splitting this last chapter into 2, because it was getting a bit long and I prefer to keep my chapter lengths as consistent as I can. it will be up tomorrow, xox
-Vivi

Uchiha Tajima lie on a hard futon in a small room of the clan's compound. It was quiet here, which was the entire reason, over a year ago now, he hadn't protested the Senjuu's proposal to make their own family grounds the heart of the village. The Uchiha, then, happily existed on the farthest outskirts, away from the bustle and noise.

Beneath his deeply furrowed brows his eyes were open, but it was clear that sight had left them some time ago. And what was more, he ordinarily would be ordering some servant or another to shut the screens over the windows to block out the sun, could he see it. Dust floated lazily in its rays like tiny, glittering gems, but unfortunately for Izuna—who assuredly was the one who opened up the windows in the first place—Madara's mood happened to agree with their father's proclivities for the dark.

"Chichi-ue," he said as if nothing were wrong, as he shut the screens. Speaking softly, the way he admittedly wished he could, would only spark Tajima's anger, and judging from the tense way he lie curled on the cot, his rage did not need much in the way of prodding today. There in the now-dim room, Madara knelt on the fresh tatami before his father's bedroll, his hands on his thighs, his feet tucked up under him; a picture of propriety, even though there was no one here who could see him.

Even blind, Tajima would know if his eldest were slouching. Madara, for his part, was simply glad to've made it back in time to endure his father's ire once more.

"Returned from your...extravagant travels, have you?" The words were meant to be sarcastic, if not outright scathing, but there was little else but shocking weakness to his voice. Even just the effort it took to speak, it seemed, winded Tajima. "And I suppose you're here—to tell me how the world has changed you. How you've—returned a new man, or some such thing."

"Why are you speaking nonsense?" Madara chided with a small, airy laugh. "I have nothing to say of the sort. You know that I'm here to see you."

"Yes, well..." He shifted beneath his thick blanket; while winter had arrived early in the northlands, autumn had only just settled fully over Konoha. Outside, the weather held a pleasant crispness, but Tajima's blood apparently was doing little to warm his body. "It's about time."

"Father," Madara tried, "will you not let the healers tend to you?"

"No use in it."

"And not Okojo?"

Tajima sucked at his teeth, sending a glare in Madara's direction. "Even if I...could survive the trip to those woods, I—I do not want to."

Madara pressed his mouth into a thin line. An old man—not that his father was old by any stretch of the imagination, but for a shinobi, he certainly was considered past his prime—wishing for death probably should have upset him less. As it were, though, there were plenty of arguments bubbling upon his tongue and threatening to spill out through his teeth: Do you not want to live to see your youngest son become a man? Do you not want to tend to my mother's altar, knowing anyone else would not do it to your standard? Do you not want to meet your grandchildren?

But that last in particular, of course, was a bitter subject. Izuna was not yet married, but would be soon enough, the bride already chosen, all because Madara had disinherited himself after Sakura—in his father's eyes—had dishonored her bargain to give him those blessed heirs.

"As you say, chichi-ue."

They sat in silence for some time. A gentle breeze rustled through the trees outside, but he shut his heart to everything except the room, shrouded in thick shadows. When his father began to pat at the mats around him, Madara bent forth to put the small wooden bowl of water within range of those wandering hands. As Tajima propped himself on one elbow and drank slowly, Madara decided it was now or never.

"Do you know of anything," he started, "that would connect the Sharingan to the Tailed Beasts?"

Carefully, Tajima replaced the bowl onto the floor, that crease between his brows deepening. It seemed that he was looking somewhere faraway, as he sometimes looked when searching his memory. Or, more likely, the memories he'd glimpsed of those he ensnared with his frightening eyes. He hoisted himself to sit upright, sweating from the effort.

"There are certain things," he finally said, "that an heir must know. And while—Izuna has done a fine job of it, he is...well, he is not you." He stopped to take in a deep breath, wincing at the pains it caused. "In the room where you and your brothers were brought into this world, there is a tablet. Do you remember it?"

