trigger warnings: torture, blood, brutality.

splinters written in ink

Madara had archived his priorities into a list of three:

One, locate and restrict all fuuinjutsu masters.

Two, if one didn't know their privacy was invaded, they wouldn't make a complaint.

Three, rogue Uzumaki were top-priority. No one cared whether or not the Tsuchikage was amassing troops when there was a literal chakra-beast loose-canon in the form of a terrifying redhead at large.

By its nature, fuuinjutsu was unfair and overpowered. Madara had a susano'o and the mangekyou sharingan and over two decades of experience as a shinobi. A fuuinjutsu matrix didn't care about the years he spent training. It didn't care about his impressive chakra reserves, or the plethora of katon jutsu he had at his disposal. The seal remained stuck to the ground until the unwary passerby—Madara—stepped on it, and then all laws of the universe were ignored because fuuinjutsu.

The next point was almost more annoying. Almost, because a lack of information wasn't, in all honesty, the reason he was bound and gagged, with pieces of metal sticking into his back. Someone could have stood to mention he was dealing with an Uzumaki, though.

Rogue Uzumaki were a liability the world was not prepared to deal with, probably ever.

A shinobi capable of managing several summoning contracts in one setting, without breaking a sweat, should not be allowed to wander around unchecked. Especially when they were known for their hair-trigger tempers and damnable curiosity. Someone's head was going to be busted in when Madara found out who let a rogue Uzushio shinobi slip by, unnoticed. Maybe even the Uzukage. Madara thought six months was a long enough time between international incidents.

One might have to take a step back and understand that Uchiha Madara, at the moment, was in a spectacularly terrible mood. If one knew how he'd gotten himself into that particular conundrum, they would have sympathy.

The mission, as were all missions that had a habit of going wrong, was a simple one. It was a scout-and-maybe-destroy kind of mission—the sort of mission that the Hokage typically sent Madara out on, so in all fairness, he had his guard down. When one could wrap themselves in chakra armor and reek killing intent so powerful that it, on the rare occasion, literally stopped hearts, they didn't have much cause for concern.

Scout-and-maybe-destroy was a fancy term for Madara showing up, seeing, and obliterating the area.

He was asked to maintain a level of propriety, of course. If there seemed to be a rich person with enough standing that it might end up added to Hashirama's paperwork, then Madara was to contain himself. A little.

Anyway, the mission.

There were reports of an army amassing on the border of Iwa and Kusa. Paired with the rumors that Takigakure forged an alliance with Iwa for materials and resources, it was an ample cause for concern. Madara had practically seen the gray hairs cropping up on Hashirama's head.

"Madara, dearest, loveliest, light of my light, heart of hearts—"

"Oh, shut up—stop pouting—I get it. I'll keep the explosions to a minimum."

"Thank you so much. I was going to start losing hair next. Did you know the mayor of Rice Patty actually wanted to go to the Daimyo? The Daimyo!"

"That's nice, but what the fresh hell is "light of my light" supposed to mean?"

At that point, Tobirama had thrown the mission report at Madara and told him, under no uncertain terms, to get a move on.

Madara arrived about two weeks after the contingent of Iwa, Kusa, and Taki shinobi had taken up base in a small fishing village next to a large lake. Normally, it would have been an ideal place for a vacation, with cerulean waters and misty falls and thick forests that turned the place into a tiny, pocket paradise. Only, all the people who lived there previously had been chased out. Houses once painted an array of pretty pastel colors had been slapped with a uniform camouflage.

The lake was crystal clear. He'd been unable to resist a look, walking out onto a long dock built into an L-shape. It was a dark, murky green where the water was deepest. With his curiosity sated, he'd turned back to the village, where a large amount of shinobi were no doubt wonder what kind of suicidal idiot had wandered in to sightsee.

He itched for the scythe and gunbai on his back. A buzz of chakra collected in his sternum. Heat crackled through the air as he stepped off the dock, into the village proper.

The emptiness was what struck him as odd first. Normally, shinobi wouldn't bother to chase out civilians. They were a constant source of food, upkept the village, and worked as human shields in the event someone attacked the base. It was unlikely the civilians were escorted out for honor's sake.

