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Not all soulmates are romantic or even positively benefit one or both parties. Sometimes they just indicate the ones who pivotally -- or cataclysmically -- will impact one another.
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At least, that's Itachi's theory, given how some of the people that are blessed/cursed to have a soulmate are barely pubescent children matched to much older and notoriously horrible missing-nin, like that Haruno girl in Sasuke's class; surely no one deserved to be paired with Orochimaru, even if it hadn't meant being moved into T&I's permanent residency/political prisoner apartments while Konoha's elders quietly debate whether to keep her in reserve or murder her immediately and hope the loss will still register with -- and destabilize or kill -- the current host of the body-hopping snake sannin.
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Either way, he expects that when he turns fourteen, he'll look down at his left wrist and read his brother's name.
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What he sees instead is Uchiha Mikoto.
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He's returning from a mission when it happens, and is later glad he kept an easy pace that allowed him to be out-of-village the night of his birthday and thus miss any 'surprise' celebrations his various family members might've sprung on him.
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(Because no matter how little time he ever even has for his extended family, between his missions and training, every second spent in their company always feels like one too many.)
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He felt the slight burning right on time -- during the wee hours of the morning, when he'd been born -- and had only sighed. Took a drink from his canteen and resettled himself more comfortably in his hidden perch on a bushy-leafed tree.
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He could've made it back home yesterday if he'd pushed himself, but had privately been glad of the excuse to be away for more than the one reason. The ever-present tensions with his Clan's compound were rising noticeably day by day, and he'd loathed the obligatory Clan-wide gatherings any excuse for a 'celebration' mandated even before the whispers of rebellion had begun to sound.
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So now he sits, resting, just a few solid hours of running from Fire's borders, and his aggravated skin tells him that he, like many of those from major Clans, has been marked by some unseen force that has decided at least part of his future for him.
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He waits until the burning from the letters, branded all at once into his flesh, stops, and for the tingling afterwards to fade, too. Then, reluctantly but with an air of expectation, pulls off his arm guard and rolls up his sleeve. He then reaches again for his canteen, as he's a little breathless and dry-mouthed from nerves even though he knows what he will find. His sharingan easily reads the flowing black ink on his skin despite the pre-dawn darkness, as he tilts the container up for the last few remaining drops.
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Uchiha Mikoto.
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He chokes on his water.
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He panics quietly, shivering on his tree perch. His hands jitters while he seals away his rations and water bottle, and straps back on the guard. Takes it off again and double-checks what he already knows with absolute certainty and dread is there.
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His mark still reads Uchiha Mikoto.
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He cannot spare his mother. He'd had to bargain hard just to buy his little brother's life. He will never be allowed to save Mikoto also, and he knows that if she had the choice, she'd want him to save Sasuke, too.
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(Sasuke is so young, so innocent, hasn't been corrupted by world yet and can't be blamed for their family's sins. He deserves to live. Mikoto would want that. Itachi wants that.)
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And yet... if he doesn't, his utility as a Konohan spy in Akatsuki will be severely compromised, assuming he even survives the loss of his soulmate, which many who love theirs, don't. Who will protect his brother then, and give him a goal to strive for? Who will safeguard the village from afar?
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Why is it his destiny to climb to great heights on the tree of fortune only to then fall and hit every branch of bad luck on the way back down again?
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He races back to the village, too full of adrenaline and stress to rest any longer (it only takes little more than half the usual amount of time, and yet he isn't tired when he arrives, or perhaps he is but is somehow too tired to actually sleep). For once, though, he goes directly home first rather than the Tower, since he isn't expected back to report yet, anyway.
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Panicking in the privacy of his own bedroom isn't less miserable, but at least it's safer and more dignified.
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He re-checks his arm as he pulls off his armor and dirty clothes. He checks it again as he dresses in some old worn casual-wear kept for the rare times he doesn't have to leave his home for the day. He checks it once more as he sits on his bed, still trembling but trying not to make any noise in his silent house even though the privacy seals in his room would prevent him from waking anyone up anyway so long as he stays in it.
