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Madara was no liar.
He never needed to lie.
Unthinkable, he knew, when it reduced the chances of recognising his soulmate using society’s favoured way of introduction--a little greeting lie, that innocuous, ridiculous greeting meant to be given as a joke or shifted suddenly in answer towards the truth, proving to the self that they had met their other half.
Madara didn’t care for it at all, he tells them. His particular brand of blunt honesty will lead him to his soulmate, despite the rest of society’s moral failings.
Because if the gods had designed mankind to be two of a whole, unable to lie to their own soul, then surely it is far more pious to maintain the truth, trusting that his own soul would recognise the honest man within him and seek reconnection, is it not?
(The old priest falters, faced with this challenge from their troublesome heir, and Madara smiles. It is wide and filled with too much teeth, a far cry from the closed lips of the effigy depicting his goddess, her intentions inscrutable and unknowing.
Madara meets the statue's eyes, and in it finds a challenge.)
What was a relationship built on a lie, or a future built around lies to everyone else? He questions further. His fated love would be much better when it started with learning this truth from the outset.
(There was nothing they could say to sway his mind, the boy driven to loudly speak his mind whenever possible with the boldest of convictions. It had become a point of pride, spiritual superiority and a show of strength over everyone else.)
So it was not his problem if people did not take his first words as seriously as they should have, come present day. They would learn soon enough, when his chakra turned the very air into fire around them or when Madara swung forth, gunbai and scythe in hand while the last laugh they’ll ever hear echoed in their ears.
Senju Tobirama should learn soon enough, that taciturn brother-stabbing bastard brother of his best friend glowering at him in silence by the gates of their new village. Standing on years of blood, sweat, and tears that made up its foundations, and allowing for this exact moment where his heart gets shaken out of his chest and stomped on against the newly paved cobblestones in the dead of night.
“I think you are my soulmate.” Madara says, and Tobirama looks at him with an expression of utter rage and disgust.
“Learn to lie better, Uchiha.” Tobirama hisses back, instead of returning Madara’s very real, objective assessment of their situation.
His soulmate is a very rude man, and Madara tells him as much.
Tobirama very maturely decides to stalk off into the night instead of continuing their conversation like adults. Likely to avoid him for the rest of their lives in this little village unless strictly necessary, as he had done throughout the course of the peacetalks.
A history of avoidance that would have carried on in the village if not for the fact that in private, both men got on excellently, and their first proper little talks soon set them on a collision course towards each other that Madara would proclaim inevitable.
Madara was just enough of a bastard to not allow Tobirama his preferred option this time around.
“You knew all along,” He yells instead, chasing after the lanky man. “Didn’t you?!”
Had to have known, with a dozen intriguing behaviours and instances over the years coming together to create a larger picture, now that Madara held this knowledge in hindsight.
His deliberate attempts to reduce direct interaction with Madara at the beginning of their working relationship, for one, preferring to use Hashirama as a go-between for negotiations and work. An act that the Senju would seemingly be content carrying on till the end of time, had Madara not grown tired of this back and forth and cornered Tobirama for his direct input.
As it turned out, they worked together really well. Too well, Madara would croon, panting heavily into the other’s ear at the end of a long night.
Then there was the way Tobirama would carefully choose his words in conversation, quiet and thoughtful with Madara when they were not busy throwing barbs and teasing nonsense at each other. Replies that were often based more on fact and observation than personal opinion, but never showing disinterest or a desire to shut down their talks, either.
Madara grew to not quite mind the latter, not when he had found that the Senju’s actions revealed more than anything that could be said. And that was the final piece of the puzzle, in the end.
He could read in between the lines of Tobirama’s fidgeting hands which sought out his under the tables, the way the Senju hovered by his back, close enough to leech off his body heat, and the cold nose that buries itself into the crook of his neck in the intimacy of a dark corner.
It was clear in the way the man liked to curl in on himself, making his tall form smaller to nudge under broad arms and attach himself to Madara’s side in sleep, alertness melting away into hard-won trust in Madara’s strength.
Tobirama liked to be held. The cold, stern bastard who seemed untouchable and icy to anyone else liked to be kept close, and it simply was the most endearing thing to Madara who never wanted to let him go.
And in his hold, they fit together in that hold in more ways than one. Under the bickering and arrogance and impressive shows of competence in public were two mean, lonely bastards who found that they understood each other more often than not, enough to choose to stick together and fuck around until Madara finally connected the dots.
It made him very reluctant as a result to allow Tobirama to run away now of all times, when he needed answers more than ever as to why the Senju had been drawing away.
