Chapter 1
Chapter Text
Tobirama stood vigil in the howling blizzard. The blood on his sword was freezing into blooming crystals as bodies on the ground cooled from the wind.
Ten Hagoromo around him lay dead, red splotches in the snow. By the time he had arrived, most of them had already been dead, and the rest Tobirama had easily disposed of with a flick of his sword and a single hand sign.
Now Tobirama was alone, looking down on the last living person in the clearing.
Uchiha Madara was slumped against the trunk of a tree, hot blood steaming in the cold. His chest rose and fell slowly, the only indication he was still alive, for otherwise he was completely still and despondent. Blood seeped through the cracks in his armor, and streamed in rivers down his face from empty sockets.
The wind shrieked, cold pricking Tobirama’s cheeks.
“Kill me,” Madara whispered.
Tobirama did not budge at the words. He considered them, for a moment. Weighed it out. Slowly, silently, he sheathed his sword.
“No.” he answered.
He kneeled into the snow. As his fingers touched Madara’s cheek, the forest lit up with a soft green glow.
—
When Madara woke up, he had expected darkness.
He had been, as embarrassing as it was to admit, been caught off guard. Already injured from a mission, Madara had been limping back through contested territory to the Uchiha lands. It was winter, and work for clans was few. Nobody would be trekking through the deep snow now, especially through contested territory, set far away from any real Senju or Uchiha settlement. Nobody wanted to freeze to death.
It was this assumption that led Madara to stumble through forest, blood dripping onto the snow, and his guard let down. His mission had been a special case: a high bounty that was too lucrative to pass up. The Uchiha had suffered a poor harvest during the fading fall, and the snow had been light enough to assume that Madara could make the journey.
From the start of the mission, it had all gone awry. The target had hired heavy protection from the Land of Wind, and though they may all lay dead now, they had managed to mark Madara with a heavy wound. Bad enough turned to worse as during the trip home, a blizzard set in, and soon he was surrounded by knee deep snow.
He needed to return back to the Uchiha compound with his commission. There were people depending on him.
He had been so caught up in the pain in his side, the bitter cold on his skin, and the worry in his heart that he hadn’t noticed his attackers until a senbon had lanced into his side.
A Hagoromo squad had found his bloodtrail, and few clans knew how to follow the scent of profit in blood like the Hagoromo could.
There were only ten of them, a fight which ordinarily Madara could have ended with not much more than a sigh and a few minutes, but he was injured, and tired, and as he hailed fire and destruction down upon his assailants, and felt his movements begin to lag and jitter, he realized with horror that the senbon had been poisoned.
The more he was just a second too slow, the more senbon and their poison sunk into him. It was a localized toxin, it didn’t spread through his blood as well as most. Rather the sting of iron in his skin was followed by an abrupt seizing of the muscle it had sunk into. Madara was unfortunately familiar with Hagoromo poison, on account of his clan’s frequent clashes with them, and he knew that if it was fast acting poison they wanted, it was well within their ability.
No, they wanted this poison to only affect certain parts of him, and it did not take much thinking to parse out why.
He grunted as another senbon sunk into his arm. Another that avoided his neck or face. They were preserving his eyes.
You couldn’t sell a broken product, after all.
Genjutsu smugglers were a scourge hated by all clans, but no more so than the Uchiha. If there was any monster that haunted an Uchiha’s dreams, it was not Senju, but rather the idea of losing one’s eyes. Senju, for all of their cruelty and monstrosity, did not steal eyes.
Hagoromo did, and Madara had been old enough long enough to have walked the halls of the medical wing and seen clansmen with bandages over their faces, and spirits broken. Madara had been clan head long enough to have mothers weep to him, holding their eyeless children to their chests, begging him to fix what could not be fixed.
Madara had been good about keeping traffickers off their land. But now, as he fell to the ground in a seized body that he could no longer control, it struck him that perhaps he had not been thorough enough. While he thought he had chased them out, the rats had been hiding in their holes through the long winter, waiting for the taste of blood to come out.
His eyes, the only parts of him still under his control, flicked around wildly. He knew he should turn them off, or otherwise the memory of their removal would be with him forever, but he could not do it. Sharingan developed under pain, a flower that bloomed in showers of grief and blood. Now, terrified for his life, terrified even more for the loss of his eyes, he could not turn them off. Fear kept them open.
The Hagoromo hunters, what charred remaining shinobi there were, now approached him. The Sharingan memorized each minutia of their features, each speck of ash across pale skin, each gash Madara had managed to carve into them, each splatter of blood across their faces. There were three of them left now, and Madara watched in clear detail as faces split into greedy smiles. He could see the reflection of the moon, in perfect detail, in their hungry eyes. He could see each furrowed crease in their irises as their eyes dilated.
Madara had never felt like prey.
He felt like it now.
He could not help the scream that tore from him as iron dipped into the socket of his eye. There was laughter at that, and Madara had never been more grateful that the Sharingan could not memorize sound. He doubted he would forget it, regardless.
The first eye came loose with a sickening squelch, and half of Madara’s world went dark.
He was afraid.
Madara was not used to being afraid. But not terror swallowed him like some great beast, devouring his flesh and replacing it with trembling, shivering fear. He was crying as the blade dipped now beneath his second eye.
Madara could only hope for a swift death.
The world went completely dark, and all Madara could feel was warm blood pouring down his cheeks. Somewhere within his new void, Madara could feel his heart break.
Madara was now completely helpless, crippled for life. He did not want to live in this dark. Madara wished for death.
Outside of his blindness, now he heard a choked off scream. Something heavy thudded to the ground, and a flare of chakra rippled across the snowy clearing, colder than even the winter chill.
Suddenly the clearing was silent, absent of even the smallest noise. Gone was the rustling sound of fabric as his eyes were pocketed away, the low voices talking over him like he was some sort of pig for auction, the laughter and the sharp sound of paper being unrolled. Now it was only silence, silence and cold.
“Kill me,” he whispered, with his last ounce of strength.
There was a single, terrifying beat where he thought he might be talking to air.
Then, clear and firm,
“No.”
Whatever might have been said after that, Madara could not remember. The blood loss had claimed him, and he slipped peacefully into a warm sleep, hoping to never wake up.
He did not expect he would either, much less in his clan’s medical ward.
For Madara, he was one moment sinking into death, and the next woken to pain in a place he did not recognise. It was a frightening, disorienting thing to be alive when you knew you shouldn't. He surged up in a panicked frenzy, and was met with noise and action. Hands and voices pressing against him. He pushed back the hands trying to calm him, unable to focus on the shouting voices around him. His eyes had snapped open, sharingan activated and-
He could see.
A bandage was wrapped around his eyes, but through the gauze, cream-colored light filtered in. He could see.
Madara stopped fighting, and hands from all over rested on him in reassurance. The fuzziness of the world around him, dampened by panic, began to take shape. The sounds of shouting transformed slowly, as ice melts to a stream, and became words again.
“-adara! Please, Lord Madara!”
His panic was gone, replaced by concern.
“Hikaku?” He asked, and was surprised by the rough quality of his voice. As if he had gone days without its use.
He heard a relieved sigh, and the shadows outside of the gauze shifted.
“Thank god, I was worried you would hurt yourself. Ah, Ikaru, please go inform Lord Izuna that Lord Madara has awoken.”
“Yes sir.”
Madara heard someone rise and leave them.
Madara’s face twisted, and he noted with displeasure a painful soreness, “What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you,” Hikaku said, sounding worried still, “but please, deactivate the sharingan before you damage your eyes.”
His eyes.
Madara reached up to touch his face, and felt with a resounding relief that his sockets were not hollow. He could not help as he let out a choked sound, halfway between a gasp and a sob.
Madara cut the chakra flowing to his eyes, and the sharingan deactivated, leaving a residual burn.
“What happened?” he asked.
Hikaku sighed once more, and Madara made a mental note to stop being the reason for Hikaku’s constant stress, at least for a while after this.
“That’s what we want to know,” Hikaku said, “we found you just outside the compound. A patrolling squad stumbled upon you slumped against a tree, a blanket over your shoulders, and a bandage around your eyes.”
Hikaku’s voice was full of horror as he continued, “it looked as if they had been ripped out and somehow reattached. I…”
Hikaku trailed off, unable to say another word. Another voice, who Madara recognized as Uchiha Nozomi, the leader of their medical unit, spoke up.
“It was a cleaner job than any of us could have done,” she explained calmly, almost reverently, “cleaner than any of us could have imagined possible.”
Madara’s eyebrows shot up. Eye-transplants were not an unknown art, given how essential they were to Kekkei Genkai trading, or how important eyes were to the Hyuuga and Uchiha. But the Uchiha, in particular, specialized in treating the eyes, for rather obvious reasons. For someone to be able to perform one better than an Uchiha medic… not even the Senju should have that capability, for all of their renown in healing.
Madara reached up to tear the bandage from his face, but a hand shot out to stop him.
“Lord Madara, I am afraid you will have to keep it on for now. Your eyes need rest.” Nozomi said.
Madara felt anger rise in his chest, but he quickly doused it. Nozomi was right, even Madara wasn’t prideful enough to disobey.
“Madara,” Hikaku spoke once more, “what… what happened that night?”
And then suddenly the anger was back, now different and sharp. Not indignance like seconds ago, but fury, dark and hot.
“Hagoromo traders,” he growled, “they caught me off guard. Poisoned me with some sort of paralysis drug. Next thing I knew I was on the ground, and-” cold fear, darkness. Madara wet his lips and forced himself to continue, “they stole my eyes.”
“Do you remember anything more?” Hikaku asked.
A memory flashed through his mind, colder than cold, the silencing of sound.
“Kill me.”
“No.”
Then sleep.
“Someone killed the traders,” Madara remembered, “I can’t remember much about him through the pain, but he was male - deep voice, though I doubt I could pick it out through a crowd, too brief, and I was too far gone at that point. That’s all I can remember before the blood loss got me.”
“Whoever it was,” Nozomi cut in, “you got very lucky Lord Madara. Very few people can perform a successful eye transfer, and even fewer without leaving permanent vision loss. The work that your little hero did on you… well frankly it’s revolutionary.”
A hand was placed on the side of his head, and Madara felt Nozomi’s chakra trickle through him in examination. It rested warmly behind his eyes, and for a second Madara was revolted. It was strange - no Uchiha liked anything invading their eyes, and especially someone in Madara’s case. But it was not the invasion that disgusted him, rather a strange sense of wrongness - that the warm chakra was not snow-melt cold disturbed him. Madara shoved down his disgust, why on earth would he expect cold? Why did it feel like he had felt it before?
Nozomi, taking a close look at his eyes with the diagnostic jutsu, continued, “Lord Madara, you had been experiencing vision deterioration from the Mangekyo, correct?”
“Yes.”
“When you were first brought into the ward, we ran this same diagnosis. The severance point of your eyes had been bridged with a line of healthy young cells. Since then, they have continued to grow and the area has strengthened, the reattachment seamless. More than that though,”
She removed her hand from his face, leaving Madara relieved as her chakra was gone.
“Madara,” her voice was serious, “all the damage from the Mangekyo had been healed as well. Your eyes are practically brand new, in fact, they will most likely heal to be in better shape than they were before this. Your mysterious healer, whomever they are, can heal the Mangekyo blindness.”
Madara could not help the way his entire body froze with shock.
“What?”
Nozomi rattled on, “of course, it’s not permanent. Any further use will continue to damage your eyes, but they have been almost fully repaired…”
She continued on, but Madara could not hear her. All else in the world had faded to an unremarkable buzz as what she said echoed within him. Someone could heal the Mangekyo blindness. An illness that had plagued the Uchiha for generations was curable. There was a solution, there was a savior out there.
Suddenly, nothing else in the world mattered than finding who had healed him. Suddenly all of Madara’s fear, all of the long meetings with clan elders, all of the urging and resisting and insisting that Madara must blind his brother to save himself - all of it, all of it: meaningless. There was a cure. Madara would not have to take Izuna’s eyes. He would not have to damn either of them to an endless darkness.
He laughed in bewilderment, softer than he thought he was capable of.
There was a cure.
“..nerve tissue is much too fragile to even use Senju iryo jutsu. All the techniques I know are far too blunt for this kind of healing. The chakra control required what was done to you is impossible.”
Even Nozomi, old, aging, weathered Nozomi seemed amazed.
“It would be like trying to thread the eye of a needle from a mile away,” she breathed.
“How is this even possible?” Madara asked.
“We don’t know.” she replied honestly.
Madara was silent for a moment, thinking.
“Hikaku,” he intoned.
“Yes, Lord Madara?”
“Start a search through the contested area as soon as it is safe to do so. We need to find the remnants of the fight, and find any clues of who this person might be.”
“Of course.”
He turned his head slightly to where he knew the medic was, “Nozomi.”
“Yes, Lord Madara?”
“If we could find this person, would you be able to copy their technique with the sharingan?”
She sighed, “I am afraid not. Even if we had all the knowledge of Senju techniques, all the finest medicines in the land, and even if I could see how the himself healer did it, it would remain an issue of skill, not knowledge. This was a miracle, one I doubt anyone, even the Senju could reproduce.”
Madara quelled his disappointment, “I thought as much. Then it is of utmost importance that we bring them into our service, and keep them here. No matter the consequence.”
There was a tense pause, that even someone as dense as Madara could read.
“Would anyone like to fill me in on whatever I’m missing.”
He heard Hikaku intake a breath, try to speak, and give up.
Madara raised a brow.
“Come on, currently blind, you know. If an elephant is in the room, someone is going to have to tell me about it.”
“Madara…” Hikaku sounded strained.
“That is my name.”
“There is something you should know.”
“I should hope so.”
“You see, the thing is-”
A loud Bang! resounded through the room as the doors were thrown open, and Madara felt Izuna’s static-shock chakra roll over him in a nervous coil.
“You’re awake!” was the only warning before all 180 pounds of Izuna came crashing into him in something that was half hug, half tackle.
“Lord Izuna!” Nozomi snapped, yanking him back off Madara. Judging by the choking sound his brother made, it was probably by the collar as well.
“Thank god!” Izuna was sobbing dramatically, “I thought you’d be asleep forever!”
Madara winced from his volume, “The pond is not off the table, Izuna!”
Izuna remained undeterred, continuing to wail, “You could have been blinded for the rest of your life! I was so scared when they found you!”
All the blooming affection in his chest was thoroughly squashed when Izuna threw himself upon Madara again in a runny-nosed mess.
“Izuna, please! He’s fine!” Hikaku tried, though everybody in the room knew it was pointless to try and calm the Uchiha heir down when he had whipped himself up into a frenzy.
“How can you say that Hikaku! He could have been blind forever! If his soulmate hadn’t found him when he did then-”
Madara suddenly went very still, “What did you say?”
The room fell deathly silent, and Madara didn’t need his vision to feel as all eyes shifted to him.
“Soulmate,” he repeated, voice hollow of emotion, “You said soulmate just now, right?”
“Lord Madara-”
“You didn’t tell him yet?!”
“I was just getting to it! We had a lot to cover before-”
Madara felt numb. His mouth moved without his command, instinct taking over when his mind failed him.
“Explain. Now.”
A beat.
Hikaku cleared his throat.
“Madara, there is something you should know.”
—
To say Madara had thrown a tantrum was putting it very lightly.
Soulmates, as they were everywhere, were a sacred thing. Someone the universe had tied you to irrevocably, someone entirely yours and you theirs in ways you could hardly comprehend. Your soulmate was your everything.
To Uchiha, soulmates were even more than your everything. Everything you had belonged to them, and because everything could never be enough, you became more than you could have ever been before, just for them. Uchiha loved strong, and became strong for love. There was a reason the first touch of a soulmate left a mark on your skin. A soulmate changed you, deconstructed you and rebuilt you into someone better.
Your blood, your air, your gravity: they were all of it.
When Madara was young, he couldn’t wait to meet his soulmate. He dreamed about who they would be, how wonderful their meeting would be. He begged his father to talk about how he met his mother. He traced endlessly over the china-blue stains on his fathers knuckles and on the back of his mother’s hand from an accidental brush of skin.
He used to run around grabbing everyone he met’s hand, hoping with an almost delirious fervor that his skin would stain with their bond. Of course, it never happened, otherwise everyone in the five elemental nations would have heard within days. Madara had always been more the shout it from the rooftops type.
As he grew up, he relented and stopped his childish behavior. But, if he was being honest, the burning desire never left. Each touch of his hand upon another’s, he found himself wishing please, please, please.
In many ways, it grew worse.
His older brother had died when Madara was young, and so Madara was made heir. He gained power, and he gained responsibility. Little Madara became Lord Madara. He was shuttered away from easy, carefree days. Hashirama had been a reprieve from the dark study rooms, from the training yard, and from the certainty of the war he was to inherit. But after Hashirama’s brief interlude, Madara’s life was once again clouded with the encroaching storm of blood. Madara grew to carry the world on his shoulders, and he did not complain. He loved his clan, so when he wiped the blood off of his gunbai, he did not shy from the knowledge that he would yet again dye it red.
When his father passed, Madara became clan head. With that, the Uchiha clan depended wholly on him. He had to guide them, protect them, and fight for them. He had to be strong for them, and so he did. Madara became someone important. Now his hand brushing another’s meant something. Nothing was to be carefree anymore. Somehow, though he would never admit it, he wished for Hashirama’s peace more than ever now. He couldn’t tell anyone that - dreams didn’t protect his people.
People looked at him with either fear or admiration in their eyes. He was a powerful man. In a way, it felt his power had become him. He wondered, maybe, that Izuna and Hikaku were the only two to truly know him anymore. And even that was fickle. They did not know about how much he still dreamed about the escape from war. About how sometimes he dreamed about packing his bags and leaving. It was his darkest secret, because he truly loved his clan, and nothing he had to sacrifice for them would ever be too much.
But still.
Still.
Perhaps nobody saw Madara anymore. Ironic, for the Uchiha.
He dreamed, now, of someone looking at him with clear eyes that reflected nothing of fear, of admiration. No, he didn’t even need love. He only wanted someone to see him with no pretense, and listen without judgments to his ramblings.
So his obsession grew.
He built up and tore down an imaginary soulmate every day. One day they listened quietly as Madara read them shitty poetry. Another day they teased him with a sharp smile and made him fume and laugh in equal measure. Some nights he imagined skin upon his skin, heat and sweat and teeth and lips trailing across a blush. Other nights, all he could dare to wish for was a hand in his own.
Madara gave himself this one allowance. This one obsession to escape into.
He wished for everything, but expected nothing.
He didn’t need any of the fantasies. All he needed was something real.
When his skin brushed another’s, his mind still begged please, please, please.
He swore, when he met that someone, he would do anything to make them happy. He couldn’t wait to throw some massive, unnecessary party, to preen and show his someone off. He couldn’t wait to waste money and time on silly little things to give them. Madara had looked through his mother’s collection of clothes and jewels and wondered which one he would give first. Of course the rest would naturally follow, but in what order, and how fast?
Would his soulmate even like them? It didn’t matter. They could collect dust, and Madara would still give them. Just to give them something.
He was sure the day that they met, Madara would do anything to earn himself a chance.
He waited for his skin to stain with manic patience.
So, when he found out that he had not only met his soulmate apparently, but had not been able to see them, or feel them, or know them at all, and rather than all the parties and gifts, that he lost them, Madara predictably went ballistic.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!”
Nozomi quickly excused herself, walking away in what was barely not a run, leaving Izuna and Hikaku to deal with the absolute shit-storm that was about to happen.
It was a just-barely sort of thing that prevented Madara from accidentally burning down the medical ward. He spat fire and shouted, fuming and lashing out like a child - only one that was lined to the teeth with every fire jutsu known to man.
His tantrum had been loud enough to draw every curious Uchiha with ears to the medical ward. They arrived just in time for the entire clan to witness their clan head throw himself on the ground and wail a baby. Any worry they had felt for him vanished instantly. Lord Madara was fine; he was clearly back to his old self.
“This is unfair!”
It took Madara about two days to stop trying to break things, a third one to stop snapping irritably, and four people watching him at all times to ensure he didn’t tear the bandages off his eyes so he could see his soul mark.
“This is bullshit!”
After what had felt like a tortuous eternity, Nozomi had put a hand to his head, looked at the wound, and declared he was fully healed.
They walked him to his rooms, placed him before a mirror, and left him to privacy. He heard them rise, and walk, and heard the hiss of the shoji doors. Then he was alone. He had not been alone since the night in the blizzard. He would never admit it, but it frightened him now: darkness and silence.
He sat there in silence for a moment. After spending days trying everything in his power to just look, he was suddenly scared to. He did not know why.
His hands rose shakily past his face, gently grasping the bandages. Slowly, he began to unwind them, gauze pooling in his lap in a small pile, and the light beyond the bandages growing until-
Madara’s face stared back at him in the mirror, sharingan glowing red in the darkness of the room. Across the shelf of his cheekbones was a mirrored stain, red as blood.
Madara forgot how to breathe.
His soulmark.
Unbidden, a hand came up to trace along the mark. There was a long stain, reaching diagonally from below the outer corner of his eye to the end of his eyebrow. Beneath the harsh cut of his lower crease, a smaller misshapen blot rested. The placements of the thumb and a forefinger, where a diagnostic jutsu would be best performed on his eyes.
Madara laughed.
His eyes traced reverently across the marks, and how beautiful they were. Red as his mother’s carmine roses in the garden, blooming just as stunningly on his face. Madara almost found himself unsuited for such a delicate beauty, with the harsh cut lines of his face, but he only loved them more for it. The bud below his eye and the long petal touching his brow, he had never seen anything as pretty.
He watched joyously as the marks crinkled when he smiled.
Madara had found his soulmate. He had a soulmate.
How wonderful, that he still had his eyes to be able to see the marks. How incredibly lucky that he would still be able to see his soulmate one day.
And oh.
Madara’s hand traced the marks, and pictured the now dyed fingers that must have left them.
How amazing his soulmate must be, to give him back his eyes. How grateful, how indebted he was.
Madara locked eyes with himself in the mirror, and watched as that marked face set into an expression of determination.
He decided at that moment that he would give the world to his soulmate. Give anything, anything.
He had lost him.
Madara would never let go again.
—
Tobirama had never wanted a soulmate.
There were quite a few reasons why, but the first time he had the realization was when he first saw his father hit his mother.
They were not soulmates. There was no color from an accidental touch. His father had a gray spot on his cheek, faded from his soulmate who had died years before. Another Senju - dead before they even came of age. His mother did not have a soulmate yet, and so she and Bustuma married, and had children.
Bustuma had never loved her, but even he could muster up some tenderness for who had become his life partner. His mother was much the same. It was not a fairytale romance, but they both got something out of it. And it was enough. Not dazzling, not exciting, but it was not bad. And so they were happy with mediocrity.
Then one day his mother bumped into a visiting Hatake delegate, and where her brow met his collarbone turned a sunshine yellow. Suddenly, mediocrity was not enough for her.
Bustuma was not a jealous creature, but something in him broke. That his wife had a connection he could never have, that she got what was stolen from him, that she had promised him devotion to the Senju and now wanted to run to the Hatake-
It only took a month for his anger to build enough to the point where Bustuma then ensured that his wife’s mark would never again be sunshine yellow.
Now, in a way, the two of them were matched.
Two gray marks.
When Tobirama came along, it only made things worse. He looked nothing like his father, but rather like a dead man. However, Tobirama was his father’s child, Butsuma’s child. His hair was stark white, not Hatake gray, his eyes not black but ruby red - and besides, he was conceived long after his mother met her soulmate.
That did not stop Bustuma’s hand cracking across his face. That did not stop the haunted look in his mother’s eye.
If that was what soulmates made people do, Tobirama hoped he would remain markless his entire life.
As he grew up, he learned that his parents were a rare exception. Soulmates, it seemed, were truly destined for one another, pulled by some gravitational force together to connect in a supernova of a collision.
The splashes of colorful markings were not just an empty promise of what should have been, but rather what was. Grey was a tragedy but color was life and beauty and love.
Neither Kawarama nor Itama had met their soulmates before they died, and Tobirama bitterly believed it was for the best. He knew what gray did to people.
So when Hashirama first met Mito, and their skin dyed emerald at first touch, Tobirama had been terrified. Terrified like he had not been since his last brother’s chakra had flared in pain, just before it snuffed out. Tobirama was terrified for his last brother, and what on earth a soulmate could do to him.
Luckily, their love was one that assuaged worry. Mito was what Hashirama could never be: steady, practical, sharp. Hashirama, in turn, brought joy and adventure and love. They completed each other. They loved each other.
One day, before a battle with the Uchiha, Tobirama had seen Mito silently slip her hand into Hashirama’s. She said nothing, but their hands twisted into each other like it was a tether keeping them tied to the earth. Such a simple, gentle assurance.
Tobirama had never wanted a soulmate, but he did then.
Who wished him off when he left for battle? Who sat with him on the long nights? Who listened to the things he never dared to say?
He looked in the mirror that night and saw in his reflection a man killed out of jealousy. He saw an appearance that had called people to cry foul play, to name him a demon, and to scorn his snow-pale skin and rabbit eyes.
How could he be someone’s other half when he was not even whole himself?
He could not smile like Hashirama did. He could not be as dazzling as Touka. He could never be as beautiful as Mito.
What did he have, really?
Even Hashirama looked at him sometimes like he was somehow missing something vital. And many times it felt like he was. Tobirama was a tactician. Hashirama had no idea how to run a war, and he held no desire to. But both he and Tobirama understood that their negligence in tending to their garden of blood would only let it grow out of control, and the Senju would be swallowed up and consumed by the strangling vines.
So Hashirama looked at Tobirama, who had always devoted himself wholeheartedly to duty, and handed him to the keys of the armory.
Each drop of Uchiha and Senju blood that was spilt from then on almost always had Tobirama’s signature on it.
Hashirama loved his younger brother, he did, but even he was disturbed by the ruthless efficiency at which Tobirama could conduct a war. It did not take too much to mistake Tobirama’s sense of duty for hatred.
The Uchiha had killed his younger brothers after all, and Tobirama was never as good at forgiving as Hashirama was.
Easier still it was to confuse practicality for pessimism.
Tobirama killed when he was told to, and when he was called demon, he did not flinch. He had been called it many times before. After enough times, he began to repeat it.
He looked into the mirror and saw the man he supposedly looked like, and he saw the warmonger they all saw, and he saw the monster they all called him.
“Demon,” he whispered to himself.
For what else could he be?
Why else was he born like a bloodless spirit, looking like a man who had died for something as stupid as love, who could not live up to the promises that the universe made his mother.
For the first time, Tobirama wished he’d never have a soulmate, not for fear of the gray, but for the absolute certainty that he would disappoint.
Tobirama had the keys to the armory, and he was the one who drew the battle lines.
Who would ever love someone who’s stock and trade was only blood?
Who, indeed.
Apparently, Uchiha fucking Madara, according to the universe.
Tobirama tugged on a pair of black gloves, covering up the red on his hands once more.
‘Just kill me now’ he thought dispondantly.
The reason he had been out in the forest that night had been a stupid one. Sure, all clans kept up patrol in the winter, but they only kept squads running near to their compound. Nobody would be coming in the winter - the enemy was the cold more than anything, and so the winter became the only point of truce in the war.
So, realistically, there was no reason for Tobirama to be so far out from the compound during a snowstorm, let alone the blizzard that had set in.
But the thing was, as simple and stupid was… Tobirama just liked snow.
His clan, more inclined to the warm weather of summer and spring, tended to disagree, but Tobirama had never been much of a typical Senju. Few Senju could navigate a blizzard, and fewer still wanted to. But Tobirama found odd peace in a storm. Something about how the snow and wind swallowed him until nobody could find him.
The patterns he could see in the seeming chaos of it all fascinated him, and he liked to watch the flurries of snow dance elegantly in the bitter cold.
Tobirama had built himself up to be a hard man, in part to cover Hashirama’s blind spots, as his brother was all too soft sometimes. He allowed himself these small moments of gentleness, however. Little things to reaffirm he remained human behind the carefully fashioned armor he had made for himself: teaching the clan children, making jutsu, joking with Touka, and watching the snow dance.
He didn’t afford himself much, but he let himself have that.
The blizzard that swept fire country was an in-a-decade sort of thing. Wild and ferocious to the point even Tobirama had to be walking the snow carefully. He delighted in it. He could barely see between the flurries! He felt he could even get lost! What a wonderfully powerful storm. He actually had to strain his chakra to navigate the sleeting white, to feel beneath the layers of dampening snow and feel the sparks of life.
It was so blessedly silent within the howling storm, a reprieve that did not come easy for a sensor like Tobirama.
So when an obtrusive hot chakra burned into his sensing, he was justifiably put out. But his anger faded quickly as he identified the signature.
Iron-soot-smoke
Uchiha Madara.
Tobirama snapped his head over to the direction of the chakra, mouth hanging slightly open.
What on earth was the man doing out in this sort of storm?
He stretched his senses through the snow, and quickly picked up the slimy taste of ten other signatures: Hagoromo fighters, closing in on Madara. Their chakra seethed with violence and sanguine greed, reminding Tobirama of a fox creeping into a hen house. Tobirama could have laughed at the implication that Madara was the hen.
