Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

"It is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply."

— David Jones

The walk to dinner is nothing to be afraid of. That is, Kanae sets her hand in the crook of his elbow and chatters absently with the Elders as they walk along, so he's relieved from having to say anything of note. Which is, indeed, nothing to have feared so drastically.

"How many brothers did you say you had, Kanae-hime?" Elder Sayuri's taken over the course of the conversation.

Kanae blinks. "Six." I thought it was- "Kyoya-niisama, Korui-nii, Masato-nii, Shiro-nii, Ruta-nii, and Izuna."

So that's what she meant by six.

His brother is also her brother. Something about that thought is so very warm.

But if his brother is her brother, then her brothers are also...his? The Twins, Ashiro and Aruta had claimed so, but he is hardly certain. What do her other brothers think of that particular venture? It is not as if they know him much at all, and Kanae is here because he signed a contract.

Perhaps they do not like him. He hasn't really the courage to think of it much further.

"And which one of them was it, that left here on wings?" Elder Asahi has taken his pipe with him, though he is no longer using it. I didn't know that Asahi-jisan was so interested in youkai.

He said he wanted to meet Kyoya-san, didn't he?

Kanae hides a smile behind her hand. "That would be my eldest brother, Kyoya-niisama." She glances up at the sky and smiles brightly. "He is, after all, a hanyou of great renown."

"But you are human." Elder Yuko cuts in.

"Quite human." Kanae agrees with a smile. "Just barely more than an eighth youkai blood disqualifies one from being anything other than human."

Madara huffs and wraps his arm around her waist. "Is this an interrogation of some sort?" She'd been doing well with answering their questions, but she doesn't have to tell them where her blood came from and what exactly that makes her.

She is Uzumaki Kanae from Uzu, wife of Uchiha Madara. That's it. That's all that has to be known about her.

"So prickly." Elder Sayuri sighs, glancing over at Kanae with dark eyes. "See what we must put up with even when we invite him to spend time with us?"

Kanae's smile doesn't falter. "Madara-sama is not prickly." She has often teased him for being easily irritated, but it seems that such private thoughts of hers will not be made public before his somewhat grandparents. "Madara-sama is exactly how he should be, and I wouldn't like him as much if he was any different."

His heart purrs at that statement. Exactly how I should be, am I?

That is a blessed, blessed thing, even when he is unhappy.

"Hn." Elder Sayuri might sound nonchalant about it, but she's also smiling. "Exactly as he should be, is he?"

Somehow, this entire show is less fun when it's other people doing the talking.

Madara looks heavenward for a brief moment, and prays to all the Kami that Izuna will. Let. This. Dinner. End.

Preferably soon.

He should have known better than to think that the Kami could help him.

Dinner, as it were, drags on for hours and hours and hours upon hours without showing the least sign of ending.

Kanae brings out sake and dessert, and he didn't even know they still had sake in the house after his drunken debacle a few months ago, but apparently they do, and the elders are happy to stay.

For forever.

Oh alright, it is not actually forever. It isn't even a little bit like forever.

In fact, they might have only been here for two hours maximum. Izuna, kami forsake his soul, had sneaked off an hour ago, complaining of fatigue, and 'pretty please, have lots and lots of fun without me, Niisan'.

Madara redoubles his solemn vow to find the nearest well and kick his horrible, no good, awful, terrible and treacherous otouto down it.

He will just have to ignore the fact that the nearest well is not ten feet from the kitchen door the next time he actually sees Izuna.

It only feels like forever because they've started telling Kanae stories about his childhood, involving that one incident with a wet cat and the last eight sets of his father's clothing.

In his defense, he had only been five years old at the time, and his contract with the cats had been recent.

Still, it makes Kanae giggle. "I knew it!" She leans back against him, her head on his shoulder as she plays with his hair. "Madara-sama is a cat!" He doesn't think that she's drunk. She's not slurring her words or complaining of a headache, but it is very likely that she is somewhat tipsy.

At least just a little.

Perhaps she's a happy drunk.

"That he is." Elder Yuko agrees with a happy sigh. "Our Madara-kun is as prickly as a bedraggled kitten."

It is something in the sake, Madara's half sure of it. The Elders are not nearly so pleasant to him. Never. But they have been nothing but pleasant to Kanae. He would feel affronted if Kanae hadn't already demonstrated the ability to bend everyone in his clan around her little finger with nothing more than a small smile and the word please. He's the worst of them. There are so many things he cannot refuse her.

"Why do you call him Madara-sama, Kanae-chan?" Elder Asahi's lit his pipe again, and the smoke fills the small dining room. "Surely he hasn't asked you to be so formal with him, has he?" The older man glances at him sharply, as if telling him that having the audacity to ask his young wife to refer to him with the -sama suffix is a crime.

