Chapter Text
His birth was one marked as a sad occasion. He had heard how in ancient times — before the advancement of medical knowledge — the probability of both the child and mother surviving through the birthing process was slimer compared to the modern era rate of successful birth.
To think that one day he would experience that immensely low survival birth rate in his second life. Who would've imagined. A second life was also an unimaginable experience, even if there were already many isekai stories out there.
A surprise he wasn't quite sure how to feel about it. In his first life he only lived because he was given birth to. There was nothing earth shattering in particular that he wished to achieve. Only that he wished that he could live his life without pain and struggle. So he tried his best to live a fulfilling life. The best way he thought.
There was no recollection in the recess of his mind how his previous life ended. But knowing the way he had lived, it shouldn't be a tragedy. Just another stable life and perhaps an accident to end it all.
A truck-kun's fault, perhaps?
Heh, that's funny.
Amusement bubbled in his chest. The legendary truck-kun came and blasted him to his new life. A second chance, people would call it. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but he was certain he'd figure it out. There was nothing wrong with going with the flow.
His eyes were not working properly the first time he came out of his mother's womb. Everything looked bleary. He could only make out blurry figures.
Then he began focusing on his hearing. It was awful! The noise sounded like a demon's screeches before it started settling down and his ears were working. That was how he discovered that his mother had died giving birth to him.
From a loud crying noise of an adult man. Another adult man's voice tried to soothe the crying man, but it sounded like he had failed. The man who was trying to soothe the crying man sounded like he was about to cry himself. Was the crying man his father? He wondered.
The third voice also belonged to an adult man. This one unlike the first two was complaining. Then the fourth, the one with the deepest voice asked the nurse of his condition. Asking whether he had survived. He in fact survived, but he wasn't crying.
The question worried whoever it was that was currently holding him. He knew he was being held in someone's arms, he felt warm. Then he felt a shift in his position. A hand began hitting him insistently. From the worried whispers around him, wondering why he was not crying he took it as his cue to cry.
And he cried. His cries were followed by a collective sigh of relief. Crying in a baby's body turned out to be rather tiresome, he didn't resist from falling into sleep.
He wasn't quite sure how many days had it been since he was born. Maybe it was already a week, or a month. When all you do was the same thing everyday everything tends to blur into one.
Now at least he could see his surroundings clearly. He was living in a classical Japanese style room. With sliding doors made of wood and thin white paper. The room looked bare. A candle stick holder to one side of the room, and a crib. That was it.
He wasn't certain whether he was being neglected. There was always someone to take care of him. When he cried a lady would come in. He was guessing that this lady was his nanny. Even without him crying out she would routinely check his diapers, try to feed him, and bathe him.
Gaining a clear sight also made him notice that he was now a girl. A she.
She had to discover the disappearance of her very familiar appendage between her legs while being bathed. She was stunned silly and turned into a statue for a full minute, before relaxing her body. Assuring her caretaker that she was not sick. The lady looked downright terrified when she turned so still. She felt guilty.
Her thoughts on being a woman in her next life were… nothing interesting of note. She was always indifferent towards genders and what it meant in her first life. So being a girl and losing her appendage for an unfamiliar one was only surprising.
None of the four adult men she heard the day she was born into this world came to see her. Not even once. That meant her father never came to see her. This was why she thought she was being neglected. She'd say she's somewhere in between neglected and forgotten.
Staying in the crib all day, for a whole day, or week, or month, was grating on her nerves. "Humans were social creatures without interaction they would die" She never took those words seriously, but now she understood. Even though she enjoyed remaining indoors for days, there was always someone she would talk to. Now she supposed she was hungry for any social interactions.
And thus the only way she knew how to get what she wanted as a baby was through tears. She cried and never stopped until the lady took her outside. Only when the lady took her further away from the room did she stop her cries.
The lady looked somewhat frazzled by the end of the ordeal. She really felt guilty, but it was the only way of getting herself out of that four walled room.
