shishi-odoshi

"Being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." - Aldous Huxley. (I tried really hard to not use a quote from this book but it happened and it fit and I'm so sorry.)

Written for: PikaCheeka's Second Madara & Hashirama Fanwork Contest. Entry #1. (If you're a fanfiction writer who's partial to HashiMada I highly recommend checking this out and maybe entering so we all have more fanwork going around).

Izuna wasn't someone he needed to see often. His brother was young and too energetic, with the scorn of Senju still lingering in his eyes. Something like that was hard to detach. Madara had tried, once before, but he'd ended up with a young man who was anything but his keen brother, so he'd given him back his hatred and let him hate the Senju for no reason at all. He just needed to know that Izuna was alive, and that he smiled every day, and that he finished his meals before going off to talk to Hikaku and Naori. That was what weighed him down as an older brother, and now that it was lifted he was light and free.

Free to sit with Hashirama on top of his own stone head and look down at the village and maybe chuckle at the silly things that the modern villagers did.

"See that, Madara?" Pointing. "That's the building where the children are trained. I was speaking to Naruto-kun today and he told me all about their system. Want to know?"

"I'm entirely uninterested," Madara replied absently.

Hashirama's smile dropped off his face. "But you were asking me about it yesterday."

Yesterday. It was a curious thing why the word hadn't vanished from their language since the theory of it no longer existed. All Madara remembered were fragmented views of every time Hashirama smiled, each image preserved halfheartedly in the attic of his mind, and all he ever felt was the present. Who cared what happened yesterday.

"I don't remember that," he answered, returning a small smirk to appease him. "But I'm sure you can think of far more interesting things we can do."

His friend looked half-scandalized, which was ironic because he was the one usually vulgar before belief. "Here? We're in plain sight!"

"No, you dolt. In your tall-house. Whatever they call those things."

"'Apartments'," Hashirama supplied. "Brilliant places, they are. I don't see why you still have the large Uchiha ground when you could move into the one beside mine. It's free, nicely decorated, and inexpensive to maintain."

"I can walk across the entire place within seconds. It's more like a hotel than an actual house. And I require my own sparring grounds."

Hashirama chuckled and didn't answer as they stood and began to walk down the steep rock, shouldered by Konoha's autumn wind. It pulled at their long hair, tugging, almost twisting Madara's into the mass of knots it used to be.

It had been one year.

Time grew quicker as it passed, like a child learning to run. Faster and faster.

They weren't holding hands but the hands of their shadows, splayed onto the rocks, were held tightly.

Konoha's streets were as bright as they'd always been, filled with the laughter of their descendants. It had taken a while to understand this new world. Hashirama had adapted quickly, he'd prodded at their modern ovens and learned how to speak their colloquialisms with careless expertise, and it had taken all of three months for everyone and their mother to recognize his name. Madara still kept a wooden fire hearth in his room within the Uchiha compounds and had bamboo shishi-odoshi installed in the ponds outside his rooms to scare away the nonexistent birds. The sound was calming.

It took an hour for them to arrive at Hashirama's apartment. He earned his rent by performing S-rank missions, most of which included using the fuuinjutsu he'd learned from Mito to make seals for a security that no one would ever need. Even Madara had to admit that it was a nicely kept place, though simple.

"Who knew, Madara? Who could have possibly known that I was gay?" Hashirama whispered to him. "That's what the young people call it these days, anyway. I suppose you saw it better than I did. You were always perceptive."

And he kissed him patiently as they stopped mid-step, halfway into the apartment with the door still spread open but that was fine because no one would come by. His hands played over Madara's collar, pushing back his tangled hair, curling over the shell of his ear.

Hashirama did not like men. He had a wife, once, and he'd loved her. So Hashirama wasn't as deranged. It was unthinkable to be different in this one, strange way that the Uchiha had turned their eyes at because they needed Uchiha children and not gay men. The concept no longer applied since he'd chosen only five to remain but the thought lingered. It lingered somewhere at the back of his mind as he pulled Hashirama further into the small apartment where he'd memorized the location of his bed.

~o~

Hours later he returned with his lips tinged red and his hair a tangled mess, walking confidently into the Uchiha compound despite all of that. The first thing he sensed was the lack of Izuna's presence. Maybe he'd gone out drinking with Hikaku and Obito again. Naori wasn't there either. She probably went to check the mission roster for something to occupy her time. The Uchiha grounds were usually this empty. He'd chosen Hikaku and Naori to return because they had been Izuna's only friends and perhaps they would be able to give him the brotherly love that Madara couldn't.

