Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by drowsyivy, fishebake, and UmbreonGurl.

"The rain is full of ghosts tonight."

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

The closer they get to the house, the louder it gets. "I don't even have to feel guilty." Ah, she had assumed a little bit earlier, hadn't she? Next time, she will trust Madara-sama when he says that there is nothing to worry about. "At this point, it's not a surprise anymore. They're not even trying to be surprising."

He huffs a little, something she now recognizes as a laugh, and pulls her closer. Standing here with his cheek pressed against her hair is a sweet feeling. "Didn't I tell you I am good at pretending to be surprised?" This party is very loud, this is true. She hears the amused fondness in his voice and finds herself gladder for it. "At this rate, I don't need to pretend to be surprised either. They'll surprise themselves."

She smothers a giggle. They actually might be surprised when Madara-sama and I return to find that they've already started to party.

He leads her towards the back courtyard, to the uncommonly used back door. "If they will not surprise me, perhaps I should surprise them."

Oh, that is a fun idea! "What a good plan." She whispers, leaning close so that no one else will hear. "How shall we plan our attack?"

Perhaps he is out of practice in thinking of plans of attack, because instead of telling her about something they could actually do, he freezes, panic suddenly spreading across his features. "Actually. What would happen if we never arrive?"

The words go straight to her heart and stick there like salt drying under her fingernails, a stain that smells of seaweed and tastes like pain.

"They'd send out a searching party." It is your birthday party, Madara-sama. They cannot miss you, not tonight. Not any other night of the year. Can you not see how much they love you? "They can't miss the guest of the hour for tonight."

"Will they truly miss me?" There's a haunted, hunted look in his eyes. It is not a question, because he knows the answer to that.

He should know the answer to that.

For someone who should've been so clear-sighted to be so blinded to his own image...it strikes to the center of her.

Yes, of course, they would.

And if he does not return, they really will send out a searching party. Why would he ever think otherwise?

"Of course they would." Did he not see how much they loved him? Does he not know how much she would grieve to lose him? "They love you dearly, and they want to celebrate your life today."

He squeezes her hand. "I know." He is tired and sadder now, more pensive. "It is just that sometimes I…It is hard for me to say that."

"You know it, but at the same time, you doubt it." She hadn't meant to make him sad.

Not on this day of all days of the year.

It isn't a day made to be sad.

He hums, the sound soft in the back of his throat. "As you say, I do not trust the truth of it."

Trust.

Had it been only a few months ago when she chastised him about how much he doesn't trust the ones he loves? He'd remembered it.

Words have weight.

Her words have weighed on him as well even if she did not mean for them to weigh.

"One day you will." Words have weight and she would make this so for him if she could. One day, he would trust the truth of it.

He smiles, a fond light in the darkness of his eyes.

And whatever gloom that had hung over him dissipates like fog in the sunlight.

"I believe we have a surprise to plan?" he asks.

She matches his smile with one of her own."Of course we do."

Carefully, they sneak into the back courtyard and then steal across to the back door of the house.

No one has found them yet, even if the party is loud.

Izuna must've frightened them into listening then. The back of the house was largely reserved for more privacy, Madara-sama's study, the bedrooms, her plans for a new room.

"Madara-sama." She leans forward and whispers in his ear. "This way." She tugs him down the hallway past where they would build her new room, passing a display of birthday decorations and then…

Setsuna rounds the corner and with an exceedingly loud bellow, announces the news of their return to the rest of the clan.

"Everyone! Madara-sama and Kanae-hime are home!"

What may best be described as a mob pushes them into the kitchen.

Perhaps the Uchiha do know how to party after all.

It is afternoon when she returns to the house to find where her brother-in-law has gone in the meantime. Izuna is no longer so often at home as he used to be, flitting here and there among the houses in the district and beyond.

Madara-sama does not seem to have noticed how his brother had slowly drifted from only amusing himself inside the house with whatever games he could find, to now wandering about outside.

Izuna seemed...happier though, than he had been when she first met him.

