Fated to Meet You
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Unfortunately, no tobiramaxmai moments in this chapter.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything, character or plot, from Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto.
Chapter Six: Candlelight
It was difficult.
She thought it was going to be easy. You just had to look at the flame and sense. Nothing more, nothing less. Mai didn't say a word, but her chakra still fell back. Like when every word was released while communicating with Elder Mio her chakra would fall back, the same would happen when the flame so much as flickered or the light so much as convert from yellow to orange.
Mai had pulled forth all her concentration onto the flame that she only noticed the sky had turned dark when the night wind blew the flame out. And a sense of panic spread throughout her veins until it had balanced out.
Had she been sitting there for that long?
She brought her hands up to rub her eyes. They stung foreignly and uncomfortably. Waiting until she could see the distinct outlines of the trees in the distance, Mai rose up from the ground. Picking up the candle, the sound of gently crushed grass accompanied her steps. Gently and quietly Mai opened the door to enter the home. Her footsteps creaked lightly on the wooden floors. Ayaka and the rest of the maids had gone home to their families. The empty, large house made her footsteps echo through its empty halls. Pausing to see objects of home in the dark night, Mai gently walked to the kitchen. It wasn't unusual for the halls to be dark and barely seeable. When anyone needed to move through the night, a candle would have to accompany them. Setting the candle quietly on a table, her hands searched for the familiar sticks that Ayaka would use to light the fire for tea. The light sound of skin on wood seem to echo into the darkness.
She found nothing.
Mai turned around to face the hallway. She could make out bits of the far staircase thanks to the moon's light. Should I report to Elder Mio now? She thought to herself. Abandoning her candle, Mai carefully walked straight towards the staircase. Once she reached the foot of the staircase, Mai grasped onto the wall.
"I can report to Elder Mio tomorrow." Mai whispered to herself before she carefully lifted her foot onto a higher stair step.
"Do you think the Uchiha Clan will ignite a frontal battle with us, Team Captain?" Jun asked Tobirama. They two of them and Kaito had gathered to plan their next mission.
Tobirama with his arms crossed in front of him answered, "Not anytime soon." Tension was still present even after a couple weeks when news of the new Uchiha Clan Leader hit their Senju Village. But Tobirama knew the Uchiha Clan wouldn't do anything on a large scale like a frontal battle until later. Although, to his annoyance, he didn't know when later was.
Jun nodded his head before leaning back. "...Maahh, Takeshi-senpai is late, again." The younger Senju slumped into his pillow-seat.
"Give him time, Jun." Kaito said. The older Senju glanced at their team captain. As per usual, the white haired senju sat still with his arms crossed over his chest. Kaito knew his team captain did not tolerate tardiness- in fact, he did not tolerate any rule to be broken. But Takeshi has been an exception for a while. A while too long. It wouldn't surprise Kaito if their team captain scolds his teammate after this meeting. Immediately after his thought, the door slid open and entered in their last teammate.
"Senpai!" Jun perked up in his seat beamingly.
"Sorry for my tardy." Takeshi said respectfully and primarily towards their team captain.
The white haired team captain nodded for the late teammate to sit and began explaining their upcoming mission. The four Senju shinobi had been working as a team ever since Hashirama became clan leader, going mostly on bodyguard and high-ranking missions. It surprised each shinobi how compatible they were to each other, especially how compatible the three were to their team captain. The white haired Senju heir was well-known throughout the clan as rather cold and distant. But as their team began to form, the three dark hair Senju's noticed that their team captain was also human. A self-secluded human.
Ayaka sent her out on an errand again. This time not for tea but for rice. Normally, these kind of errands were for the maids, but most of them were out on their child leave. In the Uchiha Village, rice was sold in one store. There was no price on rice. One would pay as much as they could. Mai remember barely surviving, and the seller would give her a free bag of rice each month before Mai insisted on paying with what she had left after each mission and buying anything else that was needed. Walking through the open door of the shop, Mai bowed carefully to the familiar woman seller. "Hello."
Turning around, the woman seller smiled brightly. "I wondered when you would come." The woman, Uchiha Haruna, was older than Ayaka by what seemed a few years. From what Mai learned from the woman's chatter was that she had five children: all boys. And all of whom had died in battle. "Everyone is talking about you." She walked around the the table she was behind to in front of Mai. "Look at you! You're an Elder's Apprentice!" The old woman said with great pride as if Mai was her own child.
Mai smiled and looked to the ground and nodded shyly.
"The child that I remember since she was young has grown up." Haruna cradled Mai's head in her hands. Her voice filled with cheer and pride. "Did you need rice?" The old woman glanced at the girl's empty hands.
Tracing her eyes down to her empty hands, Mai nodded. "Elder Mio needs rice."
. . .
Mai walked out of the shop with a bag of rice. Wrapping the bag around her hand, she fixed her grip before walking forward.
"You need any help with that?"
Looking up, Mai's eyes conjured up the image of a familiar tanned man, Uchiha Hikaku. She stared up at him for a few moments longer before looking back down at her hand. "...No, I think I'm okay." She looked back up at him.
Hikaku looked at the large bag that seemed like it could tip the small girl any minute and laughed. "Well then let me walk you back."
Mai looked forward at the path to Elder Mio's house before her, and back to the man in front of her, and nodded. She fixed her grip on the bag before walking forward with the man beside her.
After only two steps Hikaku spoke. "Have you gone on any missions yet?"
