Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nobody stops Madara on her way from the fields, either to placate or admonish her. 

Her actions aren’t those of a leader. Her temper isn’t befitting of a clan head, and her anger is a constant, digging affront against the village itself. She knows, and knowing doesn’t do a damn thing, because there’s no reasoning out emotion. The war is done, and there’s nowhere to put her rage - apart from into oversized trees, felled in a single furious blow and apparently blocking an essential internal village path.

The engawa is the first touch of cool shade as Madara passes under it, and the faint evening breeze flows through like a choked stream of water. Her katana is just another point of heat on her hip, her yukata as much of a burden as a futon draped over her shoulders, and she wipes over her nape roughly with a handkerchief offered quickly by a passing servant. The fabric is already damp with sweat. It wraps tight around her bruised knuckles and sticks to the drying blood in the web between forefinger and thumb. Her path is long, her rooms to the west of the house and soaked in the last of the sun. For the first time she regrets butting heads with the elders over not taking up rooms in the central building, and quashes that thought as quickly as it came.

It’s not enough. Any of it, the sparse missions she’s permitted to leave the village for - and how that rankles - the sparring, the training. 

Her clansmen aren’t weak - they’re forced into strength simply by keeping up with her. Now they’re refining jutsu and developing better techniques in days of peace and good food and steady income. And Madara watches her people flourish, and bites down pointless anger that it’s been done this way, leaning up and lashed together against another clan. And for all that they’re strong, that twenty of them can fight her together and try to give her an opponent, it’s not the bitterly satisfying scratch of fighting another god. Even then, Hashirama never fought her like he meant it until the final hour - and he’ll never raise a hand to her again. 

There is a tale of an Uchiha warrior who grew so disappointed in his enemies, he threw himself before an erupting mountain and fought, fire against fire until only a half crater of the mountain stood and the man’s bones fell to ash. 

Madara was told that story by the hearth as a child more often than most.

Sliding open the shoji, her shoes and their dust drop carelessly to the entryway. Dark wood lines the room and tempers the heat, tatami stretching from study to bedchamber, and the painted screens are placed to block eye-straining light from spreading through her rooms. Faint incense lingers in the air from the early morning, burnt down to grey ash in a ceramic dish by the writing desk, and the mess of scrolls rolling over it. Deep blues, and black lacquer, navy and stark white. 

She stops short, damp cloth still held to her neck. 

Tobirama kneels in the corner of the room, head down and hands on her lap. Dressed plainly, hair braided, a worn old tasuki tying up her sleeves. She doesn’t speak. 

It’s a finer picture than painted on any of the screens. Sketched out skilfully, too - Tobirama’s waves of chakra are blanketed to a soft brook, her face softened from the stern expression it falls into naturally, and a small nioi-bukoro tied to her obi scents the air. Nothing like a shinobi. Senju Tobirama is known as a genius and a warrior, but she’s been a covert operative too many times not to learn about disguise. She embodies a humble servant, sword-hand callouses hidden under her rough navy kimono.

Madara lowers her hand and the cloth, and takes slow steps towards her. Her mind has gone quiet; the world soft and silvery. 

How ludicrous they must look. They aren’t children, to play games of pretend like these - but here is Tobirama before her, and here she is, and she can’t recall why they should care about anything else. 

“Where did you come from, pretty thing?” 

Her voice is low. How could she make it anything but? 

Tobirama gives a deep, careful bow, fingers sliding out before her on the tatami. “I am to be of service to you as a handmaid, ojou-sama, if it pleases you. The Senju wish to make your stay a comfortable one.”

Something sparks. Her world lights again, a flare of heat that isn’t ugly and cloying, and Madara’s stomach clenches tight just to relax with spreading heat. She crouches down, balanced, and uses her bloodied forefinger to bring Tobirama’s chin up.

“Mm.” It’s been weeks. Long weeks. “Call me by my name. I’m not some lord’s wife.”

White lashes dip low. “Uchiha-sama. I am in your hands.”

“You’re not one of the Senju, are you? I’d remember your colouring.” 

Tobirama accepts her hand, and lets her tilt her head all the way up to face her. She looks younger with her hair tied loosely, small wisps free over her ears. 

“I was born to a small village north of the river. I have been granted the chance to improve myself in service.”

“And I thought you would say you were brought from the land of frost, breathed into life from flakes of snow,” Madara croons, silly poetics just to see her handmaid’s cheeks go warm and know that Tobirama is irritated by it underneath. She takes a lock of hair between her fingers, rubbing them together as if to find colour hiding under pure white. “You’re a beauty.”

She ducks her head. Madara taps it back up.

“Answer me.” 

A light flush, averted eyes, and quiet uncertainty. “You are as kind as you are powerful, Uchiha-sama.”

“Beauty can be a burden, too. I suppose you prefer to work here than venture to the pleasure houses and the wealth you’d earn there.”

Tobirama swallows hard. Any young handmaid would be unsettled by the praise, and that remark - it shreds propriety at the seams. Her new position must feel more like stepping into a snake’s nest than the rooms of a noble. 

“I am unmarried, and chaste, Uchiha-sama. I hope to marry and improve my family’s lot, for I - I am a diligent worker, but have little else of value. My parents were not blessed with sons among their daughters.”

“Then I suppose I’ll enjoy your service for as long as I can.” Madara lets go, withdraws her hand, and offers some mercy as she stands above her. “Do you know how to clean weapons?”

If that’s Tobirama’s eyebrow lifting, she’s restrained it remarkably well. A single nod. 

“Then you’ll do so later. You’ve drawn a bath?” 

“I have, Uchiha-sama.”

As Tobirama unfolds from her bow and moves to stand, Madara drops the sweat-damp cloth carelessly to the ground. Her hair resists gathering, or taming, but she brings it up into a knot at the back of her head, loosely tied and tugging faintly on her scalp. She widens her stance slightly; rolls her shoulders and raises her hands just above the level of her hips. Her hands are loose, her fingertips pointed to the ground.

“You may serve me.” 

 Tobirama hesitates. Madara waits, standing patiently in front of her. No noble lady would ask to be undressed fully before reaching the private screen of the bath; but Madara is shinobi. Her handmaid will have to adjust.

Even with the light growing dim over the fields, only two of her bedroom’s lanterns are lit. A candle burns at the bedside, wax pooling slow and hot in its carved holder. Shadows grow long and build in the corners of the room, and Tobirama lets her footsteps be heard on the tatami as she crosses them.

Her fingers are shy when they pluck loose the knot of Madara’s obi. Light, when they take the dust-stained yukata from her shoulders and draw it down past her hands. Her underclothes follow next, and they come away even more slowly from her body. When Tobirama sees the sweat-damp wrapped cloth holding her chest, she hesitates - dances her fingers along the fold and cross of fabric at Madara’s back, taking her time and finding a way to undo it with barely a glance of her fingers against Madara’s skin. The ghost of them lingers down Madara’s spine, runs the shape of her shoulders. Fabric piles higher in neat folds on the ground by her feet, piece by piece. The air moves over her skin, cool on sweat down her sternum, and eventually she’s bare.

Madara stands proud, unashamed. Why should she not? Her body is a testament to years of work and wounds survived, battles won. Her arms are strong, her legs muscled, and the tremble of Tobirama’s hand says everything she needs to know about what she thinks of her endowments.

“You don’t act like you have sisters,” she says, looking over her bare shoulder just to see Tobirama startle. 

“I -” She flushes, and casts her eyes down, only to redden further. “My apologies. I do not wish to be disrespectful.” 

“I’ll spend most of my day being dressed and undressed if you’re always this cautious.” 

“My apologies, Uchiha-sama. This lowly servant will work to serve you better.” 

“A good start.”

They don’t often play games. They don’t always have the time, or the patience - Tobirama is annoyingly fussy about sticking to the script she hasn’t informed Madara of, and likes to have appropriate clothing and setting to set herself in. But every time they do, Madara enjoys it. Every time, she peels a little more back from Tobirama and sees inside.

