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Madara was no longer human.
He could see, he could hear, he could think. His chest heaved with his breath, and his hands felt the slippery texture of slime-covered rotten wood beneath them.
But he was no longer human.
He was no longer alive either.
Madara remembered his death; the sharp pain in his chest, and then the green of the ocean staining the sky above until the dark cloud of his hair obscured his vision. His lungs filled with ever-increasing heaviness, and the sea salt seeped into his heart through the wound that had opened the way for it, burning its way into his core.
Oh, the pain was indescribable; only the surprise of his own impending end was greater.
When Madara opened his eyes the next time, he thought he was seeing the afterlife of every seaman: the glint of the sun on the shimmering foam of an unending sea. But the vision shifted, and Madara realized he was seeing the pearlescent scales of a sea creature.
It was tormenting what was left of him.
It tugged and tore at him without tenderness or care, creating new wounds and filling them with slimy living creatures. He could feel them move beneath his skin, in his throat, in his stomach, behind his eyes.
Madara was dead. But his body was full of life.
Molluscs, barnacles, seaweed, parasites, fish — all of it stirred within him, their essence torn out, melted by the sea itself, to revive, to replace dead cells. To become him.
When Madara took his first breath, the water no longer oppressed him. His body spasmed, and he opened his jaw, trying to let out his suffering into the sea. But you couldn't scream underwater. All his horror and pain remained within.
The creature jerked from his convulsions, its tail coiling like a snake. It swam closer to his face, and Madara was shocked to see something so remarkably human. Red eyes, red stripes on white skin; that was all he had managed to sear into his memory before its face twisted in disgust and disappointment. The creature flicked its tail, turning, and disappeared into the water faster than Madara could reach for it.
Madara found himself on the ocean floor.
Alone.
Lost.
Cold.
Confused.
Remade.
His eyes saw better in the darkness of the depths than on dry land, his body moving obediently again, each step painfully slow.
Predators tried to eat him, acids tried to corrode him, and scalding water tried to boil him. All in vain. Madara was now the ocean. A water ghost with the body woven from the children of the deep. When living things tried to sink their teeth into him, they cut through him like liquid. The water magic that animated Madara was now a part of him, and over time, he was able to open the door to it, ceasing to be its pure creation and becoming its master.
Madara wandered the seabed for years, decades, perhaps, he couldn't say for sure.
Once he realized that by merging with the water he could travel at its speed, he was determined to find his way out. But try as he might, the shore eluded him. And then... he found his ship.
Amaterasu.
Once black, the galleon was now covered in seaweed and coral, with paint peeled off, revealing decaying wood underneath. Instead of humans, now sea creatures had made their home within.
She was like him: dead and remade by the power of the ocean, teeming with alien life and abandoned.
Madara was able to share his magic with her by cutting out his eye and making it one with his ship, giving her once again the ability to swim through the sea at his will.
Amaterasu cut through the surface of the water and let him breathe air again, feel the salty wind on his skin, and squint from the sun. Alas, the shore still eluded him.
In his wanderings, Madara learned that he was not the creature's only creation. Dozens of people who had lost their minds also wandered the seabed. Pirates, marines, merchants, the creature wasn't picky. And he wasn't either. He took them all under his wing, out of loneliness and boredom. Poor, mindless humans, they hadn't had access to the magic that had created them, and they were too far gone to try to do what he did.
But they followed orders.
Like a clockwork machine, they carried out mundane tasks on the ship, the only semblance of normalcy available to them. And to him. After so long, Madara felt like a pirate captain again. And like a pirate, he attacked other ships, only this time, not for money or even the thrill of a fight, but for information. He wanted to see his brother again. It felt almost possible; all he had to do was send a messenger to him to tell him he was alive, at sea, and that they could meet again here, at Amaterasu once more.
But all the people he caught trembled; the particularly cowardly ones even fainted at his mere glance. Their terror was so intense that he was certain they didn't understand what he wanted from them.
Frustrating.
Madara became more cunning. He began stealing gold again, but now he offered it as a bargain, a payment for a service or a rumor. He also began cruising around the part of the sea closest to his home, as close to the shore as the ocean magic would allow.
He succeeded soon after executing his new plan, after a raid on a merchant ship. One of the vendors knew the name Uchiha. He knew the name Izuna, too. And then... Madara learned that... his brother... was...
Dead.
He was executed on land by hanging when he took up piracy again to find his brother. To find him.
The pain that his salted seaweed heart could give Madara was no less piercing than from the bloody red one.
He needed to find the creature. Then he could see his brother again. Here. On Amaterasu. By his side once more.
