Chapter 03 | & Nightmares

Violent images flickered in and out of Mio's mind, perforating her numbed defenses and feeding into her helplessness. She endured the nights when the shadows governing her memory functions showed her the blurred, perplexing actions that left her orphaned. Nobody cared what happened to her; in fact, most of the Uchiha were too concerned with themselves to worry about the deaths of their best spies, knowing there were many more waiting to replace them.

Mio liked them best. They were members of the category that did not tiptoe around her as if she were fragile to the touch and treated her as they saw fit. They were honest about their feelings and reminded her that she did not need to sit around listening to everyone's sorrowful recollections of her parents while the memory of their deaths still plagued her dreams.

Even now, twenty days later it was still expected of her to blubber on about the loss. Sachiyo seated her plenty of times across a short table, offering her freshly baked sweets and warm milk, to reiterate the same speech she did every three days since they arrived.

"Crying is natural," reminded Uchiha Sachiyo soothingly. "Nobody is going to judge you if you do it. You are still a child."

A child? She internally questioned as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Since as long as she remembered, her father instilled the methods necessary to take somebody's life. Normal, civilian children went through their childhood without having been born into a shinobi clan or having their parents put a freshly sharpened kunai in their hands. None of them were taught that a clean slit across the through could rupture a vein called the jugular and cause a person to bleed towards their death faster than a dozen puncture wounds.

She had a child's age but an adult's knowledge. The fact her new caretaker thought it appropriate to point out almost made her laugh, but with her mother's training, she remained inexpressive.

"You lost your mother and father."

Mio blinked up at her, drawing her gaze from the colorful bread squares sitting across the rectangular plate. The wrinkled face staring back at her expressed concern and a shade in her coal eyes that looked a lot like pity.

"It's almost abnormal you haven't cried."

Abnormal. Mio repeated the word in her head, liking the sound of it as it echoed in her head. Abnormal sounded like something she quite enjoyed being if not a depressed puppy crying tragedy. She didn't need the attention Sachiyo invested in her. Sometimes she wanted peace and quiet to be in the company of her memories. At that point, they were the only ones that soothed her rampant heartbeat and reminded her the nightmares were just her mind playing cruel tricks on her.

However, the elder's voice droned on endlessly. She strove to make a connection—to become that one person in the world willing to listen to her woes in her time of need and pull her out of her depressive bubble. Sachiyo wanted to be the woman Mio would one day be indebted to because she had selfish, untold reasons.

Sachiyo thought acquiring her boosted the Uchiha clan's future. In the sincerity of that observation, Mio chose to stay. Selfishness was honesty and not a lie disguised with a smile.

Mio woke up startled and drenched in cold sweat when the vivid nightmares gnawed at her memory. She relived the moment—the deathly silence of a darkened house and the sudden flash of silver caught in the moonlight. She saw the man stealthily sweep under her father and slash right down his shoulder as he attempted to counter a feint. Blood slapped across the walls, coating every surface a sinister shade of red.

The thud of her father's body hitting the ground resounded, echoing until the noise faded into screams of torture. Torn limb from limb until the remaining life disappeared from his onyx eyes—it lasted a lifetime. She absorbed the scenery, the trickle of blood falling like indoor rain. The splash of each droplet was amplified by her inner panic, the awkward beating of her heart, and the weight of her mother's body smothering her. The faint scent of peach and grass, the smell of her mother, spoiled in the putrid metallic stench. She found comfort in her mother's perfumed skin. It eased the rapid beating of her heart. But her mother was bruised and bleeding, breathing haggardly as she whispered broken words into her ears.

Moments before, her mother had protected her from the thrust of the man's sword. Pushed her hard into the wall, the tough surface left a cluster of purplish bruises on her back that after twenty days had not yet faded. Half the house had been torn apart by a slur of complicated jutsu, but the final touches were done by hand while she played possum.

"Breathe," her mother had whispered, struggling to her feet.

She fought until she fell right alongside her husband's dismembered remains. Cold fingers bruised her ivory neck and jaw as the monster checked her pulse with a twisted smile. His eyes, green as emeralds, cut through the darkness to make contact with Mio.

The paralyzing fear that washed through her that night returned to her every morning she woke from her nightly terrors. Mio thought of screaming as he closed the short distance between them and fantasized with the idea of picking up one of the kunai from the ground to use for her defense. The latter worked better in her head. She was quick and powerful, able to deflect the barrage of attacks until she found an escape. But Mio wasn't any of those things and with the bulky shinobi standing in front of her, she expected death to come swiftly.

