hi there. this is a direct sequel/part 2 to "genesis" and the full thing will likely be 3 parts total. less of the weirdness here and more of a focus on Madara in the aftermath of that story.
enjoy, xox
-Vivi
貴種流離譚
At the edges of the new Uchiha clan grounds stood Madara, feeling as the gentle breeze tousled stray strands of his hair with profound languidness. He wished he could spend his time half as lazily.
The center of his chest had been a dull ache for months, his mind like the buzzing of a beehive. There had been little time for his mind to slip into melancholy thoughts with the frenzied activity that'd followed the long days after she—his wife, he would sometimes remind himself, in a way that made his heart squeeze almost uncomfortably tight—whisked herself away to some time he could hardly comprehend, to people he'd never know. Unable to bring himself to stay in her woods without her, he'd bid his family farewell and made his way back to the family grounds by his lonesome.
News reached him that the Senjuu's second son had been killed in combat; Tajima, Izuna, and Ren returned the very next day, announcing with an undercurrent of victory that their rival clan had offered up their surrender.
Madara did not ask after the when or the why.
Peacetime, so new to the world, weighed nearly as heavily on them all as the once-looming promise of neverending battle. It was far more fragile, held much more taught, and who knew when one final push would cause it to shatter, when one last tug would snap it apart? And it was almost criminal that the first night after his father had shaken hands with the Senjuu clan head, Madara was unable to sleep at all, sore through to his bones from a lifetime of strife.
The idea of building a communal village had been Hashirama's, and so the old men were more than happy to shrink back into the shadows—ashamed, Madara thought, to have agreed to the armistice so readily—and let their firstborn handle the work of it. With only a few other clans agreeing at first, mostly the little fish of their oceanic network of both hasty alliances and generational rivalries, the heirs had plenty to occupy their time indeed. It was not until they'd secured the support of the Hyuuga that Madara first felt his body easing into the idea that it could one day relax.
There was a piece of him, too, long neglected and nearly dead, that began to thrive in Hashirama's presence. Their time together had always been easy, and though the man had diminished somewhat from the loss of his last remaining brother, he was still ever the optimist. He and his betrothed were the first to be wed—sanctioned by a Shinto priest and followed by a rather lavish ceremony that Tajima had scoffed at—in the Village Hidden by Leaves, and Madara knew without prying that Mito had been with child even then.
With his oldest friend on his way to a lifetime of happiness and the place of his own family secured in this new village in an unprecedented era of peace, Madara felt the first pricks of loneliness settling over his psyche.
His father had been all too pleased when his eldest bowed low enough to touch his forehead to the floor to disinherit himself. As far as the clan head was concerned, the Slug Mother had dishonored their arrangement with her sudden disappearance. He'd been less pleased, however, when Madara announced that he would be gone from the blossoming village for some time. It would already be work enough, Tajima protested, to find a suitable match for Izuna, who had taken interest in neither women or men in his twenty-two years; and now the clan head would need to handle it alone?
"What use are sons if not to help their father?" he grumbled. "I ought to go and retrieve Okojo from the woods. He, at least, has a sense of duty."
"The Lord Hokage has tasked me with ambassadorship to foreign lands," Madara offered, even knowing it would be little use. "The other countries are following our lead, chichi-ue. We must make a show of strength and poise to secure our place in the world."
It was true, yes: Hashirama had all but begged Madara to visit the other nations once rumors began to spread of other villages hidden in their motherlands. He had to fight to keep from leaping at the opportunity, eager to be away from the planning and the building and the people-greeting and instead be alone with his thoughts, desperate to make sense of all that'd transpired in the woods. He'd taken the time to calmly thank his closest friend and explain that he'd need to pass it along to his father first and foremost—a formality only, for of course Tajima knew well that his sons often did what they liked if he fought them too hard once their hearts were set.
"Be well," Madara said, rising to his feet. Then he smirked, able to hear his next words as if his wife had possessed him and spoken them herself. "And do try to play nice with the Senjuu."
And so he stood now at the village outskirts in the slight chill of the latesummer morning, dressed in lightweight armor suitable for long-distance travel and pulling a heavy bag of his things from his shoulder. He'd tied back his hair low at his neck, a wide-brimmed hat of straw atop his head and tied beneath his chin. The dawn hadn't broken fully yet, the world still bathed in a dim half-light of lifting grey fog tinted pink and orange in certain places.
