Unyielding

One-sided MadaHashi and relatively one-sided MitoMada. Because I don't write romance stories.

(I published this a while ago but I wasn't that happy with it, but I figured I'd rather edit it a little and repost it because if I kept deleting the works I didn't approve of my fic page would be pretty empty.)

Konoha interests her. This much is evident, and Madara wishes fervently that it weren't true but it is and she is there to stay. Mito, with her stately hair and majestic features for an eighteen-year-old girl, does not seem willing to leave them alone so easily.

Instead, he finds her gazing deeply into the Nakano, right where Hashirama once stood, with her layered kimono sleeve gently covering the lower half of her face. But Madara has learned to recognize desperation where he sees it. Despite the lengths of silk that present her perfectly, her origins have been low. No one of well breeding would have such fire in her eyes.

"Madara-sama," she greets. Mito does not shy away like the other Uzu creatures. She is a scholar who observes everything with the quickness of her glance, and she has already begun to observe him.

He doesn't care for any of it. Three hours earlier, her lips have been kissed by Hashirama, and that is unforgivable.

"Are you here to kill me?" She asks. He's within steps feet of her. One sweep of his ganbai, a throw of a single kunai to her tenketsu, the merciless pain of Amaterasu. Any of it would do. Any would bring her to her knees, would make her cry for death, would drain the prettiness from her eyes. Madara wonders.

Instead of reacting she leans down to the riverbank where her elaborate sandals are caught deep in the mud and fingers a flat stone. While he watches, she flings it across. Her arm arcs with careless elegance and the stone flies to hit the opposite shoreline just as his once failed to do. She doesn't look at him while she reaches down to choose another.

"We used to do this many times, and watch the stones get swept into the whirlpools. Here there is only this river, but Hashirama-dono has shown it to me," Mito explains as she strikes the shore again. "What have I come into, Madara-sama? What must I learn to get rid of the looks I receive from the people with features similar to yours?"

"Get out," Madara told her. "Get out of our village. You have no purpose here. I know you all plan an alliance through marriage, but it is worthless to us."

"I know that," she replies. "Hashirama-dono is not doing it for this village, he is doing it for my people. He believes that the troubles of the Uzu people will subside if they are under the protection of the Senju through marriage. He also wishes to combine the life-energies of the Uzumaki and the healing abilities of the Senju to create powerful shinobi worthy of succeeding him." The embroidered sleeve falls, revealing the red paint of her lips.

There is nothing he can say to that. Even if the words light fury through his veins, he cannot give Hashirama what this girl can. Even if he were somehow willing to degrade himself to fulfill his own desires, nothing will come of it.

~o~

"You look at her often."

It is noted with complete nonchalance, and Madara responds with the same. He crosses his arms, sits stiffly at the council table, browses through trade agreements, and tries to ignore the only other person in the room.

"Answer me, Madara," Hashirama sighs. "You do, don't you? I've noticed that you visit her at the river quite often. Should I be worried? You've never shown interest in women before."

"Will they protest too much if I kill her?" Will you protest?

Hashirama started. "Of course! Leave her alone Madara, she's young."

"Beautiful, too."

The sudden drop of friendliness in the air indicates his worry. Madara watches his face closely, sees how the expressions splay openly across his features. He has always been vulnerable in that way. It's easy to see what he thinks. "You protest too much. Do you love her?"

His once-friend sinks slowly back into his seat. "Not exactly, no, but she is a likable girl and I will try. Please do not get involved with this, if people find out, they'll think you're purposely going against me."

Long, battle-worn fingers turn a page. "You do not love her?"

"I… not yet, no."

"Did you not kiss her on the day you were engaged?"

"Oh no," he smiles. "She kissed me."

~o~

(Degrading.

It's strangely, unforgivably wrong. But he imagines Hashirama anyway.

It's embarrassing for a leader of the Uchiha but he knows all too well the curse that his clan carries, that of excessive feeling. Hashirama can afford to take lightly things that he must force himself not to feel.

And at twenty-one, he shouldn't have to remain the quiet of his room, where the Uchiha fans on the walls glare back at him accusingly. Each stroke stems it a little more, every hitch of his breath lights up the proud Uchiha room. Mito's looks rise once in his mind, briefly, just the seals of her red hair and how they fall over her shoulder when she leans down to pick up a stone.

But as always, it doesn't last long.