Instead, as Sachiyo reiterated the story, the group arrived to the wreckage and two Uchihas sacrificed themselves so she could continue living. The assassin escaped.

The murderer was a part of a shinobi clan; she knew that much from his fighting technique. If she met him once more, whether it was within the next couple of days, weeks, months, or even ten years from then, she would recognize him. He towered over her parents like a giant with tough, bronzed muscled skin and a symbol carved over his upper back—a filled-in crescent vertically slashed by a thin, jagged line.

Every night she woke up from the nightmare, she played with the idea of meeting him again as she clutched onto her knees for a sense of security. If they crossed paths in five years, what would happen? Would she attempt at revenge, or face him with a forgiving heart?

She thought about many things in silence, but questioned her existence the most.

If Uchiha Sachiyo had not stormed in with her team that evening, Mio would be in pieces besides her parents, but the bitterness gave her no time to enjoy her elongated life.

Better off dead, she thought every morning the sun blinded her, illuminating her current stay. Mio left her accommodations quietly after folding her futon and changing into her mourning clothes.

Sachiyo's home was situated in a desolate countryside far from the shinobi wars where peace and wilderness surrounded them. According to Sachiyo, the manor was once used by her ancestors to train young Uchihas into spies and assassins that in time helped boost the clan name, but since she inherited the property, it doubled as her family home and safe house.

When Mio arrived two weeks ago, she expected to see shinobi walking in and out of the buildings like they did in the Uchiha compound. She met with silence instead. There were two boys living there, her grandchildren, but she met neither throughout her twenty-day stay. She limited her movement from her cluttered bedroom to the kitchen where she took her meals with the cooks and the outdoor bathhouse.

Today was different. She felt an inkling of curiosity to venture down the long passageways and enter the nicely furnished rooms as her thumping heart calmed into a rhythmic beat. So, she did.

Mio wandered corridor to corridor and room to room until she established a slight understanding of the shortcuts in the manor. As she grew tired enough to fall back asleep without fear of another nightmare, she decided on a different route back to her room when she came across a thin line of orange light over the floorboards.

Hushed voices reached her ears—Sachiyo and Hiryuu. She stopped in the adjacent hall, eyes brimming with curiosity, and flattened her back against the wall. She held in a breath, somehow able to hide without drawing their attention.

"…useful if we want Madara or Izuna to lead," said Sachiyo.

"A girl that can neither talk nor hold a kunai properly?" Hiryuu spat. "We lost two shinobi at her expense, it costs us nothing to dispose of her now before she becomes troublesome."

"She could very well surpass both parents if trained properly," snapped Sachiyo. "If she can learn to be a proper spy, she will become more than useful to my grandchildren. They will need someone in the shadows to keep them grounded and informed at all times. Mio can do it."

"She's already given up. We have no need for a mute."

"Mio has an eidetic memory, she can move with the stealth of a cat—whether she speaks now or never is irrelevant if she can do what is required of her," she defended. "Genji trained her well. We should make use of her, not waste her talent."

Mio wasn't quite as surprised as she should have been when she turned back down the hall without a sound. She expected Sachiyo to have ulterior motives for putting a roof over her head, and having heard it from her mouth made it easier for Mio to get comfortable with the idea of staying longer. Knowing that the reason for her stay was not pity or excessive kindness brought a slight smile to her face because the words exchanged in that room by Sachiyo and Hiryuu rang with honesty.

She was needed despite the trouble she caused by severing all links of communication with the world outside her mind. Even if it meant being used to further the nefarious ploys of an Uchiha elder, Mio had not experienced that sort of happiness in weeks and she swore to hold on firmly.

If nobody lied, she would gladly take on any burden.

Mio liked pushing apart the clutter of boxes obstructing her view of the tall window to peer through the cracks on the wooden panels. Beyond the field of tall grass lay a stretch of greenery and trees that lined the entrance of the dangerous forest. Her position gave her the advantage of following any strange movement outdoors. If the mansion provided an escape route, she suspected it lay deep inside the canopy of trees. Few people crossed her path with the exception of Hiryuu, who paid Sachiyo an infinite amount of visits she assumed had to do with her muteness. Hiryuu had a one-track mind.

