Content warning: somebody is (non-graphically) eaten alive in this chapter; also several mentions of suicide. Also, cliffhanger.
Next update will be Monday; I've finished writing the story now, so will be updating Mondays and Thursdays until it's all up.
Compass of thy Soul
If asked about the highlight of her year in the winter she turns eighteen, Kita would probably say it was being given a yukata set with a dragon pattern by Madara at the beginning of the summer. Which is possibly a bit trite, but it's been a rough year. Ohabari-oba got pregnant again right after Yasakatone was born –Shironushi is born in October– the in-clan political situation has been a downward spiral into petty bickering and spiteful pride that has hurt the instigators just as much as the targets, Madara and Izuna have both realised that being fully trained in appropriate use of the Mangekyō only slows deterioration rather than stopping it entirely and her little brother Jōnen ran off into the woods if a huff –despite knowing he's not supposed to– and got mauled by a tiger. He's lucky to be alive, but the six-year-old now has crippling scars, has lost half his fingers on one hand and can barely walk.
He's never going to be able to make handsigns for chakra techniques now. It really doesn't help that it's all his own fault and he knows it; Midori tells her about the regular screaming tantrums and the listless spells but privately Kita thinks this is partly Mama's fault for spoiling the boy so much. None of her sisters would ever do such a thing, they were all taught better, but Mama always bends for Jōnen so he's always got away with so much more.
Well, until now he has; things might change now that both Mama and Jōnen have seen the consequences of such dangerous permissiveness. Yori told her after the surgery that without her seals –without the seal bandages carried by the Homeguard squad who were patrolling the area due to the Outguard seeing tiger scat– Jōnen would definitely have died. Tiger bites and claws are not remotely sanitary and the blood-clotting seals she came up with in the early spring kept him from bleeding out.
Tekari is only two, so hopefully Mama will be firmer with him and he won't have to suffer such a nasty wake-up call.
Of course there have been other good things. The experienced potters coaxed into living with the Uchiha clan have picked up the education of the two apprentices, there are now new fire techniques specifically for firing stoneware and porcelain, Kita's bento-box seals have also been modified to keep the kilns at a steady temperature with minimal fuel costs –first by keeping more heat contained in the kiln and second by creating what amounts to a thermostat, 'storing' surplus heat in seal-space and releasing it back as the kiln temperature is deliberately raised or lowered, allowing for porcelain to be fired effectively and for specific glazes to be created– and there is most certainly a gap in the market for shinobi-fired tea bowls. Along with all manner of other shinobi-fired items. Having clan ceramics is a source of pride; everybody in the clan is buying and commissioning items internally now rather than buying from outsiders. Not all of the glazes come out consistently just yet, but homes are being found for all of them as the occasionally random nature of the potter's art doesn't make them any less useful; they even exemplify the wabi-sabi aesthetic.
Kita is mostly exhausted though. She can't do everything, but bringing in people to delegate to seems to be creating more work, not less. She has sealing apprentices now –two Outguard young men– who are learning to make their own charcoal and ink and working on their calligraphy, so that she can delegate drawing seals to them. She picked these two because they understand her thought process and how her seals work, but Kita's not sure they'll ever be that creative. Uchiha frequently aren't and developing the sharingan often seems to stunt the imagination further. She suspects having perfect recall makes the idea of innovation and improvement seem absurd; after all, if you can do it perfectly already and learned in seconds, why change your method?
Really though, the absolute worst thing about this year is how the Senju's tactics have completely twisted around. They're not attacking the clan border anymore –possibly due to the seals on the compound's buildings preventing Tobirama from being able to accurately gauge numbers– so they're targeting squads on missions instead. Well, squads travelling back from missions mostly, along with returning trade caravans, which is actually worse; it's a possible consequence of her actions to protect the clan from Tobirama's sensory range, or else of stirring up trouble between him and his father with that tea ceremony. Madara and Izuna are now constantly on call along with a few elite Outguard squads, roaming just beyond the borders of clan land with summoners and sensors, trying to meet incoming clansmen so as to drive the Senju off. Kita's working on directional alarm seals but it's slow going when she's not really got the time to work on the project exclusively. Maybe a reference map will help?
Of course Tobirama is on a lot of those ambush teams and Hashirama inevitably shows up whenever Madara crashes a fight, so both of Tajima-sama's sons are angry about the change in tactics. Izuna in particular is being loud about how untrustworthy the Senju are and how very clearly they all want to obliterate the Uchiha completely. Kita could point that both Senju are of course following their father's orders, but she knows Izuna well enough now to be able to tell when he's just complaining to complain.
Really, though. It's been a bad year. And the Senju clearly aren't inclined to stop fighting over the winter this year either.
The plum blossom is out again and Madara wants to be at home with Kita, sitting on the engawa wrapped up warm and drinking tea as they enjoy the beauty of the flowers against the winter sky. But instead he's holding Hashirama at bay with his Susano-o as the rest of his squad bag the bodies of the clansmen caught in a Senju ambush on their way back from a trading trip to the coast, sling any dropped umbrella bags containing supplies over their own backs, lift the injured over shoulders and under arms and run as fast as they can to get away from the rapidly-escalating fight.
Izuna is away west, meeting a trading caravan out of Wind, and the Outguard is so stretched that the Homeguard have been joining in the patrols around the borders. Madara's sure that the clan's already sending reinforcements and that one of the newly-formed medical teams will be headed this way at a run –Kita's tiered alarm seals tied to the map on the wall of the Outguard headquarters is a godsend and has been from the first day she set them all up, as is the built-in chime system that notifies other Outguard in the field so they know if Tobirama or Hashirama have seen sighted somewhere– but that's only good news for the injured and fleeing; he will have to rescue himself.
Madara is so, so angry at the Senju for targeting civilian clan members. The Uchiha don't do that! They don't lurk around the borders of Senju territory looking for merchants to pick off! This has all the hallmarks of a Tobirama plan, because Butsuma isn't creative enough for it!
Tobirama isn't here, but Hashirama is and the idiot has always been able to take everything Madara throws at him, so he's not going to bother holding back. Not at all.
Kita is feeling worn to the bone by the never-ending skirmishing. The Senju's new strategy is interfering with their supply lines and those who have died as a result are mainly those who were never trained to defend the clan. They were trained to protect themselves yes, but not for the battlefield. Their duty was to feed the clan, to provision the clan. And now they can't anymore.
