Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Is that you, Hashirama?” Madara asks, trying to reach out with his sensory abilities. He’s blind in both ways, his eyes white and empty, his senses seared off from the overwhelming force of being enveloped and consumed by that fucking alien. But he still knows it’s Hashirama. By the sound of his footsteps, the clank of his armor, the force of his presence he would know him anywhere.

Madara is drawn to him like a moth to a flame. He died with Hashirama once before, fitting that this end should be with him too.

“Yes,” Hashirama kneels next to him and takes his hand. There’s so much he wants to say, to make Hashirama understand.

I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I found the answer and wasn’t utopia worth any cost?

But what comes out instead as a croak, “I guess neither you nor I could achieve what we wanted.” He failed in the end, reduced to a puppet and the dream had been a lie. If death wasn’t close at hand Madara would rage, he would fight and scream. Once again a cog in the wheel of a machine of death and this time he didn’t even know it.

“You’re so impatient,” Hashirama chuckles and Madara feels the prick of tears in his eyes. He never thought he’d hear the sound again. “Maybe we both were…It takes time, Madara. Our dream started with us, but it has to be cultivated and kept alive by generations after. We were never going to see the full fruition in our lifetimes, only youth and hubris made us think we would.” Hashirama squeezes his hand and Madara gathers all of his failing strength, seeping out like chakra through his skin, to squeeze back.

“Our dream?” He remembers the night at the Naka. Where it started and ended, the words as seared into his mind as any image he’s ever captured with the sharingan.

“Our dream,” Hashirama repeats. “Konoha is still…young in a way. There have been many failures and there's more work to be done now than ever but…I saw the village briefly. I’ve spoken to a handful of people who lived there. It’s not a lost cause, Madara. Not yet.”

“Always the optimist,” Madara snorts and his body spasms in pain. He spoke so fondly of the village as if it hadn’t been the death of both of their clans. As if the bijuu hadn’t been weaponized on a scale impossible to imagine even when Madara first led the kyuubi to the border as a threat. As if the whole system wasn’t just as corrupt as it had been in their time, just with a different name.

“Have you seen it?” Hashirama asks as he bends over Madara. He can tell, he can feel the brush of Hashirama’s hair on his chest.

“No,” Madara answers honestly. He knows enough, looking through Obito’s eyes. First, as a brat trapped under the rock and then as the bitter adult with his pet Akatsuki long dead.

“I think you should,” Hashirama says and Madara recognizes that tone. Something uncomfortable twists in his gut, something not too different from fear. Hashirama’s going to do something Madara will regret.

“Hashirama—”

Hashirama puts his hand over Madara’s heart. Chakra pierces through his chest like a blade. He wants to laugh and never stop at the horribly familiar feeling. At least it's through the front this time, Madara thinks. But there’s no blade. No sword sticking through and his best friend, his lover standing behind him. Instead, Hashirama’s chakra wraps around like a snare around his heart and seeps into his blood. It hurts. Hurts in the same way transforming into that fucking alien woman had. His skin stretches too tight around his body, ready to split at imaginary seams. Madara grits his teeth in renewed pain, terrified to imagine his skin turning pure inhumanely white again, but it doesn’t.

He knows because he can see again, his eyes and senses restored as the agony tears him apart.

And then it lessens and, in its absence, relief nearly chokes him.

“What…what did you do?” He asks Hashirama, voice hoarse. Why is his voice so rough? Had he been screaming? Madara blinks slowly, nearly overwhelmed at the sights around him. Only Hashirama’s face grounds him.

“Gave you the second chance I always thought you deserved,” Hashirama smiles and squeezes his hand, “my only regret is I won’t be there with you in this new life.” He starts to fade, the cracks of edo tensei spreading wider and wider across his face and neck.

“No. No, I’m going with you. I won’t be separated from you again.” Madara surges up, wincing as his body protests. He’s died twice before; he knows the feeling intimately well. Whatever Hashirama did worked. He’s not dying anymore, but Hashirama still is.

Madara grabs desperately at his shoulder and Hashirama’s crumbling hands frame his face.

“Goodbye, Madara. When we meet again…” he pauses and Madara fumbles, trying to get medical ninjutsu to gather on his palms. Hashirama tried to teach him once, but it was like pulling teeth. Those were in the good days of the village. He’d joked he’d never need to learn because Hashirama would always be by his side and he refused to learn after…everything. Not that it would make a difference here. Hashirama is dead. It’s only Tobirama’s blasphemous jutsu that holds his soul to this form. Healing won’t do him any good. Yet still, Madara tries. “When we meet again let’s raise three cups and sip from them three times apiece.”

There are tears in Hashirama’s eyes. He leans forward and brushes his lips against Madara’s, a brief and gentle press. Before Madara can react, he crumbles to dust, the last reminder an ashy smear on his mouth.

And then, Madara is alone. Again.

He watches with a chest full of ice as the other reanimated kage die and the survivors huddle together in desperate relief. If Madara was anything more than numb, he might enjoy it when they notice his presence. The entire rag-tag group is banded together, but it’s the three brats and their sensei that fought who fucking alien woman that step forward. Madara was aware, trapped in his body, trapped in hers. He was aware of everything.

And he already had experience with these brats as himself too.

“Why aren’t you dead?” Naruto, the latest kyuubi brat, has such a way with words. Madara ignores him and stares down at his hands. Firm and real. One natural, the other inhuman zetsu flesh. There’s still some of Hashirama’s ashes on his fingers.

“Ask the Shodai,” he growls when Naruto puffs himself up, unwilling to take silence as an answer. There were no more zetsus but Madara knew how to use edo tensei. He could…

But then Hashirama would be mad at him and simply release the jutsu himself. Unless Madara put a controlling talisman in the host and completely robbed him of his free will. Madara wouldn’t do that. He had already lived with a will-less copy of Hashirama before. The agonizing solitude of the cave had been unbearable and there had to be trials and experiments to form the white zetsus into what they’d been. Before Obito, he’d kept one of the best of them as a companion, but the illusion always shattered when they tried to speak. It was imperfect anyway. A pale shade of Hashirama’s brilliance. To smother his real soul would be unbearable. And if Madara summoned him and didn’t, he just end up alone again. With another tally to add to the growing—times Hashirama left me list.

“He wouldn’t!” Naruto stomps his foot. He looks ridiculous, doubly so missing half of his right arm. “Would he?” He turns to look at Sakura and Sasuke, also missing half an arm, behind him.

“He would.” The voice belongs to a woman. One more figure breaks away from the huddled crowd, the current Hokage.

Hashirama’s granddaughter.

The last person Madara wants to see. He knows who he is, what he is. Jealous, mean, and vindictive are close to the top of that list. Madara never hated Mito. Not personally. But he did hate Hashirama’s wife. Hashirama’s son. Hashirama’s granddaughter.

“But I’ll rectify that mistake.” She takes a step forward and Madara sneers.

“It worked out for you so well last time.” The five kage are jokes. He doubts even Naruto and Sasuke would be strong enough to fight him at full strength now. The Sage’s blessings were gone with their arms, but Hashirama's chakra coiled tight in his chest, leeching into his own. They might stand a chance now but they wouldn’t as soon as he healed. If he healed. Madara won’t kill himself. But he might not defend himself if they attacked him.

He’s tired. He wants to rest.

Hashirama’s second chance was well-intended and completely unwelcome.

“No.” Naruto tries to cross his arms and only realizes part-way through that he can’t. “If the Shodai thinks you deserve to live, there’s got to be a reason. You’re not,” his nose wrinkles, “crazy or anything anymore, are you?” 

“Naruto…” Sakura pinches the bridge of her nose and Sasuke rolls his eyes.

“What, it’s a good question! Can’t bring him back to Konoha if he’s gonna start killing people.”

“You want to bring him back to Konoha?” Tsunade turns to look at him, brow arched. It’s news to Madara too.

“It’s like a righting the wrongs thing, right? He's gotta make up for the things he did. That’s why the old Shodai guy wanted him alive, so he could do just that. There’s been enough death and dying today,” Naruto kicks at the rubble beneath their feet. This might have been a forest once but anything living has been completely and utterly decimated by the fighting. It’s unlikely anything will grow back for centuries. “I want to start moving forward, making things better. You’re going to be part of that,” he says it like a threat, like Madara is a child to cow into unwanted duties, “but if you step out of line and threaten Konoha…I’ll deal with you myself.”

For some unspeakably stupid reason, the confidence in his voice seems to assure his companions. Madara doubts he could. The boy had to rely on his team and literal divine interference to stand a chance. But Madara doesn’t want to fight them. His dream lies broken and shattered like glass around him. If he tries to reach for the pieces, he’ll end up covered in blood and cuts that’ll never stop bleeding. His plan, his purpose, gone. He has nothing else.

So he stands and he follows.

Chapter Text

Most days Madara wonders if he’s actually trapped in the stomach of the Shinigami, living in an eternal purgatory that’s torturous but not quite hell. It’s been months since he returned to the village, stuck in a convenient apartment guarded by convenient around-the-clock ANBU and a convenient view of the full Hokage rock. He has to look at Hashirama’s dumb stone head every time he glances out his window. It’s better than looking at Tobirama’s. Or remembering standing there on the cliff himself, imagining the endless possibilities before it all turned suffocating. He doubts anyone knows the importance of that rock anymore. Beyond Hashirama’s ugly fucking monuments.

It doesn’t matter. This time isn’t his. Madara is, once again, a ghost haunting the living.

He’s assigned missions to aid in rebuilding Konoha. They’re small, pathetic things. Things children should be doing, which is fitting because he sees them doing the same tasks he’s assigned to too. Apparently a few weeks before the Fourth Shinobi War, Konoha had been flattened into nothing by Pain. Madara knew this in the distant way he knew things he learned from Obito, but nothing more. So he’s tasked with being an errand boy, helping clear the lingering rubble, carrying building material back and forth, doing whatever mindless tasks any self-important chunin thinks to assign him to do.

He is Uchiha Madara and he spends his days doing meaningless labor on the outskirts of the village.

Madara refuses to speak to anyone more than necessary on these jobs and his ever-present ANBU guards see no reason to converse with him. He can, quite easily, go entire days without uttering a single word to another living soul. He finishes his jobs and retreats back to his shitty apartment to not-stare at Hashirama’s stone head and drink away whatever emotions he can’t bury completely.

He feels the lack in the village. The absence of Uchiha. He knew they were killed. Massacred. The thing he feared most had come to pass, made even more sickening by the fact that an Uchiha hand carried out the deed and Obito used his name to help cut them down. Madara hated them in the end. Refusing to listen, distrusting him, choosing the fucking Senju over his rightful worries. But he never would have killed them. The bitter, angry part of Madara hopes Obito rots for that misdeed alone.

The morbid part of him wonders if it’s some punishment for what he did to the boy in the cave. How he twisted him into a useful tool. The bottom of Madara’s sake cup never has the answers he wants. He swishes the liquid around and takes cold bitter comfort in knowing he was trying to kill himself in the exact way Hashirama once had.

Madara could never bring himself to return to the village, but he sent a zetsu to watch Hashirama occasionally. He had issues with his vices before, but Madara didn’t get as much satisfaction from watching him try to ruin his liver and reputation as he thought he would. He still loved Hashirama under the burning, raging hate and betrayal. Unfortunately.

Look at us now. Are we the same yet, Hashirama? Madara raises the bottle to the stone head in a toast and then taps it against the effigy on his own chest. He lost his cup about half an hour ago, and he can’t be bothered to find it. Madara downs the alcohol and lets the bottle fall from his hand. It clinks against the two other empty ones lined up next to it. Why wouldn’t you let me die? I just wanted to die.

He slumps forward on the table and passes out.

Madara wakes, unwillingly, to a pounding on his door.

“Hey! Old man Madara!” A voice too loud and too awake yells from the other side. Madara groans and pushes himself up, wiping away the dried drool on the corner of his mouth. His head pounds like someone’s repeatedly stabbing a rusty kunai through it and that sounds like a fucking wonderful idea to inflict on whoever’s on the opposite side of that door. He stumbles to his feet, swaying back and forth as he moves towards it.

Madara’s eyes blur and it takes him several times to fumble with the lock on the door. The ANBU guards are probably laughing but they can piss off. He finally gets the door open just as the blond-haired brat raises his fist to knock again. Naruto. He hasn’t seen him since he returned to this godsforsaken hellhole. So much to do as future Hokage.

“What. Do. You. Want.” Madara snaps each word out. Some of the biting threat is softened by his squinting and agonized wince at the bright afternoon sun.

“You reek, old man.” Naruto wrinkles his nose and takes a step back. Madara catches sight of the movement, and he might be hungover and miserable, but he still notices that Naruto has two arms again. The right one is bandaged and wrapped—a false limb. Probably Tsunade’s doing.

“Go away.” Madara tries to close the door but Naruto sticks his foot in the way. If he wasn’t hungover and every movement long drawn-out and syrupy, he’d make sure to slam it in the door as hard as he could.

“Uh no. See I asked Granny how you were doing—”

“I haven’t spoken to that woman.” And he won’t. Madara will go the rest of his miserable life without speaking another word to her or the Hatake boy whose face is currently being chiseled into the mountainside if he has any say in it.

“—and she just grumbled and said I shouldn’t bother with you unless you started destroying things again—”

“Great. So leave.” Madara shoves his weight against the door but his head swims and it for a moment he thinks he’s going to blackout again before his head clears.

“BUT,” Naruto raises his voice and the rusty kunai burrows deeper in Madara’s brain, “I’m gonna be the Hokage. And that means taking care of every citizen. Even grumpy maybe slightly murderous ones like you.”

“Am I supposed to be endeared by that? Drop to my knees and bow to the benevolent Hokage?” Madara spits. That blind optimism and complete refusal to acknowledge the dark reality was what doomed Hashirama too. Bury problems, overlook the worst ones, make excuses for the detractors to preserve peace and stability.

“Uh, no? That’d be pretty weird, not gonna lie.” Naruto squints at him.

“Go away, Naruto.” Madara sighs heavily, defeat gathered tight around his shoulders. “You won. I lost. I don’t want to be bothered.”

“So you can just drink yourself to death instead?” The words are sharp, unlike the earlier ones. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? That I haven’t seen it before? The Shodai gave you a second chance and you’re wasting it.”

“I never asked for it, I wanted to die!” Madara snarls and then catches himself. He breathes out sharply and steps away from the door, letting it swing open. “I don’t care. Do what you want, I’m not playing this game.” He steps away and retreats to his bed in the far room. The apartment is small, all one room plus a bathroom and kitchenette. He collapses onto the bed and turns away, facing the wall.

Naruto walks inside, his footsteps quiet against the floorboards. He’s probably looking around at the empty space. Madara has added nothing to it but the bottles and a small shrine in the corner. That’s the only respectable piece in the entire apartment and it’s still simple and plain.

“I’m going to help you,” Naruto mutters petulantly and sits down at the single chair at the table Madara slept in all night. “No matter how long it takes.”

Chapter Text

That day marks a change in Madara’s boring, monotonous routine.

No longer does he have several days of complete silence in a row. Now, Naruto bangs on his door at least three times a week until Madara lets him in. He can’t shunshin away to escape him either because he might lose Naruto temporarily, but then he starts pounding on the door past midnight when Madara’s trying to sleep.

Usually, after Madara lets Naruto in, he retreats to his bed and faces the wall—like a petulant child, his brain is all too quick to compare. It was just like when Izuna was little and Madara made him do chores or something he didn’t want to do and he’d throw himself down onto his futon in protest. The comparison makes his heart ache and he tries not to dwell on it. Naruto talks. He sits down at Madara’s shitty table and blathers on and on about daily Hokage training, all the paperwork he had to read, the boring lessons interspaced with the fun ones, and the repairs that were finally starting to come along. He talks about his friends too. Sakura. Sai. Sasuke. The rest of the shinobi of his year, the teachers he liked, the people he lost.

Madara doesn’t respond. He just lets Naruto chatter for an hour or two until he leaves and then he returns to do it again. The only positive thing about it really is the ANBU leave when Naruto arrives, their irritating, silent presence finally gone. This goes on for months.

However, the new routine breaks one day when Naruto comes in and collapses in the chair. Madara’s already in bed, staring at the wall. But Naruto doesn’t speak.

After a long-drawn-out moment, Madara turns to peer over his shoulder. Naruto has his head buried in his arms, breathing heavily like he’s about to cry. And here’s where it all breaks down. Madara expects to feel a vicious curl of black satisfaction in his gut—see the world is hell, you try to make it better and it never works—but instead, he feels only a vague note of disgusting concern and apathy.

He tries to cling to the apathy but it slithers away from him and he’s left with concern. Naruto has kept to his schedule of coming over and bothering Madara for just over three months. In all those visits, the cheeriness has never dimmed except for some exasperation and petulance. He’s never cried. Never shown the darker emotions that he had to feel, so what pushed him to this now? Was it a ruse? Just a way to try and gain some sympathy so Madara would actually interact with him?

No, he’s not Hashirama. Madara has—unwilling—listened to Naruto’s stories and—equally as unwilling—discovered too much about him through them.

Madara sighs, irritated, and sits up. Naruto doesn’t look up at him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“So now you wanna talk to me?” Naruto sniffs and gods, yes, that’s definitely tears in his voice.

“No, I don’t,” Madara snaps. “But you’re crying on my table. I eat there for gods’ sake.”

“’m not crying.”

“Yes, you are. Now I’m not going to ask again: what’s wrong with you? If you want to say it, do it now. Otherwise, get out.” It’s been a long time since Madara tried to comfort someone. He’s not even sure if that’s what he’s trying to do now.

“I’m Kurama’s jinchuriki.” Naruto finally looks up and his eyes are bloodshot and red.

“The Kyuubi has a name?” Madara never got any more than threats and complaints from it, both of which he ignored.

“Yes.” Naruto glares at him. “And I’ve worked through…a lot of issues with it. And I thought the village did too. I saved them from Pain and then you and then Kaguya and I thought that…that…” he sniffles and tears drip down his cheeks.

Why isn’t he telling this blubbering story to his friends? Madara saw all of them there, clumped together at the end of the war. Naruto talks about them often enough in his spiels. If he was saddened by whatever the villagers had done why not take it up with them, why him?

And then it clicks. Naruto isn’t sad, not entirely. More than that he’s—

“You’re angry,” Madara says out loud and immediately grimaces. He doesn’t want to know anything about Naruto. He actively wants to avoid it as much as he can. Naruto isn’t Hashirama. He doesn’t want to see underneath the mask if he can help it.

“…yes,” Naruto says between gritted teeth. Then he looks ashamed of himself and buries his head back in his hands. “I grew up alone. Unwanted. Nothing but a monster. The Shodai said you—”

“Finish that thought and I’ll cut your tongue out of your mouth,” Madara interrupts with a snarl. He doesn’t know what Hashirama said, but he shouldn’t have said anything at all. Madara won’t be pitied. He won’t be coddled. Most certainly not by a brat decades his junior.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?!” Naruto yells, blue eyes burning. “But you never treated me like a monster,” his shoulders slump. “I thought I proved myself. That was my goal, you know? Become Hokage, earn everyone’s respect. I thought I had gotten it early then. Everyone was so grateful and then…”

“Then they didn’t need you anymore,” Madara says before he can stop himself.

“Yeah. There’s peace. The villains were defeated,” Madara rolls his eyes—such a simplistic view, “why do they need me now? Most are still grateful. They’re nice. But no one’s apologized for how they treated me. And some of them are giving me the same looks they did back then. Like I’m not me, not a person. And I’m so…so angry. How could they do this to me? Haven’t I given them enough? What more do they want? What do I have to do to prove I’m not some beast?!” Naruto shouts and pulls at his hair, breathing heavily.

“I hope you didn’t come here for me to reassure you and give you some optimistic promises,” Madara sneers and tries to push down how familiar this story is. His hands want to tremble and he hates Hashirama a little bit more now for subjecting him to this even second-hand.

“No, of course not. I’m not stupid,” Naruto pouts at him and looks away. “You just…you don’t want anything from me. Not even something like constant cheeriness. Everyone—my friends, they keep saying I’m their rock. That they believe in me and what I want to do, to accomplish. And that’s…good. I’m happy. But I can’t tell them about this. Maybe if I was just sad but…not the anger. It gnaws at me. My own rage and pain, not Kurama’s, threatening to eat me alive. I could tell Kakashi-sensei but he’s so busy with Hokage duties. I could tell Sakura but she’s working so hard setting up the new hospital and gone with Tsunade-baa half the time. I could tell Sai but he has his whole thing with Ino and trying to fix ROOT. Sasuke…Sasuke is complicated,” Naruto winces, “he doesn’t want to be in Konoha half the time, and the Massacre still haunts him day and night. How can I put this on his shoulders too? I don’t have anyone to tell except…”

“Me,” Madara says

“You,” Naruto agrees. “You haven’t kicked me out yet either, which I think is pretty good progress,” Naruto wipes his nose and grins. It’s all shaky and wobbling, but real.

“I’m about to.” Madara threatens but he’s ignored.

“It’s nice to talk about it. To just admit it, you know? Thanks, Madara.”

Chapter Text

From that day on, the talks changed. Madara would usually at least look at Naruto instead of facing the wall. The one time he did it again, Naruto forcibly dragged him up and the shock of someone touching him outside of Hashirama and battle was so great Madara froze and let himself be pulled up before he could properly react. He’d still barely talk, but Naruto would chatter on as before, covering much of the same topics, but he’d also stop and complain, venting about things he thought he shouldn’t tell his friends or that he felt but said emotion would be too inconvenient for others to deal with. Madara has to bite his tongue and remind himself Naruto isn’t an Uchiha and this wasn’t a lesson. Trying to bottle up emotions is a futile endeavor. It never ends well and very rarely even works. At least for him. For better or worst, everyone in his Konoha had known how he felt at almost any given time.

But, against his will, Madara does start to feel some…attachment towards Naruto. He’s hopelessly naïve and gullible. They rarely speak about village politics or the hopeless fate of the human condition, but Madara remains firm in his opinions, no matter how much Naruto pouts or tries to give him heart-warming speeches about love and the power of friendship.

“Yes, tell me how that helps Ame and the systematic destruction and abuse the Great Nations have levied against the smaller ones since the villages formed?” Madara replied to that particular speech with a cruel smile that could cut steel. He’d use the Uchiha as an example, but that sunk too close to the bleeding wound in his chest. One good thing from Naruto’s speeches and his cutting remarks in return was it’d leave Naruto in enough of a huff that he’d usually storm off, ending their chat right then and there to go try and work on some ultimately meaningless piece of paper to put an end to it and make things right.

It didn’t escape Madara that he had another future Hokage’s ear. If he were younger, he might try to do something about it, twist Naruto in a similar way he did Obito. He can see the similarities there already. But he’s tired. And he doesn’t care anymore. This life is pain and suffering and he’s had enough of trying to struggle against it. Fuck, he’d probably make it worse. Again.

No, he’s content to drink himself to death, do his shitty clean-up missions, and only mildly try to sober up around Naruto because if he was drunk the brat would start yelling and his voice reached a pitch that was even more painful than existence.

But, of course, Naruto just had to push that boundary too.

“Come on, old man. We’re going out today,” Naruto says, barging into his shitty apartment like he owns the place.

“No.” Madara reaches for a bottle of sake. To hell with the yelling.

“Yes. You need a plant or something in here. Even if it’s just a fake one. This place gives me the creeps and I’m sick of it.”

Through a miracle of stubbornness, pigheadedness, and ignoring Madara’s swearing and promising a very painful death, Naruto drags him outside into the village proper. Madara rarely goes into the center of the village. The oldest districts are gathered here and he can’t escape the ghosts. The streets blur and sometimes they’re worn, over almost a century old, and other times everything is bright and new. Both make his heart beat unsteadily in his chest for different reasons. Getting dragged into the past, however, is by far the more unpleasant option. Hashirama will creep around the edges of his vision and the sharingan only worsens the effect by showing them the real memories perfectly preserved. He’d nearly overused his sharingan when the village was first formed, every possible moment he could get away with it. It was their dream, his and Hashirama’s, and he needed it to combat all the lingering nightmares of war but then the dream turned into the nightmare, and oh gods that was worse than the pain and misery of war—

“Hey, you alright, old man?” Naruto jabs him in the side and the memories dissolve in the light. Madara exhales and clenches his hands into fists, trying to steady himself in the present.

“I’m done here.” His voice is steady because Madara forces it to be, will not tolerate weakness, least of all from himself. He can feel the eyes on him, the people glaring at him as they walk down the streets. They’re insistent. Invasive. He can’t get away from their gazes and he wants to rip his own skin off so they stop looking, so there’s nothing to look at. It’s achingly familiar. Madara turns away from Naruto, reminds himself it’s Naruto not Hashirama—Hashirama’s dead, he should be too but he’s not—and walks as quickly as he can back the way they came as Naruto sputters and races to keep up. Past and present threaten to blur together until he can’t distinguish them. Madara keeps walking but the past seeps inward like an oozing, infected wound.

Is he going in circles? Is this a genjutsu? He tries to even out his breathing, the breath is key to mastering katons, he’s had control of it since he was five this shouldn’t be hard—everything blurs and his breath is slipping out of his grasp, lungs heaving, and he can see the people glare. There are too many of them, past and present overlaid, twice the stares, twice the—killed his own brother for his eyes, what a madman, who could trust such a monster—

Madara runs into someone…something and nearly falls to the ground. Nearly, but he doesn’t because he’s dragged up by someone else. Someone lower than him.

“Careful there! Fiery passion might take hold of us all, however…” the man trails off and Madara blinks at him in confusion. He recognizes him.

"Might Gai,” the name comes to him in a flash, “why aren’t you dead?” He saw him open the 8^th gate. The last fight fun and satisfying fight. He was a glowing red crisp last time Madara had seen him. There’s no way he should be alive, even one of his legs is wrapped in a cast and he’s sitting in a mobile metal chair.