The room Sachiyo urged her to call her own doubled as a storage closet where she kept ancestral antiques stockpiled in the corners alongside tightly wrapped valuables in crates that supported the weight of a tower of cardboard boxes that hid corporeal secrets. Out of boredom-induced curiosity, Mio dug through the box she used to reach the peephole in the window to find a satchel containing rows of weapons, from throwing knives to poison-tip needles and beneath the black fabric bearing the Uchiha insignia lay a collection of scrolls that varied in size. She searched each for writing, but only found a few containing an eclectic selection of jutsus, none of which she recognized to be a part of Uchiha techniques.

Sadly, the curiosity increased her boredom, though she had not expected something spectacular to happen from opening a couple boxes. Mio returned everything inside the box as she found it and pushed it back into place before reseating herself atop her folded futon. She stared absently at the boxes amassed in her surroundings, thinking morbid thoughts.

Things such as percentage of survival in the case of an unexpected tremor or a shockwave of war breaking out crossed her mind. She entertained the ideas to keep the monotony at bay. She took her mediocre size and laughable body strength into consideration and guessed her ribcage would give out under the weight, no matter the angle of impact, and that if she was lucky a broken rib might pierce straight through her heart, thus ending her misery quickly. If not, she suspected the pain would be enough to kill her in time.

Without realizing it, Mio's mind welcomed streams of morose ideas because a lesser part of her being figured they were easier to structure, easy to stomach, than happy notions. She enjoyed the impenetrable darkness clouding her emotional receptors and liked the weight of grief resting on her shoulders not because it acted as a reminder of broken recollections, but because she wanted to hold onto it like a blanket that warmed her through the winter, a garb of security. It laid the foundation of numerous possibilities and a smidgen of hope that within them she might do something worthwhile that would one day remind people like Hiryuu, who would always look upon her like worthless scum, that Genji and Kikyo bore a daughter, and that girl's name was Mio.

Fame meant nothing to a shadow. She had no need for her name to be known throughout the continent. She only wanted the recognition her mother held in such high regard, the one of the family whose insignia she wore sewn onto her clothes. That was all.

The recent flood of shadows alerted her of the time. Mio left the room quietly and followed the same corridor to the kitchen where dinner awaited her. A woman called Kana took care of her meals at Sachiyo's demand and worked swiftly as a professional. She accompanied Mio at the table and watched her eating habits intently, taking note of the food she left behind on her plate and how quick or slow she ate her meals. Since she acknowledged Mio would neither tell her nor write about her preferences in cuisine she decided to make it a guessing game.

Kana was sitting with her back to the door when Mio entered without disturbing the rest of the kitchen staff as they prepared dinner for their masters. She was a short woman with long brown hair, observant gray eyes and a round face. Her endearing personality often came off as annoying, so her presence often bothered her seniors within the kitchen's four walls, but she rarely let anyone speak horribly about her. She thought simple-minded things, worried over simple-minded problems, and lived a simple-minded life where her world revolved around orders and food. Mio enjoyed the solidarity of her honesty because it came as naturally as breathing to her.

The plates of food awaiting her on the tabletop were elaborate: thinly sliced pieces of meat dipped in sweet sauce lain over a patch of green vegetables, a bowl of soup of daikon, carrots and mushrooms, minced chicken patties, a lidded bowl containing chicken and egg boiled over rice, and finally a bowl of white rice.

Mio stared at Kana's unabashed face, amazed, as she took her seat and chopsticks.

"You seem to enjoy my extravagant use of sweet sauce, so that can be your main course," Kana said effervescently, watching her eye the food. "The soup is to even out the taste, and if you prefer eating small, try the chicken patties or eggs."

Mio placed her hands together, bowed her head, thankful for her meal, and dug into the sweetened splay of chicken slices. She combined them with the vegetables and rice to indulge in the loveliest taste she has ever come across. Her taste buds raged in excitement as she continued eating until most of the plates were emptied except the chicken and eggs over rice, though she enjoyed it, she was too stuffed to dare eat more.

She almost felt too bloated to stand, but managed as Kana cleared the table.

"Bye Mio-chan." Kana waved from across the room, the loud ring of her voice disturbed one cook to the point he nearly chopped his finger off.

"Keep it down!" he hissed as the knife clattered over the cutting board and a curse escaped him.

"Sorry," squeaked Kana.

Mio disappeared down the hall, taking a slower walk through the familiar route to allow her overstuffed stomach to settle. She wired thoughts into her mind to keep her distracted as she took in the sight of the hallway in the setting sun's glow and calculated the percentage of survival if the boxes ever dropped on her. In the second it took to envision the cluttered room, she heard something heavy crash. It came from the direction of her storage closet bedroom.

