Work Text:
SACRILEGE
The Uchiha lands lie inside the border of the eternal winter. Just at the edges, ever watching, ever waiting. Nobody has seen the great dragon there in three hundred years, but still the winter does not leave.
It’s a mark on this land, one where nobody wants to live. The permafrost makes food difficult to procure. The days are cold, the nights colder. Still, they wait.
The skills they once honed, the lives they once led are written in the culture and the lands. The bones of the great dragon Butsuma mark the center of their small village. The skills they hone with bow and naginata are used for hunting prey outside their borders, and contracting out skilled warriors for coin and goods. The oil they strain from animal fats and sacred plants are used in their ceremonial fire dances.
The clan head is still called Tajima. Izuna can’t even remember his father’s given name, and wonders if one day his elder brother Madara’s name will be lost to history in the same way.
_____
Izuna is ten when he performs his first fire dance, chakrams lit with flame as he swirls and spirals into the air. He’s the youngest and the most serious dancer on the stage. He does the same moves all the children have been taught, echoing the movement of Madara’s steps as Madara dances forward to lead, ceremonial Naginata at the ready. Madara is grinning, wicked and victorious. It’s a hard contrast to Izuna. The crowd sings loud and proud:
Great dragon Butsuma
How we laid you low
And bared your bones
Afore our gods
The youngest children and the eldest warriors wave fans in the crowd, and the flame burns brighter and higher. Madara spits oil along the blade of his weapon and lets the fire roar. For a moment Izuna believes this is what made them great, when they used to fight many dragons instead of waiting and watching for a single one.
The night ends in drunken hymns and even Izuna tries a sip of sake from a cup. “If you are ever in a pinch, with no oil, you can spit fire with sake,” one of the elder warriors offers Izuna advice with a sage nod and a ruffle to his hair.
“Have you ever seen the dragon?” Izuna asks.
“No,” the warrior whispers, leaning down so only Izuna can hear him above the noise. “But as the winter lasts forever, so too the great Tobirama does not die or move on. We’ll fight him again one day, but not a soul knows where he sleeps.”
“Tobirama knows where he sleeps,” Izuna replies. “And one day I will too.”
“Of course, one day we might all know, but leave the fighting to your brother, he was born to be the next Tajima,” the warrior sips deeply from his cup and makes the sign of Amaterasu’s blessing with his hand against his chest.
But he shouldn’t have to be, goes unsaid.
_____
Izuna is twenty when Madara takes ill on the night of the fire dance. A fever lays him low and the heat can’t seem to be sweated out for all the herbs they give him and blankets they wrap him in. He’s delirious and their father is upset.
By now Izuna has more siblings, small and worried but old enough to dance with their chakrams and sing the songs. Izuna offers to take up the Naginata, he knows the steps, he’s seen Madara dance it every year. He knows the words by heart, and his feet can follow the beat of the drums. He would be perfect.
“No,” his father insists when he asks. “I would not ask that of you, Madara would not want that for you, to hold the Naginata is to hold Tobirama’s wrath and focus in your hands. The blade calls to him, and I cannot ask that of you. No, Izuna.”
“I can do it, I can wield it. I can slay him,” Izuna replies, his own voice cold and full of poorly concealed rage.
“You could fight him, but I would not want you to. We keep our skills but the truth is we are not ready for war, and I would not lose more than the one child I already will lose to it.”
Izuna wants to tell his father that Madara becoming the next Tajima is not a loss. That dedicating their lives to their history is not something he takes lightly. He’s ready. But as his father takes the naginata in hand, fingers wracked by tremors even as he tries to control it. He can’t bring himself to say anything.
Instead he fetches the armor that his father must wear, every buckle familiar and strange at the same time. The style is the same as he is used to, but the material is Butsuma’s harvested scales. Black and glistening, too still on a human frame when they look like lungs should take breath beneath them. Izuna fetches the flasks of oil that will be belted down inside the armor and the thin tubes that will run up to the neck where it can be inhaled and spit.
