on her sister's parade if she wants to go? I must offer her the same that has been offered to me.

If Kanae-chan dies, then we will grieve. We must grieve, and then we must move on.

"Absolutely not." Haha-ue hisses. "Never."

"Naokano." Chichi-ue says, the single word heavy in the air. "Why should we not offer the same opportunities to our younger daughter as we do the elder?"

"She is still a child." Haha-ue is not normally so ruled by her emotions, but, but- "And look at what the mainland did to Mito."

"Haha-ue." It isn't entirely her place to speak, but she will not let herself be used as an example of why her little sister may not have her freedom. "The mainland did nothing to me. My sadness and introspection is my own."

Kanae's eyes are wide, a shocked jade green. Mito's heart hurts at the sight of it.

Tanaka-san stands tall.

"Shiko-chan?" Chichi-ue leans forward, his fingers steepled together on the table. "Did Tanaka-san ask you to go with him?"

Kanae shakes her head. "I volunteered."

"You cannot be serious, Ashina." Haha-ue cuts back in. "You cannot let her go."

"Cannot?" Chichi-ue raises an eyebrow at her, a slight edge of sharpness to his voice. "I will remind you of this only once, Nao. I am your king."

Haha-ue presses her lips together tightly. Clearly, there will be more words about this very topic, but certainly not any more in front of Tanaka-san.

"I give you leave to take your apprentice with you on your travels." Chichi-ue inclines his head in respect for Tanaka-san's advanced age. "Go with the blessing of your king."

That they do not have the blessing of their queen is loud in the room despite the silence where Haha-ue would normally offer a blessing of her own.

Mito follows her sister and her sister's teacher out of the main hall. "Kanae-chan? You've packed well?"

Her sister nods. "Shishou helped."

She's no longer happy though, and for a moment, Mito harbors uncharitable thoughts towards her mother. Kanae should always be happy.

"Kanae-chan, look at me." She takes her sister's face in her hands and presses a kiss to to Kanae's forehead, and then to both cheeks. "You have to do what you think is right. You can't let other people decide what you want to do with your life."

Kanae nods, but Mito's not finished. "You want to go to the mainland and learn to be an infiltrator and a poisoner and then you want to come back and earn your spot as the captain of the border guard. You can do that. If that's what you want to do, then you will find a way."

Kanae flings her arms around Mito's neck. "Thank you, Neesan."

Mito smiles. "Always." Always.

I will always support your dreams whatever they may be. Big or small, they'll find a home in my heart.

"I have to go say goodbye to Niisama!" Kanae's running off down the hall. "And Shiro-nii and Ruta-nii and everyone!"

Tanaka-san meets her eyes for a moment after she rises. "Didn't think you'd take the side the Queen ought to have, Mito-hime."

Mito brushes the dust off of the edges of her sleeves. "I would be hypocritical if I did not allow my sister the same freedom that others have given me." And it is true. Her sister deserves the chance to make her own choices.

"She'll be safer than you were, and you weren't hurt by something time couldn't heal." Tanaka-san offers. "We're not going to a warzone just the court that I already play like a fiddle. She'll play my granddaughter. It's a believable enough ruse." His words are blunt, but true.

Time and distance has given her the space to heal. I was not useless.

"I know." Mito walks with him down the hall. "I know. You love Kanae-chan as much as we all do."

He watches her for a long, silent moment. "You'll make some man a mighty fine queen one day, Mito-hime."

Hashirama's tanned face appears in her mind's eye for a moment. She doesn't want to be a queen, but- "Thank you very much for your kind words, Tanaka-san." The surly old man doesn't give out compliments often. She ought to take the kindness for what it is, a kindness, not a reminder of what will inevitably be her duty one day.

I will make a gracious queen to one of the many feuding kings in the Land of Water, or perhaps further, to the Land of Lightning.

It will be only my due.

Alliances, after all, are quite important.


Her little sister is gone for the months of June and July, celebrating her thirteenth birthday in a foreign land among nobles who frittered their days away in luxury and wealth.

Hashirama writes to her still, about the state of the war, the state of the Senju, and his hopes for the future. He is stronger now, more confident and cheerful than the morose letters he had sent her during her five months of silence. Perhaps it is a front now that he knows she reads her mail. Perhaps he doesn't want to worry her. Hashirama is so very good at trying not to worry people.

Sometimes, that bothers her. He asks so very little for himself, but always so much for others.

Still, he dreams of peace, and Mito can do nothing but encourage him.

Peace in Uzu may not be perfect, but it is certainly much better than the constant threat of death and destruction no matter where one turned. It is better than a child who still wants to live, but can only ask with shaking breaths if he will die before the sun sets.

Peace is not perfect by any means, but it is much more ideal.

So Mito tells him of the imperfections, is careful not to make it seem as though there are no problems here when there are.

