Chapter Text
The office was dark and he was alone in the building. A single candle burned by his elbow as Hashirama stared at the elongated shadows on the far wall. There was more paperwork for him to do. It was never-ending.
In this silent secrecy, Hashirama allowed himself to unwind. Be honest.
He was just so tired… tired of building, of supporting, of holding together this beautiful, infinite dream by his fingertips. It felt lonely. He missed dinners with Tobirama. He missed drinking with his cousins. He missed a thousand things he’d taken for granted. Hell, he even missed arguing with his brother. All he wanted right now was to look up and see Tobirama in the doorway saying anija, stop slacking off, in his nagging, loving way.
His sudden bout of loneliness was unreasonable, of course. His clan was waiting for him. His brother would be back in two days and he’d pick up right where he left off, pecking Hashirama until he couldn’t remember why he missed him.
This loneliness wasn’t because of them. The source wasn’t the loss of family or the lack of company, it was just… it was just…
The wind outside howled and wood creaked. Hashirama looked at his window even though his senses said there was nothing there. The sharp spike of hope inside his chest became painful.
The floors always creaked when Madara paced in the office. Up and down he’d go, thundering and stomping until the ceiling flaked on the shinobi downstairs, and Hashirama had to ask him to stop. That’d earn a snap from Madara. Hashirama would pretend to be hurt until he found the perfect thing to say and Madara would puff up in response until they both collapsed back into humor.
His absence felt like a hole in the world. It was in the exact outline of him and it was present in the way the air missed his voice and the trees always felt cold. He wanted to go back to when they laughed and argued in the same breath.
Nowadays, Madara was only angry. Always, always angry. His clever humor was gone. All the gentleness in him was gone or hidden. When they argued, it was for keeps and Madara no longer had compunctions about hitting below the belt. He knew how to turn words into knives and Hashirama couldn’t – wouldn’t – take it anymore from a man he called as close as kin.
Now there was just this silence – this awful, empty silence, devoid of warm fires and warmer smiles.
The darkness felt a little colder now. Hashirama closed his eyes.
“I love him like a brother,” he whispered to himself. He didn’t know when his attention wandered from his work. Suddenly weary, he buried his face in his hands. “I just don’t understand why he never felt the same way.”
Or maybe he did. Madara made no secret of his heart, not for one second of his life. When he was angry, he screamed his voice hoarse. When he grieved, his entire soul wept black and blue. Madara was so honest that it was uncomfortable. There was no hiding a man who wore his rawness like a wound.
It wasn’t difficult to see what was in front of him. Madara could be hard to read if you didn’t understand him but Hashirama knew better.
In another lifetime, where their lives lined up better and the timing was right, maybe he could have reciprocated the truth of Madara’s secret – to love him as he deserved to be loved. But they’d still been at war when he married Mito. That was how it always went: like their friendship had a leak that couldn’t be fixed and any goodness they had just spilled out. Their relationship was just a series of closing doors.
If he thought that telling Madara this would help then he would have done so long ago. But he wasn’t that naïve. Madara could move the world if he wanted to, he was so stubborn, and once he was set on a course of action, gods fell apart for him. Madara didn’t want to say anything and he was unwilling to listen. His anger would probably boil the oceans if Hashirama dared to tell him something that he didn’t want to hear and with the peace so fragile, could he really be selfish enough to force Madara to tell him what was wrong?
Maybe he had to. Madara would explode. He would rage. But Hashirama couldn’t watch his dearest friend destroy himself like this. He couldn’t stomach it anymore. He just wanted to help him – that was all he ever wanted.
It all started with Kagami’s arrival the next morning.
Nowadays, Madara sent Kagami when he wanted to communicate with the Hokage’s office. Hashirama got used to him and more importantly, he got better at suppressing his disappointment when the warm-fire-crackle chakra he sensed wasn't to be the one he wanted it to be. To his credit, Kagami was a sweet boy, respectful and diligent. He did his duties without complaint and he wasn’t afraid to meet Hashirama’s eyes.
Yet it still clawed at his soul to talk to Madara like this, exchanging cold letters like they were strangers. Where had their conversations gone? They used to be able to talk for hours without growing tired of one another. He remembered the two of them hiking up their mountain, being so engrossed in their conversation that dusk surprised them.
Where was that easy spirit, that effortless communication? Most pressingly, when had he lost it? Sometimes he wished he could go back in time and advise his younger self to savor these conversations while they lasted. It’d never occurred to him that there would be one cold day in which they ceased.
“Here you go, Hokage-sama.” Kagami handed over a letter. Hashirama took it from him and barely repressed his disappointment over how thin it was. Kagami left after he nodded at him and Hashirama carefully unfolded the paper.