***
The turbulent seawater finally began to settle, and the long silhouette behind the glass started to take on clarity. The creature didn't calm down or even grow weary from banging its body against the thick glass of its tank, but rather finally realized the futility of its attempts to break free.
It had taken only three days.
It stared at Madara with red eyes filled with hatred, baring its needle-sharp teeth in a threatening display.
It was exuberant, the hunt. Finding something so small in the vastness of the ocean was not an easy task. He directed Amaterasu downward, swimming underwater once again. Even with his attunement to the element, it took him years to find the creature. It was fortunate that it clearly wasn't expected to be a prey, to pay the consequences of what it had done, to face its sins all at once. Even so, it fought back, killing all of Madara's crew by using its magic, but once Amaterasu brought them to the surface and severed its connection to the sea, the creature remained on the deck, no stronger than a particularly large fish.
It didn't like being in the cage, naturally, but it didn't know it could have been worse. Madara thought of binding such a dangerous thing with shackles and chains, but it turned out that in such a small amount of water, it remained powerless.
Its new home wasn't designed for something so large; it didn't allow it to stretch to its full length, forcing it to be constantly bent in one place or another. It couldn't even swim, staying uncomfortable, yet alive.
In the sea, it could control the water, create whirlpools and storms; the primal power of creation and destruction was at its fingertips. In the glass tank, it could only stir the water with its hissing.
Madara took malicious pleasure in seeing its misery. It was only a fraction of the eternal torment he was now cursed to live with.
Madara had three days to think about his next steps, and after the euphoria of a successful capture, reality began to sink in. Izuna died on dry land. Neither he nor the creature were able to set foot on it. He sent opportunistic men with instructions to bring his brother's body to him for unimaginable riches, but that was so long ago... it might be too rotten for even sea magic to work.
No. No. He had to try. He had no other choice. He had to.
***
A man returned, only one of many he sent, seeking a reward for the information he obtained.
Izuna was gone.
His family managed to recover his body and gave it a proper Uchiha funeral.
A pyre.
There was nothing left of him that could be revived.
***
The dark brown glass of the rum bottle was coated with slime and algae, and a couple of barnacles had decided to make its surface their home. This was his special bottle, the one that had survived Amaterasu's sinking. Madara uncorked it, tossing the cork carelessly somewhere on the floor, and then winced at the first sip. The alcohol no longer made him pleasantly intoxicated, but rather nauseatingly sick for a couple of hours, but he was willing to accept that. Anything to not feel this rotting emptiness inside.
The creature watched him with unblinking glowing eyes, frozen tense in its tank. Madara threw his head back for another sip, hitting the wall. The slimy tentacles coming out of his scalp instead of hair twitched painfully.
"I'm alone," he said hoarsely, and the creature narrowed its eyes. "More alone than I ever was in my life." He gave a joyless, raspy laugh. "And it's your fault, isn't it?"
He rose from the stool and strode toward the tank. The creature spread out all its fins, trying to appear larger, and began to retreat into the corner.
"You killed my men, but it was your right to fight. No, I do not blame you for what you did to me either, you cruel thing. It was torture for my body and for my soul, it still is, but now?" Madara spread his arms, raising his voice. "I had never been more powerful! I have more freedom than the pirate life ever gave me. You made me a God." His hands began to drop, his voice fading. "A God who can neither protect his followers nor fulfill his own desires." Madara gripped the neck of the bottle tightly in his hand. "My brother is dead. And it's your damn fault!"
The brown glass shattered into millions of pieces as he smashed the bottle against the edge of the tank, and alcohol splashed everywhere. The creature inside hissed and thrashed. Madara pointed an accusing finger at it.
"You could have stayed! You could have shown me the magic, left me on a boat, let me leave a note, anything, but instead I wasted my time on the seabed, trying to master what you gave me." Madara made a deep breath and then rested his forehead against the cold glass. The slimy purple tendrils of his hair left dirty streaks on the tank's wall. Madara's voice faded to a hoarse whisper. "If only Izuna had known what happened to me, he would still be with his wife, alive."
Plop.
A drop fell onto the gray floor of Amaterasu. Madara's eyebrow twitched. One of his tentacles slithered across his cheek in a tender caress and collected the excess moisture.
A tear.
"Hah," Madara said, examining the muddy drop clinging to the tip of what now served as his hair. "It turns out the sea still allows its creations to grieve." He chuckled. "Why indeed not? Perhaps it is created from the tears of its children."
The creature inside the tank looked at him, its mouth open threateningly. It did not speak once, incapable of human speech. If it knew whether his guess was true, it could not answer.