Madara feels very much personally attacked. He almost opens his mouth to clear up the issue, but Kanae beats him to it, still speaking in that soft lazy way she's been doing all night.

"No, no, of course not." She hides a smile behind one of her wide sleeves. "It is only his due. Madara-sama has asked me many times to simply refer to him by name." She pushes herself away from his shoulder and props her head up on one hand. "But I think we should try not to nettle him so much more tonight, yes?"

Curse him. He wants to kiss her smile off her face again.

"I don't think his heart will take much more of it." She observes with false innocence. Curse her. She knows exactly what his heart can and cannot take. "Why don't I tell you about the time when I nearly upended a tureen of seaweed soup over the heads of my twin brothers?"

At the moment, his heart wants the Elders to leave so that he may dump her into the bathtub with something like a warcry on his lips.

Perhaps then she'll learn not to nettle him in public. She never does seem to learn.

"Oho?" Elder Sayuri leans forward. "That sounds like a story for the ages. What could make you behave so rashly, Kanae-chan?"

"Ah." She leans back in her chair and twirls her chopsticks around her fingers. "Well, you see, I was about twelve at the time, and the youkai king, Habiki-san, had taken me dancing the night before…" What follows is a story about family dinner, a near miss for the Twins and Kyoya-san vowing to have words with Habiki.

He didn't know that she thought Habiki was pretty before. That unsettles him just a little bit.

Kanae's story is the last they tell that night, and when it ends, the Elders rise to go.

"We've intruded long enough on Madara-kun's patience and your hospitality, Kanae-chan." Elder Sayuri mentions as she leans in to kiss Kanae on the cheek.

"It was a beautiful night. Thank you." Elder Yuko does the same.

"Remember the clan is always interested in heirs." Elder Asahi's eyes are alight with a mischief that Madara hasn't seen in years.

Kanae doesn't so much as blush. "I've always wanted a large family, thank you." She drips honey with every word. She's not as drunk as he thought then. "But I'm sure however many heirs there are, it will be with the blessing of Inari." The Fox Goddess.

Inari's also well known as the goddess of grain.

Rice.

Ah. It had been rice that brought them together, both the excess and the lack of it.

Somehow, this pains his heart a little less than it did before.

But still, the ache is raw.

Her choice was not much of a choice at all. What was she supposed to do, let her people starve to death?

The guests leave, and they are once more alone. "I didn't know you disliked guests this much, Madara-sama." He lets down her hair, and she spins away to undo the knot of her obi by herself.

"I do not." He protests. "Tonight was fine."

She comes back to him. "Your hands are shaking."

And so they are. He shrugs. "It is what they will do, sometimes."

"What's wrong?" She asks him.

He shrugs again. "I did not know you think Habiki is pretty." Why does he hunger for her heart when he cannot give her his own? Why does he want her regard, her care, her words? My favorite fearsome warrior.

Not like anyone else in the world.

Why does such a thing soothe the ache in his chest away? Is he truly so selfish to deny her her happiness, no matter who she cares for?

"I was twelve, and his youkai glamor was quite strong." She sits down beside him on the futon, though the distance between them might be growing wider. "You thought Niisama was pretty when you met him, didn't you? Didn't Habiki-san also look pretty in a half exotic way?"

"No." It isn't quite true. He'd thought Kyoya-san's face to be the most beautiful he's seen in a long time.

"Can you tell me why it hurts you?" She asks as she takes one of his trembling hands in her own. "That I thought Habiki-san was pretty when I was twelve, that is."

Why does it hurt him? Why do so many things about this whole situation hurt him?

"You could have married him." Perhaps that is it. She had been sad to leave the snake youkai behind. Nothing gold can stay.

"I didn't want to marry him." Her retort surprises him a little.

"No?"

"No. Not even a little bit." She looks at him for a long moment. "For what it's worth, I've always thought that you are beautiful, Madara-sama." She kisses the back of his hand, and then cups his face in her hands. "Your dreams are beautiful." She tells him. "Your happiness is beautiful." Does she know that his heart sings with every word she says? "You are so very much more than pretty to look at, Madara-sama. Though," and here, her eyes laugh. "You are quite pretty to look at."

And something about that hollow space inside of him fills.

"How do you know me?" He asks her, asks her serious eyes, asks the softness of her features despite the sharpness of her angles and edges, asks her tender hands that both heal and hurt. "How do you know what I need to hear?"

How had he happened upon a wife like Uzumaki Kanae by accident?