He almost left Madara to deal with them, but then Madara’s chakra flickered and burned with pain, and the Hagoromo struck, like a hammer meeting heated iron, sending a shower of fear-desperation-anger from Madera in all directions.
The man was losing? Tobirama’s brow pinched as he focused. Hagoromo signatures were dying, but Madara’s was growing increasingly panicked and unstable. Madara would not survive this fight.
And if Tobirama were any other Senju, he would have let him.
He was not Hashirama. He wasn’t some sort of all forgiving, all loving altruist. He had enemies, and he killed those enemies. Tobirama had fashioned himself to be a hard man, a pragmatic man; realistically, he knew he should let Madara die.
But Tobirama was a smart man, and he used it to get what he wanted. While most people thought that was war, it was not.
They must have forgotten, with time and with blood, that Tobirama had once opposed war. They must have forgotten that Tobirama fought and killed only that others may live. They forgot, and left Tobirama to his war. But even so, alone in the dark, Tobirama’s mind continued to tick away, to search wildly through shadows for a light, for a guiding star, an opportunity.
Something to take peace from dreams and lift it to possibility.
Madara had long been that light.
Madara was the only Uchiha who had ever once given serious thought to peace, even if it was when he was just a boy. People thought that after he and Hashirama severed their friendship, that he had grown out of childish ideas like peace. But people thought a lot of things, and Tobirama knew from personal experience that most of it was false. Most people could not sense chakra in the way Tobirama could, and so they could not feel as he did how Madara’s chakra dripped with revulsion and horror through every battle. Not only at Uchiha deaths, but at Senju too.
Madara was the key to peace, and Tobirama had spent years trying to figure out a plan to get him to accept Hashirama’s extended hand.
He still didn’t know how, but he knew that he needed Madara still.
Worse still, if Madara was dead, Izuna would take over the mantle of the Uchiha, and then there would be no hope for Hashirama’s peace, and it would almost assuredly spell the Uchiha clan’s eventual eradication. Peace in a way, sure, but at the cost of hundreds of lives, Uchiha and Senju alike.
If Tobirama wanted even the chance at a bloodless peace, he needed Madara alive.
Tobirama had reasoned it all out that night, in the snow. Then, he gathered chakra in his legs, and jumped.
Tobirama was not known as the fastest shinobi alive without reason, and that night he put even the swiftness of the blizzard gale to shame, racing so quickly that the air around him howled.
He approached the clearing and unsheathed his sword so that when his next stride carried him past his adversaries, it was with an arc of blood lancing off him.
The first Hagoromo body hit the ground, and the remaining two turned to look at him with fear. Tobirama’s hand curled into a single sign, and the white snow turned red. All the Hagoromo lay dead now.
At last, he turned to Madara. What a pathetic state he was in. An Uchiha without his eyes was as good as crippled entirely.
“Kill me.” Madara had said.
“No.” Tobirama had replied.
Instead of driving his sword through Madara’s still beating heart, Tobirama had sheathed it instead, and kneeled before the clan head. His fingers graced either side of his cheeks, smearing blood with them. He focused his chakra into the sockets, and assessed the damage. He needed to see what he was working with.
Madara had been incredibly lucky that Tobirama had found him, to say the least. The Hagoromo bloodline thieves had not been careful when extracting his eyes, and had left messily torn nerve endings behind.
Tobirama’s mouth had twisted down, as he looked closer. There were patches of dead cells on the optic nerve, and they extended past the tear and back into Madara’s visual cortex. Damage like this would have been heavily affecting the clan head’s sight. He would have been going blind.
Well, if that wasn’t a shock.
He decided then to shelve it for now. He had work to do.
Carefully, he retrieved a sealing scroll from the Hagoromo closest to Madara. It had been sealed with a key sequence, but it did not take much trying from Tobirama to break it. With a twist of chakra, Tobirama was holding Madara’s eyes.
Tobirama retrieved a pair of tweezers from his small medical bag. He wasn’t working in the best of conditions, but it would have to work for now.
It was kind of gross, even Tobirama would admit that, as he essentially had to shove Madara’s eyes back into his own skull. With one hand, he held open the bloodied, limp eyelid, and with the other he gently popped the eye back into its socket. Then, maintaining his diagnostic jutsu he viewed within the skull and used the tweezers to guide the nerve ending into place, so it was touching with the severed end.
And then for the hard part.
Tobirama rummaged through his bag, and pulled out a pair of seals. He placed them on the back of his hands, and watched as the paper flashed and disappeared and left him with ink markings over his bloodied skin.
The kind of work Tobirama had been about to do, working on the nerves and brain, was not the kind of thing that even he could accomplish unassisted. Very few had the fine chakra control to perform Iryo jutsu, but even Tobirama with his precision was all too blunt. The seals focused and reduced his chakra. The difference was comparable to fighting with Madara’s gunbai, versus the finest of senbon. Tobirama had to thread a needle from miles out, this was him giving himself a scope.
Then ready, Tobirama had sighed one last time, checked on his chakra reserves to confirm he had enough for the task he was about to undertake, and finally began work on the first eye.
Hours later, Tobirama had finished up, wrapping Madara’s eyes in gauze and patting himself on the back. Madara would make a full recovery. He dragged the man to his compound, thanking the blizzard for covering their signatures, and finally returned to the Senju compound.
He had thought that would be the end of it.
Finally alone within his quarters, he gathered water with a flick of his hand into a basin. He towled the blood off his face and neck from where it had splattered, then massaged the dried blood off his hands. Tobirama had to scrape at the dried residue to get it off, and the water turned red.
But when he lifted his hands from the water, nothing could have prepared him for what awaited him.
His fingers stayed red as the water below, stained permanently.
A soul mark.
The water in the basin froze as Tobirama’s blood ran cold.
And now, a week later, Tobirama stared down at his black gloves. Hashirama had asked about them, but Tobirama was able to avoid suspicion by citing the cold. He knew that the answer wasn’t likely to last into the summer, but he doubted Hashirama would even remember he was wearing them by then. Mito might, but she had always left him to his own affairs.
The problem had proven to be Touka.
She knew him as very few did, and she simply scoffed at his excuse. Tobirama hardly ever did things ‘just because’ and she knew it. A couple days of needling and she persuaded him to finally explain.
Tobirama cast one last long look at his gloves. Touka was watching him intensely. He grabbed the fabric gently between his fingers, and tugged the fabric off. As the black gloves peeled away from his fingertips, it revealed calloused white skin that turned red.
Touka softly gasped. Tobirama set his gloves down, and did not look her in the eye.
“You found your soulmate,” she whispered.
Tobirama solemnly nodded.
“And do you know who…?” she trailed off, unsure of herself. It was sad, but not unheard of for one to touch their soulmate without noticing until it was too late. The universe could tell you who was supposedly your other half, but would do you nothing to ensure you met, or stayed together.
Soulmates and tragedy overlapped more than anyone liked to admit, and Tobirama knew this better than anyone.
“Yes,” he said.
“And do they…”
“No.” he said flatly.
“Tobirama,” she tried, laying her hand across his, gently brushing his stained fingertips, “I- I don’t know what to say. I know you weren’t hoping for this.”
“It’s fine,” he said, “Nothing will come of it, anyway.”
Her eyes widened, “surely you don’t mean that? You’d actually leave them by themselves? Tobirama, I know you’re scared but you must at least try-”
“He’s Uchiha.”
He watched as his cousin’s face froze. The heartbreak Tobirama had not allowed himself to feel seeped into her features.
“Oh Tobi,” she whispered, and her hand tightened in his own.
They sat in the wake of it, in a silence that seemed to stretch beyond the room they inhabited: one that reached far out into the winter snow and across buried battlefields that themselves rested on buried bodies from a time no one could remember any longer. Their silence was the silence of the war, one seeming never ending.
“Hashirama’s peace, we must bring Hashirama’s peace.” Touka suddenly said, breaking the silence with a hard conviction in her voice.
Tobirama snapped his head up to her. Touka had never been in support of Hashirama’s attempted treaties, firmly standing on the side of survival rather than dreams. Touka liked fighting, and she was bitter as any other Senju was. Nobody truly liked war, but Touka bore it with a grim determination that even Tobirama could not match.
Touka looked at him, and her eyes softened, “Tobirama, you deserve the chance to love him.”
“Peace isn’t attainable,” he tried to say, but Touka merely rolled her eyes.
“If you thought that, you would have killed Uchiha Madara when you had the chance.”
Even Tobirama could not hide the shock that crossed him.
“How did you..?”
Touka laughed, a small soft thing, “what other Uchiha would you touch and not kill? Your soulmate certainly isn’t a child. Beyond that, I can think of no other that you would spare other than Madara.”
She sighed, “You’re my baby cousin, Tobi. You may think you’ve hardened your heart, but I know how much you detest this war you run. I see how you wish to fight the bit in your mouth, but steel yourself not to. I’ve seen you research Madara, and I’ve seen the way you look at him - you think he could tip the scales.”
“I could have ended the war if I killed him,” he whispered.
“You would have eradicated the Uchiha, had you.”
Tobirama took his hand away from hers, “would you have liked that?”
Touka looked at him with saddened eyes, “I would have not. I want the war over, but have never desired to watch you, or any Senju suffer for it. Tobirama, I have watched you grow up, and I have seen you play and hide all the cards you have, and I have been your second in command through all of it. I know just as well as you do how much blood would be spilt had Madara died.”
“We would win,” he said.
“At a cost,” she shot back, “and Hashirama would have hated you for it. You know that.”
Pain lanced through his heart, and he bared his teeth into a snarl, “don’t say that.”
Touka tried to touch his shoulder, but he pushed her hand away.
“Hashirama loves me,” he snapped at her.
“He does,” Touka agreed, “but he is a horse with blinders on, and his focus is not on the Senju, or me, or even you Tobirama. It is on peace.”
Sometimes, Tobirama thought, the truth could be a very hurtful thing.
Touka tried to touch his shoulder again, and this time he let her.
Her voice, when she did speak again, had lost its cutting bluntness, and was soft and smooth, “what I am trying to say with this, is that I would not have you suffer the pain of a Senju victory, not when there is another path. Peace - peace with the Uchiha - may not be the only end of this god forsaken war, but I think… well, I think it may be the only ending where any of us may be happy.”
“My soulmate will never love me,” Tobirama whispered.
“You can’t know that.”
“Touka,” and now it was his turn for cold truth, “I am the monster under their beds. Hells below, I am the monster under Senju beds as well. I know that. I made myself that. I did not build myself to be lovable, to be cherished. I built myself strong.”
He smiled ruefully, “Peace will come. I know it will, but please, do not expect from me what I cannot give you. I have killed countless Uchiha. I would not forgive myself, I do not expect anyone else to. I deserve that much.”
“You have always been a harsh judge.”
“Perhaps.”
“You truly believe it is impossible.”
Tobirama sighed once, derisively, “I am a warmonger Touka-”
Her face twisted angrily, “You are a soldier-”
“I am a monster!” he shouted, voice rising as it rarely did. Silence echoed loudly in the space following it, and it settled like dust across the still room. Touka looked at him with that same anger, that same injustice, but now she held her tongue. Her anger kept on a tight leash, all together reminded that Tobirama would always have the last word. Touka was the only one who would ever dare challenge him, bar Hashirama, but even she would bow when told. It was not her signature on the war deaths.
Tobirama ran a hand through the hair that had fallen loose over his face, readjusting the savage - the all too Hatake-savage that had cursed his mother - until he was once again civil, and once again his father’s son.
“I am a monster,” he repeated quietly, “There is a reason my hands are stained red, even in my soulmark.”
He looked down at his fingers, permanently a rich crimson. There would be no rid of it, short of cutting off his fingers themselves.
“This,” he laughed quietly, “I cannot even pretend to wash off. Fate can have a twisted sense of humor, sometimes.”
He looked at her, where she still sat in a terse silence. He smiled at her, genuinely appreciative in that moment of her anger. It felt good, he would silently admit to himself, to have someone angry for him. It made it easier to not feel anger of his own, and it reminded him that somewhere beneath this stone he had carved himself out of, there was still a person. Something that a good person like Touka thought was worth fighting for.
But the sentiment was all he needed. He didn’t need anything more. He didn’t need a soulmate, he didn’t need that kind of love. Tobirama was the practiced kind of starved, so he knew very well how little he could live on. This, just this, was more than enough.
Asking for anything more was not worth the problems it incurred.
“Peace will come,” he said, promised, “My happiness does not need to be on the treaty.”
Then he tugged on his gloves, covering up the marks, and stood. When he left the room, Touka was still sitting on the ground, watching him with angry, sad eyes, but daring not to say a word.
Chapter 2
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Aniki, you really need to stop with the pining thing.”
From where Madara was sat at the window - forearms resting on the sill and head propped on them - staring wistfully outside, he replied, “I am not pining.”
Izuna cocked his hip, “Uh-huh?”
Madara sighed softly, eyes still fixed firmly on the snowed-in world outside. A dreamy smile formed on his lips.
“Yeah,” he said airly.
Izuna scoffed, “Aniki?”
“Mm?”
“Could you tear your eyes away from that window for a second-?”
Madara interrupted him, “When do you think the winter will be over?”
Izuna scowled, “and why do you care?”
“Clans will reenter communications once the snow melts,” he turned to Izuna, “which means I can begin my search for him.”
Izuna rolled his eyes, “of course.”
“He must be a shinobi, and a skilled one, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find him from among the crowd. Izuna, do you think he’ll appreciate a traditional courting more, or something a little faster? I mean, we are soulmates.”
“See, this is what I’m talking about, all you can ever think about is your soulmate.”
Madara blinked, “that’s not true.”
Izuna smiled sharply, “How long have you been at the window?”
Madara blinked again. It occurred to him that he couldn’t remember. A long time.
“The snow is pretty,” he tried to defend.
“You used to spend all winter cursing it out.”
Well, Madara supposed that was true. The snow was awful to deal with, and no Uchiha really appreciated the cold. They liked the warm, summer months. They liked fire and heat, not dreary cold. Madara hadn’t either.
But now when the cold winter air drafted in through his window, he was reminded of a deep voice and a freezing chakra. He was reminded of the red marks around his eyes.
Now, suddenly the snow was not a nuisance anymore. It was beautiful, and Madara cannot remember why he had ever loathed the first fall of it. Sure, winter was hard on his clan, that had not changed. But snow was fierce, and beautiful, and Madara could not begrudge it for it’s nature. It was snow, it did not fall to spite them.
Now he could get lost in the dazzling slopes of it for hours on end.
And it appeared he had.
Madara scowled, “I hate you.”
Izuna grinned, “Thank you, I try!”
“No, like I really really do. You’re the worst.”
“At least I don’t spend all day mooning about some man at a window,” Izuna stuck his tongue out.
Without so much as a word, Madara rose and walked towards Izuna. The bastard, still laughing at him, didn’t notice the danger until Madara picked him up and threw him over his shoulder.
“Aniki!” he shouted, but Madara was already walking with determined strides.
“Aniki, wait! Wait, I said! I didn’t mean it!”
They had to break the ice on the pond before Madara threw Izuna into it, but seeing his brother resurface from the shattered ice, chattering his teeth and cursing at Madara made it all the more worth it.
“Aniki!” Izuna whined.
Madara laughed.
—
Ink gathered in the brush.
Seals lay scattered around the room, in a semblance of something that had once been organized, but was now devoured by a mania.
Tobirama’s lab was usually pristine, but the recent weeks had lended to turning up every corner of it. He had no time for organized, not with what he was planning. Tobirama was, above most else, a scientist; an inventor. He created things, for a variety of purposes. Practical things, sometimes, tools, medicine, sealing scrolls. Weapons too, new jutsu, more powerful explosive tags, things that haunted the Uchiha lines. The kind of things that every conflict just almost-barely missed taking Izuna’s life.
Izuna could adapt faster than any Uchiha, his eyes working overtime to memorize every shift of Tobirama’s muscles as he moved. So in turn, Tobirama could change faster than any Senju. He made sure to reinvent himself each battle, new jutsu, new tricks, new patterns, new skill. He made sure that the man Izuna faced each battle was different, and therefore Tobirama stayed alive, and Izuna stayed teetering on the edge of death.
And now Tobirama reinvented himself again.
Two seals laid before him, and they were perhaps the deadliest thing Tobirama had ever succeeded in creating.
His most dangerous weapons, and he would use them for peace.
Tobirama almost had to laugh.
He picked up his brush, wiping off the excess ink, and painted the last mark on the seal that even the Uzumaki had told him would be impossible.
On the table, the Hiraishin thrummed with power.
—
Tobirama sat leaned up against the grass where his father was buried. Next to him, covered by untended overgrowth, there was a stone bearing the name of Senju Butsuma. It was all together an unfitting grave for a Clan Head, but given the fact that both he and Hashirama had wanted to burn his body - a burial that bordered on sacrilege for the Senju - Butsuma’s lackluster burial seemed all too glamorous for him.
Tobirama felt the spring breeze sweep his hair. The ground beneath him was damp, and the grass had just barely begun to sprout. The final snow had passed, and so winter was over. War season would soon begin. Spring brought both life and death.
Fitting, that Tobirama should be where he was now.
“I’ll never understand you, you know,” he said to the empty air. Somewhere beneath the ground, Bustuma’s bones could not hear him. Tobirama pretended they could anyway.
“You never loved anyone, or at least I can’t remember that you did,” he continued, “you did not love mother, even when you did not despise her, you did not love me either, and you never even loved Hashirama. He was everything she could have given you: a male heir, a strong son, a shinobi with the Mokuton. You were given everything, and you still didn’t love him.”
“And yet, you threw everything away for love ,” Tobirama said the word with an airy amazement, turning his hands over in a half shrug.
“Not even your own love…” he trailed off into silence. He could hear birdsong in the forest echoing quietly, and the rustle of leaves in the trees. Life had come back to the earth. Tobirama could have smiled at the sunshine warming his cheeks. He fell back onto the grass, feeling it tickle his neck. Above him, the sky stretched on and on, infinitely blue. It almost felt peaceful.
“I am about to do something you would like very much,” he said to his dead father, “and something you would have hated very much. But I think, in the end, you’ll forgive me. I will not be happy, and that is all you’ve ever wanted for me and mother.”
The bones below the earth did not answer him.
Tobirama could only hope he would not find himself in the pure lands, or wherever it was his father ended up, soon enough to hear his answer.
—
He found Hashirama in the armory.
The older man was looking up at the blades that hung on the wall. There were many of them, sheathed and racked in rows that rose up to the ceiling, and disappeared far back into the dark of the armory. But more than the number of blades, was the number of empty racks. Of weapons not left to rust, only polished on schedule by the armory manager, but rather sharpened and used and brought to battle.
The forges, Tobirama would predict, would be busy in the coming days. Fixing shattered and chipped edges, straightening armor, and melting down irreparable metal, the furnaces burning off the Senju and Uchiha blood that dyed it.
“Anija,” Tobirama called softly, “we must go soon.”
Hashirama hummed, eyes still gently tracing the swords.
“Did Mito send you off yet?” he asked. Mito would surely be upset had her husband left without a goodbye. Hashirama would come back, that was a guaranteed fact that could only apply to one hailed as the God of Shinobi, but even then. Fear is not a friend of the rational, and hearts will fear danger that doesn’t exist, simply to remind itself that it can love. Goodbye’s were important before a battle, even if you got a ‘hello again’ after.
Greetings were never guaranteed, after all.
“Yes,” Hashirama finally said. His mouth had curved into a frown. Finally, he turned away from the wall, and looked to Tobirama.
“Good luck out there Tobi,” Hashirama said softly, and Tobirama could see the fear in his eyes.
Tobirama smiled fondly, “Good luck, Anija.”
“Don’t let Izuna get the best of you.”
“Don’t let Madara blow your eardrums out with his screaming.”
Hashirama laughed throatily, but even his humor could not tame his fear, or his disgust. Hashirama hated war. He hated the senseless killing. He had hated it since he was born, and then even more after the deaths of Kawarama and Itama.
Hashirama, Tobirama knew, was secretly very grateful that Madara and Izuna were strong, that way neither he nor Tobirama would participate in senseless, endless slaughter.
It was, perhaps, another reason he let Madara go.
“Hashi, I need you to trust me today.” Tobirama said.
“I always trust you.”
Tobirama shook his head, “You won’t today.”
Hashirama’s face twisted in worry, “You’re not making any sense. What are you going to do?”
“I can’t tell you, you’ll try and stop me."
“That is not particularly comforting, Tobi.”
“I know, Anija,” Tobirama smiled softly, “and if this doesn’t go well, I’m sorry. But when the moment comes, and you’ll know when it comes, I need you to trust me. I need you to use me.”
Hashirama looked confused, and concerned
“I don’t suppose there is any chance you could just tell me the plan ahead of time?” he joked.
“No.”
Hashirama sighed, let his eyes slide closed, and laid a hand on Tobirama’s shoulder.
“Okay, you little mad-man,” he said fondly, trying to hide his fear. He smiled at Tobirama, “I’ll trust you. But do me a favor, yeah? When you’re done with whatever plan you’ve concocted this time, please return my little brother to me.”
Suddenly, Tobirama felt himself be pulled forward, and wrapped in strong, comforting arms.
Hashirama had not hugged him in a long time. It was to be expected, they were grown men now, leading an entire clan together, leading a war together. They did not have the time for the brotherly tenderness of their youth.
And more, Hashirama hated war. And Tobirama represented that very war. He knew, deep down, that Tobirama was only doing what he had to - he tried to remind himself of that everyday. But even then, he could not help but look at his brother, and see the cruel eyes of their father - Tobirama was used to it. He was often seen as the phantom shadows left behind from lives he had not lived: a dead Hatake, a helpless mother, and a man who only spoke in violence.
But Hashirama still loved Tobirama, even clouded as that love sometimes grew.
“Anija?” Tobirama asked, hands hovering uselessly in the air.
“Promise me,” Hashirama insisted. His arms tightened around Tobirama, almost desperately.
Tobirama, at last, relented. He closed his eyes and leaned in to the touch, his own arms wrapping around his brother and completing the embrace. For a single second in their war, it was peaceful, and quiet, and warm.
“Okay,” he whispered, “I promise.”
—
The sounds of explosions and screams rattled in Tobirama’s ear. Few things could compare to a shinobi battle. Shinobi moved faster than the whistling point of a samurai’s blade, and their mere hand strikes carried the power of a cannon shot. An all out fight between shinobi made the very earth tremble.
A shinobi battle between the Uchiha and Senju?
It was hell on earth.
The ash in the air struck bitterly on Tobirama’s tongue, his eyes stung from the smoke in the air. He felt his teeth clatter harshly against one another as the earth shook again.
Metal screeched loudly in his ear as he deflected another strike of Izuna’s sword. The Uchiha heir narrowed his sharingan red eyes and danced back away from Tobirama - just in time too, as Tobirama’s sword came cutting down where he had just been.
Tobirama’s attacks followed him quickly, however, a fresh array of kunai chasing his form. They embedded in the ground, some lined with streaks of blood, but none managed to strike true on Izuna.
“Senju bastard!” he heard Izuna curse.
Izuna spat a swath of blistering fire at him, and with a couple of hand signs Tobirama summoned a wall of water to block it. With a screaming hiss, the battlefield grew cloudy with mist. The white clouds blocked Izuna’s view, Tobirama had learned over the years. But mist could do nothing to stop Tobirama’s sensing abilities.
Water senbon streaked through the mist, and Tobirama felt with satisfaction as they struck true. A cry of pain echoed through the settling mist. A swift wind blew, clearing away whatever was left of it, and revealing Tobirama and a bleeding Izuna.
Izuna, never one to be slowed by something as mere as pain, was immediately on him again. His blade edge caught against Tobirama’s own, and sparks scattered across charred grass.
They moved in a fast blur, swords screaming off one another, cutting where they may in shallow strokes, but never landing solidly in the flesh of the opponent.
Their swords caught, only for a second, but it was all Tobirama needed. His free hand flashed through signs that only the Sharingan could ever hope to catch. Water gathered in his mouth, and he spat a raging dragon of water at Izuna.
He heard the Uchiha curse, rapidly fleeing. The dragon wouldn’t hold him long. Tobirama took the time to take inventory of the field. His sensing spread out and caught on the various marked kunai about the ground. Quickly, he adjusted the dragon to chase Izuna back…back…back-
There!
Just as Izuna finally managed to slash through the dragon, he stepped back one final time. A marked kunai just behind his heel.
Izuna, for his part saw - in the molasses slow world the Sharingan provided - the water dragon shower to the ground, destroyed. And beyond the fall of thousands of glittering raindrops, he saw Tobirama grimace. In less than all the infinite divisions a second could be split into, Tobirama disappeared.
And then there were hands shooting out from behind him, the rustle of paper, and suddenly Izuna’s connection to his chakra, too, disappeared.
The world returned to full speed as his sharingan shut down, and all Izuna could hear was the rushing of blood in his ear, and the sharp edge of a sword at his throat.
“Don’t move,” Izuna heard in his ear. His eyes snapped to Tobirama, heart beating rabbit fast, but the Senju bastard wasn’t even looking at him. Rather, his gaze fixed far out onto the battlefield.
Izuna followed it, and saw Madara.
Fear struck him; cold as any of the ice that Tobirama had ever cut him with.
Tobirama, now, let out an imperceptible sigh, a breath he had been holding in tense suspense. He was worried that he wouldn’t have made it time, even with the Hiraishin, to slap a chakra suppressant seal on Izuna. He had developed the new seal in conjunction with the Hiraishin. The Hiraishin would have allowed him to kill Izuna by itself, faster than the sharingan as it was, but it wasn’t enough to beat him and keep him alive.
The chakra blocking seal allowed him that dearly needed grace. He had developed it from his medical seal that he used to limit the flow of his chakra. The seal, during it’s development, had posed a very serious threat, which was that those who didn’t know how to elicit a steady, thread-thin stream of chakra into it would find themselves cut off from all chakra in its entirety. You’d have to override the seal with enough chakra to burn it out.
It took him considerable effort, but he finally managed to strengthen the resistance of the seal itself, and cut the opportunity for any flow whatsoever, like the original seal had been built for.
And now, with the birth of his two new creations, he had Izuna retrained and cut off from his chakra systems. Now, Izuna was helpless as a civilian child, and the adults could get down to talking.
Tobirama watched, in an almost detached sort of focus, as Madara paused his fighting with Hashirama for just long enough to glance at Izuna, as he did every fight. He would never admit it, but he felt a pit form in his stomach as he saw the red marks across Madara’s face. Like blood that Tobirama had spattered - tainted - him with. Tobirama quickly dispelled the feeling, and reminded himself sternly of what he had told Touka all those nights ago. His happiness didn’t need to be on the treaty.
Finally, Madara was looking at them, at Izuna. He saw, then, Madara’s eyes lace through with fear, and his face crumpled in something Tobirama could not name.
He didn’t have enough time to ponder it either, as whatever the emotion was was quickly burnt away under an anger that darkened Madara’s features.
“Izuna!” he screamed.
Hashirama turned then, and just in time, as Madara came flying at Tobirama with a fist that would surely leave his brain matter splattered across the scorched earth.
Tobirama did not even blink as a fist stopped just short of his face, and a maelstrom whistled past him, his hair blown with the wind the blow carried with it.
A bead of blood rolled down Izuna’s neck, and Madara’s eyes were fixed on it. Tobirama, as Madara had drawn close, had shifted his blade almost imperceptibly inward; it was this that stopped Madara. The message Tobirama had sent was clear:
You may be fast, but I am faster.
Tobirama felt a grim satisfaction, and again moved the blade just a little more in, beading with it another drop of blood.
“Try it, and he dies.”
Madara’s gaze snapped up to him, and his face flashed with anger. Tobirama knew he had won.
Hashirama was suddenly there, panicked in a way Tobirama had very rarely seen him.
“Tobirama what-?”
“Hashirama-” he tried.
Madara flared, “if you so much as think of hurting him-!”
Tobirama brought the sword closer. The words died in Madara’s throat, and Tobirama watched terror eclipse anger in that moment.
“Izuna!”
“Tobirama!”
Tobirama registered the cries of the two men with disinterested attention.
“Hashirama.” he reminded firmly, but he saw it fail to register. Hashirama’s eyes flicked between the three of them rapidly, sweat building on his brow.
“Aniki, don’t worry about me, just kill him!” Izuna shouted, but his words fell on three pairs of deaf ears.
“Release him now, Senju!”
“Tobirama what do you think you’re doing-”
Now it was turn for Tobirama to shout, “Hashirama!”
Finally, Hashirama’s eyes snapped up to meet his own, and he watched as the panic in his brother’s eyes gravely turned to understanding.
“Tobirama no…” Hashirama pleaded.
“Propose your peace, Anija,” Tobirama commanded.
“Tobirama this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen!”
“Peace or death,” he reminded him, and now he looked at Madara. He used his sword arm to push Izuna’s head back, bearing his neck. Blood ran in rivulettes down it.
Hashirama’s eyes looked at him pleading once more before screwing themselves shut. Hashirama’s expression set into grim-faced determination and he finally turned to Madara.
“Madara, please, I beg you, accept peace with the Senju.”
Madara spat vitriol at him, “He has a blade to Izuna’s neck!”
“And he’ll slit it if he has to!” Hashirama cried, “You know he will! Peace or Izuna’s death, Madara chose!”
