I'm currently on holiday, but there will be another update on Thursday regardless.
Compass of thy Soul
Winter looms ever nearer but the fighting does not stop. It slows, but the Senju keep encroaching on their borders and keep needing to be driven off despite the snow on the ground, and Tobirama in particular takes relentless advantage of the sudden abundance of his element to soak every last Uchiha he can ambush with his prodigious water techniques. At least a quarter of the Outguard have been treated for mild exposure and two are in bed with pneumonia; Madara is currently working on a technique that uses fire chakra to maintain body temperature, with the help of some lower-ranking Outguard with more modest chakra reserves. 'Low effort' is not Madara's strong point.
Kita of course has never seen Tobirama in person, but she has heard a lot about him from listening to Izuna rant while she mends his coat. Tobirama is very good with a sword so her blunting and reinforcement seals are not enough to keep the garment intact; she has to take up her needle every two weeks or so to restitch them and patch rents. Thankfully Izuna wears armour under it.
"–and then when I tried to pin him down with Great Fire Annihilation he just stopped it with this gigantic wall made of water! I've never seen that technique before! It's barely five handseals and how does he even come up with these things?!"
"Try this on for me?" Kita requests, holding out the repaired coat. Izuna obligingly does so, still grumbling about his nemesis.
"I swear, he does it for fun. Half the time he barely bothers to attack me with chakra, he just stops all my techniques dead and makes me look like a moron…"
Izuna's wristbones are visible past his sleeve cuffs. Kita tugs lightly on the nearest sleeve, but it doesn't move. "Stand up for me for a moment, please?"
"Why?" Izuna's standing almost before he's finished asking that though. Kita eyes the lower hem –his knees are showing– and sighs.
"Izuna, you've grown out of your coat."
"No I haven't!"
"Your wrists and knees are showing," Kita says bluntly. "I'll have to make you a new one." He's probably never going to be as tall as his brother, but he's not short.
Izuna grimaces unhappily. "Kita-chan, we don't have time. I could be called out into the field at any moment!"
"All the more reason to get you into a better-fitting coat as quickly as possible," Kita retorts firmly. "It's got to be restricting your movement, and if it isn't already it will be soon." If it isn't, it's only because that coat was originally made for Madara, who is more solidly built than Izuna is.
Izuna bites his lower lip. "A simple pattern then," he decides. "Something that won't take you long to put together."
He won't pick one of her originals then; those are all fairly intricate. Unless, of course, she can tempt him otherwise. "I'll get you out the designs so you can choose."
Because the Outguard and Homeguard Heads both traditionally belong to the Amaterasu lineage and they, their spouses and their children are all permitted to wear patchwork coats, there are strict rules about who is allowed to wear what in terms of imagery. Only a Head is allowed to wear a coat with Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susano-o full-sized in the lining. Heirs are allowed all three, but half-sized. Kita got around that in Madara's coat by including Izanagi washing his face, making the trio's smaller size look like perspective or a feature of the storytelling. A Head's daughters are all permitted to wear a full-sized Amaterasu, and a head's sons are all permitted to wear Tsukuyomi or Susano-o.
Nephews and nieces of Heads may be granted permission to wear patchwork coats, but it is a privilege not a right. Kita thinks Tajima-sama allowed it for Hikaku because at that point there were only four other individuals in the lineage with the right to it and it affirms his brother's sons' dependence on him personally.
Nobody can upgrade the image in their coat lining above what they are permitted without both Heads agreeing to it, but if a person wants to downgrade they are free to do so. Hence Tajima walking around with a Susano-o coat from before he was Outguard Head and Madara wearing the Hare of Inaba until he grew out of it. It is however encouraged that coat linings be distinctive; they are often used to identify bodies. Mostly when bodies are too damaged to be identified otherwise.
Hikaku is wearing Tsukuyomi, so Kita is going to offer Izuna Susano-o. There are a lot of Susano-o designs, from the basic portrait with sun and moon over each shoulder as allusions to his siblings, through various mythic scenes –including Susano-o throwing a flayed pony at his sister's loom– all the way to three different versions of the kami slaying Yamata no Orochi, one of which Kita has contributed.
Izuna flicks through the designs very carefully, going back to her pattern of the death of the eight-headed dragon three times –maybe he likes how the dragon's severed heads wind down the sleeves?– but settles on the simplest full-body portrait. It doesn't even have storm clouds or roiling waves in the background. Given how often she repairs Izuna's coat, she could probably add to that over time if she really wanted to.
"This one."
Kita eyeballs him. "You offend my artistic integrity," she informs him flatly.
"Look, when we're not constantly fighting the Senju anymore I'll personally pay for a fancier coat," Izuna bargains, "but this isn't the time."
"I'll hold you to that. What colour do you want the rest of the lining to be?"
Izuna shrugs. "Blue? Grey? Something dull anyway."
Damasked or watered grey silk could substitute for storm clouds. Kind of. "Fine, go put your armour on so I can measure you. Wait, does that need adjusting too?"
"I got my armour adjusted months ago, Kita-chan!"
Kita glares at him. "And you didn't think to request the same for your coat?"
Izuna shrugs, eyes glinting. "Whoops?"
Kita throws a cushion at him. It bounces off his shoulder. "Take that coat off and leave it here," she tells him, "then go dress for your fitting."
"What's going to happen to this coat?" Izuna asks, stripping out of it.
Kita eyes the many, many repairs, both to the outer layer and the patchwork lining, remembering all the times she's had to take it apart to patch the canvas core. "Dismantled for rags I suspect; it's pretty much had it. But not until I've got your new coat finished, which shouldn't take me very many days." Really, that pattern is almost insultingly easy.
"You're cute when you're huffy, Kita-chan," the brat of a seventeen-year-old tells her cheerfully as he darts out through the shōji towards the genkan. Kita is going to stab him with pins as many times as she can feasibly get away with during his fitting. The armour will make that a bit tricky but it doesn't protect everything.
It's Kita's birthday today and Madara got dragged out of bed at some painfully early hour by Father, on the basis that they need to test whether Tobirama can sense people moving around when he's sleeping. It turns out that yes, Tobirama can –great– and based on how bleary-eyed the Senju are and how Butsuma's teeth are grinding almost audibly, Father is probably going to do this again. Or possibly start waking them up for feints, just so as to wear Tobirama down. If half the times they leave the compound they just turn around again and go back to bed and keep doing it in the middle of the night, Butsuma is going to get sick of his son waking him up and give different orders.
