Every ounce of his being had been waiting, dreading, for the moment of truth when the revelation of his old, decrepit feelings for Hashirama and feeling spurned and betrayed had led him to drive the sage to simply stand and walk away into the rain, never to return. As much as that, Madara had been equally prepared to grovel at Jiraiya’s feet, at the ground of the only man he’d ever loved so passionately, as tempestuously. How else wasn’t it true? For a man who had brought the world to its knees, the scale of willingness of what he’d be willing to do for Jiraiya, the deeds and atrocities he’d commit just to keep the sage by his side… Oh, he didn’t know what power he wielded. Of the infinite sway he commanded at his fingertips, of what he’d be willing to do for the Sannin at the merest drop of a word, as automatic and subconscious as rainfall in the depth of night. All to keep him, because Madara loved him too much. He wanted nothing less, nothing more.
Yet, he knew better than to think that Jiraiya would ever do such a thing to him. That he’d ever come to terms to the power he held over the Uchiha and wake up one day and decide to wield it like the power-hungry, yet nihilistic and madly altruistic man who had tried to make the world submit to his will in order to banish all suffering. He wouldn’t, and that was the part that made Madara’s heart ache the most. In the breadth of a moment, he damningly wondered how differently his life would’ve been if Jiraiya had entered it earlier, had been part of his generation or so. Of how he’d never have fallen into the trap of madness that he had.
But, would he have really wanted such a thing? Madara’s mind lingered back on one of their past carnal encounters–one of many, how insatiable they were for each other–and how Jiraiya hadn’t wanted Madara to make such ridiculous vows like changing the universe to make a perfect world just for them. Not when the precise circumstances–both unfortunate and not–had brought them so inexorably together in the first place. Could he have ever wanted the world to change if it meant meeting Jiraiya in a time and place where they wouldn’t understand each other as perfectly as they did, to be completely at odds with each other to the point that they understood each other on a level few others could?
Now and there, he didn’t shed tears alone. Especially as Jiraiya, and more so when his words had taken wing and struck the Uchiha’s psyche like penetrating bullets. But, if it was pain, it was blissful and Madara couldn’t help but smile in disbelief despite himself. “No one’s ever cried for me before,” Madara admitted through that uncanny and shattered smile. Relieved from telling him, broken that it had been part of his past at all. “Maybe from my family, but… never from the man I loved.” Even Hashirama hadn’t wept for him after his death, he knew. Hashirama’s heart had grown stony towards Madara for all the times he’d attacked the village, and Madara could never blame him. He’d been the attacker, the foul-hearted felon that had threatened so much despair on the place he was supposed to have helped built from the ground and to the sky. A legacy the heavens were supposed to have remembered, even.
But, how did that make his present with Jiraiya any more reassuring than his past with Hashirama? Did it have to do with the fact that he and Jiraiya had never traded blows? Because as far as he saw it, his unseen enmity with Jiraiya went so far beyond a normal kind of villainy. Maybe too normalized for what he’d done and who he’d trampled in the name of a forceful peace, but it had started with a prophecy and ended with the two of them falling in love in a time and place when they shouldn’t have. In circumstances that should never have come to pass, but had. And he couldn’t be more grateful that the man he wanted to spend the rest of his life with was someone he’d been so entangled with, who had taught him more and had made him rediscover his humanity more than anyone else might’ve ever been capable of.
“Jira-kun, please listen to me,” Madara asked as he took Jiraiya’s face in his hands, once the sage had toiled through Madara’s spiel and had digested the full breadth of what he’d come to say. “I know, once I would’ve told you that you couldn’t forgive me, that all of what I’d done wasn’t entirely yours to forgive…” Which, was still true, but it was a truth they’d come to an understanding of practically ages ago. “But, you have to understand how much this wretched past of mine had to happen in order for this present to come to be. It seems so contradictory when I’ve pushed you away more times than should’ve been allowable, but I can see the truth for what it is, and that truth lies in the fact that you helped me rediscover my humanity when I thought I’d lost it the moment I’d revived myself after the first time I’d died. Completely and wholly. There’s too much pain I’ve subjected you to, too many mistakes that ruined so much, but I’m here with you, now. In this unpredictable and indifferent universe, circumstances happened for us to be.”
