It's difficult to put the feeling between them to words. Ease exists there in a way it did not. A way he'd begun to doubt it ever would. When she wants his attention, Izuna will touch his arm, his back, his neck to gain it. In turn, she allows his hand to rest over her waist when he passes behind her, her knee when they entertain.
Strange as that is in itself, the feeling that troubles him lies in the distance that contradicts every touch. One he feels had begun to wane before they'd gone to see the Daimyō, the inconsistency of it confounds him.
It doesn't feel like jealousy, and while Izuna may not think as he does, she is not senseless or shy. If it were something simple he believes she would voice it and the knowledge that it's not only further spurs the itch that has taken root under his skin. He is infuriated by his own lack of understanding, a familiar feeling, where she is concerned.
•
"My brother has invited us to train with him today." If it weren't so sweet, the degree to which Kagami's face lights at the news may even be insulting.
"Clan Leader Madara? Are you sure?" Wonder colours his voice and she couldn't keep back the smile it brings to her face if she tried.
"I am quite sure. I've told him all about your quick progress in dōjutsu and he's eager to meet you." She worries his eyes might fall from his head if they grow any wider.
Madara has never been a distant leader to their clan, the side of him that exists for their people is the warmest he has, but she knows the younger children especially have heard the stories of all he's done throughout the war and mythologized him into something larger than life.
That mythos is written across Kagami's face as she spends the rest of their walk assuring him that yes, Madara knows who he is and invited him, specifically, to train. It's her highest hope that they'll warm to each other easily. With she and Tobirama, Kagami has gained invaluable connection and guidance, but what the child truly needs is a home with the Uchiha, and it would be good to see her brother less alone.
Once Kagami has been exhausted, fed, and left to nap in one of the guest rooms, the first thing Madara remarks upon is how rare a child he is to have allowed the times he's grown up in—alone without parents, world around him mired by conflict—to have made him so clever without losing the hope that makes him sweet.
"He is exceptional." Izuna feels the warmth in her own voice and couldn't be more pleased when she hears whispers of it reflected in Madara's.
"He is that. He reminds me of our brother, the way he never seems to tire or sour, no matter how hard you push him." The ache in his words is one she feels in her own bones. She doesn't mind it so much, it's been healing, in a way, to see the reflection of their brother in Kagami.
"I wondered if he might, I couldn't help seeing the same in him."
"It feels strange to see him so clearly in someone." Izuna leans into Madara's shoulder, finds comfort in the familiar weight of him.
"Because you have brought us peace, his life will not end the same way." Peace at the will of those who took your brothers from you. The whisper sounds somewhere in the dark of her mind. She refuses it any purchase.
"Does that mean you've finally forgiven me?" His tone is that of a joke, but vulnerability is carried in the raw edge that underlies his words.
"As much as I can," she offers. "I see Kagami and—however angry I've been, I cannot help being grateful he won't grow up in our world. Any hope he feels will be less foolish than yours ever was. I cannot fault you for that."
"Thank you, sister." He presses a kiss into her hair, a comforting echo of childhood evenings spent collapsed into each other after training, overlooking this same forest. A grounding remainder of the foundation between them that keeps them steady under the weight of all that's passed since.
•
Izuna arrives home late and there is a lightness to her step, her movements that's pleasing to behold.
"Kagami sleeps at my brother's tonight." It may be the strange mood he's found himself caught in, but the first thought that grips him is one of anxiety. Perhaps he sleeps under Madara's roof because he's unsafe elsewhere.
"Has something happened?"
"No, of course not." There's no hesitation in her words, he feels immediately reassured. "Madara invited us to train and felt with so many rooms empty it wouldn't be right to send him away with no home to go to. He will stay until he's found one, though, in all honesty, it's my hope he already has."
He isn't prepared for the way her words ache.
"Is that why you brought him there?"
"You seem bothered." She seems surprised, he can't help the same. Izuna may not be willing to bear his children, but—surely she feels the bond that's grown between the three of them? Tobirama has never feared Kagami's eyes, he'd hoped—
"I do not understand why, if you felt the need to give Kagami a home, it could not be with us."
"What?" She turns to face him, then. He doesn't need to see her eyes to read the bewilderment written across her features.
"He is already attached to us both, and you would teach him to use his eyes better than anyone. We have the means, the space, it would be no burden."
"Are you being sincere? You would bring an Uchiha orphan into your home?" She still thinks of their home as his, still does not feel as though she belongs here with him. The reminder only causes further injury.
"Is this not your home too? You've said for yourself I am fond of him, is this such a surprise?"
"I didn't realize you thought of him like a son."
"Perhaps not, but I could grow to." It's only in saying the words he feels the truth of them. Burrowed far deeper beneath his skin than he'd realized, leaving him feeling caught out, even within himself.
When she comes to him, he feels the apology carried in the hand she rests over his arm. The words she speaks are gentle, but without clemency.
