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"…Marked Omega is able to sense whenever their mate is in need of a release. Once their mate is satiated but they weren't around to help, they can sense it too…"
Sasuke shut his eyes tight and massaged his temple with trained fingers.
His suspicions turned out to be true.
It didn't take much to mate. An Alpha only needs to mark his Omega on the nape of her neck.
But once an Alpha and an Omega mate… all their life, their existence, from that point onwards would shift on a gigantic scale. They would be bonded for life that even marriage doesn't hold a candle to its potential.
On top of that, if what he just read was true, that if marked, an Omega would be able to sense everytime their mate was on a rut, then they would be able to sense when their Alpha was satiated as well. What would it imply when their Omega wasn't around to help them?
They did it with another.
It… genuinely is a literal instance of a connection destined for life. The kind he wasn't sure he would be willing to take part in it.
Surely, this really wasn't his idea of how he should spend his time off. But even as he reprimanded himself over and over again, his hands, eyes, and brain were persistently on the work as if covertly designated to do just that.
He was a good seventy feet under the ground where the Naka Shrine resided, accompanied by only the barest minimum of light and heat, but his eyes were perpetually in their sharpest form and he was sweating bullets from the emotional strain of diving into materials of the unknown. Hidden materials of the Uchiha Clan, untouched for years since the time of their untimely fall and being kept secret of its existence within the clan from outside world even much longer.
When his feet brought him to the Konoha Research's archives one morning on his first day off after a one-week mission, at first he had thought it was merely a spur of the moment since he did want to know more about the way mating and particularly between the fated ones work. He had thought it was just going to be him looking for more materials to read.
That was two weeks ago.
It hadn't occurred to him that he would turn it into an all out research altogether.
Conventional articles were rare, but more so scientific ones. After finding close to nothing of what he hadn't already known from local archives, the Sasuke one and a half week ago decided to touch the untouchables to look for more truths.
He had known of its existence from conversations of the adults he shouldn't have heard in his late childhood. But he was much too young then when without warning everything passed into oblivion overnight, there was no one to take him there when he was of age. It had become an untoucheable place, one that would easily remind him of the weight of his reality. For the longest time it had been a token of undesirable remembrance so he avoided it like a plague. Then he killed Itachi and the truth revealed itself, yet he still bore Konoha hitai-ate as much as he told himself that he should loathe the village he'd been calling home all his life when he fought against his own kin in the last war.
Too much had happened and what had been a strong standpoint became a dull, weakly pulsing bawl that barely had any difference from a preconceived routine. Particularly so when he eventually reached a stable peace of mind after prematurely conjuring closure to every clenching mess in his life.
He was content living the life as an Anbu Captain. He needed nothing more, he had said to himself, not even the title as the Last Uchiha.
So it wasn't a surprise that even years after the massacre, there hadn't been a reason or need to proactively search the way to go inside. He hadn't needed to know anything more about how cursed his clan actually was. He would never come down for clan matters, that much he was certain, but he would never have guessed that when he did come down it would be for anything close to knowledge about biological traits of the human.
He was committed. Although, desperate might be the more appropriate word.
Besides, he came down to the clan's hidden bunker without soaring expectation since what he actually needed had nothing to do with clan matters.
It was a shock then when his eyes easily caught sight of the first keyword right when he opened the first document; the last head's memoir, his father's.
The next moment, he took a good one week to read through all his father's memoirs and came to a conclusion, one that he didn't really know how to make out of his feelings about it.
Uchiha Fugaku had always wanted to find his fated partner, but he never did.
Sasuke's mother was first introduced to him at a young age with the ink of their marriage already dried on sacred scroll between the two families. Their marriage was political but his position as successor was as weak as it could get at the time so he really had no choice.
In his memoir, Fugaku described their marriage as one that had endured the time headstrong with deep understanding and exceptional compatibility. But she was not his fated partner. Though he couldn't ask for more, because even though she wasn't, keeping Mikoto by his side brought out the best version of his life.
He knew he loved her, just not in the way how he had thought he was capable of doing.