"Madara!"

"Izuna!"

The foreign voices rang simultaneously, both tainted with the same alarm of a misbehaved child committing the same mistake twice.

Mio looked into the next hallway and found, who she assumed, where the old hag's grandchildren. Both attempted to abandon the scene of the crime—the storage closet—when the oldest of the two caught her staring and grabbed the youngest by the shoulder. She suspected to be in close age to the tallest boy, older or younger by one or two years, while the shortest seemed to have just celebrated his fifth or sixth birthday. She didn't care for details.

As she had been caught, Mio approached her room and took in the damage. They accomplished fulfilling her repetitive train of thought and had given her an accurate percentage. She survived 100%. She never considered not being in the room from the start.

She entered and without addressing the issue, she closed the doors.

"You should have said sorry."

"You dropped them!"

"Forget it. Let's leave before she tells grandma."

The thump of footsteps vanished down the hall.

"Madara! Wait for me!"

More steps.

"Run faster!"

"I can't!"

Their voices disappeared as she started packing everything back into the cardboard boxes. The only problem was hoisting them back to top of the stacks.

She stared at the mess, overwhelmed. I'll figure it out.

The boys faced the consequences for the discord they caused in Mio's bedroom. Not because the orphan girl tattled to their grandmother, but because Izuna let it slip over dinner even though there was no mess to confirm it. Together they were ordered to clean the outdoor hallways the following morning and weren't allowed to leave until every inch of wood doubled as a mirror. This was followed by a warning to avoid bothering their new resident, explaining her decision by saying, "she isn't ready for human contact."

Madara, on a curious whim, heard a bit more about Mio from the kitchen staff.

"Do you think she'll be my friend?" asked Izuna, lolling over the floor with a rag on his face.

"No. She's introverted," replied Madara, scrubbing off the grime Hiryuu left on his way into the house.

Izuna bolted onto a seat, worried. "How long does she have to live?"

Madara glowered at him. "It's not a disease."

Curiously, the youngest Uchiha gave a tilt of his head. "What's it mean then?"

Madara stayed silent before huffing. "You wouldn't get it!"

Izuna snorted. "You don't know either! You probably just heard someone say it!"

"Shut up!"

Izuna only laughed harder.

A dirty rag slapped him in the face and silenced him instantly. Izuna stared at him shocked until his lower lip started to quiver and he scrambled out of his seat with a sharp, childish cry.

"Madara hit me!"

The sound of Izuna's voice disappeared inside the house, leaving him alone with his annoyance and a sneaking suspicion that no matter the circumstances his young brother could probably get away with murder. That, and as the youngest, Sachiyo favored him for being cute. But the punishment couldn't get worse than cleaning the outdoor halls, so he decided it was best to finish the task at hand before facing his grandmother.

Halfway through completion, Madara caught Hiryuu in his periphery, but he wasn't alone. He was talking to Mio on the other end of the hall, unaware of his presence. Hiryuu's lips were the only ones moving and from the short distance, he could make out the words without having to use his Sharingan. The elder was growing impatient by the girl's lack of response. Mio, in turn, stayed perfectly still, eyes focused and lips sealed.

Hiryuu's impatience turned into something lethal as his voice rose. He could have a kunai at her throat and he wouldn't be surprised if the mute dropped dead. "You want to be killed that badly?"

Madara stood, dropping the rag at his feet.

Mio didn't even blink, didn't flinch.

Hiryuu grabbed her roughly by the collar of her baggy shirt when the door behind her opened noisily.

"Let her go."

Madara recognized his grandmother's voice and the deadly poison threaded in her words.

Hiryuu did as he was told and skulked out of sight, into the thick forest, grumbling beneath his breath. Sachiyo caught Madara staring and gave him a critical look that promised a harsher punishment as she beckoned Mio indoors.

Watching her, he had to wonder if she was even alive when her eyes flickered to meet his. A small knowing smile brightened her face and then, she was gone. The door sealed shut behind her.

.

.

Mio accompanied Hiryuu because she wanted to hear his complains about her silence and the rest of her inadequacies as a prospective spy. In short, she humored him for the sake of her own amusement. He whined nicely for a man accomplished in the shinobi arts with widespread fame to assert it. He had the right voice. She thought it sounded funny.

As expected, he tried forcing her to speak by explaining how useless a mute kunoichi would be when it came to trafficking information among clansmen and gathering it. Nobody would take her handicap serious.