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He should stay in it. He should stay put until he either has a new plan, or a mental breakdown and then recovered from it so he can proceed with the plan he has already made.
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He creeps out into the hallway and heads for his parents' quarters, his chakra already supressed by habit. A quick sense-check, and he knows his father isn't home, probably fallen asleep at his desk again at the police station. Sasuke is sleeping in his bedroom. His mother, her presence muted by her own chamber's privacy seals, is probably also asleep.
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His parents' wing of the Main Family House has an outer receiving room for meeting with official (obligatory) guests, with an entry-room that splits off in one direction into a small but richly appointed semi-private dining room and a likewise semi-private sitting room in the other. A middle chamber, where his parent's individual studies' doors are at either end. And an inner chamber, with the three large bedrooms usually divided thusly : Clan Head's Room on one end, and the Clan Consort's Room on the other, and in between them a room that could be used as a bedroom for both if they were a love-match (with the outer rooms then serving as young children's rooms -- or reversed, the middle room becoming a nursery if the married couple were... arranged.
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His parents keep separate bedrooms.
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Itachi and Sasuke have long had emergency access, via their chakra, to both their parents' quarters' middle chambers, if they ever need to barricade themselves in there, ever since they were old enough to walk and mold their chakra. They also had access through the middle chamber's exit door leading to the hallway between there and their mother's antechamber. They couldn't go beyond it, but they could knock in case of urgent need (or in Sasuke's case, supposedly urgent need after a bout of overactive imagination).
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There are three layers of seals in their parents' quarters alone, not counting securing the rest of the house. They can lock it so that no one can enter anything but the outer chamber, a basic-precaution low level of security which they usually do in the daytime while at least one of them is home. They can lock out everyone but Itachi and Sasuke, who can continue onward as far as the middle set of rooms -- and on Mikoto's side, also through the left-most archway, down the short hallway between the third and second chambers, and through her antechamber door to stand before her bedroom door -- which was designed as an evening security measure.
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Or they can activate all three seals within their bedroom so that the other security settings stay the same but even Itachi or Sasuke get stopped at the antechamber room entry-door rather than their bedroom doors.
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Mikoto started using the third security seal at night once Sasuke entered the Academy and grew out of running to her after nightmares or during storms (though not out of knocking on Itachi's much closer door). Itachi had never knocked on her door but the one time on a prior October evening, and she'd opened it mid-way through his first knock, already rushing out. She no longer expected her children to come seeking entry to her bedroom, her only real sanctuary in the house, and certainly doesn't expect them to violate basic rules of privacy. Even so, she uses all three lock seals now, and undoubtedly feels secure and unreachable behind them.
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But Itachi is a genius, and almost more importantly, he is the kohai of Hatake Kakashi, collector of an eccelectic range of jutsu, skills and seals -- and the former student of the Yondaime, who himself was a student of Jiraiya the known seal master.
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Itachi is the inheritor of an odd mish-mash of known and hidden knowledge, old and new abilities both, as the occasion arose for his senpai to pass them on to him. Plus everything he's picked up through his sharingan or independent study, whether it involves performing a technique, or countering and deconstructing it.
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Itachi can, with some effort and concentration (but less and less is needed the more he does it), bypass the third security seal. And the seal on her bedroom door itself. There is no room in his home that he's wanted to enter that has remained closed to him.
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He slips inside her bedroom to stand at her bedside, relieved and yet surprised that she is asleep. How had she not woken up when the soulmark burned its way into existence--?
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The pill bottles on the bedside table answer that question. There's spilt water, as if from a shaking hand, and an empty cup. She must've been awake, or been woken up by the soulmark, and probably was almost as distressed by it as Itachi had been; she hadn't needed her anxiety or insomnia medications since she'd recovered from her last miscarriage.
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He knows, as he has watched her on several occasions when he could not sleep or meditate while he was supposed to be healing from illness or injury, made restless by boredom and stress but soothed by watching her graceful motions as she made tea and persued personal studies. Went through her stretching routine. Danced about in her room as the mood took her to the traditional music on the radio with the familiar motions of old Fire Dance routines. Sat reading on rainy days on her pillowed bench underneath the window while the warm yellow flames in the fireplace crackle softly across from her. Or even just breathed quietly and evenly and peacefully, asleep and alone in her too-large bed.
