Disclaimer: This story utilises characters, situations and premises that are copyright Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, Shonen Jump and Viz media. No infringement on their respective copyrights pertaining to episodes, novelisations, comics or short stories is intended by KuriQuinn in any way, shape or form. This fan-oriented story is written solely for the author's own amusement and the entertainment of the readers. It is not for profit. Any resemblance to real organizations, institutions, products or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All plot and Original Characters except for those introduced in the canon books, manga, video games, novelizations and anime, are the sole creation of KuriQuinn. (© KuriQuinn 2016- )

Original Prompt: Hi Kuri! Are you thinking of writing an alternative fic for Samsara? Like what would happen if Indra choosed to wait for Uchiwa's birth? Thank you for being a fabulous writer!

Author's Note: This story is not canon. It does not fit into either Kishimoto's Narutoverse canon, or my own headcanon 'verses. It's just a plot-bunny/request I had, a sort of "what if" scenario. I'm not sure if I like it or not, the Indra/Shachi story was never meant to have a happy ending, so it was a little hard for me to write this one. But I gave it my best shot. Hope you enjoy it.

Author's Note 2: This isn't exactly new, but it was only posted on tumblr. Since tumblr is now doing stupid things and I'm worried I might lose my stuff because their system for flagging inappropriate content is complete shite, I'm backing up everything. Ao3 and Quotev will have my NSFW stuff, as well as the Dreamwidth account I've linked to tumblr. Everything else will be uploaded here, ffnet and wattpad. It's not part of any particular canon of mine, just an idea.

For the first time in his memory, Indra's wife glares up at him, pain and fury and something else suffusing her entire form.

"If you were to call down lightning from the skies or set me alight with your strongest flames, I swear on my love and fidelity that they would not touch him," she vows, the words torn from her throat as if being dragged over crushed glass. "Only a child born of our union could survive such a thing."

Indra's eyes fly once more to her swollen belly, forcing himself to remain calm in the face of the lie she tells. His blood boils, but where moments ago it was fuelled by desperation and adrenaline and need for the woman before him, now there is nothing but anger. She has made him lose control of himself once already today. He will remain impartial in this, handing down detached judgement for her crime.

"Do you think because you are with child that I will hold back?" he challenges her, careful to keep his voice toneless.

"Of course not," she responds softly, a little of the fight ebbing. "I only hope it makes you take pause. Because if you do this, you cannot undo it. You are not so mighty that you can resurrect the dead, my love."

The anger rears up within him again at the implication that he is fallible, or that he is not utterly sure in his judgement. He clenches his teeth together, refusing to give in to the need to defend his intentions.

She is quick to take advantage of his silence.

"Husband, I hope that one day your heart can be cured," she tells him, tone soft with sadness. "Only then can new hope be born to your line…only then will you no longer need your sons to fight and die for your legacy. And when you realise I have spoken nothing but the truth to you and how deeply your hatred has scarred you—know that I die still loving you despite the action you take tonight. If it takes the rest of your life, or many lives, I will wait for you. If I had an eternity, I would spend it waiting for you to return from the darkness that has you ensnared."

The constant, whispering presence at the back of Indra's mind is murmuring again, cajoling and beseeching.

She and the child can still be of use. Asura will surely come for them.

He is sure that his brother will come for his offspring, for he is just as protective of his own as Indra is. But the notion of this child, the mental image of Shachi locked in any kind of intimate embrace with another man, and his hated sibling at that—

Indra deliberates whether to plunge a bolt of lightning through her traitorous heart, or burn her alive as she prompted him to do. The Sharingan activates then, illuminating the dark insides of the shrine, and the anguished expression of the woman before him.

"You don't have an eternity," he tells her, raising a hand and levelling his index finger at her face.

It would be unwise to kill her yet.

There is a certain logic to this, but this is the same presence that has always pushed him to act, to become more powerful. For once, doubt creeps in, uncertainty boring a hole in his resolve.

