A/N: This chapter diverges from the prologue, immediately following the seventh POV heading.

TOBIRAMA

Satisfaction eludes him, as it always has in her presence. After countless clashes, he has her where he wants her. It's cost him more than he cares to count, but she cannot move from her place pinned in the mud that covers them both. Her arm is limp, bent wrong at her side with the other held tight in his grip while thick blood pours from the fresh wound at her hip.

She still looks up at him as though she has the advantage and when she speaks, her voice is wet with blood, yet still somehow as sharp as ever.

"You may be a weak man, but I never took you for the type to waste an opportunity," she spits. Even torn from her throat as they are, the words still sting. She always presumes too much. "Where has your fear gone, Tobirama?" He takes her jaw in hand with enough force she can't close it and resists the urge to curl his nails into her skin.

"Death is for cowards and those who deserve mercy." Looking at her now, sharp eyes and full lips that've haunted his dreams in ways that show him the worst of himself, driven half mad by the smell of her blood, he speaks without thinking, "I can think of more deserving fates for a woman of your kind."

He means for it to frighten her, but Izuna only laughs, bitter.

"I'm certain you can." She uses what's left of her strength to rise against him, make clear she feels the truth of his statement, and Tobirama is overwhelmed by the swell of anger that fills his chest, making him feel as though he might combust. It takes all he has to keep from crushing her windpipe under his arm as he forces her back down into the dirt.

"You tempt fate, even now."

"Is that all?"

"Is your own life such a game to you?"

Izuna is no fool and he bears the cost of mistaking her for one each day of his life, as he's reminded of every time he catches his own reflection. Even so, she has a way of getting under his skin that tempts him to forget. If she wants to seduce him into martyring her, a part of him yearns to give her her way.

Another part of him, the worst part of him, that speaks with his father's voice and the soul of his sire, yearns to tear her eyes from her pretty face and show her what use an Uchiha woman is without them.

In the end, it's the worst of him that wins.

When he crushes his fingers into the red glow of her eyes, feeling as they split and leak under his nails and across his skin, she screams, ragged with enough pitch that he can hear for himself how it must tear at her throat. Izuna flinches, spasming up against him as he feels the scrape of her sockets. Her voice tapers off into a manic, humourless laugh and Tobirama feels every shift and shudder where he's swollen hard against her.

"Now," Izuna breathes, "now, you cannot let me live."

"You think I won't?"

"When my brother sees—"

"He will bargain for your life."

"Madara would never be so cruel," she laughs.

Strong words, Tobirama thinks, spoken by a girl who has never known her brother's failings as he has. Madara will do what he can to keep her alive, no matter the life she lives, and Tobirama's only regret in having taken her eyes is that she won't see what he truly is.

"You will see your worth, Izuna." As he speaks, he cups her cheek, still wet with blood but his hands even more so, and runs his thumb along the edge of her open socket as she hisses in pain. Under his touch, the skin is already swelling and darkening, and Tobirama thinks she's never been more beautiful than she is now, hollowed out and brought to heel. "To your brother and I both."

She gives no response.

No words come when he pins her back and slips his blade under her obi to cut it away, nor when he tears her tunic from the split of her legs to her collar. The bindings over her breasts come away with little effort and even exposed as she is, Izuna does not speak. If not for the heat of her skin under his palms, he might think her dead already.

IZUNA

Frost has found its way into her bones and Izuna knows it won't be long, now. Tobirama's touch is colder still, and the only warmth she finds is buried deep in the pit of her stomach, stoked by resentment and burning in a way that's always haunted her. There's little satisfaction in it, and blinded to all but the nauseated agony that runs from phantom eyes to the base of her spine, her only gratification is denying him the pleas she knows he yearns for.

Izuna will not scream, beg, or cry. As Tobirama bruises her skin and sinks his teeth into her flesh, her only hope is that Madara isn't the one to find her corpse. Tobirama speaks of leaving her alive, but she knows him too well. There is a hunger in his voice, his grip, the weight of his breath that guarantees her demise. It's no small comfort.

Izuna keeps her control, what little she has left between them, until he bares the rest of her and she feels the sharp chill between her legs that tells her she's wet. A low groan, nearer to a growl than any noise a man should make, echoes in Tobirama's chest and Izuna prays that death might tighten its grip.

When his mouth finds her, the heat inside grows and Izuna struggles not to cry.

Exhaustion would be a mercy, she is far beyond anything felt before and to guard against the reactions she wants not to give takes more than she has. A sharp cry rips from her lungs and Tobirama presses closer, hands gripping her thighs tightly enough she can feel where blood drips down her skin from the cut of his nails.

The slip of his tongue makes her sick with the pleasure it brings, and when he rises, there's a bitter relief in the press of him, swollen stiff enough to burn against her. Somehow, this feels less of a violation.

"Have you truly nothing to say?" Leant so close as he is, Izuna can feel his words against her skin.

"What's left?"

"You could beg."

Even Izuna did not expect she knew him so well.

Silence hangs between them, and in it, there is only the distant sound of battle and their shared breath, her own growing shallower by the second where his is deep. The ache in her chest has begun to fade from feeling entirely and her blood now burns where it touches skin. It won't be long, now.

Izuna has oft imagined what it might be to have a man, even the one above her, on her worst nights. When he breaches her, pain and pleasure both underwhelm, and she wonders if it's the frigid nature of his touch or the slow creep of death that numbs her to it. No matter the reason, it doesn't spare her the same from the invasiveness of having him forced under her skin.

Full weight bearing down on her to crush the air from her lungs, Izuna is subject to his wet pant against her neck, somehow a welcome distraction from the slick sound of their joining. A rough touch and jarring force are what she braced for, but he meets her with a slow grind, heavy and wanting, filled with regrets.

"You could have spared us this," Toirama whispers against her skin, hand cradling her throat in a way that might be tender if not for the bruises that bloom there. For all she can tell, Izuna may well be crying, and she wonders if he could tell her tears from her blood. When she tries to lift her arm—the one that still works—the tremors are too bad to move as she wishes, and she finds every part of her has grown so much heavier.

"Tobirama," she rasps, pleading. He takes her wrist and slips his palm into hers, lacing their fingers together to hold between them.

Izuna always expected that when her last breath came, she wouldn't have to think to know how it should be spent, but in the end, her words fail her. When the slow-built swell of heat in her belly finally crests and washes out through her bones and across her skin, Izuna feels herself fade with it, and finds it's too late to say anything at all.

TOBIRAMA

In his dreams, Tobirama has seen the light leave Izuna's eyes a thousand times over.

Now, he has robbed himself of the memory, and is left only with the chill that slips under her skin and winds itself around her bones, keeping her still as only the dead can be. When he feels himself seize, aching desire coiled and sprung at last, he crushes his lips to hers and there is no breath shared between them.

He finds he cannot force himself to leave her.

Tobirama has always cultivated control, over his wants, his feelings, his actions, but now, no matter how he urges, no part of him is willing to pull away from her fading warmth. When he does, there will be no escape from the knowledge that this is the last he will ever have of her. This isn't how it was meant to be.

She was meant to live. To quicken with his child and learn her place at his side. To be the piece that fit between their clans to bring peace at last, with the Uchiha kept in place by Madara's own hand, for fear of his sister's wellbeing.

Now, she will be nothing.

Now, she may well be the end of his clan, and it's Tobirama who has wrought whatever fate they might meet in the face of her loss.

A/N: Honestly, I thought this would come out way more graphic? But have some soft death/non-con instead, I guess 💀