Unchained
"Comfortable, Treasure?"
Tobirama finishes his paragraph then glances down from his perch; his wife smiles up at him, Kiso clinging to her hand and looking very bemused to find his step-parent in a tree of all places.
"This is a very fine tree," he informs them both loftily, setting a marker in the book and closing it. "Is it lunchtime already?"
"It is time to wash hands and use the facilities, yes," Izuna says with aplomb; "Kiso-kun was concerned when he could not find you, so enlisted my assistance."
"And you have found me," Tobirama concludes, shifting around so he is sitting up on the tree limb rather than lying along it. Jumping to the ground is not at all challenging; he has to bend his knees rather more than would be required with chakra, but he knows how to land lightly. Kiso instantly lets go of Izuna to demand a hug; Tobirama obliges him, staying crouched.
"I'm sorry you had trouble finding me, Kiso-kun."
Kiso snuggles against his shoulder. "Keifu climb." He sounds both curious and faintly put-out.
"Yes, I climbed the plum tree; Tōnari-ba taught me to climb trees." Well, she taught him how to climb them gracefully and with minimal chakra; with chakra one can simply walk up the trunk, but that requires both decent chakra control and strong core muscles.
And, of course, access to chakra. Without chakra Anija would probably make an embarrassing spectacle of himself while abjectly failing to climb a tree.
"I learn?"
"When you're a bit bigger, Kiso-kun; you need to be able to reach the branches." For now the toddler can settle for crawling through the Amaterasu Residence's shrubbery.
"Hn." Kiso leans back for eye contact. "Hans?"
"Yes, let's go wash our hands for lunch." Though Tobirama needs to drop off his book on his new living room shelf first.
Tobirama focuses on Kiso through lunch, learning and committing to memory a few new names of children roughly the toddler's age he'd been playing with –playing at being cats and also a temari game– and ensuring he sounds suitably interested. He is interested, but showing it is the most important thing here; Kiso needs to know Tobirama is interested in him and in everything he does, so that if the boy is ever uneasy or unhappy he will not hesitate to communicate.
Haha-ue always wanted to hear about everything, and never failed to make time for him despite Anija being louder and Tama and Wara being younger and more demanding. Tobirama never thought twice about letting her know his every passing thought; it had been a shock when she died and abruptly nobody was interested in him like that anymore. Baasan had made time for him, but she wanted him to be talking about something, not just pursuing his curiosity and theorising aloud.
He refuses to think about the few times he had tried to talk to his father –actually talk, not merely report, recite lessons or provide intelligence– and been rebuffed.
Izuna is also transparently delighted to hear about Kiso's morning, then as the meal draws to a close skilfully guides the toddler into being excited about his afternoon visiting the self-same aunt she spent the morning with. He soon learns that 'Naka-ba' is married to 'Haruto-ji' who is a farmer, has a ten-year-old daughter called Sakuya and is expecting another child. Going by Izuna's talk of plays she might be something of a theatre enthusiast, but then again impromptu theatre might equally be another fairly common Uchiha child-entertainment method; Tobirama has no way of knowing. He's not exactly been out and about in the clan compound very much since his release from the Diplomatic Quarters.
Well, he could ask. He doesn't really want to though; he is abruptly impatient for his promised explanation, so has no intention of starting up tangential discussions. For as long as Kiso is here he will happily listen to and encourage the toddler, but the moment he has left Tobirama will turn to Izuna for the answers she has agreed to give him.
Then the mentioned Sakuya-chan arrives to fetch Kiso, a fairly tall pre-teen girl with a round face and a cherry-print kimono belted by a lattice-pattern obi, and then he and Izuna are alone in the house.
The moment Kiso has been waved out of the back gate Tobirama turns expectantly to Izuna. She is wearing the now-familiar willow and heron printed kimono in a colour he has recently identified as being called 'yearning mouse' –a pale, dull bluish purple– with the damasked obi decorated with swirls and fish in blues, greys and oranges, and her hair is tied back with cords in a feminine knot. It's a subdued look, and the tattoo on her face does not look out of place as it did when she was wearing the pink kimono with the coral and seaweeds.
"Where would you like to sit, Tobirama?" She asks him.
"By the iori," Tobirama replies promptly; the middle of the house, suitably concealed from anybody outside and also with easy access to his bedroom should he at any point require a swift retreat.
"Off we go then."