“You can take off your kimono.”

A short, sudden inhale. Tobirama doesn’t talk back to her, so soon after promising to improve herself, but her feelings on that order are written over her face in bold strokes. 

Madara smiles at her. Mock-gentle, slyly digging the way the ladies of the court do to each other, pecking hens with sharp beaks. “You’ll be rather troubled by sodden clothes if you insist on wearing them to the baths. Keep your nagajuban.”

And Tobirama does it. Small, quick steps, folding her simple outfit away in an unobtrusive corner, and returning to Madara in plain white underclothes. On a shorter woman, the hem would cover the soft backs of her knees. Tobirama is too tall for it to sit lower than the middle of her thighs, milky skin bare. The fabric is well-worn, washed a thousand times over, and the shape of her breasts is obvious through sheer white. If her colouring was anything like her brothers’, the space between her legs would be too. 

Her head is low. Madara is the one naked, but Tobirama wears the shame. 

Madara thinks, unbidden, of the first time she saw Tobirama like this. Remembers looking at her winglike collarbones, the faint shape of her ribs sloping down to small breasts. Remembers thinking how peculiar it was that this had always been a part of Tobirama - someone she had known for more than half of her life and never known this. 

She turns away, crosses the distance to the hallway and across familiar silent floors to the washroom. Tobirama follows, and kneels to slide the shoji closed behind them. 

Madara has seen Senju homes, and knows how differently their clans build dwellings. Senju lean on the fashions of the capital, richer ornamentation and painted wood carving. They favour courtyards and trees that wind around their buildings, circular and tall. More to the point, they still favour communal baths or high-walled round tubs big enough for one. One Senju, anyhow. Possibly two of any other clan. For the Uchiha - ironworkers, firestarters - a stone floor and low, wide bath in each home is a simple thing to build and heat. 

Dark, rounded stones pave the floor, polished smooth over generations of footsteps and water soaking down into the spaces between. The bath is square, shaped from wood sealed with iron, and filled with clear, hot water. Steam rises thick and scented, even with the windows over the bath open to a raked-stone courtyard set within high walls - the evening is still, airless, and neither a Senju or Uchiha can remember an autumn hotter than this one. 

“Here,” she says, and shows Tobirama the washcloths and small cedar tubs - the illusion that she doesn’t share this bath on a regular basis must be kept, after all. “I’m sure you’re proficient in caring for long hair, if you have sisters.” 

“None so fine as yours.” 

She almost snorts. “Or as much, I imagine.”

Tobirama doesn’t succeed in hiding her smile, but she does dip her head like a sweet young maid would. Madara feels almost proud of that smile, for her part in making it. “No, Uchiha-sama.” 

“Use the comb. There’s oil beside it.” 

Tobirama stands upright from the small shelf with the tools in hand and turns to her - knuckles whitening for the briefest moment on the handle as she takes Madara in.

The bath stool is low, but she sits on it just as she would in the Hokage’s chair. Legs apart, thighs strong, feet planted confidently. One hand rests on the curved edge of the seat, the other raking her thick, tangled hair back from her face. Tobirama’s gaze lingers on the dark curls between her legs, and flickers over the swell of muscle along her raised arm.  

Madara tilts her head. “Am I the first lady you’ve served?”

“Yes, Uchiha-sama.” Tobirama bows, again, her hair slipping forward over her shoulder in its braid. “I apologise for my ignorance.”

“I don’t hold your inexperience against you. You’ll learn.” 

A small smile.

“Come.” 

Tobirama’s shoulders relax some, and she willingly draws closer when Madara beckons. She must be confused, poor thing. Told of the Uchiha leader’s bouts of anger, her sharp tongue, only to slip meekly into her rooms and be met with praise and gentle, prying teasing. 

Her hands are delicate where they pick through tangles and tease out knots, fast and precise. Small tugs at Madara’s scalp give sparks of pleasure instead of smarting, and the teeth of a wooden comb run a smooth course from her temple, behind her ear, to the base of her skull. It smells faintly sweet when Tobirama dabs oil along her scalp with the pad of her finger, like jasmine in summer, and Madara tilts her neck to let Tobirama rub it in at her temple. It takes time, but Madara’s hair and Tobirama’s hands are old enemies now, and her maid has tactics ready. The last snarl of hair comes loose, and the comb makes long, smooth passes from roots to ends by the time the sunlight has inched back from the walls of the room to linger along the floor.

Madara bends to the side, cups a handful of water from the bath and wipes it over her face roughly. It beads up in her lashes, a fine smudge of dried-black blood melting back to crimson on her palm. Tobirama reaches out and takes her wrist in her open hand - too deft for any servant, moving on instinct. When Madara holds her arm firm in place, Tobirama stops short.

A breath. Tobirama’s own voice, deeper than the lilt she’s affecting. “My mistake.” 

“Continue,” Madara says.

She stays watching steadily as Tobirama traces the dust and blood from the lines of her palm with water and cloth. Each stroke tingles, and Tobirama’s lips part as she focuses on washing away the dirt under Madara’s nails. The last touch of lingers, and Madara lifts her hand back in front of herself to examine it. The cuts are already staunched, sealing together.

Madara draws her thumb into her mouth, sucks softly at the iron tang of blood from under her fingernail until she tastes only salt. “You’re thorough.” 

Tobirama dips her head. She’s drawn closer and closer to Madara, like she’s basking in her heat. Tempted in close like quarry in the forest, head down and nuzzling through ferns right into sharp jaws. Her bare foot almost touches the leg of the stool. 

“And you are generous, Uchiha-sama.” 

Madara leans her head to the side, and holds up her hair from her back with one hand.  

The first touch of the cloth is delicate, trailing down the nape of her neck and wiping away dust where her yukata’s neckline crossed her skin. Tobirama finds a rhythm in her touch - a soft, slow drag, then the sound of water sloshing, a faint patter of the cloth wrung out, and the same touch again. When Tobirama strokes the warm cloth all the way from her shoulder to knuckles, curving along the inside of her elbow she doesn’t bother to hide her low noise of pleasure. Indulgence is not something forbidden to noble women, after all - and Madara has never held herself above it. 

“Pardon me,” Tobirama murmurs, and takes her elbow to lift her arm carefully. Madara allows it. 

The first short pass over her underarm makes electricity travel the length of her spine, and Madara lifts her upper arm fully to give her access. Her fingers hang curled at the nape of her neck, idly moving back and forth through the damp hair curled against her skin while Tobirama washes the day from every part of her body, nagajuban clinging damp and translucent to her skin, cheeks warm, water running down her wrist and soaking her from elbow to ribs. Madara’s clit throbs. 

“Good,” Madara says - she didn’t mean for it to sound so throaty, but Tobirama’s lips part and she accidentally squeezes most of the water from the cloth. It trails down Madara’s flank. 

Her chest gets the same delicate care, even when Madara breaks character, grins and lays her hand on top of Tobirama’s to make her press her scarred knuckles up against the underside of her breast - Tobirama glowers at her, and wipes a few times hard enough to scour before returning to dainty touch. The water is hot in the basin; Tobirama’s hands flushed with it, her veins high over her knuckles - but by the time the droplets fall to the crease of Madara’s hip and thigh they run down tingling-cool. They can rarely bathe together for long; always too cold for Madara, too hot for Tobirama. 

Tobirama’s knees are pink where she kneels on hard stone. All of her skin is like that, showing the smallest touch in blooms of colour before healing almost as quickly. Madara’s not sure she’s ever seen more comely bruises than the ones Tobirama wears on her breasts and thighs after a rough night - she’s completely unmarked, now, and the illusion is all the better for it. 

With Madara on the stool, Tobirama has to adjust herself and sit low on her heels by the time she reaches as far as her ankles. Madara hitches her leg up higher to make the angle her foot hangs at more accommodating, and Tobirama dabs the cloth over her instep, where faint veins trace under the skin. In all this time, she’s kept that cloth from allowing skin to touch skin without a single misstep. Her touch lingers on the pulse under the nub of bone at Madara’s ankle, but not once does she break and drop the washcloth to feel it bare. 

