AN: Due to popular demand (and because I haven't been able to finish the upcoming chapter of An Inch of Gold), here is the epilogue to Samsara. I hope it resolves a lot of the questions you guys have been asking me.

結語

Indra comes back to himself too late.

The flames have marred his wife's body beyond recognition, and even though he stops before the black tongues can reduce her to ashes, the damage is done.

It's not the first time he has killed one who professed to love him – one who, against all odds, he found his heart reaching for in return – but this death shakes him. As he turns away, his stomach rebels and he finds himself on his knees, vomiting in reaction to the violence of it all.

This is the first death that he has instantly regretted.

And yet even she was a traitor in the end, the voice in the shadows reminds him; speaking the same horrible truths he has been plagued with his entire life. It's a change from previous entreaties to wait, soothing and cajoling.

Indra glances back at the skeletal husk of the woman who stood by his side for so many years, bore his children and professed her love for him until her final moments. Blackened arms still wrap protectively around her middle, and Indra's eyes narrow.

The child that was the cause of all of this, and for all her protestations, proof of her betrayal.

He pushes himself to his feet, prepared to walk away and leave all evidence of his only weakness to desiccate in ignominy. He has to return to his children – their children – and tell them what has happened. Not his own hand in it – her last request is one he will honour if only out of respect for the years they had together – but they will need to know.

He knows they will grieve all over again, having believed her dead for so long, but perhaps it will make them stronger. Perhaps it will cause one of them to awaken the Sharingan, and then they can all pay Asura back for the damage he has done to them –

Behind him, there is a flare of chakra. Indra freezes.

It's not possible. She can't…

He turns around, half-expecting to watch her pull herself to her feet despite all odds. A ridiculous fantasy of her stumbling forward to him, her eyes sad but determined, reaching out to him –

Instead, her charred form remains utterly still, reproaching him by its lack of movement.

His gut heaves again, and he clenches his fist. Sentiment is causing him to imagine things.

Until the chakra flares again.

Fleeting and flickering, like a candle fighting a downpour, and coming from her body.

No, not her body.

The child!

She told him, didn't she? She promised him –

He crosses the distance within a blink, wasting no time in kneeling by the swollen stomach of the corpse. He can't think of it as her anymore, because if he does he might hesitate in what he is about to do.

Kunai in hand, he makes careful incisions, the way he has seen the healer woman use for breech births. He can't breathe – the scent of charred flesh and the dreadful anticipation constricts his lungs – as he moves skin and muscle out of the way, ignoring the blood on his hands as the chakra signature continues to flicker recedingly.

His fingers brush against something solid and thin – a leg, a foot – and he carefully twists about within the bloody tissue until he gets a safe hold on the tiny body. Gently, he removes the infant completely from it's mothers' womb, all the while in disbelief.

It should be dead. There is no way that it should have survived. Indra knows the strength of Amaterasu. Its heat should have boiled Shachi from the inside out, and yet somehow…

Somehow, the child is alive.

He stares in awe down at the infant – a boy, he notes dimly – listening to feeble, mewling cries. Its little body is small, only a little larger than the hand that cradles it, with skin as thin as parchment. Indra can easily make out the veins beneath it, can see the little lungs that struggle to gasp air for the first time - can see how ardently the child clings to life.

"Only a child born of our union could survive such a thing."

Shachi's words ring in his ears, both a benediction and a reproof.

It's not the only one, either; even in it's barely developed state, the child resembles him in a way none of his others ever have.

With trembling hands, Indra carefully cuts the chord attaching the baby to his mother, then wraps him in the folds of his cloak. He is painfully aware of the utterly fragile being in his possession, and of the reason for its infirmity. He lays two fingers softly against the baby's heart, allowing an infinitesimal flare of his own chakra to seep into his son's body.

Instantly, the baby's chakra signature becomes less distressed; his heartbeat becomes more regular and his lungs are no longer working quite so hard. Indra knows in that moment with absolute certainty that this child will live.

Just as he knows with that same certainty that he killed the only woman he has ever had it in him to love.

Tears fall then, as they haven't since he was a child, and he grits his teeth, because he can't clench his fists; not with the baby beneath his hands, utterly dependant on him for survival.

She was faithful.

She never betrayed him – the only person in his entire life who never did, and he killed her. She who had never given him any true reason not to trust her, who had stood beside him all these years even knowing exactly who he was and who even in her death, sought to please him, to protect what he held most dear – his child.

He is unsure how long he crouches there, sobbing in tandem with his infant son.

Long enough for his grief to turn to rage.

This is Asura's fault, the voice in his head reminds him.

Shachi spent her final months with his brother and father, robbing Indra of her presence, forcing him to adjust to the idea that she had died in an attack by their enemies. Indra razed an entire island, killed every living creature there in retribution, and it only made the hollow inside him worse. The closest he came to filling it was today, when for the first time in months, he felt her presence.

When he had her in his arms again in a way that has haunted his dreams since he thought her dead.

And now she is gone. For good this time, and by his hand.

Forgive me, he wants to say, but the words won't come to his trembling lips.

He doesn't deserve it.

Indra accepts that he will live with that truth for the rest of his life – it's a punishment he will endure silently, and alone. But one day, he will make Asura pay for what he has caused, for everything he has taken from him.

But not now.

He has to raise his son. And miraculous survival aside, the child is weak, born too early. Indra can't leave the infant now to hunt down his accursed brother and kill him. This child will need him more than the others did, bereft as he is of his mother.

This child is the one she loved enough to die for, and in recompense Indra will protect him above all the others. He will ensure that their other children understand their younger brother's importance as well, that they too intend to protect his future legacy.

The baby has quieted now, having sobbed himself to sleep. With a trembling finger, Indra traces the miniature fluttering eyelashes.

"'Fan the flames'," he murmurs softly, the slightest hope entering his heart as the infant presses into the warmth of his home. "Uchiwa."

終わり

I swear I'm done this time. This really is the end, there are no more chapters forthcoming. Anything else about Shachi and Indra will be explored when I start writing my original novel. (Although, do check out my AO3 account or tumblr for the occasionaly oneshot which may or may not involve NSFW themes...ahem).

Again, thank you all for your amazing support throughout this story, now I have to get back to my other ongoing fics!

クリ