Death was warm.

The sensation was pressing around the soul with comfortable pressure, almost caressing it as it floated along in the emptiness. There was no darkness; just complete void of existence.
Except for the soul and death.

Thoughts came and slipped away in an instant, completely intangible and leaving behind only a faint trace of recognition. It had no recollection of its past life, be it boy or girl, animal or human.

The soul just was.

And it was content to drift along in the nothingness, energy humming gently, as it had never experienced a calm quite like it before, or so it was certain.

And suddenly the soul was torn away from the emptiness with force, its entire existence screaming at the horror of it all.

The emptiness was left once again completely barren.

Blinding light, extreme chill, and the feeling of being touched caused the child to wail, its tiny lungs producing the loudest sound in the entire room. A scratchy blanket was wrapped around its frame and placed into a final set of arms.

A pair of blazing honey eyes opened, angry, trying to find the source of the entire ordeal and its ensuing discomfort. It settled upon a pair of similarly colored eyes, edges crinkled as the owner smiled wide.

And the baby ceased its crying, so suddenly that every soul in the room stared in utter bewilderment.

Harumi looked down at the child in her arms, smiling earnestly as its eyes scanned over her face, as if intent on memorizing her features. Another bundle was passed into her arms a moment later, and she admired her two children.

The boy cried. He wailed, face red from effort.

The girl just stared. Not happy, not sad, not upset. Completely impassive.

Harumi took in their appearances, almost chuckling at the stark difference between them. Her daughter had been blessed with moonlit white hair while her son had hair as dark as the night. Strange to think they were twins. Her little yin and yang.

"What will you name them?" A gruff voice interrupted Harumi's assessment. Her lips pursed into a tight line as she considered.

"Miyuki," She announced, placing a kiss on her daughter's head. "And Kyo."

The older man nodded in approval.

She doesn't cry.

Harumi knows this all too well. While her son wails and shrieks for attention her daughter sits impassive, honeyed eyes carefully analyzing. She learned to walk faster than her brother, and she does so with much more grace and skill. When the two siblings were being taught how to read and write Miyuki never needed explanation or direction more than once.

Harumi can already tell her daughter is gifted, and she feels a flash of guilt when she thinks it a pity it couldn't have been her brother. Harumi's father does not care for female clan-heads.

"I have only need for Kyo," Jun had said in regards to training, brushing off the white-haired girl with a wave of his hand. Until she had retaliated with a magnificent roundhouse kick which, while hadn't done any damage, succeeded in getting his attention. Jun made an annoyed noise but relented.

Miyuki didn't get along with anyone aside from her own mother and Kyo, although Harumi had since assumed it was due to her own choice. It wasn't brought about with an air of supriority; Miyuki simply had no interest. Kyo adored her, forcing her to play with him and practice their lessons together. The girl doted on him, carrying him on her back even though it was quite a task for her. It was the only time Harumi caught her daughter smiling.

By the time the twins were six, it was very apparent that Miyuki was going to surpass her brother as a ninja. Although Kyo was bright, he was still a child in all the ways his sister wasn't.

"No."

"Please! It would be such a wasted opportunity to not give her the title of clan head. She's a genius!"

Jun glared at Harumi, quieting her in an instant. "Kyo will become the clan head. End of discussion."

His daughter slumped her shoulders, feeling defeated.

Harumi leaned an arm against a tree, panting. The pace at which she had been running had begun to exhaust her, and her chakra was nearing depletion. A kunoichi though she was, she had been laid down with raising her offspring.

Miyuki was still clinging to her back, doing a good job of watching behind them. Harumi knew it wouldn't do much in case of a surprise attack, but it was better than nothing. She silently prayed both letters she had sent in advance reached their destinations.

"We're almost there," She said gently, holding onto Miyuki tighter. "Don't worry."

"...I'm sorry." The sincerity with which her daughter spoke the words caused Harumi to blink in surprise.