A thought strikes him, then, unexpected given the sweltering, looming power of his anger.

Indra doesn't want to kill her.

Pain and betrayal overwhelm him, but something tiny, hidden and long-suppressed flares to life within him. It's like a tiny tongue of flame in the darkness.

He remembers the day they met on that far eastern shore, and the weeks afterward when she nursed him back to health. Images of the day when he could move by his own power, and his attempt to eradicate her for being witness to his weakness. He can still feel the way her throat felt in his hands, the only time he has ever laid a hand on her in anger.

She had all but given up, struggling against his hold on her, except for a last spark of defiance in her eyes. There was a determination in her that he recognised, a will to live and endure that even a lifetime of abuse could not extinguish.

And though in this moment her eyes once more beg him not to kill her or the child inside her, that same defiance shines at him. Coupled with her trembling words from earlier, he knows she has surrendered herself to die by his hand, but will face that end unflinchingly.

"Don't tell him my death came by your hands," she breathes, tears trailing across her cheeks. "Don't tell any of them. If you ignore anything else I have said—please. Tell them I thought of them in my last moments."

He narrows his eyes at her, and something within him pulls taut in expectation.

"Irritating woman," he calls her, for want of any other words.

And then, unexpectedly, she takes a small step forward until her brow presses against his outstretched fingers.

"Please make it fast," she whispers.

But the sudden contact with her skin is like a bolt of electricity, sizzling through his veins and shocking the rational part of him that has been numb since discovering her pregnancy.

Now is not the time to be hasty, the voice warns. The child still has value, though she might not—

Asura's child.

He has to be sure.

And so he does that one thing he never has before, through years of marriage and beyond. He has never had the desire or need to, because with Shachi he has always intuitively known her every thought and intention. She was the only person in his life he has even been completely sure of until today.

His Sharingan activates, ensnaring her in a genjutsu before she can react.

Shachi's body goes rigid and her eyes vacant as he traps her within her memories, then uses his ability to slip into her mind.

The world around them becomes utterly devoid of sensation, without ambient noise or surrounding scent. Colours invert, the sky bleeding red and the ground a forbidding black, stretching on for miles around them. With merely a suggestion, he orders her mind to cast her back into the past, to relive the past year when she was away from him.

He seeks something, some undeniable proof that will help him make his final act against her, some evidence that without a doubt she has lied to him about her relationship with Asura.

His stomach clenches and rage suffuses him so thickly he can almost taste it as he sees the facsimiles of his brother and father, of his long-abandoned home and trappings of his childhood. Though her eyes offer him a softer perspective on the place, he refuses to be sidetracked, intent on the inevitable proof.

But the longer he follows her mind back through her memories, the more uneasy he becomes.

Because there is no such proof.

He watches her sitting among his kin, as regally as a queen (and isn't that what he made her, after all?), chastising them both on his behalf and frowning in contempt at the man that Indra killed on the shore when he rescued her. He observes her sitting with a tiny woman that Indra vaguely remembers returning with Asura, and when she places hands on the woman's abdomen he realises this must be his brother's wife. This is a mark against her—ensuring his brother's fecundity is as treasonous an act as any other—but it's not the specific evidence he seeks.

He needs to go back further, needs her to show him the exact sin that he has accused her of committing.

Instead he finds her sitting in conclave with his father, wrapped in blankets and listening unsmiling and thoughtful as his father tells stories. And then a vision of her lying sick and bedridden, fighting on death's door as Asura's wife tends to her.

He spares a moment to puzzle over her fevered dreams—a dark haired boy walking away from a sobbing girl whose hair resembles a cascade of cherry blossoms, and a hard-eyed man with wild hair cupping the chin of a woman with skin like porcelain—before moving on.

Beyond his genjutsu, he hears Shachi panting with effort as her mind is forced to relive all of this within seconds, is aware of the dark presence gleefully musing that she doesn't need her mind to bring to child to bear if he lets her live.