"Kagami is an Uchiha prodigy, he should be an Uchiha heir if he is anyone's." He cannot deny the truth she speaks, is not so caught up in his own attachment that he loses sight of all logic.
"I see the sense in it."
"But you do not like it."
"Am I expected to?"
"No, of course. If it's any comfort, he will be a very lovely nephew, I'm sure." It does not, but she is trying, for his sake.
"That only serves to remind me that Madara and I are brothers by law." Never a pleasing thought, though a distracting one, certainly. There is mischief in her voice when she speaks next and he takes the hand she offers in it.
"Have you never considered the delight of a child that is not your own? One to whom you can teach every infuriating trick and send them home so their parents might suffer the consequences of them? I know you're not enough of a masochist to teach the worst ones to your brother's child who shares so much of your own space."
"You encourage me to torment your brother."
"I hardly have enough time to do as much of it as I'd like to myself, these days. Someone must pick up the slack. I believe Kagami might be up to the task, with some help."
"Aren't you getting ahead of yourself?"
"Perhaps, but Madara has always had a soft heart, and they took to each other well. Besides, now I am gone, if something happened to him, he would be without an heir. It's not ideal."
It's not until she's said it that he considers the realities of such a thing. They have all suffered loss, but not quite so complete as Kagami's. To give him a family and have it torn away a second time if Madara is taken from him—
"You think he'd be suited to it?"
"You do not?" She withdraws her touch and the tone of her voice tells him to take caution. Even so, he's never hidden behind half-truths to spare her feelings and knows it is not worth it to begin now.
"Kagami has so little, if he were to become attached and Madara perished, would he not be—"
"Driven mad?" He feels the mistake as he makes it, but cannot seem to pull himself back.
"You forced me to speak it."
"I did not force you to think it." The tone of her frustration, her anger are familiar enough to leave him largely unaffected, but the hurt— "That you would even speak such vitriol about the boy you'd be willing to make your son—have you ever even witnessed the madness you espouse?"
"Everyone knows—"
"I am not asking you for rumours and tall tales. What have you seen? Who has gone mad before your eyes?" He is not so naive as to think not yet having borne witness to something makes it an impossibility. It would be foolish to ignore the signs simply because they have not reached their end result.
"Your brother is erratic—"
"And yours is not? Madara is boisterous, he has a temper, if that is enough to make one mad then so are half the men who go to war."
"He shows the markers of it, Izuna. I know he is your brother, I know it cannot be easy to face your clan's curse, but surely even you understand he holds the propensity for madness. If he suffers enough loss—"
"Enough loss? " Outrage and grief tear through her voice and sink in his chest. "Three brothers, a mother, a father, countless cousins and endless clansmen, what is enough loss? If it takes more than that to drive an Uchiha mad, would it not be enough to send anyone past the edge?"
He moves to touch her arm and she pulls away from him.
"Do not touch me." Only moments ago she'd reached for him willingly, now, she takes the scroll she'd abandoned and makes to leave for her study.
"Izuna, I am sorry—"
"Why should I care for sorry? I have no wish to sleep beside a man who thinks—"
"Izuna wait, please."
"Why should I?" Because we are better now, he yearns for truth in the thought. Because I have no wish to drive you from your own bed, in your own home.
"I would like for you to stay."
"Are you a fool—"
"We would do better to finish this, Izuna, even if it is not easy. Even if we do not agree." If they leave it, he knows the topic will never find rest, between them. It will fester and rot and ruin any closeness they find if ignored.
"Have you gone mad?"
"We always manage to find common ground for the sake of the village, why not for ourselves?"
He wishes he could bring himself to meet her eyes and see what's behind them, but the instinct to evade them is too strong. Each second that passes, the itch beneath his skin grows.
"Fine." Her voice is still hard, but he will take her anger so long as she stays. "Go on, then."
"Please, come sit."
Given the chance, he tries to explain to her his reasoning, his theory. Her patience is lost with it before he can get far.
"I am well aware of your theories," she spits, "they've followed us for years." In truth, he hasn't given much thought to the feeling that must have accompanied them, for Izuna and her clan. He saw only the necessity of warning those around them. "What I don't understand is how you can be so blind to the inadequacies of your perspective."
"I've thought through every angle—"
"You do not even begin to see any outside of your own! Tobirama, our clans were at war all our lives. You believe we show no warmth to each other because none was shown to you, and why would it have been? Did you hold any warmth for the Uchiha? Did you treat us with affection?"
The truth she speaks is undeniable. They were raised to believe the worst of each other.
"No, I did not, and I admit that like most among us I was raised to view the Uchiha unfavourably, but Izuna, the grief, the viciousness that comes of it among your clan—"
"Is it a crime to grieve openly, simply because you find it unsightly? To openly seek to take revenge against the people who took your brothers' lives?" It stings. She speaks of a pain he knows well. It's in that knowledge he finds the certainty that their reactions are so much more than ordinary grief.