"Neesan?" He turns towards her, unerringly, setting aside his cup of tea on the kitchen table. "Did you need me for something?"

For all that she knows he doesn't have eyes, it is still strange to settle the difference.

He knew who was in the room with him, knew where they were, always.

For all that Izuna is quiet, he has never been frail. Enduring, was a quality that fit Uchiha Tajima-dono's second son much better than his first, and not for the first time, Kanae wonders where it had fallen apart.

"Mmm, not exactly." She has finished preparing what might be had for dinner, but tonight she rather thinks she would like to fry sticky rice for dessert.

It is easy to get lost in how abundant food is here, all the rice and grains and wheat and spices, fish and flavoring, meat and vegetables. Raw resources came cheap, and with it a lack of need to truly plan each meal.

Whatever she wanted, her husband had the money to indulge her.

No longer is she the little girl trading pearls at the marketplace.

Oddly enough, despite her young age, vendors knew her as the matriarch now.

"But you did want to see me." Izuna smiles. "Neesan, you are not so hidden as you think."

"You are more hidden than you used to be," she quips. "Out and about all the time now, and I have still not yet learned where you go when you leave the district."

She has not told her husband about his brother's trips into the city to go and meet whoever he was meeting. Izuna seemed happier when he returned, each time steps lighter, and he ate more with better appetite, so she supposes that there was certainly no harm to whatever he'd been doing.

He is twenty-two years old, nearly five years her senior and no idle boy.

"Did you want to know?" He asks, tilting his head to one side, as if thinking about it

"Not if you don't want to tell me." Keep your secrets if you like them that way. She is not his chain or keeper.

"Then I think, for right now, I would prefer not to."

She goes in search of the pound of flour she'd bought last month, thinking that perhaps she would ask Inami to teach her how to bake. She had not that much opportunity to try before. "As you like," she agrees, already slightly distracted by thoughts of dinner and perhaps writing to Chihaya.

Come visit! I miss you, she composes in her head.

"That wasn't what you wanted to see me for, was it?" Izuna sighs. "What were you really so curious about? You've never cared whether or not I went outside, unless you've suddenly adopted the practices of my foolishly silly Niisan."

"No actually," She pauses. "Has Madara-sama always been like this?" It is perhaps not the right question, however, she is a bit at a loss as to know how to ask at all.

But men born to power are not often afraid of it like her husband is.

Because that is what this is in the end. Her husband feared the power he wielded and the love that came with it. The mantle of responsibility rested on his shoulders like an ill fitting cloak, and any moment now, he'd shudder, and it would fall off completely.

"No, of course not." Her brother-in-law's rejoinder came easily, without a hint of lie. Rather blunt for Izuna who always tried to smooth things over and keep peace.

"What changed?" This conversation is overdue and desperately wanted. "When did he learn to fear such things?"

Izuna's lips flatten though she detects a hint of uneasy sorrow in the sudden slump of his shoulders all the same. "When Chichi-ue died, it was winter." And winter is the hardest season to live through. "He was only eighteen."

She is eighteen, still young to the ways of the world.

What must have it been like? Three hundred pairs of eyes waiting for the heart that would lead them, three hundred mouths waiting for the hands that had to feed them, and he was only a young man, burdened by the weight of it all.

"I see." Her admission is a soft, quiet thing.

"Our aunt died young," Izuna continues. "But she was Chichi-ue's only sister, so when she passed her son came to live with us." He turns away. "His name was Suisho."

He died that winter, Izuna does not say. And Niisan could never trust power again.

Izuna does not say this, does not give form and name to the reason why her husband carries guilt as much as he carries anger and grief, but she is not foolish.

She understands.

"Thank you," for telling me, for letting me understand.

Because Uchiha Izuna is no fool either, he hears the words she does not say.

After her conversation with Izuna, she stops by Madara-sama's study, where he is frowning very hard at a sheet of figures. If she were closer, she would trace the lines it leaves until his face smoothed out as her fingers ache to do already.

But instead, she pauses by the doorway for a while, watching him, the way soft light from the seals fell over his features, the way his fingers fidgeted with a lock of his hair while he is not paying attention.