This wasn’t even a letter. It was just a scrap that Madara scratched out some words onto. Hashirama couldn’t even tell if he was angry or sad. This was a snub. This was an insult. Madara dismissed him, dismissed their village, and a small part of him wondered when things would finally fully fall apart.
Everything in order. Don’t interfere.
In order? Don’t interfere? When had their settlement become this… this begrudging collaboration between reluctant allies? They’d vowed to each other to work hand-in-hand as brothers and equals. When they clasped hands on the day of truce, that’d been more than just the end of a blood feud. It had been a promise.
This wasn’t even close.
Hashirama crumpled up the letter, his mind made up. Enough was enough. He had hoped that over time, given space to settle, that Madara would temper his wild heart and come back in from the cold. But that’d never been the case with him, right? Sometimes he had to be chased down until he got tired.
Hashirama cornered Madara in his house. He knew the instant that Madara’s eyes flashed that he was going to walk into a firestorm. For a moment, Hashirama was beset by doubt. Did he want to do this? Fighting with Madara was hard. Each time they clashed, Hashirama walked away from it feeling drained, exhausted, sucked empty. It hurt to raise his hand against his friend and it hurt even worse when Madara got that unbalanced gleam in his eyes that said he planned to give it as good as he got.
“Get out,” Madara hissed.
He steeled himself. Sometimes the things that hurt the most were also the most necessary. “No. This doesn’t continue any longer.”
“Excuse me?” There it was again – that dangerous glint. Upon closer examination, Madara didn’t look all that good. The bags under his eyes looked puffier while his cheeks were thinner. It wasn’t as bad as when he’d been eighteen and carved out by hunger, but it came frighteningly close. “This is my home, Senju. You’re unwelcome.”
Since when, he wanted to ask. Since when did I become unwelcome?
“You’re avoiding me,” Hashirama said instead. “You won’t even look me in the face anymore.”
Madara glared at him defiantly. “I wasn’t aware that I had to present myself every day,” he snarled. Hashirama immediately wanted to shake him and demand that he stop doing the thing he did where he interpreted everything he said in the worst possible light. It was the most infuriating part of talking to him. Madara never wanted to back down or deescalate. He only hit back harder.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Hashirama replied. It came out harder than he intended it to. “Why are you doing this – punishing me for something I didn’t even do?”
That did it. Madara rounded on him with his shoulders squared and his lips pinched thin. “That’s how you see this? Punishment? Don’t act so childish, Hashirama! This isn’t about you –“
“Yes, it is.” Hashirama stepped up to him. Madara took a step back. He wasn’t dumb enough to think that it was because of fear. “This is exactly about me. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be running away.”
“Running away -!” Madara’s chakra flared angrily. “You think I would ever run away from you? You?”
The contempt stung. Hashirama forged on. “I know. What you’re not telling me. I know.”
The air left the room. Madara went bloodless. For a split-second, Hashirama genuinely thought he would attack him. The tension stretched until it could no longer. The floorboards cracked as Madara’s anger erupted.
“Get out!” he screamed, throwing the nearest thing on hand. Hashirama ducked the vase. It exploded against the frame of the screen door, a hundred pieces skittering all over the floor.
“Madara, please –"
“You fucking come into my house,” he seethed, his teeth bared into a snarl, “you come in here and you mock me –"
“That wasn’t why!” Hashirama ducked the table that he threw. “Madara, just listen!”
“I have listened enough! Leave!”
His temper hit its limit. Hashirama clasped his hands and the wood of Madara’s home shortly followed. Roots wrapped around his arms to stop him from throwing any more things and when Madara thrashed, Hashirama squeezed tighter. He wouldn’t hurt him but he had enough of talking and being shouted over.
“Let me go –"
His finger twitched. Madara made an angry noise around the root that grew over his mouth. But he didn’t create the Susano’o or even burn anything, so Hashirama had to count himself lucky. He pushed him deeper into the house to finally get this out of the hallway.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” he began once they were seated. Madara was still restrained but he’d stopped struggling as soon as Hashirama put his foot down. He'd resorted to glaring at him through his thicket of hair. “I want you to just hear me out for once.”
Madara snorted.
His hard-won reprieve stretched out like taffy. Hashirama felt gummy-mouthed for a moment, a little surprised and yet not at all that Madara relented. They danced like this a lot, the two of them. Madara ran away and Hashirama followed. Madara fought and Hashirama won. Then Madara gave in.
He despaired at this cycle. Every time it started anew, he despaired a little more.
Madara’s home was the same. He comforted himself with that. This could still be fixed.
“The village needs both of us – and I need you, Madara. I can’t do it all alone.” He thought about this coming here. What he’d say – what he needed to say. For most people, he found the right words to turn aloof detachment into budding camaraderie. With Madara, it was always a guessing game. What comforted him today could incite him tomorrow.
“You can’t hide away like this anymore – barely talking to anyone, not even talking to me… our dream can’t survive if it’s only me. This needs to end.”
