Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"What's wrong with him?" Butsama demands, fierce and threatening, his eyes glinting in a way that made Hashirama desperately want to cower away behind his mother.

But he's a big brother now, so he can't: it's his job to protect baby Tobirama, who doesn't know enough to fear their father when he's in a mood like this, and who doesn't even have the coordination to crawl away properly even if he did. He's only just barely managed some determined scooting forward on his belly so far, and even then Hashirama may have been helping a little.

Besides, Hashirama's nearly four; he's already started training to learn to fight and he'll be ready to go out to battle in another year or two, facing the Uchiha clan - red-eyed monsters that he's been told will happily kill kids like him and even baby Tobirama, the very thought of which makes Hashirama's heart break - and surely they'll be much scarier than Senju Butsuma.

...surely.

Hashirama's always been a touch doubtful that anyone would be scarier than his father, and he suspects he doesn't mean it in the way all the adults think he means it, as hero worship and adulation.

No, Butsuma is scary not for his extensive fighting abilities, which Hashirama is duly impressed by, but for the way Hashirama's brave and powerful mother, who fears no one outside the clan compound walls, goes quiet and meek in his presence lest he raise a hand to her (or Hashirama) again. And Hashirama doesn't like that type of scariness one bit.

He doesn't much like the way Butsuma is pointing scornfully at Tobirama, currently sleeping tucked into Hashirama's shoulder, either.

"The medics say he's healthy," Hashirama's mother murmurs quietly. Too quietly; she’s such a happy person when her husband isn’t around. "Thriving-"

"I meant the fact that he looks like a drowned rat," Butsuma snaps, his chakra blazing with the bad-hurt feeling Hashirama has been told is called killing intent. "Skin like an Uchiha, hair like a Hatake...did I get the father right, you bitch, or should I keep guessing? You wrote to me at the front lines and told me I had a second son, not - this!"

"The child is yours," Hashirama's mother says, then cries out when Butsuma strikes her.

Hashirama flinches and clutches Tobirama tight enough that he wakes up, surprised and gurgling a tentative whine, little baby fists reaching out blindly.

"Lie to me again, whore, and I'll snap the brat's neck and get started on making the next one before his body's even cooled," Hashirama's father says, and Hashirama tenses, preparing to flee.

He doesn't understand why his father's so angry, but he knows enough about snapping bones - necks - to understand the meaning of the threat. He won't be able to stop his father himself, he knows that, but he's fast and he's small and there's a hole in the back wall that he could wiggle through with Tobirama if he had to, and once he's among other Senju his father usually at least pretends to keep his temper under control, which will slow him down. Out through the wall, into the compound - maybe into the forest if the rest of the clan doesn't oppose Butsuma's plan - the rest he can figure out later, but he won't let his brother get hurt if he can help it, he won’t, he's the big brother, it's his job to protect Tobirama, his mother said so -

"He's yours, I swear it!" she cries, her hands thrown up to ward off another blow. "There's no one else, and never has been!"

"Do you think I'm blind? You're as dark as me, skin and hair both, and your parents and grandparents the same -"

"Hashirama, sweet one, show your father your brother's eyes," his mother says, not taking her eyes off her husband (you keep your eyes on the enemy at all times or else you die, Hashirama's fighting instructor said, but when a wife would start to consider her husband, her clan head, an enemy, Hashirama doesn't know).

Hashirama would rather run, but he also doesn't want to leave his mother behind, so he obeys, turning Tobirama around and tilting his head up with a finger under his chin.

"Red eyes," Butsuma says, lips twisting to a sneer even more disgusted than before. "Sharingan red. Uchiha, then. Don't tell me you're pleading rape of all things -"

"He's an albino," she says. "White hair, white skin, red eyes - like the Nara's sacred deer. It just happens sometimes, an act of nature; that's all. The child is yours; I swear it on my life - on Hashirama's life."

Hashirama doesn’t really think his life is hers to swear on and all things considered he'd really rather she didn't, but if it makes Butsuma less angry, less likely to hurt them, fine.

"A rat like that, mine?" Butsuma scoffs, though the terrible killing intent is fading away. "Wonderful. You would have me be the father of a sickly, deformed runt, then, instead? Worthless!"

"It's true that albinos are sickly, my lord; eyes weak to light and skin liable to burn too easily, but that is not all that he is. All the medics say he's doing very well – they say he’s very healthy - they even say that the signs point to his having a powerful chakra -"

Butsuma snorts, crossing his arms. "It’s impossible to tell anything about chakra at all before the age of two at the earliest. Soothsayers are always predicting great power, and they’re rarely saying more than what the parents want to hear. He could have none at all!”

"Or he could turn out like Hashirama," she counters. Hashirama is unusually strong for his age, though he would very much like to be left out of this conversation. He focuses on hushing Tobirama, who appears to be considering crying, and on edging backwards towards his chosen escape route. "Another credit to the strength of your blood -"

Butsuma barks a laugh. "Don’t be ridiculous. A pathetic thing like that? There wouldn't even be any point in testing him for the Mokuton."

The Mokuton. Right.

Hashirama's shoulders ease a little in relief: the Mokuton means that his father can't kill little Tobirama even if he wants to. It's against clan law for any Senju child (and Hashirama's mother is Senju, too, from one of the more distaff branches, so there’s no question of it, even if her own mother was a Nara) to be killed before they get tested for the potential of one day having the clan's fabled but long absent bloodline ability when they ultimately come of age.

Hashirama doesn't even know what the Mokuton is - he doesn't like studying, far preferring to sneak out to the woods to make friends with the trees that sometimes like to whisper back to him - but for the first time he hopes he has it, because if he does then the clan will have no choice but to spare Tobirama even if only for the possibility that he might have it too.

"My lord -"

"Oh, stop whimpering, it doesn't suit you," he says. "I won't kill the puling brat, not yet. Bastard or not, albino or not, if he makes it to fighting age he'll at least be useful as cannon fodder, if nothing else."

"Thank you, my lord," Hashirama's mother says, bowing her head. “We thank you for your mercy.”

Hashirama’s not so sure Butsuma’s words are as merciful as all that. Doesn’t cannon fodder usually mean dead?

"You're not suckling it another day longer, though,” Butsuma continues. “I'm due back on the front lines soon, and I want to get you started on another one before I go - a proper spare, this time."

"Of course, my lord. Hashirama, take your brother to your room."

Hashirama is only too happy to go, though he lingers a moment longer, afraid for his mother even as she smiles (not the usual one, warm and happy, but the one she wears around guests she doesn’t trust) and nods at him to go.

Eventually his father notices that he's still there, though, and Hashirama flees before his glare.

"I hate it when he's mad," he complains to Tobirama, who was starting to sniffle despite having been very good about not crying so far - Hashirama's noticed that flaring his chakra in and out works very well to distract him, even though all the grownups say that chakra sensing doesn't develop until around the age Hashirama is now but what do they know they're clearly stupid, and he'd employed the technique to keep him quiet in the face of their father's danger. "When I grow up, I'm never going to get mad. I'm always going to be happy! Or sad, I guess; sometimes you have to be sad. But nothing else!"

Tobirama quiets down again when they get back to Hashirama's room and cuddle up with Spot the spotted cat, once Hashirama's favorite stuffed toy and now bestowed with great honor to Tobirama (though sometimes, on days like tonight, Hashirama still wants to hold onto him as well, a practice he justifies to himself as teaching Tobirama about sharing).

Once the familiar sounds start up from his parents' room - grunting, mostly, and the slap of flesh on flesh - Hashirama thinks it's over, that they're safe, that his father will forget about his second son (and, if Hashirama is unusually lucky, maybe be even his first as well) in favor of clan politics.

He’s wrong.

He wakes in the middle of the night, frozen by the knowledge that he and Tobirama are not alone in the room.

His father stands above him, dark as a shadow and just as indistinct.

"Red eyes," he murmurs. "Sharingan red. I wonder."

He does nothing else, just stands there for an endless few minutes more before departing, but Hashirama stays awake for a long time after, a frozen feeling in his belly and a certainty that something terrible was going to happen, though he wasn't sure what, fixed firmly in his mind.

He wasn't able to shake that feeling, not in the three weeks his father stayed at home, nor in the few months of peace they have after he leaves and before he visits again, or even the brief reprieves they have after that. Instead he made a point of being around Tobirama as much as possible, diligently practicing his vow of not getting mad (it’s hard, especially when Tobirama breaks something of his, though he perseveres by reminding himself that it’s inevitable for babies to have such accidents) and just as diligently training his fighting and running skills with a fervor he’s never had before.

He knows that he needs to get strong and fast enough to save his baby brother from the terrible thing that was coming for him.

Hashirama's mother thinks it’s cute at first, then concerning, but Hashirama persists, even taking Tobirama out with him to the forest to talk to the trees, which he'd never shared with anyone else before. He insists on sleeping in the same bedroom as his brother, and only agrees not to take him to his training if his mother promises three times over that she'd watch Tobirama carefully.

But all his precautions, all his vigilance, are still not enough to save Tobirama from their father.

"Where is he?" Hashirama screams, red in the face, having a tantrum like he hasn't had in years - arms flailing to every side, legs kicking, hands clenched into fists. "Where did he take him?"

"Baby - baby, sweet one, please, calm down -"

"I don't want to be calm!" he howls. He promised himself he wouldn't get mad anymore, doesn't want to be like his father, but for Tobirama he'll break any vow. Vows don’t matter, if only Tobirama is safe. "I want Tobirama! Where did the bastard take him?"

"Hashirama! You can't say such things about your father - your clan head - and who taught you that filthy language anyway?"

Butsuma himself had, saying it with a sneer any time he saw Tobirama, and Hashirama still isn't sure what it means but is pleased that his suspicions that it's some sort of insult have been confirmed.

Butsuma deserves all the insults under the sun, but Hashirama promises he'll never say another one ever again if only he brings back Tobirama unharmed.

He says as much to his mother, who looks suddenly older and more tired.

"Your father's trying to help," she says, but her words ring hollow in a way that suggests she doesn't believe what she's saying. "He took him away to try something....Hashirama, you know how I told you that there was a good chance that Tobirama would grow up to be blind?"

Hashirama nods, reluctantly calming enough to listen. She'd explained that the white color of Tobirama's skin and the redness of his eyes meant he was different from the other babies, much more delicate: that Hashirama needed to be vigilant about spreading the special goop the medics made just for Tobirama over his skin before taking him out into the sunlight, that they should try to stay in the shade of the trees, and, yes, even that Tobirama might not be able to see things like Hashirama does and that maybe, when he was older, he would end up not seeing things at all.

"Well, if what your father has planned works, Tobirama will see even better than you. So it's a good thing!"

"If it's a good thing, why have you been crying?" Hashirama asks accusingly. He doesn’t trust their father, who hates Tobirama, to have good things in mind for him. "Why is there only one medic involved, and why does he look so scared?"

"There's only one because this is a secret, sweet one, a secret your father is keeping even from the rest of the clan. Even you, baby, you don't get to know what exactly it is; that's why you don't get to be in there with him to keep him calm, even if that would make it easier. And -" she hesitates. "And the medic and I are only scared that it won't work right, that’s all."

"And what happens if it doesn't work right?" Hashirama demands.

His mother's silence is his only answer.

Hashirama goes back to screaming. When his throat goes hoarse - hoarse and tickly in the way that he's learned to associate with the way his cuts quickly scab over and disappear without leaving any scar - he stops, going quiet but not calm. Determined.

It breaks his heart to even think it, but he knows now that he can't trust his mother with Tobirama's safety: he left Tobirama in her care while he attended his lessons, trusted her, and she betrayed him. She gave him to Butsuma, who Hashirama is certain was hurting him even now. Maybe even killing him, and all the while Hashirama can do nothing but sit here, helpless to do anything to stop him.

Helpless.

Powerless.

He hates it.

His mother, seeing his tears and shouts come to a stop, tries to gather Hashirama into her arms, offering comfort, but he pushes her away.

He doesn’t need comfort. He needs power.

"Teach me a jutsu," he demands.

"What, now?" she asks, surprised. "You don't have to resume training until later -"

"Sensei says you were a front-liner before you married and you're in charge of the defense reserve now, which means you must know some. Teach me!"

"But -"

"Something mean," he says. "Mean and awful. Something that hurts."

"Hashirama -"

"I need to get stronger to take care of Tobirama," he says. He won't admit the possibility that his brother is dead, that he's failed in the first job he's ever been entrusted quite so badly. He can't even think that lest the Shinigami hear him and take adavantage. No, Tobirama has to live. He has to live, even if only so that Hashirama can make up for letting him down like this, can seek his forgiveness for not protecting him properly. "No one else will do it, so it had to be me."

His mother flinches like he's stabbed her. She looks at him, her eyes searching for something, but Hashirama focuses his gaze on her nose and mouth and forehead, the way he was taught to do when fighting Uchiha.

Fighting the enemy.

Her shoulders bow forward as if under some terrible weight and Hashirama wants to apologize for being so cold, wants to burst into tears and throw himself forward into her arms, but the thought of Tobirama - alone with their father, just a baby and even more helpless than Hashirama - makes him hold fast.

"Okay," she whispers. "I'll teach you."

Hashirama is what his sensei calls a natural - he's got loads of extra chakra, lots more than other kids his age, and he finds learning the right signs and chakra movements easy. So by the time his father comes back, he's already got the jutsu his mother taught him - Scorpion Sting, she calls it, and it's very nasty indeed - pretty much down and ready to go, no matter what the consequences that will fall on his head, if his father even thinks of saying anything other than that Tobirama is fine and ready to come home.

"We think it took," he says instead. "There's still a high chance of rejection until the implants settle, but things look good. The medic confirms that we won't know how much of it he actually got until he's older, though."

Hashirama doesn't know what that means, but a glance at his mother shows her relief and that means Tobirama is alive.

He doesn't yet believe that he's okay, not until he sees him with his own eyes (and does a check for genjutsu meant to hide injuries) and held him in his arms, but - alive.

"I want to see him!" he demands.

That's the sort if talk that would usually get him walloped, with a lecture about respecting his elders, but his father's in a good mood for once so he just shrugs and gestures airily at the door behind him. "Watch him for a while, will you, Hashirama?" he says, his eyes on his wife. "Your mother and I still need to work on getting you a little brother."

A real little brother, Butsuma means, because for some stupid reason he thinks Tobirama doesn't count. But Hashirama doesn't care about anything other than Tobirama right now, not even about how sick his mother was when her last pregnancy failed after only a few months or how the medics advised her against trying for another so soon.

Not that Butsuma cares what the medics say when it's contrary to what he wants.

Hashirama rushes into the other room, where the medic is holding a roll of bandages in one hand and struggling to get a crying Tobirama to calm down enough to apply them.

Hashirama ignores the medic entirely, leaping up to the blood-stained metal table and pulling Tobirama into his arms, flaring his chakra the way he knows Tobirama likes best.

Tobirama quiets immediately, screams turning into distracted whimpers, and reaches out for Hashirama's hair with his chubby little fists.

He likes Hashirama’s hair: it's his favorite toy to grab with his fingers or stick in his mouth to suck on whenever he can reach it, above even Spot, which is why Hashirama tries to keep it as long as possible. Butsuma usually chops off Hashirama's hair whenever he sees it getting what he considers to be too long for a boy his age, leaving it in a frankly awful bowl cut, but his dignity is a worthwhile sacrifice for Tobirama's gummy gap-toothed little smile.

"At last," the medic sighs. "Hold him still, will you? I want to bandage up his eyes for a little, give him the chance to rest and for his body to adjust."

Hashirama nods, remembering his mother's explanation of how sensitive Tobirama's red eyes were; he wouldn't be surprised if Tobirama's remaining whimpers are because of the bright light in the room. Darkness isn't a bad idea at all.

But even as he holds Tobirama's head still - Tobirama submits to it with ill grace and grumbles, but from the medic's expression it's still far more compliance than they'd been able to get without Hashirama’s help - Hashirama looks at Tobirama's face and frowns.

"Hey," he says. "Are his eyes supposed to have those swirly black dots in them?"

They look almost like the stylized pictures he's seen of the Uchiha, with the dojutsu unique to their bloodline: shining blood-red eyes that he's always been warned never to look into lest they kill him with their super-powered genjutsu.

"Forget about those," the medic advises, wrapping the bandage swiftly and efficiently so that Hashirama's brief glimpse is quickly covered. "Say, you're a bright boy, aren't you? Would you like to learn some iryo ninjutsu? I normally wouldn't, at your age, but you have so much chakra - and as his brother, you're probably compatible -"

"Healing?" Hashirama asks, interested. "What type of healing?"

"It strengthens the body's own resources," the medic explains. "So if your brother gets sick, you can use your own chakra to help him heal faster. I can even teach you a version to lower the possibility of host rejection - that is, something you can use to make his eyes get better quicker. Wouldn’t you like to help with that?"

"Yes! Teach me!" Hashirama exclaims.

All thoughts of the swirling black tomoe are forgotten.

Chapter Text

Tobirama never forgets anything.

Ever.

No matter how much Hashirama might wish he does.

Every rashly made promise (Hashirama quickly learns not to commit to anything he isn't sure of, though he never quite gets over his tendency to engage in dramatics), every embarrassing mistake (at least the memories make Tobirama smile, Hashirama assures himself as he nurses his injured pride), even the useless things like what they'd had for breakfast on some random date, like three months and fourteen days ago.

Hashirama knows that one for sure, because he's tested it.

Still, sometimes it's helpful - Tobirama attends the same lessons Hashirama does, since Butsuma refused to get him his own tutor, and his brilliant memory means that he can recite exactly what sensei said about how to do a particular jutsu when Hashirama is struggling to practice them on his own time later.

Tobirama even learns the jutsus faster than Hashirama does. It's almost as if he only needs to watch a single demonstration one time, and then he’s able to repeat it. He's practically Uchiha levels of good at copying, even, and everyone knows they have the Sharingan to help them with it.

But Tobirama's a Senju, not an Uchiha.

Hashirama had hoped that Tobirama's obvious genius would appease their father, but while it gets a certain smug satisfaction, Butsuma remains as antagonistic to his second son as ever, even going ahead and naming little Kawarama as the official spare – next in line to clan leadership after Hashirama – before he'd even survived infancy.

Rude.

"I don't know what his problem is," Hashirama complains one day as he helps Tobirama with his daily morning ritual.

Hashirama need only roll out of bed and into new clothing to be ready, but Tobirama needs much more preparation than that: cream to protect his skin from the sun, a rinse to darken his hair a little to a grey color that could be excused as the inheritance of their distant Hatake cousins rather than admitting his albinism to the enemy, a nasty-smelling drink that Hashirama swears he heard someone say was made in part out of spider web (ick!) to help make his blood stronger, an iryo ninjutsu technique to strengthen his immune system...

He even has special lenses to protect his eyes. He wears them all the time, even when he sleeps, but since he needs to change them out a minimum of once a week before they get dirty, he’s made a habit of changing them in the mornings as well. Though honestly, Hashirama doesn’t really think the lenses actually do all that much? Tobirama's vision is never anything less than perfect, and he confessed once that he didn’t notice a difference once he'd adjusted enough for them to stop itching.

The only thing they actually seem to accomplish is making Tobirama’s eyes a dull flat matte red instead of the shiny red-with-black-flecks they were underneath.

But why would anyone bother just with changing the color such a small degree, especially since they’re still red either way?

"What do you mean?" Tobirama asks, sitting still so that Hashirama could brush the rinse through his hair. He likes that little indulgence, sitting in Hashirama’s lap in a way he considers himself far too dignified to do the rest of the time, and Hashirama likes it too, likes taking care of his little brother in a way he’s not allowed to do most of the time. Being considered grown-up before he's even ten is awful.

"Butsuma!" Hashirama exclaims. He's complained about this before, but he'll happily complain about it again. "You're better at jutsu than I am, you're training yourself in taijutsu and kenjutsu all the time, you're basically teaching yourself how to create seals in what little spare time you have, our teachers say your grasp of battle tactics is second to none - I don't understand what more he could want from you!"

"I don't have the Mokuton," Tobirama answers, because he always takes questions very literally. He's a serious child, and Hashirama finds himself playing up his own childishness in an attempt to compensate. The other children, their cousins, don't like to play with Tobirama, and their parents all seem to have followed Butsuma's lead in respecting Tobirama's abilities without respecting his person. Only his teachers adore him. "He could want that."

"That traveling Uzumaki said you were the most promising suiton user he'd ever seen," Hashirama retorts. "And barely anyone has the Mokuton, anyway!"

"You do."

"Well, yeah. But I'm only as good at it as I am because you keep helping me figure stuff out. And you're always coming up with new ideas, too; not just for me but for everyone!"

Not too shabby for a six year old.

“My chakra levels are also disappointingly low,” Tobirama points out. This is true, unfortunately: he’d had such potential when he was a baby, the medics all said, and they'd spiked dangerously low a few times when he'd been in that dangerous age when his body first started developing its chakra coils, but by now they'd steadied to a fairly low amount that Tobirama was only able to very slowly increase with lots of practice and effort.

And, far worse in Hashirama’s view, the low chakra levels meant that Tobirama is tired all the time. Not that it stops him: Tobirama gets up before dawn to train, and studies late into the night, but even on days where he did get enough sleep there always seem to be circles under his eyes and sometimes a slight tremor in his stride. Hashirama can tell that some days, bad days, any movement at all beyond the most sluggish causes him physical pain; they're working on a iryo jutsu to deal with that, but there's only so much they can do.

“But your control is amazing,” Hashirama says, avoiding the issue of chakra entirely. He wishes that Tobirama had the same reserves he did, but wishing wouldn’t make him suddenly capable of sharing the too-much he had to compensate for Tobirama’s too-little. “You can do more with less chakra than most of the adults in our clan can do with everything they’ve got.”

Tobirama doesn’t need to reply for them both to understand that all this effort, however impressive, was not and would never be enough for their father.

Tobirama shrugs. "I'll just have to try harder to make him happy," he says, like he hadn't cried into Hashirama's shoulder for an hour the night before because Butsuma had absentmindedly praised little Kawarama in a way that he'd never done, not once, for Tobirama.

Hashirama's hatred for his father burns in his chest like he's an Uchiha, cursed clan that they are, and it gets worse every year as he watches Tobirama torture himself for their father's approval in what they both know is futile hope.

