Chapter Text
There is something bad that happens, they say, to those who spend too long in the world alone before their soulmate is born to join them.
A child without a soulmark is nothing strange. An Academy student without one is an object of sympathy, but not yet of concern. A teenager without one is unfortunate enough to be pitied, but they still have time.
But in your twenties, to be without a mark begins to draw glances. By thirty, the glances become whispers, and beyond that, the whispers become distrust and then fear. Those without marks are without balance, the whispers say. They are a mirror with nothing to reflect, a candle that reveals nothing around it but a further darkness. There is an emptiness in them where the other half of their soul is not, and it makes them sick.
The markless, the tales tell, are hungry.
And they seek to feed that hunger, all too often, with terrible things. With bloodshed, with lust, with gluttony; with power, with wealth, with forbidden knowledge. With dominion, overt or secret, over the life and death and fate of others.
Shimura Danzō, Konoha's shadow, has lived for half a century and in all that time, his wrists have remained bare.
And in the name of his village, he has done dark deeds. He has ordered the deaths of the innocent and the brave. He has lied out of both sides of his mouth and down the middle to ensure that nobody besides him should ever know too much. He has supervised the brainwashing and breaking of children in the dark below the roots; because the Sandaime Hokage inherited too soft a heart from the Shodai, and the limited methods he permits do not create soldiers who are strong enough.
He has authorised and witnessed soulmarks flayed from young wrists and bonding glands cut out and incinerated, because to love one person more than the village is a weakness, and Root's operatives will be stronger and more single-minded without it. After all, is he, Danzō, not the holotype of devotion to a cause greater than oneself? He could never have come so far as he has, never have kept his head when all around him were losing theirs to foolish sentiment, without the strength of being markless. If they live long enough to learn what he knows, Root's children will look back and thank him for sparing them the burdens of distraction and inevitable pain that come with finding one's soulmate.
He is confident of his judgement in this, and his conviction makes it easy to act.
Until, at the age of fifty-one, he is shocked awake in the dim glow of a high-summer's night, by a pain like a sword's point driven between the tendons of his right wrist. He starts up in his bed, choking down a cry and clutching at his arm as the agony of it burns hot and deadly cold all the way to his bones.
There is no enemy in his chamber. There is no blade in his flesh. There is only a fresh, bright-black mark on the unbroken skin of his wrist, reading 器.
Danzō takes a single, slow, deep breath. Then he gets out of his bed, wraps his wrist in exactly the same fashion as he has done for four decades, and summons his most trusted subordinates to go, now, and bring him the names of every woman in Konoha to have given birth tonight.
* * * * *
Uchiha Fugaku is accounted fearless even among the greatest of the sons and daughters of fire, renowned for his ever-steady hands and mind no less than for the power of his eyes. He would nonetheless rather face an army single-handedly than have to wait, pacing the engawa like a man possessed, while behind closed doors the love of his life fights a battle he can do absolutely nothing to aid her in. His thumb rubs anxiously over his wrist, pressing into the gland beneath the simple 忠 that stands proxy for her, and as he silently prays for her and their child's lives and wellbeing, he hopes she can feel him sending her strength.
And then a low, wailing cry sounds through the paper wall beside him - not her voice, but a new one, one that the world is hearing for the very first time. His heart sticks in his throat as the door slides open to reveal the midwife smiling, beckoning him in; he stumbles over the threshold in a daze.
All he sees is her, his soulmate, his wife - sitting up, her lovely face drawn and her hair plastered down with sweat, but smiling, her eyes shining - and the tiny bundle in her arms. The midwife and her assistant are congratulating him, but he barely hears a word as he falls to his knees at Mikoto's side.
She looks up at him with all the love in the world as his arm comes around her shoulders to support her, and holds the bundle so he can see its tiny, crumpled red face and fuzz of jet black hair. "Our son, husband," she whispers, voice hoarse with strain and joy.
"Our son," he repeats, and his voice is as broken as hers. His sharingan is alive, committing every moment to perfect memory, as he reaches out and touches his fingertip to the baby's forehead. "Uchiha Itachi."
It's his right by custom to choose the name, as the father, but he'd agreed that choice with Mikoto long before the child was due. While it would be disrespectful to reuse a name from the main clan line directly, a parallel or synonymous name is an acceptable homage - so Itachi for Izuna, the flame-hearted younger brother of Uchiha Madara, who died a hero of the clan before his brother's later madness could stain his name.
May their son be as steadfast in his loyalty, and as selfless in his deeds.
"Does he-?" Fugaku begins, reaching for the tiny hand that wiggles its way free of the wrappings. The words die in his throat as he sees the kanji on the baby's wrist and his question is answered before he completes it.
The mark is minute, but clear. "Winter?" Fugaku reads, frowning as a cold rivulet of unease seeps through his joy. For an Uchiha, child of fire and born into the height of summer, that seems a strangely inauspicious mark.
"It could mean anything," Mikoto reminds him, nestling her head into the hollow of his shoulder. "And at least he won't have to wait for them."
Fugaku nods, accepting the wisdom of her words; but as he holds his family close in his embrace, he still feels the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.