“Old man, we have got to work on your people skills,” Naruto complains, finally catching up. “It’s rude to go around asking why people are or aren’t dead.”

“That’s why you asked me verbatim. Remember?” Madara snaps.

“What? No!” Naruto crosses his arms and pouts. “Anyways he’s not dead ‘cause I healed him.”

“You’re not a med-nin.” Madara’s sure he would have mentioned it before now.

“Well…no. But it was one of the Sage of the Six Path’s…thingies I got. Then lost. I used it when it mattered!”

“‘One of the Sage of the Six Path’s…thingies’,” Madara repeats, disgust in his voice. He had no lost love for Hagoromo, how convenient his story about sons and successors aligned with the Senjus’ whispering and rumors about the Uchiha. How he claimed to have wanted to love both his sons but one was always pushed aside. And the soul reincarnation was too neat and tidy, wrapped up all of Hagoromo’s problems and tossed it aside. Madara knew a liar when he saw one. But to call his power a thingy. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, counting down like he’d do when Hashirama did something particularly stupid and enraging. He actually manages to make it to zero, instead of stopping around eight as he burst into a fit of rage, the tactic quite useless in his youth.

“Well, I see you’re up and about,” Gai says and Madara realizes he’s been sitting there this entire time, watching. “How are you feeling?” He’s careful with his words, Madara did nearly kill him after all, but he almost sounds…sincere. Like he actually wants to know.

Too bad the answer’s shit.

Madara grunts and Naruto laughs nervously, cutting in before he can speak. “He’s better! Actually, talking now instead of laying in bed all day.” Naruto laughs and slaps Madara’s back.

He turns to berate the boy and misses Gai’s flash of concern.

“Tch,” Madara turns away from Naruto, “my apologies for running into you, Gai—”

“—you’re apologizing? You? Why haven’t you ever apologized to me?”

“Because I respect him, I don’t respect you,” Madara spits and enjoys the way Naruto squawks in protest, “you’re a child.”

“A teenager! Almost an adult!”

“A child. I’ll respect you when you stop caring so much about what other people think of you. Until then, all you get is pity. And annoyance.” Madara crosses his arms and ignores Naruto when he shoves him, truly proving his maturity. Madara doesn’t budge.

“How do you weigh so much?!” Naruto grunts and leans into him as hard as he can. “I’ve never seen you eat anything.”

“My arm, dumbass.” He flexes the unnaturally pale hand. It had the same properties Hashirama’s skin did, amplified. Technically, Madara didn’t need to eat or drink ever again. He only would for pleasure but pleasure was on the bottom of his current list. But it meant Madara couldn’t kill himself by wasting away. It probably protected his liver too more than he’d like. Hashirama’s own healing was a bit of a boon and a bane when it came to alcohol poisoning.

“Oh…” Naruto scrunches his nose.

“Goodbye, Gai.” He’s had enough. Madara turns and Gai waves, browns drawn tight in confusion, as Madara starts walking away, Naruto hot on his heels again.

Somehow on the way back, Naruto procured basic groceries and a fake plastic cactus. He totes both back to the apartment and insists on making instant ramen. He badgers Madara into eating and as he’s leaning against the table—there’s only one chair and Naruto refused to move even though it’s his damn apartment and his damn uncomfortable chair. As Madara raises the noodles to his mouth, he realizes it’s the first thing he’s eaten…since reanimation. Since he last died. Stuck in that cold, gloomy cave only kept alive by the gedo statute…he didn’t eat then.

Madara can’t remember when the last time he ate was. He takes a bite of the noodles. It tastes strange—anything pre-shrunken and dried coming out of a cup would no matter what Naruto said—but it’s not bad. Madara eats slowly while Naruto demolishes his food and makes a second bowl.

When he takes Madara’s to refill it—he hadn’t even realized he’d eaten everything—he takes it with only a small grumble and complaint. After Naruto leaves that night, Madara looms over the tiny plastic cactus sitting on his counter. He picks it up and contemplates crushing it into a thousand tiny pieces or throwing it out the window altogether. He knows what Naruto is doing, how he’s trying to weasel his way in and make him care about things, even if it is a stupid plastic cactus.

He's wrong. The cactus is uglier than sin and the cheapest thing Madara has ever seen in his entire life. If Naruto thinks he’ll care about this…He sets it down, about to turn away. Before he does, Madara tips it over onto its side and it looks even more pathetic there, not even standing upright.

Maybe the cactus is a representation of himself—nothing but a fake life.

Chapter Text

Madara refuses to go out with Naruto into the village center again.

“Come on, why not? You were making such good progress, and there’s a lot of new buildings bein’ built and it’ll be totally different—”

“I said no.” And maybe some sense can be beaten into Naruto’s head because he falls quiet at Madara’s sharp tone and stops nagging him about it.

Or maybe not and Madara should never have been so optimistic.

One day, about a month after their disastrous trip, Naruto barges into his apartment with a guest. Madara sits at his shitty table, a half-full sake bottle in hand, and stares at Gai’s surprised face as he looks into the apartment.

Oh, fuck no. Madara slams the sake bottle on the table until it rattles and some of the liquid splashes out. He rises unsteadily to his feet. He’s not drunk, not yet. It’s ten am and he’s getting there because today wasn’t supposed to be one of Naruto’s visit days and he most certainly was not supposed to bring someone else.

“Get. Out.” Madara’s eyes are on the brat, he refuses to look at Gai. He hadn’t been lying when he said he respected the man. Their fight was the one high point in that entire shitty war and he won’t have someone he respects seeing him like…like this.

“Huh? You didn’t even hear my idea! I know you don’t like people and you don’t want to go out but apparently, you tolerate Gai-sensei so I—”

“—have officially gotten on my last nerve,” Madara interrupts, fury rising fast and hard with the alcohol in his blood. “I’m done. You interrupt my life, ignore everything I have to say, and completely disregard anything you don’t personally like. I’m not your pet project to fix, Naruto. Get out and don’t come back.”

Naruto wilts, lower lip jutting out in a pout.

“No! I’m trying to help you and I don’t care what mean things you have to say, you need friends, Old Man and—”

It’s too much.

Madara isn’t wasted but he feels exposed, two people in his shitty apartment looking at his joke of a life.

So he decides to fuck it.

He shoves past Naruto, careful as he can be half-drunk as he skirts around Gai’s wheelchair and storms out of the apartment.

“Hey! Where are you going?! Hey!” Naruto scrambles after him but Madara shunshins away, nearly falling ass first in some random part of the village when he lands. He glares at the area around him, he’s on the green outskirts of the village, away from the suffocating heart. There are only a few dusty roads around him and the wooden walls rise up in the distance.

Madara stumbles off the road and collapses onto a nearby tree and slides to the ground. His head is pounding. Gods, why didn’t he bring the sake with him? Going back into the village proper to find another bottle is too much work. Madara closes his eyes and sighs. At least he’s alone. A soft breeze rustles through the trees—the only noise is the leaves, his heavy breathing, and…footsteps.

Madara bites back a growl and cracks open one eye.

“Um…are you part of the inspection detail?” A man with a happuri stands in front of him, rubbing his covered chin. The first thing Madara notices about him are the eyes—almost too big and wide for his face. Then he processes the rest of the man’s sentence and doesn’t bother hiding his groan.

“No.”

“Then…what are you doing here?” The man prods. He hasn’t started yelling or screaming—though Madara almost wishes he would. If he started screaming he’d probably also run away. Preferably in the opposite direction.

He doesn’t say anything, just grunts and stares at the man. It’s probably more pathetic than threatening, his eyelids feel heavy and gritty, and it’s difficult for him to focus on the man in his blurry drunken haze.

“All right, suit yourself. But at least take this.” He hands a bottle of water out to Madara. When he doesn’t reach out to take it the man sets it on the ground next to him and then walks away. Deeper into the forest with a clipboard tucked under his arm to do whatever…inspection thing he’s planning to do. Madara watches him, sprawled underneath his tree until the man disappears from sight. He must pass out because sometime later the sun is shining in his eyes, lower in the sky when he arrived. His head is pounding, splitting pain behind his eyes, uncomfortably similar to the mangekyou's pain before…before—

Madara pushes himself mercilessly to his feet, ignoring his aching body’s protests. He grabs the water bottle and cracks the cap open, taking heaving gulps of water. He doesn’t know where the man is, or his ANBU guard for that matter. They’ve started to grow lax ever since Naruto started coming around. More proof of this generation’s weakness, they can’t even keep on the same task for more than half a year. For a moment, Madara considers running.

He’s unfortunately sober again and he could get out of this cursed village once and for all. But that doesn’t solve the problem of where he’d go. Everyone he cares about is dead. And no matter how much he hates Hashirama for cursing him with this torment of a “second chance” Madara can’t bring himself to take a tanto to his gut. He knows what expression Hashirama will make if he does. That Hashirama still has that kind of power over him now is almost enough for his hands to itch for a blade just to prove he can do it, that he doesn’t care what Hashirama will say…but it’s too much work.

They took his weapons and none of his jokes of missions have required anything of the kind. Not that Madara couldn’t easily get his hands on something if he tried but it’s just too much. He’s tired. He’s always tired. Naruto and Gai should be long gone from his apartment by now. He can pick up more sake on his way back and drink himself into another dreamless sleep. That sounds leagues better. Madara forgets all about the inspector with his happuri and wide guileless eyes.

Squinting against the afternoon sun, he walks back into the village proper, intent on getting his sake and then going home as quickly as possible. He ignores the people on the street, most of them civilians that pass by without second glances but a few weak genin and chunin glare as he goes past. Madara keeps himself centered, focusing on the hard road underfoot, the strange unmistakably new buildings that rise up around him. He’s nowhere near the heart of the village. He knows where—when—he is.

For a moment when Madara spots his favorite cheap sake stand, he thinks the end of the day will at least go as planned, but no sooner than the thought crosses his mind than Gai rolls out into the street in front of him.

Chapter Text

Madara stops and meets Gai’s eyes. People on the street split around them, water passing over rocks in a river.

Gai crosses his arms over his chest. I’m not getting out of this. Madara thinks with dreadful certainty. For a pitiful moment, he considers running. But he has some tattered dignity left, so he accepts his doomed fate and walks closer to Gai.

Somehow, he’s still surprised when Gai says, “Let’s get dinner.”

“Fine. Where?” He doesn’t know where anything besides the sake stand is. He actively makes the effort not to.

Gai reaches down and grips the wheels of his chair, spinning around with surprising dexterity.

“Do you have a preference?”

“No.”

“Curry it is then.”

Madara grunts and follows behind. It’s awkward. Neither of them speaks—Madara refuses to be the first one to break. He may respect Gai more than anyone else in this cursed village but he does not want to be here. Getting dinner, acting like this is normal. None of it is, it’s all fake. Did Naruto put him up to it? Madara wouldn’t be surprised if that brat did. But he can’t ask so instead, he bites his tongue and follows along.

And try as he might, he can’t help but notice a few things on their way. Gai’s chair. He wheels it with ease, strong practiced motions, but he has to maneuver over bumps and holes in the road. As the shops start to open up around them, Madara’s eyes are drawn to their steps for the first time, and he notices raised thresholds and narrow doors, effectively making them impassable. He’s not sure exactly what thought is building in his head, only that it twists and writhes until Gai announces, “We’re here!”

Madara looks up and sees a traditional curry restaurant. It’s newly rebuilt, the wood still smells sharp and the paint barely looks cured, but the step is gently sloped and the archway plenty wide. Gai rolls into the restaurant and greets the woman behind the wooden counter, chatting animatedly with her. Madara ignores them and walks further in to take his seat. He glances over the menu with little interest, the words a jumble of characters. The provided alcohol list deserves more attention anyway.

“Do you know what you want to it?” Gai asks as he rolls closer. He lifts himself from the chair, balancing on one leg, before pushing it to the side, out of the way. Then he folds himself down on the cushion, opposite of Madara. He grunts in response and looks back at the sake list. Silence descends again and Madara wonders if that’s all this awkward dinner is going to be. He’s suffered worse, but gods he just wants to be back in his apartment alone.

Gai sighs. And then he slams his hands down on the wooden table, rattling the little center piece display full of condiments. Madara glances up at him, shoulders tense.

“Fight me.”

Of all the things he expected…

“What?” Madara croaks, eyes darting towards the wheelchair and back.

“Your Spark of Youth has almost sputtered out. You’re an old feeble man, wasting away,” Gai says, black eyes on him.

“I’m over a hundred years old.”

“It’s not about age!” Gai slams his fist down again. “It’s about spirit, mindset! You’re killing yourself and you don’t care. So I challenge you again: fight me!”

“Why do you care? I’m the one who reduced you to this,” Madara waves his hand at the cast and chair, “I tried to lock all of you away in a dream and I don’t regret it!” Only that he was manipulated, that the true purpose wasn’t peace on earth in endless sleep, but instead glorified food for that fucking alien. Hashirama preached they were rushing, selfish to believe they could see the culmination of their dream in their lifetimes, but what was the alternative? Damning generations to suffering in the hope that chip by chip they’d improve and in some impossible thousands of years it would get better? Like that was success?

“I was aware, you know. I didn’t die immediately after our fight, before Naruto healed me. I was dying but it was…slow. Painfully drawn out. I never lost consciousness.” Gai looks down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. “I saw the Black Zetsu betray you, Kaguya consume your body. I don’t know if you’re a good man, Madara. You have killed and manipulated others, while the very same thing was done to you. I think you really did believe your plan would bring peace, that you wanted to be locked away in the dream too, not rule over it. The Shodai made an…accidental plea on your behalf in the Yamanakas’ shared mink-link. He couldn’t contain his affection for you. Glimpses of memory and emotion slipped through. He was convinced you were a good and kind man until the end…and he was very deeply in love with you.” Madara’s going to kill him. When he dies, he’s going to find a way to murder Hashirama in the Pure Lands and send him to a second death, he swears to every single god—

“And then there’s now. You’ve spent months in the village, a defeated man but you haven’t tried to attack or sabotage it. Naruto seems fond of you with a true desire to help. I don’t know who you are, Madara. I don’t know if you deserve the chances you’re being given, but I won’t have my answer unless I get to know you. And I can’t do that if you’re trying to kill yourself in the quickest way possible.” Gai finishes and settles back, hands in his lap. The server waits hesitantly to the side, but when Madara glances at him, he scurries away. Typical. He glances back at Gai.

“That still doesn’t explain why you even want to care,” Madara says coldly and crosses his arms. Wasn’t Gai and the Hatake boy close? Obito had never shut up about him or the Nohara girl and despite whatever bad blood they’d carried into adulthood, he’d assumed the Hatake still cared about his old genin teammate in some form. If he did and Gai cared about his own friend…why was he even here?

“I should have died when I opened the 8^th gate. I was prepared too but I survived…at a cost,” Gai glances at the chair to the side, “one that I do not find too great a burden to live with. I will never work as an active ninja again, but I’m alive when one of my genin is not.” His mouth purses into a frown, lips wobbling. “And I am happy to have survived but…things change, Madara. Youth still burns in my heart but everyone sees an old man when they look at me now.” He chuckles but it’s not a happy sound. “I am someone to be coddled and swathed in blankets for my own protection so I don’t shatter like glass. It comes from a place of concern, I know, but at times can be unbearable. No one spars with me, no one fights. Even Kakashi tries to steer our challenges into something more…fitting for my current condition.”

“And you think if you get to know me, I won’t?”

“You are an abrasive man,” Gai says bluntly, “I cannot imagine you softening for anyone or anything.”

Madara scoffs, nearly at a loss.

“So, you want to be around me because I’ll be mean to you.” It’s only slightly better a justification than most of Hashirama’s usual idiotic reasonings for his equally idiotic plans.

“More or less. Are you going to fight me?”

“I’ll train with you,” Madara says instead, mostly because he has a sinking feeling Gai will be as stubborn as Naruto otherwise. Plus, he hasn’t properly trained since the war. He wouldn’t go as far as to say he was out of shape but…he wasn’t like he was then.

Their server finally gathers what spineless courage he has and approaches the table. Gai orders first and when Madara grunts and only orders a bottle of sake for himself, he tells their weak-willed server to bring a second bowl of the same curry.

The coward does so and Madara glares him into submission as he sets it down on the table. Gai thanks him profusely and digs in. Madara has no other option than to pick up his own utensils and start eating. He doesn’t particularly want to but the idea of wasting food makes his skin prickle. Too many years of starving rations.

“I hope you like it. Spicy curry is one of my personal favorites and if I remember correctly, the Uchiha were well-known for their use of peppers and spices.” Gai grins. His face is flushed red from the heat but he eats enthusiastically away at his food.

“It’s weak. The sake burns more,” Madara sneers and Gai laughs as if he’s told a great joke.

The meal should have been awkward. In a way, it still was but less so than Madara feared. Gai was animate unlike their walk to the curry shop, regaling Madara with various rival challenges, his genin, his new routine as a teacher at the Academy. It’s a familiar position, to let the words wash over him and be preoccupied by someone else. Gai is a more experienced speaker than Naruto, more apt at conversation and trying to pull him in too instead of assaulting him with a gush of words. 

Gai is careful to ask his questions and phrase them in a way to be as inoffensive as possible. Asking broadly about Madara’s days, fondly reminiscing about their fight and avoiding the context, never mentioning any of the Hokage or anything that happened after explicitly. He’s careful with his words while maintaining the same vibrant energy, but Madara still grunts and gives him mostly one-word answers in reply. He doesn’t do anything outside of missions, he doesn’t like anything about said useless missions, he doesn’t eat, doesn’t talk to anyone except Naruto, and now Gai. His only hobbies are drinking, staring at Hashirama’s stupid stone face, and sleeping. 

Madara is a riveting conversation partner, he knows.

But Gai, the physical embodiment of optimism, barrels through and by the time the server cleans their table and the bill is paid, Madara finds himself surprised by how much he didn’t hate the entire ordeal. He’s not looking for his chance to flee. Training still sounds physically draining but it’s been well over half a year since he was active and he…misses it. This body is still comparatively young, he’s not the old decrepit man attached to the gedo statue to survive. 

“You know…in a way you remind me of Naruto,” Gai says as he hobbles on one foot back to his chair, sinking into it with ease.

“Really?” Madara asks, lip curled. As much as he’s grown accustomed to Naruto, he would not say they were alike.

“He’s untempered Youth. He thinks he should shoulder every burden, that he alone can make it right. If he’s not careful, he’ll burn himself out.” Gai looks at him and Madara stills. “But that’s not to say, he’s not making progress. The village is still being rebuilt from Pain’s attack. Every new building has to have certain specifications Naruto wrote himself. Wide doors and sloped thresholds. Perfect for a wheelchair.” Gai pats the rim of one of the wheels and winks. “It’s progress. Maybe only a tiny step for you, but for me…” Gai trails off. “Tomorrow at noon?” He looks back up Madara doesn’t try to hide his wince. That was too fucking early.

“Two.”

“Two it is! Training ground 5.” Gai rolls away, watching and waving backward until he’s out of sight. Madara turns to go home–finally–but Gai’s comment about Naruto sticks with him. He knows where he’s at. Naruto’s favorite ramen bar is in this part of town, just a few streets over. It’s being rebuilt and expanded, one of his top priorities as future Hokage, he said with a wink and a grin. 

No. Madara tells himself sternly and takes a step in the direction of his shitty apartment.

He can’t take the second step.

Swearing under his breath, Madara turns and marches towards the stupid ramen shop. The people around him back away in fright, giving him a wide berth. This is just because he’ll be insufferable if he finds out about Gai. Madara can just hear the gloating, reaching to a fevered pitch–I was right, you did like Gai and now he’s your friend and blah, blah, blah. Forget dinner and maybe Madara showing up to training tomorrow didn’t make them friends. Gods I’m too old for this. He pulls open the door to the restaurant, one of the new metal ones that opens on its own. No matter how it may help Gai it still looks painfully alien and out of place. Madara barges in. Naruto is sitting at a table, two empty bowls of ramen in front of him as Madara storms over. Belatedly, making quick eye contact with the man behind the counter, he realizes he’s never actually been in this restaurant before, only knows it and the owner Teuchi so well from all of Naruto’s stories. No matter.

Madara marches up to Naruto. The boy glances sourly up at him, noodles hanging out of his mouth. His eyes look red, like he’s been crying. Fuck. Madara doesn’t let his momentum stop, but when he opens his mouth even he’s surprised by what comes out.

“If you ever pull a stunt like that again and invite strangers into my apartment without telling me, I will kick you out.”

“You already kicked me out, remember? I’m banned,” Naruto mutters churlishly.

“Obviously if I’m here to tell you, you will be banned in the future for any idiotic stunts, it means you’re unbanned now. How effective would it be to kick someone out who’s already been kicked out? That’s the worst kind of threat,” Madara snaps. This is not an apology. He refuses to even say the words out loud–Uchiha Madara does not apologize, but it’s worth thinking so Naruto doesn’t get any funny ideas in his head.

Madara tenses, waiting for the gloating or yelling–either way it’d be too loud, but Naruto blinks at him in shock and then smiles, a relieved chuckle escaping his throat.

“So, I’m not banned anymore?”

“No, you’re not banned, are you even listening to me?” Madara crosses his arms and leans back.

“You’re the one storming in here all dramatically,” Naruto complains and his eyes are suspiciously watery but they both ignore it. “And since you’re here, you should eat something. It'll be my apology to you.” He takes a deep breath. “I…I realized it was too much. Gai talked to me and then I had some time to think about it and…I’m sorry. You were right. I was thinking of all the ways I could be helpful, without thinking about well, you. So please accept my apology and let me buy you some ramen.” Madara fails to hide his grimace. 

“No.”

“Please.” Naruto shoves his own bowl forward and waves back towards the counter. The woman-Ayame-marches towards them. She’s fearless, unlike his and Gai’s spineless coward.

“No, I’m full.” Madara waves her away when she gets close. She refuses to leave. Instead, she pulls out her paper pad and clicks her pen. Threateningly.

“You don’t eat, that’s a bad lie.” Naruto squints at him. Madara meets his eyes head-on. He must still see something though because his eyes narrow into slits. “Unless it wasn’t a lie and you did eat with someone else…someone who you respect,” Naruto singsongs the last word, lips curling up into the gloating smile Madara first expected.

“I’m leaving.” He stands, pushing past Ayame who watches him with a frown, eyes never leaving his face.

“Oh, you did, you did! Haha, old man, I was right! I was right!” Naruto slams down a handful of money, way too much for this cheap place, and scurries after him.

“Stop talking.”

“You and Gai are friends, admit it.”

“No.”

“I bet he got you to agree to something else too, didn’t he?” 

When Madara doesn’t answer, Naruto breaks out into another fit of laughter. His smile is so wide it’s a miracle it doesn’t split his skull.

He follows Madara all the way back to the apartment, making a nuisance of himself that Madara reluctantly puts up with until he finally kicks him out to go to bed, hours later. 

Chapter Text

This is a bad idea. Madara thinks to himself when he wakes in the morning. It’s early, just past eleven because Naruto refused to leave for hours last night and then Madara was too tired to even drink. He passed out before he finished his first cup. He debates not showing up to Gai's training session at all. Naruto’s insistence that life would change and get better if he had friends and engaged with people was naïve and short-sided. It would only be gauze over a pumping artery. The world still wouldn’t be right. 

But Madara forces himself out of bed because he told Gai he would be there and the few scraps of pride are all he has left.

He walks to Training Ground 5 and crests a grassy hill to see Gai is already waiting for him.

“Yosh! Let our training begin!”

Gai is unsurprisingly enthusiastic. He has several scrolls with him—gifts from one of his former genin he says with pride—with sets of strange objects inside.

“It’s exercise equipment,” he explains at Madara’s puzzled expression. Most of it is specialized for his chair, contraptions with peddles, resistance bands, and odd metal bars at a confusing array of angles. It’s specialized in a way that looks like two people had too much to drink, had a brilliant idea, and woke up with an abomination made of plastic and metal that only their drunken selves could divine the supposed purpose of…not that Madara had much experience doing that with Hashirama at all. But however strange the contraptions may look; they seem to work. 

“Go ahead, warm-up and stretch, then we’ll exercise properly!”

Madara eyes him dubiously but picks up a weight. He recognizes what this is at least.

Despite it being months since he last did anything strenuous, his body remembers the basics. Memories seared into flesh and muscle over lifetimes of war as easily as any image with the sharingan. 

It’s not the same as fighting—there’s no blood and heady rush of excitement and fear mixed together to make a potent addicting concoction. Instead, this is a slow awakening, gentler than Madara’s used to. It’s not even like the sparring he and Hashirama would do as children. Even that was tinged bitter by the knowledge that they wouldn’t kill each other but other shinobi wouldn’t be as lucky. 

But there is something soothing about working out with Gai. He doesn’t try to spar or fight—something Madara’s glad for, but he does challenge him to do a certain amount of reps in a limited timeframe, or to complete the strangest circuit of routines, describing various forms Madara’s never heard of. Privately, he thinks Gai made them up on the spot then and there.

It’s…fun.

And after so many hours, Gai declares them done. Before Madara can make his escape, Gai drags him off to a yakitori restaurant. He protests but Gai hears none of it, already planning their next session and the one after that. Before Madara knows it, he has skewers of chicken in front of him and plans to meet up with Gai twice a week—conveniently on the days Naruto doesn’t come to bother him–for the foreseeable future. He thinks of protesting, at the way he could yell and rage and make anyone regret trying to plan his life for him, how much he's through with being someone else’s puppet even in as small and inconsequential a manner as this but…he’s tired. He knows their plan, knows the purpose of these carefully scheduled activities and thrusting unnecessary and unwanted food in his face at every opportunity but…why should he even care enough to rage? 

The answer is he shouldn’t, so Madara grunts and lets himself agree, if only because he enjoyed working out. Feeling the muted but familiar rush of endorphins again even if it was a pain to get there was worth it and he’s positive if he tried to do so much a sit-up alone the current Hokage and ANBU would be convinced he was plotting against them again.

