Note: If you know it, you know it.

Late Bloom
1

Blink

If I have to say one thing about life, it'd be never blink. You are almost always guaranteed to miss something.

Our world is feudal. There's this constant war, even when we're not fighting. Madara once told me it was complicated but to be honest, I'm not really interested anymore. In the war, I mean. I think I have enough blood on my hands, at this point.

You don't have to believe me. I'm not asking you to be ignorant. I'm just asking you to listen. Listen, and just hear me out on this one. I promise I won't shove my convictions down your throat or have any ulterior motives.

Oh, but.

Trust me on the blinking thing.

"You look stupid."

Madara sneered, while his helpers clothed him in his war attire, "This armor was passed down from my great-grandfather."

I shrugged, "So looking stupid runs in the family."

"Ironic, considering the fact that we have the same surname," he snapped.

"Same surname, different family trees," I pointed out.

"Nice save."

He shot me a glare that probably could've killed a man (literally) and I smiled apologetically, taking a seat and letting my hand rest on my lower abdomen while I observed him from a small distance, "Is black like your favorite color or something?"

"This is war—not a fashion show," he stated stiffly, lifting his arms up as the pieces of armor clinked into place, "and do you actually consider yourself qualified to talk about fashion?"

I frowned, glancing down at my plain gray kimono wrapped at the waist with a loose white onbi.

They were designated garbs for the caretakers of the clan. If I had the money and if I had the choice, I'd be perusing the compound in cobalt blues and fire reds—but dreams were only dreams and sometimes they were better off staying that way. In the end, I didn't choose this life—I was born into it, but I made due with it. And I found peace through acceptance.

Kimonos were only kimonos, after all—nothing but pieces of pretty decoration.

Gray wasn't such a bad color anyway.

My hand hovered over my lower stomach, as Madara's helpers left the room. The doors slid shut behind them and I shifted my gaze to the war-clad shinobi, who was staring himself over in the mirror.

"Is there something you need?" He asked, voice completely devoid of emotion.

I shifted my gaze from his reflection in the mirror to the portrait of a ship caught in a storm that was mounted on his wall, "Actually—"

I paused. Maybe not today. Not yet, anyway.

"I just wanted to bid you goodbye," I told him, "you know—just for good measure."

"That seems uncharacteristic of you," Madara looked only mildly displeased, but he didn't remove his gaze from the mirror.

It was a half-assed answer so I should've expected him to say something like that.

Maybe tomorrow. If tomorrow never comes.

"I'll be at the training grounds," he stated.

It was his version of an open-ended invitation.

The war wouldn't start for another month and these next few weeks would be dedicated to getting the troops in shape. I didn't like being cooped up in the Uchiha compound anyway, so I'd probably find an excuse to go visit the training grounds whenever I could.

"Okay," I replied softly.

If Madara weren't so preoccupied with the upcoming war, I wouldn't even hesitate to tell him what was wrong right then and there. But there were matters outside myself that were important to the clan and this might've just been a triviality that could cost him his life. A triviality that could cost my life.

The last thing I needed was Madara in the fight of his life on the battlefield, only to have him distracted by the news that could potentially end his political career. I tried not to shudder at the thought.

I stood up, "Don't die, okay?"

It was only here that he finally tore his attention away from his reflection in the mirror. He made his way over, armor clinking each step of the way.

I wanted to say something about how proud his parents would be if they were here but everything was too contrived and I wasn't the kind of girl who forced conversation for the sake of conversation.

Madara put his hand on top of my head, "I won't."

I reached the courtyard of the Uchiha compound, feeling completely overwhelmed by the nausea in my stomach.

I squatted down, and rocked back and forth, trying to grasp some kind of solace in the fact that Madara would be better off in the battlefield without knowing—I was trying to rationalize my actions. Rationalize my silence in the face of adversity.

"You didn't tell him."

Izuna approached me from the opposite end of the corridor, leaning against the balcony separating the courtyard from the compound, "You need to. This is the sort of thing that matters to his career."

"I know," I admitted a bit reluctantly, "but this is also the kind of thing that would ruin him."

And the word I didn't say: forever.

There was a short pause.

Izuna looked like he was mulling over something. Then again, it was difficult to actually decipher what he was thinking. He had a penchant for looking indifferent and he could've been thinking about what he was going to eat for dinner, for all I knew.

He didn't often meddle in his brother's personal life. It'd become a bit of a taboo topic, ever since Takada (but that was a story to be told another day). For a while, I actually convinced myself that this would be one secret that would pass off as irrelevant. One secret I could try and bury inside myself. But then again, I'd always been naïve about these matters.

A stupid, stupid girl.

"Nii-san couldn't care less about what people think of him," Izuna stated, "as much as you think he wants to rise in the ranks, there's a part of him that would give it up with no qualms."