Indra shakes all this off, returning his attention to Shachi's memories.

They watch Asura and his wife together, embracing in a casual, affectionate manner Indra feels uncomfortable witnesses. He notes Shachi's naked pain as she watches this, and he thinks perhaps this is the proof he needs, that soon he will find what he seeks—

But farther back, she simply spends nights staring up at the moon, her form growing smaller as he brings them closer to the day she was taken.

Instinctive fury threatens his hold on the image as he sees her bound and gagged in the hold of a ship, and then again as the man from the shore knocks her unconscious in the ruined forest. Then they are indoors, the hut around them is familiar, as is the woman seated before Shachi.

Dewadasi, he recalls. The midwife. But this doesn't make sense, this is before…

Quietly, Shachi reveals what she suspects—what six pregnancies have made her familiar with. The older woman is nodding, asking her questions, wanting to know when she knew for sure—

The world seems to solidify, then, but they are still in the illusion. Indra sees them both them—himself and Shachi, entwined and rocking slowly into one another. She clutches frantically at his shoulders, whispering his name over and over, legs wrapped around him. His face is buried in her neck as she cries out, and soon his entire frame shudders and goes still.

When he pulls away from her, flushed and sated, the look that he graces her with is one Indra did not even know he was capable of forming. His eyes are soft, the barest trace of a smile ghosting upon his lips, and something warm in his eyes that he's forgotten the name of.

But the clarity of this moment, of her memory, as if she has thought of it so many times over and over so as to recall it with perfect detail, leaves no room for argument.

The child is mine.

There's no doubt. She is telling the truth.

Indra is so shocked, it is as if someone has punched him. He is thrown from the illusion so abruptly that he staggers backward, falling to one knee. Shachi cries out in surprise and pain as well, crumpling to her knees. She manages to protect her stomach, but her entire body continues to tremble from the mental assault he just put her under.

You fool, you could have killed her!

And not just in this moment.

An harsh, sickly sense of horror creeps up on him, the reality of what he was so ready to do washing over him.

He would have killed her. If he had acted a few seconds earlier—!

Knees knocking, he staggers to his feet and tries to back away.

"Indra?" she murmurs, watching him with wide, worried eyes. And it makes no sense, but at the same time he would expect no different, because she is the only person in existence who would worry for him after what he has just done.

What he has done for his entire life.

In the past, Indra has only ever trusted what his eyes could show, has never listened to anyone else because he knew best. Neither his father nor his brother could ever show him their truth, because their abilities meant nothing next to his.

But right now, there is no artifice or illusion, and he has witnessed the truth for himself. Even if his wife possessed any genjutsu abilities, his own surpass anyone's on the planet, and they have clearly just showed him that he made a mistake.

The whispering presence, the voice that has always been correct about everything…is wrong. It has always felt omnipresent and omniscient, but here it is wrong. It, too, believed Shachi's child to belong to Asura.

And if it was wrong this time…what about all the other times he thought he saw so clearly?

Indra thinks back on every battle he has ever taken part in, every time he stood in challenge against his father's teachings. He can remember Asura now, the boy and man beyond the image painted by years of seething hatred. He remembers the faces of those closest to him who he murdered that he might become more powerful, and for…for what?

Wasn't all of this in need of protecting the people who are precious to him?

Instead, he cast off his kin, has remained distant from his own children, tried to kill their mother…

I am a monster, he realises with a dead certainty.

It is as if a blindfold has been taken from him, and for the first time since he was a child, he sees clearly. He falls to his knees, staggered in realisation and crippled in uncertainty.

Can I ever make up for this?

Suddenly, there is a hand on his chin, forcing his face upward. Shachi stares down at him, once more on her feet, her hair flying loose around her cheeks.

"Indra?" she asks again, and slides her fingers further to cup his cheek.

Her hand is a warm comfort he does not deserve, and reflexively, he scuttles away.

"No…" he rasps. "Don't…you must stay away from me…I almost—"

"But you didn't."