They had been getting on so well. Growing closer, reservations falling away and giving birth to something new, though they had kept their budding chemistry in the shadows, out of the public eye and half the time in Madara’s bed.
What they had was personal and more importantly, theirs, even if neither of them had bothered to name it.
Theirs, even as Tobirama drew back over the past weeks, refusing casual summons or invitations to come over, claiming Senju business that Madara was simply not privy to.
Such busy periods were nothing out of the ordinary considering their stations. They all had a duty to their respective clans first and foremost.
Madara could not fault him, even while he and Hashirama met up at bars night after night and Madara wondered what the younger Senju was up to while he drank with Tobirama’s brother and leader.
There was no good way to ask after him either, hidden as the both of them were to the rest of the world.
But today, Madara would get his answer.
“Senju, come back here!”
He had been about to retire for the day, just a few hours before, slipping on his faded sleeping yukata and rolling out the futon, guided by the dim light of the waxing moon and burning kerosene lamp.
All ready to slip under the covers, heavy body guiding him to the ground, when the prickling feeling of being watched settles over the nape of his neck like a trap.
Thin, pale digits sink into the collar of Madara's yukata and pull and he spins around, fire in his eyes and burning within his chakra.
It all soon burns in a different direction as his eyes catch upon pale hair and glittering eyes in a too-sharp face.
He knows this man.
Senju Tobirama corners him against the partition separating his room from Izuna’s, one hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, the other creeping downwards to loosen the yukata’s ties.
The garment slips off his body with zero fanfare, and soon there is sharp teeth and slick tongue mouthing at the exposed, overheated skin, lavishing and laving over Madara’s body like the sweat that coats it is a rare delicacy the other will never taste again.
A treat that Madara would allow Tobirama to have and take for the rest of time, now that Madara had understands that this was how it was meant to be for two to be together, how right this all was in the afterglow.
No lies and soulmate etiquette were needed too see the truth in the line of their bodies and the thrumming of two souls existing on the same frequency, a call and response sung without the weak, obviously false greetings that started everybody else’s.
There was no mistake, as he tells Tobirama, pressing their foreheads together to whisper promises that will carry for the rest of their life.
Marriage, obviously. The full pomp and ceremony, Uchiha-made wedding silks and Senju-brewed sake and the inevitably chaotic mish-mash of traditions and rituals that would herald a brand new future in their joint village.
Children and a brood of heirs, if Tobirama wanted. Fine features with dark Uchiha hair and red eyes and pale locks or the common brown of the Senju and gods knew they would raise them happy, the way Tobirama looked after not just the Senju but also the Uchiha’s kids.
And even if he didn’t, Madara would be exceedingly content to grow old with just Tobirama by his side, he promised. Days and nights spent living together in this very house, till the wood grew worn and marked by human hands and his hair is as white as Tobirama’s, sitting on the genkan to watch cherry blossoms in his garden bloom and fall a hundred times over.
It was a beautiful dream. It could be their beautiful reality.
But Tobirama had ripped himself out of Madara’s embrace in the aftermath when those awfully sincere words dripped from Madara’s slack mouth.
Turned and made to run, to return them to their previous state of merely existing in the other's orbit when they both knew that they fit so much better by the other’s side.
Madara had followed.
He needed answers, even if most others would baulk at the idea of being able to catch up to a running Senju Tobirama.
Tobirama is the fastest shinobi alive, but Madara has the advantage of a natural wind affinity to boost his every step and a winner’s audacity to never give up.
And so their story reaches the present moment.
They race through narrow streets, through over recently finished rooftops, into not-yet rank alleyways and budding gardens where the soil is freshly turned and wet beneath their feet.
Behind them, a highly disgruntled populace is rudely shaken awake in the chaos, while the night-dwelling shinobi in their path leap out of the way, the pair of them twisting and turning around a village the both of them knew like the back of their hand.
Including the innocuous, decorative-looking seal carved into the side of the new schoolbuilding that Tobirama must not reach at any cost.
Madara pushes forth on aching thighs that had already been well abused earlier in the night, one final desperate spurt, success in the palm of his hand as it closes in on the Senju’s shoulder.
His yell of triumph is lost into the night as the Senju’s own chakra brushes against the seal, prompting him to dig his fingers into the hollow of a sharp collarbone and hang on tight, despite the sharp hiss of pain that escapes Tobirama.
It stirs him to hang on even as the world twists and turns, space collapsing in on itself before rapidly flattening back up into the room they had originally been in before.
The aftermath is gag inducing.
Madara heaves and fights the rising nausea within him from Tobirama’s cursed teleportation jutsu, threatening to add to the now ripened stench of their previous activities, bent over on rumpled sheets that had become depressingly cold in their absence.