Madara closes her eyes, and lets herself simply enjoy the trace of water down the sole of her foot. Tobirama’s scent. Slim and familiar fingers, finally warmed up as they cup her heel. The shift of fabric stretched over Tobirama’s thighs, a valley between them. The focus, single-minded, cleaning dust and someone else’s blood from between each toe. The rich amber of sandalwood and trace of camellia oil hangs in the steam. If this is how the gods feel when worshipped, Madara’s starting to understand the lure of creating hails and hurricanes just for a few more desperate prayers.

The cloth is wrung out. Water drips. No touch to her skin follows. 

When she opens one eye, Tobirama is flushed hotter than steam alone can explain. Her fair head is bowed, but she steals a glance from under her lashes and bangs at Madara’s taut stomach and the swell of her breasts that lingers, and wants , and tears away instantly when Madara catches her. 

Something dark, thorny and molten-hot stirs inside her. 

“Do you like them?” 

“Uchiha-sama?” 

Madara rolls one shoulder, and the corner of her mouth tugs up into a grin when Tobirama automatically follows the movement of muscle tightening beneath her breast. 

“So you do.” She shakes her head slightly, and makes her voice chiding. “But yours is not to stare or to covet.”

In an instant Tobirama falls to a bow, forehead almost to the stone. Droplets settle on her skin from the steam, rolling down soft over hard lines, and her white garment stretches between her shoulders, open in a narrow slice down her sternum. 

Madara imagines her words as a black-scaled viper, sliding heavy and heady-warm around Tobirama’s shoulders and against her neck, tasting the skin under her jaw and ear. Winding its body around her chest for the heat of her skin. 

She outstretches her foot and uses it to lift Tobirama’s chin. The underside of it is warm, and petal-soft. 

“Do the Senju mean to insult me?”

“No,” shocked, said so quickly it leaves politeness behind. “No, Uchiha-sama -”

“I suspect -” and she makes Tobirama raise her head to an uncomfortable angle, body still held low, “- that they wish to confirm the rumors of my predilections. Are you a spy, as well as a poor village girl?” 

Her breath hitches. Did she expect this turn to the story? Accusation, aggression, to be made plead for her place at Madara’s feet? 

Scales coiling over a bounding pulse. Venom sinking into flesh. Madara leans forward and fists her hand in the crossed collar of Tobirama’s nagajuban to pull her up to her haunches, pressing her foot into her folded thigh. Her heel digs hard into muscle. 

“My faults are my own,” Tobirama says, shakily. “I - I have never - I do not know what afflicts me.”  

“You do look fevered,” Madara says, a mocking sing-song, and turns her ankle to twist in deeper. “Do you find me compelling, then? Enough to tempt the virtuous, chaste handmaid?” 

“I wish only to serve,” Tobirama whispers. 

“Is that so?” 

She blinks hard, mouth held tight - perhaps from shame, from fear, or from pain - and looks up at her with glass-bright eyes. And Madara knows her, knows the shape of her like the grip on her favourite kunai, and she can see the arousal that Tobirama holds herself back from. 

Madara tilts her head, resting her elbow on her knee and cheek in her palm. If she had fangs and coils, she’d embrace Tobirama with them. Curl tight to her breast and bind her legs and taste her, feel all of the fluttering vibration of her throat and heart moving. 

“Then kiss me.”

“- Uchiha-sama?”

She’s a shinobi, and will always be faster than an untrained handmaiden could hope to be. Those are the rules of the game. So Tobirama has no time or choice to evade or fall back when Madara presses her foot to her chest, heel hard against her soft breast, and rests the ball of her foot against her collarbone. Tobirama’s gaze darts from the flex of her ankle to her face, and her eyes narrow.

Madara crooks the side of her mouth into a smile. “Go on. Prove your honesty.” 

Tobirama could refuse. And then they’d pull the game in another direction, maybe to a brawl on the stone floor in a rush of hot pain and biting and hard gropes of soft flesh until Madara pins Tobirama, like always, puts her weight against hers and comes out on top. 

She doesn’t. 

Her handmaid’s face is hot when she bends her head, hands tight on her lap. Her lips are soft, warm, and they brush over the top of her right foot, light as a breath of air. Both hands cradle her ankle, pale fingers and half-moon nails meeting over each other. 

Madara leans back, hands on the sides of the stool, and watches Tobirama kiss the arch of her cleaned foot. Then the smooth space above the joints of her toes, and - a moment, a small and shameful breath - taking her second and third toes into her soft mouth and running her tongue slowly over them, between, sucking so faintly that Madara has to focus to feel it. 

Biting her lip doesn’t help to control her expression. 

She lifts her leg, arches her ankle, and points her foot to press against Tobirama’s tongue. The muscle of her stomach tightens, firm and tensed. Tobirama’s throat bobs, swallowing hard, and her eyes dart up before falling again in deference. Madara has always had a mean streak, though, and she rubs her first toe crudely against Tobirama’s cheek, right by her stretched lips - somehow, Tobirama stops herself from slapping Madara’s leg or biting down and leaving her hobbling for days, and keeps her tongue flat and outstretched for her to abuse. 

“So sweet,” she croons. “Such an obedient girl.” 

Tobirama’s breath hitches through her nose - her nagajuban is wet through, nipples hard underneath - and her back arches where she kneels low and surrenders. Her eyes are closed, creased tight at their corners, and her flush mottles her cheeks and chest as she sucks and makes soft, hurt noises and rocks her cunt heavy against her own heel where she’s dragged it forwards. 

Madara’s breath shudders, and her hands curl tighter at the sides of the seat.

She considers - with difficulty, tearing her mind from the feeling of Tobirama’s tongue and the sight of her so debased and undone - whether to play the cruel noble and admonish her, or the sweet-tongued tempter and praise her for falling so well. Choices as pretty as a new set of kunai.

“Lick it,” she orders, and pulls her foot from Tobirama’s mouth to hold the sole of it in front of her face.

Sweat runs down the side of Tobirama’s neck, over her pulse and into the collar of her underclothes. Soaking under her hairline, steam of the room overheating her. She tilts her red-lined chin up and bares her throat to obey, tongue dragging a straight line up - and to her ankle, and halfway up her calf with her eyes and course fixed on dark hair and glimmering wetness before Madara wrenches a handful of white hair from its braid and slaps Tobirama’s cheek. 

The crack of skin on skin rings out, and fades in the pounding of her pulse. Tobirama pants in the silence, face turned away into Madara’s wrist and her hair held in a tight twist. A mark has already bloomed over her cheek. She’s pitched forward on her knees, braced by the fingertips of both hands on the stone. Madara has both feet planted, Tobirama caught between them, and she traces her thumb over the bright red painted along Tobirama’s cheekbone. Her own handprint overlays it. 

“Did I give you permission to take such liberties?” she gets out. It passes as a dangerously low tone.

Tobirama shakes her head, lip held between her teeth. Shinobi, or handmaiden - it’s hard to know which she’s playing, or if she’s playing at all any more. 

“If you want to touch all of me so badly, we can leave the washcloth aside next time.” She gives Tobirama’s hair a rough tug, and presses her thumb to the plump of her reddened lip. “I’ll have you lick the sweat and dirt from my body right in my bedchamber. You’d enjoy such indignity.” 

“Please, Uchiha-sama.” Tobirama’s eyes are still closed, and she’s leaning into Madara’s hands despite her words. Madara’s stomach heats. “I plead for the mercy I am undeserving of.” 

Her thumb slips further along Tobirama’s lip, and over the hard edge of her teeth to wet heat. “Maybe you should have been sent to the whorehouse. I doubt your prospects of a good marriage would improve if anyone were to know of your actions. Isn’t that what you were sent here for? To be educated in a fine household, to hope a man of some station would take you as his wife?” 

Tobirama makes a soft noise around her thumb, shoulders drawn tight and her hands brought back to her lap. Madara presses further, feels Tobirama’s lips open up for her and sees her jaw go slack. 

