Chapter Text
Day 64
Madara’s leg is hot, like a slow fire creeping up from his foot. Broken, he was told at first, the internal damage was a complicated spiral fracture. Then Hiraishin came. The CAT IV kaiju that his brother went out to fight and then they had to evacuate the primary base and it just wouldn’t heal right. Limited medical supplies meant limited options, but the medics had tried their best.
Day sixty-four after evacuation, the gangrene sets in.
They give him heavy drugs, opiates of a cheap and questionable source, and he’s out, and when he wakes, there’s nothing left of his leg below the knee. And not much left of the knee either.
(It still hurts less than the pain of knowing Izuna is gone.)
The joint that they left isn’t good enough for a prosthetic attachment, at least not one that would be serviceable, and the swelling is too much to do anything with it but rehab. He half considers begging the base medics to shoot him, useless as he is now, but he’d rather go down fighting then forgotten in a med bay, just another casualty, and a wasted opportunity at that.
One of the mechanical engineers builds him a wheelchair. It’s light, just enough room to sit with a belt across his lap that he learns to lean his pelvis into to help the tilt. It gives him a means to get to the makeshift rehab and the mess hall and not much else. He thought he was fit and strong, but still his arms are sore at first, every movement requires them, and even just rolling over in his bed means swinging his weight through his abdomen to accommodate the loss.
In his head he still reaches out to step with it into the shower, and he crashes at least a few times before he realizes it's better just to slide sideways and not risk losing his balance.
He can make it around with the ease of necessity fairly quickly and he becomes more familiar with his body and with his environment. This place is the old Uchiha Corps base, one they haven’t really used in a while, but it was a good place to put all the more vulnerable crew, far enough away that it shouldn’t need to be defended even by its handful of mechs.
The general calls in for the continuing mission to defend the frontline again, and all the crew that can move roll out with weapons loaded. There’s not much left in the aftermath. Just the broken down, damaged, pilotless and the machines doomed for scrap.
Madara half wonders if that’s what will become of him too.
Day 96
Indra is the only engineer left behind and he sizes Madara up with a special brand of reverence for somebody who has worked with him before, and the kind of tone that Madara is getting used to when he insists that he will drift again.
“You know that the mechs connect to your feet right, like you probably technically don’t need the leg, but you need to believe you do, and you need whoever the hell you drift with to believe it too.” Indra’s tone is full of doubt.
Madara narrows his eyes—half of the half-ass therapy is to believe his leg is gone and try to deal with the pinprick sensation of the ghost of it. It would have been a small price to have paid to have drifted with Izuna just one last time, even if the leg was a guaranteed loss at the time.
“Fine, we attach it to what’s left of my leg and we use mechs for the proper knee and ankle joints,” Madara shrugs. He can’t really see the problem.
“Look, I’m not a medic,” Indra reasons, “but I built the first mechs and the first Jaeger for the Uchiha Corps and I know how biomechanics work. I even know the Sharingan OS pretty well, and I can tell you that the way you are now and the way they are built is just not going to work, let alone finding you a partner.”
“Fuck that,” Madara whispers, and it’s the hardest loudest sound he can make without screaming. “Fuck that,” Louder this time. “I counted six graveyard Jaegers in the hangar that can probably be rigged up together, why the hell would it need to be bipedal. Half the fucking kaiju aren’t, I can fucking crawl, Indra. Build me a rig that can fucking crawl.”
Madara takes a breath. He stares at Indra, as if he can see through him. He looks tired, grey streaks in his hair shine under the lights, and his face is weathered and in need of a shave. His age is worn in the sinewy lines in his arms and weight of his long and deep sorrow. Madara knows the stories, legends even, about Indra. It’s like staring into a mirror several years into the future. He knows that Indra lost not only a partner who knew him inside and out but also a brother, and he’s missing one of those himself.
“Let me be useful, just one last time. It’s one rig, one Jaeger, it just needs to crawl out of the graveyard and put the kaiju that killed my brother down,” Madara hisses, his eyes narrow and his body wells up full of spite and adrenaline.
“Ok, just so we’re clear,” Indra says. “You don’t want a real Jaeger, you want a billion dollar scrap machine for a coffin.”
“Just so we’re clear?” Madara asks, leaning in against his seat belt and causing the wheels to roll a little closer with his movement. “That’s exactly what I want.”
Day 122
The first problem comes up biomechanically. They can’t build a proper suit for Madara to crawl in with his good leg in a position where he can comfortably move without his hip joint giving out from the compensation required to balance his good leg. He wouldn’t care but the balance is too difficult to manually pilot even a computer simulated Jaeger. They suspend him from ropes to remove the impact of the floor from the equation, but his weight is lopsided and too hard to balance.