Izuna says nothing when his father kisses Madara’s sweat soaked brow and whispers that he loves his son.
_____
He’s only going out to dance, he’s not going to war no matter how much this dance is a preparation for one. Izuna’s armor is less heavy. Navy silks and black leather plates form a complete outfit. It’s held on by sturdy chains instead of dragonhide leather and is easy to slip into with the decreased weight. His chakrams are slipped into his hands and a prayer is whispered for his brother’s return to health and his father’s step not to falter.
“Hold Madara close to your breast and deliver Tajima from dusk to dawn unfettered by snow or dragon.”
The night brings the festivities in full swing. The dance progresses under the massive rib cage of Butsuma to burst out from under the archway of his massive bone upper jaw. His teeth have been decorated with rows of fireweed, and great bowls of flame light up the ground and sky.
There is a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the frost and everything to do with their break in routine.
Tajima’s steps are steady as he makes his way up onto the stage, his feet follow the drum, but his hands are grasping. The Naginata shakes just a little on every spin, falls just a hair longer than it should when he throws it to catch, until finally near the end, exhausted and aged, he lets go.
The sound of the Naginata falling to the ground is near silent, but the crowd drawing breath is so loud that Izuna thinks even Tobirama could hear it in his slumber.
He’s horrified as Tajima bends to reach the Naginata, fumbles to restart the fire, and then Izuna is there, grasping the shaft of the weapon and oil spitting from his lips to hold and spin. His chakrams fall to the flagstones as he finishes the dance, as he alone sings the words:
Great dragon Tobirama
In your slumber
We wait and watch
To lay you down
The drum sounds hard as he catches Tajima’s eye, and claps him proudly on the back but his expression is somber. He doesn’t accept the Naginata back into his hands, waves Izuna off when he offers.
“It is yours for the rest of the night, and for the rest of your life should Madara never recover. I’m so sorry my son, I have failed you.”
“No,” Izuna replies. “You have given me the chance that I need.”
_____
It is very difficult to find a dragon made of ice and snow in the land of ice and snow. With Madara slowly on the mend, Izuna’s time with the Naginata—that was said to have slayed Butsuma—is running out. He thinks he only has a week or two left before he isn’t the strongest person in his clan anymore.
Therefore, he must move swiftly. He dresses in the armor made of dragon scales, over the navy silks and black wool he favors. He has plenty of oil on hand, flasks against his bare thighs, and his chakrams hooked onto his belt. Small knives find their way into his boots and a pack of dense, dried, and salted meat is slung over his back.
He ventures out prepared, but the winter makes it difficult to see. In less than three days he is caught in a swirling blizzard, cold in a way the fringes of eternal winter have not been. The wind swirls around him and seems to direct him through deep forests. He’s so desperate to escape he picks the first shelter he can find.
It’s a cave on the side of a mountain, and the mouth is so wide it doesn’t look like it could be a very fortuitous find. He doesn’t think he can find better in the storm, and he’s so far from home he won’t make it back easily so he ventures in.
It’s deeper than he expected it would be.
The gray stone of the cave is dark, but not as much as Izuna thought it to be. It’s unnerving. Once he gets a little farther he becomes very concerned. There’s a great iron bowl, the same kind that the Uchiha burn sacrifices of scented woods to the high heavens. It’s sitting on the stone floor, slightly upturned and empty but for a handful of ashes. They are so heavy they require four to six men to carry them. And yet here this one sits, far from home.
“Tobirama,” he hisses. He thinks he has found what he searches for. The farther he goes the more he finds. The great stone bowls, and larger and larger piles of ash. Sometimes in the bowls, and sometimes just in drifts piled up against the walls.
Nothing can live here and yet as he ventures the air begins to smell like fresh spring blossoms. He can’t discern what kind. It’s a luxury item he has never bothered to trade for.
The scent is so distracting and out of place that he attributes it to his shock upon wandering into the heart of the cave.