"So, please bear with me," Izuna opens with once they are both settled by the iori; "I'm not entirely sure where to start with this, so I'm going to begin in the middle and hope for the best."
Tobirama nods; it's the least he can do when Izuna has been no less patient with him.
"The reason I sometimes slip up and call you husband is because that is what I want you to be," Izuna begins, meeting his eyes and stealing his breath with her honest candour, "but you can't be that, or at least not yet, for a range of reasons. Our clans are feuding, so I could never have married you on equal terms without betraying my clan and you would never have accepted me for the same reasons."
She takes a breath. "This is also recent; I did not want you as my husband when I abducted you. I wanted you as an ally in ending the feud between our clans, hoping that expediency would convince you and that when I released you once peace was achieved, you'd be committed enough to any children we'd hopefully conceived by that point to take up the duties of fatherhood."
"When?" Tobirama manages, his voice half a croak. He can't –this is– Izuna–
His wife smiles at him, sad and sharp and fond. "I can't unbind you unless our clans are at peace, Tobirama; not without breaking Clan Law. But I can't keep you caged for the rest of my life, not without becoming everything I hate most. I was always going to free you. I just," –she takes a quick, unsteady breath– "I didn't expect to ever mind your eventual leaving."
Tobirama doesn't say anything; he can't his throat is tight with hope and incredulity–
Izuna closes her eyes for a moment, composing herself, then resumes her explanation: "Legally, you are my concubine. In the eyes of Fire Country, Senju Tobirama is the spouse of the Heiress of the Uchiha Clan, but very much a subordinate spouse due to the gaping chasm between our respective ranks. However Fire Country is also aware that Uchiha Izuna has taken a concubine, as Uchiha Izuna has been vocal and adoring on the subject." She pauses. "And here is the difficulty: I am both Uchiha Heiress and Izuna-the-Warrior, and yet neither is all that I am. I am more than the horror and power that pressed my ruling title upon me, and more than the warrior the feud has forced me to become; even without those things, I am no less myself, no less Izuna, and it is as Izuna that I want you as my husband. As a woman desires a man and a person desires a partner, no more and no less."
She is not looking at him; Tobirama can't help but be grateful because he is sure if she were she'd read his tangled emotions right off his face and he needs time to process this–
"I am Uchiha," Izuna continues, tone precise and chakra aching, "and we love hard and fast and foolishly; I do not expect you to love me. I would like it, but your doing so –or claiming to do so– will not affect your freedom; once there is peace between our clans you will be fully unbound from the fuuinjutsu placed upon you. My father has already made it clear to me that if peace is achieved, the only 'surety' he will require to keep you from harming our clan will be your word, and that if you leave, he will not sanction armed pursuit." She breathes, sharp and jerky. "Because we will have peace, and he will not compromise the wellbeing of the clan for me. As he should not. I would not want him to."
Another sharp, unsteady breath; Tobirama is frozen by three different emotions vying for dominance, desperate to speak and also terrified of interrupting in case he misses something she wants to say, does she truly–
"I love you, Tobirama," she says baldly, meeting his eyes for a single fulminating instant, "I want to have you as my equal spouse. But only if that's what you want and if we gain peace; I cannot give it to you otherwise. But you have my heart regardless of that, and always will. We– Uchiha don't fall out of love. We can dampen and deaden it and if refused we mourn the loss, but we do not stop caring. We may add other loves, if we seek them out and work at opening our hearts, but we do not lose old ones. And while I have many kin I care for deeply as siblings and aunts and uncles, never have I desired another as I do you, Tobirama. Never. I never expected to –never missed the absence– but now I care and it's so much that it's hard to believe that this is a thing of weeks and not years."
Tobirama's heart is in his throat, his eyes prickle and he needs to say something but he can't, he's got no words–
"If you want to leave when we have peace, I will not stop you," Izuna says, voice hitching, "and I refuse to pressure you with my feelings. You are your own, Tobirama, and while you are my concubine I will not cage you out of misplaced obligation to my heart. I just–" her voice breaks "–come home to spend time with the children sometimes, please?"
His voice and mind still refuse to cooperate, but his muscles at least obey him: Tobirama lunges forwards and wraps Izuna in his arms, dragging her into his lap as she starts to cry. He buries his face in the back of her neck as she sobs into his collarbone, rocking and purring and breathing in her scent. The scent of her grief and her sincerity, of her hopelessness and her steely determination to do right by him.
