Fandom: Naruto
Title: From the Mountaintop(1)
Author: hana-akira AKA rurichi
Genre: General, Angst
Character: Uchiha Madara
Rating: 17+
Warning: OOC, doesn't-really-follow-Canon
Prompt: Because Madara had always been an observer and Izuna his brother.
Summary: From the mountaintop, Madara can see all of Konoha.
...
I look from above but never from below and it's in this moment that I know, I truly know—
(That you'll never come home.)
...
From the mountaintop, Madara observes the land he sees below him. The land below is scarred and ruined, so much that no one would have believed that it had once been bursting with life unless they had been part of the battle that had desecrated it beyond any recognition of its former glory. Black trees with no leaves and burnt grass are the only things left of its legacy.
(War is ugly and it will take at least two generations before the green comes back, if at all.)
Madara stands at the edge and he knows that this scene before his eyes will become a common sight and will be nothing out of the ordinary in the near future.
(Though no one knew it at the time, this first time of Madara observing silently everything below him from above will become a habit, and with time, an obsession.)
His younger (And only) brother Izuna quietly stands beside him and everything is okay. For now.
(It takes three generations for even one leaf from a tree to come back, and even then, it is the color of a fading brown—the color of decay and rot. No grass is ever seen again, not even after the Senju have occupied it for many generations to come.)
This was life and so time moved on.
…
In years to come, Madara will have traveled to many mountains and looked from above them because the Uchiha clan never stays in one place, never stays still so that there is never a chance for their enemies to catch them unawares. They will have traveled far and wide, to places where the seas rise to the sky and to where the deserts' winds will constantly cry and they will continue to travel until they have found their own paradise (Which will be till the end of time because there was no such thing as paradise on Earth. Hell is other people(2) and so Hell will always be on Earth.)
Then again, there are some things that could be considered to be as close to paradise as anyone could get—well, Madara could get to, anyway. Having Izuna beside him is one of those few things, one of those things that could be considered being in paradise because he made him so happy, but that was only one thing in a place where they put a price on Nature and a name to a sunny sky with rain.
It's enough, though. For Madara, it's enough. So long as Izuna was by his side, it was enough. Heaven on Earth couldn't be perfect and Madara didn't expect it to be what with war and death constantly around him, but it could be enough as long as he forced himself to believe that tomorrow will be a better day and that one day Izuna and he will never have to see something like that blackened land they had seen long, long ago in a land far from where they were now.
(Together they are like brothers and together they are a pair—)
Everything changes, though, when you lose that little piece of Heaven, that little bit of paradise that you had been able to get in the midst of bloodbaths and dead bodies.
(Death was a part of life and soon Madara found himself to be alone.)
…
From the mountaintop, Madara can see the second snowfall of his twenty-first winter fall upon the land below him. This land is supposedly called Konohagakure and it will be the last resting place from hereon out for all of the Uchiha in his clan. Izuna had wanted to see Konoha, but had died before he could. He was only nineteen when he died. (He was so young, so very young to die.)
His little brother had died three days ago in the first snowfall and had, therefore, died a white death. (He had been put in a white coffin and the snow had continued to fall like shooting stars and his last sight of the world had been the unforgiving, gray winter sky.)
Tuberculosis(3), the doctor had said. No cure, none at all, and it was miracle in and of itself that the child had lived to even see his nineteenth birthday. Even if he took some Kyorou Sanyaku(4), it would only prolong his time for only a little while, if at all.
He had said nothing as he watched his little brother desperately push off of his futon and had then left frantically for battle. He had stood to the side and he had let his baby brother pass even though he knew that where Izuna was going to was to his death.
(By the end of the day, he had found Izuna's dead body in the center of a mess of a hundred other dead bodies, blood dribbling out of his mouth and his black, blank eyes staring into the darkening sky. A lump of something or another grows in Madara's throat and Madara can only ask one thing from the cooling, dead body that he's cradling in his arms like a loved child—)
"How could you be so foolish?"
(A piercing scream rips through the air and Madara rages against the world.)