It’s large, like the great shrines he imagines in the capitals, like the great palaces by the sea. Ice is stretched out in decorative pillars all the way from floor to ceiling. Vines and flowers curl around the but still appear alive. It must be an illusion. Dragons should have magic, and this must be it.
In the centre of the cave, on a bed of ash and surrounded by great iron bowls and statues of Amaterasu is Tobirama.
Izuna stands still, naginata at the ready.
Tobirama’s scales are white like the snow, but they do not glitter, and it hardly seems like it’s a lack of light. The horns curling up his jaw are hardly red, as if stained in old dry blood. The ridges along his spine are translucent and wave in gentle arcs as he sleeps.
Izuna doesn’t want to wake him, knows the horns are dangerous, better to kill him fast. His heart is said to be thick with ice, that only fire can pierce. Izuna spits oil onto the blade of the Naginata. Fire is easy to call, flint on the edges of his gauntlets rubbing with a quick hand movement and bringing a spark to his fingers. The moment his fingers touch the oil the blade is set ablaze and Izuna knows he has made a great mistake.
Tobirama’s great big eye opens, scarlet in a sea of white. Tobirama wakes
_____
Tobirama is compelled into wakefulness. It’s an urge, primal and desperate pounding in his blood that wakes him. He smells his brother Hashirama’s flowers, a gift from the last time he was here. He knows this is his home, but the urge to collect, claim, hoard, is overwhelming. Fire that is not yet his.
His eyes are already open before he realizes that there is a small human in front of him. Fire crackles along the blade of the weapon he wields and Tobirama’s heart mourns that he has brought war into his home. His thoughts however are turned to the warmth that he has brought. That weapon, blazing in its glory, is one he remembers.
This is the weapon that laid his father low. In the hands of somebody capable, in the hands of an Uchiha.
The weapon has been brought to fight him time and time again. It burns and Tobirama needs it.
The ashes of what remains of his hoard scatter under his claws as he stretches his six sets of wings outright. The human yells, loud, and charges in towards him. This is not a large enough space for Tobirama to fly, and the little human is competent.
The weapon spins with fire as the human moves light, like a dancer, as if he could ride the winds that Tobirama does. He seems unafraid as he vaults along Tobirama’s spine where he must turn to see him.
It’s the weapon that Tobirama covets and he reaches back with one quick turn of his head to have it enclosed in his jaws. The tiny human lets it go and Tobirama turns his head back straight too soon.
The human has another weapon, something digging into his back in a grating and painful way. Like a large thorn stuck between where his scales meet. It’s uncomfortable and Tobirama crouches low and rolls over, hoping to dislodge the human or crush him against the ground.
He doesn’t have any luck as the human pulls the weapons from his side and runs along his slowly turning body. Circles of fire spin in his hands as he weaves and jumps in the air over Tobirama’s flailing forelegs to hold the circles of fire roughly at the spot in Tobirama’s chest where his heart beats beneath scales and flesh.
“I will slay you and end this eternal winter,” he speaks, loudly, though even without his volume Tobirama’s ears are sensitive enough.
Tobirama must drop the pole-weapon in his mouth to make sounds, to speak as the human did with vocal cords and sounds.
There’s a distinctive hiss in his tone, but he finds the words easily enough. “I’m uncertain if slaying me will end the winter if you intend to build your home under my desecrated
_____
Izuna falters. He didn’t expect the dragon to speak, to talk or understand. It’s something the stories seem to have forgotten or overlooked. “You are trying to trick me.”
“Has living under Butsuma’s bones brought you peace?” Tobirama asks, the last word ending in a long hiss.
No, Izuna thinks, raiders and bandits and other clans frequently come to fight. Food is scarce in the land where nothing grows.
“I suspect living under my cursed bones would bring you winter for all eternity.”
Izuna still doesn’t move. “Lies.”