Tobirama had been so happy for Kawarama, too, that was the most gut-wrenching part of it; even through his tears of despair and hopeless envy, he'd managed a shaky smile, the ones that more and more often appeared only in his eyes, saying that he was glad that Kawarama would get the chance to know what it was like to have his father be proud of him. He loved Kawarama so much, so very much, had raised him the way Hashirama had raised him because Hashirama was now too busy with the war to do it himself. Of course Tobirama would blame himself for the envy their father so cruelly created.

Oh, how it made Hashirama's heart burn. It would be so easy for their father to make Tobirama happy: a kind word, even a smile. It would cost him nothing. And yet, time and again, he treats his second son with nothing but disdain and endless, escalating demands.

He'd even sent Tobirama out to the battlefield when he was only four, two years before the usual age, despite Hashirama's screams of protest. Only as a courier, yes, toddling through trees to carry messages from one post to another, but it was still only through luck and Tobirama’s own skill that he survived.

"Well, whatever. Who you are is more than enough for me," he says to Tobirama, not for the first time, because it's true and because Tobirama loves to hear it, even if it will never fill the hole in his heart that their father created. "Screw the old bastard anyway."

That last part is something he doesn't normally say. Maybe Hashirama was a little more sore about yesterday's crying session than he'd thought.

Tobirama frowns at him. Serious, always serious. "You shouldn't say such things, Hashirama."

"Why not? He's not here to hear it."

"I don't want to risk him hurting you."

Surprised, Hashirama frowns at him. "You mean hurt you."

That's new, too, and it wounds Hashirama more than anything else, made him hate more than anything else, made him want to hurt something, someone, even himself if it would make the pain go away. It's already intolerable enough that Butsuma routinely put Tobirama at terrible risk, but no, he felt free to punish him, too.

Not for his own mistakes, as Tobirama had few enough of those - but for Hashirama's.

As the only living inheritor of the fabled Senju bloodline limit, Hashirama is now virtually untouchable. Even his father, who used to raise a hand to him at the slightest provocation, wouldn't dare let anyone see Hashirama limping out of their household after one of the beatings he claimed, when Hashirama was younger, were meant to correct his character, and that meant the beatings stopped entirely.

At least, they stopped for Hashirama.

Butsuma had been pleased to learn that his eldest son's behavior could be just as easily corrected by a threat of beating Tobirama (a threat carried out often enough to give it teeth), and possibly even more than it ever had been by beating him directly.

Hashirama tries so hard, now, to be a good child, but even when he’s trying he finds that he's not very good at it.

But Tobirama shakes his head in negation. "No, I do mean hurt you. Our father...he 's terrifying when he's when he's really angry. I don't want you to see that, not ever."

"When have you seen that?" Hashirama asks, frowning. Had he missed something? Has he let his brother down again?

Tobirama hesitates, which is uncharacteristic of him.

"What? When was this? Did he do something -"

"I don't remember," Tobirama says, and he never says that.

Hashirama gapes at him.

Tobirama seems to almost shrink in on himself. "I can't place it, I mean," he corrects himself. "I know what happened on every day, and this didn't happen on any of those days. I can’t place it in the sequence of my memories - but I still remember it happening."

Tobirama had viscerally horrific dreams, so realistic that he couldn't tell they weren't real when he was having them, but he always knew what was real and what wasn't when he was awake, as he is now.

"A genjutsu?" Hashirama suggests.

"I can break almost any of those."

Tobirama is freakishly talented at genjutsu, despite it not being a traditional Senju strength. It isn’t like it really matters, though; no matter how good a Senju could become at genjutsu, any Uchiha would tear it apart like it was nothing. That’s what they’re famous for.

"No, not an illusion. I mean, maybe something to make you forget when it happened, papering it over with some other memory. Maybe?"

"Possible," Tobirama allows, though he still looks disturbed.

"What do you remember? Just Butsuma being angry?"

Hashirama hasn't called Butsuma a respectful title in years, not even to his face.

Tobirama considers the question for a long moment. "I'm scared, in the memory," he finally says. "Really scared, badly, worse than anything. He's angry, but also pleased, smug. I feel his killing intent. I know there's nowhere to run - my leg is trapped by his doton jutsu, and I don't know how to escape. I'm trapped. He laughs and says, 'At last.' He steps forward. And then -"

"And then?" Hashirama prompts when Tobirama trails off, sick to his stomach and not really wanting to know, but certain that he has no choice. If sharing the burden if this mysterious memory will lessen it for Tobirama, Hashirama will gladly shoulder his part of it.

"And then he rips my eyes out of my head."

Hashirama recoils. "He wouldn't!" he protests automatically. "That's – even if he doesn’t do anything with them, that’s still practically eye-stealing! It's - it's forbidden!"

Immoral and disgusting, too, but the important thing is that the Senju are locked in battle with the Uchiha, a dojutsu clan. If the Uchiha ever got wind that they'd started stealing eyes like dishonorable bandits, they would immediately summon all the other dojutsu clans, as well as the daiymo and his samurai in their roles as dispensers of justice, to aid them in eradicating the Senju from the face of the earth.

"I know," Tobirama says. "But I still remember it."

His eyes are distant.

"Do you remember anything else you can't place?" Hashirama asks, curious. “Any other memories, I mean?”

"My best friend falling off a cliff and breaking his leg."

Hashirama frowns. "But - I'm your best friend. And I've never fallen off a cliff."

"I know," Tobirama says, looking upset. "I know that. But in the memory, it’s different. I just know he's my best friend and that he's falling and that I shouldn't have dared him to climb."

Tobirama's never dared anyone to do anything on his entire life. He’s far too serious.

“That’s…awful,” Hashirama finally says, even though he knows Tobirama knows it already. “How long have you remembered this?”

A shrug. “Always, I think?”

Hashirama shudders in revulsion at the thought of it. “Why only mention it now, then?”

“I’m six.”

“…so?”

“I’m not six in the memory,” Tobirama says. “I know I’m not six yet. I don’t know how much younger than six I am, but I’m definitely not six. I thought, you know, maybe it was something that hadn’t happened yet or something? Something in the future? But you still haven’t fallen off any cliffs –”

Now that Hashirama thinks about it, Tobirama’s always hovered around him whenever they were near a cliff.

“– and anyway you don’t really look like the person in the memory.”

“Do you…?”

“No, I’ve never seen him before. Or even anyone who really looks like him. He’s got lighter skin than any Senju but me, but that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the Uchiha are pale enough to fit, but obviously I’ve never actually met any of them outside of the battlefield.”

Hashirama nods solemnly, shuddering at the thought. He’s been on battlefields across from the Uchiha himself, careful never to look them in the eyes; he’s a ninjutsu expert, or will be, and that means he doesn’t have to come into close contact with any of them.

It’s probably for the best – Butsuma’s always needling him about his soft heart and tendency to adopt sad looking animals no matter how dangerous or wild, jeering that Hashirama would probably try to adopt an Uchiha if he found one that looked upset, and honestly Hashirama’s not entirely sure he’s wrong.

“Anything else?”

“Not really. Next thing I remember is a Senju clan medic standing there with a scalpel, saying he thinks he’s cut them down enough to fit.”

“Cut what down?”

“No clue. I started crying at that point, so everything is blurry.”

"...okay. And that’s it?”

Tobirama nods.

“Where do you think the memories come from?" Hashirama asks.

"I don't know," Tobirama says, and wraps his arms around himself, looking so miserable that Hashirama immediately reaches out to hug him. "I don't know. But Hashirama, promise me - however you feel about our father, don't ever face him like that: weak and helpless, while he laughs. Please. Promise me."

"I promise," Hashirama says at once, and means it with all his heart.

He fully intends to be the one laughing on the day their father falls.

Chapter Text

The one ability of Tobirama that their father seems to actually respect is the strength of his sensor abilities.

"No Uchiha could have reached that far," Butsuma says begrudgingly when Tobirama reports comings and goings from the edge of his extremely impressive range.

It may be the nicest thing he's ever said to Tobirama, who is all but walking on air for the next week, even if no one who isn’t Hashirama or Kawarama or little Itama would be able to tell. He doubles down on training that ability thereafter, broadening his range even further and increasing his precision to focus on additional details.

He gets very, very good at it, too. Hashirama has found that when Tobirama puts his mind to something, really puts his mind to something, there's very little he can't do.

(This is, sometimes, a problem - Tobirama is extremely creative, smart and unorthodox, but unfortunately he, like their father, is a brilliant tactician. Fantastic for battle, absolutely fantastic; wonderful in the short term and, at least for Tobirama, sometimes in the medium term, but when it comes to thinking long term...ugh.

Seriously, sometimes Hashirama wishes he wasn't born as good a strategist as he is because he's pretty sure he's going to be driven up the wall by the fact that he can so clearly see future consequences that no one else ever seems to think about. At least Tobirama is learning, even if he still hasn't quite figured out that just because you can invent something doesn't always mean you should.)

Still, as much as Tobirama wants to make their father proud, as much as he loves him, he hasn’t lost his reason or his sense of caution. He tells his father anything that might be helpful, practical useful things, but Hashirama is the only one who knows the true extent of his sensing: how sensitive he is to the nuances of others' chakra, how he can all but replicate exact details even from a distance, how much it hurts sometimes -

How he's always sensing, always, whether he's asleep or drained of chakra.

Even though he's grown up well past the usual dangerous age, Tobirama's chakra still has a way of draining far too fast sometimes, no matter how little he's doing. Recently they discovered, through some impromptu games of hide and seek with little Itama, a happy soul, that it helped a little if he kept his eyes closed. Ever since then, Tobirama has spends increasingly more of his time in his private quarters wearing a blindfold, purportedly as a means of further training his situational awareness - not that he needs it, given that he learns to move around fluidly without his sight within the course of a few weeks.

Outside the home, where walking around with a blindfold would be more embarrassing and require more explanation, he takes to adding a happuri to his armor so that he can draw it down over his eyes whenever he has a moment to rest.

Things are going well.

Hashirama starts to feel happy: Tobirama's sensor abilities are a blessing, something he can be cheered for throughout the clan. Finally, he thinks, there was something that Tobirama could do that would bring him only joy.

(He should have known better than to tempt fate.)

It happens in public, at a formal clan dinner with all the elders and their father sitting there, and no one knows that Tobirama's senses are still working but Hashirama.

But because Hashirama is the only one who knows, he's the only one who has even the slightest idea what's happening when Tobirama suddenly drops his bowl, his expression twisting in horror, and throws himself out the window without a word a second later.

"Please excuse us," Hashirama says on his behalf to the outraged elders and their father, then follows him out before they have a chance to respond.

He doesn't know exactly what it was that Tobirama sensed that so overwhelmed him, but that expression means it's nothing good.

There are very few things Tobirama cares about that would make him willing to so breach the rules of etiquette so thoroughly beaten into him -

- and Kawarama is out of the compound on a courier mission.

Hashirama's already resigned by the time they're out in the forest, running faster than thought but still not fast enough, but Tobirama shrieks as though he was the one who was stabbed, his too-powerful senses showing him all the details he would never be able to excise from his too-perfect memory, staggering and beginning to fall even as he reaches the clearing that should have been safety, having exhausted himself in speed and left nothing for fighting.

Hashirama is just moments behind him, though, and he reaches out with the forest to try to strangle his brother's killers.

He gets two of the squad, mangling their bodies beyond recognition without the slightest ounce of pity, leaving them only identifiable as Uchiha by the scraps of fabic that flutter to the ground, but three others manage to evade him, disappearing in a flurry of leaves and shadow.

When he turns back, Tobirama is on his knees, sobbing and tugging futilely at the swords and kunai that pierce Kawarama's body. "I should've been faster," he says, voice broken. "I should have kept better watch - I should have been faster, I could've helped if I'd only been faster - Hashirama, help me! I don’t have the chakra reserves to heal him!"

Hashirama comes to stand by his shoulder. His heart hurts, seeing his brother's body like this, but not the way Tobirama's does. Tobirama was the one who raiased Kawarama, raised Itama, not Hashirama; Hashirama loves them dearly, but they're his brothers - to Tobirama, they might as well be his sons.

(And if some part of Hashirama bitterly remembers that Kawarama is their father's favorite, neither his disobedient eldest nor his despised second, and thinks of how despite Hashirama’s best efforts he had begun to absorb some of Butsuma’s more pernicious beliefs, repeating vile things about Tobirama when the other was absent even though it was Tobirama who loved him more than anything - well. That part of him doesn't need to see the surface.)

So it hurts and he grieves, but he also knows that it’s not as bad a blow as it could have been - not as bad a blow as it is to Tobirama.

"We'll take him back for a burial," Hashirama says, because there's nothing before them but a corpse.

Tobirama moans in despair, horrible grief making his voice grate terribly, like the sound of splintering wood, and then suddenly his hands fly up to his face, his chakra levels suddenly draining at an alarming rate.

"Tobirama!" Hashirama exclaims, moving forward at once. "What - a trap? Tell me what hurts!"

He continued his lessons as a healer long after the medic taught him those few techniques and insisted that Tobirama learn, too, counting on his brother's genius mind to start coming up with new combinations almost at once, which he had. They were both very good at it now.

"My eyes," Tobirama moans. "Something's wrong with my eyes."

Hashirama's scanning frantically, looking for the damage, but nothing's coming up as wrong. As far as Tobirama's body is concerned, it's working as designed.

Except Tobirama's chakra is still draining away like he somehow sprung a leak, which means there must be a wound - a trap - a seal - something - but where could it be? With enough expertise, a trap seal could be drawn on any surface, solid or liquid: on skin, hair, tongue, eyes –

Eyes.

"Hold still," he tells Tobirama, more or less futilely because Tobirama is barely even twitching anymore. "I'm going to pop out your lenses."

He hasn't seen Tobirama without his lenses in years, nothing but the brief glimpses when he helped him in the mornings, but he still remembers what they look like under there - what they should look like, that is.

And the second the lenses are off, there it is, whatever it is that's hurting his brother: the black flecks in Tobirama's eyes have changed, turning instead into a pinwheel made of little black waves.

(It's almost like the Uchiha symbols he's seen scribbled on old scrolls, but that makes sense, doesn't it, that the Uchiha would leave an Uchiha trap on a freshly-killed corpse, meant to catch the unwary.)

"Tobirama, I think I've figured it out where the trap is - Tobirama - no, don't pass out - Tobirama! Stay with me...!"

Hashirama doesn't want to leave Kawarama's body behind, but he would do it in a heartbeat if he thought the medics back home would be of any help. He would throw himself on the nonexistent mercy of the Uchiha themselves if that's what it took to save Tobirama’s life, but he knows that they won’t help either.

It’s up to him.

He sits there all night, between the corpse of one brother and the comatose body of another, ignoring everything he’s ever learned about healing in favor of brute-forcing as much of his chakra into Tobirama as either of them can tolerate and a little beyond, and he thinks he might go a little insane in the process.

(Sometimes Tobirama's eyes look as if they themselves have drained of all color, an almost pale lavender with rippling concentric rings around the pupil, but Hashirama manages to convince himself it's a trick of the light and with an concerted effort it goes back to the more familiar red.)

Morning comes.

Tobirama opens his eyes.

They’ve gone back to the normal red-and-black-flecks, Hashirama is relieved to see, and his chakra appears to have stabilized.

“Anija,” Tobirama croaks, his voice cracking. “Tell me –”

But he falls silent.

Hashirama knows what he wants to ask, knows why Tobirama didn’t ask it, and curses yet again his brother’s memory.

He wishes, more than anything, that he could tell him that it had only been a dream.

“Let’s go home,” he says instead. “Get on my back.”

Tobirama’s eyes flicker and change – pinwheels again, and his chakra swells as though he were using some sort of powerful jutsu – but then they return to normal as he forces himself to calm, willpower overcoming his emotions as it has had to do far too many times before.

Looks like whatever the Uchiha did to him, it's not going away anytime soon.

Fine, whatever. It doesn't matter. Hashirama will find a way to make sure Tobirama survives whatever this is - survives and thrives. He will.

He won't let him down again.

“I remember them,” Tobirama says quietly, interrupting Hashirama's thoughts.

“Them?”

“The three you missed. I know what they look like. The next time we go up against the Uchiha, I’ll kill them.”

Hashirama knows Tobirama means it, too; he’s killed before already. If anything, he’s killed more often than Hashirama has, for all that Hashirama’s power is the more deadly – Tobirama knows how much Hashirama hates to strike the finishing blow, so he does it for him when he can, Hashirama finding often enough the shinobi he’s grabbed in the roots of the Mokuton have their throats slit or their lungs filled up with water before he’s forced to crush them.

“Well,” he says, shrugging. “That should make Butsuma happy, at least.”

(It doesn’t save Tobirama from being punished when he gets home, though, and Hashirama’s fists clench so tightly that his palms begin to bleed.)

Chapter Text

Hashirama really likes Madara.

The other boy is the first person he’s ever met that really gets him, equal to equal, and Hashirama can feel his heart expanding with joy at how they talk and play and tease the way he’s never had a chance to do with anyone else before.

It was a chance meeting by the riverbank that brought them together. Hashirama isn't sure what brought Madara to linger out there, but he himself was there because he couldn't bear to be at home.

Everything had started going wrong with Kawarama’s death.

First there’d been that funeral, and Hashirama opening his stupid mouth about everything he was feeling, only to get punched like he hasn’t in years – Tobirama stood up for him, in his own way, and ended up paying the price for that, as always, but this time when Butsuma left him lying on the floor he didn’t get up again.

Unfortunately, Hashirama’s healing could only go so far.

Worse, whatever had gone wrong with Tobirama’s eyes was still there, leaving him bedridden for weeks, chakra-weak and drained – Hashirama, desperate to prevent Tobirama from being punished for not adequately preserving his reserves, tells everyone he caught pneumonia, which has many of the same symptoms – but luckily for Tobirama he’s young.

Too young to be dealing with the sort of debilitating impairment that one usually only saw in the few who managed to reach a very old age, in Hashirama’s opinion, but Hashirama has learned enough of medicine and healing to know that Tobirama’s youth is the only thing saving his life: his chakra coils are not yet fully matured, not yet rigidly set in place, and so they’re able to mutate around whatever-it-is that’s draining him. They’re able to adapt – and so he lives.

(The medic that used to treat Tobirama when he was younger died on a mission he should never have been sent on, and Butsuma lets no one else treat his despised second son so Hashirama has to do the work himself. He wishes he could at least get a consult with one of the other medics – describing his brother’s condition in words really isn’t doing the trick.)

Little Itama, who always loved Tobirama best of all – he’d even dyed his hair white to be more like his beloved brother, though he’d only managed half of it before Tobirama found him playing with bleach and stopped him – spent most of the time Tobirama was in bed worrying over him.

Not even Butsuma’s lectures and occasional punishments could stop him from sneaking away from everything – training, dinner, even playtime – to linger by his bed and curl up by his side, giving him hugs, reading him stories, and even trying to feed him until he was better using anything (food or otherwise) that came to hand, using logic that made sense only to a small child.

Hashirama thought it was cute. Butsuma thought it was weakness.

It saved his life.

If Itama hadn’t slipped out of the campground in the middle of the night to visit Tobirama, worried that his favorite older brother wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without a good-night hug, he would have still been there when the Uchiha attacked. He would’ve ended up just like Kawaram, and Tobirama’s heart would have broken forever.

It ended up getting broken pretty thoroughly anyway.

It was Tobirama’s own suggestion that Itama be sent to foster with the Uzumaki, acting as a guarantee of well-being between the clans and to set the ground for a closer alliance: a hostage from the Senju, purportedly sent to be trained in whatever branch of the sealing arts he showed a knack for, instead of demanding that the Uzumaki provide one of the Senju clan heirs with a wife to act as the same. Diplomatically, it was a stroke of genius – the Uzumaki, delighted by the unexpected offer rather than the demand, doubled their contribution to the Senju war effort, filling their coffers and lending more of their warriors, and there was always the possibility of a marriage later on, once Itama was old enough to return to them a fully grown warrior.

Hashirama knew that Tobirama raised the idea only because he knew the safest place for his brother to be was behind the whirlpools. He wanted for Itama to live more than anything – more, even, than the joy of having him be by his side.

But what Tobirama did not know, what none of them knew, was the Uzumaki did not foster lightly: the child would be theirs and no one else’s, bound to their land and their service for at least fifteen years and the option to stay should he wish, and while his family could write they could not lightly visit.

They even changed his name, calling him Uzumaki Itama, and, though he still lived, in the end they’d lost another brother all the same.

Tobirama was walking again by the time Itama left, the weakness gone and draconian training resumed, and most of the time it was as if nothing had every happened.

(Sometimes, like the day Itama left, he shook like a leaf that’s lost its tree.)

Butsuma hadn’t even bothered waiting until the dust from Itama’s travelling party had faded out of sight before he started talking about arranging marriages, his own and maybe even Hashirama’s, in order to ensure that the Senju clan had a proper line of succession in place.

It's because Tobirama doesn't count, in Butsuma's eyes. No matter that Tobirama has started killing for him, no matter that even the Uchiha are impressed enough that they've already started targeting him, no matter that he continues in his punishing training despite the fact that his exhaustion had gotten so much worse, no matter that for the sake of his father's love Tobirama has never disobeyed his orders even when Hashirama knew he desperately disagreed with them - nothing will ever change how Butsuma feels about his second son.

Hashirama really wants to kill him right now, to the point that even Tobirama has told him to go be elsewhere lest he be tempted to actually do it.

So he went to the river.

And by the river, he met Madara.

He doesn’t tell Madara that he’s there to avoid murdering his father, since he thinks it might come across as a bit creepy, but he does tell him just about everything else. His hopes, his dreams – together they start turning those wistful thoughts into actual plans.

Peace.

A village.

A place where children can be children, and no brother need ever die so young. A place where their brothers – only Tobirama for him, since Itama is gone; and a matching brother named Izuna for Madara – can grow safely and happily.

“We’ll need a good police system,” Hashirama says one day as they’re lying on the riverbank, cloud-watching. “In the village, I mean.”

“Hn? Of course. Justice is important.”

“Not just justice. Protection. The whole point of this peace would be to make sure children like our brothers are safe, right?”

Madara looks at him sidelong. “Safe from war, yes. Not safe from everything. We can’t wrap people in blankets and keep them locked at home all day, no matter how much better it would make us feel.”

He sounds wistful, and Hashirama couldn't agree more. Being wrapped up in a blanket and home all day sounds like a decent life to Hashirama, and if he didn’t know how strenuously Tobirama would object…unfortunately, he does, and he’s pretty sure Madara is right.

“That’s not what I mean,” he says, going back to looking at the sky. “I mean – well. The best defensive wall in the world won’t help you if the next attack comes from inside; isn’t that a shinobi saying?”