On the mainland, Uzu has gained some sort of legendary status as a safe haven, where nothing truly terrible ever happened, where everyone is always happy, a utopia.

It could not be further from the truth. Peace brings with it different sorts of tensions.

Sometimes the winters are harsh, and food is difficult to find. Sometimes, a summer storm smashes the ships in the harbor, and it is a delicate and painful job to stitch them back together again with chakra and ink. Sometimes, entire ships are lost at sea and the widow's walk is crowded with the family members of a crew that will never sail again.

Sometimes there is sickness that the medics cannot cure, and the bodies must be buried far out at sea to prevent an infection.

Sometimes, but most times life is good.

"Mito-nee!" Aruta slings an arm around her shoulders. "Mito-nee guess what?"

She looks up, but Ashiro is nowhere to be seen. That brings a bit of tension to her spine. Wherever one goes, the other follows, so it is likely that they are planning to pull some trick on her.

"What?" She asks.

"Chichi will let us have our own ship this year!" He singsongs next to her ear. "And when he does we shall gather up a crew of our friends and some old hands and be on the hunt for whales." He tugs her to her feet, dancing to a tune only he can hear.

"Will he?" Mito asks. The news has cheered her, if only because the Twins have wanderlust and sea-fever coursing in the marrow of their bones. That Chichi-ue had finally agreed to let them go means that the house will settle down from their endless string of pranks.

"Yes, yes, yes! He has promised us so." Aruta tugs her about around the garden and into the house. "A new ship that we can call our own."

"Oh?" Mito laughs. "And have you decided on a name?"

Aruta swoons backwards dramatically. "The Whirlpool Queen, for Haha."

She has barely a second's notice before the water bucket flies from the ceiling and soaks her completely. In that second she pulls Aruta back so that he is equally soaked and sputtering.

"You were saying, little brother?" She asks.

"Aww." Ashiro hops down from his perch on the roofbeams. "This was no fun at all."

Aruta spits out a mouthful of water and glares at his brother. "I thought we agreed that we would wait until I passed before you let go?"

"Mito-nee was too fast for us." Ashiro looks over at her with a wide, cheeky grin. "I hope you'll forgive us for trying to soak you, but it's true that Chichi will let us leave soon."

"Am I the last one you had to joke with before you could leave in peace?"

"Nah." The Twins shrug as one. "Shiko-chan isn't back yet, and we wanna dunk her in the bay before we go, and also tease her about Habiki-san a few more times."

Mito knows Ichiro-usahaya no Habiki-sama, King of his Sea, passingly well. He is a friend of Niisama's and he has paid her court for a few months summers ago. She had found him ultimately, charming but strange.

"Don't do that." Mito ruffles both heads of hair, the dry and the dripping. "She doesn't like it when you do."

"Ah but that's half the fun." They chorus together. "You've gotta admit it's rather fun, right?"

"I don't like it very much when my little sister is teased." Still, the Twins don't tease in meanness and only in fun so she lets it go. "Still, Kanae-chan will be home in just a few more days, so if you're patient enough, you'll be able to dunk her in the bay."

They nod quickly and whirl off to do whatever it is they do when they are not luring innocents into their traps. "Bye bye, Mito-nee! Have fun with your sealing session."

Mito waves them off and returns to the stone bench in the water garden where she had left her notes.


That night, dark wings grow larger out of the setting sun, scattering the noisy gulls all the way down the beach. Mito sees them coming and heads out to wait on the sea strand.

When they land, their shape morphs into that of a tall, dark haired woman with corpse gray skin and icy blue eyes. She has no claws on her hands, but her lips are pale and bloodless even against her ashen skin.

Chichi-ue had not fallen in love with her appearance, for Lady Biwa is not very pretty by human standards, but something intrinsically of value to her.

She turns all eyes towards her whenever she steps foot on the ground.

"Hello, Little Kitten." She says, her voice airy and breathlike. "Have you seen my hatchling? I have need of him." Oh, so that is what it is. Lady Biwa is here to find Niisama.

Mito cursties. "It is good to see you again, Lady Biwa." It is an unusual visit. Most times, Lady Biwa lingers in the Mountains of the Moon for more than two years before coming back. There is rarely anything urgent like this that would bring her to Uzu unannounced. "I'll go tell Niisama that you are here, if you'd like to come up into the house for tea and rice cakes?"

Lady Biwa regards her impassively, calmly, for what feels like hours before her lips part in a small smile. "Of course, my kitten. Tea and cakes sounds lovely."

Mito offers her a hand, and she takes it as they make their way on foot across the beach.

Mito is not entirely sure, even after nearly eighteen years, what to call Chichi-ue's youkai lover. Indeed, she's not sure that there is a way that anyone could possibly call this imposing woman next to her anything informal at all.

Certainly, she can't possibly call Lady Biwa, Biwa-baachan, though Niisama refers to Haha-ue familiarly enough.

