Miyu enters the room at a steady, calm pace. Two of her escorts are seated in the front row behind her, and she assumes the other two are doing a perimeter check.

  It makes her feel better – a Konoha contingent is a statement from the land of Fire to the Waterfall Village. Three clan heirs, and a supposed legend.

  She settles into seiza, facing the door as the higher ranked player, and waits for her opponent to take their seat.

  Ito Mamaru, thirty-two. Resident shogi champion of Waterfall. A wife, two young children, and the expectations of an ambitious Kage on his shoulders.

  To beat the current elemental champion, who happens to belong to Fire, which, as it happens, hosts perhaps the strongest Hidden Village the world has seen?

  This is an opportunity the Kage of Waterfall would be loathe to miss.

  They bow to one another respectfully, and Miyu begins unpacking the pieces. The room, aside from the clinking of shogi tiles and the breathing of its many occupants, is silent.

  Miyu takes a moment to settle herself. Schools her face into careful politeness as she extends a hand and begins organising her opening.

  Here, she is calm. Here, she is in control. Here, she is Miyu.

  They begin.

  Between turns, the pieces shift and the board blurs as her mind scrambles the game, breaking down the strategy in an orderly chaos.

  Soon the line opens up, and with each of Ito’s captured pieces the probability of victory inches closer until her horizon is clear of obstacles and the chance of winning is no longer a chance.

  He hasn’t seen it yet.

  Probably won’t, not for another six moves.

  Miyu plays them carefully anyway, and offers her opponent the respect of her follow through. He will want no pity.

  It concludes, as she expected, in six moves.

  For a minute – and then two, and then three, Ito stares at the board. She can see the moment it registers so clearly.

  The slight downturn to his narrow lips. His nostrils flaring as he inhales deeply, trying to keep it slow and absent of panic. The slight tightening of the skin around his eyes. A slight sheen of sweat on his temple.

  Two years ago this had been her. Hands trembling beneath the table as Makishima destroyed her in the final round of the championships.

  She’d kept her composure, just barely. Hung on, all nails and teeth and bone deep desperation because she couldn’t cry - couldn’t falter, not in front of anyone. No, they wanted her to shake, wanted her to cry, to lose herself in the frustration of a loss.

  But she could not. Would not.

  They want her to fail. Want to be proven right about women being frail, fickle things with no place in the game that is now her domain.

  They will not see her bleed.

  Finally Ito bows.

  Miyu bows back, a fraction shallower.

  She rises, and the audience follow. They bow to her, and she to them, but she is not fooled.

  These men hate her. Oh, they still bow low, but gods, their eyes burn with righteous fury to see a woman in the place of high respect. The absence of proper recognition from the shogi association is the little bit of vindictiveness they cling to, their proof that she is worthless.

  Miyu keeps her shoulders level and her steps even as she walks from the playing hall, her escorts hot on her heels.

  “Brilliant,” Shikamaru leans in, the word meant for her ears only.

  She smiles privately, and continues leading the way back to their inn.

  .

  “Thank you,” Miyu smiles to the Aburame as he hands her another warm cup of sake.

  “You are welcome.”

  She’s used to the monotonous voice by now, and catches the slight upturn at the end of his reply. Happy, then. Or perhaps, genuine?

  She brushes off the observation and indulges in her fourth cup. Another victory, so she thinks she’s earned it.

  “Miyu-san,” Itachi’s smooth tone sends a tingle of pleasure rolling down her chest. “May I ask you something?”

  Ignoring the urge to point out that he has already done that, she nods and takes a bite from the green tea mochi they’d bought that morning in Waterfall.

  “How did you become the best?” His dark eyes watch her from the other end of the log she’s seated on.

  “I read your file,” Shikamaru speaks up from the other side of the fire before she can reply. “What little there is in it, at least. You’re not a clan kid, and the school you went to didn’t have a shogi club. Or even a shogi book.”

  Smiling into the rim of her cup, she takes a sip and then lowers it slowly. They wait patiently for her answer.

  “I learnt,” she says, tasting sake and mochi on her tongue, “from the grocer down the street when I was eight.”

  There silence around the campfire. She can feel eyes on her, heavy – taking in every breath, every movement.

  “We sat on milk crates behind his counter. In between customers, he explained the pieces. The strategies.”

  She smiles and it’s almost wistful.

  “I started beating him by the time I was nine. He kicked me out of his store and told me to find real competitions to play in. Sent me along with as many books on strategy as he could afford.”

  Her gaze drops to her hands, smooth and pale. Small.

  “I didn’t have enough money for the first one. So I went to small street tournaments – at nine, just a girl, and bet money I didn’t have on games against men three times my age.”

  She lets out a long, slow breath.

  “I won them. I made enough to join official tournaments, and I started winning those, too.”

