A/N: IMPORTANT! Before we begin: I used to be a regular contributor here on . I left and tore down all of my stories because I was pissed that one of mine was removed. There are FIFTY-ONE works and counting on my Archive of Our Own profile, and 49 of them are for Naruto. If you like this, please look me up there.
BESIDES (ALSO IMPORTANT): There's a good chance some douche canoe is going to report this story and have it ripped down as well, so if you like it, you'll want to know where to find it so you can keep reading. The Archive does not censor stories, and my work is in no danger there.
ALSO important: This story is ALSO posted on Archive of Our Own, where it is SEVERAL CHAPTERS AHEAD. Like what you see? Want more? Find me on the Archive. My Pen name is the same (BlackMajjicDuchess)
Chapter Seven: Legacy
"NII-SAN!" Izuna cried, spotting him first. The lad hurtled in his direction, throwing his arms around his brothers shoulders.
Had he not been healed completely a few hours ago, he might have grunted in pain from the impact. As it was, he endured it fondly. Leaving Miyu behind had gutted him, but he was infinitely relieved to see that Izuna had survived after all. "Good to see you, too," he grumbled affectionately, returning his embrace.
He released him and stepped back, embarrassed. "I never thought you were dead," he hurried to explain, not wanting to be seen doubting his older brother. "It's just that, when you didn't return…"
He smiled weakly. "I understand. I was wounded, though, that's all. See? Look, I'm fine." He spun around slowly to prove his claim.
"You should go to Father," he said, more seriously. "Before he gets some crazy idea to give me your place. Nobody wants that."
"Yes," he said unhappily, his smile slipping. Transitioning from Miyu to Tajima so quickly was not high on his list of pleasurable experiences. Nonetheless, it had to be done. "I'm glad you're well." What he meant was, "I'm glad you weren't killed," and both of them knew it well.
Izuna smiled back. "Only because you trained me," he replied modestly. "It was a close call. If it had been just a few weeks ago, I might have been overpowered, and I wouldn't have escaped the blast."
Madara's lips twisted with distaste. Sometimes he disliked being correct; Tajima would have given the order to detonate even if Izuna had been among the dead, for the simple fact that more Senju would have died than Uchiha. The fact that Madara himself hadn't escaped the worst of it was pure chance, for his skills were unrivaled, even by Tajima. He should have been far and away by the time the tags had gone off. He thought about the lucky bastard who had sneaked up behind him and put a sword through his leg, and found sick pleasure in remembering how he'd torched him only moments later.
Madara went to where he knew that Tajima was packing up his tent. "Oto-sama," Madara greeted, standing a short distance away.
His father froze in unhooking the tent from its pole, but didn't turn. "I was beginning to think maybe you weren't worth your name after all," he rumbled, turning to regard him over a shoulder as he wadded up the tent fabric. "Where have you been?"
"It doesn't matter," he dismissed, pointedly avoiding the topic of the red haired medic who had saved him, in more ways than one. "I'm back now."
They stared each other down, as if trying to decide the value of an argument. Madara would give no more information than that, though, even if the older man tried to beat it out of him, and Tajima seemed to decide that he didn't have to know. "We're striking camp," he said tersely after a time, and turned back toward his work.
"I heard the horn," Madara affirmed. "I'll tend to my tent. I just wanted to report in first." His father waved a hand impatiently over his shoulder, dismissing him entirely. Madara was glad to be finished with him. He'd rather be by himself, anyway, for not too long ago, he had left behind the most precious person in his world. The only other that could compare was Izuna. But Izuna is here, and she is not, he reminded himself. My objective has not changed.
He broke down his tent in record time, relegating it into a small pack that could be slung over his back. As soon as the rest of the Shinobi were packed up, their company would be on the move. A clash with the Senju almost always led to a need to resupply. Hashirama's forces were relentless. But before that…
Izuna had just finished striking his tent, too, and had been headed toward him. "We have work to do," Madara told him. He nodded in assent; they both knew. Izuna had almost died. He hadn't, though, and the knowledge of that was enough to spur them into another training session, for it had demonstrated that their efforts were not in vain. Without preamble, they sprang towards each other. There was no one faster or stronger than Madara among the Uchiha. The only way for Izuna to become his match was to practice against him one-on-one. They were definitely brothers; Izuna was learning rapidly. His brother was exceedingly sharp-witted and perceptive. Madara could not outsmart him, and their physical strength was similar. All that Izuna lacked was a little experience and some muscle tone. Very soon, they would be perfectly matched.
I won't lose you, too, Madara thought of his brother.
Protect Izuna. Outlive Tajima. Find Miyu. They were good goals.
"See?" Mura was saying days later, cranking the string back. "If you pull this back and hook it here—" he demonstrated, "—then you can put the arrow here. You can shoot a lot further. Watch." He lifted the contraption and fired it, and the arrow went sailing across the clearing to imbed itself into a tree over seventy yards away. Mura set down his new bow and grinned happily.
