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(Here is a fact. Madara dies.)
☾
It has been a long time coming—he should have died decades ago, the first time all those years ago. Should have let himself be cut down by Hashirama when he left for the final time. Shouldn’t have let himself be used and manipulated by a creature reeking of death and destruction, shouldn’t have given in to the temptation of having his baby brother back. He should have faded quietly into the background and then killed himself when he had dwindled from Konoha’s memory.
His death would have been far more beneficial for the world than his continued existence, as he now comes to find. Damn Madara and his stupid, weak heart. Damn Madara and his cursed, consuming love. He’d almost brought about an end to the world because he had wanted to see his brother again so badly. He brought about an apocalypse that others thankfully had the power to stop—because he’d let his love get the better of him.
What a fool he’d been. If he’d wanted to see Izuna that desperately, all he’d needed to have done was die.
And despite everything, Madara smiles.
Because that is what is happening now, was it not? The answer had been so simple and he never saw it—too caught up in the human desire to stay alive and someday, one day, have his brother back at his side—but he sees it now.
Madara is dying, and nothing can stop it from happening. Nothing and no one to bring him back again.
Zetsu is gone, Kaguya likely sealed through the means of that Uzumaki boy and the last Uchiha—looking like twin mirrors of Hashirama and himself back when Madara still cared.
It hurts to see them, by Amaterasu, it hurts. Then again, it isn’t so much that seeing the Uzumaki boy hurts him. It isn’t that when he looks at the Uzumaki and Uchiha, he’s reminded of everything that could have been, everything Hashirama and him might have become with the absence of hatred.
No. The reason is far simpler, and far more painful.
Uchiha Sasuke looks so much like Izuna that it hurts. His face twists into familiar mannerisms and expressions: the scrunching of his brows, the sharp uptick to the corner of his mouth when he’s smug about something. There are a few differences—Sasuke seems to have an affinity for lightning when Izuna’s was, like most Uchiha, fire. Izuna’s lips were thinner, cheeks not as pronounced, and features rounded rather than angled, but if Izuna had shorter hair and sharper features, he could be Uchiha Sasuke’s body double.
Uchiha Sasuke is a walking ghost, and Marada is haunted.
He is so empty—empty and fueled by decades of rage and bitterness—that it doesn’t hurt as much as it barely registers in the back of his consciousness. But when everything is over, when Hashirama is once again kneeling on the ground next to his dying body, he finds that it is all he can think about.
Uchiha Sasuke’s face, and his dead little brother, Izuna.
He can’t bear to look at Hashirama, and settles for staring straight up at the sky. It’s devoid of the bloodred moon, and he’s thankful for it. It isn’t quite yet dawn, and the night stars shimmer in the distance. If Madara were in the habit of believing in delusions—at least more than he already had—he’d think one of those stars was Izuna, twinkling down at him from above, ready to welcome him when Madara finally goes.
It’s taking unfairly long, Madara thinks, petulant. What is the point of remaining here any longer, when he has nothing to say and nothing to give—and most importantly, nothing left?
Hashirama is saying something, he registers vaguely. Something about village bonds and lost friendships and dreams, and Madara wants to laugh.
“My dream was lost,” he croaks, “But yours lives on.” He doesn’t say anything about how at some point, there had been no difference, that once they had both worked toward the same thing, the same goal, the same dream. That once, all Madara wanted was for a child not to know war, death, and suffering. That once, Madara had wanted peace. He doesn’t tell Hashirama that once, Madara’s dream had been Hashirama himself—a selfish, jealously guarded secret he never told anyone, never gave even the slightest utterance to—because who in their right mind would have chosen Madara over Uzumaki Mito, who was everything Madara was not, everything Hashirama needed?
(He has no dream now. He only has a wish—one wish. To see his little brother again, keep himself from bawling at the very sight of him, hold his hands, and tug him into an embrace. He will mutter apologies into his hair as many times as it’s required, for failing to protect him, for letting him die so young. And then, if Izuna will still have him, he will never let go.)
