A/N: I've just decided to post this as an appendage to Enigma for continuity's sake.

I do not own Naruto or The Waste Land, for the matter, but I do like to draw on them as sources of inspiration.

april is the cruellest month

The Burial of the Dead:

A solemn procession made its way from the Hokage Tower to Konoha's standard burial site, carrying its finest. In this village, there is no separation between the strong and weak, the powerful and the powerless in death, the war heroes and the civilians who perished from sources of death as mundane as old age, for they are all consigned to the same plot of land to languish for eternity.

The coffin was surrounded by forlorn men and woman clothed in dark black. A solitary figure travelled in front of it. A woman with bright, fierce red hair seeping out of her intricately patterned mourning veil. Her poise, her stature was impeccable – she made sure it was. The widow wanted to look beautiful for her husband for just one last time. She wanted to show him, show Konoha, show the entire Shinobi World the searing pain that punctuated her heart, the hundreds and thousands of invisible spears that have forever lodged themselves in her.

When they arrive at the graveyard, the procession dislodges the unembellished wooden sarcophagus from the high, venerated position and promptly begins to bury it in the plain old dirt. As she witnesses this, she unwittingly moves towards it. She presses her lips against the surface of the coffin, despite sanitary warnings from her fellow companions, and mutters a few parting words:

Farewell, Hashirama. I guess this is it, old friend.

April is the cruellest month,

.

.

It was spring when they bade goodbye the Shodai Hokage. It was a disease no one knew existed. One moment the man had been his usual jovial self, laughing at the smallest trivialities of life, slouching at the smallest indication of being scolded, beaming with joy – his eyes lighting up like bright lanterns in the dark – at the most mundane trinkets from foreign lands. In another moment he was gone, his life ripped away.

It was the kind of disease that flourished during warming weather. April, situated right at the centre of spring, thus became the perfect moment for it to gain a foothold in Konoha. Of course, it had to strike Konoha's finest. The early symptoms had seemed negligible. A few coughs here and there, a sense of impending fatigue growing by the moment, a dimming of wits (not that Mito would have noticed, realistically speaking.) He had insisted it was nothing, that he was merely exhausted by the burden of leading the elemental nation's largest hidden village and the onerous task of forging a peaceful consensus with the other great powers of the continent.

Then all of a sudden, he was bedridden. Mito and his brother, Tobirama Senju, embarked on the next to impossible task of searching for a cure. It was to no avail. No medic in the land, no tender of remedial herbs could understand what had happened. After hours and hours of meticulous examination by Konoha's own medics, they had also determined that it wasn't some form of obscure biological weapon. No. It was a strange, alien, deadly epidemic pure and simple.

Peculiarly, it wasn't contagious. And thus in his last hours, Hashirama requested to be in the presence of Mito.

"I'm sorry Mito this is it."

Her eyes stung.

"I know I haven't been the best husband to you."

Her heart trembled.

"You must have known about Madara all these years ago. I had foolishly neglected you in those early days of our marriage."

She couldn't care less anymore. She wanted to scream, to confess to him stories of her own infidelity. But the words wouldn't come out.

"It's okay-"

"But I just wanted to say thank you, Mito. Thank you for forgiving me."

Thank you for forgiving me too, Mito privately whispered.

"Thank you for accepting me as your husband. Thank you for bearing our son. Thank you for advising me on all those pesky political affairs all through the years. I'd struggle without your help, you know? Thank you for always being there for me, even during my darkest moments. You know, I never thought I deserved you back then. Heh… guess I'll have to apologise too, for being all selfish about you."

"No," Mito interrupted him gently, putting her index finger on her red, luscious lips. The same lips that would gently peck an indolent Hashirama on a lazy Sunday morning. The same lips that passionately collided with another man. "I should apologise too."

"Nonsense!"

But it did make sense.

"It has been my utmost pleasure to have known you this life. Take care of everyone when I'm gone. Take care of our son – he's only a little more than twenty after all. Take care of little Tsunade. Make sure she doesn't gamble so much… Oh, she's only four – what have I done?!"

Mito chuckled along with him. But internally, she was gripped with consternation as she detected the fact that his voice was getting shallower and shallower.

His end is near.

"Hashirama, thank you too," she whispered gratefully. "For everything."

Breeding lilacs out of the dead land,

.

.

Flowers bloomed over the graveyard. It was spring, after all, Mito supposed. It made her husband's resting site all the more picturesque, all the more bittersweet.

She knows she hasn't been the best wife to him. Except he doesn't. It is this nagging feeling of guilt that she must bear for the rest of her life. Not alone though, a voice whispers from the back of her mind.

Another man is there, his head lowered and keeping a solemn vigil over his dead brother's grave. Tobirama Senju's eyes were red and Mito realises that this must be the first time the man has wept for a long time. Sympathetic, she approaches him, clandestine feelings she believed were long gone blooming insidiously inside her.

She holds his hand and leans against him, whispering soothing words of comfort: "He's off to a better place, Tobirama. He would want us to cherish his memory."

He breathes in her sweet, enticing scent – it was like cherry blossom, the kind that blooms brightly in seasons such as this – and savours the softness of her palms, the smoothness of the back of her hands.

"You know, my brother loved you in the end," Tobirama pronounced these words with grave ceremony. He looked up from Hashirama's coffin and into Mito's warm brown eyes. He felt an old, long suppressed fire smouldering within him. The presence of the woman, the goddess with flaming red hair, fanned it tenderly. He decided to drench it in water, quenching the unabating lust. It would be indecorous to indulge himself on these grounds. Insolent. Disrespectful to his brother's memory.

