A/N - I first conceptualized Madara's father when I was playing around with one of my multi-chapter ideas, and was quite frankly awed by what my own imagination had stumbled across. For those who are interested, his size comes from the fact that he's half Akimichi.
Here's to the days before the Founding.
Disclaimer - I don't own, I just write.
Growing Pains
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"Some men are best left to fade into legend, as giants. Otherwise we would be too afraid to look back at our own past. Afraid that we could never measure up to them."
- Attributed to Senju Hashirama
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His father was a giant.
Madara remembers this, remembers the intimidating rumble of his voice, the way you could look up and up and still be left with the feeling that there was so much more up to go. His enemies said that the ground shook when he walked; Madara knew better because he'd dogged his father's footsteps when he was younger, trotted along behind him and stared intently and he'd been surprised at how quiet they were, graceful and not a motion wasted, like every other member of the Clan.
He grows up knowing that his father is respected, loved and feared and that therefore, he has certain rights that the average Uchiha child does not, a knowing so subtle and entire that it influences the entire scope of his life. The proud tilt of his head, the confident chatter of his voice, the smooth assurance of his movements, are all part of his birthright, and that is power. If Uchiha are the top of the heap when it comes to shinobi, and his father is undoubtedly the best of the best when it comes to the Uchiha, then he, Madara figures, who rates only a few steps below his mother in the family hierarchy, can expect certain things of life.
Such as: the swoop of air rushing past his ears as his father catches him up and throws him into the air; Madara spreads his arms wide and screams with excitement like the hawks he sees floating high overhead on sunny days. Sometimes a fine line of worry appears between his mother's eyes, though she never says a word, but Madara only shouts higher.
Such as: the sight of a bloody, stinking battlefield where the bodies of others far outnumber those of his own Clan; his father standing straight and tall in the wreckage like an oak tree has been planted there in the aftermath of the carnage. Madara, who had been given a knife of his own before the battle and told to stay out of the way, clutches it tightly against his stained tunic as he watches, feeling his desperate love and pride thumping in his chest with every heartbeat, but he knows better than to run to him now, would never have dreamed of it. It would seem a kind of sacrilege.
Such as: the love in his mother's eyes as she stares up at his father, how slight and small she appears next to him and how he can and does lift her up with one arm and twirl her around until she clings to him and laughingly commands him to stop. Her laugh is gentler than her husband's, leaves rustling and water gushing over stone, but once she lets Madara sit on the table she's commandeered in the stronghold when she mixes her poisons, and he has heard his father say proudly that only a fool would underestimate her, and even at a young, young age, Madara has already decided firmly that he will never be a fool.
Such as: pride.
Such as: love.
When he was just a barely tottering child he remembers sitting fascinated, staring at the massive form of his father's war fan and its dull, vivid colors, not quite ready yet to touch it, but content to sit and wonder.
When he is ten years old he tries to lift it, valiantly, gritting his teeth and straining until the muscles of his shoulders and back ache fiercely in protest. It shifts, just a little, maybe an inch of ground and that grudgingly. Then his father comes and lifts it with one hand, slings it across his back and stands there looking down at him silently, and Madara is ashamed.
He can still feel the pressure of his father's hand on his shoulder a few hours later, the way it relieved a little of the heat from his cheeks, but his voice is still fierce and strident, leaving no room for doubt when he tells Izuna that next time he'll lift it without any trouble at all.
Izuna is only seven years old and their mother's silent shadow in all things, but he already knows enough to nod silently when Madara says that he is going to do something, and accept it.
Life is filled with battle after battle and the space between, with good eating when the pay is good, and lean times when it is not. Madara receives an education without price when he begins following his father into the meetings and then the battles where he directs the fate of the Uchiha, either with his ominously quiet voice or with the unimaginably strong winds that he fans into life, his large hands wrapped firmly around the heavy handle of his gunbai.
Reputation, he learns, is everything.
He stands in his father's shadow and watches the way that the eyes of every man in the room turn to him when he speaks, observes, with a wild grin of delight, the panic that ensues when his towering form enters a skirmish. He sees the way that skin pales, hands tremble, lips smile just a little too widely.
A good reputation, he decides, is built on fear. He vows that one day he will make such a name for himself. One day, Uchiha Madara will be a name that will cause men to tremble in awe.
He has no doubt that his father will live forever.
When he is thirteen he stands in the drizzling rain with his arm around Izuna's shoulders and watches his father's funeral pyre being lit. Their mother is dead and lost, somewhere, in the trampled disaster of the field where they had met with shinobi who had powers not even their far-seeing Clan had come across before, flight and explosions that shook the ground in bursts of fire and thunder; Izuna is sobbing into his chest but Madara's eyes are dry because he knows in his heart that if he had not been in danger his father would never have stumbled into the ambush that ended his life.
Thick smoke billows up to the sky and the raindrops hiss as they meet with coals and Madara's hands sink into the thick mud when he falls to his knees, keening soft and low in the back of his throat as his eyes blaze with a terrible pain, like dying and being born at the same time.
The age of giants is over.
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