There is a storm cloud on the horizon. It doesn't appear to be moving in the direction of the village, seems miles and miles away, is little more than a distant gray speck on the very edge of the stretch of blue.

Madara watches it idly, like a moth drawn to a flame; he was never easily distracted, not in his entire life since his murky-forgotten days as a toddler. His mind was razor sharp and lightning fast, quick to find a problem and a solution between one breath and the next, constantly striding forward into greater and greater stakes and coming out as steady and strong as before, claiming another victory for the Uchiha whether in a fight or in the delicate balance that was ever-shifting clan allegiances. He wasn't called a genius just for his skill with jutsu or prowess with a sword.

He was never easily distracted, before.

Izuna is gone. The clan he'd sworn his life to have been ignoring his counsel for the better part of a decade now. The village he'd first fought so vehemently against, then risked every fiber of his being to build alongside his former enemies, disapproves of his 'arrogant warmongering' and 'obvious clan favoritism'.

There are too many problems now, with no solutions in sight for his brilliant brain, which is commonly lauded as the most excellent strategic mind in the newly-developing Elemental Countries.

Too many problems, not enough solutions, no point in finding those solutions.

Without Izuna to jabber incessantly in his ear, without his clans' worries to handle, he's found himself… drifting, more often than not.

Each day comes and goes, sometimes agonizingly long, other times over in the blink of an eye, and for some reason Madara can't bring himself to care that he's losing all track of time. No one says anything about it to him, and he probably wouldn't care even if they did.

There is a storm cloud on the horizon, the one imperfection in an ocean of crystal blue.

He studies it like it's an especially unique and interesting puzzle, something he can slowly reconfigure into something else instead of just an imminent storm.

It doesn't float freely across the sun and sky like a normal cloud, going wherever it wants whenever it wants, like he had once upon a time, back before one last brother was placed into the ground and most everything lost its meaning.

It lingers in place, heavy and ominous, threatening lightning and thunder and rain on the landscape below it, and awareness pierces him like a sword; it reminds him of him, here and now, where a man wearing a ridiculous hat and the sigil of the Senju put him on a leash and told him to yield.

He walks through the half-finished front gate of the village, ignorant of the surprised eyes and suspicious glares he garners along the way, clad only in clan-typical dark fabric and carrying no supplies other than a single sealing scroll.

He walks away from the dream he'd outgrown years ago, the dream he'd lost to the Senju and failed to reclaim, hardly bothered to fight for anymore.

He walks toward the horizon, where bright shining cerulean leeches into numb, freezing gray, the one place that feels right.

He doesn't look back.


A/N: Madara is super easy for me to write because I can get into his mindset... that's a bit scary to think about.
~Persephone