"H-Hashi-" he clamps one hand over his mouth.)

~o~

Uzumaki Mito is not an expressively beautiful girl. Those of her clan are born with plain features like blank slates and hers has only been painted to perfection, to form a mock semblance of supreme beauty. But there is a certain allure in her utter lack of imperfection.

Every morning since she arrived, she walks down the rough-hewn village roads in her layered kimono with her red hair pinned into the two seals that Madara cannot decipher. He sees her glide past the Uchiha compound, guard-less as no eighteen-year-old should be. In the evenings, she sits by the Nakano with her archaic scrolls, brush in one hand, ink-bottle in the other. Sometimes he stops on the way to the compound to watch her for a few minutes, and as a sensory-type, she knows this.

"Will you come speak to me, Madara-sama?" She asks on the second time he does this. "I wish to talk to you."

Madara approached guardedly from the trees surrounding the riverbank. "What does a little girl need to say to me?"

The ink and brushes are set aside, and she stands up to face him. This time, her hair is no longer in its twin seals, but elegantly loose. It's long, far too long to be worn lose, and already disheveled in the calm wind. The fact of it is strangely intimate of her. Hashirama's hair is almost as long.

"You have an interesting preoccupation with Hashirama-dono," she comments as she tucks a strange of vermillion hair behind her ear. "He knows this, but he does not admit it."

The shame of it scalds him but he's far too used to maintaining his posture to show any of it. If Mito says it, then she is right. Hashirama is already aware of his obsession.

"Is it because he's all you have left?" she asks. "I am not familiar with your style of war, you see, and I don't know how common it is to lose family. But I asked Hashirama-dono about you last night, and he is talkative sometimes."

Madara quells the multitude of emotions that take him, anger mixed with an unwanted desire. He crosses his arms and looks impassively across the river.

"He told me not to be worried with how you act, because you're still angry at not being able to protect your brothers. All four of them." At this, she turns toward the river, slips a hand through the tangles of her hair, eyeing him past the curve of her shoulder. "Your clan is not predisposed to you any longer, either. What else do you have, apart from him?"

Her clavicles are delicate in the evening light and it would be so simple to snap them between his fingers, to teach her how a mere scholar must act before a warrior. Her hair is longer than Hashirama's and he wants to see it strewn around her limp body, he wants to see her eternally kiss-bitten lips blue from death. But he draws back the flood because she is the last thread of trust that hangs between them, and killing her would destroy the last fruitless remains of friendship he has.

"You fascinate me, Madara-sama," she murmurs as he walks closer. "You have no idea how much."

"Being a fascination to a little girl is nothing to take pride in."

"You're wrong."

Her hands splaying across his chest are warm, unlike those of the Uchiha clan girls. In the diminishing light, her hair shimmers in fiery streaks across the glowing skin of her neck and her eyelids have been dipped with a stark green that he smears away with his finger. The Uchiha are passionate by nature. This time, he gives in.

~o~

Madara is no stranger to this, but every night he spends with Mito is different.

In the daytime she is a vivacious girl, calm and elegant yet ardent when it comes to things she cares for. With him she is nothing short of seductive, and the seal she paints onto her breast to avoid the possibility of scandal is severe against her naked skin.

"Leave early today," he whispers into her neck as she climbs onto him. "Unless you wish to be caught by the guards. It is a clear night."

"Isn't it you who should visit his lover at her home, since this is your village?" Mito asks.

"Don't say such idiotic things."

Mito rocks into him, taking him deep with every slow motion of her hips. Her arms curl loosely around his shoulders and his back is pressed to the wall. He prefers it this way, where he can tell himself it's her fault. But when she leans forward and allows him to lay harsh kisses on the side of his neck, he pushes forward until his hands are on the floor, on either side of Mito's shoulders and buries himself deeply.

"Madara-sama…"

The girl has a bad habit of muttering his name in that strange tone, where it sounds like a natural continuation of her breath. No one has ever said his name like that. The syllables draw fear, dread, perhaps once there was admiration to be heard. Mito utters them with pure longing. It unnerves him and undoes him at once.

His hair falls over his shoulder to blend in with hers, black tangled with a startling red.

~o~

In two months, the engagement between two clans is made vocal and the date of a wedding is under consideration. Madara sits in Hashirama's office once more, signing papers in his shaking hand.

