Work Text:
The year Shikako at last reaches adulthood again, spring is dry and summer is dryer. She and Akimichi Utsui have run the length of the Land of Fire every other week since late spring, and everywhere they go is the same: not enough water for crops, hot days and clear skies, a pervasive sense of dread from all the civilians that food will be hard to come by. Utsui says that according to her uncle — who handles most of the Akimichi's business with the Fire Daimyō — unfortunate accidents and costly mishaps are on the rise for the nobility, as well as the rate of long-term bodyguard contracts.
Everyone is nervous, and it makes for vicious business practices.
The Akimichi also have solid ties to common civilian merchants (and in fact it was through civilian commerce that the Nara and Yamanaka came to be allied with them) and therefore know that the Akimichi are themselves widely considered lucky: by the time fall approaches it's well-known that the Akimichi are untouched by the drought and still doing a fast and profitable business selling surplus food and feed, in addition to all the extra shinobi work they've picked up that summer.
Of course, in truth, it isn't luck that makes the Akimichi food stores flourish. It's actually Shikako, who early in the summer was deployed with the Nara research division to implement her half-baked ideas about watering crops on Akimichi lands and has now seen the fruits of that labor literally flourish.
On this particular occasion, Shikako is traveling east to west with Utsui, the both of them each carrying a scroll of supplies for feeding both deer and people at one of the more distant Nara farms. Navigating a forested set of hills where the trees that have already begun to turn gold and red and brown, they first smell smoke and then, when they dart up a tree for a better vantage point, see it rising in huge billows from over the next hill.
It's too much for even the largest controlled bonfire, and after a quick discussion they creep towards it, looking for a good place to survey the fire. It's a long distance from the Nara farm they're headed to, but the forest here is just as bone-dry as the forest everywhere, so essentially all that's between the Nara farm and this forest fire is abundant kindling and a handful of civilian settlements.
They pause at the top of the hill and look down. There's a swath of forest, a sheer cliff, and then a settlement spread out at the base of the cliff, reminiscent of the way Konoha will be positioned in the future, miles up this same valley.
"I didn't think that there were any civilian villages here," Utsui says doubtfully, as they study the shape of the fire. It's burned from the road along the river up towards the settlement, eating acres and acres of what Shikako belatedly realizes was probably mostly farmland this morning.
That's a lot of food to lose, and it's unlikely that the other farms they can see from here will do much better. Upstream and downstream there are ninja doing their best to keep it from spreading up and down the valley, hindered by the low waterline of the river and their own inexperience; it's clear to Shikako even from this distance that although all of them know water jutsu, none of them are well-practiced in it. They probably haven't been taught to convert their chakra from one nature to another, which is just another on the long list of techniques Shikako considers basic that aren't yet wide-spread.
"There aren't," Shikako says. "It's a ninja clan."
"It's big." Utsui's mouth twists. "Senju-Uchiha territory, right? Which is this one?"
"Uchiha."
It's not unreasonable for Utsui to have mistaken it for a normal village at first glance; the pre-village has a population larger than most farming villages, and they live far enough from the nearest civilian town that they must be self-sufficient. But Shikako can sense their chakra, fire- and lightning-natured, and see in the layout of the buildings the ghost of the Konoha Uchiha compound that might now never be built.
"Well," Utsui says, "none of our business. Let's go." She makes to go back the way they came — only to stop again when she notices she's the only one who's moved. "Shikako...?"
As much trouble as the Uchiha down by the Naka are having, the situation at the Uchiha compound is much, much worse: the entire compound is ringed with fire at this point, except for the cliff where Shikako is watching from, and ninja of this era simply aren't as adept at scaling vertical surfaces.
This fire, Shikako supposes, must have been deliberately set at several points around the Uchiha compound all at once. Otherwise, they would have evacuated well before they were trapped.
The Uchiha's seclusion has surely brought them a great deal of independence and wealth, but the downside is that if they all die here today in this forest fire down to the last child, no one will bat an eye. Ninja clan civilians aren't under the purview of whoever the local lord is — ninja clans don't pay taxes, don't answer census surveys, don't answer to anything but money and power — so even if whoever set the fire claims their deeds far and wide there would be no retribution for the lives lost. Likewise, no one has any duty or reason to help them, really. But someone should.