“You carved one into my own bedroom?”
He had not wondered how Tobirama managed to sneak his way in here, far more occupied with other potential activities they could be doing to give it more thought.
“I would not be seen skulking by your door like a common whore,” Tobirama spits, before he grimaces, gaze sweeping forlornly over the mess they had made of Madara’s bedroom. Unlike Madara, he had landed somewhat elegantly, perched on the edge of the bed while Madara collected himself over used spend and ruined cotton. “That’s not the point.”
“It isn’t,” Madara agrees. He hauls himself into seiza, shifting his grip on Tobirama to trace downwards away the bruises he’d left on Tobirama’s collarbone down his arm, large digits coming to rest lightly over fingers that were twitching in his soulmate’s telltale sign of stress. “So, what do you know?”
“I know far more things than your brain will ever comprehend,” Tobirama elects to say after a prolonged silence, offering up nonsense instead of a proper answer like the bastard he was.
It was like talking to a brick wall or a yokai from the stories, Madara groused. With the Senju’s unusual colouring and many tricks, he would not be surprised to learn that the man was really part of the latter group.
Nevermind.
“How long, Tobirama,” He tries again, each word enunciated with exaggerated clarity and slowness, the way one would speak to a particularly stupid child. It would draw a reaction, he knows, even if said reaction is offense.
That was the trick with Tobirama, Madara found. Get him talking long enough through any means, even the most ridiculous, and eventually, the truth that was bothering him would shine through.
“How long have you known that we are soulmates?”
“What makes you say that, Madara?” His soulmate asks, the perfect picture of false calm despite the clench of his jaw, clearly having decided to embody aforementioned stupid child in his bid to pretend that they weren’t soulmates.
“Soulmates? Because I know it to be true!”
“How are you sure?” Still, Tobirama challenges him, desperation shining true in his eyes as he glares at Madara. Or perhaps it is unshed tears that render those brilliant irises aglow in the dim moonlight filtering through from Madara’s open window, though Madara could not fathom the reason for any tears at all.
“The appropriate time for the greeting lie has long passed for both of us, if you were so rude as to try that now.”
“Passed, yes, but since when has either of us subscribed to society’s rules on soulmates? You are stating facts again that you do not even believe in.”
It is a complaint Madara had often held against Tobirama, the way the Senju would cite rules and beliefs that in his eyes, had no logical or desirable reason to exist.
That Tobirama would hold himself to such beliefs, so steadfast and reliable when the man truly shone while breaking all known rules and expectations to create miracles others could only dream of. That he would turn them against Madara, too, whenever he felt threatened, unwilling to share the truth simmering under his skin.
Following society’s little dance and song, even when Madara knew they could be incredible together going without.
“So you will try it now?”
“No!”
A cheap trick, he knew, Tobirama knowing and weaponising his well-known principles to catch him out.
“You try it and see, you are my soulmate.” He insisted, instead, for Tobirama had no such principles against committing such lies, he knew, even if it turned out that he could not speak one to Madara’s face.
“I don’t have to,” His soulmate says loftily, mouth pulled up in a sardonic smirk. “I’m not the one making claims they aren’t certain about. Only you can lie and see for yourself if this soulmate claim is not just a delusion.”
“If?” Madara asks, eyebrow raised. “You do not deny the possibility, my dear Tobirama. And I certainly cannot lie to you. You know this.”
“You say you don’t.” Tobirama mutters, frustration colouring his tone. His hand twitches under Madara’s hold, flexing and curling into a fist, but he does not pull away. “Then, do you not remember?”
“Remember what?”
“Your hatred of me.”
Madara stares.
“We are in my bed, right now.”
A bed that was rumpled to high heaven, stinking with the ripe, heated scent of two grown men and their nightly activities, barely big enough for the two of them unless they’re pressed up right into each other, precisely how Madara knew Tobirama liked it.
“And?” The Senju actually scoffs, much to the growing indignation rising within Madara. “I could visit the flower district in the capital for a good time. Bedding someone doesn’t promise positive feelings, much less confirmation of a soulmate match.”
“I do not bed just any man, Tobirama.” He was not some cheap broad that could be bought, and Tobirama knew it, unfurling his fist to twist and squeeze Madara’s own hand in apology, even as the Senju’s face seemed impressively impassive.
It doesn’t stop the name of his lover from leaving his mouth dripping with frustration, hope, and every proof he cannot put into words, the sum of which amounted to that there being only ever just him, Tobirama, and no one else.