“Aniki!” Izuna lurched forward, but Tobirama pulled him back easily.
“Quickly!” Hashirama shouted.
“You’re insane Hashirama!”
“Please Madara, just accept the peace. I am begging you. Accept the peace, and Izuna lives!”
“Hashirama I will kill you, I swear, you and that fucking demon-”
“Choose.”
Tobirama’s voice echoed coldly across the clearing.
Madara finally looked back at the demon, and what he saw sent a shiver down his spine, along with another molten flash of fury.
The white demon’s gaze stayed trained on him, and those crimson eyes betrayed nothing in them from where they cut, peeking out just behind Izuna's shoulder. There was nothing of fear, nothing of admiration.
Tobirama looked at him calculating, and steeled with a hard resolve.
“Choose,” he repeated, “Peace, or Izuna’s life.”
“Kill him Madara!” Izuna pleaded, “Let me die, just kill him!”
“Izuna-”
“-Choose, Madara-”
“-Please Madara, please-”
“-let me die-”
“ -Madara!”
“ -Madara!”
“ -Madara.”
Red eyes watched him from over Izuna’s shoulder, and a voice in its singularity drowned out all the noise around it.
“Choose Madara.”
Tobirama looked at him, and Madara could think of nothing else. The world rang silent in his ears, all except for that horrible voice, and all he could see faded into oblivion except for those cruel, lifeless eyes.
“Peace!” he chose.
The word tore itself from his throat, so desperate and raw that he wasn’t even sure he was the one screaming it until pain stuck through his vocal cords.
The world came back to him in a flash, and he saw with Sharingan clarity as Izuna’s face fell, as Hashirama let out a breath, and as, almost imperceptibly, Tobirama smiled. The battlefield fell silent, and all Senju and Uchiha were slowly lowering their weapons, looking with cautious confusion to their leaders.
“Peace,” he said again, more steadily, “peace, Senju. I’ll give you your peace -I vow it before Amaterisu herself!- just let him go,” his voice turned into a terrified plea, “Just please let Izuna go. Let him go.”
And then suddenly Izuna was in his arms, and the two brothers fell down to the ground in an ungainly heap. Madara grabbed onto Izuna like he would vanish any second, and held him close with shaking hands.
He looked up with a burning gaze at Tobirama, standing over them from where he had pushed Izuna. His face was still carefully blank, and a drop of blood fell from his sword.
“We will send a treaty for signature,” was all he said, and then he was walking away. He even dared to turn his back to Madara like they were-
Like they were at peace…
They were at peace...
Shaking, with Izuna in his arms, he did not think it felt like it.
Hashirama was saying something to him, some form of apology that Madara could not quite hear. Izuna was screaming something at him, something about just letting him die, but Madara could hear none of it. All he could manage to focus on was the retreating back of the Senju demon as he slowly stalked away from the battle.
—
“Tobirama what have you done!”
The empty halls of the armory echoed with Hashirama’s shout, amplifying it and sending it back to Tobirama again and again. Like thousands of accusations at once.
He closed his eyes, and forced composure onto himself.
“I got you your peace, Hashirama,” he whispered.
Hands grabbed at his arms, and Hashirama drew so close Tobirama could feel the air move with the strength of his voice. Nevertheless, he could not bring himself to look at his brother.
“You threatened Izuna's life! Madara will never forgive the Senju, he will never forgive me!”
“He will forgive you.” Tobirama denied.
Hashirama could not be consoled. “Even then, Tobirama, you could have killed Izuna!”
“It was peace either way,” the words slipped insidiously from his tongue, for they were true. It would have been surrender, or signature - peace either way. Had Izuna fallen, or had Madara agreed.
He wanted it bloodless, but Tobirama always had a backup plan.
He heard a sharp intake of breath, and now his eyes finally drew up to meet Hashirama’s. There were tears in his brother’s eyes, and his face was flushed with emotion. He looked at Tobirama like he didn’t know who he was.
“You can be heartless, Tobirama.”
Tobirama did not let the words hurt him. He didn’t.
“I know.”
“It is no wonder they call you a demon.”
Breathe in, breathe out. Words could not cut him, he had long attempted his armament against him.
“We have peace now.”
Hashirama was distraught, and he was angry. His face twisted darkly, “It wasn’t meant to be like this!”
Tobirama could not help the way his voice rose, “How else was it supposed to be, Hashirama? I gave you bloodless peace! I left Izuna alive when I could have killed him! I have your peace, your village, your dreams - all a breath away!”
Hashirama hissed, “You held Izuna hostage!”
“He was the only advantage we could push!”
“Madara is furious!”
He snapped, “So what? He is furious at me! Hashirama, just let me take the fall! That is what I am here for!”
That, it seemed, finally quieted Hashirama. Now a different expression crossed his face. Fury gave way to an almost sort of heartbreak, and he did not shout at Tobirama - he did not match his tone. Deep sadness filled his eyes, and he looked at Tobirama distraught.
There was a wall between them - as there always was - but now it seemed so thin. Neither dared cross it, or rather, neither knew how.
“Tobirama…”
Tobirama turned his face away, “do not look at me with pity, Anija.”
Hashirama’s hand came up to his cheek, and brought his gaze back to him. The tears brimming in his brother's dark eyes had fallen. Tobirama could not lean away from the touch. The wall between them remained, but at times like these, they could pretend it did not exist. Soon, they would go back to their roles, but for now, they looked at each other and saw behind the persona. They admitted to the ruse.
“Be a hero, Hashirama,” Tobirama whispered, voice gentle in a way that was barely audible, “Leave the dirty work to me, and go bask in the light.”
“Tobi, please.”
Tobirama forced a watery smile, “If you ever need me, I’ll be just a step behind in your shadow.”
Hashirama hiccoughed out a sob, and his other hand came up to Tobirama’s cheek too. Then, Tobirama was in his brother’s arms, and Hashirama was crying into his shoulder.
“My foolish little brother,” he said into Tobirama’s neck, “they will tear you to shreds.”
“I will not let them.”
“Yes, you will.” Hashirama hugged him tighter, “You always do.”
Tobirama brought his hands up to settle on Hashirama’s back, “Be happy, Hashirama. Peace is finally upon us. Only I will continue at war, and the rest shall be free. Do not cry for me, brother. I have a soldier’s soul, war will be with me always. It is my rite to carry.”
Hashirama’s tears - the tears Tobirama would not shed - wet his shoulder.
Tobirama smiled, looking forward to a future he could almost see - a future he would secure. It was bright there, and Hashirama was happy. Children laughed there. The Uchiha and the Senju were finally free. That was all that mattered.
Only one soldier was left behind. Statistically, it was a magnificent exodus.
“Be happy, Hashirama,” he repeated, smiling, “be happy.”
—
The coming days were spent waiting with a breath held.
Madara sat all the could by the window to his bedroom, looking over the budding leaves in the courtyard, and waiting with a pit in his stomach for a messenger hawk to arrive. But even time for that was few. More often than not, Madara found himself in contention with his own clan.
And with his own brother.
“You should have let him kill me,” Izuna kept saying. Like it didn’t leave Madara terrified at the mere thought there could be a possible world where he had done just that. Like Madara wouldn’t have been shattered by that.
“You should have let him kill Izuna,” The clan elders kept saying. Like he would take his eyes after death, like there wasn’t already a viable solution. Like how in any way letting Izuna die, and killing Senju Tobirama off in return wasn’t a loss to Madara. Like his revenge would break even with his grief.
Like that was how a heart worked.
The rest of the clan, too, beyond the ones who openly rallied against him, were suspicious of peace at best. Rightfully fearful, they did not think of this as the end of the war. Worst case, it was somehow a Senju plot to attack them with their backs turned, best case, it would be a peace with unfair, subservient terms for the Uchiha.
Now, more than ever, Madara longed for his soulmate. Izuna was furious with him, Hikaku was busy just trying to keep everything together, and Madara found himself alone with his vow. He had promised peace before Ameterisu: he could not back down now without being stripped of his name as Uchiha and having his existence erased from clan records.
As he stared at the red marks around his eyes, he wished so desperately that the man who left him was here. He didn’t need someone to look up to him right now, he didn’t need another to scorn him - he just wanted someone to sit steadily by his side, and let him know that he was there.
It had occurred to Madara that his soulmate hadn’t knowingly left him that night. The blood was thick on his face, he remembered the feeling of it slicking down his skin, so it would have made it hard to see the new appearance of marks beneath the already existing red. It was not impossible that his soulmate simply had not noticed at first.
But it had been months since then.
There was no way, bar their own blindness, that his soulmate would not have noticed the marks on his fingers. He must know.
It was possible that they didn’t know who he was, but that was unlikely. Madara was the Calamity of Fire Country. He was the leader of one of the most powerful clans. It was unlikely that his soulmate didn’t know him, and even if they didn’t, they knew he was Uchiha. He had held Madara’s eyes in his hands and fixed them back into his skull.
So why did he never come find Madara?
Why had there been no one at the gates, holding up red-stained fingers and calling for his name?
Madara was not dense - a love stricken fool, maybe, but not stupid. It was possible that his soulmate was from an enemy clan, aligned to the Senju. Maybe Senju himself.
He might even be afraid of Madara.
That hurt, he would admit.
Now, he waited for the treaty to arrive for another reason. For the hope that maybe, just maybe, Madara would be able to meet him. That maybe there was a point to this peace beyond what only seemed to be insidious lies and blatant threats.
Madara was a fool for dreams, but even he felt the bitter reality of that absence. There was no one at his side now. He was alone.
That only made him crave it more.
That someone might look at him and understand him. That someone might say to him, “You couldn’t have let Izuna die, you shouldn’t.” That someone would look at him without the weighty expectations levied upon him. That he might have someone in his corner.
“I feel your absence sharply, love,” he whispered to the quiet of his room. Foolishly, with the hope that maybe someone, somewhere, out in the vastness of the world had somehow heard his words, would turn around, and come back to him.
A tapping at the window snapped him out of his thoughts.
He raised his head to look over, and felt his heart stop in his chest. A hawk sat at the sill, preening itself cleanly. Between its sharp talons, it held a sealed scroll, and across its neck, inscribed on a silver tag, was the Senju crest.
With slightly shaking hands, Madara reached out to grab the scroll. The hawk watched him carefully, golden eyes tracing him with a predator precision. The scroll was heavier than he had expected, or maybe Madara was just imagining it, but the paper felt like lead in his hands.
Slowly, he unsealed it, and unrolled it. Sharingan activated, his eyes flashed across the paper, widening as he did so.
Twenty minutes later and he was sitting in the clan meeting room with every Uchiha elder. They too, now read over the scroll with the same disbelieving expression. Chatter was spoken slowly between them, but nothing substantial was said. They did not have the words to say it.
Eventually, the scroll had fully made its rounds, and made it back to Madara’s hand. He stared down at the Senju seal placed below the treaty, and at the blank space left for the Uchiha’s.
Silence reigned heavy over the room.
Suddenly, Nozomi spoke up.
“It is not unreasonable.”
Her declaration sent a shockwave through the room, and hushed whispers once again rose. Eventually, another elder, Uchiha Manabu scowled and hissed.
“It’s Senju!”
The dam truly seemed to break then, and the rest of the elders, emboldened by Manabue, began to shout their own discontent.
“It must be a ploy somehow!”
“Lord Madara, I implore you to reconsider!”
“The Senju scum mock us!”
“We should eliminate them while we have the chance!”
“Yes, before they do to us!”
Madara felt a headache building.
Amidst the chaos, he watched as Nozomi’s frown - a delicate, courtly thing at first - grew darker and darker, until she seemed fully irate and beside herself with fury for the council of old fools.
Angered enough, she finally shouted, “We will uphold peace!”
And the room fell silent.
Nozomi’s voice was old, and cracking, but strong. She may have been relegated to the backlines of the war for years due to her age, but she had in no way retired. She ran the Uchiha medical unit with precision and skill, and unlike many Uchiha elders, she still possessed Shinobi steel.
Another elder, Uchiha Ako this time, fanned herself delicately and narrowed her drooping eyes at Nozomi.
“That is surely dangerous, is it not?”
Nozomi snorted, “We are shinobi.”
Ako’s mouth thinned, and she covered it behind her fan.
“The Senju are too, and we know what sloppiness gets us.”
Nozomi smiled meanly, “Of course, for some of us. What was it for you, Ako, taken off the field for a simple break, and retired at seventeen? As far as I’m concerned, you have no voice in the matter of war, still wet behind the ears as you are.”
Ako glowered, “How dare you-!”
“Ako.” Madara’s voice cut harshly over the room, and silenced the growing argument. Now, with all eyes on him, he scanned his vision across the room of waiting elders. Anger was within him as well, so he would not scorn their wariness of plight, but though it was like dragging his flesh across razorblades to admit, his hands were tied.
“I swore an oath before Amaterisu herself,” he reminded them, “the condition of Izuna’s life for peace. Now, I am bound to that peace. This meeting is not of war, but of the terms on which we end it. As long as I am Uchiha clan head, that is how it will be.”
He narrowed his eyes dangerously, “and unless anyone is willing to try and remove me from that position, then we will proceed with peace.”
The room was left in tense awe, they stared at him with widened eyes.
“Then?” he asked, raising a brow, “Are the terms unreasonable?”
“No, Lord Madara,” Nozomi replied.
And it was the truth.
Madara was fully expecting a document outlining the borderline enslavement of the Uchiha to the Senju. It was reasonable, they were blood enemies, and if the White Demon had manufactured this peace, he expected it to be nothing less hellish then the battlefields he too created.
After all, Madara had sworn a sacred oath. He had to agree to peace, and he expected his hand to be forced into something devastating. He didn’t know how he would protect his clan from that kind of retribution, he was terrified of even having to attempt it.
But in the end, he didn’t have to.
Madara would have been forced to sign off on anything. That was what a deal before the gods meant. And instead of what would have made sense, an unfair treaty benefitting the rightful winner, they were presented, with of all things, a document that stipulated nothing less than even terms for the two parties.
The Senju had won the war, and left the spoils.
Deep down, Madara still felt great fear and suspicion, as he could not for the life of him gather why they would do that.
But the terms of the treaty were fair, for Gods sake, they had even included an inquiry for any possible alterations to the document.
Part of Madara was furied by that - it was surely a mockery of the fact that Madara truly had no choice. Hanging a carrot in front of his face and laughing that he could not bite. Putting up a facsimile of fairness for a deal that was ultimately signed in blood.
It made him rile with anger.
But he held his tongue, and did what he had sworn to do.
“Then we are decided,” he said, voice almost solemn, “we will send back our consent, and will meet for signature in two days.”
—
Tobirama stared down at the marks on his fingers. He detested them now more than he had ever.
He was, at his core, a tactician. Peace was yet another operation, a movement of people and weaponry, all in a delicate balance. He had it all measured out and weighed, knew each moving part as well as he could know it. The only variable left was the supposed bond between him and Madara.
He did not know what would happen if he were discovered, he did not care to find out. Tobirama was a tactician. He eliminated unknown variables.
And so, the marks needed to be unseen.
The gloves would only last him so long, and especially with the Uchiha he had to be careful. His excuse of the winter cold would quickly expire, and Izuna had years upon years of perfect memory of Tobirama. He would notice the gloves.
He would be fine with just the one instance, but he needed to be rid of them.
He could not put his hands under a henge, a quick glance at it with the sharingan would see quickly beneath it. Cosmetics, too, would fail under an Uchiha eye. It would look lik ehe was hiding something. Nothing he could cover it with would adequately avoid suspicion.
Tobirama picked up the brush at his side, and dipped it into a dish of red ink.
He would cover them up with something that was visible, then, rather than being intended to go unseen. Any genjutsu or henge would look like a disguise, and Uchiha could look beyond such things easily.
But seals did not disguise, they covered. Izuna could not see beneath the red markings on Tobirama’s face, because they were sealed into his skin itself - inseparable, sans Tobirama’s release of the seal.
Now he repeated the seals on his hands. The brush touched down on the inside of his wrist, and in a dense scrawl of characters, he painted in his new gloves. Chakra storage, the same as on his cheeks.
The brush crossed over his fingers, he carefully felt nothing as his soulmark disappeared under the red ink.
It was all a calculated move, it was all for peace.
And if, when he had looked down at the marks, he could not help but remember their counterpart’s twisting on Madara’s murderous face - looking at Tobirama like he were a monster - then it was only another reason to bury them where they would never again be seen.
Tobirama had no room for an irrational pain, and he had less room for a longing he couldn’t explain.
—
The Senju and Uchiha convoys met on a soft spring day - the beauty of such a day ruined by the tenseness of two parties of delegates meeting in full armor, poisonous distrust filling the air like a miasma.
They set up a collection of tents and settled their parties down for a multiple day negotiation and signage. Or the act of it. For there was little to be discussed, and even less to sign. But, often forgotten, with the exception of moments like these, both the Uchiha and Senju were noble clans. There were certain ceremony and etiquette that they went through, even if both sides were a razor’s width from homicide.
For Madara, in particular, it was agonizing. The farce of it all only served to heighten his anger. He was forced to sit and drink tea across the table from Senju Tobirama. He was meant to exchange pleasantries with the monster who had almost killed his brother, who would have, had Madara not agreed to bow his head.
It was a certain kind of agony to sit mere feet from the White Demon. To feel those emotionless eyes stare at him as that stone face dipped to delicately sip from a luxurious cup. He was forced to shake the hand that had held a sword to Izuna’s throat. He was forced to sign peace with a man who had held his brother’s life in his hands, fully intent to end it if Madara did not listen to him.
He was forced to be cordial with a monster.
Tobirama’s hands bore fresh tattoos, red seal ink stretching from his fingers to the midway of his forearm, as if his hands had been dipped into a basin of blood. It seemed that Tobirama did not even pretend to be anything more than he was, he wore his armor to the meeting, he bore seal-weapons openly on his hands, he did not mince words.
Madara could not really see much beyond him - could not focus onto the tea ceremony or the pleasantries, or any of this entire farce - he could only see Tobirama. He could only watch and seethe, boiling just below the surface of his skin with barely reigned in anger.
Tobirama watched him now, as he placed the Uchiha seal on the treaty. Three days of meetings and ceremony and pure uselessness for a fucking signature - even that a formality.
“I never thought this moment would come,” Hashirama breathed as Madara pulled the seal away, leaving fresh ink drying on the paper.
Madara could not quite share his enthusiasm. He stayed quiet.
“Madara, we did it.”
Madara raised his eyes to meet Hashirama’s. The look in his eye was reply enough.
Hashirama’s face fell, and he hesitated. He, too, fell silent.
“The Uchiha party will depart,” Madara then announced, rising from his spot.
“Ah,” Hashirama scrambled to rise as well, “Then the Senju will return also.”
Hashirama stuck his hand out, and it took Madara a second to realize his old friend wanted him to shake it. His very being roiled against it, but he bit back the sickness rising in his gut and took Hashirama’s hand in his own.
“I know it didn’t happen how we planned, but I believe we’ll be able to do great things,” Hashirama confessed.
“Mmn.” Madara replied, detached.
The Uchiha Parties and Senju rose to follow their leaders. Madara was halfway at the door, when a voice called from behind him.
“Lord Madara, I must ask for a moment of your time.”
Madara froze, and then turned around stiffly. Tobirama stood tall from where he had spoken, eyes calculating and posture inhumanely poised.
Madara wanted to kill him - just the sound of his voice lit a fire of anger in the pit of his stomach.
“Say what you must,” he grit out.
Tobirama's gaze did not falter, “I am afraid it is a matter better discussed in private.”
He held back the profanities on his tongue.
“Everybody out,” he commanded instead.
“But-“ Izuna tried.
“Now.”
The Uchiha party cleared out, and so did the Senju. Madara noticed they left with little resistance, but was keen enough to catch the glance between Hashirama and his brother.
But then they were gone, and Madara was alone with the man who had almost killed his brother.
“What is it you want, Senju?”
Tobirama did not answer immediately. He shifted to the back of the tent, eyes no longer watching Madara but off to the side. He seemed to think, then opened his mouth.
“Give me a year,” Tobirama’s fingers trailed over the edge of the desk.
There was something very sharp about Tobirama, nothing about him penetrable, his very skin an armor. Even now, Madara had no idea what the man was thinking - Tobirama had not allowed him to, so he would not.
For whatever Madara felt about Tobirama, he would give the demon this: he was smart. The razor-sharp kind of intelligent that cut and carved and sacrificed until it got exactly what it wanted - the dangerous kind. Madara knew this very well, Tobirama was dangerous. And more than that, he used it to get what he wanted.
Even this, the simple action of trailing his fingers over the edge of his desk was done with sharp, precise purpose. Whatever that purpose was, Madara didn’t know, but Madara knew it was purposeful, so he watched tattoo-red fingers move across the polished wood, swiping up dust with them.
Tobirama lifted his hand up and rubbed the dust off. His eyes then locked on to Madara, red and fierce.
“I know this is not how you wanted peace to come, but this is the way it has,” Tobirama stated plainly.
Madara balked at the bluntness of it. Three days of niceties veiling distrust and anger had not left him expecting the puppetmaster of all of it to simply throw all of it away. Quickly, Madara sharpened himself, and quickly discarded his own attempts at playing nice.
“You held my brother hostage,” Madara bit back, hands clenching tightly at his side. It was all he could do to not launch himself at Tobirama and rip his throat out. He hated him. He hated him like he had never hated anyone before.
“I did,” Tobirama replied, no emotion betrayed in his voice.
“This is not peace,” Madara snarled, “this is a bargain. And you used Izuna’s life as the price.”
Tobirama gave him a half smile, with pitying eyes. Madara’s anger flared even hotter at it.
“Peace, bargain: what is the difference?” Tobirama held, “Lord Madara, this is indeed an exchange. My business is that of ending a war, and I intend to deliver on a product.”
Madara was not inclined to listen. He only wanted to hurt Tobirama. How to hurt someone you couldn’t touch… how to hurt a demon.
“Hashirama would disapprove,” Madara said.
Tobirama waved a hand, dismissing it quickly and without reaction, “He already does. Where has that gotten us? We’re both doing this for our brothers, Lord Madara. You know that.”
Madara glowered, “this kind of peace will not last. The only reason I even agreed to it was to save Izuna’s life, but you know as well as I do that the will of one person is not the will of a clan. The Uchiha, be it now or later, will rebel. Or the Senju will.”
Tobirama walked closer to Madara now, and even Madara would admit, Tobirama made a terrifying figure. He walked like he was human, he breathed like he was human, but there was no way he could be. Tobirama was an extra-ordinary sort of presence that seemed to sit apart from the rest of the world it supposedly inhabited. Something about him just wrong.
“That’s why I need you to give me a year,” Tobirama reiterated, “All I need you to do is to rein the Uchiha in for a year, and I’ll do the same for the Senju. One year of civility, and I will work to ensure that by the end of it no one will want to rebel. To prove that peace is possible, and that we are stronger for it.”
Madara blanched.
What Tobirama was proposing was impossible. To try and tame two rabid clans in a years span was an insane task. Only a madman would think it possible. Right now the Uchiha were seething, just barely holding back from what Madara wanted to do right now: kill Tobirama and resume to war. The Senju surely wanted the same, but for Izuna and the Uchiha. Maybe they even added Tobirama to the list.
Afterall, Tobirama had had Izuna in his grasp - a death which would have ended the war, which would have almost assuredly granted a Senju victory - and Tobirama had let him go.
Now all they had was a facade of peace between the two clans for it.
Tobirama was so disliked now that Madara bet he wouldn’t even be able to charm a whore.
“You’re insane.” he said.
Tobirama scoffed, “Of course I’m insane. I am ending a war here. Nobody who has been sane in the history of our two clans has even dared try.”
“This will not work.”
“I am not asking you to believe in me,” Tobirama shrugged, “I am only asking that you give me enough time to prove you wrong.”
“And if you fail?”
Tobirama paused for a second. It was not hesitation, but rather just a moment's span to draw in a breath. Then, he spoke.
“If I fail, Madara, then you may kill me.”
Madara’s blood froze in his veins.
“What?”
“You may kill me,” Tobirama was not looking at him now. He was looking somewhere in the distance, to a particular nowhere. Who knew what he saw there.
Tobirama continued, “I am not Izuna, and you are not Hashirama. If peace is truly impossible, which a year should be enough to prove, then our war will resume. But if I die, the Senju will not fall like they would in Izuna’s absence. Hashirama will not let them.”
“Senju what are you even saying-”
“It’s a zero sum game Madara,” Tobirama explained, his voice hard and cold, “Things will go back to the way they were before, almost as if it hadn’t happened at all. In fact, you gain something.”
He smiled down at Madara, once again returning his focus to him. Unlike all the times before, Tobirama actually, genuinely looked into Madara’s eyes. It was the equivalent of suicide for a Senju to try that with an Uchiha, and though Tobirama was an expert at breaking genjutsu, the man he had dared to look in the eyes was Uchiha fucking Madara.
He all but put his life in his hands.
It took much restraint to not end it.
“I know you want to kill me, Madara,” Tobirama said. His eyes were unreadable, defined almost by their lack of anything: nothing of fear, nothing of admiration.
“Then you should know you are playing with a fire.”
Tobirama huffed a dry laugh, and his voice was thick with sarcasm when he spoke, “I am a Senju shinobi. I have spent my entire life fighting the Uchiha. Playing with fire is all I do.”
“You’d really let me kill you?”
Tobirama did not waver, “yes.”
It took Madara a moment to respond, as he sat in the lingering silence of Tobirama’s declaration. Tobirama was a demon - that could not be denied. What human would offer their life so readily, with so little regard? Madara remembered stories of how demons corrupted humans, and how they traded in souls. It occurred to him that Tobirama had been doing that all along, and was doing it now.
He was a warmonger who dealt in blood, and he was a negotiator whose currency was death.
Izuna’s life, Tobirama’s life, what did it matter to a demon?
“Why do you care so much for peace?” he finally dared to ask. Why was it worth enough to risk his life for?
And for a single, almost imperceptible moment, he finally saw something real in Tobirama’s eyes. A certain gentleness. But it was gone as quick as it came, and listlessness replaced it once again.
Tobirama turned his eyes away from Madara, and moved to walk out of the tent.
“I don’t like war,” was all he said before he left.
And Madara was once again alone.
—
They barely managed to get back to the Uchiha compound before somebody snapped. Madara was fairly sure it would be him, with how dark the anger in his stomach had become - leaded and heavy. To his almost surprise, it wasn’t.
The second the gates of the compound creaked close, Izuna flared.
“God fucking damn it!” he screamed, and slammed his fist into the nearest wall. The stone shattered in a deafening boom - cracking and splintering in a spiderweb up the wall - releasing a cloud of dust.
“Izuna!” Madara shouted.
Izuna was not listening, he rounded on Madara now, eyes sharingan red, “Do not even try to calm me down right now, Aniki! I cannot believe you signed off on that!”
“You know that I had no choice.”
Izuna laughed, “Oh you fucking had a choice! You were just too much of a pussy to make it!”
Madara felt hurt flash through him, “I couldn’t let you die-”
“Yes you could have!” Izuna screamed, “We all know you could have!”
His declaration sent ripples of shock through the Uchiha party, and through the clan members who had gathered at their arrival. And shock gave way to a sheepish agreement. Nobody wanted to admit it, but Madara could have let Izuna die. And they would not be in the situation they were now.
Izuna continued, jamming an accusing finger into Madara’s chest, “Because of you the Uchiha are signing a treaty that none of them wanted. For all we know, this could be a trap. Have you even thought about that?”
Madara tried to speak, but Izuna did not let up.
“Because you couldn’t let me die, now all Uchiha could be facing extinction! It was my cross to bear! I should have died! When the Uchiha face the consequences of your selfish decision, the blood will be on your hands Madara! Soley on yours!”
Izuna stormed off, ripping off his armor and chucking it to the floor as he went - the armor Madara had gifted him on his 17th birthday - like he was disgusted with the fact he was still wearing it.
“Izuna!” Madara tried to go after him, but Hikaku reached out and stopped him, shaking his head solemnly.
“Let him go, Madara. He is inconsolable right now.”
Hikaku looked left, right, and then commanded strongly, “everyone go back home. Stop gawking, you all have things to do.”
And so hesitantly, with looks cast back, the rest of the Uchiha watching left also. And then Madara and Hikaku stood next to a shattered wall, in a silent courtyard, with their backs facing generations upon generations of battlefields from a once immutable war, and the place where they had ended it.
The world felt all at once too big and too small for Madara.
“I couldn’t have let him die…” he said helplessly.
Hikaku gave him a sad smile, “I know.”
Madara buried his face in his hands, “what did I do wrong?”
“Is this not what you wanted?” Hikaku asked him, “you have your peace. You’ll have your village. Everything you dreamed of will come true.”
Madara scowled at his cousin, “Izuna’s life was ransomed for it.”
Hikaku smiled gently, and it did not reach his eyes, “Don’t let his poisonous words get to you.”
Madara startled, “Hikaku what-”
“Madara, Izuna should be dead. By all rights, he should be dead. We are shinobi, when our opponent is better than us, we die. That is the way it has always worked. Mercy is not in the playbook.”
“Mercy?” he spat, in disbelief. But Hikaku did not flinch away, and continued with brutal honesty.
