WAP 44

“Priestess,” he purred. She glanced up as he prowled into his own house, smelling faintly of both smoke and soap. The combination was sort of acrid. Aiko tried not to scrunch up her face in visible distaste. He probably didn’t realize that she could smell him so strongly. “My apologies for the delay. I am of course honored that you have come to see me. Would you like tea and refreshments?” He sat closely to her and sprawled to watch her from under his lashes, jaw tilted up. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

“No.”

He froze. “...Are you quite certain?”

Aiko leaned back on her hands and let out a sigh. “I wanted to confirm our policy for prisoners of war.”

There was a long moment while he visibly recalibrated the context of the meeting, wrestled with disappointment, and settled on bloodthirst. “We can keep them, but so can the Senju,” he said, with a tone that implied he would rather she not lean on the Senju. “We prefer to take noble prisoners whenever possible to ransom back to their clans. Foot soldiers are not generally worth their keep, so we either kill or let them go, depending on the conflict.”

“I was attacked by a Hyuuga today,” Aiko said blandly.

Madara shot up. “And-” he cut himself off and sort of rolled his eyes. “Are they well?” he asked. “What did you do to them?”

…She did sort of appreciate his obvious assumption that she had traumatized them, rather than that she might be injured. She offered him a smirk. “He’s fine,” she said airily. “Very lost, however. It will probably take him a week to get home at the least.”

Madara eyed her in a way that looked hungry. “Fascinating,” he eventually offered. “Are you quite certain that I cannot change your mind on dinner?” 

Aiko opened her mouth to reject the offer, and then remembered Hana’s pallor and her suspicion that it would be a good idea to set her up with a healer’s supervision. “You’ve convinced me,” she said instead. She would be able to work that into conversation and feel it out, if she stayed longer.

He puffed up. “I see.” His chakra signal warped and spiked in a signal to someone else. “We would be honored to have you at our table. If you would like, we could make up a futon for your night as well.”

She paused, but privately wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea after all. Why did it matter where she slept? She could take anyone’s hospitality. 

‘And I know here that there’s no chance of an attack while I sleep. The Uchiha guard their borders well.’

Aiko had to admit that there was a sense of safety lacking in her daily life. She blinked a few times in contemplation and then accepted his offer. He seemed thrilled by this. That was when a retainer gently knocked on the door to see why they’d been called. Aiko looked up at the ceiling while Madara conferred with his clansman, trying not to feel homesick.

She wasn’t accustomed to being on her own, really. Growing up in a massive village had instilled the incredible privilege of knowing that hundreds of capable shinobi were awake and watching the perimeter. Her shitty little farm town was nothing alike. The only other shinobi who spent time there was Kakuzu.

Wings flapped. Both Madara and Aiko turned to look at the messenger hawk waiting on the windowsill.

“...Excuse me,” Madara said. His expression turned pinched. She noticed that before she realized the seal on the scroll indicated it was from the Senju. He stroked the bird with a large hand before gently retrieving the correspondence. He stood to read it, a frown pulling his features down.

She waited patiently, flexing and stretching her hands in an unconscious bid to be ready for a conflict. The air in the room was tense.

Madara broke the silence with an unhappy scoff. “We have word from our allies that one of the Daimyo hopefuls wishes to meet with you, at the Capital. They offer you their loyalty in exchange for your blessing of their bid for leadership.”

Aiko hummed. “It’s a trap,” she said philosophically. 

“Almost certainly.” He put the scroll down and picked up the hawk without seeming to think about it. She watched with an eyebrow raised as the head of the Uchiha sat and absentmindedly cuddling his working bird. “If you will tolerate it, you ought to go regardless. It will be easier to deal with this issue by confronting it.” He had a blunt tone that she appreciated.

She lifted a hand in a sort of shrug. “I don’t mind. Do they say when?”

“Yes. May I come with you?” Madara fixed his gaze on her. He had activated his Sharingan at some point. Did he even realize?

Sure, why not. Aiko agreed, and then added that they should probably invite a Senju for appearances. Madara pressed his lips so flat that they whitened, but he didn’t argue. He sent a reply back to the Senju with a retainer before they had dinner.

Dinner with the Uchiha turned out to be a cheerful affair with distant relations, not just the immediate family. They ate outside in the smoke of carefully maintained firepits, where strips of meat and vegetables were fried on racks. 

Strangers eyed her from their porches, across the shared courtyard. Izuna flitted around cheerfully, flirting with and provoking various clansmen. Madara and Aiko quickly relaxed into banter, mocking Izuna and Hashirama in turns. 

“My youngest acolyte, Hana, finds him most vexatious,” Aiko shared. She snatched a particularly choice-looking piece of beef and stacked it with a bit of onion for one good bite.

Madara hummed from the back of his throat. “Is she a comely maiden?” he asked.

Aiko thought about it for a moment. “Yes, she is quite pretty,” she agreed.

Madara’s lips twitched. “My foolish brother must have been very confused by this reception. Did he pout?”

“He did pout.”

“Good.”

Her bed for the night was actually in the main family’s house, which Aiko thought was sort of intense but didn’t mind. It was only when Madara actually kissed the back of her hand good-night that she had the faint suspicion that she was actually being wooed. Madara must have decided that the potential political benefits of being tied to her outweighed the personal demerits of spending time with her.

“Wow,” Aiko mumbled, throwing herself onto the comforter with an extremely satisfying whumpf of displaced air. “He’s got terrible taste.”

Still, she respected the hustle. And she slept easily, knowing that dozens of qualified shinobi were watching for intruders.