"I do," Madara answered. He knew, only by way of his sharp ears, that it was kept there to prevent it from being seen by any members of the branch family. Heirlooms of any kind were rare, destroyed in some skirmish too close to home or another. His father had never drawn any particular attentions to it before. "The one written in ancient hand signs. One of the boys tried to carve our crest onto it, once."

"Tch," grumbled Tajima, though not with bitterness. "Was that Touga, or Okojo?"

"Kousuke, I think." Madara gave a sad smile; it had been an age since he'd heard his late brothers' names spoken aloud. "Certainly not Okojo, since Mother was there."

More grumbles gave way to his father's own wry smile, a small thing, reminiscing fondly. "She was the only thing—standing between whoever it was and a beating, that's for sure."

Had any of them ever gotten to be children without the threat of violence looming overhead? "What of the tablet, Father?"

"Only some of it," he breathed, clutching one hand to his chest through his humble robes, "has been deciphered. The signs are ancient, as you said—but with each additional tomoe of the Sharingan, more of it becomes legible." He lifted his gaze, and with his senses still sharp enough, managed to land it on Madara's face. "It is indeed written that our eyes possess the power to control the bijuu."

"Control?" Something akin to elation rushed to Madara's head, skin prickling almost uncomfortably. Indeed, he'd felt his own command over the Eight-Tailed Beast down to the smallest, most insignificant of his bones. "It says this outright?"

"Yes." His breathing had become labored; this was likely the most he'd moved and spoken in weeks. "But whether it says more—says how, or rather why," he continued, "I do not know. Our doujutsu is progressive; an eye keen enough...to decipher the entire thing, well, it has not been seen in generations." And it went without saying, that the reason for such a thing was war. "I had hoped..." He glanced away, scowling. "The Slug Mother..."

"I understand," said Madara sympathetically, in spite of the little twisting heartache at the reminder of his wife's departure. Surely, were either of them capable of having what would pass as a normal life, any children they had would be fearsome things to behold. "But she would not have left if—"

But, surprisingly, Tajima waved a dismissive hand. "If it were not necessary. Yes—that is certain. She knows what it means," he said as he struggled to lie back onto the futon, "to hold up the very heavens. It is a weight—that could have folded a lesser man. None other is worthy of you."

Madara slid forward, overcome by the unexpected praise of her and driven by the need to help his father. But he stopped himself just short, knowing it would only be taken as an embarrassment. He opted instead to pull up the blanket to Tajima's shoulders. "Father—"

"You must find it." A thread of strength surged through his voice.

"What must I find?"

"What she sacrificed in saving you." He gazed up toward the ceiling. "Your power, Madara—it was nigh incomprehensible." A shuddering breath. "Armies bent to you. You made child's play of war."

Madara shivered, too, his father's words washing over him. Indeed, he had seen inside Sakura's mind and witnessed her memory, and Tajima's Sharingan only ever saw truths, could see what the original person may have perceived but had otherwise gone unnoticed. But this couldn't be it, could it? What he wanted so desperately to tell his once-heir?

"Do you truly care only for power—"

"You will watch your tongue," Tajima hissed, "lest I pry it from your mouth, boy." He narrowed his eyes and shot a sidelong glare in Madara's direction. It was almost as if nothing were wrong at all, for how ferocious he'd become. "Am I to go to my grave thus misunderstood? Look hard—beneath the underneath. I care for power, yes, but the power alone of our doujutsu pales to the importance of its preservation. Our language, our techniques, our very way of life...! The power to pull the breath from our lungs and spit fire was passed down to me, same as it was passed down to my father; would you damn your own with the knowledge that we burnt ourselves to naught but embers and ash?" His hand, battle-worn and trembling only minutely, reached out and gripped Madara's, a startling strength. "It is your job to fan the flames, to keep them alive.

"When I die, it is my will that you take my eyes."

The sentiment broke over Madara like a low tide suddenly leaping forth. Such a thing was once commonplace for the family, but had grown out of practice in the last few centuries; it was regarded now as an ultimate act of love, respect, and trust, three things he was certain his father would never admit to feeling. It was, however, a bestowal of great strength, along with a way to keep the clan's legacy afloat, and those certainly fit Tajima's creed.