He loves her so much his heart might burst from it; his head is spinning worse than any concussion, but nothing hurts.
"You truly expect nothing, don't you," he murmurs when her tears finally subside. "My brilliant, beautiful, ridiculous wife; how can you not see how much I want you?"
"Wanting and choosing are two very different things, Treasure," she mutters bitterly against his chest.
"True." And that is something he genuinely appreciates that his wife understands. "Very well then, since I've sold my pride already I may as well."
He takes a breath.
"You're mine, Izuna. My wife, my mate, my joy; I would like to marry you before our kin should we get peace, so I can boast of what I have won, but even if we do not get peace you are no less mine for that. I am keeping you, Izuna; not because I should or because it's expedient but because I want you. I want you and you're mine and I am never going to share you with any other man, so the only husband you are ever going to have will be me."
Another breath.
"And I'm yours, Izuna. My body, my heart; my very soul. Everything you want to keep; anything you want to ask. Please Izuna; I want to give you so much and you won't tell me what you want. Let me give you things, please? How can I accept your heart when you won't let me give you mine?"
Izuna sobs again, shaking in his arms, chakra heady with profound relief and burning joy. "Everything you give freely and kindly, Tobirama; everything."
He kisses the scars on her neck, caressing the sensitive marks with his tongue. "I love you," he whispers, eyes closed, "and I want to hunt for you. To fight for you. To surprise you with small gifts and lift some of the weight from your shoulders. To work on peace between our clans beside you, not simply informed but participating. I want you to lean on me, as you allow me to lean on you. I know you feel for me –I can sense it– but I want to be trusted."
His wife trembles against him. "My beloved," she rasps, "asking for the hard things. No, don't you dare take it back," she adds as he second-guesses his boldness and opens his mouth to offer her more space, "you're right. It's not fair of me not to give you space to give me things. Not when I made it clear how much giving you things means to me." She tugs on his collar, pressing a kiss on the revealed slither of chest that makes Tobirama's treacherous libido add a more sexual layer to their current entanglement; subtle and teasing, tempting him to touch her with more than comfort in mind.
"But please, best-beloved, can you let me explain to you why keeping you by my side will be so much harder on my mind, however welcome to my heart?"
Tobirama's gut sinks. Izuna's never given the slightest indication before now that any part of her might hold that decade of determined violence against him, but it seems that was wishful thinking on his part and firm compartmentalisation on hers. There is, indeed, much between them that should be addressed.
He doesn't want to air all that, but if that is the price of trust… "Speak, my heart."
Her breath is hot against his skin. "This is a clan secret, best-beloved," his wife begins, shoulders loose and head tucked under his chin as she breathes evenly and deliberately, half a step into the battle-calm he had thought was the sum of her emotional range before his abduction, "but one I hope you will keep regardless of the success of the peace treaty. You don't have to promise," she adds, tapping his arm firmly as he opens his mouth to do just that; "you asked me to trust, and this much I will trust you with now."
"Thank you," he tells her quietly, warmed and honoured by her willingness to speak of secrets to him.
"I assume that over the centuries the Senju have picked up some of what the sharingan lets us do," Izuna continues, tone rueful, "but I shall tell this as we are taught it, so as to link the details together and give you the full picture."
Yes, the Senju have indeed put together a fairly comprehensive picture of what the Uchiha's bloodline enables them to accomplish, but to hear it from an Uchiha perspective is a gift he never expected to receive.
"It takes battle to awaken the sharingan; not necessarily outright armed conflict, but at least the expectation of a clash where one must give all that one has in the face of a foe who may end not only your own life, but those of your kin. This grants the first tomoe; the eye opened in battle sees all."
Tobirama can tell that is a quote.
"So, what is covered by that 'all'? And what are the consequences of it?" Izuna continues, tone studiously light. "A great deal, in truth; normally when one looks around, one sees clearly the object of one's focus, the rest falling into the background. One of the trees in the garden is a tachibana; can you tell me if it has begun to bud yet, Treasure?"
Tobirama, put on the spot, racks his brain; yes, given a few moments to think he does remember the evergreen citrus tree that stands over the back gate, not far from the tea house. But whether it is budding yet he has no idea.