His clan was small but it didn't matter because every one of them was worthy of their name.

It took seconds to notice that the compound wasn't entirely empty.

"Madara," the boy standing behind him rasped out. "We need to talk."

Madara turned slowly with something resembling pity rising in his look. "I'll speak as much as you want," and he walked further down in the direction of his house.

Sasuke followed him silently through the compound with bloodshot eyes. It hadn't taken long to notice that the last Uchiha boy was able to see past the moon with his brother's gift. Madara hadn't taken that into account, but now it was too late to do anything to change it, so Sasuke would just have to learn how to live like this, just like he had.

As they arrived at the main house, midnight fell heavily, reddened with the fullness of the moon. They sat opposite each other at the kotatsu and Madara waited for him to begin. He would answer the boy's questions. This world was for everyone, after all, and he was somewhat proud of his creation.

"It's ridiculous," Sasuke hissed, curling his fingernails into the cloth of his pants. "It feels like I'm the only one who doesn't remember things. Make it stop."

After a moment's hesitance, he whispered a 'please' between clenched teeth.

"I can't do that now. Everything has already been put into play and you missed your chance long ago," Madara leaned his jaw against one hand, watching the way the red moonlight played across Sasuke's skin. Their brief silence was broken only by the taps of the shishi-odoshi outside. "Nothing has changed since the last time you came to see me all those months ago and nothing ever will. Stay here, boy, you are an Uchiha and a strong one. There are many rooms in this place and if you wish to see your parents or your brother, it can be done."

"No!" The boy yelled. "Don't. You can bring back anyone, anyone but my family. I don't want to see them. I can't."

Madara observed him quietly. The boy had some kind of complex, it was clear. Perhaps he was afraid of what his parents would think of him having failed. Silly boy, they'd never know. Nevertheless, it seemed better for his mental health to leave them dead. "Fine," he agreed. "But at least move back into your house here, there's no need to remain in that small apartment. Perhaps I'll introduce you to my brother who you've been avoiding. You may get along nicely."

Silence punctuated that, and Sasuke's nails dug deeper into the cloth he was gripping. It took a while for him to speak again. "Madara, what will happen when reality catches up to this place? Where will all the people go, whoever's still alive?"

Madara smiled wryly. The boy had noticed. He was somewhat clever after all.

The problem was not with its creation. No, that was mechanical. Genjutsu was filled with complexity and it took time to weave it carefully into the stone body of the creature, but Madara had seventy years to spare and a goal in mind and dozens of Hashirama's clones at his sides. For him, it was simple. Mechanical. Seven hours a day of concentration, of deciding what went where and weaving all the pieces together.

But there was a problem, an irresolvable one. Wars existed for a reason. And as an almost-warmonger he knew the reason. That reason would catch up with them and all they could do was enjoy the time in between.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Hashirama used to say that scarcity was the lifeblood of civilization, and though I never agreed, there was no reason to disagree either. Forget about that, boy. Go spar with those teammates who pester you, speak to your sensei again, and ask your Rokudaime if he can reinstate you as a jonin. Talent should not be wasted, even if there's nothing to do with it."

Sasuke looked down at his hands, tight-lipped, and some hint of resolve broke inside him as he nodded.

~o~

War was a concept washed out of their world but they sparred anyway, if only to keep their bodies young and their minds even younger.

"Everyone's avoiding me in the sparring grounds these days," Hashirama laughed as he pulled his punch to let them both breathe. "I think they know that I can match you in a spar."

"Of course they know." Madara wiped the sweat off his hairline and sat cross-legged on the grass. "You were the Nidaime, no one is going to think you grew weak just because it's been seventy years since you gave up the position." Seventy years and they both looked twenty-five, an age Madara had chosen simply because it was the year his body had been most healthy. Before that there were the hunger strikes of the pre-Konoha days and after, there was the stress that wore away at him while the village had grown to hate the sound of his name. But that was a false reality now. It had never happened.

"I guess not, because even Naruto-kun won't spar with me! Though I don't blame him. Everyone wants to spar with him and he just has no time. The village is lucky he has that Nara boy to pester him into doing actual work, just like I had you."

"I did not 'pester' you. I just gave you reminders now and then because I had more experience in the position," he retorted. The false past felt as real as the real one. "Besides, how else would you have remembered to attend your brother's marriage?"