"I am no longer your heir," Madara said, hiding the tumultuous reactions swirling in his mind.

"You are my firstborn." His father had always been a master of, with only his words, the art of making one feel like a complete idiot. But then an uncharacteristic softness flashed across his features, his voice diminished again. "I thought...that I would have more time. To show you the tablet, pass down what I know...hoped, foolish man that I am, to meet your children, Izuna's...

"So you must find that strength." A cold sweat had broken out across his paling face, that momentary air of sympathy evaporating from his tone. "Strength I could not keep hold of. Grow stronger, not"—another wince, followed by a grunt as he clutched again at his chest—"not for power's sake, but for ours. Our connection to the Tailed Beasts...find its meaning. Protect the clan. Make me proud, for I will be watching. And for the sake of the gods, fetch me more water, boy."

It took another three sunrises before Tajima, the most stubborn of their tiny main family, finally succumbed to the warm, soft hands of death. He had been forty-three years old. Madara and Izuna were both at his side in the end, and though neither shed a tear for their father, neither of them were immune to the melancholy in the long days that followed.

And though Madara was no longer the Uchiha clan heir, he took on all of the typical duties expected of an eldest son. His brother was grateful, for being in the spotlight was never among his strong suits—never mind that it was not Madara's, either, but he would accept his lot with grace as he'd always done. He passed the night of the wake at the side of his father's body, the smoke of incense heavy in his nostrils, the echoes of chanted sutras in his head.

When the head clan healer arrived at dawn with the head priestess, he did not protest. There was a part of him that worried, as he lie on the sterile mats of the healing quarters, that all that he'd seen with his own eyes would be erased somehow, when the wrinkled woman began to fuse his father's eyes with his, the medic easing the pain of it. But when all was said and done and the priestess struck stone against flint before his new eyes in the traditional way, after the flashing sparks subsided, not only could he see with a renewed clarity, but when he searched his memory for his first night alone with Sakura—he'd made love to her while watching her with his Sharingan eyes, after all—the image was still there, clear as crystal, her expression tight with focus on her pleasure, her hair growing inch by inch as it pooled in the cool, rising water beneath her.

He breathed a small sigh of relief, and ached for her.

The day of Tajima's funeral was a cloudy one in mid-autumn, the leaves all russets and golds as they fell from their branches and scattered, glittering, across Konoha. Pockets of gleaming sunlight peeked through as the procession made its way slowly through the village streets and out to the grand Fire Temple, stopping and starting at intervals to kowtow, as dictated by tradition. And though his father did not have much in the way of friends, his reputation commanded fierce respect; the only family who was not present were the Senjuu, and that was by careful design.

Well, that was what Madara had thought, for when he and Izuna entrusted their father's body to the monks and ensured he was burning well according to Uchiha ritual, they turned to see the procession fully dissipated—all but Uzumaki Mito. She stood at the bottom of the steps dressed in a plain black robe, though its make was exquisite and its modesty was evident only because of the occasion, her swirling clan crest embroidered in bright threads on either side of her chest. Her red hair was like a smoldering flame piled atop her head as she stood there in the sunset, her face unreadable beneath the crowning jewel of her yin seal. And, curiously, there was a babe swaddled in the same fabric as her kimono, tied securely around her back to carry him against her chest.

When they reached her, she bowed low, supporting her child's weight with her palm while the golden, dangling hairpin stabbed through her hair chimed sweetly as she addressed them both. The single strip of paper crowded with her very fine script, the intricacies of some sealing jutsu or another, undulated gently in the low wind. "You have my deepest sympathies, Lords Uchiha."

They returned her bow as was custom, and it was Izuna who spoke next after eyeing her through his narrowed lids. "You are as bold as they say, Mito-dono." His tone was the very echo of Tajima: scathing, but with a refined edge their father had never bothered to learn. Izuna, then, was shaping up to be a cunning politician. "Surely you are not ignorant to the rift that separates our clans."