“—and what of my siblings, did they stay and make war when they found things to free them of their own curses? Do you fight Hashirama, and his forbidden forests? Do you fight Kawarama singing songs of steel? Do you fight Itama, dancing with death?”
Izuna shakes his head, hands trembling. He’s uncertain now, and yet he still holds tight to his ideals.
“Do I fight you, tiny Uchiha, beyond the winter that does not leave, do I seek you out?” Tobirama continues.
Izuna shakes his head, scrambling for anything he knows for certain. “But all the stone Uchiha bowls, all the ashes.”
“I am cursed to hoard all that is burning, hot and on fire. Many times what I collect does not survive its own flames. The bowls of your people are so very sturdy and they call to me when I am awake. So I brought them here. As your blade sings with flame, as your metal circles burn even now and call to me to possess them.”
“I don’t trust you,” Izuna concludes.
“I don’t trust you not to kill me in my sleep, but I am long since tired of war and children born to hate,” Tobirama sighs, and it sounds like the low notes Madara plays on his shamisen.
“Prove it,” Izuna says like a petulant child. “I want my Naginata back.”
“Oh yes. The blade that my father bled upon, between us like a gesture of peace,” Tobirama bites out. “I shall not let it leave my sight, it belongs to me now, and so if you must hold it, here you will remain.”
“Fine!” Izuna bites out. He can’t afford to lose the weapon. It’s all of his family's history and sacrifice in one fell swoop.
He jumps to the side of Tobirama’s neck to land on his feet where the pole arm has fallen to the floor. Tobirama turns over to face him even as Izuna keeps the weapon between them warily.
“You should rest. I will not eat you in your sleep,” Tobirama promises. Izuna doesn’t think he could rest if he had all the comforts in the world.
He doesn’t have an option. Outside is inhospitable as a place to sleep, and Tobirama won’t let the naginata go without a fight, and Izuna isn’t sure if he wants to fight anymore. He’s too tired to argue.
In the end he sleeps sitting up in a corner that is protected by a bit of an overhang, naginata clutched in his hands and across his lap. He’ll find a solution in the morning.
_____
The weather is better after the storm. Not beautiful; not spring carefully creeping through the melt, but a clear winter day like all the other clear winter days that Izuna has experienced. He still has time to make a decision, and now he’s well rested.
He can earn Tobirama’s trust, and then he can stab him while his back is turned.
Three days he waits and watches from his corner eating the last of his rations and relieving himself outside the mouth of the cave.
“I’m hungry,” he announces.
“How good are you at hunting, little Uchiha?” Tobirama asks.
“Very good. I’m not Tajima of my clan, but I could have been. Under other circumstances,” Izuna replies.
“Glad am I that you are not. What a cursed name, Tajima and Butsuma invoked their gods and demons both in vengeance and their hatred bore fruit.” Tobirama speaks, his voice low and knowledgeable.
“What do you mean?” Izuna asks.
“If you must ask, your education has been sorely lacking. Come. Climb on. I’ll tell you a story while we hunt. And know that if you pierce my hide with that blade we will both plummet to our deaths.” Tobirama warns.
Izuna doesn’t make the mistake of crawling up behind Tobirama’s head. He knows that Tobirama won’t allow for it yet, not a spot where Izuna could pierce metal through his hide and into his brain. Instead he follows to where Tobirama has folded his first and largest wing, hands running along the edge of feathers to climb up and onto the dragon’s back, on leg on either side of his body, hands gripped into a group of ridges along the length of his spine.
“Hold on,” Tobirama speaks, and Izuna listens to the warning. Suddenly the air is in his ears and face as Tobirama twists to fly straight up, the cavernous cave proving to be very tall, and even providing a perch with a higher entrance to the outside.
Tobirama slows down until he is drifting casually and able to speak with his voice carrying on the wind.
“We were but eggs, me and my siblings, when Butsuma desired an army, more dragons to fight your clan. And so bitter he was that we all hatched with hatred on our hearts and a curse above each of our heads. I have forgiven him, though I cannot forgive how the Uchiha clan will not let him rest. His bones should be buried, or burned.”