In fact—it struck him as he peered through a dusty window, looking into the abandoned space within—there were little signs of anyone, shinobi influence included. Had he not been able to sense their chakra signatures lurking in the shadows, waiting—for what, though?—he would assume the village was well and truly abandoned.

Madara stepped away from the window.

Chakra burst. Icy cold poured over his arms, his legs, his neck, until he realized nothing was there—but there were hands and he couldn't move—

Spiraling lines of ink crawled out from under him. They looped around, jagged and uneven in some places.

Madara sucked in a breath, moving his hands to form a jutsu—the cold clamped down.

His heart plummeted. It felt as though the shinigami itself had gripped his soul, dragged him down and contained him. Contained, because while part of his subconscious screamed hands, hands on his arms, hands on his legs, he felt no real hands.

A wave of panic struck him. What if it was the shinigami?

Clapping filtered in through the haze around his head. The world seemed to have blurred and bent, as though he was viewing it from underwater.

"I'll give it to you, shinobi-san," said a blurred figure with distinctive red hair. "I laid out fifty of those seal matrixes. Fifty. You managed to avoid every one of them by pure accident until this one."

The iciness steeped into his face. He couldn't move his tongue, but he glared as heatedly as he could manage, even as his entire body slowly started to feel numbed.

"Aight, I'm gonna need you unconscious for this next part, so—"

Madara blacked out.

"Yamanaka."

"Are you color blind? Clearly a Nara."

"Shit, I hope not. Those shadow things are terrifying."

"Well, he's tied up, so I don't know why you're worrying about it."

"Do you even read books? These situations never work out for people like us—"

There was a persisting ache in Madara's shoulders. When he tried to shift to relieve it, a burst of tingling ran down his elbows that put his teeth on edge. A groan escaped him. There was a slow, radiating pain starting in his shoulder blades, and spreading down his rib cage and into the small of his back.

Actually—Madara snapped awake, his heart jumping—he couldn't breathe.

The panic was there and gone in a second. Obviously he could breathe, seeing as he hadn't suffocated while unconscious, but he couldn't take deep breaths. Each shallow breath made his head swim nauseatingly. The smell of rotting produce and the taste of ozone in his mouth did little to settle his stomach. He clamped his jaw shut and tried not to retch.

Hands grabbed his chin. Unlike the cold, unreal hands that had frozen Madara in his tracks earlier, they were warm and definitely human. They were also very unwanted.

Despite the churning in his gut, he snapped out—literally, with teeth.

"FUCK—"

"Guess we can rule out Hyuuga, huh?"

"He almost bit my hand off, you inconsiderate asshole—"

Madara blinked his eyes, several times. His vision wasn't quite what it used to be. It wasn't total blindness, as he could make out colors and blobs, but it was inconvenient. He tried not to squint too obviously.

One of the figures had left to inform "leader-san"—they weren't the creative sort—that their prisoner had woken up. It took Madara an embarrassing long stretch to realize the prisoner was himself. He was tied up, true, and something was blocking off his chakra, yes, but the words Madara and captive with being held between them just wasn't right. He'd never been held captive before. He'd never messed up so badly before, either.

The sharp-aching-bruising pain in his shoulders was getting worse. It made it hard to concentrate on his surroundings. The other shinobi was talking—something about Nara and their deer—and was ignored in lieu of figuring out where the hell he was being held. It looked like a warehouse, but when Madara strained his eyes to make out the entirety of the place, his head gave a protesting throb.

He consciousness had to have wavered, because the next time his eyes were remotely clear, the Uzumaki was back.

Without the seal turning the world to butter, it was easier to make out the piles of braids pulled into a ponytail, tiny seal tags hanging from the end of each individual strand. The Uzumaki rustled as he worked, leather cords around his neck, hands stained with ink.

A blinding grin overtook his face when he noticed Madara awake. "Look who's rejoining us!"

Madara was hovering in chains, bent forward, so he had to struggle to look up. His back was numb in a way that wasn't natural. Pain killers, he thought. Something prickled, like the suctioned feet of an insect, against his neck. It put his hair on end.

"I needed you mostly asleep for this stuff," said the Uzumaki. "It's—er—well, a bit of a secret. Trade secret. Bigger than normal secret."

Madara groaned. He wasn't in the mood for this.

"Don't worry," said the Uzumaki, which worried Madara immensely. "You won't have to wait long. Hokage-sama will come personally, I'm sure."