He got a nap in around midday, but he wants to go home and he can't because Hashirama is lurking behind the lines on the Senju side and while nobody is attacking right now, that's not going to last.
It doesn't last. Night has long since fallen again before Madara is allowed to stumble home. He's exhausted and hungry and has dead leaves in his hair. He kicks off his sandals in the genkan, frowns when he can't see his slippers anywhere and just walks in barefoot. He must have left them by his bed this morning.
"Madara?"
Oh, that's why no slippers; he's at Hikaku's. Kita gets up from beside the iori, setting her embroidery aside –another coat lining?– and gently leads him into a side room.
"Here, start changing; I'll fetch a stand for your armour."
Madara strips off his weapons and lays them down on the low chest, hangs his coat over the corner of the upright cabinet and starts fumbling with his chest plate. There's some bumping sounds overhead, then Kita is in the room again with a proper armour and weaponry stand cradled in her arms. Madara helps her assemble it, then strips down to his padded winter long johns and undershirt, adding his weapons to the rack after his armour is all properly hung up. He's so tired.
Kita walks back in –when did she leave?– with a bowl of warm water and a towel. Yes. He should wash; he wants to wash, at least a quick rinse-over so he doesn't smell so bad. Kita walks out as he takes off his undershirt and walks back in a few minutes later with a nemaki nightshirt, which she dresses him in as he dries his hands and face, then once she's tied the belt he moves onto his feet and the floor, leaving his clothes and warm under-layers in a pile by the shōji along with the towel.
"Sit down so I can brush your hair."
Madara sits. He can feel Kita's knees against his back and her hands in his hair; she's using one of her three-pronged tortoiseshell hairpins, which have wider-spaced teeth than a comb would. His hair always tangles and he didn't get a chance to brush it this morning, so it must be a mess. He thought growing it out would help but so far it's just made it messier.
He's so tired and he knows he's got bruises from Hashirama's stupid trees, but Kita is gently untangling his hair without pulling too hard and it's just so nice to sit with her, to feel her chakra against his…
Madara wakes up, realises before even opening his eyes that the body in the bed with him is Kita –Izuna doesn't smell this nice– and decides that right now he doesn't care. Kita's sixteen now, more than old enough to have found out about sex and desire, and the body in his arms very definitely has curves so if she had him undress in her bedroom and dragged him into her bed after he nodded off then evidently she's decided she's comfortable with it. They're betrothed; it was always going to happen sooner or later.
… has she braided his hair? She always braids her own hair before going to bed. Is it to stop it all from tangling? If so, he's got to start doing that.
Later. Right now it's dark, the bed is warm and he's still too tired to care that he's hungry.
Izuna arrives as Kita is serving breakfast, carrying his own bowl of chazuke cradled against his chest. The irregular hours the Outguard are suffering through means meal quality has dropped, since proper meals have to be prepared in advance. Kita is currently working on refrigeration and reheating seals, but the current situation is that the Outguard's best and most filling meals arrive to them in bento at the fallback points behind the front lines. Breakfast is generally previously cooked rice with tea or stock tipped over it to reheat it: quick, warm, portable and –most importantly– easily assembled by Outguard members themselves from previously prepared ingredients.
Surprisingly few of the clan's warriors are capable of preparing anything more complicated than rice balls and tea, despite all of them being able to identify edible greens and mushrooms in the wild.
Kita has made katemishi, a mixed grain and vegetable porridge, because despite being peasant food it is warm and filling and easy to vary on a daily basis so that the younger children don't complain. Today's has rice, millet, pickled daikon, winter squash, sesame seeds and wakame in and is garnished with fish flakes; Madara is already on his second serving.
"How do you walk into the wrong house, brother?" Izuna complains, flopping onto a cushion and scooting as close to the iori as can be achieved without setting his trousers on fire. "We've lived in the hall all our lives!"
Madara barely glances up from the food he is shovelling into his mouth, but shifts so as to lean into Izuna's shoulder. Izuna shakes his head but pulls chopsticks out of his sleeve so he can dig into his own food.
Kita offers him fish flakes, which are gratefully accepted with enthusiastic nodding; Izuna has his mouth full.
"Still, how did you not notice?" Izuna demands later, after everyone has eaten their fill and Kita has scooped the remainder into bowls for Hidaka to run over to the Outguard assembly point for the clansmen on watch duty. "The buildings don't even look the same!" He's leaning into Madara though, so Kita knows the argument isn't serious.
"I was tired," Madara grumbles. "And it's not like it mattered. Kita got Ojisan's field armour rack out for me and some of his nightwear."
"Oh so it's Kita now?" Izuna asks slyly, eyeing her across the iori as she heats water to wash the bowls. "Yobisute? Well she is sixteen, I suppose it was bound to happen. I was still expecting you to take things mo–"
Madara grabs his brother by the hair and grinds his face into the tatami. "We are not doing that! It was just sleeping!" Izuna retaliates and it turns into a wrestling match; Kita keeps an eye on them, but the fight is fairly half-hearted.
"Well you did look dead on your feet when you left the meeting point," Izuna concedes, catching his brother in a headlock, "so it's probably for the best. You might have fallen asleep halfway throu–"
"Shut up!" And over they go again, Madara now attempting to smother his younger brother with a cushion.
Benten giggles, watching avidly over the dishes she is drying as she kneels beside Kita. She's five now and fully participant in all the daily chores; the rice Izuna is eating was supervised by her throughout the cooking phase last night, just before Kita tucked her up in bed. Getting to see her much-idolised cousin eat her cooking is an unexpected treat; Izuna is the family favourite because he both smiles and talks more than Madara does.
Kita's glad to see Madara and Izuna messing around. There have been days –days that are steadily becoming more frequent– when Izuna just mutters bile and Madara slumps silently, unable to muster the energy to combat his younger brother's venom.
Those are the days when Kita takes it upon herself to banter back, which is actually exhausting but being argued with energises Izuna sufficiently to prod him into stomping off out of the house to complain to his friends about how terrible all her ideas are, especially when she manages to point out a logical fallacy in his reasoning. Kita then gets to lean into her betrothed and be silently comforting as she mends, embroiders, paints or practices koto, enjoying how his chakra gradually settles in her presence.
