Five years later

Madara:

I hugged his furry little head close to my chest, planted a kiss on top of his head. He was five now, but still acted as when he was a calf.

I'd bought him off the farm where we used to buy our staples three years ago, when the owners said they were slaughtering him. It was the same calf whose mother I'd milked, and I was enormously attached to him. He was obviously not a cow anymore, but a bull, and a very cuddly one at that. I smirked. What would you think of me if you saw me now...

I knew what he would think of me. He would think I was adorable, gentle, kind-hearted. He never understood that that was only a reflection of him; that he saw himself in me. But I saw it. And I knew.

I went to the wooden building next to the cottage that had just been built. I was fifteen minutes early, but I usually was, wanting to chat with the children.

"Madara!!" they screeched when I entered.

"Whoa!" I screamed when one of them threw themselves into my embrace. "Good morning, Lizzy."

"We've missed you!" one of the boys screamed.

"You saw me the day before yesterday", I laughed.

"I know", he pouted. "But that's, like ,a whole day in between! Do you have to teach the older children as well? Can't you just teach us?"

I smiled. "You're only saying that because you know I'm teaching you ninja art today. If it was maths, you would like to have two days in between!"

I had set up the school two years ago. Every other day, I taught the small children of twelve and younger, and every other day those thirteen and above. It ranged from sciences to ninja arts. The ninja arts was mostly for fun, a for of exercise, as you didn't really need those skills here. There were ten in each class, and some of them came from all across the vast lands where we were living. But there weren't the only ones...

One day, two years ago, I had stepped on my porch to see a collection of fifteen adults and their children standing there. It had been five years, but I still recognised them from Konoha.

"We are in dire need to escape the leadership of Konoha", one of them said.

"Sarutobi isn't to your satisfaction?" I asked, not too bitterly, I hoped.

"It's not that", a middle-aged woman said. "Sarutobi is a good leader. But we found out the reason behind Tobirama leaving. The fifteen of us held a meeting, and decided we did not want to live in a village where the leadership was created due to homophobia." I was taken aback. "We never signed the petition to throw you out of the village. But if we'd known sooner about Tobirama being told his partnership with you was unacceptable, we would have left earlier. It's not the foundation we want our children to grow up in. And since you were a good teacher in the village..."

They all looked at me pleadingly.

We'd held a meeting in the evening, and decided to set up a small village in the area, with a school for their children as well as the local ones, where I would teach. It had made me happy, full of purpose, something I hadn't felt in ages.

"Mr Uchiha..." The middle'aged woman who'd spoken had come to me, put a hand on my shoulder. "Where is Tobirama?"

At that, I had sunk down to my knees and cried.

I loved teaching the children.

I loved every aspect of it.

Before the day started, I always read something to them.

"Anything in particular you want to hear today?"

Lizzy reached her hand up. "Can you tell us about your boyfriend?"

I smiled a little. "Again?"

"Pleaaaaaase?!" The eyes of all other children where glittering in expectation. I sighed. They loved when I talked about him.

They would have loved you here...

"Tobirama was... Well, at first, I'd seen him as stern. Unreachable, even. Doing what is logically right before what he wants to do with his heart." I placed my hands on my heart. Don't cry. Madara, don't cry.

"What does 'logically right' mean?" a boy named Aaron asked.

"It's when you use your brain to decide what you should do instead of your heart." I thought for a second, searching my brain for an example. "For example, you heart might want to pick a flower because it's beautiful, but your brain tells you to leave it be so that the person walking behind you can admire it as well. So you want to pick the flower, but you don't because you know it's logically right."

Aaron nodded, satisfied.

"But then I got to know him, and he was the softest man I'd ever come across." The children loved this part, and I waited for the question that always came:

"But how did you know?" I smirked. Every time.

"When my little brother died, he visited his grave every day. Despite me telling him I didn't want him there, he couldn't help but come anyway. It was not, in fact, logically right to come, but his heart wanted him to visit. And so he did."

"He was kind, warm and loyal. He was the most loyal man I'd ever met. For years, he loved me, and his love increased with each year. Yes, we fought", I said, remembering it fondly. "Because if you never fight, it means that either you're a chicken and don't dare voice your contradictions... You remember what contradictions are from our language lesson last week, right?" The children nodded. "It means you either don't dare to voice your contradictions, or you agree with each other in everything, and where is the fun in that?" I smiled a bittersweet smile again, looking down. "But he had an exceptional gift for talking, for remaining calm despite having quite a hot temper. We never slept apart since moving here. Not even one night. Not even when we had just had a fight. We were always together."