“I’m pretty sure it goes ‘the thick skin of the fruit doesn’t prevent rot from within’, but I get your point. Wouldn’t catching spies be T&I’s job, though, rather than the police?”

Hashirama rolls his eyes. “Not spies. Citizens, clansmen: people who are part of the village but who aren’t doing right. Like parents who don’t deserve to have children.”

He knows Madara is looking at him, knows he’s frowning, but he doesn’t look back.

“Parents who hurt their children for no reason,” he says, eyes fixed on the sky. “Parents who beat them, or who never give them a kind word. Parents who hate them. I know you think family’s important, but it’s better to be an orphan than to have a parent like that.”

"Surely that would be a clan matter?" Madara asks hesitantly. He values family more than Hashirama does, but then, he seems to actually like most of his, even if only begrudgingly. Even his father, who he complains is far too harsh and cruel, doesn’t seem to inspire true hatred in him. For all of his friend's outward grumpiness, Hashirama suspects Madara is probably a friendlier person than he is. "A clan would never allow -"

"Even clans that value face more than children? If they're willing to sacrifice them for their wars, they'll sacrifice them for their pride." Hashirama's voice is bitter, even if his face is calm, and he doesn't know how to make it anything but. He doesn’t like being angry, he vowed long ago that he wouldn’t be, but sometimes it creep through no matter what he does. "Leave it a clan matter, and it's the same as doing nothing."

“I’m not sure I agree,” Madara says. “But - we’ll have a police. And no one, no one, will be above it. Not even clan heads. Not even the most important person in the whole village.”

Hashirama feels Madara’s hand come down on his shoulder and squeeze, conveying sympathy and comfort and offering his own strength to add to Hashirama’s own.

Hashirama smiles.

“Let’s go for a run,” he suggests, changing the subject. “I bet I can beat you.”

“The way you didn’t the first six times?”

“I’m getting faster!”

“You’re so lazy you should consider getting a sloth contract.”

“Says the person who’s probably going to get a contract with dust mites if he doesn’t wash his air more often…”

“Why, you -!”

Hashirama really likes Madara.

But, like everything else good in his life, it gets ruined eventually.

Unsurprisingly, Butsuma is involved in that.

Hashirama blames him, even if it was Tobirama who told on him.

Tobirama is terrified on Hashirama’s behalf, Hashirama can see it in his face and his stance, and he would never have asked his brother to disobey a direct order from their father, not when Hashirama knows what the consequences would be.

But –

It still hurts, seeing Madara pick his family over their dream.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts –

And then everything changes.

Hashirama already knew in his bleeding grieving heart that this day on the riverside would be a significant one in his life, burned into his brain, and he could see that Madara feels the same way, sees the red he’s been taught from birth to fear ignite behind those beloved features.

But Hashirama’s never been scared of Madara, not the way he’s been trained to be scared of the Uchiha, and so, for the first time in his life he looks fully into the gaze of the Sharingan –

And he recognizes it.

The crude artwork they had at home, exaggerated and monstrous, had concealed the truth, but the Sharingan isn’t monstrous at all. It’s just red.

Red, shining bright, with spinning black tomoe.

Just like Tobirama’s.

A stolen Sharingan will never turn off, his memory reminds him. A punishment to those who dare: that it will eat their chakra reserves to nothing, and brand in their mind forever all that they see –

(“I remember that I’m scared,” Tobirama said, curled in on himself, frightened by a memory he could not place, a memory that could not be his own. “More than anything. And then he laughs, and rips my eyes out.”)

Hashirama doesn’t actually remember how the battle ends, or how they make it home; he knows distantly that Tobirama looks at him, pale with worry and guilt, and that Butsuma doesn’t look at him at all, not even once, but he can’t really bring himself to care.

Nothing penetrates the shock. The horror.

Nothing, that is, until they make it back to their home within the Senju compound, and Butsuma says, “Tobirama, kneel.”

That wakes him up.

“You’re not punishing him,” he says, catching his brother by the shoulder before he can drop to the floor in automatic instinct. “He obeyed your orders.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Butsuma says thoughtfully. “It is you who will be punished this time. Mokuton or no, you betrayed the clan –”

Hashirama can’t help but snort in disbelief. “I betrayed the clan?” he says, and he can hear the near hysteria in his voice. “I betrayed?”

“You consorted with an Uchiha –”

“Oh, yes, consorted with an Uchiha,” Hashirama says, and he’s angry now. “I supposed that’s much worse than stealing their eyes.”

That stops Butsuma.

“How could you?” Hashirama demands. “Eye-stealing is forbidden! Every clan in the Fire Country – every dojutsu wielder in the world – will unite to destroy us!”

Tobirama’s eyes – red, red, red eyes, the black hidden behind lenses that never seemed to have any purpose beyond that tiny color change, that tiny but infinitely significant color change – flicker back and forth between the two of them.

“What are you talking about, anija?” he asks hesitantly. “He didn’t take anyone’s eyes today.”

“Not today, no,” Hashirama says, and he’s so angry – so furious, imagining the child their father robbed before he killed, seeing in his mind’s eye that it could so easily have been one of the brothers Madara lost – that he doesn’t even think about the damage his words might do. “But your eyes came from somewhere.”

Tobirama goes quiet.

“Red eyes, I heard you say.” Hashirama’s gaze is fixed on Butsuma. “I was only a child, but I heard you. Red eyes – that's what made you think you could hide away your theft, wasn't it? Eye-stealing like a common bandit, like a bloodline thief, and no one would notice –”

“I did,” Butsuma says, and he’s not even sorry. There’s not the slightest trace of shame in his features, only a savage smugness. “And I was right. How many Uchiha has he killed, over the years? How many Senju saved? How many battles won? And it’s all because of that!”

“It is not!” Hashirama howls. Even if he valued warfare, which he doesn’t, he can’t abide hearing such filth said about his brother. “Tobirama won those battles, not his eyes!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Butsuma says, and he’s got a savage, mean-spirited smile. “You said it yourself: if anyone finds out, our entire clan will be exterminated. So rage as much as you like, Hashirama; it changes nothing.”

Hashirama’s fists are clenched so tight that he can feel blood dripping down his palms.

“And as for your little Uchiha ‘friend’ –” Butsuma starts.

“You lift one finger against me,” Hashirama says, and he finds to his surprise that his voice is quiet, calm, even. A bit like Tobirama’s, actually. He doesn’t know how that happened, but for some reason it makes Butsuma recoil where none of his screaming ever has. “You lift one finger against me or my brother, and I swear to you that you will be dead.”

Butsuma can tell he means it, too, so he just scowls. “You will fight him in the next battle,” he promises, savage, meaning Madara. “And he will keep killing Uchiha.”

That time, he meant Tobirama.

With that said, Butsuma turns and stalks out of the room.

That’s no more than Hashirama expected, so he lets him go.

Only then, as the red haze starts to fade from his eyes, does he think to look at Tobirama.

Tobirama is sitting on the floor, his legs splayed out before him as if they had simply stopped working. He’s still in his armor, his precious sword negligently dropped to the floor for probably the first time in its existence; his hands are limp in his lap, and he’s staring vacantly into space.

And suddenly it occurs to Hashirama what his reckless words and furious revelations might have done to the person he loves most.

“Tobirama,” he says, dropping down beside him. “Tobirama, no, it’s not your fault –”

“They’re my eyes,” Tobirama says dully. “Or – not mine, I suppose.”

“They’re yours now,” Hashirama says quickly. He doesn’t want Tobirama to get any ideas about ripping them out of his own head or anything like that; that seems like the sort of thing his surprisingly noble-hearted brother might do when he’s not thinking straight. But he means it, too: Tobirama has had them his whole life; they’re his and no one else’s, no matter whose they were originally. “You were only a toddler, a baby, when – when he took you away. I remember it. It must have been then…I was so angry and scared that day. I didn’t know what they were doing, only that you were gone and something bad was happening.”

Tobirama nods, his motions still sluggish with the shock. “Did Mother know?”

Hashirama hesitates.

If what your father is doing works, Tobirama will see better than you, he remembers his mother saying. So it’s a good thing!

His silence is enough. Tobirama bows his head as if the weight on his shoulders has just grown heavier.

“She never said no to Butsuma,” Hashirama says, trying desperately to help lighten that terrible burden. “You know that! It’s not her fault, not really; she never stood up to him, not once, not for anything –”

“Like me.”

Hashirama stops. He hadn’t thought of it that way.

His mother, who feared nothing but her own husband, who loved him in her own way but was beaten down further and further, taking up less and less room, breaking apart piece by piece until the day she died, and even then only her sons knew that the poison in the sake that killed her came not from a clever enemy but from a flower she’d asked Hashirama, all unknowing, to grow for her.

(He remembers that she said the purple nightshade he’d grown was as beautiful as her children, the last thing she’d ever said to them, and he still doesn’t know if she meant it as a compliment or an insult.)

“You’re different from her,” he says, helplessly, and hopes that it’s true.

Tobirama is silent.

And then –

“I don’t need genjutsu to fight.”

Hashirama blinks, confused by the sudden change in topic. “What? I mean, no, of course you don’t, but what does that matter?”

Tobirama looks up, his gaze steely even as he looks away from Hashirama’s eyes, avoiding them the way he always avoids everyone’s eyes. His genjutsu has always been perfect – strong as a Sharingan, Hashirama said once, laughing, and he regrets it now – but Tobirama’s strong dislike for looking people in the eyes had always weakened his use of it.

(Butsuma ordered Tobirama never to look in any of his clanmen’s eyes, and they’d thought it was a rare show of mercy, but now they know the real reason why.)

“I’m not going to use it anymore,” Tobirama says. “I can’t do anything about the memorization, or the copying; that’s automatic. But I’m not going to use them.”

“What about…” Hashirama trails off.

He doesn’t really want to talk about what’s started happening recently, on the days when he and Tobirama snuck out to the forest together – Hashirama to practice his Mokuton, and Tobirama to see what happens when his eyes turn to pinwheels. 

Neither of them realized why at the time, thinking it was some sort of jutsu backlash, but it's not, is it?

All those things that happened - all those strange things, the black water that he can summon from nowhere, boiling hot like burning oil and killing what he wants and nothing more.  Or the way time itself sometimes seems to slip and slide around him now in ways that don’t really make sense, with projects that require four hours rest suddenly being ready after four minutes, and an afternoon of heavy training and they still made it back in time for lunch, and that’s just what they’d found out by accident.

Those are all from the Sharingan.

Tobirama frowns. “I don’t know,” he confesses. “I – Uchiha are fire, though, not water. It’s tied to the eyes, for sure, but…that one is mine.”

My last gift from Kawarama, he doesn’t say, but Hashirama knows he thinks of it that way. Hashirama thinks that if it’s a gift, it’s more of a poisoned chalice, reminding Tobirama every time he uses it that for all his wondrous new powers he’d rather have his brother.

(Hashirama noticed, too, how they had suddenly become the eyes to Tobirama, not his eyes, even though Tobirama had probably had them longer than the original owner by now. Even though he’d never known any other. It made Hashirama wonder what had happened to the original set, though knowing their father they’d probably been thrown out like trash.)

“That makes sense to me,” he says instead.

He doesn’t mention the rare times Tobirama’s eyes go purple; Tobirama hasn’t noticed it yet, Hashirama’s never really found the right time to bring it up, and now really seems like a bad time. He’ll mention it eventually.

Maybe.

Maybe not, if what he’s heard about the Rinnegan’s ability to resurrect people at the cost of the life of the user is true. Maybe that makes Hashirama more his father’s son than he ever wanted to be, but –

He’s not going to let Tobirama trade himself for anyone.

Chapter Text

Butsuma is right about this much: Hashirama does fight Madara, and Tobirama does keep killing Uchiha.

But Tobirama doesn't listen to Butsuma the way he used to, his heart broken by the realization that he'd never earn his father's love not because of any fault in himself, but because of something his father himself inflicted on him, and that has a significant effect in a way neither Butsuma nor Hashirama ever realized.

Tobirama is the soul of the battlefield.

The Senju never really respected their leader's younger - now youngest - son the way they do Butsuma, for his ruthlessness, nor did they revere him the way they do Hashirama, with the crushing power of his Mokuton, but they've learned to trust Tobirama in a way they don't trust either other. Between his sensor abilities and tactical genius, Tobirama is able to look at any situation and figure out how to turn it to their advantage.

He doesn't prioritize saving lives the way Hashirama does; his eyes are fixed on the mission objective, on victory, and to Hashirama's bemusement that is what his clan's shinobi and kunoichi apparently want. They die, yes, leaving widows and widowers and orphans behind, but they die with bloody teeth bared in smiles of pleasure, escaping to the Pure Lands with songs of triumph on their lips.

The elders and powerful of the clan all hate Tobirama, but the regular soldiers follow him first.

And so when Tobirama turns to his brother for confirmation of his orders, rather than his father, it is Hashirama's will that ultimately triumphs over the battlefield - his strategy, his objective, his terms.

His army.

Hashirama notices. Butsuma – doesn’t.

Hashirama notices that, too.

He’s careful not to oppose Butsuma too openly, counting on his father's arrogance and disdain for his second son to blind him to the truth, but under his careful guidance and Tobirama’s brilliance the battles become less bloody, the butcher's bill less steep, the slaughter less likely to spill over onto bystanders.

“No more dead children,” he tells Tobirama one day, when Tobirama finally hits double digits. In Hashirama’s opinion, Tobirama is still a child himself, round-cheeked and baby-fat, but he’s already a general. "I can't stop both sides from sending them out, but...no more."

Tobirama frowns. “He won’t like that.”

Hashirama doesn’t say anything. He won’t push, not when it comes to Butsuma; he doesn’t pay the price for that, not the way Tobirama still does.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tobirama finally says. “But you might not like it.”

He’s right, Hashirama doesn’t like it – sticking the heads of child-killers on pikes? really? – but it works: the Uchiha are extremely freaked out by the unusual savagery of the tactic, which results in morale among the Senju being higher than ever, and that, in turn, means that Butsuma couldn’t get volunteers for a child-killing mission of his own even if he held people at sword-point.

It works.

Honestly, Hashirama is mostly just surprised that the mere presence of dead bodies, of which they have all seen far too many, is enough to cause such an effect on the Uchiha, and he says as much to Tobirama.

“It’s not the corpses, it’s the crows,” Tobirama replies, nodding in the direction of the heads, on which a fairly large number of crows have indeed come to rest. “I’m pretty sure the Uchiha burn their corpses to make sure no one steals the eyes.”

“Burn?” Hashirama asks, wrinkling his nose. The Senju prefer burials, but then, they're primarily a clan of doton users, for all that they're famed for their thousand skills, while the Uchiha are katon users; he supposes it makes sense. “And anyway, what has burial customs got to do with crows?”

“Crows pick out the eyes of dead men,” Tobirama explains. “The Uchiha are sensitive about things like that.”

Sure enough, the next time Hashirama’s on the battlefield with Madara only a swords’ width away, his (former) best friend glares at him as if betrayed and says, poisonously, “Heads on pikes? Really?”

“Only the child-killers!” Hashirama protests, thinking secretly that he and Madara are really quite delightfully similar when it comes down to it.

“What do you mean, only the –” Madara goes quiet for a second, thinking, or possibly just for enough air to cast that stupid fireball jutsu his clan is so famous for. “Your side stopped killing children around the same time.”

“It would be a blow to morale to do otherwise,” Hashirama explains, virtuously cribbing from Tobirama’s solemn and significantly more extensive explanation. He side-steps another katon and half-heartedly throws some roots to grab at Madara’s feet; they miss, of course, though they do make Madara hop like a particularly graceful rabbit. “The statement is only effective if we have moral superiority.”

“And by limiting the punishment to just child-killers, you make it unappealing for anyone in my clan to agree to those types of missions, too,” Madara says. He sounds begrudgingly impressed. “Who on your side thought of that, anyway? Not your father, that’s for sure.”

“...Tobirama,” Hashirama admits.

“Isn’t he ten?”

It’s shortly after that battle that the Uchiha start calling Tobirama the White Demon.

“Congratulations,” Hashirama says solemnly when they find out that the moniker has spread to other clans like the Nara or the Yamanaka, both of whom should really know better. He pats Tobirama on the back. “You’re a scary story parents tell to scare their children.”

“I’m ten,” Tobirama says through gritted teeth and an extremely bemused expression.

“Very scary,” Hashirama says, and pinches his cheeks.

“And I bet all the history scrolls are going to say that you’re the nice one...”

Hashirama does still fight, and quite seriously, against other enemies, and Madara does the same, and their reputations grow to the point that no one even questions why the two clan heirs continue to duke it out with no result – everyone just assumes they’re keeping the other away from the rest of the clan.

Madara might also think that, actually, Hashirama’s not sure, but either way their fights slowly start resembling more and more the sparring sessions they used to have by the riverbank. They never go so far as to shout encouragement for each other’s jutsus, of course, but there’s something of the same feeling.

After a while, Izuna starts making a point of targeting Tobirama on the field, sword against sword. Hashirama worries first that Tobirama is about to slaughter Madara’s last living brother, but they seem fairly evenly matched.

“You’re not going to let him kill you, are you?” he asks, his hands glowing green over a shallow slice in Tobirama’s arm, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. “I mean, I don’t want him to die, either, but if you need me to…”

He doesn’t want to, he desperately doesn’t want to, Madara would never forgive him –

“No, Izuna’s a good opponent,” Tobirama says. “He’s got a great defensive strategy, particularly in close combat.”

Hashirama looks at him.

“I can direct the battlefield any time I’m at a distance, then focus on him when I get close up without worrying about stray casualties,” Tobirama clarifies. “He’s defensive – the Uchiha trained him to guard Madara’s back, not strike out on his own. I might not be able to kill him, but I’ll be fine.”

Hashirama still worries.

That worry probably saves his life.

He’s not anticipating it when Madara suddenly goes back to attacking at full gusto, reeking with deadly killing intent that has a strange almost desperate edge to it, but he’s been holding at least a dozen roots back in reserve just in case he needs to incapacitate Izuna and when Madara hits him full force he squawks and throws them in between them as a shield.

He sees Tobirama blur with speed – his little brother is ridiculously fast, notoriously so even among shinobi, and that’s not a trait associated with the Sharingan, Butsuma – to try to come to help, because he’s probably been worrying about Hashirama as much as Hashirama’s been worrying about him, but Izuna’s blocking him, trying to harry him away from them.

Hashirama flickers his chakra in one of the patterns he and Tobirama established early on – all well here, continue fighting – and Tobirama twists back to focus on Izuna, much to Hashirama’s relief. Distractions in a battle field are a very bad idea.

Yes, yes, he knows he’s a hypocrite.

“What’s happened?” he asks, throwing himself to the side to avoid Madara’s next strike, and unlike his usual dodges he really does mean throw. “What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?”

“Are you insane?” Madara hisses. “You can’t ask me – we’re not friends! We stopped being friends long ago!”

“It’s only been a few years...”

He probably deserves it when Madara goes for his head next.

“Seriously,” he says when he next has a moment to breathe. “Who’s dying?”

He means it as a joke, but Madara looks grim and his eyes flicker ever-so-briefly to the west.

The west, where Tajima and Butsuma are fighting.

“Oh, no,” Hashirama says, meaning it. “I’m really sorry to hear that; I know you don’t get on with him that well, but that can’t be good for your clan.”

Yes, he knows they’re his enemies. But they’re still Madara’s clan, and he can still be concerned about them on Madara’s behalf, no matter how much Madara scoffs at him for it.

“Seriously,” Madara says, mockingly imitating Hashirama’s earlier question. “Hashirama, when did you go insane?”

“Some months before I met you,” Hashirama says honestly. “I had a very bad night.”

Madara gives him a weird look.

“A very bad night.”

Madara almost looks like he wants to ask, or express sympathy, and even though he doesn’t actually do it Hashirama’s counting that as a victory.

Tajima ends up pulling through whatever illness was causing Madara and Izuna such discomfort, and they go back to their almost stalemate for a while.

The next time Tajima begins to falter, though, and Hashirama’s watching for it now, things get bad again.

Madara and Izuna both throw themselves into the fighting, for better or for worse, and then they’re gone for an entire week – Tobirama suggests and leads several very successful covert raids for supplies the second Hashirama tells him they need an excuse not to openly fight the Uchiha until their two strongest fighters are back on the field, and he doesn’t even ask any questions – before returning.

This time, Madara wears the colors of the Clan Head.

Also, and this is more important to Hashirama, his Sharingan eyes are now pinwheels.

“Hey, so, what’s that called?” Hashirama asks, finding that he has to escalate to Sage Mode to stop Madara’s newest – significantly stronger – onslaught. “Oh, and my condolences.”

“You’re so weird,” Madara tells him, but his tone is more long-suffering than anything else. “Also, how long have you been able to do that?”

“As far as Butsuma knows, today,” Hashirama says, a little dryly. “In actuality – a month or so?”

Madara actually stops fighting for a second, peering at him. “Really?” he asks dubiously. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better about the fact that you’ve apparently been taking pity on me?”

“Why would I take pity on you?” Hashirama asks, putting his hands on his hips. “You’re halfway to kicking my ass a good half of the time! If I didn’t get a head start on Sage Mode, you would’ve been able to kill me.”

“That’s the point. We’re at war, you idiot.”

“You still haven’t told me what your new eyes are called,” Hashirama says, because they’re not going to get anywhere retreading that old ground. “Is it still the Sharingan when it’s a pinwheel instead of flecks?”

“Please stop admitting that you look me in the eyes,” Madara says with a groan. “Just – stop. It’s embarassing. To you, mostly, but also to me. And it’s called the Mangekyo Sharingan, not that that’s any of your business.”

“Oh, is that what that looks like? We have some art. It’s – bad.”

Madara pauses again, probably thinking of Hashirama’s extremely underdeveloped sense of artistic appreciation (for some reason, Madara doesn't agree with Hashirama's conclusion that stick figures are as complex as art needs to go) and extrapolating from there about how bad exactly the art is. Then he makes a face.

“Yeah,” Hashirama says with a sigh. “That bad.”

“Just fight me already,” Madara says, but it sounds almost like surrender, and the rest of the battle is mostly Madara trying out cool new attacks while Hashirama blocks or dodges and shouts irritating color commentary.

(Hashirama’s just glad he doesn’t try the black fire the Senju scrolls they’ve uncovered tell about; Tobirama’s already told him that if Madara ever summons that he won't hesitate to use his black water to counter it, and that would be the end of everything.)