“If Senju Tobirama wanted Izuna dead, then he would be dead. And with that, the rest of the Uchiha clan would have suffered greatly for it. He has been the only one fending off the white demon for years. But for some reason, Tobirama ransomed him instead - yes, ransomed. That is what happened. I’m not going back on what I said Madara, so stop looking at me like that - Izuna’s life was used as a bargaining chip. But he is better left alive as a chip than dead in a ditch.”
Hikaku scowled, “and he needs to realize that. He is embarrassed right now. And he’s suspicious, as we all should be, given the the Senju’s cunning, but you both need to wake up and understand that if the demon wanted us dead right now, we would be fighting for our lives on a retreating front, Izuna’s body rotting in the fields somewhere. Instead, we have peace.”
“You’re not seriously implying that we trust Senju Tobirama.”
“Of course I’m not,” Hikaku rolled his eyes, “Who knows what he will plan from here on out. What I’m saying is to trust this peace, and to try and make the most of it for however long it lasts. I do not trust the Senju, Madara, but we are all tired of war.”
Madara considered it, and even he, clouded with anger, had to agree to the points Hikaku made. Senju Tobirama was cunning and sly, but he did seem, under the scrutinizing eye of the sharingan, truthful and sincere about peace.
He had asked him for a year.
He had bet his life on it.
“I will never forgive him,” Madara whispered, but he did not deny what Hikaku had said. He couldn’t. He was right, this peace was dangerous, it was forced, and it was entirely engineered by their most fearsome enemy, but it was sincere.
And still, Madara loathed Senju Tobirama. He had delivered everything Madara had ever wanted to him on a silver platter, but he had done so in a way that left both the Senju and Uchiha bound and gagged, helpless to it.
Senju Tobirama had planned everything out to achieve this: each and every drop of blood that tipped into his scale.
He was a monster.
Hikaku looked at him, and set his jaw, “no one ever will, Madara. Nobody will ever forgive Senju Tobirama.”
And no one will ever thank him, went unsaid.
Madara could not help but think of Tobirama’s carefully blank eyes on the battlefield that day, or during the treaties, or even during his plea for ‘just one year.’ It seemed in that moment that Senju Tobirama knew that as well. He would not ever be thanked for peace.
Madara was okay with that. He did not want anything else for the man. He wanted him to suffer in that loneliness for all eternity. But Tobirama was okay with that as well…?
What was a soul, what was a life, what was pride, to a demon Madara supposed.
“Hikaku,” Madara suddenly said.
“Yes?”
“Keep your eyes out for any sparks of dissent within the Uchiha, have members loyal to the main branch do the same. I don’t want a single plan against the Senju or this peace to arise without my knowledge, and I expect it to be snuffed out summarily. Also….”
Madara swallowed thickly,
“If Izuna begins any mobilizing of his own against the Senju, you’ll tell me immediately. Am I understood?”
Hikaku inclined his head, “Yes, lord Madara.”
—
Two months later, Madara stood on a cliff above a neonatal village. The wind carded through his hair, and he looked down at the freshly built and occupied homes, their lights glowing in the fading rays of sunset. His eyes were narrowed down at it, and his mouth was pinched in a tight scowl.
The village took less time than any of them could have expected, but the Mokuton in combination with expert plans, it had been up and running before any of them could blink, and the clans rose for the first time in generations from their ancestral lands and moved.
If asked, nobody really knew who exactly planned all of it, or who orchestrated the quick assembly off all the needed moving parts. It was an amorphous ‘someone’, probably Hashirama if anyone had to guess. Madara knew different.
“You did all this within two months,” Madara said, still squinting down at the village.
From behind him, a cold voice spoke, “With help, of course.”
“Two months…” Madara repeated, and set his mouth into a frown. He turned around, and saw Tobirama standing in the vanishing light of dusk. Red eyes watched him carefully even now, face guarded behind a gleaming happuri - the Senju emblem now replaced by the symbol of their temporary peace: of Konoha.
“A year. You asked that day to give me a year…” Madara said then, looking at him. He folded his hands behind his back, and tilted his head, then continued past the tense silence he had let fill the air, “…You have ten months left. Let’s see if you can keep your head when the day comes for me to sever it.”
Tobirama dipped into a small bow, and a blood red hand placed across his heart.
He looked up at Madara through those ever so sharp eyes and looked at him with a careful blankness - nothing of fear, nothing of admiration.
“Thank you, Lord Madara,” he said.
Notes:
Yeah sorry, less romance more politics. Because I am insane.
Chapter 3
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It is the natural human condition that every single person, in some form, wants to be loved.
Even if isolated for their entire lives, and without ever being told what human connection is, or even what another person is, a human will still be lonely - longing for something they don’t understand. People fail at building connections often, and loneliness is a very permeable poison that will sink into everyone with time. But, regardless of success or failure, people never stop wanting connection. People will never stop trying for it, no matter how many times it fails, and no matter if they don’t want to try anymore. It is a desperation that is from birth to death, can kill you and can make you kill, can start wars and end them.
Wanting to be loved would guide a man to die if he thought that death would love him.
—
The olive branch that served to first really entice the Uchiha was the establishment of Konoha’s hospital. The Senju were renowned for their healing capabilities, and because of them their clan possessed a tenacity that none other could claim. A Senju shinobi could be seen retreating off the battlefield with a fatal wound to the stomach, only to be once again at the front lines during the next fight.
Most things an Uchiha shinobi would die from, a Senju shinobi would shake off with a month of bedrest.
As such, the Senju guarded their secrets preciously.
“Gently,” Tobirama’s voice coaxed softly through the sterilized air of the med ward.
Nozomi’s hands rested on a cut on Tobirama’s arm. The wound was clean and small, bleeding fresh and red.
The head of the Senju iryo corps, Senju Shizuki, had taken one look at Uchiha healing techniques and decisively declared that it would need a total overhaul. Madara would have been offended, if not for the way Nozomi’s eyes glittered with curiosity and agreement.
“Destruction is part of creation,” she explained to Madara, “If our foundation is crumbling, then it is only natural we tear down what we have built on it. Then, we build anew.”
So they started from scratch.
“Thin your chakra as fine as you can get it,” Tobirama instructed, “thread it through the flesh, and bind it to the other side. The more precise your work, the less chakra you expend. Only Hashirama has chakra reserves large enough to heal fully through brute force. Work small.”
He closed his eyes, focusing on what Nozomi was doing.
“That's better,” he said, “use those threads like roads to guide the natural energy within the cells to follow. It's the energy that resides within everything, within the entire planet. It's hard to directly manipulate, but easier to guide. Use it to stimulate healing. Good, good. I know it's hard to feel it, but keep practicing and you’ll be able to sense that energy easier.”
Even if Madara hated the man, he could admit he was fascinated. He turned to Hashirama next to him.
“Are all Senju shinobi this skilled?” he asked. The marks on his face seemed to burn in that moment.
“No, but it’s still pretty cool right?” Hashirama cheerily replied.
“They’re just healing a cut.”
“You're such a sourpuss. Just wait until they get advanced enough to learn the hard stuff. I once saw a guy get his leg cut off and they managed to stick it back on.”
Holy fuck.
Hashirama either didn’t notice the look on his face, or didn’t register it because he started counting off on his fingers.
“Yeah we can do amputation, replantation, treat infection, set breaks, restore nerves, all sorts of things. You’d have to ask Shizuki or Tobirama about it.”
Madara swallowed, “You said you could reattach limbs, what kind?”
“Pretty much anything if it’s fresh enough. Even I can’t heal tissue that’s completely dead.”
“Could you do eyes?”
Hashirama’s expression sharped, “You know that we’re not bloodline thieves.”
“I wasn’t implying it,” he snapped back, perhaps too harshly.
Tobirama’s voice rose suddenly.
“Must you get your feathers ruffled by everything?”
Madara scowled, “Stay out of this, Senju.”
“You’re disrupting my concentration,” Tobirama sneered, “Not that it would matter I suppose. Even Senju techniques can’t fix that broken attitude of yours.”
Madara seethedfrom where he was watching them work, suddenly whipping around to Hashirama, “Why isn’t Senju Shizuki leading this?”
Hashirama blinked, “does it matter?”
Tobirama looked over at them, “If you’re going to talk over my teaching then both of you can get out.”
And so Hashirama and Madara found themselves kicked out to the hallway, the door slamming shut behind them,
They could still see into the room, via an observation window, but Madara could no longer hear whatever Tobirama was saying. He glared at the man through the glass, still conducting his lesson unaffected.
Madara’s frown deepened, “The Uchiha will take it as a slight to not be taught by your best.”
Hashirama huffed, “So? Tobirama is the best, unless you want me to try and teach how I heal. Which Tobirama will kill me for.” Hashirama honestly looked confused, “Shizuki will still run the hospital.”
“Then why not have her teach.”
Hashirama frowned, “because you asked for our best expert.”
“And you sent him?”
“I just told you he was the best.”
“He is a front line shinobi! He’s not even part of your medical ward.”
“Not technically, no.”
“So why?”
Hashirama blinked again.
“Hold up,” he said quickly, “where do you think all of our healing techniques came from?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I think this is a key piece of info.”
“Why?”
Hashirama pinched the bridge of his nose, “because Tobirama invented like over half of them.”
Now it was Madara’s turn to look confused.
“What?”
“Yeah, no, he had an obsession with healing after-” Hashirama suddenly clicked his jaw shut, “well it doesn’t matter. Point is you asked for the best, and he’s our best.”
And it did prove to be true. In the coming days, Tobirama continued to lead classes on Senju healing with the Uchiha. He knew things that sounded unbelievable to the ears, but given a simple demonstration proved true. He showed how to fix things Uchiha had long thought unfixable.
It was amazing, and at the same time disturbing.
Madara could not help but think of his mysterious soulmate. If he were truly Senju, then it was possible that the techniques he used had been invented by Tobirama. That scared Madara for some reason. It perturbed him.
He could not picture the man who had saved his life being associated in any way with the man who had been willing to kill his brother. One of them was a selfless savior, his guiding star, his only scrap of sanity left in his terror. The other was the danger, the darkness, the terror itself.
After about a week of teaching, Tobirama left the rest to be handled by Senju Shizuki, citing his own workload.
Tobirama left the halls of the hospital, and Madara pretended not to breathe a sigh of relief.
His presence, no matter how knowledgeable, disturbed everyone there. The Uchiha did not trust him, and they certainly did not like him. It was not particularly comforting to be taught how to save a life by the person who had ended many of theirs.
Everything Tobirama invented was in one way or another a weapon. It all contributed to the war in some manner. Him teaching iryo jutsu only served to remind everyone about that: this was how the Senju fought so ferociously. This is how a clan could fight to the point of breaking themselves and be able to do it all again tomorrow. Each life saved was another they could put on their frontlines.
Weaponry all the same.
Purpose, Madara wondered about purpose.
Tobirama never did anything without it.
He could have had Shizuki teach from the get-go, but he didn’t.
Purpose.
Tobirama had entered the halls of the hospital with a purpose, and he ran from them with a purpose too.
—-
There was a cat sitting alone in the rain.
It was a mangey creature, with a missing eye, a clipped ear, a ratty tail. Its gray fur was rough, and there were scars across its nose, old and gnarled.
An ugly thing…It looked more like a drowned rat than any sort of feline.
Tobirama was walking home, but he paused to stare at it. The cat stared back with its unblinking green eye.
Being half past midnight, nobody was out besides him and the cat. A soft shower of rain had begun to fall on Konoha, leaving the streets cold and wet, shimmering in the moonlight. Tobirama could not help but feel at home in the darkness and the rain - obscured and somehow safe in the danger. There was no more war - not for anybody else. All there was was frigid rain, as he had always known there would be.
The cat meowed at him. The sound was cracked and broken. Pitiful, and small, and ugly.
Tobirama walked over, and picked the thing up. Water squeezed through the gaps in his fingers as they pressed against the soaked fur. The cat went pliantly, not hissing or scratching.
With a seal, Tobirama wicked the water out of its coat. He tucked the thing beneath his chin, and together they walked through the rain.
—-
The first time Tobirama had spotted a mop of curly black hair among the crowd for his lessons, he didn’t make much note of it.
Senju clan children came in all shapes, sizes, and colors. And while they were young, before they were introduced to war, rank, and Tobirama’s endless signage of blood, they were not afraid of him. A good portion of the fighting shinobi in the Senju today had been where these children stood before, watching him make slow signs with his hands and making water butterflies float through the air.
It was a good introduction to manipulating chakra and performing basic jutsu. As much as Tobirama hated to admit it, it was good for war as well. It helped train them young without keying them into that fact.
Tobirama rationalized that he only did it to help them survive. And in a way, it was true. If there was a guarantee that children would never face death, then he would have never taught them jutsu. He would never teach them how to hold a blade, how to add power to a strike, how to throw kunai with pinpoint accuracy. He would have been content to teach inane, peaceful things.
But that was not the world they lived in. So Tobirama trained as much as he taught - hoping to give them at least a chance when the children finally had to take up arms.
And now, even with peace, they were shinobi. So he continued to teach, and Senju children continued to swarm around his ankles demanding to see water butterflies, and dancing lightning, and to learn it.
When a new child joined, he did not take much notice. He continued to teach as he would.
But Tobirama would have been an idiot to keep missing it forever. The way between tepid earth tones, cool waters, and dancing winds, he could catch sparks of a hot chakra. The pair of dark, curious eyes that watched him from between the crowd. The dark, high collared clothing.
Somehow - and for the life of him, he could not figure out why - he had managed to gain an Uchiha child among his class.
“I don’t get it!”
And a very vocal one at that.
Tobirama looked over to where the young Uchiha was sitting, looking up at Tobirama with bright eyes and a scrunched face.
“Where are you lost?” Tobirama asked.
The Uchiha boy frowned, “no matter how many times, I can’t summon water.”
Tobirama smiled gently, “That’s no matter. You’re naturally fire natured - water would be the hardest nature for you to release. Try again with your fire nature instead. Change your hand seals from inu to tora.”
Tobirama clasped his hands together, forming the tiger seal and blew gently, a wreath of fire igniting over the heads of the sitting children. He watched the Senju clan children gasp, shrinking back from the fire passing harmlessly above, smiling in wonder.
The Uchiha boy, however, frowned deeper.
Tobirama released the seal and shook sparks from his hand.
“Would you like to come up and give it a try?” he asked.
“I still don’t get it!”
“Get what?”
“If you have the water affen, uh, affet…”
“Affinity,” Tobirama corrected gently.
The boy nodded vigorously, “-the water affinity, then how come you can do the fire release?”
“I trained very hard. Fire was the hardest for me to learn.”
The boy brightened, “Then I can learn the water release!”
Tobirama blinked, “well, yes…”
“Then how can I do it?”
“It will be substantially harder.”
“What does substantially mean?”
“Much more. Greatly.”
“But not impossible?”
“No.”
Tobirama received a beaming smile.
“Then I can do it!”
For a moment, he was dumbfounded. An Uchiha wanting to learn a water release. Tobirama was not sure he ever thought he would see the day. Uchiha were nearly all fire natured, with wind and lightning being the possible exceptions. An earth release or water release coming from the enemy side had been something Tobirama seldom saw during the war. In fact, water seemed to be a wholly Senju trait.
Even if an Uchiha could master it, he also doubted they wanted to.
The Senju were the clan of a thousand talents. They could muster up fire if they wanted to. But it was fire that killed their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers - their cousins and nieces and nephews. Fire killed Senju. So Senju didn’t use it often.
Water killed Uchiha.
Somberly, Tobirama thought that this Uchiha child had yet to witness war. Then, slowly, the thought crept in - he would never have to witness it, would he?
Maybe, water didn’t kill Uchiha anymore. Maybe fire didn’t kill Senju.
Tobirama looked down at the bright eyed boy, smiling unknowingly up at a person who had killed multitudes of his kin, and saw the innocence of a child who had not seen war. The possibility of a child who had not seen hate. The freedom of a child unburdened by the blood of countless, timeless slaughter.
“Yes,” Tobirama felt his voice speak, as if moved by a force besides his own; a welling of power and clarity that overtook him like a tide of water, “yes, I’m sure you can.”
He looked at the kid, and smiled.
“What’s your name?”
The bright eyed Uchiha beamed back at him.
“Uchiha Kagami!”
—
It was an argument they had had so often that it felt rehearsed.
“Let me go, Madara!”
“Izuna wait-!”
And yet still they continued to step into their roles.
“I don’t care if you forbid it, I’m going anyway!”
“Izuna I’m not saying you can’t go, just be careful…”
Terror was not a new emotion for Madara. He felt it every time he stepped out onto a battlefield, knowing that his little brother might not make it back. Madara had never feared for his own life, save for when he was very young, and for a darkness in a blizzard. But terror came easily to him anyway. Hashirama, for all his power, had never aimed to kill Madara. Their fights were practiced, almost showy, and never to the death. They fought each other so they wouldn’t have to fight anyone else.
It was never the same for Izuna and the white demon. From the moment Izuna and Tobirama first met on the banks of the Naka river, they had tried to kill each other. Izuna returned home each battle covered in bleeding wounds, some so deep and red they made Madara’s heart stop dead in his chest. Each time he watched Izuna don armor again, he wondered silently if it would be the last time he ever saw his brother alive and breathing.
So he prayed each night for Tobirama to die. He wished with delirious fervor that Izuna would strike him true, and the demon would be dead. He hoped that Tobirama would die on a mission, or die from a disease, or finally realize his place and die so that the world would be better for it. He knew that it would never happen. The Senju white demon could outrun death itself - or so the story went.
And so Madara continued to fear.
But then Tobirama had the opportunity to kill Izuna and he did not take it. That should have meant something to Madara. Should have felt relieved that finally, finally, he would stop having to worry about his brother’s death. The ghost had been the only one who was a threat to Izuna for a long time, and with that threat gone, Madara should have felt elated.
He didn’t.
He felt even more terrified.
Because now he had seen a blade close enough to Izuna’s neck to slit it, and was powerless enough to do nothing but watch.
Izuna always worried him. But suddenly, his brother was mortal. Tangibly, irrefutably mortal. The only thing that had stopped his death was a butchered promise, and the sick plans of a monster that for some reason decided he must live. And those things were much much thinner than skill. Skill could keep someone alive reliably for years. With a promise, it only took a moment.
Izuna could die, Madara had almost seen him die. And it terrified him.
“What I don’t understand is why you’d even want to go on a mission!” Madara shouted, “You hate Konoha! Look! You even scowled at the mention of its fucking name! You don’t believe in this peace at all, so why on earth would you fight for it!”
“Because I’m bored to fucking death!” Izuna shot back, “And I, for one, am not content to watch the Senju steal power and position within this rickety treaty by sitting by and doing nothing. Unlike you!”
Madara scoffed, disbelieving, “Oh so now I’m doing nothing? Last I checked, you’ve been the one moping around, complaining to elders and turning your nose up at anything we manage to accomplish in this village! You have no idea how hard I’m working, you ingrate! Do you know what it’s like to have to work next to the person who almost killed you everyday!”
Izuna’s face turned red with anger, and he snapped.
“Shut up! Don’t you dare hold that fight over me!”
“The fight where you almost died?” Madara hissed, “The fight where I almost watched you die and could do nothing?”
“God fucking damn it, Madara! Stop treating me like I’m made of glass!” Izuna screamed, “I am a Uchiha shinobi, I have survived countless battles, and let it not be forgotten, I am one of the four most powerful fighters within fire country.”
“You could have died-!”
“I didn’t, though!” he exclaimed with desperation. He grabbed Madara’s hand and placed it above his still beating heart.
“I am still alive, Madara! Tobirama did not kill me, so stop treating me like I died on the battlefield that day!”
Madara jerked his hand back and his expression darkened, “You’re only alive because he let you live!”
Izuna let out a frustrated scream, “You’re not hearing me!”
“You’re not hearing me!”
“Just because I almost died does not make me weak! I have never been weak! I will never be weak, and even if I die someday I will have died a fighting, capable shinobi! You need to stop treating it like I’ve been crippled.”
“You could have been-”
“And you could have died too,” Izuna cut him off, his tone harsh and cutting “your soulmate was the only thing that saved you from a pathetic death at the hands at the Hagoromo! And I never treated you less for it, did I? I never argued with you about going on missions! I never treated you like you would break! So why won’t you do the same for me?!”
Madara reached a hand out, but Izuna slapped it away.
“I’m heading out. Don’t fucking follow me” he said, turning away
“Where?”
Izuna snapped, “God, do I have to tell you everything? I’m not going to get shanked and die from going out.”
His brother was already at the door by the time Madara cried out, “Izuna!”
But Izuna was not in any mood to listen to him. He glared over his shoulder.
“Don’t follow me. And I’m going on that fucking mission after I get back. ”
And then he was gone.
Madara was alone.
Always alone.
He backed up until he hit a wall, then slid down to the floor. The room was quiet and still. Lonely, cold. He and Izuna hadn’t said so much as a kind word to each other since the peace was formed. They tolerated each other at best now. It was a far cry from how they had been before the peace.
Madara laughed humorously.
Wasn’t that ironic?
Madara was oh so very tired. Unbidden, a hand reached up to touch his cheek, his fingers passing gently over the red left there. Roses were all too gentle for him, too beautiful for a face like his. He even, for a moment, felt a spark of anger. Not at his soulmate, but directionless to the universe. That it had brought them close enough to leave a mark, but just far enough for them to never meet again.
Madara was terrified they would never meet again.
Then he would be truly alone, wouldn’t he?
“Would you even like me?” he asked no one in particular. Then he huffed hollowly again and shook his head, “who am I kidding? I wouldn’t care.”
He didn’t need them to be perfect. Didn’t even need him to be good. Madara only needed him to be real.
He looked out into the empty room. Light was streaming in through the door - still left ajar - illuminating the new wooden floors. Glowing veins of chatoyancy lit up in the summer sun. Hashirama had spared no expense when it came to building the Uchiha main house. Imbued even the littlest detail with warmth.
But it all felt sterile and sad now, alone with no one to sit with.
Madara turned his head out into the world beyond the room, where the sky was blue and cloudless. Past the engawa, there was a garden. A sloping sakura was aglow in the middle, dripping the last of this year’s blooms onto the stones below. Beneath it, the transplants from his mother’s rose garden sat struggling to grow. The journey had been rough on them, and the new soil had not been forgiving either.
“I always imagined I’d find you, and I’d get to let everyone know,” he smiled ruefully, “I’d drag you around to everybody I knew, even to people I didn’t. In some dreams, you loved it. In others, you hated it and yelled at me when we were finally alone. But I’d just sit there like a grinning fool, trying and failing to hide how much I loved you.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think this peace will last. But I am trying, you know, I’m trying. So that, maybe, maybe, I can meet you. And even if our clans end up against each other as the peace ends, I can spirit you away. Nothing will be able to separate us again.”
He was silent for a second. He felt his face tremble, and blinked the sting out of his eyes.
“I wish,” he admitted with a wavering voice, “that you were here. And that somebody could tell me what to do. ‘Cause I’m scared, love… I’m so fucking scared.”
But Madara was alone, so nobody replied.
—
Madara walked for a long time after that.
As a Shinobi, life wasn't slow very often. When battles were fought, you either had to move fast or end up on the wrong end of a blade. You had to move so fast that you flickered by, had to move so fast you could outrun death.
When the war had been drawing to its unknowing close, Madara had already been losing his vision. Each and every activation of his eyes only made it worse to the point he was basically rationing his own body - carefully chipping away at it so that he would be able to stretch his use until he finally went blind… or worse, he had to take Izuna’s eyes.
He thinks he remembers, when he was much smaller, how disorienting shunshin could be. You moved incredibly fast, and often the eyes could not keep perfect track of it all. When Madara developed his sharingan though, he no longer faced that problem, and with time, he forgot about it.
It was grueling to learn how to do it all again without that crutch. But he learned, if only to buy himself the seconds more before someone would be blinded.
In that time, that whirl of images he struggled to comprehend, he learned how much he lost with speed. How much he lost when moving too fast.
Madara believed he had been moving too fast for a long time now.
Now he walked, with the hope to catch something he may have missed. Something important that he once fought for, that he still wanted to fight for - because if what he saw now was all there was to it, Madara didn’t know what he would do. If all he had was distrust, fear, and anger, then he had nothing.
So he walked the streets of Konoha for once, and used his repaired eyes of his to look out onto a world he had not stopped to observe. He had walked this path before, of course, but had he been looking? He didn’t know. He walked to work in the morning, and walked home in the afternoon, always lost in his own head, always thinking forward, worrying about what might come.
Madara now finally tried to step into the present.
He drifted aimlessly through a summer night, with the air hot and humid. Beneath his feet he could hear the crunch of gravel and packed dirt. Scents and sounds lingered in the street, oil crackling, meat hissing on the grill, people chattering, even laughter among the sound. Lanterns strung zig-zagging from one side of the street to the other, where people passed illuminated below.
Civilians from both clans had moved in with their shinobi, and with them, regular people and merchants from nearby had followed suit. Konoha was a city of shinobi, but between the cracks people who dared to try a new world had slipped in, covered the streets with lanterns and filled the air with smells and sounds.
Madara was not some sort of raging bull, blinded by hate. He could see that Konoha was good, that peace could be good. As he dodged through the busy street, eyeing children playing between their parents' legs and vendors bargaining their wares, he had to acknowledge there was something there, something they were building, and something beautiful.
It only terrified Madara more.
At the end of this all, what would happen to these people?
All of this happiness, all of this hope, gone.
Madara did not despise peace - he was just unconvinced it would last.
He continued to walk down the street, shutting out the memories of his youth that the village sparked. In the children, he could see himself and Izuna when they were young. Laughing and playing without a care in the world. Then they grew up, and suddenly where had those days gone?
He passed by a shop selling sweets from a stand. Kids were crowded around it, parents dragged unwillingly along. Madara smiled softly at one pair - an Uchiha mother and her son. She was his cousin, fourth or fifth, he couldn’t remember which, once removed. Her kid had been getting ready for his first mission just before peace was drafted.
It was nice to see them here, instead of where they could be now. Madara knew how many young kids died their first time facing the Senju, he knew how their flesh smelled on their funeral pyres.
And by the light of Amaterasu, that boy was a child. Old enough to be sent to war, but young enough to drag his reluctant mother along to buy candy. Madara couldn’t help but wonder if he would already be dead by now, if not for the peace…
He paused, staring blurrily at the shop before him, and the children who dreamed of nothing more than sugar and games.
Again, the thought struck him that this would surely end…but.
But maybe it was just rationing all over again. Maybe it is them buying the seconds more they never had before. Maybe, even if temporal, the peace gave them just that much more time, that fewer battles, that many kids are still alive. Each second was life, dripping down from somewhere high above and leaving them to catch it with their imperfect hands. Trying, at the end of it all.
Peace would end. Madara knew that. But for those few seconds, it mattered. It mattered.
“Enjoying yourself, Madara?”
Madara groaned and turned around, “I was until you showed up.”
Tobirama’s impassive face stared at him, his hands folded neatly behind his back.
“So what is it, Senju? Taken to stalking me?” Madara taunted.
Tobirama lifted a sculpted brow, unimpressed.
“I do have a life,” that smooth voice reprimanded.
“Color me surprised. Now, get on with it.”
Tobirama had the audacity to look surprised. “On with what?”
Madara scowled, “We’re not friends-” he spat the word out like a curse “-by any stretch of the imagination, Senju. You don’t come to me unless you need something, that was the deal. I do my job, you do yours, that’s it.”
Tobirama sighed, “must you call me that?”
It took Madara a second for his words to process. Call him what? He hadn’t said anything insulting, at least not with a name. Oh there were plenty of things Madara wanted to call Tobirama, but he at least had the civility to restrain himself to a curt “Senju”- Wait, there was no way…
“Are you seriously taking offense at me calling you by your surname?”
Tobirama only had a few inches in height over Madara, but what little he had he used to his leverage. The subtle titling of his head up, the softly lidded eyes gazing lazily down - it all gave the impression that somehow Tobirama was miles above him. Like he had stepped foot on the lowly earth to grace Madara with his presence. If it didn’t infuriate him, it would have made Madara feel small.
Tobirama curled the edge of his lip up - his mocking face in stark contrast with his cordial tone, “Forgive me, but when you spit out the name of a clan you have historically destested, it gives the impression that you might hate them.”
“Why on earth would I care what you think?”
Tobirama leaned forward to quietly hiss in his ear, “Your actions don’t exist in a vacuum, Madara.”
Madara’s eyes shifted over to Tobirama’s, challenging, “And?”
Tobirama stared at him long and hard for a second. Not even mad, just genuine pause that slowly turned to exasperation. He straightened and dragged a hand over his face.
“I cannot believe I have to spell this out for you.”
“What-”
“Believe it or not, o’ master of the Uchiha,” Tobirama began, “But I am not the only Senju out there. In fact, as someone of your status should be aware, there are quite a few. So, each time someone overhears you complaining about ‘that damn Senju’ or ‘that Senju bastard’, they don’t just assume it's me.”
Oh.
If Madara wasn’t so mad right now, he would even be inclined to admit that it made sense. But refusing to give an inch to Tobirama, he stayed stubbornly silent and glared at him.
Tobirama looked thoroughly unimpressed.