Madara almost asked, "What's Hashirama got to do with this?" but that was rather like asking, "Why would you, the enemy, want to cut off the snake's head before the fight begins?" Of course Hashirama had something to do with his current predicament.

Instead, he settled on saying, "You realize he's called the God of Shinobi for a reason, right?"

It certainly wasn't for his innate ability to basket-weave.

"One second," said the Uzumaki. "I need to test the strength of this seal."

The Uzumaki grabbed Madara's arm, contorted by chains, angled up behind him—then snapped it over his knee.

Madara gasped, doubled over, and then he realized he wasn't in pain. He felt nothing. His arm was crooked, horrifically so, skin already red and mottling up into a patchwork of blue.

The Uzumaki peered into his eyes.

"Nothing, hmm? Good, then. It works."

He got up and walked around to Madara's back. Madara's breath sucked in, mouth going dry, as he waited for another strike. The Uzumaki was in the perfect position to break his back, or legs, or anything else.

Instead, he grabbed ahold of—something—and wiggled it. There was an absence of feeling in Madara's back. It was like nails on chalkboard, of the real torture variety. The scent of freshly spilled blood hit Madara's nose. It made his head spin and rekindled the nausea in his stomach. Something hot and metallic pushed up his throat.

"These are dowsing rods, in case you're wondering."

Six long rods, dark as midnight, jutted out of Madara's back. They dug in deep and unmoving. It was painless and, had the Uzumaki not pointed it out, Madara wouldn't have noticed. Now that he knew they were there, he couldn't stop feeling—something. Phantom pains, like a paraplegic.

Seafoam green eyes were in front of him again. It was all Madara could do not to throw up—he wished, in a moment of pure misery, that whatever jutsu the Uzumaki used numbed his stomach, too—as the temperature of the warehouse skyrocketed. At the same time, gooseflesh broke out over Madara's skin. He blinked sweat out his eyes and frowned. Feverish?

"Open up," said the Uzumaki cheerfully, all too cheerfully, and Madara wanted to tear his face off. The Uzumaki didn't wait for him to comply.

Two fingers pried Madara's mouth open and, while he was violently leaping to horrific conclusions that made him, somehow, even sicker, the Uzumaki retrieved ink and a brush. A third finger prodded Madara's tongue down.

"Stop moving. Believe me, this will get a lot worse if I have to add any more seals of restraint."

The ink smelled of river silt. It tasted like dirt and was cool on his tongue.

"And for the finishing touch—"

It seared white-hot and Madara thrashed. The Uzumaki wiped his hand on his hakama, then brushed the line of saliva off the side of Madara's face.

"And now we wait."

Presumably, they were waiting for Hashirama.

The problem with that was Madara's bad habit of roaming when he was on missions. It wasn't that he avoided returning to the village—he didn't, not when Hashirama was there—but, he liked to bring home souvenirs. Watching Hashirama's face light up when Madara brought back something particularly unusual was always the highlight of his week. Thought of Hashirama sent a pang of intense longing through him.

Hashirama would be expecting him to take a while to get back to Konoha. Some time in the next week or so, he might start to worry. It would take him another week for that worry to spiral into concern, and then finally into panic.

That was probably why, hours later, as the moon arched high into the dark sky, a group of shinobi approached him. They were headed by the Uzumaki, who Madara had realized by now was the leader of their group. It was a collection of Iwa, Kusa, and Taki shinobi. Despite the fact they clearly had a leader, they were glancing around at each other, as though wondering why, exactly, they were present.

"What was the duration of your mission?" said the Uzumaki, arms crossed over his chest. He'd lost the twinkle of faked warmth, eyes cold and cavernous, in his impatience.

Madara sneered at him. "However long it takes me to destroy you."

For the record, Madara didn't have a filter. Hashirama bemoaned it. Tobirama had tried to tell him, multiple times, that sometimes keeping one's mouth shut was the best option. Izuna had accepted it as an unfortunate side-affect of Madara being Madara a long time ago.

The Uzumaki, of course, didn't know that. He dropped to his haunches in front of Madara, with the sort of mirthless smile one often wore when their day was not going as they wanted.

