(c)
There is nothing more beautiful, Madara thinks, than a falcon just before a stoop. He has seen it happen many times. The bird halts in midair, impossibly high, and holds there—poised, immobile, hanging at the edge of its invisible precipice. Then it plummets. It is a living missile: hunched wings, curved back, feet flat against its body, head rounded, beak gleaming; the bird drops faster than any normal eyes can follow and it carves a streaking spiral into the sky, and just before it plunges into the ground it lifts its wings and spreads them wide to catch the air once more.
Pulling out of that mad dive, Madara thinks, and returning to that steady gliding state, is the most agonizing part to watch.
5.
Hashirama makes Madara feel vulnerable and exposed and emotional and he hates it, hates feeling like his heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest every time he looks at Hashirama's face, hates the way his jaw goes slack every time he sees Hashirama smile.
It is far worse than he had once thought. A long time ago he had convinced himself that he was only in love with the idea of Hashirama. Now, being close to him, being next to him, hearing him talk and feeling his chakra and watching his face, is almost more than he can stand.
Madara loves Hashirama's not-quite-lisp and the way his voice goes all quiet and serious sometimes and the way his sparkling eyes become dark and intense. He loves his warm hands and his long soft hair and his broad back, his booming laugh and the way he sits with his legs crossed beneath him and his chin lifted slightly. He loves when Hashirama puts his tongue between his teeth as he concentrates, and he loves when Hashirama allows himself those small frustrated sighs when he thinks no one else is watching. He loves the way Hashirama piles his hair up on top of his head to get it out of the way, the way his fingers dance as they tuck the last dark wisps behind his ears; he loves the solid strength of his forearms as his sleeves fall back to his elbows.
Last night's rainstorms have cleared away, leaving broad pale sweeping skies in their wake, and Madara meets Hashirama by the village gates before the sun rises and they set out towards the top of the cliff together. Lately they've been walking together, at least once a week if they can manage it, but they're almost always together otherwise, meeting with engineers and clan leaders and street vendors and workers and representatives of large foreign organizations. Village-building, it turns out, is a long and intricate process, and not one, Madara will admit, that they were entirely prepared for when they started. The whole ordeal is unbelievable and terrifying and exhilarating and there is nowhere on earth Madara would rather be than right here, in the early morning shade of the trees by the temporary village gates, at Hashirama's side. His constant warm presence is nearly a miracle.
On their way up through the forest they pass by a muddy ditch on the side of the path. Hashirama points at a set of tiny bare footprints at its center and beams up at Madara through the early morning dimness and Madara smiles too, unable to stop himself, both for Hashirama and the child.
"Small steps," Hashirama says, and Madara laughs at the double meaning, then fights the urge to bury his face in his hands and never come out ever again. That wasn't even—Hashirama isn't even trying to be funny.
It's too early for breakfast, so they keep climbing. The path twists over little clearings, weaves through glades full of gilded ferns, circles around a little pond that's barely graduated from being a puddle. Hashirama keeps reaching down to pluck stray nails out of the path, and now he rescues a struggling emerald dragonfly from the water, speaking gently to it as he lets it rest on his warm wide hand to dry its wings. It flies in a circle around both of them before taking off down the mountain, towards the village. They both watch it until it skims around a corner and vanishes.
They climb higher with the sun, and now the morning light is spotted and golden against the widening path. Up here the trees are shorter and thinner, all gnarled wooden shoulders hunched down against the morning wind. A feather, black and white with a red tip, floats down from somewhere far away, and Madara reaches up, plucks it out of the air, and pockets it. The clifftop is within view now.
It feels so…so wonderful to be at peace. Madara has never known this kind of calm before, this overwhelming feeling of leisure and tranquility, and he wants to stop in the middle of the path and stretch out in a sunny spot on the ground and sit up here with Hashirama all day.
Almost immediately, he remembers the folder full of paperwork waiting for him back at the makeshift Uchiha compound, and casts a worried glance back down the mountain; Hashirama notices him looking and turns around too, but then a great wind rises up from the slope of the cliff and weaves through Madara's hair, lifting it back from his face. Madara squints, and then closes his eyes entirely. He can hear Hashirama breathing quietly next to him. There is a sound like thousands of whispers, which is really thousands of leaves brushing against each other in the wind, and as he stands by Hashirama's side on the path to the clifftop Madara thinks he has never heard a more beautiful sound in his life.
Madara opens his eyes as the wind dies down, and finds that Hashirama has closed his own eyes and is leaning slightly into the breeze, his clothes rippling, long dark hair turning gold in the shifting patches of sunlight. He looks strange and serious with his eyes closed, and Madara is spellbound and disgusted and breathless.
They walk the rest of the way up to the cliff. The village—well, about five tents and several skeletal wooden frames right now—is splayed out below them in the forest. They can hear the distant sound of hammers tapping against wood—it's later than Madara had thought, if the morning construction has already started. Beside him, Hashirama sits down on the cliff and slowly crosses his legs.