Feeling the weight of the bag drag her arm down Mai answered, "No, I'm still training with Elder Mio."
Hikaku made a sound of amazement. "What are you training on?"
"Sensory."
The older Uchiha smiled. "Elder Mio is great in sensory."
Mai nodded in agreement.
"What kind of missions do you specialize in?" Hikaku asked. The man never seemed to stop talking. But Mai didn't feel like she was being interrogated with his questions.
"Individual recons." Mai stated and left out the assassination part.
"Ahh…" Hikaku breathed out. "That's why I've never seen you before."
Mai nodded. She fixed her grip on the ever-heavy bag of rice.
Hikaku glanced down at the girl's hand holding the rice and laughed. "Let me help." He reached out his hand.
Mai glanced from Hikaku's hand and then to his face. "No, it's okay." She changed her grip to her left hand and wrapped the bag around her palm. "Elder Mio's house isn't far from here." Mai reasoned. It really wasn't.
"Alright then." Hikaku withdrew his hand and walked with the girl. "How old are you, Mai-chan?" Hikaku said with an air of familiarity.
Mai stumbled a bit at the suffix. Mai-chan? No one has ever called her that, and yet a part of her seemed fine with a man she just met calling her that. "...Fifteen."
Hikaku nodded. "I was fifteen when I started training under Elder Jirou, also." He commented. "Are you going on any missions soon?"
Mai silently fixed her grip. "No, Elder Mio wants me to train a little more before I go back onto the field."
"Really?" Hikaku glanced down the bag of rice that was hiding behind her body before looking up to see Elder Mio's house nearing. "Maybe we can train together. It must be boring training by yourself."
She never thought that the sight of her teacher's home would ever give her this much relief in her entire life. "No, it's okay." Mai replied with no reason whatsoever.
Hikaku laughed. "Alright then. Well, this is where I leave." He slowed his pace. "See you around, Mai-chan."
Mai lowered her head a bit to bid farewell to the older Uchiha. She stood there, out of respect, until he was a distance away before walking back onto her path carrying a bag of rice and a sense of familiarity to the older Uchiha.
"We leave at dawn tomorrow. Be ready." Tobirama concluded his briefing and looked up at his team. When Hashirama became clan leader, he appointed Tobirama a team assigned for high-class missions. It didn't surprise the white haired leader that his older brother would make a team for him with members that were compatible with each other. He'd worked with them once a few times when his father was still clan leader, and alive. They were all very skilled: Kaito in genjutsu, Takeshi well-rounded, and Jun in taijutsu.
He watched as all but one of his teammates leave the room: Takeshi. Tobirama had been very lenient on Takeshi on his tardiness. Beside his tardiness, Takeshi was fine. He was about to call him to stay behind, but the man decided to stay himself.
Takeshi waited for the sound of the door to shut before speaking. He could feel the eyes of all his teammates on him. His Team Captain's red ones in front of him. Kaito and Jun's brown ones from behind in the door. "..." He began. "Team Captain,"
Tobirama patiently waited for his teammate to finish his sentence that seem to cause him much frustration. His red eyes glanced at the dark haired man's tensed forehead to the straight line his mouth made.
"...Have you heard about what happened to the girl?"
His red eyes blinked nonchalantly. Tobirama knew exactly who his teammate was talking about: the girl in the Land of Steel. An image of her conjured up into his mind. Her black hair that faded in with the shadows, her dark eyes, her youthful face. How old was she? She looked as if she would be around Itama's age if he was still living. "No." Tobirama answered.
Takeshi looked down lower into the table between them.
Tobirama explicitly remembered the scene when he brought back the unconscious girl. Takeshi was normally a quiet man, but it was the look in his eyes when he looked at the girl that caught Tobirama's attention. He knew why that girl meant a great deal to him. The girl was around his deceased sister's age. Deceased just a few months ago.
"She was scheduled for execution the day after we left." Takes informed while still looking down at the table.
Red eyes narrowed. Tobirama knew the moment he captured her, she fate would be death. She was young, yes. And the image of her in his head was beginning to remind him of Itama. And even of Kawarama. All of whom were young children forced to fight carrying the burden of war created by their ancestors and live to not see their adulthood. Tobirama exhaled silently. Of course he felt sympathy for the girl. What if she had a family? What if she had a sibling that needed her? A sibling that now had one less sister.
As if he was done expressing all of his emotions, Takeshi cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to bother you, Team Captain." Takeshi bowed. "I will not be late next time."
Tobirama nodded and waited for the door to slide shut before glancing out the window in the room. His mind played back to when he first saw the girl looking up at the fireworks filled sky. No one would've thought she was an shinobi. Even his eyes tricked him. He remembered thinking- wishing to himself that she wasn't the assassin. But her chakra proved her wrong.
Still, the clan had to be put first. Even if he had to cut the girl's life short.
Mai lowered herself down onto the green grass, being careful to keep the balance of the candle in her hand on her way down. She just got done speaking with Elder Mio about the candle training and was told to continue the training again. Carefully, she slid the stick to make light. Lighting the candle, she blew out the fire, waving her hands to release the smoke into the air. Letting her hair down, Mai felt the wind on her cheeks as it carried her black strands in the air. Averting her eyes to the candle flame on the ground, the trees around her faded into nothingness. Minute by minute, her concentration increased on the fire.
However, not even a quarter of an hour in, water fell from the sky. And the fire was extinguished.
A/N
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