67: Torment of Morality

"Oath-breaker.""Bloodstained Failure.""Derelict of Duty.""Queen of Corpses.""Betrayer.""Kinslayer."

On the eve of dawn, Uzumaki Mito's eyes snapped open.

She had not been sleeping, but that did not mean her mind ceased to harrow her behind closed eyes. The deterioration had slowed recently, since she became a mere pseudo-jinchūriki, but Mito knew her sanity had been irreversibly damaged. Whispers of the Demon Fox would likely always dredge up her fears now.

But this time it was especially painful, echoing those accusing words Mito had braced herself to hear. The words she could never blame the girl for uttering.

The words that, somehow, had never come.

For Uzumaki Sumika, long-lost daughter of Mito's late protégé, perhaps Mito had well enough earned each and every one of those damning titles.

Such eruptive and emotional condemnations could well be expected from a child of Sumika's age, let alone one whose lineage held such infamously vivacious bloodlines, Senju and Uzumaki. Indeed... with all that had happened, an outburst of hatred and accusation could only be expected. That was what the darkness in Mito's heart had told her. The remnant of the demon she had housed for decades.

Yet, no such thing had happened. The contrast consequently jostled her heart like whiplash.

So silence reigned in the space left by the night's events. Events most contrary to the situation Mito was expecting, admittedly in part due Tsuna's inattention to detail as much as anything the elder's twisted mind may have conjured.

After spending quite a few hours throughout the night, scrolls and letters lay neatly stacked in Mito's lap, all products of intrigue and preparation ready to serve their purpose. In a few hours, her ANBU would deliver them simultaneously, and then the next phase could begin.

With much of her work complete, Mito thus finally allowed herself to confront the personal dilemmas plaguing her.

Those curses and condemnations that even now echoed in Mito's ears. The blackness of guilt led her to believe they would be heard in due time. If not already, then certainly once the child knew the truth...

Mito recalled the girl's expression in the moments after her true identity was revealed. An expression which grew so neutral as to be grey, and then faded into an even more pallid and ashen white. An intense and haunted reaction.

Emotions rumbled within the bedridden woman once more, the most powerful of which she recognized as a familiar rage and grief. She allowed herself to feel its traces.

At the mere thought of Sumika's reactions, the elder took in an exceedingly slow and shuddering breath through her nose, eyelids squeezing shut as her emotions threatened to overcome her. To confirm the girl's identity, and meet her firsthand, only for it to turn out this way.... Mito had relished in the moment, yet all the same was tormented by it.

Among the casualties of that tragedy all those years ago, the young Sumika's body was never found. Missing. Vanished. Presumed abducted. Presumed deceased.Mito herself had exhausted every resource available trying to locate any sign of the girl over the years. ANBU, mercenaries, spies, innovating new jutsu, and even... even breaking taboos in her desperation. Many suspected perpetrators had died brutally as a result of Mito's investigation, but never was there any lead on Sumika herself. Even Uzushio's liaisons found nothing.

But after a decade, a decade, despite all doubt and all the failed attempts, Sumika appeared now like a ghost, yet most definitely alive. Her identity confirmed by indisputable means. With such a miracle... breaking those taboos might have been worth it in the end.There was so much to do, so much to consider.

Sumika... Masumi's legacy. Masumi's family. Even now, Mito was still failing that poor girl's family. The shame and guilt were inexpressible.

Clans and nations, family and friends. Even now, with all her might, was it still impossible to protect them all...?

Protect them...

In instants, a swath of memories overwhelmed the Uzumaki elder once more.

Young Masumi and her family... and how Mito had failed them. Even as she was preparing for own death, arranging the last stages of her endless plans and contingencies, Mito never forgave herself. Not for their deaths, nor for all the chaos that came after, nor what it meant for her few remaining relatives.

Mito alone bore the weight of her actions with utmost personal secrecy, to spare her descendants that guilt at least.

Thoughts of those events ten years ago were always on Mito's mind, motivating her to resume the deadly games of politics from the shadows, to protect the precious few people left in her life. If not for this practice of reminder and memorial, the exhaustion, the weariness of it all would surely have destroyed Mito by now. The lost smiles she saw only in memories allowed her to overcome the madness she endured.

Mito knew she had changed over the years, and she recognized the damage to her own heart and mind. The effects of being a jinchūriki had only intensified the destabilizing factors. But all the same, she was committed with every remaining fiber of her will.

She might have lost her will earlier, given up sooner, embracing death and passing everything on to her tragic successor. But that successor had become poor, kind Uzumaki Kushina. A talented girl now gifted with that heaviest and most unenviable of burdens. To be a jinchūriki, a container for a demonic beast.

That it had to be her, a girl far younger than Masumi was even at the beginning of her training... it brought intolerable guilt... the Demon Fox was the worst companion for anyone with a kind and grieving heart. Mito knew that all too well. Even more than her own self-loathing and grief, the tailed beast had amplified Mito's hatred and disgust. Though those feelings were justified, that was no easy way to live. To a child, it must be crushing.

As such, in the few years they had together, Mito offered everything she could to Kushina, shielding the girl from messy political intrigue and agonizing moral decisions - accepting all of the responsibility onto herself. Training, secret techniques, relics, comfort - everything to prepare Kushina's heart and lessen the inevitable pain.

Utilizing all her knowledge as a Grandmaster of Fūinjutsu, Mito had even undertook massive research efforts to develop a procedure that would transfer the tailed beast less traumatically... for the recipient. All for Kushina, all to make it as easy on her as possible as she took on that tormented role.