Madara doesn’t tell Hashirama the three words he had always longed to say when he was alive. Rather, when his mind had still been his own, not a vessel for creatures older than the world, chakra beings comprised entirely of spite and hatred. He doesn’t tell Hashirama ‘I love you’ because there would be no point to it, no point at all. They are both dead, after all. Dead and undead and nearing death yet again. Those words are useless in death, where Madara will never see Hashirama again—and besides, he knows the answer anyway. There’s no point in useless pain.
He doesn’t listen to what Hashirama says in response—the sound seems to be fading in and out of his ears. It’s easier to simply ignore the words coming out of Hashirama’s mouth, and for a moment, Madara lets himself pretend that he says ‘I love you too.’
It isn’t a comfort.
Slowly, he closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at Hashirama anymore, doesn’t want to see the edge of Tobirama’s sneer as he looks down at Madara’s decaying body. He deserves all of this animosity and more, but he’d gotten enough of it when he was alive. He’d rather think of what is to come, what he will be met with in death, the peace he will be granted. He thinks only of Izuna, and whether he’d be willing to forgive him for truly being so foolish.
He’s tired.
☾
That is how Uchiha Madara comes to an end.
Rather, how he is supposed to end. Because for all his calculations and recalculations, and all the times he has been shunned and rejected, he never accounted for death being one of those to turn its face away.
Madara closes his eyes and finds himself on the precipice of something. He looks down, and his body is his own once again, no jagged black lines running down the skin of his arms, chest, and legs. If he were to look in a mirror right this instant, he’d likely find his eyes to be devoid of the black sclera characteristic of the Edo Tensei jutsu, and he isn’t sure if he feels relieved or weary.
Then he looks up, and his breath catches. Everything stills.
It’s Izuna. But not just him.
Kaito. Ryo. Ren.
His brothers— all four of them —are waiting on the other side, waiting for Madara to join them. Their faces are bright and young and happy, so unlike the last time Madara had seen them; Kaito, Ryo, and Ren had been barely children when they passed, and Madara is sure had it not been for his Sharingan, he would have forgotten their faces. He’s been carrying the void in his soul created by their deaths for years, mourned them for longer than he’d mourned Izuna. He didn’t think he’d ever get to see them again.
But he did, he does, because they’ve all been waiting for him, for the elder brother they barely knew.
Madara wouldn’t be able to stop the tears that rolled down his face even if he wanted to. The three children all cling to Izuna, whose face is soft and unlined with stress, eyes shining with unaffected adoration—the sight makes a part of him sick to his stomach. He wears robes of light blue—a stark contrast to the dark navies, grays, and blacks he used to hold a preference for. Then again, they were shinobi, and Izuna had always taken the deaths of their younger brothers the hardest out of the two of them. It eases something in Madara to know that in death, Izuna was able to find the kind of peace he never had in life.
Madara cries, opens his mouth, keeps crying, and cannot say a damned thing.
The ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I love you’ and ‘Thank you’ and ‘You waited for me?’ gets all muddled up on his tongue, and so in the end he says nothing. He doesn’t need to, because Izuna smiles at him, and Madara cannot hear from so far away—but he doesn’t necessarily need to—and feels his heart untense when he reads the shape of ‘Welcome home’ on his mouth.
Izuna is so close and yet so far. His family is so close.
Madara takes a breath. This. This is all he ever wanted. His family, smiling and happy and whole. He breathes in, and on the exhale, lets go of everything that had burdened him in life. There is no room for those regrets here.
He breathes, then smiles. Takes a step forward, and—
☾
Opens his eyes.
☾
(Here is another fact: Uchiha Madara wakes again. And lives.)
☾
It hits him suddenly and entirely after a good hour—the whole of which he has spent staring at his ceiling. He is numb inside, everything in him frozen and slumbering, blood sluggishly churning along his veins, chakra lying dormant in his pathways.
(‘The Uchiha are made of fire,’ he remembers Tajima telling him in his youth. Their clan is hot, volatile even, with explosive tempers or slow-to-build countenances like lava. A Uchiha’s love and anger went hand in hand—were one and the same if outsiders were to be believed about it. Whoever you were, if you were Uchiha, you burned.
Madara has never felt less like a Uchiha in his life.)
He is alive. He’s alive.
Madara is alive, when he’s supposed to be dead.