"Ha, I think I went to share the shochu that Toka had brought from Ta the evening before. I'm always a little forgetful when I'm drunk." With that he stood up. Brushed himself off. Grinned. "A few more hours of practice, maybe? I haven't gone on a mission involving actual fighting in months now and I think I'm getting soft."

"Of course," Madara smiled and stood and took his stance and waited until Hashirama began their dance, with his loose karategi barely concealing the grace of his movements. And for hours he heard nothing else but the sounds of their limbs meeting in blows. Thoroughly nothing. Certainly not the faint clamor of a warning.

~o~

It was the second year in when Madara made his decision.

He turned in the small bed, maneuvering around Hashirama's grip. His lover was still asleep. There was no point in putting it off because there was nothing to wait for and they had all the time in the world to enjoy the consequences. Madara didn't know why he was shivering so harshly. The fear of rejection had already been cleansed from his mind, and it couldn't be that. It couldn't. Not rejection, not the stunned look that was sure to take over Hashirama's deep eyes and carve into him the very first seeds of doubt.

So he woke him with a finger curved languidly across the line of his jaw. Hashirama's eyes flew open.

"You're up early, Madara."

"I always wake up early, you're the one who sleeps in every day like a boy."

"But I got up first yesterday, remember? You only woke up when your cook arrived at the door with breakfast. Why do you still have your meals poison-tested anyway? It's a little silly in your own house."

Madara watched silently as his lover rubbed the lingering sleep from his eyes, yawning without a care in the world. He shivered again, and this time not entirely from arousal. With a sigh he sat up and crossed his legs in the sheets. Two years had gone by already and it had taken him this long to understand that the man he loved was the Hashirama who knew everything about the world.

"Let's stay here a little longer. Breakfast can wait." They were in the Uchiha compound, and Izuna and Hikaku and Naori would likely be at the table. Maybe Sasuke would sit there too with his permanently worried look, like he'd taken to doing recently since he'd moved back into the compound. Sometimes even Obito came by, through he spent most of his time with that girl whose name was Rin. But it was Izuna who could never know.

Hashirama leaned forward to press their mouths together, and smiled into his lips. "Is that your way of saying you want-"

"There's something I planned to tell you," Madara pulled back even as Hashirama swung one of his legs over to straddle him, already prepared to ride him. But he kept the position. Maybe Hashirama's solidity would make it easier to explain.

"What is it? Did Obito come by to pester you again?"

"No. This world is an illusion."

"Well that's not something I expected you to say," Hashirama chuckled. "How interesting. Tell me more about the illusion." He leaned forward to kiss him again, and then paused halfway.

Madara's lips curved into a wry smile. "Are you beginning to understand? It's the same that I once spoke to you about."

After a while, Hashirama looked away a wrinkle on his otherwise lineless brow.

"Are you remembering something?" Madara prompted.

"I remember fighting you. Except... I wasn't alive at the time," he replied carefully. "How is that possible? The Edo Tensei must die after they're sealed..."

"You did die. I killed you that time, because you were brought back to fight me. But now you're alive inside this illusion, isn't it brilliant?" He asked it like a test and it was almost amusing to watch how the Senju idiot tried to piece together a response. It took a while for him to speak so they stayed there silently, balanced against each other, listening to the languid taps of the shishi-odoshi outside.

Was it fine to go on like this? This was perfection as brilliant as he'd once dreamed of. Obito – his student – was ecstatic. He spent every day at his lover's house, showering her with a devotion she grew to admire. And the mere sight of Izuna walking around with his characteristic seriousness lifted the weight of duty from his shoulders. In two years no one had died. But some small part of him insisted that it seemed like no one was living either.

"The Hokage Monument," Hashirama finally whispered, lowering his head so his breath skated across Madara's neck. "You changed it. Your face is there now. Mine is beside it."

The sudden rush of embarrassment took him by surprise because he'd almost convinced himself of the false past. But the Monument was still there, outside the window, with his own face carved onto the far right. Madara stiffened slightly, and his eyes widened when Hashirama's arms tightened around him.

"Is that what you wanted? I can imagine that it would have been hard. I tried, Madara, but I suppose you took things into your own hands."

"It wasn't the only reason."

"I know. I know." Hashirama's weak chuckle filled the room. "And now you've decided to tell me and break me free of it. This illusion is fascinating. I'm already starting to forget yesterday, and this time I can notice that I'm forgetting. There's just facts, things I knew happened. The memories are gone."

