Chapter Text
"Do with it as you please."
With that, Tobirama turns on his heel and strides out of the office without another word. Madara stares at the spot in space he occupied for perhaps fifteen seconds at most, speechless. Then, mechanically, he tips his head down to look at the object Tobirama placed on his desk.
An inro with matching netsuke of exquisite craftsmanship. It depicts a lone koi, pure white with ruby red spots, in a tranquil koi pond. The netsuke is of a dragon, pure white jade with ruby inlay for the red eyes and stripes on its body, coiled around a genuine pearl, soft milk white glistening iridescent. Even the ojime bead is pearl and the cord is braided silk. Defining lines in the pattern on the inro made with maki-e sparkle silver, the thin keshifun lines outlining the intricate details whitish and dull from years of handling contrasting the bright and flashy blue marufun of the pond water. Near the top of the container is a torii gate in gold radan, a beacon to which the little koi is facing from the lip of the pond, heedless of the enamel trees separating pond and gate.
“Oh, that bastard,” he hisses through his teeth, feeling a headache coming on.
It’s been three months since the village was named. Three months after that meeting with Hashirama on the mountain where he and Tobirama came face to face for the first time outside of the initial negotiations. Three months since Hashirama got it into his head to try to get his best friend and little brother to be less antagonistic toward each other.
It’s wonderful to know he wasn’t the one to break first under Hashirama’s well-meaning meddling, and so quickly at that. But irritating now that a peace offering has been given he has to reciprocate in kind or face Hashirama’s suffocating disappointment.
Madara scowls down at the inro, rubbing his sternum. Thinking of Hashirama disappointed reminds him too much of that final battle before his downward spiral, the look on Hashirama’s face when Madara reached for the smoke bombs instead of ignoring the furiously beating heart next to his, the demands to not trust him from Izu—
Madara sets his ink brush down with an aggravated sigh and gulps down his tea, reheated almost to boiling with a liberal application of chakra. Thinking of him just reminds him how cold and empty his chest has become, accustomed to two fire-natured hearts beating within, and how his lone heart freezes over from the absence of his brother's. To distract himself from it, he picks up the inro, turning it this and that way in the light.
It’s pretty, he’ll give Tobirama that. Something that fits his style more than Madara’s, but it’s an acceptable gift. He’s been meaning to get one to hold his identity and clan seals anyway so this is fortunate timing.
He brushes his thumb over the koi, feeling it warmer yet cooler than any other spot on the inro. It must be his imagination associating the koi with Tobirama and tricking him into thinking up the strange temperature difference. He sets it down and picks up the ink brush to go back to work even as his mind spins ideas about reciprocation gifts.