Chapter 1
Kami-sama created human resiliency with the ultimate cheat code. Shared burdens are lessened. Shared joys are undiluted - amplified, even.
Madara has lived two lives' worth of regret. She knows what it looks like to bear that alone -
(dark cave, decades of emptiness gnawing at his bones, lies poured into his ears and out his mouth)
- maybe she doesn't deserve it, but it's granted to her anyway. It hits harder on days like this, jarringly idyllic in the aftermath of the destruction of Kaguya's brief reappearance.
Her son rolls in the yard, tipping over with each attempt to stand. Features arranged in a familiar stubborn scowl. Hashirama is encouraging him with exuberant cheers and fist-pumps.
Tobirama hangs back, half-hidden behind a pillar. He wears his similar expression of distrust, but he's in loose clothing - not a shred of armour or weaponry to be seen. It doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't have concealed weaponry, but it wasn't an effort he'd always made. That he's present at all is a surprise. He even nodded at her in something approaching civility when she first noticed him.
More surprisingly, Izuna sits in front of him, leaned against the pillar. His good eye is focused on the baby's increasingly red face as it succeeds in standing and takes a staggering step forward, clinging to the porch. Tobirama stands in his blind spot.
The sky is overcast the way she likes it; the clouds forming a shield against the searing heat. Rain threatens on the horizon but doesn't fall, leaving the air refreshingly cool.
The wooden porch beneath her pulses with familiar chakra, conveying safety and tranquility that would be a blue-moon luxury in the days of war. That this is instead a daily occurrence is odd but not unwelcome.
Her senses are still dulled, chakra too volatile to use in full after Kaguya had torn apart and forcibly rearranged her chakra coils to make her an ideal vessel. She's beginning to suspect this will be the case for the remainder of her life. The scar where her son was torn out of her healed with Hashirama's cells - it draws a strip of tan skin the shape of a tapering spear across the pale skin of her lower abdomen. The remainder of her damaged chakra still mixes with his, clashing and nauseating with power no one is meant to have.
(The Rinnegan eyes will be an issue. But for today, they sit complacent inside Kamui, as does what remains of Zetsu. Kaguya remains trapped in the moon. She still draws the curtains and remains awake every full moon. Hashirama more often than not chooses to stay up with her, a solid presence.
Her own borrowed eyes still remain a dull black.)
The baby tumbles face-first in front of her. Hashirama calls out, dragging out the syllables of Obito-chan, but one pudgy hand is stubbornly placed on the porch as a small body hefts itself back up with determination. She wonders what his namesake would think of being honored this way, for all that she had insisted on the name. A remembrance and apology in one.
She turns back to the letter from Mito. The woman is still travelling the Fire country, patenting her latest seals as she spreads them among the civilian settlements to rebuild their lands. She promises to return soon, but Madara can't exactly fault her for needing an escape from Konoha, brief though her first stay had been.
The Senju brothers received their own letters, though she notes with some petty satisfaction that she's the only one to receive a gift. A hairpin the shape of a miniature battle fan is enclosed. She can't wear it, hair cropped short as it was when she and Hashirama met in their first lives, but the joke is appreciated. She can always put it on Hashirama if she really wants.
Kurama dances on the edges of the inked words, an unspoken sorrow, and she lets the regret wash over and out. There will be time to rectify that.
Stubby, saliva-coated fingers grasp at her knee, pulling her out of her thoughts. Her son scowls up at her, clearly assigning her the blame for his latest failure. He's glaring so hard she tilts his chin up and automatically checks for Sharingan.
Bizarrely, he does look a bit like her protege, the original Uchiha Obito. It's the cropped spiky hair and the dark cat-eyes, she thinks, flicked up at the corners. He's tanned as Hashirama, though, and his hair is closer to brown than black.
Takeshi wheels into the courtyard with packed lunch just as the new Senju Obito manages to wrench his face free and take three determined steps in succession. Takeshi stares, eyes wide, at the triumphant gummy grin. Hashirama and Izuna cheer, and Takeshi follows a second behind, leaning down to hoist the baby into his lap. Tobirama cups the lower half of his face, but she knows he's smiling.
She puts down the letter and joins the rest of them.