Falling.
I was falling just like in those dreams where you roll off the side of a cliff, except I wasn’t waking up. My stomach plummeted, my heart fluttered, my breath drained from my lungs. When I finally opened my eyes, I saw the sky above me and, for a moment, I could almost pretend that I was lying in a windy field. A flash of green framed my vision—the tops of trees—before a stinging pain flared across my back and I was no longer falling, but sinking. My consciousness faded to the sound of water rushing over me.
When I came to, I was spitting up water and gulping down lungfuls of air. My skin felt cold and clammy, my eyelids heavy, and my chest sore and bruised. I heard a voice—or rather, I felt a voice, muffled as it rumbled against my ear. I vaguely noted that I was being carried, cradled in strong arms that held me against a broad chest.
If I knew death was gonna be a bad acid trip, I never would have bought that gun, I thought dryly. My brows furrowed as I began to recall what were supposed to have been my final moments. I had just finished writing a note for my family. I had clutched a pistol in my sweaty palms, convinced that this was the only choice I had left, and then…
I should be dead.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” came another rumbled string of words.
I blinked open my eyes again, squinting against the light that filtered through the trees above. The world was spinning around me and my stomach churned violently.
“Gonna puke,” I managed to wheeze mere seconds before I was deposited on my knees as my stomach emptied itself onto the ground.
I felt a hand on my back, offering a steadying point of contact as I tried to regain my bearings. My throat burned with the acid of vomiting on an empty stomach. I gasped through the sickness, digging my fingers into the dirt.
“Where am I?” I asked once I was sure I could speak without going another round.
“Just outside the borders of Konohagakure… You’re lucky, you know. If I hadn’t been patrolling the perimeter, you’d likely be dead.”
“I’m sorry, I must still have water in my ear,” I gritted out. “I thought you just said ‘Konohagakure’.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
I sat back on my knees and turned to face my saviour/captor, only to freeze where I sat. My brain fully shut down at the sight of him: long, unruly black hair, prominent bags under eyes just as dark, and a headband with an all too familiar insignia that most certainly wasn’t a cheap plastic replica you could buy at Walmart.
Either this freak had dedicated a ludicrous amount of time and money to create the most realistic cosplay of all time, or I was looking directly at Madara Uchiha in the flesh with my jaw hanging open like a dead fish.
“Judging by that look on your face—” he quirked a brow, resting an arm on his knee— “I’m starting to question that myself.”
I stared at him for a moment longer before glancing away, then I looked at him again with an even more confused expression than before.
“I’m dreaming, right?” I asked hopefully.
The man (I was absolutely not calling him “Madara” until I figured out what the hell was going on) snorted and rose to his feet, offering me a gloved hand. I looked back and forth between the hand and his face before taking it and letting him help me stand back up.
“I don’t think so,” he said, almost apologetically. “Why? You seem shocked to be where you are.”
“Well...yeah. I’m supposed to be dead,” I repeated. The man studied me for a moment.
“I sensed you fall from the sky. If that were your attempt at suicide, I’m rather curious to know how you managed to get up that high in the first place.” I furrowed my brows again.
“The sky?” I asked as if he were the crazy one. “No no no—I shot myself.” It sounded strange to say aloud, but in light of...everything else, it was by and large the one thing that made sense. “Like, in the head. With a gun. And I definitely wasn’t in the middle of...wherever the hell I am when I did it.” The man tilted his head.
“A gun?” he asked, the inflection of his tone making it seem as if he’d never even heard the word before. I stared at him for a moment before rolling my eyes with a put-upon sigh.
“Right, yeah. You wouldn’t know what that is, would you?” I said, lowering my face into my hand as I rubbed at my eyes. “So—so what is this? Did I die and go to LARPing Heaven or some shit? I could really use some straight answers before I go insane.”
“It sounds to me like you’re already halfway there,” the man said with a very judgemental look on his face. I shot him a glare as I crossed my arms. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Oh, of course. I’m the one not making sense,” I said. “Listen, buddy, your costume’s great and all, but I am seriously freaking out here!”
He flinched slightly as I flailed my arms, looking me up and down as if he expected me to pull a weapon on him. Instead, I began pacing around in a circle.
“None of this is real, okay? I’m-I’m—I’m dreaming or-or-or this is just some freaky whacked-out DMT trip as the life fades out of my real body back in the real world where I’m dying! This is just—”
I placed my hand over my mouth as I stopped moving. I swallowed down the growing lump in my throat as I turned to face the man again, eyes wide. Slowly I moved my hand from my mouth, letting it hover in the air as I tried to process everything that was happening to me.
“...I need help.”
“Clearly.”
Eventually I let him lead me back to the—God help me—village after I calmed down from my hysteria. I was astoundingly capable of mobility for having just shot myself, fallen out of the sky, and nearly drowned all before waking up to find myself in a goddamn anime. I really, really hated how fucking stupid that sounded. More than that, though, I hated that this guy was actually telling the truth as far as the laws of reality worked in this fucked up afterlife dimensional purgatory. We approached the gates of Konohagakure, but it didn’t appear in the way I was used to seeing it. The “wall” that surrounded the village was little more than a glorified picket fence, likely the work of a certain Mokuton user to act as a temporary barrier.