The only saving grace of this change is that all the Uchiha carry umbrella bags now, so none of the money and goods they have traded for has been lost or damaged. Many have died for it, but the clan is still fed and well-provisioned.
It is in no way an equivalent or acceptable exchange.
Too many have died. There have been thirty funerals just since New Year. The clan's trade branch has disbanded entirely, most of its surviving members joining the Outguard. The Outguard will now have to stand armed teams for trade missions, mixing veteran warriors with clever negotiators so as to not be caught out by Senju and still feed and supply the clan.
Those who do not want to fight or are too young or injured to do so are trying to find a place within the clan for themselves. It's not easy; they have gone from being providers to being burdens, their affluence fading away to nothing in less than a year as their numbers are halved, and most of them don't have the prestige of belonging to an established lineage; it's why they went into trade in the first place. Madara has lost most of his mother's extended family and it weighs on him terribly, not that Izuna is any better off.
Honestly, it's not really skirmishing anymore. The Uchiha have lost too many, mostly those they never thought would be lost like this, and every fight escalates rather than anybody attempting to retreat. Well, unless there are injured to defend; Yori's medical teams have somehow cribbed off Hashirama's self-healing abilities to develop a yin chakra technique that enables a degree of rapid tissue regeneration. It's still not much good for gut wounds or organ damage –they're too complicated and nobody in the clan knows enough about the human body to heal things the right way, even with a regular stream of patients and fatally injured Outguard members giving permission for the healers to experiment on the off-chance of having a break-through – but blood loss and muscle damage are both easy fixes now and broken bones can be healed much more quickly. It's chakra-intensive and people do sometimes need to go back to the healers for treatment of unexpected after-effects, but it works. Fewer people are dying and there are people on the lookout for good anatomy books so the medics can improve further without risking the lives of their patients to do so.
Yori has punched several people for recklessness though; just because they're better at fixing things now is not an excuse for suicidal charges!
It's July and Mama is dead.
Dead.
Dead shortly after bringing two baby girls into the world. Kita has thrown together a seal to kick her own mammary glands into life and summarily taken charge of the infants –Papa and Grandma have enough on their plates with Tateshina, Naka, Jōnen, Tekari and Kinu– and has found herself thrown headlong into motherhood without even getting to do the fun bit of conceiving them first.
Kita thinks Mama died of something she remembers being called eclampsia, but there's nothing she can do about that. She never studied it; knows nothing about it other than that it is something that just happens sometimes. She knows enough to know that the breast milk seal will have odd effects on her mood due to how she's rushed into twenty-four hours what should take months, but she doesn't know the exact hows or whys there either. Just that it would work, that she needed to do it and that the soreness and cravings are worth it.
Midori goes home to help Papa and Naka comes to support Kita in her place; Naka still hasn't earned her mastery in the clan's patchwork coats, so Kita now has a not-quite-thirteen-year-old apprentice to teach patchwork and embroidery to on top of a nearly-eight-year-old who is already being taught to use chakra and shuriken by her older brothers, three sealing apprentices –two of whom are new as one of her original ones is dead and so is Sannosawa-sensei– and twin newborns.
Newborns she still needs to name.
Kita is so, so tired.
Madara tries to help Kita. He really wants to help, so desperately, but he's in the field almost every day and most nights too and when he is home he's usually so tired he just wants to sleep. Which there being two babies in the clan hall makes very challenging.
Kita has done something odd with seals the corner of their bedroom with the padded box the twins are sleeping in so that she is the only person who can hear them crying at night, which does help and he's grateful for, but all that means is Kita is not getting enough sleep.
Kita is in fact getting so little sleep that she's going a bit... strange. Madara takes it upon himself to delegate her sealing apprentices to Yamizo-sensei, Sannosawa-sensei's successor –he knows Kita's seals well enough to supervise them– and to arrange for Chidori-oba to keep an eye on Benten during the day. That still leaves Kita with two babies and a little sister she has to teach a craft to, but it seems more manageable than her previous workload. Especially with Naka-chan taking over some of the cooking.
The next time he's in the hall –most of a fortnight later– Kita informs him that yes, he did help, which helps Madara feel better about things too. Ohabari-oba informs him that Kita's napping during the day now, which reminds Madara of the Outguard veterans who are so used to getting called out at any time that they doze whenever they're not either fighting or eating.
It's a punishing schedule for everybody. Madara doesn't even know if Kita's come to terms with her mother being dead yet; she certainly didn't cry at the funeral six weeks ago. He wants to be at home supporting her, needs to be at home supporting her, but the Senju are still being a nuisance so he has to fight.
He hates it. His eyes ache nearly all the time now and he knows he can't see as well as he used to. He just wants Butsuma to die so this whole mess will stop. He's seen more dead clansmen this year than in several previous years combined and he's tired of it.
The twins have names now; the rounder-faced one is Azami and the longer-limbed one is Toshi. Her thistle and arrowhead. Plant names, but at least it's not Naka. She's never going to name a child that. There are too many Naka in the Uchiha already, so much so that many go by Outguard nicknames or are identified by parents or siblings or spouses, which is dreadful. Being identified by profession is not much better; her little sister is 'Coat-maker Naka.'
Today Kita caught a Senju trying to sneak into the clan compound, bound his chakra and tossed him in the pigpen. He died screaming and all she can think is 'good riddance.' She knows that's not good. She can't find the energy to care.
On the upside, the elders are much more polite these days. Maybe they can see she's right at the end of her rope.
Ohabari-oba has finally taken over all the Homeguard duties again; Shironushi is weaned now and the older woman has far more time than Kita does. Tajima-sama is busy enough that he's probably not going to notice.
Madara is really, really worried about Kita. He can tell Father's worried too, which really isn't good, but he has to be here on the battlefield. Has to fight Hashirama while Izuna fights Tobirama and Father fights Butsuma. He's giving these fights his all but he can't beat Hashirama. He's never beaten Hashirama. It doesn't matter how hard or how half-heartedly he fights, Hashirama always matches him.
Does Hashirama really care about peace at all? So many Uchiha have died over the past two years, many more than Senju, and Hashirama has killed quite a number of them. Every time Madara has charged into battle he's found his so-called friend standing over the injured and dying. Clansmen suffocated by planks crushing their ribcages, impaled by branches through vital organs, casually tossed aside by spine-shattering blows; none of them die quickly and he remembers each and every last rattling breath with vivid clarity. Madara is never so cruel when he comes across a Senju patrol; his enemies die swiftly and cleanly.