"You do not," Izuna goes on before he can confess his ignorance, "because you saw it, but did not truly see it. But with sharingan, everything within my field of vision is fully seen; every bud, every aphid, every drop of dew, and every scuff on my opponent's armour, every stitch of his sleeve-cuffs, every hair of his eyebrows. All, Tobirama, truly does mean all."
Tobirama tries and fails to wrap his mind around this, given his knowledge that the Uchiha already see more colours than most and in greater detail. "That sounds exhausting and distracting."
"It is; there is a great deal of training that is very necessary once a clansman awakens our bloodline, purely to ensure they are not a risk to themselves and everybody else around them," Izuna says quietly. "Much to learn, many new mind-ordering techniques, many, many hours of practicing and training the mind to prioritise specific things over others, despite not being able to blur those things out or ignore them. And it is not only what is that is distracting; sharingan also enables us to see what might be. What other living things intend or even just consider. So not only are we assailed by the vivid and varied wonder of the world around us, but also by the phantoms of what might be. A phantom grouse rising from cover at the approach of a patrol, a phantom punch mid-argument, three different sword-strikes my sparring partner is contemplating; so much to see," her chakra turns faintly bitter, "and all of it indelibly carved into the mind, never to be forgotten or even dulled by the passing of time, as clear as though it took place only moments ago."
Tobirama's heart quails. Ten years of fighting Izuna, ten years of furious battles and chases and deaths to kin on both sides, of injuries and insults and his own occasional enraged determination to see her dead, and for all of it his wife's eyes were bright with sharingan. Half a lifetime of warfare, much of which he has doubtless forgotten as the battles blend into each-other in retrospect, which to Izuna are all perfectly, brutally clear.
No wonder she knows him so impossibly well.
No wonder she struggles to trust him.
Wait– "You keep using your sharingan when we're intimate together," Tobirama asks, incredulity warring with both dismay and glee, "does that mean–"
"That I have perfect and indelible memories of you pleasuring me, and of all the things you've said while doing so? Yes," his wife says blandly, reminding him forcefully that she is an absolutely shameless tease. "I'm hoping that in time they'll balance out the less welcome memories, so I'll be able to curb my instinctive reaction to having you unexpectedly appear in my peripheral vision."
A reaction which no doubt involves reaching for something sharp.
"And," his brazenly incorrigible wife continues mildly, bright mischief gleaming in her chakra, "it's very nice to remember when I'm away on missions and sleeping all alone in my bedroll."
Tobirama snorts. "You don't need all that inappropriate art to remember those various ladies naked, do you."
"I could paint most of them from memory, yes," Izuna agrees lightly, her grin audible, "and part of me very much wishes to paint you from memory: you smile gloriously when you're enjoying my desperation, Treasure."
Tobirama feels himself blush hotly; he rests his overheated forehead on the back of her neck, torn between mortification and dark, wild delight.
"And how you look at me when you've spread my thighs to taste my pleasure, hm," his terrible wife goes on, chakra rippling with teasing heat, "that intensity and enjoyment as you feast on my intimately sensitive places with lips and tongue, oh yes. That has kept me warm at night on multiple occasions."
Tobirama swallows dryly, very aware of how much parts of him are enjoying his wife's shamelessness. "My wife," he ventures softly, "was touching herself while remembering me?"
"Of course I was, beloved," Izuna murmurs back, pressing another teasing kiss to the exposed vee of upper chest above his loosened collar. "How could I not?"
Tobirama tips his head back to stare at the carved panelled ceiling above them, trying to remember what this conversation was about. "We've drifted," he says determinedly.
Izuna sighs regretfully. "Sorry treasure; I think you can tell how much I don't want to explain this."
"You have answered my original question," Tobirama offers. "The details of why you find it hard to trust me can wait, if you want them to."
"I do not think you should let me off the hook in this," Izuna says quietly, producing a handkerchief and wiping her eyes. His kimono is wet, but it's linen; it can take far worse.
"I'm not," Tobirama says firmly, "but I want to celebrate the fact that you have promised me all the freedom you can give me first." Yes, there will be rather less freedom if peace between their respective clans cannot be finalised, but it is still worth celebrating.
She finally draws back enough for eye-contact, face streaked with tear-tracks and nose pink and blotchy. "What kind of celebration did my heart's treasure have in mind?"
Tobirama grins. "Guess."
Her answering smile is bright and hopefully wicked. "My beloved perhaps wishes to push me to the tatami, untie my obi, open my kimono and enjoy how indecently eager I am for the slide of his sword within my sheath?"
