Heaven wait (Hashirama x Madara)

2. Missing someone you've never met (Madara)

I had been mere nineteen when I had been discovered. A child, in many ways.

I was working in a cafe as a barista after I had graduated from high school, trying to figure out what the fuck to do with myself from here on out like so many others my age. My grades had been far from bad, although not excellent. Maybe, I could study English literature? Or just English? I knew Italian and had done some Russian in high school and then taught me the rest of the language myself; maybe I could add that? Go abroad to study in Russia? 

My head had been more full of hopes and dreams than it could ever had been if I had dreamed of becoming world-famous. Even so, world-fame was given to me.

The cafe I worked in was close to Central Park and not easily affordable. They had hired me because I was what people who came there searched for in life, which was young and pretty. The customers didn't only want the extravagant cakes made by the world-class pastry chef.

And one day, a model scout had come in, and... well, scouted me.

But never in a million years had I thought it possible for a model to reach the level of fame I had. I had believed, when I had first signed the contract, that I would be modelling for cheap catalogues and in-store sales signs. And to begin with, it had been a lot of that, yes. But my agent hadn't lost heart.

"There's just something oh-so-special about you. You just wait!"

Many times in my early twenties, I had stood in front of my mirror,  wondering what on earth was so special about me. I was tall and lean, yes, but I though my nose was too long, my chin too rough, my eyes too big with bags underneath them. My naturally black hair was the only part of me I felt I had control over, and I had taken to wearing it reaching past my ears with the fringe draped over one eye.

"You have that quirky appearance that speaks to the big fashion houses nowadays. It's like Eddie Redmayne had a child with Adam Driver!"

I didn't know who Eddie Redmayne or Adam Driver were, but I wasn't all that certain I was happy about being their imaginary love child.

But my manager had been right in one thing. The fashion houses soon got their eyes up for me. I walked for Fendi, for Armani, for Boss. I was asked to make not only magazine spreads but covers as well. I was immeasurably popular on social media. And I as I acted in my first music video, I was soon asked to do interviews, giving me a personality on top of my appearance, which the public apparently liked.

At first, I had loved it. Of course I had. I had been mesmerised by my own success. At twenty-three, I had a private jet, an entire floor in a New York skyscraper, which I owned to this day, and rarely woke up in the same bed for more than a week at a time as I travelled so much. The world could not get enough of me.

Then, I had slowly but steadily noticed a deterioration. I was constantly jet-lagged, and hardly ever got more than a few hours of sleep each night. I was often so tired, I was afraid I would get a seizure. That was then I had begun taken a few shots too many each week to cope. Then, at a particularly rough party, I had had to take myself aside to breathe... 

And that was when I had been introduced to cocaine.

"Take this. You will thank me."

It was a bit more complex than that, involving a lot of compliments and flirting, but I'm too ashamed to think of it in too much detail. Needless to say, I had accepted, and it had been everything that I had been promised. I felt that cocaine saved my life. Of course, it didn't.

The only thing it did was enable me to keep destroying myself.