Chapter Text
Tobirama had lived alone in the woods for a long, long time.
She hadn’t always lived in the woods, and she hadn’t always been alone.
Once, she had been a young girl living with her three brothers in a small village that loved her. She was their darling little witch, an exceptional child with magic running through her veins.
She would mend broken pottery, find sheep lost from the pasture, clear weevils from the neighbor’s flour, and every day they would praise her and tell her she would surely be a mage in the king’s court one day.
Until that fateful day, Tobirama had only worked small magics, but she knew she could do more. Like she knew how to place one foot in front of the other, she knew how to grab the weave and read the price of magic.
Before her mother passed, when she would tell the siblings tales of wizards and dragons and knights, she would tell them: Magic always has a price, and Magic would take more if it wasn’t freely given.
The broken pottery needed a little bit of clay she dug from the ground herself, otherwise another pot would break when the first one was repaired. The lost sheep needed her to run the full length of the pasture before she was led to the lost sheep, otherwise the ewe would be found lame. The flour needed her to eat an entire spoonful, weevils and all, before the pests were disposed of, otherwise mice would find their way to eat the entire grain stores.
Sometimes, the price was simply too high.
The baker’s son asked for Magic to make the tailor fall in love with him. Magic would have taken their firstborn child as a price. Tobirama looked at his fevered eyes and told him the price would be his eyesight. He grimaced and told her it wasn’t worth it, and she was glad she lied.
Kawarama and Itama asked her to explain how the prices worked once. Neither of them were able to work magic themselves but always loved watching her craft spells and speak cantrips. She tried to explain something she knew instinctively, like explaining breathing to a fish.
Bigger Magic asked for a higher price. Crueler Magic asked for a higher price. Unnatural Magic asked for a higher price. If you tried to avoid paying the price, Magic would take even more than it required. Before you cast a spell, you had to be willing to pay the price.
Hashirama had chuckled at their youngest brother’s awed yet fearful looks and told them not to worry. Easy for him to say. He was touched by the earth, able to call to the magic in green growing things by saying please. He couldn’t read prices or pull on the weave, but he could ask a daisy to bloom and it would happily oblige.
Tobirama had to remind her brothers that magic was no plaything. She couldn’t just cast a spell and do anything. It was dangerous, but she was clever and careful, and so they needn’t worry.
But she spoke too soon.
Sickness came to their village. Kawarama fell ill and nothing they did could rouse him from his fevered unrest for long. He grew weaker and weaker, slowly unable to even lift himself enough to swallow a thin broth. Their father gave up on him ever recovering, told them to say their farewells.
Tobirama, with her all the hubris of a child with great talent, tried to use magic to save him.
The cost was too high.
She knew it would have killed her, a life for a life. She refused to pay it. She was a child, headstrong and overconfident, but also uncommonly good with magic.
And so the price was not met, and Tobirama thought she had won, but Magic will always find its price. The spell completed with an explosion of power: Kawarama was alive and so was Tobirama, just with three red slashes on her face. The family thought everything would be ok, would go back to normal. It took days to realize what was wrong.
The villagers began to look at Tobirama in fear, run from her, chant prayers at the sight of her. Those that used to love her soon shunned her. Even her father refused to look at her, would leave the house early in the morning or not return home at all. The siblings woke up one night to the smell of fire as their cottage was lit ablaze, the front door barred, trapping them inside.
They snuck out the window and ran, Hashirama brandishing their old wood axe at anyone that came close. Shouts for the boys to not be deceived by the monster in their sister’s skin followed them and Tobirama tried not to hear the voice that sounded like her father praying for her death.
Everyone they met on the road had the same reaction: they could not see Tobirama, just a monster. Tobirama never knew what it was exactly they saw, or if it was just some sense of other, but she knew she couldn’t stay with her brothers like this. She would only cause their death and ruin. So when they stumbled on an old cottage in a dark part of the woods, after they cleaned it and repaired it, she made them leave.
