16

Chapter 16: SixteenChapter Text

SIXTEEN:

Kurama reacted first between them, letting loose a terrible snarl from between jagged, crimson-dripping fangs at the woman who had appeared in the mindscape. They slammed their body at the barrier of weirwood trees, causing the entire ring of trees to shudder. "You!" They snarled, and the sound was so loud it rumbled around the entire mindscape, causing Sansa's teeth to rattle. Uzumaki Mito watched Kurama with a sad, weary look on her beautiful face before turning to Sansa.

"You must be an Uzumaki," she murmured. "That shade of hair is quite unmistakable. Are you Kushina's daughter, by chance?"

"I am," Sansa said, as she managed to pull herself back to her feet then took a chance by reaching through the branches of the weirwood to brush her hand against Kurama's fur. The fur felt exactly as Kurama's chakra did; like hot, crackling flames, licking at her hand in little simmers, but without the burn. Kurama stilled at her touch and ceased their violent efforts at breaking through the branches, much to Sansa's relief. Instead, they stayed very still and silent, slit eyes fixed with deadly intent on Mito.

On Mito's part, she was watching Sansa with a look of badly hidden alarm on her face, appearing as if she dearly wished to tear Sansa away from Kurama and to safety. Sansa kept her own face serene, kept her hand in Kurama's fur, determined to show a united front between the pair of them that seemed to soothe Kurama more than any words could. When Mito dipped her chin slightly, Sansa knew she'd understood the silent message.

"My name is Uzumaki Fuyuko," Sansa introduced herself with a bow, which Mito returned.

"I am Uzumaki Mito. You appear quite young, Fuyuko-chan," Mito said softly.

"And you appear quite alive, for someone who should be quite dead," Sansa replied. Mito's mouth curved into a ghost of a smile.

"I am quite dead, I'm afraid. But I made a vow before the gods, before the time of my death. It was a vow I intended fulfilled and when I could not within my lifetime, I ensured that I left behind the means to aid my descendants in achieving what I could not in theirs." She gestured to herself. "I am a chakra imprint," she explained. "Before I died, I sealed a part of myself into this mindscape and tied the seals of the chakra imprint and the mindscape both to my bloodline."

"So even dead, you exist to make my existence a misery!" Kurama broke their silence to snarl furiously, tails thrashing about behind them, and Mito sighed.

"I can understand why you would think that," she said quietly.

"So you exist only within this mindscape?" Sansa cut in before Kurama could continue.

"Correct," Mito nodded.

"And you will only appear when I activate the seal from your hair-pins?" She asked. Mito frowned.

"You don't understand the seal?" she asked. Sansa blinked.

"No," she admitted. "I only recognised it because of the dreams Inari-sama kept sending me."

Mito's eyes widened in alarm. "Activating seals in your mind without knowledge of what they are or what they may do is very dangerous," she said urgently. "Surely Kushina has taught you that by now!"

Sansa inwardly flinched; to be the bearer of bad news was a task that brought no joy– not to her, or to the one she must give the news. "Kushina died on the day of my birth," she said quietly and Mito inhaled sharply, the pain sharp and poignant on her lovely face. "My twin brother and I live in an orphanage. The only reason I know Kushina is my mother is because I am a reborn soul and despite my apparent young age, my mind is that of a woman grown."

"You do not speak as a child as young as you appear," Mito admitted shakily, looking very much like she wished to sit before visibly steeling her spine, "but there have been prodigies before. I assumed…" She let her head fall forwards slightly, her beautiful face etched in true grief. "Oh Kushina," she murmured. "She had such hopes and dreams… she was torn away from her home so young, but she was so brave. So, so brave. She had such spirit in her, such love in her heart… she was a true Princess of the Whirlpools; she had oceans in her veins, hurricanes in her bones and eddies in her heart. I cried for days when I learned she was to be trained as a kunoichi– I couldn't think of anything I wanted less for her, except perhaps for her to carry my burden."

"A burden you chose!" Kurama roared, and Sansa's hand was dislodged as they threw themselves at the branches again, roaring in wordless, impotent fury at their inability to get through, to get to Mito. Sansa wasn't sure if she'd ever seen Kurama this angry and it shook her, down to her bones. She wanted to soothe them and she wanted to soothe Mito too, who had flinched into herself, suddenly looking startlingly young and vulnerable. How old had Mito been, Sansa suddenly wondered, when she had sealed Kurama? If she had lived until Kurama was sealed into Kushina, she must have been young…

"It was a burden I chose," Mito said suddenly. "I took the old stories of my people, our old legends of warning, and I used them to bind a free being against their will. I know my words mean little to you, Kyuubi, but it was never my intention to keep you sealed and it was never my intention for your brothers and sisters to be sealed. I only wished to stop your rampage that day and to seal you was the only way I knew how. I truly intended to free you after Madara was defeated and it was possible to free you without dying myself."