After the battle, though, he’s feeling particularly light-hearted. Madara, Clan Head! It’s a heavy duty that falls upon his shoulders, especially since he’s only seventeen, but despite everything he said about picking family over peace, there’s a chance that maybe he would be open to –

“- peace talks,” Butsuma says. “"We can have a delegation ready to go by the end of this week."

Hashirama gapes at him.

He knew Butsuma had started noticing his growing lack of control over the Senju clan - it began with Tobirama's army getting accustomed to looking to Hashirama because Tobirama does, and, once his approaches started getting results, their admiration spread even to non-combatants - but Hashirama still has nowhere near enough support in the clan to launch an effective coup and seize power.

And while Hashirama has been able to effectively leverage his growing popularity into a certain measure of influence over clan policy, enough to counter some of Butsuma's worst instincts, Butsuma himself has always been his enemy, not his ally.

Why would he suddenly be agreeing to one of Hashirama's most dearly held dreams now?

Tobirama very minutely turns his face to the side, a deliberate shift that no one but Hashirama would realize was him shaking his head, warning caution, but Hashirama is filled with bubbling hope too strong to repress. He never cared if he was the one who reached out the first hand for peace or if the credit went to someone else, as long as peace is ultimately reached.

If Butsuma has finally realized that peace was inevitable, that Hashirama will offer it regardless as soon as he was dead - a realization perhaps triggered by Tajima's own death? - and wants to get ahead in order to ensure that he can include robust terms in the negotiations, Hashirama will take it, and with great joy.

"How do we know the Uchiha will not kill our ambassadors on sight as they approach?" one of the elders is asking.

"We'll send them under flag of truce," Butsuma says. "We've never done that before; they'll be curious. A small party, no more than three individuals, and at least one will be of sufficient importance that they will be convinced of our good intentions."

"I'll go," Hashirama says at once. He doesn't think it's likely - he's the heir, after all, and their Mokuton prodigy, not to mention even he knows that he’s frankly awful at negotiating when it’s for something he really wants  - and sure enough, everyone is shaking their heads.

Butsuma has a little smile on his lips, though, and Hashirama feels the first shiver of concern - he looks smug and satisfied, laughter behind his eyes at Hashirama’s small gesture in support of his idea, as if something is going right.

Tobirama always feared that expression most of all, and usually for good reason.

"No," Butsuma says, raising his hands for quiet. "Not you, Hashirama, but your brother's presence will be just as persuasive."

Hashirama's heart sinks, hope curling into fear in his belly. Butsuma treats Tobirama decently enough in public, especially since he figured out his second son's sway with the soldiers of their clan, but he's never truly valued him.

And while Tobirama would be Hashirama's own first pick as ambassador, with his self-control and poise and ability to always consider his options before acting, Hashirama is terribly certain that those are not the qualities Butsuma is thinking of.

Butsuma has always thought of Tobirama, first and foremost, as disposable.

But then, that would mean - the peace talks -

"An ambassador of such high rank would require them to treat him with respect," Butsuma says. "Gathering all the strongest members of their clan together at the welcoming feast - and that is when we will destroy them all.”

Some of the advisors look uncomfortable at the thought of using peace talks as a cover, but many of the elders are as vicious as Butsuma, and they’re already nodding.

“How, though?” one asks with a frown. “They won’t weaken their outside defenses –”

“The strength of a wall doesn’t matter if the attack comes from within,” Butsuma says, and there’s an ugly sort of anticipation in his voice. “An explosive seal tied directly to the user’s chakra, magnifying the effect many times over...the entire compound will be caught in the blast. Even those who survive the initial blast will be weakened, allowing our forces from outside to come in and pick them all off. We will leave no survivors.”

Hashirama is frozen. Horror wells up within him; his mouth tastes like ash, and he can see it, that’s the worst part, he can see it – it’s not a bad plan, not really, not with the Uchiha weakened and uncertain after Tajima’s death, not with Madara as the new clan head; Madara, who unlike Tajima would allow the ambassadors to pass through the compound gates, and all because he would believe without a second’s hesitation that Hashirama must be behind the delegation –

“Abomination,” he says, his lips moving without his conscious decision. “This plan – it is an abomination.”

Some of the leaders are looking to him, but not enough, not enough, he’s beloved by the majority of the Senju but their clan is no democracy – it is the elders and the powerful whose voices matter, and they support Butsuma.

Dogs, each one of them, baying for blood that they will not need to lift a finger to obtain.

“The Uchiha will not be so easily deceived,” one of the elders says, ignoring Hashirama entirely, obviously dismissing his objection as nothing more than the wistful dreams of an idealist the way he always does. “They will search our ambassadors before they permit them to enter, much less invite them to a meal. How can we hide the seal well enough to get it through their gates?”

Butsuma smiles. “Do not trouble yourselves; I’ve already thought of a solution to that,” he says. “We’ll put it in the one place an Uchiha will never think to look.”

He glances over at Tobirama, who he still thinks of as his – his tool to use, not his son, never his son, never beloved and all because of what Butsuma himself inflicted upon him – and his smile widens.

“We’ll paint the explosive seal onto Tobirama’s eyes.”

Hashirama doesn’t actually remember moving.

It’s as if the whole world goes white, then red, and it’s fury he feels, fury unlike anything he’s ever felt before, all the hatred he’s ever had for Butsuma suddenly filling him from head to toe – how dare Butsuma do something like this, how dare he pervert Hashirama’s dearest dream and seek to use, seek to kill, Hashirama’s most precious person in the process; how dare he use Hashirama’s friendship with Madara to destroy him and his clan; how dare he treat Tobirama like trash that finally has a use but only in its destruction; how dare he –

When Hashirama comes back to himself, his hands are covered in blood.

He’s lunged across the table, the wood of the floor and wall and chair – dead wood, of the sort he’s long pretended he doesn’t have the ability to control – all springing to life with sharp spikes to pin Butsuma in place, and he’s – he’s –

He ripped Bustuma’s eyes out of his head.

What has he done?

“Kill him,” Tobirama says.

Hashirama looks at him blankly. Doesn’t Tobirama realize – he just – the Senju clan will never accept a parricide as their leader, never; Hashirama will never be able to extend to Madara the hand of peace, he’ll be lucky if he escapes without being executed or banished –

Tobirama’s eyes are spinning pinwheels. He’s removed his lenses, hands moving as quick as the lightning he can summon, and his hands are knotted into fists on the table before him as if he is under some terrible pressure.

“Tobirama...?”

That’s when Hashirama realizes that no one else in the room has moved.

Their eyes are fixed on Hashirama where he kneels on the table before the moaning, wounded but not-yet-dead body of his father, but their eyes do not see.

Their eyes shine red, with black pinwheels.

Genjutsu.

“I won’t be able to block their vision for long,” Tobirama says, and he’s gritting his teeth with the strain of it. His chakra is strong, not weak as they’d always thought – it was only ever the presence of the ever-draining Sharingan that hid it away – and they’d figured out a way for him to borrow some of Hashirama’s when he needed extra, as he does now. “Kill him, now; then remove your wooden spikes and go wash your hands. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Tobirama,” Hashirama says, helpless. He’s the older brother; he’s supposed to be the one caring for his brother, not the opposite way around. And what does it matter, anyway? He’s a parricide, he’s never going to be Clan Head, and now Tobirama’s own succession will be in question because of what he’s done to help –

“I can’t kill him,” Tobirama says. His voice is as stern and calm as ever, but Hashirama knows his little brother and can see how much he’s feeling right now; he’s overwhelmed with emotion, far too many all at once for Hashirama to decipher. “I can’t kill him, anija; I still love him. So you have to do it. Now, Hashirama.”

Hashirama reaches out and snaps his father’s neck. He doesn’t laugh the way he thought he would.

“Now go.”

Hashirama goes.

When he comes back, the elders are all on their feet, all yelling, their eyes clear once more, and only Tobirama is still kneeling, his eyes closed to conceal the truth hidden under their lids.

“Hashirama-sama!” one of them bellows, grabbing at his arms – it’s the one who ignored him earlier, who asked about how they would hide the explosive seal to get it through the gates. He’s never addressed him as Hashirama-sama before in his life. “He has to be imprisoned at once!”

“I – what?”

He?

“Your brother! After you stormed out, Bustuma explained his plan to use Tobirama as a vessel for the explosive seal, and Tobirama murdered him where he sat!”

After he –

Oh.

Of course.

Genjutsu is the art of weaving illusions so real you can’t tell the difference between them and reality – so real that if you time it just right, you can overwrite a person’s perception of what happened right before their own eyes.

And Tobirama knows, just as Hashirama does, that the Senju will never accept a parricide as their leader. He used his Mangekyo Sharingan to trade that reality for a new one, using a skill he hasn’t touched since he was a child – a skill he swore he would never use again.

He broke that vow for Hashirama’s sake.

Hashirama looks at the scene before him with new eyes.

Butsuma’s head – with its missing eyes and snapped neck, damning in their tale of what Hashirama did – is missing, blasted away, probably with one of Tobirama’s water dragons, because Tobirama might have loved his father too much to kill him but he has never cared about what happens to corpses, no matter how once-beloved.

Hashirama had called the plan an abomination – he’d been too horrified to move, yes, but he could see a world in which he wasn’t, a world where he leapt to his feet and stormed out of the room. He can see the elder still asking the question he asked and Butsuma answering the same – he can’t see Tobirama rising up in fury, casting his most deadly ninjutsu on an unprepared man, much less on his father, but the elders can, and have, and that’s what matters.

Hashirama will be clan head after all.

“– execute him," the elders are shouting, "Exile him, imprison him –”

“No,” Hashirama says, and his voice silences them all. They’re not accustomed to seeing him be stern and solemn. “There will be no punishment.”

“You can’t be serious!” one of the other elders shouts. “He murdered your father!”

“My father went mad,” Hashirama says. “He must have, to have proposed such a plan. To pervert the laws of hospitality and truce like that – the Senju would never be trusted again by anyone. Our allies would desert us, our patrons and clients would abandon us, and the rest of the world would unite together to destroy us rather than permit the existence of a snake who would use the flag of truce as a weapon.”

They fall silent again – a guilty silence, this time, for having let their lust for Uchiha blood overwhelm their reason.

“To have even suggested such a thing is madness,” Hashirama continues, looking at each and every one of them. “To have proposed something that would lead to the destruction of our clan is unforgivable. It is treason, pure and simple – treason to our clan, treason to the laws of humanity itself. And the punishment for treason is death.”

The room is deathly quiet.

“My brother performed nothing more than his duty,” Hashirama says, and the lie tastes like ash on his tongue. “He executed a traitor. That it was our father is – unfortunate, yes, but I will not punish someone for doing their duty. He will not be imprisoned, he will not be punished. I say so not as a brother, but in my first act as the head of our clan. Is that understood?”

It takes a long moment, but they nod. First the ones he’s already lured over to his side, the ones who have already invested themselves in his eventual ascent; then the ones who wavered between the sides, uncertain who would prove more persuasive; and finally even the ones who supported Butsuma, realizing at last that he is gone, he is no more, and the world has changed.

Each and every one of them nods.

Hashirama has won.

He will be the next clan leader.

“Take my father’s body and prepare it for a proper burial,” Hashirama says, even though Butsuma deserves to be thrown from the compound walls and left for dogs to feed on. “And if you are to speak of what happened here, you will speak of it as I have: as treason, as madness, as justice. Now go.”

They go.

When they are at last alone in the room, Hashirama looks at his brother, still kneeling, his eyes still closed. There are tears gathering in the corners of his eyes: he still loved his father, even after everything, and Hashirama killed him. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t just mean for the genjutsu – for Tobirama violating his own oath, which not even Butsuma’s most dire punishments managed to get him to do – but for what it means. Tobirama doesn’t believe in peace, can’t even imagine it, would never pursue it if he were named clan head, but for the sake of Hashirama’s peace he will let his name be spat upon, tainted forever with the name of parricide that should rightly hang on Hashirama’s head.

“For you, anija,” Tobirama murmurs at last, still not looking at him. “Anything.”

How could Hashirama promise him anything less in return?

Chapter Text

Hashirama leads his clan, Madara leads his, and yet there is no peace.

It’s – frustrating.

“Anija,” Tobirama says without looking up from the paperwork he’s doing, probably their tithe to the daiymo or some other internal clan matter that only appears unimportant until nobody does it. “You’re destabilizing the architecture with your feelings again. Go play in your garden until you feel better.”

Hashirama’s Forest of Death is not a garden and he’s sticking to that. Though it is a remarkably good place to sulk, and anyway going there will mean he doesn’t have to work on –

“You can take the papers I prepared for you to sign with you.”

Hashirama groans.

Tobirama is far too good a clan leader, given that he actually isn’t, but Hashirama can’t help but be grateful for it. If the clan’s finances had been left in his hands alone…

It’s not worth thinking about, really. He’s so bad at paperwork.

Specifically, at remembering to do any of it.

Tobirama, though, never complains. He likes being of use to the clan, he says, and every time he does Hashirama gives him a giant bone-crushing hug because he still hates his father for making Tobirama think he has to be of use to be wanted.

(Tobirama’s standing in the clan is…not great, though better than Hashirama worried it might be. There’s never any love for a parricide, of course, and there were a lot of whispers at first, a lot of uncertain glares from shinobi who still desperately wanted to follow Tobirama in battle but who didn’t know if they should, but it all got resolved the day his Aunt Kaede – who is everyone’s Aunt Kaede, really, because she’s so old and still so terrifying – decides to draft Tobirama to be her walking stick for the day, which is her version of a stamp of approval. After that the whispers mostly subside and things go back to normal, and there are sometimes a few comments about how the wind sometimes carries things back to the person who threw them that make Hashirama see red because if they knew and did nothing then he…is going to do nothing about it because he can’t abuse his position as clan head, but it makes him want to do something.)

Tobirama even finds time – somehow, between doing the clan administration, keeping up his training, and continuing to churn out new jutsu at an alarming rate – to start studying up on all sorts of bizarre things.

At first Hashirama can’t figure out why in the world Tobirama would care about things like sewage systems and garbage disposal and plumbing and electrical lines, but then Tobirama gives him twenty scrolls on architecture and civil engineering and how larger settlements get laid out to maximize both efficiency and defense and suddenly Hashirama gets it.

Hashirama’s the clan head now, after all.

Tobirama wants to be ready to build his village.

Hashirama blubbered for at least three days after he figured it out, which made Tobirama so horrified that he's been forced to promise not to do it again.

Still, knowing that Tobirama's on board with Hashirama's dream village means so much to him. They're ready for it to happen.

Except, of course, said dream village requires peace with the Uchiha, and that part is – tricky.

He tries to talk to Madara about it during battle – somewhat incessantly, he’ll admit – and gets nothing but fireballs thrown at his face for it.

Everything seems fairly hopeless.

Then, one day, he bumps into Madara in the middle of the small fishing village just down the way from the daimyo’s summer palace.

He stares.

Madara stares.

They’re both hiding themselves with henges, both alone, probably both here for the same stupid mission, but there’s no circumstances under which they would not recognize each other.

“Did that asshole actually hire both our clans to do one job?” Madara finally says, sounding somewhere between bemused and deeply offended. “Does he not know…?”

“Active sabotage seems more likely than someone forgetting about the whole Senju-Uchiha thing,” Hashirama concedes, thinking to himself that it was particularly likely given the particular constraints of the mission – requiring secrecy and power both, meaning that it was really just him or Tobirama able to take the job for the Senju, which now that he thought about it was remarkably well paid. It was probably the same on the Uchiha side. “Truce until we figure out what the trap is?”

“Don’t call the generations of outright warfare between our clans a ‘thing’ like you’re a teenage girl discussing her favorite celebrity couple,” Madara says, looking pained, “and you can have your truce.”

Hashirama promptly changes his henge to a moderately attractive but not particularly noticeable female form of himself, wraps his arms around Madara’s henge, and obnoxiously coos, “Whatever you say, Madara-senpai!”

Madara makes a very fine effort to keep his face straight and his grumpy temper intact, but then he glances over at Hashirama’s new henge and just bursts out laughing.

Probably the addition of bunny ears.

“I hate you,” he chokes between howls of laughter. “Why do I like you, you’re so dumb –”

“The sloth contract makes me irresistibly cute,” Hashirama says primly. He doesn’t actually have a sloth contract – he doesn’t have a summoning contract at all, no animal would take him; Tobirama says it’s probably because of the Mokuton and Hashirama agrees, though he half-suspects he might have bound himself by blood to an oak tree once given how he seems to be able to summon them out of nowhere no matter where he is or how unlikely it is that there were any acorns around for him to use – but no one else needs to know that. Anyway, it’s a great excuse: no one ever seems to question it when he says vaguely that getting the sloths moving is too difficult to waste on routine missions. “Let’s go eat some ramen.”

“In the middle of a mission?”

“We still have to eat. Besides, we can listen for gossip at the same time!”

“Listen, just because we’re teaming up this one time doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill you the next time we meet on the battlefield –”

“Yes, yes, of course. But that’s then, this is now, and now we’re getting ramen!”

They do end up murdering the person who hired them – it turns out he was hoping they’d destroy the village by fighting each other, thereby covering up certain very naughty things he’d been up to – but it’s still the most fun Hashirama’s had in ages.

“Want to do this again next month?” he asks as they prepare to head back out to their respective clans.

“You really don’t get the whole ‘mortal enemy’ business, do you?” Madara asks, but he sounds resigned, and he does show up next month so he’s a rotten dirty hypocrite anyway.

He tries to justify it as fishing for information, but it’s not like Hashirama actually tells him anything he could use about his clan – he mostly complains about dumb stuff people in his clan are doing (“Touka is trying to see if you can double-wield naginata again!”) and laughing at Madara’s horrified responses to them.

Madara doesn’t tell him useful things either, sticking to equally ridiculous topics, and that’s fine.

(Tobirama knows where Hashirama's going every month, but doesn’t even bother trying to get stuff out of him afterwards, telling him that he’s hopeless and an embarrassment until Hashirama sits on him, smiling, because he knows that’s as close to Tobirama’s blessing as he’s ever going to get.)

He doesn’t know if Madara’s got the same arrangement with Izuna, but he likes to think so.

“How’s that white demon of a brother of yours doing?” Madara asks one day. “Haven’t seen him in battle for a bit.”

They’re sitting by the pier with donburis and Hashirama has taken off his shoes to see if the fish really will come nip at his toes if he puts them in the water while Madara rolls his eyes at him.

“I wouldn’t be here if he were injured,” Hashirama points out. “No, he’s just…he developed this new, uh, thing, and he’s taking some time to work out the kinks.”

“Great,” Madara says. “Is this a ‘lots of your clan’s people are going to die when he unveils this’ sort of thing or is this more like the time he tried to raise the dead?”

“I told him to stop doing that,” Hashirama says. “Andanywayheonlysortofgotthatowork – anyway! Not the point –”

“There wasn’t a point, I asked you a question. Also, he got it to work?”

“No, because I told him to stop.”

“…that’s not comforting.”

“Anyway, you don’t need to worry, it’s not either,” Hashirama says, deciding to just move on. They’ve had the ‘necromancy is a bad habit’ discussion before, he agrees wholeheartedly, and anyway Madara clearly doesn’t have anything new to add, he just likes to whine. Hashirama's already forbidden it, okay? What more does Madara expect from him? He certainly can't stop Tobirama from inventing new forbidden things; it's like his brother's only hobby. “It’s more of, um, you know, a defensive measure. A bit like that thing you do, the Susanoo…say, is that particularly characteristic of your clan?”

Madara gives him a weird look. “Yes…? The tengu are traditionally seen as a gift from the founder of our line, along with our Sharingan.”

Damnit.

And Tobirama’s been so excited by the possibilities of the Susanoo, too! He’ll be disappointed when he finds out he won’t be able to plausibly use it in the battlefield.

(“I won’t let you be stained with our father’s crimes,” Tobirama told him once, his eyes bright red and swirling in the way he only permits them to do in the privacy of the training field Hashirama built and warded just for him. “I know no one can ever find out. But I won’t let you die, either, and if that means revealing all of this, then so be it.”)

Hashirama sighs, then turns and pokes Madara in the side. “Hey, speaking of Susanoo, yours changed recently. Wasn’t it just bones to start with?”

“It develops more as you master it,” Madara says, batting his hand away. “Eventually you can get it to a full person, with armor and a sword. Then it’s really useful.”

“Do you think I could do the same with wood, if I tried?”

“Hashirama.”

“Right, right, I keep forgetting, battle plans and new jutsu are not appropriate subjects of conversation. Oh, wait, before we change subjects, has Izuna figured out that new jumping move? Tobirama said the last time he tried it on the battlefield, he ended up in a tree.”

“Hashirama.” Madara’s attempts not to start laughing are really making his stern words a lot less effective.

“I just want to know,” Hashirama persists, grinning. “Tobirama laughed so hard that he couldn’t breathe last time, the second we got home, so it's clearly need-to-know information: I need to know if I should learn some sort of lung-clearing jutsu to keep my brother from dying from excessive laughter –”

Madara puts his head into his hands, but his shoulders are shaking. “Izuna said it was a bush he got stuck in.”

“Tree,” Hashirama says. “Definitely a tree. Trust the Mokuton: it was a tree.”

This secret friendship is not what Hashirama wants, but it’s what he has, and he’ll live with that.

He still spends each battle offering peace to Madara – still starts ever meeting by asking about it before being shut down – but Madara refuses time and time again, thinking first of his clan and what they want rather than what would be good for them.

(Tobirama says that Hashirama is not naturally democratic, even if he is something of a pacifist, and he’s probably right about that. Well, nobody’s perfect, and Tobirama’s always cared enough about democracy for the two of them anyway. Hashirama has no clue where that urge came from, but it’s the reason he has to contend with a stupid council so he’s not sure he entirely approves of it.)

It’s mostly all pointless.

But sometimes, the best times, Madara will let it slip that he still thinks of their dream.

“Looks like the Hatake would be tentatively up for a more permanent alliance if we ever actually make the village,” he tells Madara one time.

Madara groans. “The Hatake? Really? Between them and the Inuzuka –” Uchiha allies. “– the whole thing’ll turn into a dung-pit; I thought we were planning a village, not a zoo…”

“We’ll put them on opposite sides of the village so that they don’t run into each other.”

“There isn’t going to be a village, we’re at war. And anyway, even if there was, they’d have to go together; I’d never agree to having more than one side with exposed open forest access.”

“But what about the Nara? They won’t want to share their deer with wolves.”