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He's suspected of having many secrets by his family, by his Clan. But not of his deepest, most shameful and most closely-held one.
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The person he loves most in the world is his mother. And he loves her in all ways that one can love; friendly-like fondness, familially... romantically...
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Lustfully.
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He'd noticed his feelings for her starting to change when he was twelve, but hadn't been able to put a rhyme or reason, or even a name, to them at first. He'd long been her silent, secret second shadow, though.
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He hadn't understood until the first time he'd watched her pleasure herself in her bed, and been painfully aroused for hours afterwards, his unconsciously-activated sharingan capturing every rapturous moment to torture him with for days (and nights) until he got his rebellious mind back under control.
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(It had almost been a relief to think that after... after ...she wouldn't be at risk of him tainting her with his unacceptable desires. He couldn't lose control and genjutsu her into compliance and then blissful ignorant forgetfulness, because she would remain pure and out of his reach. He'd wanted to save her from everything, but most of all from himself.)
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His first images of her showing her not just as his mother or even as Uchiha Mikoto, Clan Matriarch but as Mikoto, desirable woman, had been captured on accident, unintentionally. He has no excuse for the many ones he's burned into his mind since then --
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And just like that, he has his solution.
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If he is to be a kinslayer, his soul will already be damned and his reputation destroyed. What harm was there in adding one more crime to his soon-to-be outstanding list of sins, especially if it saved her life? And Sasuke will have someone to return to after he takes his revenge -- someone who will help him maintain the peaceable Clan traditions but will know better than to risk the safety of her only remaining son by rousing Konoha's wrath with treasonous teachings or sedentious talk.
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Undoubtedly she will keep the information about the soulmark quiet, as will the Sandaime if/when he finds out. Itachi can't imagine any med-nin outting his recently brutalized mother's secret to anyone else. And if Mikoto hates Itachi, she won't mourn his passing, will probably survive it all the better for having already wanted him dead herself.
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He will have to time it just right; it will have to look like Sasuke's arrival interrupts him, that he'd completed one crime against her --
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(weak, he's so weak; he could make it so he doesn't have time to finish, but he wants to, badly, and isn't strong enough to deny himself this one chance at pleasure with her)
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-- but not yet the other of slitting her throat afterwards before he turns his genjutsu on the soon-to-be last loyal male Uchiha. This final crime against Sasuke will itself be seemingly interrupted by Konoha nin racing to investigate the ceaseless screaming.
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He'll make sure his back is to Sasuke when the boy arrives, that whatever the cries Mikoto may make that Sasuke hears, his little brother won't actually see Itachi ravaging their mother's body. He'll push his trousers down only as far as need-be and make sure she's prone by then, and pull her skirt back down afterwards with a condescending pat to her rear, silent mockery of her usually impeccable appearance, so that no one but whoever the med-nin is that treats her sees the torn and bleeding flesh.
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The first time, he'll take her pussy gently, sensually, using his sharingan to subtly genjutsu her and force her body into responding with pleasure. He'll make her come for him, fill her up with his own release and then shame her afterwards for loving his touch, for the benefit of her testimony or any mind-walks done on her. He can't stand the thought of her associating his cock in her cunt with pain. The second time, he'll take her ass, though he'll probably have to use a jutsu to get his dick up for it, since neither anal sex nor the thought of her pain has ever excited him.
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Itachi sits down on her bed, considering her sleeping form with an unacknowledged, quietly growing anticipation. She's turned on her side, facing him and her blanket is pushed down by her feet to reveal her slender, shapely legs. One of her nightgown's straps has fallen over her shoulder, and a beam of the setting full moon's light falls perfectly across the pale, silky skin of her chest.
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He wants to make the first act good for her. It will be their first time together, mostly likely their only coupling (he doesn't count the second part of the plan, which will have to be done with pain and blood and visciousness in order to be convincing; it will be no willing action of Itachi, who loves Mikoto, but of Itachi-the-Clan-Killer, who loves no one).