Because Madara cannot lie, will not lie, and he did not understand what Tobirama was doing. Unable to read this strange, reactive barrage coming out of the other’s mouth in contrast to his obviously trembling shoulders, body needy and practically crying out that it needed to be held and comforted instead of upright and stiff, in Madara’s arms instead of on the other side of the sheets.
None of this made sense.
“I nearly killed Izuna.”
“You healed him as well.” Madara reminds him, slowly, because there was no reason to bring this up now.
It is still a recent wound, scabbed over but not done scarring, and both of them are aware of it. Tobirama’s gaze has turned, cast low and away from Madara while his body tenses, clearly expecting retaliation that Madara would have enacted on anybody else with a vengeance.
Not Tobirama, though.
Madara remembers the days where hate, fear, and pain ruled his mind, thinking that soon, he will have nothing left in this world to live for. Knowing later that his childhood dream was to be realised by his brother’s suffering, an unfair pound of flesh that only did not end in death due to Hashirama’s lingering sentiment.
He remembers curses falling off his lips when he learnt who Izuna’s healer was, hawk eyes trained on Hashirama’s younger brother as Tobirama worked to reverse the very damage he caused, all in the name of scraping together peace to end a war built into their very bloodline.
The reminder echoes in his chest, protectiveness and fear having festered into resentment and hate that lingers in an unhealed wound, eager to grow and eat him alive from the inside out.
But Madara also remembers the nightmares and the quiet nights after, leaning into each other as they watched the sun tip over the horizon. Recalls watching Tobirama kneel by his side as Madara bid the sun in prayer to watch over all their siblings. The two of them working tirelessly during the day, family histories and other secrets shared in the dark pushing them onwards to a better future.
He is not a forgiving man for many, but he has learnt to understand Tobirama.
“He lives, and you have paid your due to me ten times over.” Madara says quietly, finally reaching out to pull Tobirama further into him. Folding the younger men under his own arms the way Tobirama would have naturally curled up when he felt safe. “Lay your sins to rest, I no longer bear them against you.”
In his lap, Tobirama sighs still, somehow unconvinced even within Madara’s watchful hold. He turns his head away from the bed to regard the open window, the watery moonlight from the waxing crescent overhead washing out an already ghostly face as Tobirama tries to dig deeper, further into the past and tearing into scars that Madara barely remembers earning.
“You should not want me as your soulmate, in any case.”
“Would you like me to burn the earwax out of your ears, Tobirama? I have been telling you how much I wanted to be your soulmate for the whole night. What is your issue with it?”
“You would say that to anyone you feel a connection with,” is what Tobirama tells him, then, and Madara recalls brief, joking moments between himself and Izuna, the other great person in his life, and the hellish idea of being fraternally linked soulmates.
Where would the joy of catching Izuna out of his tall tales be, or the hilarity of going along with his brother’s facetious facades to the rest of the world until the curtain falls and they both break down into a puddle of laughing boys?
Nay, it is a different connection than that between his and Tobirama, one that would be burdened under the weight of being soulmates where Tobirama and Madara’s could only soar higher.
Still the thought causes him to snort inappropriately during Tobirama’s next, extremely serious accusation, unable to catch himself in time at the ridiculous thought of a soulmate who could not be anyone but Tobirama.
“I heard you tell Hashirama that you wished he was your soulmate.”
It is strange, how the sudden mention of Hashirama causes Madara to sober up instantly. Vaguely ironic, he supposed, considering the claim that could only have been made while Madara was under the influence or perhaps delirious. It would explain why he recalls no such words leaving his mouth in the past, even while confusion, then unthinking, fervent denial bursts forth in the face of Tobirama’s shocking claim.
“Excuse me? I respect his marriage to Mito, and I would never dishonour the Lady Senju in that manner. We are merely friends! Friends who both established early on at the river that we could never be--wait, the river?”
The river, for there could be no other place his Senju would have come to this conclusion, despite the rumours that circled around both clan heads and the close friendship he rekindled with Hashirama. There was never any possibility of considering Hashirama ‘his’ in the recent past, not when living in the village had quickly exposed him to Tobirama’s prickly appeal, and Madara had grown uninterested in considering anybody else even when drink muddles his words and loosens his tongue.
A single bead of sweat trails down his thick neck to disperse somewhere in the valley of his pecs, and Tobirama traces its path with a dull look while Madara wracks his brain for a moment that could have contained Tobirama, beyond that fateful final day.
Madara is not so old that his memory is failing him just yet, he thinks, not with the benefits to memory that the sharingan afforded, but twenty years on makes his fleeting childhood a distant life buried under the shrouds of war and this new downy peace.