"You are in chains," he murmured softly, so quiet Madara had to strain to hear him. "There are dowsing rods in your back, keyed in to some of the most powerful creatures in existence. Do you know what that means?"

A cool hand brushed wild locks of raven hair out of Madara's face, earning a scowl. There were all of three people in the world Madara allowed to touch him, and only one of them did so in such a tender way. That was Hashirama's gesture, and when Madara escaped, when he was out of those chains—

"There are two bijuu closing in on our location."

The angry bluster vanished. Madara couldn't even wrack words for that. He gaped, like a dying fish, instantly leaping to denials. Only, his captor was an Uzumaki, and clever, and evidently powerful, even for the Uzumaki Clan.

"I was only planning on one, so it might put strain on the seals," said the Uzumaki. "Long story short, we don't have time for your Hokage to realize something's gone wrong."

The Uzumaki beckoned to one of the shinobi gathered. A woman stepped forward, her hands lighting with a medical jutsu.

"We need him to come immediately. No questions asked."

As a boy, Madara used to lay awake at night, thinking about his eyes being taken from him.

It was a fear many Uchiha possessed, that clans with dojutsu in general possessed, and Madara was no different. Growing older had tempered the fear. It was lessened, because the chances of any enemy getting close enough to him to take his eyes were so slim, it bore no thought.

The darkness, Madara realized, was a living thing. It breathed. It moved. The ground was a rumbling, subterranean beast that echoed with each step. A wind song played through the air. He smelled oil and ozone and figured out, all at once, the village's main purpose—as well as why it was chosen for occupation.

It was a mining village. Close to a lake, perfect for fishing, and perfectly disguised as a regular fishing village, it was just the sort of misdirection a shinobi would utilize. There were enough explosives collected in the town to blow the entire village off the map. If the village went up, that would take care of any and all reinforcements Hashirama brought with him; except, perhaps, Tobirama, who always seemed to be looking out for random bomb threats.

Normally, Madara called him a paranoid bastard. Now, he knew it would probably save his life.

However, there was Izuna. His brother, his last living family, who was strong and clever, and whom always seemed to knock at death's doors, as though tempting the shinigami to take him. Izuna would most certainly not sit around, while knowing Madara was blinded and bound.

Spurned by the image of a gravestone—"In Honor of Uchiha Izuna, Loyal Shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, Loving Brother"—Madara writhed in his chains. The other shinobi had left hours ago. Sunlight was warm against his skin. He tested the chains and tugged.

He couldn't feel pain from injuries. There were odd aches and pains that filtered through, but most were from old injuries. The new ones were delightfully numbed and it was perfect.

It was perfect, because when Madara pinched his fingers together and ripped his hand out of one shackle, he didn't feel the tear of skin and the severing of tendons.

He flexed his hand, a sluggish movement—and then did the same for the other hand. There was a pop in his shoulder and he lost movement in his left arm. Hissing, he tumbled out of the chains, holding his arm out and twisting, thankful again that he could feel no pain.

Hashirama was going to have a heart attack, when he saw what Madara had done to his body. The mental image of Hashirama blanching, his eyes going wide was almost enough to bring a smile to his face. Almost, because he'd already spent so much time healing Madara, tenderly and patiently, and there he was, undoing all that hard work.

He stumbled across the warehouse, finding the door from memory. The hall sounded empty. He opted to clamber out a window instead, landing lightly on his feet outside the warehouse. A cool breeze whipped around him, carrying the scent of oil and minerals. There was also a good amount of wine.

Water lapped gently against a close shore. Madara followed it, let it guide him until he felt a familiar wooden dock. The rods were an uncomfortable weight against his back, a tedium that most likely stoppered six injuries capable of bleeding him to death.

An irregular gust of wind alerted him to a shunshin.

Madara whirled around as a hand reached for his shoulder, gripping a bare forearm and pulling them forward with their momentum. He kicked their feet out, twisted their arm, and landed on their back.

Teeth barred in a snarl, he leaned forward. "Where are the barrels?"

"Wh-What—"

"This place is chocked full of explosives. Where are they?!"

"I-I—"

A nicer person might not have done it. Madara was not a nice person, and he was having a very bad day.

He clamped a hand around the shinobi's mouth, then jerked their arm. There was a harsh pop and they gave a strangled gasp.

"Where?!"