Then suddenly Father throws himself up Butsuma's sword, taking the Senju's head off with his tantō, and Madara abandons Hashirama to rush to his side.
The ceasefire is awkward and hasty –Tobirama thankfully talks more sense than Hashirama– but Madara doesn't care. His father is bleeding out in his arms and he needs to get home. Needs to get everybody home.
Madara finally gets his father as far as the medical team, but there's nothing they can do for him except block pain, so he and Izuna spend their father's last minutes kneeling next to him feeding him chakra, so he can participate in a shared genjutsu that lets him say so much more than he ever could have with just words and impart a vast quantity of information about the clan and the Outguard, some of which is very clearly older than he is. Information their grandfather must have given him, or that their great-grandfather gave their grandfather.
So many things Madara will need to go over later, but also closure. His father has removed Butsuma, so Madara will never have to send anyone to fight against him, and what he makes of the clan –and the never-ending war with the Senju– is now in his own hands.
His and Hashirama's hands.
His father cautions him to make Kita his priority; there are so many ways an Uchiha can break and his betrothed is sliding dangerously close to that line. It is why Izuna is included in the genjutsu; he will have to take on Outguard duties while Madara ensures that the Uchiha will still have a seal master, a coat-maker and a Homeguard Head in the spring.
Madara is personally more concerned about not having a betrothed. Kita is precious for herself, not just for what she brings to the clan. She is a person in her own right.
A person he loves as much as he loves Izuna.
His father dies. Madara leaves the body with his brother and the medics to be prepared for the funeral and walks home. He's walking up the path to the clan hall when he realises he's still covered in his father's blood and then Kita is jumping off the engawa and crossing the garden in bare feet to meet him.
"Madara?"
"Kita." What does he say? "Otōsama's dead." She looks completely at a loss. What else does he say? "Senju Butsuma is dead too; we have a ceasefire."
Kita bursts into tears and throws herself at him. Covered in tacky blood, his arms full of his wailing betrothed –is this the first time she's cried since her mother died? He's been away far too long– Madara doesn't know what to do. So he sits down on the garden bench and holds her tight, ignoring the rusty scarlet of his father's lifeblood smeared everywhere. There really isn't anything else to do.
Her emotions are spilling from her like pus from an infected wound, but surely this is better than the emptiness of the past few months. Surely this is healthier. She's finally grieving, finally recognising what she has lost.
Madara realises abruptly as her tears mingle with his father's blood that his father is dead. Dead, and Madara is now Outguard Head. Now responsible for the supply and protection of the clan, just as Kita is responsible for the industry and welfare of the clan.
He rests his face against the top of his beloved's head and lets his tears join hers.
Everything hurts.
Everything.
It's too much.
Mama–
Her heart–
She just murdered that Senju in the nastiest way she could think of and she can still see his face when he realised what she was going to do–
Mama–
Her eyes are so sore and she can't stop crying–
Tajima's funeral goes. The ceasefire stretches. Kita starts picking up the pieces of her life. She weaves the silk she has spun. She invites friends over so they can all do their mending jobs and writing together, rather than separately. She teaches Naka a new embroidery stitch and hugs her little sister tightly. She hugs Benten and praises her improving dexterity and chakra skills. She writes to her non-clan friends, now that sending personal letters directly won't risk the messenger's life or be so delayed through intermediaries that they take three months to arrive.
She dotes on her two adopted infant daughters and teaches Madara how to handle babies. He's at home every day now and determined to help her any way he can; she suspects having things to do is helping him deal with his own grief, so she teaches him to change nappies and the kinds of things that soothe crying babies who aren't hungry or uncomfortable.
It hurts in a good way, seeing him bounce gently on his toes and croon a song for one of the twins as he projects care at them. To have help raising them and see him light up when they greet him with a smile.
"Madara?" She says one snowy February afternoon as they're bundled up on the engawa with the babies, watching Izuna and Hikaku be utterly crushed in a snowball fight by Hijiri, Hidaka, Benten, Midori and Naka all working together.
"Yes, Kita?"
"I love you."
The expression on his face says she's just given him the best gift of his entire life.
It is spring and they're not at war. It feels a little unreal; this hasn't happened since Madara was seventeen, five long years ago. The clan is a shadow of what it was then, but he is determined to help them get there again. Well, determined to try; the clan doesn't have a trading branch anymore, so that's one more responsibility for the Outguard to take up.
Madara delegates that section of duties to his cousin Obihiro, who along with his wife and toddler son are some of the few of his mother's relatives still living. In the past two years of war over one hundred Uchiha have died, most of them not even in the Outguard.
It's why the Homeguard now trains everybody, regardless of inclination or profession. Woman and children, elderly or crippled, everybody has to know how to fight to Homeguard standards rather than just self-defence standards.
It hurts Madara's heart to see little Benten determinedly wielding her miniature naginata. She only turned eight last autumn, but she's been learning to fight for eighteen months now. He wanted better for his family –had dreamed of peace and a time when children didn't have to learn to fight– but he struggles to see it these days. He's not sure where his hope went. Somewhere far, far away from all his dead cousins who were never trained for the battlefield but died in his arms there anyway.
As spring gradually fades into summer and missions continue to be startlingly uninterrupted by Senju, the problems at home begin. Madara recognises that as Outguard Head they're not technically his problems, but they reach him in other ways; through angry warriors and irritable elders and arguments over where they're going to sell what.
The entrenched fatigue from the last two years is finally fading and absolutely everybody in the clan has lost at least one member of their immediate family, be it a parent or a sibling or a child. And they all want vengeance on the Senju.
Madara does his best, but everybody just plain refuses to recognise that if they attack the Senju now, it will be like last year all over again. Just worse, because this time they will have started it and the Senju will feel justified.
Madara can't explain how Hashirama outclasses him or how Tobirama will now have free rein to change the Senju's battlefield deployments as he pleases. He tries, but nobody gets it. They're all too full of fury and guilt and they want to blame the Senju, because that's so much less painful than blaming themselves.
Madara has no such illusions. He knows he is just as much to blame for this endless war dragging on as any Senju. He can't beat Hashirama and unless he can, he's stuck at the idiot's mercy. It's far from ideal and he's doing everything he can, but he's not a god.
He informs everybody very firmly –and occasionally at the top of his voice– that the clan cannot afford a war right now. They need more steel, they need more trained warriors, they need more armour and more food. The clan needs to grow more, to earn more, to put everybody they have left to work in crafts so as to support the Outguard, because war is expensive and when they're constantly fighting the Senju they can't take as many missions or do as much trade.