Izuna almost asks why it matters to him, but this is Tobirama’s father. Even though it was so long ago, Izuna would be upset if he found the bones of his father in Tobirama’s house.
“They should be honored in death,” Tobirama continues and then falls silent.
Izuna wants to argue, but every point falls stale off his tongue. Hundreds of years, dancing on bone and decorating them with aggressive weeds, cultivated just for this reason. An entire festival to celebrate the death of the great dragon.
“What do your kind do, to honor your father’s sacrifice?” Izuna asks, curious.
Tobirama spins in a circle, twisting only minimally as if to help Izuna stay on. “We dance in the sky to celebrate his freedom from hatred and body.”
“—and what do you do to celebrate the first Tajima’s death,” Izuna dares to ask. Tobirama plummets for an entire breath and Izuna wonders if he’s offended by the question.
“Nothing,” he answers. “Mortals live and die in a heartbeat. Without his grudge we may never have been born, but while we are strong alone, he was only strong with his clan and kin at his side. His legacy lives on in you, there is nothing to celebrate in a meaningless death.”
“Do you even know how he died?” Izuna asks.
“No,” Tobirama replies, and then there is only silence, but it is contemplative.
_____
“Will your clan worry that you are gone so long?” Tobirama asks Izuna later, when they have returned to Tobirama’s cave.
“Yes, they’ll think I’m dead out here,” Izuna replies. “More so if they catch sight of you in the sky. But upon my return, I must give my naginata to my brother who will once again be tasked with fighting you to the death.”
“I don’t want to fight tiny humans, and the naginata”—the word sounds so strange on his tongue—“belongs to me now.”
“I still don’t understand why,” Izuna grumbles.
“It burned under my eyes, warmth and fire, therefore it must be mine. If you were to leave, I would find it difficult if not impossible to let you go with your burning circles.”
“My chakrams?” Izuna spins one roughly on his fingers.
“Yes, those,” Tobirama clarifies, but it doesn’t really explain anything at all. Izuna is too tired to ask again.
_____
Another week passes and Izuna is beginning to smell. Even to him the scent of stale sweat under armor and silk long plastered to his skin is rank. He thinks he catches Tobirama wrinkling his nose when he dares to come close to his face.
“I need to bathe,” Izuna states. “I won’t do well with cold water.”
“Do you know how to heat the big stone bowls with your fire?” Tobirama reaches a wing out to gesture to one that is off the ground. “ I can only make ice, but it will melt with heat.”
Izuna is running low on oil, and doesn't have much left even for his cooking fires. “I need wood to burn beneath it.”
“I will return ’ere long,” Tobirama nods. Izuna wonders if the vines that decorate the ice would be flammable but they are so damned strange he doesn’t want to risk it.
True to his word, Tobirama brings a large piece of deadwood, the scent of pine still present when Izuna lights it beneath the large iron bowl. Tobirama breathes snow and ice and tries his best to aim it into the bowl but it still takes him a few attempts.
His red eyes are focused on the task he is performing. So much so he doesn’t take notice of Izuna’s study of him. Since he has awoken from his slumber to now, his scales have gained a shine, the tips of his horns are now a brighter scarlet, and the edges of his feathers and ridges almost seem to have gained a hint of blue.
Izuna is unsure what to make of it, so he too turns his attention to the water, stripping his armor for the first time since he left the Uchiha village.
The water is heavenly as he climbs into the bowl, warm and clean. He sighs and finally allows himself to relax. If Tobirama wanted him dead, at this point he already would be.
He wonders if it’s dishonourable to lull Tobirama into comfort and then slay him. Where once it was a mercy, it seems to him now that it might be sacrilege.
“Tell me about the flowers,” Izuna speaks, mindlessly offering a topic of conversation that isn’t war, honor or death.