“Hn, prey animals…maybe some restricted preserve for those?”

“That could work. We’d need lots of space for the training grounds anyway. Can you imagine being stuck in a siege without a place to train?”

“Yes. Viscerally well, having experienced it several…wait, are you saying the Senju compound has training grounds inside its walls?”

“Why did you think the compound is so large? We’re a smaller clan than yours!”

“That still seems unnecessarily decadent. But I suppose it would reduce stress under siege…”

“It really does. I was thinking maybe fifty or so for the village –”

“Fifty training grounds?! Where are you planning on putting this village, the moon?!”

And so it goes.

Not peace, no, but – something.

And then things change.

Chapter Text

Hashirama actually spends the entirety of the afternoon where everything changes unconscious, which means he doesn’t know that everything has changed until significantly later.

Though he still finds out before just about anybody else.

“You’re such an idiot,” Tobirama tells him, afterwards, furious and elbow-deep in Hashirama’s stomach to rearrange the organs before Hashirama’s ridiculously accelerated healing fixes them into all the wrong places. “You should have dodged that.”

“I meant to,” Hashirama moans. Tobirama’s a great healer, even if he doubts his own abilities – just because Hashirama has the spare chakra that lets him skip the details in favor of brute-forcing the body’s own healing doesn’t actually make him better at fixing things. Tobirama’s the detail expert, the one who studied anatomy (mostly on corpses, which, ick!); if there’s something wrong on the inside, he’s the one to go to. Which is why Hashirama almost invariably does. “I just – if I’d dodged, they would’ve gotten the kids.”

“The kids are fully grown shinobi.”

“Sixteen’s too young to die.”

“You started with six being too young to die,” Tobirama grumbles. “Then it was ten. Now it’s sixteen...you do realize that if we never let any shinobi fight, ever, we’re going to run out of money pretty fast?”

He doesn’t object any further, though, which says everything Hashirama needs to know.

After Hashirama's gotten all fixed up – his stomach doesn’t even have a scar on it, of course, his healing never leaves him scars in a way that would be frankly a little embarrassing for a shinobi of his age if he didn’t have the healing to explain it away, but hilariously enough even Tobirama, who knows his healing factor better than anyone else, will sometimes, when he's very drunk, start petting Hashirama’s skin and marveling at how soft and unbroken it is – he grins at Tobirama and stretches ostentatiously. “See, all fine. No harm done, right?”

“Other than the years the stress has taken off my life, you mean?”

“Awww, Tobirama…”

“There – is something else,” Tobirama says, and Hashirama knew he’d been more angry and stressed than normal. Sure, it'd been a bad injury - most shinobi did not survive being disemboweled, which is what made this particular clan's signature move particularly notorious - and, yes, even Hashirama with his ridiculous advantages just barely squeaked through without dying, a risk he'd known he was taking when he'd leapt forward to take the blow, but even so, Tobirama was unusually upset.

Something was definitely up.

"Oh?" he asks, thinking in terms of strategy and tactics. Had he missed something? "What?"

“I had to use the Sharingan to end the fight quickly.”

Hashirama blinks, taken aback. He hadn’t realized the fight had gone that badly.

“Your guts were everywhere,” Tobirama says, averting his eyes to the floor. “How was I to know it wasn’t as bad as it looked?”

It probably was as bad as it looked, but, well, they’re not the two best healers in Fire Country for nothing.

(Sometimes Hashirama wonders if that medic knew what he was starting when he taught Hashirama that first jutsu, but no – back then no one even knew about the Mokuton, much less about Hashirama’s tendency to get hyperfixated on certain subjects that he then masters to an unnecessarily thorough degree.)

“Okay,” Hashirama says. "...so?"

Tobirama glares at him.

Hashirama holds up his hands. "Seriously!" he says, shrugging. He can't quite figure out why Tobirama is so stressed about it. Sure, he hates breaking his promise not to actively use his eyes, but he’d always left the door open for emergency situations, which this seems to have been. “The kids were unconscious at the time, so they didn’t see, and you killed all the attackers. So what’s the problem? If nobody sees it happen, it's the same as if it hasn't happened.”

Hashirama is a great believer in trees falling in a forest being functionally noiseless as long as no one is there to hear it. Tobirama, on the other hand, seems to think that things matter just for the principle, which is obviously ridiculous.

Tobirama makes a face at him, knowing exactly where Hashirama's thoughts are going. “Yes, well, even by your standards it was a problem: I think someone was watching.”

“Someone? Unspecified? The finest sensor in all the land can’t tell me who?”

“I was busy! They were hiding their chakra – fairly effectively, in fact –”

Pretty high praise from Tobirama.

“While I still knew they were there, of course, I didn’t think they were important enough to check out since they didn’t seem to have any intention of participating. You know I was already running on three days of no sleep before we were even ambushed! And once I was forced to use the Sharingan to counter those chakra-mangling techniques of theirs - whoever first decided to invent a method of using chakra to disembowel people should be lit on fire and not put out - I barely had enough chakra to drag you back here and heal you.”

“…Tobirama.”

“What?”

“Are you saying you left the kids behind? Unconscious?”

“I sent some people go pick them up once I got back; they’re fine. I wouldn’t have if there’d been any risk.”

Hashirama rolls his eyes.

Tobirama scowls at him. “Can you focus on the more important question here?”

“I don’t think it is more important,” Hashirama says, shrugging again. Tobirama was always more of a worrier than Hashirama has ever been. “Even if this mysterious watcher did see you, which you don’t know for sure, what’s he or she or they going to say about it? And to who? Oh, yes, I'm just going to walk into a nearby tavern and announce to all and sundry that the White Demon of the Senju has a Sharingan; that's a sound plan. Let him! No one’ll believe him, not in a million years."

"But -"

"Tobirama. There was only one watcher, right?”

“Yes, just one.”

“See? It’s fine. No external verification, no problem. Even if they somehow convince themselves that’s really what they saw happening rather than it being, I don't know, a trick of the light, they’ll probably assume they got caught in a particularly strange genjutsu.”

It takes some more convincing, but eventually Tobirama calms down.

So, really, it's no big deal.

Hashirama would have happily forgotten all about it - the kids certainly seem inclined to, since no one really enjoys thinking about disembowelment - except that Tobirama promptly leaps on the whole entire fiasco as an excuse to insist that Hashirama practice being subtle more.

Hashirama protests.

Tobirama refuses to yield, justifying his stubbornness on the basis it was Hashirama's fault the rescue mission turned into such a disaster.

Hashirama would probably be on stronger ground if that wasn't, well, true.

Not that stops him from trying to get out of it.

Still, after the first five excuses Hashirama tries don’t work, he agrees.

That’s probably why he’s lazily practicing his ‘pretending to be a tree’ skill by the riverbank a week later when Madara and Izuna come out of nowhere.

Not good.

Madara he could get away with, sure, but with Izuna around? No thanks.

He doesn't like those odds - he'll make it out alive, more than likely, but Madara fights like he's possessed by a demon when his brother is around, and Izuna's distaste for the Senju (and for Hashirama personally, which Hashirama has never really understood but which Tobirama, sighing, explains to him is probably misplaced jealousy) is strong enough that he would probably pick a fight just for the principle of it.

And Hashirama did promise Tobirama that he'd at least try to avoid getting disemboweled again until everyone has gotten over the trauma of last time.

Hashirama very hastily makes himself a better pretend tree.

Amazingly enough, it actually seems to work, but probably only because Madara is so clearly distracted.

(Hashirama has never been able to hide from Madara when he's paying attention, and the reverse is true. He's not sure why that is - they're both above-average in sensing henges and clones and negative intent, yes, but people far less skilled than Madara have gotten by Hashirama before and he knows that the same is true for Madara. But each other? They always know if it's the real one.)

Still, Madara's entire focus is on the river and his brother, and he walks right by Hashirama who, in retrospect, should probably have stuck to the Senju side of the river for his practice session.

He does note that Madara’s biting his nails again, which he only does when he’s nervous.

“Put your gloves back on and stop that,” Izuna tells him, using a voice that sounded remarkably like Tobirama's own long-suffering tone. “Listen, okay, I dragged you all the way out here for a reason. I want answers.”

Madara pauses in the middle of putting on his gloves. “Answers?” he squeaks, then, with a force of will, swallows and says in a more normal voice, “To what?”

Izuna rolls his eyes. “Right. And that wasn’t suspicious at all, aniki. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Madara grumbles and sits down by the riverbank. Hashirama is only three trees back from them.

If he just stays quiet and carefully avoids listening to their conversation, they might not notice him. He furiously thinks tree-like thoughts to avoid being sensed and then shortly thereafter dealing with attempted murder, which would undoubtedly spoil a very pleasant afternoon.

Water, soil, sunlight. Water, soil, sunlight. Water, soil, sunlight –

“I find myself facing something of a minor dilemma,” Madara says.

Screw sunlight, he wants to hear this.

(Tobirama says that Hashirama is a gossip. Hashirama says that shinobi are trained in information collection and that he's simply exercising his skills. Tobirama, at that point, rolls his eyes and says that if that were true, Hashirama would be more inclined to collect information that was actually useful rather than obtaining an encyclopedic understanding of who is sleeping with who at any given moment. Hashirama then claims that that information could one day prove useful, and in reply Tobirama tells him to prove it. They've had this exact discussion at least thirteen times and they don't seem to have tired of it yet.)

“You? A dilemma? You don’t say; I would never have guessed,” Izuna sniffs, then grins when Madara glares at him. “Yeah, yeah, you've been acting weird; I figured it was something like that. But what is it?”

Madara fidgets for a moment. “I saw something,” he says. “It was – a surprise.”

Izuna arches his eyebrows.

Hashirama mentally urges Madara to get on with it already.

“…I think someone in our clan might have raped somebody.”

Whoa.

“What?” Izuna says, sitting straight up. “Who?! When?”

“No, I mean, I don’t have proof! And I don’t know who. I just think it’s possible it might have happened, if you know what I mean.”

Izuna clearly does from the scowl on his face, although Hashirama doesn’t get it. That seems like a fairly yes-or-no answer in his mind - how in the world could someone walk in on a scene that makes them think rape was involved and not know? Hashirama would think that it'd be fairly obvious given what the scene in question must have been.

 “Shit," Izuna says.

"No kidding."

"What makes you think it wasn’t consensual?” Izuna asks, which seems like a bullshit question to ask, in Hashirama’s opinion. Madara's impulsive, but he wouldn't leap to conclusions like that, surely.

Madara grimaces. “Possible, but the circumstances make it seem - unlikely. Besides, if it was, it wouldn’t be a problem, would it? We’d already know.”

Huh?

“Great," Izuna says. "Just – great. That's fucking great. Could it be…?”

“I really don’t think so, and anyway we haven’t had any, uh, instances recently. Not untraced ones.”

“Hn, fine, point taken. Is this something we could solve by…?”

“No.”

“We have to do something. If someone else figures it out –”

“There’s no immediate issue,” Madara says, holding up his hands when Izuna glares at him. “The situation is contained for now. But it’s…more complicated than you might think.”

“It doesn’t matter if it's complicated,” Izuna says firmly. “We're the clan heads, Madara. We have responsibilities. You need to deal with this. One way – or the other.”

“I know, I know, and I will,” Madara says, but he looks even more distressed than before. “Just – I don’t know. Whatever. I’ll find a way to deal with it. Pick another subject.”

A long, somewhat judgmental pause.

Hashirama wiggles an overly inquisitive squirrel off one of his branches.

“I’ve found a really great new sword technique,” Izuna finally offers. “Next time I meet Tobirama in battle, I’ll be able to skewer –”

“No!” Madara yelps.

Izuna stares at him.

Madara winces. “Let’s not discuss that here, okay? Too close to Senju lands. Someone could be listening.”

Don’t be ridiculous. No one’s listening. Hashirama’s just a tree. A nice, innocent beech of a tree.

Heh.

“Did you hear that?” Izuna asks, frowning and looking around. “It sounded like giggling.”

Oops.

...maybe Tobirama has a point about Hashirama not being good at subtlety.

Madara’s frowning now, too, and, yep, he’s going to start sensing any minute so clearly the only thing to do is to make the trees on the other side of the river start swaying pointedly until they catch Madara's attention.

"What is happening," Izuna says flatly.

“Just Hashirama. In a good mood, apparently, if his emotions are reaching the riverbank,” Madara says, seeing the trees wiggle in a happy dance. Hashirama can get a whole set to do it in time now but Madara doesn't seem that impressed, rolling his eyes, though his lips also quirk up a bit, making him look fond. “Don't pay him any mind, he just does things like that."

"I can't believe you actually like that man. He's an idiot!"

"I'm not disagreeing," Madara says dryly. "And yet the fact remains that I do like him. And be sure to remember that that 'idiot' could probably wipe out an entire unwary clan by himself if he wanted to. We should go.”

Hashirama’s sad to see them go, but it’s better than being found out eavesdropping on them.

…huh. If he really focused on this whole tree disguise thing, he might really be able to drop eaves on them. That would be hilarious.

Also, Madara would get incredibly paranoid, which would be even more hilarious.

He does wonder a little what they were talking about, that they felt the need to speak so obliquely even when they thought they were alone.

Uchiha clan business, undoubtedly. Nothing that concerns him.

Chapter Text

"What's going on with the Uchihas?" Tobirama asks one day, only a little while later. "It almost feels like they've been avoiding us recently."

"I have no idea," Hashirama says, and patiently endures the moment or two of additional scrutiny before Tobirama believes him.

Apparently his credibility on all things Madara-related is not the best. He can't really blame Tobirama for his skepticism, either.

"I wish I did know," he adds, pouting. Madara even missed their monthly meet up. It happened fairly frequently - missions, clan business, whatnot - so he isn't worried or anything, but he would like an explanation.

"You might yet get your chance to find out," Tobirama says dryly. "Your friend is approaching Senju lands alone."

"Madara? He's - what? Really? Here? He never comes to find me!"

"He is this time. Go talk to him."

Hashirama is out the window before Tobirama can remind him to take paperwork with him or something equally awful.

“Madara!” he exclaims, leaping down from one of the trees into the clearing Madara has paused in – on Senju lands, technically, but not so close that he can’t quickly retreat if someone catches him trespassing.

Normally, this would be when Madara rolls his eyes and mutters something about demonic sensors – he’s very impressed with Tobirama, as is only right – but this time he doesn’t.

“Hashirama,” he says instead, quite seriously. “We need to talk.”

Hashirama lets himself hope, just a little. “About peace?” he asks, smiling.

“No. It’s about…well, your mother’s infidelity.”

“I’m going to kill you now,” Hashirama says, still smiling.

“What? Wait, no, that’s not how I meant –”

Hashirama eventually concludes that Madara probably didn’t mean to say whatever it was he’d been intending to say quite like that.

“You fight terribly when you’re feeling guilty,” he tells the man currently buried under several feet of tree roots carved with chakra suppressing seals. “I’m still considering whether or not to, I don’t know, rip your arms off or something. That was very rude.”

“…how’d you get the seals onto the roots and still move the roots?” his friend’s somewhat muffled voice replies.

“I use the Mokuton to carve the seals into place after I’ve already moved the roots, but don’t try to distract me. How could you say something like that? After…”

That’s what really stings. Back when they were friends, Hashirama told Madara about his mother – how beautiful she was, how happy, how brave – and how their father had beaten her down until she thought she was so much less than she was, how he’d accused her of any number of things, unfaithfulness most of all, and used those accusations as justification to take away more and more of her freedom until she sought the only exit she felt was left to her.

How dare Madara say something like that, when he knows how much it reminds Hashirama of that pain?

“Maybe you’re under some sort of mind control,” Hashirama muses. “I could try to shock your brain back to normal…”

“Don’t do that! No shocking! You might have mastered raiton, you ridiculous over-achiever, but I don’t trust you of all people near my brain, medic or no medic. I just – stuck my foot in it, okay? It happens. Now let me up.”

Hashirama just sprawls out further on the roots. “My entire clan would probably tell me to kill you right this instant. Aren’t you the one insisting that we’re mortal enemies now?”

“Not anymore I’m not.”

That’s enough to get Hashirama’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“Let me up, and I’ll tell you.”

Hashirama rolls off the roots and steps back. "Talk."

Madara very carefully extracts himself and stands. "I said that badly, and I apologize," he says, bowing formally. "I...uh...I'm not sure how to start saying this."

"I'm fairly sure that anything will be better than calling my mother an adultress," Hashirama says, his voice dry as dust. "I can't believe that was your first choice on how to start this conversation, Madara, really. I'm good-natured, but no one's that good-natured."

"Clearly," Madara says, but he looks properly abashed.

"Now, what’s this about?"

Madara takes a deep breath. "Your brother. Tobirama."

"Yes...? Are you questioning his sexual fidelity as well? I must say I mind that much less, given that he's not married. Or even dating anyone."

Actually, now that Hashirama thinks about it, is that normal for a seventeen year old? Izuna certainly seems to have a woman hanging off his arm every time Hashirama spies him from a distance.

Madara makes a face, half-irritation, half-distress. "No, it's not that."

Hashirama’s quickly losing patience with his otherwise normally very straightforward friend. "Just spit it out already!"

"He's got the Sharingan!" Madara exclaims, then promptly looks mildly shocked at himself.

…oh.

Hashirama feels a great sense of calm settle over him. It feels remarkably similar to horror. "And?"

He doesn't want to sacrifice his best friend to save his brother. He doesn't, he doesn't, doesn't, doesn't -

(But – for you, anija, anything, and how could he promise any less?)

Madara blinks, taken aback. "Wait. You know?"

"He's my brother. Of course I know," Hashirama says, still caught in that horrible calm that precedes and permits cold-blooded murder. "More importantly, what are you going to do about it?"

And how many people have you told? How many more people have to die to keep a secret I never wanted?

"I mean, that's actually what I've been struggling with," Madara says, and laughs a little, running a hand through his hair. He hasn't noticed Hashirama's mood yet, so Tobirama's lessons on concealing killing intent are working. Hashirama's not sure if that's a good thing or not. "Normally we deal with this by offering an adoption, but I don't think that applies here."

Hashirama pauses. "...what?"

A little of the murderous rage cracks and chips away. That's not what he expected Madara to say at all.

"I mean, obviously -"

"No, wait," he says, holding up his hands. "The Uchiha deal with this through adoption? How can that possibly be an acceptable solution to your clan?"

"Well, you know," Madara says, suddenly awkward again. "Whatever the circumstances of his conception, he's still a cousin, right? It's not his fault."

"His...conception?"

Madara blinks owlishly at him. "Yes? That's why I started with that, uh, unfortunate comment about your mother."

"You think someone from your clan raped my mother," Hashirama says, the pieces clicking together - Madara's strange behavior on the riverbank and his words today.

The Sharingan is a bloodline limit. Of course.

If you didn't think it was eye-stealing, the only other explanation is an unsanctioned child born of the bloodline - an illicit affair, or, given the state of affairs between Senju and Uchiha, more likely a rape. Even if Hashirama's mother was the sort to be unfaithful, there was no way any Uchiha that had successfully seduced the wife of the Senju clan head into a clandestine relationship would fail to report the situation to their own clan head.

"Well, yes. How else could he have gotten a Sharingan?" Madara asks, frowning. "I mean, there's the obvious, of course, but even if I thought your brother was the sort to go in for eyestealing, which for all that demon lacks the most basic understanding of morality I really don't, I checked. For obvious reasons, we keeps extremely close track of everyone in our clan, alive or dead, and it’s clan protocol to prioritize disposal of eyes over retreat, even if you’re ultimately forced to abandon the corpse. Our records indicate we haven't lost any eyes to thieves in nearly two decades."

It's extremely tempting to let Madara keep his illusions. But - adoption -

No one is taking Hashirama's brother away.

(We have to take care of it, one way - or the other, Izuna said that day by the river, and he meant death. The Uchiha can abide eye-thieves, if they must, but another possible progenitor, another source of the Sharingan for children unnumbered? Never.)

If Madara was anyone else, Hashirama would kill him now, knowing that he's been keeping his suspicions to himself.

But - it is Madara.

His best friend, his brother by choice, the other half of his soul.

Hashirama owes him an explanation, at the very least, and maybe even a chance to propose a solution that won’t result in the death of one of Hashirama's most precious people by his own hands.

"More like a decade and a half," he says, and that old bitterness twists his lips into an expression he knows doesn't fit well onto his face. He's done so well with his vow not to be angry - happy or sad, yes, but not angry, not bitter, not malicious and bullying and like his father - that he sees shock on Madara's face at the sight of it. "If you want to be specific."

Madara is frowning, though; he still hasn't put it together.

"Tobirama is an albino," Hashirama tells him gently. "And my father's true-born son."

"But - the Sharingan -"

"He wasn't even old enough to be talking properly when Butsuma did the transplant," Hashirama says, and watches the understanding crash into Madara's face. The horror, of course, he expected that, but also - pity? Sympathy?

How strange. Everyone knows how the Uchiha feel about eyestealers.

"Are you saying," Madara says, very carefully, as if every word had a terrible weight to it, "that your brother has had a fully activated Sharingan his entire life?"

"Everyone knows stolen Sharingan don't go quiet; only born Uchiha can deactivate them," Hashirama says, puzzled by Madara's seeming non-reaction to the issue of theft. "So – yes? Obviously?"

Madara looks sickened. "All those battlefields, all those years...how does he sleep?"

"Oh, huh, are the nightmares related to the Sharingan?" Hashirama asks, abruptly distracted. He’s always had a bit of an issue with focus and Madara knows well how to exploit that, but this seems like a sincere question on his friend’s part. "Of course! That would explain why they're so vivid – what? Don't look at me that way!"

Madara has an extremely good judgy face.

Hashirama holds up his hands to ward it off. "In answer to your question, he came up with a timed-release jutsu that induces a state similar to a coma for the times it gets particularly bad."

"Are you serious?"

"Apparently actual sleep is trickier to mimic? I don’t know, he says he’s working on it. And anyway, he doesn't have battlefield nightmares all the time; sometimes he gets stuck re-living, I don’t know, every breakfast we’ve had for the last four years.”

(“We need to have more variety at breakfast,” Tobirama said with unusual fervor that particular morning, clutching at Hashirama’s lapels with clenched fists and staring up at him with bloodshot eyes. “Rice with miso is all well and good and I know we both like it in the morning, but the table was endless and every meal was the same as the last, stretching out into infinity…I think I might have seen one of the hells of the afterlife, anija. I think I saw hell, and it was breakfast.”)