He is not made for paperwork really, her husband.

Although perhaps he would agree, and add that he was made for war and death. Someone had taught him once that such things were all he was good for, and she somehow still hasn't managed to dissuade him of that notion.

If anyone were to ask her what she thought of him, she would tell them that he was made for sunlit fields, a scythe in hand, paint brushes and silk screens, winter mornings and perhaps too many pastries. He was made for the softer parts of peacetime, for the quiet moment he took before his lips quirked up and he started to laugh.

If he were born in Uzu, perhaps he would never have taken up a weapon at all.

If he did not need to fight and kill, she rather believes that he would be unfamiliar with war.

He takes no pleasure in such things, neither seeking it nor speaking of it often, except unhappily. He is no thrill seeker, not truly.

This is how she knows who he is, even amidst the storms within him that tore all these parts down and left them scattered all about, even when he suddenly veers off course into the dark.

He turns slightly to face her, setting down his sheet of figures. "Kanae?"

"Madara-sama…" She comes to look at the figures over his shoulder. Rarely is she curious about such things, preferring to deal with people instead of numbers. "I had a thought for the house, but I am unclear if you would also like this idea."

"Oh?" He quirks a brow at her, leaning back into her embrace. And quietly, almost imperceptibly, his muscles loosen. "What is this plan beyond adding flowers to all our screens and putting koi fish figurines everywhere so that I may be reminded of my cat-like nature?"

She cards a hand through his hair, marvelling at the softness of it. He had such volume.

Ah, I am still so jealous of this, love. What would take me hours to style comes to you so naturally.

"Oh, just another thing I miss that would remind you of being a cat." Laughingly, she taps his nose, watching him go cross-eyed for a moment.

He half hums. "Why would I want to hear about this?"

"Because—" You love me. Her breath catches in her throat.

But that's not true.

How easily she forgets what is true and what is not.

"Because?" He asks her, plucks her still hands from his hair and elects to hold them instead.

There is certainly fondness in his gaze, amusement and warmth in his eyes.

She will have to learn to be satisfied with this instead, to fit herself down in whatever corner of his heart she might hold, even if that is not what her own heart cries for.

It is not his fault.

"Because I want one, and I think you'd like it." She settles for this instead.

"One of?" Casually, he brushes his lips against her knuckles, and where he touches sizzles as though it were touched by more than flesh, as though touched by fire.

"A sunroom."

"Oh?" He closes his eyes, still absently holding her hands, leans back further until they are close as they could be with the chair between them.

"It is not so dark here, in the winters as it is in Uzu." Even though he has done nothing distracting, she is distracted all the same. "But I think a room of the house that could grow plants in the winter would be nice."

He reaches up, cups her cheek in a hand. "Do you want me to come with you to the glass smith when you go, or would you prefer to design it yourself?"

"I would like your thoughts." The disparity between the parts of himself that he gave and the parts that he did not was always so stark. "It is your house as well."

How easily he offered up all these little pieces of himself, these spaces he stepped aside to let her change and fill.

How she wishes she could be satisfied with such.

"If that is your wish." He huffs a laugh, the corners of his mouth turning up. "Then we shall have to set a date."

Two weeks later, she jolts awake when he sits up in bed with a strangled scream.

"Madara-sama?" All she can hear now is his harsh breathing.

He's shaking, cold sweat beading on his brow, as he stares at his hands.

"Madara-sama!" In a fit of desperation, she grabs his shoulders.

The eyes he turns up to her are blood-red, black pinwheels spinning wildly.

They say that you should never meet an Uchiha's eyes, that red brought with it the power to ensnare and beguile, but all she could think of now was the fear and guilt in his slack features.

How far he's gone this time.

How far he's gone.

"What's wrong?"

This seems to bring him back closer to himself. "It's nothing." He breathes out, breathes in, and keeps on breathing. "A dream, is all."

She sets her head against his shoulder, worries, because she doesn't know how not to. "A nightmare?"