“To think you called yourself chaste. How many of these Senju have you given your mouth to, that you reach so quickly for me?”

“None,” Tobirama says, distorted and believably upset. “I have never - I have kept my virtue -”

“Don’t lie.”

Madara lets go of Tobirama’s hair, running her fingers straight down through, and wraps it back around her fist in a closer hold. Her fingers lay across her hot cheek, thumb sunken to the knuckle in her warm mouth, and she lets her sharingan burn and spiral into focus. 

Tobirama - real Tobirama - stiffens, features sharpening and her teeth pressing into the web between Madara’s fingers. Her hands leave her lap, held half-ready to form signs, and Madara grips her hair tighter to keep her head forced up.

“Have you really never felt desire? Watched your noble, wonderful Senju sparring in the fields and wanted their hands gripping you instead? I’m sure they’ve told you what these eyes can see. All of your hidden secrets, your little lies -”

Tobirama shakes her head. Her eyes are clear, hard, and she’s still forcing herself to keep staring into Madara’s gaze. Madara’s never used it on her - recorded the sight of her long spine arching, her hips held in Madara’s hands, yes, but never met her face to face with it active. Not like this. 

“Never? You’ve never felt it before, have you,” Madara murmurs, voice dropped low. Fantasy blends with truth, with things she’s never voiced. Intoxicating thoughts kept to herself and pulled out to turn over in her hands like treasures at night. “You must have thought something was missing in you. Poor thing - dreading a future lying on your back for your husband’s cock to chafe at you.”

She uses her hold on Tobirama’s hair to move her head, rolling her neck, and takes her thumb from her mouth. Curves her hand around the base of Tobirama’s throat, holding her up and still. Tobirama’s mouth stays open, the tip of her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, and she gazes up into Madara’s pinwheel eyes.

“But now your cunt aches for me, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Tobirama breathes. A faintest dampness glimmers in her eyes.

“Good girl.” She strokes up her throat with her thumb, squeezes a little tighter. “Do you lean so close just to remember my scent after I leave?”

“Yes -”

“I’m the very first you’ve wanted to bare your skin to.”

Tobirama’s throat works under her hand. 

“Have you pictured my hands on your little tits? So hot and wet,” she mocks, “between your legs, when you dare look?”

“Uchiha-sama -” 

“I should punish you for touching me so boldly.” 

“Yes,” she answers, and her red eyes open, and Madara’s caught. Tobirama doesn’t have the sharingan. But when her gaze locks with Madaras, it snags and holds every single time. Like two matched pieces, a dovetail joint meant to lock together.

Amends by punishment is not a shinobi concept. It’s not their life, not something useful in war and bloodshed and constant, relentless hardship. Hashirama trying to offer his life up as reparation was enough to end a war in a moment, and for the first time, Madara dwells on a thought her mind has been avoiding. She’s glad she didn’t ask for Tobirama’s death. She’s glad the woman in front of her isn’t dead by tanto or by combat. Not because she’d rather bring her low, like this, to shame Tobirama and crush her spirit. Because Tobirama lets her, because she’s singular, because Madara could love her despite everything and maybe is already there. 

“Then you’ll have it,” she says, finding her words and place. Tobirama’s hair has become a very literal handhold, and she brings herself back, pupils and tomoe melding back together into ink-black. “And your impudence will be forgiven.”

“You won’t send me away?” Tobirama’s voice barely, just barely wavers.

“I am not so cruel. Poor thing. How could I send you from here, still wanting and confused?” 

She refastens her grip on Tobirama’s throat, and stands to her full, bare height over her. Tobirama lowers her eyes, and melts into Madara’s hold. 

“I’ll discipline you. Your misstep will be forgotten, and then you may attend me again.”

Tobirama’s head moves faintly; she’s trying to nod.

“Stand.” 

Shifting her balance to her knee, and then her foot, Tobirama gathers herself and obeys. Madara keeps her hand in her hair, and uses it to lead her to the edge of the bath. Water laps at the edge where it should be perfectly still, reacting to the moon-tide ebb and flow of Tobirama’s chakra; just as the candles and forges flare when Madara passes them. 

“Hands down.” 

A shiver runs the length of Tobirama’s long spine. But she bends, arms straight, hands resting side by side on the flat edge of the bath and her head down, body folded at her hips. Her legs are long, lean, pale under the lifted hem of her underclothes, and the tendons of her ankles draw taut as she dips her back into a soft arch. Her hair hangs over her shoulder, and the nape of her neck is laid bare. Senju Tobirama, awaiting discipline like a child while dressed as a handmaid, made wet as a spring from anticipation. How ancestors and elders would weep.  

Madara lets go of her hair to tug her nagajuban up over her hips. Tobirama’s hands twitch, inhaling shortly, and Madara runs her hand down her lower back - pushes down, forces her to arch - over the bare curve of her arse, down the back of her thigh and along the tense flex of her calf. Tobirama is lanky, slender, unfeminine in her clothes and manner. But when Madara looks at her, curled in her bed and peaceful in sleep, she only sees a moon to her sun. 

“Stay.” 

Madara’s hand curls around smooth wood, and she considers the tool. A slim cane, no more than two feet. Made for pulling the courtyard shoji shut without having to reach over a full bath, not striking a lover, but it will do. 

“Have your masters disciplined you before?” 

“Yes.” 

Short, emotionless. Not a handmaid’s answer; Tobirama’s. 

Ostensibly, the Uchiha don’t tolerate any member of the household laying a hand on their civilian neighbours. Madara never saw physical discipline meted out to children or servants in the Uchiha clan, but she knows that Tobirama did. Knows that she felt the bite of it, adult fists driven into fragile growing ribs. Beating to teach strength. For slightest disobedience. For a body growing into softness instead of broad shoulders, for snow-hare eyes and a mind that has to take things apart to understand them. 

But still she bends for her. 

“You know what I mean to do?” she asks, tracing the flat of the thin rod over Tobirama’s calves to see gooseflesh rise. She brings the end of it from Tobirama’s left hip to her ankle, drags it against the stone to draw it up the inside of her leg, and flicks it across to tap the inside of her right thigh. 

“Yes, Uchiha-sama.”

“And you accept it?”

A silent nod. She can’t see Tobirama’s face, but she can see her reflection in the water. Her lower lip is pulled tight into her mouth for her to suck on like a comfort, and her eyes are closed. She looks - young.

“Stop me. If you need to,” she says abruptly. Something about Tobirama soothing herself is making her adjust and shift her grip on the rod like it’s a katana slick with rain, even though she hasn’t fumbled a weapon in years. 

Tobirama cranes her head around and gives her a look that says get on with it, Uchiha. Possibly also stop being a coward, which is maybe just her mind filling in the gaps with likely-Tobirama-statements. 

The first snap of the rod against pale skin makes Tobirama rock forwards hard and resettle herself soundlessly. Her shoulders rise and fall, and her elbows soften from locked position. A shinobi’s reaction to pain. Madara gets her second strike in just over the space between arse and thigh, both legs burning together, and Tobirama’s throat tenses in sharp lines. No sound escapes her. She doesn’t try to cover herself or beg. She doesn’t ask for forgiveness. 

Madara sets her palm on Tobirama’s spine, just under her nape, and leans in. Even her ears are flushed, her face hot and her eyes staring out at the garden with burning focus. Madara nudges her forehead against Tobirama’s temple, and splays her fingers out on her back. Follows her gaze, and looks upon the deep red of the momiji’s leaves and dark curve of its trunk, set in the centre of spiralling stones. 

“You’re not a shinobi. You’re a handmaiden,” she says. Her voice is low, but Tobirama shudders. “Cry if you want to.” 

It takes strike, after strike, more power behind it than Madara planned on giving, and Tobirama’s arse is lined red and pink in crossed lines spreading down her thighs, welting and promising bruises tomorrow. She takes it well. Her breath shudders, and her bare feet curl on the edge of the stone, and Madara almost misses it under the crack of the rod when she makes a small, swallowing noise. Her legs tremble, muscle going tense and quivering uncontrollably - and what makes her grit out a sob, in the end, is Madara sliding the end of the rod up between the insides of her thighs and pressing it against her cunt. 