"Tempting though that is," Tobirama replies, voice rumbling in his chest, "I think this time I want my wife straddling my lap so I can kiss her and tease her with slow caresses, enjoying the way her sheath clutches at my sword as she rolls her hips in an attempt to pleasure herself over me." He leans in to kiss her, then closer still to murmur in her ear:
"And when she's finally desperate and breathless and shaking, completely helpless and willing to agree to anything if only I keep going, only then will I roll on top of her, pin her down and take."
The way Izuna shudders in his arms tells him she has no objections whatsoever to his desires. "I'd like that," she confesses quietly, "but I should warn you that once driven to tears, I am likely to cry again over practically anything."
"I will be gentle then." Much as she might struggle with trusting him and however rational that struggle might be, he knows she wants to trust him. It's fairly obvious in her willingness to let him reduce her to desperate and barely-conscious incoherence on a regular basis. "Untie my obi for me please, Izuna."
"Your obi, not mine?" she asks, hands already reaching for the simple knot fastening his soft obi.
"I want to see you fully dressed in your lovely silks while I am sheathed within you," he tells her darkly, nipping lightly at her ear. "Want to hold your hips firmly in place as you squirm around my sword, flushed and gasping and hot, so I can enjoy at my leisure how your eyes darken, your scent changes and everything about your body softens and blooms in eager anticipation of my touch," he grins against her throat, "and your increasing desperation for me to undress you and run my hands all over that freshly sensitised skin." If she does cry he will pause, but being able to sense her feelings through her chakra will give him an edge in separating genuine distress from simply being overwhelmed.
His obi untied, his wife unfolds the front panels of his kimono and unties the juban underneath to reach for his hip-wrap; he catches her wrists.
"I think I'll do this part," he teases her; "I know you'll try to cheat otherwise." It wouldn't be the first time she's prompted a change in plan with her evident enjoyment in touching him, often with avid scarlet sharingan eyes darting between his length gripped in her fingers and his face as he moans in pleasure.
Knowing that every instant, every detail of what she has seen with sharingan will be within her mind forever, clear and pristine and perfect, makes his gut twist hotly and his breath catch. That she wants to do that, wants to remember him this way, to drown out and bury all those hundreds –thousands– of fights and ambushes under shared pleasure–
"If you want to use your sharingan, I don't mind," he assures her, pressing a kiss to her mouth before unwrapping his underclothing and exposing himself.
"Shameless," his wife teases him lightly, eyes blooming scarlet and spinning slowly as her gaze drifts down his body.
"My wife," Tobirama says very deliberately as he tugs apart the front panels of her kimono under her obi, "will never be less than fully aware of how very much I enjoy her pleasure. I like that very much."
That hypnotic tomoe-marked gaze rises to meet his eyes once more. "My husband enjoys that I think of him when I touch myself."
"Perfect memory means that you can relive the moment, does it not?" Tobirama asks provocatively as he reaches under ruched layers to remove her hip-wrap. "I enjoy that my wife chooses to re-experience my attentions when I am not present," he leans in, "although I do very much want to watch you do so at some point." It would be stimulating, to watch his wife sprawled on her back and moaning his name as she touches herself, to watch her peak with her fingers on her pearl and his name on her lips, and then be able to fall on her tender, trembling body and communicate at length how much he enjoyed the show.
But that's for later. Right now he intends to enjoy how very sweet-scented and restless his wife becomes as her body eagerly accommodates his most intimate intrusion, and properly admire how it contrasts with her pretty summer silks. He may possibly have to sprawl on his back to fully appreciate the picture she makes, but that will be no hardship at all.
And since she is using her sharingan, he wants to ensure she cannot select this outfit from her wardrobe ever again without remembering in vivid detail that she once wore it during sex.
A few exceedingly pleasant hours later Tobirama has proved quite conclusively that yes, Uchiha are very visually orientated and also that his wife can indeed use genjutsu to see the world through his eyes just as easily as she can make him see through hers. The two discoveries overlapped very satisfactorily, and have given him a number of fun ideas for future encounters. There were some tears, but they got through them without serious upset and Izuna seems far steadier for having shed them.
However right now he is freshly washed and comfortably sprawled on the grass in the shade of the house in his yukata, his wife flopped on her back next to him.
