Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
"Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart;
Of its constant hunger for whatever it is
It wants. The way it stops and starts."
-Poe, Terrified Hearts
Izuna lets them be, when they get back. Perhaps he can feel the tension in the air. Perhaps he is tired. Perhaps-Madara doesn't really know, and the world is painted gray enough that he has no desire to find out. Kanae steps out into the hall with him for a brief moment, and then returns.
The weight on his shoulders is crushing all the same. "You got rid of all the sake in the house, didn't you?" It's not really that he wants to drink. It's more that he wants to forget all these echoes, these bells, these dreams.
He doesn't want to know, can't even imagine.
And whatever else poisonous sake is, it is good for forgetting, good for blinding, numbing, drowning. His sorrows need drowning.
She comes to sit beside him, head on his shoulder, and he feels her hands tremble when she raises them to cup his face. "Come to bed, Madara-sama."
She'd done too much for Hashirama then. Done too much, and now exhaustion creeps about the edges of her words. She has little left for him tonight. Madara knows.
The words are a rising floodtide. He cannot stop them, even if he has the energy to try, and he does not.
"If I could stop, I would." He stares down at the hands in his lap, and his heart stutters on. "I don't want-" Hashirama. He thinks. I could love you, if I didn't love him.
"You do, still." She whispers, and her hand slides down, fingers trailing over his chest, down to trace the scar over his abdomen through his finely embroidered clothes. "He is a ghost in this room tonight."
Most nights it isn't so. Most nights he takes down her hair, and runs the bone comb through its length before the vanity, a thousand strokes to precision. Most nights she unlaces his armor, and returns it to the rack where it belongs, humming absently under her breath. Most nights he falls into slumber, and she is beside him, no space between them.
Most nights Hashirama makes no intrusions unless he is spoken of.
And Madara is tired of the spectre, but he has always been bad at banishing the past. "How long will you wait for me?" How long before you tire of this man who sits beside you?
She is young and pretty, and on the nights she hasn't burned herself away, she is bright and vibrant, laughing, kind. His clansmen speak of her often. The clan's children are fascinated by her.
He feels the seven years between them weigh like decades. He is no popular man in the village. He has no honor to his name, blood on his hands, and a weight on his heart that he cannot take off. She is here by his side by choice.
He does not know how much longer she is willing to choose-
"Madara-sama." She huffs against his shoulder, voice hoarse. "Shut up, and go to sleep." She pulls him back down on the futon, still fully clothed, and throws an arm and a leg over him possessively. Normally, it is he who ends up holding, clinging, but not tonight.
She's using his chest as a pillow, and in the faint glow of the moonlight, her hair darkens to bloody streaks. "I know you don't believe in much anymore, but accept that the gods have given you a miracle and don't question it." She sighs contently as she shifts. Before she sinks into sleep, she mumbles something under her breath. "Dramatic man...forgive yourself."
He's left awake, as his thoughts chase their way in circles around his head. She tells him that he shouldn't question it, had compared herself to a miracle of the gods, and then promptly fallen asleep on him as if he is her favorite pillow, and he can't help it.
He laughs, quietly, because moving too much might wake her. She needs her rest tonight.
A small woman with red hair and too stubborn a mind, a miracle of the gods for my existence.
A balm for the soul. A seamstress for his heart.
He considers his thoughts once more, and decide that only the last two considerations matter. She is here by choice. He has a weight on his heart.
And why would he care so much whether or not she wants to go away in the future, whether or not she'd grow cold and unforgiving, whether or not she cares too much for him, if in no way did he care for her? Why had he danced these months, begging her to ask him for his heart? Why did he allow her her teasing, and never find another room for her? Why did he allow her space in his life, the vanity on the wall, her clothing in his closet, her sewing table, a second chair, her presence by his side, if he did not feel that in some way she is supposed to be here?
Why does he let her dictate and influence his actions?
There is no sake in the house, because she has banned it, but it would be easy for him to continue drinking. He does not.
