12 years later

Noooooo.

Every fibre of my body went against it. No. Absolutely not. No no no no no no no. It's Sunday, and I've been up five all six days of the week. I am not, under any circumstances, getting up.

I got up anyway.

Luckily, I wasn't absent-minded enough to forget to put my trousers on. Their soft hem caressed my stiff muscles nicely; I had so much time in the evenings with myself nowadays and I has used that time yesterday to train myself vigorously. It showed. I was forty-three and was in the best shape of my life.

The doorbell, that had woken me up, rang again.

"On it!!" I shouted. My voice echoed in the vast apartment. I was still living in the same place after all these years, and it was still equally empty.

I looked at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, massaging one eye socket with the ball of my hand, using my other eye to make sure I was decent. The trousers did show off more of my v-line and the hair that went up to my navel than I was comfortable with, but there was nothing I could do about that. Or I could, but I wasn't going to. Several strands of my wild, long black hair had come loose from the braid I always made before bed, the streaks of white in my hair greatly contrasted against the black. I kind of liked all that white...

I went to the door and opened.

And stopped dead.

"Umm... Hi", a surprisingly deep voice said.

Outside my door works a woman, or rather a girl. She was quite tall for a woman, with shoulder-length, fair hair with thin bangs that went to her eyes in a very fashionable haircut. She looked broad and strong, as if she played rugby, and had a kind face that looked a bit odd with her baggy blue jeans and boyish white shirt. She had a black backpack slung over one shoulder.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

"You're Madara?"

It had happened, once or twice, that a fan had found my location and come to knock, asking for my autograph. But I immediately knew this wasn't one of them. For one thing, she had not called me "Chef Uchiha".

"Can I come in?"

Did the girl just ask to be let into a stranger's apartment? I looked down on her. She did, I had to admit, look like someone who could eat men for breakfast. Weightlifting, I thought. Less cardio than me. I was impressed. Impressing me was impressing in itself: I was never impressed.

I opened the door for her and walked into my apartment.

"Sure. Make yourself at home. I'll just find my T-shirt."

It took a while (I always lost things and found them in the most impossible places; I once lost my car keys for two weeks then found them in a container of protein powder) and went to the kitchen that was open to the living room where the girl sat herself down on the couch, looking very comfortable. She didn't do it in a rude way at all, though; it was as if she took me telling her to make herself at home to heart.

"Have you eaten breakfast?"

"Just a protein bar." She smiled a little at me. "I know who you are. I wasn't dumb enough to come full."

I smiled back and got working.

I usually never cooked for anyone but myself and customers, but this, somehow, felt different. She had demanded food from me. Also, she was so young she could've been my daughter, so some reptilian instinct within me wanted to provide her food.

I cooked and dished up the breakfast at the kitchen table, figuring she ate heartily for her training. I made a mushroom omelette, vegan bacon with maple syrup, ricotta pancakes with a caramel sauce, sorbets made of only berries and yoghurt and several dishes of fruit and vegetables alongside fresh bread and luxurious cheeses.

We began eating in silence. She was a slow eater, and didn't seem bothered by our lack of conversation at all. She put the foods I had made in her mouth and chewed while looking out the window where the Parisian summer sun had risen long ago. Once we finished, I asked if she wanted tea or coffee (I would never destroy a breakfast with the taste of coffee during) and she accepted. I took two cups along with coasters to the coffee table at the couch, and sat down on the other end of the sofa from her.

"So..." I said. "What can I help you with? And who are you?"

She didn't answer. She looked at me sternly, as if trying to decide whether she could trust me or not (which I found odd as she didn't seem bothered to be locked in with me in my apartment), and her face was so sincere I would've burst into laughter had the atmosphere in the room not changed to something dense and very, very serious.

She reached for her backpack that she'd put next to the couch and unzipped it, producing an envelope that she handed to me, not letting my eyes go.

I looked at the envelope. It was a simple white envelope with a stamp and watermark. I did not recognise the handwriting.

I looked at the girl.

"I'm sorry. I think you've got the wrong person", I said.

"I don't think so", she said. Her eyes were glittering with something I couldn't quite understand. Hope? "It's you."

"Who are you?" I asked, profusely confused.

The girl took w deep breath.

"My name is Sunna", she said. "I'm Tobirama's daughter."

The heart of my soul stopped. 

I looked at the handwriting on the envelope.

"To be opened when you're 18, my love."

When I first read it, I had believed it was something written by a lover, maybe a high school sweetheart who had been terminally ill. But of course, it was her father. It had been twelve years since he died. She had been six. She was eighteen now.

"You had no clue?" she asked. I shook my head, and she looked disappointed. "So you don't think I look like him?"

I looked at her. The resemblance was striking; the pale blue eyes, the white lashes, the beautifully carved jaw, the furrowed eyebrows. I hadn't noticed, but now I looked for it, he was clearly there, written all over hr face.

"You're his split image. I'm sorry. I just haven't thought about him that much. It was a long time ago." Something struck me. "But you must've known what he looked like! He's all over the Internet!"