Still, this is all not entirely for her to question. Lady Biwa is Lady Biwa, that is all.

Mito alerts the household staff of their coming, in time to make certain that Haha-ue and Chichi-ue both know it. There will likely be a party tonight, to celebrate, and Chichi-ue will take both his wife and his love dancing.

"My kitten, you are of the age where love is a consideration, yes?" Lady Biwa regards her with calm eyes, her head tilted to one side. It causes her braid to slip over her shoulder.

For all the time that Mito has known her, the Lady of the Iron Claw has looked exactly the same, unchanged by time, unweathered by the storm, with a face equally twenty and fifty all at once.

Unbidden, Hashirama's face comes back to her. What is love? She hasn't yet found it. "It would not be unusual if I were to be married in the next few years, no." Mito allows.

The Tori people of the Mountain of the Moon don't believe in marriage. So perhaps, Lady Biwa may be persuaded that it is a form of love.

"I will never understand Ashina's people." The woman beside her sighs. "You will speak to me of alliances and marriages and the betterment of many people built off of your unhappiness, but that is not love." She turns her head so that she meets Mito's brown eyes squarely. Mito has forgotten, of course, that Lady Biwa has watched her lover and her best friend's marriage go on for nearly three decades now. "I am asking you of love, my kitten. All people deserve the right to love."

And yet, it is Chichi-ue's love that sows dissension...No. It is not love, Mito decides. It is the inability to spend his entire life with only the one that he loves that is the issue.

"I have not yet found someone I love." Mito tells her the truth, because Lady Biwa, no matter her belief or disbelief in marriage, also never lies.

Lady Biwa hums. "You will one day." She says so with such confidence, as though duty may be shucked off like yesterday's fish guts to a cat.

"May I ask you something?" Mito has always wondered.

"You may." They are in the water gardens now, and Lady Biwa trails a hand through a fountain, water droplets gathering on her corpse gray skin.

"What led you to love Chichi-ue?" Won't you have to say goodbye to him so much before any youkai suitor of yours? Mito doesn't quite understand it.

Her Chichi-ue's life is a drop in an ocean compared to the years the woman on her arm has to spend.

"Hmmm." The corners of Lady Biwa's bloodless lips curl upwards. "I think I fell in love with the way he laughed." She leans in to whisper conspiratorially in Neesan's ear. "As a young man, he was always laughing."

"But he left you." Duty said that he marry Haha-ue, and so he had. "And he will leave you again when he dies before you." It would be a cold day indeed, when Lady Biwa falls, but it is unlikely that it will be before Chichi-ue passes.

Perhaps her thoughts have a morbidly dark bent to them these days. Butsuma-dono's passing has done nothing to fill her thoughts with flowers and joy.

"That is so," Lady Biwa allows. "He will leave this realm before I do, and had I chosen a youkai lover it would likely not be so. It is like the turn of the wind," She murmurs, as they step into the front hall. "But it is better to have had and lost than to have never taken the first step, is it not so, Mito-chan?"

"What are you speaking of to my daughter so seriously, Biwa?" Chichi-ue's standing in the low light at the other end of the hall, by a painted red pillar.

"Your life." Lady Biwa replies. "And your passing."

"It must be a strange topic for you." Chichi-ue steps forward for an embrace. "You are slow to speak of the sad things."

"I have no desire to grieve before I must." She returns the hug fondly, but her eyes scan the hall before her. "And where is my wild war child?"

"Haha." Niisama steps into the hall while tucking something into his sleeve. "You're early."

Lady Biwa runs a hand through the dark flight feathers falling over his forehead. "The rebels have begun a resurgence. My brother has need of your skill."

Niisama freezes. "Kozei-jisan does?" He seems to be considering something very carefully. "At least stay for a few days, Haha. I will need to say goodbye to my siblings and Kanae-chan isn't home yet."

He is serious then, if he's dropped his nickname for Kanae. She is his 'lovely girl' nearly always.

Mito wonders for a brief moment, who the rebels are, and if they'd keep Niisama away from home for a long time. It doesn't seem likely though.

Haha-ue appears to gather Lady Biwa into a warm hug. "Stay for dinner, Biwa." She says. Her lips are smiling, but her eyes are not.

"Of course, Nao."

And so again, Mito's life changes.


A.N. We get less of Hashirama, (In fact, nearly no Hashirama at all this chapter.) but we do get a closer look at the Uzumaki Family dynamics which were less fleshed out in the Sunfall/Moonrise POVs. Never fear though, Hashirama is rapidly returning in Chapter 4.

My other work is being worked on, but slowly and polishing the material I already have written for this is easier than trying to juggle the Bon arc of Bloodless right now, so this is getting done at a faster rate.

Thank you so much to mikurocks1234 and Elise142 for reviewing!

And everyone else who favorited and followed.

~Tavina.