Izuna has been ill for days.
Every night, Hashirama assures him she will recover. It does little to ease his mind. What's worse is that his brother refuses him the details of her condition. He claims there's no use worrying over what he cannot fix, but if what he holds back weren't enough to alarm him further, he wouldn't keep it from him.
He is baffled by his own behaviour. He's no more a stranger to loss than the rest of them, and yet he can think of little else as he pushes through the hours until he can see her for himself again. No other loss in his life has followed any sense of safety. Tobirama has only just begun to find comfort in the village and his marriage both, and there's something truly unbalancing about having the fragility of the feeling thrust in his face.
He knows his own state must be dire when Madara smacks the scroll from his hands and pushes him to sit.
"Stop pacing."
"You are not worried—"
"As if I'm not, but your anxiety helps no one. It's stressful just looking at you." Madara grabs the sake and two small cups from the drawer and pours without any finesse, placing one down in front of him. "Drink."
Tobirama sweeps his hand over the desk. Ceramic shatters across the floor.
"You're unbearable, Senju. At least if my sister dies it will be of some comfort to know she avoids being in your company." Madara's words speak to his worst memories of his marriage. His worst fears.
"Hold your tongue, Madara. Now is not the time."
"I beg to differ."
"I won't be held to account if you continue to push—"
"When have you ever been held to account? Hashirama shields you from every consequence. Kill me and cry to your brother over it, I'm sure you'd—"
It's too much.
Tobirama loses his will mid-fight.
Madara knocks him to the ground, air rushing pushed out from his lungs, and he cannot find it in himself to rise again. He stares up at the low-hanging sun, early evening, now, and finds himself tired in a way he cannot ever remember being.
Beside him, Madara wipes the blood from his mouth and crouches down at his side.
"Out of your system?"
"So it would seem."
"Wonderful." He holds out a hand. "Come and have a drink with me." Tobirama meets his grasp and allows himself to be pulled to his feet. "And no more damn pacing."
When Tobirama returns home, he is greeted with good news—though, it is difficult to think of it as such. Hashirama informs him his wife's lungs once again fill with air of their own volition. He wasn't aware they'd ever stopped.
By the next night, Hashirama is confident enough in her recovery that he takes his own rest in her study while Tobirama keeps her side. He makes every effort not to allow his nerves the best of him. Works through the night—well aware he will not find sleep if he tries—and struggles in vain not to feel for her pulse quite so often as he does.
Leaving her side once his brother wakes is a feat unto itself.
•
Izuna wakes and wishes, quite immediately, that she'd stayed asleep a while longer. Enough so that she would have escaped some of the ache that burns her muscles and aches in her bones. Each breath she takes, each beat of her heart feels like a strain. She cannot remember ever feeling so run down as she does now.
"There you are," Hashirama's voice is pleasant, soothing, though not the one she wishes to hear most. His chakra, however, makes her glad for his presence before anyone else's.
Above her, she cannot quite make out the details of him, eyes stinging as she blinks to clear them. He brings a cup to her lips and helps her to sit enough she won't choke while she drinks. Everything hurts, even her stomach twinges against the weight of tepid water.
She pushes his hand away for fear of throwing up.
"How long was I asleep?" Her throat is raw.
"Just short of a week." She'd expected only a day or two. "You had a particularly bad reaction."
"The worst has passed?" Her clothes are not the same as those she took her tea in. She's glad she wasn't awake to see the blood.
"Without question. You'll still need some days to recover, though." It's no surprise, with how she feels.
"Could I sleep through it?"
"It's better to try and stay awake when you can, but that likely won't be long, for now. I'll call for my brother—" Izuna sees the dark circles under Hashirama's eyes, the dull lustre of his skin. She doesn't know how bad it got, but a week is a long time to keep awake, even with help, and she doubts he's had much chance to rest.
"No. Rest first, Hashirama. Go back to your wife. I'm only going to fall asleep again." She knows well the boundless devotion he has to the village. If he sends word to Tobirama, Madara too will want to come. Hashirama would feel bound to return to the Hokage's office if they left.
"They would never forgive me—"
"They are both incapable of bearing a grudge against you. Sleep, please. I feel steady enough for a few hours on my own."
The second time Izuna wakes, it's to the feel of her husband's nearing chakra. He's at her side by the time she opens her eyes.
"You are awake."
"Only just," she grins. Her jaw aches.
"How do you feel?" Concern is set deep across his brow, voice heavy. Her condition must've been grave. He runs his hand through her hair, still matted with old sweat.
