Chapter Text
The island stands proud against the raging sea. Tall cliffs have been carved even more treacherous by the slamming tides, creating whirlpools and reefs with jet-black stone spears piercing the surface of the water.
The ocean is a merciless, cruel thing. It is also all the Uchiha know. Heavy rains strike the earth with force, and winds bend down the few proud trees that still have their roots in the ground between tiny valleys and shadows of hills.
As of late, the sea has been harsher than in decades. It eats their fishing boats and none of the sailors resurface alive. The water is content carrying one or two of their bodies onto the shore and keeping the rest in its depths.
Without the boats there is little to eat. Hunger has been thrown onto their beaches just the same, and it won't be long before starvation and desperation follow.
"We can't keep doing this, sending out good men to drown and receiving a few sorry fish in return," Izuna's voice is a nervous whisper. He peers through the windowglass, its frame rattling. Madara supposes there's a draft. “It’s madness. This spring will drive us all mad.”
Madara sits by the kitchen table, his hair pulled into a loose bun with a fishbone comb. "Perhaps there is another way. Think about it - the waves creeping up our shores, trying to fit through our cracks, demanding more of us. The ocean is lonely, Izuna."
"Or jealous." His little brother scoffs. "Either way, I don't like it."
"The sea will swallow us without it," he says. His word remains final - he is the head of their village after all. "The elders think that a willing companion could satisfy it better. Another kind of rite may yet soothe it."
He exposes the jewelry box, carved out of the wood of a drowned tree. Inside is a simple metal ring. "They had it made last night. Now all that's left to do is ask."
"It shouldn't be you."
"I won't risk offending the forces of nature, Izuna. I am not much, but our people have little to begin with. We'll make do with my measly status as the head of the Uchiha."
He places the ring box onto the sand, and waits for the ocean to judge him, either worthy or then not. There is a blanket around his shoulders as he watches the rising tide. It takes an hour or so, but finally the water grabs the offering and drags it into the murky blue.
The night is cold. Izuna brings him soup and mulled wine.
Then comes the morning.
The creature that rises from the waves is made of seafoam and ice. It stands on two legs and looks human enough, if only strange for how colorless it is. Madara thinks of a wedding gown, and wonders whether this is the attempt of the water to appeal to him. He watches the thing shamble forward and slowly form a face, twisting its head side to side before the cheeks, the nose, and the rest of it form and follow.
There's the ring, glistening around its finger.
So this is my bride.
When it stops changing, it's a beautiful face. White eyes stare at him as it steps forward. He can't tell whether it's trying to mimic a male or a female appearance, landing somewhere in between. Its face is angular with three deep gauges, one on each cheek and one on its chin, but its lips are softly shaped, as are its eyes, framed by long white lashes.
Madara stands up, terribly stiff. He already knows he will be bedridden for a day or two, but the misery of a sickness does not distract him from the wonder of seeing a creature of the deep before him. Slowly he walks into the tide, meeting it halfway.
Its teeth are razor-sharp and in two rows, like fish. “Hello,” Madara tries, feeling foolish for his sudden lack of tact, but the creature does not respond. Carefully he offers it his hand.
When it bites down on his fingers, it draws blood with ease. Madara flinches, but the creature brings out its tongue and licks on the wound slowly. Mesmerized, Madara watches the red color spread onto the tongue, then its lips, coloring them in a manner more human. Then it guides Madara's hand to brush its cheeks and bleed straight into its glassy, mirror-like eyes. The blood seeps through, gives all of that color. The eyes grow completely red without pupil. The same happens to the gauges. His strange bride paints its face with his blood.
Salt, he thinks when it wraps its arms around him, the freezing waves lapping against their legs. His bride is just as cold, chalk-white unmarred skin slick as freshly caught snapper. The bite mark stings.
It makes a sound like choking, and saltwater runs out of its mouth, before it draws a breath, the very first ever. It sounds painful. Madara finds himself pitying it.
The shallower the water gets, the more it hesitates to walk. Madara takes off his jacket, wraps it around its lithe, wet form, and picks it up on his arms. He carries his bride away from the beach and through the town, keenly aware of the way his people peer at them through the windows and doors pushed sneakily ajar.
"This is my home," he says, as they stand in front of the hut. The walls of the building used to be red, but the storms have long chipped away most of the paint. It's an old, yet sturdy house. Madara's bleeding hand aches, but his arms do not. His bride is light, weighing little. "Now it's yours as well."
He carries the creature through the door, away from the harsh wind, and lets it down onto the floor. Izuna sits by the table and stares at them, apprehensive. He has taken out their father’s old harpoon. It rests on the kitchen table, a silent threat.
