I was born of the womb of a poisonous spell.

[forefather]

Who: Madara and OPEN to anyone.
When: Monday.
Where: The biodome.
Summary: Madara's up to something. You know that, don't you.
Rating: PG?
Warnings: None? No, seriously, he won't kill you for chatting with him.

Comments

[demonswordmode]

Going into the biodome was turning into a bit of a gamble. Tsubaki had already seen Yosuke, and now she had spotted the other one of her supposed friends that had fallen to madness. It was hard to put his face to those actions, when he looked so calm. Her friends had all said that no one was truly lost until they went full Kishin.

It was the same as when she'd seen Yosuke. She wanted to know why. What had happened? How far had he gone into insanity?

Tentative, as though intruding on something, she eased closer to the older man. "I didn't know you studied herbs."

[forefather]

He heard Tsubaki's approach but didn't stop his work. Madara gave her a glance and a smile in greeting before returning his eye to the bowl, his left hand sprinkling a pinch of some crushed leaf. "I've had a lot of time to study a lot of things," he replied. "When a man lives alone in the woods for several decades, he picks up a few things about plants."

His lips twitched as he caught himself on the verge of launching into a ramble about wild herbs. "You're not really interested in hearing about my wilderness survival studies, are you."

[demonswordmode]

"Well, I am a bit curious now. I didn't think you looked old enough for-- ah, can we say I didn't say that?"

Just when things couldn't possibly get anymore awkward, she had to say something like that. Tsubaki sighed and stepped a bit closer, curious about what he was doing and feeling a bit less like she was intruding now.

"But you're right. I did want to talk to you about other things, but maybe later we can talk about wilderness survival?"

[forefather]

Madara snorted. "Appearances can be deceiving, isn't that right, Tsubaki? If I looked my age, I'd be a dried up skeleton with cobwebs across my ribcage. Thank goodness for life's little illusions."

He picked up a tiny pink flower and tore the petals off, scattering them over the top of his sickly goop. A stark contrast. "So, what's on your mind, my dear? I think I can guess, but let's hear it."

You saw nothing.

[demonswordmode]

"I should know better than to take appearances as the whole story. Do you mind if I sit down?"

She was still hoping that this was more than a five second conversation. If he was willing to answer her questions, she had quite a few of them. It took a second for her to screw up her courage to just ask him what she wanted to know.

"I guess I wanted to know why. I know they hurt you first, but I still don't understand what you meant when you said you couldn't stop."

[forefather]

"Please, sit," Madara replied, gesturing to the spot beside him. "I always welcome the company of a pleasant young lady." He took up his pestle and resumed crushing, those pink petals soon nothing but a reddish smear on the walls of the bowl.

"Everyone keeps asking why," he murmured. "Why? As if every tragedy has a reason, as if madmen are capable of reason. Of course, does a madman even know he's mad? If I say I'm mad, does it mean I'm not? And anyway, would disease of the mind excuse my actions, even if they are the precious reason? No. I wouldn't think so. I would kill a madman for being mad. But then, as it turns out, I'll kill a lot of things for no reason at all."

[demonswordmode]

"You probably are insane." There wasn't any accusation to go with it, just a quiet statement of fact. Tsubaki sat next to him and watched him work, idly wondering what he was making out here in the biodome. "Especially if there really wasn't a reason at all. And it's my job to kill someone that's going down that path, to keep them from becoming a demon."

There was no threat to that, just quietly talking. Almost as though she was talking to herself. "But I don't want to give up on a friend. And you have never done anything to hurt me, even when you were insane. Sure, I wasn't nearby and I didn't try to fight you, but they hurt you first. I wonder what the week would have been like if they would have just left you alone."

[forefather]

"I wonder too," Madara sighed. With his breath came a small puff of fire, heating the contents of the bowl just a little. "Somehow, I doubt anything would have really changed. Maybe once, a long time ago, someone could have saved me through kindness. But I am a violent man by nature. I am cruel and hateful. I'm sadistic and unforgiving."

He gave Tsubaki a rueful little smile. "Don't be fooled. I would kill you just as easily as I killed them. Especially knowing that it's your duty to kill me." Madara rolled his shoulders in a light shrug. "Of course, I won't right now. Because I'm calm right now. It's all about that, all about my temper. You should give up. I'm about as controllable as the weather. And I mean the real weather, not the weather in here."

[demonswordmode]

There was a little shrug in return. "I wouldn't try to kill you here. You'd just come back, I wouldn't be helping anything. Your soul would be gone before I could collect it. I don't like killing, it's just what has to be done when someone's gone too far."

"I don't want to control you. You are what you are. No change can happen while you don't want it." Tsubaki couldn't help but peek at what he was working on. It didn't look very nice, hopefully it wasn't supposed to be food. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

[forefather]

"Unfortunately, my wants have very little to do with anything," he replied. "Isn't that a symptom of madness? How could any man want to tear his own brother's eyes out, or want to destroy the greatest friendship he's ever had, or want to annihilate his entire clan? I don't do anything because I want to. I do it because I am compelled to, because I don't have the power to stop myself, and because the realization of my actions doesn't set in until I am standing knee-deep in somebody's else's blood.

"I want peace, Tsubaki. Over a hundred years I've tried a thousand ways to obtain it. The problem is, I am a force of chaos."

Madara became quiet again, raising the bowl to his face to breathe in its acrid scent. His eyes became glazed for a moment, then he reached for a new herb.

[demonswordmode]

Tsubaki pulled her knees up so she could rest her chin on them, just watching him work. She'd never really talked to any of the people that she'd been assigned to kill. Except, of course, for Mifune, and she never did want to kill him.

"Someone else forcing you to not do what you're compelled to do would be like putting you in a cage. That might be worse than the compulsions." But left them at a bit of an impasse. If he couldn't stop, and couldn't live with the urges being stopped for him, what else was there.

"What would you do? If you had peace?" He was calm now. There was very little threat of him killing her, and if he tried, he'd be left trying to kill a pair of metal blades.

[forefather]

It was quite a dilemma. Madara had run into the problem many, many times. How often had he suggested to his enemies that they strike while he was powerless? And yet they hesitated, doing the same thing Tsubaki was doing now: putting faith in him to make his own choices. For good.

And every time, he told them they were idiots for it. Yet somehow they blamed him when it all went wrong. Where was the fairness in that? He wanted to tell Tsubaki she was an idiot, too, but if the same thing happened he would be so utterly annoyed, it was better to halt the cycle right at this point.

As for the question. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "It's eluded me always, and I have trouble imagining what peace even means. It might be a myth. The way hope is a myth."

[demonswordmode]

It was odd. Tsubaki was becoming resigned to the fact that Madara was someone that would be on Shinigami-sama's list. A human that was following the path of a demon and couldn't be turned away. Her duty was to kill him and collect his soul. But that didn't mean she hated him. She had killed her brother, after all. Preformed her duty, even though she loved him. It made things more complicated, but it was just who she was. Accepting people exactly as they were was a basic part of her soul.

"I don't think hope is a myth. But peace . . . Someone will always have more power than the rest, and someone else will always want that power. I don't think the kind of peace where there's no fighting is real. But a person can find peace for themselves, and maybe someone close to them."

Maybe the only peace for Madara would be after he finally died. Permanently. Unfortunately, that was impossible here.