Peace. Before this, she felt that it was something foreign and unattainable. Something that didn’t and would never co-align with her way of life, to a war dog treading the same beaten path over and over again. She was a cold-hearted cynic, someone who didn’t put her faith needlessly in others when they were either just going to die or she knew that she had to leave her trappings behind. Faith as a demon, or even in the life she had before, was not something that came easy to her. For the longest time, she thought she was incapable of it, of finding comfort, much less putting her trust in another person who wasn’t set to vanish on her the moment she turned her back on them. Even in her wildest dreams, she never would have imagined things to have turned out this way, after she was sent on the military equivalent of a wild goose chase halfway across the world, only to wash up on the wrong shore and ingratiate herself as a staple of his court.
She was still intent on surviving, and for a while she thought the importance of her mission was the only thing that kept her going, that kept her sane. But after many long, sleepless nights, happening upon one another or seeking each other out inside the castle walls, she realized that in spite of appearances, in spite of being on opposite sides of a cultural divide, they were remarkably similar. Similar in ways that helped them to understand one another, the bitter pain of loneliness, haunting apparitions from their pasts that never gave them peace… not when they had to carry them on their own. For him, it had been when the Senju clan launched an unprecedented attack and ransacked their shores, staining the sands red with blood, down to the last woman and child they could find. For her, it had been an uncle who sabotaged them from within, a brother who turned to violence even for all the times she tried saving him from himself, before he burned himself out like a neutron star. Even then, even for all of her efforts, he still hated her for it. She hated that she felt like she had to turn her back on family, but he had given her no other choice. She had to save herself before she burned up along with him.
She had never told anyone that story before, not even once. But as days bled into weeks, of just the two of them carrying long, drawn-out conversations about anything and everything, from him teaching her their written language and how to properly dictate with a brush, to her regaling him with tales about faraway lands, about subarctic forests that were covered in ice and snow year round to glaciers carving through hidden valleys and giving way to rivers during the coming of spring… the more she came to realize she didn’t want to be parted from him. She may have had her doubts, she may have felt torn between her newfound love and her sense of duty. She may have felt confused, scared, wondering what would become of him if she left without so much as a parting word. How it would destroy him after everything they had been through. She couldn’t bear to put him through that, when he had finally given her something to believe in, somewhere she could lay down roots and put her troubles aside. Well, a warlord was never without his share of troubles, the blood on his hands was forever a constant, but she could help defend the life that they had built, tooth and nail if need be.
He had restored her faith, just by proving to be kindred spirits, brought together by the will of the ocean tides. She wrapped her arms around his neck as she drew her in, threading her fingers from the top of his scalp down through his hair. That monstrous mane of his that crackled with static electricity, an effect of the magicks he had absorbed from the God Tree all those years ago, long before her time. Not that it deterred her in the least, giggling as he nestled into her neck and she held onto him even tighter, him hitting a rather ticklish spot that always seemed to get her, whether she was on guard for his boyish antics or not.
“Careful, love. People might start to get the wrong impression.” A joke as light-hearted as any, squeezing him back one more time before pulling away, hoping that a lovelorn smile from her would help lift his spirits, and in turn the morale of his men as they continued up the path. Beams of sunlight were interspersed throughout the trees, shining down from the canopy overhead as she walked by his side, listening to him intently with her eyes drifting between him and the road winding up the side of the mountain.
“I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.” She paused, clenching her jaw before slowly and steadily releasing her breath, a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. For as much as she didn’t want him to linger on it on the journey home, the course of change was inevitable. The world was changing all around them, and if the wheels of progress hadn’t started to turn then fate never would have brought her here. There were even enemy combatants that still managed to moor off their shores, most of them smaller vessels that could have more easily slipped past their front lines or disguised themselves as tradesmen sailing to and from the continent. She had rallied their standing militia and rained hellfire down upon them from the castle gates before they even came close to breaching it, setting herself up with her rifle in the highest watchtower and picking them off one by one, perfectly lining up every shot with not a single bullet wasted.
She didn’t have any complaints or regrets about not joining him on the battlefield. Not when the battlefield was encroaching more and more on their territory, threatening their semblance of peace day by day.
“Everything feels like it’s opening up at the risk of destroying something else. The humans are slowly replacing their gods with iron and steel. They think industry will give way to a better and brighter future for everyone, yet they still fight over resources, trade routes… anything that so much as looks like a rock in the middle of the road and could jeopardize their progress. They get upset, work themselves up for a while, then forget or die before they can finish. The sad thing is, there’s so goddamn many of them that there’s always someone to pick up where they left off.”
Feeling Shiemi’s eyes on her while no doubt trying to keep up with what her mother was saying, she lifted her up into her arms before she tired herself out on the long road ahead, the warmth of the setting sun at her back and basking her head and shoulders in a fiery glow.
“Hopefully, change doesn’t have to mean that we’ve been conquered as a people. Change can come in many forms… but assimilation like they want it from the West is just erasure. That’s what worries me. I don’t want Shiemi to lose her inheritance, to lose sight of her identity just to be swallowed by a world that will forget what any of it means. That will just see it as unimportant. I don’t think keeping them at bay will hold forever. But we shouldn’t have to bend to the whims of madmen in doing so.”