Beside him was a mare, massive even to his eyes, whose demeanor hardly suited her muscular flanks. The beast nickered softly as her ears flapped more like a cow's, nudging her nose against the hat he wore. He fastened his bag to her decorated saddle, opting to keep his jug of water tied around his waist, and mounted her swiftly. She'd been an absurdly generous parting gift from Hashirama, one Madara protested to accept even at the other man's insistence.
He patted at her mighty side, smoothing her black mane as he kicked at her softly. As dutiful as the Senjuu heir had claimed, she obeyed, breaking into a steady trot to allow her new rider to grow accustomed to the gait of her, and for her to gauge his weight upon her back. She hadn't been named, these war horses commonly driven to exhaustion shortly after they'd matured, and plenty of fathers were strict that their sons not grow attached to any.
There on the road—it had not been nearly so worn only months ago, but so many feet and hooves and wagon wheels migrating to the Leaf had worn away at the grass and given way to a simple pathway—he finally allowed himself the first substantial thoughts of Sakura. Even just her name in his mind made him shiver once, the image of her serene face and her incredible fury almost taking his breath away. He thought of the river she'd risen the first night they coupled, how he could see the faint glow of her energy flowing through it even far beyond the reaches of her territory. He thought of the woods, those colossal trees that had only grown more, the brush and the wildflowers thickening by the day as if by her influence alone.
And he thought of Okojo, the boy's strength in the face of adversity more fierce than anyone could have guessed. He was there in the woods even now, his destiny seemingly clear to him, and a feeling of pride surged in Madara. Had he not taken the boy in his arms and ran as fast as he could towards the forest in search of the fabled medicine woman who lived there, none of this would have happened. What was it Sakura had said to him in warning? They will twist your empathy into hatred.
He swallowed, having only his best guesses to know what she'd meant by that. What fate had befallen he and his family in her future, for him to become so full of rage and so devoid of love? His father had seen it in her memory, he knew, though the old man refused to speak of it in any detail. Whatever it was, it had led him to accept the Senjuu truce with no fuss.
When he thought of the brothers he lost, his heart grew heavy. It was becoming harder and harder to imagine their faces, often the memories mingling with Izuna's or even their father's features. Had the others not been killed in battle, they would be nineteen and fifteen this year. Just children who wanted nothing more than to be children, forced into a war they cared nothing for. At least, he supposed then, their mother had passed before any of them did. He wasn't sure he could live with the heartbreak it would have surely caused her, especially busy as he was keeping his own grief from swallowing him whole.
She had named them with love and care and purpose—and a bit of her levity, too, that had always seemed to pierce through his father's stony exterior and make him crack a smile. As he passed through the younger stretches of Fire Country forest, the rays of the faraway sun hitting him in pockets where they managed to shine past the foliage, he felt like a man made only of memories, alone on the road but for those ghosts and his horse.
"Kioku," he said into the warmth of the day, patting the black horse's strong neck again. She sighed, and he couldn't tell if she approved of the name or not. "Let us aim to make our way past Fire Country borders by nightfall."
Close to his heart, he held onto the hope that his travels would lead him back to his wife somehow.
It was his first trip past the rainy corners of Fire and into Wind Country since his boyhood. He'd forgotten just how much more brutal the sun seemed, and Kioku grew restless the deeper into the desert they went. Following the huge flagposts—carved from felled Fire Country trees with massive swaths of colorful cloth tied around their upper portions—she seemed to hate the feeling of her hooves sinking into the sand, and so he slid from the ornate saddle and led her by the reigns instead, hoping to lighten her share of the load.
The first little village they came across was a bustling mass of fabric billowing in the high winds, pinned to the sides of buildings carved from stone and reinforced with clay. Its citizens were wary of him, as they were right to be, but were happy enough for his gifts as a token of Konoha's good intentions. He stabled the horse, who happily drank from the wide trough, and made his way to the communal center of the tiny town, where he happily drank from the natural spring there.
He passed some days there, attuning himself to their local dialect and letting the honored grandmothers help dress him in their more traditional garb; it made the hot days more bearable and the cold nights less of a shock. The young man and his little sister who tended the stables brushed the loose sand from Kioku's mane and cleaned the buildup beneath her hoofed feet, feeding her fruit plucked from desert trees that she seemed to particularly enjoy.