"Certainly not," she agreed easily, straightening her back. Her face was still impassive and her stone-dark gaze was razor sharp, and were she speaking with anyone else, it would've been an effective method of intimidation. "Everywhere I go on the mainland, I am reminded of how different our way of life is in Whirlpool; I am no Senjuu, regardless of whose child I've borne. As an Uzumaki, I am here to pay my respects."

Madara stood, considering, then sent a glance to Izuna. "This is the kind of loophole Father would bemoan, but begrudgingly admire later."

His younger brother merely pursed his lips, still unable to fully reconcile the eldest's rekindled friendship with Hashirama. "That is true enough. Let us be glad he is not here to complain of it, then."

At that, Mito's smile was a bit wry. "Yours and mine would have been good company to one another, in a different life." She glanced once to Madara, and then back to Izuna. The child asleep at her breast stirred, but did not wake. "Uchiha-sama, I beg you for a private audience with your brother."

"You may both do as you please," answered Izuna tiredly. He did not bother to be subtle when he held up his hands to sign, Do not let another woman with a yin seal bewitch you. Then he said, "I'm going to sleep in the quarters they've prepared for us. Wake me in time for the bone-picking ceremony." And for good measure, he added, Else I'll strangle you.

Madara smirked. Of course. I will keep this as brief as I can manage.

Mito waited until Izuna had made it all the way back up the steps and into the temple before setting her gaze upon Madara. She took in an even breath as she looked him up and down, and then said, "There is something of her within you after all. I have been eager to meet with you, Madara-dono."

That was not at all what he'd expected to hear, though he couldn't quite say he ever had anything solid in the way of expectations when it came to Hashirama's wife. She'd seemed a mystery from the day she'd arrived in Fire Country, a true foreigner, one unrivaled in her dignity and composure. "You must pardon my ignorance, my lady."

"Of course. I have had little else to do but think, since the birth of my son," she said, smoothing back the baby's brown hair. "I suppose I am a few beats ahead of myself. Will you walk with me, my lord?"

She watched him for a long moment in the fading light of evening. Stars were appearing far overhead, tiny pinpoints of shining white amid the dusty lavenders and rich, rosy pinks of dusk. Against her chest, the baby began to squirm and fuss; she cooed down at him gently, tutting her tongue and murmuring that they'd return home soon enough.

They walked side by side at an appropriate distance, rounding the paved stones of the temple's courtyard and skimming along the shallow forest path the monks had worn away from centuries of walks just like this one. The air had cooled even further, close to chilling Madara through his modest black robes.

"I'd hoped for a daughter, you know."

He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. She didn't seem the kind of person to say things simply to say them, and they were two seasoned shinobi trained to look beneath the underneath. "To pass down the secrets of your yin seal, isn't it?"

She gave a small hum in the affirmative. "It was long ago that one of my ancestors begged the Lady Katsuyu to save the life of her daughter, who was born in silence. The Great Sage gifted knowledge of healing to the mother—of precise control of the well of power within her body—and blessed her with extraordinary longevity, besides. And although the art has shifted throughout the centuries, fuinjutsu requires no lesser extent of chakra control than mending. Her ways live on, but only barely."

With his hands folded behind his back, he focused on her words with intent. The name she'd spoken, Katsuyu, settled in his stomach like a pleasant meal after a grueling day. He knew without having learned it any which way: it was Sakura's name, another part of her she could no longer remember.

"The legend is similar to that of the Senjuu," he mused quietly, thinking of his father's anger when recalling that the Sage of Slugs had connections to both their rival clan and the foreign one marrying into it. "They were farmers, originally, who prayed to the Great Slug during a famine. She taught them the ways of combining earth and water to grow crops, and the mokuton took shape in battle generations later."

"So those are the humble origins of my husband's greatest weapon," she said in teasing, soft tones. "No wonder he hasn't told me. But both he and myself are among the last users of these gifts. They are dying arts, Madara-dono. What, then, will you do with that which your wife has blessed you?"