She brushes his bangs away from his forehead. "Because you let me know you." Her existence in his life is hardly an accident.

He sighs and pulls her closer. "Invite guests over. You like guests." His thoughts are foolish sometimes.

What does it matter how exactly she'd come to be his wife? She is not unhappy here. She has not asked for anything that he cannot give.

And yes, her life has changed, but she is not unhappy. And as long as she is happy, he ought not feel guilty for anything. Why must I worry over things that are yet to occur when I don't even know that it will happen?

She pokes his cheek with a finger. "Ah, but you don't like guests." Her lips brush the bottom of his chin. "Especially not ones who can tell me about when you were a little boy."

He pulls away slightly so she can see his frown. "I was five."

She nods. "Mmmhmmm."

She does not seem to have understood him. "I had signed the contract with the cats the week before."

She pats his cheek. "I'm sure it wasn't your fault, Madara-sama." She looks away so he does not see the teasing smile on her face. He sees it anyway. "You can't deny it though, it was rather funny."

Perhaps, now on looking back, his father's reaction had been rather funny. For someone so stern to be so undone...he smiles despite himself. "I was such a difficult child for him." He runs an absent hand through Kanae's hair. "I was his eldest son, and he loved me dearly, but it was not an easy life." They'd both been too set in their ways, too stubborn for their own good.

It had caused plenty of strife between them even before the incident with Hashirama at the Naka river, but he had always known that his father loved all of his sons dearly, Madara most of all.

His father had died at the hands of Senju Butsuma. He had avenged that debt, the little good it did for his peace of mind or his father's life.

It had not calmed the storm in his heart or brought Uchiha Tajima back to lead the clan. It had only made his rage and confusion all the more raw.

But here and now, it is like calm summer seas.

"It is hard to imagine that you were as mischievous as the Twins." Kanae murmurs, her breath fanning out over the base of his neck. "They are responsible for exactly half of all of Chichi's gray hair."

"I was hotheaded, headstrong, and you would have had a better time herding cats than giving me orders." Not all of the past is painful to look at. There had often been times that he'd been happy, now that he looks back into the depths of his childhood.

It's just that happiness has been in short supply in the past decade or so.

"I think," Kanae says slowly. "I would have liked very much to meet you."

"I was reportedly quite scary by the time you were twelve." Yes, they had started calling him a demon in the year before he killed Senju Butsuma in the Red Plains the year he turned nineteen.

"Were you?" She sounds quite amused by this.

He flops back onto the bed and hides his face underneath a pillow. "Yes."

She flops down beside him, her hair spilling over his chest. "Fearsome warrior." She teases. "All of your enemies cowered before you in terror."

Perhaps he doesn't look scary when he is actively hiding from the candlelight with a pillow over his head. "Quite." He nods in a self satisfied way. "Though you shouldn't cower."

"I will remember." She says while piling another pillow on his head. "Though I do hope that for your sake, your future son will not be as prone to misbehaving as the Twins."

He pulls both the pillows off of his head and stares up at her sleepily. "How close is this future that we speak of?"

She considers it. "Far yet."

He nods. "Mmm." The thought of family is no longer like a raw wound.

Perhaps he dares to hope for a future bathed in light and water and not in the light of flames and blood.

Ashiro and Aruta are sitting at his breakfast table the next morning. "Neesan kicked us out of her house." They slump over the table, their arms outstretched before them in various stages of dismay. "Because we were disturbing the baby."

"Since when was a baby worth more than her baby brothers?" Ashiro wonders aloud. "Since when?"

"Perhaps because the child is hers?" Madara queries. "And perhaps because you two will run anyone ragged given the slightest chance?"

"Aww," Aruta blows a lock of hair out of his face. "You're no fun, Otouto."

Kanae comes in from the garden at that moment, and the Twins are out of their seats and spinning her around in an instant. "Shiko-chan!" They chirp in unison. "We found your information for you!"

She sets the basket of apples on the table when she has a spare moment. "You found my information for me?"

"Uh-huh!" Aruta laughs and pats her on the head. "We found a whole bunch of stuff."

Ashiro drops a sealed scroll into her waiting hands, and suddenly the jovial atmosphere is gone. "Kawaki Saemon is angry, little sister."

Kanae presses her lips together. "Well, it's not like he was going to be jumping for joy."

"But at least now he knows not to mess around in the Viper's lair." Aruta ruffles her hair. "We're going to have fun at Zuzu's! Bye bye, Shiko-chan, Otouto!"

Kanae turns back to him, a bemused expression on her face. "Well, I suppose I should figure out what sort of present this is."

Madara takes a sip of his tea. "Is everything roundabout with them?" He still can't quite believe them exactly.