"You've been avoiding me. Any reason, Madara? I wanted to ask your opinion on the Kaguya clan-" He pauses when he sees the brush Madara had unconsciously broken in his hands. "Is there something wrong? Is this about the Uzumaki alliance? I know you have been opposed to it but it is necessary."

"So you will marry a girl you do not love for the sake of the village?"

Hashirama frowns. "What makes you say I do not love Mito? I have never liked a woman as much, she's absolutely charming."

"I see."

The silence drags on between them, and Madara doesn't have the heart to speak out and say Hashirama knows nothing about love, that it isn't the same joyful thing he feels around his damned brothers and advisors, that it's something far too deep for any thick-headed Senju to comprehend. Instead he reaches for another brush.

But Hashirama makes up in observance what he lacks in experience. He stops Madara with a hand on his wrist, and waits until he looks up at him, albeit guardedly.

"I've seen you talking to her," he comments. "Sometimes she goes to the Uchiha compound, doesn't she? She plays with some of the younger children in your clan, teaching them to skip rocks and telling them the rules of some games she once played in Uzushio as a child. And she tells me that she meets with you too. I can't imagine what the two of you would possibly have to talk about, but she's happy. She admires you, Madara."

Foolish, idiot Senju. Madara seethes on the inside. He half-seriously contemplates telling him that they've been fucking almost every fortnight for a month, if the man was truly so oblivious. But he withdraws his hand, pushes aside the papers, and makes to leave.

"Wait," Hashirama's voice takes on its nonchalant tone of command. "Listen, I want what's best for everyone. And… I think that there could be a different way to settle this."

Yes, settle it. That would involve Hashirama's lips against his for once, and Hashirama's strong body under his hands, perhaps over. That would involve earthy skin and a voice like a melody-

"We founded this village together, Madara, and you're just as important to its existence as I am, because Rikudo knows what I would do without your skills," Hashirama's voice drops slightly. "I've… never seen you take so much interest in a woman before. And she… may like you better than she likes me. She loves conversing with me, but somehow she isn't as predisposed to doing much more, though she tried in the beginning," he laughs, and it's not a humorless laugh at all. It's tinged with a kind of relief that only a man as block-headed as Hashirama could possibly feel in this situation.

"But this means you will have to take more interest in clan relations," he goes on. "Will you agree to that, Madara? Marry her, and take my position in integrating the Uzumaki clan into our village?"

Without turning to look at him, Madara slings his ganbai over his shoulder and heads for the door. He has no answer to something like that.

"I'll give you a while to think about it!" echoes through the corridors of the Senju compound as he leaves.

~o~

He doesn't tell her later that evening but she already knows, and he's sitting guardedly by the river when she appears. Her arms drape around him from behind.

"I had an interesting talk with Hashirama-dono today," she says. "It seems that I have a chance to do as I like. What are your thoughts, Madara-sama?"

Madara looks down into the water and sees the reflection of her face over his shoulder, stilled in anticipation. "You would prefer to be married to me? The Uchiha do not take outsiders lightly. Your life will be some kind of hell. Don't expect me to do anything to stop it."

"Ah, but those were the old days, weren't they? Now they seem to get along quite well with the rest of the village. Their much-exalted leader should be proud." Mito leans in to mutter, "perhaps it's only you that does not take outsiders."

"Leave, girl," he frowns at the disappointed look of her reflection in the river. Does she think of him as some kind of sage? He considered killing her, once.

"Only if you truly want me to," she replies evenly. With that he stands and faces her, arms crossed, willing to say just that. To try.

But before he can speak her words come tumbling out. "I admire you, Madara-sama," she says. "I admire your control. I admire your sense of responsibility. Everything. I've never met anyone like you."

Try. He tries to tell her. Then remembers the Senju compound. Red hair. It's something undeniable already, with that thought. Her hands run smoothly over the scars on his chest, under his haori, and he lets them explore, knowing it's already gone too far and stopping it will take more effort than taking control. Let them play.

"I admire how you can continue despite facing loss," Mito admits. "The worst my people have ever faced has been shortage of rice, yet you have survived through ten years of war with no medics and rationed bandages. I think you should have more in return, more than one friendship that you barely admit to."

"Silence, Uzu-girl," he mutters as his hands slowly relent to touch her.

"And I can also be something for you to have left."

She leans in slowly, tumultuous red hair streaming down to where he grasps at her waist. He tastes concession in the paint of her lips.