Both of them stopped walking at the very same moment. She turned to face him, her swaddled son reaching up one of his stubby little arms to poke at her face, and she looked nearly like a deity herself. Regality and grace exuded from her, and her hard expression spoke to her experience alongside how deeply she cared for the topic at hand.

"I'm not sure what I'm to do with it," he admitted after a moment. "She left in a hurry, with much of her past still unclear to us both." He thought, then, of the strange man, of the strange half-Sharingan moon, of how he'd halted the Eight-Tailed Beast's rampage with a single look. "I seek now to find and interrogate a man made of shadows, whose mother sought to destroy Sakura for thwarting their plans."

Something came over Mito the very moment he'd spoken the words. She leaned forward a fraction, almost subconsciously, her hair pins like little bells ringing in the early night. "This can be no thing of chance, that an entity wants your wife dead. I believe the Great Sages to be dying, indeed, same as the power they've bestowed upon mortals," she went on. "Or rather, they are being killed—slowly and systemically. It cannot be a coincidence that your wife has given you a part of herself."

He could feel the blood draining from his face. "Killed? I—You must be mistaken, my lady, or perhaps the story as your husband told it to you was exaggerated. The power Sakura bestowed upon me was unknowingly done."

Mito had leaned forward again. "Even without her memories, a sage is a being in perfect synchrony with this world. Surely that cannot be truly forgotten. They are made of a different power than you and I, the only thing that can truly nullify our chakra. Whatever this entity—this mother, and her son—is, the influence of shizen energy is fading from the earth, while chakra only grows more powerful with each generation."

Madara blinked, stealing a brief look at her and Hashirama's son swaddled there against her body. It was true that even among the Uchiha, sons often outclassed their fathers. He wondered, then, for all of Hashirama's strength and Mito's unparalleled precision—along with both of their vast reserves—just what their offspring would be capable of achieving. Madara looked up to the starry sky, dark clouds passing by here or there beneath the bulging gibbous moon, and shivered.

Would the shadowed man seek to use someone like this, the way he had once used Madara? If all the world's natural energy was being siphoned into this entity called Kaguya, it was no wonder she'd been able to breach Sakura's spacetime jutsu and nearly break it in half.

"While we are on the subject," he began lowly, hesitating. But his father was dead, with only his eyes remaining in the world of the living. "And since your interest in the preservation of the sages is evident...I will tell you what I have not yet had time to report to your lord husband: that the shadowed man only recently attempted to breach the temple of the Eight-Tails in the Land of Lightning." He lowered his head to meet her gaze once more. "My Sharingan was able to ensnare the bijuu. I fear..." He glanced away, ashamed for both his hypothesis and his lack of understanding, doing his best not to shudder at the memory of the many-tiered pinwheel eye that replaced the moon on the night Sakura left. "I fear that my clan has a connection to this thing called Kaguya, and that we will herald in something terrible on her behalf. Supposedly, it has already come to pass in a time since undone."

Mito's fingertips were warm against his paled face, the contact a sudden shock. Her nails were painted a color like the depths of a churning sea, glittering in the patches of moonlight, her expression soft, almost pleading as he met her eyes once more.

"Do not despair so," she urged gently, the caress deepening as she searched his face. "You are a compassionate man, that much is clear to me. So long as we keep living, the future remains ours to shape." Then she pulled away as abruptly as she'd touched him in the first place, as if she understood just a moment too late how such a thing might look to anyone watching from afar. "And if this spawn of Kaguya seeks the Tailed Beasts, then already you have helped more than you realize."

He tilted his head. "How do you mean?"

"They are beings of chakra, my lord. As such, they can be sealed away—though only a human with deep enough reserves would be a worthy vessel to hold such a mighty thing."

Madara stared, disbelieving. "The skill in fuinjutsu that would require—"

"Something I'm more than capable of." She smiled, just the slightest tug of her lips at their corners. Despite how readily she'd touched him, she was too proper a woman to ever show her teeth in joy. Languidly she gestured with that same hand up to the yin seal that sat at the center of her forehead.

He frowned without really meaning to. "The Uzumaki alliance with the Senjuu was worth more than even I realized."