"Or course I do", she said, looking down shyly. "I've searched him like mad since the day he died." I jerked at the rawness of her words. It was like overstraining an old injury after a few months rest; something felt wrong. "But it's not the same as hearing it from someone he loved."

I melted, remembering the deep, fierce love between us two. Between us three.

"Your mother never confirmed?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. Never wanted to talk about him. Said I'd be better off if I knew as little as possible. Of course, that only poured gasoline on my curiosity."

Sensitive lady, I thought. Very aware of herself. Just like her father. I started to really like her.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"She tried to prevent me from googling him so I wouldn't find out what the media said about him." The intensity of her gaze was so much like her father's, my breath caught halfway between my throat and the core of the earth. "He promised in this letter what they say about him isn't true. Is that right? Is he innocent?"

I smiled sadly, trying to connect the word innocent with the name Tobirama, but failing miserably. Although I was thinking about another type of innocence than the one she was asking for.

"He is", I said. "He never did anything Merlin told the media he did." 

Of course, I couldn't be sure. But at the same time, of course I could.

"What about the other man?" She nodded towards the letter, still in its envelope in my hand. "Hashirama?"

"Oh!" I smiled genuinely. "He moved back to the States. Started up a vegan restaurant. The only vegan restaurant in the world with four Michelin stars. Actually, there's no other vegan restaurant with over two."

"Are you still dating?"

I was taken aback. "God, no! I haven't heard from him in ten years."

She looked unfathomably sad by this. "What happened?"

I smiled, tucking my feet beneath me, a way of getting comfortable I had only ever used when alone, or with Hashirama and T. I trusted this girl.

"We loved each other still. But we reminded each other too much of your father's death. We were madly in love, Hashi and I. I had never been in such a healthy relationship. We had to break up because we couldn't stand it. To this day, our breakup was one of the most painful things I've had to endure after having lost your father and my sister."

"My condolences", Sunna said politely.

"It was a long time ago now", I said. It seemed to be a phrase I would repeat many times.

We had been a couple one year after T's death, but we had felt frightfully incomplete together. We had had the talk, and decided that I should take over the restaurant, which was a complete 180 as I still hadn't fulfilled my part of Tobirama's contract and become owner with Hashi. After our separation, we had kept in touch for a while, messaging each other politely, made the occasional call but somehow, it all became very stiff, very unnatural. Hashirama had moved back to his birth country, and I had stayed in Paris.

I had tried not to search Hashirama, not to google him, but of course, it was hard. Was he married? Had he moved back to France? I didn't think about him that much nowadays, but a couple of times a year, I couldn't help but wonder. And he was social, outgoing, happy, so you could see him in a TV show or other.

Actually, it wasn't entirely true that we hadn't heard from each other in ten years. Four years ago, he'd texted me.

Unknown: It's Hashirama. Did you hear?

Me: I heard...

Unknown: Do you need to talk about it?

Me: No. No, I don't, but thank you. Do you?

Hashirama: No. Thank you.

Me: Take care.

Unknown: You too.

Merlin, who'd made a name for himself in Taiwan as a chef, had killed himself.

Of course, having gained the fame he so desired by ruining Tobirama's life, his suicide could not be kept from media the way the suicides of everyday people did. I tried to feel a grain of sadness, of sympathy, of anything but glee but failed.

The case of Merlin and Tobirama had become huge when it happened. Much bigger than I ever noticed in my state of crisis after his death. But Tobirama's suicide just seemed to prove to the media that they'd been right, that Tobirama had, in fact, done everything Merlin had said he'd done. Don't you see?! I wanted to scream to the world while clawing my eyes out. Don't you see he didn't kill himself because he was busted, but because he was wrongly accused?!

Me and Hashirama felt helpless; Merlin immediately became victimised and idolised, and by then we knew we had no chance of going to the media with our version of the story. We had watched as the story blew up to unreasonable proportions all over the world, so much so that Merlin's death was still worth mentioning in mass media, even if so many years had passed since that time he'd been interviewed on TV for the first time.

"Madara." I jerked back to reality. "Do you want to read it?" Sunna nodded towards my hands. The letter?"

"What's in it?" I asked.

"Well, it's addressed to me, but it speaks very lovingly about you. And about Hashirama. So I figured you could read it."

I looked at it. Tobirama's last words... His last words about me. Even if we had fought, his last words about me to his daughter had been loving enough for her to come search me up.

I felt tears in my eyes; an old rash in my soul had been opened up and was now bleeding out through my eyes. My hands holding the envelope were trembling.

"God", I said, and my voice cracked so I had to turn away. "Sorry."

"It's okay", Sunna said, putting a courteous hand on mine to stop the trembling. Is this what it feels like? Having a daughter?

Finally, I shook my head.

"No. No, I won't read it." I looked at Sunna, having reached a decision. "That letter was meant for you. I want to keep it that way."

Sunna nodded. "But just so you know, I'm going to burn it."

I looked at her, frowning.

"Are you sure?"