She's far better at koto these days, but she still doesn't enjoy playing scales. Actual tunes are so much less mind-numbing. She has also finally learned all her kanji, although she is still expected to practice her calligraphy, and her education into clan history remains ongoing; there's centuries of material there. Her tea ceremony is also a work in progress; knowing what to do does not make her performance any smoother, so practice continues. Kita sometimes struggles to reconcile the hypocrisy of Ohabari-oba and Tajima-sama recognising that penalising her for writing with her left hand is ridiculous, yet still expecting her to perform tea ceremony right-handed.
The fight eventually ends with Hikaku reminding Izuna that he has watch duty at dawn, prompting the seventeen-year-old to dash off in search of his armour. He's wearing his new coat now –it really didn't take her any time at all to sew– and she at least managed to put enough care and detail into the outside that most people will never realise how basic and dashed-off the lining is. Well, despite being plain she did manage to quilt the grey silk background in cloud shapes, so it's not entirely boring. Given how regularly she's patching Izuna's coat, she can probably add a few embellishments here and there, so long as she isn't too obvious about it. Better to avoid the sleeves though; they're the most regular target.
Madara lies where his brother left him, sprawled on his back across the tatami and studiously avoiding eye-contact. His control over his chakra presence has really shot up lately, so Kita can really only guess at his mood. She suspects he's embarrassed.
"I'm not actually interested in any of that yet," she says as she hands Benten the bowl of used washing up water for the five-year-old to carefully carry outside and pour through a sieve over the drain that meanders discreetly through the shrubbery. The contents of the sieve will then go in the slop bucket, which will be collected by whoever is feeding the pigs today. "And I trust you to respect that."
Madara sits up again and carefully straightens the tatami, moving the cushions back to where they'd started.
"I also don't mind you starting the night here rather than just wandering over because you're too tired to notice you're doing it," Kita adds, because it's the truth. "It's nice having somebody to snuggle with."
Her betrothed ducks his head, hair sliding forwards over his face. His ears are visible though and ever so slightly pink. "I'll remember," he promises huskily.
He does remember. He ends up staying over a few nights a week, although sometimes he gets called out in the middle of the night. Kita swiftly learns to ignore that though; if she needed to be awake, he'd tell her.
Shortly after Izuna's birthday in February Tajima-sama informs Kita that she is now old enough to be moved into the clan hall. In her own bedroom, of course; she won't be sharing a room with Madara until they are actually married. Kita suspects this is purely so that Tajima doesn't need to leave the hall to find his son when he's trying to arrange a night raid on the Senju forces.
Kita would be more worried about leaving Hikaku's brothers alone –Hijiri has regular Outguard training now he's fourteen but Hidaka is only six– had the seventeen-year-old not recently fallen head-over-heels in love with one of Yumiori-oba's apprentices. Yori is also seventeen, delightfully honest, shockingly well-adjusted and utterly gleeful at the prospect of being able to move in with her sweetheart. Also very likely to beg her parents for an early coming-of-age, so she can marry him properly rather than simply being his lover; not that not being married yet will in any way to dissuade Yori from having sex with Hikaku.
Yori knows what she wants and intends to get it. Kita is willing to enable this, but is going to keep Benten. She's been raising the little girl from when she was eighteen months old and is the only mother the five-year-old remembers; breaking that commitment would be a betrayal.
The Uchiha understand the importance of emotional bonds, so Tajima-sama will only complain if Benten gets underfoot. Little girls are invisible to clan heads until they start causing trouble.
Without big brothers to snuggle with, Benten is likely to end up in Kita's bed. Which honestly could be part of Tajima-sama's latest evil scheme; Madara is very private and while sex in your betrothed's room is private, it's not private if there's a five-year-old asleep in the bed as well. What if Benten wakes up?
Sneaky and typical of him; Kita instantly starts plotting out secrecy seals. Her bento-box and refrigeration seals are a smash hit with the clan; everybody likes hot lunches and longer-lasting fresh fish. Tajima-sama is even vaguely in favour of selling them. Well, charging a premium for the seals to be applied to some civilian craftsman's work, at least, since mass-production of lacquered bamboo lunchboxes would be a waste of clan resources.
Madara's response to stumbling in from a mission and finding her in his dining room is really quite delightful, and Benten's glee at living in the clan hall helps soften the blow of having to dress in outdoor clothes in order to spend time with her siblings.
It hurts a little that Kita knows more about Benten than Jōnen and little Tekari. It also hurts when Tateshima brings eight-year-old Midori to the hall's kitchen door to ask for cooking lessons on her behalf. Is Mama really so busy with teaching Naka and indulging her youngest son that her other daughters have given up on her completely? Or is that, since Midori has no interest in the family craft, she has been left to find her own way rather than Mama asking around and arranging a suitable apprenticeship? It was Grandma who picked up on Tateshina's talent, not Mama asking her to consider it.
By March Midori has also moved into the clan hall and Kita has acquired a separate futon for her and Benten, moving them into a little room that had previously been used to store all kinds of childhood odds and ends which Kita moves into the loft. Midori continues caring for Auntie Tsuyu's chickens and their parents' vegetable garden, although she does add caring for the ornamental garden around the clan hall to her duties. Kita isn't sure Mama's even noticed.
It really hurts when parents prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they too are human and fallible.
The war with the Senju slows down as missions start coming in again, but it doesn't really stop. Father has to keep the border fully fortified, which means fewer missions can be accepted as the Uchiha can't spare the manpower. Some of those missions get picked up by Homeguard members –a few here, a few there, mostly women who retired to have children and can afford to leave those now-older children with sisters or mothers for a few days– but Madara suspects that the projected drop in income is what prompts his father to decide to market Kita's sealing skills. Despite the clan's last two years' income each being higher than it has been in three decades regardless.
To be fair, he doesn't do it directly. Rather, he writes to a few longstanding Uchiha allies, most of whom are civilian but including a few shinobi clans they are on neutral terms with, and informs them that the Uchiha have seals against lightning strikes, leaking roofs, wood rot and vermin depredation. Nothing that offers an obvious military advantage, but all things that cost in time and resources; the flurry of offers –extremely generous offers– that are brought back in short order make it clear that yes, all their allies are prepared to dig deep into their pockets for such things.