  She thinks of prize money, the stunned faces of her opponents. No one had called it a fluke because you just can’t fluke against the calibre of players she had faced.

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  “What about school?” The Nara asks, and the raw interest in his tone catches her off guard.

  “Oh, I skipped,” she says, half laughing, “not many people cared if a no name civilian didn’t come to class or not. Besides,” she shrugs, “the capital isn’t like the hidden villages. I was a girl born to poor parents. Worth less to them than a nanny goat, or a pair of chickens.”

  She shrugs, watching the firelight flicker in the depths of her cup. “To some, I’m still worth that – champion or not.”

  They don’t stiffen. They’re ninja, and broadcasting their emotions isn’t something they do. But the air grows heavy at her words, nonetheless.

  “How’d you get so good?” Asks Shisui, serious for perhaps the first time since she met him.

  Here, Miyu hesitates, sake and sugar hot in her veins.

  “At night,” she says, lifting her gaze to stare into the fire, “when my father was busy beating my mother senseless on the other side of my door, I’d look up at my ceiling.”

  She can remember it so clearly. The ratty, paper-thin walls. Her lumpy, threadbare futon. The small, battered dresser in the corner. Her window, cracked and rickety, making a rattling whistle every time the wind swept past.

  Dust, along the old wooden skirting.

  Stained tatami, ugly and mismatched.

  And the ceiling - watermarked and patchy, shifting into the board that has come to symbolise so much more to her than a game.

  Every facet of her tiny childhood room burnt into the backs of her eyelids.

  “On it, I saw a board. Pieces. And I’d play, for hours and hours, going through strategies, playing whole games, for years.”

  She stops then. Remembers nights where her eyes had been swollen shut, small casualties of her father’s fists. Still she’d force them open, deal with the hot, stinging tears and the discomfort – and on her ceiling, the pieces. Blurred and wavering, but present.

  In her darkest hours, body aching with cold, stomach churning in hunger, the ceiling was all she had.

  Even now, when she’s faced with the reality of what she is – Miyu stares up at her ceiling and lets the pieces whir.

  Because she is nothing more than a civilian woman without family, no grand name, and wealth in the form of tournament money and good investments - a decent enough dowry, though she had fought tooth and nail for it and is loathe to give it up. For a man, at that? Distasteful.

  The real world is complex. Regrettably, shogi has only an echo of its depth. It makes the reign she has over the board addictive. It’s where she is safe, powerful, and most importantly – on even ground with her opponent.

  She can’t help but marry the pieces she so often sees with people she meets in her everyday life.

  Ninja, pawns.

  Noble families, knights.

  Kage, generals and kings.

  The thought of her own place? It makes Miyu sick.

  But Daimyo?

  The Daimyo are the players, blundering and selfish, and often disgustingly incompetent. She could do it better. She would do it better, if she dared to think about it for more than a minute at a time.

  Here she is, a master of strategy, fighting every day to be recognised and somehow terrified of such recognition becoming reality. Yet, the alternative is somehow just as bad.

  Remaining nameless and faceless keeps her as an inconspicuous annoyance, a mere imperfect grain in the wood of the board.

  But respect – true respect – the attention of bigger fish, the threat of innumerable contenders, all of whom could want her dead and have it done easily?

  That might just be worse.

  The ninja ask her no more questions that night.

  .

  The fire is low, but still crackling as Miyu exits the tent. Her hair is down for once, and she’s in her warm sleep wear and slippers, but the air is chilly, so she sits on the log closest to the fire.

  She appreciates the audible footsteps of whoever is on guard. The sight of them in her peripherals doesn’t startle her.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she says softly, absorbed by the flickering glow of the coals. “Sorry to-”

  “Don’t apologise,” Itachi’s low murmur is a welcome sound. “Would you care for some company?”

  Miyu nods, and he places a few small logs onto the fire before he sits beside her. Close enough that she can feel the heat of him against her side, a sharp contrast to the biting air of the early morning hours.

  “Sometimes,” her voice is barely above a hush, “after games, I can’t stop replaying the entire thing.”

  She feels his dark eyes watching her face, and realises she’s too tired to stop him from seeing how she feels.

  “I can’t stop thinking about the holes in my play.” It sounds silly spoken aloud.

  “You won.” She hears the question in his statement.

  “This time,” she offers with a wry smile.

  “You’re the best player in the world,” he shifts his gaze on to the fire, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs.

  “Today, maybe,” she sighs, “but tomorrow? The day after?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone play like you,” he says, as though it means anything.

  They sit in silence for a moment.

  “You must think me pathetic,” she murmurs softly, “to question every decision like this.”

  “I think you’re cautious,” he turns to look at her again. “You’re not arrogant or entitled. I think it makes you the best.”

  Her eyes feel a fraction too warm, and she chokes out a little laugh.

