A/N: I try to write Madara as a complex character, and this is what I get. I should probably go back to pulp horror or something.
Warnings (read this before you read the story): Gore, horror, eye fetishes. Not for the faint of heart
cathexis
By Chronomentrophobia
Because, one fine day, my efforts might be appreciated.
Once, he had four brothers.
He hadn't cared much about his parents, craggy-faced and unfamiliar and blacker than crows. The parasitic hatred for every Senju, which seeps into every crack and every pore, sickly-sweet and sticky-suffocating, is the only thing he had ever gotten from them, and even that is too much sometimes.
But, once, he had four brothers, and he apportioned himself accordingly. Each of them carried a part of Madara, like a poisoned blade hidden up a sleeve.
He'd taught Izuna to throw shuriken and Mikoshi to use kunai, just to distinguish between the two. Egaku carried extensive knowledge on explosive tags, stolen from a Senju by Madara's Sharingan, and little Kasuta...Madara had been so torn, but it would have been the height of foolishness to refuse his baby brother basic training. He knew better than to hope for something he couldn't make for himself.
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Kasuta dies first.
When Madara finds him, the sword is so big and his body is tinier than it has any right to be, nearly cloven in twain. He has so little blood that Madara hopes, for just a moment, that he is still alive, that he'll make it—
(The Sharingan is a harsh companion.)
Madara incinerates his body instead of bringing it back for the clan and goes for a few months without eyebrows, his hair singed and cheeks scarred by cauterising burns. His eyes burn even though there are no tears.
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Then, Izuna bashes his brother's brains out on a rock.
Madara saw it only from a distance, a rich red burst on the ground, a pulpy mass like a rotten melon, and he opens his mouth to ask where, in a world where the clan's storehouses had gone empty for so many times he'd lost count, Izuna had gotten hold of more food—
But his Sharingan spins and spins, and Izuna's teeth are splintered and broken as he laughs and laughs and laughs until Madara's eyes close.
Madara doesn't know how he got Izuna away from Mikoshi's body without gagging on the scent of raw meat, but he'd been so afraid that Izuna would be hungry enough to suck on the hunk of bone and flesh splattered on the rock (and oh what an awful waste and his stomach shrieks and roils in protest) and Madara knew that he wouldn't have had the heart to stop Izuna if the boy had started: Mikoshi and Izuna, twin brothers, together from womb to grave, one within another.
And he's gulping for breath between his laughter and his tears, holding giggling, bloodied Izuna like his bones are a prison and he won't ever, ever let his little brother out. The demon's eyes, Izuna's eyes, change while he's still in Madara's arms, three solid streaks meeting a hellish red pupil and his smile is overflowing when they do.
Half-hysterically, he thinks he's glad that Kasuta isn't around to see their descent. At least their littlest brother doesn't get to smell the sweet-sourness of putrefaction.
Every night before going to sleep, Madara presses the heels of his hands to his eyes until he sees fireworks behind his eyelids and wonders, wonders why his eyes won't stop burning.
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Egaku withdraws after Mikoshi's death, speaking only through the volume of paper he consumes. Madara finds explosive tags folded in the shapes of cranes and others that detonate at no more than a brushing glance, tags so labouriously and beautifully written that they are like art, and still others gummy with dried red-rust.
Madara uses them in battle. It's the height of artistry to see Egaku's explosive tags detonating, a conflagration of hard work and Senju entrails fueled by the chakra haze of death and desperation.
His clansmen think he's gone crazy. Small and flame-eyed and grimy, a starving black rat in crow-black clothing
(laughing during battle until he chokes and his voice burns out).
Izuna just smiles, steadfast and deadly by his side, so much power pouring out from his Sharingan that Madara's eyes yearn. They are on fire.
Madara thinks he's gone crazy when he finds an explosive tag on Egaku's tongue. The boy is pale.
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As Madara grows his Sharingan grows with him, fluttering and stretching and aching to accommodate chakra like fire. He's short and thin-boned and stringy because this fire burns away at him from within and hunger from without.
He's accustomed to the pleasurable hurting sensation, accustomed to blood slipping like glass beads over his cheeks whenever he overreaches himself. He grows lean, feverish; he can't handle his own strength, too used to having it halved and quartered and meted out, but Izuna bears the burden of it with him, and the cracks from the inferno inside are small enough to heal. For the longest time, Madara has just one brother, and he thinks he can live with it.
They train and they train and they train and they train and Izuna is never satisfied. The eyes that require blood sacrifices like gods and spirits must also be godlike, and even together they have but a fraction of that power.
