Until the stars die

Independent Uchiha Madara roleplay & ask blog

[moonmurmur-blog]

Use the letters of your muse’s first name to describe their personality. Tagged by: shinbashira

M— positive trait: Methodical  || negative trait:  || Maladjusted

A — positive trait: Adaptable || negative trait:  || Arrogant

D — positive trait: Devoted || negative trait:  || Despairing

A — positive trait: Articulate || negative trait:   || Abrasive

R— positive trait: Romantic (philosophically) || negative trait:  || Ruthless

A — positive trait: Astute || negative trait:  || Ambitious

[shinbashira]

A thought.

When creation is as easy and natural as the pulse of his heart, practice becomes unnecessary. Creation becomes an idle hobby, a pleasure to partake in private. So here he comes to sit by the riverbank, between the patches of sunlight, underneath the warm rays obscured by the shadows of leaves above. Here he comes to think and to breathe and to create.

Thus, a breath; and he exhales chakra into a trembling sprout that buds from his upturned palm.

To say that it is only a thought which brings life to a fresh bud is untrue. It requires a precision with twining or tugging or tamping that makes the difference between lotus or rafflesia, yew or maple. With mokuton, the finest of details must be accounted for, down to the thickness of a flower’s stem or the pattern of a leaf’s veins. One must visualise perfectly even the grains of wood. The texture of petals. Sharpness of thorns. Shape.  Colour.   Odour.    All.

The sprout grows in size.  A leaf unfurls from its side. He wonders: could he create flora that he has not yet seen— that perhaps does not yet exist?

Light footsteps upon soft earth rouse him from his reverie; at once, he stands, enclosing the fluttering of life among his fingers.

Hashirama turns to greet the approacher. “Hello,—”

[moonmurmur-blog]

He approaches him warily, sunken eyes absorbing his every move. Peace, peace. They are at peace now, and a peace that has lasted long enough for them to build a compound. But still he hesitates, still his shoulders tense the moment he feels the other begin to weave his chakra. There is a fear and a violence in peace that Madara has yet to grow accustomed to, the violence of waiting.

Uchiha Madara does not return the pleasantry. He rarely does. “It will be sundown soon.” The clans are eating together tonight, a large supper suggested by the elders in honor of a moon passing since the ground was broken for the first building. Madara scowls thinking about it, knowing all too well that he will be turning his nose up at some of the Senju specialties. Why a forest clan preferred so much food from the river was beyond his comprehension.

When Hashirama doesn’t immediately respond, the Uchiha stops several feet before him to watch. He crouches to the ground, willing himself to keep calm, to stop the flare of chakra behind his eyes that always struggles to burst forth at the sight of mokuton. The Sharingan is not a gift made for peace, he reflects; outside of sparring, he has been unable to find a way to advance his skills as of late, while the Senju has leapt forward with his own. “What are you creating?” he wants to ask, but he keeps silent.

[shinbashira]

“—Madara.” A smile slides easily into place. A disarming smile in the face of Madara’s scowl, a soft curve of lips that borders on affectionate, too intimate to be called merely cordial. Hashirama takes care to keep himself at an acceptable distance, knowing that Madara at this early stage in their ceasefire would only respond with recoil.

So, he waits. He does not respond immediately to the other man’s statement, and instead waits for him to adjust.   To take the next step forward. When Madara finally moves, crouching to the forest floor, Hashirama takes that as cue to continue.

“You warn me against being late for our communion, yet sit beside me as if stopping to relax?” he teases, a gentle push against their boundaries. He, too, returns to his seat— beside Madara, now— and gently brings his enclosed hands into the space between them.

Hashirama feels, rather than sees, the flash of sharingan ready to manifest. That particular chakra, he is intimately familiar with. Truth be told, it is something that Hashirama had begun to miss in even these few weeks of peace.

A quiet sense  of the anticipation   of being    suffocated.

Every inch of Madara’s being ready to— fight? to flee?—, energy trembling just beneath the surface of his skin, barely-contained, always threatening to burst. Hashirama looks at him and can’t help but wonder; What are you waiting for?

Unasked questions receive unanswered replies  in the bare curiosity that burns alongside the chakra behind his eyes. Madara can be surprisingly easy to read.

(The ease with which he understands him startles Hashirama at times. The idea of knowing Madara, attuning to Madara is one that he has yet to grow accustomed to.)