Days ago, when Sasuke had a final grasp on his father's last memoir, the hands that were holding the scroll had lowered to rest on the table as he could only stare into the wall before him with his brain completely void of conclusions. He didn't know what to think, he refused to think about it. He loved his mother so much and it really wasn't a good feeling to know that she actually wasn't the one his father wanted.
Not every Alpha or Omega has their fated partner born in the same lifetime. Sasuke finished his father's tale with that crawling fact.
"Fated pair… I've never witnessed such wonder before." His father had written one day.
Wonder, of all many other things, his father had chosen to use the word to identify it with.
Why, wonder, Sasuke mused, Chichi-ue?
His eyes swept across arbitrarily placed scrolls to the ones of his father's, unintentionally shoved to the peripherals. One thing he found the most momentous from his father's memoir was the fact that his father's father, which was his grandfather, wedded his fated mate and the last clan head had never seen such love as deep and rugged as the one his parents had, or so he had written.
Truly, Sasuke could only guess his father never really read his father's memoir in all its entirety. Never got the chance probably, since he'd had to face his demise so untimely. If he had a say about it, Sasuke would have to prefer connection rather than love. Love is such an absurd concept for it to be defined as such.
Despite his initial view about it, Sasuke found himself spending the next precious week of his time reading his grandfather's memoir. Today, and just like any other day prior, he had perched on the same seat for more than one should sit at a time, reading through a twenty years worth of memoir.
When he began with his grandfather's memoir, his mind automatically started comparing facts between his father's and grandfather's. The both of them admitted the same thing, that it was such a rarity to be able to find one's fated mate.
But they both had contradicting outcomes.
While his father had no chance in ever finding one, his grandfather had found his in a series of coincidence and synchronicity. Fate, both of them had mentioned.
The day when he met his fated one, Sasuke's grandfather wasn't supposed to go. But fate had chosen him to go and when he glanced his way to the women before him for the first time, an epiphany hit him.
"She is my fated partner."
Sasuke's fists had tightened around the scroll he was holding, creating creases on the parchment from where it had the most contact with his fingers. He had never wished for his grandfather's return to life as much as he did at that moment. He had so much to ask.
It didn't take long for them to take off from there and just a day before their marriage, Sasuke's grandmother revealed her side of the story.
"She knew from the start that I was her fated partner."
Does it always happen that way? Sasuke had mused. Both sides always in the know?
Does it mean… Hinata…?
He had pushed the thought about this particular subject aside to avoid getting his hopes up. It really wasn't the time for it. He still had a lot to find.
So he read on, and on, and came to a conclusion about mating from his grandfather's experience alone. He somehow had attained everything he needed that he could find.
What he didn't need was how he came to that conclusion.
If he didn't know what to make of his feeling about his parents, when he continued reading, he didn't know if he should laugh or frown in misery to his grandfather's findings.
Because he didn't need to know how his grandparents discover the extent of mating.
His grandfather even put a name to it, the monstrous anguish.
It was an accident. It wasn't supposed to happen. Yet, it almost took not only the life of his love, but also the life of his unborn child inside the womb.
It wasn't even because the fact that he had decided to appease his rut by doing it with another, even though in and of itself was another unforgivable mistake, but it was because he had decided to do it with his Alpha teammate, his wife's dear friend.
It wasn't even voluntary on Sasuke's grandmother's part… to crumble and give up any means of living, because deep down she knew her husband didn't have a choice. They were in a mission together after all.
His grandfather didn't describe it well, so Sasuke couldn't really understand this monstrous anguish. Only that it was crawling from deep within his grandmother and it affected his grandfather on physical, emotional, and even spiritual level.
There comes the reason why he denied his father calling it love.
What to make out of his findings about fated pair then?
The one his father so desperately tried to find but failed due to circumstances and his grandfather found by fate but had to confront the worst of it?
Now that he had the chance… what would he do about it?
Author's Note :
Pheww, this part was particularly difficult to write and my mind was all over the place (plot line-wise and real life problems-wise). Plot-wise I'm pretty satisfied with how this one turned out, can't say the same with the editorial though.
On a side note, a week ago bloodberrylicious mentioned that it'd been almost a year since I first started this story... my I just realised. It wasn't even my intention to post this chapter at the exact time of this story's first birthday yet I did.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter and expect the last third next week.
Until next time.
- Crowds