“You aren’t gonna get a test drift with a ghost like this one,” Indra says, and he’s right. “You can’t afford to fry your brain before we field you. But we need the data of you crawling on the suspension treadmill to create a new OS, which by the way, has to be made from scratch.”
“How long is that gonna take?” Madara grumbles, already his path to revenge has been delayed. The General doesn’t check in here often; doesn’t have time to check on him unless they think he can be fielded. He’d have to have a partner for that, in theory.
(He has a partner. It’s Izuna.)
Hell, they left him with Indra, a mechanical engineer considered too old and outdated to be anything more than a relic. The rest of the base is just a skeleton crew to support anyone who ends up like him on the frontlines. “Long enough that you have time to fix the issue on your end of trying to hold a sustained run on four legs like an animal. You aren’t going to like half the answer for your balance.”
“Just tell me, so I can choose to not-like it or not,” Madara growls, delay after delay.
“You’ve got to go back to the med bay and get them to take the remainder of your other leg. You’re too imbalanced to hang like this and you won’t be able to operate a prosthetic well enough to fight with the weakness in your muscles from the infection. If you do, it’s gonna be another six months of recovery at least—and then another half a year until you are field ready. For the length of time you'll need to get to the frontlines, and then to get into the nest, you have to be able to operate the Jaeger solo, it’s not going to be more than a Mark-2 at best. I’m also gonna reiterate, you’re gonna die doing this.”
“But I’m going to die fighting,” Madara says, “Take the rest of it, I’m fucking going to be in that cockpit any way I need to be.”
Day 151
Indra wisely doesn’t tell him the plans the medics have decided to implement for rapid healing, so when he wakes up hooked to tubes of blue liquid, he panics. He reaches to grab them, but his wrists are tethered to the boards. “Stop,” he hears, and he knows that voice, it’s Indra, and he’s with the two base medics. “You are fine, it’s just to help with the transition, it’ll make you heal faster, and then you can go back on the field as soon as I’ve got a Jaeger for you to pilot.”
“What the fuck is this shit?” He asks, his dark eyes following the blue liquid in the tubes, there’s flecks of white and little streaks of dark red that he wonders if it's the backwash of his own blood, it’s a thought, and then there’s screaming. He’s screaming. “What the fuck?! What the actual fuck?! What is this shit?!”
Indra comes closer then, and there’s a mask back on his face and he’s out again.
Day 190
He comes to; it’s a blur and a panic. When tries to move he realises that he’s restrained, and there are still tubes of blue liquid hooked up to him.
“Madara, focus! I need you to focus. We’ve woken you up six times now.” It's Indra. “Look at my face, I need you to think like you are in a drift. Focus. I’m going to give you the facts. I need you to verify some stuff for me, Ranger.”
That’s right, he thinks, he was a retired ranger, he was a fighter, half of a whole. “Scarlet One,” he says.
“Scarlet One,” Indra says, “What’s your name and your designation?”
“Madara,” he replies near automatically. “Uchiha Corps. Scarlet Blade.”
“Scarlet One,” Indra says, “Listen to me very carefully, and if you can get through this, I’ll drop the restraints. You’re hooked up to an older version of a healing pod, a prototype for the Gedo Mazo they have at base. Your medic, Zetsu, recommended it, it’s going to give you accelerated healing and get you back in the drift faster.”
“Ok, alright. And the blue stuff?” Madara asks.
“It’s a safe plasma fluid made with the byproducts of the CAT V kaiju Mokuton. It’s not actually from the kaiju itself, but the growth appendages it leaves behind. Perfectly safe. They seem to have some variety of cell regeneration.”
“So… you’re trying to regrow my legs?” Madara questions. He’s almost certain that Indra has fallen off the deep end and taken Medic Zetsu with him.
“No, they can’t grow things that aren’t there, only regenerate rapidly what you already have, if the tissue and bone was healthy before anyway. They’re a weak byproduct of Mokuton, not the Kaiju itself. And frankly, nobody wants to get close enough to kiss the thing and find out.”
“Yeah, I fucking know, I’ve fought that bitch a few times, only long enough to hold the line, it almost shows up for fun, leaves before things get rough, it’s inconsistent as fuck,” Madara is getting grumpier by the minute. He pulls on the restraints and upholds a tethered wrist as far as he can. “Let me out? It’s not like I’m gonna be able to run anytime soon.”
“You’re faster on wheels than most people walk, it’s just the stairs that leave you defeated,” Indra says, but he starts unbuckling the wrist restraints and the strap across his chest.
“Ha, ha,” Madara replies dryly, “You’re a real comedian. You guarantee this shit is safe?”
“Safe enough for your purposes,” Indra nods, and now that he’s free, he stands to leave. “I need to get back to the graveyard. It’s been a long time since I was a working mechanical engineer or software developer, let alone both.”
“Do you have help?” Madara asks, and self-absorbed as he’s been, he realizes that he never asked what it would actually take for Indra to build him the Jaeger he’s asked for, all but demanded really.
