The pristine river, a silver ribbon threading through the war-scarred land, had become a secret confessional. On the Senju side, Tōka knelt, her small shoulders shaking as the ghosts of a past life clawed their way to the surface. The name "John" was a fresh wound on her soul, and the memory of his song, "Arcade," was the salt rubbed deep into it. The world of chakra and clan politics felt like a flimsy stage set, and behind it, she could still see the sterile white of a hospital room, the desperate pressure of a hand in hers, and hear the heartbreaking notes of a piano saying a final goodbye.
Across the water, in the dappled shadows of the Uchiha territory, a different kind of storm was brewing. Indra had been meditating, seeking the calm center that his Six Eyes usually provided. But today, the calm was elusive. A profound, indescribable ache had settled in his chest, a hollow emptiness that had nothing to do with chakra exhaustion or physical fatigue. It was a ghost limb of the soul, a pain for something lost so completely he had almost forgotten its shape.
And then, it surfaced. Not as a memory, but as a sound. A melody. It began as a single, sorrowful note in the quiet of his mind, then unfolded into a progression he knew with every fiber of his being. It was the last song. The one he had played for Vidya as the life faded from her eyes. The one he had composed in the ashes of their future, a eulogy for a love that was a "losing game." The song called "Arcade."(He was not created this song he only sing this song for Vidya)
A cold sweat broke out on his brow. His breath hitched. The analytical power of the Six Eyes was useless against this tidal wave of raw, untampered grief. It was a pain so vast and ancient it felt primordial. A frantic, illogical thought seized him: if he did not play this song now, if he did not give voice to this agony, the last tether he had to Vidya—this memory, this melody—would snap forever, and he would truly be alone in this brutal world.
With hands that trembled slightly, he unsealed a storage scroll. There was a soft puff of smoke, and standing there amidst the pine needles and moss was his piano, a beautiful, anachronistic piece of craftsmanship, its dark wood polished to a soft sheen. He sat before it, the familiar feel of the cool keys beneath his fingertips a comfort and a torment.
He didn't decide to play; the music decided to play through him. His fingers, calloused from the sword, found the first, haunting chords. The melody spilled into the forest clearing, a sound so alien and beautiful that it seemed to hush the very birds.
And then, his mouth, acting on a will of its own, opened. A voice, young and clear, yet freighted with the sorrow of a millennia, began to sing. It was not the powerful baritone of his previous life, but the higher, purer pitch of a boy. Yet, the emotion was the same—a devastating, soul-crushing honesty.
"A broken heart is all that's left…"
The words were a whisper at first, carried on the breeze.
"I'm still fixing all the cracks… Lost a couple of pieces when I carried it… carried it… carried it home…"
Each repetition of "carried it" was a hammer blow to his own heart, a stark reminder of the weight of her loss, the burden of living on.
"I'm afraid of all I am… My mind feels like a foreign land… Silence ringing inside my head… Please, carry me, carry me, carry me home…"
The plea was raw, a child's cry in the dark. It was John's plea at Vidya's bedside, and it was Indra's plea now, lost in a world that demanded he be a god when all he wanted was to be a man who had come home to his wife.
Unseen by him, two figures had emerged from the trees. Madara and Izuna, having just arrived at the front lines an hour prior, had been searching for their brother. They found him not as the unshakeable War God, but as a boy hunched over a strange instrument, his body wracked with silent sobs that shook his frame even as his voice remained eerily steady. Tears streamed down his face, cutting clean paths through the dust of travel, falling onto the ivory keys with soft, pitiful taps.
Madara, ever brash and confrontational, felt his usual retorts die in his throat. He saw not weakness, but a grief so profound it was a kind of strength. Izuna's hand found his brother's, and they stood together in silent, shared witness, understanding that this was a pain beyond their years, a sacred sorrow they were not meant to interrupt.