He eyes her stomach, imagines the pulse of the unborn child's chakra on the edges of his consciousness, warm and safe and alive no thanks to him.

"How can you even look at me after I…"

Almost killed you, almost killed him, violated your mind, kept you at arms length, treated our union as no more than a business transaction, turned our children into soldiers—

His stomach rebels, then, and he hurtles away from her, stumbling forward onto his hands. His entire body heaves at the harsh truths that surround him, the veracity he can finally understand, and he vomits up the contents of his stomach until his throat burns and blood joins bile on the ground.

Her hands are on his shoulders again, steadying him, and he wishes she wouldn't touch him. He doesn't deserve her touch, doesn't deserve her attention at all— He tries to gather his strength to him, to pull his chakra together to disappear, but it is as if all of it is trapped behind a veil of sorts. He is utterly unable to focus.

Perhaps this is why he can't stop her from gently drawing him away from the mess, bringing him out the door of the shrine that was intended to be both sanctuary and a tomb today. The cool forest air fills his lungs, offering him some minor respite, but doesn't quell his need to escape.

Shachi is having none of this, however, forcing them both to the ground. She kneels before him, features pulled into sympathy.

"You are not a simple man, my love," she tells him with soft certainty "To love you is to love the storm itself, and I knew that from the day you asked me to be your wife that it might end in my death. Whether in childbirth or a casualty of battle, I didn't know, but I made that choice."

"I should have left you behind," he tells her through gritted teeth. "You could have married a…a good man. You would have been safer. Happier."

"I doubt I would be either of those things," she tells him seriously. "Indra…it cannot be said that you are good…but you're not so damned as you or anyone else might think." She tries to offer him a smile. "You dream of a better world, a world where loved ones are protected and where there is no need to experience loss. Perhaps war isn't the way to go about it…but I've learned that the hearts of men can change. They learn. Perhaps…perhaps there is a better way?"

"I know no other way," he whispers.

"You are the most capable man I know, and the world bends to your will," she says with a shake of her head. "You will find that way. You will make the world safe for our children, and their children, and their children's children."

He can only stare at her, unable to form a proper response to this.

How can this woman...be?

"It might not be the way you have done things," she goes on, as if unaware of his inner turmoil, "It might not even be the way of your father or brother. But you have the ability to find it. And if your heart remains clear of the darkness, think how much easier it will be to see that path?"

Indra shakes his head, trying to pull away once more. "I don't deserve…"

"Maybe you don't know," she interrupts. "But one day you might. And because of the possibility of that one day, that someday…I forgive you."

Rather than feel relief, he feels as if he has been stabbed.

"You…you can't…!"

"I can. And I will. And I do," she insists, reaching to take his hands in hers. Though they tremble and resist, eventually she places them against the swell of her stomach. "You have to be forgiven before you can change. And if it must start somewhere, it will start with me. I am the mother of your children. Your wife. If no one else will stand beside you, I will."

He doesn't know how to interpret this, none of it makes sense. Uncertainty has overtaken the rage he felt earlier, mixed with disgust and shame for his actions. He can't find the words, and make his body move, feels more helpless than he has ever felt.

She speaks lies, the voice in his mind insists. No human is so forgiving after what you have done. She will use this against you, will make you seek forgiveness for the rest of your days—

"Something dark whispers to you, husband," Shachi tells him, words quiet but sharp. "Let it fade to nothingness—oblivion is where it belongs."

"I can't."

Ignore the bitch, what does she know of these things? I have made you strong, I have made you the most powerful creature in this world. What could a weak female know of such things?

"If you ever want to make up for the things you have done, you have to cast it aside," Shachi beseeches. "It has no place in the same world that our children will grow up."

He thinks of six tiny faces, gazing up at him with hope and fear after he told them he would bring their mother back. The idea of their disappointment and pain—the return of the grief that has been etched into their eyes since they all lost Shachi—

It's as if something within him has suddenly been illuminated.

No!