"Tobirama..." I took a deep breath. "He helped me when I was on a bad path in my life. He helped me see that what I desired for the world wasn't necessarily what the world needed. In many ways, he was my saviour." I looked at the children. They're eyes were large as saucers, and they were so quiet you could hear a pin drop. "He was my saviour. He still is. He will always be."

After class, I took a walk around the cottage. I felt my arms ache after the sparring with the older kids yesterday; I started feeling like my age.

Going into my forties without Tobirama had been tough. I wanted him by my side, needed him by my side. Not one day passed without me wishing he was still with me.

I came to a stop underneath our favourite tree, where we'd had sex many, many times. His grave was there, marked by a beautiful, smooth, black stone I'd found when I walked to the ocean. First Izuna... Then you... First the right part of my heart, now my left. Is there anything there now?

I knew there was. The children. I loved them. I loved them so, so much.

Tobirama had deteriorated psychologically three years after we moved to the cottage, so four years ago now. He'd gone from being the happiest I'd ever seen him, to a whole other man in less than one month. In the beginning of his deterioration, when he still enjoyed talking, he'd said how much he missed the village, that his entire life had been dedicated to the village, and how he felt like a trapped animal now he couldn't go back, nor continue his life without fulfilling that need. "It's like I'm being attacked by a lion, and I can neither run nor fight!" he'd shouted in the middle of a panic attack, his eyes red and puffy, while I held him. In the end, he'd stopped eating.

"Tobirama, please!"

That was a memory that had etched itself into my memory and would stay there forever. The memory was created as though I was a third part looking at us from above. He was in bed, skeletal, naked, me next to it, his favourite breakfast of French toast with peaches and whipped cream on a tray I was holding.

"Tobirama, please!"

He had tried. He had tried his Goddamn best, but ended up throwing up the three bites he managed to take. Not on purpose; his body just seemed unable to hold down food.

Sometimes, he would take my hands, look at me with so much pain in his eyes that I started to cry. "Never believe you' weren't enough", he would whisper. "You were more than enough. You are more than enough."

He'd begun speaking in past tense like that. It was as if he'd given me a heads-up. The night before it happened, we had sex for the last time. It was the only time we had sex since he'd started to deteriorate, and more than once I wondered what would have happened if I'd declined. Would he have refrained from doing it a while longer? How many times more would I have been able to say I loved him then?

The love making had been agonizingly careful, him lying down, looking at me in awe, me straddling him, moving my hips up and down slowly, oh so slowly, coming down from time to time, kissing his dry lips, his hollow cheeks. "I love you, Tobirama", I said. "From the bottom of my heart, I love you. I always will."

He had smiled weekly. "It feels different doesn't it? The sex. This is not sex, Madara, this is love-making."

I had smirked at that, increasing my pace, started to fuck him. A sweat broke free on his forehead, but I didn't care, just continued until he came, filling me up and I continued until I came, too. I lay down on his chest then, still broad despite how much he'd wasted, and I had begged for him to be inside me for a while longer. I want to feel you inside me for as long as I can...

The day after, Tobirama Senju ended his life.

I had been prepared for it, or so I'd thought. When I found him, my knees had buckled underneath me, and I had screamed and screamed and screamed. "Why, my love, WHY?" I had clung to him, kissed his cold cheeks over and over. "Come back. Please come back. Wake up. Tobirama, wake up! I can make you French toast! Please..."

It had taken me hours to release his cold, stiff body.

I hated to admit it, but all the agony, the sorrow, the helplessness, was mixed with a sense of relief. A tension had drained from my shoulders that I hadn't even known was there, and I realised it was caused by anticipating his suicide every day for months. Now, I knew I didn't have to come home to my love having killed himself, because it had already happened.

I sighed where I stood at the gravestone. It was a long time ago now. I closed my eyes, let the tears paint my cheeks, reflecting the orange glowing sun that was setting. This time of day was always so bittersweet, so tempting. But it made the grave and the tree look beautiful.

I let the rays of the sun paint the world and then etch that painting into my eyes, creating a memory of this exact moment where I was standing, satisfied after a full day of teaching, my heart yearning after him, remembering him who was my light, my world, my everything.

My saviour.

Creating a memory so I could then go on and live the rest of my life the best way I possibly could, without him.

Not because I want to, but because I must.

End.