After weeks, he left with a small band of the locals to trek further west, where the people of Wind Country were fortifying their new hidden village. It was a long week of travel, the caravan slowed by the many supplies they carried. He spent the majority of the trip speaking with the shinobi, listening to their stories from their side of the war and even recognizing a few of them from prominent clans that had either clashed with or came to the aid of the Uchiha at some time or another. It was as much of a comfort as it was a great shame that so many of them shared the loss of so many brothers and sisters and sons and daughters.
Accompanied by these fellow nin, Madara made a successful bid to the man who'd rallied the desert clans under his control in the Village Hidden by Wind. He was intrigued by the title of Kage, agreeing to open contact and establishing a more direct route into Fire Country to ease future negotiations. By the time Madara and Kioku made north for Earth Country, the village citizens were already calling their leader Lord Kazekage.
The sands gave way to rocky ground, dotted here or there with skinny trees until the whole landscape gave way to rolling hills. Winter had arrived late that year; the green of the grass were muted and often covered in a blanket of frost when he woke each morning, and the clusters of trees—it was hard to imagine them as forests, for he always compared them to his wife's—still held many of their turned leaves of golds and reds, a fraction of them blowing past him in little swirling breezes. His mare radiated confidence beneath more steady ground, but what he found among the villages and clan compounds scattered among the north was a fair bit more discordant and unorganized.
A famine, he soon came to understand, loomed over the clans as they prepared for the snowy season. It seemed there was no one, not a single messenger or an envoy of representatives, anyone could look to for any guidance; many of their clan heads had met bloody ends in the last weeks of the wars, and their young heirs were ill-equipped to make such hard choices. Madara soon found himself divvying any advice he could spare to the young lords, some no older than fourteen, and it was as he spoke quietly to a small group of them that he saw someone he recognized.
The head of the Kamizuru clan—a family ancient as the Uchiha or Senjuu—had ridden in on horseback, followed by a small guard squad. Still spry even with his greyed hairs and long beard, he hopped from his horse and began calling for the townsfolk to gather. The young lords hurried to join the small crowd, Madara sticking behind a distance that betrayed him as the outsider he was.
"Head north by northeast," Ishikawa was urging. "Bring all you can carry. Clans from all over are building up a new seat of our cultural history, the Village Hidden by Stones. Families blessed with abundant harvests have pooled their resources. Leave now and survive to see spring!"
Madara waited with his arms crossed as the families seemed to come alive and shed their creeping starvation, running this way and that to load carts and hitch up their bison. Sheep and pigs were herded into the muddy streets, mothers scrambling to pile their children with as many clothes as they could layer. Through it all, the old man had taken notice of the stranger in their midst and approached him with a smile on his face.
"Uchiha-dono," he said, clapping his hands together and giving a short bow. "It is good to see you outside of a war zone, for once. Tell me, how fares your honored father?"
"Father is well." Madara returned the courtesy with a deeper bow, mindful not to risk offending his elders so soon after their barely-achieved peace. "Since it is clear you've taken charge, please allow me a moment, Kamizuru-sama. I represent the Village Hidden by Leaves in formally extending an alliance."
The older man glanced around, but seemingly not at any of the Earth Country citizens bustling about. Displeased, he clasped Madara on the shoulder and leaned in. "Did your lord send you all this way without the company of your honored wife, my boy?"
He cocked his head, doing his best to ignore the sudden proximity. "I beg your pardon?"
"I know it must be a shock that even we mere country rubes can gather information," he said with a chuckle. "You were wed just before the truce. Do you deny it?"
"I do not deny it," he murmured, glancing away and trying not to rudely pull back from the other man. He was not sure how rumors—of both their marriage and of she, herself—would effect how people would see him and Konoha alike. "She and I are separated by quite a vast distance at present. She is as busy as I, these days."
"Strange," he said as he gave his beard a slow stroke. "There is something I sense all about you—I had thought it might be her. But now, so close..." He hummed, tightening his grip on Madara's shoulder. "It is as if a force of nature is coursing through you."
Madara watched him with renewed interest while his heart began to pound in his chest. He could see her in his mind, cradling his chin in her hands, her fingertips stained green. He remembered the stillness in his soul as she loosely braided strands of her shorn hair around his wrist. He'd worn it there for a year's time; it was its pink sheen and pale green shimmer that'd saved Izuna from the warm hands of death.
And what was more, he'd drank from her, swallowed it down and felt her power begin to fortify his own. Had her presence lingered even now, after so many months? Even after she'd left this life?