Thus, Madara’s days shift again and he finds himself busier than ever.

Now, with whatever hellish schedule Gai and Naruto have designed, Madara rarely has a day to himself, instead of weeks of only superfluous interaction. Worse, they must have encouraged one another and wound each other up, because Madara faces an aggressively forceful front from both Gai and Naruto now. Not a single day goes by that they don’t make him eat something. Madara finds himself in too many of the refurbished restaurants away from the village’s heart and Naruto starts stocking his fridge like he plans to move in. That thought is almost enough to get him to burn his shitty apartment to the ground and escape. He may tolerate Naruto now, but the thought of living with him does make Madara long for that rusty kunai.

But he escapes that worse-than-death fate and settles for grumbling as Naruto leaves stashes of food about his apartment, waiting for him to find. Most are obvious because besides the shrine and the tipped-over plastic cactus—Naruto rights it every time he sees it and Madara tips it over again when he leaves—the apartment is as bare as the day he moved in. So, there’s fruit and pre-packaged food littered about his empty floor and shelves, tucked behind empty bottles that Naruto collects and throws out, grumbling all the while. 

“I can’t believe I’m cleaning. Me. Cleaning after you,” he complains every time. Madara grunts and usually finishes draining whatever he’s drinking, usually sake but Gai has been giving him some kind of cursed ‘protein shake’—a nasty concoction that’s on the edge of undrinkable but also strangely addicting—and throws it at him. Like a good little maid, Naruto shoves it inside his trash bag. The future Hokage cooks and cleans for me, how novel. Madara thinks and forcibly stops that train of thought before he can spiral into memories of Hashirama in the good sun-drenched days before he was officially proclaimed Hokage. 

“You’re so boring, old man. Don’t you want to do anything? You just sit here until Gai drags you out or you’re forced to go on missions. Why not do something fun?” Naruto complains one day.

“Fun would be you shutting your mouth,” Madara mutters and stares down at his protein shake in hand. It says ‘peach’ on the side but this sludge is a twisted nightmare of the fruit. 

“Oh haha, you’re so clever.” Naruto slumps on the table opposite of him, there’s still only one chair to sit in and Madara’s currently occupying it. Madara realizes Naruto has the same observation when he picks himself up from the ground with a grin.

“No,” Madara says before he even has a chance to open his mouth. 

“Let’s go furniture shopping!” 

“Absolutely not.” He gives up his inspection of the cursed drink, takes a swig—shudders—then takes another.

“Please? I think it’ll be good for you, I really do.” Naruto presses his hands together and begs. Madara stares at him, unimpressed. “What if we trade? I’ll do something for you if you do this with me.”

“What could you offer me?” Madara cocks an eyebrow.

“I could get you your favorite food—”

“No.”

“I’m not getting you sake.”

“Tch, like I’d want yours.” The point wasn’t to savor it, it was to get as drunk as quickly as possible.

“Ok what about…” Naruto trails off, chewing on his thumb. “What about your weapon? The fan thingy?”

“It’s a gunbai,” Madara snaps, automatic, and then pauses. “Why would you want to give that back to me?” He’s amazed they hadn’t destroyed it, what with Konoha’s utter lack of respect towards anything and everything regarding the Uchiha.

“Why not? It’s not like you’re going to attack people with it,” Naruto says, more idiotic and naïve than anything that ever came out of Hashirama’s mouth. Madara sets his drink down and takes a deep breath, counting down before the rage could consume him. “Plus, you could put it on the wall and spruce up this place! That way you’re decorating too.”

“Fine.” He’s only agreeing because he wants to safeguard a piece of his heritage from the village.

Naruto grins and shoves himself to his feet, marching out of the apartment. Madara follows behind at a slower pace. 

“You’re carrying this blasted chair. And paying for it too,” Madara says as they make their way down the street. He doesn’t know where any furniture store is—he only forcibly learned where all of Gai’s various restaurants were against his will—but Naruto keeps them towards the newer areas as best he can, always careful of heading back to the center. 

“Why do I have to buy it, it’s going to be your chair. You have plenty of money, I know you don’t spend it on anything but alcohol,” Naruto complains, stomping through the too-bright street. 

“Because you’re going to be the one who’s sitting in it. Why do I need a second chair?” Madara asks to rile him up. It works. Naruto’s stomps become heavier and he looks like a bullfrog the way his mouth opens wide to lecture Madara on the importance of hosting or having multiple chairs or whatever bullshit he’s going to make this specifically about. It’s satisfying to see him get so worked up—absently Madara wonders if this is why Hashirama was such a little shit to him when they were children—but as they’re passing one street, the main one that would lead to the old heart of the village, Madara hears a ringing bell and multiple people stopping to turn and walk down the street.

He doesn’t realize he’s stopped walking altogether until Naruto does too, inching in front of him and standing tall on his toes to see more. 

“Eh? What’s all that about?” 

“Shouldn’t the Hokage-in-training know?” Madara prods. Like hell, he knows what’s going on in the village. 

“If you’re gonna get smart, I think that’s an invitation to go check it out!” Naruto falls back flat on his feet, hands balled up into fists on his hips.

I’m not going down there, is on the tip of Madara’s tongue, but the words are stayed by what he senses. Further down the street, where it opens up into a large open space is a tight bundle of Hyuga. At least seventy or so. Nothing, in Madara’s vast experience, goes well when that many of the bastards are together. He’s reluctantly interested.

So, when Naruto takes his first step forward, glancing back at him to make sure he’s not going to insist on continuing onwards, Madara follows.

Chapter Text

Madara and Naruto walk down the road. The crowd presses close around them, the people so focused on whatever is at the end of the street, they don’t even mind pressing so close against him. Madara grits his teeth and pushes back, he does not like being this close to them , after all.

“I think it’s…Hinata,” Naruto mutters, standing on his toes again, one hand braced against Madara’s shoulder to steady himself as they reach the end of the street where it opens up into a large plaza square. It used to be one of the busiest intersections in old Konoha.

“Your girlfriend?” Madara drawls.

“She’s not…it’s complicated,” Naruto says, squinting at him and then turning back. Madara has poked fun at it before and enjoyed the way Naruto would turn into a babbling mess with any pointed comment about Hinata or Sasuke but he doesn’t keep protesting. Instead, his brows draw tight and a frown mars his face. “Last time I talked to her, she said there was some trouble with her dad and she sounded weird. I hope everything’s okay—”

Before Madara can berate him for worrying about a Hyuga, a main branch Hyuga of all people, the crowd shifts forward and a gap in the bodies appears.

In the center of the square, there’s a small, hastily constructed stage with a trembling Hyuga teen climbing its steps 

“Hinata…” Naruto mutters and glances nervously at the press of people around them.

“E-everyone.” Hinata’s voice breaks. She coughs, her trembling growing worse, and tries again. “Everyone. T-thank you for coming here today. I felt it was important to do this here in public, not at the compound–”

“Do what?” Madara yells and the growing crowd mutters in agreement. There must have been runners or people purposefully drawing others in, because the crowd has swelled to its limit, at least four hundred bodies crammed in the same space, more blocking the streets behind them. 

By now, the majority aren’t Hyuga, but the white-eyed bastards still group tightly around the stage. Most of them, Madara notes with interest, are branch Hyuga. It’s obvious the way they shy away from eye contact and how something convenient covers their foreheads. 

“Hey, don’t interrupt her,” Naruto says and elbows him in the side. 

Hinata fumbles, picking at her fingers as her eyes dart around the Hyuga gathered in front. They finally land on one in particular and Hinata takes a deep breath. She squeezes her hands hard enough for them to turn bloodless white and looks up. Determination wraps around her like a stiff oversized coat. 

“I am Hyuga Hinata. Disgraced heir to the Hyuga clan b-but heir nonetheless. I made a promise to m-my cousin Neji and I intend to honor it.” She takes another deep breath, twisting her hands together until they look ready to crack. “From now on there is no more main or branch house. M-my sister has revoked her right of inheritance. I am the only heir. The Hyuga will change under my leadership and abandon the caged bird seal or,” she gasps, looking like she’s about to pass out from the stress, “or the Hyuga will not have a place in this village. I will dissolve the clan.” 

It’s so quiet, you could hear a senbon drop in the square. No one says anything. At all. Until Madara bursts out laughing. Naruto elbows him in the side again, but the spell has been broken and now a loud clatter of cacophonous voices rise up. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Naruto hisses, glancing worriedly up at Hinata and then the crowd around. They’re not storming the stage…yet.

“You think she’s telling the truth?” Madara scoffs. “You’re naive, Naruto. No Hyuga would willingly give up their slave system. They preach pretty words, make all their promises, and then they do nothing. And who’s to challenge them? It’s their clan, their custom. If you do, then you get written off as the crazy one,” Madara mutters, bitterness curling in his chest.

The crowd at least isn’t as foolish as Naruto. They raise their voices and jeer. 

“Yeah, right!”

“Why should we believe you?!” 

“Great, more clan nonsense, why should us normal people care?” 

“What proof do we have you’ll keep your word? You’re part of the main branch, just like the rest!” 

The branch Hyuga raise their voices. Hinata opens her mouth, but they drown her stuttering out. Madara turns to leave, he’s had enough for twenty lifetimes of Hyuga bullshit, but Naruto stops him, a hand on his arm. His blue eyes are unusually serious, mouth set in a determined line.

The Hyuga at the front of the crowd fall silent as an older woman makes her way up next to Hinata. She’s old enough to be the girl’s mother, her brown hair laced with silver at the temples and wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Like the majority of the others, she’s part of the side branch. Unlike the others, her hair is styled away from her forehead and she wears nothing to hide the slave seal. It stands out on her skin, a poisonous green free for all to see. Despite being part of the side branch, she looks out across the crowd and glares down everyone making a fuss. Even Madara. Her colorless eyes land on him and don’t look away for a long, long minute. 

“I am Hyuga Isamu, widow of Hyuga Hizashi, mother of Hyuga Neji. When Hinata first approached me with the plans and promises she made with my son, I laughed her out of my house and told her to never darken my doorstep again. Unlike my late husband, I was born to a line of branch members that dated back to the very founding of this cursed clan. More than any other, I know how much the main branch takes from us ,” she snarls, lip curled over her teeth. “But Hinata was tenacious and determined. She came to me in the first week of the war’s end and has convinced me there was hope. For the first time in our history, there is a possibility for change.”

“But Isamu, she’s a main branch! She’ll betray us and our children will be sealed! We’ve all heard it before, this very demonstration could be used against us!” One Hyuga woman yells, tears thick in her voice.

“My word is not enough,” Hinata starts. Her voice is weak compared to Isamu’s but she doesn’t hesitate, even with her stutter. “So I will prove myself to you through action instead.” She turns to Isamu and bows deeply, before straightening, pulling something out of her pocket. It’s a random metal cylinder to Madara but it makes all of the Hyuga freeze in front of him. Hinata offers it to Isamu. 

“We are not as cruel as the main branch. A single individual will not have the power to cause you debilitating agony, that will require a majority. However, you will feel a fraction of our pain every time one of our seals is activated.” Isamu takes the tool and presses chakra into it. A familiar seal darkens its side, and now it’s Madara’s turn to watch in stunned shock. She flicks something on its side and a point emerges. Isamu presses it into Hinata’s forehead until blood starts to drip down her face. “You will be marked as one of us, to show your commitment. You will not hide this seal. You will bear it for the world to see, to prove your dedication. And, if you live to see your promise fulfilled, the main and branch house united as one equal family, may this mark fade,” Isamu’s voice wavers for the first time before it surges again with strength, “may this mark fade from your skin, the last Hyuga to ever bear its curse.” She finishes and the caged bird seal forms on Hinata’s forehead. Hinata takes a shuddering breath and straightens to her full height, staring at the shocked crowd before her. 

The seal is identical to the side branch Hyugas’ with the addition of a single circle underneath the ‘X’ that mars her forehead. 

“I am Hyuga Hinata.” Her voice still shakes but she projects it outward, capturing everyone’s attention. “And I will keep my promise.” 

The rest of the day is a blur. The Hyuga sweep Hinata off the stage, Isamu always right by her side. The civilians who don’t know the customs cheer, parting in a daze for something mindlessly exciting for them. The clan shinobi among them are much more cautious. Several shunshin away and Madara can only imagine every clan will know what just happened before the sun sets. Naruto makes one attempt to get close to Hinata and talk with her, but the crowd pushes him back, cutting him off. He returns to Madra’s side, anxiously biting at his thumbnail. So, he understands the gravity of what just happened. There’s hope yet. Madara meanwhile is in a daze. That wasn’t useless fluff and empty promises. If that seal was real–and he has no doubt it is, he could sense it snaking around her chakra coils, binding them tight–there won’t be a way to remove it, unless the conditions are met. Hinata, a main branch Hyuga, will feel only a fraction of the side branch’s agony when their seals are activated, but they’ll be able to impose the same agony on her with a majority. And, in Madara’s experience, one of the things people tended to rally easiest behind was taking their pain and anger out on someone else. And for the branch Hyuga who’ve held a grudge…

Why? Why would she do that? Madara wonders as Naruto tugs him away from the square. They meander back the way they came.

Somehow he finds himself back in his shitty apartment with an additional chair and take-out from Ichiraku’s but he doesn’t remember anything after leaving the square. Naruto sits across from him, squeaking in the new seat as he mechanically eats his food.

“You think Hinata’s going to be ok?” Mindlessly stirring his chopsticks around, he looks to Madara of all fucking people for comfort. 

“I…I don’t know.” He wants to be snide, to mock Naruto but he…can’t. Madara’s mind is blank except for an endless– why’d she do that? She has nothing to gain and everything to lose .

The Hyuga are one of the most powerful clans, steeped in their traditions and unwilling to budge. They’d been using that damn slave seal before the Warring States period for gods’ sake. Madara did everything he could to make sure they wouldn’t be invited to join the village before they gave the barbaric practice up. It sank his already horrible reputation. The Hyuga refused, but Hashirama kept his promise and they hadn’t been admitted into the village until Tobirama became Hokage. 

The Hyuga would never give the caged bird seal up. Never. They didn’t when it would have benefited them most, so why do it now? With the Senju and Uchiha gone, they’re one of the last noble clans, the only one really given the Aburame’s… everything. The triad trio are the only ones beside the Hokage and council that have a fraction of the power of a large, structured clan. Tobirama always muttered about the Uchiha being untrustworthy and looking to seize power in the village when his concern should have been the Hyuga. After the fourth war, despite a lack-luster heir, they were in a position to leverage their power best, especially if their lack-luster heir could be wed to the future Hokage. They had everything , so why did Hinata throw it all away? For ‘justice’? ‘Equality’? A ‘better future’? 

Madara wants to sneer. He wants to sneer and laugh and rage. 

Chapter Text

The thoughts about the Hyuga plague him. Torment him. A swarm of biting insects he can’t simply burn away. Naruto notices it, so does Gai. They worry he’s going to relapse and they become almost unbearable in their concern. He still spars and eats with Gai, tolerates Naruto's visits and stories but both of them get this expression on their faces, a sickly-sweet look in their eyes that drives him insane. It’s too close to Hashirama– I’m worried about you Madara but you know I’m right so just listen – look that he knows all too well. 

“Stop treating me like a child! Stop treating me like I’m about to break!” He yells at both of them on several separate occasions when it all gets too much. His apartment and the village aren’t sanctuaries–not that the village ever was–so Madara takes to the forest surrounding it for some peace and quiet.

He’s…partially successful. Madara is blissfully alone, but he feels strange walking through the trails. In a twisted way, it reminds him of his childhood. Deep into the woods, he catches glimpses of the rising mountain in the distance, and without the buildings and village…he looks down at his body and expects to see a child’s in its place. The leaves will rustle and he’ll look up expecting Hashirama–also a child–to pop out and tackle him to the ground. It doesn’t happen. Of course, it doesn’t happen, doomed to be delusion and dream. Madara has to limit his time in the woods, lest he gets dragged back into memories. These are kinder than the ones in the village. Less tainted. 

The Hyuga questions never stop swirling in his head but for a few moments, he can forget. Remember the simpler times when he and Hashirama really could do anything together. He never brings sake to the forest to drink. Not because he doesn’t want to–lost in the bittersweet memories makes him long for the alcohol to take off the sharp edge until he’s left with the perfect hazy purity–but the first and last time he tried, the memories vanished altogether. 

He couldn’t enjoy them at all and instead was left drunken and confused, blindly searching for Hashirama when he didn’t know where he was, when he was. Madara made it back to the village’s edge and luckily stumbled upon Gai, out with the Hatake boy. Or not so lucky because Gai took him back to his apartment and called Naruto. Madara has no recollection of anything past that and even those memories are rather elusive and blurry.

Instead, Madara wakes up with a splitting headache the morning after in the ruined remains of his shitty apartment. The last thing he remembers clearly was finishing a bottle or two in the forest and then waking up here. Naruto is by his side, the ragged, torn remains of a blanket draped over them both. 

What the fuck happened? Madara looks around and winces at the sharp spike of pain in his skull. When his eyes land on Naruto, he finds the boy staring back at him, awake and unusually serious. 

“What…” Madara’s voice is a ragged mess, barely more than a croak. 

Naruto stands and makes his way towards the counter. One of the only things battered instead of completely trashed is the cheap, shitty coffee maker. 

“You…um…came back drunk. Gai left you here and you were fine for a while but as I was about to leave, you didn’t recognize me. You kept asking where the First Hokage was and…it got bad. ” Naruto’s voice is small. “You were crying and screaming and…” So he wrecked the apartment. Madara exhales loudly and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s never drinking in the forest again. “You…you loved him, didn’t you? In love, I mean,” Naruto clarifies and brings over two cups of steaming coffee. Only one is in a coffee cup, Madara can see the second cup in shattered pieces on the floor.

He wants to snap at Naruto. To tell him to drop it and never speak of this mortifying incident again. Madara’s sitting on the floor, surrounded by broken wood from his bed frame, shredded cloth from his mattress, with a singed blanket around his shoulders. He’s a picture of shame. Naruto crouches beside him and sets the actual cup of coffee in front of him. It’s going to be atrocious. The boy can’t work a simple fucking coffee machine to save his life. Every sip will be chock full of loose grounds. It’ll be the cherry on top of a horrible shitty night that continued into an even shittier day. 

“Please?” Naruto’s voice wavers, but he keeps eye contact with Madara, doesn’t shy away from his gaze. 

Madara sighs and picks up the warm cup. “Yes,” he answers curtly and takes a sip. It’s as disgusting as he thought it would be, somehow worse than any cup Naruto made before. 

“How did you…are you still in love with him?” Naruto mumbles, fiddling with his glass in hand. Madara squints at it and realizes it’s not even a cup, it’s a bowl. 

“Are you trying to get relationship advice from me ?” Madara raises an eyebrow and takes a second sip. 

“No!” Naruto’s ears turn red. “Not really…I just…you don’t talk about him, you know? And I thought the Shodai brought you back just for a second chance for you to redeem yourself at first but then Gai put into context some of the things he said through that mind link and…and last night…” Naruto trails off and glares up at him. Madara glares back, but he doesn’t back down. “I’ve never seen you cry, Old Man. And you were so…so upset that he wasn’t here, you were inconsolable. And then I made the mistake of telling you he was dead.” Madara winces. He doesn’t remember last night but he could picture how well that went over. “I guess you thought that meant I killed him.” Madara winces again and looks closer, trying to make sure Naruto isn’t covered in bruises or burns. With this quick healing though, it’s impossible to tell how badly he had been injured. “Which really sent you into a fit. I managed to get a hold of you and pin you down in sage mode before you destroyed any more of the apartment, but you were yelling and screaming very creative threats about how you’d make me pay for, and I quote, ‘killing the love of my life’–” 

“I did not say that,” Madara interrupts. He had at least that much confidence in his drunken, deranged self. That’s not what he called Hashirama…then. 

“Alright, maybe not those exact words, but even I picked up this wasn’t just any old pal to you. So I wanted to know how you felt…” He bites his thumbnail, looking up at Madara curiously, obviously wanting more. 

Madara stares back down at him again, long and hard, but Naruto still doesn’t look away. His mood is at an all-time low, between the headache from the hangover, the knowledge he’ll have to replace all his furniture, the leeching embarrassment of what he did which will no doubt have repercussions because trashing the apartment couldn’t have been subtle to any other sensor in Konoha, and, yes, the shitty coffee that tastes terrible, so Madara doesn’t know why he entertains Naruto by answering. 

“Yes.” he takes another sip. Come to think of it, Hashirama had a knack for burning theirs whenever he made it too. Before the machines, he’d roast coffee beans over a fire and always, every single time, Hashirama would nearly burn the house down. It’s why he stuck to tea, which was only slightly less burned from leaving the kettle on too long. Madara smiles at the sudden memory, a twitch of his lips as his eyes prickle. “I still love him. I also hate him too, so don’t get that twisted.” He jabs one finger in Naruto’s direction. 

“And he, uh, felt the same? About the love part? Or hate, I guess, but mostly love.” 

“Yes.” Of that, Madara had no doubt. Despite it all, Hashirama loved him in the end. Probably hated him too, if he had any sense in his thick skull.

“Then why did you two try to kill each other? Why did it end up like this?” Naruto asks. If there hadn’t been such an earnest look on his face, Madara might have very well asked him why he and Sasuke tried to kill each other just to watch him squirm. But for the first time in a long time, Madara feels every year he’s lived sink deep into his bones. He’s got a century on the brat, at least. 

“Because loving someone doesn’t make all of your problems go away,” Madara sighs. He knows–from all of his endless stories–Naruto grew up an orphan. Alone and hated. His blood boils at the thought. Another child failed by the village. But Madara’s aware because of how he warped Obito, how alluring love is. How it should be able to fix any and every problem. How desperately people will go to the ends of the earth for their love. Madara is an Uchiha. He knows. He knows. 

So, he opens his mouth and begins to speak, to tell his story.

Chapter Text

“Our clans were at war. Mine and Hashirama’s. When we were children,” Madara clears his throat, the words awkward and sticky on his tongue. He’s never…he’s never told the story before. Not to Izuna, not to Obito, to no one. “You went through a war, Naruto, but you have not been a child of war, bred to fight and die in an endless, unbreakable cycle. Hashirama and I were young, idealistic. Our first meeting was an accident or,” Madara’s lips twitch, “if you believed in Hashirama’s romantic notions, destiny. We were two weapons wearing the skin of children, thinking we knew better than our elders. We planned a utopia, a place of peace where all the warring clans could live together and our brothers would be safe. We dreamed of a village.” He can’t keep the edge of bitterness from seeping into his voice. 

“But it was just that, a dream. Our friendship was discovered and my father gave me a choice. Side with the Senju boy–our clan’s greatest and oldest enemy–and put my family, my last remaining brother in mortal peril, on the dream of a pre-teen after centuries of savage war, or give him up and return to my rightful place. It was a generous offer, to overlook and forget my reason as long as I kept my word and served the clan as I should.” 

“But you chose Hashirama, right? You chose the dream?” Naruto asks, leaning closer. 

“Yes. I went to the river where we met with a warning. I spent all night carving it into a rock and planning how we could communicate in the future and meet up again. But then…when I arrived, Hashirama’s father and brother gave him a similar ultimatum, I suppose. We tried to avoid a fight, but it was impossible. My last brother was nearly killed. If I had been a second slower…” Not that it did Izuna much good in the end. “I convinced my father Hashirama was stronger and we would lose if the fight continued.” 

“But then you went back? You said you planned how you guys would keep meeting–”

“No. My friendship with Hashirama was…” he doesn’t have the words to describe it, “precious.” It’s still too weak, it doesn’t capture the all-consuming hope and wonder, how dear and important Hashirama was to him, how it felt like stepping out from the shadows into the warm sun anytime Hashirama would look at him and smile… “But how could I face another day if my brother died due to me? Because of my friendship?”

“That’s not…” Naruto pulls at his hair, frustrated.

“You grew up in the village, Naruto. You’ve had your hardships that I do not know and I have mine. You cannot conceive of the death and destruction of that time. The clan was everything, loyalty to it was the only reason the Uchiha survived as long as we did. I was the heir, groomed to take my father’s place when he fell to the violence of that era. How could I turn my back on the clan and entertain fantasies and dreams? I would be their–my brother’s–death. I would ruin them. So I cut my heart out and walked away from him. My friend. My love.” Even now it aches like a fresh wound. In a way, it still is. Hashirama’s tear-stained face was the first image he ever saw with his sharingan, perfectly preserved.

“But you changed your mind! The village exists!” 

“War followed. I returned to my life, but it was not the same. You don’t understand the gravity of the sharingan and how it awakens. No one will ever understand again…” Madara fights down the vice around his heart. The Uchiha are gone. Massacred. It didn’t matter in the end. Nothing did. He failed. “It is a momentous occasion in a young Uchiha’s life and I awakened mine when I parted with Hashirama. The pain of that decision awakened my clan’s most prized dojutsu. I was naive when I was young. I thought my decision to put the clan over my relationship with Hashirama would prove my loyalty, but it only shadowed it with doubt. The Uchiha questioned why I even had a relationship dear enough with our enemy to awaken the sharingan in the first place. Word spread through the clan and I found myself a pariah. Betrayer. My father did what he could. My brother stood unflinchingly by my side. But the rest had made up their mind. Pain and misery, coldness and hunger were part of our daily lives. These things become so much more bearable when you have someone to blame.”

“That’s not fair!” Naruto pouts, blue eyes burning. A humorless laugh rattles out of Madara’s chest.

“This is not a happy story, Naruto. Did you forget how it ends?” Madara presses a hand to his chest and smiles cruelly. “My father took our clan out of Fire Country. It was an attempt at distraction, but it failed and led to one of the worst famines in our history. We returned, sucked into the same eternal war we always had been. I realized then, that mine and Hashirma’s dream had been just that–a dream. A dream in the truest sense of the word, a fantasy that could not be achieved by two lonely boys, raging at their pitiful life. All I could do was scrabble and fight, try to protect my clan, my family for one more year–until I too fell and died to the raging monster of war. 