  “I’m such a fake. I act calm and steady, but I’m really terrified of failure.”

  She turns her head to meet his eyes.

  “If I lose,” her voice feels thick, “it means they’re right. It means – I-”

  He settles a warm, scarred hand over hers.

  “It means,” he says firmly, “that you will try again.”

  She can’t seem to look away from his face even as she begins to shiver.

  “You’re cold,” he tugs her hands between his, turning her to face him. “Do you trust me?”

  It’s a loaded question that she thinks him cruel to ask now - with his handsome features exaggerated in the shadows the low fire casts.

  She forcefully doesn’t overthink it.

  “Yes.”

  There. Simple.

  And then he closes his eyes and takes in a slow, measured breath.

  As he begins to breathe out, the parts of her hands where they’re touching begins to tingle.

  Another breath in, and with his next exhale – warmth.

  It seeps into her hands, up her arms, coiling in her veins comfortingly. Slowly it creeps up to her shoulders, and begins to spill into her torso, rolling down her back like a trickle of hot water. Soon she’s toasty warm from her toes to her neck.

  “Amazing,” she manages around a soft, disbelieving laugh, “ninja do this whenever they feel cold?”

  His head is tilted to the side, dark eyes drinking in the small curls of fog that come with her every excited exhale. Her cheeks are flushed pink, and her smile flashes a glimpse of her straight teeth.

  “It’s a secret clan technique,” he admits, letting his thumbs stroke gently over the soft skin along the backs of her hands. “We call it breath of fire.”

  “Ah,” she huffs another laugh, “and I tried so hard not to overthink your question.”

  “Hn?” Itachi tries not to get lost in the way the golden glow of the fire curves along her jaw.

  “Trust,” she’s looking up at him, her lips half quirked in an amused smile. “You asked if you had mine.”

  “I did,” he tilts his head to the side slightly and watches as she mirrors him. A lock of her long hair slips from behind her shoulder to fall against her neck.

  “And yet,” he can hear her resisting the urge to laugh again, “you are the one who showed me the secret technique.”

  Itachi shrugs, wishing he could activate his Sharingan. But this moment is too fragile. He will do all he can not to shatter it.

  “You told me something about yourself,” he hums, “it was a fair trade.”

  “Fair?” she quirks a brow, “You know my deepest, darkest, most terrible fear,” her eyes glimmer with amusement, “and here I am, none the wiser about you or your worst fears.”

  He pauses, letting his lip quirk upwards just slightly.

  “And if I told you I fear nothing?”

  She searches his face for a sobering moment. Her hands twist in his grasp until she can wrap her fingers around his calloused palms.

  “You’d be lying,” she tells him, leaning in, “those who fear nothing love nothing.”

  Itachi watches the shadows her lashes cast unabashedly.

  “I don’t think you are a man who loves nothing, or no one.”

  Here, he spots his opportunity. Contemplates for just a moment on whether to take it.

  “You’d be right,” he keeps his voice low.

  “I know,” she grins and it stirs something in his chest to watch her face glow with emotion.

  “I have a brother,” he says simply. “I was five when he was born. I swore that day to be the best big brother ever.”

  Miyu laughs and it’s just loud enough to have woken the others, but Itachi doesn’t have it in him to care all that much.

  “I can imagine that,” she chuckles, “a tiny, serious you, swearing a vow over a screeching newborn.”

  “He only screeched a little,” Itachi admits, letting himself smile for what feels like the first time in a while.

  He doesn’t miss the way her eyes lock on to his face, pleased.

  “I bet you are,” her eyes flicker up to the stars and she watches them for a moment. “The best brother.”

  Itachi shrugs, opens his mouth to reply, and cuts himself short when he sees Shisui step out from a tent.

  “Shift change,” he says with a shit eating grin, trying to sound apologetic and doing a terrible job of it.

  Miyu pulls her hands from his as she stands, casting him a quick smile as she steps towards her tent.

  “I should get some sleep. Good night.”

  Itachi watches as she ducks into the tent, and then turns his blank gaze to his troublesome cousin.

  “Terribly sorry,” Shisui yawns, placing his hands behind his head as he cocks his head back to take in the night sky. “You’re the one who insisted on keeping the shift rotation punctual, if I remember correctly-”

  “Shisui.”

  Itachi tries not to be annoyed. But the way her face had closed off so immediately at the sound of a voice that wasn’t his makes Itachi want to set his clansman alight.

  “Sheesh, ‘Tachi. Cool it with the killing intent, yeah?”

  He lays off it, exhaling sharply through his nose as he stands.

  “I’ll do a perimeter sweep,” he says needlessly, shooting Shisui a quelling look.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Shisui grumbles, “But make it quick. You’re prissy without your beauty sleep, ya know?”

  If Itachi discreetly sets Shisui’s hair on fire as he leaves, that’s his business.