They never speak of the rice shipments the clan sends to Uzu. He sends them anyway.
She washes his hair, and sings him songs, and night after night, he'd watched her dance with her bare feet over his floorboards as if pulled by an unseen string from her table to his to center of the floor, back to him and then back to her table.
He examines his heart again, and finds that Hashirama still holds the lion's share, painfully leaving fingerprints over the creases and the edges, that he can't erase his oldest friend, finds that Izuna still holds the remainder and certainly, he has no desire to remove his little brother, that the dead's claim has not been touched, the graves in his mind's eye are many and numerous, but somehow she is there nonetheless.
She has staked no claim.
But the parts too painful to touch are receding.
She has staked no claim.
But thinking about the past is no longer a kunai twisting deeper.
Thinking of Izuna does not wound him with thoughts of eyes.
The clan's children speak to him now.
The clan smiles at him now.
He doesn't know how long he spends that night, staring up at his wooden ceiling, weightless and flying. Why did he ever think that love was to be parceled out in small doses, that it was finite and its quantity unaltered when hearts are meant to grow and change?
He runs a hand through her hair, and feels the silk of it over the calluses on his hands. "Kanae." He tells her. "Wait for me."
He is still half awake, when she stirs at sunrise. "It is too early." He whispers, and his grip tightens over her. "Stay." But his delight is still too much to bear, and he rises to wakefulness even without her prompting.
It does not mean that he opens his eyes though. He pretends to be asleep.
"Madara-sama?" She brushes the hair from his face. He opens one eye, and it's still a lazy morning, still too early. The sun hits her hair, and sets it on fire. It's tangled in the back, so much so that it really looks like tongues of flame. "Are you alright?" Her hand pauses over his forehead, and she blinks at him, green eyes paler than new leaves in the springtime in the rising light.
Am I alright? The laughter that hits him, he's been holding back all night. Am I alright? He pulls her hand down, and kisses her fingertips through his laughter. "More than alright." He tells her. "I have not been so alright in a long time."
She pulls her hand away, suddenly, turning away. "Madara-sama!" But her face is as red as her hair. It is a very pretty red. Something in the vicinity of his chest purrs.
Oh? He sits up, and leans over her shoulder, arms around her waist to keep her from continuing to run away. "I embarrassed you?" He kisses her shoulder, and tries to keep himself from laughing. He fails. "I am sorry-Izuna has told me that there is nothing that can embarrass you?"
"When I fell asleep yesterday," She sighs, and leans into his hold, no longer embarrassed, but perfectly content. "You were not this happy." It is an understatement. When she fell asleep yesterday, he was ready to sink again, but she had left him with enough to come to his own realisations. "Did good news reach you during the night?" In a manner of things.
How had he ever thought he was content before? It is nothing compared to this. "You told me you were a gift from the gods."
"I did?" She blinks. "That was not intentional."
"Mmmm..." He shifts, and sighs. Normally their positions are reversed. Normally, her head is on his shoulder, but still. "You did."
"I am sorry." She reaches for him, but that would involve him moving from his position right now. He likes where he is. "Arrogance was certainly not my intention."
He huffs, and watches a few strands of her hair move. It is still too early for this. "But you are a gift." He pulls her back down, and finds the spot between her shoulder blades, eyes sliding closed. "My gift. My hope. My wife. Mine."
She giggles. "As you say."
He frowns and prods her stomach. "You do not believe me." And this is really rather unfair. She's the one who said that she was a gift, and that he ought to just accept it. "You are my gift."
"For what occasion, Madara-sama?" There's a smile in her voice though he can't see her face. At least she's stopped arguing about whether or not she is in fact a gift.
"My birthday." It is the first thing that he can think of, though this is a patently ridiculous statement. He was born in winter.
It is currently August.
"Izuna said that your birthday is the 24th of December?" She turns, and he does have to give up the spot between her shoulder blades. She pokes his cheek, and doesn't move her finger away. "Aren't I a little early then?" Her eyes are laughing at him.