Us, not himself. Not some faraway and possibly dead phenomena that the stars were. He remembered, once, in his rogue years that he’d asked Black Zetsu about the cosmos. Not because he’d known that the pest had truly been an extension of Kaguya’s will and not his own, but because he simply felt like even a sliver of his own consciousness that wasn’t himself knew. A part of him that remembered the Uchiha’s ancient legacy, of their celestial beginning. And what Black Zetsu had told him was that, no, the universe wasn’t sentient and it didn’t care. It was impersonal and simply existed, that fate and destiny were made-up arbiters of mankind. That it had invented for themselves in order to take away some of the responsibility they had in the good and evil in the world. Something he’d realized a long time ago, too.
But, if there was one sliver of belief he allowed himself to have by then, it was the fancy that he and Jiraiya had been meant to be together. That they might’ve had other red strings of fate, but that they hadn’t been the only ones, and that more existed that had tethered them together, too.
“I thought I’d given up in almost everything but nothingness… In this world, at least, and that the values we hold dear–peace, love–could only be found through make-believe. I know better now. I look at you, this enemy I’ve had since the beginning of our Prophecy, and I see the man I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with. Who I want to spend the rest of my existence with. Who I want to be with until the very end.” The tears in his eyes shimmered for a very different reason then. Being faced with this, with him, with still so much to be spanned between them… Maybe it was twisted, to be looking forward to it. To know that, for as many bridges they’d crossed, it was still an ongoing journey towards reconciliation they might not totally ever fulfill.
And, he was okay with that. Being in Jiraiya’s arms, being kissed by him, held by him, was enough to let him know that it wouldn’t be a journey made in despair. Madara had no doubts in his mind that it would still be a pathway with twists and turns, that they might still find other ways to hurt each other, but it wouldn’t be like before. They wouldn’t be unseen enemies shaping the course of history, but two people in love who still had many obstacles to surmount. And, he was okay with it. Jiraiya was completely right; facing his demons alone was nothing but a regrettable mistake, and he knew that now. Nothing but senselessly self-inflicted wounds. And that Jiraiya was there by his side for a reason.
More than just his sensory blind spot inherited from his maternal side at birth, he had never liked people behind him because he’d never wanted to lead in the sense of being superior to those he was supposed to guide. More so with the people close and dear to him, like his family. In love, it was even more so that he wanted nothing but someone to walk by his side, to be his equal. And the sage had become that for him, someone he didn’t feel a need to be more powerful than in the same way that he’d felt for Hashirama for much of his life. He wanted to be Jiraiya’s equal instead.
His equal in being human. In power, too, they probably were by the point they’d come, with Jiraiya achieving the pinnacle of his sage path, but that didn’t matter. Not when there wasn’t any more struggle of that sort. Maybe they still sparred then and there, but not embattled in a bitter conflict like they’d once spiritually been. Philosophically, through destiny, it all felt absolved when Jiraiya gathered the Uchiha in his arms and placed such a sanctifying kiss on his lips, the hollow hole that had threatened to swallow him in a pit of dread and fear closed from such a gentle absolution. Madara felt as though he found more than just sanctuary, but whatever missing parts of himself he’d been without for too much of his life.
In a sense, they’d both succeeded and failed in bringing world peace, hadn’t they? Simultaneously, because they hadn’t been the ones to bring it about. The Prophecy might have opened those doors, but Madara knew it had lain on the efforts of those who came after them to make the world better, exactly as Hashirama had said to him at the time when he’d thought his demise had come. When his Kama kept him alive by a thread, only to show him that his time hadn’t yet come. If destiny or fate existed, it was the one time he could believe in it. And their thread had brought them there, in each other’s arms. He was content with it, if it were the case.
“Jira-kun, let’s get changed. You’re soaking, and… well, I’m not much better off. Then, we should eat before our food gets cold,” Madara stated with an affectionate peck of his lips on Jiraiya’s cheek, flirty and darted despite how much affection was unbearably present in his gaze for the sage. Together, they rose from the table of untouched food and Madara led him by the hand towards his apartments that were slightly further back, down a corridor that fed into other entertaining rooms for personal use, until he finally came to his bedroom. It was sparsely but mindfully appointed, kept as clean as a museum but still more personable than his cave in the Mountains’ Graveyard he’d made a base out of for several decades until his death. From a wall was his prized Gunbai proudly mounted whilst latticed windows dribbled rainfall noisily.