He knows they have hidden depths. It's just trying to plumb those same depths that's the hard part.

"Sometimes it's not." Kanae shrugs and comes to sit next to him at the table. "But then I would be concerned since that would mean things are progressing towards doomsday." She breaks the wax seal on the scroll with a quick incision with a kitchen knife and unrolls the cloth with a flick of her wrist.

There's a seal painted on the silk, a thousand little squiggling signs reading 'storage.'

Kanae sighs. "They didn't." She doesn't sound certain though.

Madara leans forward. "What did they give you?"

She doesn't answer him, but a quick burst of chakra later, the sharp scent of blood hits his nose.

There's a severed head staining the silk scroll on his kitchen table.

A head of gray hair, a long gray beard, eyes rolled back, neck severed between the second and third vertebrae in the neck...her brothers had gifted her with a severed head.

Another quick burst of chakra later, Kanae expertly rolls the scroll back up. "Well, I suppose that's one way to never worry about Kawaki-san ever again." She looks not the least bit perturbed.

Madara supposes that he should have come to expect it by now. Of course, the Twins would gift their little sister with a severed head without a single care in the world.

Despite being the most peaceful village in existence, Uzu citizens don't seem to have the slightest compunctions about getting rid of people who threaten them, even just in anger.

He would like to spar with the Twins sometime.

Perhaps they'd be more willing to oblige him than Kyoya.

"Spar with us, Otouto?" Ashiro swishes his foot around in the lake water. "Well, I suppose we'd be alright at it." Madara's sitting next to him on the pier when he broaches the subject.

"It's just, you know…" Aruta folds his arms behind his head and stares up at the sky from his floating position on the lake. "We don't really do a lot of confrontational fighting."

Ashiro picks up the thread of conversation. "Assassins are trained to hit hard and hit once."

"And so are harpooners." Ah, that's what it was.

Kanae said her brothers were whalers once upon a time. He supposes that the long bladed weapons they kept on their belts are harpoons.

"And yet, I doubt you two are unworthy opponents." He could use an opponent besides Hashirama. It would be unlike them to be modest, but misdirection is entirely likely.

He will have to be on his guard.

"Ah, we'll give it a go." Aruta props himself up on one shoulder, shirt dripping. "Can you be persuaded to step out onto the water?"

"Do I look like I have a death wish?" He has no wish to drown or crawl out of the lake like a wet cat, thank you very much.

Ashiro laughs. "Don't be silly, ugly brother of mine, you will have to help our little brother onto the water." And saying so, he forms a hand sign.

The water around Madara's ankles tighten into ropes attempting to drag him in.

A quick Katon jutsu later, he leaps free.

That was by no means a honorable start to a sparring match.

He has no more time to think on it. They are upon him.

His wakizashi is in his hand as he fends off their quick jabs.

It seems that their style is to poke their enemies full of holes.

His own involves beating people to a pulp when not burning them alive.

He flips himself away, onto the shore away from the water they command so easily, retreating deeper into the forest until he can find an opening.

"Come." He grins. "Let's dance."

He hasn't had this much fun in ages.

The Twins throw their heads back and laugh as one. "Oh, this is fun!"

The sharp clash of metal rings out across the clearing.

The Twins are next to perfect covers for each other, seemingly needing no words to move into the spaces where the other had occupied a moment before.

They are smoke and shadows, a collection of feints and jabs.

But his eyes bleed red, and it is far easier to read their moments.

Their defense is not without flaws.

They truly are not frontline fighters.

This fight ends something like this: the edge of his blade pressed to Ashiro's throat and the sharp tip of Aruta's harpoon pressed to the base of his neck.

"I think we should stop this, Otouto." Ashiro sighs. "Before something untoward happens, and we'd have to explain to Shiko-chan why everyone is hurt."

He is not among enemies.

He slides his sword back into its sheath.

The weight of the harpoon disappears an instant later. "You really are something else, Otouto!" Aruta slings an arm over his shoulder. "We would have been dead in ten minutes flat if we were only one person!"

Madara huffs in his direction. "How kind of you to notice that you are not, in fact, one person." The problem with using one blade is that you can only threaten one person at a time with it.

Ah well, there is always Katon Jutsu to soothe his wounded pride.

They laugh obnoxiously like squawking gulls. "We forget sometimes!"

The Inuzuka do make their way into Konoha at the end of October. Hashirama insists on throwing them a party, because that is what Hashirama does.

"Must it be a banquet for the entire village, Niisan?" Tobirama pinches the bridge of his nose. "We will already be low on supplies for the winter without a large party." For some reason, Tobirama has been…

Less bothersome in the most recent two months, at least to him.