"Bending the clan bloodline to a person's will grants experience; the eye that opens in experience copies all," Izuna begins quietly after a long time spent enjoying the singing of the crickets and the birds. "It is the most obvious aspect of our bloodline, allowing us to mimic with our bodies anything we have seen with our eyes; ninjutsu most obviously, but also taijutsu, handwriting and even voices. Uchiha have a natural propensity towards mimicry anyway –we're physically rather more flexible than I believe is normal for other shinobi– but this allows us to fully imitate absolutely anything. And I do not even have to see you writing in order to mimic your style; a sample is enough."
"How many love-letters have your cheerfully forged, Lord-Wife?"
She cackles softly. "Oh you know me so well; plenty enough, Heart's Treasure. Anyway, that's the second tomoe; third tomoe requires knowledge, which is the trickiest one and various people have different theories for what 'knowledge' means exactly. I personally think it means knowing what you're seeing, genuinely understanding what it is that you are witnessing while also desiring to act. The eye that opens in knowledge reflects all; this is the stage at which we become able to cast our infamous ocular genjutsu."
Tobirama lets the quiet sounds of the summer afternoon surround them for a while longer, then dares to ask:
"What of the form your sharingan took when you were defending me in the Diplomatic Quarters?"
Izuna's chakra stills utterly, then sags into vague melancholy as she sighs. "The eye that opens in grief," she recites quietly, "knows the faces of the gods."
Yatagarasu. Inari. Toyotama. Konjin. Kōjin. Raiden. Yomotsu-shikome.
Amaterasu.
The names of the clan's various Lineages abruptly make terrible, terrifying sense.
And how bitterly ironic, that it is the feud that has granted certain Uchiha those incomprehensible and unpredictable abilities that so terrify his clansmen; 'Manifest Head' makes considerably more sense as a title now.
"Your Lineage is Amaterasu, not Susano-o," is all he says.
"The Lineage is named for the first manifestation to appear within it; some bloodlines have a single known manifestation, others have several. Amaterasu has most; no person can have more than two manifestations, but there are four kami associated with our line."
This is very definitely deep into the area of clan secrets; a little too deep for Tobirama's comfort, in fact.
"This is why you have Ame-no-Uzume embroidered in your coat lining, isn't it? The real reason."
"It is," his wife agrees quietly, "and also why I've been reticent on the subject of coats; as my spouse, unequal or not, you are entitled to a proper silk-lined coat with an Amaterasu design. But I was… reluctant," she continues after a brief pause, "to grant you one when I did not know whether you might one day leave it behind. That would have hurt almost more than the leaving."
Tobirama doesn't quite know what to say to that.
"All Uchiha have coats," Izuna continues softly, "and all adult Uchiha wear their coats outside the clan compound, for all that a number of our Trading Branch kin wear coats without our mon on the back, for safety's sake. It would be one thing for you to reject our union, given that I strong-armed you into it, but to reject kinship…" she trails off.
It means more to Izuna that he recognises himself as belonging to the Uchiha clan in his own right than his accepting his position as her concubine? That… actually that fits very well with her stated desire to have him as her husband and equal, as well her small and desperate hope that, should they achieve peace, he will not immediately abandon her. If he thinks of himself as Uchiha, he will of course not leave permanently; for missions or to travel maybe, but he would always come back to the clan, if not to her personally.
But he still gets lost wandering around the Uchiha compound, and so Izuna has been elusive on the matter of coats until now.
"Would I also get Ame-no-Uzume in my coat lining?" He asks.
"If you wanted to," his wife says after a breathless pause, chakra bright with cautious hope, "or you could have Susano-o or Tsukuyomi."
Tobirama considers this. "I don't actually know all that much about any of those kami," he admits.
"I could tell you some stories, if you like?" Izuna offers. "Then you can pick one you like the sound of and we can see if the coatmaker has a pattern for that already, and if not I'll design something."
"I'd like that," Tobirama decides, "but not right now."
"What would you like to do now then?"
"I'd like to just lie here and bask in not having to do anything for a bit longer," Tobirama decides, "then I'd like to do some more writing. And possibly a little drawing."
"As you wish."
Once Kiso has returned from his day out, eaten dinner and been tucked into bed, Tobirama settles on the engawa outside his wife's bedroom to enjoy the last of the sunshine and read some more of his novel before bedtime. Izuna joins him with a book of her own, sitting next to him in comfortable silence.