Especially the Akimichi. They are offering ten years of spice deliveries on top of a cash fee upfront per building. Father is definitely taking them up on that, no matter how many storehouses end up needing to be sealed. This is easily decades –if not centuries– of spice deliveries, a vast range of spices they will not have to pay for. Insanely generous is what their offer is, which says a lot about how many losses having these seals will prevent them from suffering.
Father is however presenting Sannosawa-sensei as the clan's sealing specialist, for various reasons. For one, he is a respected scholar and fits the generally accepted image most civilians have for sealing masters. For another, he's been working alongside Kita for long enough that he does in fact understand her seals, so much so that he can reproduce them with only a minor loss of quality and stability.
More pragmatically, if everybody thinks Sannosawa-sensei is the seal master, if –or more realistically, when– he gets assassinated by Senju the Uchiha still have both their seals and their seal master. Sannosawa-sensei is fully on board with the risks, as is his apprentice Yamizo who is slightly better at drawing the seals despite understanding their inner workings rather less. They, more than anybody else in the clan, truly understand how valuable Kita's seals are, how much more stable and prosperous they have made the Uchiha as a whole.
Kita won't even be on those missions as herself; Father has ordered her to wear working dress, bind her chest, hide her hair down the back of her shirt and pretend to be Sannosawa-sensei's errand boy.
If he was expecting Kita to be offended, he was disappointed. Kita's only question is whether they'll be willing to eat her little sister's cooking while she is away. Which yes, is a valid question, but Midori-chan's cooking while basic is warm, filling and of consistent quality.
Madara would like very much to be bodyguard on those missions, but Father has assigned Akaishi and Hikaku that job. Madara has to stay closer to home on lower-stakes missions, so he can be called away at a moment's notice without compromising the clan's alliances should the Senju attack in force.
He really hopes Kita doesn't accidentally run into Hashirama or Tobirama on any of her missions. It's bad enough that Izuna has Mangekyō too now; he doesn't want to find out what will happen when Kita finally comes face to face with the horrors of war. The Uchiha have a saying about those clansmen who are most good-natured, which is that the steadiest flame burns the hottest.
Kita is possibly the most good-natured Uchiha Madara has ever met. She also has more than enough chakra now that she could activate her sharingan –if she has it– without accidentally killing herself an hour later from over-exertion. Combined with her seals –and the way she casually defied Father over mass-producing those knockout seals, 'for personal defence, so I am not submitting them for approval' indeed– he gets the feeling that her response to genuinely believing she is going to die would probably be very, very… let's say visceral.
The clan has another saying, that all Uchiha have the same reserves of innate drama at their disposal; some merely save it all for special occasions. And Madara has never seen his betrothed use more than the faintest garnish of drama for anything.
The first two sealing missions go off without a hitch; Father puts the Akimichi at the top of the queue due to the generosity of their offer, then sends letters to everybody else to let them know that their offers are 'being considered.' Which is political-speak for 'this is your opportunity to make a better offer;' everybody of course does make better offers, because mundane sealing applications are rarer than chicken teeth.
Madara's not sure why Kita uses that comparison. It does at least sound amusing; Izuna asked why not birds' teeth generally and had been horrified to learn that geese do, in fact, have teeth. As do swans.
Throat teeth.
Shudder.
The third sealing mission is the one Akaishi comes back from in an umbrella bag and Hikaku comes back from with Mangekyō. Yatagarasu Mangekyō in fact, not Amaterasu, which is a real surprise; not entirely implausible, since their shared grandmother was Yatagarasu lineage, but still surprising. It is, again, not exactly a fair trade. Especially not when Father's response to losing his right hand is to promote Hikaku to Akaishi's position and give him permission to marry Yori-san.
Hikaku's half a year younger than Izuna and not eighteen yet. He doesn't need this kind of pressure on him, but he's also the new head of the Yatagarasu branch and if he doesn't step up and marry, there will be more pressure on his younger siblings. Well, more pressure than there abruptly is already. Hikaku being Yatagarasu really upsets the political status quo, which hasn't yet recovered from Taka becoming Yomotsushikome Head. It does mean that Father keeps Hikaku closer to home now though; on the next sealing mission Father sends out Tsuyoshi and Taka to watch over Kita.
Everybody comes home from the next four sealing missions with only minimal injuries, by which point it's the height of summer and there's a lull in business. Kita of course has her silk cocoons to harvest at this point –Benten and Midori have been looking after the caterpillars for her and Madara's done some tree climbing for fresh leaves on request, as has Izuna– and the fact that it's also too hot to fight for six weeks straight prompts Father to arrange Hikaku's wedding.
Madara thinks it's very encouraging how very in love his cousin is with Yori-san, and how very clear it is that she loves him back just as much. He's not sure how Kita got that complicated Yatagarasu patchwork coat finished in time –has she been stitching it on the road?!– but she did and Hikaku looks very fierce and confident in it.
Well, he does if you don't know that the expression on his face is in fact rampant nerves. Hikaku has always been a very conscientious older brother to his siblings, but his parents' deaths and joining the Outguard young really haven't helped lessen his tendency towards worrying.
Yori-san balances him there; she barely worries at all. Not because she doesn't think, but because she seems to move directly from thought into action and rarely deigns to consider that she may not be completely successful in all her endeavours. She isn't universally successful, but she does always learn from her mistakes.
Madara was not expecting Kita to be wearing a black furisode decorated with her lineage's patron for the ceremony. It looks completely stunning on her and draws his attention to the fact that she is now only slightly shorter than Izuna.
She's always been small before. When did this happen? How did he miss it? Yes, she's been away a lot this year, but has he really been paying that little attention?
It doesn't occur to Madara until after the wedding that Hikaku and Yori-san are two years younger than he is and only a year older than Kita. That Father could order him to marry next year is… not a good thought. Yes, he does want to marry Kita, but he wants it to be in his own time. Her own time. Yori-san was already agitating to marry Hikaku and for Father to have given Hikaku permission, he had probably asked already as well, but that's not how Madara's relationship with Kita is. They're not in a hurry and the contract said when Kita is twenty, which is more than three years off.
Madara doesn't want to rush this. Father always said that haste was the enemy of quality when he was teaching Madara the sword when he was little, so why would that change now he's almost an adult himself? Besides, Kita is currently raising her own younger sister and little Benten and already living in the clan hall, so a marriage ceremony would just meant that she would be expected to have sex with him.