"Even if you learn well or excel in anything, nobody is going to take you seriously," he continued. "You're only going to get killed in this line of work."

She never doubted it. Death wasn't as terrible as he claimed, though, but it was a chameleon. Sometimes death took you quickly, blink and you miss it, other times it was slow and painful, and it took a lifetime of endurance to understand it was coming. She knew that if she ever had a choice, she wanted to die quickly, have her heart let out before she hit the ground. It sounded easy, might feel the same. She hated the idea of pain and when the thought occurred, she imagined her parents fighting for their lives. They defended their home bravely with all the strength available to them and lost to pain and blood loss.

The nightmares slowly started expanding her imagination. Mio was never sure about the reality of her family's death and wondered if the recollections buzzing in and out of her mind were accurate accounts. Sometimes, she preferred not to question it. She wanted to continue living in that feeling in between not knowing whether the facts were real or not.

Sachiyo escorted her back to the storage closet turned bedroom and looked at her reproachfully. "You should never, never leave this room unless it is for food or on my permission," she said with finality. Somewhere deep in her mind, she played with the idea of arriving at the scene five minutes slower to find her last potential spy dead. She would only have a short-tempered elder to blame. "You need to stay alive, you hear me? I need you alive."

The hag cared little for disclosure. She patted her shoulder with an awkward smile and shut the door.

It seemed Sachiyo did not understand the concept of twisting a truth into a different shape to make a better lie than the excuses she sold cheap. Lying was not the priority; it was urging her to speak with a voice she barely remembered.

Mio deliberated her resistance to speaking. If she bothered to engage Sachiyo in conversation, would she be told what awaits her in the future?

In the end, it was likelier she paid closer attention and react accordingly than talk.

What if her voice came out weird? She wanted to save herself the embarrassment.

Mio liked to keep a persistent eye on Uchiha Hiryuu. She made it her priority to know where he was and what he did, knowing that he adopted the same schedule as he tailed her to and from the kitchens back to her bedroom. He crept in the shadows like a spider on the wall, observing her with bright red eyes, because he assumed her parents gave onto her a knowledge he desired.

Kikyo parted with a note that asked her to drown a snake, but the timing was off. Sachiyo loved and trusted the snake. Mio hated to be cruel, so she remained neutral. She deliberated her movements with utmost precision. If she had to accomplish the order the paper asked, she wanted to do it perfectly. The last thing she desired was upsetting her mother in death.

She dreamt of her skeletal corpse emerging from the ground, rotten flesh dropping from the smooth bone of her face in chunks. Kikyo pointed her bony finger to her face; eye dangling from one socket, the blood flowing from the wounds she remembered left a trail in her wake. The finger touched her nose and spread a cold so frightening it immobilized her. The frantic eyes she recalled in her flashbacks were burning intensely.

"You failed me," she accused in a guttural, inhuman voice. The hand dropped and met with her throat. "You failed me!"

Mio woke after her mother's hands wrapped tightly around her neck, squeezing her windpipes shut.

The horrid dreams made it difficult to sleep, but if they hadn't, she might not have caught onto Hiryuu's surveillance. He crossed the hallway on a nightly basis to peer into the closet through the aperture in the door.

He entered the room last night, believing she slept, and rummaged through her luggage without making a sound. She listened, wishing she could say that whatever he searched for was no longer there. She could instill that fear in him and exert control, but gave into selfishness.

Hiryuu left hours before dawn. The brothers trained at the wee hours of the morning and he oversaw their progression while teaching them what they needed to learn.

Sachiyo forced her out of the kitchen that morning to watch from the verandah. "Pay close attention," she said, leaning into the railing observantly. "Your skills need to match theirs if you plan to survive in this world."

Consciously, Mio admitted she didn't, but the idea intrigued her. Surviving in this world—in warring war—with the Uchiha brothers and that was all she was asked to do.

"Do you understand, Mio?"

Mio nodded. As far as understanding went, she had the gist of it. She could do the math; put one and one together to create a reason thanks to the conversation she eavesdropped on days ago.

One of the two brothers would own her. She had no say. Not today, not in the future.

Sachiyo's hand found the top of her head, ruffling strands of wild hair. "I will make you into our greatest spy."

And she had no reason to doubt her.

Mio turned her attention to the brothers, watching them bound after one another with weapons that gleamed in the rising sun and fire jutsus that scorched the earth. As they exchanged powerful blows, she felt her heart accelerate.

To reach that skill level, Mio required perfection.