(Hashimada) The Adventures of a Hedgehog and Some Idiots

32: Marriage problems

(A/N art has nothing to do with this chapter, it's just beautiful 🥲)

By then, the sun had almost completely set; they made their way towards Hashirama's wooden house, which he created earlier. They walked in silence - the news they had just received was too hard to bear. Once they got to the house, Madara lit a fire again and Hashirama worked on clearing some of the trees out, so they had room to move around a little.

Hashirama sat by the fire, and Madara sat beside him, leaning into him. Hashirama held him close, and they both gazed into the fire.

"I mean it, Hashi. . . I will do whatever I must. I could always use my Sharingan-"

"Mada, I really appreciate that, but we have to be careful about this. The elders have a lot of influence. . . We have to be careful how we go about this." Hashirama groaned in frustration and said, "It's just so irritating. . . After all this time, everything was starting to feel perfect. Everything was in order - the village, our feelings, even my brother is starting to come around. . . And the only way we can fix this without conflict is by finding a replacement. Even then, I don't want to offend the Uzumaki clan. . . Ugh. I should just say that I'm already engaged or something!"

Madara stopped to think for a moment about potential replacements. "Well, the most obvious replacement for you is your brother. I doubt he would be so willing, though. . . It is not likely that an Uzumaki would agree to marry an Uchiha. However, only your brother, yourself, and I have a high enough status. . . Unless I convince this Uzumaki to marry someone else," His Sharingan glowed in the dimly lit room.

Hashirama sighed, "I can ask Tobirama, but. . . Even if you 'convinced' the Uzumaki to marry someone else, it isn't likely they'd listen to her, anyway. The marriage was arranged by the elders of our clans, so the only way to avoid it is getting either her clan or mine to change their mind. . . This is giving me a headache already. . . I would just tell them that we're engaged, but-"

". . . What?!"

"Yeah! Oh, that gives me an idea. . . What if we told them the tension between our clans is still too high, so in order to bring our clans closer. . . We're engaged! I mean, it's a win-win!"

"Hashirama, that may be believable, but if that were the case, you could marry any Uchiha. At least, that is what the elders would argue. Besides. . . Marriage is moving too fast, is it not?!"

Hashirama frowned - he paused to think, then continued. "Hmm. . . I don't think marriage is moving too fast. I mean, we both agreed that we want to spend our lives together, anyway. Besides, we might not really have another option. . . Plus, we could always argue that the clan leaders getting married would have more of an impact. . . We could say that the situation is desperate, so we have to take emergency action or something."

"Still. . . There is no way that the elders would believe or support that. Our clans are set in their own ways - the treaty alone was difficult to agree to, let alone something like this. . . Half of my clan already wants to cast me out since I agreed to the treaty. This would probably cause more harm than anything, at least among the Uchiha. . ."

"Ugh. . . I'll ask Tobirama. If he doesn't agree, we should at least try to make the engagement thing work - it's worth a shot. If things still aren't working out, then we'll have to resort to other measures, somehow. . ."