“Oh,” Tobirama exclaims, and even though he doesn’t show much expression, his entire body stretches out with delight. “They are a gift from my brother Hashirama who broke his own curse so long ago. Where once his magic gifted him with endless thorns of poison, and twisting mangled trees that speared the flesh of humans like swords, now he can make vines with flowers that will bloom for a thousand years.”
“What broke his curse?” Izuna asks.
“‘Love in your heart will break a curse of the soul’” Tobirama speaks as if quoting, boisterously and uncharacteristically. Then he laughs, short and bitter. “He fell in love with a princess, they write plays about it in far off Uzu where he lives.”
Izuna can’t say that he’s heard of the plays, or even truly believes the tale, but the flowers keep blooming day after day, and the ice never truly melts… but it begins to bead with drops of water. It’s wet to the touch.
He wonders what it all means.
_____
Izuna leaves when Tobirama is resting. He leaves the Naginata on the ground, gathers his chakrams, and slips out into the very early morning. He thinks Tobirama has simply let him go until he hears the roar rip through the valley that will lead him home. It’s fierce and possessive, angry and feral.
But at the end it echos like a mournful cry, and Izuna can’t turn back now.
He’s frightened by how much he wants to, this place has become far too friendly. Where once he was ruled by fear, now he feels fondness, softness.
He turns back, just once, but Tobirama does not come out of his cave, does not come to find him. It’s better this way.
_____
“Izuna!” Hikaku calls, loudly allerting all the Uchiha nearby.
Izuna stumbles a little at the gates, looking up at that great skeleton stretching up and over the walkways and grand stage of their small village. Somewhere inside the throat once lay vocal chords that could speak in human tongues should Butsuma have wanted too.
“We dance in the sky to celebrate his freedom from hatred and body.”
When? He wonders. On the day Butsuma died? How many dances were seen as an act of war instead of a memorial procession?
“Izuna! Izuna!” Hikaku is pulling at his hands now, leaning him back, offering him a shoulder to lean on.
“Madara has been so worried, he recovered from his fever but we worried he would be sick again with how worried he was for you,” Hikaku speaks and does not let up dragging Izuna along.
Izuna’s eyes linger on teeth and ribs made of bone and wonders what it was like when there was flesh. Tobirama is half the size, but he must look like this on the inside too. Who is really in the wrong when Tobirama lives on a pile of ash and the Uchiha make home in the body cavity of their enemy.
“This is wrong,” he whispers, but Hikaku doesn’t hear him.
He’s swept into an embrace before he’s done contemplating their village. “Wha-” Oh, but he knows the scent of ash and deep forest pine.
“Madara,” he says, “I’ve lost the naginata.”
“I don't care,” Madara replies. “I thought I lost you.”
Madara pulls back to hold Izuna at arm's length, and Izuna is worn, yes, tired from walking, tired from learning, but he’s well fed and warm. When Madara leans in again to press his lips to Izuna’s forehead he smells clean. “There’s nothing but snow in the direction you came from, and you had no bow to hunt, no snare to lay traps. Who helped you?”
Izuna sighs, his brother’s eyes are too strong, even frazzled he is observant.
“Tobirama, the great dragon, took care of me. I owe him my life if not a boon,” Izuna speaks formally.
Hikaku gasps, and it’s such a stark contrast to Madara’s absolute silence and stillness that Izuna turns to look at him instead. There’s surprise there, but also wonder, and a certain amount of sheepish embarrassment from having been caught. He straightens and bows.
“Go and tell my father the good news,” Madara addresses Hikaku, and waits until he has left to turn back to Izuna. “He has cared for you, and kept you safe, even though we think him a monster, and you have returned to me alive and well. I owe him a boon. Do you think there is anything we have that a great dragon might want?”
A gift, from a clan of fire dancers to a dragon cursed to hoard it. “We have one thing, for certain.”