"Disgusting. Sore. Nothing a good bath and a few days' rest won't fix." Tobirama shakes his head above her and her arms ache when she reaches out to keep him from standing.
"I should call for my brother—"
"Leave him. He's already seen to me, I sent him to rest before calling for you." It's clear how it upsets her from the way he goes tense under her weak grip. "Come, Tobirama, I could hardly ask you to come and Madara to stay, and your brother looked as though he hadn't slept in days. He needed the rest, and I was only going to fall back asleep."
"You could have sent word you were awake."
"So you could watch me sleep?"
"I would have liked to." There is no trace of a tease in his voice. She finds her own fondness for him unbearable.
"You're strange."
•
Izuna, still unable to stand under her own weight and unwilling to bear another second in the staleness of her passed fever, accepts his care. He calls to have the bedding changed and the room aired out and carries her into the next room to help her undress as the bath heats. There's nothing subtle in her distaste for feeling feeble, but her irritation seems to be with the necessity of accepting help and not in that it's his she receives.
Tobirama carries her with him into the bath and sets himself to scrubbing the week from her skin. Izuna urges him to be thorough, and so he is, leaving her flush wherever he's been. When they are both rubbed raw, he pulls her into his arms once more and leans into the wood until she begins to fall asleep in his arms, soothed by the slow-cooling water. He stays a while longer, allowing himself the simple comfort of feeling her heart beating strong in her chest.
Once they are out and dry, he takes the perfumed oil he knows she likes best and rubs it into her skin, doing what he can to massage away the ache that seems to weigh down every movement she makes. He hears the sounds she swallows, pained and tired. As he brushes the last of the oil into her long hair, he feels both Hashirama and Madara arrive to settle in the next room.
By the time they are both dressed, casual enough to be comfortable, the sickly pallor of her skin has brightened. Her eyes are tired, but she seems pleased to feel the company that waits in the next room.
•
With everyone unwilling to heed her protests, Izuna is confined to her home until Hashirama deems her fit enough not to collapse if she goes further. She knows, now, that her body had failed, and it's the depth of worry that had set into the expressions of her brother and husband both as Hashirama explained as much that keeps her acquiescent to their wishes. It's something she'd like never to be the cause of again.
In turn, at least, she is permitted to work from home, and when he visits, Madara brings Kagami, along with the scroll she'd requested, to occupy her time.
In the end, it's more of a project than she imagined, choosing how best to avoid repeating this experience. So many options, each as uncomfortable as the last, and with both scarcity and convenience to be considered.
In all likelihood, it will be months before they can love freely, regardless of chosen method. She is unwilling to risk it before her cycle has settled, and while she loves her husband, she still hurts enough not to feel eager.
Time passes and Tobirama never voices the fear he must've felt while she was unwell. There is no need, the toll of it so clearly worn when he looks at her. Recovered in full, she does her best to drive it from him. With pain and pleasure and her presence alone. Works to prove that she is with him, flesh and blood in his arms in every way.
They're kept away from the village nearly a fortnight by their latest mission. The thrill in how well they fight together, now the friction between them has changed shape, has yet to wear off. It takes Izuna with enough passion she often finds herself tempted to suggest they take their time, slow their return by a day or two. Some day, she thinks, she will persuade her husband.
Today, though, she is glad they have not.
Upon their return to the village, they are greeted by Madara in the office of the Hokage, who bears a manic, sleepless grin and informs them they have a nephew to attend.
It's not until she holds her new nephew and feels fondness beyond anything she has the words for swelling to steal the breath from her lungs that she realizes her family has grown, not by one but four.
•
Tobirama holds his nephew and finds a feeling he hasn't known since his brothers were small, held in his arms for the first time while he sat, frozen, terrified he might drop them upon taking even a single step. He has grown, far from the still-clumsy child he'd been, and yet the fear is no different.
Accompanying it is a feeling beyond measure. Soft and unbearable, wound tight and anxious impossibility of its own strength. A feeling he sees reflected on his wife's face as he carefully lays the child in her cradled arms.
•
Izuna misses the feeling of her husband within her.
Near three months on and her cycle has yet to settle. She won't be tempted into carelessness, but they both yearn for the closeness that comes with being so wholly joined. Tobirama does not push for more, but he makes no more a secret of his yearning than she does.
In truth, Izuna has some idea of how to satisfy them both, but with Mito and Hashirama well occupied, she can think of no better person than her brother from whom to seek advice and the thought holds her back. She's not yet been desperate enough to subject them both to the embarrassment, but the frustration has become a distraction and it seems she's finally reached her limit.