“When I met Hashirama on the battlefield, I showed him no mercy. He cried and raged. Begged me to see reason and remember what we had, our dream. I never answered him. I couldn’t open myself up to him again only to lead to the same disastrous results. But I couldn’t kill him either. I had a chance, once. It was in our third fight as enemies, no longer playful sparring between boys. Hashirama begged like he always did and when I didn’t answer, he threw down his sword and screamed at me to prove him right or wrong. I…couldn’t. Not when he was unarmed, not when he was crying. It gave him too much confidence.” Hashirama took it as a sign. One he unendingly pledged himself to. Madara knew. Hashirama whispered it into his skin after a tender night and Madara questioned his unending faith. 

Madara’s weakness, his failure to kill his enemy, was the foundation of Hashirama’s unrelenting faith. 

Poetic. 

Except for how it ended.

Chapter Text

“Hashirama never stopped begging and pleading for peace,” Madara continues. “Eventually he took over leadership of the Senju clan and became even bolder.” Hashirama told him once, what he did to take over from his father. The Uchiha whispered about Madara being a kin-killer but if they knew what their precious Shodai and Nidaime did…but he had kept that particular secret to the grave and back. “The Uchiha were tired. The hot blood had worn its course and they longed for peace but not with the Senju. Their crimes could not be forgotten. At least that’s what I thought.” Madara looks down at his empty mug. The scarred hands that clutch around it, absent of familiar gloves. “I was not well-liked amongst my clan. The Uchiha do not forget. They do not forgive.” He meets Naruto’s blue eyes. 

He won’t understand, he can’t, not really. Not even Hashirma could know the particular agony of having every moment captured perfectly with the sharingan. The blood, death, and betrayal. Always, always so close. Even without the dojutsu itself, the clan was cursed with the horrors of an almost faultless memory. 

Madara can remember vividly the first time Hashirama told him he forgot something important. He questioned if he was sick, sleep-deprived, or on the verge of death. Why else would he forget? Instead, Hashirama laughed and dismissed it, shrugging it off as a joke. It was incomprehensible to forget. All of the pain and death was burned into Madara’s brain and when he awoke his sharingan he would live through any recorded memories and they’d be indistinguishable from reality. The Senju muttered about a curse of hatred that afflicted their clan, but it was a curse of memory instead. 

The Uchiha did not forget. 

Time was unable to dull the memories and take off their edge. 

So they did not forgive. 

The clan had never forgiven him for his first betrayal, awakening the sharingan over Hashirama. And then…

“Hashirama preached peace. He sent letters to me, to the entire clan. He would get himself hired by the same daimyo, or opposing ones, and do everything he could to be a nuisance and prove his intentions were pure. He offered food, aid, anything that would get my clan to trust him.” And in doing so, he undercut Madara’s authority. A Senju offering to provide for the clan where their own failure of a leader couldn’t. And then… “Less than a year later my…my…” The words don’t come. Madara exhales sharply, tightening his hands around the cup until it’s about to shatter. “My brother was killed. By Senju Tobirama.”

“The Nidaime?” Naruto blinks at him in shock. He doesn’t know. None of them know. The cup cracks and drops to the floor, the remains of the coffee soaking the floor. He knew the Uchiha made him into a ghost, tried to write him out of history. Why did he think for a second they would remember Izuna? “But he knew his brother was trying to make peace, didn’t he? That doesn’t make sense, why would he–”

“I. Am. Aware. ” Madara bites the words out, pressing his palms flat against his knee. He’s breathing heavily, sharingan active. He’s only aware of the latter as Naruto stiffens, unease flashing across his face. He does an admirable job of keeping eye contact before the instinct overwhelms him and he looks away. A distant part of Madara wonders if the Kyuubi has any influence over that, if the beast’s fear of his eyes seeps into Naruto too. Or if their recent past as enemies left a mark in the way it didn’t for Hashirama. Stupid, stupid Hashirama who never flinched away from his gaze. 

“I am aware,” Madara repeats, exhaling deeply. He’s not calmer per say, but he’s more in control of himself. “Not everyone among the Senju wanted peace, especially not with the Uchiha. We were still at war, no matter what ideal world Hashirama wanted to wish into existence. But Izuna was my little brother.” Madara’s hands close into fists. His nails bite crescent scars into his palms, another set among many. “I was…too late to stop him. Hashirama begged me to let him heal Izuna. He held out his hand, desperation in his eyes. He could do it. I knew he could. But Izuna…” the memories rise, swift and fast and Madara digs his nails in until he feels his skin split and blood start to ooze out, “Izuna refused. He would not be healed by a Senju. And I honored his wish. I should not have, but Izuna was the last of my family. The only one I was close to.” 

Madara’s heart was his enemy again. He was too paralyzed by the idea of being alone, a world where Izuna lived but hated him was unbearable. It was the fear of a naive child. Madara would end up alone no matter what. Even when he had Hashirama, he eventually lost him. At least if Izuna hated him, he would have lived. At least Madara wouldn’t have failed in his duty as a brother. 

“My decision killed him. He died three days later from an infection in the wound. The Uchiha saw Hashriama’s offer of aid, remembered his many offers before and abandoned me in droves after I left them on the battlefield to care for my brother. They still hated the Senju, but they decided they would take their food and medicine and probably justified it to themselves that they’d kill them later when they slept. On his deathbed, my brother begged me to take his eyes and end the Senju once and for all. I honored his first request.” The physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional one. Watching his baby brother die…

“But you didn’t kill the Senju,” Naruto whispers. 

“No.” He would have, if the pain wasn’t so great. Maybe if he loved Izuna a little less. It would have been easy to turn his susanoo against the Senju. They had seen it before in his and Hashirama’s more cataclysmic battles, but Hashirama wouldn’t have expected the sudden burst of power after Izuna’s gift. If Madara’s goal had been their destruction, they would be dead. As it was, he only wanted to kill himself. Not even Tobirama. Oh, Madara wanted to see him bleed and suffer, die in an as agonizing way as possible so he would feel a fraction of the pain he did losing Izuna. But Tobirama was Hashirama’s little brother. And a part of Madara might have hated his old friend–his unending optimism and confidence that Madara, plagued with doubts could never have, his easy charisma that drew others to him at the cost of cutting away Madara’s few remaining ties, his strength and how they were always even-matched no matter how much pain and sacrifice Madara endured…but he was still Hashirama. And Madara remembered the boy on the cliff, with the brightest smile that could challenge the sun with their shared dream of peace where they could protect their little brothers. Madara couldn’t find it in himself to take Tobirama away from Hashirama like Izuna had been taken from him.

“No, I did not kill the Senju. I betrayed Izuna’s last wish. I fought recklessly, out of control until I was flat on my back, Hashirama above me. I wanted to die and he tried to bargain with me. Down on his knees, begging a defeated enemy to trust him. To believe in our dream. I wanted him to kill me, to die by his hand or no other.” Madara’s lips twitch into a bitter smile. How funny, he’d gotten his wish in the end. “So I gave him an impossible choice. ‘Kill yourself or your brother. We’ll be equals then.’ I never thought he would…” Fear worms its way through Madara’s heart at the memory. He was barely alive, completely exhausted with only the barest flicker of chakra in his body, certainly not enough to activate the sharingan and yet, that memory is preserved as well as any other. Hashirama stood, taking off his armor as he held a kunai to his gut. That was never Madara’s plan. He was supposed to choose the third option, kill Madara like Tobirama yelled at him to do. Instead, Hashirama looked down at him, a smile on his face and teary eyes filled with love. 

He jabbed the kunai in–and Madara surged up and caught his hand.

“I trust you, I trust you,” he whispered, the words a desperate, pleading prayer as he pried Hashirama’s hand back. “You’ve shown me your guts. We’re the same.” He didn’t stop until he pulled the kunai out of Hashirama’s grasp and heard the faint clink as it hit the rocks. Hashirama couldn’t die. Not while he was still alive. Madara had lost everything…everything but his first friend. If Hashirama died then he would…he would…

Madara stumbles to his feet. He’s unsteady, swaying back and forth as he gasps in heaving gulps of air. It’s not enough. None of it is enough. Hashirama is dead. Hashirama is dead and Madara isn’t. Hashirama left him here, abandoned him–

“Breathe, breathe!” Naruto is in front of him. “You gotta breathe, Old Man! And sit back down, you stepped on the cup. Your feet are bleeding.” He ushers Madara back down, away from the ceramic shards. 

It’s not real.

None of it is.

Madara looks down at his bloody feet, leaving smears across the floor and feels nothing. But he sits when Naruto pushes him down and stares at the boy’s face until the memories subside. It doesn’t help. He’s still alone , untethered and abandoned. The phantom itch for a tanto grows stronger. What right did Hashirama have to judge him? He tried to kill himself too. Madara never asked for this. He never wanted this damnation disguised as peace, he wanted to die. The plan failed, this world was a hopeless hell that everyone was doomed to suffer in. There was no change. No making anything better. All he wanted was for it to end. To see Izuna and his family again. That’s what Hashirama took from him, stole from him when he forced Madara into this farce of a ‘second-chance’. 

“I’m sorry,” Naruto whispers and Madara realizes he’s been speaking aloud. He slumps against the wall as the bed and its boxy frame are in pieces. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I never wanted to upset you–”

Madara holds up a bloody hand and Naruto falls silent. “It is what it is.” 

But at his words, Naruto’s mouth curls into a tight frown. Madara can already hear the protest before he opens his mouth. 

“I didn’t want to upset you,” Naruto repeats slowly, weighing each word as he speaks it, “but you’re wrong. It’s not hopeless. I know you don’t see that now but…but I swear Madara, I’ll change it. Konoha will change. Everyone in the village–”

“You think I haven’t heard this before?” He cuts Naruto off. “I helped break the cycle of war and  Hashirama promised me peace, promised me change, promised me–”

“I’m not Hashirama!” Naruto scowls, blue eyes burning. For the first time, he almost looks like a shinobi, a proper adult instead of a snot-nosed brat. “I’m not him. I can…I can do things differently. I know Konoha isn’t perfect! The village hated me for years, some of them still do! But I believe–”

“And when it turns on you again? I was one of the co-founders and look at me now!” Madara gestures angrily towards his chest. “I tried to make it work. I threw myself into building the village, making it worth betraying Izuna’s last wish. I did everything they wanted, I groveled and begged and turned my cheek to every insult and it still wasn’t enough. The Uchiha were never accepted. The Senju consolidated power. Hashirama was blind to the flaws, Tobirama blind to his own bias, my people drunk and stupid on the promise of peace to see the sword swinging down towards their necks. No matter what I did, I couldn’t change it. Hashirama couldn’t. We were gods and in the end we were useless! We couldn’t put the village onto the path of proper peace and prosperity how can you correct it now? How can anything you do make up for the years, the decades, the centuries of suffering?!” Madara thunders.  

Naruto doesn’t react, not like Madara expects. He only squares his shoulders, jaw set stubbornly. 

“I don’t think I can make up for everyone’s suffering–not yours, not mine, not anyone’s. The only thing I can do is work to make sure it never happens again. I can’t erase the village’s past mistakes, but I will give everyone a brighter future.”

“It takes time, Madara. Our dream started with us, but it has to be cultivated and kept alive by generations after. We were never going to see the full fruition in our lifetimes, only youth and hubris made us think we would.” Hashirama’s words drift through his head and Madara’s overcome with rage. It burns his blood, makes his limbs shake, and nearly cracks his teeth as he grinds them together. 

“I think you know it too and you’re afraid to trust in that possibility,” Naruto says, voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. “It’s scary to change. Hate and fear are bad, but they’re comfortable. Simple and easy. The Shodai gave you a second chance. Maybe not to right your wrongs like I thought, but to give you hope again. I can’t force you to accept it, just like you won’t convince me to give up my dream. I will change the village.” Naruto’s eyes lock with his. In them, Madara sees Hashirama…and himself. 

Unbidden, the Hyuga girl rises in his mind. Her choice to willingly give up power for the sake of some high-minded justice . 

Madara recoils and scoffs, looking away from Naruto. His heart pounds unsteadily in his chest. “Fine. When they turn on you again, I’ll be there. I won’t even gloat.” 

Naruto snickers, his serious facade shattering. “So you do like me–”

“Fuck off.” But Madara can’t stop the strange feeling bubbling in his chest, or the relief of telling a story locked away inside him for over a century.

Chapter Text

The fallout from his episode is both better and worse than Madara expects. Only a few hours after he finishes his story, there’s a knock on the door. One of his useless ANBU guards finally rearing their heads again. 

“The Hokage would like to see you.” The man wears a bear mask and disappears in a flutter of leaves almost before he finishes speaking. It’s not a request, but a command. And not one Madara can easily refuse despite how much he wants to. 

“There’s no reason to worry,” Naruto reassures him as Madara scrounges through his wrecked apartment for a semi-clean shirt and bandages to wrap his hands and feet. “I’ll go with you and explain everything to Kakashi-sensei.” 

“You will not.” The last thing he needs is Naruto trying to summarize his sordid life to the Hakate boy. 

“I won’t tell him everything ,” Naruto says with a roll of his eyes, “I have some tact, you know.” 

“I didn’t.” 

Naruto pouts and crosses his arms. “Well, I do . I’ll just explain what needs to be said. You weren’t on some murderous rampage, just drunk. All of this,” he waves at the remains of the apartment, “was an accident, not an attack.” 

Madara scowls but doesn’t say anything else. He distinctly remembers seeing Gai and the Hakate boy in his drunken haze. He was no doubt aware Madara was intoxicated, but that meant nothing. He wrecked his apartment and Naruto had to hold him down in sage made. That would be enough to irritate him had his and the Hakate boy’s positions been reversed. Still, bringing Naruto probably wouldn’t make things worse . 

So when Madara is as presentable as he’s going to get, he doesn’t tell Naruto off for tagging along beside him. And if he focuses on Naruto’s loud, distinct voice to keep himself grounded in the present as they wander into Konoha’s heart towards a Tower Madara hasn’t seen since Hashirama sat behind the main desk…well. That’s for him to know. 

In a way, returning to the Hokage Tower is opening one of his oldest wounds up and cauterizing it shut at the same time. This is one of the oldest districts, but it has changed. The roads expanded, the shops new. The Tower itself is bigger, grander than he remembers with two smaller red buildings alongside the main one. It’s still the eye-watering red Hashirama insisted it should be, but the building is no longer made from wood. Above all, it looks…old. Because it is. The building may have been renovated but its foundations were laid a century ago. A blip of time, infinitesimal in the grand scheme, but no structure or settlement in the Warring States could attest to lasting that long. 

Madara hesitates on the steps. Naruto stops in front of him, concerned. 

Madara takes a deep breath and forces his feet forward. Together, they pass through the doors. 

He hates it. The not quite right, not quite wrong feeling of it all. The mission desk is on the first floor. Shinobi gather at it, a low murmur of conversation as scrolls are exchanged, money is paid, and chunin box things up and take them away. The two smaller buildings must connect to this one. Archives to store all the past records, if he had to guess. Madara feels the eyes on him from the moment they enter, but no one visibly reacts as Naruto leads him to a set of stairs.

He doesn’t stop at the second floor but climbs up to the third. Slowly, Naruto has grown quieter, not quite silent–never silent–but even he is aware of the tension. 

They walk down a long, winding hall. It’s not the same. Madara tells himself, and it’s true. The walls are finished and decorated, not rough-sawn wood that would impale splinters as long as fingers into the body if you so much as brushed against it. Even more jarring, the door to the Hokage’s office is closed, not open. Hashirama hated for it to be closed, hated how cloistered away he felt. Deprived of the village. It was an endless argument he and Tobirama would have, both of them childish and petty over it. Hashirama broke the door and claimed he couldn’t get it closed. Tobirama would bluster and after the third or fourth time, it only took the door being open during ‘working hours’ to make him angry. “Hashirama you can control wood, if anyone can fix the damn door–”

Naruto reaches out and slides it open. 

It’s almost disappointingly anti-climatic. The Hatake boy is sitting behind his wide desk–not the same as Hashirama’s desk–in an open room lined by windows. Papers sit stacked around him and some kind of thin, plastic thing rests in front of him. It makes an odd clacking noise that stops when he looks up.

Hashirama would never be able to focus in this space, is Madara’s first thought. He only had one tiny window to look through back then and he’d still get distracted by it. Horrible with paperwork, Hashirama could ironically meditate in the forest for hours without interruption, but he hated being stuck indoors, especially up high.

Only Madara could get him to work but in a way that too was inconvenient according to Tobirama. Outside in the middle of nowhere made it difficult to schedule meetings or respond quickly to unexpected issues. But in the forest with Madara by his side to read him whatever the day’s issues were–everything from the new sewage system, to a committee to organize farmers’ stall numbers, to the various plans to integrate different clans’ shinobi–then he could focus and retain it, could even propose solutions that Tobirama couldn’t argue with, only grumble that it took him too long to get serious. 

Ironically, the memories don’t shatter when the Hakate boy speaks, but when Madara spots Hashirama’s portrait on the wall. The first of six. Gods, he looks miserable. 

Madara doesn’t step closer, he can control himself that much, but he can’t stop staring at it. He’s seen a gauntlet of emotion on Hashirama’s face. His highest peaks, his lowest depths. Every last iteration of his overexaggerated depressive facade. But Madara had never seen this. Not this lifeless, hollow–

“Madara!” Madara doesn’t flinch at the shout, but only just. His eyes slide over to Naruto, who’s pouting childishly, but there’s a glimmer of worry in his eyes. “You’re not listening.”

The quip, because you have nothing interesting to say , is on the tip of his tongue. Madara swallows it down under the Hatake boy’s impressively blank gaze. Both of his eyes bore into Madara. He doesn’t have Obito’s sharingan, anymore. He never recovered it after Madara ripped it from his skull. “I grew him a new eye . ” He remembers Naruto’s words, delivered in an irritatingly blase manner at one of Madara’s off-handed comments. Grew him a new eye. As if that was something common and unremarkable. Another of the Rikudo’s power thingies he had at one point. 

The reminder of prickling irritation helps calm and settle him. Madara meets the Rokudaime’s eyes without faltering. 

Naruto clears his throat and picks up where he left off–a retelling of what happened last night and early this morning. The Hatake boy hums along, nodding and absently engaging in all the correct places, but his eyes never waver from Madara’s. Naruto finishes explaining and, true to his word, doesn't go into any unnecessary depth. 

“So it’s all one big misunderstanding?” The Hatake boy drawls when Naruto is through. 

“I just said that, Kakashi-sensei. Don’t tell me you weren’t listening either.” Naruto’s pout deepens and he crosses his arms over his chest like a petulant child. 

“Ma, ma, just making sure I understand.” He doesn’t mention anything about early last night, when Madara ran into him and Gai. “While I am glad to know it was an accident ,” he draws the word out, “it nevertheless was a disruption. One that will not happen again.”

“Of course not,” Madara spits out. He learned his lesson. He’d never bring alcohol into the forest again if it stripped away his memories and led to such embarrassing outbursts. 

“I’m glad you’re in agreement, but unfortunately words are not enough.” Madara stiffens and Naruto looks ready to protest until the Hatake boy holds up his hand. “This is not the first time I’ve heard of your drinking problem.” Madara’s lips flatten. Who told him? Naruto? Gai? Or one of the spineless, ANBU cowards? “Clearly it’s gotten out of control.”

“It’s gotten a little better,” Naruto says, but it’s a half-hearted protest. He’s yelled and complained enough to Madara about the sake bottles before. 

“Perhaps, but it’s still a liability. There’s no assurance another incident won’t happen. From now on, you’re sober. No vendor will sell you alcohol again.” 

“Not even going to take the moderate approach?” Madara sneers. He’ll just ban it altogether, like Madara’s some misbegotten child gorging on sweets because he can.

“No.” The Hatake boy smiles under his mask. “And if you break the order you will be punished.”

So this is his petty revenge for Obito. Pathetic. 

“Uh, Kakashi-sensei…” Naruto trails off as the Hatake holds up his hand again. 

“And while I trust Naruto to enforce this on his own, I have decided another level of supervision would be appropriate. Yamato will replace the ANBU assigned to you. He’ll keep you in line.” The door behind them opens and the man that gave Madara his water bottle in the forest all those months ago steps through.

Chapter Text

Madara takes to his enforced sobriety like a cat to water. He recognizes, in an abstract way, that things could be worse. But that does not mean he is pleased with the current situation at all, mostly because it is not that bad. 

Madara does not need to consume any food or drink to survive, thanks to his new arm. He can still get drunk and overwhelm its natural metabolizing abilities, but now the symptoms of withdrawal are more mental than physical. He craves the drink because it’s familiar, because he cannot have it any longer, because he wants its numbing effect. His body, however, does not share the same desire. There are no symptoms. No shaking. No abdominal pain that waxes and wanes like the phases of the moon. Nothing.

In a way, he wishes there would be something. Pain and misery had always afflicted their clan and there were those that succumbed to the bottle’s influence. He doesn’t wish to be weak and helpless without it but this is just one more thing that’s not how it should be. There should be consequences. In his first life, the smoke from his pipe bothered Hashirama. The smell would make him sick, try as he might to hide his reaction, so Madara gave it up. He remembers the effects: the shaking, the irritation, his restlessness and insomnia growing worse. That is the reaction a human body should have. Not this. 

Madara sits at his new table and glares down at the unnaturally white flesh of his arm. He traces the faint line where the new connects to the old and considers. He cut it off once before, he could do it again–

A knock on the door interrupts his thoughts. 

It’s not Naruto’s frenzied beat or Gai’s sharp rap accompanied by yelling. 

So it’s the newest reason he wants to drink then. 

Naruto pulled him aside after the Hatake boy’s announcement and told him about Captain Yamato. Wide blue eyes and an unusually soft, hesitant voice. Yamato had the mokuton. Not since he first left, had Madara wanted so much to burn this entire cursed village to ash and rubble.

Hashirama’s great-grandson then. 

That’s who the Hatake boy assigned to watch him.

Part of Madara wonders if the Hatake hates Yamato to assign him such a task. At least his blood has thinned enough for the resemblance to be non-existent. If he had Hashirama’s face, Madara would kill him. He would not allow Hashirama’s legacy to be sullied by weakness further. 

“Madara? Please open the door.” Yamato’s voice echoes through the wood. How polite. 

Madara considers leaving him there. He doubts Yamato would try to force his way into the apartment as Naruto and Gai would. 

“Leave if you know what’s good for you,” Madara calls back. He thought he hated Tsunade most of the people still living, but the Hatake boy is quickly rising to the challenge.  

“I apologize, but we both know I can’t do that.” 

Madara snorts. 

“If you don’t open the door, I’ll call Naruto.” 

“Fuck off and die.” He’s not a child, Naruto isn’t his mother to be summoned to scold him for not getting along with other Uchiha brats. 

“Alright.” And then Madara hears the all too familiar creak of a mokuton wood clone. Footsteps echo away from his door and he takes a deep breath, hands steepled in front of his face. Madara breathes out, trying to smother the rising irritation but he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol in more than seventy-two hours. 

He shoves himself out of his chair, only resisting the urge to grab it and throw it against the door at the last second. He doesn’t want to listen to Naruto’s whining about getting a new chair for the third fucking time. It doesn’t stop him from stalking toward the door, ripping it open, and reaching out to grab Yamato’s collar. He’s taller than Madara but not as Hashirama. Pathetic. He drags the man in and slams him hard against the wall. If he had any decorations up they would have crashed to the floor. 

“Look you weak, pathetic–” The vest under his hand hardens into wood. The clone. Madara drops it in disgust. Yamato, the real one, pops back into view, a smile on his face. A child’s parlor trick of genjutsu. 

“Well, now that you’re up and ready we should get going. We don’t want to be late after all.” His smile stays perfectly in place and Madara imagines the satisfaction he’d feel at bashing his teeth in. 

“Fine,” he growls between clenched teeth. He’d make Yamato regret this. The Hatake too. If Konoha wanted to antagonize him, he wouldn’t go quietly. 

Yamato walks with him to the construction site. Unlike the ANBU, he stays right by Madara’s side instead of following him from a distance. It’s grating. If Madara wanted to make a run for it, he would have done so by now. Yamato, or any of the ANBU jokes, wouldn’t be able to stop him. 

Is it to exert control? He wonders as they walk in complete silence. Weak men who know they’re weak are often the ones who try so desperately to prove otherwise.  

“It’s a nice day, isn’t it? Summer’s finally coming to an end.” Yamato smiles and Madara squints at him. 

Maybe his game is to play the idiot instead. Making small talk about the fucking weather of all things…

He couldn’t actually be that stupid, not unless this was actually a ploy by the Hatake boy. Assign him a verifiable idiot instead of the ANBU as a mockery. The great Uchiha Madara, reduced to being chaperoned by an idiot…

No. Naruto called him Captain Yamato. It’s possible he could have attained a high rank through nepotism–Madara wouldn’t put it past the village, not with its Senju influence and Tobirama’s hypocrisy–but he doubts Naruto would respect the title of an imbecile. 

So what’s the angle? Madara stares at Yamato, not even trying to be subtle about it. Yamato’s smile widens. He met Yamato once before, another one of his drunken low points months ago. He was inspecting the forest, confused as to why Madara was passed out beneath the tree and gave him water for his splitting hangover. A kind gesture towards a stranger. Suspicious that he showed such kindness towards Madara, especially if he knew who he was. 

“Have you made good progress in rebuilding?” Yamato asks, oblivious or ignoring Madara. “I’ve only done the occasional inspection, none of the actual work.” 

“Enough,” Madara says when Yamato gives him an expectant look. Honestly, he barely knows what he’s been doing for all these months. Clearing rubble, running errands, making way for the specialists and the like. He’s been assigned to the outskirts of the village. There are some populated neighborhoods, but nothing he would have recognized in his time. There’s no meaning behind its destruction or its rebirth. Just Madara working away at mindless tasks. 