Indra pauses in the doorway. “I’ve got Obito, he’s here the way that only a really bad drift can do you for, kind of like you, except that he was on another base with better medics, so instead of a chop shop with experimental kaiju by-products, he got surgeons and grafting. Not really my story to tell, but his old partner? Still on the frontlines. Hatake Kakashi.”
Madara makes a noise to whistle low, “Damn, the one with his face covered and his old partner's eye in his head who pilots with Maito Gai? Because nobody else can withstand the shit in his head? They gave you his old partner?”
Indra sighs. “They didn’t give me anyone. He just... doesn't have anywhere else to go. He’s an extra pair of… Well, he’s another hemisphere, and he's got the software covered. He’s building you your new OS, so you can’t complain. His work is good, even if he’s only present half the time.”
Madara nods again. “Alright, you’ve got Obito. This shit is perfectly safe. Heal up, get in the rig, and go kill Hiraishin.”
“That’s the plan, and Madara?” Indra asks. Madara knows he can’t quite sit up yet but he can see the laughter in Indra’s eyes from here. “Let Medic Zetsu know if you start to look kaiju, you know, horns, red eyes, your hair comes in white, the usual.”
“Fuck you,” Madara calls but it echos in an empty doorway. Nothing left to do but get better.
Day 241
In the next six months that it takes for Madara to heal enough to be a daily driver on the suspension treadmill that serves as his retraining bot, Indra and Obito put pedal to the metal and expedited the process as much as they can. The benefit of a Jaeger scrap graveyard is, well, a lot of available scrap. Once they have something solid, they bring Madara down to see the progress that they’ve got.
“We’re gonna have to build a sling and a lift to get you into the cockpit, and getting you out isn’t exactly going to be easy. Your chair is going to go with you so you can still move around the cabin when you are disengaged, which you will need to do at least three times to let your brain recover from the drift.”
Madara nods. He understands that he won’t be able to get there and fight without some time to deal with the trauma in between.
“We’ll stock you up with Mokuton by-product as well. You can ingest it or hook it up as subcutaneous fluid while you rest. Standard is rations and water for six months, but we only have enough for three. If you survive, it should get you back to base, but no further.” Indra has most of these things well thought out, and he details further instructions to Madara as they circle around the quadrupedal Jaeger, the first of its kind.
“Meet Kyuubi,” Indra flourishes, and so Madara does; up close and personal with her massive metal paws.
He circles around the mech that is to be his fighting chance. She’s solid, with parts mismatched in mostly reds and oranges. She has pistons operated by hydraulics for her back knees, to accommodate for what he can’t, he assumes. One back leg is green and blue, and one front leg is black. As he makes his way around, he feels the need to point out the massive amount of tails she seems to have, like a Shinto Fox of eld. They look like a wind sail or a fan.
“So, that’s your counterbalance—and I know that it’s not going to feel real, but it’s got its own AI system that works through the OS. Obito designed the Mangekyou as a kind of Sharingan V2. You should be familiar enough with the former system to use it, but also the AI in it should be able to automatically adjust the tails as a counter weight and operate the back legs as a response to the front ones moving. The front legs and the weapons, though... That’s going to be all your brain and your body. She can balance you, but she can’t move independently. She’s half manual, half automatic.”
Indra’s voice turns somber. “I hope your ghost pilot was diligent in their uploads and also I hope that they were very very good.”
“It’s Izuna,” Madara says, his head tall and his voice proud. His hands steady the rims of his wheels, flipping the wheel locks to be held in place while the lift takes him and Indra back topside and out of the graveyard. “Izuna was piloting solo at the end, they wouldn’t let me back in Scarlet with a broken leg.”
“Good, ok, Izuna’s upload should be able to adapt enough to get you a couple drives, there’s not much left now. Getting you to the point where you can use the drive engagement sling—you're gonna have to forgive the outdated armour on that. I didn’t have any scrap worth salvaging for anything that small and fine, so I used my own outdated set.”
“What else is left then?” Madara asks, flicking his breaks beneath the seat and spinning to face Indra.
“That mental breakdown—the one you haven’t had because you’re a good ranger and your compartmentalization coping probably includes your PTSD over the loss of your legs and your brother?” He replies and it’s phrased like a question, an eyebrow raised and a grimace crossing his mouth. Just like he’s tasting something unpleasant, Madara thinks, and it’s telling the way he won’t meet his eyes.
“I can’t just… stop doing that.”
“No, you can’t, but you still need to get your head straight before you ghost-pilot,” and of course, he’s right. “There's a couple bottles of booze left in the med bay if you don’t mind that some of the gin is probably fused with kaiju by-product as a makeshift field disinfectant.”
“I’m not that desperate,” Madara scolds. “Just make sure that she has weapons ready to go. I’m not exactly going to be punching anyone if I need my hands to move.”