It is with great effort that he faintly recalls a quiet shadow stalking them in his childhood, chakra as imperceptible as a water droplet in the river while the two of them played.
A narrow, intent gaze burning obviously into his back as it had earlier in the night, simply screaming to be acknowledged even while Madara occupied himself in childish games with Hashirama and shut out the rest of the world, for they didn’t matter but the new friend he had made.
Because there had also been a moment of wishful thinking, once, a yearning for connection with a kindred spirit carelessly revealed while he gazed at the clouds in the open sky that was void of human borders, even if he had been unaware then just how much he and Hashirama shared in common.
Now, Tobirama’s eyes had flicker shut a beat too long, pale brows tightening the slightest bit at the mention of his and Hashirama’s childish exploits at the Naka.
It was as good as a verbal confirmation when it came to Senju Tobirama.
“You are serious.”
“I’m not anija, Madara.” That obvious fact comes hissed through gritted teeth, Tobirama’s voice rough and body tense as he shifts to hide his face away. “Our personalities differ too much that you would not find a relationship satisfying should you seek a replacement for my brother. I’m not ‘good enough’ to be that.”
“And I am not asking you to!” Madara responded, aghast, hands settling on both sides of Tobirama’s cheeks to make sure the Senju faced him while he settled the score. “He’s a good friend, but our souls are not compatible. And neither are you a replacement for Hashirama, where did you get that impression from? I like spending time with you for who you are!”
He didn’t enjoy the way Tobirama was blinking furiously now, long lashes spreading what looked like moisture over eye bags darker than he ever recalled the Senju sporting.
“We were kids by the river and weary of the future,” He explained, reaching out to wipe the wetness from Tobirama’s eyes with a coarse thumb. “I was frustrated with the state of things. A soulmate match with someone who understood me sounded like a dream.”
And it could have stopped their senseless conflict, Madara knew, even if he hadn’t realised that Hashirama was the Senju heir back then.
Soulmate matches had stopped wars, caused revolutions, toppled kings and raised new ones, a pair’s attraction to the other a catalyst for them to do everything, anything, to be closer together and by the other’s side.
It brought together far more than two people searching for each other in this lonely world, healing divisions across societies and forging connections where none existed before. The Uchiha respected soulmate bonds, had drawn treaties and forged alliances to unite out-clan members.
In their society, its divine origins meant that there was nothing more powerful possessed by man than this fated love itself.
Of course Madara had yearned for one, even when he realised that the chances of meeting that truly fated match in this world would hardly come to pass.
A match with Hashirama back then would be a scandal, but also a most powerful weapon.
A match with Tobirama on the other hand, had no such impetus.
Peace was already agreed upon, his and Hashirama’s names inscribed onto history. Regardless of what Tobirama did, he came second, the hidden brain behind their success while Madara and Hashirama were the faces most people saw and recognised.
But Tobirama meant something else to Madara, a power much more important than a weapon to add to an arsenal so bloated Madara barely remembered half of what he had.
Fulfilment. Settlement. The option to grow old with someone he chose to love and who settled the restless fire within him into something befitting the hearth of a home.
He thinks of a future living by Tobirama’s side, and in the consideration of such a path, his heart finds itself full.
“What is this about Tobirama?” He finally deigns to ask, rough hand sweeping over pale locks and tracing down the gentle slope of Tobirama’s nose. “Why do you bring forth old scars to us in the now?”
Tobirama tilts his head back to glare at Madara eye to eye, even as his hands reach out to the loose locks of Madara’s hair framing his face and chest with familiar ease. Madara silently registers the favoured self-soothing habit, Madara’s thick hair twisted around swollen knuckles and rubbed against bony thumbs, while bitterness bleeds into hateful words against him.
“You would have left your life to fate, just like that. Surrender to forces on choices completely within his control and accept a partner just because someone told him as a child that there would be a person promised to him, who had no choice but to show him attention and understanding the moment he couldn’t lie to them.”
“That’s not true,” Madara snapped back, “And that’s not why I wanted you at all.”
“So you say.” The venom in Tobirama’s voice could have melted straight through the tatami in its acidity. “Who am I to you, really?”
“My soulmate.” Madara blurts out, wincing at the knowing look that quickly crawled over Tobirama’s face in bitter triumph.
But Madara isn’t done, tired of this odd back-and-forth where Tobirama shied further and further away from him, trying to convince Madara that Madara for some gods-forsaken reason, did not want Tobirama beyond the grand title of Uchiha Madara’s soulmate. That could not be farther from the truth.