The hut is only big in comparison to the rest of the houses on the island. Once, it had housed seven people instead of the two it does now. Madara imagines the vastness of the sea and knows his house must be incomprehensibly small to the bride that now looks around his home.
It seems like his new spouse is curious. Madara lets it down, and holds it against his side, when he realizes it just isn't able to stand on its own. “And this is my brother,” he tells the bride. “He is your brother too, now that we are married.”
It doesn’t appear to understand. Madara doesn’t know if it even listens.
At least the wary look on Izuna's face fades. The creature does not seem like a threat when it depends entirely on Madara to move.
Regardless of the fever Madara feels settling in, he takes it upon himself to carry his bride into the bedroom. It would not be proper to have Izuna fulfill his marital duties. So, Madara is the one to sit the creature down, pat its body dry and help it into a nightgown.
The gown had been his mother’s, and her mother’s before that. It is well cared for, and soft. All our inheritance that is meant for the woman of the house, and this is what we have in its stead. Politely Madara avoids looking at its sex.
"Do you sleep?"
It stares at him with a small tilt of its head and says nothing.
Madara sighs. “Alright. I do sleep. You would do me a great honor, sharing the bed with me. Is this fine by you?”
Nothing. Madara nods slowly and gets ready for bed himself.
The smell of salt and metal is in his nose. He thinks of the blood his bride took from him, and prays that sleeping next to a sharp-toothed ocean creature will feed his people and soothe the waves. Hopefully it does not eat me, he thinks as he pulls the blanket over himself, too feverish to truly care about that right now.
His bride does not bother lying down next to him. It seems perfectly content, sitting on the edge and inspecting the room. Thankfully it doesn’t attempt to devour him either. When dinnertime comes and Izuna brings him more soup, he offers the creature a spoonful. It hisses at the spoon.
“It might be too hot for it?” Madara guesses. Izuna mostly looks terrified, not taking his eyes off the white figure for a second.
They try raw fish instead. That his bride swallows without a second thought.
It sits outside, wearing his lamb wool sweater and a burlap skirt, and watches the birds. The wind tosses its hair, long enough to reach its shoulders.
The rest of the townfolk avoid the meadows behind the village leader’s house nowadays. The ocean feeds them, allows them to survive on this island separate from the rest of the world, yet some of its gifts are too peculiar to accept. Madara understands, but he cannot be the same. It is his duty as a husband to see to the happiness of his spouse; be it made of flesh and blood or foam and ancient magic.
Madara walks up to it - he really should stop thinking of it as an it, but it just doesn't behave like a human - and kneels down next to the rock it's chosen for its chair.
He's got a small bouquet of blooming heathers that he places on the thing's lap. Its white hands take the flowers and fiddle with them.
"Are you happy here?" He asks the creature. "On the dry land, I mean. It must be very different."
It makes a sound that sounds like two stones being forcibly dragged against each other. Okay. I don't know what that means.
He switches techniques, turning to also look at the birds. He can't find the fascination in them like his bride does, but he can surely spend a little time with the creature.
“The one flying up above, you see it? That is a white-tailed eagle. I quite like their kind.” Madara expects no answer. “The ones by the ground are seagulls. Many do not like them, calling them thieves and whatnot. But they’ve got to eat too. I would be cruel to condemn an honest thief like them.”
He feels a little like a thief himself. Perhaps my new spouse would prefer to remain in the depths, yet I’ve stolen them for my own regardless, all for the rich dowry of survival. How unkind of me.
It lays down next to him the following night. Madara shows it a comb, and then runs it through its soft, white hair.
Baths are another point of contention. His spouse does not like warm water whatsoever. Even cold water is frowned upon, if it comes from the well, leaving Madara with a bathtub full of good water ready to go to waste as his bride refuses to get in.
Madara finds a solution eventually. They have another old bathtub outside, one that they’ve used mostly for soaking and washing carpets during summertime. He scrubs it thoroughly clean, and then fills it with seawater, two buckets at a time.
It is tedious going, but his bride seems to very much prefer this. It shamelessly slips out of the few clothes Madara has talked it into wearing, and enjoys the salt water, as Madara sits on a chair next to it.
He takes to reading out loud to the creature, starting with Jude the Obscure, and sometimes he takes out his harmonica, playing in order to amuse it.
Izuna tries to involve himself, bless his heart, despite the fact that it remains too strange to him. Still, not even his brother can deny the sanctity of their marriage, the union between forces unknown to all people and one simple man.
The village is well-fed. The ocean is happy once more.
He sits across from Izuna, in the middle of a chess match. His spouse sits at the end of the table. Madara has given it the comb to fiddle with. It is all a very clever ruse to get the creature and his brother into the same room at once.
Izuna does not need to love his spouse, but it would be good for all of them, if he stopped jumping out of his skin every time he turned a corner and laid eyes on it.