It’s not so easy as making her cry by simply hitting harder than anyone else has before. Tobirama isn’t so easy. She’s worth the work.

“I don’t think you deserve to be hit here,” Madara says, quietly. “What do you say?” 

“Your judgement is my belief, Uchiha-sama.” 

Madara strokes her, slowly, drawing the age-polished wood between the lips of Tobirama’s cunt and watching it come away slick. Tobirama can take pain, but pleasure undoes her. Her flanks heave with her breath, and her feet inch further apart, and Madara takes in the sight of her cunt between her legs. A thin, delicate string of wetness falls achingly slowly without breaking, and the last of the sunlight catches on it. It shines through her hair, too, falling over her eyes and floating up in light strands with her outward breath. 

“No.” Her voice is low, and she turns the cane in her hand to roll over Tobirama’s clit and make her thighs twitch. “Your sins aren’t so terrible as that.” 

Tobirama’s hands tighten, and her head drops lower. Madara’s eyes burn, ache, and they show her Tobirama’s soft, bare skin opening brilliant and spilling red around a blade. Madara’s hand on the hilt. Blood shining on the end, instead of the wetness of her cunt where Madara pushes the cane forwards and parts her. Illusions over truth, one meaning laid over another. 

“Don’t hold it in.”

“Ngh-”

Tobirama sobs when Madara hits her across her thighs, knees buckling. Again. Again. Faint, swallowed gasps slip through her teeth when Madara follows it with a line caned scarlet into the underside of her arse, and stop entirely when Madara lifts the rod higher.

And strokes it, gently, down over the raised lines and marks she’s beaten into her, following the curve and recognising every wound before leaving skin for the last time. It drops to the floor loudly, clattering before falling still, and Madara has her arms wrapped around Tobirama and her face pressed into her nape before the noise fades.

Her hands are clamped over her face, her head is dropped low, but Madara feels every hitch of her breath in her hands, her arms, against her chest and her cheek when she lays it against Tobirama’s back. She closes her eyes, takes her weight against her body, and stands for both of them - for as long as it takes, for ten years worth of tears to be lost into the steam of the room and the warm, still water.

She can feel the throbbing heat of Tobirama’s skin against her, the flinch when their thighs meet. It makes the predator part of her sing, bend her knees to feel it closer, and she inhales against Tobirama’s neck. 

“Mhm.” 

Madara opens her eyes, face still resting against warm skin through damp cloth. It feels like no time, and yet hours that could have passed between them. Tobirama is rubbing her face with the heels of both hands, lashes clumped. One of her feet is nestled against Madara’s, ankles touching, and she puts herself back together without shifting her weight away. Madara waits for her.

“You took it well.” 

“Uchiha-sama is m-” Tobirama’s voice cracks. “Uchiha-sama is merciful.” 

Madara shakes her head. She knows Tobirama can feel it. “Let yourself breathe.” 

For once, Tobirama listens. She doesn’t even argue when Madara sways slightly, holding her close and rocking both of them. There hasn’t been a day in her life that she’s felt maternal, but she remembers the warmth of being held. She doesn’t know if Tobirama does.

“I’m ready,” Tobirama says, plainly, when her face is dry and her eyes are clear. Only the faint salt on her cheeks betrays her. “Let me be your servant again.” 

She thinks, again, of a younger Tobirama, fighting to keep her head high enough to breathe. Refusing to cry, bend, or break, walling herself into rigid form and hiding herself inside it for her clan and everyone else to forget. 

Madara strokes her fine hair from her face, gathering it back instead of arguing with her. Then, taking the collar first, she draws the sorry-looking nagajuban down from Tobirama’s shoulders. It lands with a faint slap on the stone. Tobirama’s right arm is crossed tight over her chest and her eyes are wide, once again an innocent handmaid when she darts a glance back at Madara. Her left palm hides her body, too. 

“Your arm.”

Tobirama tilts her head.

Madara lets out a short, real laugh, and takes Tobirama’s hand from between her legs. “Your mistake is forgiven. Now, give me your arm.”

She lifts Tobirama’s hand, leads her to the edge of the bath, and taps up her elbow from the underside until she understands to hold it out for her. She holds onto Tobirama’s arm, balancing with it as she steps over the edge and sinks her leg into steaming water, humming soft in her throat. The heat sinks into her bones and rises up, better still as she lets go and lowers herself in. The water comes just beneath her shoulders if she sits far enough out from the edge, lapping at her skin, and she rests her head back. 

Tobirama settles behind her with a faint wince, turned at the hips and seated sideways. She has a small ceramic bowl laid out and ready, funori mixed like dark honey within.

Madara lifts a hand and her head, flicking her fingers in a casual permission . 

Long fingers spread through her hair, and a lingering tension in her neck melts. 

The gentle scrubbing is wonderful, and she feels like she’s dissolving into the warm water one piece at a time as she stretches both arms out over the side of the bath. The sound is a lulling, soft scratch as Tobirama’s fingers make tiny circles on her scalp, working through the weight of her hair. A scar runs rough under her fingertips, and she slows her movements to separate her hair; smooths the pad of her thumb over the line like she could wipe it off.

“A kunai,” she murmurs. “I ducked. The blood matted my hair so badly I had to cut it.” 

They have almost no daylight left, and the seals carved into the inner sides of the bath slowly produce a soft, warm light from their engraved shapes. Tobirama’s fingers fan out slowly through the wet hair, slick with the mixture. Exploring, searching silently and slowly in the way that indicates her asking permission; giving Madara ample time to object. Time to answer the unspoken questions, too, all the ones Tobirama’s never asked. 

A small, round dent in bone. And these are only the scars on her head. 

“Friendly melee spar.” 

A faint, faded silver line curving over her shoulder.

Madara’s lips quirk, even when something in her gut lashes. You. 

Tobirama’s hands still - realizing, maybe even recognising the old wound. They would have been teenagers. She shakes it off, corrects, and softens her tone. “May I rinse your hair, Uchiha-sama?”

“Let it sit. Dry your hands and fetch that oil.” 

When Tobirama stands, Madara turns in the water and draws her legs under her, chin resting on folded arms atop the bath edge. 

No Senju would believe that Tobirama does this willingly. Comes to Madara’s rooms and undresses herself layer by layer at the foot of her bed, sinking into her arms and down between her thighs. Would an Uchiha believe that it’s not hatred that moves Madara when she touches her? 

Tobirama’s back is long, slender, and her waist curves gently in over sharp hips. Even in the dusk, her arse and thighs are a raw mess of welts and overlaid marks. They wrap around the backs of her legs, licks of colour at the sides. Every step is almost a limp. She’d let Madara hurt her beyond this. Let her go further still. Her hand around Tobirama’s pale throat, breaking the column of her windpipe and snapping her bones. She wouldn’t need a blade to cut her. Her hand could pierce right through her stomach, her chest, curling around rich meat and the wet strain of sinew. 

“Uchiha-sama?” 

Wordlessly, Madara turns back to face the courtyard, slides forward and submerges herself. 

The water isn’t her ally like it is Tobirama's. The heat is familiar, though, and the sudden blanketing quiet in her ears calms her mind. The same vicious lashing in her gut dies down, snuffed out under heavy weight, and she imagines smoke curling off her fingertips in the water and leaving them clean.

She opens her eyes. 

It’s a funny thing, to look up at Tobirama from under the surface. A wavering image, Tobirama’s calm face in and out of focus, white hair tucked behind her ear. Madara blinks slowly, her hair a weightless mass of dark, waving clouds around her head. A handmaid would yelp and flutter, she thinks distantly. Her Tobirama simply waits, setting the oil down, easing closer and putting both hands to the edge of the bath, pale fingertips curled into the water. One strand of her hair falls long, loose, and trails over the surface in a soft white line. Like a brushstroke on paper.