He's not going to pressure Kita to have sex with him. She's made it clear that she's not even interested yet. He's not going to marry Kita any time soon and Father can't make him.
The Uchiha clan might currently have more money and goods at its collective disposal –and at the disposal of each individual member–than ever before in living memory, but it's a mess. Yes, part of that is that they've now been at war with the Senju for seventeen months straight and only just got a break from the constant fighting, but the Outguard are honestly as well-organised as ever. What's straining them is injury and depleted numbers, both of which happen regularly –going by the records, some years are very bad years but it hasn't got quite that bad yet– and will change in time.
The clan's craftspeople are also doing fairly well: war-related crafts have enough raw materials to keep up with the Outguard's needs –if not always enough time, which means bringing in more apprentices– and the more peaceful crafts have the funds for more materials and access to a wider market, so are keeping busy as well and bringing more money into the clan. The issue is on the political and social side and the people making most of a fuss about it are well-off wives with time on their hands and lineage elders, who don't have anything else to do except complain and make everybody's life difficult.
Elders also have connections and vast social power, which makes everything so much harder. As does Ohabari-oba being pregnant again; Kita doesn't begrudge it, but the older woman is currently suffering morning sickness, so isn't quite up to her usual ferocious standard. Also, Minakata is teething.
The whole clan is creaking at the roots and Kita can recognise that she has contributed to this. Entirely well-meaningly –and she does not regret her actions in the slightest– but human nature is what it is and nobody likes change, especially not when it comes with a perceived fall in status and privilege.
The problem is twofold: firstly, the upheaval to internal precedence shifting twice in two years due to individuals from two separate lineages manifesting Mangekyō, and secondly –but in many ways more pervasively– the social shifts prompted by the widows' silk cooperative.
Kita did in fact foresee many of the changes associated with the silk cooperative; she'd just seen them as positive. It's a good thing that the clan's widows are no longer dependent on close relatives and the clan coffers for the survival of their children. It's a good thing that they can buy new clothes for their children, more meat to eat and can pay for repairs to their homes. They're contributing to the clan now, which reduces the Uchiha's dependence on mercenary work and helps balance the books against the pressing costs of war.
The problem is that all those desperate widows are no longer available to cook and clean and garden for a pittance –they have their silk and can afford a little more pride– so a minority of more affluent clan members who don't want to do their own chores have to offer more money if they want those jobs done. Or pay less, and have somebody less skilled –probably a pre-teen or a retired Outguard warrior who is also physically less able– do the work more slowly.
Yes, it's good that the clan is wealthier now in a general sense and those few handfuls of affluent ladies –and it is mostly older wives whose sons are not married yet or whose daughters-in-law have crafts or professions of their own– certainly enjoy being able to wear silk, but they are also very bitter about being inconvenienced by that affluence and secretly feel that the widows don't deserve the prestige and status that they are gaining with their work. Surely the silkworms should be in more appropriate hands? Entrusted to individuals with more leadership experience?
Tajima-sama loves those arguments, because they have absolutely nothing to do with him as Outguard Head and the elders are all so busy being complained at about the shift in the status quo that he has free range to do as he pleases elsewhere.
The real problem is more insidiously cultural: to be a widow is to be a burden, on your father or your brother or your son, and a widow with young children and no father-in-law is in a very precarious position indeed. The clan has always provided for them –sons of widows nearly always end up in the Outguard and many daughters do too– but only just: staple foods, second-hand and much-mended clothes, kanji lessons and not much more. No spending money for toys and sweets, no extra ink for practicing calligraphy at home, no support or connections for apprenticeships and no inheritance of land, not when the clan supports an adult brother over an underage son to hold a farm or a workshop. The Uchiha simply can't afford to let fields lie fallow or productivity fall, and with everybody being related, who inherits physical property can be changed at the order of the Homeguard Head if they feel said property is being mismanaged.
Brothers-in-law with wives and sons of their own to feed are quick to challenge a widow's hold on her husband's property, especially if her sons are too young to do the work themselves. A widow's oldest son may well be apprenticed into the family craft by his uncle –provided there is a family craft– but that is only one child when most mothers have four or more young mouths to feed.
Silkworms mean those widows have work, have purchasing power and community and pride in their achievements. Their daughters are learning useful skills and networking, making them more marriageable, and there is money to sponsor their sons into apprenticeships or persuade a higher-ranking clansman to offer extra warrior training. The clan as a whole is less precariously balanced and more resilient, but those individuals with the loudest voices, who are used to being listened to, are only seeing the cheap labour they have lost.
In a related note, Kita has recently mastered killing intent. Well, judgemental intent; being able to project, 'I am disappointed by your small-mindedness' is much more helpful than directly threatening people over tea. Besides, everybody knows she won't really kill them, but being able to wordlessly broadcast that you feel somebody is putting their own comfort over the wellbeing of the clan is very helpful.
Grandpa Yamasachi, sitting in on one such meeting, glared thunderously at one such irate lady when Kita pointed out that she was essentially complaining about no longer being able to exploit their less fortunate relatives and underpay them for their labour; evidently nobody has ever phrased it quite like that in his hearing before. Similar complaints soon cease to make it to her ears thereafter; Kita suspects the rest of the elders have taken to quoting her and word has got around. Of course, that doesn't mean the problem has gone away yet. Bruised egos and offended dignity take time to subside, and nobody likes having it pointed out that they were behaving in a manner unworthy of an Uchiha.
It's one less thing to take up Kita's time though, which is a tremendous relief. The political upheaval is a nightmare enough to wrestle with and it's not the only thing on her plate right now.
No, her current problem is far more urgent: the clan's supply of bandages with seals on is running low and she doesn't have any thread she has spun herself that isn't silk.
"You haven't taught anybody to do this yet, seriously?"
Kita glares at Yori over the table as she copies that long-ago seal she'd used to spin chakra into cotton thread. It works just as well on hemp, but it's slow. She has six other seals with thread hanks sitting on them scattered around the room, charging.
Yori is good at embroidery, has solid chakra reserves, got the chakra spinning seal to work first time and is Yumiori-oba's senior apprentice; she's the perfect person to teach stitched seals to, considering most of the stitched seals are health related. Of course she's also married to Hikaku and now the matriarch of the Yatagarasu lineage, but Yori is refreshingly down-to-earth and doesn't actually care about that. Which may well cause problems with Hikaku's second cousins later if they decide she is 'neglecting her responsibilities,' but right now it's a good thing because the two of them are only very recently eighteen and Mangekyō or not, it is preferred that a lineage head is twenty before they take control of their duties and responsibilities. The current head can oversee matters until then and tutor Hikaku in his very limited free time.