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He reaches out and smoothes the backs of his knuckles across her cheek, then trails his fingertips down her neck and over the tops of her breasts. Sleeping deeply under the influence of her prescriptions, she doesn't register or respond to his touch, which is disappointing but fortunate and expected.
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He knows the jutsus his family uses to prevent pregnancies and/or bloodline theft, ones that prevent conception, ones that chakra-block reproductive passages, ones that pull all seed -- without or within a very recently fertilized egg -- from the body. He knows what chakra-enhanced healing creams are safe for use internally after assault or even just aggressive consensual sex, and that said creams are are often a staple in the households of arranged marriages (such as his parents') where foreplay is scarce and bumbling if even practiced at all. He knows what genjutsu to use before, during and immediately-after sex to hide or alter the memories of the event or partner.
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He can, if careful and meticulous, remove all evidence of a sexual encounter having ever happened.
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He wants to give Mikoto as much pleasure as he can, when they come together for the first time in her fully-conscious awareness.
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So shouldn't he... carry out a rehearsal, of sorts, beforehand? Just to make sure he can please her. She deserves his best efforts, after all, and practice does make perfect.
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He stands and reaches for the fasten on his trousers, his blood heated and heart racing, and reconsiders the luckyness of his soulmark. It's not so terrible if it lets him save her... and lets him have her even the one time. It's actually perhaps even the best luck that's ever befallen him personally, outside of the chance to spare his brother.
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He thanks gods he doesn't believe in, and inexplicable and utterly random good fortune, which he does, as he undresses her and lays down beside her. He presses his bare skin to hers, shuddering in pleasure, and kisses the only woman he's ever wanted, the way he's long wanted to.
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He'll mark her body the way she's marked his heart -- deeply, unforgettably, inescapably -- as an ode to their already-intertwined souls. It's the only heaven he'll ever know, but for this, he'll gladly forsake all others.
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Author's Notes :
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I'm not sure where this fic sprung from exactly, and I wrote it in all in one barely-edited sitting. But some ingredients were surely sparks from other fics (some of which I'm pretty sure I've rec'd in my bookmarks under "Uchiha Sasuke-centric" and/or "fuck Konoha" tags) as well as pondering what would've happened if Itachi had been equally obsessive/possessive of anyone else instead of or in addition to Sasuke. His mother was the obvious reasonable choice, since I never saw the episodes with Izumi to really have a feel for her, and Itachi doesn't regularly interact with anyone else except Shisui (which is an extremely over-saturated tag that I'm not interested in adding to, so I chose the ItaMiko rarepair instead.
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Plus, it has 'forbidden love' appeal, and Itachi's such a self-righteous pseudo-martyr that I can imagine his emo'ing over his forbidden desires and thinking how he suffers much more-er than anyone else does but his resisting them marks him as Holy-er Than Thou over his evuhl family members and therefore fit to judge+jury+executioner his Clan-so-there! *insert eye-roll*
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Also note how he justifies his actions, and while he's right (in this fic-verse) that it's a scandalously believable cover story, he separates himself from his 'righteous, neccessary' crime in his mind by claiming it's his cover's persona that will be violently raping Mikoto, not his 'real' self. He also unknowingly implies to himself that he still hopes to somehow get the chance to have sex with his mother again *after raping her* when he thinks their "first" (it's not, though, is it?) time together will "likely be their only coupling."
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The Haruno-Orochimaru soulmate reference is *absolutely* a shout-out to Tozette's "The Soulmate Phenomenon (Is Ruining My Life) fic, which everyone should go read immediately, if they haven't yet (quick prayer that Authorlord Tozette will be able and willing to bless us with an update soon!).
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All that technical mumbo-jumbo with the house's security seals is to give in-universe proof that (1) Itachi is cleverer and more dangerous than his family expects and in ways that they don't expect; (2) Itachi's had Issues (tm) for a long-*ss time and has also been violating his mother's privacy and trust for about as long and totally thinks nothing of it. He's a real winner.