Chapter 15 | Silence
Mio never returned to the room upstairs. She traded it for a cramped corner in the servants' quarters where the cooks were kind enough to let her spend the night fully aware she had a bedroom upstairs and a houseful of lunatics they thought were her friends. She thought it served its purpose being painfully ignorant of the inner dynamics of a clan like the Uchiha or perhaps they were smart enough to block it all out. If that was the case, she was insanely jealous that they could do that because she wanted to be anywhere other than the compound.
She wished she could go home, her home, not the roof Sachiyo put over her head because she was starting to feel inadequate about the whole situation and it only took a few choice words out of Madara's mouth to accomplish that level of discomfort in her. She wanted to go back to that broken down cottage in the forest where she lived for nine whole years before Mikazuki Gouki ruined her happiness.
And Izuna, he had heard things he shouldn't have and he had been hounding her all day for answers. He must have asked hundreds of people for her location, but she had made sure nobody saw her sneaking out to the back garden and into the forest after Madara made it clear that he thought she hadn't felt the pain of her parents' death. She didn't seem to deserve the slightest bit of consideration, but he didn't understand her reasons. That death haunted her for the last six years, nonstop and in repeat always more vivid in the next dream that it was in the last and she woke each morning reminding herself that she had lived through the ordeal, but that her parents had not. She didn't accomplish anything by crying or talking or complaining about it, she'd only seem whiny. Honestly, how or why they died hadn't been anyone's business but her own, so she was angry mostly.
She never expected to tell Izuna that Hiryuu dealt with the Mikazuki clan before or that his order was the reason her parents were dead, let alone how she came across the information. She didn't think he would find out.
Still, the following morning after Hiryuu had attacked her, she had woken up with Izuna at her side and he had been smiling. He had looked at her differently than everyone else with genuine worry and not pity. She had gazed into his face and had decided that the impulse that had forced her to act against Hiryuu (in an attempt to ease the pain of her loss) had been a lesson. She had wanted to learn that lesson. She had to because it meant having a roof over her head, food on her plate, and a person like Izuna willing to befriend her. I could be happy here, she had thought and had meant it. She had wished she could be happy with Sachiyo and the Uchiha brothers. And for nearly six years, she had been. She had trained hard enough to win Sachiyo's approval. She had worked hard enough to be acknowledged by Eijiro. She had tried her best until even Jouji caved and he had hated her guts those first three years, set on making her life a living hell when she had been asked to work under him. She and Izuna had become real friends, and even though she fought with Madara all the time, she knew that eventually he would see that she had been honest with them.
She had opened up to him and in a few words Madara had made her feel so stupid for doing so.
As chaos reigned in her head, Mio pinched her arm harshly and forced herself to cry. She couldn't on her own even though that was all she wanted to do. Cry until her throat was dry, until the tears dried on her cheeks, until her pillow was drenched in them and the emotion left her empty as Madara claimed she was. She wanted to be that girl and stop thinking and worrying about everything. She didn't want to feel this pain.
Mio buried her face in her blanket. It was going to be hard. It was going to be so hard.
The first sob startled her, heavy and broken and loud, and after that, she couldn't stop. Not even the tears relented and when dawn came, she left her pillow drenched in every inch of sadness in her heart.