Madara was silent. The bright burn of his chakra died down to dim embers, still hot but no longer so dangerous. Hashirama let the Mokuton go. For a long time, Madara said nothing.
“Please, I –“
“…what did you mean when you said you knew?”
“What?”
“You said you knew.” Madara met his eyes. Hashirama didn’t flinch from the sight of his Sharingan. “What do you mean?”
His mind raced. He’d come here for a purpose – to finally do something about the growing chasm between them before it grew too wide to bridge. But to make up one’s mind was one thing. To do was another.
He looked at Madara. Something in his face said that he already knew what he meant. He was only asking for confirmation.
Hashirama grew a little gentler. Despite everything, he cared about Madara. There was no argument bad enough or silence long enough to make him stop caring. “I know about how you feel,” he said, trying to soften the blow as much as possible. “About me.”
Emotion flickered across Madara’s face. It disappeared quickly but Hashirama was used to catching his quicksilver thoughts.
“How long?” he rasped.
“…not that long,” he said. But he had to look away to say it. The child he knew had been bright and playful. For each other, they’d kept their claws sheathed. Only time and growing up taught Hashirama how to peer deeper into his soul and find the vast jagged peaks and valleys of his heart. Madara felt intensely about him, that’d been clear since he got his Sharingan. But the meaning of that intensity only became apparent to him when it was too late to do anything about it.
“Don’t lie to me,” Madara hissed. “How long?”
“Since we were boys,” Hashirama reluctantly admitted.
The bluster left Madara. He leaned back, somehow smaller, and Hashirama wanted to reach out and tell him it’s okay, this is fine, please don’t look like that.
He didn’t. He knew how Madara reacted to sympathy. It was too close to pity for his pride to take.
“That long?”
“Yes.”
Then a silence fell, an awkward do-nothing silence where Madara didn’t look at him and Hashirama wished he would. He wanted to take action. Reassure him, maybe. He liked reassuring Madara, liked the blazing hot surety in his eyes when he looked at him – when Madara looked at him that way, nothing felt impossible. He wanted that back.
“Madara –“
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Madara said jerkily. He curled inward, his black hair slipping over his face, hiding him, hiding his angry, angry eyes, and Hashirama could practically hear iron barricades slamming up. Get out. No entry.
“Then what?” he demanded. He was loud enough to fill the room with his voice. “You’ll continue to ignore me? That’s your solution?”
A brief stab of insight told him that was exactly what Madara was hoping for. It was the same as Hashirama’s ploy: create time and distance and hope that’d make the problem go away. But they both knew better than that.
“I want to help,” he insisted, splaying his hands across his knees. He didn’t know how, couldn’t think of a single solution that wouldn’t make Madara snarl at him, but he wanted Madara to stop ripping this rift open between them. Hashirama wasn’t the only one suffering. He knew Madara was too.
“Help?” The air grew hot with sour bitterness. “You can’t help.”
“Can’t or you won’t let me?”
Madara straightened up at that, his temper stoked like fresh coals. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” he snapped, his voice so sharp that the tension nearly cracked. “You can’t do anything.”
“Why not?” That again. Hashirama felt like an echo playing back the same words. Why? Why?
Madara’s face screwed up. “What do you mean why not?” he hissed. Hashirama felt like a little kid again, poking his friend until he flushed and yelled. Except that this time he had no joke to pull the cord on Madara’s temper.
“Why can’t I help?” he said. “I want to. For both of us. The village needs us both –“
“Fuck the village!”
Madara lunged at him. It was a cat’s pounce, the powerful curl of leg muscles that propelled a lightning strike leap. Hashirama didn’t try to meaningfully stop him so Madara caught him by the chest in a hard tackle that sent them to the floor. He was aware of his neck, of his belly, but Madara didn’t go for any soft place.
He kissed him. It was mean, toothy and hot-breathed, and so violent that it felt like he was about to bite him instead.
Hashirama, too stunned to react, let him pin his wrists to the floor. He felt Madara settle down on top of him, too hot and heavy for this warm night, smelling like tobacco smoke and trembling like he was barely holding back from worse. Madara licked into his mouth, mauled his lips, kissed him until his lungs burned before he remembered to have mercy and when he did, he sat back on his haunches. His face was flushed, his eyes fever-bright, and his lips curled when he spoke.
“You think you know something?” Madara grabbed the front of his shirt. “You don’t. Not even by half.”
With a whoosh of air, Madara was suddenly up. He turned away dismissively, tossing his head. “Just go, Hashirama.”
Hashirama stood up slowly, his skull buzzing, lips bleeding from where Madara bit him. He stared at Madara’s retreating back, willing him to turn around and show him what he was thinking, but Madara refused to give in. So for once, Hashirama obeyed and left.