More civil. The thought is concerning enough that Madara might bring it up sooner or later.

"But we must welcome them somehow." Hashirama grins. "Besides, having a party right after the harvest season is the perfect way to ensure that everyone's spirits remain high when we head into the winter."

"Did your last attempt to hold a party teach you nothing?" Madara himself, finds himself agreeing with Tobirama more often than not these days. That would concern him if it weren't for the fact that he can acknowledge that Tobirama is a sane human being sometimes.

That Senju Tobirama is also a certifiable genius has little to do with it.

They don't get along, no, but they also don't truly disagree on many fundamental issues. Not as much as he and Hashirama disagree at any rate.

"You nearly died at your last party, just making certain you remember that."

Hashirama looks properly chastised. "Oh alright, no feast, but that means that you two have to be civil to each other while the Inuzuka enter the village."

Perhaps that's what Hashirama wanted all along. He does look rather tired and unsuited to parties these days.

"Fine!" Tobirama throws up his hands and stomps out. "I'd nearly given up on talking sense into you."

And then it is just Madara and Hashirama sitting together in the office of the Tower.

"He has gotten more prickly." Madara observes.

Perhaps there is trouble in Hashirama's household. He is unaware as to what it is, given that he hardly visits Hashirama's household any longer.

There are plenty of clan members to visit and talk to in his next to nonexistent free time.

"He thinks I should just stay at home and leave other people to deal with issues right now." Hashirama slumps forward until his forehead is touching his desk. "But he doesn't understand, I can't just dump everything on someone else, even though I would like to be home."

"Your wife is about to give birth to your first child, and the first thing you think of is whether or not you can ask someone else to do your paperwork?" Madara raises an eyebrow at him. Kami. Hashirama's gotten more stupid in the intervening months. "Ask your beloved brother to do your work and just go home and hover or something."

"But, Mada! That would make Mito-chan unhappy!" Hashirama sniffs. "I don't want to make her unhappy."

"I think," Madara pauses for a long moment. Why am I giving Hashirama relationship advice again? I barely know what a relationship is. "That according to Tobirama, Uzumaki Mito is already unhappy with you precisely because you are trying not to hover."

Hashirama sobs like a strangled cat into his paperwork. "I knew it."

Madara flicks an inkwell at him. "Then go home, you idiot." He doesn't know exactly when his life's taken this turn — who said he could give Hashirama life advice? Why doesn't it bother him to sit here telling Hashirama to go home to his wife? — but it's not as if he's not adaptable.

If this is what he must do after skipping out on paperwork for weeks at a time in the recent months, then it's what he'll do.

I must remember to send Kanae a message that I'll be home late.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Hashirama peels himself off of the desk. "You hate paperwork."

Madara has considered burning all the piles when Hashirama's back is turned, but he's hardly going to tell his best friend that. "Just send your prickly brother back here, and I'll thank my lucky stars." He turns away with a huff. "Go home, Hashirama. You've been useless all day."

The corners of Hashirama's mouth tilt down into a wry grimace. "Thank you, Mada." And then Hashirama's out the door.

Madara bits his thumb with a sigh. "Hina?"

Hina pops into existence onto a chair, her feet tucked under her primly. "Yes?"

"Will you tell Kanae that I'm going to be late for dinner, so she and Izuna don't have to wait for me?" This is all my fault. I skipped out on work earlier and now it's all back here to haunt me.

Hina blinks slowly. "Why?"

Madara gestures towards the mountains of paper on all three of the desks. "Too much to read." His head thunks against his desk. "I'm an idiot for telling Hashirama to go home." He grouses to himself. "Now I have to read it all."

Hina pats his head with a paw. "There, there, Madara. It'll be alright, you'll see."

Madara raises his head to glare balefully at her. Does everyone in my life want to see me flail and then tease me for it? "Just deliver your message."

"Oh, alright." Hina saunters off, her tail in the air. "At least, Kanae will feed me fish, unlike you."

Madara judges the number of sheets of paper in the nearest stack to be somewhere between a hundred and a thousand and sighs. I might not make it home at all.

He pulls the top sheet off and raises the stamp in his left hand. Might as well begin then.

A.N. In which Madara is poked and prodded endlessly by all the people in his life, Kanae receives a rather...unusual present, and Hashirama learns to go home.

And here we have it, the next chapter of Sunfall. (I'm working through the next chapter of Bloodless. At the moment, I'm like five scenes in.)

I'm still participating in NejiTen Month 2018, so hopefully you guys will see more content on that soon.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorited and followed! You guys make my day.

~Tavina