“Maybe you don’t care,” he continued, “but my clan does, and frankly your clan does too. Your shitty attitude affects other people, and sets a precedent for what is and what is not okay. So, if you want to uphold your end of the bargain, either stop it altogether or at the very least get more specific. I do have a first name.”
Madara stared at him for a second, “You’re not saying…”
Tobirama scoffed, “I’m not a bashful maiden, Madara. I already call you by your given name.”
“Which I never allowed you to do,” Madara interrupted.
“We both know that I am in the habit of doing what is effective and efficient, not catering what you like. It’s easier.” Tobirama shot back.
Madara was going to flay him alive and burn his skinless body.
Tobirama continued, “I am not asking you to treat me with respect Madara, your respect is not high up on the list of things I desperately need right now. I am only asking you to be more specific in your insults. White Demon, Monster, Tobirama whatever, I don’t care. Just make sure it's not Senju.”
“Are you seriously telling me you want me to call you a demon?”
“It would be preferable.”
“Do you have no sense of pride?”
Tobirama rolled his eyes, “It is a pawn worth sacrificing. Besides, I have already wagered my life on this, what’s an insult to a dead man?”
Madara recoiled, “You disgust me.”
“How?”
“I don’t- Augh! Just the callousness of it all! Do you seriously value life so little?”
The white haired man’s mouth thinned into a line.
“Do you seriously want me to answer that?”
Madara realized he didn’t. Not when those hands had held Izuna’s life in them before.
“Get out of my sight, Senju.”
Tobirama leveled him with a flat look. For a second, Madara thought he might have been able to see some sort of sadness in those dark eyes. But as always with Tobirama, he could not tell if it was a genuine glimmer of something, or a facade the monster used to further some agenda of his.
What must it be like to live like that, he wondered. To live a life caught between the real and unreal. He wondered if Tobirama even knew where the act stopped and his real self began. He wasn’t sure if there was a difference, or if Tobirama was sure either.
Madara’s eyes skimmed that blank face searchingly for some answers,
A life like that…sounded worse than hell.
Tobirama shifted his gaze, breaking the spell. Now he looked over Madara’s shoulder, fixated wholly on something besides Madara with such a fearful fondness that for a second he could not breathe.
He wasn’t sure why that disturbed him.
Following his eyes, Madara turned around. He was looking at the candy vendor again. More kids had joined the crowd around it. There was the chatter of childish pleas and fond parents - the sound of coins being forked over and gentle conversation. Again, Madara spotted the Uchiha in the crowd. But Tobirama was not looking at them - instead fixed on another pair. Half a year ago, Madara would have had to turn on his sharingan to understand why, but with his newly healed eyes it was rather obvious. A father and daughter were holding hands by the stall, tan skinned with chestnut brown hair and green eyes - the both of them. On their backs, standing soft white against the cream of their haori, was the finely embroidered Senju crest.
“That is who you’re insulting whenever you spit out that name, Madara.”
Tobirama’s voice was quiet, but no less firm and cutting. Madara could not help the way he flinched as the truth of that statement reached him - the shame.
Tobirama continued, “I do not give a damn about my pride Madara. You can call me anything you like, say anything about me you wish, but speak ill of my clan again, and tarnish their sacrifices for this peace, spread hate when you could as easily shut your mouth, and I will make sure you suffer for it.”
“I-”
Tobirama cut him off, “Don’t.”
Madara did not let him end it there. He grabbed his arm and forced Tobirama to look at him.
Red eyes met Madara’s dull black ones.
In them, Madara saw nothing of fear, nothing of admiration.
“I’m sorry, Tobirama,” he said. Even though it felt grating, it was true.
Tobirama seemed genuinely taken aback. His mouth parted open slightly, and his eyebrows titled just ever so up.
“You don’t have to-”
“I need to. That was our deal, right? Consider this an official apology from an Uchiha leader to a Senju one,” he dipped his head a small bow, “I am sorry to have disgraced and disparaged the efforts of the Senju clan.”
There was a short silence, where Madara dared not look up. Then he heard a small intake of breath, and Tobirama spoke.
“I am not here to antagonize you, Madara,” Tobirama said, “I do it when it’s convenient - to get what is necessary. I do it for them…”
Madara looked up, and saw with shock that Tobirama’s impassive mask had somehow begun to crack. His eyes glanced nervously to the side and his brows were pinched together in something that resembled uncertainty. Madara didn’t know Tobirama could be uncertain.
Noticing the eyes on him, Tobirama trailed off. Within a moment's breath, that mask was slammed back on.
“What I’m saying,” The thing masquerading as a human said, “is that we are on the same side, Madara. I am glad you could figure that much out.”
Madara frowned, “And here I am trying to be the amicable one.”
“No one would have ever guessed you were capable.” Tobirama smirked.
Madara threw Tobirama’s hand away, snarling.
“Your a fucking asshole, Tobirama.” Madara bit, “I was wrong to ever associate the Senju with you. They don’t deserve to be insulted by the comparison.”
Then Madara turned hashly on his heel and stormed off. Honestly! The one time he tries to be anything other than infuriated with Tobirama, he is met with nothing but scorn. He should have known there was no point to even trying with him.
And if Madara thought he caught Tobirama smiling gratefully as he turned away, then he must’ve been mistaken.
Monsters didn’t smile.
For as long as he could preserve this peace, he could pretend that.
—
Izuna felt his mood go from bad to worse as he approached the Konoha gates.
His mission had gone fine, but as far as blowing of steam went, assassinations were not particularly satisfying. He was still pissed at Madara and downright enraged by everything else. So when he spotted Tobirama leaning contentedly against the walls of Konoha, staring him down, he felt his blood pressure rise.
Intent on ignoring him, Izuna set his jaw and rolled his shoulders, eyes fixed resolutely on the village and deliberately refusing to stray as he walked closer.
He reached the gate and placed his hand on the cool metal. He could physically feel the chilly presence of Tobirama on his skin, but refused to turn to look at him.
He tensed, ready to push the gates open, when a voice spoke.
“What? You can’t even meet the eye of your rival after all this time? You wound me, Izuna.”
Even as he kept his eyes dead straight, Izuna couldn’t help himself as he snapped.
“Refusing to meet your eye? Please, I’m not some sort of Senju.”
“You seem awfully cowardly for an Uchiha then. What? Did I scare you into meekness after that last fight?”
He whipped around, furious. His pinwheel eyes met Tobirama’s calm red ones. The sheer absurdity of it almost snapped him out of his rage - it was the first time Tobirama had ever looked him in the eye.
Regardless, he raged.
“Shut up! You should have just killed me if you wanted to hold it over my head!”
Tobirama scoffed and sneered, “how on earth would I hold it over you if you were dead? Corpses aren’t particularly offended by insults.”
Izuna seethed, “We both know that’s bullshit. Hashirama made you stop your skeleton war years ago, but you don’t forget jutsu!”
“Oh?” Tobirama asked, “Maybe I’m the real Uchiha then and you’re the Senju in your eyes. Perfect memory and perfect cowardice.”
It took physical effort not to draw his sword.
“Why are you even here?” Izuna demanded, “To mock me?”
“How could I not be here?” Tobirama shot back, “Your chakra was so aggravated that I could feel it from miles out. Like thousands of spiders crawling over my skin.”
“So what? You came to finish the job to shut it off?”
“I’m here to mock you, obviously.”
Izuna physically recoiled, “What?”
“What do you mean ‘what?’” Tobirama mimicked, “I thought it was well established we hated each other?”
“You don’t mock me - you never mocked me! You just fought silently, like a creepy fucking doll. Most I could ever get out of you was grunts of pain.”
“Well clearly I have years of unsaid material.”
“Augh!” Izuna screamed, pulling his hair, “what are you trying to accomplish right now? Getting me to attack you?”
Tobirama looked at him like he was stupid, “ obviously!”
Izuna did a double take, “Wha- Are you trying to break off the peace?”
“Are you stupid? What I’m trying to do is help you blow off some steam so you don’t. I’m trying to goad you into sparring me, idiot” Tobirama explained, “or did you seriously think I get pleasure out of mocking you. Please, I’m not a child.”
“Then why-”
“Because you act like one, so I’m trying to accommodate for your level of intelligence.”
“Oh I’ll show you a spar-”
Tobirama punched him square in the face before he could finish. Izuna felt his body catapult backwards, hit the floor, and skid heavily through the ungroomed dirt of the forest. He flipped himself, digging a hand into the ground to slow his momentum, leaving furrows in the ground. When he looked up at Tobirama once more, Izuna’s face was covered in dirt, and reddening scratches, blood beginning to well.
His nose was broken, gushing down his lips.
“Take it easy, you bastard!” he screamed at Tobirama.
Tobirama was shaking out his hand with disinterest, flicking blood off his seal-red hands. He looked up at Izuna once more at his exclamation, and tilted his head with that same detachment - for a moment, Izuna could only see the stone cold enemy he had fought for years. But then Tobirama rolled his eyes and curled his lip in an almost showy display of dissatisfaction.
“Why?”
Izuna was incensed, “This isn’t a fucking death match! It’s a spar!”
Tobirama looked more confused than anything, “So?” he asked with a scoff, “since when were you made of glass?”
Izuna’s eyes widened.
Then, he began to grin - the air around him grew thick with static, and lightning began to jump from his fingers.
Then he launched himself at Tobirama faster than an arrow, leaving the grass behind him streaked with electrical burns.
Tobirama met him halfway, and the ground shook with their clash.
Hours later, the two of them lay splayed out on the torn up ground, chests heaving with heavy breath and limbs too tired to move.
“Hah,” Izuna gasped for air, “f-fuck you, Tobirama.”
Tobirama swallowed another breath, “same time next week then?”
“God, I hate you.”
“So yes.”
“I’m going to,” a deep breath, “beat your ass I swear-”
It occurred to him he had never heard Tobirama laugh before. He supposed there were first times for everything.
He heard a shuffling sound and Tobirama's face popped into view. Hands fell onto his face, and when he tried to squirm away, he was held still and reprimanded with a firm "stop moving". He almost threw another punch at Tobirama, but a cold, soothing chakra flowing into his own stopped him. He felt the pain in his nose fade away, even as Tobirama grabbed the bone and readjusted it into place. After another minute more, Tobirama pulled away and flopped back down in the dirt.
"Don't put any pressure on that for a while. I don't have enough chakra to heal it fully."
Izuna was almost too shocked to speak. He had never, in a million years, expected Senju fucking Tobirama tohealhim of all things.
"Why?" he croaked. It was a loaded question. Why did Tobirama heal him? Why did Tobirama spare him? Why did Tobirama want peace? Why did Tobirama do anything?
"Because I don't like war Izuna."
"Bullshit. You were the most bloodthirsty person out there."
"The same could be said for you, no?"
"Don't try that with me," Izuna spat, "I was a soldier. A spymaster and an assassin too, but never what you were. I was nothing like you."
"Like what?"
"A tactician. Every single battle had your strategies written all over them."
"You understand me that deeply then?"
Izuna huffed, "of course I do. I had to in order to survive."
"Then tell me, Izuna, why on earth would a strategist give up their most valuable weapon to their enemy with zero strings attached. Why on earth would I ever heal you?"
Izuna didn't know.
"To trick me. To trick the Uchiha. So you can eradicate us at our most trusting."
He heard Tobirama sigh, "that's so uncreative. Seriously, do you really think I would waste all this time and resources, spare one of the Uchiha's best fighters, and provide the Uchiha with invaluable knowledge about Senju healing, all for what? A cleaner defeat? Oh yeah, marvelous idea right there. You really must be an idiot."
Izuna hated him. He hated how he was right. But he just couldn't accept that, he just couldn't move on, couldn't part from the ineffable truth that Izuna could not dislodge from his heart: simply, and with no other defense...
“I just can’t trust you.” he admitted to Tobirama, "I don't know how."
He heard the Senju hum, “I do not expect you to.”
“Then what am I supposed to trust?”
“Your gut, Izuna, or your brother, I don’t know. Find something. I’m not a fucking psychic..”
It occurred to Tobirama that he had never heard Izuna laugh beyond scorn. He supposed there were first times for everything.
“Try teaching,” he offered.
Izuna craned his neck upward, looking at the top of Tobirama’s splayed out form. He scowled.
“Do I look like the teaching type to you?”
Tobirama looked up at him, face cold as always.
“Do I?”
“Obviously not.”
“Then you would be surprised.”
Izuna scoffed, then choked on his spit from the motion. Tobirama let him hack out his lung without making fun of him - it really did seem like the taunting was just to piss him off the first time. To get something out of him. There was no joy in it.
“There’s no way,” he finally said once he finished coughing.
Tobirama shrugged, or at least Izuna thought he did. It was hard to see him from his angle, but he heard the rolling crunch of dirt and fabric from some movement.
“You don’t know me, Izuna. I don’t know you.”
“I know how badly your sword cuts.”
“I apologize.”
“No you fucking don’t.”
“True.”
"I don't think this peace will ever last, Senju."
"Do you have anything to lose for trying in the meantime?"
There was a long silence, the only sound of their heavy breathing.
“...fuck it.”
A week later, Izuna stood in front of three newly graduated Chunin, the first batch the academy had ever churned out. He stared down at them, an Uchiha and two Senju girls. All three of them stared at him with wariness in their eyes, and beneath that, simple nervousness.
“Stand up straight!” he snapped.
The girls jumped to attention, startled and wide eyed.
“Names!”
“Uchiha Yuko!” , “Senju Tomoko!”, “Senju Kazumi!” they announced in sequence.
“Listen up!” he commanded, pacing in front of them, “Right now, you are all wimps. But I was challenged by an even bigger and more annoying wimp to do this, and so because I cannot lose to him, I will turn all of you from wimps to warriors! By the end of our time together, Tobirama will have no choice but to acknowledge your collective awesomeness, and my superiority by proxy as your teacher!”
“Senju T-Tobirama?” Yuko stuttered, “the demon?”
Izuna nodded solemnly, “the very one. Now, who’s ready to kick some ass?”
They stared at him in abject terror.
“Verbal responses are required. I’ll ask again. Are you ready to kick some ass?”
“Y-Yes!” they yelled back this time.
—
When Madara pushed the doors open to the council room, it quieted to an immediate hush.
The Uchiha elders had called together an immediate assembly and demanded his presence. Madara wasn’t sure what for, but whatever it was he was wholly disinterested. As Konoha had grown, it became evident that elders would matter less and less. Power was in the hands of clan heads more than anything, because the village was in their hands. Elders were consulted less frequently, and bestowed less authority.
They were old, and the world the village was built on was new. Their ideas repelled against each other as oil refuses to give voice to water.
In a way, Madara suspected they dragged him to this meeting just to prove they could. To show that they still had their barbs in his skin
Madara strode now into a room of spitting old oil, whose eyes fell upon him with weighty consideration and lofty expectations. Madara allowed his own gaze to cut sharply across the room. Wherever it was that his eyes fell, silence followed and people withered back.
Suspicion.
Inwardly, Madara sighed. It was going to be a rough meeting.
He strode briskly to his seat at the head of the room, and roughly took his place.
He looked across the room once more, and trepidation breathed back at him.
“So?” he asked, “what mattered so much that you needed my audience?”
Suspicion writhed before him again - nervousness. He didn’t need to activate his sharingan to notice the way the elders glanced sweepingly around, licking their lips and wringing their hands together. A scowl began to form on Madara’s face and his expression darkened ever so.
“So you’d drag me here to flaunt your authority and then refuse to explain?” He raised a singular brow, “Forgive me if I don’t take kindly to that.”
Finally, someone mustered up the courage to speak.
“The Senju have handed over their healing techniques.”
Madara looked over to elder Ako, hiding her face behind a fan. She was, as she always was, poised. Back straight, hands delicate, eyes dark.
“They have,” Madara admitted slowly.
Elder Ako’s voice was the withering kind. Airy and strained, like old grandmother’s have - lacking all at once any type of grace or beauty while ever in the attempt to imitate it. Her head was high, and she did not look at Madara when she spoke. Her cracked, carmine lips opened and thin flesh peeled away from a once straight row of teeth. Withered and old, in some sort of mockery of civility and grace.
“Then we have nothing left to gain from peace.”
If a sentence alone could cause desolation, then Ako’s voice left a wake of silence as destructive as a swath of black fire. A tense moment passed.
…Slowly, Madara began to laugh. An unbelieving, dark sound. Deep from his chest growing louder by repetition as his eyes slid shut and his head fell, shaking disbelievingly into his hand.
His teeth were bared in a facsimile of a grin, and his brows were pinched in some form of cruel humor.
When he looked back up, the smile was gone, and darkness eclipsed his face. His eyes burned blood red, deep beneath their sunken insets.
“Did you seriously think that would work?”
Ako straightened up, undeterred “If we were to strike the Senju now, we would surely find victory. We have nothing left to learn from them, they’ve handed all their weapons right into our hands.”
“Careful Ako…” Madara warned.
“We could eradicate them, Lord Madara. As easily as we could put down a sleeping dog.”
Madara felt angered heat rise beneath his skin as she continued to talk. Refusing to look at him, spouting all manner of nonsense while sitting above a floor built by their once enemy. Sitting above the lands they had decided to try to dedicate to peace. Threatening, as casually as she might mention the weather, genocide.
It was not a foreign concept to Madara. Genocide, complete eradication, had been the subject of their war for as long as anybody could remember. And Madara held no doubts that peace would fail.
But even then…
The hundreds that would die.
By a woman’s words - a woman who had not seen the field since she was a child in her own right..
Senselessly dead.
Men, women, children…
All the children Madara saw were playing in the streets of Konoha. The children Tobirama looked upon with such fondness that it blindsided Madara. The children who for the first time in centuries would be able to look out into a world that did not seek to devour them.
Eradicated.
Put down like a sleeping dog.
“You supersed your station,” Madara hissed darkly.
Ako’s eyes slid over to him, now flashing red, “You have abandoned yours.”
Anger burned bright in Madara.
He rose halfway, the ground beneath his feet smoldering.
“You’d dare-” he bared his teeth dangerously, “This is blatant mutiny.”
She held his gaze, eyes behind drooping lips.
“I am doing this to save the Uchiha,” she replied candidly, “Something which you have seemed to have forgotten as your duty.”
“I have made a sacred promise in front of Amaterasu herself-!”
“Break it.”
If words could devastate…
Ako turned up her nose from her clan head. Disrespect running rampant. Madara’s eyes swept across the room of elders who looked pale… but didn’t say anything against Ako.
They had planned this beforehand.
Subtly, slowly - so that not even Hikaku had caught it. His cousin was thorough. It only spoke measures to their carefulness, to the insidious nature of this undertaking. Mutiny. Blatantly.
Hatred so strong they would go behind their clan’s back. Only telling him beforehand because they thought-
They thought he would agree.
They thought he was some sort of rabid dog. As easily manipulated as the Senju could be killed. They thought he would willingly break his oath, if only for the taste of Senju blood to yet again wet his lips. They thought he was a monster.
The marks on his face burned against his skin.
Of course.
Why would anyone ever think anything else?
He was a tool now, wasn’t he? A tool for Hashirama’s peace. A tool for Tobirama’s gain. A tool for the Uchiha’s vengeance. For destruction and hellfire. That he might only burn for their will, they cast their bets on him.
Something was building beneath his skin. Something he did not know how to name, but it was dark and thick, some sort of hatred he could not contain. Some sort of protectiveness he had never known before and had never mustered. Some sort of promise he had to keep. Some sort of dream- Some sort of duty- sort of fury- of fear- terror-
of of of
A bow within him was drawn - he did not know the fingers on the string.
Were they his, or someone else's? He could not tell. Frigid fingers on the cusp of his heart, squeezing and squeezing. Taught- the bow grew.
Choking and tepid, it built in his lungs. Sharp as senbon piercing his skin in the blizzard cold, his heart beating rabbit fast in his chest. The sweat on his brow. The sound of the world fading away, so he could no longer hear the words said on the elder’s moving lips, ringing, ringing, ringing.
The world sharpened to sharingan clarity, and Madara felt the bow snap.
When finally he came back to himself, however long it took, a single thought echoed in his head.
Tobirama, he needed Tobirama.
—
Tobirama gasped and stirred from his lab work as he felt a searing chakra grab hold onto the outskirts of his.
Iron-soot-smoke felt like ash on his tongue, and he set down his pen and paper with a click. The seals on his desk fell out of focus, and he zeroed in on the fire desperately lapping at his senses.
Tobirama knew Madara was a sensor, thought of no comparison to himself. He had never expected Madara to reach out in such a way - a way only a fellow sensor could understand. To barb into another’s chakra and pull for attention.
And pull desperately.
It was intimate, in a way, to even brush chakra. Some aspect of souls caught in an embrace - or a blow, for even violence held untold intimacy - and catching edges in sparks. He never thought Madara would ever willingly do so. Not with the distaste that lined the man’s chakra every time Tobirama drew near.
But now fire burned into Tobirama’s side. As Madara demanded his attention. It was not a call, or a barb, or even an ask. It felt like Madara was clinging on to him. Like a lifeline.
—
By the time Tobirama arrived at the Uchiha compound - to which he came as quietly as a shadow - Madara was curled up in a ball in the corner of the meeting room. His eyes were wide open with a sharingan shine, and there was sweat dripping down his face.
Tobirama’s gaze swept cursorily around the room, taking in the scene before him. Around ten Uchiha elders were staring blank eyed into a certain nothingness. Tobirama waded between them, stopping when his foot bumped against something heavy.
He looked down to find Uchiha Ako’s head in a puddle of blood.
Tobirama spared it a long glance. Then his eyes turned to Madara.
“What did you do?”
Madara raised to look at him. He could not help but huff a sardonic laugh at Tobirama. Tobirama, with his voice ever so empty. Not an ounce of accusation, not a minutia of anger. Blankness, carefulness, calm.
What Madara would give to have that.
“What you told me to.” He croaked in reply.
Madara noticed, belatedly, that Tobirama wasn’t wearing his happuri. His rough hair fell in curtains over his face. He looked softer like this, somehow. Disheveled almost. Even in the crystalline world of the Mangekyo, there was little fault to be found in Tobirama’s expression. With the exception of the slight raising of his eyebrows, and a slight sheen of sweat on his face, one would never guess anything beyond perfect calm.
The idea of Tobirama rushing anything was almost absurd. But here he stood in simple shinobi blacks, his happuri forgotten.
Tobirama sighed once, taking in the room again.
“Traitors then?”
“They expected me to join them.”
“Fools.”
Madara sneered, “Spare me it, Senju. You and those ‘fools’ think about me the same way. What? Do you really think I’ll just do everything you say because we have a deal? Do you think I’m some sort of animal at your heel? Do you seriously think you can buy me?”
“Yes,” Tobirama replied frankly.
“You-”
“Luckily you thought long enough to not simply kill your entire council,” Tobirama continued on thoughtfully, “one death will be hard enough to hide. Over ten elders dead would have been disastrous. I’m sure you know the repercussions if the truth gets out?”
Madara glowered, tightening in on himself.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Tobirama nodded, “what did you use this time?”
“Tsukuyomi.”
“Smart. Some of these people have lived long enough to resist anything else.”
“What do I do, Tobirama?”
Madara’s own voice was so broken that for a moment, he did not even register it was him speaking. He was Uchiha fucking Madara. He was feared throughout the elemental nations. He was strong, he was fierce. He did not plead. His voice did not quiver. He did not sound lost. He did not become lost.
But here he was anyway.
“Replace their memories. The meeting concluded with a stern reminder of what loyalty is - and to who. Then we monitor them closely, we slowly limit their power more and more, and if needed,” Tobirama shot a glance down to Ako, “we take care of them.”
Madara buried his head between his knees.
“You’d have me kill my own clan.”
Somewhere beyond where he had hidden himself, he heard Tobirama scoff.
“Grow up. You are a shinobi.”
“I can’t do it, Tobirama, I can’t kill an Uchiha.”
“You already have.”
Madara felt the painful truth lance through him. He had killed his own kin. In cold blood. To protect the Senju of all people. Maybe Ako was right, maybe he had forgotten his duty.
“Is this how you plan to deal with all the threats to your precious peace, Senju?” Madara spat, “Kill anyone who gets in the way? Murder and hide the evidence so nobody ever knows?”
A quick shuffling sound was the only warning before Madara found himself yanked up to eye level by Tobirama. A scowl was firm on the other man’s face, twisting his red tattoos angrily.
“Let me make something abundantly clear,” Tobirama said softly - dangerously - “it is not my plan to kill my way to peace. If that was the case, Izuna would be dead and rotting. You, Madara, you did this. And I am helping you fix it, so either get your shit together or get out of my way.”
He pushed Madara away from him. The Uchiha stumbled back and stared at Tobirama with an almost sort of bewilderment.
Tobirama flicked through a couple hand signs, and Madara watched as the blood soaked into the tatami and paper walls lifted and collected above Tobirama’s hand. The Senju then turned to Ako’s body, and the blood flew from his hand and back into the cooling channels of her neck. He picked the bloodless head from the ground and placed it on the severed edge of her body.
His hands lit up with a green glow, and the flesh began to stitch itself back together.
“Wait-” Madara panicked.
Tobirama sent him a stern look.
“I am fixing the problem, Madara. If you don’t want me to, then go turn yourself in.”
Hashirama had described replantation of limbs before, and Madara had lurked around the hospital enough to get the general gist of the idea. But to watch a lifeless body be unbroken and pieced back together left the realm of the unbelievable, and went straight into horror.
Madara had done this.
He had done this.
“How…” he began to ask.
“The body does not know it is dead yet.” Tobirama explained tersely, “just like those statues you’re holding onto over there. They’re gone, they just can’t tell. From there, you can make them do most anything.”
“How will we explain this?”
“Explain what?” Tobirama asked, shifting his hands ever so slightly to the right and revealing a strip of unmarred flesh, surrounded on other sides by deep severance, “as far as anyone else is concerned, Ako died peacefully in her sleep. With the Tsukuyomi, you could even give yourself an extra day or two after the meeting in leeway. She never had enough friends for anyone to regularly visit. When they find the body, Madara, we won’t need to explain. An old lady with a markless death? They’ll draw their own lines just fine.”
It occurred to Madara just how much Tobirama knew. About the Uchiha, about Ako… maybe even about him.
“You knew I would do this,” he accused.
“Of course I didn’t,” Tobirama snapped back, “I expected you to have at least an ounce of restraint, or at least subtlety, but I prepared for you not to.”
“Oh god,” Madara braced himself against the wall, “I really am your fucking dog, aren’t I?”
“That was the deal. This-” Tobirama gestured to Ako “- is the deal.”
“You planned all of this out.”
“Not to the detail,” Tobirama’s hands were covered in blood, or was that just the tattoos? Madara could not tell anymore, “but I have never been one to not think ahead.”
“Izuna too-”
“Planned, obviously.”
Madara could not help the strain in his voice, “Why?”
“Peace,” came the succinct reply.
“And you what? Wagered your life on a bet? Wagered Izuna’s? Wagered mine?”
Tobirama scoffed, “Wagered what? When I took Izuna captive? That wasn’t a bet, Madara. That was simple cause and effect. The bet is now. The die have been cast, and we are playing out the rest of the game together, whether you like it or not.”
Izuna.
Tobirama hadn’t called it a bet.
“You knew I would save Izuna?”
“Of course. You couldn’t have let Izuna die. He’s your brother - you love him.”
There was blood on Tobirama’s hands. Or maybe it was just the tattoos. Or maybe, for a glimmer of a second, Madara might have imagined red stained fingertips to match his cheeks. Might have heard what he had so long wished for someone to say, what he wanted his soulmate to say, only to come out of the person he hated most.
“What would you know about love?” Madara shot back sharply.
For a single moment, Tobirama paused.
Then he grimaced, and returned his glowing hands to work, “I think a little bit, at least.”
Madara wrinkled his nose, “And this peace? What is that for? Hashirama?”
“Of course.” Tobirama replied.
“You’re a monster.”
“Of course.” Tobirama replied.
The body in his hands sat cooling. The remaining elders stared into endlessness, awaiting a dream from Madara.
“Don’t you have any empathy?” Madara asked.
Tobirama looked down at him cooly, “Is that what you needed me for?”
And Madara supposed it was not.
The night passed summarily, and soon Tobirama rose from Ako’s perfectly still body where she slept below. Nobody could have guessed her dead then. She looked so small, and Madara wondered again if he really needed to kill her.
Had there been another way?
Madara imagined there was. Looking at Tobirama, he knew there was. He knew somewhere in that unfeeling brain of his, there were thousands of possibilities in which peace proceeded on smoothly. Madara could not see any of them. All he could see was war, and violence, and violence to stop war, and war for peace. A house of cards at best, flint over sparkpowder at worst.
“Take her home.” Tobirama said.
“I should burn her,” Madara didn’t answer, “I should burn her.”
“Burn her when she dies, Madara.”
“I am a monster.”
“Grow up,” Tobirama snapped and rolled his eyes, “I am under no pretense that you are holding to our deal out of any honor, or duty, or god forbid any fondness for me. I placed a bet because I knew that you wanted peace, or at least would be willing to try. I am not a fool Madara, you are not like me. You are not alright with war. A disaster? Sure. Pathetic? Most definitely. A monster? Ha! You don’t have the talent.”
And Tobirama turned to leave, as swiftly and suddenly as he came.