Opening one of the several wall cabinets did he slide open the open where he kept several pairs of cotton yukata, light but not enough that either would be chilled. Faced off to the side did Madara begin changing, turned out of habit for modesty’s sake, even though the pair of them had seen each other in the nude countless times before. As Madara finished, he couldn’t help but turn just as Jiraiya had finished sashing his yukata securely, hair moved aside just enough that he could see the Uchiha uchiwa stark between his shoulder blades, something that Madara himself had spent hours stitching into as many garments as he could, it less a necessity and more of a comfort. But, it wasn’t that alone that ran through Madara’s mind like lightning, rooting him in place.
It was such a sudden thought, one he might’ve considered before, but never so vividly. Vague notions of wanting to spend the rest of his days with Jiraiya had surely come and gone, in their worst and best hours alike, but… something in him wanted Jiraiya to wear the uchiwa for the rest of his life. Forever, on ever article of clothing for the world to see.
Madara couldn’t help himself as he circled his arms from behind around Jiraiya’s waist as he molded into the sage’s back with a laden sigh, nestled with a soft kiss pressed into the man’s nape. His arms wound between his ribcage and waist, yearning to feel his warmth and heat all to himself, the train of that name running wildly through his mind. Uchiha Jiraiya, Uchiha Jiraiya– it chanted, sang in his ears, a chorus that didn’t want to end. Something Madara wasn’t sure he’d ever voice aloud, even though he could feel impulsiveness dig into his chest and worm its way up his throat. A few more kisses were planted before he propped his chin on Jiraiya’s shoulder, those words insistent on his tongue as much as his first ‘I love you’ had been in what felt like ages ago.
“Someday, I want there to be a reason for you to wear my clan’s emblem all the time, love,” Madara murmured with a sentimental heaviness, eyes misty at the thought. Gods, would he ever stop being some weepy fool over the man he loved? Not sure if he was ready to hear an answer, Madara left one last kiss behind on whatever of his trapezius was exposed before he carefully unwound his arms and returned to the dining room where they’d left their food, busily preparing what Jiraiya had gotten on an ensemble of dishes on a darkly lacquered tray. That way, he wouldn’t have to waste time when Madara knew that Jiraiya was starving. The things he could glean from people’s fluctuations in chakra was expansive, and one of them was hunger. That, and he simply didn’t want to be a rude host.
Massing a decent share of inarizushi for himself, he waited for Jiraiya’s inevitable return, contenting himself with tea he warmed with a bit of Fire Release in an earthenware mug, not wanting to start without his darling toad sage.
…Especially since they’d need it for the trials ahead.
Had all this time apart not granted them time to process—had it still been the early days of their turbulent affair—Jiraiya might have felt foolish and embarrassed for weeping openly. He didn't doubt that back then, Madara would have thought him a fool for it. It wasn't as if he hadn't come close to it before now, of course... But he could see now that even he had been guarded, in his own unusual way, for much of their beginnings.
He'd been an open book practically from the start, eager to share and learn and work out how everything had transpired the way it did... But looking back on it, it had always been with the emotive yet ultimately impartial air of a narrator. He'd connected with the events, but distanced himself from his personal position in them just enough. There was always that higher level of raw empathy he avoided whilst trying to piece it all together. Threads of plots crossing over, twisting around one another, merging into one...
In striving to work it all out, he'd protected himself from the sharper edges that sought out any fault in his ironclad heart to plunge into. But now?
Now, he felt as tender as the child on the receiving end of the tragic tale, recited to completion. And his child self always was a bit of a crybaby. Maybe it was learning of the doomed romance underpinning this whole bloody history of Madara's that finally did it. Probably. It was exactly the sort of thing to yank at his heartstrings without any hope of him enduring it...
He smiled in an aching, knowing way, grimly unsurprised that those words probably weren't mere hyperbole. That he probably was the first to cry for Madara. But it stung no less despite that lack of surprise.
When Madara took hold of his face, he couldn't tell which was hotter, his own cheeks or Madara's hands—or whether one of the two was so cold that it instantly burned on contact. He blinked through the prolonged pinpricks pattering behind his eyelids, and felt himself sag. He wasn't sure if it was relief, or the sheer weight of it all, but never once did he break the warm connection spanning pupil to pupil, plumbing soul-deep. Dark eyes almost took on an oozing quality, until hearing that adorably shortened form of his name caused them to refocus, then dart briefly aside in his bashfulness.
