Chapter Text
She feels a tug in her navel right as it happens.
She feels out of place. Gone was the comforting weight of her elder sister’s cottony embrace. The plainly dyed cotton Masako-nee-san wears now was so warm, so soft, and felt so good against her skin, Miwako felt like she could happily curl up in her sister's sleeves for a lifetime. She doesn’t hear her sister’s voice or the ever-present winds howling through the rocky outcrops that curl around their village. She hears him, instead. She’s panting in a body not her own, exhausted without having exerted herself. The air is warm, her arms are bare and she almost feels uncomfortably full. “Nee-san? Where -?”
She feels the tug and she’s back.
“Nee-san!” She cries out once again, and this time, she receives an answer.
“Mi-chan,” Her elder sister was pushing her away despite Miwako’s attempts to cling on. A hand, softer than she’d ever felt before, gripped her chin in that familiar iron grip, forcing her to look up and make eye contact. Miwako hated it. Eye contact meant trouble for everyone. “Where did you go just now?”
Miwako shakes her head and burrows deeper into her sister’s embrace, hiding from the recrimination and worry she sees in her sister’s dark eyes. It wasn't fair. She didn't even do anything. “I don’t know! It’s not - it’s not! It’s not ! It’s not supposed to - it’s NOT ! I can’t - I - I won’t!”
“Miwako!” She’s shouting and making too much ruckus. If she gets any louder, her sister’s servants will find them and - so it had to be done. Her sister hated hitting them back home, when they still lived under one roof, but the strike came faster here, Miwako noticed. She quiets down and sucks in one sharp breath, letting the warm stinging on her face ground her. “Do not tell them.”
“It’s not .” Miwako whispered, eyes averted. She sees her dirty toes, bare on the dry, cracked earth as her vision blurs. “It’s not, nee-san. I don’t have one.”
Her sister pulls her back and presses her close, "Alright, alright, Mi-chan," Masako hums tunelessly in an attempt to soothe her. "It's alright. It's not, it can't be. You must have dozed off...just a dream..."
It's not, though.
And the cotton doesn't feel good anymore.
*
Eventually, Masako lets her go. Her sister cups her face, one cheek still red and overly warm against Masako-nee-san’s cool palm, and she plants kisses on both with regret, a silent apology, in her eyes. “Be well, imouto. Go home.”
Miwako doesn’t protest. She slips away as silent as a ghost and makes her way through the miserable assembly of buildings and fences she calls her home. Choked with dust and never quiet, Tawabe is a small border village tucked away in the far northeast. It’s a desolate place with barely enough arable farmland for food. Most of those fields are owned by a man far away, a man who scares the village head. And then, further west, there is the Earth daimyo. Miwako doesn’t know this but she will, one day. She’s still young and each day, she learns more and more about her world. Today, her world is limited to a few new truths: the date is May 7, she turns six years old today, and she, despite her desperate hopes, has a soulmate.
Soulmate.
She’s lying in bed, staring up at the thatched roof of their home. The snores and grumbles of her sleeping sisters kept her company, a low, steady counterpoint to the tempestuous winds outside. The rock rain was going to be fierce and she was not looking forward to all the debris she’ll be stepping on tomorrow.
She closed her eyes.
*
One moment, he was out in the open courtyard, trying to run through his kata under the strict eyes of his uncle while his brothers lounged on the engawa (offering unwanted commentary), and the next, he was gone. There was a sharp tug, reminiscent of the time he'd stepped into Isamu-nii's wire trap and was left hanging there for half an hour as his brothers laughed, and laughed, and laughed. There was no laughter or prank here, though. He felt rough-spun cotton and a tight embrace of a stranger. A woman was calling him 'Mi-chan' and he had tears on his face. He hadn't cried in near three years, he thinks distastefully.
Heeding his uncle and father's teachings, he waited. The tug didn't feel so jarring this time as he expected it.
He's still in the open courtyard but his uncle and brothers were all standing around him. "Nagai-oji...?"
"You certainly are a credit to our clan, Madara-kun." Uchiha Nagai was his father's most trusted advisor and his sole surviving brother. He was also a very difficult man to impress. "We will speak more on this later. I must speak to your father first."
Madara watched his uncle turn and walk away. His brothers were pulling at him, asking him question after question. To be a credit to their clan is a good thing...but - "I didn't do anything though?"
"Madara, you just swapped!" His left cheek was being pinched this way and that, forcing him to swipe at his older brother in retaliation. "You're not even seven and you're already swapping!" Two years older than Madara, it seemed to him that Ryosuke made it his life mission to discover everything and figure everything out before Madara. The younger boy didn't like it and scowled back. "You must have a really strong bond with her."
*
The Uchiha celebrated that night as news spread of Madara's swap. Almost every member of the clan with some ties to the main family made their way to the celebration. It was the first celebration they'd had since the new year and Madara was sorry that a few of his cousins and Goro-nii were away on missions. Having gotten over his sour mood, he found that he was happy and excited. He didn't know what it meant to have a soulmate but it must be a good thing. There were smiles on everyone's faces and people were congratulating him, his father, and his mother in turn. It must be a good thing.