"It is not only open, it is an eruption—"
"A well-warranted one! Why should it be you who decides what is acceptable in war?"
"That is hardly fair."
"Is it not what you do?" He begins to answer but the plead in her voice stays his words before they leave his tongue.
"Tobirama, I am asking you to leave behind your defence and look honestly at what you say. You admit that you were raised to hate us, as we were you, and that you have not witnessed true madness in us on your own, only the markers of it that you yourself chose based on little more than stories and second-hand accounts. All of it predicated on emotions you claim we either have no control over or stifle completely, all because they aren't shown openly to you, and when they are you find them difficult to bear witness to."
Instinct tells him to explain himself further, to make her understand, but if she's willing to put away her anger and plead for a moment of reflection, he owes it to her to give it.
It's true, he has never witnessed their madness for himself. Not in a way that feels too solid to be denied. There have been glimpses, moments—but then, does not every man experience moments of madness in war? He's never seen it take hold and refuse to relent.
Nothing has changed, in effect. The Uchiha are still the Uchiha, but now they are a people at peace. Even he will not deny that he's been wrong about them in some respects. There is affection there he did not see before. An openness of feeling between them he did not care to understand when they were still clear enemies.
The truest difficulty lies in determining whether this is a sign they aren't as he thought or one that any peace is only a superficial solution to a problem that can only be bled out.
"You see the flaws, do you not?" Izuna's voice still carries force, but it has gentled considerably. "I don't believe you would allow Kagami to share your home if your beliefs were still truly so unshakable."
"I see the flaws," he permits. "Uncertainty is not a feeling I enjoy." Even the thought of it is enough to spur further impatience with himself.
"I know."
Some time passes in silence before she begins to gather her things once more. The sight gives rise to a difficult mix of emotions.
"You still leave."
"I am not angry, but I cannot sleep next to you with the faces of my brothers so clear in my mind. Does it not bother you the same?" When he closes his eyes he still hears Kawarama's laugh. Sees the trouble in Itama's eyes whenever left to his own devices.
"It does." Still, to have spoken as they have—making peace is still new, between them, and something in it feels fragile. "Share a meal with me in the morning?" She agrees and bids him goodnight. As he settles for the night he finds the room feels suffocating in its emptiness. To say whether her presence would have helped or hurt feels impossible.
There is upset between the Yamanaka and the Hyūga and the morning slips away from them. It feels inordinately important that he find time with her today, and that feeling is the one that forces him away from his desk the first moment he has to breathe.
It's likely she's been as busy as he has, if not more so, given her role in the village, but if they can find a moment, he sees no reason to abandon their plans entirely. When he finds her already leaving the food vendor he knows she likes best, carrying more than he knows she'd eat on her own, it gives rise to a warmth too strong to brace against.
When offered, she accepts his arm and tension he's carried through the morning leaves him at her willingness to touch him. Strangeness still lingers in the space between them, but with more understanding, he knows it will not last. He won't allow it.
"Your mood has improved." Hashirama sits across from him, hardly making any effort to contain his delight.
"It has," he allows.
"Because of Izuna."
"Yes." There's no use denying what's plain to see.
"You've been more comfortable with each other, these past months. Am I right in thinking you enjoy each other's company, now?" Subtlety has never been Hashirama's strong suit. It was foolish of him to think he might be able to work in peace. All hope was lost the moment Hashirama saw them walking arm in arm.
"I cannot speak for her, but I am pleased when she wants to be near me."
"Brother, I am so glad to hear it." The sincerity in his voice feels raw, makes it too easy to confess as he does.
"It hurts her that I do not trust her."
"Still?"
"I am not sure." A speculative look falls over Hashirama's face.
"How very unlike you, Tobirama, to allow yourself any uncertainty."
"I cannot seem to help it." Without permission, he hears the distaste he feels for the situation seep into his voice as he speaks. "She hopes Madara might take Kagami as his heir. I'd thought perhaps she and I might have him as our own."
Surprise writes itself across his brother's face. Perhaps, if even Hashirama is surprised, he has not been so clear as he thought.
"I'm sorry, brother. I knew you cared for the boy, but did not realize how much."
"No need. In truth, I cannot fault her reasoning." If it weren't for the question of his own, he might not be so bothered as he is. "The place of an Uchiha prodigy is with his clan." Hashirama knows him well enough to wait for him to speak.
"She pressed me on how I could want him in my home if I truly believed in the inevitability of his madness. I did not know how to answer her."
"I know how you hate the feeling," Hashirama offers. When he continues, Tobirama knows his hurt has been read and resents the relief he finds at not having to speak his feelings. "I know you, brother. You will not let yourself rest until you've settled this inside of yourself."
"You say that as if it's a positive."
"You are trying, Tobirama. There is nothing better."
A/N: Talking 😳