“I swear you are cheating,” Izuna huffs.
Madara smiles and moves his queen to a checkmate. “You should try being good at the game, Izuna.”
“Whatever,” his brother sighs. “I’m going to get the water boiling.” He leaves, muttering something more about cheaters and tricksters under his breath. Madara smiles, amused.
“He is a sore loser, isn’t he...?” Madara muses and does not expect any answer.
Carefully, his bride rises from its seat, and, holding on to the edge of the table for support, takes the one across from him instead. Contemplatively, its hands hover over the pieces, before it begins placing them back on the board. It replicates the starting formation correctly as Madara stares.
His bride stares right back until Madara finds his voice.
“...white starts,” he tells it. “Every time. You can... You can move the first pawn two squares. Yes,” he agrees as its hand hovers over the row of pawns, “those.”
It plucks a piece and moves it forward. Madara matches, and watches in wonder as it – no, they – move the next piece.
Intelligent, his brain supplies. They learnt the game by just watching us play a few rounds.
Three games. They play three games against each other, and his spouse wins every single one. Their lips quirk into a satisfied smile as Madara fumbles with his pieces. Izuna sits with his cup of tea and watches them, just as flabbergasted. After the third game, they must find Madara’s utter humbling satisfactory, because they rise from the table and head into the bedroom on wobbly legs.
(It’s progress anyway. Short distances have become fully walkable.)
“A fish is better at chess than I am,” Izuna mutters, as Madara collects the gameboard and pieces.
Lightly, he smacks his little brother’s head. “Do not call my spouse a fish.”
“It’s not an insult! It’s just... It doesn’t have a name.”
“That doesn’t make them a fish, Izuna, be proper. You are family.”
(It would feel wrong to name his bride like one names a dog. Instead of ‘fish’, Madara decides to try referring to them with sweet nicknames instead.)
“Doesn’t make them a human either.”
"It isn't so bad. They’re just around, not doing anything or asking for a thing. This is little for what we're being given in return." He pauses for a while, before adding. "And they’re beautiful to look at."
"Siren," his brother mutters. "Aniki, you cannot mean that. It may not be an abhorrent thing... But it isn’t a human being either. It is seafoam on legs, that is all."
"The water has been calm. We draw more fish than ever before. If my bride grows displeased, so will the sea," Madara reminds him, willing to drop his observations about the appearance of the creature and give Izuna peace of mind.
But they are beautiful. Madara finds himself admiring them over and over again. The deep could have given me a squid to take to bed, but it gave me them.
In the dark of the bedroom, with their quiet figure tucked in next to him, he speaks.
“You are delightful.” Moonlight has kissed the highs of their cheekbones and the sharp of their nose a bewitching silver. Their eyes open, the shade of red of the iris something completely different in the night. “I only hope you find me a satisfactory husband as well, regardless of my mortality.”
They make another painful, ear-piercing shriek. Madara just nods.
“Would you mind if I held you, my sweet? Only for a moment. I would not want to warm you too much.”
They do not appear to mind. They move closer to him so that he may put an arm under their neck and wrap the other arm around their midriff.
He has never laid like this with anyone before. Madara is not inexperienced, per se, but most of his exploration has ended at the moment of climax. There is no softness, no lingering hands or shared breath, no kisses that do not devolve into houndlike snapping of teeth and tongue.
The press of his spouse against his chest is unlike all of that.
"I wish I knew your name."
Without a sound, they bring one of their hands up, and press it over his heart.
And so it continues – tenderness, night after night, more of it than he has ever felt before. He teaches his bride how to braid hair, ensuring that their hair is full of tiny white braids before letting them fight his impressive mane into a singular one. Summer comes with rich wild berries, and he persuades them into tasting some. The juice of the wild strawberries on their lips is a debauched sight, yet Madara does not do anything about his desires.
In his heart, he fears he would ruin what shaky understanding has grown to exist between them.
His eyes do seek out their figure, though, first in secret, then without shame. They are lithe and the sex between their sculpted legs is a pale gauge Madara knows would grow irresistibly red, if he was to bleed over it.
His thoughts do not contain themselves only to what is so sweetly sexual about them. He finds the spark in the way they shove him off once they overheat in his embrace, in the way they close their eyes as he reads to them, in their tendency to weave the heathers into their hair once Madara is done braiding it.
The townsfolk no longer gawk at them in terror. Madara takes his spouse to sit by the midsummer bonfire with the rest of their community and picks them up in order to include them in the dancing. They are still too light to be a person, still little more than a ghost of the deep in borrowed clothes. He allows himself a gentle brush of his hand against their cheek and then carries them home, when their legs grow too weak to hold them up.
They win at chess again and smile at him, silently pleased. Madara smiles back.
