ten a surprise you should be careful not to miss
The liminal waters were strangely cold when Madara reached for them and he looked around, oddly chilled as his eyes landed on the snowflakes drifting through the mirror (where was his mother? Not that Madara minded the space but it was odd that she was gone so long), what – confused and wary in a way he couldn’t explain as he approached the mirror, not sure he was ready for the next fragment but the second a bit of snow brushed over his skin the water vanished and Indra was standing on an empty white plane in full armor, snow in every direction except a single black, burned out husk of a tree reaching out for the white sky behind him. What –
Movement behind him and Indra spun, crouching and blinking in surprise at the sight of Tobirama slumped at the bottom of the black tree, blood the only color on the snow that surrounded and covered him. A memory, a crisp stable memory, but when? And how had he been pulled here? “I wondered if you would show up” Indra twisted, trying to keep an eye on – but no, the Tobirama at the base of the tree was gone now, blood the only thing left on the snow and behind Indra was – Tobirama? Dressed in a white mesh armor and mission pants, with the long hair he had at his death and blood at his temple as he started to hum slightly, the familiar tune sending shivers down Indra’s spine – he, when he saw this Tobirama last he had thought it was a factor of Tobirama’s disassociating from the pain but… “You’re wondering what I am” Tobirama murmured “I thought I warned you you would have to meet me love, you should have known that this was coming.” Indra was getting colder as he glanced back at the tree where a flickering Tobirama was slumped, what the fuck was happening here?
“When am I? What memory is this, why did you call me here?” Indra growled, eyes flicking back at the flickering memory and the solid looking Tobirama in white with the cold, hard eyes and blood dripping off his chin only to vanish before it hit the snow. The Tobirama in white clicked his tongue, circling Indra on top of the snow, “A memory, one of many, or an imagining, don’t you think that Tobirama felt like this often enough?” he waved a blue tinged hand at the snow and the tree and the painfully isolated Tobirama bleeding alone, yes, yes Indra could see that Tobirama would have a place like this burned in his mind; maybe he had experienced something like it once and felt so often that he was back here that it was burned deep in his mind. A rut in his mind. But – wait, slowly Indra turned to the white Tobirama who was humming again, face still and cold; ‘he’ Tobirama had referred to meeting a ‘he’ and that time when the albino saw Indra and said ‘You reminded me of my soulmate. I’m not sure why, he certainly doesn’t have the silly eyebrows, but – Indra was supposed to be the legendary ancestor of the Uchiha right? So, you must be something to do with that, only, why would he…’
“Who are you?” Indra whispered “What are you doing in my soulmate’s soul? Are you my father’s work?” and the other being smiled, thin and cold and sharp, “Don’t you recognize me?” he tipped his head, hair falling over his face, “You don’t know me as well as you should then love, you fail to fully understand the depths a human mind can be driven to all on its own. You should know Yuki-onna by now, you should know what a life like his does to a person, it makes a thing like me.” no, Indra stumbled back, feeling Madara push to the front as the armor melted away, no; surely Tobirama wasn’t that – but…so many signs, and Ko had warned him that Tobirama might have fragmented earlier. But – “How long” Madara rasped “how long have you been part of him?” Yuki-onna shrugged, icy and unfeeling, “How long has he needed a way out? Someone else to do what he couldn’t when Butsuma sent us to kill a child, when he had to hurt you with the blood of your kin, when the seals sucked away everything that he felt and numbed him? how long was he called by my name by our father?”
“No!” Madara snapped, eyeing this icy version of his soulmate, “No, how long have you been a separate self, how long has he hallucinated you; I know it started before he broke the bond from the memory with Kagami. He thought I was another hallucination and didn’t understand why you would let me be nice to him, so how long?” Yuki-onna grimaced a bit, a stiff expression on a cold face, “Madara, love, think, do you really think it was as simple as one moment when he shattered? Don’t you see yet? We lost everything, all we had was ourself and even that was stolen from us and then all we had was you but you could never love Tobirama if he did the killing that Butsuma made us, I have always been what was needed, I am as much your soulmate as he is and there is no simple one moment when we broke; it was a slow shattering along fault lines. I was needed, so I became stronger and as I became stronger I was needed more.” Madara stared and the pale eyes stared at him cold and distant and somehow still possessive, “Do you really think that I wanted this? Any of it? We did what we had to survive and we always knew you would never want us when you knew.”