Indra grins then, and it’s bittersweet. “You’ll be able to scratch, and bite—and there’s room in the mouth for nukes, but our base only has one. So, it’s the only one you’ll get.”
Day 430
The breakdown Indra warns him about comes on the one year anniversary that Madara woke up with only one leg. One year and 65 days after Izuna left for that last mission, Madara can still hear his brother’s voice echoing over the loudspeaker. Izuna, reassuring everyone that he was going out to save them. Everything about his tone assured Madara (from the hidden panic in his voice, to the careful jokes) that he was going out to die—and it’s all of the things that the kaiju have taken from him!
It’s ruined his body and taken his brother and primed him for the only fuel that burns in his soul now—revenge. It burns hot in his veins, but it’s something that he’s sat with a year already, so it’s something he can serve cold. He transfers out of his bed to his chair, and it’s morning, so he finds the bathroom that they all share and transfers from the chair across to the toilet to take a piss and the inconvenience of not having the joy of standing and all the inconvenience that comes with a body like his—trivial compared to Izuna’s disappearance—and all at once and he breaks down.
He leaves his sweat pants over the grab handle because he can’t be bothered to put them back on anyway, it’s not like he has fucking legs to fill them the fuck out.
He pushes himself along the hallway with a single minded determination to find those bottles of gin in the disinfectant cupboard. He’s going to find them and he’s going to consume them until today is over.
It turns out the bottles are too high for him to reach and he’s impatient as fuck, so he grabs a broom by the handle and shoves it between the empty footplate and between his shoulder and his neck to hold it steady while he makes his way back to the cupboard, swearing under his breath.
The end of the broom handle opens the cupboard marked ‘first aid’ and the one next to it and he can see the bottle labeled ‘Akimichi Spirit Co’ with that aqua blue tint that he knows is the Mokuton additive—but at this point he’s already been pumped full of the stuff, so fuck it.
“Need a hand?” He turns, and there’s somebody he doesn’t really know, but he knows of them, so he’s able to deduce that this person... This must be Obito.
“I know,” Obito says, and he lifts his arm so Madara can see that he only has one hand, the other side of his jacket hangs empty with a messy knot. “Amputee humour, but if you think that’s bad, I’d love to hear what you’ve got.”
“I don’t even have a leg to stand on,” Madara says bitterly.
Obito laughs, and the sound is stark and raw and in sharp relief, considering that Madara already nearly had a crying breakdown in the bathroom. “Or pants, but not important. I’ll hand you a bottle.”
When Obito is close enough Madara can see that patches of his skin graft have the same faint glow as the liquor—kaiju maybe?
Obito brings down one bottle and hands it to Madara who shoves in between his thighs to keep it steady while he backs up to give Obito room to slide off the counter. The bottle in Obito’s hand is hastily shoved his way too as he retrieves a cane from where he left it at the door. The younger man has a limp. But it’s the single eye—and his family has never truly appreciated its sacrifice—that stands out. A gift for Kakashi, something to keep his slightly more whole partner in the field. “I wasn’t a good cadet,” Obito says. “They really should never let me drift, but they shouldn’t have let that idiot Kakashi into the cockpit either, he was a headcase before I ever got to him. You, however, you were a cadet legend. Older than half the fleet, and still alive and kicking.”
“I was half a legend, Izuna was… brilliant, he was brilliant,” Madara corrects him, and he could complain about loss, but Obito uniquely resonates with some of those parts of himself, “and now he’s fucking gone.”
“So we drink for him today,” Obito agrees, as he follows Madara back to his room. It’s not much, but it’s a military base, so the expectations aren’t high. It was an officer’s quarters once, so it’s roomy enough for his wheelchair and has its own counter and mini kitchenette, bathroom too, if it had a wide enough door for him to use now. He sighs as he puts the bottles of questionable gin on the counter, wondering if the added kaiju bits will make them more drunk or less?
They don’t bother with cups, they just take swigs from their respective bottles until they are laying on the floor, Madara still only wearing his underwear and Obito with his jacket half-removed (but given up on) from when he got tangled trying to take it off.
“Today, we are them fuckin’ drunk! We sing victory songs for Izuna!” Madara slurs.
Obito moans low on the floor like it aches. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, for the Scarlet Lady, I remember her well, I wanted to work on her, I wa— I remember her, she was soo beautiful Madara! S’best yay-girl-l-l”
“Jaeger! She was our Jaeger, drink another round” Madara declares, but they’re prone on the floor and the bottles are empty around them. His hands clutch the dog tags around his neck, his name, his rank, his unit all marked on the metal. “We drink for Izu today, and tomorrow, we destroy the kaiju.”
“Yeah fuck the kaiju,” Obito mumbles.
“Dem’ just fuckers, fuck them all.”