Kurama snarled, a harsh, guttural sound, and Sansa flinched at the wave of scouring, acidic chakra that flooded the mindscape in their rage, like a Dornish sandstorm flaying her skin. Her breath was tight in her chest at the sheer malice that had flooded the mindscape and she feared that it may have leaked beyond the mindscape, to the outer world, and what the consequences of that may be.

"Liar!" Kurama spat, raking vicious claws against the branches keeping them caged. "Liar!"

Mito, Sansa was impressed to see, managed not to stumble at the onslaught, instead keeping her head held high. "I am not lying," she said, her voice only shaking slightly. "But the original seal was basic and even after Madara's defeat, to remove you would have been to kill me. And to kill me, would have been to lose Hashirama his wife."

And, abruptly, Sansa understood.

After all, she had been a wife too. She knew what that meant, for a woman.

"What was the price," she asked quietly, "of your marriage? What did your body buy from your husband?"

Blessedly, Kurama went silent to listen as Mito smiled the bitter smile of a bartered woman. "I was never a kunoichi, no matter the lies they wrote into history," she said. "But I was the princess of an island nation."

"Uzushio," murmured Sansa.

"Uzushio," Mito agreed, a soft, wistful look on her lovely face. "We didn't have a full shinobi force, not in the way of the other clans, but we did have our own defences. Uzushio was protected and we remained untouched during what would come to be known as the Warring Clans Era. But then, the Senju and the Uchiha formed an alliance. And the other clans started flocking together, forming powerful military dictatorships across the Elemental Nations. We knew that we could remain isolated no longer, not against such force as one of these new Hidden Villages. But we didn't wish to leave our island."

"You needed an alliance with one of the villages," Sansa realised, before correcting herself. "No, not one of the villages– not if you wanted to be untouchable. You needed the first village. The strongest village."

"Yes," Mito said, a weary look flickering over her face. "Konohagakure. The village hidden in the leaves. It helped that we already had ties with the Senju, but we needed a formal alliance with the village they had helped found."

"And so you were bartered for your island's protection. A princess for them, in exchange for an alliance to make Uzushio an unattractive target to the other villages." Sansa said.

Mito nodded tightly. "I could not die to free the Kyuubi," she said. "Because my life did not belong to me; it was the price my island paid Konoha for her protection. And when my husband captured the other tailed beasts and demanded I seal them, all in the name of his precious peace, I put my people first and did as he bid. Then later, once I had made a more stable seal, when I could have survived releasing the Kyuubi, I could not because to free the Kyuubi would be to upset the fragile balance of power between the Hidden Villages and endanger Uzushio by making Konoha appear weak. So again, I put my people first." She looked up at Kurama, her face defiant. "I do not regret it," she told them. "I am sorry that you and your kin paid the price for my actions, but I had to do whatever was in my power to protect my people."

Sansa's heart ached for the woman, because she understood that, understood doing whatever it took for her people, for the North. She remembered the honeyed words and sweet kisses she'd used to lure Jon from his Dragon Queen to her bed, how wretched she'd found his touch, her brother's touch, no matter that he was her cousin in truth, but how she'd endured it; for her people, for the North and their independence. She remembered how it felt, when her body was the tool she must use to gain influence, to gain alliances, how violated she felt, how wretched.

But whatever was within her power to protect her people, Sansa had done. She had suffered for those she had loved, just as Mito had.

Just as women did.

Kurama bared their teeth at Mito, unmoved as their eyes flashing with malevolence. "And yet," they said mockingly, "for all your sacrifices," here, their voice dripped with disdain, "just how did Konoha honour their promises? Just how well did they protect your precious Uzushio?"

Mito's winter-rose blue eyes suddenly flashed with rage. "They did not keep their word!" She hissed. "I did my duty! I married Hashirama, I bore him three sons and watched them all die for Konoha, I worked to keep his village running as he pined endlessly after a bitter madman while I forewent the one I could have loved! I even allowed Konoha to kill me, to tear the Kyuubi from me and seal it into my young niece so they could forge her into their weapon! All that I did for them, for Uzushio, and yet when Uzushio was attacked, when my people were slaughtered, where was Konoha!?"

Mito shook her head, her face stained red with her rage. "I can never forgive them. Never. They were lucky I was old and Kushina was vulnerable when Uzushio fell. Kiri and Iwa were hunting down the survivors, and I couldn't protect her. I needed Konoha to remain standing for her sake, and perhaps in part for the one I could have loved. But Konoha failed even in that and now my niece is dead, Uzushio is dead, and Konoha lives on."