"Will you be joining us in the village, Uchiha-dono?"
Madara blinked, forcing himself back to reality. Snow was just starting to fall, the flakes tiny and dense—it would last for some time and pile heavily, prompting an undercurrent of anxiety in the townsfolk. He looked about, unable to feign interest in spending the winter so far north during a brutal famine, especially considering the long weeks he'd already spent here.
"I must make for the other countries that seek to establish a formal military power." He bowed low again, then straightened to fasten his straw hat atop his head. "Send word to the Lord Hokage. He will be happy to send aid to help strengthen your community, if you make mention of my appearance."
As he mounted Kioku, the man who would become the First Tsuchikage gave him a nod. "You have my thanks. Sure as stone, we will endure. And, my boy—take care on the road. I have heard troubling rumors of a shadowed man with yellow eyes, watching wanderers at the edges of sight like a wildcat ready to pounce."
To a man like Ishikawa, the shift in Madara's demeanor was surely noticeable. But to anyone else looking on, it would seem that he merely tugged at the mare's reigns and broke into a steady canter, headed back the way he came. The horse could sense his urgency, struggling not to burst into a full-blown gallop, and once they were clear from the sight of others, he kicked at her flanks and she lunged forth at full speed.
Snow had already begun to cover the rocky ground, stinging at his freezing face as it flew into his eyes. His mouth was set in a thin line, unease making his limbs feel tired and sore, his fingers reddened and raw from the cold as he steered Kioku more with his knees and less with the reigns. Each loud thud of her hooves beating on the hard earth pounded in his ears, and around every turn and behind every bare tree he swore he saw the man made of shadows.
He rode on unrelenting even as the dull, grey light of the snowy day gave way to an eerie reddish hue that was dusk veiled behind the thick clouds. The chill broke just as he emerged into the grasslands, the precipitation turning back into rain by the time night had fallen over the plains.
Somewhere overhead, a streak of lightning the color of lavender streaked behind the clouds. The thunder that followed was loud even over the torrent of rain, but Kioku had been hardened by the chaos of battle—she was undeterred and surefooted now that they were nearing Fire Country borders once more. He leaned left, urging her to pivot further east, his destination not far now.
"Just a bit further," he said over the rain. "You can make it."
His clothes were soaked, the temperatures still dangerously low to be so wet. The mare whipped her head, splashing even more droplets every which way, seemingly frustrated by the feeling of her mane clinging to her neck.
Finally he could see it, the stark black outline of buildings lined by tiny dots of glowing orange against the deep indigo of the rainy night. Even through the darkness he could make out the towering temple that sat at the district's northernmost point, the many tiers of its flared roof lined with burning lanterns akin to a lighthouse in the midst of a churning ocean. He pulled the reigns to slow Kioku, mindful that the Sky District's doors were open to all—a sanctuary even during the Period of Warring States—as long as all weapons were left at the gates.
The men standing guard had sensed his approach, their hands tight on the sheaths at their hips in warning. As Madara dismounted, he unfastened the shortsword at his back and held it out in a show of peace. The guards relaxed, watching as he knelt to place the sword beside the many others and pull the knives from his hidden pockets. And, since he was shinobi, he took one and split the skin of his palm with it: the unspoken vow that his hands, essential for performing jutsu, would similarly not be used as weapons within the walls.
Aware that the slice on his hand was already mending on its own, he led the horse inside, stabling her himself; she gave a wild shake, happy to finally be out of the rain. Wringing his hair onto the dirt ground strewn with hay, he gave a small but exhausted smile as she drank greedily from the basin, water sloshing over its sides. Paying the stablehand to dry her and untangle her matted mane, he only then was comfortable enough to leave her side.
But he couldn't very well visit the clan's onjin soaking wet and caked with mud. He detoured to the nearest bathhouse, stripping with haste, bending to take the nearest bucket and fill it with lukewarm water. Tying back his hair, he upturn ed the bucket and scrub bed at his skin, only pausing to repeat the rinse. He redressed with just as much haste, his spare clothes still damp from where his travel bags had soaked through, but it was no matter. Once he donned the jacket kept in the smaller pack he'd brought in with him, he set off into Sora-ku.
