Chapter Text
When she wakes, there is a thin layer of gauzy material covering her eyes, and the stench of decay buried deep in her being.
She does not panic.
She cannot sense anyone around for miles, which means either her own chakra has been suppressed – and it hasn’t, she determines, after a quick, exploratory flare – or she truly is alone here. She tests her range of motion, her digits and limbs responding well, if a little stiff, and she is not in any way bound or trapped to the surface she is lying on. When she runs a hand over her head, her fingertips brush cold marble, and she draws back with a hiss of surprise.
She is in the crypt.
Seals of preservation have been carved into the underside of the lid propped atop her tomb. They are dormant, unresponsive to her examination.
Uzumaki Mito plants both hands on the marble above her and gives a good, firm shove. She rises into a sitting position, the lid above her moving out of the way as she lifts, and promptly chokes under what seems like a mountain of dust. The lid crashes to the ground. Mito wheezes, pressing the gauzy material against her nose and mouth for respite, and waits for the chaos to lessen. When it does, she cautiously lifts the cloth away from her face.
The first thing she sees is the white scrap of silk in her hand, yellowed from age. The next thing she sees is the tombs of her ancestors lined alongside her own, each one smashed open, pieces of marble strewn about the stone floor. Everything in her line of sight is utterly wrong. The banners hanging from the walls are no longer the vivid red of her time, but faded pinks and peach, the fabric scorched and torn in places. The jewels set into the floor are all gone, but marks of sharp tools remain, the stone scratched and dented by the work of thieves. The great set of double doors leading into the crypt ought to be sealed shut, and yet remains wide open, a gaping maw of shadows at the entrance.
Mito slowly lifts herself out of the tomb. The silk in her hand had not been surprising, she’d removed it herself from her face. It was the hand itself that sent shock rippling through her core. Smooth and unlined, no scars or calluses. The hand of a young noblewoman. The one she had been, before time took her away, and left an aged crone in her place.
She assesses the situation with deadly, unearned calm.
She has awoken inside her own tomb, apparently young and untried once more, and has found Uzushio’s crypt in a state of total disrepair, defaced by greed. The crypt is located directly beneath the great hall, and so she should be able to sense thousands of chakra signatures above her. And yet there are none. Nothing but dust floating in thick, undisturbed air. Despite the obvious signs of intrusion, it does not appear anyone has entered the room for many years, meaning the crypt has been abandoned long enough to be raided, and yet even more time has passed since then.
Uzushio has fallen.
Mito breathes the truth out, unwilling to let it fester within her.
How many centuries has it been? What is the world like, above her? Have more Great Shinobi Villages been founded in her absence? Who currently houses the Kyuubi?
Is there room for one more ghost to haunt Uzushio’s shores?
She steps across the cracked stone tiles to examine her ancestors’ tombs. They remain, thankfully, still enshrouded by silk, but their tombs are broken beyond repair. Mito can only assume her tomb remained intact because of the seals someone had placed after her death.
Enough dawdling, she thinks crossly, don’t be such a coward. Time to properly assess the damage.
With that, she leaves the room without a backward glance.
The steps are chipped and fractured, but she navigates them with only a small scowl, robes dragging through the dirt.
Before she can properly leave the crypt, her attention is caught by a large looking glass in the room at the top of the small flight of stairs. The glass is dark and partially covered by a red velvet blanket. She crosses the room at once, eager to find answers within herself before seeking them elsewhere, and tugs the blanket free, sending it cascading to the floor in a rush of dust.
She narrows her eyes at her own reflection.
She has been dressed very extravagantly for death. White ribbons have been looped through her hair, and a small, ceremonial circlet glints above her forehead, the mark of her seal thankfully still visible on her skin. Opals decorate her ears, and rows and rows of jewelled necklaces fall across her chest, a gold choker around her throat. Her robes are heavy, white fabric with gold thread embroidery depicting scenes of Uzushio life, tides of gold spilling at the hem, fish leaping around the cuffs, decorative swirls filling in the spaces. There is even a touch of fur at the collar, a real luxury for the village.
All in all, a tremendous waste of money to be used simply to dress up a corpse just to bury her beneath marble. What was it all for? So grave robbers might think her pretty, had they managed to break through her tomb?
Everything is a little loose, presumably because it had been tailored to fit her older self, not the young woman she sees staring back at her from the looking glass. Her face has been painted white, with Uzushio swirls of blue and gold glittering on her cheeks, her lips a pale pink, as red would have been improper to be used after death, more a colour for weddings and celebrations.
