I needed to do laundry.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, I needed to do laundry.

I was rushing around my apartment, trying to find the buddy of the one sock I had found while brushing my teeth and trying not to drool toothpaste on the wooden floor I had just cleaned.

I drooled toothpaste on the wooden floor I had just cleaned.

I sighed. At least I had found another sock. It was white, while the other was black, but I figured if I found a pair of grey trousers, I could tuck them into the socks as a fashion statement.

In all the madness, my phone rang.

"Ewwo?" I said, mouth full of toothpaste.

"What?"

I ran to my bathroom, spit in the sink.

"I said, hello", I said.

"Hello. So you're late again?"

It was one of my university friends, and he didn't at all sound irritated. On the contrary, there was amusement in his voice.

"Is anybody surprised?" I asked.

"No", my friend said. "When will you come?"

I came back from my closet, where I had found a pair of trousers deep within that I hadn't used in ages but they were the only pair that weren't in the laundry. They were black, not grey, but they would have to do and I had managed to find and oversized grey shirt. I looked at the digital clock on the microwave.

"In fifteen minutes? So seven fifteen?"

"See you seven thirty then!" my friend said in a chirpy voice.

"You motherf-"

But he had already hung up.

It was rare, being able to see all of my friends from university at once. Most of them were busy with careers and partners and in some cases even children now, not to even mention we all lived in different places. But when we met, it was as if time had stood still and we fell back into the same easy jargon as all those years ago.

"Izuna!!" they greeted me as I came into the fancy restaurant, the prices on the menu matching all of our careers in the IT business.

My group of friends, five men and three women, had already ordered beers for themselves, but it touched me that they had ordered a glass of my favourite red wine for me. I sat down took a sip. The flavour burst in my mouth.

"Wood. Grapefruit. A touch of elderberry."

My friends gaped at me in disbelief.

"You're joking?" they asked.

"Of course I'm fucking joking. It tastes like red wine that is going to get me drunk. Thank you for choosing it for me."

We ordered together. I decided on bruschetta with pesto and olives as a starter, oven-baked parsnip and Hasselback potatoes in an umami and sour broth with grilled asparagus as a main, and a brownie filled with Brie cheese as dessert alongside a coffee drink with violet syrup. It was one of the best dinners I had had in my life. The conversation between us was easy, ranging from politics to our personal lives. I didn't have much to say about politics, but I did tell them a bit about my forest walks, about my promotion, about my new-found love of going to the cinema alone.

"Date anyone yet?" One of my friends, who sat next to me, nudged me and winked.

I looked down with a smile. I tried telling myself, once more, that they meant well, that they didn't know how much it hurt when they asked me. Strangely enough it hurt more now, when I didn't fear a life alone anymore, than it had done before, when I had been so scared of the fact that my heart seemed to have decided it had had enough. I knew that if I told my friends, they would be accepting and let go of the bantering, but I just couldn't bring myself to. Madara was the only one who knew, and I desired to keep it that way very dearly.

They kept talking around me. Two of the boys had proposed to their girlfriends. That was okay. But then, one of the girls announced she was having a child.

And I suddenly missed him.

It hit me from time to time, but it was rare now. It was just so, so incredibly long ago. Yet, I sometimes missed him. The first days, I had scream-cried in bed, unable to get up. Madara came three times a day to give me food which I refused. It took me six days until I could go back to university, six days when it felt as if I had been at the bottom of the ocean, and even then, when I managed to get up, I was a shell of myself. My friends had been beside themselves with worry, asked me if it had anything to do with Hashirama's disappearance. Once last year, one of them had told me I had never quite been the same since. I didn't know if it was because of what had happened, or if it was just the natural changes in your personality that came with age masked by the sullenness I felt after the death of Tobirama, but I had felt it, too. It was like I was only a fraction of my old, younger self instead of evolving in my personality like all my friends did.

I suddenly couldn't bear sharing my friend's joy. Feeling incredibly egoistic, I excused myself, went to the counter and paid my share and almost ran out of the restaurant. Once out, I realised how hard I had found it to breathe in there because it felt like the first breath after coma.