The glow of paper lanterns in the diminishing rain and smoke from the hearths made everything glow, though the oranges and reds made him yearn for the soft, pale greens of Shikkotsu's woodlands more than ever. Somewhere on the other side of the street, the warbling voices of oiran performing an ancient song rose up even over the noise of the crowd. He joined the moderate flow of it like a fish in a stream, ignoring the pull of his stomach attempting to drag him towards one of the many vendors lining the street. He stood just a hair taller than most of the men, brushing shoulders with them as he passed—in his youth, their visits to the red-light district for the covert exchange of weapons had always shaken him, for he'd never seen so many people in one place that weren't trying to behead one another.
Now, though, he was more at ease from his year or so establishing the Leaf and his long months in the tight-knit desert communities and among the mountain clansman. He navigated the familiar route at a snail's pace, slipping through cracks in the people whenever they arose, and soon found himself at the front of an unassuming building, no different from the other brothels on the main strip. In the alley to its side, stray cats glanced his way—knowingly.
He straightened, clearing his throat and lifting his arm to part the noren curtains and slide off his shoes in the genkan. Beyond, the main room was small and well kept, and the two young women who'd been giggling and talking in hushed voices shot him near-vicious looks before their eyes widened. Both of their noses were painted black, their eyes rimmed in the same charcoal-like substance that made them look more like mischievous spirits in their beautifully embroidered silks, rather than simple pleasure girls (which, of course, was true). The taller one bent forth in a half-bow before hurrying off to the hallway, the sweet chime of her hair ornaments fading into the back of the house while the shorter one giving him a once-over.
"I thought the rain would turn to snow and back again before you finally showed up, Madara-dono," she huffed, one of her hands resting staunch on her hip while she waved the other about as if to dismiss him. "Baasama is getting old; she's in bed already."
He was long past questioning how strange women came to know so much about him, and really, the whole reason he'd sped his horse here was for the Uchiha onjin's expertise. Granny Cat had explained Sakura's sagehood, and surely would have some knowledge of the strange man in black skulking about the world—the same, he somehow knew deep down, who'd been watching that night the false goddess had made her appearance high above the trees of Shikkotsu.
"And it's just as well," the young woman was prattling on. "You really thought to request an audience with her looking like that?!"
Looking down at himself, he could find no glaring flaw, but rather a series of small ones that were adding up from his hasty bath. He'd fastened his belt too hastily, and the knot was not especially presentable. He'd thrown a haori over his robes that was wrinkled from its place near the bottom of his travel bags, although he knew that the hexagon-pattern was enough to camouflage the worst of it. His hair, though, had fared less well in his trip from the bathhouse to the brothel, frayed and wild from the mad dash from the rocky mountain passes all the way to the fieldlands that would, years from now, become the Village Hidden in the Grass, to being dried only partially in the bathhouse, before he'd set out into the damp night.
The taller woman returned, bowing again just as quickly as she'd done the first time. "There is room for you upstairs, sir. Baasama will meet with you in the morning, if it's suitable to your schedule, of course." When he nodded, she smiled warmly. "Please, follow me."
She and her sister led him down the dim hall and up the tight staircase in the back of the house, cats darting out of their way at nearly every step. The upstairs hall was a bit wider, and he was grateful not to need to duck past the oil lamps on the wall lest he set his hair on fire. One of the maids knelt at a door in the middle of the hallway, sliding it open while her sister stood with her head bent down and her hands folded daintily at her thighs before she shuffled in on her socked feet and beckoned him inside.
The room was small but lacking by no means. The tatami was finely woven and almost plush as he walked upon it, and in the tokonoma were a scroll and a vase holding delicate flowers, each of them worth more likely than every heirloom brought by the unified clans to Konoha combined—though, he supposed, that was expected when violence was outlawed: things lasting longer than a decade or two. At the room's center was a modest sunken hearth lined with rich, polished wood, a black kettle suspended atop of the pit that'd recently been cleared of its ashes.
As the first two women went about setting out the freshly-starched futon, three other girls shuffled in, each of them with those startling cat's eyes and the tips of their noses blackened. They took to separate tasks that were much too close for comfort: one of them untied his hair, running through it with a comb scented with a floral oil to loosen tangles and make it shine in the firelight. Another pulled at the sloppy knot of his belt, unceremoniously parting his robes and slipping them from his shoulders, seemingly unbothered by his near-nudity and entirely disinterested in it as well. Another still picked up where the last left off, pulling out his arms and instructing him to hold them in the air while she slid the sleeves of a far finer kimono—and one that wasn't damp with rainwater—over him, her warm knuckles grazing over his stomach. She reached both of her arms behind him to secure the new belt around his waist, tying it with an ornate but rather loose knot. The look was completed with an exquisite jacket, the finest he'd ever worn.