But the process still had to be done. A wrathful tailed beast on the loose would spell a fate even worse than what a jinchūriki suffered. It still meant that Mito and Konoha as a whole would owe Kushina a debt that could never be repaid. And so it had begun, incurring another debt of blood...

So it was also that Mito had considered even her own death to be the height of personal selfishness, for it was the very clansmen she hoped to protect who would suffer for it.

Blood stained many hands in Konoha, and although many years had passed, Mito had not forgotten those who owed debts of blood. The time neared when such debts would be paid in full, but not soon enough to spare Kushina this fate.

The turmoil of all these long-harbored feelings, of her guilt and pain, it scraped at Mito's sanity like the claws of the Demon Fox itself as she had slowly and methodically transferred the tailed beast over to her successor.

But now, after much was already said and done, another child who had already suffered so much would be thrown into the mess.

An entirely separate matter had entwined all of them once more, just as the decisions had been made at the most critical junctures.

On a night mere days ago, when Mito was unraveling to the ends of herself, agonizing over her final actions and the weight they would have on the shoulders of others, a memory shone unusually bright.

It was an inescapable memory, an inescapable thought, one which reignited something that burned within Mito's heart. A flame that roiled and utterly consumed a heart long thought to be frozen and shattered. After decades of constant struggle, loss, and brutality, something profound had finally broken inside Mito, only to be revived at the first sign of Masumi in almost a decade.

Shards of Masumi's brilliant azure chakra, trickling from a long-forgotten project left over from less desperate days. A trinket Mito had created together with her cherished pupil, its inactivity an ever-present reminder of Masumi's death.It lit up anew, its light announcing the presence of long-lost kin.Yet the light from that gem had not been Masumi's azure, but a vaguely familiar, impossible amethyst.

At the sight, a jaw-slackening doubt had crept into Mito's mind, along with a premonition of insufferable dread.

It was a doubt unique to one person, the desperate Uzumaki Mito, the only one who had never abandoned a certain fruitless hope.

An impossible hope that, if realized, would bring with it excruciating implications.

In that moment, Mito had made a single decision, one which would impinge yet again upon Kushina's benevolence. Countless plans may have to change, but still Mito had made that decision. If she was to be condemned anyway, this last indulgence may end up being the most important decision she had made in her life...

...

The matriarch's mind eventually fluttered back to the present, suffused with the compounded distress that had defined her twilight years. She was too old for this kind of stress. No- that kind of thinking was disrespectful to those who had died before her. And those who would come after...

"Masumi... I am so sorry. I will do the best that I can with the time I have left."

But Mito knew that in sharing the truth, no comfort would be found for anyone involved; it could only bring more pain.

Mito pressed her hands to her face as she leaned back onto the headboard of her bed.

The girl had seemingly known nothing of her own family and past. By all accounts, Sumika was victim to a tragedy which had stolen practically everything from her. Just from what Dan and Tsuna had reported, the implications alone were horrifying to consider.

They would doubtless uncover more soon, once Sumika's health was studied more thoroughly.

Malnutrition, isolation, emotional deprivation, lack of coherent education or guidance... intuition told Mito so much, even in such a short time after meeting.

What's more, when Mito tried to ask the girl what she wished for, the child's answers were all almost painfully purehearted. Basic necessities, the simplest of luxuries, space for herself, access to training and learning materials, and knowledge of her past.Little more than that. A child who had lived so harshly still maintained such innocent desires.

But what would knowing the truth of her parents do to someone like young Sumika? She who had already survived untold horrors, could she really handle any more hatred or despair? Would the child regret learning the truth which she sought so doggedly? Would Sumika reject Konoha or her homeland if she knew the prices that had been paid? Of the wars that demanded such sacrifice? Was it responsible to impart such a burden on one so young, even if she was entitled to know? Was Mito's self-satisfaction worth more pain for her family?

Sumika, Masumi's cherished daughter... How could Mito dare to face Masumi in the afterlife, not only after having failed her, but also potentially having imparted further agony on her only child?

Such a child, who instead of wrathful or bitter, acted subdued and calm. Reserved and troubled, yet earnest and attentive.

Even more, Mito recalled how her granddaughter knelt with and spoke of the child.

Tsuna, last of Mito's living descendants, a war hero of infamously hotblooded temperament. A brazen young woman whose heart harbored an immense love for those close to her. Leader of Konoha's most venerated clan, with the pride and wealth of nobility. Such a person knelt easily to comfort this girl, her face softened into an expression most tenderhearted and affectionate.

Seeing such a profound and touching gesture of concern from her usually fiery and impatient granddaughter, Mito would not have been surprised if Tsuna spoke words of condemnation even to her own grandmother. Another painful possibility to tear at Mito's remaining sanity during the nights.

Just her normal duties were worrying enough on their own, but controlling her chakra so soon after the transfer procedure had already taxed Mito's strength past the safety limits.

But... it was good that the child seemed so close with Tsuna...

Yes, at least there were others who could be what Mito could not, who might succeed where Mito had failed. She could hope they would all be there for each other. All of them... her successor not the least among them.

Now that thought.... it allowed some ideas to resurface. Perhaps sending another letter or two might develop those possibilities.

Still, there was no escaping it. The truth was owed. A debt Mito could not deny. A debt of blood.A debt that could only be paid with everything Mito had left to give. But how to tie it all together? What was the best way? What would Sumika choose?Years of planning and scheming would have to be adjusted, to account for protecting the girl now.

Ironic, considering it was only for Masumi's sake that Mito had mobilized so many resources in the first place.