emy ෆ

Madara loses sight of her during the last push against the Senju. One second, she fights three men at once with blood running down her arm, mud splattered across her face, breathing hard but still standing. The next, smoke cuts through the battlefield, fire erupts near the riverbank, and she’s gone.

At first, he assumes she moved ahead. Then, he assumes she fell behind. Twenty minutes pass. Madara kills two Senju, desperate and angry, breaking bones through armor. She knows he doesn't like to lose sight of her, ever. She knows he needs to see her fighting, alive, just as much as he needs the same from Izuna. These are small concessions Madara won't make, and if, for some reason, either of them were to disappear, anger and panic would take hold of him, just like now. 

Izuna is okay, but where the fuck is (y/n)?

By the time the retreat signal sounds through the valley, something ugly has already started clawing inside his chest. He rushes back to the compound soaked in blood that isn’t all his. Sweat sticks his hair to his neck, one shoulder guard hangs half-broken after taking a direct hit earlier in the battle. His eyes keep scanning the wounded brought through the gates, yet there’s no sign of her.

Someone says her name near the medic halls, and he turns so fast the shinobi beside him almost reaches for a weapon.

—She’s alive,— the man blurts out when questioned. —Bad shape, but alive—

Madara is already moving before he finishes. Armor hits the floor as he walks. Gloves first, then the chestplate straps ripped loose with one violent pull. His gunbai lands somewhere behind him against wooden flooring with a loud crack. He keeps going without it.

The medic room smells like herbs, blood, wet cloth. Several wounded Uchiha fill the space, groaning while healers move between futons. The second the leader enters, conversation dies.

And there she is: standing against the wall with bandages wrapped around her ribs and shoulder, as if sitting down and resting were a sign of weakness, dried blood dark across the front of them. Her hair looks filthy, tangled with sweat and ash, one eye swollen purple, a cut crossing her mouth.

Alive.

Madara stops breathing for a second; relief hits so hard it almost pisses him off.

She notices him and lets out a tired laugh, bending slightly, in pain. —You look worse than me.—

He crosses the room in seconds, crowds her space with angered authority. —What the fuck happened to you?— The words come out rougher than intended. One healer starts explaining something about a kunai wound, blood loss, a collapsed lung, but Madara barely hears any of it. His eyes stay locked on the stained bandages around her body. —You disappeared,— he barks at her.

Her expression changes, annoyed. —I got surrounded.—

—And that somehow prevented you from retreating with the rest?

—I killed every Senju in front of me before I dropped, if that answers your question.— A dangerous look flashes across her face then.

—Not fast enough, no.

The room goes silent.

A younger medic glances between them before quietly ushering everyone else toward the far side of the room. Nobody wants to stand between Madara Uchiha and whatever this is becoming. She stares at him in disbelief. —You think I almost died because I fought poorly…—

—I think you were careless.

—I’m a shinobi and I acted—

—You’re a fool.

That does it. Beautiful anger cuts across her face, alive and burning, and he finds himself absurdly grateful for it; he longs to be on the receiving end of her precious wrath. —I’m not a weak little soldier who needs guarding every second,— she spits back. —You don’t get to look at me like I failed some fucking test because I came back injured!—

Madara steps even closer, both his hands caging her against the wall. —You almost didn’t come back at all!—

She sees it then, beneath the rage, beneath the insults and the strong voice and the clenched jaw: fear, real fear. Madara stands in front of her, covered in battlefield filth with half his armor missing, staring at her like he still expects her to disappear if he looks away for too long.

And God, that realization does something awful to her chest. —You thought I died,— she says, quieter now.

His silence answers for him. He never looks vulnerable in the way other people do. No trembling voice or collapses. He shows it through aggression instead, through the way his hands flex at his sides like he wants to punch someone.

She exhales through the pain, forcing calm into her voice because one of them has to keep their head straight right now. —I’m still here.—

Madara’s expression darkens. —You were bleeding out in the fucking mud.—

—Alive, Madara. I survived.

