A/N: Full disclosure, I found a lot of details on the symptoms of mercury poisoning, but very little involving the actual time span. Which is to say, I'm bullshitting a little, here, go with it 😌
Time spent with her clan cannot come quickly enough.
It's been easier to be here since she's taken on a more active role in the village. Long hours and an unending list of things to be done keep her mind busy enough she doesn't linger in the surge of nausea that comes whenever she remembers what waits for her at home.
For the same reason, the slow creep of misery back into her mind has been easier to miss. Insomnia returned first, late nights she hasn't been able to resent too much as they've allowed her to get more done, soon followed by difficulty keeping her temper and the horrible feeling of something about to go terribly wrong.
At first, she'd put it down to her situation, to the change in routine—an adjustment period, though she's never struggled so much with one before—until the dizzy spells and the episodic shakes began to set in.
When the outward signs begin, Mito notices almost immediately and takes her aside.
"Tell him you're sick." It sounds more like a command than a request, and irritation pulls her jaw tight as she fights the urge to pull her arm from Mito's grasp. Some part of her recognizes her own petulance and it only serves to irritate her more.
"I'm not sick."
"It's the mercury, Izuna. It's beginning to affect you." More than anything, she'd like to tell her to mind her own business, but she's too conscious of the fact that had Mito done just that up until now—it doesn't bear thinking about the state of paranoia she'd still be living in.
"Think, for a moment. Has anything changed in the last week to make you so miserable? I'm sure you haven't slept, and I've seen the way you lose your balance when we train. The mistakes you're making aren't like you. Tell me I'm wrong."
Izuna wishes she could. Tension seeps from her shoulders as she forces herself to relax and consider Mito's words, they make sense.
"I didn't think it would happen so quickly."
"I don't know that it always does, but in your case, it has. Izuna, you seem unwell, everyone has noticed." The thought makes her miserable. To seem run down and erratic immediately after she's been given a position with some value gives the impression of fragility. "If you tell him you're sick, he'll believe you. He'll keep off you until you go and you can stop taking it now before you get any worse."
Izuna has no intention of telling everyone she's sick, regardless of what they already think. Only Hashirama and Mito would know her true reason, everyone else would think her weak for it—she would think herself weak for it—and she cannot repeat a faked illness each time this happens. To keep steady through it is the only real option. Now she knows the cause, she can manage the symptoms, she's sure of it.
Her mind is set.
Tobirama behaves as though he can tell something is wrong and it infuriates her. It's written into every blow he lands but doesn't follow through, every time instinct moves him to push and he pulls back instead. He's being careful with her and she can think of very little more insulting.
She allows the itch of irritation under her skin to escalate into something vicious and pushes back as hard as she can. Drives him into a corner until he has no choice but to fight back with something more, something real.
Midair, she loses her bearings. It feels impossible to tell which way she's facing and only the impact of the ground distracts her from the sharp burn across her chest. It takes a moment to begin to understand what's happened, and when she tries to push herself up the ground slips out from under her, wet with her own blood.
Tobirama is by her side and then he's not. She realizes she's pushed him away, full force, only after she's done it. He's back too soon but he keeps his distance. It's too difficult to focus on him with the world spinning so fast, but she wishes he'd leave.
By the time Hashirama shows up, the world is mostly still and she's caught her breath. Sitting with a cloth pressed to her wound and denying Tobirama's increasingly insistent demands that she allow him to heal her as the situation and the pain catch up with her both, now she's more clear-headed.
"She is being ridiculous." Tobirama's angry voice comes from somewhere behind her as Hashirama settles next to her.
"You are being dramatic. Haven't we both had worse at each other's hands?"
"This is different, you're already unwell and you will not let me heal—"
"Tobirama, it's alright. This isn't helping." Hashirama's voice is a gentle reproach. "Izuna, would you allow me to—"
"Go ahead." She doesn't have to look to imagine her husband's reaction is not an easy one, she hears his steps halt behind her as she allows Hashirama to pry away the cloth, sticky with blood, and heal her where she would not even allow him near. When he turns on his heel to go Hashirama calls after him that his wife is wounded, voice carrying as much irritation as she's ever heard in it.
She hates the part of her that feels remorse when he doesn't return.
"Why didn't you let him help you?" Disappointment colours his voice. She doesn't want to tell him that for a moment, she'd forgotten where she was.
"It's the mercury." A half-truth. "I haven't been thinking clearly."
It explains away both the injury and her reaction well enough, and she's deemed well enough to see herself off to clean away the blood with only minor difficulties.
