cw: ongoing discussions of period typical sexism, arranged marriage, implied female alpha
Ane-san's mantle hangs heavily on your shoulders.
The situation is one that is unique, and so is the kimono that you now will wear to the ceremony. The kimono and hiyoku have been dyed from the original white, so that the traditional black of an alpha's layers show beneath the outermost layer.
The coat, which is a glorious sunset red, patterned in gold flames and black clouds and white rivers. It is what would have suited ane-san's high standing at the wedding but it feels too fine on you, stepping into the occasion. Which one of you now is the ghost for the other?
Your aunt smooths back your hair and meets your doubtful look in the beaten bronze mirror, the line of her brows soften.
"It's been in our family for generations," she says, tugging the collar of the uchikake to lay perfectly flat. "You look like a bride," she says. It is both consolation and encouragement.
The position you are going to take up in the clan will require a careful balancing act. That knowledge made your chest tighten, but in the mirror it didn't appear to show. The traditional white powder smoothed your features made your eyes appear more stark and you forced yourself to blink slowly, focusing on the flow of chakra through your body.
"Has any like me worn it before?" you can't help but ask. You feel vulnerable and young in a way that you haven't since your first year in battle as a warrior for the clan.
She smiles, and you can feel the strength in your aunt's hands when she lifts you to your feet and keeps holding on as you step carefully into the new zori just outside the door.
"Yes."
The ceremony was already notable for its unavoidable complexities. As an itinerant mercenary shinobi, and a second son, Uchiha Izuna would have traditionally made his way to your family's compound and joined your household, adding the branch family's honor to his own. However, Izuna and his brother were to be the next heads of the clan and took their orders directly from the main branch. You would travel instead with those your sister's had chosen to take with her from the household and hold land for Izuna as part of the main family lands.
The path to the temple, in what felt like a particularly futile attempt, had been picked clean of forest debris in an attempt to keep the hem of your kimono clean. You held the fabric close anyways to keep it off the ground.
Since you would be traveling to main family compound, Izuna had chanced the travel to your family's lands in return. His name would be bound to yours in the family records at the same temple that had offered the funeral rites for ane-san. This path was the same which you had taken when following her casket.
You shook those thoughts away and tried to dismiss the feeling of dread just the same. The path diverged, the place of burning separate from the place you were going. Wasn't a wedding supposed to be a joyful affair?
Your aunt took lifted the back of your coat gently with one hand, the other carefully clutching her own, so that all of your moves were carefully and silent as ghosts, making no noise even over the leaves that had fallen since the children first cleaned the path.
You reached out into the forest and sought to see forward.
Ane-san's residence still had Izuna's portraits, all fifteen years worth. Every painting the main family had ever sent was there, but you had only opened the last one. All of the others had been stacked so carefully, but the ties around them were crisp, without the wearing that frequent opening and closing might cause. You didn't know why ane-san never opened the old portraits, but you left them alone.
Perhaps it was desperation that drew your senses, searching for the original which could have inspired the artist's rendition even though you would meet him soon, even though you had no familiarity with which to identify your betrothed. You felt as though you were walking into a trap. There were too many factors that would be entirely out of your control.
Uchiha Izuna's mother was long dead and Uchiha Madara, as far as you knew, was not yet mated. They were the only two of Tajima-sama's sons still living. You would be the only alpha in the immediate main family, even if it was by marriage, and the only wife.
You would also be the first marriage into the main family in this generation, making you the first child related to the head by giri, by the obligations and responsibility of being Izuna's mate. All of this would place you immediately into the clan's upper hierarchy, but you knew your own clan well enough to know this didn't remedy your being an effective outsider.
Yours would also be the first fulfilled betrothal from Tajima-sama's five sons, even if your hand hadn't been the first one offered. Another pang of grief struck through your chest, already the most familiar wound on your body. It would do no good to regret what had already come to pass. The duty of that old oath weighed heavily upon you, it dragged behind you and was carried by one of your few remaining family at your side.
The temple was in sight when you sensed it, a well of unfamiliar power approaching from the opposite direction. It was dark and light and deeper than your own but somehow familiar. Your eyes ached in a way that was becoming familiar.
Light broke over you and the others. You crossed the threshold of the temple grounds where the forest had been cut away. The others, Izuna's escort, were a little ways ahead of yours, and you withdrew your senses, perturbed.
You came upon them soon enough, waiting. It was mostly men, battle hardened warriors. Among them you could see one other who was as alpha as you were, although much older, and scent another omega, although that presence was skillfully disbursed.