Kawarama left first, always a little lost staring at the horizon since his brush with death. She didn’t have to push him, just told him once he could go. He left the next day, joined the King’s knights. He sent letters that dwindled as time passed. Tobirama never took it personally. How could a respected knight have a terrible witch as a sister?
Itama left next. He didn’t want to go, always the baby of the family, but he was meant for greater things. He had an imagination and lust for adventure, a yearning to be part of the stories their mother used to tell them, and she knew he couldn’t be satisfied within the small confines of the forest. She asked him to go on all the adventures she couldn’t, to do it for her. He left with tears in his eyes, and a promise that he was only leaving to search for a way to free her. His visits would contain tales of his travels and sorrow at her forced isolation, but each time he left again, it was with more excitement and less regret every time.
Hashirama was the last to leave. Her older brother, who would have died for her that very first night they escaped from a village that hated her, never planned to leave her, but even he couldn’t stop the magic of the heart. He fell in love with a sorceress who had gotten lost traveling back to her homeland, a beautiful woman with hair redder than the sunset and eyes the color of deep waters.
Mito was kind, and never shunned Tobirama though she sometimes startled at her presence, but she couldn’t stay in the woods. She was of the sea and storms, and had to return home. She was too kind to ask Hashirama to come away with her but her sorrow was heavy in the air like the static before a lightening strike.
It was Tobirama’s fault she had to live isolated. Her burden to bare. Her brothers never deserved this fate, which is why she pushed them away one by one. Hashirama would never leave her on his own, even if his heart would break to leave Mito.
So she spoke harshly to him. She could barely remember the vitriol she spat at him to make him leave, but Tobirama was always exceptionally talented at whatever she set her mind to do. So he left, and she wept behind a closed door once she was finally all alone.
And she lived all alone for many years.
The first time a villager stumbled into her clearing, it was the dead of winter and she wore a thick scarf around her head as protection from the cold, face barely visible as she harvested winter greens. They startled upon seeing her, but didn’t scream, didn’t pray or attack. Instead, their face brightened, something Tobirama hadn’t seen for a long time.
“Are you the witch that’s supposed to live in these woods?” The young woman asked, stepping closer, but not crossing into the small garden plot where she knelt. Before Tobirama could reply, the woman - girl, really - continued, “I need a spell! I’m always really clumsy, but the blacksmith’s apprentice asked me to save him a dance at the Last Light’s feast tomorrow and I just know I’m gonna trip and ruin it all! Can you cast a spell on me so I don’t trip?”
Tobirama blinked at the rush of words.
“A spell… so you don’t trip while dancing?”
The girl flushed and looked down.
“I… yes. Yes, I can do that.” It’s was a small magic, specific, with a short time frame, it barely had a price at all. She tugged on the weave just the slightest bit.
“Wear those shoes when you dance tomorrow, and you won’t trip.”
“These? But they’re so ugly!” The girl wailed, looking down at her boots, clearly made for hard work and harder weather, and wouldn’t match whatever nice frock she was surely planning to wear to a feast day. The slight embarrassment would easily cover the cost of the spell.
“That’s the cost. If you don’t, you’ve been warned.” She didn’t mean for her words to sound ominous, but if the price wasn’t paid, the girl would trip at a later date and break her wrist.
The girl’s face went white.
“I’m sorry! I’ll wear them!” Before Tobirama could clarify what she meant, the girl bowed and ran out of the clearing.
After that, people requesting small magics became a semi-frequent occurrence.
Tobirama found that if she covered her face, the villagers asking for magic wouldn’t fear her. Well. No more than they would normally fear a strange witch in the middle of nowhere. She used a little magic to create an alert system around her cottage so she would know when someone was coming, giving her time to hide herself behind veils and scarves. The villagers were intimidated by her covered figure, but they kept coming back for little spells instead of chasing her away.
They spells were always easy, small things, and each small working left her heart racing and palms sweating.
Magic terrified her.