The numbness in his chest grows. It expands until his lungs seem to drown in the feeling, and he finally puts a word to the nameless emotion. The grief pulls him down like the ocean, the likes of which he has only ever seen once.
(He’d accompanied Hashirama to Uzushio once, had resigned himself to playing bodyguard-and-or-chaperone, while his best friend and his bride-to-be took a walk along the shore, as they giggled and whispered, acted like two people already half in love. And Madara had ached with something fierce that day—let himself hang back further than he would have usually allowed himself to do, ignored the couple in front of him, and instead paid attention to the ocean. It was big and blue and beautiful, the sound of the waves crashing against the sand almost loud enough to drown out Hashirama and Mito’s laughter. Madara had closed his eyes against the sound of the sea and pretended he was alone, completely missing the look of unbridled longing Hashirama sent his way. By the time he opened his eyes again, he’d resolved to let these unwanted feelings either die an unremarkable death, or bury them so deeply within himself he’d forget they ever existed in due time.)
This is not his house. This is not even his home. (No, the only home he’d had was the one he had with Izuna and their brothers, and that had been taken from him a long time ago. Konoha had been a pipe dream, but it was never a home. Had become even less so in the later years.)
Madara is somehow alive, decades into his own past, with no idea how he got there.
This is… this is his room in the Uchiha Clan Compound in Konoha. The room he’d spent less and less time in as he started constantly requesting missions outside the village, where he was gone for long stretches of him—for days, weeks, months even. He’d always return, however, because he knew Hashirama would abandon everything and everyone, his duties and responsibilities, to drag Madara back, that eternal idiot. So Madara made sure to always come back, and did—all the way up until he didn’t. (And that had been the beginning of the end.)
Izuna is already dead at this point in time, Madara realizes with a dull pang, underneath all the grief. His little brother has been gone for a long while already, his dying gift spinning in Madara’s skull. Madara would have torn them out already had they not been the only remnant of Izuna he had left, and once again curses himself for his horrible susceptibleness to stupid sentimentality. These eyes—rather, what they represented—were the cause of most of his suffering back then, was what led him so blindly (ha!) into Zetsu’s manipulative roots.
But that’s okay, Madara thinks.
He doesn’t plan on being alive for much sooner—doesn’t plan on sticking around long enough for Zetsu to come and try to entice him yet again. And though Madara would like to say he’s a changed man, he knows himself. He’d do anything to see his family again, to see Izuna again, and even foresight of the future, witnessing and knowing everything that went wrong because of his bad choices, won’t be enough to curb the temptation entirely.
There would always be an undercurrent of ‘What if…?’ in everything he’d do going forward, and Madara cannot risk the chance again.
Best to cut off the poison in its tracks before it has the chance to spread, he thinks.
Besides. He is tired. He is also unsure if he has the will, energy, or even fire to go through his past again. There is nothing for him here. No family, other than distant cousins from branch lines who feared and revered him equally. Nothing resembling true affection, no love. There is only the constant enduring of the villager’s suspicions and whispers and rumors, only the constant but quiet pining for a man so far from his reach he may as well live on the moon, only the slow deterioration of his sanity and hope and happiness. (Though Madara has not been truly happy for a long time. Content at certain times, perhaps, but happy? No. All his happiness leached out from him when the last of his blood left this world.)
It takes everything in him to will himself upright and walk over to where a stack of papers has been pushed to the side on his worktable. He ignores the papers and reaches for his journal instead, a thick, leatherbound book crammed to the brim with sheaves of parchment. Madara flips to where he left a leaf as bookmark and reads the most recent date. (It is at times like these when Madara is grateful for certain things. In this case, his habit of writing in his journal daily, no matter how mundane that day might have been, no matter what mission he might have been sent on.)
He freezes, thumbing over the freshly dried ink. His heart pulses in his throat.
06.18.04
After staring at the parchment for long enough that the number might etch itself into his mind without Sharingan, Madara laughs. It starts small, a soft chuckle of sorts, and it grows, tumbles over the next laugh choking itself out of his throat, until he’s full-out cackling in hysteria. He hunches over from the force of his laughter and wraps his arms around his torso. (He tries to convince himself it’s not because he needs to physically hold himself together.)