The clan grudgingly subsides, but Madara knows already that this is going to come up again next spring. He needs to make the most of this year's grace.
Which means he has to make renew diplomatic contact with all the clans his father has been too busy to do more than write to since they were in the capital, two years and an age ago. Kita's apprentices are all capable of writing her fireproofing and fire-quenching seals now; maybe he can market those to their allies?
Babies grow fast; Toshi and Azami now crawl everywhere at high speed –she has tweaked the leash seal she first used on Naka so they can't fall off the edge of the engawa– and like to babble along when sung to. They're also showing dramatically different temperaments: Toshi will sit and listen avidly when Kita is playing koto, even for half an hour straight, but Azami bounces and squeals and flails to the music for a bit before losing interest and trying to get Kita's attention.
Izuna enjoys being 'the fun uncle' and playing with Azami, who revels in the attention, while Toshi is happy to sit in Madara's lap and snuggle.
Both girls are already calling her 'kaka' and Madara 'toto,' which makes him flail, and Izuna teases that they really need to get married before people start talking.
Kita's not going to be twenty until the year's end and her coming-of-age will be the following January; she's hoping they can marry as soon after that as possible. What with the war and the babies she and Madara haven't really had either the time or the inclination to become more intimate with each-other, but it is now something she knows she wants. The girls are sleeping through the night too, so they do have the time and the space…
She knows he wants it too; it's in how he looks at her. She loves him for being so patient with her.
Now it's really settling in that the Senju aren't going to ambush them at any moment, people are starting to bring their coats around to Kita for repairs. Well, bringing their coats around to Naka; most of the clan is a bit leery of walking up to the clan hall to ask the Outguard Head's wife-in-all-but-name to fix their stained, smelly coats. Kita gets around this by paying for a workshop to be built just beyond the hall's garden –nominally for her sealing experiments so the children can't get into them by accident– and brings in both Naka and Midori to do the bulk of the face-to-face negotiating work. They are right that she doesn't really have time for maintaining more than the patchwork coats that the main families of the clan's lineages wear, but everybody in the clan still deserves to have their coat in the best possible condition and her other two adult cousins who make regular printed coats shouldn't be made to suffer under the abruptly overwhelming workload.
Midori is very good at sewing the coat seals now despite not enjoying it much and Naka has lots of practice at unpicking, laundering, mending, re-dyeing and restitching; it settles both of them to have something to do that they both know is indispensable, and to do it somewhere away from the still-painful memories of Mama. Kita sits with them every day, occasionally letting Naka take over replacing a pattern section or redoing the decorative embroidery of a section of patchwork lining under her eye, but mostly she does that part herself.
People also bring in the coats of the dead to be resized for younger siblings or children; most of her clansmen want to cling to the memories of the lost rather than wear something new, so there is a lot of soaking, patching and relining and careful folding down to size as well.
Madara entrusts her with his father's coat to soak –she has seals that let her get all the blood out of fabric now, Yori loves them– and repair; she removes the coat lining from the canvas core entirely, replacing the torn patchwork sections front and back and stitching it onto a new core heavy with seals. She never got the opportunity to put more than the bare minimum of seals in Tajima-sama's coat, but she knows Madara intends to keep this as a spare and she wants him to be well-protected.
A new core means she can let the whole coat out slightly; Madara is a little wider through the shoulders than his father was and more solidly built. It also lets her feel that it's a new coat with a salvaged patchwork lining, rather than Madara wearing the coat his father died in. That's the wording she uses with the rest of the clan too; 'I salvaged the lining and put it in a new coat' is much more comforting and positive than 'I repaired the coat so somebody else can wear it.'
Of course, not everybody has old coats to reuse; there are a lot of angry, hurting teenagers with newly-awakened sharingan wanting to join the Outguard this year and most of them need coats. Madara refuses to lower the entry age –in fact he raises it to sixteen– but all the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds still get Outguard training and are attached to the Homeguard for local patrols, running messages to nearby villages and towns and doing trade pickups with civilian merchants. A few of the smarter teenagers sweet-talk Yori into teaching them basic pharmacy and healing; the healing teams might not be on the front lines in a fight, but the clan needs every one of them regardless of age and they are invariably stationed not far from the battlefield. The fighting does reach them occasionally, which is why Yori's medical apprentices are also trained as long-range weapons specialists and trap masters.
There'd be more genjutsu specialists, but no Senju will ever look an Uchiha in the eye on the battlefield. They're trained to avoid it. How they manage that is beyond her, but they still do it.
All those teenagers need armour too, which the clan is at least flush enough in funds and time to provide rather than leave them to acquire their own. Or not, as the case may be. Basic adjustable leather armour with a few metal plates, so they won't have to buy new sets as they grow, but it's better than nothing. A lot better.
As summer heats up Madara sends a small team north to buy iron sand in bulk again; their stores are running low and armouring so many means they will need more steel to keep everybody supplied. He also increases the quarterly local order slightly; not by much, but enough that they don't need to stop making knives in order to keep everybody in shuriken.
Papa visits; apparently Jōnen is really determined to be a wire-smith now and is working very hard despite his physical difficulties. Tekari is only recently four and too young to linger in the forge for long, but he's taken a shine to one of Papa's cousins who makes shuriken –both large and regular sized– and Papa is considering an apprenticeship there. Seeing as Papa already has cousin Yae helping him as a fellow master and he's not the clan's only wire-smith, Kita thinks that's a smart idea. Aunt Nikko isn't married and the niece she's trained to eventually succeed her recently got pregnant, so Tekari will be able to learn and master shuriken-making while Naeba is focused on raising her own children.
Kinu is still a toddler, so what craft she will pick is very much up in the air. Tateshina is sixteen and Grandma says she's almost ready for her own mastery project, which is very exciting since the clan will have another true master weaver and that will let them do more with their silk. Some members of the widows' cooperative have recently specialised in dyeing and others are experimenting with shibori, so the Uchiha may soon be able to produce their own figured kasuri kimono. It's an exciting thought.
She'd like this peace to last, but the grumblings and gossip within the clan make it clear that no matter how much Madara wants peace, the wider Uchiha aren't going to cooperate. They want vengeance for the loss of all those they were never prepared to lose –nobody goes into the Outguard assuming they'll live to retire, except possibly with a crippling injury, and everybody knows it– and sooner or later somebody is going to make a move, regardless of Madara's orders to let the Senju be the ones to re-open hostilities.