He asks Nagai-oji and the man smiles in that cold, satisfied way of his. He smiles like this at a blow well-struck, at the end of a successful mission, and at the sight of dead Senju. "It means you will be adding strength to the clan. It means the next generation is secured."
From his other side, Isamu-nii elaborates, with a smile of his own, "It means, you will be happy, Madara. Like mother and father."
And that's what he wants.
He wants to be happy, like their parents. He looks at his parents who had left to mingle with their kin. They were perfect in his eyes: strong, whole, one.
That's what it means to be soulmates.
As the revelry carries on around him, Madara smiles.
*
The evening before Madara's seventh birthday, he was given orders to stay in his rooms with Yosuke and Shuto, his father's trusted aides. He must stay inside under watch because the swap could happen at any moment. His parents had sat him down after their celebration in May and had given him a stern lecture. He'd received the same lecture again before his birthday. He must make the most of this swap and try to identify his soulmate. Madara knew his parents wanted to find this girl as soon as possible.
"The world is a dangerous place, Madara." His father begins, his voice was the same steady, low voice that walked him through his first sword forms and now, he's imparting another lesson no less important. "You must do your best to identify your soulmate and we will retrieve her. Every year that passes without finding her, the less likely you will ever see her alive."
Madara paled at that but he knew it to be true. He remembers Goro-nii-san. For two years, he swapped with his soulmate. The first year, the swap was fast, lasting no longer than a few seconds but the girl had smiled; eager to talk and introduce herself. The second year, she stayed for a few minutes and told Yosuke and Shuto, 'My name is Yumi. I'm from Wind. I've been feeding as much chakra as I can into this bond! Which clan is this?' She had been happy.
There had not been a third year for Goro-nii and Yumi-san.
*
So, even though he despised practicing calligraphy, he sits obediently with scrolls, ink and his calligraphy brush arranged on the chabudai before him. Directly in front of him, seated at low tables of their own, Yosuke and Shuto sit with the clan's account books to review while they waited. From dawn, Madara copied out texts on ninjutsu and chakra theory. The initial determination and drive he had has long since vanished under the passing of the hours. When the tug came, he almost missed it. He'd been staring into the blank space between two characters for what felt like an eternity. He didn't have time to shout so he tosses his calligraphy brush, hoping to hit Yosuke, who was to his right.
His view disappears before he can confirm the hit --
-- and he sees stars burst behind his eyes as a heavy hand backhands him across the face. In this gangly, thin body, he tumbles onto the ground like a ragdoll. He sees a dark, looming figure and hears a man shouting, his speech slurred from drink - but that can't be, it's barely past noon, came the stupid thought - and another blow lands, this time, a kick in the ribs. "You wretch! You killed my son!"
There was the sound of a woman screaming and pleading by his side. Who?
Then the tug comes for him again, pulling him back.
Madara returns, screaming a desperate, "No!"
"Madara-sama!" Shuto was at his side first, holding him upright as he sprang to his feet, instinctively clutching at a face that did not ache. "Your soulmate?"
He takes a breath and sits again. "It's nothing." His hand shakes. "Has father returned?"
Madara heard a howling, screeching wind over that beast's shouting.
*
There is an old Earth Country saying, 'blessings upon blessings; children upon children'. Children were blessings. One child will naturally bring more children into the home. If a couple is unable to have another, they must appease their youngest child. That child does not welcome new siblings, their spirit is too strong and does not want to make space in their home. Most Earth Country peasants would create anklets with tiny tinkling bells for the child to wear, so that their footsteps will be lightened and they will lead a new child home.
Her father would rather make space for his long-awaited son by breaking his youngest daughter's spirit.
All of her sisters had lived through it like a rite of passage. She'd seen the scars on all of them.
Now it's Miwako's turn.
"Daughters, daughters, daughters!" He yelled as he swung, "All I have are good-for-nothing daughters! You need a man at the forge! What use are daughters, woman?" He was shouting at his soulmate, his wife, a shriveled husk of a woman after a decade of marriage.
Her mother had miscarried earlier that afternoon. She was pregnant for three months, almost four, and it was too soon to tell the gender of the baby. To her father, every lost child was a son. Every living daughter was a bane and testament to their failure of a soulbond.
Once he'd grown tired of kicking her, he dragged her mother up off the ground and carried her out to the village healer. It was the middle of winter and the snows were knee-high but he drags his wife out with no extra layers. This was the lot of women.
It was only after the footsteps fade away that her sisters come to her side and help her up. Fuuko was grumbling and rummaging through her bag for herbs and dressings while Sumiko cried silently, moving Miwako's limbs, poking and prodding to discover any hurts. Fuuko was now the eldest in the house and an apprentice to their village's herbalist. She resents and flaunts her position as the eldest in turns. Sumiko... she just cries.
Miwako just sat there, quietly relieved as they work.
They didn't notice when she'd swapped and didn't notice when she returned.
Thank the gods for small mercies.
*
He was seven years old and a blooded shinobi.
But Uchiha Madara still runs to his mother for comfort this time. He's so angry, he finds himself crying into his mother's sleeves. He'd never taken a blow without a chance at retaliation before and unfortunately, he suspects that his chance at killing that man were depressingly slim.
"We need to find her, haha-ue."