He runs an unsteady hand through her hair, catching a bit on the tangles, though he is gentle with that. "Ah." The rest of him still shakes, as though he is standing in some sort of cold draft she could not feel.

Where he has gone this time, she has no way of knowing.

She traces the line of his jaw, warm despite how chilled he suddenly feels. "You don't have to tell me." He does not have to tell her what had troubled him so. "But I will always listen if you want to tell me." There is nothing you have to fear telling me.

He says nothing, but his hand does not leave her hair.

For the rest of the night, her hand rests on the rise and fall of his chest, even in her dreams, even in rest.

Whatever woke him the night before does not leave him alone in the light of day. She sees the way it gnaws at him, like a hungry ghost, in the bruises darkening under his eyes, the mechanical way he eats whatever's been set before him, and the absent way he bids goodbye.

She is still distracted by it much later, when the sewing circle in her house packs up to head home. It is much easier to become concerned when there are no longer any people about to distract her.

"Did my cousin go to the Tower this morning?" Inami pauses in the doorway, looking up at the sky. "It looks like the snow's about to start."

"He did." But he had not returned.

Inami glances at the sky once more, a thick covering of dark clouds overhead. "He ought to be coming home by now. This is no time to get trapped in the snow."

Even Izuna was home now, cleaning the mud from his boots with a brush while sitting outside on the walkway. "Niisan was very odd this morning," he adds, slowly setting down his left boot and picking up the right. "I wouldn't put it past him to have forgotten to come home."

The older woman makes a noise. "Forget? The nerve of him to forget when he has a home to come back to."

She sets a hand on Inami's arm before the other woman charges off to...perchance, bang down the door of Madara-sama's tower office.

She does not fault him for what he's remembered, nor what he's forgotten.

Such things take time.

"Sometimes, he is, perhaps, a bit too easily consumed by work." It's making excuses, but if it protects him from Inami's irritation for now, it will have done its part. "I'll go remind him."

"That's no excuse." Inami almost snaps. "He has a family. Nothing is more important."

Had she ever thought of it like that? "He is a leader of men," she counters. "And in such ways, the sacrifices we all must make must be forgiven."

Her father rules in Uzu and has done so for over thirty years now.

Her mother had never demanded that time from him.

She is familiar with the language of distance, of burdens, and duties and weight.

Power is never an easy thing to wield, and she begrudges her husband very little.

He gives what he can give, and that is enough. It will always have to be enough.

She does not intend to be her mother, angry at what could never have been and will never be, and she does not intend to cast Uchiha Madara as her father, his face turned towards a different sky.

"Is that really what you believe?" Inami scans her face, looking for something, though she does not know what.

"It is what I have always believed." She was born the daughter of a king.

A beloved king. A younger daughter.

But leaders make sacrifices, and those who love them bear those sacrifices.

It is how it has always been.

When Inami leaves, she is sure that the other woman still has not understood.

The snowfall had already begun, thick and heavy, coming down soft, but with enough frequency that it is only a matter of time before the roads become impassable.

She pulls her cloak about her shoulders, and goes to collect her husband from whatever has entrapped him in his tower.

As it turns out, the obstacle keeping Madara-sama in his tower is her own sister.

It wasn't what she expected when she opened the door, but there's Neesan with her hands on Madara-sama's desk, something like a storm brewing on her older sister's face, ready for breaking.

And all she can see is the slump of his shoulders, the way he's pulled in on himself, made himself smaller for some reason still unknown to her.

"Oh, Neesan, I didn't realize you were here as well," all she wants right now is to get away, to get Madara-sama away from Neesan, if only for the time being. Of all the days for there to be a conflict, it had to be the one where he was already unbalanced and concerned. "I was just about to tell 'dara-sama that he should come home because the snow is setting in too thick and the streets won't be cleared in time. I didn't want him to get snowed in you know."

She chatters, if only because this is the only way to prevent Neesan from getting a word in edgewise.

It's better this way. Given a little space, Neesan normally thinks things over once again. And perhaps, Neesan will come talk to her instead of trying to find answers in a man who has no answers at all, especially not right now.