Not only had I somehow, freakishly managed to find myself in the weebiest of fictional TV shows, but I was so far back in the timeline that the main setting hadn’t even been established. I couldn’t even find comfort in knowing what was going on around me because this era of the canon hadn’t been thoroughly explored. Obviously this was before Madara had abandoned the village for his whack-job Infinite Tsukuyomi scheme and God I really needed to stop thinking of this as if it were real. This had to be some sort of nightmare, right? Of course, I wasn’t the only person who had fantasied about what it would be like to live in the Naruto universe, but this was so not what I’d had in mind.
Hell, given my unique experiences, I shouldn’t have been half as spooked as I was, but this was beyond insane. I believed in reincarnation, sure, and I recalled some of my past lives, but this was so far from what any of that was supposed to be. It was supposed to be reincarnating into a new life entirely; you know, reborn into a new body, growing up in a new timeline, and maybe, if I'm lucky, remembering my past lives again. But this…
I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at Madara to find him staring down at me with concern in his eyes. He nodded in front of us to what was clearly the Hokage building. I took a deep breath and nodded back at him, letting him lead me inside and up several flights of stairs until we reached the Hokage’s office. I held my breath as he opened the doors, the sound of hearty laughter reaching my ears. Inside sat the first Hokage himself, donned in his new traditional robes. He seemed to be in the midst of bantering with none other than the future second Hokage. I felt my sanity slipping with every new piece of evidence that proved this was real.
“Madara! I’m glad you’re back. Tobirama and I were just—”
Hashirama stopped when his eyes landed on me and I felt a burning desire to run away, run as far as I could from this hellscape and maybe seclude myself in a cave to rot. This was all just so, so stupid.
“Who is this?”
“To be honest… I’m not sure,” Madara said, casting another glance down at me. “I found her outside the village while I was patrolling. She was—”
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Stop.” I held up my hand, promptly interrupting whatever tale of insanity Madara was about to pin me with. “First of all, let’s get something straight.” I’m not, but that’s besides the point. “I am not a girl. I’m a guy, thanks for asking. You may continue.”
I gave an exaggerated flourish of my hand as if granting him my blessing to keep flapping his rude-ass jaws before crossing my arms over my chest and settling into a scowl. Normally I wouldn’t be so confrontational about correcting my pronouns, but my patience was already wearing thin as it stood and I wasn’t about to stand there and let that continue. I had my priorities straight, if nothing else.
“...Apologies,” Madara said after a moment, eyeing me with a look I was unfortunately desensitised to. “He—” I nodded at his correction and he went on, turning his gaze back to the brothers— “was half-dead in a lake a few miles from the northern gate.” He crossed his arms and took a breath as if preparing himself for the next part of his report. “He fell out of the sky.”
“Excuse me?” Tobirama chimed in with a subtle breath of laughter, standing from his perch on the edge of Hashirama’s desk. “Do you take us for fools, Madara? People don’t simply fall out of the sky.”
“This one did,” Madara retorted. “I know what I sensed. I’m sure if you had been paying attention, you would have sensed it, too. Besides, I’m not entirely convinced that sh—” I shot him a glare and he rolled his eyes with a huff— “that he is a ‘person’, so to speak.”
Wow. I honestly didn’t know if that were supposed to be an insult or not.
“What are you suggesting?” Tobirama asked with a scoff. “That he’s some sort of fallen angel? I never took you to be a man of religion.”
“I don’t know what to think. Maybe you should hear the story from him and tell me what you can make of it,” Madara said. “If you ask me, it’s all nonsense. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Why don’t we slow down for a minute?” Hashirama suggested, turning a reassuring smile on me. “How about you tell us your name, for starters?”
Oh great. This ought to be fun.
“Malakai,” I offered, knowing damn well this was just going to bring about more questions. “Malakai Nightingale.”
“That’s...unusual,” Hashirama said, no doubt choosing his words carefully. “Where is it from?”
“Not here.” I scoffed. “Look, I could tell you the truth, but you’re just going to think I’m crazy. Hell, I think I’m crazy. I shouldn’t even be here.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve mentioned before that you should be dead,” Madara said, leaning against a wall now. “I’m still unclear on that. You mentioned a ‘gun’?”
I groaned and let my head loll back on my shoulders.
“You people haven’t invented firearms yet, have you?” I asked hopelessly. “No, that’s not until the next generation,” I added under my breath.
“What?” Tobirama asked.
“Nothing. Um—” I paused to think as I began to gesture vaguely with my hands. “It’s like a… Think of a slingshot, but it’s made of metal and the ammunition is this tiny little...bead that explodes from the tip when you pull a trigger. It can cause some serious damage and it’s a terrible weapon, so I don’t suggest inventing it. It’ll just cause more death.”
“Like yours?” Madara asked with an arched brow. I nodded.
“Yeah. At least, that’s what should have happened.” I pursed my lips. “I blew my brains out of my skull with that thing. I remember that split second of pain— I died. And now, somehow, for some reason, I’m here. The real kick in the ass is that I thought this place was supposed to be fictional. It is where I come from, at least.”
“What do you mean by that?” Hashirama asked, folding his hands in front of him as he leaned forward on his desk. I heaved a sigh.
“Do you actually believe this?” Madara asked incredulously, pushing off the wall to stand up straight. “Do you really believe that this person…” he gestured toward me, “blew his brains out with some nonexistent weapon and then spontaneously found himself a mile above the ground in a completely different place?”
“You said it yourself, didn’t you?” Tobirama asked, his eyes never leaving my face. “You said that he fell from the sky. Did you sense him before then?”