The idea made me laugh. Madara. Giving up his ambitions for the sake of some girl.

Some stupid, stupid girl.

I pursed my lips, "I don't want him to even fathom the thought of giving up all he's worked for," and I hesitated slightly before I decided to continue, "I want to see him succeed. And if that means I have to take the fall, I'm okay with that."

"Noble, but if you wanted to be a martyr, you should've kept your feelings to yourself before all this happened," he stated, "then you wouldn't be in this position at all."

It was a difficult pill to swallow, but he was right. If I had just kept my big mouth shut—if I had just followed my obligations and listened to my mother, I wouldn't be here in the first place.

"Hindsight is a bitch," I admitted.

Even though the pain and burden could be hard to bear, I forced myself up onto my feet. The skin around my ankles were stretched taut. Completely swollen.

I averted my absentminded gaze from my feet to Izuna, who was leaning casually against the balcony ledge with his arms crossed over his chest.

I was unable to bottle up my frustrations and relented a soft sigh, turning my heel.

"I'll be off," I said, waving my hand, noncommittally, "to get my bed rest. Chiaki wouldn't have it if she caught me in the corridors like this."

But.

I hesitated before I could take my first step, "You know how Madara said there was a faint smell of fruit before death?"

"What about it?" Izuna seemed only moderately interested in what I had to say.

I half-laughed, brushing a lock of my hair behind my ear, "Nothing."

I peered over the canopy to see the sky painted a brilliant shade of navy blue. Stars blinked and—for a fleeting moment—I was content. This wasn't the kind of conversation I wanted to have with Izuna, but it was the kind of conversation that I needed to have.

A sort of coming to terms with reality, I suppose.

I felt comfort knowing that I wasn't alone. Izuna always pressed the questions that no one else really bothered to ask.

"Madara has never lied to me before," I figured there was no harm in telling him, "and he hasn't given me a reason to doubt him, so maybe I will. Tell him, I mean. And if he doesn't want it, that's fine with me. It's not like I'm in a position of helplessness."

I took a step forward—paused, and looked over my shoulder and shot Izuna the best smile I could manage in this circumstance, "Maybe the kitchen is making apple pie tonight. Kind of smells like it."

The training camps weren't far from our compound.

It took some patient waiting in my bedroom until Chiaki left to her own quarters before I headed out. Security was light during times like this and it wasn't long until I managed to escape the gates of our compound.

It must've taken me roughly three circles around our gates before I realized our camp was probably hidden until some genjutsu. The Uchiha clan wouldn't be the Uchiha clan if it didn't constantly supervise every waking detail until the watchful gaze of an illusory eye.

By the time I reached my forth circle, a guard emerged from the shadows. I explained to him who I was and that I was given orders from the elders to give Madara his honorary war onbi. A white lie but he recognized me as Madara's caretaker, did a general scan with his activated sharingan, and let me in, albeit with reluctance and distaste.

I followed him through the folds of the illusion and caught sight of Madara immediately.

He was directing a young man, who wouldn't have been more than eleven. Kami-sama. Eleven and ready to fight on the front-lines. Eleven, and ready to give his life to a war that he probably didn't understand.

I looked up to the sky.

When I was nine, I found a robin. A pretty, red robin. Her nest was right outside my windowpane and her eggs were bright blue—blue as the sky.

A blue jay appeared one day and discovered the nest. I was under the stupid impression that he'd fall in love with the robin and it'd be some grand love story that transcended nature and time.

But instead, he devoured the eggs in her nest and flew off into the sky. Almost like he was never there at all.

When the robin came home, she let out a terrible cry of despair.

She circled her nest for two days before she starved herself and died.

I watched in horror as the sky exploded from above.

My ears were ringing.

It was hard for me to make sense of where I was. All I could tell was that I was lodged inside a pile of gravel. There were cries from all around me but I couldn't make sense of anything except the constant ringing inside my ears.

I tried to push myself out, but I ended up collapsing over the side of the gravel pile and hitting the ground below with a light thump. A couple metal rods clattered next to me and I covered my ears with my hands.

To my horror, as I looked down to my feet, I was bleeding.

Desperate to find the source of the wound, I groped my entire body, kneeling into the dirt.

I wouldn't even care if it were my legs. Or my arms. Or even my head.

Rational thoughts. Rational thoughts.

Hot, fat globs of tears began to form as I came to the realization that the dark river of red was coming from between my legs. It became more and more difficult to even see behind the veil of tears, but still, I tried my hardest to make sense of what was happening.

To make sense of why this was happening.

At once, everything began to shake. My hands trembled violently, and in a desperate attempt to quell this fidgeting, I ended nicking myself in the eye with my fingernails. My hands were sweaty and I tried to clear my head for a relevant thought—something, something to make sense of all of this.

"Please let this be a dream," I whispered.

Rational thoughts, rational thoughts.

I couldn't breathe.