Before anyone else could continue with what was going on before, she drags Madara-sama out the room and down the hall. "You should go home soon too, Neesan!" she calls over her shoulder. "Inami says that it will be very hard to walk home soon."

The snow storm has gotten worse by the time they make it to the doorway at the bottom of the tower. It hadn't been long at all, and yet now, it falls thick and fast and the streets are already buried beneath a layer of white

"You didn't bring a coat with you this morning." She should've reminded him to bring one, but she'd been distracted by how absent he'd seemed to notice the shift in the air, the expectant pause before the blizzard. "We will have to walk quickly then."

"Why did you come?" He sounds...far away.

"Why wouldn't I have come to get you?" She opens her umbrella and loops an arm through his. "There's no food in the Tower. You would've starved if you stayed snowed in." And you've been acting like a dead man walking all day.

Perhaps he will always be like this, oscillating like the tides. High tide comes in, and he stands where he was before, ready to let the water bury him alive.

Low tide pulls away, and he remembers that he is still living and breathing, in this world, not the next.

"What did Neesan say to you?" To have encouraged you to travel so far away this time.

"What?" He's still looking absently ahead, seemingly unaware that they've arrived home.

She brushes the snow from his hair, wonders if he can even feel the bite of the chill that's snaked its way around them.

Even though he hates the cold, he's forgotten about it now. "What did my sister say to you?" There is more snow on him than she thought, and she frowns at this, suddenly dissatisfied with the reach of her small bamboo umbrella. It fit her perfectly well but seemed inadequate now. "I do hope you're not going to get sick again." She muses, more to herself than to him. "I don't know what happened."

"She knows." It's been a long time since a simple conversation could make him so tired, but she feels the tiredness from him now.

"Knows what?" What could've sent Neesan to the Tower, where she doesn't even like to go, to confront her husband about something? What could she possibly come to know to make her do that? "Madara-sama, you've made no sense since last night."

"She knows why you're here."

He looks at her as though he expects a lightning bolt to come down from the heavens and reduce him to nothing more than a black mark on the floor.

She...does not understand this either.

"I thought Neesan always knew I was married." They've ended up on opposite sides of the kitchen table now, as his hair drips wetly onto the floor below. "It would be rather strange if she did not, seeing as she was there for the cerem…" She trails off. "Oh," she says in a small voice. "You mean she learned about the contract."

Yes, she rather expects that would make Neesan upset. She'd been so careful to keep it from her as well because of that.

Why now, would someone have told?

"Well, that is unfortunate." This is not something that anyone had business telling Neesan, because what Uzumaki Kanae chose to do was Uzumaki Kanae's business alone. Her choices, her choices, and they had led her to where she is now. There wasn't need for overprotective older sisters who have probably reinterpreted whatever was told to her in some inaccurate statement already. "I wonder who told her." Whoever told Neesan better be ready for her to send them a very upset letter. "Still, she was going to learn about it eventually." It is not as if the situation could not be salvaged...it would just take some time.

It would take some time, is all.

"There's something I have to tell you." Suddenly, the air weighs a little heavier, seems a little thicker.

No, this is not despair, however much she wishes it were simply despair.

There is grief here, and guilt, but hope as well.

"About last night."

Whatever had haunted him so last night, could she hope to understand it?

A.N. Sun/Moon is back! I do have to admit that it took me quite a bit to get back into the mood with this particular set of stories, largely because they have such a soft feel to them most of the time, and I've been kind of stressed out, so it's harder to get back into the head space of these characters. While I'm not completely without stress now, I've been able to come back to this story, plan ahead a bit more, and Sunfall chapter 20 is on its way as well! I'm hoping to update a lot more now that I'm home again, so we'll see how that goes. (ah, the days of near daily updates, I miss them.)

Wherever everyone is right now, I hope you all are staying safe. I know this third week in isolation has made even me, a classic introvert, a bit stir crazy. We can all only do the best we can. Sending the best of wishes to all of you.

~Tavina