Yamato hums and doesn’t ask any more questions. 

The next thing that surprises him about his new minder is that Yamato works alongside him. The ANBU had watched from their safe distance, but never directly interacted with him or with Madara’s joke of a mission. Yamato immediately gets to work, helping him clear rubble off the assigned area and haul the builder’s supplies to the clear space. He works without complaint, sometimes humming a soft tune under his breath. 

It’s aggravating. 

“What are you getting out of this?!” Madara snaps when the sun starts to sink in the sky. He’s tired and dirty. Dirt and dust are smeared on his clothes, caked on his face and under his nails. They’re finished for the day and Yamato has lingered by his side and worked alongside him the entire time. 

“Pardon?” He blinks, debris caught in his eyelashes, and then swipes at his eye. 

“You heard me!” Madara growls and shoves past him. “The ANBU, when they bothered to do their jobs, watched from a distance.” The Hatake might not trust Naruto’s word that Madara’s fit was a drunken accident, but having his minder do the same daily labor as Madara struck him as an odd way to go about guarding. 

“Ah, well you see,” Madara turns back to watch Yamato laugh nervously and rub his chin, “I’m using you.” 

Now it’s Madara’s turn to stop in place, swallowing down the confused exclamation before it can escape. His expression must convey his emotions well enough though because Yamato smiles bashfully. 

“Believe it or not Madara, guarding you is far from the worst assignment I could have been given. In a way, I was quite relieved when Kakashi-senpai decided to reassign me at the last moment.” His expression clouds before he forces himself to smile again. It’s nothing like Hashirama’s mood swings. Even the forced smiling looks completely different. Then Madara pauses to stop and wonder what worse assignment could there be. He almost feels a little insulted by it. “I’m happy to get the chance to do something physical for once.” Yamato glances behind him at the space they cleared through the day. “It’s simple but rewarding work, don’t you think?” 

Madara snorts and turns away to start walking again. Behind him, Yamato stretches his long legs to keep pace. 

“I quite like the change in pace, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for the time being.” 

Great.

Chapter Text

Madara wants to die. To curl up and never move from this spot again. Weeks have dragged by, day by agonizing day as there’s nothing to numb them anymore. He’s aware of everything. The full agony of this existence. 

The nightmares start again–the same scenes of blood and death that plagued him during his first life. His brothers’ death. Izuna’s. Hashirama’s, if Madara didn’t stop his suicide attempt in time. Madara is helpless in them. All the power in the world at his fingertips and he can’t change a thing. 

Then the new ones start. 

The moon red and full as the God Tree blooms behind him. Black Zetsu’s hand through his heart, Kaguya taking over his body. A new kind of helplessness. A new kind of rage. The Konoha brats’ eyes turning ringed and purple.

One more broken dream. 

Madara wakes several times a night, gasping and soaked in sweat. He drags himself to the bathroom, sitting in the shower as the cold water washes over him. If he’s lucid enough between the spikes of panic, he remembers to take off whatever clothes he was wearing first. Most times he doesn’t. 

It’s a pathetic life, one he hates. What use is there in suffering through this? Hashirama isn’t here to comfort him anymore. There’s no strenuous dream for Madara to grasp and dedicate himself to even as it slips away. He’s tried and he’s failed. All he wants now is peace and death. 

The water isn’t nearly as good as the alcohol at numbing, but sometimes when he’s sat under its spray for hours and his limbs are tingly and numb, the very tips of his wrinkled fingers a ghostly white, nearing blue, he feels calm. 

It never lasts. Madara can’t live in the shower. Eventually, the panic and stress abate and he becomes all too aware again or someone knocks on his door to drag him out. 

He wouldn’t care, he’d give up then and there but he remembers the self-righteous look on the Hatake boy’s face. 

Madara would live just to spite him. He wouldn’t give Obito’s shitty little friend the satisfaction of his death. 

That Madara can live with and tolerate, it’s the rest of the time spent with Gai, Naruto, and even Hashirama’s damned great-grandson that drives him mad. Because, in the light of day when he’s being dragged around by the others, the nightmares and despair don’t stop but they…subside. He doesn’t forget, he never forgets, but Madara is firmly among the living then instead of his dreams where he’s surrounded by the dead.

When he wakes from his awful nightmares, he wishes for death but also increasingly the day. It’s…different than it was with Hashirama. Hashirama had been his only anchor in the storm, suffering through the same night terrors and bloody memories too. Perhaps if it had been just them it would have been enough, but Konoha existed. Their clans demanded attention. Hashirama had few friends but he had everyone’s respect, he had their support. 

Madara only had him…

The knowledge that he’s growing weaker, depending on others, rankles him. It makes Madara grit his teeth, nails tearing into his skin. He wants to scream, to curse, to drive them away before they can leave him so he’ll have his few white-hot seconds of righteous anger before he snuffs out completely. 

His head is a swirling mess of emotions and irritation and he wants it all to stop. 

So, of course, that’s when Naruto knocks on his door. 

Madara knows it’s him by the annoying pounding. He hardly waits for Madara to get up and shuffle towards the door before he starts pounding again and yelling. 

Madara opens the door. Naruto grins, completely fake. He’s not near as good as Hashirama at putting on a mask. There’s a large unwieldy package under his arm and two sticks of dango in his opposite hand.

“Happy one-year anniversary of me kicking your ass, Old Man,” Naruto says and barrels inside. Well, that explains why the fireworks and celebration started at such an ungodly early hour. With every boom and crash, Madara jolted awake, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he expected the earth to move underfoot in a doton jutsu or for Hashirama to charge in swinging his giant sword. It was neither. Just civilians and their fireworks. It was either a blessing or a curse that he couldn’t fall back asleep. 

“Are you here to gloat?” Madara asks as Naruto hands him one of the dango. It’s tsukimi dango, the same kind the Uchiha used to make for the autumn moon festival. Nausea rises swift and sudden in Madara’s gut. He tosses the skewer into the trash. 

“Ahh, more like to escape,” Naruto laughs and scratches the back of his neck. 

This is his chance. Naruto has admitted weakness. Madara can drive the kunai in and twist it–

“From the civilians or the shinobi?” Madara asks instead, dropping into his seat at the table. He’s too tired for this today. 

“Both?” Naruto shrugs and raises the dango to his mouth. He pulls off all three of the white rice dumplings at once and starts chewing. Disgusting. That’s exactly how Hashirama used to eat his too, stuffing his face like an overgrown child while he laughed and dragged Madara into asinine bets about how many dango he could fit in his cheeks. At least Naruto takes the time to swallow fully before he starts to talk again.

“It’s just more of the same. We have this big festival today and it’s good for everyone to have something to celebrate together but…but it’s still the same. I know change takes time but it’s been an entire year and we’re still…” Naruto starts to tap his fingers on the table. “Hinata’s making headway with the Hyuga. They’re fighting it every step of the way, but not a single member of the side branch has been sealed since she said she’d put a stop to it. I’ve told Kakashi-sensei that we should be bold like her, but he keeps telling me to wait. That the changes we’re making can’t overwhelm the civilians and the clans both. And I understand his point but it feels like time is slipping between my fingers. I’m gonna blink and it’ll be gone and still, nothing will…” His tapping fingers clench into a fist and he stares down at the cheap wood of Madara’s table. 

He longs for his sake, now more than ever. Madara exhales a deep, long breath. 

Not for the first time he curses Hashirama under his breath. The Kage, the Rikudo, and hell even Obito himself at the end of his traitorous life kept going on and on about how much of a shining beacon of purity Naruto was. How he was marked by prophecy and prominence.  

But hearing him speak, Madara only sees a reflection of himself. Distorted by time and difference, but he recognizes the tone, the building frustration. 

“And what do you expect to achieve by coming to see me?” He finally asks. Madara dealt with his own helplessness in a decidedly piss-poor manner. Kaguya and his current pathetic half-life are proof enough of that. 

“I…I don’t know. I want to be able to say it, I guess.”

And like his anger towards the civilians, Naruto felt he couldn’t turn to his friends for this either. Madara wants to laugh. He had and dismissed the thought of influencing a future Hokage’s ear months ago. It seems this time, it’s not his choice.

Things will never change. It’ll all end in the same way. Madara thinks and then can’t help but hear Hashirama’s nagging voice about the necessity of entrusting future generations with their dreams.  

“I also wanted to run another idea by you.” Now Naruto fidgets in place, looking almost uncomfortable. Madara dreads what he’s about to say. “So much of our problems came from secrets, from people not feeling like they could talk to one another. What if we told everyone the truth? About the village’s history, the Uchiha, ROOT, the jinchuriki, all of it?”

“You want to destabilize the village? Ruin all of your work of saving it in one fell swoop?” Madara laughs. They’re shinobi. Secrets and lies are in their blood, anything to keep and maintain power over radically different clans. Madara isn’t naive. The Hyuga are infighting but he’s sure they and the rest of the lot would snap at the chance to overthrow what fundamentally has been a Senju line of power from the start. Why wouldn’t they? 

“No, I want to make it better! And this,” Naruto jabs at the table, “is a problem! I didn’t know why the village hated me for years ! I thought it was me that I was the monster, not Kurama who, by the way, is also not a mindless beast.” Madara rolls his eyes as Naruto glares at him. “What if Sasuke knew about Itachi, Danzou, and the Uchiha? What if the village never forgot about you or your warnings? I can’t fix that, I can’t erase it, but I said I’d make things better and this is part of making it better!” 

“And do you think the people will thank you? That you’ll reveal to them the rot at Konoha’s heart, however slowly, however carefully, and they’ll line up and sing your praises? No one wants to accept blame and responsibility for their actions–”

“They already hate me! Enough of them still do! For so long I wanted to be the Hokage so everyone would accept me, respect me. I got a taste of that and, at first, it was nice, but…you know how that goes,” Naruto’s voice drops as a muscle in his cheek spasms, “and now I realize it shouldn’t be about them liking me. It never should have been. I don’t care if everyone hates me after this as long as I’m successful. I never want there to be someone like us again!” Tears stream down Naruto’s face and Madara feels like someone’s reached into his chest and squeezed. He can’t breathe. 

Someone like us. He said. Someone like them, alone and hated. 

In time, I’ll show you my true dream, Hashirama. Madara left the village, convinced he was right. That he could bear the burden and save them all. His clan's hate didn’t matter. Neither did the village’s or the world’s. Madara was going to succeed, he was going to–

Gods he wants to be anywhere else but here.

“Have you talked to Sasuke about this?” Madara forces the words out. Naruto blinks, stupefied. Out of all of the questions, Madara doubts he ever expected that one. 

“Uh…no. But he’s been gone, out of the village–”

“Then you need to call him back.” Naruto opens his mouth, ready to fight or complain but Madara holds up his hand. “Look, Naruto,” he starts and hates the way he can practically see Hashirama by his side, proud and slightly smug at what he’s about to say, “you cannot do this alone. I understand your argument, though I disagree.” Madara wishes it could be true, that the truth would be enough. The same way children wish upon stars or little boys make promises at a river that they swear will last forever. “However the village has not turned against you yet. You still have power, friends, and the Hokage’s ear. If you charge forward, all you will accomplish is the destruction of your own goals before they are realized. You are burning bridges with no regard and you have not asked for anyone’s opinion but mine or the Hatake boy’s.” Madara meets his eyes and Naruto glances away. His shoulders slump and his truth is revealed–nothing more than a chastised child. “How many people have you spoken to lately?” 

“What?” Naruto startles.

“Have you been isolating yourself?” Madara grits the words out. 

“Oh, like you’re one to–”

“Answer the damn question, brat.” 

But Naruto doesn’t and that’s answer enough. Madara sighs and massages at his temples. He knew the Rikudo and his fucking chakra transmigrations were full of shit. How obvious when he looked at Naruto now, he only saw himself. A loud, blond version of himself that he’s now somehow in charge of counseling. 

“You need to call Sasuke back to the village, Naruto,” Madara repeats, scrabbling for some composure. “Not only for company outside of your duties, besides me ,” he says when Naruto starts to protest, “but also to ask his opinion. And you need to listen to it, Naruto. I’m serious.” Madara glares at him until he starts to nod. Gods what he wouldn’t give for this. To go back, to speak to Hashirama, to make him listen and understand– “Anything you say about the Uchiha, Itachi, or Danzou will reflect on him for better or worse. This is your chance to reach out to him, to show him he still has a place in the village because you will listen to him and you won’t repeat the mistakes of your predecessors.”  Madara leans across the table, intensity crawling like insects beneath his skin. He has to make Naruto understand, he failed with Hashirama, failed with his world, he can’t fail–

Madara flinches and draws back. What is he doing? Playing pretend like anything matters–

“You’re right,” Naruto says. 

Madara stares at him, dumbstruck. He’s serious. There’s no sneer about Madara’s all too well known hypocrisy. No joke or dismissal. 

You’re right . The words jangle, a clashing, chaotic tune. How long has it been since someone, anyone has told him that? 

“I’ll write to Sasuke, ask him to come back…but I’m not giving you the satisfaction of agreeing with the other stuff as well,” Naruto awkwardly mutters the last bit. The vice loosens around Madara’s chest. He can breathe again, the world not so off-kilter anymore. Still, he swallows hard around the sudden, dry lump in his throat and tries to scoff. 

“Is this really all you’re here for? To pester me?” He hopes the additional, if so then scram, is clear in his tone. Madara just woke up and he feels like he needs to lay back down again. But that would be showing weakness and he’s already done too much of that today. So instead, he stands up and moves towards the fridge, intent on getting one of his disgusting protein shakes. If his hand shakes as he reaches for a bottle, Madara ignores it. Withdrawal symptoms, he’s sure. 

“That and to give you this.” Naruto tries for his usual loud, abrasive tone, but it lands wrong. His voice is still soft and vulnerable at the edges, it cracks midway through like the child he is. But Madara doesn’t comment on it. He turns and watches as Naruto smacks his unwieldy package propped up against the table. “I told you I’d give it back, remember? After you agreed to go furniture shopping the first time.”

And just like that, he can’t breathe again. Madara nearly crushes his drink in hand as he makes his way toward the innocently wrapped package. In a daze, he lifts it up on the table and then pulls at the thick twine that binds it. The cord and paper fall away, revealing his gunbai. 

It looks the same as it did on the battlefield, like no one’s touched it since. Dust and debris coat the fine wood, the leather handle cracked with years of sweat and use. It hums when Madara runs his hand over it, the weapon calling out and recognizing its master. 

Madara swallows and drops his hand. Naruto’s eyes are pinned on him, waiting. 

You’re a fool , Madara wants to say. He’s been docile and complacent up until now. That’s not to say he isn’t dangerous unarmed–Madara’s eyes alone could fell countries–but it’s foolhardy to arm him. Arm him with this weapon no less. Neither Naruto nor Sasuke have the Rikudo’s powers now. Madara could kill them with ease. 

And yet he doesn’t pick it up. He doesn’t plan to use it in battle but instead turns to look at his walls where to best display it deserving its proud and noble heritage. Decoration, not idle, not useless, but decoration nevertheless. 

“I told you, I keep my word,” Naruto whispers quietly. 

Madara can only stare.  

Chapter Text

“Did Naruto tell you Sasuke is coming back to the village?” Yamato asks him when they’ve finished clearing the rubble from the latest construction zone. Madara grunts but otherwise doesn’t answer. 

He is more than aware and he knows Yamato knows that he’s more than aware. Naruto scribbled out his letter to Sasuke then and there on Madara’s shitty table while the sound of poppers, sparklers, and all forms of anniversary celebration filtered in through the windows. It was a strange, discordant atmosphere. Madara wanted to hear nothing of their triumph, their mockery but it was all distant as he stared up at his gunbai and Naruto worked tirelessly on writing a simple letter to his best friend, tongue poking out the side of his mouth. 

He showed multiple drafts of it to Madara all day. They ranged from drippingly heartfelt, practically love letters, to the most brusque, demanding summons with not a single ounce of emotion to be seen. Madara scrubbed his hand down his face, uncomfortably reminded once again of himself and Hashirama and their letters, and tried to get Naruto to write something normal. A simple summons asking him to return to the village to discuss certain ideas and how much Naruto personally missed him. 

“You know…part of me wanted to go with him instead of staying in the village,” Naruto admitted, running his fingers over the creased letter. He’d go in the morning and slip it into a falcon’s carrier tube and with any luck, it’d reach Sasuke in less than two weeks. “But I worried that somehow everything would collapse when I was gone and by the time I got back…” He fisted a hand in his hair, tugging. “Everything had to be worth it. I had to make it worth it. And…what if Sasuke didn’t want me to come along? I spent years chasing him down, not understanding his reasoning or why he was doing anything, and I thought at the end we had made up that we understood each other once again.” The hand in his hair is his false limb, the one Tsunade made. “But he still left. The village. Me. What if he didn’t want–”

“I doubt it had anything to do with you, Naruto.” Madara cut him off. Maybe a little harsher than he should have but he was at the end of any emotional heart to hearts for the day. Week. Month. “And more to do with the Uchiha and Sasuke’s own revelations while away.” He bit back the words, unlike you, he probably believes the village is unsalvageable, because apparently there was still a curl of kindness in Madara’s heart. 

Or maybe he was too tired to deal with the resulting aftermath if he said that private truth out loud. 

Either way, Naruto sent the letter off, anxiously awaiting a response each day. They had met up several times with Gai and now Yamato joining their group–how unfortunate–and Naruto had been talking about it nonstop. He even told them it was Madara’s idea to write to Sasuke in the first place, but didn’t explain the full context of his atrocious idea regarding the Uchiha and revealing the truth about the village. 

That had been a disaster in and of itself because Gai started crying and praising his thoughtfulness and Yamato stared at him with a simple smile that Madara just knew was somehow smug and gloating. 

Which was why when Naruto got a return letter, he crashed in Madara’s house at an ungodly hour of the morning–one of the rare fucking few he managed to sleep through–to show him the note. It was a verbose– On my way. One sentence. Not even signed. Madara threw Naruto out of his apartment and told him to come back when the sun was up or not at all. 

So yes Madara knew Sasuke was coming back, of course he did. 

He side-eyes Yamato, who’s innocently sipping away at his water. Bastard. 

“What are you getting at?” Madara bites out, unamused with the game. Yamato is, as always, unfailingly polite with a smile on his face. It makes Madara want to rip his hair out. 

“Just making conversation,” he says and Madara snorts. “And I’m curious if you’ll want to meet him yourself since he’ll be here soon.” 

“We’ve already been acquainted.” Madara stabbed him in the chest and he cut Madara in half.

Yamato gives him a pointed look. It still doesn’t break his pleasant facade. “You know what I mean. Properly. Not trying to kill each other.”  

Madara scoffs and grabs his own bottle of water. He doesn’t know how he feels about meeting Sasuke ‘properly’ which, he has no doubt, Naruto will make him do. Sasuke looks exactly like Izuna and he’s the last Uchiha besides Madara. There’s a tangle of emotions in his chest regarding him that Madara doesn’t want to begin to touch and everyone–especially Madara–is better off pretending they don’t exist.

But of course, he can’t even do that and they come bubbling up anyway.

The whole reason he left was to protect the Uchiha, the village. Fulfill his true dream, bring them all real peace. If he had stayed would he have been able to prevent the Massacre? Or would his presence, the hatred and distrust of his name, only hasten it? If they were doomed for the latter, at least Obito wouldn’t have been able to kill them in his name. 

Madara grits his teeth, bones creaking with the force and tries to snuff out the rage burning in his heart at the thought. 

His name. That traitorous brat used his name to slaughter –

“Madara…” Yamato places a hand on his shoulder and Madara flinches and shoves him off. 

“Don’t touch me!” He jolts to his feet, chest heaving. The few other people around glance at him warily. They’re civilians, with little to no knowledge of who he is. Only that he’s a shinobi made to help them. They’re still wary, distrustful. The ANBU had let themselves be seen on his first day and gossip spread like wildfire through all the construction and clean-up teams. Even now his reputation haunts him, a skin he can’t shed, blood he can’t wash off. 

“It’s alright, I’m sorry,” Yamato says. He’s the only one not tensed, ready to fight or flee. His oversized eyes are wide with worry and something like honest regret creases his brow. Madara wants to hit him. Anything to get him to stop making the face. It’s nothing like Hashirama’s. Just as his touch on Madara’s shoulder was nothing like Hashirama’s. Is that better? Is it worse? 

Madara doesn’t know. He does the only thing he can think to do at that moment to regain control and storms off. Yamato calls after him but doesn’t follow. He’s better than the ANBU at least and gives Madara his privacy, trusting he won’t destroy this pathetic place after all. That or it’s not his problem and he doesn’t care. 

Madara walks around the village, careful to keep to the new districts far away from the heart and the rotting remains of the Uchiha compound. He doesn’t go home because he doesn’t want to risk Naruto or Gai finding him in such a mood. Sometimes Madara could grudgingly allow himself to be cheered up–or at least convinced not to be actively murderous–but not now. His hands itch for a bottle of sake and he thinks of how easy it would be to steal one from some civilian seller. They wouldn’t even notice it was missing until it’s too late. Instead, he buys himself a plate of inarizushi and walks until he finds a small, secluded park. It’s off of the busy streets, but Madara can still see the rush of people if he peers through the trees. Their noises are muted and he can hear the trilling birdsong above. Dappled light shines down on him and Madara doesn’t feel better , so much as he feels like he can bury the emotions properly and not think about them for a minute. 

Which is exactly what he does. 

Until a shadow falls over him. Madara is surprised to see Sasuke only in that he hardly expected the boy to seek him out and whatever meeting they’d have would be orchestrated entirely by Naruto. He is not surprised to see Sasuke for the reason that, of course, the last person he wants to see right now is exactly who he would. That’s par for the course of his shitty life.

“What do you want?” Madara grunts and raises a piece of inarizushi to his lips. He half expects Sasuke to draw his sword and if they’re going to fight, Madara’s going to have at least one good bite. 

But Sasuke doesn’t draw his sword. Instead, he steps closer. 

“To talk.” And then he sits down next to Madara on the bench.

Madara closes his eyes and sighs. He would have preferred the fight. 

Chapter Text

Sasuke says he wants to talk, but both of them are silent as Madara continues eating his inarizushi. He’s not Naruto. If Sasuke wants to talk, he’s going to be the one to start talking, Madara’s not going to hold his hand and give him a break. 

“Naruto told me he wanted us to act as his guards for the next Kage Summit,” Sasuke says, monotone. It’s probably the most unlikely combination of words Madara could conjure up and, upon hearing them, he promptly inhales his food and starts to choke. 

“He–” Madara coughs, trying to clear his throat , “said–” he barely keeps from spilling his remaining food, “ what?!” Madara’s going to kill him. If Naruto thinks he’ll tolerate being that close to the Hatake boy or Tsunade for more than a week he’s sorely mistaken. 

In a show of faith or foolishness–personally, Madara leaned toward the latter–the last Kage Summit six months ago had been attended by the current Kages, their heirs, and any previous ones still living. Naruto had told him all about traveling to the Land of Iron with the Hatake boy and Tsunade both, much to Madara’s displeasure. He assumed it’d be the only generational meeting of its kind–the Kage or the villages they left behind would be too tempting of targets otherwise–but apparently not.

And Naruto wants to bring him along. The more Madara thinks about it, the more absurd it becomes. Once he fully catches his breath, he starts to laugh. Howling, shrieking laughter that has Sasuke tensed by his side. Oh he’s tempted to weather the awful journey, surrounded by two people he loathes more than anyone else, just to see the other Kages’ faces. To watch them cower and see the fear in their eyes if he arrived armed, especially with the gunbai. It’d almost be worth it. 

“He said you’d find it amusing. I didn’t believe him,” Sasuke says, side-eyeing him once Madara has settled down.

“Well, Naruto has been full of great ideas as of late. Has he told you his grand plan regarding the Uchiha?” Madara asks, the words coming out sharper, but easier than he first suspected. It helps that Sasuke keeps his hair short, in a different style than Izuna wore his. Their faces may be similar, but their mannerisms are night and day. As long as Madara keeps that in mind, he can get through this.

“Yes. Among other things.” Now Sasuke’s not glancing at him from the corner of his eye, he’s staring at Madara directly. Hair covers his blind left eye, the sight taken in payment for the Rikudo's temporary power. “You two are close.” 

How amusing now after a century of life, Madara can hear the faint jealousy, the accusation in his words. Madara is half-tempted to taunt him or to say nothing and watch him torment himself. 

“Naruto believes me to be capable of rehabilitation, that he can convince me yet of the village’s worth.” To still believe in mine and Hashirama’s dream, Madara thinks to himself, but doesn't say it out loud. He picks up another piece of inarizushi. 

“Of course he does,” Sasuke mutters under his breath. “But you still don’t believe it, do you?  

Madara thinks of Naruto. His heartfelt promises and determination, his insistence that he can see the dark side of the village and yet still overcome it. He thinks of Gai, reluctantly of Yamato, and of that damn Hyuga girl standing on her stage declaring her intent for justice. 

“No,” Madara says and squeezes his inarizushi so hard it bursts and falls back on his plate. 

“So why haven’t you done something about it?” Sasuke asks bluntly. 

“Were you expecting to return to a pile of heaping ash and ruin?” Madara mocks and arches his eyebrow. Sasuke stares coldly at him. 

“I expected you to be dead.”

“I’m insulted you’d think I’d die so easily.” Both he and Naruto failed repeatedly at that, it took a fucking space alien from the moon to accomplish it.

“You weren’t exactly stable last I saw you. When the weeks passed without some other apocalyptic nightmare and Naruto’s desperate summons, I thought someone had done the smart thing and poisoned you. Imagine my surprise when I returned and Naruto’s talking about us both accompanying him to the Kage Summit, his grand plan of revealing every last truth to the village, and speaking so highly of you .” Sasuke narrows his eye. 

“You thought it was a genjutsu.” That’s why he didn’t wait for Naruto to introduce them. Madara wouldn’t be surprised if he ran out on their talk and Naruto’s currently running around the village searching for him. 