“Well… No, but—”
“Then we can’t rule out any possibilities,” the albino interrupted. “For all we know, he could even be a spy from another village or mercenary clan out for a bounty. I say we lock him up, keep him under observation until we can make sense of the situation.”
“Hey, wait a minute! Lock me up? You’re going to keep me prisoner?” I asked.
“It’s our only option right now. We can’t exactly allow you to walk freely around our village when none of us know exactly who you are, where you came from, or why you’re here.”
Tobirama stepped forward, pausing a few feet in front of me as I backed up against the door.
“Brother?”
My frantic eyes flickered toward the Hokage, pleading silently with him to veto this idiotic decision. He furrowed his brows and pursed his lips, looking away.
“We’ll try to make your arrangements comfortable for you in the meantime. I’m sorry, but we can’t risk the safety of our people,” he said, voice soft.
I floundered as Tobirama took hold of one of my arms, then nodded for Madara to take the other. They escorted me out of the Hokage’s office as I threw one final pitiful look over my shoulder at Hashirama. I knew the bitch couldn’t be trusted, but this was another level of bastard.
Even so, I didn’t put up much of a fight as they led me to the makeshift holding cells in an underground facility. Tobirama had wrapped some sort of paper seals around my wrists—chakra suppressants, if I had to guess. I couldn’t even find the will to laugh. Did I even have usable chakra? I didn’t feel any differently than before. It was probably just a precautionary measure, much like the way Tobirama placed another seal on the wooden door to my cell and locked it with his own chakra.
“Madara will stay here to keep an eye on you for now,” he said. “I have much to discuss with my brother.”
“The hell I will! Why do I have to get stuck babysitting?” Madara protested.
“Because you’re the one who found him and brought him here,” Tobirama said, turning a glare onto the Uchiha. “You didn’t even restrain him before letting him inside the village. What if he had hurt somebody?”
“You have better sensory capabilities than I do, Senju. His chakra signature is practically nonexistent,” Madara pointed out. “He’s weaker than most of the civilians in this village.”
“We can’t afford to take any chances. Not now,” Tobirama snapped. “We’ve just begun to stabilise the village. To jeopardise it at this point would require a level of treachery or just plain stupidity that I would never expect from you of all people. Watch him. Take some responsibility for your mistakes.”
With that, Tobirama walked out, leaving Madara to gape at what he undoubtedly found to be the most blasphemous of insults. I sighed and took a seat on the bench at the back of the cell, leaning forward to hold my head in my hands. All was silent for a moment until I heard Madara pull up a chair in front of the cell door. I glanced up from between my fingers to find him staring at me none too kindly. Awesome.
“I’m sor—”
“Don’t.” He cut me off. “I’m not a fan of small talk and I won’t be accepting any apologies or half-truths from you until we can be sure you’re not a threat.”
I lifted my head from my hands and sat back against the cold stone wall, levelling a glare on him.
“Don’t you think that if I wanted to hurt anyone here, I would have taken a little more care to ‘infiltrate’ the village?” I asked. He said nothing and I shook my head with a humourless laugh. “Right. Forget it. I’m taking a nap.”
“What?” Madara narrowed his eyes at me as I shifted around to lie down on the bench.
“I said I’m taking a nap,” I repeated. “I’ve kinda been through a lot today, what with dying and then taking a blind dive into a lake in a fucking TV show.”
“A what?”
“Shut up.”
I closed my eyes to avoid looking at whatever offended ire was creeping onto Madara’s expression. I had my doubts that many people would dare to speak to him that way, let alone act so casual around him. Hashirama and Tobirama were exceptions, clearly, but as far as Madara was concerned, he was practically the terror of the shinobi world, second in power only to Hashirama himself.
“You ought to mind your tone, boy.”
I cracked open one eye to see scarlet flash in the gaze on the other side of the bars. I squeezed my eyes shut again as fast as I could, but it was a futile effort. Within seconds I was strapped to a vertical surface crucifixion-style. In my mind’s eye, Madara stood before me, clad in his traditional war armour instead of that vested excuse for a uniform. I mean, really, I could understand it being used in later generations after the bloodiest of wars were over with, but in this day and age, was it really a wise decision?
“Let me guess,” I said, lolling my head to the side as I stared at Madara. “This is the part where you ‘teach me a lesson’, right?”
I could talk a big game, but I wasn’t so foolish to think that Madara couldn’t practically feel the fear radiating off of me in waves. This was his world, his game, his rules. The real kicker was that I had no idea how to tap into any supposed chakra I may or may not have possessed in order to break this godforsaken genjutsu, not that I thought muttering a simple “kai” would be enough to shatter something of Madara’s creation.
“You’re awfully quick-witted for someone who should be dead,” he said as he began to circle me. “Now that we’ve got a little private time together, why don’t you tell me all about that? In detail. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“Oh, perfect. Maybe now you’ll finally believe me,” I said, rolling my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I squirmed against the ropes that bound me in place, wincing as they dug into my wrists and ankles. “Don’t suppose you’d like to let me down so we can settle this over a cup of tea?”
“Not likely.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered. I rolled my shoulders, trying and failing to get comfortable. I had a feeling I would be here for a while. “Guess I’ll start from the beginning. I was born on October sixth in a little town known as ‘go fuck yourself’ to two loving parents by the names of ‘mind your own damn—’”
I was cut off by a gloved hand circling around my throat, the man of the hour standing mere inches away from my face as the Sharingan swirled into an elaborate pinwheel that somehow managed to spin threateningly.