"I spent all of the love I've saved… We were always a losing game… Small-town boy in a big arcade… I got addicted to a losing game…"
The metaphor was perfect. His life with Vidya, that beautiful, brief, impossible happiness, had felt just like that—a dazzling, noisy arcade where he, a simple man, had gambled everything on a game rigged from the start. And he had lost. He had lost it all.
"Ooh, ooh… All I know, all I know… Loving you is a losing game…"
The chorus was a surrender, an acceptance of a truth that had defined his first life. His voice cracked on the high note, not from lack of skill, but from the sheer weight of the memory.
On the opposite bank, the Senju children had found their sister. Hashirama, Tobirama, Kawarama, Itama, and Mito stared in shock at the scene. Tōka, their pillar of strength, the one who meted out justice with her fists, was on her knees, weeping uncontrollably. Her tears were not the quiet tears of a child, but the deep, wrenching sobs of a woman mourning a lifetime.
And then, they heard it too. The strange, beautiful, heartbreaking music drifting across the water. It was faint, but clear.
Tōka's head snapped up. Her tears did not stop, but their nature changed. They were no longer just tears of grief; they were tears of recognition. Of impossible, terrifying hope. As the melody swelled, her lips, trembling and salt-stained, began to move.
She didn't sing loudly. It was a whisper, a breath, a prayer sent across the river. But her voice, trained and clear, carried on the peculiar acoustics of the water and the wind.
"Do you love or love me not?... peeling pieces from my heart... my color lens is gone...still I carried, I carried, I carried on"
Her voice was higher, younger than Vidya's had been, but the phrasing, the slight tremble of emotion on the word "carried," the very soul she poured into the lyrics—it was identical.
On the Uchiha side, Indra's fingers froze on the keys.
A discordant note rang out, jarring the melody to a halt.
His head whipped up, his ethereal blue eyes, still swimming with tears, wide with a shock that transcended understanding. His Sharingan hadn't activated. His Six Eyes saw no chakra signature, no visual target. But his heart saw. His soul recognized.
That voice.
It was not a similarity. It was not an echo.
It was her voice. The timbre, the inflection, the very essence of the soul behind it… it was Vidya.
A flicker of light, tiny and desperate, ignited in the profound darkness of his grief. The endless, grey ocean of his sorrow suddenly had a shore. His tear-filled eyes, which had seen only the ghost of his wife, now seemed to clear, gazing with a terrifying, hopeful intensity across the river, though he could see nothing but trees.
He found his breath again. His hands returned to the keys, finding the chord, and his voice rose again, stronger now, no longer a solitary lament, but a call. A desperate, answering call.
"Ooh, ooh… All I know, all I know… Loving you is a losing game…"
He sang the chorus with everything he had, pouring out the pain of two lifetimes into the melody.
And from the other side, her voice answered, weaving with his, a perfect, painful harmony across the divide.
"Ooh, ooh… All I know, all I know… Loving you is a losing game…"
They stood on opposite banks of a river that was more than just water; it was a chasm of clan, of war, of destiny, of life and death itself. They could not see each other. No chakra sense, no visual prowess could bridge that gap.
But they didn't need to see.
Their hearts, tuned to the same frequency of love and loss, built a bridge of their own. In that moment, across the water, through the shared, sacred language of their song, Indra and Tōka did not see a Uchiha prodigy or a Senju princess.
He saw a hospital room, a woman with bandaged hair, a love that defied death.
She saw a young man with a piano, his eyes holding a universe of sorrow, a melody that was her last memory.
The song ended. The final note hung in the air, a poignant, unresolved chord that seemed to question the very nature of their separation.
Silence returned to the forest, but it was a different silence. It was a silence filled with the echo of a miracle. The war still raged. The clans were still enemies. But for one, fleeting moment, on the banks of a nameless river, two shattered souls from a forgotten world had found each other, not with eyes or senses, but with the one thing that had survived the journey through death itself: a love, pure and primordial, that was the true, first cause of their lives.
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