“Do you blame me?” 

“No.” It was the first reasonable thing he’s heard in months. “But you haven’t said what you think about Naruto’s new grand idea.”

“And you’ve avoided answering why you haven’t leveled the village.” 

They drift into silence, but it’s not a comfortable one. Sasuke stares, unblinkingly at him, while Madara finishes the rest of his food and mulls over his thoughts. Part of him, a large part, wants to get up and scoff and leave this cloying conversation behind. It’s not like speaking to Naruto. It’s harder, worse with the history and trauma of their clan between them, lurking unseen but in every word. Why should he endure it? Sasuke is the last of the Uchiha, who will come after him? 

And that’s it: Sasuke is the last of the Uchiha, who will come after him? 

Hashirama brought him back to life, but who knows how long he’ll live? Even now Madara can feel Hashirama’s chakra wrapped around his heart as it still seeps into his own. Without the coiled center, he imagines his chakra would drain from his body until he was a hollowed-out husk, just like it had after the juubi had been removed. It may keep him alive for a normal life span. It may start to weaken and flicker in the coming years, driving him to an early death. Or it may curse him to unnatural longevity damned to live until he becomes the last Uchiha in this godsforsaken village. 

“I don’t believe the village can be fixed, it is fundamentally broken.” Madara sets his chopsticks down and traces the edge of his little plastic to-go plate with his thumb. “But there are some in your generation that believe it’s not yet hopeless and choose to struggle against the inevitable. They will fail.” Madara meets Sasuke’s eye. “But their attempts are sincere. I have tried and I have failed to bring about true peace. Why should I end their dreams, when it’s their dreams that’ll kill them in the end?” 

Hashirama’s words– Our dream started with us, but it has to be cultivated and kept alive by generations after. We were never going to see the full fruition in our lifetimes, only youth and hubris made us think we would –buzz in his ears and Madara shoves them down. In a way, it may be kinder if Madara did level the village. What was worse: quick, crushing defeat or a long, slow death? 

But he is tired and selfish now. Madara sacrificed everything he had left after reading the writing on the tablet and it still ended the way it did. 

“Why did you tell Naruto not to spread the truth about the Uchiha? About Konoha? That would make his dream crumble faster, wouldn’t it?” 

Madara opens his mouth to answer but finds he has no words. Sasuke echoes his own thoughts and concerns. Naruto would destroy the progress he made, every feeble attempt to save the village, and possibly make Sasuke’s life worse as he would be the one to bear the brunt of the Uchiha’s actions. 

Sasuke is still watching him, but his expression isn’t overtly hostile. More confused and wary. Madara wonders if he longs to understand. What his life was like in Konoha as an Uchiha before the massacre but touched by the Senjus’ taint. If he wants the clan back or he’s twisted enough like Itachi who slaughtered them in Konoha’s name. 

“I have been wrong many times before,” Madara says slowly, the words dredged up from within, pulled through his teeth, and balanced on the tip of his tongue. Part of him wants to stop, to lock the words away before they can escape and he can’t take them back. He doesn’t. Why doesn’t he? “There is a part of me that hopes I will be wrong this time as well.” 

“You wanted to bring peace to the world,” Sasuke laughs, a short, sharp little thing and looks away. “A fundamentally kind man.” He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. He stays like that, strands of hair twisted in his fingers, staring down at the ground. Just as Madara wonders if this is the end of their delightful conversation, he adds, “I don’t know what to do. About Naruto. His grand idea.” If Madara was reluctant to speak, Sasuke sounds truly pained by his own admission. “Why should I care about the village after all it’s taken from me? It twisted my brother, made him into a monster that would slaughter his own kin. It took my family, every last one, not even the children or elderly were spared. It let the people responsible go untouched, the rot spreading and festering at its heart. And I know, were Naruto to do exactly what he wants and ‘reveal the truth’,” he spits out the words like poison, “the majority would only care because of how it could benefit them. No one would mourn the Uchiha, so why should I care one way or the other? Why should it matter to me at all?!” 

“Are you asking me to convince you to stop caring?” Madara asks and Sasuke flinches. He half expects the boy to jolt up and stalk away. Instead, his shoulders slump and his head hangs low. Unbidden, an image of Hashirama comes to mind. During that decisive battle where he failed to strike Hashirama down and instead bolstered his own faith in their miserable little dream. 

“I won’t give up on you, Madara!” Hashirama yelled, nearly dwarfed by his oversized armor as Madara backed away. His brown eyes were fevered and bright, he looked mad. “I never will! No matter what you do, I’ll never stop caring–” Madara never heard the rest of it, bleeding back into the throng of battle, trying to convince himself he was doing anything but running away. 

“I will give you the same advice I did Naruto,” Madara says and forces his voice to remain steady as the memory loses its grasp on him. “Neither of you can do this alone and neither of you has reached the point of no return yet. So you two need to discuss it. Properly. Without running away in the middle of the conversation.” Madara gives him a pointed look and Sasuke glares right back. So he was right. 

“Like you didn’t want to run the moment you saw me,” he mutters under his breath.

“But I didn’t.” He’ll leverage that against Sasuke if he has to. He might even do it for fun in a different scenario, but he has to make him understand. “My greatest regret was losing Hashirama. I became convinced I alone could succeed where he and the village failed. I withdrew from him, I lied to him, I betrayed him.” He meets Sasuke’s eye again. “How long has it been since you’ve talked to Naruto?”

“Regardless of chakra migrations, you and I are not the same, in case you haven’t noticed.” He moves the right stump of his arm, hidden beneath his cloak. 

“Don’t spout the Rikudo’s nonsense at me, boy. We might not be the same, but both you and Naruto are repeating my mistakes. At least make your own for gods’ sake. And listen to me when I say talk to him while you still have a chance.”

“Fine.” Sasuke stands with a huff. He pauses before he marches off, like he wants to say something else. Madara expects a flippant, I hope I never see you again, remark but it doesn’t come. After a long moment, he finally says, “I hope you’re wrong too.” 

He shunshins away, leaving Madara by himself on the bench. 

That could have gone worse. He’s almost surprised it didn’t end in a screaming match, something on fire, or both of them trying to kill each other. For gods’ sake it didn’t even end with an insult from either of them. 

Madara tips his head back, enjoying the warm spots of sunlight that shine down through the speckled tree leaves. It would be wrong to say he feels content, at peace but he’s…closer than he’s been in a long, long time.   

Chapter Text

Madara basks in that almost-contentedness until Naruto finds him again the next day. He’s expecting it, only surprised that the brat hadn’t burst through his door even sooner, but he still scowls as Naruto saunters in, grin splitting his face in half.

“Sasuke said he ran into you at the park and you two had a little chat.” Naruto wiggles his eyebrows and Madara beats down the urge to throw the protein shake he’s holding in Naruto’s face. Only because he doesn’t want to have to clean the floors. “And I noticed that nothing caught on fire, or was reduced to ash and rubble, or–” Madara throws the shake at him anyway.  

“Wha–hey!” Naruto wipes dripping pink liquid off his cheeks and scowls. Now it’s Madara who’s grinning. “Uncalled for, Old Man! And here I was just about to say how much you’ve matured too.” He harrumphs and makes his way toward the sink, reaching for one of the threadbare clothes that came with the apartment to wipe off his face. 

“Don’t preach to me about maturity, brat.” Madara sits down at the table and tips the glass up to catch the dregs of his drink as Naruto rinses out the cloth and gets down on the floor to scrub up the mess. “Especially not when you told Sasuke that you want both of us to accompany you to the Kage Summit. I doubt the Kage will be happy to see him ,” traces of Obito’s memory–Sasuke invading the wartime summit meeting and dueling the Raikage–flash in his mind, “much less me. Did you think for even a moment how that would look to the other Kage? You keeping counsel with war criminals? Declaring us your personal guards?” Madara was beginning to wonder if Naruto really did want to see this miserable village wiped off the face of the earth. Reveal all their secrets, antagonize the other Kage…he was doing a great job of destabilizing it.

“I had a plan!” Naruto says, standing up and slinging the dirty cloth toward the sink. “It’s simple. I knew Kakashi-sensei and Tsunade-baachan wouldn’t like it. In fact, they’d dislike it so much they just might have to try and convince me not to bring you and what better way to do that than to agree to some of my other plans! I got loads of proposals for how to rebuild Ame and reconnect with the other Small Nations that they wanna delay ‘cause the clans don’t like it or the other Kage haven’t given the ok first. Now they’ll have to review those unless they want to bring you two along and that’s what I wanted all along.” Naruto grins again, distinctly foxy and sly, as he rests his hands on his hips and laughs. “It’s brilliant, isn’t it?” 

Gods help us all, Madara thinks and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

Naruto’s brilliant plan remains brilliant until it’s, to no one’s surprise, suddenly not. 

And that suddenly not finds Naruto in Madara’s apartment once again, a week or so later, looking distinctly nervous. 

“What did you do?” Madara asked when he first opened the door. A quick glance around and he couldn’t see any blood or body parts. Unlikely he killed someone and they’d have to burn the body. 

“Promise you won’t be mad,” Naruto starts as he slips inside and Madara feels a swift longing for sake, stronger than he’s felt in weeks. A headache starts to form behind his eyes and it’s a struggle not to grit and grind his teeth together when he repeats:

“What did you do?” 

“You remember my brilliant plan? Get Kakashi and Tsunade-baachan–”

“ Yes. ” Madara bites out. 

“Well…” Naruto wheedles, looking anywhere but at him, “it worked. Too well. I got them to compromise and send a delegation to Ame–we’re doing that too now by the way–to discuss future plans, what Konoha will offer, what Ame wants, that sort of thing…but that was on the condition you and Sasuke not accompany the official Hokage party…”

“What’s the problem? That’s what you wanted.” Madara narrows his eyes and Naruto glances up to give him a bashful grin before his eyes dart away again. 

“...but you will travel with us to the Land of Iron in a few months.”

“Why?” What benefit was there in making him march into that sun-forsaken land of ice and snow to do nothing, not even terrify those jokes of Kage? 

“Because Kakashi-sensei is worried with all three of us out of the country and you here by yourself…” 

“That I’ll wipe the village off the map?” Madara arches an eyebrow and Naruto has the good graces to sink in on himself. 

“Yes.” 

“And they’re suddenly concerned now? They weren’t when they left for the last Kage Summit.” The ANBU had guarded him in greater numbers then, Madara could hardly go anywhere without tripping over one of them, but he wasn’t yanked along to the Land of Iron like a dog. 

Naruto bites his thumbnail, suddenly unable to meet Madara’s gaze altogether. He mumbles something low under his breath.

“Speak up!” 

“I said…that was before you got drunk and I had to restrain you.” It’s barely louder than before. Madara loses his battle with his twitching eye and grinding teeth. 

“I have been miserably sober for months now, you and I both know it. If I wanted to destroy the village I would and there’s not a damn thing any of you could do about it!” Madara rages. He might be out of practice, but death and war was bred into his veins. A weapon wearing the skin of a man. He had his gunbai, his flames, and Hashirama’s chakra coiling in his chest, he could level this hovel as easily as he dropped those meteors on Onoki. 

“I know, I know! But uh…think of it as a vacation?” 

“A vacation?!” He’s going to throttle Naruto and everyone else in any position of power in this entire damn village. 

“Yeah! I got Sasuke to agree to go too–not to the Summit but with us to Iron–so you two can spend more time together! Go to an onsen, see Iron’s samurai village, or the countryside, eh, eh?” Naruto spreads his hands out in what Madara assumes is supposed to be a welcoming manner. 

“I hate you.” Madara collapses into his chair, rubbing his temples and trying in vain to chase away the fully formed headache.

“Well, I guess you don’t want to hear the good news then.”

“Not particularly,” Madara grumbles and winces as Naruto whines, high-pitched and grating even while sober.

“Come on, I’m offering good news now and you’re just gonna sit there like a grump!” He shoves at Madara’s shoulder like a petulant child. 

“I doubt we have the same view of ‘good news.’” Madara ignores his pushing even as Naruto starts to jab his arm with a bony finger. Briefly, he remembers Izuna doing the same when they were children and Madara refused to give him the attention he so desperately wanted. 

“Yeah, obviously mine’s better.” Madara can hear the grin in his voice, Naruto must assume whatever he’s about to say next won’t be the final tipping point into setting him off.

“What?” He raises his head and catches Naruto’s hand in a flash. One warning squeeze and an  unwelcome thought– when was the last time anyone joked with him or felt comfortable to be so disrespectfully casual– flashes through his mind. Madara drops his hand and buries the pathetic thought.

“Now it is with Captain Yamato,” Madara is already sinking in his seat, vividly imagining how nice it would be to set them all on fire and then himself too for good measure, “but I finally got you approved for a real mission.” Naruto’s grin widens. It’s so bright, it’s blinding. 

“Great, I can’t wait,” Madara mutters and sinks as low in the chair as he can.

Chapter Text

“I think I’m going to kill him, Gai,” Madara says. He finishes his circuit of push-ups and then collapses on the tatami mat beneath him. It’s still not sparring but the burn in his arms and shoulders is pleasantly familiar. He feels almost human as his heart slams against his chest and sweat drips off his nose. 

“Yamato or Naruto?” Gai asks, rolling over to a rack to put his hand weights away. Amusing as it was to watch him haul his giant scroll filled with specialized equipment out to an empty training ground every time they met to train, Madara can admit the small repurposed dojo is better for both of them.   

“Both.” It depends on what he’s most irritated with at the moment–the mission Naruto assigned him or the fact he’d be in Yamato’s inescapable company for weeks. Because the mission in question was to guard the Ame delegation Naruto weaseled his way into convincing the Hatake boy to send. It was small and not overly ambitious, Naruto said. Only a group of three diplomats to set up an official channel of communication between the villages. When Madara questioned if they–the diplomats and the Hatake boy both–knew that he was going to be assigned to them, Naruto was all too ready to confirm they did. The Hatake boy was against it, but the diplomats already agreed. 

“Why did they agree?” Madara asked, suspicious. The diplomats were civilians but they knew who he was. What he did.

“Well, you see,” Naruto started in that wheedling way Madara hated, “Ame’s been completely closed off to everyone since Pain died. Rebuilding Konoha, then the Fourth War and, uh, you , were bigger concerns at the time so we kinda just left them alone. Reports have started to trickle out now and they’re…not good. A lot of fighting but we’re not sure who’s fighting who or why. That’s part of the reason I wanted to send this delegation in the first place. I’d go myself but uh…” Naruto chuckled uneasily, scratching his cheek, “I was kinda responsible for Nagato’s death. Konan said she’d support me, but I’m not sure if she told that to the people of Ame before…”

“Before Obito killed her,” Madara finished for him. 

“Right. I don’t want to make things worse by barging in.” A remarkable show of self-awareness, Madara thought. “Kakashi-sensei also explicitly forbade me from going. And he has this nasty habit of poking me with senbon to make sure I’m not a shadow clone so I can’t sneak off on my own.” Never mind. “So if I can’t go and you’re super powerful…”

The diplomats would risk him coming than a surefire death in unstable Ame. Gods, why couldn’t it be a simple assassination? 

“And you’re sure you want me to accompany them? Not worried I’ll defect, take over Ame, and do as I see fit?” Madara leered, arms crossed across his chest.

Naruto scoffed. “You didn’t know to use the microwave until I taught you. You’ve never seen Ame or its technology.” That was both true and not. Madara had never seen it with his own eyes, but he had through Obito’s. And the monstrous metal buildings that rose up like mountains disgusted him. It’d no doubt be filled with strange and unfamiliar machinery. Madara didn’t doubt his ability to overcome it if he had any true ambition of taking it for himself, but why would he want a miserably rainy village caught in between three Great countries in the first place? “Besides, I trust you enough not to do that stuff.” 

Idiot. Madara thought then. 

Idiot. Madara thinks now. He grumbled about the mission to Gai, who weathered his complaints with grace. The worst isn’t going in blind to an unstable country, facing gods knows what–it’s having to do it with Yamato. Madara admits it could be worse–it could be the Hatake boy or Tsunade–but this is still at the very low end of his list. He’s avoided Yamato as much as he can up to this point. If he starts preaching to the people of Ame like Hashirama would–nothing but love and unity and peace–Madara’s thin thread of sanity will snap. 

“I believe your mission will help rekindle your burning flame of Youth!” Gai declares, pumping his fist in the air. Then, he adds in a softer voice, “It is good for you to have the chance to leave the village and see other parts of the world.” Madara picks himself up off the ground, ignoring the sentiment as he reties his hair. Strands have come loose from the ponytail, sticking to his sweaty neck. “I have something for your travels.” 

“Gai…” Madara trails off as he reaches for a small scroll hidden in the bag on the back of his wheelchair. 

“No protesting! This is full of absolutely vital necessities!” He slaps the scroll to his palm. “Protein shakes, a couple of waterproof jumpsuits,” he tugs on his own green monstrosity as a shudder works its way down Madara’s spine, “and…a symbol I hope no longer inspires such hate.” 

Madara sucks in a sharp breath as he takes the scroll and unfurls it. With a small burst of chakra he can sense its contents and pull out the item Gai’s referring to. A churning conflict of emotions stirs his gut as he looks down at the simple hitai-ate, Konoha’s leaf carved into the metal. 

“It’s yours.”

“Obviously, if you’re giving it to me,” Madara snaps. He might not be actively plotting against the village, but he won’t wear their symbol. He never would again.

“No, Madara, it’s yours. The original one.” Madara sucks in a sharp breath and takes a closer look. It’s old enough to be his. The leaf is slightly distorted, rounder and off center compared to the modern hitai-ates he’s seen. And in the upper right hand corner in tiny, tiny script are the characters for his name.

“Where did you get it?” There’s no emotion in his voice. Madara remembers the day he got rid of it. He took Hashirama down to see the Uchiha tablet, the first outsider to ever lay eyes on the artifact, and then threw the hitai-ate at his chest when he left. That–more than his words– convinced Hashirama he was leaving. Permanently.

“Naruto isn’t the only one with access to the Hokage Tower,” Gai laughs loudly, sharp and startling against Madara’s sudden frigidness. “Though, like the gunbai, I would suggest being…discerning in who you show it to. I might have freed it from one of the Shodai’s displays without Kakashi’s approval.” 

Madara wants to bluster, to deflect. Bring up Naruto, because the brat had told him later in a whining voice that he should, just maybe, carry the gunbai in a scroll if he ever took it from his apartment because Naruto made an executive decision to return it without asking, or telling, anyone else. 

That’s what Madara wants to do. To sink into familiar complaints that were easy and comfortable. Instead, he grips the hitai-ate so hard his fist turns white and Hashirama’s face rises unbidden in his mind. He kept it. All those years and he kept it. In such good condition that Madara mistook it for new. He won’t wear it as Konoha’s symbol. But as an old token from Hashirama returned to him again…

“Thank you, Gai.” If Madara’s voice shakes, Gai doesn’t comment on it. 

Madara’s melancholic good mood lasts until he’s standing at Konoha’s gates, waiting for Yamato and the diplomats. He has his heavy bag across his shoulders, scrolls strapped to the small of his back. It feels strange to be without armor, the missing weight of the heavy weight of the ceramic plates makes him unsettled. Yamato and the diplomats appear in the distance…along with the Hatake boy and his ANBU escort.

It’s not surprising that the Hatake boy is with them, but it still pricks at Madara’s skin, especially when he eyes the hitai-ate tied around Madara’s neck. The metal is turned inward instead of out. His gazing is knowing and displeased, but he says nothing as the first diplomat steps forward and introduces herself. She’s the leader of the group, a middle-aged woman with short silver hair and a scar that splits her face in half, creeping from her hairline above her right eyebrow until it curls under her left ear. 

“I'm Satoaki Nobuko, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Uchiha-sama. Thank you for escorting us.” She bows to him. A small bow, respectful but not referential. Madara grits his teeth and forces his gloved palms flat against his thighs so they don’t curl into fists. Gods he hates politicians. It’s the voice. Smooth and empty, they all had the same damn voice despite whatever they called themselves. Hashirama used it too, when he met with individual clan leaders and later the first kages. He switched between that vacant voice and his naive idiot persona so seamlessly it put every fool at ease and they forgot the power of man with the epithet of god of shinobi. It was a battle that Madara, with his short temper, overflowing pride, and antagonistic attitude could never win. “And this is Kotori Kotoka and Mou Tokihito.” Satoaki gestures to a pudgy woman with long braided hair and an eerily symmetrical face then a short bald man whose eyebrows looked like large, furry blond caterpillars ready to swallow his eyes. 

Madara grunts. “Let’s go.” 

He turns toward the gates, uncaring of their chatter and any comments about his rudeness. He can feel the Hatake boy’s disapproving eyes on his back as Yamato tries to ease the diplomats’ worries. 

Madara takes a deep breath and marches out. For the first time in more than a year, the village falls away and he’s free of its suffocating memories and walls. 

Chapter Text

At civilian speed, it takes them two weeks to reach Ame. Several times through the long, painstaking journey, Madara considers grabbing two of the diplomats, commanding Yamato to take the third, so they could start moving. It’s not that Madara has any particular dislike towards the civilians–Yamato is a different story–but each day he spends walking at an agonizingly slow pace makes him realize…he misses his apartment. Not because he particularly likes it, but because it’s familiar, because he could be alone and not have multiple pairs of eyes watching him at all times. 

Madara intensely resents being made to miss anything about Konoha, even something as simple as his apartment. It worsens his mood and makes him absolutely unbearable to be around, Yamato tells him with a pinched smile. 

Madara grunts and continues to ignore him and the diplomats both. All three of them watch him with amused eyes, much too comfortable in his presence but Madara doesn’t particularly care. As long as they don’t end up dead, he’ll consider this mission a success whether they like him or not. Yamato is very disapproving when he tells them all this after laying down with his back to them, not wanting to be part of their ‘campfire story bonding session’. 

Despite the tension, the drawn out days, and Madara’s foul mood they make their way to Ame without incident. The border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Lakes rises up to meet them. The landscape hardly changes, it won’t unless the dip south closer to Wind’s desert or north to Earth’s mountains. The forests of Fire are a comforting cloak around them until the trees start to thin and Ame–caught in the rainy windward side of the rising northern mountains, rises up like a steel deformity in front of them.  

“Well, it’s still standing,” Madara says, glaring up at the towers. Everything is dim, the sky a solid gray sheet with unending rain pouring down. Sometimes it lightens to a sprinkle, other times it’s a deluge. Madara stays warm with the chakra curling beneath his skin but the others are shivering even with their raincoats and hoods.

“And hopefully it stays that way,” Satoaki says. This close to the gates of the city, she takes the lead, Kotori and Mou close to her sides with Madara and Yamato on either side of them. Yamato will guard the rear with his mokuton and Madara the front. 

“They are expecting us, correct?” Madara asks. It’d cost them the element of surprise, but as they were supposed to be a diplomatic envoy not assassins, the trade off should be worth it. Nothing like entering the city, getting ambushed by the people they were supposed to talk to, and Madara killing them all. He’s sure the Hatake boy would love to comment on that. 

“We sent several letters,” Satoaki says in her empty voice and Madara can’t help but roll his eyes. So no they weren’t. 

The patter of rain drowns out all sound. They cross into the city and it turns metallic. There are a handful of people on the streets–too few for a village this big–who watch them with narrowed eyes and bowed heads. Their clothes are threadbare but there is no hunger or desperation in their faces. The situation is bad, growing worse, but not yet critical. 

The city groans around them as they pass through its streets. Rusted metal spreads like toxic blooms up the buildings, threatening to eat away at the supports and bring them down. Everything is towering and cluttered, even if there were sunlight and a clear sky the village would be criss-crossed with cold, dark shadows as the spires blotted out the sun. Despite the dreary gray-washed world, Madara will admit there is some color, albeit rare. Fading banners hung up between the giants, painted metal peeling in the rain. Ame is crumbling around them, a slow, dying death. 

Satoaki guides them through the village with confidence and ease. The buildings disorient Madara–nothing like navigating the forests despite their size–making him uncomfortable and hyper aware of himself. For all intents and purposes, they’re in enemy territory and he’s lost.

“Our destination is just ahead,” Satoaki says as they round a corner and the tallest building yet reaches up to pierce the cloudy sky.

“Delightful,” Madara mutters, hands tense by his sides, as giant faces on the building come into view. One near the tower’s peak has its tongue outstretched, purple rinnegan eyes cracked and fading. This is…more familiar. Echoes of Obito’s memory flash through his mind. This was Pain’s tower, the Akatsuki’s base. 

“The Tower of God,” Satoaki says and Madara can’t hold back his snort. 

None of them comment, though Yamato gives him a mildly disproving look. It’s no matter. As they slip towards the building’s entrance a shadow with long green hair springs from a rippling puddle. It goes to capture Kotori, not kill, so Madara extends the same courtesy. He moves faster than the shadow and before it can grab the unwitting diplomat, he has his hands around the shinobi’s arm, wrenching them around. A kunai pressed to their carotid artery has them stock still. It’s too dim for his sharingan to be much use in the rain, but Madara reaches out with his senses, pinging other chakra signatures. They’re clustered tightly in the tower, but a handful more linger in the puddles on the street.

Madara looks at Yamato flashing five with the hand not holding the kunai to the enemy nin’s throat. He still grits his teeth and stamps down the urge to surge forward and attack Yamato at the hauntingly familiar creak of mokuton wood and five clones melting from the man’s back. They take shape, surrounding the diplomats. Madara’s unsure of how useful he’ll be here in this stinking metal village. Hashirama would have had the power to reach into the earth underneath and command the roots and wood to rip up through the metal shell. He doubts this pale imitation could do the same. 

Still, five clones are better than none as they circle around the diplomats. All three are tense, but none of them stink of fear the way he assumed civilians would. 

“We are an envoy sent by the Hokage of Konoha. Why do you attack us?” Satoaki turns toward Madara, addressing the shinobi in his arms. 