Izuna is confined to her bed to recover. Tobirama never comes to her. They do not speak, they do not spar, they do not share a moment together. It's petty of him, she thinks, but she will be gone in three days' time and he will have a fortnight to sit in his sulk and be clear of it when she arrives back.
Of course, they do not make it three days.
•
Hashirama and Mito are outside when he arrives home to see Izuna off to her brother's. It's clear they didn't expect him to bother and Hashirama doesn't try to hide his delight at the surprise. As he heads into the house, he can almost hear his brother's voice in his head, urging him to make amends for how badly he wishes he would.
She's in her room, gathering the last of her things. He waits by the threshold until she invites him to enter and sees it for the tentative offer of peace it is. Things feel well, or something approaching it, until a small vial tips from the table and rolls across the floor, stopping at his boot.
Even if he couldn't sense the shift in the air, feel the tension she radiates, the way she goes still would give her away. When he reaches down to look more closely at it, he understands why.
"Is this why you've been sick?"
"Give that back." She tries to reach for it but he's too quick.
"Answer me."
"Why should I? You already know."
The wound of her betrayal begins to fester immediately. It's a struggle not to crush the glass in his hands. When he speaks, he does not recognize his own voice nor the feeling it carries.
"You still find me so despicable that you would risk your own life to avoid bearing my children?"
"Why do you have to—you're making it sound like more than it was." It smarts worse that she has the nerve to feel exasperated with him.
"How am I meant to react when I find the woman I'm married to is so revolted by the prospect of carrying our child that she's willing to die rather than risk pregnancy?"
"You're exaggerating and you know it." She snaps. The defensive tone of her voice catches his notice, he knows he's right. "If I hadn't been injured, I would have been fine. It was an accident. I did not expect it."
"And would you still have taken it, if you had?" For a long moment, it seems she'll allow silence to answer for her.
"Yes."
It's difficult to keep himself contained. She denies his touch, reviles his company, and refuses him the truth of her reasons, now this. Has he not tried? Has he not given her the space to feel safe? Reduced himself to touching his own wife only for the sake of conception and she refuses, now, to allow even that to come to fruition.
Has he been so horrible that she could not even explain her reasoning? Whatever it could be, he knows it would not have been a happy conversation, but surely a better one than this.
"Why would you not tell me you don't want children?" She rears back, visibly taken by her surprise, as if it's the last thing she expected him to ask. "I understand, in the beginning, but I've listened to you. I've tried—"
"Are you kidding?"
"No, Izuna. You cannot paint me out to be unreasonable in this, I have a right to know why my wife hides—" A vile thought occurs to him. His voice feels heavier in his chest when he pivots. "You are close with your brother."
"What?"
"You bring this with you to see him." Her expression twists into something ugly. He wants to fix it. He wants to make it worse.
"Tobirama—you cannot be saying something so appalling as I think you are—"
"Is this why you resist me so vehemently?" He cannot even discern whether or not he believes his own words, but he sees the fire that burns in his chest reflected on her face and that's enough for him to continue. "Afraid you'll be caught with your own brother's name in your mouth?" He's hardly finished speaking when she strikes him and he refuses to rise to it. Catches her wrists in his hands before she can repeat the action and sees the way his words cut her deeper than a blade ever could.
"Perhaps I did not see how right I was. A whore to your own brother, from a mad, sick family. Is that the truth of it?"
"You—" she seethes, wrenching herself from his grasp with enough force to burn them both. "I've always known you were callous, Tobirama, but I never realized you were truly depraved. To lay an accusation so revolting at my feet simply because I do not want you—"
"Why else? What else could drive you this far to avoid bearing children to your own husband? You could not hate it so much—"
"You could." Vicious anger fuels the impact behind every word she speaks. "You have pushed me to it. I did not speak to you about not wanting children because my want for them isn't the issue. You are. I would never bear children to a father who would hate them, is that not the least a mother can do?"
Her words leave him cold.
"You think I could hate my own children?"
"If I am their mother? I think you could do much worse." It's the first thing she's ever said to him that's left him keenly aware that he is hurt. Aware of the horrible ache that underlies the anger and indignation he's used to. He throws even more of his fury at her in an effort to pull his own awareness to anything else, but it falls flat.
"You really must believe the worst of me to think I'd harm our—"
"Do you even listen to yourself when you speak? You don't allow me a second to explain before you accuse me of incest and you think I'm the mad one between us? Are you out of your mind? You think I am the one who thinks poorly of you?"