In the end, Ako ‘died’ two days later. They burned her body, they mourned her, and nobody was any the wiser.
—
Another clan joined the village.
There had, of course, been talks about it happening. Madara had never really expected it to actually happen. Who in their right mind would move into a growing powderkeg? Who’d risk that with so many sparks?
But then suddenly they were watching a caravan of Sarutobi enter the village. Dozens of horse drawn carts pulled their luggage - their lives - with them, as they moved into their newly constructed district. Children played in the streets, music played, drinks shared.
A festival was held that night. Madara couldn’t remember a thing about it. All he could recall was Tobirama sipping sake, eyes cutting analytically over the festival.
Almost apathetic, without an ounce of surprise.
And the clans kept coming.
In the next two months, the Shimura, the Yamanaka, the Akimichi, and the Nara joined as well.
And suddenly there were clan children playing in the street, all manner of background. Different clans… playing together.
Suddenly, the village began to look like a village. Tension, terrifying anger and fear still remained. But the village grew. It grew faster and stronger than anyone could have predicted. Hashirama was hastily made Hokage, and a council was created from the clan heads. Elders found themselves with less and less power for politics outside of their clan. Things changed like swiftwater, unpredictable and erratic, so fast you got swept away in it.
Through it all, Madara could not take his eyes off Tobirama. He could not forget the blood on his hands, the secrets of Madara's soul that he somehow seemed to know, and that blinder-bound determination forward. Devout to peace to the point of destruction.
—
“What is this?”
Madara slammed a stack of papers down on Tobirama’s desk. The man in question caught his shaken pot of ink before it spilled, and looked up at Madara with a tired expression.
“That is one way to ask a question, I suppose.”
Madara scowled, “cut the shit. Explain this to me.”
Tobirama glanced down at the stack of papers, and then backed up at Madara.
“This is a village plan. Basically how this works is it outlines-”
“I know that!” Madara growled, “What is it about?”
Tobirama nodded solemnly, “My condolences, I was not aware you couldn’t read. These are plans for the Academy, which you may note have already been approved.”
Madara let out a scream of frustration. He flipped through the papers hastily, his sharingan activated, until he reached the right page. When he did, he jabbed a finger into the paper and glared back up at Tobirama.
“This! Explain this to me!”
Tobirama looked down. Madara was pointing at a line reading ‘integration of cross-clan professors’.
Ah.
“This is a new revised draft, pending approval, actually. As stipulated below the line you’re currently trying to stab your finger through, it would mean that the teachers in each class would not need to be from the clan of the children being taught.”
“When you proposed the idea you said it would be up to the clans to decide who taught their students.”
Tobirama shrugged, “Is it not? The clans will vote on this, and teachers will be subject to review.”
Madara’s eyebrow ticked, “You implied that meant we would have professors teaching their own clan’s children.”
“Oh, yes, I did,” Tobirama admitted freely, “but that was during the opening pitch of the academy, and it was when an elder was grilling me over clan separation..”
“So?” Madara needled.
“So, I lied.” Tobirama stated blandly.
The paper underneath Madara’s hand caught fire.
Tobirama summoned water with a flick of his hand and put it out.
“Those will have to be reprinted, you know.”
Madara flared angrily, “Do you seriously think you can just lie to people to get your way?”
Tobirama, seemingly done with listening to Madara, picked up his pen, cleared the sooty water off his desk with a single hand seal, and returned to working on the copious paperwork that had built up.
“It has worked so far, has it not?”
“You fucking-”
Tobirama glanced lazily up at him, “Integration means closer ties between our clans, it means more knowledge crossover, it means covering historical weaknesses with another’s historical strengths, it means forming bonds, it means children making friends who bear a different last name. Integration strengthens us. Isolation separates us. Isn’t emotional connection a major tenant for the Uchiha? Look at it through the eyes of that. And besides, they’re only teaching the basics. Clans can still teach their clan children supplementally.”
Tobirama rolled his eyes, “Connecting our clans is worth lying for - plans will change as they develop, it's how they work, and it’s easier to make those more radical changes when the ball is already rolling. If I need to lie, or cheat, or manipulate to get us to the starting line, I will.”
Tobirama huffed, “I am playing politics here, Madara, even if you hate it. Besides, at the end of the day, it still comes down to a vote. So vote against it if you think the idea is bad, rather than the fact you’re mad because I lied about it.”
Madara glowered at him.
Tobirama smiled venomously, “But you won’t, will you? Because you’re not a fucking idiot.”
One day, Madara would kill him.
—
“Interesting move!” Senju Kameyo exclaimed, peering closely at the shogi board.
Tobirama hummed and sipped his tea, “I learned from the best.”
Elder Kameyo was an old woman. Greyed hair, withered face, once piercing green eyes that had long lost their shine and grown over with cataract. She was the Senju chief strategist before Tobirama had taken over. She had once been Bustuma’s right hand woman.
She waved a hand amicably, “oh please, you flatter me.”
She placed her own piece.
Tobirama smiled gently, but did not respond. He took his turn, a wooden piece clacking onto the board.
“It really is a shame your talents are wasted here,” Kameyo mused, “you were always my best student. Lord knew I tried to teach that brother of yours, but he couldn’t ever get it.”
Her clouded eyes trailed slowly over the board.
“What moves people,” she drawled, voice dropping in volume, “what brings them down… He could kill just fine. He didn’t know how to destabilize, how to dismantle, how to destroy…”
Tobirama laughed lightly, “he has always been a little thickheaded, hasn’t he.”
“Just like his father, I swear! Bustuma didn’t have the mind for strategy. None of his children did either.”
Tobirama looked up through his lashes, smiling slyly, “please, give me some credit.”
Kameyo faked a gasp, “oh of course I didn’t mean you! You know I cherish you too much for that. I’ll give Hashirama credit, the best thing he ever did was hand the war over to you. He could have never done it, peace loving as he was.”
Kameyo placed a piece, taking one of Tobiramas.
“He never knew how to press a victory,” she continued on, “it's a hard lesson to learn, isn’t it. It roils the stomach of some.”
Tobirama moved a piece. Kameyo took it too.
“Butsuma at least knew that much,” Kameyo continued, “he could press a victory like no other, fierce man. But I guess some traits are not genetic.”
“I suppose not.”
“I’m glad you inherited some of his ruthlessness, I knew you were his son the moment you first killed a man. Others doubted it, but I knew. You could follow in his footsteps. None of his other children had the stomach.”
“I have always dared to do what others have feared to,” Tobirama replied, “that has never changed.”
Kameyo regarded him coolly, “Of course, of course.”
“Lady Kameyo?”
Kameyo looked up at him once more, sharp green eyes sliding over Tobirama’s stone-like face.
“Yes?” she asked.
This time, Tobirama was not smiling.
“I forget, since it was not a problem during Hashirama’s command as it was in Bustuma’s. Remind me, how did we deal with deserters?”
Kamayo hesitated for a moment.
“We killed them.” she replied slowly.
“And traitors?” Tobirama furthered.
She could not keep the coldness from her tone, “Killed and burned.”
Tobirama hummed softly, “I am drafting the paperwork for an elite group of Konoha shinobi, directly under the Hokage’s command. The Anbu will be responsible for everything that other shinobi do not have the skill or mettle for. As someone who orchestrated the assasination or traitors and competitors to Bustuma’s reign, what do you think?”
Kameyo swallowed thickly.
“I am retired-”
Tobirama laughed, “Your claws have by no means been dulled, Kameyo! My teacher is far too clever for that.”
Kameyo looked down at the shogi board and Tobirama’s sparse pieces.
“You’re throwing the game.” she said softly.
Tobirama leaned forward, still smiling amicably. “Am I?” he asked
Kameyo was a smart tactician.
She knew what a sacrificed pawn looked like. Before her stood a very dangerous one. She wasn’t dumb enough to challenge a man who didn’t care if he lived or died. There were few things more deadly, more unpredictable than that.
When Bustuma had come to her all those years with the order to kill a young Hatake man, Kameyo had not thought about how far reaching the effects of one little death would be. Now, she finally understood. A vengeful Hatake ghost sat before her with his wolf fangs fully bared. She suspected his claws had been buried in her for far longer than she could have ever known.
Kameyo had always hated Bustuma - he was stupid, erratic, and emotional. His only positive trait was his pure loathing for the Uchiha and unwavering commitment to wipe their bloodline from the face of the earth. Now, she hated him even more. Somehow, the accursed idiot had managed to spawn the monster of his own destruction. Years after they had killed that poor Hatake bastard, Bustuma had somehow managed to sire a son who was only his in one aspect, blood.
In everything else, Tobirama was a nightmare of his own making.
And Kameyo did not need the brain of a master tactician to gather what he was insinuating, nor grasp the certainty of it.
She closed her eyes, and drew her fan from her obi, fluttering it in front of her face.
“Interesting move, Tobirama, very interesting indeed.”
Notes:
Yh so, even more politics. Holy shit I know this is supposed to be a romance but they hate each other so much ( I PROMISE THE ROMANCE IS COMING BUT I PUT THE SLOW IN SLOW BURN OKAY-)
Also forgot to put this here originally but here’s some art I did for the series
Chapter 4
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Madara had become very familiar with the smell of Konoha’s hospital.
The cream colored rooms smelled of mild soap and clean cotton, a sharp sting of distilled alcohol drifting just beneath. Between the patient rooms, Madara could catch the earthy scent of ground herbs and medicine wafting from where they made pills and chakra supplements.
Ever faintly, too, he could smell seal ink and old paper. Incorporating seal work into iryo practices had been entirely unfamiliar to the Uchiha, as well as the greater population of Konoha. But it had greatly helped the advancement of patient care.
If you’d have asked Madara anything about healing techniques not even a year ago, there wouldn’t be much he could have answered. He was too busy, too swamped by his duties to the Uchiha and his attention to the war. But now, even buried with paperwork as they all were in an ever expanding village, he made constant effort to volunteer at the hospital.
There wasn’t much he could do. He didn’t have the fine control or know-how for most of it, but if someone needed a chakra transplant then he was a ready doner. He could heat water to sterilize equipment and for washing bed linens, he could bring meals to patients, he could file paperwork.
If you’d have asked Madara a year ago if he ever thought he’d work in a hospital, he would have laughed in your face.
But now here he was, the clan head of the Uchiha, holding a cup of water to a patient’s mouth, coaxing them slowly to drink.
“Easy, easy,” he said, tipping only a trickle into the injured Yamanaka’s mouth. The man had been injured on a high ranked mission and came back with burn scars across his entire body. He could hardly move.
Madara had never had to treat burns this bad. They weren’t uncommon in the Uchiha, but only among children first learning to wield fire. Uchiha didn’t burn past that. Fire was their sword and shield, their birthright to wield, their gift from amaterasu. It could never hurt them, only protect.
It was disheartening to see the other end of that fire.
A man too blistered to even drink water on his own. Covered head to toe in clean bandages.
Unbidden, Madara began to think again of his soulmate. He was certainly not Uchiha. Had he, as a medic, seen men rendered to ashes before? Had he feared fire too? had he peeled bandages away from blistered and leaking skin? Had the enemy then been the Uchiha…
It was an open secret that the Uchiha Clan head had a soulmate.
Madara made no move to hide it. His marks stood out plainly on his face, stark red against his pale skin. Nobody ever mentioned them. In a way, it was treated as if he was grey-marked, since even though his marks were vibrant rose red, he had nobody standing by his side. He was alone.
So Madara foolishly kept volunteering at the hospital. Each doctor he spoke to, each nurse he worked with, each patient passing through the halls - he glanced down at their fingertips hoping please please please.
The water in the cup finished off, and Madara removed it from the man’s lips.
“Feeling any better?” he asked.
He realized a second later that was probably a dumb thing to say. He stared down at the bandaged man, too stiff to even move.
He cringed, “Sorry.”
“...s’…alright,” a rough voice from beyond the bandages replied, “...thank…you…”
Is this what his soulmate saw everyday? Is this what he treated and fixed?
Madara excused himself and walked out of the room.
“Working late again, Madara?”
Madara resisted the urge to groan and failed.
“Leave me alone, witch.” he grumbled.
To his disgruntlement, Senju Touka only smiled brighter, clapping him across the back heavily. Even Madara stumbled forward, noting to himself that Touka did not have an off switch for that earth shattering Taijutsu he had seen on the battlefield.
“Oh you know you love me.” she replied cheerily.
Touka volunteered at the hospital frequently enough, though Madara wasn’t exactly sure what she did. He never caught her ever doing anything productive, but she carried such an air of purpose and authority that no one really questioned it.
“Any luck with that errant soulmate of yours?” she asked.
Madara exploded, “not since the last time you asked, which, if remember correctly, was a fucking hour ago!”
Touka held up her hands in lazy surrender, “woah-ho! Cool it fire boy! I was just curious!”
“Why do you even care?” Madara snapped, “Or all Senju this tone deaf? No, even Tobirama doesn’t torment me this much!”
Something tormented flitted across Touka’s face, but she recovered quickly.
“It must be a main branch thing!” Hashirama has it worst out of all of us!”
Madara rubbed at his temples, his eyelid twitching, “I am beginning to wonder if that’s truly so.”
“I’m actually surprised Hashirama hasn't pestered you about this,” Touka commented.
“He tried, but Mito shut him down immediately. He’s been too afraid to bring it up since.”
“Thank the heavens for Mito,” Touka said solemnly.
Privately Madara could not help but agree. Mito was truly a godsend. Hashirama's chatter, much like Touka's strength, did not come in with a built-in off switch, and Mito was the closest thing they all had to one. Without her, Madara imagined he would be truly unmanageable.
Madara felt a pair of eyes on him and glanced over his shoulder to see Hyuuga Meiko watching him. He turned his attention back to Touka quickly.
Touka whistled lowly, “is that your stalker?”
“She’s not my stalker.”
“She sure watched you an awful lot for someone who’s not a stalker.”
“I’m a fucking spectacle, thats why,” Madara answered, “a clan head doing servants work in a hospital. Anyone would stare.”
“Yeah but she does so with a certain…” Touka searched for the word, “stalker-iness”
Madara sighed, “She’s not hurting anyone.”
“She’s not really helping anyone either,” Touka countered, “I mean, it’s clear she’s much better at diagnosis, real encyclopedia brain type, but first thing she did was transfer into the trauma unit. I mean she’s good but I wouldn’t have put her there.”
“Hyuuga are adept at eye treatment. Maybe even more so than the Uchiha, since the byakugan is present from birth. It's a good place for her.”
Touka grinned, “Never thought you’d admit a Hyuuga had more talent than an Uchiha.”
“It’s just a theory. Don’t fucking tell anybody,” he stressed.
“Yes yes.” Touka waved off serenely, “all I’m saying is that the woman could do with a little less intense staring and a little less devotion to her job. I mean, I get its standard procedure to wear gloves when working, especially in the trauma unit, but I’ve never seen her take hers off. I don’t know if it’s dedication or obsession.”
Madara did not know, nor did he particularly care. He shot Touka a look which conveyed such.
Touka made a big show of backing off, to the point Madara felt his eyelid twitch again.
Tobirama might infuriate him, but Touka could annoy him in a way that even the white demon could not match, no matter how much Madara knew he tried.
Madara felt a prickle on his back again, and he glanced back once more to see Meiko still staring at him. A shiver went down his spine. Maybe Touka had a point.
He moved to say as such to her, but she was already halfway down the hall bounding off to whatever it was she did next. He seriously had no fucking clue what she even did in the hospital.
He let out another sigh.
—-
“Tobirama!”
He heard a loud bang as his front door was thrown open. Forcibly. He sighed to himself, he was going to have to replace the lock. Again - just like every other time Touka visited.
He walked down the stairs, and found Touka already making herself at home, rifling through his cabinet. He saw her pull a face as she searched the drawers.
“Seriously? Don’t you have anything good? One bag of roasted soybeans. What are you, ninety?”
“I like to stay simple,” he replied, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, and boring.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s sad is what it is,” She rolled his eyes, “You used to complain that konpeito was too sweet when we were younger.”
“They’re literally made out of pure sugar.”
“That’s what happiness tastes like.”
“You sound like Hashirama.”
“Ew, don’t compare me to my weird tree cousin,” she plopped herself down at his dining table, taking the soybeans with her and happily munching on them.
“For someone who doesn’t like my selection in food you seem awfully content to eat it anyway.”
“Uh-huh. And that's a problem, how? Last time I checked you don’t pay me to do all these extra jobs, so your house is my house, and your food is my food.”
He sighed and sat down.
“ Wo~ow” she drawled, “You’re not even going to offer me tea? Gosh, I do all your evil bidding and get nothing except stale roasted soybeans and the cold shoulder. Goes to show how much you care! I don’t know why I even like you anymore.”
A somewhat mangy cat hopped up onto the table, letting out a broken chitter.
Touka surged forward, smiling.
“Awww, little Masayoshi! Who wants pets? You do!”
Her hands descended on the poor creature, petting him with a fierceness that made Tobirama reminisce to when he had been smaller and Touka had done the same thing to him. Pulling at his cheeks and throwing him around however she wanted, cooing all the while. That had ended rather abruptly the moment Tobirama learned how to throw a punch, and then it had just devolved into impromptu spars at any time in the day. However, unlike him, Masayoshi seemed to enjoy Touka’s assault, meowing happily.
Tobirama sighed, “you know he’s not supposed to be on the table.”
“What place does a servant have to tell her lord where the edge of his land resides?”
“Masayoshi isn’t a lord.”
Touka smiled, “and this is why he likes me more than you.”
Tobirama reached out to run a hand across the cat’s rough back, to which Masayoshi preened into appreciatively, before hd deftly pickied up the creature and set him promptly back on the floor.
“Run along,” he instructed as Touka whined.
“I don’t understand why you must be so stiff about everything!”
“I am not stiff,” he protested.
“Tobirama, all you have in your house is some roasted soybeans, furniture that came with the place, and a cat that you named like an old man.”
“It is a perfectly respectable name.”
Tokua looked dubiously at him, “sure.”
“Touka…” he rubbed his temples.
“Fine fine, I’ll get on with it or whatever” she huffed dramatically, “The hospital is running smoothly. Some of the doctors have a serious stick up their ass and use improper technique out of pride, but Shizuki is doubling down on them. Oh! And the Uchiha medical leader, Nozomi. She’s one kick ass lady, I’ll tell you that much. She and Shizuki are like two peas in a pod.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking in the info. He would have to pass more legislation for strict medical rules. Some clans still practiced techniques that were harmful than helpful, and if Tobirama heard about one more Hyuuga bloodletting he would seriously strangle somebody. If Shizuki didn’t get to them first.
“You wouldn’t have to thank me if you just did the inspection yourself,” Touka pointed out.
Tobirama paused, only for a brief moment.
“You know I can’t be seen around the hospital.”
“Your reasons are bullshit.
“Touka, nobody wants to see the person who killed their cousin in a place that is supposed to be about healing.”
Touka frowned, “Tobirama, you don’t have to isolate yourself because of what you did during the war, we have all killed before. Even the medics.”
“I wasn't just a foot soldier,” he glanced away, “I was the one leading it.”
“And the one who stopped it.”
“That has never mattered to anybody.”
“Then make it matter!” Touka exploded, “So you’re fine using all of your time and energy to carefully manipulate everyone into putting aside their ancient feuds, but can’t spare the moment it would take to let everyone know you’re not some sort of monster! Tobirama, you control the narrative! You know you do!”
“Exactly,” he replied sharply, “I use my status as it is, Touka. People fear me, and when it’s right, I use it. I’m not some sort of tree hugging pacifist, that has never been my job. Hashirama plays that role. Hokage - kind, considerate, uniting, selfless. We need both the carrot or the stick, and I am fine being what people are afraid of. I don’t need to be revered, I just need to be effective.”
He sighed, rubbing again at his forehead, “That’s why I left the hospital after I established it. I needed them to associate our healing with me, as a weapon. They needed to see us giving up our arms, and look, now they’re slowly sharing theirs. But that was all I needed. I don’t need to be there any longer… disturbing people.”
Touka scowled, “Why are you so resigned to unhappiness.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he returned, “I’m getting everything I want.”
“Well I’m not!” Touka shot back, standing angrily. Her chair clattered to the ground and she slammed her hands down on the table. She looked down at him, fuming.
“Do you have any idea why I ever wanted peace?” she demanded.
He frowned, “You enjoy it just fine.”
“That is not the point Tobirama!” she shouted, “I don’t care how I feel right now! That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about why I even considered it back in the first place, all those months ago when nobody thought peace was even possible, back when we didn’t even entertain the idea at all. Back when you were wearing those stupid gloves and starting planning for all this! So go on, ask me why.”
Tobirama sighed, folding his hands neatly across each other and not looking at his older cousin. He was a strong man, but he wasn’t strong enough. Touka had never let him be. She found the faults in his armor and drove a chisel firmly into them. She never let him know peace - or rather never let him resign himself to war.
Didn’t she understand he was doing it for her. For her, for Hashirama, for everyone. He was one person. If one person couldn't be happy where everyone else could, then what did it matter? That was practically statistical perfection. He could ration that imperfection out by rounding up the smallest of decimals.
Who cared, at that point. The math checked out all the same.
“Why?” he relented.
Touka looked at him heartbroken.
“Because I knew it was the only chance for you to be happy, Tobi.”
“I am fine, Touka.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I have everything I need. I have you, I have Hashirama,” sort of, some part of him whispered. Whenever Hashirama remembered Tobirama existed and galavanted away from his sparkling job and checked in on his little brother, “I have what I set out to do. Work I care about. I have enough.”
“You could have more.”
Tobirama could not live in a world where that was true. It would destroy the thing he had forced himself to be, and he had spent far too long crafting the machine he was to destroy it for nothing. For having more. Who needed more - there was enough, and enough was all Tobirama had ever known his entire life. If he ever experienced more, then he did not doubt it would kill him.
“That would just be selfish.”
“It would be human.”
He tried to make a joke, laughing, “Then we are in agreement that it is wholly unnecessary.”
It didn’t land. Touka frowned. He felt cold, somehow, under her intense gaze. Not the good kind of cold that left you numb and wanting nothing, but the kind of cold that dug its claws deep into you and reminded you just how wonderful it had been to once be warm. Tobirama felt the fake smile on his face slip off slowly.
“He loves you, you know.” She said suddenly.
Tobirama felt as if the floor had been swept out from underneath his feet. He carefully kept his breath from hitching. He did not flinch or tear his eyes away from Touka. He looked at her steadily and did not let himself feel anything anymore. Banished the cold, banished the warmth. Banished the thought of more. More was carcinogenic, corrupting him slowly from the inside.
Touka smiled, knowing she had hooked him. She continued on, leaning forward with gleaming eyes. Hope - she wore it like an armor.
“He’s looking for you. He walks around the hospital like an idiot, doing menial, stupid tasks in the hope he’ll find you there. You should see him! He boils water to clean bed linens! The Uchiha Clan head helps empty bedpans, who would believe it? Nozomi and Shizuki have bets on how long he’ll keep lurking around. Both of their guesses are in the double digits - and not in months, in years. He’s looking for you, Tobirama. He’s relying on you.”
Defenseless, he replied, “He hates me.”
Touka’s eyes softened, “He loves you.”
“He loves his soulmate,” Tobirama doubled down, “he loves someone he doesn’t understand. Everything I’ve done to him, Touka, that’s the real me. I saved him because I thought I could manipulate him. I manipulated him because I knew we could have peace. He thinks his soulmate saved him while I’ve only bound him to the yolk.”
“He could love you.”
“I don’t deal in dreams, Touka.”
“You brought peace,” she shot back, “and I remember a time where that was only a dream in the minds of idiots.”
“You really don’t understand,” he stressed, “he hates me. He’d rather see me dead than alive.”
There was a reason Madara had agreed to their deal, and it was not the kind of requirement demanded between lovers.
“He’s an idiot,” Touka rolled her eyes, “He loves his soulmate. But he loves this peace. He loves the hospital. He loves the academy. He loves Konoha. Those are all things Tobirama, not his imaginary idea of his soulmate, did. He loves you, and he can learn to love Tobirama too. If only you’d let him, kiddo-”
“Touka, please…” he cut in, “drop this. I don’t want to hear it.”
“What? The truth?”
“Stop it. It's your truth. It’s maybe even his, but I wouldn’t care if it was. It’s not mine. I don’t care if he can love me. I don’t care if he does. I don’t give a damn about him.”
He spoke with measured, cold calmness.“I don’t give a shit about being somebody he likes. I’d sooner ram a blade through my own heart than hand myself over to him - what does he know about me? Who cares if he's in love? He’s chasing phantoms. I’m not stupid enough to think I can ever fit the caricature he’s invented. I’m not pathetic enough to want to.”
“Tobirama that’s not what I was implying-”
“I don’t want to hear it.” He repeated, “Touka, I don’t love him. It’s as simple as that.”
“He’s your soulmate.”
Tobirama sighed.
“And have I ever wanted one?”
“You’re destined to be together.”
He shook his head, “So what of my mother? All she got was a brush of skin, and that man was dead shortly after. Some destiny . What me and Madara share is nothing resembling love. Perhaps in that way, I resemble my mother. Their love went nowhere.”
“But they tried.”
“Then they were fools.”
Touka was silent for a second. Eyes wide and sad, face slack. Senju did not grieve the same way the Uchiha did, impassioned and fiery. They grieved long and lasting. They grieved like they rationed out every ounce of pain and evenly distributed it across the rest of their days. Touka had been grieving for him for a long time. Perhaps since the very first day he drew breath.
Quietly, like a whisper to herself only, she repeated, “he could love you.”
Again, Tobirama sighed.
“I love you, Touka. I don’t take your love for granted either. But Madara and I don’t love each other. We never will. And the only tragedy that could be derived from this is if I were foolish enough to believe we could. So I will not. I will not love him, and he will not love me. I was built for this, Touka. Now,” he continued, “The hospital. Tell me more. And leave Madara out of it.”
And she did. They sat and talked quietly into the night. About logistics and numbers, about cold, clinical things. Like that, Tobirama held himself together. Fortified the walls Touka had almost broke down. Took that cold, creeping loneliness and turned it into a blizzard. Into something so cold you forgot what warmth was. So you couldn’t dream it, let alone desire it.
Touka bid goodbye hours later.
Then Tobirama was finally alone, and left to his empty home. He did not cry. He did not allow himself to feel. He could live on little, he knew that. But even the practiced kind of starved could not live on nothing. Slowly emaciating himself until he was withered into nothingness.
And when nothingness consumed him, he imagined it would feel like that endless, furious blizzard. One he could get lost in, where nobody would find him, where he would find nobody, and he would never again have to think about too little, or enough, or god forbid more.
Grey, and cold, and alone.
Behind his shut eyelids, he could see his father again, as he did every time he closed his eyes. His father with his snarling face, and his heavy fists. He saw them hit his mother, crack quickly across her face and send her to the ground. He saw himself, learning how to heal just to be able to fix his mother again and again. In the dark he was there again, welding back together a fractured orbital, hands glowing green over spans of purple bleeding skin. There as his mother stared at him with empty eyes, seeing a man who supposedly looked like him. There as his mother stood above an unmarked grave she had built in secret. There again, as his father hit him, for not being what he should. There as his mother hid from him, for being too similar to what he shouldn’t.
There, again, standing in the darkness before all the promises unfulfilled.
Then he slid his eyes open, and looked down at his bloody hands, where beneath the seals he knew marked skin rested.
Looking at what he had looked at his whole life - another promise that would never fruit.
Terrified of less, terrified of enough, terrified of more. Scared of it all.
In a way, Tobirama hoped Madara would cut his neck, even if he succeeded. Konoha would live on but well…
Tobirama liked to think of it as wiping down the tables, putting the chairs up and flipping the open sign to closed. Packing up shop. Going home. Finishing, finally finishing, his job. Blowing out the lights and locking the door shut for the next person to pick up.
But first peace. First work. First, Tobirama had to give everything he had so that one day, he would have nothing. Only then, would he fulfill a promise. Peace. And maybe, if he could dare to wish for something beyond nothing - something that didn’t scare him, he could wish for an unmarked grave of his own, where maybe Hashirama would visit when he had the time or when he remembered his once little brother. And he would think fondly back to someone who sacrificed their everything for him.
And that could be enough.
—
“Are you okay, Sensei?”
Tobirama shook himself out of his daydreaming, looking back at Kagami. The boy had paused his katas, now staring at him with a concerned look.
“I’m fine, Kagami. Why?”
“You haven’t corrected my form in the past five minutes.”
Tobirama raked a cursory eye over the kid. He hummed and realized that he had indeed been negligent. It wasn’t like him to space out, much less during a lesson. He would have to work on that.
“Shift your back leg up about two inches. Your center of balance is off.”
“It feels fine.”
Tobirama walked over to him, and pushed lightly on the kid’s shoulder. Kagami toppled over in an ungainly heap. He blinked up at Tobirama, bewildered.
“Huh.” the boy said.
“Do you see what I mean?”
“I apologize, Sensei.”
Tobirama chuckled lightly, “don’t apologize, just fix it.”
Kagami scrambled up and got back in stance, shifting his foot into the proper position this time. Tobirama gave him a light shove again, and this time the kid stayed upright.
“See? Much stronger.”
“Thank you.”
“How is your lightning release progressing?” Tobirama asked.