It hurts, but Kita suspects it will take the instigation of a fresh round of bitter losses to truly ram home the utter wastefulness of warfare. She is not looking forward to it.
July is hard for Kita, much as October is probably going to be hard for him; Madara knows already that he's going to struggle. Obon helps a bit –she's less melancholy afterwards– and then the weather begins to be a bit less suffocatingly hot, which makes it easier to sleep at night.
Well, makes it easier for the children to sleep at night; Madara is not getting as much sleep as he might and enjoying every second of it, because as August fades Kita decides that she wants to do is be physically intimate with him. Wants him to look at her with his sharingan while being physically intimate with her even, which makes it intensely difficult for him to even string a coherent thought together, never mind participate.
Well, the first few times anyway. He's gradually building up a tolerance there, although he is well aware that Kita really enjoys the fact that she can reduce him to red-faced incoherence by gracefully untying her sash and placing his hands on her skin.
Madara knows he's body shy. He is utterly flustered –and secretly delighted– that Kita isn't at all. She's happy for him to look at her body, for him to touch her body while looking at it and to touch him in return. She's also not at all shy about letting him know how much she likes his body, which is flustering in a completely different way. She's taken to writing slyly suggestive haiku and leaving them on his desk for him to find, seeded in his paperwork; Izuna thinks it's hilarious how red he goes and refuses to let him burn them. His dreadful little brother even commissions a lacquer box to keep them all in.
Being desired like this is utterly disorientating; if it was just about Kita being interested in him physically that would be different –he's had all kinds of people swooning over his looks on missions so he's got used to ignoring them– but her attraction isn't inherently physical; she likes his body because it's his body, rather than the other way around. She is attracted to him as a person, to everything that makes him unique and different to everybody else, which his body is a single facet of.
He knows this because she's whispered it as he runs his hands across her bare skin and learns how she likes to be touched, and he knows it's the truth because she can't hide anything from his sharingan and she knows that too. That open truthfulness feeds the fire under his skin just as much as the way her voice hitches saying his name when he finds that sweet spot in the damp flesh between her thighs.
She is completely beautiful and he wants her so desperately he can barely breathe past that terrifying hunger. It's so vast it paralyses him, forcing him to creep forwards at a snail's pace, learning to be comfortable with this new aspect of their relationship and the changes it brings with it one tiny step at a time.
Kita's more than happy to keep the pace slow and he loves her all the more for it; if she pushed him he might explode and he's afraid of hurting her. He knows it would be all too easy to hurt her and he refuses to do that; she's too precious to risk.
October is hard. He is glad for Kita at his side, supporting both him and Izuna as much as she can. October also brings up some things he'd not realised before but that tell him a lot about his father's leadership style. Things that really aren't all that good.
"Kita, are you going to resume your duties as Homeguard Head again now the girls are older?"
Kita glances up from her embroidery frame; it's a patchwork coat for Taka's oldest nephew Oshiki, who has just joined the Outguard and is her heir now she's made it clear she's never going to marry. His father Omoto has been dead well over a year now, one of the early casualties of the Senju's tactic of picking off merchants. "Madara, I'm not the Homeguard Head."
Madara stills, sensing Izuna's chakra twitch as he twists around to face them both. "Otōsama said you were."
Kita looks him firmly in the eye. "Madara, Uchiha clan tradition states that the head of the Homeguard is a senior member of the Amaterasu lineage, which I most certainly am not. I am the clan's seal master, which is a full time position all by itself and requires me to not favour any branch of the clan over any of the others. Never mind that being your wife is also a full-time job; I do not have the time to be Homeguard Head as well. Ohabari-oba is Homeguard Head; if Izuna is interested in the position he could train as her successor, but if not I expect Minakata will take on the role."
"So why did Otōsama say you were?"
His betrothed shifts slightly on the tatami and Madara abruptly knows he won't like the answer. "Upon marrying Hitomi-sama, Tajima-sama insisted that your great-uncle Mitama-san abdicate in her favour. He did so, but Hitomi-sama was not inclined to stand in the way of what your father wanted, even when that did not benefit the clan as a whole. So Mitama-san trained Niniji-sama and Ohabari-oba in secret, so that between them they could provide what Hitomi-sama was neglecting. When Hitomi-sama died, Tajima-sama decided there was no need to appoint a replacement Homeguard Head. When Mitama-san protested, your father accused him of treason and executed him, so Niniji-sama secretly took on those duties in his place. Tajima-sama then found out what Niniji-sama was doing."
Madara knows what his father had done to their uncle, his own brother. He'd been there when Father accused Niniji-oji of treason and executed him. It had been over this? Father had executed great-uncle Mitama too, who'd been the one to take him along to watch great-uncle Moreya fly his hawks? It hadn't been an accident like Ohabari-oba had told him?
"I suspect Tajima-sama knew that Ohabari-oba was still doing some of it, but she was far less of a threat to his authority than Niniji-sama," Kita continues quietly, "hence his ordering her to train me as befits a Homeguard Head when he betrothed me to you. However as I made it clear to oba-san at the time that I did not want to be Homeguard Head, she agreed to teach me about the Homeguard and 'assist' me in the associated duties, with the implication that I would not at any point usurp her authority."
"So Oba-san is the Homeguard Head and you were only ever covering for her," Izuna says flatly.
"Well, I was doing most of the work when Yasakatone and Shironushi were born so close together, as she didn't have the time, but you both know how rushed off my feet I was then."
Well yes; she had more to do than she could keep up with. Which is entirely the point of Kita not wanting to be Homeguard Head.
"I think Izuna-san could be an excellent Homeguard Head if he chose to be," Kita continues judiciously, snipping off a thread, "as he has a very nuanced understanding of politics and can finesse people very well. However I do not know that he wants to be, or whether you would trust him to share leadership of the clan with you, Madara."
Implying that his father certainly hadn't trusted his siblings to do so. That's terribly sad, really. "I trust Izuna," Madara says firmly. "But it's his choice."
Izuna frowns. "I'll consider it, Niisan. It could be interesting; Hikaku's basically your second in Outguard matters anyway so I don't really fit anywhere right now." He turns towards Kita. "Would oba-san mind my sitting in for a bit, just to see how things work, before making a decision?"
"I think you should let me first assure her that you both know and it's fine, then Madara visit her to also assure her that it's fine and suggest Izuna learn more about the role with an eye to possibly succeeding her," Kita says firmly. "Then make it public that this is what you're doing; make it sound like you're giving Ohabari-oba the Headship because I've got too much else to do, rather than that we've been going behind your back and you're just making it official."
