Saviour

Epilogue

Five years later

Madara:

I hugged his furry little head close to my chest, planted a kiss on top of his head. He was five now, but still acted as when he was a calf.

I'd bought him off the farm where we used to buy our staples three years ago, when the owners said they were slaughtering him. It was the same calf whose mother I'd milked, and I was enormously attached to him. He was obviously not a cow anymore, but a bull, and a very cuddly one at that. I smirked. What would you think of me if you saw me now...

I knew what he would think of me. He would think I was adorable, gentle, kind-hearted. He never understood that that was only a reflection of him; that he saw himself in me. But I saw it. And I knew.

I went to the wooden building next to the cottage that had just been built. I was fifteen minutes early, but I usually was, wanting to chat with the children.

"Madara!!" they screeched when I entered.

"Whoa!" I screamed when one of them threw themselves into my embrace. "Good morning, Lizzy."

"We've missed you!" one of the boys screamed.

"You saw me the day before yesterday", I laughed.

"I know", he pouted. "But that's, like ,a whole day in between! Do you have to teach the older children as well? Can't you just teach us?"

I smiled. "You're only saying that because you know I'm teaching you ninja art today. If it was maths, you would like to have two days in between!"

I had set up the school two years ago. Every other day, I taught the small children of twelve and younger, and every other day those thirteen and above. It ranged from sciences to ninja arts. The ninja arts was mostly for fun, a for of exercise, as you didn't really need those skills here. There were ten in each class, and some of them came from all across the vast lands where we were living. But there weren't the only ones...

One day, two years ago, I had stepped on my porch to see a collection of fifteen adults and their children standing there. It had been five years, but I still recognised them from Konoha.

"We are in dire need to escape the leadership of Konoha", one of them said.

"Sarutobi isn't to your satisfaction?" I asked, not too bitterly, I hoped.

"It's not that", a middle-aged woman said. "Sarutobi is a good leader. But we found out the reason behind Tobirama leaving. The fifteen of us held a meeting, and decided we did not want to live in a village where the leadership was created due to homophobia." I was taken aback. "We never signed the petition to throw you out of the village. But if we'd known sooner about Tobirama being told his partnership with you was unacceptable, we would have left earlier. It's not the foundation we want our children to grow up in. And since you were a good teacher in the village..."

They all looked at me pleadingly.

We'd held a meeting in the evening, and decided to set up a small village in the area, with a school for their children as well as the local ones, where I would teach. It had made me happy, full of purpose, something I hadn't felt in ages.

"Mr Uchiha..." The middle'aged woman who'd spoken had come to me, put a hand on my shoulder. "Where is Tobirama?"

At that, I had sunk down to my knees and cried.

I loved teaching the children.

I loved every aspect of it.

Before the day started, I always read something to them.