Madara scrubs at his face, still looking horrified. “Of course. It’s always on, recording the mundane as well as the battlefield...I can’t even imagine. All those horrible council meetings! Stuck in your brain! Forever!”

Hashirama nods. He’d always acknowledged his brother’s perfect memory to be a curse, even before he’d found out it was from the Sharingan.

It’s fun to see someone else realize it, though; their village elders always seemed to think that because it was an asset it could have no downsides whatsoever.

“This is a disaster,” Madara says after a few moments more of contemplation. “I’d thought…a cousin, you know, that’s something; I could do something with that. But a thief?”

Oh, look, there’s that feeling of murderous calm again.

He really doesn’t want to have to kill Madara. Not ever, but certainly not before they’ve even had a chance to build their village together, the dream Hashirama’s never given up on.

(Anything, anija.)

“…I’ve decided that I don’t like it when you’re quiet,” Madara says after some time has passed with Hashirama struggling with what to do. “Please say something.”

There’s nothing to be said.

“Anything will do,” Madara adds.

“I murdered my father in front of the Senju clan elders.”

That…wasn’t what he’d planned to say.

“…not that. Definitely not that. You what?!”

Hashirama shrugs.

“I mean – I thought – I heard that…well, you know…”

Of course Hashirama knows.

Only the elders saw it happen, but rumor spread like the wind. Everyone in Fire Country by now knows – or think they know – that Tobirama murdered his own father in the middle of his own clan compound where he reasonably expected to be safe.

Opinions are generally split as to whether Hashirama forgave his brother's actions because he’s a soft-hearted idiot or because he was secretly in on the plan.

“Genjutsu,” Hashirama explains succinctly. He didn't need to explain that part in detail, not to an Uchiha. “The whole table, so when they compared notes afterwards, they all reported seeing the same.”

“…oh. Uh. Huh. I mean…you did...Wow. I don’t even…I can't even imagine...I assume Butsuma was planning something particularly grotesque, then? What was it?”

“You really don’t want to know.”

“Right. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it involved my clan somehow, and probably your brother, too.” Madara shakes his head in disgust. “That man’s hatred for all things Uchiha was outsized even for your clan…why are you telling me this now?”

Hashirama certainly hadn’t mentioned it before, not even when Madara had hinted around the subject a few times right after Hashirama had been named Clan Head and all those rumors were flying around.

“Because sometimes I get the feeling that you forget that I'm a shinobi, too,” Hashirama says honestly. “I'm not actually as nice as you keep telling yourself I am.”

Madara blinks owlishly at him. “What are you talking about?”

Hashirama sighs. “You’re right. I killed my father to protect my brother. Why mention it? Because of what we’re talking about right now. You do realize that if anyone found out about what Butsuma did, your clan would be duty-bound to kill Tobirama for eye-stealing, right?”

From Madara’s expression, he’d been so focused on the horrors of an always-active Sharingan that he really hadn’t thought about it.

“Not to mention the rest of my clan as an example, even though all of the people who actually did the deed are already dead – in fact, even more so because they’re all dead. You’d need revenge on someone, after all, and the only valid scapegoat would be either me, in my role as clan head, or maybe all of us. Even if you couldn’t convince the samurai to join in, the Hyuuga would get over their dislike of you in a second if it meant the eradication of a noble clan that steals eyes.”

Madara’s eyes are growing wider by the minute.

“And even if I agreed to defame my mother’s name so that you could claim Tobirama was your cousin, he would never agree to join your clan, and I’d never agree, either,” Hashirama continues, because Madara might not have thought about this but he has. “They’d kill him in a second if he went – he’s killed too many of your clan to live peacefully there. But not agreeing to go means your clan will demand his head, or at least that he be castrated, to make sure there’s no chance of any new non-Uchiha wielders of the Sharingan. Isn’t that right?”

Madara’s mouth opens, then shuts. He doesn’t deny it.

“So, that’s why I told you.”

“I get it,” Madara says, and at last, at last, he finally seems to. “Our friendship or your family…it’s the same choice I made.”

“I picked you, that day by the riverbank,” Hashirama reminds him. It’s always going to be a little bit of a sore spot that Madara didn’t do the same, even with the tentative truce they now have between them. “I picked peace, or the possibility of peace. I still do, every day. I don’t want to pick anything else. But…it’s Tobirama.”

“Your last brother.”

“Yes.”

Madara is quiet for a moment. “We can try to think of something,” he finally says, his voice low and serious. “But, if we don’t…I guess this is it, isn’t it? We’ll have to fight for real. To the death.”

“I’m a shinobi!” Hashirama exclaims, putting his face in his hands. He doesn’t want to see Madara’s expression right now. “How many times to I have to say it? Shinobi! Not a stupid noble samurai! Don’t you get it?”

“What do you –”

“Madara, the plant with the white flowers growing to your left is called water hemlock; if its roots enter your bloodstream from any direction, your central nervous system will immediately start shutting down, and a single squirt of its sap into your eyes will render you instantly and very painfully blind. The red berries hanging over your head are jequirity beans; a single pinprick can be fatal, and even just inhaling its dust can cause liver failure. That purple flower by your feet is aconite; even skin contact can be enough to stop your heart. We put it on our arrowheads when we hunt wolves.”

Madara is gaping at him.

“Do you understand now?” Hashirama asks. He might be crying. No, he’s definitely crying, with snot and everything. He doesn’t want to kill his best friend. “I might be friendly, I might be good-natured, but I’m a shinobi. I don’t fight fair. If you push me to pick between you and my clan, really push me, there’s not going to be a fight. You’re just going to be dead.”

“…oh.”

“Yes, oh,” Hashirama says, sitting back up and crossing his arms over his chest. A pout is not the correct expression for the moment, but it’s what he’s got; he really doesn’t want to make this choice. “Did you think wood was the only thing I could manipulate?”

Madara mirrors his gesture. “It’s called the wood release!”

“It’s a metaphor!”

“How come you haven’t poisoned my whole clan, then?!” Madara shouts, glaring.

“What sort of monster do you think I am?!” Hashirama shouts back.

Madara looks at him suspiciously. “…you didn’t think of it, did you?”

“Never occurred to me for a minute,” Hashirama admits, his shoulders going up by his ears. “Besides, it wouldn’t work anyway; I’d need to get someone inside your compound to carry the seeds to the appropriate place. I can’t grow something specific like that out of nothing.”

Madara gestures very pointedly at the plants he is very carefully edging away from.

“Tobirama’s idea,” Hashirama says meekly. “He sews poison plant seeds into the hems of my clothing so I can use it wherever I am as a last resort. The Mokuton really is much better with wood than anything else – I can just summon that.”

“That brother of yours is a menace,” Madara says, then holds up his hands when Hashirama glares. “Don’t you poison-plant me! I meant it as a compliment. He’s…creative.”

Hashirama retracts the hemlock stalks that had started reaching for Madara’s arms.

They sit in silence for a few more minutes.

“What now?” Hashirama finally asks. “I know your clan sometimes permits outsiders to have a Sharingan, but my understanding that’s only in cases where it was a gift.”

“Yes. There’s no provision for eyestealers – though your brother didn’t steal them himself, which might make a difference.”

“To you, maybe. To your clan?”

“…hn. No. They might extend forgiveness under certain circumstances, but never to an enemy of the clan.”

“I really don’t want to kill you.”

“I’d really prefer not to die,” Madara says dryly, eying the plants with a newfound respect. Then, reluctantly, he says, “There is one possible solution.”

Hashirama looks at him.

“If – if your brother wasn’t an enemy of the clan anymore –”

“Say the word ‘marriage’ and I go back to trying to kill you.”

Madara chokes. “What? No! I meant peace. Our peace. The one you're always banging on about.”

Hashirama blinks. “Our village?”

“Yes!”

“You think…? I thought you said your clan would never go for it!”

“And that’s the problem with that as a solution,” Madara says, groaning. “Some of my clan could be convinced, maybe, but the most powerful ones still don’t want peace, and I'm in no position to simply overrule them.”

“Then a large number of your clan will be dead at some point sooner rather than later,” Hashirama says, not without sympathy. “I mean, what’s the other result here? Imagine if we did get into that fair fight to the death and you did kill me. Even then all you’d get is a pissed-off Tobirama in charge of the Senju armies.”

“…and possibly armies of the dead.”

“And possibly armies of the dead,” Hashirama agrees. He’s not sure what Tobirama will resort to if Hashirama dies, and he’s sure Tobirama’s private list of forbidden jutsu well exceeds the ones Hashirama knows enough about to ban. “Not to mention I’m pretty sure he’d break his vow not to actively use his dojutsu if his goal was to avenge me.”

Madara winces. “Great. That’d be just what we’d need. Though we do have something of an edge on countering Sharingan techniques, even if…ugh, he’s copied every single thing he’s seen my entire clan do on the battlefield, hasn’t he?”

Hashirama smirks. “You’re the Sharingan expert, you tell me.”

“Always active, I can scarcely even contemplate it. My clan has a traditional sleep jutsu, by the way, to help deal with Sharingan nightmares; I can teach you.”

“That would be great,” Hashirama says, enthused. “Maybe Tobirama will be less grumpy if he got some more sleep.”

“You realize you can’t kill me if you want me to teach it to you.”

“Oh. Right. Hmm.”

Madara snorts. “To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised he survived at all,” he says. “The chakra requirements of a Sharingan is steep, and his is activated all the time. Why doesn’t he cover his eyes?”

“He does, sometimes, but it never occurred to us that his chakra issues were tied to his eyes before we learned he had the Sharingan, and by then it was habit to leave them uncovered. It would've been strange to suddenly start.”

“…you didn’t know?”

“Senju don’t look Uchiha in the eyes, you know that. And it’s not like Butsuma ever said. I only figured it out, you know, after your eyes…you know. Then.”

“I’m glad you killed your father,” Madara says, oddly passionate. “I’m really glad.”

Hashirama nods, tickled by the sight of Madara working himself into a rage over Tobirama’s well-being, something he’d never expected to happen even in the daydreams where they successfully established a village together. His prickly brother and his even more prickly friend…that was a yelling match just waiting to happen.

He'd give a lot to see that yelling match come to pass.

“This might be enough to help convince Izuna,” Madara finally says. “He’s Tobirama’s rival – the idea that Tobirama’s taking it easy on him? He’ll hate it.”

“Tobirama isn’t –”

“He’s deliberately not using the Sharingan.”

“Well, I mean, he wouldn’t have used it against anyone else anyway?” Hashirama tries.

Madara rolls his eyes at him.

“To be perfectly honest, Izuna should be more worried about Tobirama normally,” Hashirama says, shrugging helplessly. “He’s just about done developing another new jutsu –”

“Another? Already?”

“He works on them in sequence, I think. He says the new one is good enough to beat the Sharingan.”

“And he’d know, too,” Madara says, scowling. “Given that he has a set to test it on.”

Hashirama winces. “How will irritating Izuna help get us to peace?” he asks instead. “You didn’t say.”

“Izuna’s one of the strongest proponents against us accepting your offers of peace,” Madara explains. “He thinks it’s a trap designed to lead us all to our doom –”

“Classic Uchiha understatement, there.”

“Shut up. If he realizes that he’s only alive because Tobirama is holding back, he might be convinced – a number of the others might be convinced – that peace and a joint village is the only alternative to utter catastrophe for our clan anyway.”

“True,” Hashirama says thoughtfully. “I mean, it really sort of is? Even putting aside his regular set of new jutsu, Tobirama’s making progress on his Susanoo and I know that as soon as he’s got that down, he’s planning on using it to find a way to get through to Izuna’s, and…what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Madara’s back just straightened like he’d been hit by lightning and he was staring at Hashirama like his hair had suddenly lit on fire.

Hashirama checks, but it hasn’t.

“Okay, seriously, what?” he asks. “You use the Susanoo all the time, it’s not that weird.”

“Hashirama, you idiot!” Madara hisses, looking like he has a headache that could only be relieved by punching Hashirama a few times. “The Susanoo isn’t a skill associated with the Sharingan. It’s associated with the Mangekyo.”

Hashirama blinks. “I – know? But isn’t that just an evolution of the Sharingan?”

“Yes!”

“So…?”

“You just told me that Tobirama didn’t kill your father. Then who did he kill?”

Hashirama blinks again. “I’m not following. Tobirama’s killed lots of people, you know that.”

“No, that’s not…no!” Madara grits his teeth. “I’m going to tell you something that you’re going to forget as soon as this conversation ends, okay?”

Hashirama nods obediently.

“The Mangekyo is activated by the guilt causing the death of someone you care about.”

Madara and Izuna both developed theirs shortly after Tajima’s death – and they’d fought like furies before that, desperate to ensure he made it back from the battlefield alive.

“…oh.”

Seems like Madara really was the right person to talk to about what he did to his father.

“Yes, oh. So who did Tobirama kill?”

“No one.”

“Hashirama –”

“No, really! He’s just an idiot!”

Madara stares at him.

“I mean, for a genius, he’s an idiot,” Hashirama explains. “And you know me, I know what I’m talking about. He considers himself responsible for the death of one of our brothers, but he didn’t actually kill him, directly, he just – failed to get there in time. He blames himself.”

Madara scowls, but nods reluctantly. “I’ve heard that causing death by negligence can work, sometimes. But still – your other brothers have been dead as long as I’ve known you. Are you telling me that that white demon developed the Mangekyo before I developed the Sharingan?”

“Uh.”

“No, don’t tell me, I might scream. How are his eyes still intact? The Mangekyo is degenerative.”

“It’s what?!”

“I mean, I suppose he must not use it often, and it’s the use that compounds the effect, but –”

“What do you mean, degenerative? What happens? How quickly?”

“Still, you’d think, after that many years the damage –”

Hashirama grabs Madara by the arms and shakes him. “Answer my question! What will happen to his eyes? To your eyes, you idiot, you use the Mangekyo all the time, what are you thinking -”

“Everything powerful comes with a downside,” Madara says, scowling. “Except maybe your Mokuton.”

Hashirama rolls his eyes. “I’m going to turn into a tree one day if I don’t die first, stop avoiding the subject. Are you saying that you’re going blind?”

“Stop shaking me! Yes, blindness is the end result, but it happens fairly slowly even if you repeatedly use the Mangekyo, and I’m sorry, did you say you turn into a tree?”

“Not for a while yet. This is more important!”

“Have people in your clan turned into trees before? Are there Senju tree-people out there somewhere?”

“Madara. Focus. Tobirama uses his Mangekyo for experimentation; I don’t know how often he’s using it. I’ll have to tell him to stop at once.”

“Probably a good idea,” Madara agrees, looking disturbed, though Hashirama’s unsure if it’s due to the idea of someone using the Mangekyo for experimentation purposes or if he’s still hung up on the tree thing.

(One day Hashirama will tell him that Senju legend has it that the walking ancestor trees supposedly remain conscious for centuries, trapped into unmoving forms, but he thinks now is probably not the time.)

Besides, it’s unimportant! Tobirama’s eyes degrading because of his use of the Mangekyo, on the other hand –

“Oh, that explains so much,” Hashirama says darkly, already planning on grabbing Tobirama under his arm and ruffling his hair until he begged (glared) for mercy. “His eyes are always needing healing; and here I thought it was just sun damage or something from his original condition. Ugh! I’m going to smack him! Hours and hours of work and he could have just not used it –”

Madara’s hand shoots out and grabs Hashirama’s around the arm, holding it almost painfully tight.

Hashirama looks at him, surprised to see that Madara’s face has gone pale again, his dark eyes intensely focused on Hashirama. “Madara? What?”

“You heal his eyes?”

“Well, I mean, it’s a joint effort,” Hashirama says, unsure of where Madara’s line of questioning is going. “He does his share of the work. It still takes hours and everyone’s chakra is a mess at the end and –”

“Hashirama, shut up,” Madara says. “No, wait, don’t – how exactly do you heal them?”

“By instructing the cells to repair themselves beyond their usual capabilities,” Hashirama says blankly. Madara’s never cared about the technicalities of healing before; he seemed to subscribe to the ‘glowing green hands make me feel better, details unimportant’ perspective that most shinobi have. “It took us forever to figure it out and it’s an absolute pain to do – it’s not just usual muscle or bone degradation, which is easy enough, but rather the ocular nerve itself that’s coming to pieces, and worst of all the chakra pathways around it are collapsing at the same time. The collapse of one feeds off the other…it’s complicated to explain. We basically have to reconstruct them both entirely from scratch each time, and trust me, you haven’t met stubborn until you’ve met a nerve cell that thinks it should be dead. That’s why it takes both of us, me providing the chakra and strength of will and Tobirama having the control and precision to operate at such a small level –”

And it usually takes Hashirama (guiltly) accessing Tobirama’s Rinnegan for an extra boost, too. Such a pain, and so easily avoided – it’s not like Tobirama uses his Mangekyo most of the time anyway, and never in battle, which means it should be easy for him to just stop –

“You’ll have your peace.”

Hashirama stares at Madara again. His heart starts beating very fast. “What?”

“You’ll have your peace,” Madara says again. “My clan has been trying to figure out a way to slow down, much less reverse, the degradation of the Mangekyo since forever – even if your version is only a start, even if it only works on him, our medics will still want to learn as much from it as possible. Even the most recalcitrant elder will trade peace for that possibility.”

“Are – are you serious? For healing, of all stupid things?”

“I’m very serious.”

“You’re not just lying to me so that I let you go without poisoning you, are you?”

Madara smacks him.

“Awww, Madara, you know I didn’t really mean it…”

“Go back to your clan, Hashirama,” Madara says, leaping to his feet. “I’ll go to mine. Give me – two weeks, let’s say, and send another offer for a peace conference at a neutral location. This time, we’ll come.”

Hashirama follows Madara’s example and springs to his feet. “I will,” he promises. “Two weeks!”

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe you only gave us two weeks to finish redrafting this peace treaty,” Tobirama says. “I enjoy sleep.”

“You don’t actually enjoy sleep,” Hashirama points out, quite practically. “You always have nightmares.”

“Fine. I require sleep.”

“Well –”

“You’ve already mentioned the sleep jutsu they’re throwing into the bargain three times, anija, and that’s just since this morning. I notice you didn’t actually learn it before you let Madara scamper off.”

“Tobiramaaaaa –”

Tobirama had taken the news of the (hopefully) impending peace about as well as Hashirama could have hoped, which is something of a miracle given how Hashirama'd botched telling him about it.

See, unfortunately, when Hashirama is excited, really truly excited, he tries to say everything that's in his head at once, his tongue tripping over words that flow out disconnected and piecemeal and confused. And he was very excited by his conversation with Madara, very excited indeed, and he simply had to tell Tobirama all about it at once.

"Anija," Tobirama had said quite calmly when Hashirama finished sobbing happy tears into his shoulder - sometimes Hashirama thinks that Tobirama started wearing that beloved fur ruff of his just to have something to sop up his older brother's emotions, which, if true, Hashirama sincerely appreciates because it does the job very well. "Let me be clear: I have no idea what you just said, unless you really did somehow poison Madara with my eyes after he was unfaithful to you and then convince his clan to make peace by offering to heal them from a terrible disease that somehow involves strangling imprudent scientists like me, and also possibly that you think everyone should kill their parents as a bonding exercise."

"Uh. Not - quite?"

"That's what I thought," Tobirama said dryly. "How about you stop trying to tell me about it and give me a mission report about it instead. Chronologically, please."

Hashirama complied.

Somewhere in the first few minutes, Tobirama put his head in his hands and didn't raise his head for the entire remainder of Hashirama's rendition of that day's events.

At the end, he'd said only, "I see why people like you turn into a tree at the end: it means we can finally keep an eye on you."

Then he went into the other room to scream into a pillow for about two minutes solid before coming back out, having composed himself again, and informed Hashirama that neither of them was going to be sleeping until they fixed up the last version of the treaty terms to account for these newest changes.

Also that Tobirama would be taking responsibility for breaking the news of the treaty to the rest of the clan, that Hashirama was very much not invited to the meeting in which he planned to do it, and finally if Hashirama so much as thought about telling anyone anything important ever again, Tobirama was going to kick him somewhere painful.

So, really, not all that bad a reaction at all, if you think about it. And if Hashirama had ended up having to make an example of one of his father's most vicious and unforgiving allies to show how seriously he was taking this promise of potential peace, well, it's not like the rest hadn't had several years to prepare themselves for that inevitable result.

(Also, Hashirama has been spending a good chunk of time since his meeting with Madara daydreaming about the fiasco that would undoubtedly result from Madara telling his clan about the new plan. Given how tactfully Madara had handled bringing up Tobirama’s Sharingan, Hashirama likes to imagine that Madara started with something incredibly smooth like “Hey, guys, guess what, we’re not rapists but we are going to get fucked if we don’t make peace right now” or maybe “I’ve decided that we should embrace eyestealing with open arms if it means we don’t all go blind” or – the most likely option – just going with “Izuna, we’re making peace with the Senju now, please gather the clan, I’ll explain later, really, I swear” followed almost immediately by Izuna attempting to blow him up.  

Tobirama has informed Hashirama that staring in the direction of the Uchiha compound, giggling maniacally, and asking people if they think the wisps of cloud hanging in the sky were the signs of a very large explosion, were not conductive to setting up his supposedly much-desired peace talks, but actually people have started doing the “Whatever you say, Hashirama-sama” thing that they do when they want him to go away quickly and if anything that’s made more people fall into line with the idea faster than they probably would have otherwise. So what does Tobirama know?)

“Stop whining and let me focus,” Tobirama tells him, interrupting Hashirama's slow drift back into that very enjoyable daydream. “One of us has to.”

“But –”

“Go walk. Try the north-east corner of the grounds; I’ve heard it’s nice.”

Not wanting to get dragged into revising the treaty yet another time, Hashirama decides to take Tobirama’s advice and goes to mope at the north-east corner of the Nara summer compounds, where they stay during their beloved deer’s fawning season. It’s an ideal place for a meeting when it’s not being used – the Nara are on generally good terms with both Senju and Uchiha without actually committing to either, and by permitting them to use this place, they aren’t risking their home compound.

The whole place still stinks of deer, though.

He sighs.

Then he jumps a foot into the air when the trees shout a warning to him. He’s no sensor, certainly not like Tobirama is, but the trees help make sure he’s not totally taken by surprise.

Sometimes, it’s even a nice surprise.

Beaming, Hashirama dashes over in the relevant direction.

“You’re early,” he says to the Uchiha delegation: Madara, Izuna, another frontliner (Hikaru?) and three elders. “It’s only been ten days.”

“Yeah, it has. So what are you doing here?” Madara demands, crossing his arms.

