@succikko-nebulae Uh Well I Cant Resist Urge To Draw This

@succikko-nebulae uh well i cant resist urge to draw this 😳

tw: gore

[our dead will not leave us; our dead will not forget us // наши мертвые нас не оставят; наши мертвые нас не забудут]

[oh, my girl. you pray to your god for power; but you did not know what praice you will pay for it.]

three's romance

ship: hashirama senju x madara uchiha, kakashi hatake x rin nohara x obito uchiha, kakashi hatake x sanran uzuamki (oc)

word count: 2,300 +

note: a exchange fic for @she-who-must-not-be-woken!

-

Once upon a time, there was a Senju.

A man of big dreams, and bigger influence, a force of nature, and a lover of its beauty. 

A man in love, with a Uchiha. 

A star crossed love, a forbidden one, even in the time of peace, of a village created and shaped by both of their hands. Too much blood shed between their clans, too many tears cried over the corpses of kin. Tension held on the edge of a string, too heavy to be touched, to be tested.

And yet …

And yet there is a gentleness in Madara’s hands, a mark of care when he brushes brown hair from Hashirama’s face, lets his thumb linger upon his cheek for a moment longer than he should. A kindness in his laugh, a smile that is warmer than the sun when he sits down to sake, pours Hashirama’s cup to the brim. 

It would be easy to fall in love, to kiss him on the lips and forget the swirl of thoughts in his head. Easy to peel away the mask Madara hides himself under, cast it to their feet and let the true mark of the man shine out for the world to see. 

Easy.

But impossible. 

Because even now the Senju mothers tell their children stories about the cruelty of the Uchiha. Even now the elderly bristle at the approach of the opposing clan and stiffen their steps as they walk past. Even now there is a danger in a meeting, a chance that war will break out from the drop of a pin because fighting is all that they both know. 

He still tries though. 

A desperate man chasing the sun’s setting rays on a chill night. A lost soul in the wilderness seeking a drop of water. A child with tears in their eyes finding their way home. 

If only it were so simple.

“You’re a gift from the divine,” he tells him as Madara leans his head against his shoulder, watches the sun dip down below the trees.

“You’re the only one who thinks that way,” the Uchiha tells him, and his voice is soft, like rain against warm wood. “You shouldn’t think that way.”

Modestly, or maybe self doubt but it pains Hashirama, twists a knot in his stomach and makes him wish for something more, something greater a description, a true representation of the value placed upon his shoulders. 

Agony to love someone this way, to have them doubt themselves and Hashirama can say nothing save for a ‘sorry’ and the soft sigh of a soul miserable in love. 

Miserable.

Impossible.

And yet …

And yet day breaks again and again, with Madara at his side and the same feeling in heart. Companionship, friendship, something like love but stronger somehow when the Uchiha places a hand on his shoulder, laughs and pushes him onward. A partner of a different sort, greater than a brother, more akin to mate and the definitions make him dizzy, make him question himself but he never once questions Madara. 

Because maybe, he is in love. Despite the trouble, despite the danger, despite everything.

He still tries.

“You’ll make a fine Hokage one day.” 

There is a flower in his hand, pale blue with drooping petals and Hashirama wonders if he’s ever seen its kind before, out here on the edge of Konoha upon the grand cliffs.

There’s a smile on Madara’s face, wind in his hair and he looks happy like this, free of the burden on his shoulders, the worry so often etched onto his features. 

“Perhaps. If they accept me.”

A gift from the divine, or perhaps, the divine itself and when Hashirama extends his hand Madara  takes the gift with a nod, a touch lingering too long and Hashirama wonders if he loves him too. Wonders if perhaps they are both fools, wonders if maybe there is enough hope in both of them to change fate.

But it is enough for tonight, for the moment, and when they fall to drinking and laughter he can hardly remember his cares, his fears of the future and the worries of a village. 

Because Madara is with him.

And that is all that matters.

-

Once upon a time, there was a girl.

A girl with brown hair and marks of purple, a girl with healing hands and a soft heart. 

A girl in love with her friends. 

Chance that had brought them together, Rin and Obito and the sullen, gray haired boy perched on the edge of his seat as their teacher had introduced himself, laughed and proclaimed that they would be friends forever. 

It had been a rocky start.

Jealousy, and lovesick hearts, a rivalry created from a perceived threat and a crush that had blossomed as naturally as her first friendship. 

“A asshole,” Obito had called him, fuming as Rin’s hand had brushed his cheek, sealing the cut there and brushing away the blood. “He thinks only of himself.”

A threat, a poser, a boy with an ego and Obito a Uchiha without a Sharingan. A hard lot in life, made harder still by a lack of confirmed love and her eyes upon Kakashi. 

And yet …

Yet she had loved them, both of them, and been the first to see the love blossom three ways, marked by argument and glares from across the training field, strengthened by danger and back to back fights upon the ground of battle. 

Tragedy.

Death.

A monster sealed inside her, a crushed boy and a child left scarred with lightning still burning in his palm. 

Spiraling out of control, manipulation of a pure heart, a girl pulling herself bloody back to Konoha’s doorstep and years flashing by like thunderbolts, a beast’s chakra in her veins. 

He hadn’t known she was alive.

Hadn’t dared to speak her name without a pang of agony, hadn’t dreamed of her face for fear of darkness, and had broken into tears at the sound of his own name.

“Obito.”

A war created in her name, in the name of children dead and a system unfair to its core. A world where she could be alive, a world where he was with her. 

He had come back to her with a lunge, had come back to them both stained and broken but alive, whole, with a heart restored and a dream renewed. 