Izuna's eyes are like stones.
Madara takes up skipping rocks because he needs to teach himself temperance. That's how he meets the boy with the stupid hair and manipulative moods.
Senju Hashirama (chakra like earth, like spilled life, heavy and everywhere and too beautiful to stand) makes him feel more grounded than he has been in a long time.
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He meets one of the Senju in a small skirmish, and her too-bulky armour is a strange faded red, warped and scintillating at the edges. The colour of the Senju's armour has always been bright, bright red, as if they are trying to rival the brilliance of the Sharingan.
Armour is an important part of war, more than just protection. If a girl-child can't take care of her brother's armour, then she has no business even helping, let alone sneaking out into the front lines. Madara sneers at her, and she descends on him in a rain of shuriken, dark eyes flashing like river stones in a storm.
After the battle, the sky overhead has dulled, as if the combatants have drawn out its fire with the spark of blades against blades. Madara scrubs a hand over his eyes, smearing battle over his brow, and stares at the dank, blood-soaked ground, the blades sunk into cold flesh; the girl had escaped. He hopes that, when she returns to her clan, she gets a sound whipping.
The air is thick and difficult to breathe. Maybe a storm is coming.
The storm doesn't come, so he meets Hashirama afterwards at the river and talks about the peace his eyes would burn up in and the brothers he always sees out of the corners of his eyes. His hands are steadier.
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Run, he says through blind rock, through lips and a tongue of soundless ink, through the river that carries the dead and the young. Izuna's eyes are like stones, his father a crow-black shadow at his side, and Madara knows that the Senju madmen, Hashirama and his clansmenhandlers, are too far away to cause this upheaval amongst the Uchiha.
Leave now. It's a trap, Hashirama's rock says, and Izuna had leaned against his chest before going off to prepare the ambush his older brother was leading, spindly splintery fingers splayed against his collarbone, two pairs of godly eyes interlocking until they become more expansive, more capable of holding this lightless fire pooled between them, hotter than the sun.
(The blade up his sleeve, the kunai in his clothes: poisoned so that they will take down any Senju they touch. There is an explosive tag stuck to the roof of his mouth.)
And still Madara's chest swells and the rock digs into his hand until he can feel it between the thin bones in his palm. He doesn't need to behind this wall of madmen, but his eyes shift into the bleakness that had almost given his plausible deniability away and then one step beyond that, even further into insanity. Hashirama looks betrayed. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
Madara's eyes are not self, they are weapons, and for this he, too, is a madman.
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Madara doesn't ask Izuna how he knows that little white Senju. He looks over the map. There are more skirmishes, more potential battlefields blessed by flies heavy with eggs.
(When?)
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Take my eyes, Nii-san, Izuna says. They're cloudy, dulled, blood-crusted after the retreat, and Madara feels his own throb in response, his vision grow dimmer. Power has a price has an almost sentient malice, and while the storm-sun-moon deity beats down on flies buzzing over shrunken and waterlogged skin, Izuna squints, trying to see his victims.
To bend this might to their will requires still more pain, needs them to squeeze blood from stone. Two boys with the eyes of gods and they bleed like animals.
It's over, Izuna.
If you don't take my eyes you'll go blind.
We're blind already.
When Izuna cries for the last time, he cries white-on-black.
(In Madara's dreams, Izuna's empty eye sockets are filled with squirming worms. They wriggle in his mouth and taste rich and soft and faintly sweet, delicious.)
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When the time comes, Madara shakes Hashirama's hand. His brother is long dead, had slipped away like smoke, but even before that he had been only a shell of himself while Madara blazed, burned hotter and hotter until he couldn't see or feel or hear anymore amidst war and his clansmen (same thing) save for the lone voice in his ears, the ephemeral arms lifting that pale veil for an instant.
Right now he feels something. He's unbalanced, seized up the wrong way; he'd expected a sword in the gut but the world shoved him instead and he's lying splayed out on the ground facing the white sky and black clouds, feeling a rock dig into his neck with jagged, bloody teeth. He looks anywhere but at Hashirama's eyes, and sees the man's brother instead: loyal to the death and driven by something cold.
Senju Tobirama's eyes are like stones. Madara knows he is thinking of those tales of mad Madara, monstrous Madara, fey and strange and fiery Madara, the heart of the Uchiha madness. They have to come from somewhere, after all. No sane mind could have dreamed up such twisted lies.
And Madara thinks, if only you knew.
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