Madara nodded in appreciation. Tajima didn't take the lad seriously, but Izuna did. And what Izuna took seriously, Madara took seriously. After all, in no time at all, Mura would be a regular soldier in their company and Madara would be in charge. As commander, Madara would need to know the strengths and weaknesses of everyone in his company, and Mura was expected to fight. "How did you come up with this idea?" he asked, curious as to how Mura's path of logic operated.
"Well, the bows that everyone uses, they raise up, like this, you know?" He raised his arms as if he was holding a bow aimed at the sky. "You fire and hope it hits somebody, but it's not very accurate, right?" Madara nodded while Izuna merely waited; he had seen all of this already once. "So I thought, how about a bow that you can actually aim at your target. There's a spot on it, just there—" he pointed, "—and if you use it to point at the spot you want to hit, and then allow for the distance you are firing… with practice, you should be good to go." He grinned again.
Madara crossed his arms and smiled to himself. It was very impressive. "Did you build it?" he asked Izuna. Mura was a bright little brat, it was true, but technical execution would have been difficult for one so small. The tension in the string was dangerously tight, and the crank required significant physical strength to work.
"I did," Izuna confirmed. "We worked on this one together, even if it was Mura-san's idea." He grabbed ahold of the weapon and held it up for Madara to inspect. "It requires a great deal of strength to pull back," he explained-just as Madara had assumed. He proceeded to show him how to crank it back. "For it to have enough power, it needed to be difficult to set even for an adult." He handed it to his brother. "Try it."
"I see," Madara responded, accepting the new weapon. It was kind of like a regular bow, except that the limbs were crossways instead of vertical. The arrow was shorter, too, and expertly fletched. Fletching had been Mura's first hobby; he'd been doing it since he was half his current age. Fletching arrows and watching them fly had been what had first gotten Mura interested in weapons in the first place, and archery in general had been his focus. It was an interest that had gradually expanded into the field of long range weaponry, and a hobby that Izuna had carefully cultivated in his young friend, for it was in range weapons that the weaker Shinobi would find sanctuary.
If Uchiha Tajima kept insisting that the so-called expendable infantry were to be used as a shield against the vanguard, then weapons like this had a use. The weak could hold the range weapons and stay safe behind the lines of the strong, and both could deal a significant amount of damage while protecting their numbers.
Madara didn't often offer friendship, but Mura had his gratitude, for the child had provided his younger brother a means of defense when he had not, and Izuna's mind had also sharpened as a result. Someday, when Madara led the Uchiha, Izuna would be a better complement to his leadership than Tobirama was for Hashirama.
And then it would be the Senju's turn to suffer.
He found his father standing in the center of his tent, alone with his map. His usually exaggerated frown was set even deeper into his face. It made his father look years older than he actually was, a man past his prime and denying it. His fingertips were pressed hard into the tabletop, his shoulders tense and raised as he struggled to find meaning in the arrangement of the red and green pieces on his vibrant chessboard. "Madara," he acknowledged, eyes not leaving his pieces.
"Father," he returned. He entered a comfortable space for conversation, a few feet away from the map on the opposite side. He set Mura's weapon down against his leg, sensing that his father was too deep in thought to be bothered just yet. Tajima's eyes shifted from piece to piece, divining a winning strategy from the silent pawns on the board. He would speak when he was ready, as he always did. Madara both loved and hated his father, for there was a time when Tajima had been a magnificent and honorable warrior, before he had been so obsessed with revenge. Despite that knowledge, Madara found it difficult to blame him. The man had lost three sons to the Senju, and his hatred was an infernal chasm. If anything happened to Izuna-or Miyu-he would probably feel the same.
"Did you know," he began slowly, "that there was a time when Senju Butsuma and I were as close as brothers?" He sucked at the inside of his cheek, still deep in thought about his board. Madara didn't answer; long years with his father had taught him that sometimes Tajima simply needed to think aloud. Wisdom could always be found by observing the mistakes of his father, and every rant was a kind of lesson. "He was a foundling, brought into our lives by chance. My mother's sister took him in, fed him, clothed him, and loved him as a son. We were best friends for several years, he and I. Inseparable. Do you know what happened?" he asked, his glance flickering sideways.
Madara frowned and shifted on his feet. This was not a story he had heard before, so he said nothing, lest his father cease to tell it, and he did want to know. Instead, he only shook his head slowly. This was the first he had heard of the Senju and Uchiha ever being friends, and he had a private, personal connection to the issue.
"At eight years old, Senju Butsuma learned who we were, and remembered who he was. And he killed my aunt and escaped, back to his own people." Tajima's eyes narrowed as he glared at his map, eyes fixated on the green pieces, hating them with every fiber of his being. "I didn't see him again until after your sister was born."
Madara's eyes widened, for he had not even been aware that he had had a sister. He suddenly became much more interested in this story.