The first kiss had been under the stars, one placed on her lips with her hand held in his and then another, first to the mask and then to the mouth beneath it. 

“We can make this work, the three of us.”

A  strange arrangement, a love three ways and a set center in the middle, one of love, trust, and a bond set in stone, tested by fire and war. Romance of their own design, of their own choosing, and beautiful in its form.

It’s to a shared home that they come back to now, one full of dogs and warm food and a bed large enough to hold them all. A home they had picked out together, hand in hand, and one near the lodgings of a blond haired boy, one Rin says they owe so much more to. 

Simplicity, something comforting as they lounge upon the too large couch, stretch out their legs and let their bodies drape over one another like knotted strings. Rin’s hands on either of the boy’s heads, her mouth set in an easy smile as they chat for hours, catch up on years lost and dreams yet to be realized. 

“He was right, you know,” Obito whispers when Rin’s hand falls onto his cheek. “He was right about all of it.”

Friends forever, and lovers after that, a trio of kids grown to adults grown to realizations and hearts opened in love. Tragedy and heartbreak and wounds healed in the darkest of hours and hearts closed for so long and now open to a torrent of love. 

She can hardly believe sometimes it has worked out this well. 

That she has both of them in hand, and their hands in each other. 

And in that, she finds, is more than enough. 

-

Once upon a time, there was a girl.

A girl born of a time of war, brought into life in a village of those gifted in sealing and blessed with life made long. Uzumaki, they call them, saviors from beasts and jailers to demons. 

It is such a beast that lays her low. 

The Three Tails they had called it, a monster from the deep and one that had pulled the water into waves, drowned a dozen villages beneath them.

And it’s a hard battle, this creature, one that knocks the air from her lungs and her feet from the ground as she wages war with the creature, lets the silk fall from her arms and exposes seal after seal, after seal. 

It is not quite enough. 

Death, they whisper as she floats in and out of consciousness, healing they can’t manage and her only salvation, time. A scroll to be a cocoon, a sick bed, a place out of time to hold her until the wound has been healed, until they can better come to her aid. 

Aid that does not come. 

It’s a woman that finds her, one with red hair and curious eyes, one that pulls aside the bindings upon the scroll she is in and gasps when Sanran suddenly lays before her, hands curled into fists at her side, chest rising and falling with the first air she has tasted in decades. 

Kushina, the woman calls herself. A member of the same clan, one Sanran finds out, has been laid as low as she. Uzushio destroyed in a march against their people, a fear of their talents, an ambush of the cruelest kind. 

Vessels, Kushina tells her, living containers for the great Tailed Beasts, her own body host to a fox of Nine Tails, a force of nature that Sanran recoils at, cannot believe would be forced upon one so young. 

But she’s powerful, this woman, a will as strong as her own and it is to her that Sanran becomes an elder too, a living library of knowledge, the history of their clan. Devotion, the kind only family brings, and when Sanran returns to the ruins of her village it is as much under Kushina’s command as her own desire. 

And for a while, that is what she knows. Picking through the forgotten homeland and sealing scroll after scroll, book after precious book away, collecting the history of the clan, it’s very heart within her arms, within her soul. 

It’s a delight to Kushina, and a comfort to Sanran, this exchange of knowledge, this teaching of kin, a first step to healing, for her, for both of them. 

So it goes, devotion to her savior, learned acceptance of her lover, and a tolerance of the village she finds herself in, Konoha, who yet wears her clan’s symbol upon their arm. Irony at its finest, devotion for a clan they could not raise a hand to save but it is what she has now, and Sanran finds she cannot bring herself to leave. 

Not even when the Fox takes almost all of it away from her. 

She’s left alone, torn from Kushina in the cruelest of ways, with only the woman’s son as a reminder and the foul stench of betrayal as her greatest takeaway from the night. 

A cruelty for the infant, to be forced to bear the burden, a bitter reminder of her second loss but she does not abandon the village, does not flee from this sorrow.

Because there is … love here. 

Love in the form of a stranger made friend with gray hair and a mask pulled up too tight over his mouth. Kakashi, and the name sounds sweet on her tongue, even if their meeting is anything but a series of petty fights, bitter arguments and things tossed from across the road. 

But he’s kind, heartfelt, and somewhere along the way it becomes friendship, becomes love, becomes a bond that she hadn’t imagined, hadn’t dreamed of forming. 

A ear to her troubles, a smile shown only to her, and a mark of concern on his face at her words, small drops of affection enough to form a pool, enough to lay back in and float until sleep has overtaken her. Comforting, and all the more so as they grow older, wiser, stronger. 

And he’s not the only one. 

Another woman, this one with black hair and a grin as bright as the rising sun. One that laughs and takes her hand and offers her dango, her namesake, and a variety of other sweets that makes Sanran dizzy, sets off a variety of tastes in her mouth. One that is full of energy, drives her to match and sets her feet on paths that she wouldn’t take otherwise. 

Like a dream, enough that at times she wonders if she is still trapped with the scroll, asleep with the longing of her own heart, lucid from the pain within her chest, and the fear in her soul. 

It’s the kiss that does it for her, the kiss that makes it real, makes it alive, makes it okay in the space of both mourning and living, makes it okay to be soft, to fall into his arms and revel in their warmth. 

A kiss, a date, a sly glance from her devotion’s son, and a stolen moment upon a green field, with a book in her hand. 

A companion, a confidant, a lover, and Sanran finds herself in his lap, happy, content, and for the first time, truly in love. 

Once upon a time there were three ninja in love. 

Once upon a time there were three love stories.

And all three were perfection.