Shikako pulls out the sealing scroll of supplies she's carrying. Utsui has the other half of the supplies they're supposed to be delivering, and Shikako holds it out to her. "I'll have to catch up with you," Shikako says evenly, not taking her eyes off the fire below.
"No," Utsui says, and does not take the scroll.
Instead of continuing to argue, Shikako flips the scroll to her with that careful turn of the wrist that she'd learned from Kakashi-sensei in her last life and takes off towards the fire before Utsui can stop her.
It's a bad idea. A terrible idea. There's no guarantee that Shikako will be able to help and no reason that she should — except that she can feel each and every Uchiha life trapped by the fire and she can't turn her back on them.
The Uchiha have a wide fire break between the buildings and the fire, but the heat of the flames is still terrible and the wind blows embers across the divide. There are Uchiha up on the buildings, stopping out small roof fires before they can do much more than smolder, but it's clear that it won't last. One or more of the buildings will catch fire sooner or later no matter how hard they try.
Shikako sneaks along the front lines of the firefight and considers her options.
If she'd been here a little earlier she might have been able to use a seal to construct a tall, earthen wall to block the fire, but at this point there's no time to investigate the ground she'd be working with carefully enough to be sure of her work. Similarly, it's possible she could try to aide in an evacuation through the cliff but if the Uchiha haven't done it yet then that means there's probably some reason they can't — maybe the same lack of skills that keeps the use of water jutsu down by the river lacklustre — and anyway destabilizing the cliff would be obviously bad. Besides which, if they all escape alive but their possessions burn...they're probably all done for anyway.
So.
Shikako never did get out of the habit of carrying a lake's worth of water in storage seals wherever she goes. And the seal itself has only improved — there are only so many situations that call for dumping the entire contents of the scroll out at once, and so now the rate of flow is a trick of how you put your chakra into the seal. Shoving it straight in unleashes the water as fast as possible, but with just a little twist it will be just as good as a fire hose.
The only question is, how can she offer help without getting stabbed? There's no way to sneakily douse the entire compound with water.
She seeks out someone desperate.
Soon after she begins her search, she hears someone say, "Izuna-sama? Ah, he...he lead the others down to the river, before we were cut off." The speaker practically shakes with fear, and the area is tainted so thick with murderous, enraged intent that it scrapes Shikako's throat on the way down.
Shikako knows this intent, though it's not as strong as she remembers. Some mornings she still wakes with the memory of it newly refreshed by a nightmare, scrambling to her feet in the predawn light, armed and ready to kill, horrifically certain that because she can't sense Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke and Naruto that they're dead and she's the only one standing between Madara and the apocalypse, but—
But no one but Madara had actually died in that fight, no matter what Shikako sometimes dreams, and now isn't the time to think about futures that won't happen, people who Shikako has left behind, things that are in her past. She tucks the panic away. She has things to do.
"Then everyone who lives will have someone to lead them," Uchiha Madara says, with relief and resignation. He's in front of her, sweating in the heat talking to a nervous clansman who seems to be considering if hand-to-hand combat with the forest fire might be preferable to continuing this conversation. "Organize those with the strength to make it up the cliff, Hikaku," Madara orders. "Everyone who can do so should carry at least one child."
It takes a lot of labor to supply a ninja clan with everything they need and keep them fed. If the Uchiha are anything like the Nara or Akimichi of this era, probably less than a fifth of them have even a hope of scaling all the way up the entire cliff — and then, once they got up the cliff, they'd have to keep going because the cliff dips down at the edges to join with the hills of the valley. Soon, the fire will be proceeding up the hill at a rate faster than a baseline human can run, overtaking the hill completely.
Still, it's a better chance of escape than staying here, so Shikako waits until Hikaku bows and leaves before she strips herself of her ANBU stealth techniques — just in time for Madara to turn around and slap eyes on her.
Abruptly the killing intent in the air doubles, as Madara goes from vaguely murderous at a very bad situation to specifically planning to kill her, right now. Shikako already has her hands up and spread.
"From a distance I mistook this for a civilian settlement," she lies, "but our clans have no specific quarrel." She pauses, "You won't be able to evacuate everyone up the cliff."
"We won't," Madara acknowledges, grudgingly. "What's your clan?"
"Nara."
"Prove it," he demands.
Shikako brings her hands carefully — slowly — into the rat seal. She moves her shadow under her feet, and then makes it hold still. Then she spreads her hands again. "I can help," she insists, and Madara hasn't exactly stopped looking at her with suspicion but...