The darkness in his mind screams at him, but he closes his awareness to it, banishing it from the recess of his heart where it has been entrenched or so long. Though it's the work of a second, his body sags suddenly, boneless, as if every sinew and muscle that has been holding him together was attached to the presence.

He falls forward, staying upright only because she catches him, holding him against her.

"I will…spend the rest of my life…making up for my actions," he tells her weakly. The world spins, and in place of the dark entity that has shadowed him forever, for the first time since he was a child he feels a mounting terror in the face of the unknown. His whole life he has been able to predict and imagine the future, and the only times he hasn't, someone close to him has been hurt or died.

He doesn't think he would be able to survive that now.

She smiles sadly at him, and then leans her head forward, tentatively pressing her lips against his. It's soft and chaste, nothing like the desperate press of lips and tongues from earlier, but somehow this means more to him.

"When was the last time you slept?" she asks gently.

"I don't remember," he admits. It could have been days…it could have been months. He's rather sure that he hasn't had a full night's rest since the day he lost her.

"Sleep now, then," she tells him, drawing him downward. "And then we will speak some more. About whatever you wish. And you can bring me to our children. I long to hold them in my arms again."

"Yes," he agrees dimly. "And then…"

Asura, he thinks, wincing at the thought of facing them now after everything. Father…

"In time," she repeats, like she can sense the direction of his thoughts. It would not surprise him. She forces him downward, propping him against her so that his ear is pressed against her belly. Her fingers trail through his hair. "You have enough of a journey ahead of you without your mind creating more obstacles. We will take it one day at a time, together."

He frowns.

"I have done nothing in my life to deserve you by my side."

"You saved me from a life of servitude and ignominy," she tells him. "You gave me children and happiness and love. And I do not need to hear the words to know that's what this is. You saved me. Now let me save you."

Indra can't think of anything to say to this, and decides not to.

His wife has proven far wiser than he, and perhaps now is the time to start listening to her.

He drifts to sleep like that, ear pressed against her belly and the sensation of her fingers trailing through his hair.

A forgotten warmth begins to settle somewhere beneath his numb disbelief and shame, the memory of a comfort and safety he felt before. Quiet nights spent lying in her embrace, pretending the bonds between them weren't strengthening with every passing moment together.

What a fool I've been…

Suddenly he feels his wife tense.

His eyes shoot open, reflexes bidding him to act, but she tightens her grip on him, forcing him to remain in his place.

"You will leave now, shadow creature, and haunt my husband no longer," she declares against the night, and though her voice remains barely above a whisper, there is a sharpness to it. "You have lost your hold on him."

"Perhaps," a voice like dead leaves answers, sounding amused. "But you have many children. And you will have many descendants. I can be very patient, and even the strongest hearts can yield to fear."

"Then I will be there."

The presence makes a scoffing noise, but then it's overwhelming dark aura dissipates into thin air.

"We shall see."

"Yes, we shall."

And now the presence truly is gone, vanished from anywhere near them. The sense of peace and safety wash over him again.

Shachi gazes down at him, eyes sparking with that same determination he fell in love with all those years ago but could not admit until this moment.

"I mean it," she tells him. "Even if I have to return from beyond the veil of the Pure Land to protect every child of our line, I will do it."

Indra feels his facial muscles gentle, and carefully, he reaches up to brush her forehead in affection.

"And I will be by your side," he vows. "As long as you will have me."

The future will not be perfect, and he knows despite his wife's heartfelt words that his sins require penance of some sort. Too many have been hurt or died in the name of his search for power, of the distrust and arrogance that have festered in him for so long.

But he will die trying, if she were to ask it.

Shachi seems to consider for a moment, and then smiles down at him. "Forever?"

"Aa. Forever, then."

終わり

I hope you enjoyed the story! Comments and constructive criticism are much appreciated, and very motivating—and if you enjoy my writing, want updates or just to chat, I'm on Tumblr and Twitter (KuriQuinn).

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