Her lips had been red the day she’d married Hashirama, a scarlet smile painting his cheek after a rare display of affection on her part. She doesn’t dwell on the thought, leaving it for later to pick over like a starved beast gnawing on bone.
She leaves the room with a sense of muted anger, uncertain what it is pointed towards. Regardless, she follows its momentum all the way up the stairs, and steps into the light.
The great hall is gone.
In its place lies sea-soaked rock, the cliffs the village had been built upon now reclaiming the space. She can see cracked, gilded tiles glinting in pools on the rocky surface, piles of stone made by man, not nature, but besides that, it is gone. The great hall was where they would feast, dance, celebrate, and pray. Any gathering of more than ten would inevitably take place within the hall, where all manner of arguments could be quelled by the familiar surroundings. They’d deliberately decorated it to be plain and comforting, thick rugs underfoot, gentle candlelight twinkling across the space, seals on the walls dampening the roar of the ocean just outside.
Mito turns.
It is not just the great hall.
Uzushio itself is gone.
She stumbles, almost dropping to her knees.
She walks for hours, searching for signs of her home. She finds broken rock, fallen weapons, mounds of earth that suggest hasty, shallow graves, fragments of ancient scrolls tangled in the brush, a pearl comb half-buried in dirt, and countless bones.
She finds a skull propped against the remains of a stone wall that used to border the training grounds. Nearby, an almost intact skeleton is curled up at the base of a broken tower, as if seeking shelter.
That muted anger from before rises steadily, higher and higher until she feels her own chakra reserves flicker in response, her body seeking the end to an enemy it cannot see.
It is the first time since waking that she has discovered something good.
Her chakra reserves have always been immense. She is an Uzumaki, after all, and her own chakra was powerful enough to tie a beast to her soul. But now, inexplicably, her reserves feel positively endless. An infinite sea of energy. She no longer has the Kyuubi, having died giving up the beast, and yet she feels twice as strong as she had at her peak, a young jinchuuriki ready to take on the world. The only answer is her seal. It remains on her forehead despite the fact that it ought to have faded with her death, which indicates that for however long she has been resting in her tomb, her chakra had continued to gather in the seal.
She frowns, fingers tapping against her lips.
Could it be possible that the seals of preservation on her tomb had somehow affected her corpse in turn? It isn’t what they were designed for – and she would know – but it isn’t as though she had ever tested it on a dead person, especially without the added combination of her own Strength of a Hundred seal. It doesn’t make sense, and she suspects it never will. If she allows herself to question it for too long, she will inevitably have to study the phenomenon until she discovers the truth. Such a truth does not need to exist in this world. Let it remain buried in Uzushio’s desecrated crypt, where men less principled than herself cannot reach it.
The secrets of immortality had plagued her generation, each person of renown unable to resist the allure of escaping death. All save Hashirama, of course, her foolish, sweet husband, all too happy to grow old, wanting nothing more than the chance to leave the reigns of power to the next generation. To finally be free of the burden of being the man that founded a nation.
At that moment, something glints amongst the rubble.
Mito makes her way towards it, expecting to find yet another discarded kunai. Instead, she finds a brass locket, rusted shut. She clutches it to her chest, her breath coming fast and shallow.
This had once been her best friend’s most prized possession. She’d inherited it from her mother, and always swore she’d leave it to her own daughter one day. After four sons, Mito nudged her into finally passing it down to her oldest boy, a bright-eyed soldier with hair the colour of maize. At the time Mito had grown close to death, the boy had been a man with a child of his own, a precious daughter who had no talent for ninjutsu, but a deft hand at sewing and needlework.
The locket had passed through three generations to reach Mito’s shaking hand.
She can’t bear it.
Her nails scrabble desperately at the latch, forgetting the trick to unlock it. She scratches away the rust, reddish brown flakes coating her fingertips like old blood, and finally, with a firm press, the locket springs open.
She has endured so much since waking from her eternal rest. The realisation of her surroundings, her own death and undeath, the terrible state of her ancestral chamber, the loss of her home and everyone she had ever known and loved.
And yet it is this small thing that breaks her.
A flaking cracked portrait the size of her thumb. Her best friend’s painted smile reaching through time to try to cheer her once more, only to strike her like a blow. She had not expected to see her friend’s face in that moment, since during her time, her friend had left a small, pressed flower inside the locket. At some point, someone, probably her son, had commissioned a small portrait of his mother to sit here in place of the flower.
Mito’s body is wracked with sobs. She is driven to the ground, curling up, holding the locket to her heart.
She lies there long enough for the chill of the stone to seep through her being.