"It should have been the first thing you did, really; they're indispensable in the field now, Auntie says many more warriors come back these days and vanishingly few of them develop blood poisoning along the way. Seal bandages are in the standard Outguard pharmacy kit, even! We save every single one and boil them to death in between uses, but they're definitely getting threadbare even if the sealing side still works fine. Auntie's having to layer them with new bandages these days, as most of them have been mended multiple times. Without those sterilisation seals they'd have needed replacing years ago."
How Yori can just keep talking while watching Kita's hands as she stitches the sterilisation seal into the weave of a scrap of bandage with indigo silk –as a demonstration piece, so the seal stands out– and not lose focus? It boggles the mind. It also makes it tricky for Kita to keep the seal's purpose in mind, but she's made so many of these she barely needs the thought exercise to assist her in shaping her chakra anymore. She knows what this seal feels like.
Yori's eyes briefly glimmer scarlet, but it fades before Kita can be sure it was more than a trick of the light. Then she picks up another bandage scrap and a length of indigo hemp thread off her own charging seal; it's only been on it for a few hours, not overnight, but it's enough for practicing with.
She gets the shape wrong on her first attempt, so Kita demonstrates again, adding an explanation for the specific part Yori got wrong. It's possibly a stitch she's not seen before; Kita's not sure how regular clanswomen do embroidery, if many or indeed any of them do. She uses the stitches and techniques Mama taught her, which are very possibly trade secrets.
Yori's eyes are definitely red this time, one tomoe wobbling determinedly around her pupil in each. Kita doesn't comment; it can wait until after Yori gets the seal right. Which of course she will, now she's used the sharingan to take in every single detail; sure enough, Yori's second attempt is perfect.
But a dud, since Kita hasn't explained the chakra focusing part yet; that's step two. The seal has to be perfect, you have to be able to stitch the seal perfectly without really thinking about it, before you start stitching active ones. Otherwise mistakes lead to burnt thread and disappointment.
"Now stitch ten of those," Kita tells her. "It has to be instinctive and effortless before you start adding intent to your seals, otherwise that moment of 'what do I do next' interrupts your focus and the chakra doesn't take."
"So I need to sew them until I'm bored of sewing them and barely have to look down anymore; I can do that." Yori sighs, eyeing the neat thumbnail-sized seal in the corner of her bandage scrap, which is large enough to fit another fifty on, provided they're closely grouped. "So why teach me when I know for a fact that if the elders knew you'd finally decided to accept students they'd all be pushing their favourite grandchildren at you? Not that I'm not my Ruri-bā's favourite, of course," she glances up, grinning wickedly, "but this seems remarkably sedate all things considered."
"I am specifically teaching you my medical seals," Kita says, shuffling over to the slightly modified spinning seal to test the integrity of the short length of thread coiled on top of it. Speeding up the process is all very well, but could so easily go wrong; a snapped thread means a ruined seal. "You are Yumiori-oba's apprentice; healing is your remit. Once I have taught you, you will be teaching whoever else you can get hold of to take up the duty of bandage sealing full-time." The thread snaps; well there goes that hope.
"Oh, so picking politically-appropriate apprentices is suddenly my problem? Sneaky. You realise I'm probably going to be grabbing variously distant cousins with the most sewing experience, which invariably means the ones most used to mending their own clothes?" In other words, the poor ones. Possibly the bastard daughters certain warriors are pretending they don't have as well.
"Less politically fraught," Kita points out, balling up the ruined thread and tearing the failed seal in half, "and it's only the medical seals anyway; making bandages is already women's work; low-grade women's work at that. That said low-grade work now involves chakra techniques, embroidery and seals probably isn't going to win anybody over; it's still mindless drudge work, just more tiring."
"Since it uses chakra," Yori agrees thoughtfully, needle dancing between her fingers. "Once I've got a few girls able to make the seals, could you teach them to spin chakra into thread directly? The chakra-spinning seals are all very well, but you said thread infused with chakra as it's made holds it indefinitely and that's far more useful in a pinch. We just have to take care to requisition a portion of the harvest on the pharmacy's behalf and make sure we have a good reserve. And virgin thread to infuse in case of emergencies, of course, but personal thread means being able to stitch onto more than just bandages." She glances up to meet Kita's eyes. "Don't think I haven't notice how you and your sisters never get sick, Kita-chan."
"The sharingan eye seal is potentially harmful to the unborn in the womb," Kita says calmly, "so not suitable for women trying to conceive."
Yori grins. "All the better! I don't want to get pregnant just yet; we're both too young and I've not finished my apprenticeship and seriously, war's a terrible time to be expecting. I'm already taking herbs to that effect; the seal would just be security. I don't want to catch something off a patient and take it home to my husband, do I?"
"Let's see you get this one to work first." The sharingan eye seal is far harder to explain to somebody who doesn't really know how the immune system works. She is going to have to start with that, so that Yori can infuse her chakra right when making the seal and not create strange and potentially lethal side-effects.
Yori swears Kita to secrecy over her sharingan manifesting –"everybody will fuss and I've got work to do! Visual memorisation isn't enough in pharmacy or sealing anyway"– and it takes her a fortnight to successfully tune her chakra right to stitch a working sterilisation seal. By then Kita is dreaming about stitching seals into bandages, so she is happy to be able to halve her own workload. She does manage to explain enough of the basics of the immune system to Yori that she grasps the sharingan metaphor almost immediately; that seal only takes her five days to fully master.
Kita then writes her a fancy certification on a small washi scroll, stamps it with her personal hanko, invites Yori to formal tea and presents it to her in front of Izuna, who is the only male member of the Amaterasu lineage on clan grounds at the time. Yori squeals, abruptly realises her faux pas and apologises frantically, but Izuna is cackling and Kita really doesn't care. The tea ceremony collapses rather than ending formally, with Yori bouncing home hugging her certificate of competence in healing fūinjutsu –which those seals technically count as– Izuna falling asleep on the tatami –she's not surprised, he must be exhausted now the fighting has ramped up again– and Kita herself clearing up quietly so as not to disturb Izuna.
