Chapter Text
This story is set in the world of Escape & Evade, a world in which the village was formed quite differently to cannon.
There are reasons for the differences from cannon in this story and many of them are contained in The World Building of Courting Culture Confusion.
The story begins many years before Escape & Evade, during the Clan War between the Uchiha and the Senju, and continues on to cover many of the same events as occur in Escape & Evade, but from the perspective of Setsuna and Ichika. From chapter 3 onwards, this story will take place concurrently with Escape & Evade. It also contains references to events that occur in Caught and Captured as well as To Tempt a Target.
A note on time - I use the Run as a marker of the end and the beginning of the Uchiha year. It is a time for the old year to close, Prey to become runners, the harvest is in, and all prepare for winter. Additionally, this being set in the Edo Period, everyone uses the lunisolar calendar. So the daimyo's court and the Senju start the year with the Lunar New Year and the Uchiha start the year with the Run - their Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.
Nobody celebrates a birthday except for children, and everyone just marks their ages up one year at the start of their new year - Setsuna with the Run and Ichika with the Lunar New Year. This means that Ichika is usually two years younger than Setsuna, but they look like they're three years apart every Winter.
Warnings:
There will be scenes of violence typical to cannon.
There will be frank discussions of politics, including some of the more fraught decisions made by all parties, particularly Madara and Tajima.
There will also be original characters.
Setsuna, the main character in this story, has only the tiniest appearance in cannon, and most of the characters who appear here play equally small parts. Izuna is - and I say this with love - a plot device for Kishimoto to explain Madara's choices. Tōka and Hikaku are even less than that - they're faces in the crowd. Setsuna is barely that.
All four of them appear in this story, and - having no constraints apart from Izuna's canonical actions - I've taken them in pretty much any direction I please outside of that. This means that they have entire backstories and world building characterisations that will be rife with original characters.
Senju Ichika is an actual original character created by me in chapter 9 of Escape & Evade.
If original characters are not for you, maybe this isn't your kind of story.
Finally, the romantic story arc begins when Setsuna is 18 and Ichika is 16. He expresses his interest when he is 19 and she is 17. They share no physical intimacies beyond kissing throughout the story.
All of these are reasons why I am not putting an underage tag on this story.
Because there is no underage sex.
At all. Not even by modern standards.
Remember that, in the world of Escape & Evade, Hashirama married Mito at 15. Before the village was formed, shinobi expected to die by the age of 40, or 30 in Kishimoto’s cannon. What ages people expect to achieve milestones has been adjusted accordingly.
Please, read with care for yourself and skip the story if any of this is not for you.