Her heartbeat drums steady. Her body half-floats, and her hands settle on the base of the tub. The old ache in the back of her eyes retreats, pain in her temples subsiding. 

Maybe she knows that Madara can’t separate violence and attraction, both of them born together deep in her stomach and grown twined around each other. She understands that Madara needs a moment to separate all of this out. Who they are and who they’re pretending to be, what they’ve done to each other and what they are now. It’s not just games. They’re finding ways to speak to each other every time they make up these roles - ways to say what they can’t, when they’re Uchiha Madara and Senju Tobirama. 

Tobirama’s face dips closer, straight red lines curving. The first pang of Madara’s lungs comes, and she lets go of a mouthful of air, small glimmering bubbles rising. Tobirama’s lips skim the water, hair wet at the ends, and Madara meets them with the last of her held breath. 

They hold, there, halfway between dream and waking. Violence and lust. Tobirama’s mouth moves against hers, and licks at her teeth, drawing back and pulling up for Madara to follow her. Hate and -

When she breaks the surface and inhales, pushing her hair back from her face, Tobirama is there with the downcast gaze of a servant. Long hair sticking wet to her shoulders and her bare chest. Her nipples are hardened by either arousal or cold, and Madara - well. Madara has never doubted herself once she sets a course. She lifts her hand, water running from it and brushes her thumb over one. Tobirama’s chest rises on a deep breath. 

“Uchiha-sama,” Tobirama mumbles, cheeks red. “Is this not improper?” 

“A handmaid like you is meant for me to admire. What’s pretty music that goes unheard?”

“But, we -”

“I scolded you for touching without permission.” Madara reaches for Tobirama’s hand, and circles her wrist with her fingers. “I didn’t forbid it.” 

She pulls Tobirama’s hand close and lays it to her breast, fingers leaving her wrist and smoothing up the back of her hand. Her breasts are heavier and fuller than the younger woman’s, and the fixation she has on them will never stop being amusing. The great thinker of the Senju, made stupid by a pair of tits. Pale fingers go stiff, and then slowly - slowly - curve, feeling the give of soft skin and pressing down on either side of her nipple, catching it in the web of first and second finger. The soft brown bud hardens, as Tobirama’s hand strokes and explores, guided by hers. 

“Is it as you imagined?” she asks, warm and low. 

Tobirama can’t seem to muster an answer.

Their hands trail together to her other breast, and Madara pushes the heel of Tobirama’s palm into it. Makes her knead against it, fingertips curling around almost to the pit of her arm. Tobirama’s lips are parted, and her eyes are fixed, and she leans over the side of the bath with nothing but one hand keeping her steady there.

“Should I have you taste them?”

“I - Uchiha-sama -”

She pulls her in without warning. Tobirama gasps when she overbalances, and Madara laughs when she catches her into her arms, water splashing onto the stones. She’s a tangle of long limbs until Madara pulls her where she wants her, washed up against her chest. Her wounded thighs are hot against Madara’s hands, and she shudders as Madara grips them before moving her hands up to Tobirama’s smooth lower back. 

She smiles. “You looked cold.” 

Now, she looks wonderfully undone. Her hair is plastered to her face, her hands holding tight to Madara’s shoulders, body curved like a bow and held safe between Madara’s thighs. She doesn’t look impressed, but it’s not difficult to make her soften - Madara dips her head, tucking under Tobirama’s jaw and licks a droplet of water from the flutter of her throat. Smooth skin shifts against hers, an easy slide, and she curls a leg around Tobirama’s to trap her closer still. 

Her soft, sweet handmaiden resurfaces. “Uchiha-sama -”

“Mm?” She noses at Tobirama’s jaw, her ear, the space behind it.

“Please, forgive me once more.” 

“And what wrong could you have done that I haven’t seen?”

“I do not know - do you mean for me to give you pleasure?” Tobirama asks, as Madara holds her naked against her breast. Virginal beyond belief. How irritating that Tobirama knows such a weakness of hers. 

“Do you wish to serve me in that way?” 

“I do not know how,” she says, soft and ashamed. “I cannot - how can women lie together?”

Madara strokes her hands up Tobirama’s sides; she trembles against her. Every inch of their bodies lies aligned, fitted tight. “Tell me how you please yourself.” 

“Myself?” 

“Your fingers? Your pillow, between your thighs?” Madara brings her up further against her when it feels like she might draw away, light in the water. “You don’t mean to say you’ve never -"

Tobirama turns her head; Madara brings her back with a hand on her cheek and a thumb brushing the corner of her eye. 

“I am not worthy of your attentions, Uchiha-sama.” 

“Didn’t I tell you that you would learn?” she asks. “That inexperience is no sin?” 

Hope glimmers, faint in red eyes, and Madara takes back everything she’s ever thought about Tobirama being a bad actor. It’s simply because she doesn’t care to be conciliatory or false, unless it’s for something she wants.

“I’ll teach you,” she whispers against Tobirama’s ear, and she shudders, and Madara bites at the soft lobe of it with hunger. 

When she touches her, even after nights upon nights spent slipping into each other's beds, Tobirama’s body betrays her. It changes, from a honed weapon held masterfully to a shivering, needful thing - pressing into Madara’s hands, jerking away from her, quaking at the brush of nails down her sides and melting into pressure on her wrists and throat. 

Her breasts are tender, and Madara abuses that - tightens her grip, leaves marks that turn from stark white to pink to red on Tobirama’s chest. Hurts her, and hurts her some more until her eyes are dazed and her mouth is open enough that Madara could slip her fingers in without touching teeth. 

The water sloshes and the scent of camellia thickens as Madara pulls Tobirama up her body with only the strength of her arms, and lifts her into her lap to bring her mouth to small pink nipples, her hand to the side she’s not mouthing at. When she closes her teeth on one small bud, she looks up at Tobirama from under her brows and smiles around it. Tobirama’s face is agonised, tightened with pleasure, and it draws tighter still as Madara brings her head back, and tugs, pulling skin taut and making shallow breaths faster, and faster - 

“Ah!” 

Madara rubs her open palm against Tobirama’s breast, soothing the pain. “Enough?” 

Tobirama bites her lip, eyes closed tight. 

“Never enough,” Madara says, against wet skin and shuddering breaths. “Never, is it?” 

If her handmaid had never been touched before, how would she teach her to feel? 

Tobirama may have been untouched on the first night they set aside jutsu and weapons for another kind of fighting. But she knew her body then, had explored it and satisfied her needs alone for years without compunction. There was no caution. No waiting. They had both bled onto the linens, neither any less innocent than they had been before laying on them.

The answer, Madara thinks, is that she would touch her until every nerve lights up and she knows the sound Tobirama makes when she kisses her shoulder apart from the sound when she trails her fingernails over the skin of her forearm. She’d run open hands up her warm back and kiss paths down her stomach and lick at her navel, drag her fingertips through the patch of white hair between her legs and cup her hand broad over Tobirama’s cunt until the heat of it seeps to her skin. 

And so she does all of those things, and she remembers that in Uzushio their people consummate marriage in the ocean itself and she distantly wonders if Tobirama wants to play the maiden now for more than just novelty. 

When her hand finds the catch of Tobirama’s cunt, she’s slick and ready. 

Tobirama moans, and presses her hand over her mouth. 

“Lovely,” Madara says, “so lovely for me, sweet girl.” 

Her fingers trace around plump lips and thin folds and her nub, blood-swollen and needful. She only has one finger circling and teasing her open when Tobirama cries out and shoves her own hands over her cunt, hiding away. 

“I cannot,” Tobirama sobs, and Madara drinks in the act, the music written as it’s played in front of her, “I cannot face you, Uchiha-sama.” 

Easy solutions. Tobirama’s playing games again, and doing it well.

“Turn over,” Madara tells her, and urges her up until Tobirama’s hands are on the bath edge and her hips are raised. Water laps up her thighs. Her cunt is barely above the surface, lit gold from underneath and reflecting a soft, warm light in ripples against Tobirama’s stomach and chest. The sun is set. The courtyard’s trees are invisible in the dark. 