After her last great working of magic saving Kawarama, pulling at the weave to power even the smallest of cantrip left her shaking. But Magic ran through her veins, and as much as she feared it, she craved it as well. She could no sooner stop herself from using magic than she could stop herself from breathing.
That day Madara came begging for her son’s life was the first grand magic she cast since Kawarama.
The beautiful woman, hair wild and sun-blessed eyes nearly mad with grief, asked her for the impossible. Curses were no small magic. They were big magic. Cruel. Unnatural. How a young child like this was cursed, and with a curse that was actively killing him, was a bad enough happening she might need to write Itama and Kawarama about.
The worst thing about a curse, though, was that she couldn’t see the price to break it. If she was so horribly inclined to cast a curse, she’s sure she wouldn’t know the price for that either.
She didn’t know the price, and that scared her. Her last great working of magic, though it saved her brother’s life, almost got them all killed and left her all alone. She was afraid of the price this curse would ask of her.
She may not have told Madara the whole truth, that she could normally read the price of all magic. She worried the truth would just complicate the matter, make this woman angry, and Tabirama didn’t want to disappoint her anymore than she already was.
Madara asked her to break the curse anyway. If something horrible befell her or the child afterwards, at least he would be alive for it.
Tobirama agreed.
How could she not, when she did the same thing? Even with everything horrible that happened to them afterwards, she never could regret saving her brother.
The curse was nasty. It was almost… alive. She may need to write Mito as well.
The curse was horrible, but it was easy to break. No matter how small or how great the price, casting the magic itself was always easy. With the chime of a clear bell, the curse snapped and the child fell into a peaceful sleep as the Magic’s price hit Tobirama.
The child was hers now.
What?
That couldn’t be possible, but she knew it like she knew the sun would rise again tomorrow. The child had to be hers.
She didn’t know what would happen if that price wasn’t paid.
She felt tears welling up in her eyes. Why did she always mess things up? This woman was desperate enough to ask the horrible witch of the woods for help and now Tobirama was ripping her son away from her. She didn’t defend herself when Madara snarled and grabbed her by the shoulders, barely noticed when her veil slipped and fell onto the bed.
She noticed when Madara froze. Dread warred with the despair she felt.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “I would not have picked this price.
“What,” Madara started, swallowing drily, “what exactly is the price? I have to abandon Kagami? He’s no longer my son?” Her eyes, an unfathomable black starring at her like she could see her very soul.
Tobirama wished she could give her an answer. Magic was vague. Tobirama could read it, but even she had trouble interpreting it sometimes. All she knew was that Kagami was hers now. It didn’t even state that she had to take care of him, but she promised she would treat him well.
“No.”
“N-no?” Tobirama was dumbfounded. No wasn’t an option? “Magic will always find a way to exact its price. You can’t change it. Kagami has to be mine, or it will find a way to make it so! What if something worse happened in order to do so?”
It would always be worse.
She pushed Madara’s hand off her shoulder and stood, pacing in agitation.
“Kagami can be yours, but I’m not losing him,” Madara said, crossing her arms. Tobirama could only stare at her like she’d gone crazy.
“I’m staying here with my son.” The woman flicked her dark hair behind her. “I guess we’re both his mother now.”
What?
“What!?” Tobirama screeched, her entire face growing hot. Did this woman even know what she was saying?
“You should probably tell me your name if we’re going to be co-parents,” Madara said smugly, sitting on the bed and leaning back on her hands. Tobirama couldn’t help but become detracted from her worried spiral as she watched the stretch of fabric over muscles.
She flushed even darker.
“My name is Tobirama,” she said softly, sure her face was red enough to match her facial marks.
“Well met Tobirama the Witch,” Madara grinned. “My name is Madara Uchiha, and this here is Kagami. We’ll be in your care from now on.”
Tobirama had been alone for a long time. As this strange woman with the name of a massacred clan lounged on her guest bed, her son sleeping soundly beside her, Tobirama cast a little magic.
The little pinch to her inner elbow cost nothing, but meant everything.