Kindling

I don’t think I can do this without you, love. I know that isn’t what you would want to hear but the whole world has burned, and I was the one that set the fire, even if later I wished I could put it out. I hope you knew that before the end, that if I had a choice I would have gone back and changed…everything, every bitter word and cruel taunt and I know you would probably tell me you weren’t exactly kind but love – you never acted except in accordance to your nature. You treated me as a threat when you had to and fought me with respect for that, fought I-Izuna like that; there was nothing cruel or unfair in his death and I can see that now, now that I have seen so much of what a bad death is I can see that his as you intended should not have been. No the lingering curse of his death was Zetsu’s fault and his anger – well, his own I suppose no metter how I would like to blame it on Zetsu (and did blame it on you); no Izuna’s hate was just the cup our fathers handed us, one Hashirama never saw and you refused. I don’t know what I did now – I don’t know how much of any of my choices were ever my own in retrospect and I think that more than anything it the great tormenter in my life; you showed me that love, that I only ever wanted to breath clear air and so much of my anger was at a world that didn’t let me. Not like you, you how always did as your duties required for good or ill; you knew what it was too be trapped better than anyone and you never stopped trying to make sure the future was freer.

It is an odd thing that to me you were what freedom was love, you who were the most trapped of any of us and somehow bore that weight with dignity, kami knows none of the rest of us ever figured that out. Maybe Naruto but, well, I didn’t know him as well as you did, brat died to soon under the Sage’s anger – though I owe him for your return to true-er life and the freeing of the bijuu, my other siblings that were. You know there’s something very poetic about it love, that in the end the Sage ended up fighting his children just like his mother; turns out the fucker wasn’t ever that human, not like the Shikigami though Uncle went down so fast…the Sage is dead now, you know this, of course you do, right? he won’t be back or interfering in anyone’s life’s or deaths after this and the other kami were right glad to be free of him. Grandmother  remains in the moon for better or worse and I’m sure you would go and find her and deal with that to as part of your duties and- your duties killed yo

I write this too you from the ruins of Konoha. I am alone here, the graves are long gone and the living don’t dare come this close to the God tree – ironic that they call this that. It’s not a God Tree of course, just a fuck all tower of chakra and glass and if it hasn’t broken by now I don’t think it ever will and – the light when it hits it – you never saw that the sky never cleared before you – and I wish –

Anyway, the living don’t come close though we shall see how long that lasts. And –

Tobirama, I think, I…think I might…do you think that if you die enough times eventually it just…stops? Like some sort of immunity maybe? Because I died many times love, and you only really died twice, deaths in Edo don’t count because you never took Breath. But I…I tricked death over and over and over and now I wonder if it would refuse me and I can’t – I am afraid of what I might – without you – I don’t think I ever told you how you saved me after, when the camp was set up and I had been dragged to semi-sanity to help in the fight and you were back because we needed intelligence not power at that point and – you were exactly what I had always believed you to be and nothing at all like that.

So gentle in private and so fierce in war, you were cold as any winter when you had to be but when it was just us you were a fucking cuddler and don’t you deny it! I still wonder that you were never ashamed of me or our relationship what with…everything. Though I guess at that point it hardly mattered did it? A lot of pasts had been left behind. A lot…was left behind. Sakura never did recover and last I saw she was still raging about being the last of them, of the Twelve (well, Lee is still alive last I saw but I’m not sure she counts him or Ino at this point). I thought I had a lot of rage that girl….someday there will be a generation the has to rise up and strike her down To’ra, and I don’t envy them that, she’s an apocalypse waiting to happen – and I would know. But well, that seems to be how the world goes now, she even has the gray-white hair to match me and the Sage and Grandmother in our apocalyptic looks (though I confiscated the eye, the world is well done of those now)! I…

Do you remember when you were dying and I pressed your forehead to mine as I cried and you thought it was rain because you couldn’t imagine me crying over you even after all we were too each other and – when Sai figured out how to make ink trees with fruit that was edible? How you took advantage of that and left black smeared kisses everywhere and Sasuke couldn’t look at me without turning red? Did I ever tell you that I loved that? How much it meant to me that you were so sure of me and willing – wanting to let our…love, our love be seen? Somedays I felt like the dirty secret for so long it just twisted me up inside (Hashirama was good at that after the village was formed) and with you I never did, not once, fuck not even before we were together did I feel  like I was anything other than respected and seen, maybe that’s why I could apologize to you and no one else; it never felt like I was making myself less with you. I knew you respected me and never stopped and those inky kisses down my throat were –

I

I don’t think I can do this without you love. I don’t know how, I can’t find a way out either way and I don’t – how am I to bear it if all we ever had was a few moments in limbo, neither of us even truly alive anymore but not dead and I  -  I remember life- lives- without you and each was so –

I hope you thought of me as you died, I am selfish enough for that.

“I did” the whispered words were lost in the racket of the jungle around the man, ignored as the slender white haired man stepped closer to a shinning gigantic tee of glass and power and the shadow sleeping within “I did, Madara.”