"I don't care." Technically she is late, four months late, but he really doesn't care about that.
She taps the end of his nose, the touch feather light, and her laugh fans out over his neck. "Little boy."
"I am not a little boy." This is a serious matter. "I am not."
"Of course, you aren't, Madara-sama." Her response is a little too fast. Just a little too fast, just a little too smooth, just a little too amused.
"You did not find me particularly...little." Again, this is quite the serious matter. A man is not to be perceived as a boy by his wife, that is not how this works.
She laughs breathlessly at him, and sits up. "I won't say it again, Madara-sama." But still she laughs. "You are a dark and fearsome-oh this is ridiculous." She buries her face in her hands, but it doesn't stop her giggles, doesn't stop her shaking frame. "You are a dark and fearsome w-warrior of great renown."
You rob me of every scrap of pride. "Much better." He turns over. "I like that much better."
She leans over, and kisses his temple. "We have to deal with the hostages, Madara-sama."
And his satisfaction is a little tinged by reality once more. Of course. Those damned- "Five more minutes." He pulls the pillow over his head. "Armor me up then."
"What do you take me for, Madara-sama?" She rises now, and he hears her feet patter out over the floorboards, away, though her voice floats back. "Breakfast does take a little longer than five minutes, you know."
But this is all relative, all rather absent.
He drifts.
They walk to the Senju Compound after breakfast, her hand on his arm. She'd despaired over the wrinkled condition of their nice clothing, but it really doesn't matter much. He has plenty of money in this peace time to commision more clothing.
And since this is no longer a diplomatic dinner, he brings his gunbai and the attached kama slung over his back.
"Madara-sama?" She asks, as they pass the teahouse he'd used to frequent with Hashirama. "Please let me ask the prisoners a question before they are executed?"
"It is unclear that they will be executed." He is not entirely sure what Hashirama will do.
Isn't sure what would win, the combined might of himself and Tobirama, or Hashirama's bull-headed goodwill.
It is unclear, and he dislikes that more than he could possibly imagine.
"They attempted murder last night, and would have succeeded, had Neesan and I not acted quickly enough." Kanae twists a strand of her hair around her finger, and frowns at the dusty road ahead of them. "Who would prevent their deaths?"
She is back to wearing the clothing she'd wear in Uzu, a half length kimono, shorts, and in her bare feet once more. And only now does he remember that the spiraling red lines over every kimono that she owns, is a subtle declaration of her clan pride.
But for formality, she put that pride aside, and called herself Uchiha Kanae.
"I am aware." He sighs, because yes, he is really aware of far more than her. "However, Hashirama is an idiot." This is the first time he tells her this out loud. That Hashirama is an idiot. That he knows Hashirama is an idiot.
"I was aware." She tells him, with mock seriousness, a teasing glint in her eye. "From before the moment he stepped foot into my father's halls in Uzu." She turns away. "I was not aware that he was at this level of idiocy though."
He has to smile at this. "And why did you dislike him so much before he even stepped foot on your shores?" What made Senju Hashirama so unpalatable to you even then?
He'd thought it was because of something Hashirama had done. It seems not.
"He was going to take Neesan away." She shrugs. "What am I to do, if not to dislike the man that takes my only sister away from the world that loves her? He is only a man like any other man in this world, and compared to Neesan's other suitors, he had only a matchstick city to his name."
"Konoha is a matchstick city?" This darkens his mood still further. Not only will he have to argue with a Hashirama who will not have fully recovered, he has to consider that Konoha is no prize.
If she had not considered it a prize for her sister, she can hardly say that it is a prize for herself. And he can admit that Konoha means more to him than a place to live, and a collection of matchstick houses that he is fond of.
"No." She looks at him, and her green eyes seem to read every thought in his head with such perfect ease. "It means more to that to those who live here." They step past the gates of the Senju Compound. "My insults toward your city have more to do with how Senju Hashirama wrote my sister bad poetry before making himself more important to her than me."