And the important thing he had to listen to?
Well, it very nearly prompted a chuckle.
"I have to understand?" he repeated with a hint of light-hearted exasperation that dared to elevate them from the leaden moment—one that he hoped would highlight, not too rudely, that he was the one trying to get exactly that across to Madara all along. It seemed he had a new contender for the title of 'slowest on the uptake' on his hands... But he didn't mind a bit. In fact, hearing it from Madara's own mouth finally reassured him that he hadn't just been talking crazy this entire time. A rush of air puffed out from smiling lips, and the sage shook his head lightly. "Well... I'm glad you've come to that conclusion—and in such a timely manner, too!"
He joked, of course, but not in the blatantly evasive, 'look over there!', deflective way he tended to. No, he was very much present in this, and with every word that spilt forth from Madara's overflowing heart, his own seemed to swell in increments, like a balloon gradually expanding with every influx of hot air. That likely had something to do with little phrases such as 'the man I've fallen hopelessly in love with' and 'who I want to be with until the very end'—but much more than that, because deep down he'd always known it to be true, it was the simple abandon with which he said it. Almost as if the wall built up between them had never even existed, and now the great beyond was sprawling out before them without the rubble and tatters of their past to mar it.
"I think in the end, no amount of forcing the light into your eyes was gonna work without you opening them up," he murmured absent-mindedly, as if the thought had spawned on his very tongue rather than in his brain. "I've always been heavy-handed and stubborn with these things... With trying to make a difference to people... Well I guess it hasn't failed me yet, hmm?"
Arguably, not even when it came to those loves lost.
But that wasn't a preoccupation in this moment. Everything was contained in this embrace, between the two of them, and the sense of wholeness was overwhelming to the point that when Madara spoke again, Jiraiya didn't realise everything inside of him was clenched until it all relaxed with the ease of running water. He huffed a laugh, and his hands slid away from Madara's back.
"And here I thought you'd never offer!"
Jiraiya allowed his beloved to guide him to his feet, then off towards Madara's private quarters. There was a creeping sense of normality that felt utterly foreign to him, as if this reunion should have been drawn out with fire and brimstone to shake the earth around them, and yet these walls that housed them stood stalwart, steady, cool and unmoving. The air was breathable, rather than crackling with impassioned sparks upon every inhale as he'd expected.
Nevertheless, Jiraiya was still shaken and stunned by everything that had transpired, more than he even knew how to show. His body felt ghost-like, gliding into the modest but tasteful room, and by the time a garment was laid out for him to change into, he found that his own layers were already shed into damp heaps on the floor without him even registering the machine-like motions that facilitated his nudity. Just as dream-like, the clean, dry fabric settled over the breadth of his shoulders.
None of it seemed entirely real. Not until the warm pressure of Madara's chest settled between his shoulder blades, and his hands instinctively clasped around the smaller ones spread over his ribcage. He sighed when soft lips pressed softly against the skin of his nape, whatever spot was available between clinging, damp hair and the collar he'd yet to straighten up. God, he just wanted to sink to his knees and pull Madara down with him, forget about the food and end up in a tangle on the floor—but the words spoken hotly behind him sent shivers up and down his spine that rendered him rigid.
Oh yeah... it hadn't quite registered that he was currently wearing the Uchiha crest. The possessive bastard no doubt loved that... and yet, it wasn't in that sharp, gripping manner he was used to. And that in itself was odd. Warmly, pleasantly odd.
Caught in headlights as he was, Jiraiya was of no mind to do anything but follow Madara back to the table like a thrall, flesh still burning wonderfully where Madara's mouth had been (and perhaps more so, where the crest itself lay), but rather than return to his place he pulled up a cushion and sank down directly behind Madara, winding his arms around his middle. He rested his chin on Madara's shoulder, held him tight, and sighed. He could put food in his mouth, if he was feeling insistent on being a ‘good host’. But right now, nothing less than full contact would do. And as he watched Madara warm up his tea and bring it to his lips, something suddenly came to mind.
"Y'know, I don't think I've ever told you this," he began softly, calmly, "but on the day I died, I figured it out. I figured out that the only person capable of everything that had happened, and everything that was going to happen... was you. Gerotora laughed at me at the time, too. I've really gotta confront him about that one of these days..."
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