Well. He really doesn't have a choice, and he really doesn't have much to lose.
Utsui goes on to the Akmichi lands — parting with one last scolding about Shikako being reckless, so reckless! — so Shikako arrives back to her clan alone, smelling of smoke. She goes to speak to her father before anyone else. Nara Shikawa is a good father and a good clanhead, and for both of those reasons he needs to know what she's done as soon as possible.
Explaining makes him look nearly as stressed as the time she brought home a whole team of injured Hatake.
"You could have died," he says, although he must know that she knows.
"There were a lot of children," Shikako explains. "Even more than we have. And I didn't die, so it's fine."
There are other things she could say, practical considerations she knows he's thinking — Shikako is the clan heir, but she has a younger brother that much of the clan prefers. Reckless, they've called her, and this will just add fuel to that fire. Just because Shikako is probably the only Nara who could walk into an enemy compound and come out alive doesn't mean she should, they'll say, but Shikako knows that it was worth it and she actually doesn't want to lead the clan, which she knows her father knows.
Nara Shikawa is simply too good of a father to revoke her clan heir status before he's absolutely forced to do so, unwilling to give the impression that he disapproves of his daughter.
"You have to tell your mother," her dad tells her, and Shikako grimaces but that's only fair.
They talk about the regional fallout of the Uchiha being so weakened — more missions for the Senju, and probably more missions for the Akimichi; less caution needed to skirt Uchiha lands because they won't have the focus to lash out at every casual passerby; more caution needed to skirt Senju lands because the Senju will have an advantage better than any they've had since Shikawa was a child.
"The Uchiha will need food for the winter," Shikako says eventually.
"Interesting," her father says slowly, still and contemplative. "I'll bring it up with Chōidai and Inokatsu."
It takes the assistance of both the Fire Temple monks and the Daimyō to convince the Uchiha to even come to the table, and even then it isn't Madara himself who shows up. It's Uchiha Izuna and the Uchiha that Shikako has seen Madara ordering around — Hikaku — and a middle-aged lady who doesn't give her name.
"How do we know you're not working with the Senju?" Izuna asks, among other equally suspicious questions — how do we know you'll keep up your end of the deal, how do we know the food won't be poisoned, how do we know this isn't a trap?
Shikako lurks in the room under cover of stealth techniques that haven't been invented yet, providing extra security for the Akimichi alliance, and regrets that she doesn't know Chōidai or Inokatsu well enough to read what they think about Izuna's attitude on their faces.
Her father kind of likes him, though. Appreciates his sharp questions, his obvious mistrust. The Akimichi alliance started with many of the same questions, generations ago, and Izuna's distrust and hostility are sane and rational.
Of course, unfortunately for Izuna, they don't have much leverage. The drought has strangled commerce in the harvest season, as most communities horde what they've been able to grow for themselves. It's doubtful that the Uchiha could buy their way out of this problem even if they emptied their coffers, and Shikako's not even sure that their pockets are that deep. War is expensive.
"Traditionally, alliances are sealed with a marriage," Chōidai says serenely.
"Uchiha don't marry out," the woman snaps.
Bloodline clans often have that kind of rule. "Of course not," Chōidai assures the Uchiha, smoothing their ruffled feathers. "Someone from one of our clans will marry into the Uchiha. Someone who can provide a strong bond between our clans, and reassurances that we take our alliances seriously."
The Uchiha frown at each other, talking in quick glances and microexpressions, but it's clear to Shikao that they don't hate the idea. The Akimichi, Yamanaka, and Nara clans don't have the kind of combat reputations that makes it risky to have even one of them in your compound, so in effect an outclan spouse would be a decent hostage.
"Fine," Izuna says. "We're willing to talk details."
"There are other candidates," her mother says, later, at home.
Shikako knows. Utsui has already offered to go, and Yamanaka Inokatsu has three daughters of about the right age. There are more than enough sharp-edged ambitious women among them to send someone in Shikako's stead if need be.
"It was my idea," Shikako reminds her mother.
Shikako had volunteered before the Uchiha had even left the meeting at the Fire Temple. It's too good of an opportunity — inserting herself into the Uchiha will give her more control over the conditions of Konoha's founding than she had dared hope.
Her mother reaches across the table between them, wrapping her hands around Shikako's. Her palms are warm to the touch from clutching her teacup, while Shikako's are well-chilled by the late October air. "You'll be unhappy."
