Chapter Text
And that’s it.
That is the end of Hikaku’s love story.
This story, more than any of my other stories in this AU, was a labour of love.
Initially, when writing Escape & Evade, I’d conceptualised these characters in my head as Izuna’s triad. He was the husband, the most senior ranked, the one they pursued in the Run. Not until they caught him, but until he decided to stop running.
I’d had so many people ask about Izuna’s triad, and I’d answered so many questions about them, that I realised I had a story there that begged to be written. So I sat down and plotted it out. I had so many of the major events in their relationship already laid out in Escape & Evade that I figured it would be easy.
But, as soon as I did, I realised that the real problem was going to be writing their relationship with Tōka in a believable way. I spoke to my polyamorous friend, did research, and tried to lay out a reasonable plot line for the evolution of their relationship. I didn’t stop tweaking it until my friend approved it.
I thought I knew how it was all going to go.
I had it all in my head, the structure was laid out in my plotting document, I’d already written much of the dialogue for several major scenes, and I figured it was just a matter of getting it down on the page.
Only it wasn’t.
Because it wasn’t Izuna’s love story or Tōka’s love story.
It was Hikaku’s love story.
He’s the heart of this relationship, and it’s him who moves them forward every step of the way. It’s him that they follow, and they follow him out of love.
At every turn, these characters surprised me, bewildered me, and took me on a journey that I never expected. The end result bears only a basic resemblance to the story I plotted. Their relationship is completely different to the one I initially conceptualised them as having, and every single one of the dialogue snippets that I wrote during the plotting stages went unused.
It was difficult to write a story that left me so torn between what the characters needed to say, and my preconceptions of what the story should be. There were days that the words flowed, and there were days when I sat and stared at the blinking cursor until I forced myself to start writing.
You may note that the tone of the story is completely different to all of the other stories in this AU. Partly that’s because of the way the characters didn’t want to go in the direction that I’d planned, leading me to face down writer’s block more times than I want to think about, but it was also partly because of the feedback.
I am literally the only person on AO3 that is writing this relationship. They are a rare pair by any measure, and I never expected this story to get much love compared to my Madara and Tobirama stories.
But there have been readers who have cheered me on. lljj, greenchair, AislynnGoldleaf, AwfulLoneliness, and, most of all, KuraKura0_0.
KuraKura0_0, in particular, has been a strong presence, constantly commenting and leaving feedback on so many chapters that I have literally lost count of the number of comment threads that they have begun.
To you all, I say thank you. You have carried me through the two and a half months of writing this story. Your love for these characters and your encouragement of my writing has meant more to me than you can possibly know.
It is because of you that this story is complete, and I will be forever grateful to you for the love that you have shown it.
So, in many ways, this is my love letter to Hikaku, the one sane Uchiha who never sees himself as anything special. A person who Kishimoto relegated to a background character but fandom has elevated to a side character.
For me, he’s a person who is both completely ordinary and, at the same time, extraordinary. Because he is kind, good, gentle, and - most of all - loving.
May we all be as extraordinary in the eyes of our loved ones.
— Phlebas
P.S. The war continues in Zealous Zetsu Zooms towards the Zenith, which resumes posting tomorrow.