“Okay, sometimes I lose focus and zap myself.”
“Focus overall is something you must work on.”
Kagami groaned, “I know…”
Tobirama huffed and ruffled his hair, “it will come Kagami. It just takes time.”
“I wish it didn’t.”
“Then it wouldn’t feel as rewarding when you do finally get it.” he reasoned.
“Yeah,” Kagami whined, “but I would also be able to do a perfect lightning release.”
He laughed, “You make a fair point, Kagami.”
He smiled down at his student, feeling pride well in his chest. Kagami had progressed at such a rapid rate, solely due to his hard work and excitement to learn. Tobirama could not help feel immense joy at seeing the boy grow.
“Now,” he said, “show me that lighting release. Let’s see if we can hack it.”
—-
“So you're creating what’s essentially an assassination corps.”
Tobirama glanced behind him at Madara, who was following him close behind through the halls of the Hokage tower.
“Well that’s now how I’m marketing it” he replied dully, “and the ANBU will do more than just assassination. But in essence, yes.”
Madara let out a bark of taunting laughter, “and what happened to not killing your way to peace?”
Tobirama resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“I will not feign ignorance and assume the ANBU will never be put into use, but there is some truth in the idea that their mere presence will discourage any insidious behavior. It is as much a bloodless measure of prevention as it is a clean way to dispose of those who did not heed my warnings.”
Madara looked disgusted.
Tobirama raised a single brow, “Really? The ANBU, out of all I’ve done, is what distresses you? You’re really grasping at straws. There are many things about me to dislike, Madara, you don’t need to invent reasons.”
Madara’s frown somehow grew increasingly deeper.
“You know people would like you more if you weren’t such an asshole.”
“I know. Believe me Madara, the image I curate of myself is deliberate.”
Madara made an incredulous face, “You want to be an asshole?”
“Feared is preferable but I can’t control how people process their emotions.”
“And you’re just okay with being hated?”
Tobirama shrugged, “I’ve lived long enough to grow used to it. And besides, would you not benefit from the ANBU as well?”
Madara’s face paled, before it turned dark with fury.
“You have no right to bring that night into this.”
“Don’t I? You were the one who came here to provoke me ” Tobirama shot back, “And if I recall correctly, I helped you then. I don’t require a thank you, just that you could attempt to see eye to eye with me. I’m not going to kill my way to peace, honestly, I’m not stupid enough to go on the warpath after working so hard to get off of it. But peace requires discipline and back up plans. The ANBU are just another aspect of that. They are assassins, yes, but they are bodyguards, informants, and protectors.”
“And what if they get out of your control?”
Tobirama actually had the audacity to laugh.
“They will be anonymous agents, Madara!” he shook his head, “How much political power do you think they will have? And besides, I will be keeping close watch over them, they will need a captain after all.”
Madara scowled.
“What happened to anonymous agents?”
Tobirama smirked.
“When have I ever bothered to hide anything from you? You’re in on all my dirty little secrets.”
For a brief moment, Madara felt himself flush hot. Perhaps it was just his rising anger, but Tobirama’s teasing voice, those lips curling into a sly smile, and the sparkling glint of mischief in his eyes did something to him. Suddenly, the distance between them felt much too far, and much too close. Madara couldn’t tell if he wanted to run away or to close the gap. With what, he didn’t know. He just knew he wanted to knock that expression off the white bastard’s face.
Suddenly, the image of his own lips across Tobirama’s own struck him. Biting harshly on that soft lower lip and drawing a cry of pain from the other man - his face shifting from that mocking tease into something surprised and desperate. Something where Madara finally had the control.
Madara changed from flushed, to sheet white, to tomato red all in a matter of seconds.
What on earth was he thinking!
To do that-! With Tobirama of all people?
Madara had a soulmate.
Slowly, noticing Madara’s expression, Tobirama’s face fell back into seriousness. Eyebrow’s lilting up with what was almost concern.
“Are you alright?”
“W-Why do you care!” he barked back, disappearing into his anger as a refuge.
“Wouldn’t want my co-conspirator to die from an aneurysm. I have more use to get out of you yet.”
Madara bristled, momentary embarrassment forgotten.
“Honestly, how do you get anything done when being such a blatant asshole?”
“Oh Madara,” - and Madara could not stand the way his name rested so frequently on Tobirama’s tongue. The way he languidly moved through each syllable as if savoring the way it made Madara grow redder and redder with anger - “I only do this to you.”
And well, Madara supposed that was true.
He had seen Tobirama actually doing work. He was calm, collected, poised and perfect. Utterly terrifying and cut through people when needed, but he knew where to smile, who to butter up and just how much honey to use when needed. Tobirama used his reputation like a well honed sword, used terror when it was necessary and was stone cold even when charming someone. But that's where it stopped. He never took a step further. Never did more than was necessary.
Never accounted for pride, never cared for his perception beyond how he could use it.
When people whispered “demon” or “monster” where they thought Tobirama couldn’t hear, he did not make any effort to correct them. Madara was certain Tobirama knew how many people scorned him behind closed doors. There was no way someone as meticulous as him wouldn’t.
But Tobirama never did anything about it. He let them see what they wanted to. He let them call him what they wanted to. He let them do whatever they wanted so long as it furthered his goals.
Madara did not doubt that if it was advantageous for Tobirama to die, it would not be Madara or Izuna, or anyone who would give anything to kill him lining up first to do the honors, but Tobirama himself.
Madara’s face slackened as what almost felt like dread dripped through him.
That was what Tobirama had agreed to, no? Wagered his life on peace. Tobirama had already put his life on the line for this.
“Why do you care so much?” Madara’s voice sounded small, even to him.
Tobirama blinked in surprise, taken aback.
“What?” he asked.
“I mean, why are you doing this? You didn’t have to, you could have very well killed Izuna but you didn’t. You could have used that to eradicate the Uchiha. But you didn’t. I just… don’t understand you…”
Tobirama frowned, “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
How quickly he responded shocked himself. Shocked Tobirama too, even though it could only be seen in the slightest movement of his eyes. But Madara had spent enough time with him to notice.
Tobirama chuckled lightly, “You really must not listen, I’ve told you a million times: I want peace.”
“That's not what I’m talking about,” Madara cut in, “I know that. It’s like your fucking mantra. I want to know why you care so much. And don’t you god damn lie to me. I deserve this much.”
Tobirama looked at him blankly for a moment. A beat passed. Two. Tobirama’s eyes flicked to the ground, then back up at Madara. Another second. His mouth thinned into a line. He drew a breath. Swallowed it. Said nothing. Silence stretched like an eternity.
Madara had never seen Tobirama hesitate this long.
Madara sighed.
“Nevermind.” he waved off, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I… Whatever. What did I expect-”
“My brothers died.”
Madara looked back up, shocked. Tobirama was not meeting his gaze. Staring off into a nearby wall, face visibly uncomfortable.
“What?”
“I had two younger brothers…ah, once... Kawarama and Itama.” Tobirama explained carefully, “They both died on courier missions before they even came of age. Kawarama was seven, he was long dead before we even found out. Itama was six. An Uchiha squad got him, but he managed to escape with a fatal wound. Held on for an hour before I got to him. He died in my arms.”
“If I had to guess,” Tobirama’s voice turned sardonic and cold suddenly, “I would say it started there.”
Madara was speechless. He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t expected Tobirama to actually answer. He had expected something cryptic or noncommittal again, or more likely nothing at all. Not that.
His first instinct was to comfort him, but that would be inappropriate. Those were Uchiha shinobi. Those were his family who killed Tobirama’s. His next instinct was to apologize. But he couldn’t. It was a war, and the Senju had killed just as many Uchiha. Even if he did either, he imagined Tobirama would not care, nor be comforted.
Instead, all he could manage was.
“How do you not hate us?”
How on earth did that push a man to peace instead of vengeance? If Tobirama had killed Izuna, Madara would have stopped at nothing to ensure Tobirama and his clan would be razed to the ground. He knew he would. It was madness, but Madara knew with certainty that if Izuna was dead he would welcome insanity with open arms.
And yet Tobirama, a man long dubbed as a warmonger, chose peace.
Tobirama shrugged, an action that seemed all to light for the topic at hand, but it was all he had to offer.
“If we had been at war with any other clan, my brothers would have died just the same. I have had years to separate my pain from my anger. War was what killed them, the Uchiha were only the vessel.”
The perfect saneness of it almost made Madara think of insanity. To detach yourself that much from pain to look at it logically.
Tobirama looked back at him and huffed quietly at the look on his face.
“I’m not a saint, Madara. I have not forgiven, nor forgotten. But Kawarama and Itama are dead. They have been dead for years. Nothing will - and no power can - change that. Vengeance only leads to more dead. And I am smart enough to avoid that irony.”
Tobirama shook his head, “I have not moved on in the slightest - only moved forward. That’s all.”
Again, Madara was left speechless. Silence returned, Tobirama looked back at him expectantly. Waited for him to find his words. Madara waited for that too.
“I couldn’t do that,” he managed.
“I know.” was all Tobirama replied. .
And that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? Tobirama knew him like no other.
Then Tobirama turned on his heel and walked off, as if their conversation had never happened, and disappeared into the halls of the Hokage tower without Madara.
And Madara was yet again alone.
—
“Do you think you would be able to kill them?”
“Thats a fucking cruel question to ask.”
Tobirama hummed, eyes skimming across the training field where Izuna’s students were sparring. The two Senju girls were sparring while Uchiha Yuko was cooling down in the shade after her last match. Tomoko and Kazumi traded quick jabs, working on what Izuna claimed was a severe lacking in their taijutsu.
“I think it is a fair one,” Tobirama responded, “They’re gennin now, aren't they? They should be going on their first missions soon.”
Izuna nodded slowly, “they finished their first D-rank yesterday. A rabid dog in the market. They’ll be facing some actual combat in I estimate one or two months.”
“If war were to restart, they’d be seeing the battlefield then.”
Izuna scowled, “You’re an asshole.”
“So I've been told.” Tobirama slid his eyes closed, buried himself a little deeper in his fur collar “do you think you could do it?”
A voice called from the other end of the field.
“Sensei! Tomoko used jutsu!”
Izuna called back, “Tomoko, this is taijutsu practice. Didn’t you tell me you wanted to show off how far you’ve progressed to Tobirama?”
Tobirama raised a brow.
Izuna shrugged.
“She told me you used to teach her and wanted to impress you. I’ve gotta say, from what I saw of her skills when I took her in, you’re not very good at this whole sensei thing.”
“I was not her primary teacher. Only supplementary when I had the time. Which was not often.”
“You were busy back then, weren’t you?”
Tobirama did not feel like humoring him.
“Of course I was.”
Izuna rolled his eyes, then focused back on his students, “Kazumi! Fix your fist, you’re gonna break a finger like that. And Yuko! Stop throwing rocks at those birds, you should be watching your teammates spar!”
Tobirama chuckled lightly.
“Don’t laugh” Izuna snapped, “They’re doing this on purpose. I told them to put their best foot forward today so I could brag. They like to embarass me.”
“You’ve done well with them Izuna.”
“Yeah yeah, laugh it up.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ve fought you for long enough to know what amusement sounds like in your voice.”
A genuine smile quirked on his lips.
“I see.”
Izuna looked at him from the corner of his eye. Privately, he couldn’t help admitting that when Tobirama wasn’t trying to be, he was actually half decent. Since taking on his squad of gennin, Izuna had been more involved with the academy and shinobi system of Konoha than he had even considered being previously. Though he hated to see it, they were good. Those things were more than good. And Tobirama had no small part in their establishment.
“How about one more rivalry?” Izuna suggested, out of the blue.
Tobirama tilted his head, “oh?”
“You bring Kagami over here one day and have him spar against my students. It could help them learn better than just working with me and each other. And then we can see who’s finally the best teacher and who is a massive wimp.”
Tobirama sighed deeply.
“So you know about Kagami?”
“I know that someone has been teaching him,” Izuna replied in lieu of answer, “and I can recognize your fighting style anywhere. Don’t worry, nobody else knows, and I won’t tell. Especially not Madara.”
“Why?” he replied, genuinely shocked.
“Because my brother has more than enough reasons to hate you.”
“I would never have pegged you as the type to defend my honor.”
“Don’t get it twisted,” Izuna scoffed, “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for him. I still don’t trust you Tobirama, but that’s my job, okay? It’s always been my job to figure out your latest scheme and protect my people from it. And it will continue to be. My job is to distrust you, to hate you, and to complain about you. Got it? Madara’s job is to do whatever he thinks is best for the Uchiha, and we both know he thinks that's peace.”
Izuna frowned, and sadness crept - only for a moment - into his features.
“And it might be ironic for me of all people to say this, but he hates you so much he can’t even be happy in peace. I mean, I never thought it could happen, in any capacity. I still don’t know if it will last. But he did. He does - maybe. But even now that he has it, instead of enjoying it he’s just miserable. And hell I know I’m part of the problem, I know that all too well… but I just wish he could be happy. I mean, his dreams - at least briefly! - came true. That's what anybody wants for their family…”
Tobirama felt that he had heard those words somewhere else before, but did not care to think about it too deeply. He couldn’t do that, because then he would start thinking about more, when he had committed himself to enough and to nothing at all.
And for the first time since they made their deal, Tobirama felt truly bad for what he had done to Madara. That maybe he had been too harsh… he didn’t know. He didn’t like the uncertainty of that. He felt… regretful that he may have pushed Madara too far.
Breaking the silence, he said “I’ll bring Kagami over sometime.”
Izuna smiled slightly but it looked forced, pained.
“That’s good.”
They turned their attention back to the field. Yuko had subbed back into spar, and now Kazumi was collapsed in the shade of the nearby alder tree. She said something which made Yuko and Tomoko laugh. Then joined in herself, laughing right along.
“I’d do it, you know,” Izuna said.
Tobirama looked over at him, and saw Izuna staring at his students with his sharingan activated and an expression of absentminded horror on his face.
“If war started back up again.” he continued, “For my clan. I’d do it…”
Then Izuna turned to Tobirama and his eyes returned back to dark and searching. He locked gaze with Tobirama, and Tobirama did not dare look away. Izuna, when he spoke, wore grief like a shackle.
“..but I would hesitate.”
—
It was about the fifth time Izuna had come home covered in bruises.
Madara knew that no matter what, he would be pissed off about this. There was nothing Izuna could really do, sans stopping, that would ever calm him down. And that was never going to happen, he knew that. It wasn't entirely Izuna's fault. However, his little brother certainly didn’t help. He didn’t even try to hide it, striding in through the front door sporting a fresh shiner and a smug grin. He practically peacocked his injuries, strutting around with split lips and bleeding knuckles and locking eyes with Madara with the clear challenge: what are you going to do about it?
Izuna was doing that just now, smiling at him from across the dinner table. Blood was dried on his upper lip from what had clearly been a hard hit to the nose. The brat hadn’t even bothered to wipe it away.
Madara sighed and set down Izuna’s portion in front of him before doing the same on his side of the table, sitting down also.
“You could at least act less smug.”
Izuna tilted his head like a panther gauging the distance for its pounce.
“About what?” he asked.
Madara sent him a withering look, not wanting to entertain him. He turned his attention down to his food, letting his chopsticks pick through the fish he had prepared them. Madara had never cared for servants making his food, despite how strange that was for a clan head. Instead, he liked the repetition and structure of doing it. It felt good to provide something like that for his family. It brought him closer to them.
He wondered when he had begun to start hating it.
Realising he wasn’t going to take the bait, Izuna took it another step further.
“Tobirama’s still as ruthless as ever. You would think being allies would make him tone it down a bit in a spar but no. Hell he almost took my head off today-”
“Izuna!” Madara shouted.
Izuna faked reproach, “I’m terribly sorry. I shouldn’t have reminded you of your trauma. My apologies.”
Madara looked at his brother searchingly, finding not much besides contempt and smug satisfaction from getting a rise out of him.
“I don’t get it Izuna,” his voice turned hard and mean, “You get mad when I fuss about you. You get mad when I don’t. What on earth do you fucking want from me?”
Izuna leaned forward over the table. His hand haphazardly knocked his chopsticks over, though Madara didn’t think he cared. Izuna wasn’t going to eat anything Madara made anyway. Not tonight.
“I want you to get the fuck over yourself already.”
Madara scoffed, “Oh? I’m the one who has to get over myself. I’m not the one who goes out and purposefully gets injured to flaunt it. I’m not the god damn one running around like an idiot parading how much of a hit he can take! You’ve made your point Izuna!”
“Then why don’t you fucking trust me!” Izuna hissed.
“I do!”
“No you still don’t!” Izuna shot back, “When I used to return from sparring with Hikaku messed up just like this you would fucking laugh. You’d push me around and tease me. You’d treat it like it was no big deal! Now you look at me like I already have one foot in the grave!”
“Hikaku was different,” he pointed out, “he’s our cousin. Not the man who has spent years trying to kill you! If it's truly a spar, then why must he be so cruel with it?”
“So you're insinuating Tobirama is a traitor to the peace?”
Madara balked, “no of course not!”
“Then why on earth do you think he’s still trying to kill me!”
“I don’t-”
“You act like it! And if it's not because if it’s not Tobirama, it must be me then.”
“That's not what I’m saying either-”
“Then what is it?”
Madara shot up, snapping, “I’m just trying to protect you! Why can’t you be okay with that!”
Izuna scowled, “Because I’m not a child, Madara. You can’t seem to get over that. Can’t seem to get over your stupid fucking fear. Do you know how much Hashirama trusts Tobirama? He practically entrusted this entire village to him. Name any major project in this fucking place and I guarantee he had a hand in it! Meanwhile you have to fucking fight me over taking a simple assassination mission! Do you know how many of the like I did during the war! I’d lost count!”
“That's ” he bit out, “not the same thing.”
Izuna raised a brow at him, “And how exactly.”
He didn’t know. It just was.
At his lack of an answer, Izuna scoffed.
“Yknow, for as cruel as Tobirama can be, at least he takes me seriously.”
—
When Madara reached the scene, there was so much going on that even an activated Sharingan struggled to catch it all.
He had been at the Hokage tower working when he was alerted to a growing scuffle in the heart of Konoha and had raced down as fast as he could. Should it have been a normal conflict, he would have left it alone to somebody else. But as soon as the assistant who alerted him had mentioned it was a conflict between a Senju and Uchiha, he leapt from his desk like blades were already drawn.
And knowing Uchiha and Senju, they very well could be.
Now here, he skid to a stop in the middle of the growing commotion, feet digging deep lines into the hard dirt ground.
A crowd had gathered and writhed in different tones of fury, confusion, and fear. In the center of the crowd, a Senju shinobi was clutching a hand to her cheek, while an Uchiha shinobi raged at her, screaming and attempting to get to her while three other people held him back.
“You killed him, you Senju bitch! You killed him!” screamed Uchiha Juro. Three tomoe spun in his eye, and he struggled against the hands restraining him.
The Senju shinobi, young woman of budding adolescence, had tears slip down her cheeks. There was blood on her skin, blood on her armor, blood on her hands. Madara did not know her.
“Please, listen to me, I did not kill him!” she sobbed back, her tears cutting a path through the blood on her flushed cheeks.
“He’s dead because of you! You killed him!”
“I didn’t- please!”
“You fucking bitch!”
Madara’s voice roared over the chaos, “Silence!”
The crowd in an instant quieted, and the Senju girl and Juro turned to him. He saw now that there were tears in Juro’s eyes as well, leaking from behind a darkened brow and a murderous face.
“Lord Madara!” he snarled, leveraging a finger at the girl on the ground, “Tomio is dead because of this witch!”
Madara stiffened, but before he could get in a word edgewise, the girl cried out.
“Lord Madara, please believe me! I did no such thing!”
Madara quelled his rising fury, and set it aside. Anger would do him no good.
“Tell me what happened, Senju.”
She hiccoughed a sob, “I was assigned on a mis-mission with Uchiha Tomio. We were ambushed by Wind shinobi, please, I did not kill him! He died fighting alongside me, not against me. Please, Lord Madara, I am no traitor!”
“Liar!” accused Juro, “You let him die! You killed him!”
“I did not!” she sobbed, “Please, I did not. I didn’t…” her frame shivered with gasped sobs, and she could no longer speak.
“Kill her Lord Madara!” Juro implored, “She killed our kin. She killed my cousin!”
At this point another Senju shinobi stepped forward with death in his eyes.
“How dare you!” he spat, and the ground cracked as his chakra grew.
“She deserves death!” Juro screamed, teeth bared and spittle flying from his mouth. A fourth person had to jump in to stop him from breaking loose as he yet again tried to lurch forward.
“Fukcing Uchiha dogs,” the Senju man hissed, “you can’t even control your own clan members. I knew we should have never agreed to peace with these mutts!”
“What did you call us!”
“We should have wiped your clan from the earth when we had the chance!”
“I’ll rip your fucking throat out!”
“Uchiha vermin!”
“Senju rats!”
The rest of the crowd soon began to join in, screaming at eachother and hurling all manner of insults. They were at each other’s throats, all a hair's breadth away from violence. Madara was used to being engulfed in violence, but not so much as being set apart from it.
There were, of course, other clans in the crowd beyond the Senju and the Uchiha, but fire country had long been consumed in their blood feud. Few clans had not been involved in some way. There were alliances centuries old, all divided by the constant war between the Uchiha and Senju.
Now, Madara registered the two sides beginning to separate and scream with a sort of numb horror. It became very clear for the first time, how quick peace could turn to war. How delicately it balanced on a blade’s edge.
How had he ever believed this could work, all those years ago?
How did Hashirama still?
The anger he saw before him roared like a great beast, rippling with muscles and bearing its teeth. This was not something a human could kill, this was not something that could die at all. It breathed in shuddered breaths and cried out with a mangled howl of thousands of voices. It burned with hellfire and all evil that had ever been - each jealous eye, each callous voice, each blade ever forged, each person ever killed. This beast seemed to look at Madara now, stood before him as a raging crowd and screaming voices, as a Senju shoving an Uchiha and an Uchiha about to strike them back.
Madara could feel its sulfur breath across his face, and could see the monster clearly now. From his maw dripped the blood of thousands of generations, and in its eyes Madara saw himself, he saw Izuna, he saw every human that had ever been.
How could Tobirama ever think he could overcome this?
Madara felt a great fear build in his chest, staring down that beast. He had never felt smaller. For fucks sake, he was a clan head. He could level mountains, he could defeat any foe. He had survived years of war, of mutilation and death and torture. But then, his hands had been on the reins, he had been using the anger, had been guiding it. The beast had been on his leash, and it had also been on the Senju’s.
In accepting peace, he let go of that leash. It was not his tool to use anymore.
For the first time ever, Madara stood face to face with hatred as his enemy. And he saw how easily it could consume him.
But amidst the chaos, his eyes fell on the crying Senju girl. She was a spot of glowing white and red in the center of darkened hatred. Her face in her hands, all alone in the dirt. She alone stood apart from The Beast.
As if in a dream, Madara moved through the crowd until he was kneeling at her side.
Her voice, drowned out by the roar of the crowd, was just barely audible.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into her hands.
Madara held back the part of him that was inclined to side with his clan. The part that would willingly brand this crying girl a murderer and never think twice.
“Why?” he asked instead.
Her eye’s emerged from her lowering hands, red rimmed, and a beautiful blue.
“If I had been stronger,” she said, not really seeing him, “if I had only been stronger. He wouldn’t have died.”
Those were not the words of a murderer.
“Why care?” he replied apathetically, “You are Senju, he was Uchiha.”
Now she looked at him, “I was supposed to be his comrade. I’m only alive because he died. If I had been stronger, if I had only been stronger…”
She repeated those words to herself like a mantra, rocking back and forth on her shins, apologizing again and again.
And somehow, the crowd began to quiet.
Eyes began to turn to her, and restless hands began to still. Voices quieted, and people looked to the Senju girl.
“If I had only been stronger…” she sobbed.
Her voice was quiet and small, but as the other voices faded away, she could be heard by more and more. Madara watched in still amazement as the screaming subsided, and he - along with the rest of the crowd - looked on at this girl with amazement.
“If I had only been stronger…”
The crowd seemed to register it, as Madara had.
Those were not the words of a murderer.
Where had The Beast gone? Madara did not know, but it had bowed its head slowly, and shrunk from that girl like a wildcat shrunk from fire.
“Go home everybody,” Madara’s voice sounded foreign to his own ears, croaked out as it came.
Eyes turned to him.
“Go home,” he repeated, “You have already done enough damage. She did not kill Uchiha Tomio, that much is clear…”
He glanced up briefly, and saw The Beast still in them, but now it was hesitant. Even this could not kill it, even this… He shook his head.
“Just go.”
He did not know how long he remained knelt there in the dirt, only that everyone soon did as he said. By the time he looked up, even the girl was gone. The sun was beginning to set.
Across the now desolate street, a man with red eyes watched him.
“You couldn’t have stepped in?” he asked roughly.
Tobirama’s mouth was flat, “I cannot be everywhere at once.”
Madara hummed.
“You will fail. This peace will fail.”
Tobirama did not waver. He never seemed to. Steadfast, always.
“At least I will have tried.”
“And what does that matter in the end? My blade will meet your neck by the spring,” Madara promised, “nobody can tame hatred that deep.”
Tobirama only looked at him like he knew something Madara didn’t. For the first time, he smiled at Madara. Not scornful or sarcastic, but a genuine smile. Small, and warm, reaching his eyes. Without an ounce of hatred, that dark beast banished from the expression entirely.
It was almost pity. Pity that Madara could not see what those clear eyes could.
Most confusingly, it was almost fondness. A sort of pride. Tobirama, the man Madara would kill by the end of the year, looked at Madara like there was hope.
Hope Madara was somehow blind to, but that Tobirama was not.
He smiled down at him, from where hatred and hopelessness consumed his broken form, collapsed on the ground.
And he laughed.
“We’ll see, Madara.”
—
Madara thought about that smile for a while.
He realized that it disturbed him. To a shinobi, knowledge was survival. When you couldn’t spot the hidden blade, you died. When your opponent knew your moves, and you didn’t know theirs, that was it. Madara himself had never been a spymaster. He was too volatile and blunt for that, but he knew even that much.
He knew how much Tobirama hid. Anyone with half a brain knew Tobirama liked to keep his cards close to chest and didn’t let anyone see them.
Since their deal, Tobirama liked to bleed his hand to Madara. To smirk over his shoulder and flash the cards he had lined up, fully aware that Madara couldn’t do anything to stop him from raking in the chips. In some cases, Madara even helped him. Actually, he was sure that in all situations, Madara somehow helped Tobirama. He wasn’t sure how, but Tobirama never did anything without purpose.
But through all of it - what he knew and what he didn’t, he knew that Tobirama was dangerous. It was a constant as universal as gravity. The secrets Tobirama kept were sharp edged and dangerous - each one more deadly than a senbon to the throat.
Madara had always known that - had even grown used to it.
Now Tobirama had a secret that was soft-edged as a smile.
Ever time Madara thought back to that moment, he noticed something different.
The way the setting sun filtered through Tobirama’s snow white hair. The way his red eyes, which Madara always thought so cold, glowed like light streaming through an autumn forest. The way that smile softened Tobirama’s imperious face. The way his cheeks pulled up his geometric tattoos until they took on organic shape.
The way Tobirama thawed, if only for a second.
Madara kept revisiting the image. Trying to find some fault - the hidden dagger. The darkness. The danger.
And each time he failed.
It disturbed him. Or, rather, it left him off kilter. Like everything he knew about Tobirama was wrong.
The next day, he arrived at work early in the morning. He shook the fall chill off him as he entered the Hokage Tower. Winter was coming on soon. Releasing his chakra just the slightest bit, he rubbed warmth back into his hands.
In a way, he was excited for the winter. He looked forward to the first snow. Madara would never be the biggest fan of the cold, but he was excited to see clans children playing in the snow and to drink kanzake.
He finished warming himself back up and headed up to his office. He rose through a section of stairs and into the dimly lit hall on the top floor. Morning twilight had just begun to pour through the windows. As he shuffled through the hall, he noticed a light on in one of the offices. The door was just slightly ajar, letting out a sliver of warm candle light into the otherwise blue shadowed hall.
It was Tobirama’s office, though he knew Tobirama would never forget to blow out a candle. He was very cautious of fire.
Madara walked to the other end of the hall to peer into the office.
Unsurprisingly, he saw a head of white hair bent over the desk, hands working diligently through a intimidatingly large stack of paper.
Madara rapped his knuckles against the side of the door.
Tobirama looked up. He was not wearing his happuri, Madara noted. In fact, even his fur collar was discarded and hung across the back of his chair. Candlelight played warmly off his skin, glittering in his eyes.
Madara was hit with the memory of that smile again. What on earth had Tobirama been thinking back then?
“Madara, did you need something?”
Madara startled back into the present.
“Ah,” he said dully, “no. Good morning.”
“You’re here early than normal,” Tobirama noted. He reached for his happuri and fixed it into place. Giving it a tug, Tobirama’s fur slithered off the back of his chair and into his hands. Almost not even knowing he was doing it, the Senju snapped the clasps of the collar closed around his shoulders.
Madara could not help but notice how much the fur bulked Tobirama out. The other man was by no means skinny. He was a well muscled shinobi, tall and broad. Less built out than Madara, but not quite as lithe as Izuna. Not really big , but not even in the realms of being considered small.