He feels settled; at ease, even. Izuna has not only answered his question but promised him the freedom he had not dared to ask for, conditional on peace though it is. But he can accept that condition; having talking to his grandmother and knowing that Tokonoma-ji is leading the negotiations, Tobirama firmly believes that an equitable peace treaty is the most likely outcome of the current talks. Not immediately perhaps, but hopefully within the year.
He can wait that long. It's less onerous than it might be.
"Might my wife honour me with her presence in my bed this evening?" He asks as the sun sinks lower in the sky.
Izuna eyes him over the top of her book. "For anything in particular, or?"
"Just for comfort and kisses," Tobirama specifies instantly; "nothing more unless agreed to between us upon waking. It's been a rather challenging day." Emotionally challenging, mostly; after the high of relief and joyful vindication subsided he had found himself fatigued, a sensation which dragged on through half the afternoon and the evening meal and is now encouraging him to go to bed early. He has made promises he must keep tomorrow –as Izuna has kept her promises today– and that is likely to be as difficult for him as her confession clearly was for her. The restful warmth of her presence is all he wants tonight, and will make sleeping easier.
His wife's shoulders relax. "I would like that, Tobirama."
"Thank you," he tells her, grateful for her willingness; "I sleep better with you there." He's tried not to think about it, but since the assassination attempt being alone in bed –especially with Kiso there beside him– is less restful than it might be. He will get over it in time, he's sure of it, but right now he sleeps better with his wife at his back.
Her smile softens, easily following the unspoken line of thought. "Whatever I can give you, beloved."
She does not say 'anything you want' and he appreciates the honesty of that, the boundary recognised. Tobirama doesn't trust his brother's lavish promises because however heartfelt they may be, Anija never actually lives up to them; 'anything you want Tobi!' does not actually cover anything he wants. It just covers the things Hashirama is prepared to give, and going beyond those boundaries results in wounded looks and sad doe eyes and accusations.
He likes the explicit honestly of Izuna's clearly-marked boundaries, which allow him greater freedoms by virtue of their clarity.
"I will enjoy your warmth in my bed then," Tobirama says lightly, "until the weather becomes unbearable enough that I can't suffer to be touched and I sprawl over the sheets stark naked." He will miss his chakra all the more then; being Water Natured means he runs a little cooler than most, but he is not looking forward to the stifling suffocation of July.
Izuna hums, smile audible and chakra faintly distracted; Tobirama also returns to his book until the fireflies start to dance over the koi pond, then gets to his feet.
"I am turning in."
"I will join you in a little while, Treasure."
Sure enough, she slides onto his futon and presses against his back as he is going over his very full and significant day. Tobirama rolls over so as to take her in his arms and share slow kisses, soothing his whirling mind with unhurried comfort and the sweetness of his wife's scent.
"You will start showing soon," he murmurs later, when it is him pressed against her back and his arms wrapped around her body, both of them breathing deeply with hearts beating perfectly in time.
"In June, probably," Izuna agrees quietly; "not before the solstice, I shouldn't think."
"You're not taking missions anymore?" She's not gone anywhere since she ran out to relieve Madara so he could chase bloodline thieves, and he's not sure how much of that is due to the assassination attempt and the political complications his wife set in motion afterwards.
"Might take a few local ones; contract witnessing, negotiation and so on," Izuna muses. "It's important to be seen and they rarely even take a day. But I'll stop once I start really showing; too risky." She snorts quietly. "My Squad will need to pick a replacement and my father will likely assign a few warriors to do some strategic impersonation."
That makes sense, all things considered. "My Lord-Wife will be showering me in more gifts?" The summer kimono don't count, they were bribes.
Izuna shakes in his arms, chuckling almost inaudibly and chakra bright. "Oh Heart's Treasure, you will get your gifts, I promise," she murmurs, twisting around to kiss him. "Any particular requests? I know you need a summer tea kimono and a lightweight coat."
He doesn't 'need' either, but he has asked for both and it warms him that his wife keeps such things in mind. "Any recent publications on geology or hydrology, if there is anything truly new that is not a reprint of some existing work," he says, kissing her back, "and a practice weapon, if that is possible; it has been far too long since I have done sword drills."
She laughs softly, tucking her head under his chin. "I can fix that."
The comforting warmth of that promise follows him into sleep, and his dreams are quiet.