The truth, being--
“You are Tobirama. A friend, occasionally more. I want you to be more. You are Hashirama’s brother. Stabbed my own brother once, but healed him. Good dancer, incredible teacher, and a terrifying scholar when he decides to stop listening to silly things like laws and rules and other people. Brilliant, aggravating, and annoyingly obtuse and combative when I need him not to be, because maybe he would realise that I have been courting him even before I realised we were meant to be soulmates!”
There. He had said it.
Tobirama is the first to break the silence, and Madara watches, transfixed and sick to his soul as a whole new emotion makes itself known on his beloved’s face--horror, crowning the dip of his brow and lining his waterline with bloated tears waiting to burst, mouth parted to reveal the torn inner lip and the faint scent of copper perfuming Tobirama’s ghastly gasp of his name.
“Madara--”
“I have been courting you, Senju Tobirama.”
There was no going back now.
“All the time we spent learning each other, all the nights holding you under the moonlight, dreaming about what we could have, should I be so lucky and you put your lot in with an old bastard like me. Recesses in our offices and tea in my home, and I was so sure you had noticed this was more than just being bed partners! Even if I had been quiet about it as tradition dictates, I have not been subtle about my regard for you, you know!”
“I do.” He hears Tobirama whisper through stuttering, shallow breaths, rapid and panicked the way a rabbit’s chest went when cornered by hounds, caught in a trap and utterly out of options.
No more dancing around the truth, for either of them.
“I was going to ask you to the festival tomorrow. Or today. Now, I suppose.” Madara says, the words rushing forth like a waterfall now that the dam had been broken. His chest feels lighter as they leave, washing away the frustration of bad timings as he seizes the chance and talks now.
“I did not get the opportunity to ask you in time, busy as you have been in recent weeks. But I know you’ll be there, and I had intended to seek you out. There’s a quiet place under the cherry trees by the bridge, and I prepared food, a fan--”
The tears truly broke free then, streaming down that perfect face to twist it further into one swimming in grief and agony. It hurts them both, and Madara knows he should stop to fuss over his weeping love until those tears have ceased, but Madara carries on, unable to stop what he had started.
“I have a fan. Frame made of Senju wood and body of Uchiha silk, and a poem inscribed on its side. All crafted and painted by me. You are not one for flowery words in poetry, but there was no better way for me to express what I had in mind for the two of us.”
A promise of eternity, to tie their souls together in ways even the gods could not, love, declared under the enduring crown of cherry trees that bloom and die over and over but whose meaning will never be forgotten.
“All this I had planned and prepared for months,” He finished, “Even before I knew to call you my soulmate.”
He could hear a pin drop from a mile away in the ensuing silence. Instead, there was only his heart thrumming twice as hard in his chest, a two-beat rhythm that he could feel, his body kept in motion from his heart alone despite the stillness of the room around him.
The stillness that had also encapsulated Tobirama, turned to stone in his arms even while tears continued to trickle down from the corner of those phoenix eyes.
They are alone, the moon having fled behind the clouds during Madara’s confession and the rest of the village laying dormant, but Madara can barely feel the presence of Tobirama as he waits for any response, tactile or spoken.
“Is it so bad?” Madara finally forces out, his desperation to know winning over the urge to remain safely in his own delusions.
Dragging his eyes away from the horror that was clear on Tobirama’s face took more from him than he had. He had thought Tobirama was receptive to his advances, their little talks and big touches, gestures of love that weren’t overt but present nonetheless.
But with the way Tobirama had dragged out the buried past, had ran and cried and seemingly done all he could to convince Madara otherwise, he couldn’t help but entertain the growing doubt that he had been perhaps mistaken in his assumptions.
“Am I so bad to be with?”
“No, Madara, I--”
“Then why do you resist, even beyond the concept of being fated soulmates with me? To be mine, regardless of the judgement of the divine?”
He is getting worked up, he knows, voice cracking and spittle flying into Tobirama’s face. But Madara cannot help himself. He must know, even if it kills him and Tobirama both.
Uchiha were creatures of passion, and Madara was the most passionate of them all. The most powerful of them all too, and nothing, would stop him from getting his way.
Nothing, but Tobirama.
“I’m getting married. The formal announcement will be made to the village at large tomorrow, during the festival.”
“What?”
“It’s the truth.” Tobirama’s face is flushed red, tucked inwards to hide against the soft fat of Madara’s belly, hands still tied up within Madara’s hair and half his body squished up against Madara’s thighs.
Maximising contact that burns,bright as a brand while he tells Madara to tear his dreams apart.
For Tobirama was promised to another who would have what they had, in due time.
“No.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Tobirama mumbles, miserable and wretched as Madara drowns, no salvation in sight.
How had he missed that Tobirama had been gone for another?