"Wars and strife require large and concentrated amounts of hatred built up over years, passed down through generations. But people can't fight each other if they don't remember enough to hate." Madara allowed his eyes to fall shut as he spoke, breathing in Hashirama's presence. "Your idea failed, so this is what I thought of."

"I don't like it, it's false. I can't approve of it. But there's nothing to do now, is there? Not even you can stop it." His voice sounded like it was dragged down by lead. Stuck at the back of his throat. Scratchy.

"I suppose you hate me." Madara tried to pull back. There was nothing to worry about; the hatred was temporary and even if it lingered he could always re-create him.

"No!" His grip was tight but not commanding because it was an unspoken fact that Madara led their dance. "It's alright. It's unfair and wrong but so has the world been to you. I've seen Naruto-kun's happiness, the children who'll grow up in leisure, the anbu whose main work isn't to slit throats but to deliver daimyous' love letters at high speeds. Somehow, it works even though I never believed it could."

Hashirama's words were an unexpected panacea and Madara drunk in every syllable with all the eagerness he'd had as a boy. Perhaps this was what would make the strangeness of it all disappear: Hashirama's consent, his almost-approval. But for some reason it didn't, and his heart remained uncomfortably heavy. When their mouths met again it didn't take long for Madara to realize that he'd fixed everyone's problems but his own and there wasn't a single person left to complain but him.

~o~

The few times he did speak with Izuna, their conversation was stilted because his brother found him both highly respectable and incurably strange. So when they sat on a bench by the park together on an evening during the fourth year in, with Izuna sweating from his training session with Naori, Madara was the first to speak.

"How have things been going?"

"Fine, nii-san," the boy wiped at his face with a towel. "But I can't believe they're taking so long to process my anbu application. The village is ten times slower under the reign of that Senju, I preferred it when nii-san was Hokage." Izuna was twenty to his twenty-five, just barely younger yet still seventy years old. No one questioned it because nobody died and no one would until the genjutsu failed.

"I doubt that boy has even a fifth of Senju blood in him, he is only half-Uzumaki."

"They married in through Tobirama so they're just as bad," his brother retorted. Suddenly, his face broke into a hesitant smile. "Nii-san, do you want to come with us to see the Tanabata fireworks tomorrow? I'm going to the festival with Hikaku and Obito and they say groups of four bring more luck, so if you don't come I'll have to ask Sasuke." He made a face.

Madara chuckled despite his growing worry. "You should try to meet different people, or they'll continue to accuse us of being overly solitary."

"There's nothing wrong with that, nii-san. You've taught me the virtues of being independent and I intend to live by them," Izuna insisted. "So are you coming with us? They'll be selling takoyaki there." His smile widened as he saw his brother's slight reaction to the mention of takoyaki. It made him more surprised when Madara refused.

"I think I'll decline, Izuna. I believe there's someone else who'll want to drag me to see them."

~o~

They watched from the steps of the Naka shrine until every last ember of the modern color-display faded from the sky. The compound was silent but for the tapping of the ever-running shishi-odoshi near the building.

And sitting there with the friend – lover – he'd brought back to life, he put together what felt wrong. It was a fact that he was not nearly as unfazed as Hashirama, nor as innocent as Sasuke. To live within the genjutsu he would have to forget that there was ever anything else, forget the imminent threat that would pull the world from under their feet in years, maybe even months. Forget the fact that it was all false.

"What are you thinking about so determinedly?" Hashirama murmured. "Did you even see those 'fireworks'? The people are so imaginative these days, to make those things that light up the sky like that."

Madara tugged at the neck of his ridiculously colorful yukata to kiss him almost hungrily. He twined his other hand into Hashirama's long hair and pulled him closer until there was barely a stitch of space between them, until they were short of breath and gasping into each other's mouths as they pulled away. Madara wondered if Hashirama could taste the resolve on his tongue but when he looked up the idiot Senju only seemed thoroughly confused.

"Er..."

"You fool, it's a tradition after firework-displays to do that with the person you saw them with. I thought you were well-acquainted with modern things."

"There's a lot to learn," Hashirama chuckled. The sound died down when his seriousness returned, because of course Hashirama was still as perceptive as ever. "You made a mistake, Madara," he said quietly. "A very bad mistake that the world might never recover from, even if this genjutsu dies down. But there's no point in over-thinking it now, is there?" There was no scorn in his voice. None at all.

So they sat there, the two of them together, dreaming of their mechanical future under the brilliance of the Tsukiyomi's red moon.