Shaking head to toe, the shinobi guided him through the village. Madara took their weapons pouch, keeping a hidden kunai trained on their back. One stab and he'd sever their spinal cord and puncture their heart.

They came to a shrine, a direct and straight walk from the docks. Once they were inside, the smell of explosives was overpowering. The air hummed with it, potential energy charged and primed. It was ready to blow, taking the village, and whoever was caught up, with it.

He took the hilt of the kunai to the back of the shinobi's head. They dropped like a sack of potatoes as he cut through the shrine, rummaging through barrels until he found one full of oil. He tipped it, the scent harsh and searing, and he grimaced. The persistent nausea was making him suspect a real sickness, rather than a bad reaction to his chakra being sealed off.

A hissed swear tore from his lips, and he regretted knocking the shinobi out for all to two seconds, as he looked for a good weapon. His hand brushed against a weapons rack by pure, lucky chance. He tried not to think too hard on what might have happened, had he not found the bow and quiver full of arrows fast enough. A quick check to his pockets reaffirmed that no one thought to take his flint.

He tipped another barrel of oil outside the shrine, leaving a clear, slippery trail to the pile of explosives on the inside.

Madara was halfway through the village, bow over his shoulder, when he felt another rush of a shunshin.

It was the Uzumaki. He sounded amused as he said, "I'll admit, I'm slightly impressed."

Madara threw himself into a sprint, ducked under a grasping arm—and remembered not to tuck into a roll, for the rods sticking out of his back. He slammed hard into his arm, instead, using one of the dock posts to climb to his feet. Footfalls ambled behind him, unhurried and unconcerned. And, there was no reason for the Uzumaki to be concerned. Madara was a downed dog, handicapped and injured.

He lashed out with a kick that connected solidly with the Uzumaki, earning a sharp gasp of pain. He hoped there were broken ribs.

Staggering, he made it to the end of the dock. Shaped like an L, positioned just right, he was directly in front of the shrine.

The Uzumaki sounded far too casual as he called out from the shore.

"For real, though—how the hell did you manage that?"

Madara pulled an arrow out of his quiver. He flicked the flint across the arrowhead and smirked as a curl of flames singed his hands.

"Your chakra is bound, I know for a fact your arm is broken, your hands look like someone took meat cleavers to them—what did you even do there?—and we took your eyes!" cried the Uzumaki in indignant shock. "And the dowsing rods—how are you even standing?!"

Madara pulled the arrow back. He paused to consider an answer.

"I'm Uchiha Madara."

He let the arrow fly. It soared, cutting through the air with a whistle, and because he'd always been good at tracking things in the air, he knew the exact moment it struck the shrine.

"You missed—"

The shockwave hit them first, followed by a billowing roil of heat and force that knocked Madara clean off his feet. He smacked against the lake surface, sinking into the water. The water boiled around him, bubbles flurrying against his skin like millions of soft kisses, a sharp contrast to the burns he was sure to be sporting after the explosion.

He sank a lot faster than he intended, the rods weighing him down. A steady ache was starting to radiate from them, like the beginnings of arthritic joint pain in the cold months, and Madara took it as a sign the seals were wearing off. He hoped that meant the rogue Uzumaki was dead.

Before the seal for painlessness could disappear and Madara was made useless, he pushed off the lakebed. He'd always floated on the surface of water easier than most humans—his brother liked to joke he was full of hot air—so it wasn't long before he was taking great gulps of smoke-filled, warm air.

All things considered, he thought, dragging himself ashore, it could have been harder.

Miniature explosions were still rocking the village. Bits and pieces of debris collapsed around him.

("Keep the village intact, if you can," Hashirama had said with an imploring look. "The people in that area will be hit hard if these skirmishes break out into war. There's no need to make their lives harder than necessary."

"I'll keep that mind," Madara had replied, shortly before leaving.

Oops.)

The seal clamping his chakra down was still stubbornly in place, so when he trudged up a hill to catch a scent of a familiar wind, he was forced to do so without the aid of chakra-enhanced senses. A tense silence—as any such silence was, where birds and critters alike were supposed to be scurrying about their days—had settled over the forest.

One step at a time, he put the burning village behind him, along with the enemy shinobi and the memory of shackles. The rods were still there, heavy and oppressive, but he didn't want to think about the blood he'd lose if he pulled them out.