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Time waits for no one, not even long-dead women who ought not to have left their resting places, so eventually Mito drags herself off the ground, wipes her face clean of tears, and sets about finding the people responsible for destroying her legacy.
She takes the form of a woman she had known, small and unassuming, often mistaken for a civilian, and leaves in search of answers.
Crossing the watery divide between the Land of Whirlpools and the Land of Fire is a journey best done on boat, but Mito does not feel inclined to build one. Instead, she glues her feet to the surface of the water, ignoring the shifting of the tide, and calmly walks until she reaches land. The sun is going down by the time she sets foot in the Land of Fire. She can only hope it is not currently at war with whatever villages remain, as she has little to no interest in engaging in battle at this time.
Her disguise will cause her to be overlooked, if she encounters resistance, unless –
Ah.
The bushes rustle around her as she walks through the woodland path. Too obvious to be shinobi, to discreet to be merely animals going about their business.
Bandits, then.
A man steps into view, a large scythe strapped to his back. It has grown dark, and his leering expression is set shadow, appearing quite ominous. Mito gazes back at him, serene.
She is aware there are more men at her back.
“What’s this, then?” The man in front of her asks. “A little rabbit, lost in the woods?”
Mito sighs, ever so slightly. It is not enough to simply be a ruffian, it seems. One must also speak only in clichés.
“Do you know why the scythe began being used as a weapon?” She asks.
The man’s forehead creases in confusion, “you what?”
“The scythe is a farming implement. Not designed for warfare. When daimyos began drafting all available townsfolk to fight wars they were unqualified to participate in, more often than not, they were farmers with nothing but the tools they used on the land. They took these tools into battle, where they died in droves. Do you know why?”
“This bitch is insane.” The man laughs, looking over her shoulder to share the humour of the moment with the men behind her.
Mito steps on his back, prying the scythe from his hands. He splutters in shock. His men are silent, perhaps in awe at her speed.
“It is because the scythe makes for a very poor weapon, I’m afraid. Too much reach and not enough accuracy. A tool made for farming cannot counter a weapon made for war. And you are not a man of war, are you? You’re a man who seeks pleasure in easy violence because he has never had to know the fear of real danger. Am I right?”
“Bitch! Fuckin’ get her!” The man spits, wriggling beneath her foot.
None of his men move. When Mito spares them a glance, they’ve gone. Smarter than their friend, it seems.
“Here’s hoping you are more knowledgeable of ancient history than you appear,” Mito sighs.
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Mito gazes at the outline of Konohagakure, glowing orange on the horizon.
It has been a little over twenty years since her death.
Uzushio fell four years after she did.
Konoha did nothing.
The bandit hadn’t known the details, just the dates, so Mito had been forced to break into the archives of a nearby town. It had taken hours to find a written account of the awful final days of her home.
A civil war had began shortly after Mito died, the other clans clashing with the Uzumaki. Kushina had been sent to Konoha by this point, safe from the in-fighting. An unnamed shinobi of Uzushio had betrayed them to Kumo, sharing details of their village’s defences and advising them on the best way to wipe them out. Kumo had tricked Uzushio into believing they were about to send their full force to attack Konoha. Uzushio sent a warning to Konoha and immediately headed out to defend them, taking most of their shinobi with them. Kumo circled around them with half of their own forces and sieged the village. The rest of their shinobi picked off Uzushio’s soldiers during their journey to Konoha. Records show the soldiers turned back to defend Uzushio, presumably realising they had been deceived, only for the remaining Kumo shinobi in Uzushio to meet them at the gates, finishing them off.
Not a single person had been spared. Word had spread of survivors scattering across the lands, but nothing concrete. Every lord, lady, shinobi, and civilian, had been killed without compromise.
Konoha had received Uzushio’s warning of an impending attack and had responded by barring their gates and preparing their soldiers for a last stand. When the attack failed to arrive, they sent scouts to learn more. They arrived at the smouldering wreckage of their ally and realised what had happened.
And their response to Kumo’s treachery was to bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing had happened. As if Uzushio’s loss was just an unfortunate natural disaster, impossible to foresee or avenge. As if Uzushio hadn’t been destroyed trying to save the very village that started the war in the first place.
Mito breathes in the scent of the forest. It is nothing like the briny air of her home, salt so thick in the air you could taste it. Here the land smells earthy, aromatic but strange, not unfamiliar, but not home. Here is the village Hashirama loved so dearly. The place he and their children had called home. Mito had dwelled here for some time, but eventually had answered the call of the sea. Longing had hooked her between the ribs and pulled her home.