Smile widening, he parts his palms to reveal the sprout, slowly and cautiously— a projected calmness to show that the mokuton he wields now is no threat.

“Honeysuckle.”

[moonmurmur-blog]

Hashirama's smile unnerves him, just as the unknowable darkness of the other man's eyes does, and the way the sun illuminates his hair from behind. It is a smile that begs intimacy, an invitation Madara has resisted for years and plans to resist for eternity, just as much as it is an invitation that he is terrified he imagines. Imagination is too close to hope, and that is not a direction he wishes to go.

But he says nothing and allows Hashirama to sit beside him. Analysing every move of Hashirama's takes effort, and he has learned over the years that speaking too much only gives the older man the advantage.

His eyes flare again despite himself when Hashirama opens his hands, reveals the plant to him in full. He can sense the other man's awareness of his chakra, the anticipation and lack of fear irksome. Does he want to be attacked, or does he merely find his suspicion amusing? That unnerving smile...

The sprout is too small for the untrained eye to recognize, and herbalism has never been Madara's expertise. Even at the best of times, the Uchiha were never strong healers, and Madara never bothered to learn anything about plants beyond what was safe to eat in times of famine. But when Hashirama speaks its name, he knows.

Honeysuckle. He recognizes it, knows the smell that comes with the thick, choking vine creeping up the cedars, rapid, high-reaching, and aggressive. A beautiful plant, but he remembers those of the Uchiha clan who once guarded their temple shrine desperately setting fire to the roots, hoping to stop the vine's growth as it threatened to overtake everything. Interesting that Hashirama would focus on such a plant to show him, almost a mockery of the peace. Honeysuckle. No different than the Senju slowly suffocating the Uchiha. Is this why he chose it?

He leans back abruptly. "How charming. And what purpose does a noxious weed serve in Konoha?" The words are calculated (and untrue; he knows it is not a weed), meant to sap the amusement on Hashirama's face.

[shinbashira]

A thought.

When creation is as easy and natural as the pulse of his heart, practice becomes unnecessary. Creation becomes an idle hobby, a pleasure to partake in private. So here he comes to sit by the riverbank, between the patches of sunlight, underneath the warm rays obscured by the shadows of leaves above. Here he comes to think and to breathe and to create.

Thus, a breath; and he exhales chakra into a trembling sprout that buds from his upturned palm.

To say that it is only a thought which brings life to a fresh bud is untrue. It requires a precision with twining or tugging or tamping that makes the difference between lotus or rafflesia, yew or maple. With mokuton, the finest of details must be accounted for, down to the thickness of a flower’s stem or the pattern of a leaf’s veins. One must visualise perfectly even the grains of wood. The texture of petals. Sharpness of thorns. Shape.  Colour.   Odour.    All.

The sprout grows in size.  A leaf unfurls from its side. He wonders: could he create flora that he has not yet seen— that perhaps does not yet exist?

Light footsteps upon soft earth rouse him from his reverie; at once, he stands, enclosing the fluttering of life among his fingers.

Hashirama turns to greet the approacher. “Hello,—”

[moonmurmur-blog]

He approaches him warily, sunken eyes absorbing his every move. Peace, peace. They are at peace now, and a peace that has lasted long enough for them to build a compound. But still he hesitates, still his shoulders tense the moment he feels the other begin to weave his chakra. There is a fear and a violence in peace that Madara has yet to grow accustomed to, the violence of waiting.

Uchiha Madara does not return the pleasantry. He rarely does. "It will be sundown soon." The clans are eating together tonight, a large supper suggested by the elders in honor of a moon passing since the ground was broken for the first building. Madara scowls thinking about it, knowing all too well that he will be turning his nose up at some of the Senju specialties. Why a forest clan preferred so much food from the river was beyond his comprehension.

When Hashirama doesn't immediately respond, the Uchiha stops several feet before him to watch. He crouches to the ground, willing himself to keep calm, to stop the flare of chakra behind his eyes that always struggles to burst forth at the sight of mokuton. The Sharingan is not a gift made for peace, he reflects; outside of sparring, he has been unable to find a way to advance his skills as of late, while the Senju has leapt forward with his own. "What are you creating?" he wants to ask, but he keeps silent.

[moonmurmur-blog]

For history is nothing other than man's desperate effort to turn his most perspicacious dreams into reality.

Albert Camus