“Bite your tongue,” Madara growled. “I could kill you here and now. Do you understand that?”
“Got a feelin’ your sugar daddy and the blizzard on legs wouldn’t appreciate that very much,” I choked out with every ounce of sarcastic bitch I could muster.
Madara narrowed his red eyes and wrenched his hand away. I gasped for breath, coughing up the unpleasant tickle left behind along with what was sure to be a hand-shaped bruise around my neck. Madara stared at me for what felt like an eternity before he spoke again, a suspicious grin twitching at his lips.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t bring you so close to the edge that you wish I would kill you,” he said. I wheezed out a scoff and clicked my tongue.
“Naughty naughty. Are you trying to make me hard?”
There were few things in life (or, in my case, the afterlife...life) that were quite so satisfying as watching a deep red flush crawl up the cheeks of Madara Uchiha himself. I never would have imagined the man was such a prude.
“Are you ill? Do you think that’s funny?”
“Well, I’m laughing. On the inside,” I assured him. “You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little slow on the uptake when it comes to threats against my life. I already ended it once. What’s round two for a dead man walking?”
Madara watched me in silence for a pregnant moment as the blush faded from his face.
“You’re either incredibly skilled at bluffing...or you’re actually telling the truth,” he surmised. I raised and dropped my brows.
“Bingo! We have a winner.”
“Half the things that come out of your foul mouth make no sense,” Madara said. “The least you could do is speak normally if you want there to be any chance for me to understand your situation.”
“Honey, even I don’t understand my situation. What makes you think you can figure this out?” I asked, all traces of humour vanishing from my voice. “Fact is...I killed myself. I came from a universe where all of this—” I gestured to the world around me— “was just a TV show. You wouldn’t know what that is, of course, but think of it like a picture book. A book about a fantastical world with people and creatures and powers that are so far beyond your comprehension...that surely you would never come close to seeing it become a reality. Where I come from? People aren’t shinobi. We don’t have chakra—at least not the way people do here—we don’t have crazy, magical powers, we don’t have anything but life, death, and taxes. In all my lifetimes, I have never experienced something so excruciatingly boring. I guess that’s part of why I decided to leave it behind.”
Madara opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it and closed it again. He seemed to take a moment to process what I had said before he finally spoke.
“You said...in all your lifetimes?” he asked, peering at me with a curious glint in his eye.
“Yeah,” I said matter-of-factly with an abandoned attempt at a shrug. “I mean, I’ve been reincarnated before, but nothing like this. Hell, I’ve been here before. Well, not here, here, but, like...in this universe. Or a universe like this one. It’s...hard to explain.”
“Try anyway,” Madara said, crossing his arms. Oh joy. I sighed.
“To be honest with you…I had my doubts that reincarnation, the way I experienced it, was actually...real, you know?” I said. I tried to articulate my words in such a way that what I was about to say would make sense to anyone but me. “I’m still not entirely sold on the idea that this isn’t some sort of fever dream as I find my way into the white light or whatever. When I was reincarnated in my past lives, I’m not even sure if I remembered any of my lives before them. I remembered a good deal of them in my most recent past life, and I still remember them now, but I’ve never been...just...taken somewhere, I guess. Each time, I was reborn completely. A baby with a new body, a new name, a new personality, for the most part. But this… I’m still just me. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re telling me,” Madara said with a snort.
“My point exactly. I have no idea how or why I ended up here like this.”
“You said you’ve been here before. Sort of,” Madara added.
I stumbled forward as I suddenly found my feet back on the ground, the tethers holding me in an involuntary T-pose nowhere to be found. I rubbed my wrists only to find that the soreness had disappeared along with them.
“Tell me what you meant by that.”
I glanced up to meet Madara’s eyes again, this time to find they had returned to their normal shade of black. I crossed my arms over my chest and worried at my lip as I thought of how to answer him.
“I don’t know if I should tell you,” I admitted slowly. “Not that I don’t want to, but it might...mess with things.”
“What things?” he asked, furrowing his brows. I took another deep breath and reached up to run a hand through my hair.
“Timeline things,” I clarified. “As in...destiny or whatever. Specifically yours.”
“Elaborate.”
“...Remember how I said this world was just fictional where I came from?” I asked. He nodded once. “Well… Let’s just say I know how the story ends. I know what happens, when it happens, most of the time why it happens, and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to tamper with what’s meant to be. As far as I’m aware, this timeline is still steady on the tracks that it’s supposed to be on. If I give you too much information about it, it could really screw things up.”
“If—and I emphasise the if—you have the ability to know what will come to pass, don’t you think it would be a good idea to warn us?” Madara asked. I opened my mouth to answer, but paused. Instead I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes at him.
“Interesting choice of words. What makes you think it would be a warning?”
Madara said nothing. We stared each other down for another eternity before he finally released his breath in a huff.
“You don’t really have to ask that question, do you?”
His words were more of a statement than a question. I tightened my jaw and nodded.
“So you know. About the Uchiha and Senju,” I said. Madara lifted his head to stare down his nose at me.
“And you were telling the truth, it seems. In that case, what have I got to lose?”
I guess I couldn’t argue with that logic.