She brushes her hand against the bark of a tree her husband had grown. She sends a spark of chakra through the seal she carved so many years ago.
She is transported deep beneath the earth inside the tunnels carved for the Hokage to evacuate, her own seals glittering across the stone walls. She traverses the underground passages easily, slipping through the dark spaces until her face once against is bathed by sunlight.
When she blinks, she is greeted by the sight of a village at peace.
Konohagakure looks to be doing very well indeed, civilians bustling about in great masses, fresh produce being sold by the barrel, the only visible shinobi milling about aimlessly, not standing guard.
Not at war, then, Mito thinks wryly. Lucky them, I suppose.
She walks around, noting the changes between her time and the present. The buildings are much taller and there’s an extra face carved into the Hokage Mountain, a shaggy-haired fellow she hopes isn’t who she thinks it is. The Hokage can’t be that scruffy little boy Kushina had been courting, could it? Mito had only met him once during her final visit to Konoha and hadn’t been terribly impressed. Of course, Kushina had pretended she hated the boy, but she couldn’t hide the gleam in her eye when she rambled on about how annoying he was. Mito had scolded her for being predictable. A lady should at least choose someone utterly scandalous if no one appropriate suits her.
And then, like sand glittering in the sun, she feels a trace of something familiar.
Uzumaki, she thinks, following the chakra before she can even stop to process the revelation.
Her feet take her to the Academy, Tobirama’s greatest creation, where she perches atop a fence, unseen, to peer down at the small figures standing in the clearing below.
She spots the Uzumaki immediately. He’s a small boy, younger than students were supposed to start school – Tobirama had ideas about the differences in society during peacetime rather than wartime – but nevertheless, he is gamely holding his hands up in a seal, screwing his face up with effort.
She isn’t certain what technique he is attempting, but the pitiful slither of chakra he manages to shift isn’t enough to do more than make him stumble back a step.
Instantly, the air fills with the jeers of his fellow students.
“We told you!” One child crows. “You can’t do anything! You’re not a shinobi, you’re just a monster boy!”
The children take up the chant, monster boy!
“If you can’t even do something this simple, how dare you call yourself my student?” The teacher says contemptuously.
All the while, the little Uzumaki’s chakra seethes with anger, the faintest stirrings of hatred beginning to emerge. Mito senses something awful just below it, which brings with it a terrible realisation. The boy is a jinchuuriki. The hatred Mito can feel is his own, but it’s already being fed by the Kyuubi’s aura, strengthening the boy’s resentment.
If this boy is the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, then Kushina is dead.
Mito lowers her head, burying her face in her hands as if the pain she feels can be evaded if only she hides herself from it. Kushina is dead. Her bright, vivacious, precocious little flame of a girl. Her heir at heart. While Tsunade was her heir in truth, left in Konoha to lead the next generation of Senju, Mito had always seen Kushina as the future of Uzushio. She had assumed the girl had survived the fall of the village, and yet…
By the time she comes out of her reverie, the little Uzumaki is gone, along with the rest of the students.
Mito has never considered herself a fool. The boy is the spitting image of Kushina’s beau, with obvious similarities to Kushina herself, and he bears the burden Mito had died to seal into Kushina. He can only be her son. What could have led to such a boy being the laughingstock of his school, treated with such obvious derision by his teachers and peers alike?
She follows the traces of his chakra to a back alley, her nose wrinkling at the sight she is greeted with.
The boy is scrabbling through the garbage on his hands and knees. He appears quite cheerful, despite the grim task ahead of him. He finds an apple, still red and shiny, and rubs it very carefully on his shirt. Mito appreciates the sentiment, but wonders if the boy understands the concept of requiring cloth itself to be clean before it can clean anything else.
Interestingly enough, she can sense a four-man squad nearby. Two stand on the roof on the left side of the alley and two stand on the right, bordering the child like guards.
Before the boy can take a bite, a man steps into the alley, bristling with anger.
“You demon brat! How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of my garbage! Little thief, always making a mess – ” The man snarls, raising a hand to the boy.
Mito has been able to sense negative emotions since the first time she sealed the Kyuubi within herself. In that moment, she senses anger and bitter resentment emanating from the guards above. However, she can’t pause to consider the reasons why they might feel that way, because she is too busy striding down the alley, and slapping the man across the face.
The merchant staggers back beneath the force of the blow, her hand cracking against his cheek.
The Uzumaki boy stares up at her owlishly.