And I let the memories wash over me. Everything we had done together during our short life together. But it was the memory of the way he'd made his heart beat for me that caused tears to well up in my eyes. A light rain was falling which I was grateful for; people around me would think I had rain on my face. At least, that was what I was trying to tell myself. Even so, I cast my head down and started to walk. 

It took me twenty minutes to get to the top of the hill. Once there, I sat down next to the tree I had planted for him and cried.

"I wish you were here to hold me!" I cried. "I don't even know if you would have liked me for this long! I'm such a mess! I'm such a fucking mess!"

I cried for a while until finally, I felt slightly better. I stood up, looked out at the view without seeing it. I sighed, put my hands in my back pockets, a habit I'd gotten over the years when I was deep in thought, and...

I frowned, fished something up.

I looked at the object.

A green sticky note.

Folded in two.

I unfolded it.

And just stared.

My hand flew to my mouth.

And I couldn't breathe.

Another six days at the bottom of the ocean, this time lasting a few seconds.

I'm still here: <3

xx, T

And then it struck me.

These trousers had been the same ones I had worn on the day he was destroyed. I had taken them off as soon as I managed to get myself home, hung them in the far back of my closet, never wanting to see them again. But as I had laid on him that last day, he'd put his hand in these pockets. What I hadn't noticed was that he'd put this note there.

For seven years, the note had been there without me noticing.

I had never seen his handwriting before; it was surprisingly non-adult.

It touched my heart.

Tears welled up in my eyes.

I ran away. 

Madara Uchiha, the big brother of Izuna, was currently mixing a drink.

It was another talent of his, to mix different liquids and syrups for the most amazing creations. Now, it was lemon vodka, grenadine and coconut cream for a drink that tasted like sour candies. He poured it over crushed ice, took a sip.

He had been off alcohol for years when he'd noticed he started to get addicted after that occurrence. But last year, he'd started mixing a little again, mostly to his friends, and had dared to taste. Now, he made two drinks every month or so for himself as well, and was happy to find he felt no longing after the numbing effect of the alcohol.

He still got angry thinking about it, though. He'd figured out afterwards that Hashirama had come to him directly after realising Tobirama wouldn't kill Izuna. But he hadn't known what had happened then, so when Hashirama had knocked on his door, he had opened. He was slightly frightened of the man, but had still decided to let him in, hoping to figure out what the fuck was going on.

Hashirama had immediately pressed him up against the wall, stomach first, pressing his body against Madara's.

When Madara heard the professor unbuckle his belt, all life had drained out of him, and he had frozen in fright.

He had raped Madara while telling him how fucking useless he was.

It had been so physically and mentally painful, Madara wouldn't have gotten up from the hallway floor for a day if it wasn't for the fact that he had arrived.

"Madara!! Madara!!"

Madara curled up into a ball.

"Fuck!! Fuck!!"

He felt Tobirama's strong arms around him as he sat down on the floor to comfort his lover's brother.

"Get Izuna out!" Madara screamed. "He can't see me like this!"

"Izuna is not here."

That's when Izuna's brother finally well and truly allowed himself to break down.

He cried and cried and cried, clung to Tobirama's clothes as they became drenched in tears and the AI held him, let him bury his face on him as Tobirama buried his face on Madara, murmuring words of comfort, holding Madara until he stopped crying. 

This was what Tobirama had gone to do as he asked Izuna to go for an errand before they left for the ethics board together. He'd had a feeling Hashirama would go to Madara. What he would do to him, he hadn't even dared to imagine.

Madara had never understood what the motif behind that rape was.

It didn't matter that much now, seven years later when he knew Hashirama was dead, as Izuna had told him, but it still angered him.

He wondered if he'd ever treated Izuna that way.

There was a knock on his door, and he went to open, holding his drink. He hadn't dared open his door again unless he knew exactly who it was until last year, when Izuna had told him Hashirama was dead. He opened, and out there stood Izuna, white as a sheet.

