Trigger Warning: For all of the series' bright, happy, moments, it can be extremely dark. See, Sakumo Hatake. And the story of the Ame Orphans is up there. Just know what you're in for, yeah?
Jiro sighed deeply as he opened his eyes, moving his hand away from the child's stomach. Barely a child, even. He would have thought the baby on the table in front of him to be half a year old, if that, if her parents hadn't told him before that her first birthday was in two days. He knew she was sick even before he used chakra on her, her wet, rattling coughs reaching him from across the room. He lifted his gaze, past the hopeful face of her mother, to the rain streaming down the window above her. If the weather was better than maybe…
He ran a hand through his hair with another sigh, and her face crumpled. He didn't need to use chakra to know that the baby had a weak immune system. One of the weakest he'd come across in fact. It was something of a miracle that she had lived this long in a village of constant rain. The baby was barely clothed—dressing her in layers gave her a fever, but anything less made her shiver from the cold—and her skin was almost yellow. He lowered his eyes back to her, watching her mouth open and close as she gasped desperately for air, her eyes rolled up. Her mother started crying. Jiro supposed that they called for him because they expected him, a medic-nin, to know some secret technique, or some chakra based cure-all to fix her. He stood up. It was this part that he hated most of all. He didn't like telling parents that there was no hope for their children, but more often than not, that was the reality he was faced with.
"I'm sorry," he said.
He watched her pick up the dying infant but averted his eyes as she squeezed her to her chest and brushed wet strands of black hair out of her face. Jiro closed his eyes, but even as he went over it again, he couldn't think of a single way to help her. A small chakra transfusion between her and a family member could give her immune system a much-needed boost, but he knew her body would either outright reject the foreign chakra or would start attacking itself to try and get rid of it.
"There's nothing I can do."
Her crying turned to heaving sobs. Jiro looked at the window again and willed it to stop raining for a few minutes, even a few seconds, just long enough for him to think that the baby had even the smallest of chances to survive. The rain pattered on. He turned away. He thought of what she looked like when she first sought him out, her red hair a bright stroke of color in this dreary place they called a village. Her eyes had gone to his headband first, licking her lips as if she was starving and it was the only thing that could sate her. She'd offered him money, but it was remembering why he'd turned to medical ninjutsu in the first place that made him follow her.
Once upon a time, Jiro thought he could make a difference. He'd wanted to save people. He still did in a way, but his rose-tinted glasses had been broken with the death of his teammate back when he still wanted to serve the village, and then utterly shattered as more and more of the people he tried to save died at his feet.
He thought of telling her to prepare a grave, because he didn't think the infant would live through the night, but that was just cruel. He cleared his throat. "If you need me again…" he trailed off. She wasn't listening to him anyway, murmuring quietly to the infant as tears dripped from her chin.
はじめ
Madara Uchiha considered himself a patient man. He waited for the rumors and accounts of his death to spread across the five great nations, giving him free reign to do what he wanted without interference. He waited for Hashirama's foolish dream of peace to topple under the weight of his naivety, and fall it had, once the First Shinobi World War broke out. He waited even longer for the Rinnegan to finally, finally, awaken, the first stepping stone on the path to true peace. Even now, as his body failed and his strength left him, he was willing to wait.
He crossed his arms, his gaze fixed on a family of Uzumaki in the house across from him. Half-Uzumaki, he corrected himself after a quick, dismissive glance over the man. His black hair didn't necessarily mean he wasn't one of them, but his chakra, which was barely worth looking at, did. His arms were around a woman with red hair, a child cradled in her lap. His eyes skimmed over her too. He could see the wasted potential in how small her chakra pool was, how everything about her screamed 'civilian' despite her heritage being anything but. It was the boy that spiked his interest. He was hovering on the other side of the room, watching them from behind the safety of a door frame. His chakra reserves…
Well, they were something Madara could work with. He was well aware of how little time he had left in this world, and how much he still had yet to put into place. The idea of leaving his eyes to rot in a jar somewhere, or entrusting them to Zetsu to find someone that would resurrect him after all he had done to get them in the first place...
It was laughable, at best. No, he needed these eyes to thrive. He needed them to be powerful when he got them back, enough to match his body once he was revived in his prime. What better than to leave them to a child descended from a family known for their enormous chakra pools? If he gave the boy his eyes, he would be forced to grow up to be powerful. He wouldn't wilt away like his mother. Madara's eyes slid to the baby, but even she had far less potential. None, in fact. Since the last time he looked, she died.
Hmm. Madara looked at the boy again. Yes, he would do. With the proper guidance, a nudge here and there in the right direction-
A spark of blue in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He glanced over, and for the first time in a long, long time, Madara was surprised. He took a step closer, his body stiff and barely his own as White Zetsu mimicked his movement. The fact that the infant was clinging so desperately to life might have impressed him a little, but surprise? No, that was for the chakra flaring from her middle. Seconds—or had it been minutes—earlier, the brief glanced he'd given her told him that she barely produced enough chakra to keep herself alive, never mind to use. Even if she stayed alive, he would have predicted her to turn out to be a bigger disgrace to her name than her mother.
This however, was not the same infant. Her chakra was almost white in its intensity, her spiritual chakra suddenly rivaling the normal reserves of the boy. For all his experience and knowledge, Madara couldn't come up with an explanation for what he saw. It fascinated him. In an instant, his plans shifted, and the boy in the corner was forgotten.
He found someone else to inherit his eyes.
A/N: はじめ - Beginning