…
Once the Clan settles into the village, Madara leaves constantly to visit Izuna's casket before it is finally buried. (He brings incense sticks in offering and burns all of them before he leaves to return back to the village, to Konohagakure. And constantly, he prays, whenever he is there.)
It's hard to move on, to leave Izuna behind and everything else that involves the thought of home.
You had said you wanted to come home now.
(Love, would I lie to you?)
Foolish little brother; foolish, selfish little brother, he thinks and Madara sobs heavily as he falls down to his knees and leans against his little brother's whitewashed casket. (So white. So very, very white. The casket isn't buried until weeks later after Izuna's death and they wouldn't have buried him at all if it weren't for the fact that the corpse had started to decay.)
(Repeat my name like a mantra, a prayer, and hold me like a dream, a child, a long forgotten memory—)
"He wasn't supposed to die," he sobs onto the coffin, "He was supposed to live. He was supposed to live."
(Izuna, Izuna; little baby Izuna—)
Back in his own room, Madara cries, "It wasn't supposed to end this way," and only a shattered mirror is his witness of despair. (Seven years of bad luck and only nine lives to live.)
(He's gone, he's dead, and he is never coming back home.)
(Izuna, Izuna, Izuna—)
…
From the mountaintop, Madara can see all of Konoha and he hates it more than anything else he's hated before and that's saying a lot. (He hates many things—things like death and disease, filth and wasting time and everything else that's in between—)
He wants to howl at the injustice of it all.
(Why do these things get to stay alive while his brother stays dead? What do they have that allows them to continue on? He wasn't supposed to die, he wasn't supposed to die, he wasn't supposed to die so why are they alive—)
He can see the people. He can see the trees. He can see everything. It's nothing, he thinks. This land—it means nothing to him. He wants to snarl and tear things from their limbs and make the whole world bathe in red. But he doesn't because—
('Izuna would have loved Konoha,' Madara thinks, and he crushes that thought immediately.)
It is a dangerous territory to tread in, like shooting without aiming or knowing without seeing.
(The dead stayed dead and he wants to know why those things are alive.)
Who, what, where, why, when—
(Nothing lasts and nothing worth having is eternal.)
The people work together, like the gears in an overwound clock, in a circle that is a cycle, and the answer to the question of where it ends and where it begins is never answered because there is no answer and so there is no answer to his question, either.
("My baby brother died and they are still alive.")
…
"It is not fair," he says suddenly late one night. "It is never fair," his father responds, knowing exactly what Madara means. A silence falls between them. (Choking, deafening, and swallowing like a never-ending black hole—)
He turns away and no more words are said between the father and the son. The silence is filled with unsaid words and unsaid hopes and of a despair that leaks from the eyes and heart.
(Three hours later, in the middle of the night, Madara will once again wake up in a fit of nightmares and cry silently for his little brother who has been dead for nine months now and counting.)
He would wake up screaming and only his father or Hikaku would be there to offer consolation.
(It is not enough. It is never enough. Izuna is still dead and he is never coming back home and Madara still can't get over it.)
Dreams of the mountaintop, of seeing the sea below or the grassy plains and prairies of lands faraway or even a solitary flower in a desert dune—
(He remembers of a harbor, where the ocean met the sea and the sea met the beach, footprints vanishing on a golden shore, and a mirror of the sky reflected in the deep.)
He remembers and so he can't forget
(And Izuna had been beside him, all the while.)
Afterwards, when people ask Madara about his life, Madara will effortlessly lie: "I am content," his eyes closed in supposedly happy arcs and a smile plastered on his face like paint.
(You will never be happy without him by your side.)
…
From the mountaintop, Madara will say, "It's a beautiful place," and will later concede, "A harsh, but beautiful place," because even he can see beauty in brutality. (This is what Konoha is and this is what it will be a millennia here from now, golden in its glory like an empire that will never fall. Golden leaves, golden laurels, and the people are its gladiators wearing a golden crown of rose thorns as its emblem of honor and justice.)
He can see all of it and he can admit that there something to this place that he hates with all his heart; his bloody, bleeding heart.
(A coliseum, a mausoleum, and there is no difference in love or hate because both mean the same thing in the end; obsession and depression in one space, in one moment, and that's all it takes to resign to a fate that is not blazed in the wake of pyres or drowned in the coming of unrelenting tidal waves.)