Shikako's mother knows very well that Shikako has never wanted to marry. It had been a difficult conversation for them, once, Shikako fumbling for words she'd never needed before — Yoshino and Shikaku had never pressed in her last life, and it had been even less of a concern in the life before that. I won't fit, she'd had to tell her mother as she approached an age for matchmaking. There's no point in looking.
She could tell her mother now that it's fine because if it's too horrible she'll just quietly widow herself and achieve her long term goals by other means...but Shikako doesn't think that that will actually sooth her mother's worries.
"I'll be productive," Shikako says, instead. "And Uchiha heirs can't have outclan mothers, so it will just be...a partnership. "
Her mother squeezes her hands. They sit together quietly for awhile longer before other matters call their attention.
Uchiha Madara has a reputation for being bloodthirsty and murderous, a monster in every sense of the word, worse even than his father before him, and Shikako knows even better than anyone else what a danger Madara could be — but he isn't really a monster yet. Izuna is still alive, and Madara still cares for his clan enough to risk the help of a stranger and then marry for the sake of his clanmates as well.
He doesn't have to be an enemy, Shikako reminds herself and reminds herself as she selects her wedding kimono, packs her things, makes her way back to the Fire Temple, and lets her mother do her hair one last time.
Her mother blinks tears from her eyes before the ceremony and presses a kiss to Shikako's forehead. "You never let me dress you up — I'm so glad I get to see you like this."
"Ah, it's impractical..." Shikako's forgone the white headdress, unwilling to even pretend at submission, but the kimono is white and beautiful. Shikako has been using that Hyūga chakra trick to keep it clean since she put it on. She leans forward and hugs her mom tight. "We'll see each other again."
It's not a promise her mother believes, and not a vow Shikako can stake her life on, but it will take a lot to keep Shikako from bringing Konoha to fruition. She feels reasonably confident that they'll meet again as long as they both survive.
The wedding itself is comprised of a group of Fire Temple monks, a small crowd of tense Uchiha, and a slightly smaller crowd of Shikako's family. Madara's intent hits her before she even sees him, a rolling nearly-physical cloud of jumbled emotions, wary one second and then positive and then desperate.
It's a brutal, clumsy display and it sets even Shikako on edge. She kind of intends to give Madara a piece of her mind, but the moment she actually sees Madara's face, it becomes obvious that he has no idea that he's doing it. Completely unconscious projection of his intent, which is apparently a constant problem rather than a slip in the literal heat of the moment like Shikako had thought during the fire. She can't believe he lived this long, but on the other hand...well, she forgets sometimes how far back she is. How quickly techniques developed under the village system. Besides Shikako, only the handful of Yamanaka in the crowd are likely even aware that intent can be forcefully, deliberately projected. It's something they haven't even shared with the Nara or Akimichi yet, despite the long, solid alliance.
Perhaps most people are simply...unsettled around Madara.
He definitely recognizes her, of course, his eyes widening in surprise. He never had asked her given name when they met during the fire, and she spares him an amused grin as they come together in front of the Fire Temple monk, but there's no time to talk. The Fire Temple monk prays to Uchiha gods: "Amaterasu, light our path," he says. "Yatagarasu, guide our hands."
They drink three cups of sake that Shikako will burn out of her system as soon as the ceremony has come to a close.
He vows: "Under all gods, this woman is my family, my blood, mine to protect."
The Nara aren't religious enough to have a specific deity — when they make their vows it's a promise only to themselves, a burden to carry with their own two hands and on their own backs with just the strength of their own conviction — but Shikako was prepared for this by the Fire Temple monks when the marriage's details had been settled. Find something to pray to, they had said. Uchiha customs aren't so strict as to demand it, but they will never trust you if you don't pray.
"Gelel," Shikako says, "Give us a good home. I will protect it with the Will of Fire."
"The food?" Madara asks as soon as the ceremony is complete.
"I have it," Shikako says.
"We're meant to believe you have all the supplies in the treaty on your person?" asks a lady in the back — the same one who'd come to the negotiations. She's either very important or very expendable, to have come twice into close contact with the enemy like this. The fine nature of her kimono says important, her place at the back and lack of introduction says expendable.
Or maybe Uchiha clan internal politics don't work like that. Shikako will have plenty of time to find out.
"I have a storage scroll," Shikako says, although that's not technically true. No reason to get into the details of hammerspace just yet. They don't even know she can make seals, although certainly rumors of a seal master within the Akimichi alliance must have reached them.