His equilibrium shot sideways. He stumbled into a tree, the wind laughing at him through rattling leaves, and didn't think of the flip in his stomach. Anxiety, his mind informed him, instinct.

Run.

The dark was a living thing. Madara wanted his eyes back. He wanted them back so he could look at the forest and see the trees for what they were, instead of waiting for spidery fingers to unfurl and grasp his shoulders and hot teeth to clamp on his neck and rip.

Pain blossomed in his stomach—in his back, his ribs—as the seal cutting off his nerve endings finally wore off. Madara swayed, still clutching the tree. It was liquid fire. It coated him and choked him, making him taste metal, and dragged him to his knees.

There had been many times in his relatively short, miserable life that Madara thought he might die. When he was ten years old, he'd stumbled across a rattlesnake, whose bite he'd narrowly escaped with his first-ever successful shunshin. When he was thirteen, a handful of months before he met Hashirama, he'd been caught in an enemy clan's trap—he was stabbed through the stomach and shoulder, and nicked a vital vein. Later, much later, he would wonder why he didn't die then, and if the answer lay with him meeting Hashirama. Perhaps, they were fated to each other.

Even farther before then, when he was seven years old, he was lost in a forest. He remembered so little of the incident, and it was cruelty that his mind replayed the memory now, while he was alone in a forest. He'd dreamt being torn asunder, limb from limb, with shrill laughter in his ears—and then his mother was there.

She'd smiled down at him with a blood-streaked face and hollowed, exhausted eyes, and that was the last he saw of her. He woke alone, hours later.

Paranoia sparked in Madara's gut at the memory. Pain lanced through his back and he gritted his teeth.

Anger and terror in equal measures, numbing the edges of his brain and turning his thoughts fluid, made him reckless.

With one shaking hand, he grasped the base of one of the rods jutting from his back. He felt it move in his flesh, giving a pulse as though it, too, was a living thing. Nothing could have prepared him for the sensation, like plucking a wing from his back, as he tore it free.

He cried out in pain, going rigid against a tree. The rod dropped to the ground.

Five more followed.

It eased the stiffness in his shoulder blades, but little else. He was immobile.

Despite the other seals fading, his chakra remained clamped down. It left him adrift, blinded in a way he could never have fathomed in a hundred years.

He was veering towards the edge of madness, waiting for voices in the dark, when longing struck him hard—it struck him fast. His first thought was of Hashirama. Warm and powerful, like experiencing summer for the first time after a lifetime of November gloom, Hashirama felt larger than life.

He was coming, Madara knew. He was coming because the Uzumaki had taken Madara's eyes and sealed them into a letter, wrapped that up in his hitae-ate, to be delivered to the Hokage.

So why, he thought—sliding down a tree as the strength left his legs, tingling starting up his fingers—was he feeling abject despair?

He gasped for breath, doubled over. Death felt like that, he knew. It was an ancient knowledge, old as time, older than chakra. His body screamed against it. He wanted to ask Izuna if that was how he felt, during those darkest hours.

Considering the past day or so, Madara thought he was justified in his reaction to a body landing in front of him.

The kunai missed Hashirama by inches, the next one nicked his hand, and he was forced to catch the third—and last—one, before it took out an eye.

"Ma—Mada—Stop—"

Madara dropped the rock he'd been about to throw, a startled exclamation escaping him. It sounded more breathless than he'd been—ever. He was too tired and in too much pain to be embarrassed.

When Hashirama's arms closed around him, pushing him off the tree, it was almost too warm. It crawled over him, head to toe, the feeling of another's touch on his skin. Once again, the darkness whispered wrong.

"Hashirama?" he said, a question lingering on his tongue. He tried to frame his mind around the words. It remained stuck somewhere, slipping through his fingers every time he thought he glimpsed a silhouette. The hands gripping him were familiar and overwhelming. Too much.

Hashirama's hands cradled his face. "What is it? Stay awake, dear—"

His joy was laced with relief, sweeter than honey. Everything was going to be alright now—so, why was his stomach still burning?

"Your brother is right behind me. We took your—your eyes with us—"

Anxiety, he told himself. Hashirama's hands were warmer still, lighting with a healing jutsu. Run, said his instincts.