—Barely.

—You think I don’t know that?

—I think you pushed yourself past the point of reason like you always fucking do.

A bitter laugh escapes her. —That’s rich coming from you.—

—At least I know when to retreat.

—Oh, bullshit.

—I searched half the battlefield for you, (y/n).

—Sorry, my mighty clan leader. I was busy trying not to get skewered through the lungs. Forgive me for delaying the reunion.

—Don’t joke about this.

—Then stop talking to me like I’m some idiot who tripped into her first war!

—You disappeared!

—And?! I’m here!

—And I had to hear from somebody else that you survived!— There’s genuine anger there, accusation, like she committed some personal offense by ending up on the brink of death without him there to stop it.

Her eyes narrow again despite herself. —You arrogant fucking bastard—

Before she can finish her answer, he grabs her face and kisses her.

Hard.

Every bit of tension between them crashes together at once: fear, relief, anger, exhaustion, all of it tangled inside the kiss until neither of them can separate one emotion from the other anymore. She tastes blood on his mouth. His or hers, impossible to tell.

Madara kisses like a man furious at the existence of death itself. 

One hand braces beside her head while the other grips her waist, careful despite everything, fingers pressing against bandages and torn fabric. She makes a small sound against his lips when his body crowds between her thighs, heat and sweat and battlefield grime still clinging to him.

The room has emptied now; everyone knows better.

When he pulls back, both breathe harder. —You piss me off,— he mutters against her mouth.

A weak laugh escapes her despite the pain. —You came here half-naked and panicking through the medic halls for me.—

—I was not panicking.

—Where’s your gunbai then?

Madara stares at her for one long second before kissing her again, rough enough to shut her up.

This one turns hotter fast.

Months of tension and brief encounters already existed between them before tonight; almost losing her tears the rest wide open. His hands move over her like he needs proof she’s intact beneath the bandages, fingers dragging against sweat-damp skin while she grips his shoulders and feels how tense every muscle remains.

And then she notices it… the hard pressure against her legs. Her eyebrows lift immediately. Madara catches the expression and looks almost offended by it. —Don’t start.—

—You’re hard.

—You’re alive.

—That’s your defense?

—That’s the problem.

The words barely leave his mouth before she grabs the front of his undershirt and drags him down into another kiss. Madara responds hooking his hands beneath her thighs, lifting her off the floor with a gasp that turns into a hiss of pain when the movement pulls at her bandaged ribs. —Madara— fuck—

—I know.— He says it against her mouth and keeps going anyway.

Her legs wrap around his waist on instinct, trembling from pain and adrenaline while he presses her back against the wooden wall, making the hanging lantern sway. Every piece of him feels overheated. 

The armor left behind in the corridor suddenly makes sense. He came here ready to tear apart anything standing between him and proof she still lived.

His mouth moves across her jaw, her throat, every inch of exposed skin he can reach while his fingers shove fabric aside with growing impatience. Torn clothes, loose wrappings, the ties of his trousers pushed down just enough for him to get where he wants.

Where he needs.

The second he presses into her, both of them groan.

Madara drops his head against her shoulder with a rough curse under his breath, fingers digging into her thighs while she pulls his hair. The pace starts brutal from the beginning, no patience or composure. Every thrust carries too much force behind it, desperate enough that the wooden wall knocks softly behind her with each movement.

Like he’s trying to bury himself inside the fact she survived.

She feels him shaking once. That almost undoes her more than the sex itself, because Madara Uchiha does not lose control, not during battle, or before clan elders, not with enemies staring him down across rivers soaked in blood. Yet here he is, kissing her frantically between breaths, as if he stops touching her for even one second, he’ll walk back into that battlefield and find her corpse waiting there instead.

—You’re out of your fucking mind,— she mutters against his mouth, breathless now, —fucking me through a collapsed lung.—

His hand grips her jaw. —You ignored direct orders. I told you to crawl back to me if necessary.—

—Wha-at, while bleeding across the forest floor?— She laughs and moans, getting him angrier.

