A/N: So AU time. What if Kaguya hadn't been defeated and at the last stroke of a second, the Sage sent someone into the past to re-write it. He could only send someone of his blood and legacy, so only Sasuke or Naruto or Hashirama or Madara. But the Sage wanted things to change further back in time, to the warring era, and everyone knows that it all begins with Madara.
Aaand, this is my excuse for writing a Madara time travel, because I've never read one.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.
...
The world burns around him.
He awakens in distress, taking a desperate, shuddering gasp of breath. In his mind he is still lying on the damp earth in defeat, the sounds of battle never-ending even as familiar brown eyes gaze at him with regret—
A dream, he wanted to say. All a dream, he thinks as he lunges from his futon in blind panic, drowning in his own sweat.
Uchiha Madara dry heaves in the darkness, squeezing his prickling eyes and gritting his teeth in frustration. He grips his hair and stares at his hands— too small, too soft, too bloodied…
Dream, dream, dream…
He laughs in his lonesome, broken and mad.
It was no dream.
For here he was, ten years old, with the memories of a time that has yet to come. A time of war and tailed-beasts and moon goddesses and deception…
"Fuck you, old man." Madara spits with malice as he trembles, hoping his would-be father from another life could hear. "I am done with this shit, you hear me? So fucking done."
The silence of the night is his answer.
...
Madara does not understand why the Sage sent him back.
He had given up. Had been utterly repentant of his actions, quietly accepting the fact that he was wrong and he had lost. Weakened body, spirit crumbling, his resolve all but dust in the wind.
Madara does not know if Kaguya had been defeated. He does not know if the shinobi world had triumphed. But as he lay on the cold hard ground dying with Hashirama beside him to hear his last words, he realized he could care less about the outcome of the war he had started.
He felt at peace, finally. This was his deliverance.
He took a large breath, believing it to be his last—
Only for him to wake up in his ten-year old body in the lands of the Uchiha clan territory within a time he had long forgotten, the whispers of the Sage barely comprehensible in the echoes of his mind.
He screams in frustration at being denied the chance of seeing the pure lands.
He rages in his lonesome, immediately realizing what the Sage wants, what he wishes Madara would do. He wants change, wants a happy ending. He wants his sons and tailed-beast children to get along together earlier, for them to defeat his goddess mother earlier, to deliver the shinobi world to peace earlier—
Madara was not having that.
He was no prophecy child. He was not the protagonist. Was not a hero.
Madara was the scourge, the nightmare. He was the evil man people warned their children about, the bane of the shinobi world, the epitome of darkness and murder and blood.
Any other sane person would stand firm in the belief that Madara was the worst person to be sent back in time, the worst person to be tasked to fix everything wrong with the world.
And he agrees wholeheartedly.
He wonders if the Sage was as clinically insane as his mother.
Madara has half a mind to take a kunai and slit his throat with it, ending the story before it ever began.
And yet when dawn breaks and the soft patter of feet approaches his room, he looks up to see his brother Izuna, whole, alive, and healthy, and the only thing Madara could think of was redemption. Another chance.
"Nii-san?"
Another chance to do it all again.
And so as he grabs his brother for a desperate hug, tears leaking in his eyes, Madara does not think of the why or how, just that the chance was given to him, and he'll make it worth his while.
If only to have his brother with him again.
...
Hagoromo's spirit sings in contentment. He sees his son's transcendent embrace his younger brother fiercely and he knows that everything will be alright.
He knows it is an unorthodox choice to believe in the man who committed countless atrocities as the lynchpin of change. And yet at the same time, Hagoromo knows that of all people, Madara has the least to lose and everything to gain. He will aim desperately for peace, if only because he knows what it feels like to have none of it.
And in the end, Madara was not to be blamed for everything.
His mother is. Zetsu is.
He feels pity for Indra, for his dear eldest son. His reincarnations share the same tragic fate of being manipulated and pushed into darkness by powers beyond them.
Hagoromo does not have enough power to return to his actual sons' time to mend it all, but he could grant one of his sons' reincarnation the chance to redo their actions. And despite Madara's own doubt and bitterness in himself, Hagoromo has faith that he made the right choice in the end.
And so he watches with vigilance.
...
The sound of a harsh slap echoes and Izuna scuttles out of the way as his father storms out in a cold rage. He peers inside the room to see his older brother rubbing his discolored cheek, face impassive.
"Madara-nii," Izuna says in hesitation, twisting his fingers as he approached his older brother.
"Izuna." Madara greets, a smile creeping on his lips. It only highlights the bruise their father left in his cheekbones, and Izuna winces.
"Madara-nii, why are you and father fighting?" he asks, stumbling inside as he grasps his brother's sleeve. Madara catches him before he falls, settling the two of them down on the bamboo floors.
"Father and I," Madara says after a moment, stroking Izuna's coarse black hair. "We have beliefs that are at odds with each other."
Izuna blinks at that and he shoves his chin on his brother's chest, looking up at him with inquisitive eyes. "But you always agree with father."
He says that as a fact, because Madara has always been their father's favorite, their father's perfect little soldier. Even when their other brothers were still alive, Madara still received the best attention and many approving nods because he never failed to follow orders.
"Not anymore, little brother." Madara face twists into a smirk, brittle as glass. He presses his lips on Izuna's temple, a silent promise. "Not anymore."
His clan's survival and his brother's life were the only things that matter to him now.
His father's pride can go to hell.
...
A/N: My first purely Naruto story. Tell me what you think.
Read and review.
Memory out.