Chapter 12 | Neutral

Mio sat in the shade of a woven net of soft branches and leaves, blending into the overgrown bushes all around her, and listened to the swaying trees, the skittering of nocturnal animals, and the beating of her heart. It sounded incredibly loud, almost as if she were holding it in her hands listening to it thump like someone was knocking constantly from inside it. She wanted to think she was overreacting, but this had never happened before. She didn't overreact. She imagined if she did it would be in private where it would be something of an internal affair, an implosion of emotions, and she would look catatonic for several days. Maybe that's how she looked now, she just didn't know it.

A branch snapped to her right. She turned to meet Madara's eyes as he crouched down in front of her, pulling the bag from his shoulder and setting it on the ground between them. His lips moved, but she heard nothing. Her lack of immediate response seemed to irritate him to the point of reaching out to pinch her face.

Yes, she was overreacting.

"What?" she asked softly. He said nothing, merely glared. "What did you say?"

"You haven't said anything."

Mio scratched the back of her neck, feeling a rash setting in from hours under the net. "About?"

"Eijiro said something to you. It sounded important."

"I don't want to talk about it," she confessed, dipping a hand into the satchel between them and digging through it for something that looked remotely edible. She brought a cluster of berries to her nose, inhaling their scent and recognizing its deceiving sweetness. She lifted her eyes to him, holding them out to him. "These are poisonous."

He shrugged. "It's hard to see in the dark."

"That's why you smell them."

"I was too busy looking for that river we stumbled into yesterday to care about smelling berries. They didn't look poisonous."

Mio continued digging until she found something eatable and popped the new berries into her mouth one at a time. He crawled into the space beside her, shoving against her shoulder and complaining about the lack of space. She elbowed him in response and shimmied closer to the bushes beside her, holding her legs to her chest.

"I noticed you changed the subject," started Madara, finally settling into his seat. "You're good at manipulating situations, but I'm not stupid. I've seen you do it from the minute the old hag brought you to the house. You've had Hiryuu wrapped around your little finger. It figures you'd have Izuna in the same—"

"Don't say it if you'll regret it," Mio interrupted, trying to sound cool. She was tired of listening to the same thing over and over again. The way Madara told the story was as if she were a master puppeteer pulling the strings in every aspect of her short life with his family when that was further from the truth. She was content knowing she wasn't doing anything wrong and what she did to Hiryuu had been incredibly dangerous. It could have cost her life. It was a rash, childish decision on her part. She was coping with the death of her parents in a way that she knew was wrong but felt so right at the time and she spent several years mortified that she had gone to such extremes, feeling she shamed Genji and Kikyo in some unexplainable form. She got nothing out of it, nothing good, only more fear—of hands closing in on her neck and cutting off her air supply—and the terrible nightmares that still haunted her nights today.

"—position," he finished accusingly, ignoring her attempts at mollifying him.

"Izuna is my friend."

"For how long?" he snapped. "How long before you decide to get him sent away like you did Hiryuu?"

Mio rested her chin on her knee. Take the bait or admit defeat. Those were her options. She wasn't going to say something for Madara to twist into something it wasn't and she didn't like to stay on the subject of Hiryuu long enough to feel her insides shrivel up. It was enough for herself to know that Izuna was her friend…unless, tonight changed everything? He had raised his voice at her, pulled away from her—he had acted completely unlike himself after she stumbled on her words, prepared to feed him her first lie. He had asked her to accompany him and on any other occasion, she would have gone with him, but with confirmation of Eijiro's death, she had needed to return to the compound for Sako and Minako. She couldn't leave them with Taiga, not alone.

"I'll ask you one more time," Madara started impatiently. "What did Eijiro say to you?"

What do I have to lose? She wanted an answer to that question as she processed his, remembering the pained words Eijiro muttered into her ear. She wished she could have more time digesting what it meant and imagined she would be sitting down with Izuna to tell him about it, not Madara. But she didn't have an answer to her doubts and nothing else that Eijiro could have said on his deathbed would steer her away from her current objective.

"I have a grandfather," she said, regretting it immediately after he made a face. "He's a blacksmith, he lives in neutral country."

"What's that have to do with anything? So you happen to have a grandfather in neutral country, so what? You've never met him and he's never looked for you, what difference does it make that you know about him?"

"I haven't thought about it that far," she admitted softly, trying to become one with the bushes when he moved closer to her.

"What's the point of sending one of his shinobi to the compound to get you just to give you news of a living relative?"

"At the old cottage," she said suddenly, mind deviating from the subject as if she needed to explain it more than she was capable. "I didn't tell you everything Enya said. I didn't want to because it sounded like gibberish to me and I thought I was dreaming at some point…but he said I would return to Kurata." She stared into the still darkness before her, gathering her wayward thoughts. "He told me how to find Mt. Hyōga, said I would find the rest of the Kuronuma clan there…that they would be waiting for me. He said many things when he sounded so confident you would save me. I didn't want to believe anything he said—didn't want to listen—because I didn't want you to save me."

Madara pushed against her shoulder, forcing her to turn. "How is that relevant?"

"Eijiro-san gave me an order," she answered.

"What order?" he pressed.

"'Find him,' he said," she replied, her mind echoed the grave rasp of his voice as it uttered into her ear. "'He will take you to Mt. Hyōga with the rest of them.'"

"With the Kuronuma clan? Eijiro wanted you to find your blacksmith grandfather so he could guide you to the mountain where they all live?" he asked. "Do they want to start something with the Uchiha? Do they want to toss you into the black water as a sacrifice? Or are the cannibalism rumors true?"

He sounded skeptical now, less demanding. He looked how she assumed she should have if she weren't thinking about ways to stop her heart from beating so loudly, ashamed that he might hear it in his close proximity. Overreacting again, but she needed to talk to him about personal bubbles and how easy it was to invade them.

"It makes no sense," Madara said, defeated. "Why would he give you a stupid order like that?"

Eijiro thought her grandfather could give her the freedom he had seen denied to her. She couldn't be sure. She only remembered hearing his voice in the back of her head, echoing loudly until the words were muddled into incoherency. She deserved freedom. She wanted to ask for what? Why was it important that she had any form of freedom? She was perfectly fine living in service of Sachiyo and her grandchildren because she found a home with them without ever realizing what it might eventually mean for her emotions to be so involved.

She didn't understand, but again, she wasn't trying.

"I think he's a Kuronuma," she answered in certainty, seeing his expression change in the dark. Confusion? He was hard to see in the shade of night. "My grandfather. I think he's a Kuronuma."

xl: I know I promised an Izuna chapter, you'll be getting it on Feb 13 on the count of Redesign winning this week's poll. (You can read all about this on my profile.) This scene was supposed to be featured in the chapter after Izuna's POV ended, but because Izuna's chapter might be split in two and Eijiro's death is still fresh on everyone's mind (hopefully), I decided to post this as an individual chapter.

Thank you for reading and many more thank yous to YamiKitsuneKami, nightchildx, Aries01xD, that0nelittl3girl, and Dusk Nisshoku Valentine for reviewing the previous chapter!

I'll see you on Wednesday!

Apologies for how short and uneventful this was!