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Madara's father takes him up to the shrine, on the February night that his brother is born. His father guides his small hand, the hand clenching the ceremonial knife, over the heart of the crow. The knife plunges down, and a splatter of blood and feathers deluges the granite altar. The mess will not be cleaned away; crows are the physical manifestation of the Washer at the Ford*, and to allow anything but rain to clean away the remains of her avatar would anger her.
The acrid smell of the crow's lifeblood permeates the air. Glossy black feathers fall from Madara's tunic and catch in his wild hair. Sacrifice and veneration, in perfect harmony.
His father prays, head bowed and hands clasped, beneath the waxing moon. Madara follows suit, clasping his bloody hands and stumbling over his words only a little bit. They pray for the health of his newborn brother. They pray that he will live long enough to be given a name. They pray that he will live to be a great warrior who can venerate the Washer's secret name, as they do.
Throughout all of this, Madara isn't thinking that much about his brother, nor even the Washer at the Ford, whose shrine he kneels before now. He thinks about how his knees are starting to hurt, kneeling on stone as he is. He thinks about the hunger aching in the pit of his stomach and the weariness settling down on his limbs.
They come down from the hill at dawn, with Madara so tired that his father has to carry him for the last half of the journey.
-0-0-0-
"Mama, when's he gonna stop crying?"
Madara scowls down at the baby in his mother's arms. Everyone tells him that his brother, now named Izuna, needs a lot of sleep, so he's got to either be quiet or go outside the family tent to play. Personally, Madara feels that, as a four-year-old boy, he needs a lot of sleep too, so why shouldn't Izuna go outside when he starts screaming at ungodly hours of the morning?
"Yes, Tama." Madara's grandfather narrows his tired, bloodshot eyes at his daughter. "When is Izuna going to stop crying?"
Madara can't help but feel just a little smug at that; Grandfather agrees with him. Tama's lips tighten, as she goes back to the side of the tent where she and her husband, still fast asleep (Madara regularly envies his father his ability to sleep so deeply) on his pallet, rest. Nearly stumbling over a cooking pot left lying out in the dark, she raises the cloth partition dividing the two halves of the tent, and says "Try to go back to sleep."
Shigeo, Madara's grandfather, tsks and shakes his head, clapping Madara's shoulder. "Come on, young'un. It seems we're expected to deafen ourselves tonight—if your brother doesn't do that first. Though if the brat doesn't cease his wailing," the old man adds in a dark mutter, "even the Senju will come up from God knows where to find out what all the fuss's about."
"I heard that. Go to sleep, Father. You too, Madara."
Tama might not be the one in charge around here (that honor goes to Hisashi, who's too out of it to do anything), but Madara can't help but cringe at that intimately familiar tone of voice. He's no idiot; that tone of voice means he'll get a sharp cuff upside the head if he doesn't do what his mother says.
Madara beats a hasty retreat back to his pallet, pulling the cotton sheets (cotton is cheaper than linen, and all a cadet branch Uchiha can afford; it's better than the insect-ridden pelts they sleep under during winter, anyways) up over his shoulders. His grandfather follows a moment afterwards, groaning on his arthritic limbs. Shigeo goes to sleep easily, but Madara lies awake, staring upwards at the canvas roof.
He is surrounded on all sides by the sounds of faint, shallow breathing, and assaulted by the reedy, piercing wails of his baby brother. After a while, the beating of his heart almost seems to occur in time with Izuna's crying; one comes, and the other comes in nearly the same moment. Amazingly, that's doing absolutely nothing at all to help Madara sleep. He does think it's giving him a headache.
Everyone, from the clan head (who came down the day after Izuna was born) to his cousins to the old serving women who keep the fires burning tell him that his brother is a blessing to him, and that in days to come he will love and cherish Izuna, and be grateful for his life. Frankly, he thinks the clan head was lying to him, his cousins were faking him out and the serving women are just stupid. Why should he be grateful for some puny brat who keeps him up at night with his incessant, colicky crying? Why should he be grateful for a tiny baby he can't play with or practice with kunai and shuriken with?
After a while, Madara falls into a shallow, uneasy sleep.
And even in his dreams, the constant sound in the background is that of Izuna crying.
-0-0-0-
Mornings in the early summer are always the same; Madara is roused by his mother some time between pre-dawn and full daylight, him trying to swipe her hand away. Cleaning the tent in the morning is a wife's job; Father says so. Why does he have to help her do what's her job and hers alone?
Whatever Madara thinks about early morning and women's work, Tama has her way, and Madara is sent down to the river to fetch water for the laundry and cooking breakfast. And as for breakfast, rice porridge again. Sitting on the hard-packed earth between his father and grandfather, Madara scowls down at his bowl. "Mama, why do we eat rice porridge every morning?"
Tama doesn't look at him as she scoops a bit of her own porridge out of her bowl. "Because rice is cheap. Everyone else is eating it too, even our head." When she's met with her older son's chilly silence, she sighs, pale brow furrowing, and adds, her voice oddly taut, "Madara, I put egg in yours this morning. You said you liked that, didn't you?"
She obviously doesn't understand. Seeing that, Madara settles to eating his breakfast, chewing his rice-egg-water mixture with little enthusiasm, but quickly. Madara might be sick of eating rice porridge morning, noon and night, but he is very hungry, enough so that even this meager fare is welcome, once he can get over the longing for something different.
Welcome enough that, when Madara sees a pudgy little hand trying to scoop rice out of his bowl, he immediately smacks it hard with his spoon.