And so the two held each other's hands and stood together up close, mourning a man they both loved.

Mixing memory and desire,

.

.

When Tobirama becomes Hokage, Mito experiences an uncanny sensation of déjà vu. Her mind propelled itself back to that one night, the night when Hashirama went after Madara, the night when the two star-crossed rivals and lovers fought at the Valley of the End. She had waited in her living quarters with trepidation, assured only by the company of Tobirama Senju. They had kissed, they had made love and she had confessed to him the real parentage of her future son. He was supposed to be Hashirama's.

It was also the same night when Hashirama's survival was in doubt. Back then, Mito remembered contemplating with Tobirama about the prospect of him succeeding his brother and what it means for them. All those thoughts came back now, starting as rivulets running through her mind before coalescing into thicker streams, merging and merging into a fierce torrent of flood that threatens to drown her into deeper confusion.

He is standing on top of the Hokage tower, donned in his white robes and that signature hat that was once Hashirama's. He gives a short, solemn, serious speech about the realities facing Konoha, tinctured with a few much-needed words of encouragement to a population still stunned by the loss of the Shodai. His style is brisk and succinct – he concludes with the words: "I will be in my office tonight, working for all of you." There is none of Hashirama's flamboyant proclamations of a new era of peace, none of the innate charisma. Yet Tobirama's manner was also strangely comforting, for it seemed to promise stability, convey the idea that Konoha was now in safe hands.

After the inauguration, Mito meets Tobirama in his new office.

"Congratulations, Nidaime-sama," Mito said as she smiled warmly at the man before her. "Hashirama always knew you would succeed him. Best of luck, we're all going to need it."

"I'm glad my brother has such faith in me," Tobirama answered while grimacing. He felt ambivalent about Mito's presence. She reminded him of things.

Even in her early forties – an age considered elderly for battle-tested shinobi and kunoichi – she remains the most beautiful woman in the world, in his mind at the very least. Wrinkles had sprouted near her eyes and her features were evidently weathered by years of hardship, duty and life as the Hokage's wife. Her hair, though still a fiery red, now had sparse grey streaks running through it.

"It'll all be fine," Mito whispered and drew closer to him. "We're all behind you, the village that is. And if you ever need anything from me…" She stopped speaking as it dawned on her just how misleading the implications of her words could be. Her eyes glimmered, in an almost pleading manner. "I mean, all I'm saying is that I helped advise Hashirama for a long time. Now that, well, our son is all grown up and having children of his own, I'd have plenty of time to spare."

Tobirama gave her a terse smile before unveiling a huge stack of paperwork. "I'll take that into note, Mito. However, as of now," he remarked apologetically and gestured towards the mountainous stashes of bureaucracy on his desk, "I'm afraid I'm a little occupied. I don't imagine you're a huge fan of paperwork."

"As a matter of fact," Mito corrected him while smirking. An almost conspiratorial look passed between them. "I did virtually all of Hashirama's."

And so the two spent the night huddled at the Hokage's office, working through piles and piles of paperwork, desperate to replace the old flame with a mellowed, platonic companionship.

Stirring dull roots with spring rain.

.

.

Rejuvenation. Spring was, for all its faults, also a season of rejuvenation as the new life is breathed into barren earth, awakening hibernating animals, flowers and plants. It was a time when old things emerged anew.

Tobirama stared at the woman from a distance. She was holding the hand of her four-year-old granddaughter Tsunade, who was chattering ceaselessly about card games. His granddaughter.

Mito saw him and walked towards him with Tsunade, who enthusiastically greeted him: "Great 'nuncle! Come play with us tonight!"

The two locked eyes and Mito grinned rather apologetically.

"Her parents are away on an important mission and, as a result, I've been imparted with the task of looking after her," Mito explained. "I could really do with some help."

"Count it as payback for all the nights we've spent doing paperwork together."

Tobirama still does not know what to make of Mito Uzumaki. She was still wearing black, he noticed, an indication that she was still in mourning of Hashirama Senju. An elegant black kimono with pearls adorned on the edges of its sleeves clothed her and he couldn't help but wonder what lay inside of it all –

No, he chastised himself mentally. He mustn't dwell too much on such things. He had a duty to do. And, more importantly, this was his brother's wife. But she was also the first woman he loved, the only woman he loved. When Hashirama joked about his inability to conduct romantic relationships, he only scowled in displeasure. Oh if only his brother knew! For a moment, Tobirama despised himself for his act of betrayal. He had sinned, he grievously admitted. He was truly a terrible brother, perhaps even worse than Madara who snatched his brother's eyes for power, for his kind of betrayal was an emotional kind, a spiritual kind, a kind that mocked Hashirama's years of trust. He was supposed to be the dependable confidante, the reliable right-hand man of the Hokage and yet here he was.

"Right, I'll see you tonight then," Mito responded as her words wrenched him out of his wallowing act of self-loathing. Her eyes glistened with a strange feeling of longing, a feeling only he could understand.

As her figure faded into the distance, all his previous thoughts were forgotten. He could only remember her mellifluous voice, her small and delicate mouth and her majestic red hair.

And so he made his way back into the office, made his way through hours of strenuous meetings, made his way through gargantuan proportions of paperwork and waited, waiting for night to come.

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain. "

~ The Waste Land: I. The Burial of the Dead - T.S Eliot

A/N: So, I've taken the liberty of assuming that Tobirama wasn't aware that Madara only took Izuna's eyes on the latter's deathbed. Because it seemed to have passed on as urban legend in Narutoverse.