“Konoha? More lies from Hanzo’s dogs. We’re not fools to fall for such a cheap trick,” the shinobi, a woman, spits at her. There’s fire in her voice despite the cold steel threatening her life. 

“I will approach you and show you our writ.” Satoaki reaches into her bag, pulling the waterproof parchment free. 

“Twitch and I’ll slit your throat,” Madara whispers to his captive. He lets some of his power and chakra infuse the words and feels how she struggles and fails not to shrink, even as the metal bites into her skin. A thin line of blood is washed away by the rain. 

“Konoha has sent five messenger birds in the last two weeks, seeking council with the kage of Ame to discuss treaties and reparations–”

“We’re not giving you anything!” She yells in outrage. Madara admires her daring even as he scoffs at her insolence. He sees it now, she’s not a woman, she’s a child. A brat no older than Naruto and just as brash and foolhardy. 

“The reparations would be from us to you,” Satoaki says and the girl falls silent. “We are here to meet with your leader. Surely there is a sensor among your group. They should know I am a civilian, I will meet with them alone, if that is what you prefer.” Satoaki looks from the girl to the rain puddles around them and the Tower up above. 

That’s not what we agreed to. Madara scowls and tightens his grip. If Satoaki gets herself killed, it’ll still be his fault.  

“Enough,” a new voice washes over them and another teenage girl appears in front of the Tower’s doors. Through the dimness, Madara can barely make out her features–long bangs obscures her left eye, a bulky raincoat hangs half off her shoulder and tied under her arm, and a strange umbrella clutched in her hand. 

“Fuyo…” the girl in his arms hisses. The newcomer takes a step toward them and the puddles erupt, half a dozen Ame nin at her side. There are still more in the Tower, lying in wait around them. She lifts her hand and they pause–clearly unhappy, but obedient. 

This is their kage. 

Gods, another brat.

“Release Suiren as a gesture of good faith and I just may listen to what you have to say.”

Yamato looks at him and Madara reluctantly lets Suiren go. She doesn’t hesitate to spring free, darting to Fuyo’s side. Right by her side. Shoulder-to-shoulder. 

Madara sighs deeply, already feeling the oncoming headache building behind his eyes.

“ We are the leaders of Amegakure. State your business and explain why I shouldn’t throw you out of our village,” Fuyo says. 

Chapter Text

Satoaki repeats their purpose again and hands over the parchment signed in ink and chakra from the Hatake boy. One of the nameless shinobi races to take it from her hands and bring it to their leaders. Madara crosses his arm and eyes the shinobi around them. The tension has leveled out into something thick and unpleasant but not actively hostile. Fuyo reads the scroll and then hands it off to Suiren to do the same. Once she’s finished, they exchange no words but a long, silent look. 

“We believe you are a diplomatic envoy from Konoha,” Suiren grudgingly admits. She glares at him when she says diplomatic and Madara glares back. There is no true similarity between them, but the black mask over her mouth conjures an image of the Hatake boy and any amount of goodwill Madara may be inclined to conjure up withers. “Enter, and let us speak.” 

They’re young, but they’re not blindingly idiotic. Instead of turning their backs, the girls separate and gesture for them to walk through the ranks of enemy nin into the Tower. Satoaki starts forward and Madara has no other choice than to keep step next to Kotori so he doesn’t get left behind. Yamato recalls his wood clones into himself and they pass by their enemies and into the Tower. 

Madara has been in many of Konoha’s newly rebuilt buildings, but none are made purely of metal, stinking of the rust and rain. His feet leave the earthen ground and he’s…cut off from the world. Hashirama’s chakra recoils in his chest and Madara nearly stumbles. 

He better not be useless here either. Madara spares a quick glance at Yamato. His face looks waxy, but it may be from the reflections of harsh metallic light. Shinobi melt from puddles in the Tower and lead them up, past endless doors and landings, all the way to the top while the two kage shadow behind them on the wide stairs. Madara’s skin prickles in discomfort at their proximity. 

Finally their shinobi guides stop in front of a room with a large metal door. They’re close to the side of the building and when they enter Madara can see a wall of windows overlooking the village. Despite the alien interior, something in him settles at being able to see the sky and ground even if both are dark and dim. 

“Take a seat,” Fuyo gestures at the table in the middle of the room. It, like everything in this accursed place, is made of the same dull metal, as are the seats around it. Madara positions himself between Satoaki and Kotori. He sinks into the chair and nearly expects the cushion to be a false one made of metal. Thankfully, it’s not. 

Suiren and Fuyo settle across from them. None of the guards follow them in. 

“Confident, are you?” Madara mutters under his breath as the doors click shut. Kotori kicks him under the table. Madara lets out a slow breath. It’d be rather counterproductive if he killed the diplomats. 

“I know who you are, Uchiha Madara. Your chakra is very distinct,” Fuyo says and steeples her hands together. Sensor. 

“Then may I ask what confusion there was about us being from Konoha?” Satoaki asks, arching her non-split eyebrow. 

“We rather doubted Konoha would send a war criminal with their peace delegation.” 

That was probably a detail in the missing letters. Madara leans back, unconcerned. The diplomats are still alive. This is not his problem. 

“He’s been rehabilitated,” Satoaki says and everyone around the table–Madara included–gives her a dubious look. She keeps her chin held high. 

“ Right ,” Suiren picks up from Fuyo. “You said you were here to discuss treaties and reparations. Start talking.” 

The diplomats ease into their elements then. Satoaki is the main speaker, but Mou and Kotori chime in whenever she pauses to pull scrolls from her bag. Suiren and Fuyo glance appraisingly at each one. Never both at the same time, one always keeps her head up, eyes locked onto them. 

After nearly an hour of uninterrupted speaking, Satoaki draws to a close. Most of this meeting, like Naruto said, was to build a foundation for further ones. The papers they hold are proposals for treaties and reparations, nothing set in stone. The only official thing to sign at this point was a declaration of friendship–how Naruto –and plans to allocate one building for a Konoha embassy to continue talks. One for Ame was already set aside in Konoha. Yet another one of Naruto’s new ideas. 

How will we stay connected and work things out if we have to travel every time just to talk to one another? Why not invite some of their people here, send some of our people there and do regular talks? 

It was horribly naive. Inviting the enemy in. Espionage would become laughably easy. 

“This is…ambitious,” Fuyo says, reading down the long list of objectives. Madara is sure they’ve been rewritten into something more formal and appropriate than Naruto’s– make friends with Ame, fulfill my promise to Nagato!!! –scribbled out on pieces of paper in his apartment, but there’s only so much the scribes could do. 

“They are goals we’d like to work hand in hand toward,” Satoaki answers diplomatically. “A show of faith for a long-term partnership.” 

Suiren scoffs, taking the scroll from Fuyo. “They’re all empty promises. Give us a real show of faith.” 

“You had something in mind?”

Suiren and Fuyo share another long look. 

“If you are truly here to make amends and partner with Ame…we have a mission that your shinobi would be particularly suited for,” Fuyo says. 

They want someone dead? Madara stares at the girl and leans forward on his elbows. 

“Would the mission have something to do with our failed messenger birds and the rumors of chaos and conflict in Ame?” Satoaki asks, unusually pointed.

Now Fuyo scowls. Madara thinks Suiren does the same beneath her mask. 

“Yes.” 

“Will you not tell us the mission beforehand?” 

“Accept it, or leave, Suiren snaps. Madara is tempted to call her bluff, watch them both squirm as it’s obvious they need help–why else ask foreign shinobi–until they swallow their pride and beg properly. Konoha already extends a generous offer to a crumbling village. Who are they to demand more? 

“...alright. By my authority–”

“My mission,” Madara interrupts, “is to guard your life, Satoaki, not whatever pitiful task they’d have me do.” 

“Then I will accept their mission and you will be bound to protect me throughout it. Worse, our stay will be extended as you watch me struggle with whatever ‘pitiful task’ they’d give me.” She glances at him, gray eyes hard. 

“Careful,” Madara warns. He would bring her back in one piece because Naruto asked him to, but Satoaki was not Naruto. He will not tolerate being bossed around by an uppity civilian. 

“What would you have us do?” Yamato asks to break the coiling tension. It’s clear what his choice would be. It makes Madara want to accept even less. Both children watch him for a long, drawn out moment before Fuyo begins to speak. 

“Find Nagisa of the Salamander.”

“Is that supposed to mean anything to me?” Madara asks. It clearly means something to the diplomats, all three have gone pale, and Yamato’s wide-eyes have narrowed, a small frown twisting his lips. 

“We were told Hanzo’s line ended, that Pain made sure to remove any and every threat to his rule,” Yamato says carefully as the diplomats struggle to pull themselves together. 

Fuyo’s lips purse in an unhappy line. “Yes, well he failed. Hard to kill a bastard daughter and granddaughter Hanzo didn’t know existed.” 

“And you’re sure they’re related?” Satoaki clears her throat, still stunned.

“Yes. The girl accidentally killed her mother–Hanzo’s daughter–when her kekkei genkai awakened. Venom-breath, same as his. She’s only six.” 

The name Hanzo skitters across Madra’s mind, trying to dredge up some memory of Obito’s but they’re all fractured and distant. It doesn’t matter. Clearly the name meant something to Yamato and the diplomats and more importantly…

“Do you want me to kill the girl or the shinobi guarding her?” 

Everyone in the room stiffens, all eyes darting to him. 

“What? You expect me to believe a six-year-old with a confirmed kekkei genkai could avoid a sensor nin for months without help ? Please. That’s the source of conflict here. A new dynasty versus the old one.” Bitter satisfaction curls in his heart. Naruto wanted to preach about peace and unity and here was the same endless conflict playing out again. More children would die and they all learned nothing. 

“We want you to find her ,” Fuyo stresses. “You will not kill anyone. There will be no more Konoha shinobi deciding who lives and dies in our village.” 

“But you do believe Nagisa is guarded by other Ame shinobi?” Yamato asks. 

“To tell you the truth…” Fuyo folds her hands together until they’re pressed together so tight, they turn ghastly white. For the briefest moment, as if she’s unable to stop herself, Suiren lays her own hand on top and squeezes gently. Madara refuses to examine the ache that starts to build in his chest, watching the two girls, the laughable co-leaders of a struggling village. “...we don’t know, because the group that had been protecting Nagisa thinks we have taken her.”

“Could you explain more about this other group and the girl’s disappearance?” Satoaki asks, finally having pulled herself together. 

“It’s…crude, but you are correct that Ame is facing a crisis in leadership right now,” Fuyo says, her eyes flicking to Madara. “One that is pointless. Hanzo ruled Ame for decades before Pain took over. He was a powerful, but distant figure. Our leader, yes, but everyone in Ame knew it was Konan who dealt with the trivialities of the village, who helped and cared for its people. We were unaware of the Akatsuki’s plan to take the bijuu and create a weapon. When Konan returned alone from Konoha she took on the mantle of leader. No one questioned her but that’s when the rumors began.” Fuyo frowns, her lips flattening into an angry line. 

“Pain tried to remove all of Hanzo’s influence–he killed his family, his most fervent followers, anyone who questioned his right to rule but it was impossible to kill every detractor. For a long, long time Hanzo was the only thing that stood between us and total annihilation. The Great Nations had already proven time and time again to use our country as a battleground for their wars. He was not a kind man, not a good man, but he had his followers. They came out of the woodwork when Pain died. All hush-hush, whispers and rumors. No one dared to challenge Konan directly. And why would they? Konan had been shackled to Pain, without him…without him she was free to make her own decisions, to focus on Ame. None of us realized how much the Akatsuki’s plans occupied our leaders, until they were no more. Finally, we would do more than struggle to survive, our conditions would improve, life would get better. 

“And then your lackey came.” Fuyo’s eyes grow frosty and the glare she directs him would strike a lesser man down. Madara merely scoffs. “He killed Konan and plunged the world into chaos. Suiren and I were the closest thing Konan had to heirs. Our genin team had been handpicked and trained by her…Ajisai became the Animal Path when she died, it was a great honor.” It sounds forced the way she says it. A friend dead, her corpse used as a puppet. So much honor to be found. “People thought we’d fight, that there would be another civil war until one of us was dead, the other crowned.” 

“Fools,” Suiren spits. 

“We needed Pain, just as we needed Hanzo, but Konan’s way is the only way Ame can prosper. We cannot ignore the other villages or antagonize them, but our focus needs to be on Ame. We should not be divided in the village. Suiren and I were not enemies to fight over the title of leader. We can do more together than apart, we are stronger as two than just one.” 

“But you are divided.” Madara is merciless, he has to be. He can feel Hashirama’s ghost over his shoulder, taunting him, lingering in Fuyo’s lazy, half-lidded gaze. What they might have been, what they could never be. 

“It’s a work in progress,” Suiren growls. 

“We assumed our place as leaders, but it has not been easy. There was a power vacuum, we are young, and the world is changing faster than anyone can adapt to. It stirred up old fears and with Pain and Konan dead, Hanzo’s followers have risen out of their puddles. They are not our enemies either,” Fuyo glares at him as Madara opens his mouth, “truly, they’re not. They cling to Hanzo’s beliefs because of the stability they brought. It doesn’t matter that the rest of the world distrusted us, that we were constantly on the defensive, that there was no escape from that life under Hanzo. At one point Pain had been different, the Akatsuki promised something else…but in the end…” Fuyo sighs deeply. 

“Hanzo and Pain were two sides of the same coin. Suiren and I have placated Pain’s most fervent believers, we would have done the same with Hanzo’s. Things are delicate, but there is still an air of hope. We have different priorities, different beliefs about how to best govern our village, but it does not make us enemies. We are not shackled to the past, we could make a proper council, give everyone their chance to speak, to make decisions. We could do something revolutionary–”

“But then the girl showed up.” Madara can see it. How their dream darkened, how it started to chip away until allies were enemies, everything falling away until there was only one path–

“No,” Fuyo says and leans forward. “Nagisa complicated things. Gave a few of Hanzo’s lackeys ideas about dynasties, but cooler heads prevailed. She was a symbol to them, to all of us. How the old could coexist with the new. And then she went missing.”

“And Hanzo’s followers blamed you,” Yamato says, voice full of sympathy. 

“Yes. We never denounced Pain, but we were firm in that we followed Konan’s teachings. We were the bridge between the two groups, but when Nagisa went missing, Ugatsu–the leader of their group–believed us to be liars and betrayers, that we intended to finish what Pain had started and destroy all of Hanzo’s line. We’ve done our best to search for her but we cannot find her. There have been skirmishes already. Civil war is brewing as the worst tendencies bubble to the surface. We’ve closed our borders in a show of faith…but trust has been broken. Unless we find Nagisa...” 

“Your village will crumble underneath you.” Madara can see it clear as day. Ame, already teetering on the edge of ruin, would be plunged into it completely.

“We will help you, of course,” Yamato promises, sincerity practically dripping off him like rainwater, “but you said it yourself, you’re sensors I don’t see how–” 

“I will not underestimate the power of your eyes,” Fuyo says bitterly and Madara can’t help but smirk. “Find Nagisa. Speak to Ugatsu if it’d help, I’ll give you free passage through the village. But if a single one of my villagers is hurt…” Fuyo and Suiren stand at the same time, perfectly synchronized. 

“You’ll kill me?” Madara drawls. 

“I know you are stronger than us, Uchiha Madara. But do not underestimate the lengths I will go to to protect my village. You’ll kill me in the end, but I will make you regret your actions, if even for a single second.” 

It’s a different speech, but her tone, the intensity in her eyes, the chakra lashing about in her chest–weak as it is–stirs up that memory. The Kyuubi, Hashirama’s golem. Wind, unrelenting rain, one last exhausted dash only to find a trick, a clone, and then–

Fuyo and Suiren nod at the rest of the group. 

“There’s nothing else to say until Nagisa is found. Kamihara will answer any remaining questions you have.” The metal doors creak open and a frumpy, middle aged woman slips in. “Find Nagisa, prove your sincerity, and we’ll agree to work with Konoha.” 

“We’ll even sign the friendship proposal,” Suiren sneers.

And then they walk out of the room, shoulder to shoulder.

Chapter Text

I wish I never left Konoha. Madara thinks as he watches the girls leave. This mission seemed designed to torture him and him specifically, taunting him with shadows and distorted images of something he–at one point–wanted but could never have. Two leaders, working side by side, as they struggled to keep their little village afloat. There are a thousand differences, of course. Suiren and Fuyo didn’t come from centuries of war and bloodshed, didn’t have clan politics weighing them down, or a brother’s killer walking free. No matter the shallow similarities, he and Hashirama could never have been like them. But his mind still taunts him with the possibility and the fact that dealing with the girls has him longing for his apartment and solitude puts him in a foul mood. 

The little frumpy woman is speaking, telling them more about Ugatsu and his group–the ones who can be reasoned with, the extremists looking to start a fight. Hesitantly, she does the same with the remains of Pain’s followers within her own, but the names and details wash over Madara. He’s barely listening until the diplomats and Yamato stand and then they’re being escorted out of the Tower into another stinking metal building nearby and shown to a large room with a connected kitchen and bath that’ll be theirs for the duration of their stay. Madara fully expects it, but his mood sours even more when he realizes he’ll have to sleep in the same room as the rest of them. 

Camping is one thing, but this… 

Madara did not consider what he did sleeping when he was attached to the geto statue, after he found and rescued Obito from beneath the boulder. It was more of a trance to preserve his withering body while he continued to work on the foundations of his own tsukuyomi dream. So no, he did not consider it sleep. The last person he willingly laid down beside in the same small space, content to drift off without fear of being killed was Hashirama. 

A lump forms in Madara’s throat and anger starts to curl in his gut. 

“I’m going to take a walk,” Madara says and turns towards the door. 

“What? We just got here, we need to stay with the diplomats and discuss what Kamihara told us to make a plan–” Yamato starts in an irritatingly reasonable tone.  

“I’m doing a perimeter check.” There. That’s reasonable, that’s for the mission. Madara walks out before Yamato can or the rest of them can protest. 

He needs to calm down, reign his temper in before it gets out of control. 

And yet, when he steps outside in the pouring rain, he comes face-to-face with a shinobi, one with a respirator around her mouth. 

I swear… Madara hand tights on the metal. He feels it creak and distort beneath his gloved fingers. 

“Ugatsu has received word of your arrival to the village.”

“Is that a threat?” Gods he wishes it was. And then, because the universe does hate him, Yamato rushes down the stairs. 

“Madara, don’t just walk away we need to–” He halts when he sees the new shinobi. He stops right at Madara’s back. The thin thread of patience he has left snaps. Madara twists to grab Yamato by the arm and pushes him outside, nearly throwing him to the ground by the unnamed shinobi. Trembling, Madara clenches his hands into fists and bites his tongue until he tastes blood. Yamato looks hurt–what right does he have, he’s not Hashirama, none of them are Hashirama–and steadies himself before looking at their uninvited guest, expression pleasantly blank. “Excuse us, you were saying?” He asks while Madara grits his teeth. Both of them are blocking the exit now and he does not feel confident in his ability to find a second in this metal prison. 

“Ugatsu invites Konoha’s diplomatic party to meet with him and discuss the situation in Ame.” That’s where all the messenger birds went. 

“Well you lot certainly waste no time.” Madara wants her dead. Wants every miserable person in this village dead. In Konoha. In the world. He tried to find a solution for decades to bring about peace without slaughtering everyone. Maybe he should have taken the easy way and been done with it.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” The mask distorts her voice, making it oddly muffled and flat, but Madara hears the mocking sarcasm in the comment just fine.

“Absolutely. Our group has just arrived, we’re getting settled now. When would Ugatsu like us to meet?”

The woman laughs. “ Now. ” 

The only reason Madara doesn’t kill her is because Yamato steps in front of him. The only reason he doesn’t kill Yamato is because of how breathtakingly stupid he is, putting his back to an enemy, that it leaves Madara stunned. In that split second of time, Yamato agrees to the arrogant request and closes the door with its crushed handle, pushing both of them inside. 

“If you ever do that again–” Madara starts.

“No.” Yamato rounds on him, finally some emotion in his overly large eyes besides simpering amiability. He reaches out to grab Madara’s arm and pull him deeper into the building–no doubt Ugatsu’s shinobi is still outside waiting for them to follow after to her master like obedient dogs–but Madara seizes him first and shoves him hard against the wall, dragging him in until they’re out of earshot.

“Do not mistake me for some domesticated pet that you can order around at will,” he snarls, pressing his arm to Yamato’s throat until he starts to choke. 

“You’re throwing a tantrum because you’re overwhelmed, but you’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment and endanger our mission,” Yamato gasps out. His face is turning red but fear hasn’t yet started to cloud his eyes. “I don’t care that you dislike me, that you dislike the diplomats. What happens after? When you make a mistake and someone dies and you have to go back to Naruto and–”

Madara drops him. Yamato’s legs crumple like wet paper, unable to hold his weight, and he slides to the rusted floor, coughing and spluttering. 

“Is this your version of a threat, whelp?” It’s pathetic. Pathetic like he is, like Tsuande is, like what Hashirama’s lineage has become. 

“No, it’s me telling you the truth.” Yamato picks himself up slowly, leaning heavily on the wall. “You don’t scare me, Madara. I already told you, there are things much worse than you in the world.” 

“If you think this makes you anything like him, you’re mistaken. None of you,” Madara thinks of Naruto, of Suiren and Fuyo, of Yamato, and Tsunade, “will ever be him!” For better or worse. Madara was the last one to be blind to Hashirama’s flaws, not in the end, but still…

“Take a moment while I get Satoaki and the others,” Yamato says and he’s back to that damn gentle, careful voice. 

“Don’t treat me like a child!” 

“Fine! If you can’t complete the mission– leave. Go home. Tell Naruto and Kakashi-senpai you weren’t ready, that you failed.” 

“I will not .” He’d kill himself and deal with Hashirama’s judgment before he gave the Hatake boy that satisfaction. Madara’s started to shore up the dregs of his pride and he won’t suffer that insult willingly. 

“Then pull yourself together!” Yamato sucks in a heavy breath, staring at Madara. When his hands clench into fists, but he chooses not to swing, Yamato turns and carefully makes his way up the stairs. 

He’s right and Madara hates it. When he’s sure Yamato is back in their little temporary apartment, he sinks down to a squat on his heels and breathes in a deep, steady breath. He can do this, if only because Madara has suffered much worse things in his life, and he’s pulled himself through. It’s still harder than he expects. He knows with a terrible certainty he’ll be plagued with nightmares tonight and he won’t be able to spend hours under cold, numbing water without waking the others. He wishes he could drink, longs for the alcohol induced haze, but he’s not ready for the new low of getting drunk and jeopardizing missions…at least not important ones. 

He’s out of practice at burying his feelings. The last year has been him subjected to them constantly, only able to hold on and endure. And Madara can admit to himself that burying his emotions would hardly be any better, still a slave to them only in the opposite way. A middle ground must be found but he’s never been able to find that in over a century of life and he’s certainly not going to find it crouched on a dingy metal floor in the middle of Ame of all fucking places. 

So instead, Madara takes breath after breath, focusing on the rise and fall of his lungs, the pounding blood in his veins, warm breath on his lips until there is nothing else. An old trick from a lifetime ago. With all his years, he can barely remember Mother teaching him. 

When the apartment door closes and four pairs of footsteps echo down the stairs, Madara has pulled himself together. Not perfectly–he still feels raw, straining at the seams but no longer on the edge of murdering the first person he sees. 

Yamato doesn’t say anything as they make their way to the door and opens it to reveal Ugatsu’s shinobi on the other side. 

“Ready?” There’s poorly concealed amusement in her voice. Unlikely that she heard the entire exchange, only Madara slamming Yamato against the steel wall. 

“Move , ” he growls. Satisfaction curls in his chest when she flinches, a small jolt she can’t quite hide as she turns. 

It doesn’t take them long to get to Ugatsu’s. There are no signs that they’re entering another faction’s territory, no banners being pelted by rain or runny symbols painted on the buildings. It gives credence to Fuyo’s words that Ame isn’t embroiled in a true civil war yet.

Their guide leads them through the rough-hewn streets to yet another sun-cursed tower. It’s shorter than the others around it, more squat and horizontal than the thin spire with its faces that Fuyo and Suiren ruled from. 

The rain drips down in a steady beat as the shinobi leads them to the large door of the building, two guards on either side of the door. Both wear blindfolds and respirators, if not for the difference in height, they’d be eerily identical. 

“The Konoha delegation,” their guide announces and the guards move aside, letting them pass. 

What is the difference between these accursed things? Madara wonders as they make their way through the halls. It looks identical to the Tower of God, only a slightly different arrangement in the floor plan. Luckily, they don’t ascend to its tip, the room the guide leads them to is nestled at the center-heart of the building. More identical guards stand outside its metal door and let them pass without a word. The guide knocks on the door and a man’s deep voice calls out, “Enter.” 

Unlike the Tower there are no windows to view the cloudy sky and murky ground, but Ugatsu’s office at least looks like something a human–albeit a strange one–would inhabit. Electricity powers the building, but there are colorful glowing candles on the lacy tablecloth, thick brown and gray animal furs draped over the chairs and walls, and a ridiculously large aquarium gurgling away along the back wall. It’s an almost painful mishmash of styles and Madara’s struck with the sudden realization Hashirama would be delighted if he could see it. 

“Ah the diplomats from Konoha, I take it you’ve already spoken to Fuyo and Suiren?” Ugatsu is peering into the fish tank, watching some kind of large, delicately-finned fish swim around. 

Satoaki clears her throat. “We have. Ugatsu, I presume?” 

“Yes. And you are Satoaki Nobuko,  Kotori Kotoka, and Mou Tokihito accompanied by Yamato and the legendary Uchiha Madara.” He straightens and turns toward them. He wears a respirator like the last few shinobi they’ve seen–if there’s anything to immediately distinguish this group from Fuyo and Suiren’s it’s that accessory–but his voice is at odds with his visible face. His eyes are beady and small, eyebrows heavy set as if his most natural expression is a scowl. In contrast, his voice is deep and jovial, ready to break into a story or smile at the first given opportunity. If he were to take the respirator off, which would the lower half of his face match? “Come sit at the table, let us speak.” 