When he’s finished, a few tears have leaked out the corners of his eyes, and Madara hastily wipes them away before they can slide down his cheeks. He sighs, letting out one last chuckle, before coming to a complete stop, entirely silent.
06.18.04. 04. The year is four, a few months since the new year, which means four years and then some have passed since the founding of Konohagakure. It is the eighteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year, and—
Three days from today he leaves the village for a ‘mission’ that is no mission at all.
Madara has woken up a measly three days before he abandons Konoha, and he wants to laugh at the sheer perfect irony of it all. What a time to be sent back to, what a time to wake up alive when he intends on dying as soon as possible. Originally, he’d planned on simply slitting his throat in his room and leaving whoever cleaned the rooms to find his body. He’d leave no note, because Konoha didn’t deserve an explanation from him. But… his clan wouldn’t deserve it, either, the shame with no reason. For all his mixed feelings about them, they are kin, and to have their clan leader simply commit suicide in secret in the presence of them all is a humiliation they can probably do without. Afterall, who would take the Uchiha seriously after this, with their clan leader supposedly having taken the ‘cowardly’ way out?
No, Madara wouldn’t do that to them.
Instead, he’ll leave like he left last time—only this time, he won’t come back, not even to challenge Hashirama to a duel like he had before.
(Looking back on it, he really had been so stupid. What nonsense, the neverending cycle of hatred between the Senju and Uchiha, the ‘incurable’ Curse of Hatred that had been nothing but lies and manipulation to get generations of them under control, to get humans to do Zetsu’s dirty work. He wonders how he had let it get to a point so bad where he thought Hashirama was actively plotting his death and the death of all his kin. Hashirama, of all people. Hashirama, who apologized to plants he’d accidentally step on, who despised killing with a passion—he would do it if it was absolutely necessary—because, well, shinobi—but he hated violence and bloodshed with a kind of burning passion usually only ever attributed to the Uchiha.)
… Maybe he’ll send a note, this time.
Call it useless sentiment, but a part of Madara’s heart would always beat for the one man he wouldn’t be able to have. His best friend. His other half. His equal.
He doesn’t owe him a thing, but again. Sentiment. Foolish, useless, sentiment. The least he could do was make sure his death—rather, assumed disappearance—didn’t cause Hashirama to abandon everything to look for him. Konoha would need him, and if Madara simply let him know beforehand that there was no one left to search for, Hashirama would just stay put. Madara isn’t that important to him in the grand scheme of things; he knows where Hashirama’s priorities lay, and Madara probably isn’t very high up on that list.
It’s just useless sentiment all over again, old nostalgia from the days of their youth—if Madara considers himself sentimental, then Hashirama is likely ten times over the emotion. He’s a fool, but a powerful one, and he had been Madara’s fool for whatever little time they shared as boys—when they’d just been Hashirama and Madara, no clan name or political ties attached, when they represented nothing but themselves.
He sets the journal down and gets to planning.
☾
When he is done, the intended note is a page and a half long, and Madara laughs quietly.
Sentiment, indeed.
☾
He spends the next day and a half pulling his existing notes on Tobirama’s Hiraishin. He’d developed a bit of an obsession with the technique after the second Senju brother had used it to kill Izuna, and Madara was no genius by any stretch of the word, but he certainly wasn’t lacking in the brains department, either. As it was, he’d somehow managed to reverse engineer the jutsu to about a midway point, and remembers trashing the entire project in the old timeline not long after he’d left the village.
But this time, he has his memories of the future, and more importantly, memories of when the snake sannin Orochimaru revealed his own research on the Hiraishin during his time in the Akatsuki. So Madara is confident enough to estimate that in the two days he does have before it’s time to leave, the Hiraishin—a rather bastardized version of it, but fully functional in every other aspect—would be ready.
(And really, he wouldn’t even need to waste these two days with the Hiraishin if it weren’t for sentiment, but Madara is a weak, weak, man, and perhaps a small part of him does indeed feel that he did owe Hashirama an explanation this time, if only to make up for all the times he simply left him hanging.)
Madara is ready, too. Soon enough, he will be gone, and the world will be better for it.