—Yes.

—You panic too much for a clan leader.— That earns her harsher thrusts.

—There,— Madara growls against her lips. —That sound proves you’re still alive better than words do.—

Heat rushes through her face. Arrogant bastard. He keeps moving with the same relentless pace, hips driving against hers while kisses turn messy from lack of air. 

And the more she moans for him, the worse he gets, falling into his own desires and ignoring the rest of the world. His mouth finds her throat again, and he mutters, almost like a threat, —I should get you pregnant.—

She blinks once. —What?—

Madara pulls back enough for her to see the dark look in his eyes. —I should put my heir in you so you stop throwing yourself into battlefields.—

A laugh escapes her despite everything. Breathless. Disbelieving. —What a disgrace,— she shoots back. —The great Madara Uchiha knocking up one of his own soldiers, unwed?—

His grip tightens on her thigh. —You’d stay home then.—

—I would fight with your heir in my womb if I had to.

—That child would come out holding a kunai from all your stupidity.

—And if you tried locking me away from battle, I’d fight you too.

Madara stares at her for one long second after that. Then he laughs, real, low, rough, almost insane around the edges from exhaustion and relief and need all tangled together. —You impossible woman.—

—You’re the one—!— fu-ucking me against a medic room wall covered in blood.

—I’d do worse if you scared me like that again.

She feels the truth of his words in every movement, in the way he keeps her lifted against him no matter how her wounds ache, in the kisses pressed against her mouth between harsh breaths, in the fact Madara, proud, terrifying Madara, cannot stop touching her because some ugly part of him still needs reassurance she exists beneath his hands.

//

Itachi knew Orochimaru would retaliate after the failed attempt to take his body. What he did not know, what never crossed his mind even once, was that Orochimaru had discovered his secret. His one hidden thing. The single piece of his life untouched by Akatsuki, by blood, untouched by the endless graveyard his existence became after the massacre.

(Y/n) lived in a village so small most maps ignored it entirely. A place buried between forests and rivers where old women dried herbs outside their homes and fishermen returned before dusk with lanterns hanging from poles across their shoulders. Forgettable, quiet, safe (or as close to safe as the world allowed).

Itachi made sure of that. He visited between missions when he could. Rare nights and rare mornings, needing to remember what warmth felt like before disappearing again beneath the weight of who he had become.

Nobody knew of the place, of her, or so he believed.

This time, his absence lasts six days. By the fourth, something feels wrong. Orochimaru’s disappearance after the failed confrontation came too easy; men like him never swallowed humiliation without trying to poison something afterward.

Still, Itachi never imagined… this.

As he approaches the village, the first thing he notices is a foul smell. Decay, human decay, left under rain and summer heat until the air itself thickens with it. 

By the time the town appears through the trees, flies swarm so densely over the streets they almost resemble shifting black clouds. Bodies litter the mud where they fell days ago, swollen beneath ruined clothes, skin splitting open from gases trapped beneath flesh. One corpse near the center well has burst apart entirely, the stomach cavity crawling white with maggots.

The stench hits the back of Itachi’s throat. Blood gone sour, human waste released after death, wet wood soaked in gore, rotting meat left beneath heat.

Hell would smell like this.

And through all of it, one thought tears through his mind with growing violence: (y/n).

(Y/n)(y/n)(y/n)—!

He pushes through the village, sandals splashing through puddles tinged pink from old blood that has washed into the rainwater. A child lies facedown near a doorway with the back of his skull caved inward. Two villagers hang from ropes near the square, bodies swollen purple-black, tongues protruding from their mouths.

Orochimaru made a statement here. Cruelty for its own sake. Punishment stretched into spectacle.

Itachi already knows this is his fault.

Her cottage stands near the edge of the village beneath tall trees, the front door hangs broken from one hinge, blood streaks the wooden steps leading inside. He enters, and the world narrows.