***
"What, not hungry?" Madara said mockingly, shaking a dead fish just above the surface of the water. The creature remained frozen in a menacing pose in the corner of the tank. It had been captured for a week now, and this was the first time Madara decided to feed it. He had planned to use hunger as a means to bend it to his will, but reviving Izuna was no longer an option.
Madara himself didn't need food; he only had to enter the ocean to nourish his body, but the sea dwellers he now consisted of craved the hunt and fresh flesh. Their desires echoed like whispers in the depths of his mind, making his skin itch whenever he defied them.
Madara dropped the fish in the water, but the creature didn't move to grab it. He closed the lid of the tank and sat cross-legged on the stool, ready to watch with a new bottle of rum.
If anything, the creature was pretty. Like a precious gem hidden in a box, Madara enjoyed watching its scales shimmer even in the dim light. It would have been more beautiful under the bright sun, but Madara wouldn't risk moving it onto the deck. It reminded him of his true love — of the sea itself. Cruel. Fickle. Beautiful.
Powerful.
He took pleasure simply in looking at it, just as gold, precious stones, and works of art had once given him pleasure. Now he had a new treasure to guard. He stole it from the sea, as a pirate would, and merciless depths might want it back.
For three hours, the creature remained motionless, alone with the dead fish in front of it, but when Madara closed his eyes for a couple of minutes, lulled by the peaceful sounds of the waves, the fish disappeared and the creature coiled tighter onto itself.
Madara chuckled.
"Aren't you shy. Don't want to eat while I'm watching?" He stood up and walked toward the tank. It raised its fins again as he approached. "Perhaps next time, you won't eat anything unless it's from my hand."
Madara peered inside, trying to make out the creature's face, when he did, he tapped the glass. Its lips curled in displeasure.
"What is it that you so desperately were trying to create?" Madara pondered. "You tried again and again, littering the seabed with living ghosts." He leaned both elbows on the glass, which grew increasingly cloudy from his careless touches. "Perhaps the bodies of humans that fell on your head are so repulsive to you that you wish for them to leave your dominion on their own two feet." Madara cocked his head to the side. "No?"
The creature couldn't answer him. It bared its sharp teeth, hoping to drive him away. Shouldn't have made him walk this sinful earth again, in such a case.
"Mmm. Or perhaps... you desire a mate?"
A shudder ran through Madara's body. This was something the animal parts of his body understood. He leaned forward.
"I have scoured the ocean time and again over these decades, sifted the seabed in search of you even further, and never once have I found something alike. And yet..." His gaze ran along the long tail. "You were not built for solitude. I see a mating slit. What part you hide in it, I cannot say."
The creature's body pulsed with the same magic as his. But it was different. More... put together. Natural. If it was someone else's creation, like him, that someone was far more skilled at this than his prisoner.
"Mmm, yes, part human, part dweller of the sea. Is this what you wish? To no longer be alone? Perhaps, to restore your race? It should have been a race once upon a time. You alone cannot be responsible for all the myths humans made about mermaids and sirens."
He squatted down, trying to bring his face to the level of the creature, but it hit the glass with its sharp claws and hid in the corner opposite him again.
"What is it in me that repulses you so, love?" He said in a gentle, sweet voice. "You created me, after all, you know what I am better than anyone. Is it my eyes? Did you want them red, like yours?"
Instead, his eyes were an unnatural purple, ribbed like the segments of a worm. One was now ingrained into Amaterasu's body, leaving the dark hole in his skull. The tendrils of his hair covered it, their ends gently tracing the edges and curiously creeping inside his dark eye socket.
The creature hissed, the sound muffled in the water, but so powerful that Madara felt the vibration through the glass. If he'd been in the tank with it, it might have disrupted his body's structure, but like this, it was just an impotent threat. Madara bared his own teeth, row after row, reaching into his throat and stomach, and let out a hoarse hiss of his own, sounding no better than a rough broom being swept across the floor.
The creature slammed its tail against the glass, right in front of his face, and returned to its corner.
Madara shook his head with a quiet chuckle.
"Quite an opinionated thing you are, love." Madara straightened up. "The sea is no longer a challenge for me. Neither storms, nor distances, nor naval fleets can stop me. But you? Oh, you are the only thing still capable of killing me all over again. I simply must tame you."
Another hiss. The creature was stubborn; it would not be a small task to gentle it.
"Don't worry, my love," Madara said, sitting down on a stool. His boots slammed heavily as he stretched out one leg and leaned his back against the wall. "By your will, I cannot die from mortal struggle. We have eternity together. You cursed me to never set foot on dry land again, and I cursed you back by taking the ocean from you. And yet, loneliness is no longer the threat it once was for both of us. We have each other. Forever."