He just handed his brother the sticky note, and Madara had gasped.

Izuna had burst into tears then.

"Oh, dear", Madara had said. "Oh, don't cry gorgeous. Come."

He had held his beloved little brother close before taking him in, sitting him down on his velvet couch and mixing him his favourite blue drink. 

I dried my tears, happy to admit the alcohol had helped.

"I can't believe I didn't notice the note until today", he murmured.

Madara was looking at the note again, brows furrowed. It didn't take a genius to figure out he was concerned about something.

"Are you going to tell me or not?" I asked.

"Izuna..." He kept his eyes on the note. "There's something about the note that bothers me. It's the colon."

He showed me.

I'm still here: <3

xx, T

The colon before the heart was strange. I had noticed it, but hadn't really thought about it much.

"Is he trying to tell you something?" Madara asked.

"If there was, he would have just told me", I said with a shrug.

"Didn't you say the room was mic-ed?"

That was true.

I felt a pang of something in my heart then; hope.

But as soon as it was there, it was gone.

"Then why the cryptic message? Couldn't he just have written what he wanted?"

Madara's frown deepened.

"There were cameras..." he murmured. "In case you found it in the room and opened it, he didn't want the cameras to catch the literal meaning."

I felt I became irritated then, and sighed.

"Look, I don't know what you're trying to say, but-"

I was suddenly stunned into silence.

And Madara had noticed.

"What?" he asked. "What are you looking at?"

He followed my gaze, and saw I was looking at...

His laptop.

Madara's MacBook was full of stickers, of his favourite bands, of dinosaurs on skateboards, and...

A heart. That glittered.

<3

"What's that?" I croaked, pointing.

"That heart..." Madara said. "It's the symbol of the heart association of our city. Against heart disease. Why?"

My blood froze to ice.

It was the exact same sticker that had been on the computer in Hashirama's lab where Tobirama was stored.

"I need to go", I said.

I chugged my drink down before running out of Madara's front door.

I shouldn't have chugged the drink down before running out of Madara's front door.

As I ran to the university site, I felt myself becoming dizzier and dizzier. I wasn't used to drinking, which made me affected by even one drink. I hoped no security guard or police officer would pass me and decided to take me in for being too drunk or something. I had no idea how those things worked.

But it was a welcome distraction, the dizziness. The nausea. If my mind had been razor-sharp, I believed I would have been torn apart.

Please... I thought. Please!

But I didn't allow myself to feel too much hope. This was ridiculous, I told myself. Well and truly ridiculous.

I kept running. I had only been to our hill, otherwise I hadn't been on campus since I graduated. Once in front of the building of Hashirama's old lab, it struck me how small it looked. I remembered thinking it was quite ominous last time I had been here, but now, it looked pathetic. I took out my old university card, banged it against the card reader, my heart beating hard against my chest.

"Please, please, please, please..." I murmured as a mantra as I pressed in my code.

It worked.

I ran to the lab, opened that door as well.

And in the room stood the computer that had started everything, the sticker with the glittery heart still on it.

I staggered into the room, comprehensively drunk now, catching myself with my hands on every desk all the way to the desk where the computer stood. I must have been quite the sight. With trembling hands, I hacked myself into it. I felt like I was going to throw up; if it was because of the alcohol or because of the nerves, I didn't know, but probably a bit of both.

As the desktop came to life, I saw that the AI icon of his program was gone, and my heart sank.

"Nooooooo!!" I wailed.

But then I saw a different icon.

An icon with a heart.

<3

Hidden from the ethics board in plain sight.

Without thinking, I clicked on it.

Hello, Izuna.

"No..." I whispered.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening. This couldn't be him. It was a different AI who knew my name and-

God you're cute when you're drunk...

Okay it was definitely him.

I fell to my knees and scream-cried.

Umm, if you stop crying for a moment. The ethics board put Hermes' body back in the freezer then forgot about it. Your brother still a neurosurgeon?

;)