They take their places, the same as they were earlier with Fuyo and Suiren.

“I’m sure the women filled you in on our delicate situation here.” Ugatsu folds his hands together, elbows pressing down on the table and disturbing the white cloth. “Oh don’t look surprised!” He laughs at Satoaki’s blank expression. “I hope you haven’t come here thinking I’m some usurper, waiting for the slightest opportunity to remove our young leaders from power when they’re trying so hard to keep the peace.” 

“As a matter of fact…” Madara mutters and ignores Kotori’s kick to his shin once again. 

“No, no. Next month I’ll turn fifty-one. In all my years, only the last half of one, I’d consider peaceful. I’d like to retire and die in peace, not wartime. I’m too old for power struggles anymore.”

You’re barely a child. Madara can’t help but think. 

“But you’re a follower of Hanzo and your faction clashes with Fuyo and Suiren’s,” Satoaki says carefully. 

Ugatsu sighs deeply. “Hanzo was my dearest friend. He was strong and rash and the greatest man I knew. All he wanted was what was best for Ame, but in time, that noble goal was twisted into something cruel. I won’t lie to you, in the last years of his life Hanzo and I almost came to blows many a time. Once he would have welcomed the Akatsuki–the first iteration mind you–with open arms, but instead he conspired with your Danzou to end them before they could become a threat to him. In those years he became obsessed with power, believing only he could protect Ame. Age became something to personally spite him, it made him weak and frail, threatened his dream, his life’s work. There was some truth to what Hanzo believed, even there at the end–the Land of Lakes is a small country surrounded by larger ones that see us as a battleground and nothing more.” His beady eyes move to each one of them across the table. “Sometimes I believe that’ll never change. The only thing that dissuaded the Great Nations was overwhelming force, which Hanzo had in spades, and part of me will always blame you for what he became. Let me be frank, I am not your friend. Most days I despise your people and I’ll go on happily doing so until the day I die.” 

“At least you’re honest about it.” Madara could respect that at least. Satoaki glares at him for the comment, but Ugatsu only shrugs. 

“The same is true for me of Pain. After he murdered Hanzo I tried to kill him in revenge. It didn’t end well.” Ugatsu swivels in his chair and props both of his feet up on the table, displacing the candles but not knocking any over. He pulls at his pants and Madara can see the gleam of metal where flesh should be. “Got off lucky, losing only two legs and my pride. Pain went on and on about how he was different from Hanzo, but in the end, he was just the same. If he’d lived, in another decade or two a new Akatsuki would rise and history would repeat itself again and again.”

Finally, a sensible man in this damned place–

“Lucky he’s dead then, isn’t it? We finally have a chance to break the cycle.” It’s impossible to see his mouth behind the respirator, but the grin is so present in his voice, it’s unnecessary. “One that diminishes by the day, mind you, but we’re not finished yet. That’s why Fuyo and Suiren tasked you to find Nagisa, am I right?” 

“You are knowledgeable about what goes on in the Tower of God,” Satoaki says, gray eyes locked on him.

Ugatsu shrugs. “Why else would they ask you to stay in Ame? Now isn’t exactly a great time to be hosting diplomatic delegations. If you were the typical lot, they’d have turned you away and Iwauko wouldn’t have been able to find you.”

“So you believe they didn’t kidnap Nagisa?” 

“Fuyo and Suiren? No. They were Konan’s girls, not Pain’s. If they haven’t killed any of their political detractors, they’d never target an innocent child, no matter who she’s related to.” 

“But you believe someone under them…”

“Look,” Ugatsu drops his legs and leans forward again, “Ame is a powderkeg. We all have to tread very carefully. There are those under me that I despise, that despise me and wait for the day they can try and wrest power away from me. There are those same kinds of people following Fuyo and Suiren. They did not kidnap Nagisa, but I’d bet money someone in the Tower of God did. This too, is why you’re useful. The women aren’t idiots, they know one of their own is the most likely culprit but they can’t investigate–”

“One could make a counterclaim against you. Why wouldn’t one of your own people kidnap or kill the girl to weaken their opponents?” Madara interrupts. 

“True. I was able to conduct a more thorough search among my own men, but one of them could still be to blame. No one has killed Nagisa, though. I’m confident the girl is alive.” 

“Oh?” 

“If she wasn’t, we’d be at war, and everyone knows it, including the kidnapper. So she’s alive and they must have some other reason for taking her.” Ugatsu’s beady brown eyes gleam. 

Chapter Text

They spend another hour with Ugatsu discussing Nagisa, his theories, and the political situation with Ame as a whole. It’s clear he holds Fuyo and Suiren in high regard, but hardly anyone else. Ugatsu doesn’t play a fool, only a man who happens to stumble into power and information. He never breaks this facade, but the balance nearly tips when he slides Satoaki a string-tied book full of profiles of various Ame nin, their connections, various reasons to suspect them of kidnapping Nagisa, and why any inquiry into them has come up short so far. 

“You planned this. All of this.” Satoaki is back to her politician’s voice, but it’s cracking with the undercurrent of irritation that slips in. 

“That? It’s just for my personal records. I want to find Nagisa as much as anyone.” He waved off the hidden accusation, blindingly obvious that the information in the booklet was tailor-made for foreign shinobi unfamiliar with Ame and its inhabitants. He probably started making it when his men intercepted the first messenger bird.

“I’d start where Nagisa lived with her mother and then work your way through the various. suspects Of course, I’ll be happy to provide you with a writ of passage and any further help in finding the criminal and seeing Hanzo’s granddaughter returned safely,” Ugatsu says as they stand to leave. “Though I’d be careful if I were you, some more than others will be upset to see Konoha citizens in their midst.” 

On that ominous note, the doors open and they’re escorted out of Ugatsu’s strange room, back into the bare metal building and the rainy streets beyond. 

“Let’s get started,” Madara says and reaches for the booklet in Mou’s hands. 

“Are you sure? Maybe we should head back to the apartment and discuss–” Yamato starts. 

“No. The sooner we find her, the sooner we complete our mission.” He doesn’t want to stay in this damn country any longer than he has too. The address is easy enough to locate on the first page but the context is meaningless. Madara stares at it for a moment before thrusting the book at Satoaki. “Lead me here.” 

“Satoaki…” Yamato pleads. 

“I believe it’s a good idea to inspect Nagisa’s last known whereabouts, however, I will insist that we regroup and discuss our plans before conducting any interviews.” 

“Fine.” Madara turns and gestures for her to start walking. There won’t be any damn interviews if he can help it.

It takes them an hour to reach the apartment. It’s a metal building like every other one in this horrible place, but it’s narrow and short, barely a fifth of the Tower of God’s height and crammed between two other identical buildings. 

“It says she lived with her mother in apartment 44E,” Satoaki says as they push through the rickety door into the apartment. Dim bulbs hang from the ceiling, casting a putrid yellow light on the grungy walls and floors. Ame, despite its wealth of metals, is not a particularly rich country. Madara wouldn’t be surprised if the building hadn’t been cleaned since it was constructed. 

There is an elevator tucked into the left wall when they enter, but he can hear the rickety creak of the motor from here as it rises above them. 

“We’re taking the stairs.” None of them argue with him. 

The stairwell is minisculely better. The steps are cracked and worn concrete, each one chipped enough for dust and gravel to crunch under their shoes. Madara opens the door to the fourth floor and two shinobi outside of Nagisa’s apartment snap to attention, turning to face him. One is bare-faced, the other wears a respirator. Ugatsu mentioned the apartment was still under watch, one of his men and one of Fuyo and Suiren’s. 

“You’re not residents of the building, this area is off limits–hey!” Madara shoulders past the masked man on his right as his female partner splutters and reaches out to stop him. Madara knocks her hand away and enters the apartment. 

“I’m so terribly sorry–” He hears Yamato start to say and the rustle of papers as Mou or Kotori hurry to pull out scrolls and documents to legitimize their purpose. 

Madara ignores them, of course. Inside, is a small but well-loved space. One shared room and a small closed off bathroom, it’s roughly the same set-up of Madara’s own apartment in Konoha. Upon immediate entry is the kitchen, cluttered with objects and knickknacks on the counters with childish drawings hung up on the fridge. A small, square table butts awkwardly against the wall with only two chairs, with a chipped vase sitting in the middle, the flowers long wilted and dead. 

Further in, tapestries hang on the walls to provide warmth and color to unfeeling metal walls, while both thick and threadbare rugs on the floor set out to serve the same purpose underfoot. In the far left corner of the room is a large bed, the sheets are still thrown back and wrinkled. A dresser stands next to it, one drawer slightly open, though it looks old and worn enough that it may just be unable to close properly. The right side of the room is taken up by scattered children’s toys and an old wicker rocking chair with a stack of felled books next to it. 

As Madara inspects the room, the other four finally relay the proper information to the guards and push in until they’re all crammed in the small apartment. 

“Have you ever solved a missing persons case?” Yamato asks in exasperation as Madara makes his way to the dresser. 

“Was anything disturbed? Or has the room remained the same?” Madara asks, ignoring him. 

“U-uh, Ugatsu and some sensors came to investigate. They poked around a bit but couldn’t find anything. Then the trash was inspected then taken out. Besides that, we’ve had guards at the door for months just in case the kidnapper returns or Nagisa finds her way back,” the female guard stutters. 

“It’s practically a punishment, absolutely nothing to do for hours,” her masked partner mutters. 

“Seriously, Madara. Do you know what you’re doing?” Yamato continues. He’s learned his lesson, he doesn’t try to stand directly behind Madara, instead coming at an angle to his side. 

“As a matter of fact I do.” The Uchiha had conducted enough raids on civilian and shinobi settlements alike in his youth. After a dozen or so, there were signs–whether the family fled on purpose, whether there was a struggle as one of them betrayed their neighbors for a chance at surviving the oncoming fight, whether they were warned, whether it was a surprise. Madara doubts he’ll find anything useful here about where the girl is, but Ugatsu said this was her last known location. She was too traumatized after her kekkei genkai awoke, they wanted to keep her in a familiar, hopefully calming location. Two weeks later, she disappeared, without the guards outside noticing. 

They could have been paid off, the kidnapper could–and most likely was–a shinobi themself, but the real clue would be whether or not the girl fought. What was left behind, what they took. The sharingan would help him here, noticing small details the others overlooked.  

Madara pulls out the dresser drawer and looks inside. Rumpled child-sized clothes meet his eye. For the first time in over a year, since he was reanimated, revived, so close to distorted victory before Black Zetsu betrayed him and Kaguya took over his body, Madara’s eyes burn and the world swirls into perfect, crystal red. 

It’s easier than he thought it’d be. Madara doesn’t let himself fixate on it–or why he thought it should be hard–instead he turns his eyes to the clothes. The drawers are deep and the clothes are arranged in three piles. It’s only the few top layers that are disturbed. Carefully, Madara runs his fingers on the shirts and pants below. The mother had folded them neatly and pressed them flat, creating as much space as possible. He shuts the drawer and watches as it slides neatly into place. Opening the one above it reveals similarly displaced undergarments, and the one below the mother’s neat, orderly clothes.

Madara walks to the side of the room filled with toys. It’s a mess, no order in sight. Some are scattered on the large, circular rug under his feet, more are spilling forth from a wooden toy chest pushed against the wall. Briefly, Madara picks a few up, inspecting them. Most are lightly worn but not ratty. The one exception is a once-white plush rabbit hidden behind the toy chest. Madara pulls it out, inspecting the green ribbon wrapped around its neck, the nearly bald patches on its worn belly, and tosses it to Yamato. He catches it, looks down at it, and then hands it off to Mou. The little man’s caterpillar eyebrows creep so far up his forehead, for the briefest second watery blue eyes are revealed under the fuzz. He holds the rabbit like it’s precious porcelain he’s not quite sure how to handle properly and is deathly afraid of breaking it. 

Without pause, Madara moves on to the stack of displaced books. He recognizes none of the titles, but a quick flip through reveals them to be picture books he’d assume was suitable for a six-year-old. There’s nothing he can discern from these, but like the rabbit, takes the most worn one he can find and hands it to Yamato. This time he hands it to Kotori, who takes it immediately and folds it under her arm. 

A quick glance through the bathroom gives him nothing. Everything is in its place, nothing missing or knocked over. Looking through the cabinet confirms the same thing. For due diligence, Madara stares down at the rugs, looking for any signs of a scuffle, or anything out of place as he makes his way back to the kitchen to do one more check. Nothing there either.

Finally, Madara makes his way toward the rumpled bed. Big enough for a mother and young daughter both, but only one side is rumpled and messy. Madara leans close toward the pillow, letting his eyes sweep over it. 

“What are you looking for?” Yamato finally asks, reluctantly intrigued as they’ve all watched his progress about the apartment. 

“Small splatters of blood, a clump of hair.” Those would be the obvious signs of a struggle. “Or the sheets to be too twisted.”

“The sheets can be too twisted?” Now Yamato sounds put out again. “She was kidnapped, what does it matter if the sheets–”

“The sheets don’t matter at all by themselves. It’s all the details added together.” Mapmaking was a necessary skill in the warring states era. Imagined daimyo boundaries and the physical land had been redrawn all the time. An inaccurate map was a sure death. Despite that, the mapmakers were strictly utilitarian. There was a sort of finery about it, Madara remembers. The cartographers surveyed the land, red eyes spinning as they took in every detail to record it on paper. Secretly, when he was young, he thought he’d like to be among their ranks if he hadn’t been the heir to the clan. As fate would have it, he’d be destined to rewrite the maps in a different sort of way. No matter, to him, the principle was the same here. There’s information to be gleaned from the apartment. It’ll hardly present a whole, accurate picture, but it’ll be necessary in confronting the kidnapper and retrieving Nagisa. 

Unless Ugatsu and his men reset the messy bed, which Madara highly doubts from the look of it, Nagisa didn’t struggle when the kidnapper came for her. They could have overpowered her, snuck up and knocked her out before she had a chance to struggle but…

Madara glances at the empty side table next to the bed. Beside it is a broken lamp and displaced tissues. After shooing Yamato back, he crouches on the rug and peers under the bed. Sure enough there are a few more objects he assumes to have been left there, creams for the lips and hands…and a photo frame. Madara grabs it and holds it up to the light. 

Empty. 

“It’s not ironclad proof but I suspect part of the reason the guards were never alerted was because Nagisa knew her kidnapper and trusted them. Some of her clothes are missing and a keepsake photo. There are no traces of blood or significant struggle and hardly anything else in the apartment is touched. My guess is the kidnapper came for her and she left willingly after grabbing only the essentials they couldn’t immediately replace without suspicion.”

“That is one explanation but it doesn’t fit any of the profiles Ugatsu gave us,” Satoaki says, flipping through the booklet. 

“Oh I doubt it would. They’re all assuming there’s a political motivation behind her kidnapping, all of those are either Ugatsu’s political enemies or Fuyo and Suiren’s,” Madara says and lets the sharingan fade from his eyes. 

“Alright, say your theory is true, that gives us a new direction but it still doesn’t get us any closer to finding Nagisa. No one knew her or her mother. According to Ugatsu they kept to themselves, had no other family, and barely any contact with their neighbors.”

“Did Pain burn Hanzo’s body when he died?” Madara ignores Yamato and turns to the female guard. She snaps to attention, watery green eyes wide. 

“W-what?”

Madara sighs and reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Did he cremate the body? How were Hanzo’s remains handled?”

“Ahhh,” the woman looks at her partner and then her eyes slide sheepishly away.  

“He preserved the body and kept it in a glass tomb. A reminder to anyone of what would happen if they opposed Pain the way Hanzo did,” the male guard spits. 

“And it’s still there?” He doesn't care about their petty infighting. 

“I-it’s been given back to Ugatsu’s men. They’ve made a proper memorial out of it,” the female guard stutters. 

“But the body’s still there?” 

“Y-yes.” 

“Point to it on a map.” Madara snaps his fingers and Satoaki reluctantly steps forward to offer her map.

“Now is there a park nearby? Someplace with actual dirt instead of damn metal?” Madara taps the nearest tapestry. The metal behind it clinks, the cloth little better than an illusion to hide its nature. 

“The memorial is all stone, but the land around it was turned into a park. Trees and everything.” 

“That’ll do.” Madara turns and starts to march out of the apartment. He crosses the apartment’s threshold before his companions start after him. 

“We’re going to the memorial? What do you think you can find there that’ll help us?” Yamato asks as he hurries to catch up. 

He really is the weakest of Hashirama’s line if he doesn’t realize the obvious solution. 

“We’re going to the memorial because I’ll be able to track Nagisa from there. There’s no need to play Ame’s games and waste time investigating various political factions. We’re going to strike at the heart of the matter in one blow.” Madara takes another step forward before he stops. “Be useful, Yamato, and bring the rabbit and book with you.”

Chapter Text

It takes them an hour and Madara’s relentless, stubborn determination to reach the memorial. His companions doubt him, it’s obvious. Kotori and Mou are unsubtly examining the string-tied book huddled under the same umbrella. Yamato questions what sharingan technique needed dirt and a body to find another person. Satoaki just stares. Nevertheless, when the hidden sun starts to slip below the horizon and the weak filtered light grows even dimmer, the towering buildings fall away to reveal a park hidden in the heart of Ame. It’s small, but it’s an oasis in this metal hellscape. 

Together, they pass under the iron-wrought gate and follow the stone path toward the statue of Hanzo at the center. Small trees dot the walkway, skinny and oddly bare, they still look new and out of place. More natural are the lily-of-the-valleys and mountain laurels that shelter under their weak branches. The feeble things are still straggled and waterlogged, but even with the darkening light, they add a pop of color that makes the world seem less washed out and gray.

Ahead of them, lights flicker on, lighting up the statue and the fine mist of rain that never seems to abate. As they grow closer Madara can see the row of bold red canna underneath. He never cared for the names of flowers, only to know whether they were poisonous, filling, or had healing properties, but it was impossible to live with Hashirama and not pick them up. Above the canna is the glass coffin, the triumphant statue built directly on top–or meant to look as though it was–with two bright spotlights shining up toward it. It’s hard to tell the true likeness of someone from cold stone–gods know it was the case with Hashirama’s face on their cliff–but Madara can’t help but look upon the man and scoff. The most notable things are the comparatively big respirator, though unsurprising given the effects of his kekkei genkai, and the raised kusarigama in his hand, weighted chain in the other. The scythe is much smaller than Madara’s own. 

“Stop where you are, the memorial is closed for the night!” A voice echoes through the darkness and seconds later a body blocks one of the large spotlights shining up on the statue. The artificial light is so overwhelming, it casts the person as indistinguishable shadow, flat and unreal until they move forward and a short woman is revealed. Of course, she wears a respirator. 

“We’re investigating the disappearance of Nagisa on behalf of the leaders of Amegakure,” Satoaki says and waves at Mou to hand over the stitched book. She doesn’t open it to reveal Ugatsu’s list of personal suspects but withdraws a paper with his approval and signature. 

The woman leans forward and squints. 

“I still don’t see how that means you have to be in the memorial after-hours.” 

“The gate was open,” Madara says.

“I was just about to go and close it!” 

“We won’t be long,” Satoaki interrupts, shooting him a glare Madara feels more than sees in the falling dark, “but we will need full access to the grounds.” 

“Open the coffin, it’s the body I need.” Unlike Satoaki, Madara won’t dawdle and obscure his words. They all doubt him, best prove them wrong now. Yamato sighs loudly as the woman startles and takes a step back. 

“What? No, no way. I’m not going to–”

“What’s your name?” Satoaki asks before the woman can attack or flee. 

“Kadona.” It’s a startled admission, one she clearly didn’t mean to give based on her scowl. 

“Kadona, I know this is strange and unusual but we’re here to help find Nagisa. Any of your leaders will be able to verify this information. Call them, speak to them, we’ll wait–”

“We won’t. If you want someone to hold your hand and reassure you, do it quickly. If you don’t open the coffin, I will.” Madara is tired and wet, he wants to sleep but there won’t be any rest in this village until the mission is complete. 

“I won’t let you desecrate Hanzo’s body. I won’t let you use that sick twisted Konoha jutsu to disturb his death again!” Kadona practically prickles. If it hadn’t been for the rain and the hood she wore Madara’s sure she’d look like a puffed up cat. 

“Let me handle this.” Yamato steps toward Kadona reassuring her in smooth, low tones. Satoaki joins him and they start nudging Kadona away from Madara, back toward the lit-up statue. He makes to follow, but Mou throws an arm out in front of him, shaking his bald head. He and Kotori are baby-sitting him, Madara realizes. Irritation sparks in his chest. 

“We all want to find Nagisa, but if you want any chance of examining the body, best to stay put,” Kotori says.

“You’re all holding me back. If it were up to me–”

“We’d probably offend Ame and break all diplomatic ties to them before the day was done,” Mou finishes. 

Madara snarls and spins around. Yamato’s words from earlier about letting his emotions get the better of him taunt him. He wants nothing more than to storm off–let them interview their precious suspects one by one and waste time–but that’d be proving him right, wouldn’t it? So instead, he just steams–literally–in the misting rain. The water boils where it touches his skin, hissing off in anger.  

After several minutes Yamato and Satoaki return, Kadona in tow. She looks calmer, but no less suspicious in the glare from the spotlights. 

“I called Ugatsu. I’ll open the coffin, but if you do anything weird to the body, he’s given me authority to banish you from Ame.” She lifts her chin, as if this is supposed to cow him into good behavior. Madara snorts and starts walking toward the statue. Ugatsu probably said whatever she wanted to hear. He didn’t plan to use edo tensei on the body–what use would the undead Hanzo be at finding a granddaughter he never knew existed–but even if he did, what could Kadona do to stop him? Ugatsu gave her permission to banish them? Please. 

But Madara grits his teeth and says nothing. Instead, he makes his way behind the statue looking at its bracing and the glass beneath it. There, in the corner, is a seal and–amusingly–a physical lock. 

Kadona hurries to stand alongside him, not trusting him for even a second. The diplomats and Yamato follow behind, none of them convinced this will be the solution to their problems. Madara ignores them, arms crossed tightly over his chest, foot tapping impatiently on the wet stone as Kadona opens the coffin. When the glass panel unlocks and swings down on a hinge, Madara reaches forward. 

“I’m watching you, Uchiha,” Kadona says. Madara rolls his eyes and forces his chakra up through the skin of his fingers until a small fire bursts to life above them, dancing on the tip of his glove. “Are you trying to burn the body?!” 

“No. Stop screaming.” He only wants to make sure there is a real human corpse inside. The stale air wafting out smells like death and the preservation oils favored by a handful of clans on the border of Wind that he remembers from his youth, but it’s all in vain if Ugatsu’s men replaced the true corpse with a lookalike. But the body inside is human. It’s well-preserved, waxy and stiff, but the smell of sweet rot lurks just below. They’ll find out if it’s Hanzo’s soon. “This’ll do. Keep it open.” Madara lets the fire die and turns toward the nearest patch of earth. 

He settles on the wet ground, grumbling as the moisture starts to soak through his mantle and pants. With a quick motion, he strips off his gloves, flexing his stiff fingers in the chill rainy air. Madara gathers chakra in his chest, nudges the tight coil of Hashirama’s chakra lurking below his sternum awake, and plunges his hands into the wet dirt. 

There are no words Madara can use to properly describe the gathering of senjutsu chakra–the way the his skin cracks and hums with power, how it floods his senses drowning everything in the same clarity and sharpness he has always associated with the sharingan, or how paradoxically hostile and welcoming it feels as he absorbs it and it mixes with Hashirama’s and his own. Perhaps it’s because Madara was never meant to be a sage and has only touched this power through Hashirama’s, stolen twice and then freely given the third time. Perhaps it’s because the chakra of the natural world feels achingly close to Hashirama’s already, as if there was hardly a distinction to be made between them.

It takes him close to half an hour to gather the chakra, embarrassingly long compared to Hashirama’s ability to instantly enter the state or even Naruto’s ability to meditate for only a few minutes. But finally, when his companions’ frustrations are mounting and Madara is sick of sitting on the sodden ground, he feels the chakra snap into place. He rises, unsure if the faint hum he hears is only in his head or if the others hear it too. They move aside, tense and unspeaking. He expected nothing less. Sages are so few and far between. The legends told when he and Hashirama still lived their first mortal lives painted them as kindly, awe-inspiring figures. It was not a lie, but neither was it the truth. Sages bordered on inhuman in their power, taking it quite literally from the natural world like few others could. The stories spoke of them as benevolent because in truth they were terrifying. He and Hashirama battled alone and it was telling that despite the ease that he could enter Sage Mode, Hashirama never did until he was face to face with Madara. He told him once, when the village was founded and they were drunk on sake, leaning on each other for support, that he did once when he was still young and new to the power. Half of his men prepared to fight him, the other fell down to their knees and wept. None could recognize him. That was the origin of the epithet God of Shinobi. 

Without hesitation, Madara reaches into the glass coffin until his hand–still caked with dirt–touches decaying skin. Chakra is found throughout the body, in the blood, the skin, the bones. Hashirama had notably poor sensory skills unless he had senjutsu chakra coursing through his veins. Madara, already an accomplished sensor, could pick out any individual in the world with only a guide. 

Nagisa is Hanzo’s granddaughter. He never knew her in life, but in death his chakra signature will resonate with hers and show them the way. 

Madara closes his hand around the corpse’s thin wrist, the echoes of Hanzo’s chakra rising to the surface. He sees its pattern, the shape and weight. It’s cold and alien to him, hard and slimy. Nothing like his or Hashirama’s. Madara turns away, brushing the cobwebs of memory from his mind as he reaches out with his augmented sensory abilities. 

The world falls away. Land. Borders. Rivers. Mountains. There. 

Two burning pillars. The last of Hanzo’s line. 

Nagisa.