Madara stumbled back a step, feeling sick, he didn’t know what to do with this, with the knowledge that his soulmate had suffered so badly and – “Stop speaking like that, like you’re different, but you’re still Tobirama.” Madara whispered and Yuki-onna shrugged, “Another side, but Tobirama calls me different to distance himself from what I do so I took up the habit to help his sanity. I am him and he is me but he doesn’t want to be. We are what our father forged and he would rather be the sheath than the blade.” Madara’s eyes narrowed, his feet slowly getting underneath him now that the worst of the shock was over and anger starting to burn, “But you weren’t the one that broke the bond, not alone.” Madara pointed out “Shouldn’t you have been if you did the worst work?” Yuki-onna winced, ice cracking for a moment to something raw and wild as a wolf with its foot in a trap, “We did it together, a mind anything other than united couldn’t break a bond. After that Tobirama left me to run things more and more unless he was with your spawn.” That wild flash again, hungry and angry – this was the Tobirama that had resented Saburo and all Madara had built with her, this was the wild, feral, bloody parts of his soulmate, raw and fighting and angry and forced into a dissociation out of fear and survival instinct.
"Why were you there when he died?” Madara asked slowly, red eyes narrowed as Yuki-onna shrugged listlessly, “I was all that was left by then, why wouldn’t I have been there? And anyway, dreaming has always been mine love, Tobirama fears them too much to risk dreams, even his small ones.” “And what do you dream of?” Madara asked fast on the heels of the answer, icy red eyes flashing with something cold and hoarfrost-cutting, “I dream of a world just like this, a world of white with only you and I, alone, with nothing to take you from me.” he snapped back like the clack of the great jaws of an enraged wolf, warning and threatening, very clearly telling Madara that further pushing would only draw blood, good. Madara was ready for someone to fight, ready for someone that could take his anger at fucking everything after so long building up. Baring his teeth Madara prowled closer, already warming to this side of his soulmate, the side that could take everything the world dished out and hit right back; Tobirama might have hated the part of him that was Yuki-onna but Madara knew a thing or two about having more than one version of yourself and he found here the anger that had been missing in every other shard of his soulmate.
“Nothing to take me from you? Unless I am much mistaken, you took me from you” Madara rumbled, threat heavy on his tongue “you were the one to break the bond, both of you chose for me, chose another for me. You violated my destined bond, you took away my choice over an insult said in anger when you know I have a temper and didn’t know anything about the circumstances of what I was saying. You left me with a bond that never felt right, you made me think there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t be happy with my destined soulmate, you made me think I was broken for her never being enough, you left me feeling shattered and less than and like a failure, and so fucking alone!” the last words ripped at his throat as they tore out of him and Yuki-onna, who’s face had been slowly melting into that feral anger that Madara had seen under his skin, his lips pulling back in a wild snarl, “I did what I had too! What I never would have had to had you just fucking noticed me!” it was a scream and the pale icy shape was all but shivering with anger, already crouching slightly as his fighting instinct rose. Madara bared his teeth, muscles already straining for the fight he had needed since he was told about this disaster, “Then you should have done something worth noticing.” He hissed and Yuki-onna launched himself a Madara in a blur of speed so fast even Indra’s eyes had trouble tracking it; there was no hesitation, no second guessing, no questioning, nothing but wild anger that allowed him to fight far faster than Tobirama normally could (in a way Butsuma had been right, with the seals, without his feelings, Yuki-onna was far more than Tobirama could ever be alone).
Yuki-onna hit him like a freight train, a flurry of barehanded strikes that Madara struggled to keep up with, a bloody, viscous, satisfaction rushing through him as he kicked out with bone breaking force; his foot skating off of Yuki-onna’s thigh but no doubt leaving a nasty bruise as Madara slid through his lightning attack and went for the throat and joints. Yuki-onna snarled and curled his leg around Madara’s hip, pinning his thigh and taking control of the distance with a palm to Madara’s jaw and the other leg coming up to knee the Uchiha’s kidney, his entire weight on Madara. The Uchiha laughed and moved with the hits, twisting to strike Yuki-onna’s ribs with enough force he felt them crack under his blow since the albino could neither move nor block in his position; Yuki-onna hissed and coughed, repositioning his leg up around Madara’s neck and twisting his other leg to give him leverage as he tossed his weight back into a handstand intended to throw Madara over his head. The Uchiha let himslef move with the throw, flipping in the air and landing feet first on the burnt out tree in an explosion of coal and dust.