“You plan to kill Hashirama,” I began. “It won’t end the way you want it to, but you’ll have a back-up plan to use the Izanagi to escape death. You’ll go into hiding with the chunk of DNA you took from Hashirama, cultivate his cells to attach to yourself and awaken the Rinnegan, and then you’ll wait. You’ll wait for years until someone comes along to help you achieve your ultimate goal: the Infinite Tsukuyomi.”
Madara’s eyes widened a fraction as he looked me up and down.
“You do know a lot, don’t you?”
“Yeah, and you know what else?” I said, my temper rising alongside my impatience. “It doesn’t. End. Well. For anybody, and that includes you. I mean— You know what? Fuck it.”
I spread my arms and decided to lay it all on the table, damned be destiny or anything else that saw fit to put me here in the first place.
“That tablet? It’s been altered. Zetsu fucked with it so you would read what he wanted you to read. The Infinite Tsukuyomi? It’s not ‘world peace’. It’s a goddamn death sentence for everyone involved and you’re the bastard who gets possessed by the lunar bitch that wants to take over the world. You die for nothing. Everything you’ve been led to believe is a lie. And now, since I’ve told you that, which I pray to God has knocked some sense into you, Zetsu is just gonna manipulate the next reincarnation of Indra and fuck over everything! Are you happy?”
The stunned silence that followed my outburst was all but deafening. The colour had fully drained from Madara’s face as he stood before me with a slack jaw and the tiniest hint of regret in his eyes. I turned away from him with an exasperated breath, beginning to pace around slowly as I took a moment to regain my composure.
That was quite possibly the stupidest thing I had ever done and I’d done a lot of stupid shit across my lifetimes. If Zetsu couldn’t guide Madara down the path to revive Kaguya, then he would just target Sasuke next. If I were just stuck here in this era, then there was no way I would still be around to warn Sasuke before Zetsu got to him. The only way I could think to stop it before it was out of our hands…
“We have to kill him,” I said without warning. I spun back around to face Madara, strolling right up to him. “We have to kill Zetsu. Do you know where he is?”
“I—” Madara paused to swallow, evidently still processing the new information I had presented to him. “No, I—I’ve never heard of him before you...told me.”
I threw my hands into the air.
“Great. Perfect. Awesome. This is just fantastic,” I spat to no one in particular as I resumed my pacing. “Now that you know what he’s planning, it won’t be long before he figures out that you won’t go through with the Infinite Tsukuyomi anymore. ...You’re not, right?” I asked, turning an expectant look on him.
Madara pursed his lips and said nothing. I turned around to face him fully, disbelief painting my features.
“Tell me you’re not going through with it.”
“First of all you’re in no place to give me orders,” Madara said lowly. “Second of all what I plan to do is my business and my business alone. What would you have me do? Let Hashirama’s spineless foolishness corrupt what we’ve bled for and fought so hard to achieve? This village will be in shambles when I’m no longer here to keep it afloat.”
“It won’t! That’s the whole point! God you’re dense.” I rolled my eyes with a scoff. “The village will still be here long after you’re gone. Hell, it’s still here long after the Fourth War ends with your sorry ass in a second grave.”
“Then...remind me why my current plan is a bad thing?” Madara asked as if he had some sort of point. I glared at him.
“Because, ass for brains, you damn near bring on the fucking apocalypse! There’s a blond idiot years down the road that takes your plan and squishes it with his little finger, but not before massive casualties. Madara, if you do this, you’re going to start another war and it’s going to do more harm than good. And, hey, call me crazy, but I’d rather see you live your life rather than waste away on some self-righteous mission that’s only going to end in blood, death, and betrayal.”
“And why do you care so much? If you know what I’m capable of doing, then why spare an ounce of sympathy for me?” he asked.
To his credit, it was one hell of a good question. It took longer than I cared to admit to figure out a way to phrase my answer that wouldn’t make me sound bat-shit insane.
“...Because I know you. I know you in and out, up and down, and I know that if you had lived through it all, you would rot in guilt and regret,” I said. “I’ve seen it happen.”
“How? How could you see me live to regret my actions if I’m supposed to die at the end of the story?”
“Okay, newsflash, asshole: this isn’t the only timeline!” I told him. “There’s the canon timeline, the one everyone and their mother knows about back home, and then there are splinter timelines. Ones that end differently. Ones where people make different decisions. I happen to have exclusive insight on one of those timelines where you get your act together in the middle of the bloodshed and you’re left with nothing but a crippled body and the memories of all the people who died trying to stop you up until that point. I am truly amazed that you lived as long as you did after that.”
“...Is this from one of your past lives?” Madara asked after a moment. I pursed my lips and shook my head.
“No. Not mine. Someone else’s.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
That seemed to be enough to give him something to think about for a while. I hefted a sigh and walked over to the cross I had been strapped to some time ago—I couldn’t tell how long at this point. I leaned back against it and slid down to the ground until I was sitting there and staring blankly at the endless red sky above.
This kind of reincarnation was already nearly impossible to explain to someone back home, let alone someone from this universe. How was I supposed to explain a system? A soulbond?
I realized then that, despite everything that hadn’t changed since waking up from committing suicide in another dimension, one thing was different. I couldn’t hear my headmates anymore. There was only radio silence apart from my own thoughts, but I was drowning in them as it was. Of all the things to change, did it have to be the only people I had ever found comfort in over the years? The people who had helped to shape me into who I was? The people who, for all intents and purposes, were the only family I had known for the better part of my short life?