A man stood at the forefront of the group, the colors of his montsuki haori inverted just as yours were. His jacket was as white as the kimono you wore had once been, the Uchiha crest splashed in red and careful embroidery in the usual places.
None of you had concealed your presence and he turned when he heard. There was no reaction of any kind on his face. Even as an omega, you were both shinobi, and his face had also been left uncovered, with no hood or veil. His thick hair was bound into a tidy braid which fell down his back.
You felt as though you were sitting behind the eyes of a ghost.
Ane-san, forgive me.
He only bowed when you approached but you knew who it was. He looked too much like his picture to be anyone else.
A priest emerged before a word could be said, as though the bow had been the signal, and began the familiar rhythm of ceremony.
Music struck up around the courtyard - instruments and your own clans' humming. Purification, pouring cold water from a ladle for every person who would enter into the temple, including you and then Izuna.
You walked side by side, step by step. It was unnerving how his steps aligned with yours, or yours with his, until it was as though one body walked towards the altar.
You sat on polished wooden stools, side by side, while drums beat alongside your heart and the hum took on a different tone. There was the familiar feeling of seals activating, enclosing the marriage of an Uchiha heir from prying eyes.
The priest, an omega male, began a warbling song, announcing your name and Izuna's before the altar. You snuck another glance from the corner of your eye and could only thank your training for not startling when you saw him doing the same.
Three stacked cups, each shallow and each of a different size and material were place before you. The first was offered to you, and you drank it carefully. The alcohol scorched a path like katon down your throat. The cup was filled again and Izuna drank in three measured movements while you watched with the curiosity entitled to a new bride.
The second cup was glazed red as the clan crest and Izuna once again drank, the alcohol dropping smooth and clear between his lips. Once again it burned, sweet and warm, when the cup was traded back to your hands.
The third was filled with three sharp movements from the priest, the clan's dispersed sound rising around you. The liquor pooled in the dark earthenware clay cup and ignited the fire in your belly when you drank.
You caught Izuna's gaze over the lip of the last cup as you lowered it.
He watched you with quiet dark eyes, eyes liquid as ink. He was beautiful. It was not fair that you be here when elder sister was scattered ashes. A breath caught in your throat for just a second.
It was in that second that you saw the tinniest movement from your new mate, his fingers curling inward as if to form a fist. You blinked slowly, focusing inward once more to burn more quickly through the alcohol from the ceremony, feeling your chakra heat your body. It let you pretend the drop in your stomach was not a confusing amount of disappointment.
Izuna took the last dark cup in his hands and drained it without hesitation.
You could understand his apprehensions easily. They were after all the same as yours. Izuna had spent all of his life expecting one thing, only to presented with an entirely different scenario. Your name was already traded for ane-san's in the family register. The ceremony was only a requirement of tradition. By clan law, he was your spouse and you were his.
Of course it would be disconcerting to be confronted with that truth and a stranger who looked nothing like the painted portrait that had been sent to him every year.
A younger priestess handed you a folded sheet of paper and you and Izuna stood. The vows were the same you had heard at other clan weddings. Only, in order to indicate a balance in your pair, you read them with Izuna instead of alone.
Together you recited gratitude to the clan for a good match, promised harmony in your intentions, protection that your omega would not need, a devotion that he could not give you, and a kind of honor which was the only thing that the two of your had left.
The priests began circulating with wine for the guests while you and Izuna made your final offerings before the altar and the clan's humming came to a gradual end as each one drank their own mouthful of the rice liquor.
And just like that, with the last offering, it was done. Unless he killed you while the seals were still up guarding the temple, you would leave with him for the main compound in the morning.
*the described ceremony is intentionally altered from the resources I could find on traditional Shinto style Japanese weddings and is meant to be reflectively symbolic of izuna and mc. Please excuse any issues in it
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oh nOOOO just realized the shokoxreader version of things is like... the other half of girl vacation 🤣. gojo and getou go south in satoru's fever/death dream. shoko and myy oc go literally anywhere else once they can get away from being responsible adults with a hoard of traumatized children.
I've never read naruto, but I tend to prefer reading to watching anything when it comes to dialogue because reading = much faster than listening and I can go back to review information much faster, so I decided to look up the panels and....
I know that I haven't finished "there's a curse" but my first thought seeing baby naruto paint rude faces on all of the hokage is that if Izuna's mate wasn't already dead, she would have died laughing the first time she saw it.