Izuna, perched in their father's lap, his right hand still dripping with egg water, stares at him, eyes round for a few moments. Then his cheeks grow red. Then, he starts to cry.
Hisashi cuffs Madara sharply across the back of his head, his hand hard and heavy. "Madara! You do not hit your brother! Not with your hand, your spoon, nor anything else!"
"He was stealing!"
"He's a baby, Madara. No one can tell what Izuna was doing, but he wasn't stealing. He doesn't even know how to steal. So don't hit him."
Madara believes that not a whit. And when no one else is looking, he spends the better space of a half-hour making the most grotesque faces he can muster at Izuna, and taking a perverse pleasure when the baby just stares at him blankly, too shocked to cry and without a clue of exactly what he's looking at.
-0-0-0-
Madara successfully performs the Grand Fireball a few months after he turns five years old, the youngest to ever come to adulthood among the Uchiha. On that day, he is officially presented to the clan head for the first time—of course Madara's met the man before, but this is the first time that he is allowed to address the head and come before him as an Uchiha, rather than as his father's child. The head, an aging man, grizzled and scarred, told him to become a warrior quickly, so he could serve his clan.
"After your performance yesterday, we'll all be watching you."
Without a doubt the best part of all this, however, was his mother's promise to stitch the clan symbol onto the back of his shirts. To Madara, there can be no greater affirmation of his adulthood, as his newfound status as a full member of the clan, than this.
"Oh, oh look!"
But it seems that he is about to be upstaged.
The Uchiha clan is moving camp further north towards the mountain range that separates Hi from Tsuchi. For right now, the clan and its servants are resting, and Izuna is taking experimental steps across the springy turf.
Leaning against a wagon, quite thoroughly forgotten, Madara scowls at his baby brother before staring off into the woods. Izuna started walking a week ago, and since then everyone's been fussing over him, even his grandfather, who was never nearly as enraptured over Izuna's "milestones" as were Hisashi and Tama. Madara's achievement has been completely forgotten, and he's convinced that Izuna is just doing this on purpose to draw everyone's attention on to himself.
Then, Madara feels a weight against his leg, and he looks down. Izuna smiles brightly up at him, a gap-toothed smile, his tiny arms wrapped around Madara's leg.
Briefly, very briefly, Madara smiles back.
-0-0-0-
He smiles more broadly when Izuna utters his first word. They are alone, left to entertain themselves—Hisashi and Tama are with the other able-bodied, battling some foe (Madara thinks it's the Hagoromo this time), and Shigeo's off somewhere Madara can't find him. Madara has been more willing to play with and look after Izuna lately, so his parents and grandfather have been more willing to leave the two of them alone together.
"Ma… Ma…"
Izuna's face screws up with concentration, his fingers digging into the earth. "Ma… Ma-da…"
Madara smiles down at Izuna, brief but broad, a strange warmth unfurling in his chest like huddling up by a fire on a winter night. "It's Madara, Izuna. Ma-da-ra."
"Ma-da-uh…" Izuna's voice trails off and his attention almost immediately goes back to drawing squiggles in the dirt with a stick, soil shoring up beneath his fingernails. Madara crouches over him, like a great crow, like a protector, and tries to make out some meaningful shape in the lines.
-0-0-0-
It's dark, and cold. A stiff wind blows, leaves scattering across the ground, the bells strung from the nearby trees ringing softly. They are alone at the shrine, and he closes his hands over Izuna's, as they guide the knife over the crow's heart.
Their father is dead. Madara tries not to cry; he's a grown man now, and as all tell him, only women weep. Only women, like his mother, are so weak as to weep. It's not much of a struggle. He feels more numb than anything else, his heart growing cold and leaden in his chest. For a child of the clan of fire, he feels more like a creature cut out of ice. He's cold from his fingers to his toes.
But the small, trembling hands beneath his are warm, as they plunge knife down into the crow's heart, just like the blood that comes up and splatters on Madara's pale cheeks is warm, sliding down his skin and reeking of innards and death. Glossy feathers fall from their tunics and catch in their hair. The echo of the crow's last squawk hangs in the air.
They pray to the Washer that their father's soul will find its way to the afterlife peacefully. They pray that she will let him pass, as he was a great warrior who venerated her name.
And silently, Madara prays to the Washer for his brother's safety, and that he'll have the strength to protect him himself.
*The Washer at the Ford, as venerated by the Uchiha clan, appears to be a conflation of two figures: the Morrigan, a goddess from Irish mythology, and the bean nighe, a Scottish fairy. The Morrigan is a goddess of battle and strife; she incites warriors to bloodshed, is often seen as a figure in red, and often takes the form of a crow. The bean nighe (Scottish Gaelic for "washer woman") is seen as an omen of death, often seen washing the blood from the grave-clothes or armor of those who are about to die, in deserted streams. The Washer at the Ford, as venerated by the Uchiha clan, has the features of both.
Madara is a sexist. Yes, he is; you heard the way he talked to Tsunade, and I don't think that was simply because she was Hashirama's granddaughter and he didn't think she measured up. It had to start somewhere, and shinobi culture, especially pre-village shinobi culture, probably wasn't a very woman-friendly place. The fact that there wasn't a single woman to be seen or heard from in chapter 622 (not a suggestion that women weren't shinobi so much as that they weren't visible through a male lens) only cements that suspicion in my mind.
And as of chapter 622, this is AU. Oh well.