Even Kurama was silent in the face of the terrible grief and rage on Mito's face; Sansa could see the edge of satisfaction in their expression, but it was bittersweet– a pyrrhic victory.

Sansa finally stepped forward, stepped to Mito and reached out, reached up for Mito's hands. They were warm in hers.

"Teach me sealing," Sansa said, "teach me sealing so I can learn how to free Kurama and we will leave this village and we will rebuild Uzushio. I know how to rebuild a home from ruins. I know how to heal a broken people from the scars of war. Teach me sealing so no Uzumaki ever has to set foot in this cursed village again."

"Oh little sea-star," Mito said, and there were tears in her eyes but she still smiled as if her heart was breaking and healing all at once. "You had me convinced at 'teach me sealing'."

Sansa smiled softly at her. "Thank you," she said. "But I must talk with Kurama now."

Brief confusion flickered over Mito's face before comprehension dawned, her eyes darting over to Kurama then back to Sansa. "I will return to the seal and give you privacy," Mito said, "you know how to summon me when you are ready to begin your lessons."

"Thank you, Mito-obasan," Sansa said softly and Mito's whole face lit up with a heartbroken, grief-stricken joy.

Kurama waited until Mito touched the seal and disappeared in a brief flare of blue, so bright it had Sansa blinking spots from her eyes, before growling. "I don't like it!" They spat. "I don't like her! Working with her is a terrible idea!"

"Possibly," Sansa admitted. "But mutual enemies can make for strange bedfellows. And sometimes… sometimes those we once hated, the ones we once saw as monsters… sometimes when we look back, they're not always so monstrous as we once believed."

Sansa had spent years hating Cersei with a passion, but hate and love could be very similar and Cersei had been the closest she had had to a mother for so very long. And as she'd grown older, she had begun to realise just how little power the all-powerful Cersei of her childhood really had and how terrified the woman really was, behind that beautiful, impassive face, how she had suffered at the hands of men who saw her only value in her womb and the flesh between her legs, not her clever mind and her silver tongue.

"There was a woman, back in my world," Sansa said quietly, "I was her son's prisoner for years. They were not… kind years. And she was not a kind woman. I thought I'd hate her forever, my Golden Queen. But then the Dragon Queen came along, came and invaded my home and thought to make me kneel and be glad for it. A woman who thought to take from me what I had suffered for, what my brother had died for, what so many of my people had died for.

"And my Golden Queen, she wrote to me. Her children were all dead and she had no illusions as to her chances of victory when the Dragon Queen came for her. She would not go down without a fight, of course not– she was a lioness, the truest lioness of her House, and she would fight to the bitter end. But she wished for her name to be remembered, she wished to leave a legacy. And with her children dead, I was all she had left. The daughter she had tormented as much as she had raised. Who she had hated as much as I had hated her, but still protected when she could from her son's sadism.

"Oh, I won't defend her. She was a wicked person, but I don't believe she ever really had a chance. Not growing up without a mother and with a father like Tywin before being sold off to a brute like Robert, who beat her, openly dishonoured their marriage bed, making a mockery of her, and was in love with a dead woman who had never loved him in the first place. Some people bend under such pressure without breaking and others shatter into so much broken glass that they cut any who try to help them pick up their pieces.

"My Golden Queen, she was all sharp edges and broken glass. Even in her last letter. But it was honest, that way. And she told me so many things, so many secrets. If she couldn't win, she wanted to ensure she would be victorious through her legacy– through me. She helped me in my victory over the Dragon Queen, in the end. My enemy helped me build peace, for my children.

"Mutual enemies make for strange bedfellows, Kurama. You don't have to like them. You can hate them, you can even want them dead. I certainly never wanted to see my Golden Queen again. If I ever saw her in person, I'd just as likely attempt to commit grievous harm upon her as I would greet her, but she helped me form the foundations of something wonderful. Mito can help us do the same. Uzushio can become a sanctuary for us both, if we let it. Somewhere safe, where we're free."

Kurama had stayed quiet during her impassioned plea and when she finally fell silent they settled down with a sigh, a gust of hot Dornish wind. "I will not be happy about it," they warned.

"That is, of course, entirely understandable," Sansa agreed.

"And I will not forgive her," they added.

"Which nobody would expect of you," she said, and Kurama sighed again.

"I will work with her," they said reluctantly. "And I will not try to eat her."

Sansa blinked. She hadn't even realised that was a possibility. "That's… good." She said. "I'd really rather you didn't eat her. That would be unfortunate."

Kurama snorted. "I've never liked seafood anyway." They muttered. "Too salty."