When I came back to the apartment the next day, Otoha was waiting for me at the table. I could tell she had been waiting for a long time.
She didn't yell at me. She simply passed me a note and asked me to burn it after.
It was in Otoha's handwriting. She must have written it last night, not trusting herself to tell me in person.
The note was long. I thought it was going to be a huge rant about how it was bad to befriend foreigners. Or how Lightning was our enemy, and the country was bad and untrustworthy.
It wasn't any of that.
I sat curled by the windowsill, as I read the reason I would never meet my Aunt Masako.
It was because she died after the birth of her third daughter.
The first two daughters, Uchiha Tomoe and Uchiha Runa, were exactly what you'd expect for the main bloodline of the Uchiha. Pale with dark hair. And eventually, red eyes. For the sake of those eyes, the clan went through extreme lengths to ensure the blood was pure.
The third daughter was dark-skinned with snow white hair. Uchiha Mikazuki did not carry the blood of Masako's husband, but the blood of an enemy shinobi from Lightning.
Aunt Masako was a very private person. No one could ever tell what she was thinking. No one knew where she disappeared whenever she did. She kept many secrets during the war, even from Aunt Mikoto. But one thing was certain: Aunt Masako would never, ever forsake her duty or betray the clan.
Aunt Masako's husband killed her after he saw the baby. He killed their second daughter too. Tomoe killed him before he could kill her or the newborn.
In her father's mind, the killing was meant to reclaim the honor lost upon the family.
It was one of the worst nightmares the Uchiha clan had suffered in decades. Because of that night, Aunt Mikoto had to take Aunt Masako's place. Because of that night, Itachi would become the heir. Because of that night, Uchiha Tomoe became the person she did, and Uchiha Mikazuki became the person he did, two orphans who had no family, not even in each other. In the place of love, there was only resentment and pain, pain that they both buried deep inside them.
I was only halfway through the note when I needed to put it down.
Michio was… this mysterious Mikazuki person this whole time.
He used to be Tomoe's sister.
He was half-Lightning.
And our clan hated him for it.
I shut my eyes.
I was still reeling from last night, and now this…
Breathing, I made myself pick the note back up.
War and battle and death, Otoha wrote, are sometimes inevitable. People must fight to survive. We would mourn and rage but also understand and forgive. But what happened with Aunt Masako was not forgivable.
The Hyuuga and Uchiha clan agreed on almost nothing. They agreed on banning Lightning from Konoha. It was considered the land of savages, the land of no honor and no shame. The Hokage had never passed any law that had as much support as that ban.
The wound in my family ran too deep. The trauma. The hostility.
And what I was doing now was a spit in my clan's face. It would be the greatest insult they could suffer, to have one of their last remaining daughters taken away by one of them.
If my clan knew what I was doing, I would never be accepted back ever again.
Otoha knew none of this would change my mind. It was not meant to. Nor would she try to stop me.
Otoha lived with my clan for most of her life. She knew better than to come between an Uchiha and love, even one as dumb and reckless as mine.
Instead, all she wanted was to ask this one question:
Just what, exactly, happened between Masako and the Lightning ninja? What was the taboo?
Otoha already knew my answer:
Masako cheated. Despite herself, she fell in love with someone who was not her husband. Despite the war, she fell in love with the enemy.
It was not my answer that was important.
It was the boy I was with that was important. She wanted me to listen carefully to how a twelve-year-old boy from Lightning would answer.
And after, she wanted me to think carefully about the world we were in, for that to be his conclusion.
A/N: For those who just came back and wondered where all the chapters went, they were condensed into arcs. The new chapters for 2022 begin at 36. Capital Arc, so jump there.
Thank you for everyone's patience and much love (╥﹏╥)
Lily