That was the most fun she's ever had at a tea ceremony, which is a clue she should probably do more of them with people she actually likes.
Of course, it's not going to be just the bandages that need maintaining; she needs to teach Midori to spin, stitch and embroider. She doesn't need to be perfect at it or have the patience for patchworking entire coats; enough skill to renew the seals in the canvas coat cores and sew seams is more than enough to make her indispensible to the clan, and will leave her plenty of time for her beloved gardening.
It turns out Mama was partly distracted due to being pregnant again –Tekari isn't even eighteen months old yet and already has a younger sibling– and the baby girl born ten days ago has been named Kinu. Kita just hopes Mama doesn't neglect Kinu-chan in favour of her older brothers; it was never obvious when she was little, but since Jōnen was born it's become increasingly clear that Mama has always wanted boys.
If it comes to it, Kita is sure Grandma will give Mama a good telling off for neglecting the baby; it's never really been a secret that Grandma likes little girls best.
The first day of autumn brings a letter from the capital 'requesting' the Uchiha clan head and his immediate family attend on the daimyo for autumn leaf viewing in late October, and to attend the Shichi-go-san festival in November. There is the implication that other ninja clans have been invited, which is a thinly-veiled order to arrange a truce with the Senju as they too will be there. Father is displeased, but they cannot afford to antagonise the daimyo so a letter is written offering the Senju a ceasefire from the moment of agreement to Hanamatsuri in April.
It is better to be generous, Father explains, and to watch carefully; that way the Senju lose face if they insist on a shorter truce and the clan will not be taken unaware if they violate the terms offered.
It is evident the Senju have also received such a letter today; they arrive at the border at almost exactly the same moment, Hashirama obviously struggling to maintain his composure at the possibility of peace no matter how temporary. Madara doesn't meet his eyes, studying Tobirama instead; since the conversation with Kita that revealed to him how little value Hashirama actually places on their friendship, he has caught himself wondering what his friend's relationship with his own brother is like. Hashirama didn't have all that many nice things to say about his brother back when they were children –he mostly complained about said unnamed sibling spending all his time learning from his father and parroting the man's views– and Madara wonders if that's changed.
Izuna is too busy glaring hatefully at his rival to notice Madara's attention on the same person; Hashirama notices though and moves a little closer to his brother.
So he does care. That Madara immediately wonders how much Hashirama cares is bitter but not unexpected; the two Senju brothers have never seemed particularly close, so there is clearly a limit to Hashirama's concern.
Butsuma is only offering peace until Risshun, but appearing ungracious in response to the daimyo's decree is most unwise so there is a pause for the Senju treaty to be re-written, both scrolls are signed and formally exchanged. Madara is just glad both their fathers are here; Hashirama would probably jump him otherwise.
He is going to have to spend most of a month in the capital, wearing his best clothes and not getting into fights, and Kita is going to be there too. He is going to have to introduce Kita to Hashirama, and probably have Uzumaki Mito introduced to him in return. Never mind the however-many other noble clans and their heirs who are likely to be present; the Aburame and the Akimichi for certain and probably the Hyūga as well.
Madara is sure this will be a complete headache, but at least he will have his father to guide him, Izuna to back him up and Kita to talk things out with. It is very unlikely that the Senju will attempt anything too untoward right under the daimyo's nose.
All the mess caused by recent changes and reversals in the prominence of the various Uchiha lineages comes to a head as Tajima-sama tries to hammer out who will be accompanying his immediate family to the capital. They cannot go alone –it would be disrespectful– but taking too large an entourage would imply cowardice. There is also the issue of image: taking elders rather than warriors implies they have faith in the daimyo's authority to keep the peace, but also limits the group's mobility and –perhaps more awkwardly– places significant favour upon the elder or elders chosen.
It's probably going to take several days of loud arguing to sort this out; Kita is grateful they aren't expected in the capital for a fortnight. She of course is going; there was a private letter to her from the daimyo's wife included with the official invitation, 'suggesting' she bring more tenran to show off at court. Kita has a simple kimono of her own creation this year, damasked with bush clover. She has also given Madara a suitably masculine narrow obi of peace silk for his last birthday, which will look good with his formal indigo kimono and hakama.
Spinning and weaving are both very soothing and a pleasant change from embroidering seal after seal after seal into things. She needs more apprentices. Perhaps she should ask around in the widows' cooperative first? Her little sisters and Benten are all lacking the prerequisite skills –never mind the chakra requirements– so she can't really involve them until they're older.
The letter also implies that the daimyo's wife may well demand she stay on at court for longer, maybe even until the plum blossoms, so Kita is taking care to pack accordingly and bring suitably ladylike and innocuous things to do. Like calligraphy and embroidery; she has another wild silk obi she wants to embroider with silk moths –they have a pleasantly autumnal colour scheme, all browns and yellows with pink detailing– a plain weave kimono dyed dayflower blue and painted with climbing roses that was a gift from the widow's cooperative and will look suitably stunning over her charcoal nagajuban, that she needs to embroider Uchiha crests on for appropriate formality, and two plain obi that Grandma has made for her, one soft lilac and the other bold scarlet. Her plans for both are still vague, but she has all her threads packed so she will not have to settle.
She also has a new everyday silk kimono, a medium slate blue one with a cheeky repeated uchiwa fan print with red slats under white; none of the fans have the appropriate strict verticality required for a formal komon and the fan handles are beige not white, but it looks very cheerful with her narrow everyday indigo obi, which is printed with a repeated bamboo pattern that she has livened up by adding pink detailing to the leaves here and there.
Kita is resigned to spending even more money on kimono at some point; court is expensive. However she does at least have her Toyotama black furisode and her own silk-lined coat now, which is something.
Of course, stressing about her clothing is a distraction from the main issue: Kita being officially Home Head, Tajima-sama is going to demand her opinion of who to bring. Just so as to decide if he likes her ideas enough to appear to defer to her judgement, which has the added benefit of enabling him to offload onto her any resentment from people who don't get picked.
The thing is, while Madara and Izuna activating Mangekyō changes absolutely nothing of the internal system of precedence between the clan's various lineages –beyond reinforcing the superiority and authority of the Amaterasu line– Taka-san completely upended everything. Not counting Madara and Izuna, it's been well over a century since anybody had Mangekyō and the Yomotsushikone hasn't been seen in almost five hundred years.