_____
Izuna is twenty-two on the night that the fire dance changes everything. There is no naginata of the Tajima to wield, and this time both Madara and their father take a step back in the proceedings. It has taken them a long, long time to prepare for this. So much so that they didn’t even hold a festival last year. Izuna stands alone on the head of the Great Butsuma, the rest of the dancers and drummers poised to move. The rest of the village watches on, many malms away.
Their houses and their shops and their temples have been painstakingly moved and rebuilt. All of the opposition has been crushed by Madara’s insistence and charisma. Timber has been stripped and dried and dragged beneath Butsuma's bones. Massive fans of steel are held at the ready by dancers practiced enough to wield them.
Madara waits at the tip of the tail with his massive drum of oil that he alone is strong enough to carry and run with. Izuna’s new chakrams are already alight in his hands. All alone he sings the words Madara has written for him:
Great dragon Butsuma
How we laid you low
And burn your bones
Afore our gods
Great dragon Tobirama
In your slumber
We wait and watch
To bring you peace
Izuna catches Tajima’s eye from the foreground and he looks so tired and old, but so proud that Izuna almost forgets to take his next breath. His body doesn’t forget how to step though, and he’s flying before he even thinks. Body in the air and grinning wildly, leaping and trailing fire until Madara catches up with him and the oil and flame turn Butsuma’s bones into a bonfire that forces most of the dancers back. Izuna laughs and stays where he is, dancing even when he hears it. Tobirama’s curse has woken him up, and his roar shakes the ground.
_____
Tobirama has barely begun to sleep, consigned to loneliness, when the blood in his veins wakes enraged and compels him to move. He is so very tired of collecting things that burn only to have the fire in them fade, their form turn to ash or cold stone. Still he begins to move, his many wings stretching out and shaking off the weariness. He has not flown since Izuna was here and now Izuna is gone, the naginata he left behind is little more than a hairpin for Tobirama, a tiny candle of flame where Izuna himself was an entire fire, warm and alight.
He doesn’t even care where he’s going, only that he’s driven there. A forest fire most likely, where he will be doomed to uproot and bring every tree back to his cave, only to watch them all turn to ash.
The blaze is big enough that once he is high in the sky he can see it, and it is where the Uchiha village lies, bones and all. It is where Izuna is. Tobirama is not used to feeling anxious but now he worries. Worries that bones and dust will be all he finds. He beats his great wings and moves faster. His mouth opens as he roars, scream echoing across the heavens.
He doesn’t notice that as he is racing to the heart of the village, the ice is beginning to melt.
_____
Izuna sees Tobirama in the sky, twisting and flying fast towards them, but he holds his ground. When the other Uchiha begin to back away, he doesn’t budge. When even Madara takes a step back, Izuna raises his hands with chakrams burning, the embers singe holes on his silk clothing, gold bangles and choker reflecting the light as if glowing themselves.
When Tobirama comes to a stop before Izuna, snout nearly at the tip of his nose, eyes narrowed and concerned, Izuna doesn’t hesitate. He swings his chakrams into one hand and runs the other alongside the side of Tobirama’s jaw, reaching up to grasp a long horn in hand.
“I owe you a dance,” Izuna says.
“You owe me your burning blades,” Tobirama replies, his tone serious and grave. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not yet,” Izuna smiles, placing his feet to balance on the back of Tobirama’s skull.
Tobirama takes it as his cue and begins to flap his huge wings, and from here Izuna can see the azure blue of them—they were frosted before. As if they have been melted by the heat, arcs of water pour down like heavy rain where he sweeps them up and into the sky. He circles slowly, almost lazily at first, leaving Izuna to run along his spine, twisting and trailing fire that doesn’t seem to catch anything alight. Izuna leaps from the tip of Tobirama’s tail back up to the horns upon his head. He throws his chakrams in the air and spins, kicking his feet out as he goes. He watches in splendor as Tobirama soars faster and higher until he can see the ground below, great chunks of ice and snow melting and running into rivers, great trees blooming in the first spring they have seen in an age.