If there was an important lesson that his wife had taught him, it was that not all things new and foreign were necessarily going to be the key to their destruction, that the last vestiges of a bygone era couldn’t welcome someone new who could look at it with as much love as Madara did. As much as he wished to keep fighting, he wondered how long it would be until the colonizing powers of the mainland set their sights south and decided that old superstitions weren’t enough to keep them away. Unlike the properly worshiped kami within Shintoism and other animistic faiths, yokai didn’t necessarily need the belief of the faithful to keep existing, but he wondered how true that would remain to be. Of how long they could defend their shores with tooth and claw, bow and arrow before they sought to respond with war machines that far outperformed the capabilities they could muster against what was a tamable threat. If he could, he would find some greater god and wish that they could preserve their island in the past, unseen and unremarked, while the world turned and changed on the ever-revolving wheel of time.
“I’m... starting to wonder if keeping on fighting as we have isn’t as wise as I wish it was,” Madara confessed to her, a breed of vulnerability only his wife and child were permitted to witness. “Where the humans are with their inventions and machines is a level we can deal with, but I fear that won’t be the case for all eternity. Blasphemous as it may sound, I’m wondering if Nanzan shouldn’t open our borders to other yokai and do away with antiquity we’ve clung so fiercely to. Undoubtedly, having outsiders come and colonize our lands would be a horrible thing, but I wonder if we can’t accept it on our terms. We’ve already accepted some grains of it, thanks to a certain crossroads demon.”
He smirked wryly towards his wife, of this beautiful woman who saved him from years of isolation and loneliness, who was responsible for opening his heart and mind to the world outside and made him consider such an insane idea in the first place. Of course, he doubted it would see him want to drastically change, but his people were adaptable. They had accepted a stranger in their midst, and while there were still some rough spots that needed to be smoothed, they were being combed through and dealt with bit by bit. And if someone as stubborn as Madara could accept a gaijin, why not opening themselves more? Why remain isolated and at the mercy of the world that would overtake them soon enough and overwhelm them? Madara had begun seeing glimpses of the advances they were making, of the machines they were producing and couldn’t help but feel an ineffable dread and what might invade their shores if they weren’t prepared. For however powerful they were, there would come a time when magick wouldn’t be enough. When Shiemi might have to take his place as the crown princess of Nanzan and perhaps not with the same exact kind of powers her parents possessed. While Luna was undoubtedly powerful and a true threat in her own right, and Madara possessed his infernal repertoire, there would come a time when it wouldn’t be enough.
As they finally trekked through the palace gates to the welcoming fanfare of of the palace attendants that had remained behind to defend and maintain the palace grounds, as Madara inclined his head in acknowledgment of their zeal, it couldn’t help but land somewhat hollowly on his psyche. He’d failed them once before, and many of those present had once been Uchiha themselves or subjects that had depended on him for protection that he’d failed to afford them. People who still remembered their deaths, of the Senju’s butchery that had seen them maimed and killed in ways that still haunted him to remember. Of their screams rising in a hellish crescendo when he’d been praying fervently under the boughs of the God Tree, begging for it to grant him succor while those same screams were drowned by the crackle of flames as Nanzan had burned. The Uchiha’s brow furrowed as the bloom of roots beneath his tunic throbbed from the memory of his transformation that had taken all night, and by then, it had been too late. The Senju had succeeded in butchering all but him, and the power he could’ve utilized to protect them came hours too late.
Never again. Madara would be damned before he allowed that to happen, let alone to his precious family that had been built from nothing, of a new generation of Uchiha that had been a hard-won victory for them both. Shiemi’s birth even more so considering how Luna had thought she’d been barren at the time of their meeting, unable to conceive that she’d one day have a child by the man who kept her hostage due to his high walls that rejected the notion that they’d ever be able to meet halfway and get along, let alone be anything for him except a well of intelligence for him to exploit to his own ends against the West’s advances that encroached more and more upon their shores. Now, it was entirely too different. They were soulmates in the truest sense of the word, and had a daughter that only cemented that bond.
As they retired to their chambers so that he might disrobe from his armor and bathe before rejoining his family, his thoughts followed them into the bathing room. Attendants worked carefully to remove the plates and segments, sighing in internal relief as the cumbersome armor was removed and taken away for repairs and cleaning, which left Madara alone as he made way towards the bath that had been prepared in the interim and into the then lonesome bathroom where he changed out of his soiled clothing and scrubbed himself clean before entering the waist-high tub for him to soak for several minutes, the grim of several weeks in the field finally washed away and he finally felt like himself again.
Once he changed back into the clean garments lain out for him feeling much more refreshed, he joined them within where a meal had been prepared for them in the banquet hall, sighing at what would promise to be a feast after weeks in the wilderness contenting himself with game and the spirits of errant yokai who wandered in his path, happy to have something a little more closer to comfort.
“Do you think that’s what they would ultimately want?” Madara continued once they were properly seated, raising a dish of sake to his lips consideringly, glancing sidelong at his wife. Little Shiemi obliviously played with her chopsticks, pouting into the miso soup he knew wasn’t exactly her favorite. “I’ve heard rumors of what they’ve done to their own countries in the West, how they destroy their air with pollution and subjugate the people under the heels of wealthy madmen hellbent on doing nothing except maximizing profits no matter the cost. Not that I’d care much what happens to that filth, but I hardly want the same thing for Nanzan. Hah, could you imagine it? Yokai, serving under the yoke of some greedy bastard! That’s hardly a way for anyone to live, let alone wealth. But, perhaps the stores of wealth the Senju never found might be the key to our security. Maybe we could buy our way to prosperity.”
It was an odd thing to muse over, but a consideration that would have to be made. The teals of silver that existed in caches littered throughout the kingdom bore inestimable wealth, enough to be a strong foundation upon which his conspiracies could advance. Smiling into his sake, he already saw a road in sight they could take. A highroad that would be safe from the cataclysmic floods to come.
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