"You are jealous of your sister's husband." So that is what it is. It is not Konoha, and that eases the knot in his chest. It is not him. That difference is subtle but distinct. Her opinion of Konoha is a reflection of her opinion of him.
"It was hardly your fault." She tosses her hair over her shoulder, and the pearls on her hairpins flash in the morning light. Today, they are cream. She does not answer his statement with affirmation or denial. It is affirmation then. "You are important to me."
And the knot eases just a little bit more. "You don't have to tell me so." She never does have to tell him so. It speaks in all the things she does for him.
He'll learn not to question it. "I will provide the distraction." He says as he steps forward to knock on the door. "Ask your questions."
"Thank you, Madara-sama."
It's Tobirama who opens the door.
A pale and shaken Tobirama who looks like he fell asleep in a chair and hasn't done much else since except run his hands through his hair until it sticks up in spikes.
"How is Neesan?" Kanae steps forward and catches him when he stumbles.
"She's asleep still." Strangely enough, there is no sneer in Tobirama's tone, no dismissal in the other man's eyes, no antagonism. "Hello, Uchiha." There is only fatigue.
Only something like misery. Guilt.
Madara knows those feelings well. They are his constant companions, and had been so for years.
"Senju." Madara crosses his arms over his chest, and waits for the insults, the sidelong looks, the twisted lips. It doesn't come.
Tobirama stumbles down the hall, Kanae's hand on his arm so that he doesn't pitch forward.
Something deep inside Madara's chest growls. In another life, she'd be taking care of Tobirama. In another life, it would be Tobirama listening to her humming, her absent singing, eating her cooking, telling her about his frustrations, and ki-In another life, very similar to this one, Madara would be the one cold.
He reminds himself that he can act just a little bigger than this. That he can watch the scene in front of him, and let. it. go.
It is just a grating reminder, that is all, that she was not supposed to be his.
"And what about Hashirama-nii?" Kanae seems to know the way around, or perhaps she is just following where Tobirama is going.
Madara knows it is Hashirama's room.
"Unwell." Tobirama slides the door open with shaking hands. "But he is, as you said, not dead."
The word unwell shakes Madara once more. What sort of-
"Mada?" Hashirama's propped up on pillows, Mito's long hair fanned out over his lap. She's sitting on the chair by his bedside, and even asleep, her worry carves lines in her face.
The other chair by the bedside is empty.
Madara assumes that this is where Tobirama spent the night. It is unimportant though, in the grand scheme of things.
"Idiot." Seeing Hashirama-His face is too pale. Has he lost weight? Why is he like this?- "I told you, told you that this would happen, but did you listen? Do you ever listen to me? Do you ever listen to anyone?" He doesn't realise that he's stalked forward, until he's standing an inch from Hashirama's face. "Do you not understand that you are the last friend I have in this world? Do you not see the depths of your own stupidity?"
"Mada..." Hashirama protests weakly.
"Stop talking so loud." Mito's dark eyes are staring at him, and they look like two bottomless pits. "I did not fall asleep here..." She glances around the room blearily. "To be woken by your undignified screeching not two hours later."
"Neesan." Kanae has not left then. Kanae has not left to ask whatever questions she is supposed to be asking the prisoners. Instead she has come to stand beside him. "Forgive him. Hashirama-nii gave us quite the scare yesterday."
"Hashirama-nii?" Hashirama blinks, and a beaming smile crosses his face. "You want to call me Hashirama-nii? You consented?" It looks like he is about to leap out of bed and spin Kanae around the room, but Madara's glare makes him reconsider. "Kanae-chan! I heard from Tobi that you were the one to make sure I didn't end up dead! I have to thank you." And normally, Hashirama thanking people would end with him bowing far too low, or slamming his forehead into the floor, but Mito prevents this.
"Hashi-baka." She shifts her position in Hashirama's lap, and raps his forehead with her knuckles. "Do not make us have to save you again." And then Mito promptly falls back to sleep.
