Surprise bitch! I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me!
Aaaand my best friend who's following me is now having a heart attack when she sees that I've actually updated something.
Along with all of my other followers, if you guys still care. I seriously don't blame you if you don't.
Partly because even now I'm still having mixed feelings about the ending of Naruto so I wouldn't blame you guys if you were too and partly because
I am the worst updater in the world and do not deserve any support and attention. You readers should probably ignore me and go about your day *hangs head in shame*
Enough of that, many thanks to my lovely reviewers/followers/favouriters who have stuck with me all this time. If you guys are still out there and reading this I just want you to know how much I adore you. Thank you so much guys!
To everyone who has followed/faved/reviewed since then; thank you so much! And a special thanks to MonsterPhantom who reviewed just recently. Twice. Which prompted me to get this up. Thank you so much! And yes, I have had that flaw in my logic explained, thanks. And yeah, I had to look Hikaku up just before I wrote that chapter too, I knew who he was...but that was pretty much all I knew about him.
And to everyone new; welcome!
Long AN, I own nothing. Please enjoy guys!
This one's for Hanayu who I absolutely adore and gave me some of my best prompts. If you are reading this please be very, very angry that I am so late. And enjoy.
PS: this chapter can be considered a Part 2 to chapter 6.
-Madara thinks her whole life has worked out for her. She's absolutely right.
Warning: Tobifem!Mada, Hashifem!Izu. Slight OCs. Cannon divergent. Obviously.
Chapter 25: These happy golden years
Madara Uchiha, oh what the heck, she may as well admit it now, Madara Senju, hummed ever so softly to herself as she piled old things into a box.
She placed some things she'd like to keep to one side and threw others that she no longer wanted over her shoulder. She'd throw them out later or her husband Tobirama would.
Madara reached the last thing in the box and the infamous evil ninja stopped and smiled. It was a teddy bear. She remembered what had happened that day...
"Hey! Akito! Give me back my bear!" six year old Bara Senju objected, stamping her tiny foot.
Smiling, eight year old Akito Uzumaki held it out of her reach, "what are ya gonna do if I don't?"
Bara kicked him in the shins and snatched the bear back as he doubled over.
Hashirama sighed, smiling, as his friend; the jinchuuriki Mito Uzumaki, put a hand over her mouth to smother her laughter.
"I'm sorry Mito, Bara might be my daughter with Izuna but she's Madara through and through." He said.
"True love's a beautiful thing," said Mito, watching her son and his daughter squabble.
Madara sighed and shook her head as she remembered what that day turned into...
Twelve year old Karasu Senju, son of Tobirama and Madara Senju trudged up the hill. He was alone.
"Where's your sister?" Asked Madara from her spot beside her brother-in-law and Mito.
Karasu raised an eyebrow, he bore a distinct resemblance to his mother's family, like all Uchiha he was fair-skinned with dark hair and eyes but that tiny movement increased his resemblance to his father tenfold.
"Did you want me to get her? You didn't leave a note on the door." Whenever Madara had to leave before her kids got up and didn't think she'd be back by the time they left the Academy she left a note stuck with a kunai to the inside of the front door telling Karasu to wait for his sister's class to get out about twenty minutes later and walk home with her. Not that Madara actually thought anything would happen to her and Tobirama's ninja children while they did something as simple as walk home through a village where they knew virtually every single person and everyone knew them. But she felt better when they were together.
Madara raised an eyebrow, "I did leave a note on the door."
Karasu raised one back, "no. There wasn't one there." He looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the academy and shrugged, "no matter. I'll go get her."
He jogged off back down the path, with a sigh, Madara rose too.
"Want me to go with you?" Hashirama asked, one eye on Madara, one on the kids.
"No," she walked around the table and towards her house. "Thanks."
Hashirama and Mito waited until Madara was out of ear shot and then collapsed against each other laughing.
"She is... so different now..." Mito choked, raising a hand to cover her smile.
"There's an actual beating heart underneath all that snark, who would've guessed." Said Hashirama, also smiling.
"You did," Mito pointed out.
Hashirama acknowledged that with a dip of his head, "alright, true. But who would've guessed who she ended up marrying."
This startled another laugh out of Mito, "no, I don't think anyone could've guessed that."
"Especially not Tobirama and I," said Madara from behind them.
Hashirama knocked over his glass, Mito jumped about three feet in the air. "I didn't hear you come back," he said pointedly, a smile still dancing across his lips.
"No, you didn't hear or feel anything; your chakra control is as pathetic as ever. Mito, you I'm actually disappointed in. I expected better from you." Madara said, looking from one to the other.
"Oh no. The pain. How will I ever go on living?" Mito said, her voice sarcastic. She and Madara rolled their eyes at one another, then Madara flicked her hand in dismissal.
"Be back soon," she set off down the path.