Madara pulls herself closer, on her knees and gives Tobirama what she wants; the brush of her fingers against her cunt from behind, Madara’s hand spread out on the small of her back. The evidence of the beating she’s taken directly in front of Madara this way, presented to her. Like Tobirama is offering her pain up, giving all of it to her. 

“I don’t need a cock to know you,” she murmurs. 

Her middle finger nudges inside, barely to the first knuckle, and Tobirama keens when she’s opened, like it’s the first time. Madara’s palm curves flush to her, cupping the soft plump give of her cunt and curling her finger gently. 

“You don’t need to want one inside you to be whole.” 

Tobirama leans her forehead against her arm on the bath’s edge, hair spilling over her back and forearm and swept over the side of her neck. She’s squirming, tensing her thighs and shifting them wider apart until her cunt is half in the water, brimming against her skin. Madara follows her down, hand still flat on her back, and pulls her finger out just to sink two back in together. 

“More, more , please more, Madara-” 

She slaps Tobirama’s arse cheek, right over a purpling welt. 

“Uchiha-sama, please -”

“More fingers?” she asks. Her heart is thudding, and she absently brings her hand from Tobirama’s arse to her own breast and squeezes at it, rubbing her thumb over the hard nub of her nipple. 

Tobirama shakes her head, weak, and then nods - gods, she’s beautiful, and a mess. “Deeper -”

“Deeper,” Madara echoes, and shakes her head. “You’re so new. You’re too delicate here for that.”

A short, small groan rises, and Madara pinches Tobirama’s clit with her two wet fingers. She jolts, hard, and her head rises quickly from the crook of her arm.

“You need to be taught,” she tells her, and takes hold of Tobirama’s leg just above her knee to lift it, manipulate her, and use her flexibility to force her leg up onto the side of the bath until she’s entirely open, spread and caught. Bruised knee by her flushed face, hand curled around the polished wood edge under her cheek. Her foot dangles, toes under water, and Madara rubs her thumb into the arch of it to see them curl. “You have to learn to take me.” 

Tobirama’s eyes are glassy; lids low when she glances back at Madara from under her arm.

“Like this,” and she pushes her two fingers inside, palm down, stroking and feeling Tobirama give around her when she widens them apart. Then, pressure to the front of her - Tobirama’s leg tightens - and back, twisting her wrist and pushing against thinner walls, where she’d stroke if she were fucking Tobirama’s tight arse. “Clench.” 

Weakly, Tobirama tightens around her. 

“No.” She runs her nails down broken, lined skin again, and rotates her fingers inside Tobirama’s silken cunt. “Again.” 

Better, this time. Nowhere near as tight as she knows Tobirama can flex - she has the broken remains of a wooden harigata kept for posterity in a chest beneath old robes. 

“Hold me inside.” 

Her fingers drag out - slowly, Tobirama squeezing around them all the way - and Tobirama’s back and stomach tense with the effort. But she’s wet, soaking, and all of the trying in the world can’t help her; Madara pulls her fingers free with a quiet, wet sound. Tobirama’s breath empties from her lungs in a rush, back shaking and head bowed down. Her cunt relaxes, the faintest gape waiting to be filled again. 

Madara sucks her fingers into her mouth, drawing every bit of Tobirama’s taste that she can onto her tongue. She’s tangy, almost bitter, and Madara makes a rough noise as she licks over her knuckles.

“Good,” she rumbles, and that one word has Tobirama lifting her hips higher, raised leg dragging further over the rim of the bath to give Madara even more to work with. “Again.”

This time, she uses the thumb of one hand to spread Tobirama’s cunt while she sinks two back inside, still wet from her mouth. She works them in, ring finger curling to her palm, and searches for the firmness of Tobirama’s womb to press there too -

Tobirama makes a guttural, shattered mess of her name. 

When Madara goes to pull back out, she manages to tighten for a moment - and loses it, goes soft and pliant and melts open halfway through. Madara fucks back into her, withdraws, and Tobirama doesn’t even try - lies there, shamefully lax, and lets herself be a soft, warm sleeve around Madara’s fingers. 

“I thought you a more obedient servant.” 

Tobirama’s shoulder blades shift, left arm drawing in closer under her face while the right hangs loose before her, fingertips dripping onto the stone beneath. She sprawls like some kind of big cat, even over the wooden side of the bath.

“Uchiha-sama has taken my resolve from me,” she mumbles.

Madara laughs. “Did it break with your maidenhood?” 

“I didn’t know -” Tobirama whispers, like she’s telling a secret. “I didn’t know this could - that I could -” 

A handmaiden, speaking of new and unknown pleasure. Tobirama, giving the smallest and yet greatest admission of how it felt to find someone she wants. 

“I have not earned the pleasures shown to me by my lady.” 

“You deserve this,” Madara assures her, and crams a third finger in. Tobirama’s cunt stretches around her, and she takes it like her due - dripping, bathwater and wetness that’s only a blink away from blood in Madara’s sight, mixing together like rivers meeting. 

Tobirama pushes back against her hard, forcing all three fingers in to the knuckle, and Madara hisses. 

Her hand leaves the inside of Tobirama’s thigh and fists in her hair once more, wet and sleek through her fingers for her to pull Tobirama’s head up and back, force her face from her arm and see her face, her lip cut by her teeth, her unfocused eyes.  

“Do you want to break yourself so badly?”

“I want you to break me.” 

Madara groans, rises and presses up closer against Tobirama’s body. The water moves with her, shallow waves up their thighs. She leans her own pelvis against the downturned heel of her palm, weight pushing her fingers impossibly deeper. Tobirama’s hip is hard against her hand, smooth as she reaches around it to get her fingertips over Tobirama’s clit. 

When she starts to circle it in earnest, Tobirama convulses in her arms. Madara gives her no quarter - sage damn it, the girl knows what she’s getting when she asks for it - and rubs viciously until Tobirama’s cunt pulses around her fingers, gasping and trying to push back into Madara’s hips and away from the relentless pass of her fingers. It’s almost too easy, after all of the winding path to this moment. Madara forces her straight into another climax before she’s stopped moaning from the first, snapping her hips in short, rough thrusts in time with the movement of her fingers.

“Again,” she growls, and Tobirama moans; brings her hands up and places one at the crown of her head to tug roughly at her own hair while the other presses over her mouth. 

She comes a third time, and the vein at her temple stands out in sharp relief while her throat tightens around a howl. Her hips buck involuntarily, and her cunt just keeps milking Madara’s fingers in short, fluttering waves. They’re starting to ache. Madara doesn’t care. 

“ - again,” Tobirama chokes, and Madara laughs uncontrollably before she takes her fingers from Tobirama’s clit, loops her arm around her, forearm to lower belly and fingers to hipbone. 

Even that tight hold barely keeps her still. So Madara drapes herself over her too, mouth brushing her spine, and fucks her harder still with her fingers until Tobirama comes like that too, from nothing but the stretch inside her and the feeling of her cunt being entered over and over. Her elbow is braced on the wooden edge of the bath, her hand twisting and pulling aimlessly at her own hair, and Madara watches it through half-lidded eyes. Her mouth drags over smooth skin, fingers curling and uncurling slowly inside Tobirama’s body.

“Four’s unlucky.”

Tobirama’s breath hitches, and Madara can’t quite match the sound until she has her turned over and sees her face - the hot burn of her cheekbones, the look in her eyes. It’s easier then, to recognise her laugh - deep, and real, and lovely for all that it’s faint.

She took up smoking at her father’s side after the second battle she lost a childhood friend in. They hadn’t spoken, or maybe he had attempted to and Madara never answered him - she doesn’t recall the particulars. Her memory instead is of the calm rippling of a pond, left uncared for with the clan at war but teeming with life all the same. Of the smell of tobacco, the glow at the end of Tajima’s kiseru, and the moment he’d hesitated but passed it to her anyways.