It is autumn, or fall now, and so the leaves from the trees change from a deep green to a golden hue, to the color of amber or the color of blood, and the trees look as though they are on fire.
(How lonely these nights are, how lonely these days are, when you are not by my side. How I loved you so, my brother, oh.)
Madara watches from above like a hawk, his eyes reflecting golden mirrors, and there is beauty in the act of creating, of burning metal to make weapons or burning glass to meld and form it in any form the creator wishes of it.
(And so there is beauty in the breaking, brilliance in the dying, and Konohagakure is a phoenix that will rise and rise again from the ashes, twice as bright, and the world will never be able to deny the will of fire that is sung from its champions' lips.)
This is love and love is the best.
…
They'll burn your hearts away, this place, Madara admits, and that's why it's a horrible place, he thinks.
(They'll burn and blaze like a wildfire, and the world will be like a moth, attracted by the sight of a pseudo-sun that could be touched. And it will be burned and the only thing left will be burnt wings the color of ash and soot, of charcoal and coal and black diamonds that are all sharp edges and harsh reality.)
He knows that if he stays long enough, if he is in this place long enough, they'll burn him, too, and they will mold him like a jewel.
(He wants to run and never come back, to run before he's burned, too.)
Konohagakure rises from the flames and burns thrice as bright, its champions the color of yellow, red, and blue, and they are the primary colors(5) of the color spectrum.
(White, green, orange, and brown all mixed in and a violent violet that gleams menacingly like an unyielding amethyst. Rubies, sapphires, diamonds, peridots, and topazes all glint and they are like precious treasures and priceless jewels. The champions all have Midas' Touch(6) and so all they touch will eventually turn into dust even if what they touch all turn into gold in the sunlight.)
The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long and Madara thinks that that's what they get for being so goddamned bright.
(Izuna would have fitted right in with them.)
Konoha had always been so much more alive than the rest. (More than Kiri, more than Suna, more than Iwa, more than Kumo—more than everywhere else.)
…
From the mountaintop, Madara can see all of Konoha, all of its harsh-edged beauty, all of its blazing glory, and all he can do is stay silent. (Because Izuna would have loved Konoha—its stupid trees, its stupid houses, its stupid gates—)
He would have loved all of it.
(Izuna would have loved it, this land of beautiful brutality. The act of creating rather than creation—that is art and Izuna had always been a fan of art.)
From the mountaintop, Madara can see all of Konoha and it hurts.
(This is a gift; it comes with a price—
Who is the loved and who is the knife?
When Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me into gold in the sunlight?(7))
Sing in the seasons and we'll fall from the mountaintop—
(I've seen it all before and I choose to ignore it.(8))
...
I look from above and everything is so distant:
Without you by my side, I am, therefore, alone.
(Tell me, love, when are you coming home?)
...
(1) The title of this piece was inspired by the title of the fifth phase of comedy: From the Mountaintop. Its main theme was, "From a distant point of view," and the other phases' titles had been Way of the World, World's Way Undone, Love Conquers All, Beautiful Changes, and People Live On.
(2) "Hell is other people," is a quote taken from the play, Huis-clos, by Jean-Paul Sartre.
(3) Tuberculosis is a disease that usually affects the lungs that's caused by various strains of mycobacteria. It's considered to be infectious and its most common symptoms are chills, fever, night sweats, appetite and weight loss, pallor, and a tendency to fatigue easily.
(4) Kyorou Sanyaku is medicine for enervation and coughing.
(5) Primary colors are generally the sets of colors which can be combined to make all the other colors in the color spectrum. Most of the time it's red, yellow, and blue or magenta, yellow, and cyan, but sometimes it's red, green, and blue instead. Three primary colors are usually used since the human vision is trichromatic.
(6) Generally known as the Golden Touch or Midas' Touch, the story of King Midas in Greek Mythology was of his ability to turn everything he touched into gold.
(7) From the song Rabbit Heart [Raise It Up] by Florence And The Machine.
(8) From the song Caesar Feat. Robyn by I Blame Coco