Izuna keeps dancing, he dances until his legs are tired and quaking with exhaustion. Only when his fingers are holding on to chakrams so stiffly he cannot let go does he finally settle, resting against one of Tobirama’s great horns.
“I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” Tobirama admits.
“I wasn’t sure I would ever see you again either, but you were right about some things, even if I didn’t want you to be,” Izuna admits. He doesn’t admit that he missed the great dragon, but in his heart he knows he did.
_____
The aftermath of the festival brings a great deal of change to the Uchiha. Their village is now on the edges of a beautiful river, surrounded by fruitful trees, and still encircled by a bounty of rocks rich in rare metals and precious gems.
Izuna’s family does not need anyone to take up the mantle of Tajima. The Uchiha village, as it grows, centers around a great central shrine where gifts of fire are brought and burnt as offerings in great stone bowls. This is where the great dragon Tobirama rests his bones.
Izuna laughs when the first foreign visitors ask to lay offerings at the temple, small children with them hoping to catch a glimpse of the great dragon, but he doesn’t deter them.
Tobirama grumbles at Izuna when he realizes the village has appointed Izuna as the temple's leader, but he softens visibly while watching Izuna teach the smallest children the beginning of the fire-and-water dance.
More visitors come, and they take note of Izuna’s care, gilded bangles made for Tobirama’s forearms, indigo silk plush pillows and thick woven carpet. How they seem to spend all their time with each other.
When Izuna wears one of Tobirama’s claw tips as an earring, somebody gives in to the brilliant urge to write a play about them.
“Whatever happened to the trees your brother left you?” Izuna asks as they rest alone together under the stars.
“They are probably still blooming in the cave, but I need them not, they have served their purpose.” Tobirama rests his eyes, and Izuna can’t help but rub his hands carefully over his closed eyelids, sky-blue scales so much softer than he expected. Softer than when Tobirama was tempered with ice.
“They have brought you peace?” Izuna asks. “That’s what the curse was—right? The rage of war?”
Tobirama opens his eyes lazily to stare at Izuna, who seems so small in body but so vast in emotions. “No, it was rather a simple curse. The trees reminded me to be open to the concept of love. I love the village, I love all its people and its children. I love the spring that comes melting every year and the river that runs through these lands—singing to me but not enslaving me to its call. I love your fire when you dance late into the night against the stars, and your spark when you teach the youngest to hold their first flame. I drink deeply of any of the short time we have together because I have had an eternity of loneliness and I have learned what it is to love. And I love you, Izuna.”
“I broke your curse?” Izuna asks, thoughtful, “I am glad I did not strike you down. And, I don’t know how to say it, to understand how a man can love a dragon and a dragon love a man, but I feel it. I know you mean it, and I feel it too.”
“I have a gift for you, should you like it. As you are, it’s hard to dance in the sky, but I can lend you my sight, the wind under my wings, my strength, and then we can truly fly.” Tobirama offers.
Izuna smiles and rests his cheek against Tobirama’s. “I shall take you up on that, though not yet, not until I can return exactly what it is you are offering. Not until I’m ready. Soon, though. It will be soon.”
“I understand,” Tobirama yawns and the grass sways with the force of his breath. “Soon,” he says.
_____
Izuna is twenty-five when he opens eyes turned crimson by dragons' magic. The flasks of oil he carries are light in his hips now as Tobirama’s strength courses through him. His feet can throw him great distances and withstand the wind even though he has no wings. He can see every angle and scale of Tobiram’s body with permission as he moves through the air, a whirl of blues, and white, and crimson.
He doesn’t need wings to dance with grace, leaping high and free falling as Tobirama extends a wing to catch him, fire billowing from his mouth even as arcs of water playfully extinguish the boldest of the blazes.
Neither of them need words anymore, and the village sings loud enough they both can hear it as they dance. The great taiko drums echo loudly into the night.
Great dragon Tobirama
In your waking
We sing and dance
To show our love
_____