Pride


Madara learns what pride is at the age of six, when the clan grounds are filled with the cloying scent of putrefaction and his eldest brother's body is brought back sliced in two. He understands when his father turns away and orders it burnt. Then turns to Madara with a look that promises glory.

But glory among Uchiha is worthless to a six-year-old boy. It consists of luridly proclaiming a wish to die and drag along the entrails of a Senju. Of clawing out one's eyes with all the strength left before death.

Madara is not yet used to this. All he can remember is the frightened face of his mother when the Senju shinobi found her and now the fading memories of his first brother practicing his kata in the compound.

.

Izuna's tiny hand pulls at his sleeve. When he speaks, his words sound like he's reciting from a book.

"Which one killed him?"

"Why do you need to know something like that?" Madara hisses at the boy.

Izuna looks at him blankly, and his sharingan spin in his eyes with their single infant tomoe. "Well, we aren't going to just let them have him. We have to make sure they pay us back, right? Nii-san was a good shinobi, right?"

Nii-san died because he fought while ill, and was caught by stray kunai probably meant for someone else. Madara considers admitting this, but Izuna would probably assume their brother could only be avenged by killing the entire Senju clan. So he keeps silent, puts one hand on the boy's thin shoulder, and steers him back into his room. And that night, he sleeps holding Izuna's shiver-wracked body tightly to his chest.

.

He learns about the satisfaction pride can bring when he – for the first time – throws a Senju boy to the ground. It's a slip of a kid with strangely two-colored hair but a Senju nonetheless.

Madara leans over the boy who is barely older than himself and grins wildly, feeling Uchiha pride run through his veins, a promised panacea that has only just caught up with him. "What's your name?"

The Senju doesn't look up. He tilts his head to one side, staring across the battlefield, as if trying to see something beyond the mass of bodies and metal. "H-Hashi-"

"Your name," Madara growls, face darkening.

"N-Nii-Nii-sa-"

"Name!"

But by this time, his fingers have already purpled the boy's neck.

.

The Senju boy by the river is the first one to challenge his pride. He's an infuriating kid that finds his way somewhere deep into Madara's head, and stubbornly holds his place even when he's pushed away.

And sometimes he speaks of a dead boy. Something pulls at Madara's chest when he does but it fades quickly, like so many other faces drenched in blood.

"I used to have three brothers, you know," he stares into the river, watching the tadpoles flutter against the small rocks deep down. "Now I've only got my youngest one. He's busy enough for ten, but still…"

Madara stands behind him, unraveling slowly, hesitantly. "I used to have four."

.

At the age of twenty, it no longer matters.

Izuna's Sharingan burn in his eyes as he watches the body being dragged off the battlefield. Before him is Hashirama, hesitating, wondering whether to resume their fight when his mind is so obviously absent.

But it still takes everything he has to stop Madara from massacring everyone – Senju and Uchiha alike – when the fog clears from his eyes.

And that evening, he doesn't know why he goes there, but he does it if only to settle the need of vengeance steaming heatedly inside him. The Nakano is just as he remembers it, and Hashirama is too, with his stupid clothes and his subtly tangled hair.

"Don't do this," he's warned. The Senju boy – now man, but the look in his eyes supports none of that – walks slowly towards him, carrying a look of utter seriousness and Madara hates this, glares at him red-eyed, blurs the space between them with fire. Their battle is as long as always, because the great are not meant to die quickly.

But it remains that the result is the same. Both of them equally tired but the Senju not as thoroughly exhausted. Madara's hand gripping his ganbai to keep himself standing, Hashirama steady on his feet.

"Fine," he sneers. "Do it. If it's done by your hand, it's a proper death."

"I won't kill you."

A painful laugh escapes his throat. "But you will, and you want to, because I was the one that killed your stupid sibling, my very first, and he was saying it – I remember now he was calling you – and then it was yours who killed my brother, like a revenge dealt for you by the world-"

The idiot Senju's arms are solid around him, holding him up better than his weapon could ever hope to. Clenching into his blood-stained hair. Hashirama's cheek presses against his. Sticky with blood but shivery-warm with life.

"No."

And the cloth of his haori muffles every one of Madara's wracking sobs.