“You’re joking, right?” Tobirama drawls from one of trees. Of course he’s there – a sensor of his caliber, he sent Hashirama that way on purpose. Without telling him the real reason, the brat. “He was at the Nara’s doorstep approximately ten seconds after you agreed to talks.”

All the Uchiha stiffen at the sound of Tobirama’s voice, eyes narrowing; they’ve clearly all been read in on his – particular situation.

Great.

Hashirama hopes the information about Tobirama’s Sharingan hasn’t gotten too widely spread out among the Uchiha: he’s told certain relevant people in his own clan, particularly the elders who have come along to help with negotiations, but it’s certainly not common knowledge.

(Hashirama’s hoping to quietly spread rumors about it until it’s just generally common knowledge without him ever having to actually explain it to anyone. Maybe they can make out like it was some sort of last-minute deathbed gift from an ally or a friend devoted to peace or something, given in adulthood? That would be far more palatable to everyone than the truth, as much as he'd love to rub it in some of his clan's elder's faces.)

“Why don’t we all take this back to the compound?” Hashirama suggests. “The Nara are making tea for all of us.”

The next few hours are…mildly agonizing, with lots of sneaky pointed comments despite a general request by the Nara that they wait before starting actual negotiations and also lots of staring at Tobirama while he pretends to ignore them all.

“Perhaps a small break,” the Nara elder tasked (probably against her will) with hosting this meeting suggests, looking a little desperate to get out of the room herself. “To review the initial proposed drafts of the treaty.”

Tobirama reaches for a copy of the Uchiha treaty. Hashirama, deciding death by boredom is a bad way to go and dignity is fundamentally overrated, uses the moment to escape out the window.

A few minutes later, Madara appears on the roof beside him. He’s looking grumpy and standoffish, but luckily Hashirama knows him well enough to understand that he’s just embarrassed about how rude his clan representatives are being.

“It’s fine,” Hashirama says before Madara says anything that might taste like chewing glass. “We knew it’d be a tough sell.”

Madara struggles for himself for a moment, then sighs and sits down next to Hashirama. “Yes, we did. Even with all the incentives in the world, they’re not happy. Not to mention that I’m still not sure they believe me about – well, anything. They may ask to, um, see it. Your brother’s…you know.”

“We figured as much,” Hashirama says with a shrug. “It’s not actually a problem – they are his eyes, whatever the original origin – but at this point Tobirama wants to see how long it’ll take them to come out and actually say they want to see it.”

He’d signed as much under the table about fifteen minutes into the negotiations.

Madara snorts. “Of course he does. Well, they deserve it.”

They sit in companionable silence for a long moment, then Madara sighs a second time.

“Izuna’s still not in favor,” he warns. “I managed to get him to come to the meeting, but if you can’t get him on board before negotiations break for good, we’re going to have problems.”

Hashirama knows enough of Uchiha clan politics to understand Madara’s meaning.

At that moment, Tobirama’s chakra flares a little – not a warning, not in panic, but certainly defensive – so Hashirama rolls over to the edge of the roof to see what’s going on.

Both Izuna and Tobirama seem to have retreated to the same courtyard – no, Tobirama retreated, and Izuna followed, if Hashirama has to guess. They’re standing several feet away from each other, each one in the characteristic ready-but-not-actively-aggressive pose of their respective clans: Tobirama with his hands limp by his sides, Izuna with his arms crossed over his chest.

“- not sure where you got that idea,” Tobirama is saying, rather scornfully. Apparently Madara was right about Izuna being pissed off at the idea that Tobirama wasn’t using his full arsenal against him. “Even if I did use the Sharingan against you, it would only be effective with the element of surprise, which is now gone. You’re the experts, after all.”

“Experts or not, the Mangekyo is a weapon like none other,” Izuna says, clearly not appeased. “Can you perform Amaterasu?”

Tobirama inclines his head.

“Then why haven’t you used that?” Izuna demands. “I used mine on you once, though you dodged.”

He sounds resentful about that.

“A technique that requires a significant amount of chakra and makes your eyes bleed isn’t an effective attack on the frontline anyway,” Tobirama says crisply. “You were all but useless after that point in the battle; if I hadn’t been forced to retreat, I could have killed you easily, followed by significant portion of your clan’s warriors. Not emulating your mistake seems like a point in my favor, if anything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. A one-shot kill strike on me would have been well worth being forced to immediately retreat afterwards and you know it. What’s the real reason? Don’t say it was because of your brother’s peace, because I’ll know you’re lying; you’re as suspicious of that whole nonsense as I am.”

Tobirama arches his eyebrows but doesn’t deny it.

“Well?” Izuna says challengingly. “What’s the real reason?”

Tobirama shrugs. “I assumed you’d block it.”

Madara makes a slightly strangled noise from where he’s lying on the roof next to Hashirama. Hashirama elbows him pointedly; they’ll be caught for sure if he doesn’t shut up.

Luckily, Izuna seems to be taking the news about as well as Madara is, which is to say not well at all. He’s hissing like a tea pot on the boil.

“Are you stupid, or do you think I am?” he snarls. “The whole point of Amaterasu is that it can’t be blocked, only dodged, and even then only the fastest shinobi can manage it.”

Hashirama wonders if Izuna realizes he’s paid Tobirama a back-handed compliment. Probably not.

“Normally, yes,” Tobirama says with a slight frown. “But if I escalated the conflict to such a degree, you would presumably escalate similarly. And as we’ve learned from our conflict over the years, water and fire neutralize each other.”

Izuna frowns. “Water? Amaterasu is a katon jutsu.”

“For you, maybe. Mine manifests as water.”

“Are you serious? I’ve never seen that before.”

“Your clan is full of katon users,” Tobirama points out. “Have you ever had someone who wasn’t one achieve the Mangekyo?”

Hashirama looks questioningly at Madara, who thinks about it, then silently shakes his head. Then, because he knows as much about subtlety as Hashirama does, he whispers, “I don’t think it’d be called Amaterasu if it’s not fire. Maybe Ryūjin, or Ōyamatsumi…?”

Hashirama punches him in a vain attempt to keep him quiet.

“I’d have to check the clan records to be sure about it, but I don’t think we have, no,” Izuna says, frowning thoughtfully, luckily ignorant of the (mostly mute) scuffle currently happening on the rooftops above his head because apparently Uchiha honor can't handle a stupid little punch like that without some retaliation. “I’d never thought about that. Traditionally, eye-stealing only happens among adults, and in those cases the qualities of the original dojutsu wielder pass along without accounting for the affinity of the new bearer.”

“Really? Hn. I wonder at what point it stops being flexible.” Tobirama looks contemplative. “And why it does, for that matter. Maybe something about when the chakra coils stabilize?”

Izuna shrugs, casual, but he’s sneaking glimpses at Tobirama when Tobirama isn’t looking at him.

“...how old were you?” he asks in a way that might come off as casual if one didn’t see how tense his body was, which they can, because both Hashirama and Madara immediately freeze with their hands around each other’s throats and simultaneously turn to stare at the scene happening below them instead of continuing to fight. “Madara said young, but he didn’t specify.”

“Somewhere between my first birthday and my second,” Tobirama says with a shrug of his own. “I’ve never bothered to count the days, and my memories from that period are impaired by my contemporaneous lack of understanding of the concept of linear time.”

“That’s awful,” Madara murmurs.

Izuna’s face below indicates that he agrees with the sentiment.

“Sometimes he has nightmares about being three years old again,” Hashirama murmurs back, because finally, finally other people get to suffer-by-proxy the way he’s suffered. Everything about Tobirama's eyes is patently awful and everyone in the world should feel bad about it, in Hashirama's humble opinion. “Apparently it’s very frustrating and confusing, and also involves some rather interesting views on omniscience. Apparently children don’t develop a proper theory of the mind until fairly late in their development –”

“Stop talking. Please.”

“Though, on the subject of the original wielder of the dojutsu,” Tobirama says, and now it’s his turn to look awkward. “I doubt there will ever be a convenient time to bring it up, but I’d be interested in knowing his identity.”

Hashirama grimaces. It really should have occurred to Hashirama that he might need to run some interference to keep Tobirama from asking about who his donor was. Of all the things he doesn’t want the Uchiha to be thinking too hard about – or counting dead bodies on – that’s pretty high up there, especially if his suspicions regarding the timing of the death of Madara’s one older brother are correct…

Izuna luckily doesn’t know the answer, and in fact looks surprised to even be asked. “Why would it matter?” he asks. “I mean, I assume he’s dead now. And anyway, I’m not sure we know; it’s been a long time, if it happened when you say it did.”

“If?” Hashirama hisses indignantly, only to get one of Madara’s very pointy elbows in his side.

“Understood,” Tobirama says. “If it helps, I can provide some measure of identifying information.”

“…how, exactly? You were a baby.”

“Oh, you’re not going to like this,” Hashirama whispers, and judging by Madara’s incredulous glare he might have said that a little too gleefully. But it’s high past time that someone else should feel bad about the whole thing; he and Tobirama have had their fill of it.

“– appears that the Sharingan retains all the memories it records,” Tobirama is explaining, and Izuna’s eyes are going wide the way Hashirama’s sure his own had when he’d first heard the horrible truth. “I only have the activation and the moment of, um, removal, but –”

“You remember your eyes being ripped out.”

“Rather viscerally, yes,” Tobirama says dryly. “But given that I didn’t grow up with a phobia of it the way the Uchiha do, it was probably less traumatic for me than it would have been for you.”

“You’ve remembered having your eyes ripped out since before you were two.”

“…yes? Though I didn’t understand the content of the memory until I was older.”

“I hate so much about what you’ve just said,” Izuna says, and he’s got a similar expression to the one Madara developed when he heard some of the gory details.

Do all Uchiha start worrying about people they shouldn’t at a moment’s notice? Is this something Hashirama has just never known about them?

He should’ve written out and sent a copy of Tobirama’s sob story to them earlier; they could have had peace ages ago.

 “Hashirama.”

Hashirama looks over at Madara, who has his forehead pressed down against the roof.

“How do you feel about using that raise-the-dead jutsu your brother developed to raise and murder your father all over again?”

Hashirama grins. “Necromancy is a bad habit,” he reminds his friend solicitously. “Even when one’s motives are pure. As fun as that would be.”

Madara groans and inches back along the roof, which Hashirama supposes is fair given that they’ve determined their brothers aren’t about to kill each other. He follows suit.

“The elders still aren’t going to like having a Senju with the Mangekyo, even if we do form a village,” Madara says once they’re back at their original locations. “Much less teaching him clan jutsu on how to deal with it, since he’s not under our control and could teach them further. But…”

“But?”

“I’m going to teach him that sleep jutsu anyway,” Madara says, and he’s got that adorable righteous fury look on his face. “I don’t care what they say; no one innocent should bear the weight of our dojutsu without any support at all.”

Hashirama smiles.

And then, because he can, he says, “That’s very romantic of you. We’ll have a betrothal contract to seal the peace treaty any minute.”

Madara chokes. “Betroth- I – what?!”

“I really only objected to that solution because I couldn’t trust Tobirama would be safe living in your compound,” Hashirama muses. “But I suppose if we’re all in the same village you two could just live in the middle ground.”

Madara’s flailing so hard that he can’t even speak, and his face is color of a ripe tomato. It’s amazing.

“I’m sure your elders would agree, too,” Hashirama adds solemnly. “After all, that would mean bringing the Sharingan back under Uchiha clan control, which is what they want, isn’t it?”

“Hashirama!”

Hashirama starts laughing.

“You’re a terrible person,” Madara says, but his voice is almost admiring. “Truly terrible.”

“Don’t worry,” Hashirama assures him between giggles. “It would be clearly unequitable to marry a clan head to a mere heir. Maybe we should pair our brothers together instead.”

“First off, your white demon is far too pretty to be wasted on my playboy little brother,” Madara says, but he’s starting to snigger as well. “Perhaps more relevantly, they’d kill each other first.”

“Probably.”

Almost as if waiting for the right moment, from somewhere behind them, Izuna’s voice suddenly rings out, nearly as loud and screechy as his older brother’s, “What do you mean your Susanoo isn’t a tengu?! If it’s not, what is it?!”

Hashirama and Madara look at each other.

“What do you mean it’s a kitsune?!”

Chapter Text

Of course, even with Izuna now (somewhat reluctantly) supporting their plans to build a village, peace wasn’t as simple as all that.

Even once they get over the yelling, screaming, and death threats involved in the negotiation process of setting up a peace treaty, even once they've gone through the officially mandated cool down period, and even once the village has started to actually be constructed, there are still – problems.

Tobirama’s eyes, for one.

Madara was right about his clan’s elders not being happy about Tobirama remaining outside Uchiha clan control, village or no village. They’re no longer calling for his head, which Hashirama begrudgingly supposes is something, but a number of them clearly and very loudly prioritize the protection of the Sharingan and its secrets over Tobirama’s total non-involvement with the original theft.

(It's sad, really, that the Uchiha clan records from that particular period of time have become too badly weathered for them to identify whose eyes exactly were the ones that were taken, so that even if there are rumors they cannot be confirmed. Very sad, very unfortunate, but what can they do, there's simply no other way to be entirely certain. Also, on a totally separate and unrelated note, it turns out that paper remembers enough about the plant it used to be, whether wood or rice, to be susceptible to Hashirama's Mokuton, and also Hashirama has exactly zero regrets about doing what is necessary to ensure no one has proof they could use to support a claim his brother's eyes as the price of a blood feud.)

At first, the bitter Uchiha elders limited themselves to trying to keep Tobirama from learning the jutsu techniques necessary to help him deal with it. When Madara teaches him some of them anyway, particularly the ones relating to sleep, the elders escalated to lodging formal complaints about Madara’s leadership, which he only repels with Izuna’s assistance. If they hadn't been able to get Izuna on board beforehand, Hashirama shudders to think about the result - but they do, and the elders are defeated and forced to abide by their clan leader's decision.

But when that doesn’t work…well.

They’re apparently even more bitter about the whole situation than Hashirama thought.

“Anija. Your feelings are –”

“I’m aware that my feelings are warping the architecture again,” Hashirama says tightly. “I’ll fix it later.”

“It’s really disturbing how you manage to keep smiling while radiating that much killing intent,” Madara observes, his chin on his hands. He had his own desk in what they’d tentatively dubbed the administrative center of their new village: they all did, given the vast amount of paperwork that creating a new village seemed to involve. “I mean, I always knew you were the type to smile all the time, but I didn’t realize there was so much effort involved.”

“He made a vow about it,” Tobirama says with a sigh. His eyes are blindfolded, which the Uchiha have confirmed helps reduce the strain on his chakra, but it’s not impeding the speed of his paperwork in the slightest. Hashirama rues the day his brother learned to sense chakra-infused ink. “I think he was four at the time? Possibly three. He was apparently a very stubborn child, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to anyone.”

“I don’t like being angry,” Hashirama says.

“So instead you’re…happy with a side of stabbing?”

“I’m not –” Hashirama pauses, looking at the remains of the chair that had been leaning next to the door. It was now impaled on multiple long thin spikes that have emerged from the wood of the wall. Also, the top part of the chair appears to be drowning in kudzu and blackberries in a method that would work quite well to smother a person, if one had been sitting there. “...yes. Apparently. But I haven’t stabbed any people.”

“Yet.”

“Yes, exactly, no people yet – hey!”

Madara sniggers. “I’m just glad Izuna’s away on mission,” he says. “He’d react even worse than you are. Even when they were only enemies, he didn’t even approve people other than him trying to kill Tobirama.”

There’s an audible crunch from the direction of the chair.

The ‘head’ of the chair is now less smothering, more exploding.

“…should I not be mentioning the elephant in the room, then?” Madara asks, but he has a shit-eating grin that suggests he will be mentioning this particular instance of Hashirama’s temper for the rest of their mutual existence and possibly longer, depending on how one felt about reincarnation.

“It was just an assassination attempt,” Tobirama says irritably. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“You shouldn’t have to deal with assassinations –”

“I’m a shinobi.”

“– from inside the village, Tobirama! It’s our village. It should be safe.”

"Safe from what, though?" Madara muses. "Let us all take a moment to remember exactly who it was that nearly killed my brother in a sparring match."

In Tobirama's defense, Izuna had approached him and requested the match, wagering that no matter what Tobirama's mysterious new jutsu was, he would still come out the victor, or at least even as always, and of course Tobirama could never resist an opportunity to test out his new jutsu, particularly in near-battlefield conditions.

Unfortunately, they'd both gotten so accustomed to outright attempts to kill each other that they'd forgotten it was a spar about ten minutes in.

It also turned out Tobirama's new jutsu (the hiraishin, he called it) really could defeat the Sharingan.

Luckily for everyone involved, Tobirama realized he was supposed to be pulling his death-blows a split-second before he followed through on the strike. Not that Izuna particularly appreciated being only partly stabbed.

He did (somewhat begrudgingly) appreciate being healed, first by Tobirama in an attempt to keep him stable and then by Hashirama when he'd come running hard on Madara's heels to find out what had so alarmed his friend. 

It'd very nearly been a disaster - Tobirama exhausted his chakra trying to heal Izuna, causing him to collapse, helpless; Madara nearly took off Tobirama's head in revenge for his brother’s apparent murder before Hashirama stopped him by virtue of throwing himself bodily in the way; Hashirama panicked when he saw that Tobirama was nearly unconscious and bloody and started to heal the wrong person even as Tobirama tried to smack him away, unable to explain; Madara freaked out even more when he saw that he’d nearly cut Hashirama in half by accident…

And, just to top it off, what felt half the Uchiha clan was hanging out around the sparring field watching and the sheer amount of killing intent everyone was pouring out activated all of their Sharingans, which meant the entire fiasco was now permanently seared into their brains. 

Luckily for everyone, Izuna figured out what was going on before anyone else did and started laughing hysterically at the sheer absurdity of the four strongest shinobi in the entire country accidentally murdering each other after years of having tried very hard and failed to do that very thing, which in turn turned out was enough to distract them all from escalating the situation any further.

So in the end it was more comedy of errors than disaster.

Albeit just barely.

(Much more funny was letting some of the Uchiha sit in on Tobirama’s quarterly presentation of his newest jutsu research results, in which Hashirama usually spends the vast majority of time just sitting there saying, “Kinjutsu. Kinjutsu. Kinjutsu. No, I don’t care if it’d be effective, we’re not doing that. Kinjustu. Kinjutsu. Kin – I’m sorry, you can do what with people’s blood now? Huh. Okay, we can keep that one. But that specific usage of it is kinjutsu!” Their expressions were priceless, particularly when Hashirama subsequently informed them, after Tobirama had stormed away to sulk the way he always does when he feels his brilliance is being impeded by something as silly as ethics and basic humanity, that Tobirama had single-handled caused the Senju list of forbidden jutsu to triple in size.)

"That was a mistake, though," Hashirama protests. "This is different. This was targeted -"

"It wasn't even a good assassination attempt!" Tobirama exclaims. "Anija, I saw it coming a good ten minutes before it happened. Why are you so worried?"

"Because it wasn't a good attempt!" Hashirama exclaims. "That means it was a feint to lull us into a sense of security for a future attack!"

"Hashirama," Madara says after a few long moments of silence. "That's paranoid. And trust me, I know paranoid."

Hashirama pouts. "It is, though," he insists. "Elders don't make it to being elders by being bad shinobi. You might know paranoia, but I know when people are trying to be underestimated, okay?"

"Hashirama..."

"Don't you 'Hashirama' me! There's something happening, okay? Something we haven't figured out yet."

"I still think you're exaggerating."

"And I still think you have trouble realizing that your clan is capable of being guilty of more than just bad temper," Hashirama says, even though he knows it's uncalled for even as he says it.

It's true, but also uncalled for.

Sure enough, Madara scowls. "How can you say that? You know perfectly well that we're literally a cursed clan," he snarls. "Tobirama's even seen the tablet, if very briefly -"

"Speaking of which, I don't trust that so-called 'tablet'. Why would Indra leave one to his clan and not Ashura? Suspicious."

"First off, it was the Sage who left it, not Indra, and secondly, you've never even seen -"

"I don't need to see something to know bad advice when I hear it -"

"Either way, there's nothing we can do about it now," Tobirama interrupts, practical as ever. "But if there is another attack, I'll do my best to see it coming. So to speak."

He taps the blindfold pointedly.

(More people know about that now – not everyone, certainly, and it’s mostly rumor and speculation, but…people know. Some people act differently, others don’t, and a few guilty-looking souls among the Senju have put two and two together, judging by the way they avoid both of their leaders. Hashirama sincerely hopes they choke on their complicity.)

Seeing that Tobirama and Madara are in rare agreement, Hashirama sighs and droops into his favorite sulking pose - head down, shoulders curled in, general aura of gloominess around him. "I just want to protect you, Tobirama," he says with a moan of despair. "I'm your big brother. It's my job."

"Then stop sulking and get back to work," Tobirama says mercilessly. "Something which, let me remind you, is also your job, except unlike taking care of me, it is literally your job."

"He's not going to be any use to anyone until he gets this out of his system," Madara says, not wholly incorrectly. "We could spar -"

"One of you is doing this paperwork with me."

"Fine, fine. Hashirama -"

"I'll go take a walk," Hashirama sighs. He can tell when he’s being more of a burden than a help. Given his focus issues, it's not that uncommon a feeling when paperwork is involved. He tries, he really does, but no matter what he does he keeps on drifting off to think of other things a few minutes in and ends up writing out poetry or ideas for a new taijutsu technique instead of reviewing the mission reports he's supposed to be dealing with. And that's assuming he maintains the ability to sit in one place for that long... "But don't leave Tobirama alone, okay, Madara? If I'm not back before moonrise, you can stay at our house."

"Anija -"

"Promise me," Hashirama demands, ignoring Tobirama's expression of long-suffering annoyance.

"I promise, I promise," Madara says. "If my clan elders try anything, I'll be here to stop them. Okay? So you can calm down and stop doing the creepy vine thing."

It's not creepy. It's just what vines do.

...when they're extremely vicious and also subject to about three seasons growth in the space of ten minutes.

"It's kudzu," Hashirama hears Tobirama tell Madara behind him as he hops out the window in search of anywhere-but-here. "Invasive, parasitic, and extremely destructive – the other one’s blackberries, which is if anything worse, don’t let it get out anywhere, we'll never get rid of it – and if you think you can't get sick of a fruit, let me tell you -"

Hashirama goes for a walk.