Sunna nodded. "Yes. I know myself. I'll come back to it over and over again if it's not destroyed." She looked up at me. "And I don't know you that well, but I suspect you'll be the same. I will email Hashirama and ask him if he wants to read it. If he says yes, I'm posting it to him if he promises to destroy it after he's read it. If he says no, I'll burn it immediately."

I contemplated this for a while.

"You know... I'm really not worth any of your kindness."

"What do you mean?" Sunna asked.

"I..." I looked away. "Before we found your father, we had a massive fight, him and me. He hadn't told me about you, so I found out by seeing some photos he had in his living room."

"He had photos of me on display?" Sunna breathed and I suddenly realised how one single thing could mean so much but in such different ways for two different people. I couldn't help but smile sadly at my selfishness.

"Yeah. I did not take it well. Hid my anger behind telling him he should've told us. Which he should have, but my anger was because of jealousy. Of suddenly realising I would never, ever come first. That Hashirama would never, ever come first." Sunna was looking at me. "As I've grown older, I've come to realise how much you must've meant to him. It was unfair of me to make you a cause of my anger, and I'm sorry. To this day, I keep asking myself if what happened could've been prevented had I apologised sooner. Or not fought with him at all."

Sunna thought for a while before she answered, just like Tobirama always did.

"You know... There must've been a thousand different circumstances lined up for him to hang himself. If you'd apologised and he'd still done it, you would only ask yourself something else. We will never know what would've happened if one of the factors were removed. I accept your apology, but not because I believe you need to apologise, but because I know it will do you good to hear it."

I stared at her. This girl really was something else.

"Thank you." No other words had never been so meagre, nor so enough.

Sunna decided it was time to leave for the gym. Turned out she'd just moved to Paris to study, having lived slightly outside of the city before, and was going to the same gym as me.

"Tell me if you want someone to work out with", I said, scratching my head as I stood in the hallway while she tied her shoes. Suddenly, I realised how that could be interpreted and immediately stepped back. "I mean, not in that way, of course! I mean, I'm way too old for you and you're my dead ex's daughter and also I'm gay and-"

"Madara."

I looked at her, and at that moment she looked so much like Tobirama it felt as if I'd been stabbed in the heart. But then, she smiled triumphantly, her face changing as it lit up so it probably looked more like her mother's because Tobirama was gone, and she held up a finger showing off a thin, red ring in the shape of a bow.

"Don't worry, old man. I'm a lesbian. We can safely exchange numbers and you can be my queer big brother, and I'll be your flamboyant little sister."

I smiled for a long time after Sunna left. 

The pain after Tobirama was cut raw open again in a way I hadn't at all expected.

I thought I'd stopped mourning him long ago, that I was over him. It had been twelve years. But maybe, I hadn't dealt with it enough because the pain was as raw as the last time I had experienced it. It felt like I'd left the pain on the ground and moved on in my life, but now on accident come back to the place where I had left the pain and picked it right back up. 

I kept going to work, Tobirama's old restaurant that had gotten all of its Michelin stars back and an extra one, but my mind was elsewhere. Had Sunna contacted Hashirama yet? Had he also remembered me, and the three of us?

I got my answer one evening three weeks later.

I was eating a bowl of cornflakes with oat milk and freeze-dried strawberries in front of the TV one Sunday evening when an interview came up on the news. I leaned forwards, squinting my eyes; I was not wearing my glasses.

"Oh, fuck..." I breathed.

On the screen was a tall man in creme trousers, a blue shirt and a dark brown tweed jacket.

And I recognised that man.

He'd cut his hair short so it reached past his ears and fell softly on his forehead on one side. He was wearing his glasses that enhanced the beautiful lines around his eyes he'd gotten, but everything else was exactly the same.

It was Hashirama.

"Merlin was enormously manipulative", he said and I realised how long ago it was I heard his voice. "He hid it behind insecurity, which made it incredibly hard to notice."

With the help of the person interviewing him, he went on to speak about what had happened at culinary school, Merlin accusing him of doing drugs and being told to leave.

"And Tobirama..." the interviewer said.

"I can, of course, not know for certain. But there is no evidence at all Tobirama did what he was accused of. All of us left in his kitchen, now the kitchen of Madara Uchiha..." I jerked when he spoke my name. "Neither of us experienced any of the things Merlin said we had."

They went on to talk about the reasons why Merlin acted the way he did.

"But why come out with it now?" the interviewer asked. "Why not twelve years ago?"

"By the will of Tobirama. He was afraid us going to media would make people's belief that he was manipulating us increase. We understood it."

"But why now?" the interview with repeated.

"I was contacted by his daughter." My lips parted. "I don't want redemption for Tobirama himself, or for me, but for her. It's unfortunate I come out and speak when they're both dead and cannot speak for themselves, but she deserves to live in a world where people do not judge her father because of something that doesn't make any sense. To any of us."

I listened to the rest of the interview that was done in a very calm and collected manner. Hashirama was extremely good at what he was doing.

Suddenly, something struck me.

The interview was held by a French news channel.

"Welcome back to Paris", the interviewer ended the interview.

"Thank you", Hashirama said, smiling a small smile. "It's been many, many years."