Losing them, all of them, when I needed them most was the cruellest twist of fate this destiny bullshit could have handed to me. How was I going to get through this with only the pieces of myself that were still barely left intact? Would I get through this? Was I really just stuck here for another partial lifetime until I met my demise in a different way? A likely more painful way?
I didn’t realise I was crying—sobbing, really—until I felt something against my cheek. I sniffled through my suddenly very stuffy nose and looked up to find Madara crouched in front of me, brushing away a streak of tears with his thumb. When I blinked, the fabricated world around me dissipated, leaving me back in the cell. Madara was still in front of me, having opened the door to reach me.
“Why are you crying?” he asked with a voice much softer than before. I sniffled again and swallowed, averting my eyes as I tried to wipe my wet cheek on my shoulder.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not important,” I mumbled.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible liar?” he asked. He had yet to withdraw his hand from my face.
“No, not really,” I said with a weak laugh. “I’m usually pretty good at it.”
I could feel his eyes on me for a few beats of silence that was only interrupted by my dwindling hiccups.
“You’ll tell me,” he said finally. “Some other time. I believe you said something about killing a man who thinks he can toy with my life?”
My eyes shot back to meet his then, wide and disbelieving. Madara smirked and pulled his hand away as he stood.
“It’s only a matter of time, right? According to your predictions, we have a small window of opportunity to send this fool to the depths of Yomi no Kuni before he moves on to his next target. ...I’m still not clear on that, by the way.”
I scrambled to my feet, furiously wiping at the dampness that still clung to my face.
“That’s not even the half of it,” I said, ducking past him to walk through the open cell door. “You’re going to lose your mind when I tell you he’s not a man at all.”
“Pardon?”
“Come on.” I beckoned him to follow me as I sought out the damn exit from this place. “We have some research to do.”
With Madara’s navigational help, we arrived at the village library. It wasn’t much (yet), but with any luck, it would have what I was looking for. As much as I enjoyed the series I was currently partaking in, I wasn’t such a dedicated fan that I knew every little detail about every little event. There was just one place that could be a potential lead on finding Zetsu and I couldn’t remember what it was called for the life of me. It occurred to me belatedly that I couldn’t read a single thing from any of the texts in that library. I found it rather odd that I could speak the language, or that everyone else could speak my language, but I still couldn’t read the writing.
Madara must have thought me a simpleton when I asked him to read things aloud to me. I told him it was just a language barrier, which didn’t really help my case since we were blatantly communicating just fine, but oh well. I told him I was looking for a map, a very specific map, a map that provided the location of a very specific place. At this point I honestly couldn’t blame him if he thought I was just a pure idiot. I tried to explain the geography: there was an underground cave somewhere, likely with some historic significance, and it had to be relatively close to the borders of the Land of Fire. We must have been rummaging through useless scrolls and incomplete maps for hours by the time we were interrupted.
“When I said ‘keep an eye on him’,” came a low, growling voice behind our backs. Madara and I simultaneously froze in place. “I meant ‘don’t let him escape’, you frothing moron!”
I could nearly see the veins throbbing in Madara’s temples mere seconds before he whirled around to face Tobirama.
“Well, I guess this is what happens when you make me play watchdog with a chew toy,” he shot back. “Unclench your asshole, Senju. As you can see, he quite clearly has not escaped.”
Tobirama didn’t miss a beat despite the colourful insult thrown his way.
“Then would you care to enlighten me as to why, exactly, the two of you are prancing around as if he’s not the prisoner we’re supposed to keep under observation and you’re not the idiot who let him walk out?” he asked coolly.
I pursed my lips and discreetly began to shuffle out of the line of fire.
“How about: it’s none of your damn business? I have everything under control.”
“Do you?”
Tobirama’s hand lashed out to grip my shoulder, firmly holding me in place and thwarting my attempts to crawl away from their pissing contest.
“Disobeying a direct order is your idea of handling a situation?”
“The only reason I listen to half of your inane ‘orders’ is because Hashirama will throw a fit if he gets the slightest hint that we’re not getting along,” Madara snarled. “Besides, it’s not as if you’ve been very subtle lately. It’s painfully obvious you’re only trying to keep me domesticated because you don’t trust me to take missions outside of the village. I’m like a damn dog on a leash with all these pointless patrol shifts you have me running! I am a warrior fit for battle, not chasing away defenceless stragglers seeking asylum.”
“You’re unstable.”
Those two words seemed to slice through the icy tension that had built up in the room. Madara’s face hardened as Tobirama set his jaw and squared his shoulders as if he expected a physical rebuttal. On the contrary, nothing of the sort came. Instead Madara took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes as he let it out all at once. When he opened his eyes again, his tone was decidedly more calm.
“As much as I value your opinion, get bent. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have work to do,” he said, turning back to the parchment spread across the table in front of us.
“What work?” Tobirama asked, his grip still firm on my shoulder. I had a feeling I was going to bruise. “You’ve yet to explain why this boy is walking about the village freely.”
Jeez. I’m twenty-four years old. The least these people could do is call me a man.
“I believe I already told you that it’s none of your business, Senju,” Madara said absentmindedly.
I rolled my eyes.
“We’re trying to stop the end of the world as we know it,” I said.
Tobirama’s sharp eyes snapped toward me. I nearly flinched under his gaze, but gathered enough nerve to continue speaking.
“There’s...a place we have to go. We have to kill this thing before it ruins everything.”
“Madara,” Tobirama said, his eyes still fixated on me. “What is he talking about?”
“Guys?” I interrupted before they could start at each other’s throats again.