Madara nods. That's suitably politic and lets him avoid going into painful family history, while also clarifying who is responsible for what so nothing falls through the cracks.
He's still rather sickened by the implications though. His father killed his own little brother for trying to care for the clan? Madara could never, ever do that. Izuna would never try to usurp his authority as Outguard Head and though he does argue with Madara sometimes, it's because he too wants the best for the clan and he thinks things would be better done differently. But that's not a threat to his authority, that's Izuna trying to help! Father killed their uncle for trying to help?!
He's grateful for Toshi-chan climbing into his lap; it gives him an excuse to hug her and right now he needs that hug.
Kita is incredibly grateful to no longer have the whole 'Homeguard Head' business hanging over her. She's not entirely sure Izuna will actually take on the role –he does enjoy fighting on the front lines and has strong opinions about opposing the Senju whenever possible– but even just having him sit in on some of what Ohabari-oba is doing seems to be helping the spats and internal strife simmer down a little.
With the benefit of hindsight, she can see that a good part of the problem was that many of the elders and lineage heads felt insulted that Tajima-sama had given a little girl from a minor branch of a less influential lineage authority over all of them, which had fed their animosity when she changed things in ways that did not immediately and personally benefit them. Now that Ohabari-oba is officially in charge and Izuna is understudying, everybody feels more seen and acknowledged because they are both from the main Amaterasu lineage and Izuna is Madara's brother.
Hopefully between them they can encourage a little more cohesiveness within the clan, because things there really are at an incredibly low ebb right now.
"Is there always this much petty bickering?" Izuna demands about a week after Madara's announcement, dropping down on the engawa facing her as she spins her peace silk.
"Yes," Kita assures him. "In fact there's probably less than usual; everybody seems very pleased having the Homeguard back under the official aegis of the Amaterasu lineage."
"And Otōsama allowed it?!"
"He encouraged it," Kita corrects mildly. "With everybody sniping at one-another and bickering amongst themselves, they were never cohesive enough to present their own ideas to oppose his decisions or thwart him when he made unilateral decisions on Homeguard matters."
"But, but that's not good for the clan!"
Kita eyes him. "You should have noticed by now that your father cared mainly about his own vision of the clan, which was fully under his authority, than about most of the actual people who make up the clan."
Izuna glares at her. "I'm going to spar with Madara," he announces before stomping off. Oh, so maybe he hadn't noticed before now; she should apologise. Of course, being Tajima-sama's son and generally on the privileged end of his father's decision-making process, it follows that he's not seen as much of the flipside.
Well, whether or not Izuna does eventually take up command of the Homeguard, it will be good for him to have his horizons widened. As she goes back to her spinning, Kita wonders idly whether being exposed to family members in this context will have an effect on his personal philosophy on the cyclical nature of reality. After all, if reality truly is cyclical, then all these arguments are also inevitable and will continue coming around again, just like the war with the Senju appears to.
Does Izuna even realise that attempting to resolve the arguments and promote harmony within the clan goes against his stated personal beliefs?
Probably not.
Kita's birthday brings with it a sweet sense of anticipation; she's twenty now, old enough to marry and she really wants to marry Madara. Of course there's her coming-of-age in January to do first –where she will get to wear the Toyotama lineage's colourful furisode for the first and probably last time– but with the ceasefire still ongoing, wedding preparations are already afoot. The date has been tentatively set for Risshun, the first day of spring on February the fourth, and the entire clan seems to be looking forward to it. Tateshina is already weaving her wedding kimono.
Weddings for Clan Heads are once-a-generation occurrences and an opportunity for everybody to eat excellent food at the clan's expense. Kita would be more surprised if people weren't looking forward to it.
Her biggest birthday present is a full set of utensils for tea ceremony, a mix of new items commissioned by Madara, family heirlooms bequeathed to her by Grandma –Kita hadn't even known Grandma had a chaki, never mind an antique fukusa– and a tea bowl presented by the new Uchiha potters with a beautiful blue-black oil-spot pattern in the glaze. Both the civilian specialists now have Uchiha wives, so are part of the clan in truth. It's a rush to have her own set rather than having to use the Outguard Head's tea utensils, and Madara has ensured all the lacquered boxes have water dragons on as well as the traditional uchiwa and flames, to reference her lineage. Kita loves them.
She also loves her little sisters for making a lavish breakfast then getting out all the pattern scrolls for the Toyotama lineage and trying to subtly get her to pick one. Naka is much better at patchwork now and Midori's embroidery is also solid, if slow, so between them they will be able to make a good coat with minimum input on her part. Kita pretends she doesn't know what they're doing and shows them her favourite Toyotama design, one she contributed to the collection herself. It's not actually the most complicated one, but it is fairly challenging; if they manage it she will take the time to consider their individual skills, ensure Naka is suitably well-rounded and determine whether they have learned all she can teach.
If so, at fourteen Naka is old enough to take independent commissions. Midori is barely twelve, but her embroidery is good enough now that she could make a living off decorating obi and embellishing kimono fabric produced by the Tateshina, even without her sealing skills, which are something that will bring in money to the clan the way her preferred hobbies do not.
Kita is so very proud of all her little sisters. Little Kinu-chan proudly toddled over to the clan hall with a basket of fresh quail's eggs for omelettes and to soft-boil for bento as her first errand and Kita almost cried in joy. She's not seen much of the three-year-old, what with everything going on over the past year or so, and Kinu is completely adorable, although Kita's not quite sure where those curls have come from. Kita has Grandma's pin-straight hair and most of her other sisters' locks are in varying degrees of Uchiha unruly, Toshi and Azami included, but real curls? That's actually quite unusual.
Pretty though.
Madara's birthday comes and goes, as does the New Year, and then suddenly Kita is being mobbed by Grandma leading a conglomerate of Toyotama kinswomen –she hadn't realised all these people were close relatives– who chivvy her through the clan bathhouse –one of the clan bathhouses, the Uchiha's increased affluence has led to a second shared one being built and various private ones– do her hair in a complex and elaborate style, paint her face and dress her in a stunningly gorgeous pale blue furisode embroidered with cranes, plum blossom, foamy waves and water dragons along with pines, bamboo and all the other symbolic allusions to long life and good fortune. The obi picks up the wave pattern, larger and more geometric with curling pairs of koi in the centre of each wave, picking up all the colours of the furisode's embroidery in the weave, and Kita feels very, very beautiful even before the fur collar is draped around her shoulders.
