Chapter Text
Uzumaki Mito holds court in a sitting room decorated in ocean colors, with herself in a supremely comfortable seat, sipping from a teacup shaped like a koi. The teacup curls around her fingers in a perfect riot of color, energy channeled exactly as she bade it.
Scattered around the room, unseen but not unfelt, are the Senju who have dedicated themselves to her protection. Mito’s eldest son spread his seed far and wide, and though few of her grandchildren bear the Senju name, they all inherited their father’s fierce love for her. As more and more of them come of age, they also come into the habit of draping themselves over Mito’s house like hunting cats, pointedly relaxed but perpetually ready to spring into action.
Senju Akari approaches Mito’s throne, leading her child by the hand. Mito smiles like the grandmother she is, and beckons them both closer.
Akari is a harried woman, the eighth daughter of a minor Clan Head, who caught the attention of Mito’s nephew before Akari quite understood what marrying him would bring about for her. She has steadily acquired more and more grey to replace the black in her hair, and is - so far - the last of her generation of the family to bear a child.
“Is this your daughter?” Mito asks, looking down at the child.
The child looks little like the mother, Senju genes speaking loudly in heterochromatic green/blue eyes and a shock of blue hair unlike any other Senju (and thus, clearly fitting into a family that rarely looks anything alike). The mismatched eyes gaze up at Mito, scrunched up and far too serious for such an age.
Before Akari can say a single word, the child speaks: “No.”
“No?” Mito tilts her head, seeming curious rather than offended. She takes the interruption in stride, eyes moving from mother to child. “Son, then?”
The child thinks for a moment, clearly turning this over. After a moment: “Yes.”
“What is your name, son of Akari?” She speaks with infinite patience, and all the indulgence of a woman to her great-nephew.
The child makes a play of thinking for a moment, though it’s clear to everyone in the room that this name was decided long ago.
“Takushi,” the child says. “Senju Takushi.”
Mito nods. “Would you like to be a shinobi when you grow up, Takushi-chan?”
“No.”
Throughout the conversation between the Senju Clan Head and her great-nephew, Akari’s face has been growing steadily more and more horrified. When the child says ‘no’, Akari steps forward, lips already forming an apology.
Mito holds up one hand without looking away from the child. She waits, letting her grand-nephew think.
The words come in ones and twos, carefully enunciated and curled around the edges. “I don’t wanna be a shinobi. But I don’t wanna die.”
“The Senju and Uzumaki have many places for those who aren’t shinobi,” Mito says.
The child’s head shakes from side to side. “Gonna be a shinobi. A good one.”
“Yes,” Mito says thoughtfully, “I think that you will be.” She turns to her niece-in-law, taking a drink from her cup. “When he turns twelve, bring him back to me.”
“Of course, Mito-sama,” Akari says, just about tripping over herself to head towards the door. When Mito gives her a look that suggests a long-held argument, Akari corrects herself, “Mito-oba-san.”
She sweeps Takushi up and into her arms as soon as they are out of the room, and she gives him a look suggesting she doesn’t know whether to praise or punish.
“Gonna be a good shinobi,” he says solemnly, before resting his head on her shoulder and closing his eyes.
Akari laughs helplessly, and takes him home.