Help, I tried to cry out. But instead, I collapsed and let the exhaustion consume me.

"Senbi?"

I clenched my fists.

"Senbi!"

Shut my eyes.

"Where are you hurt?"

Tried to breathe.

"Where are you bleeding?"

The first thing I heard was the clink of armor as Madara kneeled down in front of me. It took me a moment to compose myself before I could even open my eyes and look at him.

What was this feeling of total shame and embarrassment?

Why did I suddenly feel so small in comparison?

"Where are you injured?" He asked, putting his hands on my shoulders.

From head to toe, he was dressed in black. Black like the sky.

There was another clink as he shifted his gaze across the barren field, littered with bodies and blood. Another clink in the armor as he looked back to me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned my head against his shoulder, resisting the urge to completely unravel and break down in his chest.

I closed my eyes. Clenched my fists.

Don't cry.

Don't cry.

I hated seeing him like this. I hated seeing him in his armor. I knew it was an inevitability, but every time he put on his war attire, it was another reminder that I might never see him again and that just had a tendency to take my breath away every single goddamn time.

Don't cry.

And this. This shouldn't have even mattered to me. How could I be so upset over something so stupid? How could I be so upset over something I never even wanted in the first place?

How could I be upset over something I wasn't supposed to have at all?

It was ironic that the stinging scent of apples that was so apparent earlier was only remote and distant now.

"I was pregnant," I said.

Madara paused. Hesitated, almost. It was the closest thing to disbelief I could ever see him wear on his face.

"Was," he stated, his breath hitching, "was?"

I stifled a sob and felt the hot, wet tears stream down the side of my face, "I had a miscarriage."

He shifted his gaze to the pool of blood on the lap of my gray kimono.

Don't cry.

I clenched my fists, "It was yours."

Madara pulled me into his arms.

All I could see was the sky from over his shoulder—the thick, black sky with all the stars blinking right back.

—three years ago.

The Uchiha clan was the greatest clan in the world.

People were dying. Everyday. Sort of like battle royale with clans and countries playing the cards. And we always won. That's why we were so renowned. That's why we were so revered. That's why we were so feared.

Our current leader is Uchiha Madara. He only recently came to power after Daisuke-sama. No one really knew what happened to him but no one seemed to really care to investigate either. Everyone was too preoccupied with the new leader to really give thought to the past.

Kaa-san was Madara's primary caretaker. Assistant. Helper. Whatever you wish to call it. So it was only natural for our paths to cross eventually.

The door to Madara's office burst open.

She had to be around my age: dark-haired and fair-eyed.

Tears poured down her face and her cheeks were tinged a pink. As soon as she caught sight of me, the bowl in her grasp slipped and clattered to the ground, breaking into a dozen pieces. I opened my mouth to say something but before I could, she ran off in the opposite direction and disappeared down the corridor.

I stared into Madara's office to see him signing papers, documents poured over his desk in neat piles. He looked up and caught my gaze but I didn't look away.

"Close the door," he stated coolly, shifting his gaze back to his papers.

There was an awful rumor that went around overstating Uchiha Madara's temper. I wasn't really sure where the rumor came from but it was always something that was just...accepted. Girls in my corridor liked to gossip about him. They called him a picky perfectionist who never knew when to be satisfied, a tyrant warlord, and a fearful leader. The latter nicknames were more popular among our clan.

Kaa-san recently fell ill.

When she was Madara's caretaker, he wouldn't dare challenge her. It was the whole respect-your-elder ideology we had going on in our clan.

Kaa-san had me when she was in her forties, which made me what they called a late blossom.

To be honest, I didn't understand what that was supposed to mean. It never gave off any kind implications and I hardly felt flattered when people referred to me as it.

With Kaa-san ill, the prospective caretakers in line took her place.

It wasn't much to be proud of, I suppose. Initially, I believed it would be some kind of honor to serve the leader of our clan but after a few weeks of careful and happenstance inspection, I came to the conclusion that Madara wasn't that kind of leader. He never cared much for triviality and small talk, anyway, so I shouldn't have been surprised.

Unlike most caretakers, I wasn't assigned to anyone. I drifted between the kitchen staff and the postal workers.

Kaa-san always insisted that she wanted me to be Izuna's caretaker but that never quite worked out the way she planned (he and I never actually met in person). She somehow always expected too much out of me, and I'd much rather be assigned to someone more average and commonplace.

I just wanted a normal life of certainty, to be honest. Apparently, that was too much to ask for.

"Nice job," I stated, "that must be the fifth girl this week you've scared away."

Madara didn't even bother looking up from his paperwork, "Sixth, actually."

It took me a moment to register his response. But eventually, I complied to the silence and pulled the door shut with a click. My fingers lingered on the knob for a moment before I turned to the broken pieces littered on the floor.

I knelt down and started to pick them up.