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Mikoto had always known what it was like not to be trusted. The adults had never trusted her, and those children who did soon learned the lessons of their parents, and tread more lightly around a daughter of the Uchiha clan than they would have one of their friends from outside it. She wasn’t surprised by it; she’d been taught to expect it.
“They won’t trust you, dear,” her mother and grandmother had always told her. “Our clan was an enemy of old of the Senju, who rule this village. They expect treachery from us at every turn, and teach their followers to expect the same. But you must bear it. In time, the enmity between us and them will be forgotten, if only it can be borne for now, and not given fresh fuel.”
So Mikoto did what any good child of the Uchiha clan did, and bore it. She never gave any outward sign that she was aware of the outsiders’ distrust of her, never behaved as though she knew or was bothered by it. They looked at her with such suspicion after every battle, whispering when her eyes flashed red. Even if she had saved their lives, they held her at arm’s length, as if they expected her to turn on them as surely as she had slain their enemies. It was a vicious weight, but Mikoto’s shoulders were made for bearing burdens. She had few friends outside of her clan—plenty who respected her, for Mikoto had always excelled as a shinobi, but that respect was almost always tainted by fear or uncertainty. There were few whom she called ‘friend.’
“And then…” Kushina broke off to laugh, a high, clear sound that rang in the air like bells. Her face was flushed bright pink, all the way to the roots of her hair. “…Oh, this one’s good, Mikoto; you’ve gotta listen.” Still trembling from repressed giggles, Kushina went on, “I got the report back to that old jerk Ogawa and when I went in his office, somebody had gotten in there, stacked all his furniture in a big pile and wrapped it up in the new adhesive sealing tags R & D put out last month. He was so mad; it was amazing!”
With war raging, it wasn’t often anymore that Mikoto and Kushina were on leave from missions at the same time. They weren’t even sent to the same front that much—Mikoto was constantly being sent south to fight in Kaze, while Kushina went north and west to Tsuchi (Entirely too close to Kaminari, Mikoto thought with trepidation every time Kushina left to fight there, but there was no one with the power to change Kushina’s assignments who would have accepted Mikoto’s advice). Well, as far as Kushina was concerned, what that meant was that they had to spend time together whenever they could—and Mikoto was not exactly complaining about that.
Today was the first day all week that it hadn’t rained—the grass by the riverbank grew green and lush, amply watered by the deluge, as soft as down under bare hands and feet. Mikoto sat with her feet in the shockingly cold water, smiling softly out at the cattails on the opposite side of the river. Kushina, meanwhile, was sprawled out on the grass, her head on Mikoto’s lap and a fair bit of her scarlet hair drifting lazily back and forth in the water.
“And would that ‘somebody’ be you?” Mikoto asked, smiling down at Kushina.
Kushina snorted. “Nope, not me. You won’t catch me wasting perfectly good sealing tags. Gotta tip my hat to whoever did it, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the old bastard so mad.”
Mikoto’s smile faded. “You really should be more careful, Kushina.” She leaned forward to pull Kushina’s hair out of the water, good cheer replaced by worry over what could happen if Kushina was ever caught talking about one of her superiors this way—even one so universally loathed.
Kushina caught her hand before she could pull it back all the way, holding it in a gentle grip. Her hand was warm—Kushina’s skin was always warm to the touch. “Mikoto, he’s a huge jerk.”
“I know that, Kushina.”
“Really, he is!” Kushina said earnestly, her blue eyes widening. “He’s nasty to everyone who works for him, and he gives anyone he doesn’t like all the worst missions. He even tried to cheat me out of my fully pay for a mission one time, because of…” She grimaced. “Well…”
Mikoto winced. “Because you were born outside of the country, or because you’re a jinchuuriki?”
“The former; I don’t think he knows about the latter.” Kushina narrowed her eyes. “Well, I hope he doesn’t know about that. But he’s just a jerk, Mikoto. Men like that need to be taught a lesson, you know?”
“I know,” Mikoto murmured, nodding. She bit back a sigh, wishing she didn’t have to say it, but… “Imagine what could happen if he found out you were saying things like this?”
Mikoto had been taught all her life to guard her tongue—never praise effusively, and never insult, lest someone look askance. Kushina had reasons of her own to need to be more mindful of her words; even if she wasn’t a jinchuuriki, or a foreign expatriate, she was still a young woman with no family. She was more vulnerable than she realized.
Kushina squeezed Mikoto’s hand and grinned. “Yeah, but I know you’re not gonna tell anyone. You wouldn’t do that.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Mikoto agreed, the smile returning to her face as she leaned down and kissed Kushina’s forehead. “Good thing for you.”
Trust was too rare a thing in Mikoto’s life to be so easily squandered.