“You don’t want this,” Madara says, “No you don’t. Who? When?”
Who could have taken his Senju heart from right under his nose, enthralled Tobirama and been offered the greatest privilege of his heart over Madara? Be promised a future and a man that Madara so ardently craved, Who would never, could never possibly provide Tobirama with the love and attention and utter obsession that Madara already gave the Senju, the ties and connection that existed between the both of them no one else could ever reach?
He thinks his heart is broken, and his soulmate has done it.
How was Madara not enough for Tobirama?
No, rather--
The emotion that steers within him is a familiar one, freshly sharp from the shattered edges of his despair and polished with obsession.
Anger, that reliable old friend, rears its head once more.
What liar could have bewitched what was his?
“Tell me,” Madara hissed, fingers digging into the pale flesh he had previously been caressing. “Why?”
He contemplates letting the fire within him loose, his entire body a crumbling furnace out of control and shooting sparks. The hardwood beneath their feet has been treated, generations of Uchiha having developed a perfect fire-retardant formula, but Madara knows he can burn hotter. Hopefully it will catch on the floorboards and the beams over their head, eat up the soiled bed they laid in and the pair of them lying on it, engulf it all and ensure that absolutely nobody else can ever have what he has been denied.
It was happening already, extremities superheated and the air around him dancing in a severe heat shimmer. Tears and sweatmarks dry out in an instant, fizzing away as Madara pants, rage overtaking every sense within him but the one that urged him to burn it all down.
They will find them in the ashes afterwards, no clue left behind as to the events preceding, but a final and lasting embrace in the pose of lovers leaving no question as to who they were to each other.
But now there are are icy fingers over his own again, pushing him back from the ten points of pain he has caused and trapping his digits in theirs, linking them in a mess of skin and bones and a relentlessly tapping nail over his central knuckle as Tobirama speaks, a patter delivered as quickly as his own fire cools and completely in monotone.
“It has been set in stone since I was ten years of age. A week after we met. There was little chance I would meet my soulmate in my lifetime. And they may not guarantee fortune, when I do. You very well know the value of my position comes from the political gains made possible from marrying off the spares.”
“You…” Madara breathed, horrified and yet hopeful, even as Tobirama finishes with a heavy declaration that leaves no room for argument, had Madara been a more reasonable person.
“There is no room for the considerations of intangible deities in this life, when it is men who sit at the table and men who benefit from the deal.”
Facts, delivered in a voice void of any joy or hope regarding his future spouse, void of the emotion Madara could clearly see streaking across his cheeks and digging broken nails into the meat of his palm. Void of any indication that Tobirama’s opinion and choices had been taken into account, regardless of the grim sense of duty which punctuated every word.
Tobirama didn’t want this, Madara just knew it.
“They’re not your soulmate,” He stressed, punishing fingers easing up into a firm hold instead. “Tell them. Tell them it’s me. Break it off. Get Hashirama to back us up.”
If Tobirama was an Uchiha, his betrothal would have been cancelled immediately, the will of the gods not to be questioned. If it was declared that he was Madara’s, it would not even matter that he was a Senju--soulmates rights made him one of theirs by association, and the Uchiha had generations of perfecting being very annoying when it came to folding out-clan soulmates into their ranks. He would even fight Hashirama, if it came down to it.
All he needed was for Tobirama to say the word.
“Tobirama?” He asks.
Hope looks down upon world-weary eyes, exhausted of their tears and rendered limp and pliable in Madara’s lap. A body given up on all its secrets, and yet still hiding enough energy to reach out and swallow that final bit of delusion whole.
“I hoped to never meet my soulmate at all.” Tobirama says.
A common enough sentiment among shinobi, whose careers were constructed upon how many layers of violence and deceit they could pull over others, but one that Madara despised nonetheless.
Shinobi after shinobi acting as if they have settled for someone lesser in their married spouse, dooming their bound family to a lifetime of unhappiness while they seek carnal pleasures and affection with even shallower connections.
They do not seek, do not think to make something for themselves with their lot in life, and it enrages Madara more than anything else.
“Do you still think that?”
Tobirama’s admission was a slap to the face, an ice cold bucket of water reminding him that perhaps, Tobirama veered closer to said shinobi than Madara himself in belief.
It was the bile lingering in the back of his mouth and blood that suddenly found itself coating his teeth and the rejection subsuming his very core, the sinking realisation weighing down his previously lightened heart that their world would not permit his perfect match to simply be.
“Ah. It doesn’t matter, doesn’t it.” Madara rasps through bloody, torn lips and a swollen, bitten tongue. It wasn’t a question. “You’ll still run off to your betrothed.”