The last of them, the youngest, entered with a large bowl of steaming rice and pickled vegetables. She knelt and placed it upon the wooden edges of the hearth, and then bent forth to light a fire on the chopped logs in the pit. As the flurry of activity finally slowed and the other women left the room one by one, she reached into her wide obi and produced a silken satchel; between two of her painted fingernails and her thumb she pinched at its contents, dark leaves flecked with glittering reds and yellows, and crushed them between the tips of her fingers, sprinkling them over the fire.
It sparked green once, twice, three times and more—for as many of the thick bits of leaf fell into it. Then she, too, stood, bent deeply at the waist to show her respects, and left. She knelt again at the door, sliding it shut; her silhouette was barely visible in the low light of the hallway, but he could hear her dull footsteps on the polished, worn wood until she descended the staircase with the rest of her sisters.
He stood in silence, processing for only a moment. That was all he could spare before he could no longer resist the call of food, and he sat in a hurry. The bowl was hot in his palms, warming him from the inside out and only aided by the cozy fire in the irori. Each bite of it he could feel snaking down his body and filling his stomach, its gnawing finally abating. And as his hunger subsided, the exhaustion he'd been pushing away for years slowly wormed its way into the forefront of his mind.
He sat there on his knees, the way his father had taught him since before he'd been old enough to even speak: his socked feet tucked up under him, his hands resting on his thighs, fingers arched just so—an elegant look, indeed, but there would be no one else for him to impress tonight. He sighed, feeling the weight of his shoulders and an ache in his head as he stood to pad his way to the mattress. There was a strange sensation blossoming in the center of his forehead that made the room spin, just once, as he shrugged off the ornate jacket and folded it neatly.
The warmth radiating from the sunken hearth had heated the room entirely, soothing aches he hadn't even noticed he'd had. His elbows and knees, of course, had not been happy with him in his recent weeks on horseback, and the small of his back had been sore for years, it seemed. But now as he stretched out his legs, there was a twinge of pain in the soles of his feet. His wrists and forearms and even his collarbones hurt, forced now to lower his walls and face the full extent of a lifetime spent on edge and fighting.
He had just reached out an arm to begin rubbing at his feet when he noticed the faint smoke that'd filled the small space. And not that it itself was unexpected, with the heat of the flames trapped here in this room with only a small, opened vent high on the walls letting it escape—no, what was strange was that it seemed to sparkle.
And green.
In the very next moment he'd activated his Sharingan, the sudden influx of chakra straight to his eyes not helping the swimming feeling in his forehead. But just as that night he'd led his father and Ren, Izuna barely holding on between them, deep into Sakura's woods to find her burning bright as a star, he felt his heart sputter and seize.
Her signature—not chakra, but shizen energy—permeated the air around him. It filled the space with ease, a far cry from the full extent of her power but unmistakable all the same. He sat there on the futon, propped up on his forearms with his legs stretched down the length of it, watching the pushes and pulls and the swirls and sway of smoke and the way they shimmered when caught in the firelight.
When exactly she'd appeared before him he couldn't say, but it seemed that she was both there and not there, ever-present and lost forever. His breath caught, the action delayed by the sluggishness that plagued his mind, but when he tried to sit straight and stand to pay his respects, she placed the tips of her spectral fingers against his lips. She was upon him in an instant, throwing her legs around him and straddling her thighs against his strong waist.
"Sit, husband," she urged with gentleness. "You've had a long day."
How could he have forgotten the magnitude of her beauty? She looked down at him so fondly, a calm, easy smile beneath her serene eyes as her hair, cropped short but shining with good health, billowed about her ears. When he'd seen her last, her face and body were lined with indigo, housing her unfathomable amounts of natural energy. Here, though, her skin was clear, with only a single diamond cresting above her brows like a precious gem adorning a crown.
His glowing red eyes dropped down to her lips, following the curves of her before he realized she was as finely-dressed as he, only—the collar of her kimono was parted severely, pooling around her biceps and exposing the topmost curve of her breasts. He was ready, then, to mark this up to little more than a delirium-fueled hallucination (though not an unwelcome one, to be fair), but her thighs were so warm, and as she removed her hand from his mouth to smooth back his hair, his scalp tingled from the contact.