Tying her small baby body in a sling over the lady's chest, her caretaker went about her duties.
Then another lady joined her caretaker asking questions that she had wanted to ask, chatting about things she wanted to know since she was born into this world. Her findings gave her a better understanding as to who she was.
Her name in this world was Kai. It sounded like a male name. Her parents were perhaps expecting a boy instead of a girl.
Her father was someone very important. And he did not marry out of love. He also didn't like her mother very much.
She could already see that her second life would not be a flower road. A parent hoping for a boy, instead received a girl. An arranged marriage where one of them hated the other. A sparse and blank room.
All of a sudden she felt that everything she had currently was enough. Anymore and her father might actually throw her to the streets for the dogs to chew on. This was an ancient period era she was living within; these kinds of "incidents" were unfortunately the norm.
It wasn't until she heard her father's name that she knew where she was and the entire gravity of her situation. Uchiha Madara. She was now reborn within a world that she only knew through a piece of paper and through a screen of glass. One she thought was only fiction. Now she was part of it all.
There was no use denying the fact that she was now part of what once was fiction. Not when the proof that this was now her reality stood hovering over her crib a few days later.
White hair, red eyes, pale white skin with red markings on his face. Senju Tobirama was unexpectedly the first person she saw that she recognized from the fictional series. He appeared silently, surprising her with his presence. She wanted to cry out, these damned baby reflexes, but the man gently lifted her from her crib.
She could not understand why Senju Tobirama was here of all people. Weren't the Uchiha and Senju rival Clans? Unless of course Konoha was already in the view. That would make more sense why Tobirama was in Madara's house all of a sudden. But what reason did Tobirama have for him to see her? She was Madara's daughter as far as she knew.
The man only stayed briefly. Asking questions of her well being to her caretaker and then he was gone. As quick and brief as the man had appeared.
What was happening?
Nothing changed ever since Tobirama's visit. Her life was thankfully still the same: eat, sleep, bath, potty, sleep. Not exactly in that order, but it was the gist of her life. The new addition was that sometimes Tobirama would come and visit her for very brief intervals, and the man would be gone before she missed him. Tobirama also bought her the only doll in her crib. Cute fox doll.
These days she was struggling to crawl. So she should be a few months old by now, unless she had somehow tried to crawl before she was supposed to. Not knowing how old she was, was a problem. She wasn't sure when she could start doing certain things. Crawling, standing up, talking.
Unfortunately she still had not puzzled together why Tobirama was visiting her. Now she was certain that Konoha existed, since the man was not being attacked by anyone for intruding.
Madara had yet to show himself. Or any of the other Uchiha as a matter of fact. Except for her caretaker who she suspected was an Uchiha from the black eyes and black hair. It was only Tobirama visiting her for now.
The other weird thing she noticed was that she could understand Japanese, when she wasn't supposed to understand. She had never learned Japanese in her previous life. It made little sense that she understood what people were talking about. All the explanations her brain came up with didn't exactly "explain". It was more or her brain telling her not to overthink and shoved a temporary problem solver. That she could understand them because she was born as a Japanese person now. It was a terrible explanation.
Well adults never actually wondered why children understood what they were talking about. They always expected them to understand simple basic words. Please, thank you, no, mama, papa, etc. Not overthinking that with so many language in existence how the fuck a child could understand the language they're using. It's like there was a default language switch in a child's brain and they just understand.
When she started standing up that was when Tobirama decided to stick around her for a longer amount of time. He would help her practice standing up and hold her when she started trying to walk. The man would even work on his papers in her room. That was what the newly added table in her room was for.
If Madara didn't show up soon a normal baby would think Tobirama was their father. Unfortunately — fortunately she was not a baby. To be precise she was a fake baby. An adult with a child's body.
Everything was really peaceful and she got used to Tobirama's steady presence. The man rarely talked and she rarely made any noise, apart from when she was moving. So when someone or something made so much as a little noise it would ring across the room.