She has scented pouches tucked into the fold of her obi, her nails have been carefully manicured and she barely recognises the woman in the mirror as Grandma dabs her eyes with a handkerchief and Granny Fuji beams toothlessly at her, sharingan shining. Then Kita is bustled off to the clan's shrine to be blessed and join everybody else who is coming of age this year –a selection of men and women in their late teens and a handful of other twenty-year-olds– so the Homeguard and Outguard Heads can congratulate them on reaching adulthood and formally add their names to the clan register.
Children's names are only in the shrine register, so that if they die young they can become family spirits. An adult clan member with their name in the register can marry without needing their parents' consent, start a business, move into vacant housing and has the right to personally address the Elders and Heads over difficulties which require some kind of judgement or resolution.
Madara stares at her speechlessly for several seconds when she reaches the front of the line, making Ohabari-oba roll her eyes fondly and elbow him before picking up the brush to add Kita's name to the records. Her betrothed instantly goes scarlet, manages to stutter out the required words of welcome and acknowledgement as all the adults in the audience chuckle knowingly at how smitten he is. He then goes almost purple when Kita's first act as an official adult is to go up on tiptoe to kiss him lightly on the lips right there in front of the entire clan.
There's a roar of applause and wolf-whistling from the crowd despite her spontaneous violation of proper protocol; everybody in the Uchiha clan appreciates a good love story.
Kita then heads off to stand with Papa and her smartly-dressed siblings so Madara can recover and continue his duties without distraction until everybody has been personally recognised, at which point there is a buffet lunch, paid for jointly by the close relatives of the participants, that the entire clan is free to partake from.
Izuna locates her instantly, smoothly extricates her from the clutches of her family and tows her over to Madara. "Here, you keep an eye on him while I fetch food."
"I do not need managing, Izuna!" Madara protests, but it's half-hearted because he's staring at her and his eyes have gone all soft. Kita realises that they're getting married in less than a month and feels her face go pink under the makeup; eight years of friendship that have eased slowly into courtship and it's almost over. Soon they'll be married with everything that entails and embarking on a new stage of life together.
He can read her easily; the softness gains a spark of heat as he places her hand on his arm and bends down so their faces are closer together. "You look magnificent," he says roughly, eyes briefly lighting up scarlet as he takes in every detail of her outfit and appearance. This close, Kita can see a smear of her red lip paint across his mouth.
"Thank you," she says shyly, free hand fiddling with her fan.
"Just so you know, nobody is ever going to let you forget that you did that," he adds teasingly, eyes fading back to black.
"Like they're never going to let you forget that you were struck speechless?" Kita teases back, leaning her head against his shoulder.
Madara grumbles under his breath, chakra as hot as the air from a kiln coiling lightly around her waist and carrying a faintly smug edge. "They're just jealous you're marrying me."
Kita can't help a giggle escaping. The thing is, quite a few people probably are, if only because she's the clan's primary seal specialist and the clan's patchwork coat specialist on top of that. The Uchiha coats are a prestige item, even if everybody has one, and while Kita is actually one of four or five individuals in the Toyotama lineage making regular print coats, she's the only person currently permitted to make and maintain the silk patchwork coats. Naka will be there soon, but she isn't yet.
There's also the fact that tossing that Senju infiltrator into the pigpen and dispassionately watching him be ripped apart won her a scattering of approving older admirers in both the Homeguard and Outguard, but Kita tries not to think about that; not her finest moment. Rather the opposite.
"Has Izuna decided yet whether or not he's moving out when we marry?" Kita asks instead.
"He says he's staying until we need his room to stash additional children in," Madara replies dryly. After Tajima-sama died, Madara cleared out his father's bedroom so Midori, Naka and Benten could sleep there rather than in the tiny box room; Azami and Toshi are in the box room now. Well, they are put to bed in the box room; they frequently wake up in the middle of the night and toddle through the fusuma to get into bed with her and Madara before going back to sleep.
Madara's long since moved all his things into her room; Izuna has a bedroom entirely to himself these days.
"So staying then." Tajima-sama's old room is large enough to fit another two full-sized futons and Naka probably isn't going to stay in the clan hall after mastering her craft; all Mama's equipment and materials are back in the family house, along with the silkworms and the mulberry trees. As it is, Naka goes home regularly to help Tateshina look after the silkworms and most of the printing is done in the workshop next to the house rather than in Kita's seal workshop. It's less messy that way, seeing as Papa's house is on the edge of craft and farming district facing the river rather than at the heart of the residential sector.
Kita suspects Naka will inherit that house rather than moving in with her husband; it's not like the mulberry trees can be moved and Jōnen would probably be more comfortable in a house closer to Papa's workshop, since his scars mean he can't comfortably walk very far. Seeing as that house was Grandpa and Grandma's house that Papa moved into when he married Mama, it wouldn't be the first time things worked out that way.
Uchiha inheritance has always been more about who has the appropriate skills and is going to make proper use of the resources than who is the oldest son.
Madara gets one week of deliriously, maddeningly glorious and fulfilling marital bliss before everything careens downhill again. One week. He is so, so angry with Uchiha Komaki for that.
"You broke the ceasefire."
Komaki is trying to look defiant but mostly he looks terrified. Madara knows he's not regulating his killing intent very well, but right now he does not give a single solitary shit.
"There were Senju on the road!"
"You were on a trading mission," Madara growls, the world red-edged through his sharingan. "Did they attack you?"
"Yes!" It's not true, Madara can see it.
Madara feels his face do something ugly; Komaki quails. "Liar."
"So I attacked first! They would have attacked us anyway! I recognised the one in charge, he murdered my brother!"
"You broke the ceasefire," Madara snarls, "which means that all the deaths to come are on your head. Every funeral, every crippling injury, all of it. Uchiha will die because you couldn't be bothered to obey me."
Those Outguard members present are all very visibly remembering how his father would have reacted to this kind of defiance; Hakodate and the other members of the Squad responsible are clearly expecting to be summarily decapitated as Komaki sinks his knees, grey and struggling to breathe.
"Executing you would be a kindness," Madara grits out, forcibly restraining his fury so Komaki's heart doesn't give out entirely, "so I'm not going to. You get to see our kinsmen die, to hear our kinswomen grieving and watch the orphans beg for their parents to come home and know that you brought further loss on them all, because you were too selfish to recognise that everybody has lost family. Everybody!"