"Why so shy?" she teased, shutting her eyes and bending to press her forehead to his. "Didn't you miss me?"
He reached out one arm and hooked it around her waist, finding it shockingly real. On instinct he pulled her in close, eliciting a small sound of surprise from her, followed by her light laughter. Gods, he could die right now and be happy for it. The slow rise and fall of her chest against his felt soft as moss, the little contented sigh she gave from the crook of his neck as sweet as the bubbling of a freshwater stream, the scent of her like faraway wildflowers carried on the breeze.
"You mustn't even joke like that," he murmured into her hair, tightening their embrace. "Not an hour passes that I don't think of you in some way."
"I know." She pulled back, grinning sheepishly as he cupped at her face, his small fingers apparently tickling at her neck. "Me, too."
He took another long moment to marvel at her, hands idly trailing down the swoop of her neck and onto her shoulders. "How is it you've—?" Furrowing his brows, he glanced at the hearth.
She cocked her head, slipping one of her hands beneath the fold of his kimono and splaying her fingers there at his chest. "I am a sage of this earth," she said, simple as anything. "The summoning jutsu calls me."
It took all of the composure he could spare not to let his anger be sparked by that. Had he missed something, wandered the world aching for her all for naught? Could he have pulled her through time and to his side at any moment he wished it?
"You...This isn't your doing, is it?" she guessed, a look of sympathy falling over her features. "It didn't feel like you, the pull of the summons."
"My clan's onjin," he mused aloud, "must know something, but she will not see me tonight." Whatever the plant was that'd been crushed and dropped into the fire must've been from Shikkotsu, imbued with something that could summon even this ghostly version of his wife through time and space.
"I should know more," she admitted quietly. "I'm sorry. Things are still a bit overwhelming, even as I try to piece it all together."
His heart gave a heavy tug, hating to see her guilt. Snaking his palms back up to her face, he offered her a small smile. "Calm your fears. We are...here, together. Somehow." Even if either of us can make no sense of it.
It'd made her laugh again, and that was all that mattered, the sound of it and the feel of her full cheeks in his hands. I don't have words for how much I've missed you.
It was enough. Hells, even just the sight of her gazing gently down at him had been enough—he pulled her face towards him, letting one arm fall to the futon to keep him righted as he craned his neck to kiss her deeply. The feel of her, the glittering shizen energy and her soft skin and her legs wrapped around him, were all-consuming and dizzying.
She returned the kiss with marked passion, dropping her hands to push him down upon the futon as she tugged at his clothes. As she had in their short time spent in her realm, she squeezed here or there, seemingly exploring and admiring the sturdiness of him in a way that was close to intoxicating. She undid his belt as deftly as the woman had dressed him in it, pulling her mouth from his only to trail it down his jaw, his neck, his collarbone.
Everywhere her lips touched, the soreness of him vanished. She sat atop him as he lay there on the cot, his hair fanned out beneath him like an ink stain, and unwrapped him from his robes and underthings. Tucking her shorn hair behind her ear, she resumed her efforts—he would swear that she left not even a centimeter of him unkissed, her hands resting firm on his stocky waist as she went.
His breathing evened, deepening. Futilely he fought the haze of sleep slowly beginning to overtake him, his heavy lids growing harder and harder to ignore. How long had it been since he didn't ache through to his bones? He wanted little else but to spend every second with her, but the prospect of finally being able to relax—perhaps for the first time in his entire life—was impossible to fight.
Even so he kept his Sharingan eyes alight, afraid that, should he shut them out, Sakura would cease to exist once again.
"Wife," he sighed sleepily, sliding his hands around her back to stop her, hold her close instead.
"My tired boy," she cooed softly, tracing the lines of his collarbones. She climbed from atop him and lay by his side; he turned to pull her in, her back pressed snugly against his front. They threaded the fingers of their hands together, their breaths falling into sync.
The fire cracked and hissed in the hearth before them, and he knew that there were a hundred-thousand things he should be asking her, telling her. About Konoha, about his months in the desert; wondering how, if at all, he could see her again, if she was well in the new future she'd carved for herself. If she'd known anything about the shadowed man, if it'd found some new target to replace Madara's role in its scheming.
Sleep, husband, her voice echoed in his mind, parting the clouds like a golden dawn. You've had a long day.
A long week. A long month. A long year and then some, since she'd left. But here and now, she was nestled in the strong hold of his arms, and that was how he fell into a deep and blissful sleep—the first he'd ever had.