
search
He seeks for a place in the corners of the village, the places his clan never goes. He is so different from them anyway (it’s not the shade of his hair) that it seems the only place to look. He stumbles on Madara-Sama there, talking to the children he once would have been forced to kill and more at peace than Kagami had ever seen him. Madara-Sama sees him there and calls him to his side to hear the stories that the other children tell; and Kagami aches for the idea of a teacher who collected the lost and confused and treated them all the same- would he have accepted Kagami? Madara-Sama seems to think so and Kagami knows that Madara-Sama knew him best (he has heard to story of Madara-Sama’s one great love- Uchiha’s only ever really love once and then with everything they are- when unseen he hears Izuna tell it in a voice weeping bitterness).
He finds a place to start in Tobirama, even in his absence. While he was searching for a man that seemed to linger in the shadows of the village he should have been the center of, he found those who would lead him forward. Mito-Sama found him lingering there even as Madara-Sama slipped away more and more, she saw him standing in the shadows of other people and beckoned him to follow her (she was amazing; regal and smart and fierce, and one of the greatest shinobi ever and she wanted to teach him).
Kagami is the only one Madara-Sama looks to before he leaves- had the brothers ever been that close? Why had Izuna fought so against peace even when it broke his brother's spirit to go on in war? And Kagami smiles as best he can and lets Madara-Oniisama go. That night he curls against Mito-Sama as she goes through the work of keeping a village safe and he doesn’t regret saying goodbye with a smile (not even when it all goes wrong, not even then).