I pointed to an eerily familiar painting in one of the scrolls, tilting my head slightly. It was rendered only in black ink, so it wasn’t immediately recognizable, but once Madara helpfully read out the text captioning the image, I was sure of it.
“This is it. That’s the place.”
“Mountains’ Graveyard?” Madara asked sceptically, straightening his back from where he had been hunched over the table. “That’s where you think Zetsu is?”
“No, I think that’s where he might be,” I corrected. “And even then the probability is pretty low. There’s nothing that gave away where Zetsu was hiding before he found your corpse.”
I pointedly left out the bit about Madara’s big battle with Hashirama for Tobirama’s sake.
“His what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving him off. “If we go there, there’s a chance we could find him or at least track him down. If he’s not staying there, he’s probably making frequent visits at least to keep an eye on the other Zetsu.”
“You’re not making any sense again,” Madara warned.
I gave a long-suffering sigh.
“Alright, here’s the low-down: this bitch named Kaguya Otsutsuki rode a meteor to Earth or some shit like a million years ago.” A great way to start the story, really. “She was the progenitor of all shinobi and she’s the one who planted the God Tree that gave you all your chakra. When people pissed her off, she mojo’d the God Tree to wrap everyone in the vicinity in these coma cocoons where their humanity rotted away until they were nothing but human husks, sort of like zombies for her to control. Those zombies are still underground in the Mountains’ Graveyard and I think some other places, too, but that’s not important right now. They’re sleeping or something.
“Anyway, years down the line, Zetsu would have amassed an army of these other Zetsu to use in the Fourth War. Even if he’s not there when we get there, we can still take out those sleeper agents so they don’t royally fuck us over in the foreseeable future.”
“Wait—wait. Slow down. What in the Sage’s name are you talking about?” Tobirama asked, forcefully spinning me around to face him. I looked up at him, leaning back somewhat as I remembered just how tall he was.
“You ever wonder where that phrase came from? ‘Sage’s name’? As in, the Sage of Six Paths? You might have heard of him?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. Tobirama gaped.
“Of course I’ve heard of him. Everyone with an ounce of education has heard of him, but he’s nothing more than folklore. A myth,” he said, crossing his arms. “What’s your point, exactly?”
“My point is that the Sage of Six Paths was a real dude, genius, and he was Kaguya’s son,” I said. “One of them, anyway. The other one lives on the moon, but—quit distracting me!”
I moved to turn back around to the scroll, but as an afterthought, I turned around to face Tobirama again.
“Hey, and while you’re at it, don’t fucking do what you plan to do to the Uchiha when you become Hokage, ‘kay babe?”
I tentatively patted his arm before turning around again, leaving him to fend for himself as Madara levelled him with a glare of pure, seething hatred. Well, if stoking the flames of what was already a ten-foot bonfire was going to be my only form of entertainment, then so be it. Returning my focus to the scroll, I cross-referenced one of the maps lying before me and discovered that it was a little farther away than I thought it would be and by a little I meant a lot. As in it was on its own goddamn peninsula between Takigakure and Ta no Kuni. Awesome.
“Okay!” I straightened myself with a huff. “Ready?” I asked, looking at Madara. He tore his death-laced eyes away from Tobirama long enough to raise his eyebrows at me.
“Excuse me?” I stared at him.
“Are you ready? To go?” I asked again, gesturing toward the door. Madara breathed a laugh without smiling.
“Cute. Simmer down, pipsqueak,” he said, channelling some serious nerve to pat the top of my head. “We have time. We need time to plan our strategy and prepare.”
I hated to admit that he was right.
“Who said you’re going anywhere?” Tobirama chimed in once more. Both of us turned to look at him expectantly. He cleared his throat. “Neither of you is stepping foot outside this village without explicit approval from Hashirama, which I doubt you’ll obtain.”
“And what makes you say that?” I asked, crossing my arms. Tobirama slowly turned his gaze onto me.
“Logic. Which is something you seem to be lacking,” he said. “Have you listened to a single word you’ve said? You’re a basket case.”
“Oh, so...you weren’t planning on segregating the Uchiha under the guise of domestic police enforcement?” I asked, tilting my head to the side. That shut him up real quick. “I know things that would give you nightmares. So why don’t you get that stick out of your ass and relax?”
If the tension in his jaw were any indicator, I was tempted to say he was on the verge of that signature pout of his. Unfortunately, I had way too much mercy for my own good.
“Look. Nobody has to make a big deal out of this. You can come with us to talk to Hashirama—hell, you can come with us to take this guy down!”
“What?” Madara piped up. “No he can’t.” He looked at Tobirama. “No you can’t.”
“Assuming you’ll even be allowed to go on this half-baked mission, why the hell not?” Tobirama asked, quirking an inquisitive brow at the Uchiha.
“Because you’re an asshole and I hate you,” he replied. It was as good a reason as any I’d ever heard.
“Boys, boys, boys,” I interjected, placing one hand on both of their chests.
Honestly? It was purely for the gratification of feeling the muscles beneath. I would be damned if I didn’t take the opportunity to feel up two of the hottest dudes I’d ever laid eyes on in my own fucking afterlife or whatever the hell this was.
“You’re coming,” I said to Tobirama before turning to Madara. “He’s coming.”
“And just who died and put you in charge?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
“Uh, I did. Suck it up. You scare me, and I don’t trust him not to follow us anyway, so he’s coming,” I said with finality.