But with his fur and face armor, Tobirama looked larger than life. Even just sitting there in the soft candlelight, he looked intimidating - or just that he commanded attention. That he was guarded.
Unbidden, Madara could not help but mourn the Tobirama who was there just a few seconds ago. He seemed easier to talk to.
“What are you working on?” he decided to ask instead of answering.
Tobirama sent him a brief look that Madara could not discern, then replied.
“I’m finishing up some logistic elements about the ANBU. We have a meeting about finalizing their establishment today and I want to make sure everything is done by then.”
Madara made a noise of acknowledgement, then picked up a few papers to glance through them. It was the pretty typical stuff, procedure, filing, budget. All that. He flipped through the pages, skimming the text. He came to a pause.
“You’ve already been approved as the commander?”
Tobirama had gone back to working in the meantime and did not look back up to answer.
“You know, those are classified documents. Hokage and involved party eyes only.”
“I’m your co-conspirator. Surely I deserve to know.”
He could have been imagining it but he saw Tobirama’s lips tick up ever so.
Madara’s eyes traced lazily over the document, “I’m just surprised it was so cut and dry. Was there no one else to consider?”
“I’m good at this sort of thing. Why leave the sea if you’re looking for fish? Besides, I’m one of the top shinobi in Konoha, and Izuna is busy with his new team.”
Madara’s eyebrows raised.
“You know about them?”
“I set it up,” Tobirama responded, “and even if I didn’t. I deal with all the paperwork whenever he and his trio of terrors rampage through Konoha. It would be impossible not to know.”
Madara leaned his weight against Tobirama’s desk. He sat there considering.
“He’s been a lot more tame once he started working with them, you know.”
Tobirama glanced up at him with a deadpan expression, “of course I know. Why do you think I did it?”
Madara couldn’t help but chuckle, “Yeah, you fucking narcissist. Of course that's it.”
“I never do anything unless it has a purpose.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Madara admitted, “otherwise you wouldn’t put so much effort into mocking me.”
Tobirama was silent for a second.
Madara didn’t wait for him to answer, shrugging, “I suppose we all need fun from time to time.”
“...you’re being awfully amicable this morning.”
“Maybe I’m just too tired to be angry right now.”
“Then I will have to look into ways to wear you out.”
Madara barked a laugh, “Was that a joke?”
Tobirama made that face he did whenever he thought Madara was being stupid. His face scrunching up ever so slightly. It was a genuine emotion that Madara realized he never saw Tobirama express with anyone else.
It made him wonder, who else did Tobirama let see behind the act? He knew that he was one of the few, but for the life of him he couldn’t name another. Not even Hashirama seemed to crack that iron mask Tobirama always wore.
“You’ve heard me make jokes before.”
“They’re usually more cutting,” Madara teased, “what? Did you run out of material?”
Tobirama let his unimpressed gaze rake over Madara, “as if you would ever cease providing ammunition.”
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
They fell into a tolerable silence. The sound of Tobirama’s pen scratching across the paper was the only thing to fill the room. Madara watched him out of the corner of his eye, and he held no doubts Tobirama knew. In the dim light, Tobirama’s tattooed hands looked almost black except in the very crux of the candlelight. There they shone as red as his mother’s roses.
He wondered why he created another weapon like seal storage when Tobirama must have known peace was coming. There didn’t seem to be any point.
“I hear you’ve been speaking more with Izuna,” Madara mentioned.
“I have,” Tobirama confirmed.
“About what?”
“His gennin squad primarily. But I help him get set up with some missions as well so he doesn't get bored.”
“Why do you care?”
Tobirama made that scrunched expression again.
“You know why.”
Madara rolled his eyes, “yeah yeah, everything you do is for peace. But you didn’t have to go that far. I think… he's fine now. Hell, I think that I’m the angry one half of the time now, and that was never how it used to be.”
“I apologize.”
“Don’t,” Madara cut him off, “You don’t mean it. And I don’t regret it either. It's hard to talk with you because it seems like every time we do, it’s because I sought you out for something you did. I start every conversation already angry. We’re always at odds. In fact, I think this might be the only fully civil conversation we’ve ever had. I think this will fail, Tobirama… But for now, I am glad it has happened.”
Tobirama regarded him silently, considering. Whatever gears were turning behind his eyes, Madara wasn’t privy to. In the face of Tobirama’s calmness, he smiled gently.
“Bet that’s something you never expected to hear from me.”
“No, at least not out loud,” Tobirama agreed.
“Because you drive me fucking insane, Tobirama. You make me mad like no other. And you do it on purpose. ” Madara reamed, then drew a breath, “but I know that you’re on the side of peace. And… and so am I. But you already knew that - that I believed in peace, or at least would be willing to try.”
Madara muttered the last part almost to himself, “Yeah. You knew that. Maybe before I did.”
“What inspired this sudden goodwill?” Tobirama asked.
That smile back then. What did it mean?
Madara frowned, “I don’t know, it won’t last.”
Tobirama dipped his pen into the inkwell, “Well I suppose that is a typical mindset for you to have.”
“Don’t say you disagree.”
“You may have a point, but only in this case,” Tobirama’s pen touched down on the paper. The ink blotted out in a large spot and Tobirama wrinkled his nose. He dabbed the extra ink up with his knuckle and continued with a slightly miffed expression.
“Peace won’t last.” Madara said, “You're a pragmatist, you must know that.”
“I do not wish to repeat myself.”
Madara sighed, “at the very least you’ve managed to get Izuna to settle down somehow. You never answered my question, by the way. Why on earth would you go so far for him?”
Madara could nearly see Tobirama think through different dialogue options before settling on his choice. Everything he did - planned.
“It would be a waste for someone as capable as Izuna to never see the battlefield again.”
Madara felt sparks of anger snap at the challenge.
“Don’t treat my brother like a fucking commodity.”
“I’m not,” Tobirama glared at him cuttingly, “I’m treating him like a person.”
“Quite the lofty accusation,” Madara returned, “Out of all you have implied about me, I must say this takes the cake. I care for Izuna. You know that, otherwise we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Of course you care for him. That’s obvious. But what you don’t do is trust him,” Tobirama’s voice was very monotone, like a professor might drone through an especially boring lesson, “He’s a capable shinobi. We both know the only reason I was able to get the jump on him last time was in exception to his skill. Not because of a lack of it. Anyone would have lost to that jutsu the first time around, even me, even you. And now, you baby him.. You treat him like he might trip and fall on his own blade. Like a child. ”
Madara bristled, “My being worried for him is not me babying him.”
“Madara,” Tobirama set down his pen, shooting him a withering look, “why on earth do you think I’m telling you this?”
Tobirama never does anything without a purpose. The golden rule Madara lived by in order to survive him.
When he didn’t respond, Tobirama huffed.
“You care about him. Stop letting that be a wedge between you two. One man’s shield is another’s cage. You should think about what he wants. That's why you fail, Madara. Because you can't dare to imagine a world different from your own - or you have simply forgotten how to.”
Madara didn’t have a retort, just building pressure behind his ribs.
The sun had continued to rise as they had talked, and now the first rays of morning slipped through the window in Tobirama’s office. Beyond the glass, Madara could see lights in the village begin to flicker on as the sleeping city awoke.
He almost felt mournful.
He and Tobirama could only be like this when the rest of the world was away. He didn’t know why it was. Maybe it was something in their blood. Something about them that had to repel against each other so fiercely. Privately, Madara knew he had a large part of the fault in it. He started most arguments, he was temperamental and impassioned. But Tobirama bit back with the sharpness of a winter gale. Madara knew it was intentional, how upset Tobirama made him - the man had even confessed it once.
Though Tobirama had mentioned, softly as one would whisper a conspiracy against one’s self, that it was not all he was intent to do.
Why Tobirama did anything was a mystery Madara could never hope to uncover - but he wished he could. If not only to finally demask the man, but to understand him. To sate his sudden need to know that always out of reach why.
Madara had caught glimpses of the real Tobirama before. The man without his armor and without his fur. The man who looked with an untold fondness towards children. The man who grinned wryly when he teased Madara. The man who had looked shocked when Madara had once apologized to him. The man who had smiled.
Madara exited the office briskly.
When he returned a minute later with an extra chair and writing set, Tobirama looked at him with a question left unsaid.
Madara sat down and pulled a portion of papers off the massive stack Tobirama was working through. He did not say anything. He had found that between them, words only cut. And Madara knew sometime in the future, they would cut again, but he could not bear that moment to be now.
So together as the sun rose, they worked.
—
The ANBU meeting proceeded without much fanfare. Tobirama had worked too hard and planned too long for any other outcome to have occurred. They mostly sat around the table approving things and making minor adjustments here and there. Nothing of actual substance. Soon enough, they were filing out of the meeting room with a satisfied air like they had done anything at all.
Madara watched Tobirama leave and wondered what project he was leaving to complete next while everyone went home and congratulated themselves on a job well done.
He almost moved to follow him, but a hand grabbed his arm before he could.
“Madara, can I talk to you for a minute?” Hashirama asked
He cast one glance back at Tobirama, then returned to Hashirama.
“What is it?” he asked.
Hashirama watched warily as the rest of the council left the room. Only when the door finally shut with a soft click did the Senju clan head let out a sign of relief and turn back to Madara with a lopsided smile.
“Sorry about that. It’s just something that I can’t have unwanted ears being privy to.”
Instantly, Madara was on guard. Hashirama wasn’t exactly the conspiratorial, plotting type. He had all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop.
“What is it?”
“It’s about the ANBU,” Hashirama admitted, “I just wanted to run some things by you… privately.”
Madara felt some of that tension seep out of him, replaced by a bone deep tiredness.
“Hashirama I have already spent the last few hours making my opinion on the ANBU perfectly clear. I voted in their favor, did I not? Between Tobirama’s frankly obsessive plans and the inane levels of detail we insist on arguing over during these meetings, I would say there is little left to be said at all.”
Hashirama made a pained expression, and Madara suddenly felt with some pride that despite how much Izuna had teased him about his lack of a poker face, he would always be better than his friend.
“I know, I just…” Hashirama let out a breath, “I just wanted to make sure you were absolutely honest, you know? Like, listen I understand that something is going on between Tobirama and you. I see you two arguing far too much for it to be simple work acquaintances, but don’t let him bully you into his ideas if you don’t agree.”
Madara blanched.
When Hashirama didn’t get an answer, he sighed.
“I don’t want to speak ill of my own brother, but that's what he does, you know? There’s no way to say it nicely. He can be so cruel to get his way. I am aware of it, Madara. It’s why he’s hated so much.”
Stupefied, Madara managed, “...he does that for you.”
Hashirama’s face fell into something heartbroken.
“I know.”
Tobirama had made Madara feel a lot of things before. Anger primarily; Fear as well; hatred and loathing; wariness and paranoia; frustration. Each one carefully massed and measured by Tobirama himself before delivered promptly to Madara’s hands. Furious and terrified, yes, but calculated and controlled.
Tobirama had never made him feel sad. And sad in his place at that.
Stiffly, Madara replied, “is that all?”
Not catching the hint, Hashirama barreled on.
“No. Another thing. Because I know you two are at odds so much I wanted to ask your opinion on something. My current appointment for the ANBU commander, well, it’s Tobirama.”
It wasn’t anything Madara didn’t already know, but he still felt himself go cold. Shockily though, it was not at the mention of Tobirama’s name, but because Hashirama had said it.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, “Isn’t this classified? What input am I supposed to have here?”
“I just wanted to see if you wanted someone else. If there would be someone more suited and less… well you understand.”
Madara did understand. He didn’t understand why Hashirama was agreeing though. Madara could hate Tobirama - that was fine. It made sense. But Tobirama had given everything for Hashirama. For his dream. For peace.
And what he was repaid with was scorn.
Distantly, old words echoed through his mind.
“Nobody will ever forgive Senju Tobirama.” ‘And no one will ever thank him’
Not even his own brother.
“You want my honest opinion?” Madara started, suddenly angry, “That position is going to fucking destroy him. Maybe not on it’s own, but with everything else he does it will. He cannot live fourty fucking lives, Hashirama. He cannot be your support in the council, your advisor in the war room, your boots on the ground, your structure, your plan, your goddamn sword and shield. He will destroy himself. Nobody, not even Senju fucking Tobirama can do all that and survice.”
Hashirama physically jerked back in surprise, both at Madara’s tone and his words.
“Since when do you care so much about Tobirama?” Hashirama challenged.
Good question.
“Since when have you stopped?”
Hashirama looked like someone had gutted him.
“Don’t say that to me. I have never stopped-”
Madara cut him off, “Then why are you so intent to let him destroy himself?!”
The other man didn’t reply for a long time, staring at Madara with hard eyes but a tightly cinched mouth, clearly lacking the words.
After two long breaths of time, Madara snapped.
“Well?”
Hashirama finally unwound slightly, just enough where he could speak, but with tension still thick in his voice. As if every single word took considerable effort to say.
“And what am I supposed to do Madara? It’s what he wants. It’s what he had always done.”
“What kind of a question is that? You stop him!”
“Nobody can stop Tobirama!” Hashirama screamed back. He gupled a breath, calmed himself, and continued, “Madara, he will let people tear him to shreds far sooner than he would ever consider stopping. It’s who he is, and god knows if I could go back in time and somehow stop whatever made him like this I would. God knows if I could make him stop right now I would do it in a heartbeat. But I can’t. Because it’s what he wants to do.”
Hashirama scowled, an unwelcome expression on his normally bright face.
“Do you know what he said to me the night after he almost killed Izuna? He said it was fine because you wouldn’t be angry at me, you would only be angry at him.”
Somehow, that seemed entirely in character for Tobirama and at the same time upheaved everything Madara thought he knew about him.
Hashirama sighed, face still dark.
“It’s what he wants, Madara. I can’t do anything about that.”
Madara stared unrecognizably at his friend. In the entire time he had known Hashirama, he had never seen the other man give up. From skipping rocks, to holding on to the dream of peace through years of bloodshed. Hashirama persevered. He kept hope that he could somehow change the world.
And yet he stood entirely unconvinced he could do anything for his brother.
“This,” Madara hissed darkly, “is what I hate about Senju. You always fucking give up.”
Before Hashirama could respond, Madara began to storm out of the council room. He heard Hashirama shouting his name, but Madara did not care. He wrenched the door open and strode past.
As he slammed the door shut behind him a dark thought crossed his mind.
And I have given up too.
—
Tobirama caught Madara about a minute after he rather explosively left the council room, catching briskly up to Madara’s stomping pace.
“Mind telling me what that was about?” he demanded.
“No.” Madara replied gruffly.
“I think I deserve to know why you stormed out on Hashirama like he killed your dog. This is a partnership. And when somebody flies off the rails in a way I can’t predict, I need to know why.”
Madara threw a disbelieving, angry look back at him.
“Do my ears deceive me, or did I do something that Senju Tobirama could not predict? I think I would revel in this more if I didn’t give a shit about humoring you right now.”
“What did he say to you, Madara?”
“I don’t have to tell you. Shouldn’t you be off to the next little project anyway? Don’t you have a village to create?”
“I stayed behind because I was worried-”
Madara whirled around on him, “Worried about what Hashirama might do or worried about what I might!”
Tobirama stared hard back at him, “Surely I am not obliged to answer.”
“You have never refused before. What’s different now? Isn’t this a partnership?”
Tobirama scowled, disbelieving that he even had to explain this. Honestly, working with Madara made him want to tear his hair out on occasion. He was just so volatile! He took a calming breath and started again.
“I tell you everything because I know I can trust you Madara. Because I understand you. So forgive me if I don’t want to share now that you are acting erratic.”
Madara laughed breathlessly, but in a way that did anything but imply good humor.
“Erratic? We want to talk about erratic? What about you? What on earth is fucking wrong with you. I just don’t understand! Why are you so okay with everybody just fucking using you? Why don’t you have any god damn pride? Why are you okay with everyone hating you? Why do you incite it? And I swear to god, Tobirama, if you answer ‘peace’ then our deal is over! Damn the consequences!”
Tobirama staggered back, for once giving up ground that he usually held on to with an iron grip. He opened his mouth, but a soft voice cut him off.
“Ah, excuse me…”
The pair looked over. Well, Tobirama looked over, Madara more whipped around with murder on his mind.
A small Hyuuga woman was standing in front of them. Her hair was long and tidy, gloves covering her delicate hands. Tobirama thinks he had heard about her, from Touka’s reports of the hospital. She was one of the medical shinobi working in the ward. From what Touka had offhandedly mentioned she was a good learner and very talented, if not a little strange. He tried to recall her name, but failed.
Madara, meanwhile, had no such problem.
“Miss Meiko,” he said tersely, clearly forcing his tone to be gentler than he would like it to be at the moment, “me and Lord Tobirama are currently discussing something.” Some tension left his shoulders as he forced himself to regain a modicum of civility.
“I know!” she rushed to explain, panicked, reaching out one gloved hand towards him before retracting it nervously, “I just…I finally built up the confidence and I would like to talk to you.” She shot a suddenly venomous glance at Tobirama, then specified, “alone.”
Well, Tobirama didn’t exactly want the conversation to go on anyway. Taking the exit, he began to excuse himself, “I will leave him to you then.”
“No,” Madara snapped, “You stay. We will finish this conversation after Ms. Meiko has finished her piece.”
Meiko jumped in, “I really think it would be better if-”
“He will stay.” Madara said firmly.
Tobirama resisted the urge to sigh, turning expectantly towards Meiko, who had begun to frown. He hoped in some part, it was communicated that he did not wish for this outcome either. Meiko did not seem to share any sympathy.
“Very well then,” she conceded delicately. She cleared her throat and turned her expectant gaze up to Madara, “Lord Madara I have something to confess. I was too shy for a long time, and it has weighed down on me heavily, but I think it is time for me to finally come clean...”
Tobirama raised his eyebrows as the Hyuuga woman grabbed the edge of her gloves. There could be no way… Ha, surely not! As if to answer in the contrary, she began to pull her gloves off.
“Please understand, I didn't mean to deceive you.” she continued, “I simply needed time to gather confidence.”
Sick horror lanced through Tobirama as Hyuuga Mieko finally pulled her hands free, letting the gloves fall to the ground and holding them proudly forward for Madara to see.
On her forefinger and thumb, her pale skin was stained red.
Tobirama suddenly felt cold terror in a way he had not felt in almost a year. That same, ice-blooded fear as when he had first washed his hands free of blood and found marks he could not smudge out.
He had known, for a very long time, that what he was doing to Madara was unkind. It had become evident, as Konoha began to grow, that Madara cared for his soulmate with a ferocity anyone could see. And anyone could see just how painful Madara was to be alone, just how much it destroyed him to be without one who supposedly completed him.
Tobirama knew that keeping it from him, even if he did not reciprocate, was a spiteful thing to do.
However, this was just cruel.
Hastily, he turned to look at Madara and froze as soon as he did so.
He had expected stupefied awe, shock, some heart melting, gushy in-love look. He found none of that.
Madara looked furious.
—-
In retrospect, it was bound to happen eventually.
Madara was a powerful figure. He knew that. His status carried with it a lot of privileges and a lot of burdens. As a clan head, and not only that, but an Uchiha clan head, his power was rivaled only by the Senju clan head and the Daimyo himself. It was a throne full of prestige, respect, power.
It made sense that people would take any opportunity to try and seize that. Madara knew that. He knew to expect that. It was par for the course.
Still, he could not help the way pure, unadulterated fury crashed over him like a tidal wave.
Madara had been mad before. He had killed in fits of anger before. Killed the enemy, killed allies, killed his own kin. But never, in his entire life, had he felt anger as he did now. He felt his skin flush hot and then blizzard like cold. A deep pit formed in his stomach and his body grew heavy with intent that built and built.
The Hyuuga was saying something, but he didn’t care to hear.
He didn’t even realize his sharingan was on until he realized she had not moved in what felt like minutes. He stared unblinkingly at her fingers for what seemed an eternity. It was nothing so simple as grease paint or a henge, those things the Sharingan could see through with ease. It was something deeper, more properly embedded in the flesh. If Madara didn’t have any memory of that night in the blizzard, he might have even been inclined to have believed her for a moment.
But he did remember. And if he didn’t, that belief would only last a minute.
He had spent enough time observing the marks on his face with absolute clarity, and could pick apart the mistakes in her disguise by the hundreds. The stain too hard in some areas, to soft in others. So close to what was real but wrong just enough to make him feel disgusted.
It was a pitiful imitation.
Glacier slow, he slid his gaze up to her face to see what rested there.
She was looking up at him with poorly veiled greed and admiration. Between that, in the slight crease of her brow and clench of her reddened fingers, fear.
It made Madara sick: this mockery.
Distantly, he registered Tobirama looking at him. He didn’t even bother to look back.
He was going to kill her.
But before he could do anything of the sort, a hand shot out and grabbed the Hyuuga’s wrist firmly in it, wrenching her forward without any pretense of gentleness.
Tobirama leaned forward, an anger Madara had very rarely seen decorating his face.
“Seal work,” he remarked tersely, “Clean as well. Who helped you do this, was it an Uzumaki?”
Meiko tried to jerk back, but she could not manage to free herself from Tobirama’s grasp.
“M-Madara!” she cried, “Make him stop!”
Madara couldn’t move. Couldn’t even dare to breathe in that moment.
“Miss Hyuuga,” Tobirama said coldly, “You have no right to ask for the help of a man you are trying to trick.”
“I’m not trying to trick him!” she shouted, “Madara! Get him off me! He’s hurting me. He’s hurting your soulmate!”
Robotically, Madara loosened the muscles in his jaw until he could finally form words again.
“You are nothing of the sort.” he whispered.
Tobirama glanced unreadably back at him, then continued, “Good eye. Well done seal work is remarkably good at mimicking a soul mark.”
“Don’t believe him Madara! I’m your soulmate! I swear! What reason do I have to lie-”
“Miss Hyuuga,” Tobirama reminded sternly, “You have committed a crime and caused great offence to a clan head. If I were you, I would stay silent and try to preserve as much dignity as I could. Make no mistake, there will be consequences.”
She snapped to Tobirama, face twisted in fury, “You can't prove anything! I’m his soulmate! Just because you don’t believe me doesn't mean it’s not true. You can’t prove it-!”
Tobirama took his free hand and with a thread of chakra drew a couple glowing couple symbols into her arm. In a moment, the red on her fingers began to fade.
He looked altogether unimpressed, “Can’t I?”
Meiko’s face rapidly turned pale.
“I must say, whoever did your seals must have been foolishly confident in their ability to fool a Mangekyo Sharingan user, they made these seals visually marvelous but altogether… well, just weak. Pitiful.”
Tobirama leaned over to hiss in her ear, “Pathetic.”
Meiko looked back at Madara, a modicum of hope shining in her eyes. She began to shout his name, but stopped halfway through as she registered the look on his face.
If Meiko had looked scared before, then she looked downright terrified now.
Two guards rounded the corner, and Madara belatedly realized that Tobirama must have called through them via a ping of chakra. He had been much too out of it to notice.
Similarly, he wanted with an almost removed interest as Meiko was summarily dragged away. She did momentarily try to put up a fight, but with Tobirama and two others surrounding her, she did not stand a chance.
The last he saw of her was her tear streaked face and screaming voice as she disappeared around the corner.
And Madara was once again alone.
“Madara?”
Well, except for one person.
Madara looked over to Tobirama, anger somehow long gone, replaced by exhaustion. And sadness. The drowning kind of sadness, the tar like kind.
Tobirama wasn’t looking back at him, his eyes fixed firmly forward. Back to the coldness Madara had long been acquainted with. The man seemed to know though, as he continued, blank and controlled as ever,
“Are you okay?”
Madara’s mouth moved before he could stop it.
“No.” Not in the slightest.
Tobirama’s mouth thinned into a line, betraying whatever emotion he was trying so hard to hide right now.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said slowly.
It was not with anger or sadness, but again that deep seated exhaustion that Madara replied, “Why do you even care?”
It felt as if he had asked that question to Tobirama hundreds of times now. Always met with the same answer. Yet he kept on asking, again, and again, and again…
“Because what she just did to you is cruel,” Tobirama answered firmly, “And I care enough about you to understand that. Don’t ask me for more detail, or another 'why', because I don’t have it, Madara. Sometimes people just care.”
Madara felt his eyes widen somewhat.
At this point he really should stop being surprised by Tobirama. As a shinobi, he really should take more offense that it had happened so many times. However he couldn’t help but feel sad. So god damn sad.
His head fell into his hands where he held it for a moment before looking up at the ceiling and blinking back tears. To his surprise, he felt a hand touch his back in a comforting gesture. To his greater surprise, he didn’t push it away.
A tear slipped from his eye, and he let it, but he would be damned if he sobbed in front of Tobirama.
“I just… feel like I’m alone in this shit sometimes. Who am I fucking kidding, I know I am. So desperately, obviously alone that somebody thought they could use it. Try to fool me with some makeshift lie and smile like I would actually fall for it. So fucking alone somebody dared try. ”
Tobirama hummed and seemed to mull this information over. He opened his mouth to speak, and for a second Madara regretted ever giving the bastard anything on him, full with certainty that Tobirama would make a usual cutting remark.
But he did not.
“I promise you, Madara, you’re not alone.”
Tobirama was still looking away, gaze fixed as always on some far out horizon that Madara could never dream to see, but despite it, his voice was present, and solid, and comforting. Tobirama did not often make promises he could not keep
He began, “I am a lot of things, and I will do a lot of things. Things you will not always like, in ways you will not like, and I am sure this has colored your opinion of me. I am, as you’ve seen so yourself, sly, manipulative, and merciless in my pursuits. But know this, at the very least: I will, out of all I do, never lie to you.”
That hand left its place on Madara’s back, and he foolishly mourned the loss of it.
“I am on your side.” Tobirama said with finality, “You are not alone, know this. That woman was a fool. A cruel, idiotic fool to think otherwise... I’m sorry I can’t be a better person. I... wish I knew more to say than you're not alone, and that I'm sorry. Truthfully, I believe it is all I have to offer, so I will. Madara, I am always on your side. ”
Madara found himself in utter disbelief.
“Always?”
Tobirama looked at him from the corner of his eye.
“Well unless you do something absurdly foolish.”
Madara almost welcomed that practiced indignant sort of anger as it filled him. It at the very least chased the exhaustion and the sadness away. Filled it with something solid.
He chuckled quietly, in better humor yet still morose “You’re an asshole.”
Tobirama smiled slightly, “I am truthful, though, am I not?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Tobirama chuckled, low and soft. It was not an unpleasant sound.
“I think we’re both hypocrites, Tobirama.” Madara suddenly announced.
“What do you mean?”
“We both hate quitters,” he explained, then laughed somberly, “but I’ve given up on peace, and you’ve given up on really ever living. What each of us believes in, the other seems to scorn. Perfect, mirror opposites.”
“We do make quite the disastrous pair, I suppose.”
Madara muttered a quiet ‘yeah’. Two real fuck ups. He looked on forward through the twisting hallway of the Hokage tower. For once, he felt his vision fade a little from the presence, and see something beyond just what he had seen before. Maybe this is what it must be like to live as Tobirama, never moving on but always moving forward.
“I might be tired of being a disaster.” he admitted, “I think I might want to be something more. Haha…What do you say, Tobirama? Do you want to stop being disasters?”
Tobirama laughed softly back.
“Madara, I don’t think I know how.”
They chuckled quietly to themselves.
Perhaps this is what Tobirama’s smile had meant back then, Madara thought. Just hope. Without a reason to have it other than simply having it. Existing just to exist. Just to believe in something that could overturn hatred, and form bonds, and maybe, just maybe, save somebody.
Madara didn't know. But he knew he was real fucking tired of being alone. And he thinks Tobirama might be too.
Notes:
More politics and they've started to stop hating each other so much. Progress B)
Merry (early) Christmas. It's like tomorrow close enough.
Okay 3 things.
1. ELLIPSIS MY BELOVED
2. I was teaching my older brother how to use ao3 (this was against his will btw) and we were on the random tag search when he found the tag "inanimate objects"
To quote him, "inanimate objects? Isn't that in every one? Shouldn't that be the biggest tag. Fuck it, I'm going to write one of these and just tag it 'words'" and yknow what fair.
3. so know that bit where I describe Tobirama "bleeding" his cards to Madara. So like, I've heard that as a saying for accidentally showing your cards when playing a game, like,,, my entire life. But I do this thing where I type out a common phrase and then start working like "what if I actually made this up and I'm crazy" so I google it to be sure. This is the FIRST time I have seen absolutely NOTHINg pop up (besides card printers talking about ink or something). Like there's really just nothing. Checked in with some friends to see if I was crazy and they all confirmed it was a phrase but why is it NOWHERE on the internet????
Anyways yh.
I realize I don't really leave many notes on this fic so you guys have no idea what my personality is like but *smacks end notes* here it is. Tobirama and Madara are not the only disasters here.
oh and I guess a fourth thing I wanna write like two other fics for these two. One like a gladiator sort of thing and the other one is like gay vampires (are there straight vampires???? Is that a thing??? wait Edward I forgot. (but like the scene with the most chemistry in that entire series was the tent thing between Edward and Jacob so idk...(see, ellipsis my beloved))) I just gotta finish this fic. That's gonna take,,, a while.