Madara felt like he was drowning, so he clung to Hashirama's wrists, a steady anchor. He dug his nails into the feeling of relief. He turned the churning in his stomach to excitement. It was his, hard earned. He was alive and Hashirama was right there.

And yet—

Something was wrong.

(The explosion leveled the mountain.

It left the surrounding countryside in shambles, sent the newborn governments into a frenzy. The aftershocks didn't stop and never would stop, degrading into a mess that would lead nation against nation, superpower against superpower.

Madara didn't remember waking, so much as thought bled back into his consciousness.

Why was he fighting? was the first sinking question, a single stone dropped into an unmoving lake.

He smelled sea-salt and watercolor and thought Mito, but couldn't fit her into his fractured awareness. Mito was in Konoha, being sickly a romantic with his brother. Mito was—

Right there. She was right there, dark blue eyes too big on her face. There were shadows clinging to her eyes. Her diamond had spread to the rest of her face. When she went to brush a flyaway strand of crimson hair away, she left a smudge of ink on her forehead. He stared, bewildered, because Mito was never disheveled.

"Stay awake, Madara—hear me, stay awake! This is easier when you're conscious—"

A starburst of irritation flurried under his skin. It took him by surprise in its intensity, but he didn't fault it, or think twice. He didn't want to switch between sleep and consciousness so frequently. The amount of control he had over his brain was at an all time low, and asking him to bargain with it was tall order, even when he wasn't hopelessly confused—scared—and furious.

He was furious. It squirmed in his gut, thick as poisoned blood.

A familiar hand brushed against his forehead, cool and so comforting it ached. Hashirama.

"We're almost done," he was saying, though his voice was warped. Madara frowned, reaching for—he wasn't sure what it was, but he couldn't, because his arms were pinned to his sides. Hashirama was apologizing. "I'll have to buy you extra inarizushi when this is over to make up for it, eh? Then, we can—"

Madara couldn't hear the words anymore, but Mito had let out a swear and the bindings tightened around him.

Something was there, and it was inside him. It was in his body and ears. It was the subterranean growl of the shifting continents and the wind song he heard in the air. He saw gold on black, a snarl of anger—"Unfair, unfair, UNFAIR!" came a howl from within, a voice, but not his own—and heard the shift of sand over sand.

Days later, or maybe weeks, Madara woke to white curtains and gray walls, and made a mental note to tell Hashirama to have the hospital painted. Then Hashirama himself came walking in the door, looking wearier than he had in years, and Madara remembered.

"The seal is holding strong," said Hashirama. His voice was hoarse. Yelling, thought Madara, then, sake. And then he hoped fervently it wasn't both.

Hashirama settled into a seat by Madara's side. His smile was tired.

"The other villages are already jockeying for a… cut," he intoned morosely. "What do you remember?"

"There were three of them," said Madara. "We're all Konoha shinobi. How are they—"

He didn't finish. Hashirama hadn't worn an expression like that since the first time Madara and he had fought as Clan Heads, for real. Resolve and bitterness, rolled into something a lot people forgot Hashirama was capable of: anger.

Madara swallowed past the dryness in his throat. "And Mito—"

"The Kyuubi."

Konoha could not give that up.

The beginning of the end had started with an explosion.)

Notes: (Crossposted from AO3.)

Because Madara's kind of out of it in this one, here's a few notes on what happened behind the scenes:

1. There were three Bijuu: the Kyuubi, the Ichibi, and the Sanbi. I can't remember if there was a time limit to how long a person could house a tailed beast before it had to be permanent, but for this one I'm giving in a couple hours. Madara had the Ichibi in him longest, so it was enough to make up for the other two being removed.

2. Mito has the Kyuubi and Izuna has the Sanbi. Hashirama wanted to take one, but he couldn't because he's the Hokage and power dymanics and all that shiz.

3. Yes, the other villages still want their Bijuu. There's nine to go around, but let's be fair: none of the villages will be happy with Konoha having THREE Bijuu.

4. There's probably a war. Or, peace is brokered if Madara and Izuna agree to live in separate villages. Or, somehow they manage to keep it all secret and none of the other villages find out about the Bijuu Incident.

5. The Uzumaki Fuuinjutsu master survived.

6. I just wanted to write something and it turned into this hot flaming mess, why. T_T