"What else was I meant to think—"
"Anything! Anything but that, for you to hate me so much that your mind leaps to the most vile place it can find, why would I ever want a man like you to father my children?" An ill feeling pulls at him now, he worries he may collapse inwards if he doesn't find something else to hold to. "How little would it take for you to turn on them?"
"You know that's not the same. We were adversaries—"
"Everyone I live with was my adversary, and yet you are the only one who behaves in this way. Is your pride truly so wounded? Being unwanted makes you this weak?" It's enough to re-ignite the spark of anger under his skin.
"You will say anything you think might unman me, do anything to degrade me. You do not let me touch you even to help but you'll allow my brother to heal the wound I had to watch bleed until he—"
"What are you—what have I done to degrade you, Tobirama? The delicacy of your pride is not my fault. I don't speak down to you in front of your men, I don't spread rumours of your treatment of me throughout the village—"
"My treatment of you has always been fair—" Tobirama detests dishonesty, he believes the words he says and cannot understand why they leave behind the bitter taste of a lie when they leave his lips.
"Nothing about this is fair, and why should it be? Fair—fair is a joke and a fairytale for children. Fair is worth nothing between us, but if you think me insipid and mad when I have done nothing to damage you, and you still wonder why I don't want—"
"Our children would not be like—like this—like us. I could never hate a child who carries my own name—"
"Senju in name, Uchiha in blood. Will you put them to sleep with stories of their own madness, convince them love will ruin their minds? What happens when they awaken their Sharingan? Will you refuse to look our children in the eye, too?" His jaw aches from how tight it's wound.
"You know well enough why I won't. I'd have no reason to avoid the eyes of children who wouldn't use them against me."
"That's how I know the true measure of you. You're a coward. All you've done to me and I've never hidden from you, have I?" The truth of it digs sharp into his chest and he feels himself flinch. "Yet you cannot even—"
"It's not cowardice, it's common sense," he argues, but even to his own ears, his defence is weak.
"What about your brother? Mito? Have I hurt them once since I've been here? They've never avoided my eyes. Be honest with yourself, Tobirama. You do not trust me any more than I trust you, no matter how much you'd like to martyr yourself."
He wants—he wants too many things to do any of them.
"I'm leaving. Have whatever vile thoughts you like, but have them far from me." Panic grips his chest and he cannot understand why, but it drives him to speak without thinking and he hates himself for how pathetic it feels.
"You cannot leave if I do not let you. I am your—"
"What? What are you? My husband? My burden. A sad man whose pride will ruin him and make him ugly. You won't be my problem too, Tobirama. Keep your misery to yourself."
He's left with only the echo of their words for company.
•
It's clear they've heard enough of what was said from their faces.
"Izuna—" Hashirama starts to speak but she doesn't have the patience to listen.
"I'll go alone. I'll tell Madara you—"
"It's fine," Mito saves her the burden of an excuse, "we understand." Everything left unspoken hangs in the air between them and she's grateful they don't press her to address it while fire still burns at the base of her throat.
"Thank you."
•
When he finally leaves her room, his brother waits for him in the hall.
"No one else heard," he offers. "Mito put down silencing seals."
"I cannot talk tonight, Hashirama. Leave me be." It's dismissive, but he knows there's nothing left to say he won't regret. Hashirama knows him well enough and leaves him to stew in the mess he's made, gripping his shoulder—one small comfort—before he slips out the door.
•
Izuna knows she's been away from home for too long when the mask she's woven into the lines of her face so carefully falls apart the moment her brother opens the door.
"What's wrong?" She does not cry, but she feels the transparency of her expression, can only imagine what he sees. "Where are Hashirama and Mito? Has something happened—"
Once they're inside and Madara is reassured everyone is safe, she tells him—not everything, but close.
"He said these things to you?" She feels the danger in the turn of his mood. Feels the way the air around him has gone thick, tastes the metal of his chakra. There's comfort to be found, there, in the way he cares so deeply, but she knows she cannot allow the storm to break.
"He did."
"Izuna, if you don't wish to go back—"
"Don't be shortsighted, Madara. Of course, I don't wish to go back, but I will." She aches at the thought, unable to tell whether the exhaustion set into her bones is from the day or purely anticipatory.
"After he's behaved like such an utter, unforgivable pig—"
"Even you cannot be angry enough to sacrifice the village over my pride."
"Watch me." This, Izuna thinks, as long as she has this, she'll be alright.
"I'd be no better than him if I let you. That would be the true punish."
The lowest point of the night comes when she lies in the room that housed her all her life and finds she feels no more at home than she does with the Senju.
A/N: How we doing? Are we all having fun? ✨