Kanae herself exhales, and he feels her frustration with her sister. Mito had woken, reprimanded two men, and said nothing to her sister before slipping back into sleep.
"I'm sorry I made you worry Mada, but it really wasn't that dangerous!" Hashirama seems to have found his tongue, then.
Madara's left eyebrow twitches. He feels the pulse in his temple increase.
Distantly he considers that friendship with Senju Hashirama is bad for his health, as well as bad for his mood, and bad for his heart.
"Wasn't that dangerous? Wasn't that dangerous?" Tobirama whisper screams at his brother. "Niisan do you want me to kill you myself?" His face falls into his hands. "For once I agree with the Uchiha. You are an idiot. And you never seem to listen to anyone."
Kanae pats him on the shoulder. "It seems to be a trend for elder siblings, Tobi-nii."
Tobirama looks up at her, murder in his eyes. "I am not your Tobi-nii."
But she's already moving on, checking Hashirama's forehead with the back of her hand, taking his pulse, fingers on his wrist. "You need bed rest." She pronounces this without a single moment of hesitation, and then turns to the rest of the room. "This means that everyone else is clearing out, and Hashirama-nii is going to go to sleep."
Hashirama, Madara, and Tobirama open their mouths to protest at the same time. She ups the wattage of her smile. There is subtle murder in her eyes.
Three sets of jaws click shut.
Tobirama and Madara troop out into the hallway, and stand about, glaring at each other.
"Well?" Kanae asks as she follows them out. "Shouldn't we discuss what to do with the prisoners without Hashirama-nii's bleeding heart?"
There's a grim look on Tobirama's face when he nods in response. "That is an excellent idea."
Madara reminds himself that Hashirama is not yet Hokage, and he has been proven to be bad at decision making. It's really for the best that they make the decision to execute or make an example of the prisoners right now, before Hashirama's bull-headed self stopped them and advocated for mercy.
There is really no need to feel guilty about going behind Hashirama's back. It's for his own good that they will be tortured, executed, and strung up on the city walls before he recovers.
Half an hour later finds them in the cells in the Senju Compound, conspicuously empty except for the three who'd tried to kill the clan head the night before.
"Mito-neesan had to come in and restrain them again when they tried to escape." Tobirama says by way of explanation, as he waves a hand at the seals painted on each of the prisoners.
Without warning, Kanae takes a step forward, and slaps him across the cheek. "How could you make her do this?"
Tobirama blinks, and touches the flaming red handprint on his cheek, as if he couldn't believe that the woman before him had just slapped him. "What?"
"You couldn't even restrain them properly?" Kanae asks, tension in every line of her frame, anger rolling off of her in waves. "You made Neesan come down here and deal with it when she was already exhausted?" This close, she doesn't look quite human, not entirely. It's something in her eyes, something in the sharp whiteness of her teeth. That she is just...not.
Madara has to remember that it is not only her brother that is not entirely human, not entirely this world.
He takes a step toward her. This anger is not sustainable, and she has sacrificed too much last night as well. It was not only Uzumaki Mito who suffered.
He'd not forgotten the chakra spike, how the Uzumaki sisters had stood together, how they'd matched. He'd not forgotten that she'd fallen asleep with nothing of her normal ability to understand him.
Something had been exchanged last night.
He isn't sure that he wants to know exactly what it was.
"Are you or are you not incompetent, Senju?" She roars, and the sound echoes on the walls.
Madara sets his chin on the top of her head and pulls her in. "It does no good now." His hand finds hers with no conscious thought of his own, and squeezes gently. It does no good for you to ruin yourself over him.
"You aren't really the person to tell me this, Madara-sama." No. I am hypocritical, am I not? Her words are bitter, sarcastic, miserable, but the anger's bled out of her now. She is no longer screaming. She's just tired. "But yes, it is over."
Tobirama is staring at the two of them, as if he's seen something that he cannot understand, but he shakes himself out of it. "What are we going to do with the prisoners?"