This whole taking-charge thing was kind of working for me. Of course, I was ever aware that the only reason I was still alive right now was because I was a goddamn enigma and humans were just naturally obsessed with the future. As long as I had information that piqued their interest, they would probably keep me around.
“Now. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but can we please go talk to Hashirama?”
Tobirama rolled his eyes.
“He’s never going to allow this,” he said. I offered him a sly smile and a wink.
“We’ll see about that.”
A little over half an hour later, the three of us emerged from the Hokage building.
“I cannot believe he said yes,” Tobirama griped as if he hadn’t been complaining about the exact same thing the entire time they were walking back down to ground level.
“I can,” I said with an unusually big grin on my face. “Like I said~ I know things. Why do you think I insisted on both of you coming along?”
I glanced back to watch them exchange stares in silence. Turning around, I started to walk backwards with my hands tucked behind my back.
“It’s the perfect bonding experience! You’ll both be on the same mission, forced to spend some of that good ‘ole quality time together. Dangle a little potential for friendship in front of that guy and, well, if it barks like a dog— You know the rest.” I turned around again with a laugh.
“You devious, conniving little—”
“Watch it,” Tobirama snapped. “As loathe as I am to admit it… He’s right. Hashirama is too gullible for his own good.”
“And you’re just realising that?” Madara asked with a snort. “Here I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius.”
“What was the last jutsu you invented?” Tobirama asked. “Oh, that’s right. You didn’t.”
“The second I have the opportunity, I’m going to wring your neck with my bare hands.”
“Is that all?” Tobirama rolled his eyes. I let my head loll back with a groan.
“Are you two going to do this the entire time?” I asked. “Man. It was funny at first, but this shit gets old real quick.”
“This is precisely why I advised against taking him along,” Madara said.
“You say that as if you had a choice in the matter,” Tobirama quipped.
“Are you trying to get me to kill you?”
“Don’t act like you haven’t fantasied about it.”
“Oh, you have no idea. Given half the chance, there are a million and one ways I’d like to watch you die.”
“Is one of those by talking my ears off? Honestly, I could go deaf listening to you bitch and moan all day.”
“Enough!”
They both came to a halt as I whirled around to face them again. This stopped being funny about twenty insults ago.
“Christ, you two are dysfunctional.” What in the hell did those two ever see in each other? “Listen, if you’re both going on this mission, I’m setting some ground rules right now. Keep the arguing to a stark minimum. If I have to break you two apart more than three times a day—”
“You’ll what?” Madara interrupted. “This is what you signed up for, pipsqueak. Deal with the consequences.”
“Do you want my help or not?” I asked. “Because believe me I am not afraid to double dose myself and put an end to all this once for all and just leave you two here to steep in your own self-absorbed bullshit and figure it out on your own. If you think you can go take down those Zetsu motherfuckers by yourselves, be my guest. I’m just a basket case, right? A liability? You obviously don’t need my help, so just forget it. I’ll see you dumb shits in the next afterlife.”
I pivoted on my heel and made it about five steps before I felt the tears prickling at my eyes. I hated getting so worked up like that. The stupid, idiot hormones in my body made it annoyingly easy to cry any and every time I failed to keep my emotions in check. Anger, sadness—it didn’t matter. This was the last place I wanted to break down and I needed to find somewhere isolated fast. It was bad enough that the dam broke in front of Madara of all people, but if Tobirama saw me like this, too…
It would be like that night all over again.
I blindly managed to take a few more steps before a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. I didn’t turn around; I didn’t need to in order to know Tobirama stood behind me. His skin was just as cold as I’d thought it would be, sending a shock of alarm across my nerves. I closed my eyes, willing away the waterworks for as long as I could before I really made a fool of myself.
“...I’m...sorry, for what I said,” came the albino’s voice. “It was uncalled for. I haven’t made enough of an effort to understand you and for that I apologise.”
“Just go,” I whispered, unable to raise my voice any higher for fear of it cracking. “I’m not gonna off myself again, just… I need time alone. I’ll go sit in jail or something, okay? You’ll know where to find me when you’re ready to leave.”
A few beats of silence passed, but eventually Tobirama’s hand slipped away. I did my best to try to hide the shudders of my body as I felt the sobs begin to build in the back of my throat. I didn’t wait for him to say anything else, or Madara for that matter. I started walking in the direction I vaguely remembered the holding cells to be. Hopefully I wouldn’t get lost, but...it didn’t really make a difference. One of them would find me eventually, anyway. That is, if they still wanted me around. I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t.
I was losing my mind, slowly but surely. I was clearly already in a bad place, so much so that I had sought out that sweet, tempting eternal slumber that had stricken so much fear in me for years. Instead of peace, though, or Hell, or even reincarnation, I ended up here. Was some sort of god trying to teach me a lesson? Was this illusion meant to be my purgatory? Would I ever get to leave? What would happen if I died here, too? Would a natural death allow me to move on from this shell of a body and go wherever the Powers That Be had planned for me next?
What am I supposed to do?
Somehow I did manage to find my way back to the cells. I stepped back inside the one I had been left in earlier, making a beeline for the bench. I was still pretty tired and I never got the chance to take that nap. After...everything, it was really the only thing I could think to do. I had evaded the tears that were threatening to fall before, but I was left with an aching numbness that I couldn’t shake. Maybe it would go away once I’d gotten some rest, but I knew better than to fall for wishful thinking.