What's Your Name?
Patrol duty was agonizingly boring as he wound his way through the Senju clan territory. No one was stupid enough to try to invade their lands, so he could look forward to absolutely nothing happening over the course of the night. The moon climbed higher in the sky as he approached the edge of their lands closest to the Naka river and his thoughts drifted to Madara and Izuna and...Madara's twin.
He'd been thinking of her more and more as the years went by. Seven years of battles and she’d never caused a single injury. Not a scratch, not even a bruise. He would know, he had personally checked every person after every battle.
He tried to tell himself that it was simple curiosity, a need to know the unknown. That the mysteries surrounding her were like his experiments, intriguing but once they were figured out he would waste no more time with them.
It was about that moment he happened to feel her chakra brush against his skin. He came to a halt and cast his sensing net out, he’d increased his range over the years and it was an easy thing to stretch it the four miles between himself and the Naka. She was there.
He took off without a second thought.
He felt her chakra again, so she had to know he was coming but his sensing told him she hadn’t moved at all. As he covered the distance between them he realized he hadn’t felt anymore pulses. She had stopped sending them out, but she hadn’t retreated?
She was just sitting in somewhat neutral territory with no awareness for her surroundings? He sped up.
When he reached the edge of the trees he stopped and looked at her closely. She was sitting on top of the water staring down into it, letting her fingers play in the current. Not paying any attention to her surroundings, not even sensing! She was vulnerable like this! Why was it suddenly hard for him to breathe?
He stepped from the trees and when his foot came down on the rocks they shifted. Suddenly he was looking into her eyes.
She shot up and immediately started backing away from him.
“I’m not going to attack you, Uchiha girl. I just want to know your name. Please?”
Her whimper made his heart feel like it wanted to shatter. Why was she out here alone? Why was she sad?
“I know better than to think you’re scared of me, you’ve come between my blade and your brother too many times for me to believe that.”
She still said nothing, just stared at him with impossibly sad eyes. She had the same porcelain complexion of her clan and it seemed to soak in the moonlight streaming down on them. Her black hair looked impossibly blacker even with the bright moonlight above them.
Had she always been this pretty?
She activated her Sharingan then, her eyes glowing red, and he tensed. He drew his sword without thinking but almost before he could draw it completely her eyes were back to their normal obsidian color.
The moment her Sharingan vanished he noticed a single tear slip down her cheek, then she was gone.
He cursed himself for his reaction, in the seven years he’d been seeing her on the battlefield he’d not once seen her use her Sharingan. Even fighting two to three enemies at once she had never reached for it.
The question of why still played at the back of his mind, and he now added ‘Why would she use it here, but not when she’s actually being threatened?’ to the seemingly endless questions he had about the girl. A list that still started with what her damn name was.
He stood there, sensing her Flicker through the woods and felt her chakra pulses start up again, probably making sure he didn’t follow her. He turned and started back to the Senju lands, playing over their latest meeting in his mind. He was halfway home when he realized something that made him stop completely and grab the tree next to him to steady himself.
The wrappings that normally covered her left arm had been missing. He’d seen what was under those wrappings.
Her soul words had been activated.
He hadn’t been close enough to see what they said, they seemed to be a lighter color. Maybe if it had been daytime, or he had been closer he could have read them.
What they said, however, didn’t matter to him quite as much as the knowledge that she had found her soulmate. He didn’t quite understand why her finding her soulmate mattered to him. She’d never even spoken directly to him, he didn’t even know her name.
Yet it did. It shook him to his core. She knew who her soulmate was. Was probably headed home to him now.
He took off for home, patrol be damned. He wanted familiar sounds and smells. He wanted his lab and to listen to his brother wax poetic about peace for the thousandth time.
He wanted to forget about the Uchiha girl with the expressive eyes, the musical voice, the porcelain skin and the chakra that felt like a warm summer rain.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to.