A perfect, grounding thing. The feel of smooth lacquer on her fingers. The gleam of metal inlay and the ember-burn. The taste, acrid, the scent, mellow. Hot on the inhale, visible on the exhale. The proof of her own steady breath, the air in her chest, the life in her body. 

She thinks that she took up with Tobirama for the same reason. At least in part. At least, the first time.  

It’s impossible to think of anything else when her fingers are vying for space inside a hot, wet cunt, and that wetness belongs to a woman who should be her enemy but is, instead, the person Madara wants at her back when she fights or sleeps. When that woman is shinobi too, and beautiful like snow over ice. A taut, white stomach shivering under her hand as she skims it upwards. Breasts soft under her palm, nipples tight, heart thudding - one two, one two - and throat sweet under her mouth, fingertips at the hollow of it, lips meeting and teeth bared as she drives Senju Tobirama into a fifth orgasm with her fingers worrying her clit. 

Spit trails between their mouths when she lifts her head, and she lets it stretch. Proof of their breath, still drawn, still alive. 

Tobirama’s arms wrap around her shoulders, hand curled around the nape of her neck, and she lets their bodies sink back into the water. 

The Senju aren’t like Uchiha. 

That, itself, is the easiest way to sum up three decades of outright war and a hundred more of hostility, but it also draws the clear shape of the gap between them. 

The act of laying with a woman is far more of a rebellion for Tobirama than it is for Madara. Senju women walk a narrow path from maidenhood to motherhood, from childhood home to marriage, and Tobirama has already strayed far enough to make her an outcast in her own clan. Madara has always been free to pursue her pleasures, but the movements Tobirama makes for herself are a game of shogi played underneath the table. 

Tobirama’s temple rests on her collarbone, a leg over Madara’s hip and her arm across her midriff. Her back is smooth and wide open as Madara traces aimless patterns up and down it, eyes closed and breathing slow. Incense lingers in the air again, soft smoke circling, and Tobirama’s hair smells of camellia. Loose braids bring it back from her face, tied with the same leather strips that hold Madara’s hair up. 

“Did you even give a mission report?”

“A clone did.” Tobirama’s murmur vibrates against Madara’s skin. “But I was needed more pressingly elsewhere.”

She’s warm enough already, bathed and sharing a futon, but that reaches a deeper point inside her. Inflames her ego, too, but Tobirama has accepted that there’s nothing to be done about that. 

“Mm.” 

“And have you calmed down?”

Madara’s eyes open and her brows knit. The ceiling is lit by candlelight, just enough to make out the rafters. 

“What?”

Tobirama props herself up on her elbow casually, one pale brow raised as she looks down at her. “I asked if you’re calmer now. There's a convoy waiting for the road to be cleared." 

Madara balls her fist and punches her in the gut. 

Tobirama drags her breath back in, pulls both knees to her chest, and uses both feet to kick Madara off the futon. The tatami is cold compared to the sheets, and Madara scrambles off her side to the balls of her feet. 

“You -” Madara points at her accusingly. “You - deceiver.”

The insult doesn’t quite land. Tobirama makes a face at her, quite comfortable where she lies.

“Conniving bitch,” Madara grumbles, and crawls back to the futon. She thumps down, pointedly facing away from Tobirama, and not moving when the younger woman draws close, nuzzles up to her back and presses her nose into freshly washed and scented hair.

“The purpose of my presence was to aid you, not to deceive you,” Tobirama states plainly. “I have a vested interest in your happiness.” 

“Forgive me,” Madara says, tightly, “if I like to imagine that you come to my bed because you want me.”

Her world turns; the printed screen blurring and ceiling back in her line of sight as Tobirama turns her back over. She growls, and goes to sit up, but Tobirama’s hand stays firm on her chest. If she really fought her right now, the guards would come running in moments. She’s only lucky that her chakra is known to lash and flare and wane again, or half the village would be in her doorway. 

Tobirama straddles her. 

“You’re being obstinate. What are you afraid of?” 

She grits her teeth. “Even you should be able to fathom it.” 

“I can’t. So tell me.” 

“Imagine,” Madara spits, “that you are viewed with suspicion at every turn by every clan. Imagine that you are considered not a pillar of the village, but an instability beneath it. Now think of how it would feel for -” 

Kami. Her eyes are hot. She’s not just angry, she’s aching, and Tobirama won’t stop looking at her.

“Imagine how it feels when I wonder - when I ask myself if you see yourself as means to tie me to Konoha. If all your attentions are meant to placate me.” 

The end of the incense burns grey and falls, silent. The night is airless, still, and the bell crickets sing louder for it. Maybe, it’s because Tobirama’s lips are pressed so tight no breath leaves her that she can hear it so well.

“Idiot.” 

Madara glares. “Get off. Go home.” 

“No.” Tobirama pitches forward, brings her face close to Madara’s and pins her arms at her sides with her knees. Her cunt is still hot and faintly slick; it brushes against Madara’s stomach. “Do you think me a piece of dangling offal? Are you no more than a dog?” 

“You’ve always been a willing tool for your clan.” 

Tobirama’s jaw tightens, and for a moment Madara thinks she’s gone further than she meant to. The lurch of it tugs her insides, a step missed on stairs. It would be one thing if she’d said weapon. It’s another to call up the ghost of a younger Tobirama between them. To feel an old wound - a girl not yet fourteen and presented before the court and would-be husband, rejected for her deficiencies after almost every noble physician had laid hands on her to be certain of them. 

“My brother loves this village, and so it is my duty,” Tobirama says, unshaken. “But it is no longer my first priority. It is not my first love.” 

Madara scoffs. She has to, or her voice will stutter like her pulse has. “You don’t -”

“I’ve never understood love, or art, or pleasure outside of living another day and seeing my brothers laugh. Creating jutsu. Mastering another way to kill the clan that would otherwise kill mine. I never understood anything I was meant to. This -” and Tobirama presses her hand to Madara’s sternum, hard enough to hurt, “- is the first time I’ve known what I want for myself. I will not allow anyone to deny me that.” 

She closes her eyes. Fucking Senju. Fucking - 

“Look at me.” 

Tobirama’s thumb is firm on her mouth. Her eyes are hard, and she’s tall where she sits astride Madara’s hips. Her breasts are bruised in thumbprint-smudges of purple. 

“My motivations when I come to you are simple. I want you, always. You have made me into - Uchiha, you’ve made me need you, and if you cannot see that -”

“I’m a fool?” Madara mutters.

“Yes. Thank you.” 

“That wasn’t -”

“I have bound myself to you. You may believe what you like, but I am not in your bed for anyone’s sake but my own.” 

Madara stares, and Tobirama looks back into her eyes directly. She doesn’t even flinch. It must take effort, straining against nature and nurture, but her gaze doesn’t slip away. 

“You have my heart. I won’t ask you for much, but I ask you not to pretend that you don’t.” 

“You’re…” 

Is that her heart that aches? That can’t be normal, or meant to be contained in a thing made only of muscle and thin papery flesh.

“Difficult.”

“Yes,” Madara allows, and brings her hands up to the sides of her own face when Tobirama frees them. The pillow is soft under her knuckles. “That. But I meant to say that you’re singular. I’ve always thought you are, just - nobody else would speak as plainly as you do.” 

Tobirama raises her brow - the movement says, quite clearly, my point exactly. 

“I love you.” Something slots into place as she says it, the same way new tomoe rose and melded into her developing eyes. “Oh. Sage. Fuck. I love you. Don’t say anything.”

The incoming yes, clearly, or perhaps a thank you for noticing stays contained behind Tobirama’s even teeth. 

“Agh.” Madara puts her hands over her face. “Oh, kami -” 

Cool hands wrap around her wrists, the futon gives under the shift of weight and she finds Tobirama wearing that lovely, perfect, lopsided cousin of a smile when she separates her fingers to look up through them.

“I want you to make that accusation up to me. And your hands are in my way.”

Madara’s mouth twitches - and she laughs, once more.