Chapter Text
“He’s gone too far this time, Hashirama-sama.” The one who had spoken, old and wizened with a twisted leg that had kept him out of battle for decades, shook his head slowly back and forth with the grave air of a man passing judgment. “Too many times has he offered flimsy excuses for the things he does and too many times have you given him more leeway than he deserves. He cannot hide behind your familial bond any longer. This transgression cannot be borne in silence.”
Closing his eyes and breathing deeply, Hashirama let it all back out as a heavy sigh. This was all happening so fast. It felt like he was drowning under the waves of what was happening around him. One moment his day had been perfectly normal and then the next one of the elders had come to him bearing evidence of a crime they had witnessed with their own eyes.
“You’re right,” he admitted softly, though it broke his heart to do so. “Surely there is nothing he could possibly say that might excuse this.”
“Sometimes a clan head must make hard decisions that others cannot,” the other man, Elder Hisao, reached out to pat him sympathetically on the arm. At his side, another of the elders sniffed delicately with her nose in the air.
“We understand that this may be painful for you,” she told him. “If you do not wish to deliver the news we will of course bear that burden in your place. Such a situation must be handled carefully.”
Hashirama shook his head, unable to believe it had come to this. “No. I should face him myself, he deserves that much after everything. But…perhaps it would be best if I had the council at my back for this. If I am alone I know he will sway me from my decision.”
It would be easy, too. His brother was clever and capable of being quite sneaky when he had the patience for it. They both knew each other’s weak points all too well and Tobirama had proven in the past that he was not ashamed to use those weaknesses to get his way if he deemed something important enough for a little guilt-tripping.
“There are none of us who are not weak to the ones we love,” Hisao agreed easily, cementing his decision that he was right to ask their help.
If Hashirama were not so distracted by the devastation he felt over what Tobirama had done he might have recognized that they were all being just a little bit too sincere, a little bit too sympathetic. He might have stopped to realize that everything Tobirama had ever done was always rooted in solid reasoning with good intentions for the clan as a whole, never in malice for those around him. If Hashirama had been given time to think after hearing the news he would have been too calm to be manipulated by the elders like this.
But he wasn’t calm. He was indignant and hurt and so, so angry in a way he had experienced only a few times in his life. The last time he had felt this betrayed he had been only twelve years old and mourning the loss of a friendship he was never supposed to have, angry that his secret had been exposed and that daddy’s little soldier had followed orders where he himself refused them. No orders had been broken this time but no orders should have been needed. This wasn’t the sort of thing he should have to tell someone not to do.
Hashirama was holding back tears when he nodded once and murmured, “Send for Tobirama. I will speak with him now.”