“There is no law against taking from waste that has been disposed of,” Mito says, with forced calm, “there is, however, a law against hitting children, not to mention laws against the improper disposal of waste. How dare you attempt to strike a child?”
The man reels, eyes wide at the sight of her civilian disguise. Then he seems to regain his composure, anger drawing his features into a tight snarl, “There’s no law against disciplining a wild animal.”
The Uzumaki boy flinches, shoulders rising up.
“Is that right? Thank you for letting me know. I’ll be sure to take that into consideration when I decide exactly how to discipline the beast I see before me.” Mito gives him a sweet smile, then goes to yank the man closer –
One of the guards on the roof drops down in-between them.
“Hey, now. That’s enough.” The man says, lifting his hands to placate them. “I’ll take it from here, ma’am. Sir, I saw what happened, and you need to leave. You don’t want this to blow up into a big mess, right?”
The merchant seethes but seems to lose all his nerve at the sight of the shinobi and charges off like a great big child in a sulk.
Mito tuts, “A waste of an opportunity for a well-deserved lesson, shinobi-san.”
The shinobi turns back to her, slipping his hands into his pockets. His posture is slack, loose, undisciplined. Mito feels her lip curl in response at the sight of it. His hair is grey and he’s wearing a dark mask across the lower half of his face. Interesting to hide his identity even within the walls of his own village. Perhaps he was on loan from another village, only here for some kind of programme. Villages did that, from time to time, sharing shinobi like tools and secrets.
The Uzumaki boy is still frozen behind Mito’s legs.
“Doesn’t seem like a lesson meant to be taught by a visitor.” The shinobi shrugs. “What brings you to the village?”
“Well, I’d like an audience with your Hokage.”
“Need an appointment for that, I’m afraid.”
Mito rolls her eyes, bemoaning the bureaucracy of it all, then turns, scoops the boy into her arms, and slams her hand on the faded seal painted on the alley’s wall.
The man is fast enough to hurl a kunai at her head the second she reaches towards the child, but not accurate enough to strike, and she and the boy slip through the transportation seal without issue. There’s no chance of the shinobi being able to follow her through it, since the seal is keyed to her chakra. Well, hers and Hashirama’s. They left seals all over the village so they could sneak around unchaperoned – Tobirama was a nuisance despite being younger – and had never felt the need to remove them.
She carries the boy through the forest on the outskirts of the village, noting that the child is trembling but unresisting in her arms, and eventually sets him down on the grass.
“Hello, young Uzumaki,” Mito says, finally finding a reason to smile when the young boy meets her eyes.
His face opens up in undisguised shock, raw and vulnerable, “How do you know my name, lady?”
“First of all.” Mito says severely, settling herself down to sit primly with her legs firmly closed together to prevent her robes from slipping. “I am not ‘lady,’ I am Mito. Though I suppose you may call me obaa-san, should you wish.”
“But you’re not an old lady!” The boy protests. “You’re as pretty as anything. I’ll call you onee-chan!”
“No, you won’t,” Mito can’t help but laugh, “I’m older than the house you live in, child.”
“I don’t live in a house, so there!” The boy sticks his tongue out at her playfully.
Mito closes her eyes, dismayed by the bad manners, then opens them abruptly, concerned. “You do have a home, I trust?”
“The orphanage,” the boy recites dully, like he’s had the fact drilled into his head.
If the Kyuubi had still dwelled within her soul, he would have cackled in unbridled glee at the surge of fury that rises within her.
***
Hello, friends!
PSA: I’m not currently accepting constructive criticism on this fic.
I’m currently on holiday, due to climb aboard a massive ferry tomorrow to sail to another island to meet my cousin/godmother after several years AND I DON’T FEEL WELL. I FEEL TERRIBLE, IN FACT.
Send healthy thoughts my way, for I am decaying as we speak.
Do I know anything about Mito? About as much as the Naruto wiki knows, as it happens. Do I love her? Obviously.
Mito: realises her descendant is being mistreated.
Also Mito: The time for diplomacy died with me. The time for kidnapping starts now.
Will there be a non-Hashirama/Mito ship?
Well, that really depends. Mito is mentally in her early sixties, chronologically in her early eighties, and physically 22. So like. Who tf could she date lmao.
Every few years a new Naruto character possesses me and forces me to write them getting angry over Naruto’s childhood.
I mentioned in another fic that my friend got me into One Piece, that treacherous snake, and I unfortunately really love it. I’m on episode 260. Chopper is my son.
If you want me to keep going with this, please leave a comment.
If you don’t want me to keep going with this, please send me a smoke signal.
Quick poll for fun: What do you want Mito to change the most?