And ring across the room it did. Twinkling chiming sounds like those windchimes. The problem was there were no windchimes in this room. Tobirama wasn't even concerned with the sound. She found that an especially weird thing. It was loud enough to distract the man from his papers.
The twinkling sound came from outside the sliding door. The one that leads to the engawa, straight access to the garden. Since Tobirama didn't seem to react badly to the sound she decided to approach the door. There should be nothing wrong with her trying to see the source of the sound.
She tried to open it by herself at first, then Tobirama noticed what she was trying to do. The man was confused from the look on his face. This was the first time she ever approached the door. Perhaps that was why the man easily indulged her and slid the door open.
The sound grew louder the instant the door was opened. But there was nothing outside that was out of place. There were no windchimes, no people, just the garden and trees, and some birds tweeting on a tree branch.
But the twinkling chiming sound was still there, and louder. It was coming from a tree in the garden. She wanted to crawl towards it but getting down from the high raised engawa would be tricky. Trying to tell Tobirama to carry her there would be impossible, she was supposed to be a baby, and acted like one. Babies could point out where they wanted to be taken to. If her memory didn't fail her.
So she approached the engawa's edge, to get Tobirama to pick her up. The man did exactly as she thought he would do, when he was about to turn back into the room she made an insistent hand movements for the tree. Added with baby talk.
Tobirama remained standing still at first, before the man relented and took her over to see the tree. The tree looked like any other tree, it was a tree obviously. But the twinkling chiming sound indeed grew louder. Far from finding it annoying, it was rather interesting. A tree making noise that a tree wasn't supposed to make.
It was to her surprise that she noticed Tobirama sending her literal question marks for stare. He couldn't hear the sound, only she could. Was she growing insane from the lack of social interaction, and her brain was trying to compensate by making her hear weird sounds coming from a tree? It was possible. It was ridiculous, why would her own brain want to overload her through driving her insane. She refused to imagine anything relating to ghosts. There were no ghosts in this world. Only Shinobis and chakra.
If only the tree wasn't out of reach she would start slapping it. She would have to wait until she was old enough to carry an axe to cut the tree down.
This was how the twinkling chiming sound became a part of her life. It comes and goes. Gradually she understood what those twinkling chiming sounds were. It was the tree. Yes, the tree. Twinkling chiming sounds were the tree's way of speech. She was indeed going insane.
The tree in the garden was complaining how there was no rain when it hasn't rained for days. That it was dry. How she understood a tree was a mystery. Like how she suddenly understood Japanese was a mystery.
Bless Tobirama for being a saint. Because these days the trees' complaints and talking was driving her insane. Which translates to her crying often, fussy, bad mood, all sorts of things that would drive a parent into madness. The white haired man chalked it all up to her teething. She wished it was.
Taking a few steps on her wobbly footing without Tobirama helping her wasmanagement growing easy. Ignoring the sounds of the trees grew easier. Now it felt like she was constantly living in the middle of a marketplace. And she could hear what most plants had to say about something. The flower who wanted to bloom. The grass who felt the sun was burning them. Her life was rowdy because of all the plants.
She really wanted to tell Tobirama about her hearing the plants. The man should know something. Considering his older brother could sprout a forest with mere hand signs.
Then the plants in the garden were bursting in their earthen places. They were incredibly happy for some reason. It was a sensory overload for her and Tobirama noticed she was feeling incredibly uncomfortable. He also seemed to notice that it was not because she was teething, it was something else.
Tobirama held her on his lap. A cool hand touched her head, blocking her ear, soothing everything that felt too much. Her senses returned to normal.
The sliding door slammed open followed by a loud shout, "Tobirama!"
"Anija quiet!"
By the sounds of someone choking, whoever it was that arrived must have been surprised by Tobirama's piercing voice. Since she was facing towards Tobirama's torso she couldn't see who it was that had arrived. But guessing by Tobirama's way of addressing the person, it should be his older brother, Hashirama.