Tajima laughed humorlessly. "Yes, you had a sister. I can see you are wondering why you never knew. Ah, well." His head dropped, hanging from his shoulder blades, nodding as he remembered. "Butsuma's father kidnapped her as a means to gain leverage against our clan when she was only three, retaliation for the alleged kidnap of his own child. I would have torn the world apart to get her back, but my advisors were having none of it. They were my father's advisors, and I was new to my role. Uncertain, untested, and their counsel was all that I had. They asked me, 'would you sacrifice the pride of your clan for one worthless girl?' Daughters have little value in this world, have you noticed? Having a firstborn daughter instead of a son is seen as a curse... but I loved her nonetheless." He sighed and retreated from the table, standing straight and trying to appear tall. "It broke my heart, but I did it. I let them kill my little girl, all for the good of the clan." His frown deepened, his jaw grinding with regret, and his voice was cold and toneless, twinged with the age-old ache of a man who had lost everything.
"I saw Butsuma again years later, after his father had died, and he had become the leader of his clan. I had clung to the hope that he and I could work together. We had spent our childhood together, stealing horses, skipping stones, and playing ninja on the plains. He had witnessed the death of my daughter, and foolishly, I believed that he had hurt for me. I proposed a truce, and we met under the white flag to speak of ending all the fighting. I brought your elder brother, Ichiro. You were just a babe at the time, but Ichiro was already ten and strong." He shook his fist, his voice thick with emotions. "I brought him because I wanted him to witness the dawn of a new era, of peace. I wanted him to see that two enemies could become friends, despite it all. And I was so wrong." His eyes hardened, and the tone left his voice. "Butsuma did not trust me, and believed that I had intended to betray him at that meeting, so he beat me to it. They put fifteen arrows in my firstborn son and demanded I pledge the fealty of the Uchiha to the Senju. I barely escaped with my life…" He paused. "But I learned to never trust the Senju again."
He stood straighter, the iron back in his spine. His previous signs of aging transformed into something different, and Madara saw it for what it was: experience, the signs of a warrior who had been tempered in blood, sweat, and tears, harder than steel. "You know why I'm telling you this, don't you?"
He did, but he shook his head anyway.
"I know, even now, that you harbor a hope that someday, you and that Senju boy you friended might make peace, perhaps be friends again, and unite the two clans in harmony. I see how sick this war makes you. I know your heart like I know my own," he continued, clutching his chest. "You are truly my son, my boy. You tell yourself now-" he stabbed a finger into the map and peered at him intensely, "-that you will do no such thing. You tell yourself that he is the enemy, and if you could only defeat him, you could kill him if you wanted to, though you dream instead of showing mercy, so that he might serve you instead. You crave that power over him, for what glory could be greater than making a pet of the mighty Senju of the Forest?"
Madara listened quietly. For so long now, he had misjudged his father, thinking he had been used as a machine of vengeance and nothing else, fighting a neverending battle based on nothing but blinding hate. To hear his father speak of emotions and a love betrayed made his vilified old man seem more human, and it made their plight more real. It was not in him to feel shame at the revelation, but the lesson was not lost on him, either. No one knew better than he knew himself that Senju Hashirama was a weakness, but even he had trouble admitting that in his darkest, most private thoughts. The truth was, he kept that dream locked in a secret box locked into a deeper box. He hardly dared hope, but the barest whisper of that dream made it all seem so worth it. What might it be like, to have a real friend? To see that dream realized? To be an integral part in completely ending a centuries-old war?
Tajima peered at him somberly, encouraged by his silence. "I tell you this for your own good. No good can come of an alliance with the Senju. We are too will be second to none. They will not submit, and they can never be trusted. No matter how firmly you believe in that peace, no matter how good they might seem, they are the sweetest kind of evil, because they will enchant you with their nobility and all of their seeming goodness, and they will betray you all the same. Countless generations of Uchiha have fallen victim to their charms. So did my father, and so did I. This ends here. This ends now. It stops with you. He is not the man you think he is. It is an illusion. A trick. A scheme to put you in his cage. And he will, Madara, this I promise. Eventually, he will."
They were quiet for a time. It seemed Tajima might have finally finished his story, and yet Madara needed time to digest it. He had learned that he had had a sister, and that his father had shared a similar friendship with their old foe, and all of it had disturbed him, for he had long considered his father beyond redemption, a foolish old man with his head stuck in his wars. A new respect grudgingly found its way into his heart, and that, too, was bothersome. It had been a long, long time since he had loved his father.
When at last the silence was comfortable, Tajima spoke again. "You came to see me. You never do that unless you have something important to say. What is it?"
Remembering, Madara lifted the crossbow and showed it to him. "Well you see…"
A/N: Thanks for commenting, Lily. :) I didn't get a chance to reply because you were signed in as a guest, but typically I try to comment on all reviews, favorites, etc. Remember, there are more chapters up on my AO3 account. I just posted Chapter 13 there (so 6 chapters ahead!)