It was no one's fault, the kunai she'd stuck in the door (because it made her husband sigh in a most amusing way) had fallen out of the door and the note had slipped under a cabinet, Karasu hadn't known to wait for Hoshiko, he'd thought his mother would be there to do it. Madara hadn't expected to be back early enough to pick her kids up but had ended up finishing the mission in less than half that. But since she'd already left her son a note she'd decided to stay and supervise Mito and Hashirama instead. Because those two needed to be supervised.
Moving with ninja speed Madara arrived at the tree where she and Karasu always waited for Hoshiko to get out of class, if Madara or Karasu was ever late for whatever reason, Hoshiko would wait for them here. Before she even reached the spot a chill shot through Madara.
Her daughter wasn't there.
A second later her son arrived, "did you get her?"
"No. She's not here. Where would she be? She knows to wait." Said Madara rhetorically, looking around, her son knew he didn't have to answer that one.
Madara bit her lip in worry, she doubted her daughter had been taken or anything but there were plenty of other bad things that could have happened to her.
"Kara, go back home and tell your uncle what happened, ask him to help look. Do not tell your father. We need to spend time looking for your sister. Not dealing with him having a heart attack.
"Works for me, I don't know where he is anyway," Karasu said, before running off.
Madara heaved a mental sigh. She loved her husband, she did. And he was a brilliant fighter but damn... he was so overprotective. Looking at the way he smothered his kids you'd think he was afraid someone was about to turn rogue and attack the village with a mind-controlled kyuubi where their best friend would be forced to kill them. Totally paranoid bullshit. Seriously.
She set about looking but couldn't find her daughter anywhere. Shortly her brother-in-law joined her and the two moved in different directions. Both called Hoshiko's name, tried to sense her chakra and asked everyone she saw. No one had seen anything. By the time they met in the middle both were properly worried. Madara was biting her pale lower lip and there was an unusual uneasy shine in Hashirama's dark eyes.
"I'll get Izuna," Madara said, she didn't bother asking if he'd found anything. He obviously hadn't.
"I'm going to see if Tobirama's at the office," Hashirama said. Madara nodded tightly. She hadn't wanted to tell her husband earlier because she hadn't wanted him to worry. But it was getting dark now, he should worry.
Madara headed off to the border patrol where she knew her sister was stationed but stopped dead as she saw something. Her yell for Hashirama to come see what she'd found died on her lips as they tilted up in a smile.
Sleeping sitting up against an out of the way tree by the far edge of the forest were two people. The first was a man, white hair, late thirties and, Madara knew, brilliant red eyes. He opened one of them now and his lips turned up in a smile so rare it could probably cure all diseases as he looked at his wife of over ten years.
The second figure was a small girl, maybe six or seven years of age. The shagginess of her long hair could come from either parent, as could the porcelain colour of her skin but her hair was her mother's jet black. As were her eyes, but they were shut now as she cuddled against her father's chest, both his arms around her, her breathing soft as she slept.
Madara felt a full-blown smile, as rare as one of her husband's graced her lips as she looked at them. She was so damn lucky... She recalled Mito and Hashirama's earlier conversation about her falling in love with Tobirama.
I had no idea either, she admitted mentally.
Kneeling down beside her husband, Madara burrowed into Tobirama's side and wrapped an arm around their daughter, over the top of one of his.
Why now and here for a nap? She wondered briefly, then she shrugged it off, why not? She shut her own eyes.
A few minutes later a worried Hashirama, unable to find his brother, wandered through the clearing, his nephew beside him. Hashirama had successfully lost not only Karasu's sister but apparently his mother and father also.
Stopping as he found his AWOL family members Hashirama rolled his eyes (though he was also smiling).
"Figures."
All three Senjus were curled up together. Fast asleep.
Madara smiled as she looked at the bear, she had no idea why this bear had reminded her of that incident when it had precious little to do with that day or why her niece's old bear was in her attic for that matter but that memory was one of her favourites regardless, she thanked her copy eyes for keeping that image in her mind forever.
After an impatient Karasu had kicked his father awake the five of them headed back home (well actually six, they stopped to pick up Izuna before they left). When they got back Mito greeted them with a warm smile. "So you found her then."
"No thanks to some," Madara muttered, raising an eyebrow at her husband.
Hashirama and Kara both glanced at each other but decided, wisely, not to point out that Madara hadn't been particularly helpful either.
Behind his mother Akito Uzumaki was curled up on the grass, one arm covering his head, the other holding something protectively against his stomach as he laughed.
Bara Senju kicked him mercilessly, "Give. Me. Back. My. Bear!"
Hashirama never married Mito as he does in cannon. But Bara and Akito eventually marry. They are Tsunade's parents. HAS YOUR MIND EXPLODED YET?!
And thank you so much to the guest who said Chapter 24 was beautiful, it was one of my favourite chapters and I'm so glad someone really liked it. Of course, you could have been talking about the fic as a whole but whatever.
Hope you enjoyed, bye!