For the first time in his life, he gets to spend the summer falling in love.
When he wakes up on the first day of autumn, his bride is not in bed next to him. That’s all right, he thinks, they may do however they please in his house. Madara sits up, sighing, and only then notices that his head feels strangely light.
Running a hand over his neck, he gasps.
His braid is gone. All his fingers find are the cut-short ends of his hair.
What?
The man jumps out of bed and races to the mirror. Longer strands still frame his face, but the back has been snipped short with some sort of a blade, and indeed, he finds a knife on the nightstand.
“Oh,” he sighs mournfully, raking his fingers through what remains, “my hair... What on earth...?”
Quickly he pulls on a sweater and finds his lamb-wool slippers from near the bed, hurrying out of the bedroom. Once he enters the living room, he halts fully.
There sits his bride, on the couch, wrapped up comfortably in a blanket. Despite going to bed when Madara did, they look dead tired, white hair a windswept mess. On their lap is another bundle.
Madara stares, distantly aware that his mouth has fallen open.
It’s a baby, with the bleached-bone skin of the creatures of the ocean, milky white eyes, and a head comically full of black Uchiha hair. It looks like a newborn, but there is just no way, he has not yet even kissed his spouse, let alone done anything else.
And we’ve barely been married for five months... Is that where my goddamn braid went? He thinks, like any of what he’s seeing makes any sense. For good measure, Madara turns on his heel and stalks down the corridor. He bangs on Izuna’s door and doesn’t wait for his brother to open.
“What d’ya want...?” Izuna grumbles. He’s mid-shave, half of his chin still covered in shaving cream.
“Punch me,” Madara says.
“Why would I... Aniki, did you cut your hair?”
“Never mind that, just do it!”
Izuna shrugs and punches his shoulder. He does it hard enough that Madara actually winces, but no, there appears to be no dream to wake up from.
“What now?” Izuna asks, before his eyes find something behind Madara, and he drops his razor, eyes bulging wide.
Madara turns to see them in the doorway, still cradling the child to their chest. Their beautiful face holds the meanest scowl he’s ever seen in his life, and they glare at him viciously. He hears the rumbling of distant thunder from up above, the beginnings of a storm. Oh, they took my reaction as rejection, that’s no good.
“No, no, my lovely, you misunderstand,” he rushes to placate his spouse. “I am– so overjoyed that I had to tell my brother about... About our baby. This is our baby, yes?”
They give him a pointed, offended look. Madara winces.
”I mean, of course it is! It’s obvious, with the hair and the rest! I am an idiot. May I... May I hold them? Please?”
They give him a suspicious look, but do quietly pass the babe to him. Madara is still not entirely convinced he’s awake.
The hair on the child’s head is almost twice the length of the baby itself, and undoubtedly his. The beat of his little one’s heart is just as real as the weight on his arms. He notes that it's as heavy as a regular human baby would be. I have a child, he thinks, numbly. My firstborn. And I fully believe my delightful spouse will topple the entire island into the sea, if I do not impress them as a father.
His bride grabs his hand and bites into the flesh of his palm without warning him. Madara winces, but lets them do it, and watches as they pour his blood into the eyes of the child. They do it in a fussy manner, which is quite endearing. The milky white fades, replaced by a vibrant red. The baby squirms, coughing a little, but doesn’t cry, comfortable in his protective embrace.
Oh. It still hasn’t had the time to sink in fully. This is my child.
Izuna, finally snapping out of his stupor, mumbles a string of curses under his breath.
“Language, Izuna!” Madara huffs, snapping to glare at his poor brother. “This is your niece... Nephew...? Your something!”
“Since when are you two parents?!” His brother sputters.
“Since now! What’s it matter? We are married! We are allowed to have children!”
“Nobody told me you would just suddenly have a child!”
“Well, nobody told me either, but if my dearest has seen it fit, then you best believe we will have one!”
Have I been... Judged worthy? Is this what it is? Did they take my braid as another offering to the sea and mold us a child out of its waters all on their own?
“Gods, then you walked all the way to the shore!” Madara realizes, turning to his spouse. “Sit down! Your poor feet!”
He walks his spouse back onto the couch with the child on his other arm, seating them down. Madara gives them the baby back before wrapping them both in blankets. For once, his bride does not complain about the heat. They look about ready to fall asleep.
The baby just stares at him curiously from under the mop of black hair that swallows them up, two of its tiny fingers in its mouth as it suckles on them. He reaches to brush the little one's hair to the side. It is bizarre, how much it looks like the both of them.
“We have to figure out a name...” Madara mumbles.
His spouse helpfully points at the chess set, still laid out from the previous game.
“We’re not naming the baby ‘Chess’.”
They frown at him.
“...we’re not calling it a rook either.”