☾
He looks back just once at the village, the thing he helped create. He now knows it would have been better off without him at all, and he smiles to think of all the unhappy futures he has now erased. Without him, without Indra’s chakra imprint in the world, Zetsu will not be able to kill Hashirama no matter how hard he tries. Hashirama will grow old and withered, will watch his grandchildren grow up, and Zetsu will be powerless in the wake of it. Madara will let Indra die with him, and without the existence of both Indra and Ashura’s chakra imprints, Zetsu will not be able to unseal Kaguya.
By then, the seeds of a better future will have been planted, and privately Madara hopes Zetsu starves, shrivels up like a dead plant, crawls back to whatever hole he came from, and dies.
Much like Madara himself, actually.
(Hm. Well. That got a bit morbid but it’s not like Madara can help it. He’s somewhat… excited, really. A well of longing and anticipation bubbles up inside him and Madara has to stifle a smile. This time tomorrow he’ll already be dead, will have reunited with his family in the Pure Lands once more.)
He can’t wait.
☾
Izuna, Kaito, Ryo, Ren, he thinks, having far passed the border of Fire Country by two days' worth of journey. Wait for me. I am coming home.
He stands in the middle of a roaring river, a kunai gripped tightly in hand, the chakra coating the soles of his feet the only thing keeping him from being swept away by the current. His eyes have been gouged out and destroyed—there’s no telling who would find his dead body and what they would do with it, so he had to take countermeasures. The blood is dripping down his face and leaking into his mouth—eurgh. It matters little, thinks Madara. He will be dead any second now, to care about the mild discomfort of tasting the blood from his ruptured eye arteries.
There is no time like the present, he thinks sardonically. Then, in one swift motion, he raises the kunai to his throat, presses against the major artery, and drags it to the other side so fast he barely has time to blink.
He collapses almost immediately, warm blood gushing in torrents from the fatal wound. His chakra control slips the instant the wound is made, and in no time, Madara is plunged into the freezing waters. The dichotomy of the warm blood on his skin and the cold river all around seems rather poetic, though it feels unpleasant.
His lungs fill with blood and water, and Madara doesn’t fight back. He simply closes his eyes, ignores the pain—what pain, he has felt much worse pain in his life, has survived each time, and dying to something as meager as this is no pain at all—and waits to be reunited with his brothers.
The current pulls him away, and Madara notices but does not care. He is already fading into unconsciousness.
He hopes, the next time he wakes, it will be to the sight of his family welcoming him home.
☾
Ten minutes later, he is dead. His body continues to be swept away by the tides, but his soul has long since departed.
Uchiha Madara is free.
☾
“Izuna,” he breathes, staring at his brother, who smiles and beckons him closer, though there is something sad in his eyes.
“What is it?” Madara asks, softer than he had ever been in life, and Izuna smiles that same melancholic smile once again.
“Your suffering,” he answers. “After so long in the Pure Lands, you learn to see these types of things, though I think feel would be a better word for it. And you have suffered much, onii-sama. I cannot help but feel sorrow when I think of it.”
Madara stares at him, heart in his throat, strangely choked around the tears threatening to spill over. “I’m the one who should feel sorrow, Izuna. How old were you when you died? When I let you—”
“Hush, onii-sama. Do not bring up the past. It has been years and years. I have had time to get over it and forgive you, even though there is nothing to forgive, and even though I had never blamed you in the first place. But something tells me you need to hear me say it anyway. Very well. I forgive you, onii-sama. Madara-nii.”
Madara chokes on a sob and then suddenly his knees can’t hold the weight of his body. He collapses forward, and Izuna simply tugs him closer and cups his head to his chest, like how a mother would embrace her child. He chokes back another sob when he thinks of how often he used to do this to Izuna, how often Izuna would come to him in need and comfort, and how Madara would hold him just like this.
“We have both suffered, Madara-nii, that is true. But the shape of our suffering is vastly different, and I have had both the time and the leisure to process mine, while you have only had your mind back for a few days. Do not fret. We will help you learn. That is what family is for.”
And when, Madara wonders, a bit in awe, had his little brother—his grumpy, adorably moody, little brother—become so wise and knowledgeable?
Madara pulls back, and doesn’t bother to wipe away the tears that have managed to slip out of his eyes. He stares at Izuna, at all the ways his face is familiar, and all the ways he is different, and smiles. He reaches out to cup his face, and slightly squishes Izuna’s cheeks.