Yuki-onna exploded out of the cloud like a lighting bolt, flat handed strikes coming in a flurry that Madara redirected and forced away as he inched closer and tangled one leg between the albino’s, finally getting closed enough to smash his forearm into the preexisting wound on Yuki-onna’s head. The albino made a small sound of pain like a hurt animal and snapped his teeth in Madara’s face, sending the Uchiha reeling back in another burst of exchanged hits and kicks but clearly disoriented by the hit. Anger still searing Madara lunged forward, kicking viscously out at the slimmer man and fastening his gloved hand around a thin wrist as Yuki-onna moved just a touch too slow for Indra’s eyes; blood howling with victory Madara lunged forward, his other hand fastening around the long neck as he pulled Yuki-onna off his feet and twisted, throwing the other down into the snow and following him down hand a vice around the slender white throat and the bones of the wrist in his hand grinding as he knelt over Yuki-onna, his legs pinning the strong legs of the other.
Yuki-onna smiled at him with blood smeared teeth, tipping his head back, burning red eyes all but daring Madara to do it, to crush the straining thorax under his hand and snap the slender neck. His eyes burned and Madara – (Yuki-onna wanted this, wanted them to be alone in a world of snow and blood and burned out trees- and what did that say about his brother- wanted to prove that he was right and Madara wouldn’t chose him, would chose to kill him, would hate him enough to do that; Yuki-onna wanted to be right) Madara lurched down, pinning the wrist he was holding over the albino’s head and smashing their lips together in a blood drawing, biting kiss. There was a shocked pause and then Yuki-onna pressed up into him, free hand jerking up to tangle in Madara’s wild hair, fisting it nearly painfully as he bit back at Madara, straining up to take more for the kiss, hungry and obsessive and wanting.
Panting Madara yanked back, holding Yuki-onna down when the albino strained to follow him, mouth smeared with blood over his thin, split lips; “You should have given me a chance, I know why you didn’t, but you should have” Madara grated out, voice tight with twisted emotion as he stared at those burning red eyes, Yuki-onna’s eyes flicked between Madara’s, pink tongue flicking out to lick away blood. Finally the figment of Tobirama’s consciousness murmured “Yes, yes I should have. But I couldn’t, he couldn’t hold on anymore and I could never choose to take that lying down. I should have, but I couldn’t. I just – couldn’t. But I should have.” And something in Madara’s chest unlocked with the taking responsibility, the flat out taking of responsibility for what he did to Madara, exhausted the Uchiha sagged over Yuki-onna, hand loosening on the no doubt bruised wrist as he fell to lean on his elbow over Yuki-onna’s shoulder, the figment silent and still under him. “You hurt me” he breathed in the dark space his hair made, eyes closed “you hurt me so fucking much. I don’t know how to move past that.”
For a long moment there was nothing and then Yuki-onna whispered “So did you, and neither did I. He tried, but…” a pause and then a thin, icy hand on his cheek, “I am sorry.” No apologies, no explanations, just recognition of what he had done and acceptance of Madara’s pain and the Uchiha’s body jerked with a choked sob, something hot and iron smelling sliding down his cheek as Yuki-onna breathed “I know. I know.” And the gorgon knot finally eased, the storm of emotion washing through him with a cold hand on his cheek; not moving, not caressing, not doing anything, just lying there, waiting, accepting responsibility for what had happened to Madara without saying a word.
Eventually the storm eased, Madara’s emotions calmed and he felt like he could breathe freely again for the first time, sucking in a breath that smelled of blood and snow and death; eyes still tightly closed the Uchiha whispered, “I still choose you, I still want you, all of you; you don’t frighten me Yuki-onna.” There was puff of air on Madara’s cheek that might have been a laugh, “Frighten an Uchiha? Heavens forbid.” And when a surprised Madara opened his eyes there was nothing below him but snow and blood dripping from his cheek and a single long tail feather, barbs cutting sharp and disorganized and the tip of the shaft looking like it had been ripped out at the root in a fight. Of course, of course a tail feather would be Yuki-onna, but maybe now Tobirama could start to reintegrate his personality rather than disassociating that aspect; knowing Madara didn’t reject this part could only help – maybe someday he would even get his soulmate to hate Yuki-onna- and himself- less, maybe. The feather of Yuki-onna- the wild, feral, bloody, Tobirama- of Tobirama’s survival, sank through his skin and lay over his sternum; pulsing and aware and hungry as a starved wolf, but Madara’s- and Indra’s- none the less.