"It's not your fault." And indeed it wasn't.

Harumi received word late in the night of an intended assassination attempt, and when pressed was shocked to learn it wasn't on both of her children, just her daughter.

It was no secret that Miyuki unsettled the clan. Jun practically despised her. But to hire a ninja to kill her? The child hadn't done anything wrong.

Usually assassinations were given out for future clan heads, and it was well known Miyuki wasn't.

Deciding that they couldn't trust anyone, Harumi grabbed Miyuki and fled, leaving the kunoichi appointed to caring for the children when she wasn't around to see to Kyo. Her son would be fine; he wasn't marked for assassination, and Jun would do everything in his power to make sure his future investment was safe.

She had intended for Miyuki to reach Konoha, and then return herself, but if they were attacked now it didn't seem likely.

As if on cue foreign chakra made its way to Harumi's senses, indicating to her that someone was rapidly approaching from the south.

Not good.

Miyuki dutifully hid on one of the taller tree branches, her slight frame not even so much as bending the bark, quiet as a mouse.

Harumi didn't have enough chakra left for an all-out sprint, especially while carrying someone. In her haste she had forgotten to grab soldier pills for her pack. They were up against the wall, with nothing left to do but fight. She readied herself in a defensive stance, kunai in one hand.

"This is where your escape comes to an end."

A figure appeared on an opposing tree branch in the dark, half of his face hidden with a cloth mask. His voice and chakra weren't recognizable, although Harumi expected that. The clan would never send one of their own ninja to dispose of them, nor would they admit to an assassination attempt.

A wave of killing intent chilled Harumi to the bone, and her resolve weakened by a small amount.

The battle was short, and to her credit Harumi had tried her best, but with only a small amount of chakra left and a man almost a foot taller than her as her opponent, she was eventually overpowered. She didn't have enough chakra left to send to her hands, and she plummeted down to the ground, landing with a sickening thud.

Instead of running, as she had expected of Miyuki, her daughter yelled once before dropping down beside her. Her eyes widened as she looked at Miyuki's own matching ones.

For the first time since her birth 6 years ago, her daughter was crying.

The ninja assassin had also dropped down a couple feet away, and he was eyeing them with interest. Harumi shakily lift her head to look at him.

"Please. Don't take her life. You already have mine. One life is enough."

"You are not my target," He replied, staring at Miyuki instead of the kunoichi speaking to him.

"Plea-"

"But you have my word I won't kill her."

The surprise and shock was almost tangible, and Miyuki lifted her gaze up to where the opposing ninja stood.

Unnatural. Strange. Abnormal.

The words his employer described of the little girl before him swirled around in his head. He had never killed a child before, and even as a battle-hardened ninja he knew it wasn't in him to shed a child's blood now. It had been years since he had been on the front lines of war, and it was a mindset he didn't want to return to ever again. A brutality he loathed.

Unnecessary.

This girl before him would grow up to become a great ninja if what his employer told him was true. The potential was there, and he could see it behind the girl's honeyed orbs. Fast calculation behind them, something that no child should have had at her age.

He gave Harumi a small nod before disappearing from where the two of them lay, a flicker of shadow the only giveaway he had ever been there at all.

Harumi looked up at her daughter, gritting her teeth at the pain coursing through her veins. Black ebbed at her vision, and she grasped Miyuki's hand in her own. She didn't have much time.

"You have to get stronger," She whispered, grimacing at the tang of blood in her mouth. "Go to Konoha. They will take care of you."

"What about Kyo?"

Harumi gave a small shake of her head. "He will be fine. You will see him soon." She coughed, spewing more blood across her clothing and on Miyuki herself. She softly apologized, reaching up to cup her daughter's cheek.

"I love you," Harumi sighed, hand going slack. "Never forget that."

And with that Harumi Taketori was gone, leaving Miyuki to cry in the forest over her body.

Note:

Edited 10/13/19