"It looks very small, from up here," Hashirama says, smiling wryly up at him. "To think that all the work we've done has only produced this much so far..."
A hawk—not one of his—goes past them, streaking over their heads towards the direction of the village. They watch it circle several times before it disappears on the horizon, wings paper-thin against the brilliant sky.
Hashirama turns back to the village, the smile fading from his face. Madara sits down too. Their hands are close enough to be touching. He quickly shoves this thought away.
"It's my favorite view in the world, you know," Hashirama says quietly, and Madara watches his eyes light up with a fierce glowing pride as he gazes down over the tents. "I wouldn't trade it for anything."
"I like this view better," Madara says unthinkingly, before he can stop himself, and then seriously considers flinging himself off the cliff before Hashirama can work out what he's just said. He can feel his face bypassing red and going straight to magenta. Luckily Hashirama seems to not have heard him, or maybe he's misunderstood, so Madara quickly tries to amend the situation by steering the conversation in a safer direction.
"I used to come here a lot," Madara says, "back then."
Hashirama's entire face lights up and Madara feels like he's melting into a puddle. "Really?" Hashirama says, as if this is the most incredulous thing in the world. "Me too!"
Another hawk, probably the mate of the first, lifts off from the tree where it had been perched, and with powerful and silent wingbeats, joins its partner in the sky. Madara tilts his head to watch. He takes a breath, lets it out, takes another.
"I always wondered if you still thought about me," Hashirama says.
Madara scowls. "Of course I did," he says. "I thought about you every day."
Swallows dive from their cliffside nests towards the pair of hawks, their wings glinting like blue jewels as they weave about in midair. At once the morning is full of their noisy bubbly chatter. Madara wonders if he's said too much. Hashirama is staring down at the cliff, tracing a circle into the dirt with one thumb.
"So did I," he says at last, and he looks up at Madara and gives him a decidedly watery smile. Madara backtracks, lifting his hands in appeasement. Hashirama's mouth is quivering dangerously.
"Don't cry," Madara says, "we're not at war anymore."
"I know," Hashirama says, and his smile broadens until he's beaming at Madara like he's the most important person in the world, and Madara is in heaven, he's in heaven, and Hashirama's fingers are reaching towards his hair and he's leaning forward and tilting his head and Madara feels his heart give a great frantic leap in his chest—Hashirama is so close—he could count his eyelashes—
"Wait," Hashirama says, frowning, and then: "Hold still."
The warm fingers pinch a lock of Madara's hair, and then Hashirama is combing through the tangles and gently removing the dead leaf that's gotten stuck next to Madara's ear. Madara makes a noise that's dangerously close to a whimper. Hashirama's fingers are retreating, curling back into a fist.
"Please don't be offended," Hashirama continues, turning the leaf over in his palm. "But you look much better lately. Not that you didn't look good before! I mean—not good, like—you know—you just look…not bad—you never looked bad—you look better than you did back then," he says quickly, his face going pink. "More…better."
Madara smirks. "Give me a moment," he says, "let me decide whether I should be offended or not."
Hashirama snaps his fingers. "Younger!" he says, tossing the dead leaf behind them. "That's what I meant. You look younger."
"Younger?" Madara laughs. "Stuck with you?"
But, Madara thinks, there is some truth to Hashirama's babbling, just like there always is…he's smiling more now, laughing more, eating regular square meals—most of them with Hashirama, actually—and, most importantly, he's finally got something to occupy his mind with, something that's not crushing guilt and constant warfare; destruction has turned to unadulterated creation. Even this morning, on the path up the mountain—there are two pairs of footprints instead of one, two separate entities combining to build this village.
Izuna never got to see this view.
(Protect your clan, Madara!)
Izuna never got to see the swallows and the hawks and the colorful tents and the shimmering green expanse of the forest; he never got to see all the people coming out of their tents and their makeshift shelters, setting up shop and cooking over miniature fires and gathering in little clusters on the uneven streets.
Madara resolves to appreciate the village doubly now, for both of them.
"Hey," Hashirama is saying, as if from far away. A kingfisher trills, somewhere down the mountain. The sound brings Madara back to the present.
"Huh?" he says, intelligently.
"Breakfast," Hashirama says, "let's get breakfast," and no idea has ever sounded better to Madara.
On their way down the mountain Hashirama points out all the ferns and the shrubs and the orchids and little wildflowers by the side of the path, and he introduces them all to Madara as if they are his family and he knows them all personally, and Madara loves it.
He knows, realistically, that Hashirama will never be with him—not in the way that he wants. But Madara decides that, maybe, this is a good thing. Hashirama makes him irrational, makes him mad with longing. Hashirama is intoxicating. On their way back into the village their hands brush together as they walk, and Madara's breath catches in his throat and he has to stop and collect himself and readjust his tunic without Hashirama noticing.
If Hashirama ever actually kissed him, he thinks he might physically die.
He can't have that. He loves Hashirama. This, right now—this loving him from afar—is enough. This is quite enough.