There is red everywhere.

Across the floorboards. The walls. The overturned table near the kitchen. One entire section of the room looks smeared red from someone dragging themselves across the floor with failing strength.

And there she is.

Collapsed on the floor with one hand still pressed over her stomach, fingers soaked dark from trying to stop the bleeding herself. Several torn bandages lie scattered nearby beside empty bowls of water turned pink with diluted blood.

She survived long enough to treat herself, and that realization hurts worse. 

He should have been here to annihilate the enemy, to protect her.

A dead shinobi lies several feet away near the doorway, missing-nin, slashed throat. Blood dried black beneath the corpse in a massive pool swarming with flies.

Even wounded, she killed the one sent to finish her.

His chest constricts so hard breathing becomes difficult.

Then (Y/n) moves, A weak twitch of her fingers against the floor. Itachi drops beside her. Her skin feels freezing despite the fever burning underneath, bruises fingerprint her throat dark violet, blood crusted down her side where fabric sticks to open wounds, a deep cut on her belly. She smells like iron and sweat and infection beginning to settle into damaged flesh.

The same scent of death Itachi leaves in his wake.

Her lips part weakly when his hand touches her face. —Mercy…— It comes out cracked apart from pain and dehydration.

He should have been here. He protected a village that ordered children butchered in their sleep. Protected secrets, politics, men who hid behind sacrifice and necessity. But not this, not her. He’s a failure. —I’m here,— he says, and hates how strained his own voice sounds.

(Y/n)’s eyes close again after hearing him, trusting him to handle the rest. It feels unbearable, because he doesn’t deserve her. Even less her faith.

Itachi lifts her into his arms with impossible care, terrified of worsening injuries already severe enough to kill most people. Blood seeps through his hands from the wound beneath her ribs.

He places her on the futon first, then he works; it takes time, but he’s able to control the bleeding, close and clean wounds, make her as comfortable as possible.

The nin’s corpse leaves the cottage before sunset while she sleeps. The villagers follow afterward. Every body dragged away from the houses, every corpse burned beyond the tree line so the smell will not reach her if she wakes. Itachi spends hours moving through the town in silence beneath falling rain, surrounded by split flesh and leaking organs and faces half-eaten by scavengers already drawn near.

When he returns to the cottage close to dawn, blood covers him nearly to the elbows. He checks on her after washing himself, feeling unworthy of her presence, unfit to be near her.

He did this. It’s on him.

The next days dissolve together after that.

He seals the cottage shut with layered jutsu to keep scent, insects, and strangers outside. Candles burn low through endless nights while he changes bandages stained through with blood and pus, cleaning wounds before infection finishes what Orochimaru started. He feeds her broth in tiny amounts because larger bites make her sick. Helps her drink water one swallow at a time.

And every moment carries the same quiet horror beneath it: he almost came home to a corpse. All his fault.

The thought follows Itachi through every hour like a shadow stitched to his spine. It lingers while he washes blood from the floorboards one bucket at a time, while he scrubs dark stains from the walls where her body struck during the attack, while he burns ruined blankets and broken furniture outside beneath silent trees still carrying the stench of death from the village beyond.

He cannot let her wake up to that, not the blood, the smell, the reminder that she spent days half dead and alone waiting for someone who might never return.

So he cleans.

Sleeps little. 

Eats less. 

Moves through the cottage at night with exhausted eyes and stiff shoulders while she drifts in and out of fever behind him. Every time she wakes, the place looks less like a slaughterhouse and more like home again.

By the week, the air no longer reeks of decay each time the wind shifts through the trees, but the shame sits deep.

He pulls his shit together, barely, when she finally stands without swaying. Itachi watches her while she steadies herself against the wall near the wooden tub, exhaustion written through every slow movement of her body. Fresh bandages wrap her stomach beneath loose robes. The bruising around her throat faded from black to ugly yellow-purple. He kneels beside the tub in silence and forms the fire jutsu carefully beneath the water until steam rises into the cold evening air. 