"I need to ask them a question first." And there it is again, her insistence on asking. What question it is, he does not know.
"Fine. Ask your questions." Tobirama leans against the opposite wall. "The room's not soundproof though."
Kanae raises an eyebrow at him. "It is not as if I am going in to ask if Yotsuki-san is satisfied." It's the way she says that word, the way that the word slides around in the air like some sort of dare. Madara doesn't like it.
She steps up to the cell door, with the dead calm of the eye of a storm. The door swings shut behind her.
"You're different." This statement from the Senju he does not dignify with a response. "Why?"
Madara really isn't interested with Senju Tobirama and his asinine questions. "Hn." Instead, he watches as Kanae through the cell door, and thinks about how to arrange the bodies once they are strung up.
Examples must be made. They have to be made, else the rest of the world think Konoha weak.
But something in his heart twinges anyway, because that isn't really why he bays for blood. It's still because of Hashirama. He'd decided the night before that love is not a finite substance to be given to only one person, but it isn't there yet.
His heart is still a traitor. It still cries out for a man who sees him as no more than a friend. And he could hate himself for that.
He shifts uneasily on his feet, and decides that it would be simpler to read Kanae's lips than to continue considering the topic.
"So, you are the disciple of Kawasaki-san." She's standing in front of the Yotsuki woman, the one who shares the kanji for crow in both of their names. "His standards have dropped." The Yotsuki woman's lips draw back in a furious snarl. Kanae doesn't even so much as blink.
She isn't speaking loudly. His ears have to strain to catch even the slightest shred of her words, but the sharingan knows all too well how to read lips.
"Are you even listening to me?" Oh. It's Tobirama once more.
"I wasn't aware that you were worth listening too." The interruption is making Madara lose track of what Kanae is saying. Tobirama is making Madara lose track of what is going on inside that cell.
She's leaned forward now, a merciless light in her eyes, but he can no longer see her lips, and her words are just snatches. "Guest right...you know...violate..."
"Since when did you counsel other people on giving up their anger over someone that you hate?" Will he just shut the hell up?
"Since I realised that I was old." And there, again, his anger. His big fat mouth. Yes, he'd thought it. Thought it last night, felt the years weigh like decades, felt every scar and every wound.
It seems as though life conspires against giving him gifts. Why give me gifts when I am too jaded to love them anymore?
A year. Two. Had he been seventeen when Uzumaki Ashina wrote to offer him Kanae, perhaps he wouldn't be as he is now. But that is a stupid thought. She was ten years old.
What good would that have done? She would hardly have been of help then.
"You're twenty four." Tobirama's voice cuts through his thoughts like a well placed tanto strike. "You're hardly about to get arthritis and weak knees." And the man's sneer is back. It's almost a relief. "What, does she not find satisfaction in you? Is that what you mean by old?"
The double entendre grates at his pride.
"Because she loves you so dearly." Madara mutters as he stares at Kanae's back. "She's practically dying to call you Tobi-nii." This is not the smartest of comebacks.
But then, he really doubts that Kanae's life is particularly satisfying no matter what she tells him.
A.N. Never a break. Madara really does have many issues that are not to be resolved by wild realizations on the nature of love and relationships in the middle of the night. But we do see the sun come out from behind the clouds for a brief moment.
As always, thank you to LittleMissSugarLess, stubs1101 (Not entirely sure which man you mean. The whole lot of them shouldn't still be alive at this point given the statistical side of this. And well...Madara's kinda scary if you're a normal person. Kanae just has a very low bar for 'Not Scary'), bunnyguest (Yeah, Tobirama needs to remember that Kunoichi are a thing, and fighting wars isn't the only way to kill people.), MidnaMoo, Lixx22 (I'm sure it's okay. I do the same thing in public all the time.), and Scarease (Thank you so much for the offer! If my inspiration ever runs away, I will be glad to take you up on that offer.) for reviewing!
And everyone who favorited and followed.
~Tavina.