My first foray into fan fiction, here we go!
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way, nor do I make a profit out of writing this. Though Madara can take the credit for my Fanfiction endeavors, and for bewitching me...
Author's Note: I've been sitting on the golden goose of a chapter 1, (Well, truthfully I haven't ACTUALLY written an official chapter 1, cause duh every author should start from a random arse middle section of their story. )
Ha. Ha. ...ha. Yes, I realize my humor doesn't resonate with you. I'll work on it. Just KNOW at some point, you'll get a chapter 1. Cause I wrote a whole bunch of other chapters in this story.
Also..
I can't decide for the life of me what perspective this story should be written in. Normally I decide these things on my own, but I would appreciate feedback on which works better, 1st person or 3rd. You can vote on it, if ya like. Eh..?
Then again..I'll probably just do what I want in the end! Oy.
There is just the fact that I can't stand to read fanfic written in 1st person (unless the writer is exceptionally capable) so how can I make others read mine...but at the same time, to me this story doesn't feel right in my eyes, except from 1st person.
Hmmm...
Prologue
Two men born in an era of war. Whose past history would shape the present itself—carve into the world their deepest desires and greatest errors born from love—converted into hate.
Their tale starts as all tales have, since the beginning of time as the tale of feuding families.
Legend remembers them as two extraordinary men, untouched by imperfection. But it is imperfection which built them from the ground up, and gave them their legs.
We often stand in awe of legendary figures becoming subdued by their greatness, feeling that perhaps it came all on its own from a smooth beginning and had a smooth ending.
We're wrong.
Nothing that is great ever existed without the pains of labor. It is the same for men of legend.
How did they grow into greatness, we ask? How did they bare such heavy burdens? How did they survive and triumph?
The heights that they've cast are only overwhelming because we fail to see past the boundaries and limits we draw for ourselves.
They had no limits. They had no boundaries, not because they were men made of stone, not because they were like an impregnable, indomitable fortress', but because they had no choice—but to harden by the wind and stand—firm.
Trial by fire they say. Well, a piece of pottery doesn't become extraordinary without being beaten, and molded by fire into greatness.
It was with their backs to the wall, and their trampled hearts torn from their sleeves that forced them off the ground—off the ground, off their knees with trembling hands to stand—that forced them to dig unseen terrains and find fresh new lands, to embrace new discoveries.
Through exploration, through perseverance, not through unbending will, but renewing that bent, falling, easily corroding will; will made of feather, strengthening to iron, will made of water, stirring to fire, will made of glass morphing to steel.
They weren't men who triumphed—they were men who tried.
Konohagakure—the Village Hidden in the Leaves, a place where young children now run around in peace, hoping from academy grounds, the toll of laughter playing in the wind. How did it come to be?
That is first the story of these men that caused the ripples that made the ocean.
It is not the story of two displaced, tear-streaked boys who trivially declare rivalries and are lost in self-pity to their burdens—surely justified pains on their part, but lesser or very different burdens, though burdens all the same— this is not the tale of Naruto and Sasuke.
Uchiha and Senju. But their predecessors, Hashirama and Madara who had created the ripples that formed them.
Examining the past can often bring clarity—and it can often bring pain. It can often send a gust of wind inciting a wildfire or a balm that douses that flame of conflict in one shot.
Hashirama and Madara
Uchiha and Senju.
Their descendants have long forgotten of names, and their importance, the youth have forgotten the lives that blinked out like candles simply because of the significance of names.
They wear it on their back—without understanding.
This tale is not the equivalent of a tale of two cities or two like-mice, this is a waterfall and a volcano, a balm and a wound, two sides of very opposite coins, but one not completely existing without the presence of the other, love and hate.
A Senju and an Uchiha.
If we go back to the age old claims of light and dark, good and evil—it would be misleading.
In this tale you'll find the colors overlap, the hues mix, and there is no good and evil, there is no yin and yang, only cause and effect, act and react, patterns that might be easily gauged though not as easily subdued.
Two names, two families, two lineages shouldering the burden of hate, the other of love.
One seed of love, but driven to hate, Uchiha.
One seed in hate, but driven to love. Senju.
Who is to say which is better? How can we condemn what their motivations were? Each having a plausible reason for their actions. How can you truly judge who was more justified in their actions?
Can you presume that you alone know love? That what you alone have what is worth protecting?
The end result is just the divergence of personalities, but can one claim that one was more right than the other?
Remember that, oh you, of separate sides.
The breeze laughed her high song along the air, stirring up the currents to whip hair back. This particular song of wind collided with two long errant black strands which danced upon a man's firm cheekbones in a whipped frenzy. The man had a dark flow of ebony hair down his back, which now tangled with this windsong, rising off muscled shoulders to blow sideways.
The tall man, his skin a peach tinge from the sun, was attired with a long full dress of kimono and sandals. He didn't give a pause nor raise his hand against the gust of air which had drawn up his locks, leaving him with a somewhat obscured view. He had a contented look shadowed on his features as he gazed upwards to smile at the wind, making friends with it.
The amiable zephyr ceased her loud bickering to chatter in a billow of amusement around him instead.
He strode across the town, like a parent visiting his child; a look of love dawning his eyes.
Charcoal eyes softened to the sight of running children, and narrowed politely with an honored demeanor over the passerby's' heads inclining towards him. He didn't stop for the praise, but he did stop to receive the flower offered to him by a little girl in front of a flower shop.
Their great leader, a beacon—they all saw. A simple man—he is. Just to walk across the town, early after the lights of dawn painted the sky and heated up the ground was his greatest pleasure. Why?
If you were to knock on the chambers of his heart and peer into the doors that opened, you'd see the answer.
A life starved of peace, full of battle, tired of bloodshed, desiring progress, wanting of reconciliation—finding it.
The greatest treasure he could ever ask for: Peace.
This is Senju Hashirama, taking his morning stroll, to reassure himself that said treasure, was there, every day when he woke up.
As the amiable man stoops to pick the proffered flower from the child's hands—a shadow appears.
But not all that is made of darkness is truly dark.
A tall pale man, with a curly mane of unruly black hair and piercing red eyes, faded to black for the time, steps onto the streets. His confidence like gold, weighs him down, making him appear significantly heavy, despite his svelte appearance. Confidence rarely tips so heavy before it leans in the direction of arrogance.
And arrogance this man had like arrows on an archer's back, in full supply.
This man is Uchiha Madara.
How is it that this improbable pair, respectively of yin and yang could coexist? And maintain a friendship?
Perhaps they can't?
Or perhaps the stories written on their faces, as they both regard one another with subtle smiles, are a prologue to tales of their past agony; shared and unshared, with mutual struggles. A hint of what might of occurred to result in this moment. The two most powerful men in the village, perhaps nation, exchanging a settled glance of contentment in the street. In the past their presence meant endless battles and unsightly destruction, for them and all those involved or near.
Perhaps this is what they mean when they say the 'tide has turned', because turn it certainly has. But will it lay still, gently, for all eternity, or will it rise up, in the fiery to which only it can rise?
And it begins!
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