Warm orange light flickers across the cottage walls. 

Outside, rain taps softly against the roof.

—You must stop tormenting yourself.— she murmurs.

His eyes lift toward her. —I’m sorry.—

A tiny smile pulls at her mouth despite everything.

The bath should help. Heat easing muscles stiff from healing wounds and too many days trapped in bed. That’s what he tells himself while helping her remove the outer layers of clothing with hands that avoid lingering too long.

But the second skin appears beneath cloth, tension crashes through him again: bandages crossing her ribs, bruises, half-healed cuts, proof. All proof of his failure.

—You can stop looking at me like that, Itachi.

—Hm.

She sinks into the heated water with a soft exhale while steam curls around her skin, and for the first time in days some of the tension leaves her face. Itachi remains beside the tub afterward, silent as ever, sleeves rolled past his forearms stained faintly pink where blood seeped through.

He looks worse than she does now. Eyes shadowed, movements stiff, shoulders wound tight enough to snap. The guilt sits on him like chains.

She studies him quietly for a moment before speaking. —Get in.—

—I’m fine. It’s for your wounds.

—You haven’t rested properly since you came back.

—Irrelevant.

—Itachi.

The way she says his name makes him pause, and hesitates only a second longer before removing the cloak. Then the mesh beneath it. Then the rest. He moves with the same restraint he brings into everything else, controlled even while exhausted half to death himself. Steam wraps around his pale skin as he steps into the tub behind her, muscles tense from shoulders to thighs the entire time.

Even sitting beside her, he never relaxes; his body has forgotten how.

She turns in the water until she straddles his lap, hands resting against his chest while droplets slide down both their skin. The contact alone makes him freeze. —It’s over,— she whispers.

His hands settle against her waist, and she feels the tremor move through him then. Tiny but real, even underwater. That’s the moment his mask cracks. He hides his face in the crook of her neck while his arms lock around her. Warm water shifts softly around them. Her fingers slide through his damp hair, gentle, patient, coaxing him back toward himself piece by piece. Small kisses press against the top of his head, his shoulder, while tension fights violently beneath his skin. —You came back to me,— she whispers.

A tear slips down his face. 

Then another.

Itachi does not sob, does not break apart loudly. The grief leaves him in silence instead, shoulders trembling once beneath her hands while he buries his face against her neck and tries to breathe through days' worth of terror. —Forgive me, (y/n). Forgive me.—

—For what? There’s nothing to forgive, love.

His hands tighten again around her waist. —This… All of this…—

The blood, the lifeless village, the fact that loving him painted death across everything near her. She cups his face until he looks at her again. —I knew the risk of loving you. You are not to blame.—

—I left you…

—You still came back. You always do.

Something desperate flashes across his expression then. Her mouth finds his before thought catches up. The kiss starts trembling, hesitant only for a second. She feels the exact moment his composure slips entirely, the rough inhale against her lips, the way his hands spread across her back like touch itself became survival.

This is his language: not speeches or confessions, but touch.

He needs to touch, apologies written in the way he kisses her, like he needs proof she still breathes, the way he holds her impossibly close while warm water moves around their bodies, how his entire frame shakes when she presses soft kisses across his face between whispered reassurances.

She guides him through it, out of the panic, out of the guilt chewing him hollow. Her hands explore him with slow affection until tension starts leaving his muscles little by little beneath her touch. When she rolls her hips against him under the water, his breath catches, eyes squeezing shut while something wrecked and needy crosses his expression. —Itachi,— she whispers against his mouth, —I’m here.—

A broken sound leaves him at that.

One of her hands sink between their bodies, finding his lenght, guiding him between her folds. When he slides inside, it happens slow, almost reverent, his forehead pressed against hers while both shake from the weight of everything carried into this moment. His arms wrap around her even harder, pulling her against his chest like he cannot bear even an inch of distance now. —I’m sorry,— he whispers again, voice cracking this time.