Indeed, with powers of sealing, immense chakra reserves and control, near-limitless stamina and longevity, that child swaddled against her chest would be an exemplary warrior in time.

Mito only gave that little smile again, the skin around her eyes crinkling good-naturedly. "This Eight-Tailed Beast," she said, "was he amiable, after you subdued him?"

"You misunderstand, I'm afraid," he replied. "There was nothing in the way of a fight. Rather, my eyes halted his rampage with no effort."

Something flashed over her face, a revelation of sorts. "Fascinating." Then, a spark of something mischievous in her eyes. "Perhaps an Uchiha alliance with the Uzumaki would not be a bad idea, either."

A chuckle escaped him at that; he'd always admired a woman with a bit of audacity, after all. He wondered, fleetingly, if Hashirama knew that his wife was the type to insinuate her coupling with another man. He carried on, eager to explain, driven by her own eagerness in turn.

"The Hachibi was willing to speak with me, in the realm of my doujutsu. Amiable...that remains to be seen. He told me that his name is Gyuuki, at least, and the reason for his rampage was grief over the deaths of the humans that tended to his temple."

She nodded slowly, considering. "So they are not all mindless beasts, as the stories so often say."

It felt almost as though they were two children, confiding secrets in one another the way he and Hashirama had done as boys. "There's something about that look in your eyes—what is it you're scheming, Mito-sama?"

"Accompany me," she said, her voice as regal and commanding as an empress. "I am taking my leave with my son to visit the shrines of Whirlpool before his second name day, as is custom. If, perhaps, we were to stumble upon a bijuu along the way..."

He matched her easy smirk, one of budding excitement. "You want me to act as your messenger boy."

"Must you phrase it so?" she said with a light titter. "A liaison, of sorts, between me and the Beasts. We must make it clear to them that though their power can scarcely be matched, it is their size and prominence that makes them so vulnerable. In the body of a human host, they will be far safer from this man you speak of, and likely far stronger in turn. With your doujutsu, the task will only be made easier."

But a realization dawned on Madara then, at the ease with which she spoke of this. "You've been harboring a plan like this for some time, haven't you?"

Though it was spoken like a question, both of them knew the truth of it. She glanced away at some insubstantial spot on the ground, a look of shame creeping into her features that she quickly schooled to ambiguity. "My husband...he has turned his attentions to the Tailed Beasts in hopes of using them as collateral. If each of the nations have one in their hidden villages, war is less likely to break out once more—this is what he thinks, at least."

"They are living things," said Madara with a frown, "and he would use them as bargaining chips?" And not only that, but doling out the Beasts as weapons was sure to only increase tension, for who could know when one leader of a village would snap, or another? Would a village take offense at being offered the One-Tailed Beast, while another happily takes the Seven-Tails?

Mito hummed quietly, her displeasure evident. "It leaves a bitter taste on my tongue, too. But if he can be convinced that they are creatures of reason, and if we can prove that they need to be protected instead of bartered, then I fear we have no other choice. The shrines of Whirlpool honor the Nine-Tailed Beast, and though it has not been seen in an age...well, perhaps it cannot hide from the likes of you, my lord."

He nodded, a confidence in him growing, one that hadn't been there since the seemingly endless days of war, battle after battle. Where his wandering in the last year had seemed so aimless, only serving to bring more questions than answers, this was something promising. This was a quest, a thing that had a potential end, one that he could carry out and see through of his own accord, with his own strength; to protect the clan, the world, the future—and of course, his wife therein.

"If it is necessary to be covert," he said, "from both your husband and those who serve him, then allow me a suggestion: I will make for the Shikkotsu Woods the very moment my business is finished in the village. You may depart the Leaf shortly thereafter and meet me in the forest, where we can leave for Uzushiogakure together."

"An agreeable plan, Madara-dono. Now, I must be getting home—I will leave you in peace to pick through the ashes of your father." She bowed her head and turned, one hand reaching up to hold her son's. Then she paused to add, "And...my condolences, again."

In the budding thrill of something of such importance, Madara had nearly forgotten he was supposed to be mourning.