“When did my otouto grow up, hmm? Look at you, being all wise and shit to your older brother. Is that what you’ve been teaching Kaito, Ryo, and Ren?”
As he speaks, he squishes even further, until Izuna huffs and pulls away. His cheeks are red with embarrassment, and when he speaks, his voice is muffled in a whine.
“Onii-sama, don’t be embarrassing, I’m nearing a century! Have some respect!”
Ah. Not so changed then. Good. Madara was starting to get a little worried.
Madara nearly oomphs with the impact when Izuna throws himself at Madara again, this time tucking his face into the crook of Madara’s neck. Now this is a hold Madara remembers fairly well, and he chuckles as he holds Izuna tight.
“Missed me, did you?” Madara murmurs into his brother’s hair, and Izuna only sniffles in response.
“You have no idea,” he whispers, and then pulls away just as quickly, rubbing at his eyes with his hand. He holds out a hand and stares at Madara, expectant.
“Come,” Izuna tells him. “Like I said, we’ve been waiting. Our brothers are very excited to meet you.”
Beaming, for the first time since Madara can remember—and he remembers a lot—he takes his little brother’s hand and for the first time, asks his otouto to lead the way.
☾
Uchiha Madara is free. Uchiha Madara is dead. Uchiha Madara is free. Uchiha Madara is dead. Uchiha Madara is free. Uchiha Madara is dead.
Freedom and death—weren’t they all just the same anyway?
Ten minutes. It takes ten minutes for Uchiha Madara to die. The instant his heart beats its last, a letter makes its way from his pocket to the Hokage’s desk, in the span of 0.38 seconds.
☾
Somewhere in Fire Country, as one man’s body drowns to its death, another reads a letter.
Somewhere in Fire Country, a wave of grief so potent, that it can be felt by every inhabitant of Konohagakure, ripples out in waves.
Somewhere in Fire Country, Senju Hashirama sinks to his knees and screams.
☾
(My dear friend,
I am leaving. No, not in the way you’re thinking, you fool, sit down and finish reading. You won’t find me. You’re a stubborn ass, so I know you must be thinking at this point, ‘There’s no place you can hide I won’t drag you out from’ and under normal circumstances, you would be correct.
But what if I said I was hiding somewhere different this time, Hashirama? Would you still come after me? I hope not. By the time you read this, I’ll most likely be dead definitely be dead. I’ve sealed this letter to teleport to you precisely the moment I stop breathing, my heart stops beating, my brain activity ceases. So in other words, the instant I am clinically and medically dead, you will recieve this.
The ‘how’ of it is a bit complicated to explain, but if you really want to know, ask your brother. It’s a distorted version of the Thunder Flying God Technique, but the principles of it remain the same. I’m sure he’ll be furious to know I of all people figured it out. My only regret is not being able to be there in person to witness the look on his face when he realizes. Oh, well. Maybe I can watch from somewhere in the Pure Lands, though I suppose I can’t know for sure.
I’m serious, Hashirama. Do NOT dare and follow me. I will haunt you if you even try.
The ‘why’ is easier to answer. I am tired, Hashirama. Tired of everything, really, but mostly I find I am… tired of living. I have nothing left for me here. Don’t you dare try to refute it, you know it’s true. Besides, I hope to see Izuna when I leave. You might not remember, but I used to have three other brothers. They are also waiting for me, Hashirama. They are waiting, and I cannot keep them any longer.
You have already given me too much of your life. Your time. Do not waste the rest chasing a ghost who won’t come.
I am sending Mito and your unborn child well wishes. You better not name them after me, and I have to say this because you are a sentimental fool with no sense. Mito has never been fond of me, nor I her, and I will not have you create a divide in your marriage by naming your child after the man she hated. Do not be stupid. Idiot.
I love you. I’ve always loved you, I love you so much I cannot breathe sometimes–
All my love,
Madara
P.S. I do have one wish, though. Please take care of my clan in my absence. They are not immediate family, and I have never gotten along with them as well as you have done with your clansmen, but they are kin, and I do not wish to see them be ostracized by the village any longer, especially not for my own misdeeds.)
☾
Madara had, after all, always been more of a coward than he let on.