"My brother–"
"I lost three younger brothers to the Senju!" Madara bellows. "Three! And I would still make peace with them if I could, while I still have a brother and clansmen left to lose! Yet thanks to you we will have war and death and still more losses! May you choke on war!" He's going to take this Squad with him every time he has to face off against Hashirama, until every last one of them hates the never-ending parade of death and mutilation as much as he does or they die trying to get away from it.
He turns his back on them and stomps off while he still has the self-control not to strangle Komaki where he stands. So much for his dreams of peace; he will have to rework the entire year's mission strategy to account for Senju assaults and try to find a way to make the conflict less one-sided and defensive.
First though he's going to drag Izuna out for a spar, so as to work off some of his temper. Kita shouldn't have to put up with him when he's like this and he doesn't want to scare the girls.
Two years. She's been married two years and the war has not stopped. She had been planning on unpicking the immune-boosting seals from her clothes about a month into her marriage, but then some Outguard warrior put his own grief ahead of the wellbeing of the clan and Kita decided against it. This is no time to bring a child into the world and she already has two toddlers to care for.
Then again, she knows her seals aren't an entirely effective contraceptive and neither are the herbal tisanes she drinks daily; Yori was using all of those and she's still pregnant. She unpicked the seals from her clothes once she realised she was pregnant, so as not to miscarry –it can be very dangerous and there's no need to make things worse for herself– and Hikaku is already beside himself with worry for his wife.
Hikaku is now the most experienced member of the Outguard after Madara. Tsuyoshi is dead, as is Taka –she died in Oshiki's arms, which activated his Mangekyō– and so are Ikazuchi and Homusubi. In fact the entire Kōjin lineage is dead now except for Homusubi's son Kagutsuchi, who is all of eight and living with a maternal aunt who has six other vaguely-related orphans to care for.
Kita's immune-boosting and infection-killing seals have led to more infants surviving their first few years of life over the past decade, but the combination of that with the ongoing war eating away at the adult members of the clan is that a good half of the Uchiha still living are younger than fourteen. Half. It's not doing anybody's nerves any good, especially now there aren't enough Homeguard members left to consistently guard the borders –a lot of the younger Homeguard have transferred to the Outguard to boost numbers– in case of a major incursion.
The only positive thing to be said is that the clan is not short of food or money. There is a good market for Uchiha charcoal, ink, stoneware and silk, they still have enough iron sand stored up to keep everybody armed –well for the next year or so at least– the weather has been good enough that crops have grown well and there's meat and fish for everybody to eat. The problem is that two-thirds of the clan's adults are either on the battlefield or running missions and the remaining third –a scant handful of elders and disabled and a harried, overworked cadre of women and craftspeople– are tending the fields, feeding the livestock, teaching the children and doing all the necessary work that the keeps the clan running, aided by the teenagers not yet old enough to join the Outguard and the children they are caring for. Even Papa is going on trade missions now, just so as to free up a warrior who would better serve the clan elsewhere.
Well Papa was going on trade missions until he didn't come back from one. Jōnen is apprenticed to cousin Yae now and Aunt Nikko is fostering Tekari, since he's her apprentice anyway. Naka is sixteen and a coat-maker in her own right, so she has been allowed to keep the house; Midori is sticking to embroidery and seals in between helping with the farming and livestock, but her work is no less desperately needed. They both live with Grandma and five-year-old Kinu, who has surprisingly strong chakra reserves and is already helping Yae to keep up charcoal production, so may well go into wire-smithing once she's older. Tateshina is recently married and contributing significantly to the Uchiha through her weaving; her husband is Takao, one of exactly six main-line Toyotama still living, who is in the Outguard and may leave Kita's sister a widow at any time. Kita hopes it won't happen, but there are no guarantees.
Kita may also be widowed at any time; Madara's eyesight is steadily deteriorating with how much he's using his Mangekyō on the battlefield. He has to keep his sharingan constantly active just to see the battlefield these days and Kita knows it's wearing on him. It's wearing on Izuna too, but her brother-in-law is trying not to mention it because he knows that Madara will see that as his fault as well.
There is nothing Kita can do except work on her seals, care for the children, make sure her husband and his brother have a warm, comforting home to come back to and good food to eat, write letters to the clan's allies on her husband's behalf and pray desperately for a miracle. She has all kinds of seals now that she knows could reshape the battlefield completely, but for that to work the entire Outguard would have to be on board with the plan and she can't make them do that. Madara would have to order them do that and even so, there's no guarantee they'd do it.
Well, they probably would do it. After the remnants of the squad who kicked all this off committed suicide in the autumn of last year the entire Outguard is very particular about doing precisely what their Head expects of them, but there's a difference between obeying in familiar situations and obeying when you're ordered to do something new and deeply strange.
Kita is rapidly getting to the point of being willing to risk it though. Maybe she can talk to her husband about it next time he's at home? She's got everything ready and her two surviving apprentices –one missing his left leg below the knee, the other lacking hands entirely and painting with the brush clenched between her teeth– are both supportive and cautiously hopeful.
She should tell Madara. At this point the entire clan recognises that they're losing and no matter how many have died, the vast majority of those who are left just want to survive. Avenging the dead be damned.
It's yet another day and yet another battlefield being churned into crimson mud. Madara is fighting Hashirama, Izuna is fighting Tobirama and Hikaku is facing off against a vaguely familiar Senju with a topknot and blue armour –is her name Baika? Tōka? Something floral anyway– and so far this morning the injured are mainly managing to get themselves off the field, but he can already see a body in an Uchiha coat so that's at least one funeral he'll be attending later.
Madara is so, so tired of funerals. He attends every single one of them –it's his duty as Outguard Head to honour his men and women's sacrifices– and they tear at his heart. He's Head of a clan of children and cripples, of people who know how to fight because they know there is nobody to protect them and it is so very far from his childhood dream it breaks his heart.
Every day.
Then Tobirama moves impossibly quickly, right across the battlefield faster even than the sharingan can follow, Izuna collapsing in a heap behind him with blood staining his coat darker and–
"Izuna!"
No no no no no!
He cannot lose Izuna! Not his little brother!
The retreat is disorganised and Madara has to guard the rear to make sure the Senju do not follow, but Hashirama seems content to let them run and those of his men most capable with Yori's yin chakra technique are carrying Izuna back to the clan compound as quickly as they can. Madara is praying that Yori can do something, but he's seen so many clansmen die by inches of wounds in the area Izuna is bleeding from and he's terrified.
Not Izuna. Not Izuna! Please!