She heard the way Hashirama shifted at the doorway. Carefully sliding the door close. Hashirama's tone was lowered and controlled this time compared to when he barged in, "Izuna was saying that you've spent a lot of time within Madara's house. That I might find you here. I… wasn't expecting you to be with," Hashirama sounded choked for some reason, "with Kai."
Tobirama ran his fingers through her hair. It felt comforting. "Kai had begun to stand. I was merely assisting her. Since no one seemed to be around."
"Ah, oh, I-I see." She never pegged Hashirama as someone who would be easily flustered in these situations. Most of the time he did it for the sake of acting all gloomy. His quick recovery from his depressive state seemed quick in the stories.
"Are you here for something Anija?"
"No, not exactly. You have not been in your office as much, and I was wondering." Hashirama sounded far more composed than he was a second ago.
Tobirama's next words made everything fall into place, "Since you are here now. Why don't you meet our niece?"
The empty room. A marriage without love. The shouts at her birth. Her unwelcome presence in this house.
The floorboards underneath Hashirama creaked, telling that the man was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He was nervous. Hesitant. He was the adult male voice she heard, the one who was crying loudly. And Tobirama was the one who tried to soothe him.
"She doesn't look like our imotou." Tobirama muttered. She never heard the man mutter, even while he was working on his paperwork his words remained clear for her ears to hear.
A sharp breath intake told her that Hashirama was not expecting Tobirama to be direct with his words. Minutes passed by before soft footsteps approached them. Hashirama followed Tobirama's example of sitting on the floor. The rustling of clothes and a gentle thump told her so.
Carefully Tobirama made her face Hashirama. Who had a pained smile. "She looks like Madara." He chuckled. His arms stretched out to take her, Tobirama gave her easily to him.
Then the sensory overload from the plants returned like a tsunami. She turned limp. She could tell that the two adults were panicking, then Tobirama placed his hands on her head once more. It did soothe the intense sensory overload from the plants. Hashirama looked like he had accidentally killed a puppy or something.
Their voices were unclear at first, gradually her hearing came back.
"—alright?"
"She's alright Anija." Tobirama tried to assure the older man.
"What happened just now?" Hashirama asked, a little shaken by her sensory overload.
"I'm not certain. She's been acting weird as of late. I thought her teeth were coming in, but I think that's not it."
Looking very concerned, Hashirama asked, "Weird in what way?"
"It started with her wanting to go and see a tree…" Tobirama gave Hashirama the rundown of what she had been doing ever since she could hear the trees — plants talk.
The creases on Hashirama's forehead grew prominent, until he seemingly figured something, only for the man to frown even more. "I have my suspicion but I'm not entirely certain."
Hashirama conjured seeds out of nowhere and placed it one her tiny hand. The man had placed his much bigger hand under hers. First it didn't feel like anything happened. Then there was a trickle of warmth flowing into her hand from Hashirama's own. The seeds on her rolled around, struggling, as tiny green leaves sprouted. It reminded her of growing those green sprouts on a cotton experiment she had to do in school.
"It is as I thought…" Hashirama sighed heavily. "She was hearing the plants. My presence tends to excite them. Kai was overwhelmed by their excitement."
"She has the Mokuton."
She saw Hashirama nodding at Tobirama's statement. There was a weird expression on the man's face. Part pitying, part happiness, part sadness. "And she awakened it at such a young age. It must be hard for her to hear the plants all day."
The two adults in the room looked at each other and shared a silent conversation between them. She was certain that it had something to do with her gaining the Mokuton so suddenly.
Hashirama told Tobirama, "We should inform Madara of this development, and keep the news of her having the Mokuton a secret as long as we can."
She did know that the Mokuton was well coveted in the future and some characters went to great lengths to produce a Mokuton user. That Yamato character was the byproduct of Danzo's selfish desire to own a Mokuton user that's loyal to him. Now without a choice she had painted a target on her back. A big one.
The afternoon saw her meeting Madara for the first time. Her father.