The same lady points her nose up and asks, "We're simply supposed to trust you?"
Shikako smiles. "If I'm lying," she offers, "you can simply kill me when we arrive."
"No one's killing you," says Madara. His words are backed up with intent so firm and displeased that the majority of the room shivers. He gives the woman a pointed look and says, "We've seen the power and utility of your storage seals already."
The Uchiha lady shrinks back on herself, and seems to try to fade into the small crowd around her.
Awkward.
Seeking to get the conversation back on track, Shikako turns to Madara and asks him what the plan is.
"I must travel back as quickly as I can, but you'll be well-protected on your journey." Madara gestures at the rest of the Uchiha.
Shikako realizes abruptly that the Uchiha woman is, in fact, a chaperone for her trip back and the rest of them are guards.
"I could keep up," Shikako asserts.
"It would be dangerous," he says. "Too dangerous."
This is probably an argument that Shikako could win — it's an argument that Shikako wants to win — but Shikako is carrying literally months worth of food for the entire Uchiha clan. Madara's marriage vows aside, Shikako is the single most important person to the continued survival of the Uchiha clan at the moment...and also, it would probably be starting off on the wrong foot to begin her time with the Uchiha by arguing.
She'll save being troublesome for later.
The journey through the Naka river valley reminds Shikako too vividly of a certain journey on Heijōmaru's back, but she doesn't let herself look away. She needs to know the entirety of the situation that the Uchiha are in — she needs to know exactly how bad it is, and it's really bad. The entire north side of the valley is grey with ash, full of burnt trees and ruined fields. The destruction creeps up the sides of the hills.
It had probably only stopped where it stopped because the ninja Izuna had been leading around the outsides of the blaze had started using controlled burns on the edges of the valley to create vast firebreaks, one of the Uchiha guarding her says. It had been the only way to keep the fire from jumping the river upstream or reaching the nearest civilian settlement downstream.
Meat is probably a concern. Ash will cloud the river soon — and who knows how good it even is for fishing — and the clan must have to go much fatther afield for hunting now. They probably kept livestock before and lost it to the fire.
The Uchiha faces that greet her when she arrives are already thinned with hunger and lined with worry. Shikako is hustled to a group of storehouses and pressed to hand over her sealing scrolls. What follows is a whirlwind of new faces and careful data entry — Shikako provides her own log of exactly what she's carrying in hammerspace, but the Uchiha count it all anyway.
They express confusion when some of it is fresh. They'll have to pickle it themselves, they discuss, smoke or dry it or otherwise preserve it.
"Storage seals keep food fresh," Shikako says carefully.
"That must be great for the Senju," someone counting bags of rice in the back of the main storehouse mutters.
"I could teach you?" Shikako asks, uncertainly. "It's not, uh, hard."
This offer isn't accepted without suspicion, but Shikako doesn't take that personally. It's healthy, in this day and age, to be suspicious of people trying to give away useful techniques. She makes a seal and demonstrates that it works and doesn't explode, then settles into teaching the Uchiha around her how to make them, an endeavor that accidentally slides into a small lesson on how seals actually work. There's no point in teaching them how to make just one size of storage scroll, and from there it's a quick slide into explaining what this and that other variable does, like how changing that symbol and this line will make the seal good for snatching up air or clouds of poison instead of solid objects.
She's still there, painting storage seals and talking to Uchiha Hikaku when Madara comes to find her, him obviously fresh from battle.
"We had meant to give you some time to relax when you arrived," Madara says.
The Uchiha around her shrink back, but Shikako watches his face carefully. He doesn't really look mad, no matter what it sounds and feels like. Maybe, if she treats him like he's not angry at anyone for anything, he won't be.
"This is fun for me," she asserts. "It's a great bonding activity. Is that your blood?"
"Only some of it," Madara says, and doesn't elaborate.
Which is fair. Most of it is probably Senju blood. That's...a whole problem that she can't tackle right now. Getting the Uchiha back on their feet needs to come before looking out for the Senju.
"Well," she says, "I'd love a tour of your healing house. Since it won't be out of your way." She's sure it needs improvement.
Madara gets this look on his face — like it very much is out of his way, because like so many other ninja Shikako has known he probably hates going to get poked and scolded by medics — but he folds right away. "It's this way," he says, and they go together.