Five. Hundred. Years.
Up until the spring before last, the Yomotsushikone lineage had been the least prominent in the entire clan, a position it has enjoyed for over three hundred of those years. The previous lineage head –the one Taka-san has summarily dethroned by virtue of seeing her lover murdered before her eyes– kept ducks for meat and farmed carp in his koi pond. He's still farming carp in that pond, in fact; Taka-san doesn't care about koi and leaving the fish there is less effort than digging another pond.
Never mind that only lineage heads are allowed to have houses with ponds in their gardens. Ponds are a lot of work.
Taka moving up her lineage means that everybody else in it has moved either up or down as well depending on how closely related to her they are; the lineage connecting her to her ancestor is now the 'true' Yomotsushikome lineage rather than mere male primogeniture, and housing depends as much on precedence and prominence as it does on personal wealth. A good number of her kinsmen are a touch displeased at having to move out of their nice houses, which is only slightly soothed by being abruptly the second most important lineage in the clan. Everybody is still rather tense there, but those arguments are all internal and their elders are staying on top of them.
About a year on matters were finally starting to settle, at which point the Yatagarasu –in the form of Hikaku– kicked them down half a peg, which is mainly shocking because three out of the clan's four Mangekyō wielders are underage and the clan hasn't had four Mangekyō users at one time before. Not since the clan started keeping written records, at least.
Getting kicked down half a step before they'd even managed to settle in at the top has ruffled a lot of feathers on the Yomotsushikome side and engendered a lot of smugness on the Yatagarasu side, because while they are still in the number three slot –it is first-come, first-served for precedence there– they are essentially equal in terms of prominence now, rather than a distant third coasting on the skill of a long-dead ancestor.
The big fuss on the Yatagarasu side is within the main family. Well, the former main family. Everybody assumed Hikaku was Amaterasu, but if he's Yatagarasu then Niniji-sama was too and the main line passes through his and Tajima-sama's mother rather than through her older brother.
Genetics aren't a thing here yet despite bloodline clans making it clear that heritability happens equally on the maternal and paternal side. Paternal is simply assumed to be more prominent for sexist reasons; the Uchiha also believe in a kind of mystic atavism where the Mangekyō is concerned, as though the 'spirit' of the gift travels down a family line whole and unchanged, being strongest in whoever it is currently inhabiting and their immediate relatives.
Kita isn't sold, but she isn't willing to dismiss it entirely either. Chakra makes things weird.
The Yatagarasu problem is multifaceted. Firstly, their new head was raised in another lineage, with different values and to different standards; practically, as Madara has explained to her, it means more difficulty in adapting to and using the specific Mangekyō techniques and an associated increase in side-effects if training is rushed or incomplete. Tsunimi-san, the former Yatagarasu head, is doing what he can to teach Hikaku about the family lineage he is now responsible for, but Hikaku is also Tajima-sama's deputy in the Outguard and that is already a full-time position. Hikaku is also recently eighteen, recently married –to a cadet member of the Inari lineage– and has two younger brothers to worry about.
Tsunimi-san very wisely offered to take over Hijiri and Hidaka's education, so they at least will be raised to Yatagarasu standards. Not that there's much left to do for Hijiri –he's fifteen now and a member of the Outguard, complete with a patchwork coat of his own as his brother's heir– but Hidaka is seven and suitably eager to please.
Secondly there is Benten, who will be six in a few days' time and considers Kita her mother despite calling her 'Onee-chan'. There are delicate negotiations in progress concerning Benten's education that will have to be either rushed or put on hold to account for the daimyo's expectations, and Kita suspects rushing would benefit her ward better. She can't take Benten with her to the capital, which means the girl will have to stay with her oldest brother and his wife. Yori has enough on her plate without adding a small child –which she knows perfectly well, hence her disinclination to get pregnant any time soon– which means that despite living with her brother, Benten will have to spend her time elsewhere. Such as with Tsunimi's oldest daughter Chidori, who has the time and genuinely likes children.
It is a concession Kita always intended to make, but she wanted to wring more reciprocal concessions out of Elder Tamayori first; concessions that will afford Benten greater freedom. Well, maybe frankness will win the day there? If she makes it clear Benten's welfare is her priority, Tamayori-san may well bend a little more in light of the unfortunately exigent circumstances forcing her to curtail the ongoing dance of proper manners.
The third of the Yatagarasu's current sources of internal strife is their summoning contract. It's not passed down parent to child but teacher to student, but the main line do try to keep it in their line. Eboshi-san is the current main summoner, his teacher –and great-uncle– having long since retired, but the main line having moved means that he is now faced with the moral dilemma of realising he needs to train either Hikaku or one of Hikaku's younger siblings as his successor.
The rest of the lineage is naturally rather upset about this, especially the two very young twin nephews who were hoping to be the clan's next crow summoners. Kita has a feeling Eboshi will try to wait until Hikaku has children, with the understanding that if he dies before then the crows will default to Hikaku himself or Hijiri. Probably Hijiri; he's actually on Eboshi's squad in the Outguard at the moment, for all he's a bit too old to be an apprentice now. The crows might accept him as an auxiliary summoner though, just to make sure the contract stays in the family.
Blending all this –which is yet to be properly talked out in full because a good chunk of each lineage is in the Outguard so are more focused on fighting the Senju than on family spats– with obeying the daimyo's summons is going to be a complete nightmare.
Kita has a few ideas of who to suggest to accompany them to the capital, but it all very much depends on how many people Tajima-sama decides to take and who is being left in charge of what. Hikaku will be left in charge of the Outguard, which means they can at least avoid taking any Yatagarasu with them; that lineage is sufficiently honoured. They should probably take Taka-san, even though Kita seriously doubts she wants to go; she's a highly capable warrior and is no less comfortable in a kimono, never mind her Mangekyō. Taking one new lineage head and leaving the other in charge of the Outguard results in them being about equally honoured, but that still leaves a further five lineages to juggle. Well, four lineages; she represents the Toyotama very well despite being considerably removed from the main line.
Four is enough for a lady-in-waiting to back up herself and Taka-san, and three men to back up Tajima-sama. They should probably take a person of no lineage as well –lineage or not, everyone is Uchiha– but Kita has no idea who or why.
Well, at least she has half a plan to present to Tajima-sama when he demands her input.