Madara looks immediately suspicious when she presses a silencing seal to the door so Kagami will not hear them.
"Is all well?"
"I need your advice."
"You're behaving strangely." How seriously he means it is clear in his lack of eagerness to give her instruction. Izuna settles across from him and wonders if the look on her face is as intent as it feels.
"Everything is well, but—I will ask you this, brother, and we must never speak of it again. In fact, I wish to pretend we never spoke of it at all, and have no doubt you'll share the feeling." Madara stares, the look he gives would be comical if she weren't so preemptively crippled by her own mortification.
"How alarming. Just tell me—"
"Promise you'll pretend—"
"Are we children? I will promise once you tell me what's wrong, Izuna." She knows the tone of his voice well enough to know pushing will only waste her time, and she has no desire for this to last any longer than it must. Tilting her head back to gather the nerves required to humiliate them both, she breathes. Looking back at him is a mistake, but she is already speaking and it's too late to take it back.
"You receive Hashirama, do you not?"
"What?"
"When you're with he and Mito, you receive him into yourself, do you not?" Madara is well and truly flustered. Izuna feels the heat behind her own cheeks and wishes desperately to end this conversation before one of them perishes.
"Izuna—I—how did you even—"
"Is this not already painful enough? Just tell me if you—"
"Why, for all that is sacred, are you asking me—"
"Why do you think, you fool?" She hisses. Disgust creases Madara's features.
"No—I'm not going to tell my sister how to—"
"Your sister is a married woman."
"Precisely!" Madara sounds as though he'd rather die than articulate his own thoughts. Izuna shares in the sentiment. "I have no wish to picture you and him—"
"Then don't. Just tell me what's required and we will never speak of this again."
"Izuna—"
"Tell me what you use to wet yourself, at least!"
"Stop speaking." His voice bears true pain. "I—I will write down what you need to know. There will be absolutely no further questions to follow."
Madara does as he says, looking thoroughly miserable as he writes. Even through her own embarrassment, Izuna is tempted to tease him for it. She is only held back by the certainty that one further push will result in the scroll in his hands being burnt to ash.
After some time spent recovering from the mortification of her conversation with her brother, Izuna commits herself. She eats light, washes thoroughly, and takes a portion of oil to keep in the wooden box at the side of the futon.
Tobirama is due home any moment and there is a strange thrill to it—as though she may be caught doing something she shouldn't—as she sits and leans back against the wall, skin bare and knees bent. She pours oil over her fingers and tries not to laugh at the strangeness of the sensation as she pushes them over and inside of herself.
At first, it feels silly and backwards, but the more her mind lingers of the obscenity of it, the more she feels compelled to chase the heavy, foreign stretch, bringing her other hand to tease at the swell of her nerves as she does.
Upon arriving, Tobirama does not react outwardly, except to grin in the way she can never quite grow used to, but adores.
"You tempt me with what I cannot have." Is all he says as he strips down to his innermost layer. Not quite, she thinks.
"You assume this is for you?"
"You knew to expect me home." He crawls between her legs as though he means to put his mouth on her and she revels in the way his voice drops when he understands where she touches herself. "Izuna—"
"Tell me more of what you think you cannot have."
•
Once he's read her intentions, it takes little time to match his wife's desire. He cannot hold himself back from pushing Izuna's hands away to tease at her the one place he's not touched, swelling between his legs at the noises she makes, as though she's surprised by the feeling.
By the time he crawls up to lay beside her and press close against her back, he is eager beyond reason to be inside of her. As he goes, he runs his hands wherever he can reach, pulling her knee to her chest as the top of his thighs brush the backs of her own. Izuna leans back into him, allows her head to tip so he might bury his face in her neck.
Everything inside of him has gone heavy and tight with the desire to feel her fall apart around him as he hasn't in months. Like this, her body is new to him and he cannot keep himself contained when he pushes inside of her. The groan that drags out from his lungs compels him to bite into the soft skin of her throat as she pants, heart beating hard and fast under his tongue. Her body holds him tighter where he enters her, less so the rest of the way through. She is hot enough inside to drive him out of his mind.
He only realizes he's bruising where he holds her when she tells him not to stop.
Izuna sleeps soundly beside him. Tobirama cannot begin to find rest. The sounds he'd wrung from her with each push of his hips were ones not heard since their wedding night. To hear her so wounded, so wanting, has ignited a fire inside of him he knows he will never again be without.
A/N: Only one more chapter + an epilogue to go. I'm going to miss this story and all of its wonderful readers 💜