“I have a duty to my clan.”
Red eyes slide shut, hiding themselves from the world and Madara.
“You’ll get over it soon enough. This delusion of soulmates. Of me, being yours. This is the truth.”
But he wouldn’t.
He needed Tobirama, soulmate or not, not some unknown spouse bonded to the other via paper and politics.
“You keep me sane, Tobirama.”
A rooster crows outside, time having slipped away.
The day of the festival was now properly upon them, and Madara finds that it fills him with an urge to keep talking, confessions he would tell no other soul finding their voice in this dark room while he still had Tobirama.
“I am barely that, in this world, itching for this or that to fill the void I do not comprehend within me. Battle, victory, fine things and fantastical stories. They all occupy me, for a while, but at the end of the day, it was never enough. We end the war, and what are we, born and bred on bloodshed and that same damn war to do?”
“We carry on our duty, that’s what.” Tobirama says, softly as the world outside begins to wake, the first sounds of the morning filtering in. “And I’ve been bound to this particular duty for my clan since I was ten years of age.”
“And what of you, Tobirama? And what of your duty to your heart?”
It haunts him, how Tobirama cracks his eyes open to reveal not a lick of understanding within them at his words. A man who shines brightest when unbound by laws of this world, willingly tying himself to a chain and post that disregards the potential of his personhood.
“I am an heir to my house. There is no such thing to me.”
“That’s not right, Tobirama.”
He’s certain of this, not when Hashirama bore his heart for Mito on his sleeve and laughed as carefree as the wind. He himself would never allow for Izuna to be treated differently from him in such matters, and he doubted that Hashirama would permit it either. Not in this village free from the necessities of wartime policy.
What for did they fight for peacetime, if it did not confer indulgences that war did not?
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tobirama scowls, even so. “You have no right to dismiss my clan’s ways and my betrothal when neither involves you.”
It is the bitter truth. Objectively, the opinions of an external clan head had no say on private clan matters such as marriage, not unless the intended involved one of Madara’s men, or Madara himself.
Both clans had given no objection to such a rule being in their constitution at the time, the Uchiha’s need to maintain the exclusivity of their bloodline limit rudely not accounting for this precise moment where Madara needed the discretion clause not to exist.
Except, it did involve him by this same law, didn’t it?
Madara straightens up, “Of course it does. You’re my soulmate.”
Soulmates. It always went back to that, even if their love originated elsewhere. Forced to play by society’s rules, even if Madara disagreed with it.
But Tobirama mattered, more than his principles, more than his beliefs, shaken up by the very man in his lap.
Madara wasn’t above using society’s rules to fight for the both of them.
“Uchiha soulmate rights. I say you’re mine, you are mine. Human agreements are null and void under the laws upheld by our gods. And I object to your betrothal.”
The stare Tobirama levels upon him is tired, incredulity sparking life back into his lover at the return of their original argument.
“I know what you’re doing Madara. It wouldn’t matter, in the end.”
It could. Madara would force it to matter.
He’d lie until his heart shrivelled and his nose grew long, if needed. They would believe him, for Madara did not lie.
Case in point, here was a truth: Tobirama was it, for him. A soulmate.
He just needed Tobirama to believe.
“I’ll make it so.”
“You have no proof.”
It’s not a denial.
“Lie, Tobirama,” Madara says, ”See for yourself. Even if you are not my soulmate, I’ll make it work. I want you. I love you.”
It didn’t matter, really, if they weren’t really soulmates. He can lie to everyone else in the world if it meant that Tobirama was by his side, trusting in the strength of Madara’s love to keep them together.
In time, a lie can be repeated so often it is accepted as the unquestionable, undeniable truth
It would not matter that Tobirama’s heart was set in the stone cold duty that lined another’s marriage papers, stuck in ways dictated by men long dead.
He can make Tobirama believe.
Unstoppable force meets immovable object, Tobirama once called them, this…thing they had cultivated between them despite their conflicting beliefs and personalities. An inevitable collision course in the making, and the outcome of their crash ambiguous.
Who would have thought that it led them here?
“Lie.” He pleads as the sunrise creeps through the window, falling into Tobirama’s eyes and illuminating them with a brilliant light.
Goddess blood red, he thinks the colour is called, and he feels that holy gaze prickle upon his soul as he leaves his life in Tobirama’s hands. “See for yourself.”
He has to, Tobirama does.
Soulmates could not lie to each other.
They could lie to the rest.
Tobirama’s hands are gentle holding his, his lover’s love language at odds with the way Tobirama sighs, ready to devastate him in every way possible.
“I love you.”