Normally the sight of his budding village is enough to calm him and make him happy - the sight of all those people, living in peace side by side; no longer just Uchiha and Senju but other clans, more and more by the month as they realize where the centralized shinobi power in Fire Country now lies - but today it just grates at his nerves.

They really need to get a police system up and running. Madara already agreed that his clan would take leadership of it - it was only reasonable given their abilities, just as the considerably higher proportion of Senju with iryo ninjutsu skills made them the obvious choice to run the hospital - but they haven't worked out the kinks of how or who will be involved.

If they had a police, maybe they could have already set up a system of punishment for when people try to murder other people for no good reason.

...no, walking through the village isn’t helping.

Hashirama decides to go walk through the forest instead.

(The Forest of Death is not a garden. It’s just where he keeps the more…interesting manifestation of his powers, that’s all. Not a garden.)

Today, though, even tending to the large carnivorous sunflowers and the snowdrops that have taken to spitting acid – listen, okay, Hashirama doesn’t like being angry and he’s great at sublimating that, but those feelings have to go somewhere and apparently when you have the Mokuton the answer to where they go is into the local plantlife – isn’t really doing the trick.

Maybe if he went outside the village?

Yes, that’ll be nice. Some real wild forest, free and growing and smelling of green – that’ll help him feel better.

Except it doesn’t.

Hashirama frowns.

The restless, anxious feeling that’s been bothering him all day – more than all day, for several days, maybe even a few weeks – is much worse out here. Much worse.

And that means the feeling isn’t his.

Hashirama reaches for the plants.

They don’t actually reach back, don’t whisper back the way he imagined when he was a kid, but they’re there for him, always, and through them he knows that something is wrong, and where.

Not what – trees are frankly terrible at understand what animal life is up to, still stuck on wondering why in the world anything would want to move around as much as all that, and while moss is surprisingly good at figuring out human motives (people apparently have a lot of sex on moss) it’s also functionally blind, so there’s that – but at least they can tell him where.

Something draining, apparently. Something a bit like a hole in the ground, a bit like weed-killer or worms, the bad ones that eat at roots instead of munching on dirt, but also apparently growing-plant-like in a strange way, a bit like lawns?

(No one likes lawns. Not even the grass in the lawn like it.)

Well, since being a sensor isn’t one of Hashirama’s skills – he likes to think he wouldn't be totally blind if he really tried, but between Madara (unusually strong) and Tobirama (not worth comparing to), he’s never had much reason to practice it all that much – the only thing for it is to go see what it is himself.

Hashirama is aware that the correct thing to do is to send a message back to the administrative center and get someone else to do it, like a proper Hokage, but that would involve going back into the village and his nerves are still scraped raw from the bad-plant-feeling and the assassination attempt on his baby brother for something he didn’t even do, and damnit, they call him the God of Shinobi, he can check out a threat that has somehow made its way to their front door without even Tobirama noticing without calling backup.

He’ll be fine.

Now, Hashirama admits that sometimes he’s an idiot. Usually, he’s the sort of idiot that’s just talented or lucky enough to get himself out of whatever stupid situation he ends up in.

This is – not one of those times.

The clearing seemed fine, when he finds it, but oddly enough the trees inside the clearing aren’t responding to him.

It’s not until he walks in to figure out what’s going on that he suddenly realizes that they aren’t real trees, they’re made of something else, something different, something white and artificial and wrong and he’s falling –

Chapter Text

“Captured by fake plants,” Hashirama says mournfully, looking with very real dismay at the sickly white vines with chakra suppressing seals drawn all over them wrapped around his wrists and elbows and shoulders and all the way down the rest of his body at approximately equivalent interludes. The underground cavern he fell into (was carried into? hard to tell if it's the same cavern at this point) is lined with the white not-plants, giving it a deceptively bright and open feeling. “Fake plants. Tobirama is never going to let me live this down.”

The black-void-vaguely-humanoid-thing that appears to be his captor suddenly gives a whole-body shiver and the blackness twists, transforming until it’s his own face looking back at him.

It's a pretty good imitation, actually; you can't see anything left over from the black-thing it was before.

“You assume you’re going to live, then?” it asks with Hashirama’s own voice. It sounds amused.

“Of course,” Hashirama says, like the contrary asshole he turns into any time he’s being condescended to. There’s a reason he’s given very strict scripts to recite verbatim anytime he’s in the presence of daimyo, accompanied by many, many threats, and he sometimes even listens and sticks to what he's been told to recite. Sometimes. “You don’t actually think that you can pretend to be me for very long, do you?”

Not-Hashirama smiles a nice big old smile that looks an awful lot like what Hashirama sees in the mirror. “I’ve replicated you down to the bones,” it says. “Every scar, every birthmark – even your chakra. Even your Mokuton.”

“Sure, sure,” Hashirama says dismissively, even though a chill runs up his back at the thought of some weird plant-thing having access to the full, deadly extent of his Mokuton. With any luck, it’s neither as creative nor as powerful as he is. “But what about my winning personality?”

Not-Hashirama continues to smile.

Hashirama smiles back.

They might have stayed at an impasse if there wasn’t a groan from the other corner of the cavern, and honestly Hashirama’s never been great at staring contests anyway so he turns to look.

“Izuna, you’re here too,” he says, puzzled.

“No shit,” Izuna says. He’s trussed up just like Hashirama is, except he looks worse: circles under his eyes, unhealthy tinge to the skin. He’s clearly been here a few days. “Be careful. That thing is tricky.”

The creature laughs, drawing Hashirama’s attention back to him, and then bisects itself down the middle – while still wearing Hashirama’s face, no less – until there are two Hashiramas, just like with Tobirama’s shadow clone technique.

“Mitosis!” Hashirama shouts.

The creature stops smiling and starts looking confused.

“What the fuck, Hashirama,” Izuna says pleasantly.

“Tobirama had a microbiological science phase,” Hashirama explains. “While we were working on improving healing techniques. I know most of what’s happening, but I usually forget what words go with what thing, but I remember that one!”

“How are you this much of an idiot?” Izuna moans. “You’re the Hokage of the village, the God of Shinobi, and you’re just – you’re so unbelievably dumb –”

Actually, Hashirama is just easily distracted, bad at starting things, tends to think of too many things at once, and has no verbal filter whatsoever, none of which have anything to do with how smart he is or isn’t, but since Hashirama does in fact consider himself to be something of an idiot (his brother is Tobirama, obviously he’s outclassed in the mental department) and also it pays to be underestimated in front of something that’s planning on imitating you to your closest family and friends, he just shrugs.

Also –

“I had nothing to do with the God of Shinobi nickname,” he says. “I just want to be clear on that. I don’t even know where it came from. It seems excessive.”

The not-Hashiramas snort, and one of them shivers and turns into a perfect copy of Izuna. “If it makes you feel better,” he drawls in Izuna’s snide tones, “I suspect you’ll have a different nickname after I’m done.”

Ooooh, is this the part where they get to find out the evil plan? Will there be monologuing?

“You’re going to stage a fight between Hashirama and me, resulting in one of our deaths,” Izuna says flatly. “Probably me, which will make Madara succumb to the family curse and go absolutely insane, making him kill you – or rather, kill Hashirama, that is, I assume you’ll sub out for the real thing at the last possible moment to leave the real Hashirama helpless – and that, in turn, will get Tobirama to kill Madara. Something like that?”

Izuna is such a spoilsport sometimes.

The not-Hashirama laughs and the not-Izuna smirks.

“Close,” not-Hashirama says cheerfully. “Your peace came too quickly, and despite my best efforts has not yet faltered, but I will make it fail. It will be just as you say, except Tobirama won’t succeed in killing your brother, of course, not even with that stolen Sharingan of his.”

Hashirama frowns.

“Oh, yes, I know all about that. I’d been wondering how you’d managed to make peace so quickly, even over my best efforts, but this…this is better than I could have hoped! A Sharingan among the Senju – that fits perfectly into my plans. All that’ll do is make him more susceptible to the Uchiha curse as well: a perfect tool. Two sides, both consumed with hatred…!”

Yeah, that sounds pretty bad.

“This will restart the war even better than before,” not-Hashirama says with a pretty good approximation of Hashirama’s own glee, except he’s never actually seen his face screwed up in evil laughter quite like that before. “And once I produce Izuna – his body, at least – to prove that it was all a set-up, all the clans of Konoha will unite against the Uchiha, forcing your brother to turn to…let’s say…drastic measures.”

The not-Izuna taps the corner of his left eye, smirking in a way that means nothing to Hashirama but judging by Izuna’s horrified expression means something to him, then adds, “Also, who says we’re going to kill you? Possession is much more effective – and we might need a replenishing source of Hashirama’s DNA if his brother proves insufficient.”

Hashirama really hopes they mean his blood or flesh, not, uh, other replenishing sources because, well, ew.

“You won’t get away with this,” Izuna says flatly.

“Why not?” not-Hashirama asks. “I have before. More times than you can imagine. I’ve infiltrated both clans time and time again, taking on multiple identities, lying in wait until the time is right –”

“Wait,” Hashirama says, unable to resist. “Are you saying – are you really saying –”

The not-Hashirama and not-Izuna smirk at him, smug and condescending and triumphant.

“- that you’re a plant?”

The way their faces fall is hilarious.

Izuna looks like he’s seriously considering bashing his head against a cavern wall right now.

In Hashirama’s defense, as a self-respecting Mokuton user, he had no choice but to go for the pun. There’s a saying, after all, about low-hanging fruit…

Heh.

The not-them recover quickly, though, glaring at Hashirama, and then head out, presumably to set up the utter destruction of everything Hashirama holds dear.

“So,” Hashirama says, a while after when he’s fairly sure they’re alone. “Is that eye-tapping thing some sort of implicit threat or something? I don’t know Uchiha sign language.”

“What? No, that – it’s not sign language. It’s a reference. To the stone tablet, the part about the Infinite Tsukuyomi.”

“The what now?”

Izuna slams his head backwards against the wall of the cave.

“Hey, I didn’t get to see your super special tablet! Your elders said I wasn’t allowed!”

“It’s not a…you wouldn’t have even be able to see…ugh. Never mind. It’s a bullshit legend anyway and Madara would never.”

Hashirama arches his eyebrows.

“…Madara would probably not.”

Hashirama waits. He loves Madara, he really does, but…

“Oh shit we really need to get out of here,” Izuna says with a groan.

“I’m open to suggestions on how,” Hashirama says dryly. “Ideally before we get embarrassingly rescued by my baby brother.”

“I’ve been here for three days and nobody noticed that I wasn’t the one who ‘left’,” Izuna says flatly. He sounds a little hurt by that. “What makes you think anyone will notice when he goes back as you?”

“To start with, leaving a note on Madara’s desk that says ‘gone on mission for interesting stuff don’t wait up’ is a lot more characteristic of you than me –”

“I think I actually did write that note,” Izuna groans. “Did he actually just re-use one of my old notes? This is terrible. I'm so ashamed.”

“– and anyway half the village reported someone sneaking out fairly ostentatiously, and there was obviously no henge involved, so we just assumed it was you. Clearly that’s a mistake and we’ll need to set up more official check-in and check-outs to avoid particularly sneaky infiltrators.”

“Oh, if we get back, I have plans,” Izuna says with all the savagery of a very offended head of village security that has identified a giant gap in his defenses. “But again, that still assumes we get back at all. Why do you think Tobirama will notice?”

“Because that thingamajig –”

“It calls itself Zetsu. Please use that. Have some dignity.”

“You Uchiha care too much about dignity,” Hashirama complains. “Who even cares?”

“Me,” Izuna says. “I care.”

(His lips are twitching, though. Uchiha love to look down their noses at ridiculous people, but they also tremendously enjoy watching their antics. And anyway, Izuna’s been stuck here for three days; he deserves to have a smile put on his face.)

“Fine, fine. Because Zetsu’s imitation of me is all wrong.”

Izuna arches his eyebrows. “It seemed pretty good to me. What was wrong with it?”

“He was happy.”

Izuna blinks. “…and?”

“I’m also happy,” Hashirama explains. “But it takes effort. There’s a difference. Tobirama’s a sensor; he’ll notice.”

That’s not quite the truth, or at least not all of it. Tobirama is indeed an amazing sensor and Hashirama hopes he’d notice just on that basis – he always notices when Hashirama’s doubling down on smiling, so it makes sense he’d notice it when it's an imposter – but regardless he has a trump card. Hashirama always briefly merges his chakra with Tobirama’s every time they’re in the same room together – an old holdover habit from when Tobirama was young and sickly and Hashirama was always trying to sneak him extra with nobody noticing.

Zetsu won’t know to do that, and if he does, it probably won’t have the same effect or feeling.

“And if he does notice, then what’s to stop Zetsu from coming back here and just murdering us both outright?” Izuna says.

“Mmm. An excellent point. We should definitely try to escape first.”

Izuna sighs. “Well, master of the Moktuon, can you do something about these vines?”

“They’re not real vines,” Hashirama says. “They’re fake plants. Plants would be ashamed to be associated with something like this. This is worse than a lawn, and I don’t say that lightly.”

Izuna gives him a strange look. “I thought Madara was joking when he said you had a thing about lawns. Apparently not.”

Hashirama decides to ignore him – clearly, no Uchiha will ever understand his pain in this matter – and tries reaching mentally for the forest.

For a few minutes there’s a lot of nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing –

“Wait, I think I’m feeling something,” he says.

Izuna sits up straight. “You are? What?”

“I don’t – I'm not sure. It doesn’t feel like plants – it feels more like –” He frowns. “Lightning?”

The entire cavern is lit up by a bright flash – not unlike the hiraishin, for that matter – and then something heavy lands on Hashirama.

It lands fairly badly.

“Owwwwww,” Hashirama moans, trying to curl up into a ball. At least he won’t have to worry about Zetsu getting his genetic material out that way, at least not until the bruises heal….

The source of the weight, a tall man with tricolored hair – black and white growing out of his skull, and plaits of bright red woven into them as they form a series of intricate braids – blinks down at him and frowns. “You’re not Tobirama.”

“No, he’s my brother. Who’re you?”

“Your – wait. Hashirama? You got tall! I mean, really tall; I thought Tobirama was joking!”

Hashirama blinks. While it’s true he was rather embarrassingly short for a while there in his childhood – Tobirama was nearly the same height as him for a while despite being three years younger – his teenage years had paid that back with interest. But only someone who knew him as a child would know to say that, and Hashirama doesn’t know anyone with black-white-red hair and braids; those are pretty distinctive, he’s sure he’d remember that.

In fact, the only person he knows who ever had both black and white hair was –

Wait.

No.

“Itama?!”

“Hold up,” Izuna says. “Senju Itama? I thought you said all your other brothers were dead – wait, no, don’t tell me Tobirama’s perfected that stupid bring-back-the-dead jutsu Madara has nightmares about –”

“It’s called Edo Tensei,” Itama says. “And it’s not stupid, just – probably unwise.”

Izuna makes a face. “Whatever. Just…tell me you’re not dead.”

“I’m not dead,” Itama says obediently.

“I said all my other brothers were gone,” Hashirama corrects. He feels slightly smug about being right that his baby brother would rescue them, though he concedes he was thinking of a different one. “Not dead. And officially it’s Uzumaki Itama now, not Senju…wait. Itama, aren’t you supposed to be in Uzushio right now? I’m pretty sure there’s another few years left on that fostering contract of yours before you’re allowed to come home.”

“Yeah, well, I saved Uzushio from being eaten by a giant whale – long story, don’t ask –”

“I’m asking,” Hashirama says immediately, fascinated. He wants to see a giant whale. That sounds awesome.

 “– and anyway to cut to the chase I got permission to go out wherever I wanted,” Itama concludes, ignoring him. Why do Hashirama’s brothers always ignore him? So not fair. “So obviously the first thing I did was come to see Tobirama.” He frowns. “And got you instead. Are you wearing his clothing?”

Hashirama wiggles around to look at his back. That shade of dark blue suggested it probably wasn’t his. “…apparently so? I wasn’t paying attention to what I pulled out of the closet this morning.”

“Are you two still sharing a closet?” Itama says, exasperated. “You’re adults! What will you do when one of you gets married?”

“Get a bigger closet and try to avoid grabbing any kimonos?”

“Not to interrupt this beautiful sibling bonding moment and, might I say, truly wonderful opportunity for future blackmail,” Izuna says, his voice dry as dust, “but maybe you could get us out of these vines and then out of this cave before Zetsu destroys the entire village we’ve been working so hard on? Any time now?”

Chapter Text

It’s all Hashirama’s fault, really.

(Hashirama is not oblivious: he’s aware that this is a state of events that is, regretfully, not that uncommon.)

In his defense, he’d never been able to control his mouth.

But – really!

The confrontation with Zetsu had just been so - anticlimatic.

With Itama’s help, they’d gotten out of their binding and fought their way out of the cave to where a red-haired woman who’d initially introduced herself only as Itama’s foster-sister had been waiting patiently. Itama hadn’t even explained; he just said it was an emergency and she’d immediately followed them as they made their way back to the village by means of the hiraishin that Tobirama had apparently taught Itama through their correspondence.

Their highly illicit correspondence.

The Uzumaki had cut off communication for fear that Itama would remain too tied to his former homeland, but being told ‘no’ had never stopped Tobirama before.

(Hashirama is very proud of the fact that he’d been the one to solve the issue, suggesting that if they both signed the same summoning contract, their summons could pass along messages between them. It’d worked wonderfully, and Tobirama – who likes writing – had enjoyed having someone to tell everything to in the same way that Hashirama – who hated writing – liked pouring the same everything into his only nearby brother’s ear.)

Anyway, they’d appeared at the edge of Konoha and run inside, only to find a confrontation in the middle of the main street, with a very confused Madara attempting to hold back a hissing and homicidal Tobirama who was demanding to know who the not-Hashirama and not-Izuna really were and where his brother actually was.

The Zetsu had been trying to explain, but as soon as the real ones arrived, it took one look, merged back into a single black-blob entity, and ran away before anyone could react.

It hadn’t even bothered to wait until the Uchiha activated their Sharingans to figure out who was who!

Hashirama, who’d been looking forward to trying to prove himself and was a little disappointed, had opened his mouth and said the dumbest possible thing.

“Well, that was easy.”

Which means, of course, that when – less than twenty-four hours later – Zetsu had returned with a set of kidnapped Uchiha and the kyuubi in tow, all of them raging mad, possibly brainwashed (it was under debate), and intent on destroying the village, it was all Hashirama’s fault.

At least Tobirama’s ridiculous senses had allowed them to find out about the upcoming invasion early enough in advance that they could go out to try to stop them further off.

That battle had – not gone well.

At all.

To say the least.

Zetsu had laughed at them, and, honestly, Hashirama thinks he’s really starting to dislike the thing.

Madara had been the one to call it a failure and ordered the retreat. They’d done only enough damage to stop the kyuubi from rampaging further that day, buying them some much-needed breathing room, and in the meantime they’d fallen back to Konoha to debate their very few remaining options.

“Genjutsu would be an option if we had the Eternal Mangekyo,” Izuna argues, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s been tightly wound up ever since they successfully chased Zetsu away from the village – as the one who’d been captured by Zetsu the longest, he’d been certain that Zetsu would return, intent on achieving his goals by force now that treachery had failed.

He’d been right, too.

“For the last time, Izuna, no,” Madara snaps. “I’m not going to give up all of that work we all did modifying the Senju’s healing technique to keep our eyes from deteriorating quite so rapidly in favor of an approach that leaves you blind.”

“But –”

“Your clan’s records suggest that the Eternal Mangekyo requires sacrifice,” Hashirama agrees. “We have no idea if you would be able to take Madara’s eyes in exchange, or even someone else’s, and I’m not interested in testing it out.”

“We need to do something,” Izuna argues. “Or are we just going to let the kyuubi destroy everything we’ve worked so hard to create?”

Hashirama shakes his head. That’s not an option. “There’s still the first method I proposed,” he says. “I could hold it with the Mokuton until Itama and his friend Mito seal it into a person.”

They were all currently pretending that Mito, a smiling red-haired woman dressed in warrior’s clothing (but walking as if she was more used to fancy kimonos), was not, in fact, the princess of the Uzumaki clan, because admitting that would require trying to send her back and no one wanted to even suggest that.

Hashirama also had the additional motivation that admitting her identity would force him to actually talk to her about the tentative arrangement between their clans that they marry in a few years when Itama came of age and honestly the longer he can push off that conversation, the better.

Not that Mito isn’t great!

She’s great.

She seems very sharp and clever and funny, and Hashirama totally wants her to be part of his family. It’s just that the very idea of talking about marriage gives him the chills, and that’s not exactly a good thing right before a major battle.

“I still maintain that’s a terrible idea,” Madara says.

“Absolutely. The kyuubi never attacked before,” Itama agrees. “Not either clan, even when we were ripping up the entire forest with battlegrounds. There has to be a reason it’s doing so now, even if we don’t know what that reason is yet – though given the Uchiha Zetsu took, I think we all have our suspicions.”

“I was more thinking about consequences,” Madara says. “If we end up with a contained bijuu, then what? The other countries will declare war for fear that we will conquer them, and who knows, maybe the other bijuu will attack as well.”

“We could try to trap the other bijuu too?” Hashirama suggests, glancing at Mito who’s nodding in agreement. “Then we could spread them out –”

“No. Don’t – just – you’re a strategist, how can you not see how terrible of an idea that would be?”

“Yes, well, compared to the other available options – which is to say, nothing – ending in a mutually assured destruction scenario doesn’t seem that bad.”

“We seem to be at an impasse,” Izuna says. “That is, unless Tobirama can pull another ground-breaking new jutsu out of his ass to give us an advantage over a bijuu, or at least something that can nullify what may or may not be a Mangekyo genjutsu capable of controlling a bijuu that none of us Uchiha can break.”

Everyone looks at Tobirama, because, well, that’s more or less what he specializes in doing.

“Not out of there, no,” Tobirama says, rolling his eyes at all of them. “But there is something we might be able to use, though it may require the Uchiha elders to finally agreeing to give me full and unfettered access to your scrolls to figure out how to best utilize it.”

He looks at Hashirama pointedly.

Hashirama winces.

Of course Tobirama knows; he should never have doubted it.

Well, at least this way they don’t have to have an awkward conversation about it?

Tobirama rolls his eyes again, clearly following Hashirama’s line of thought, but he looks more amused than anything else.

“There is?” Madara asks, crossing his arms. “Is this something else related to the Uchiha that you Senju forgot to mention? Again?”

“Um,” Hashirama says. He hadn’t thought about the awkward part of telling Madara about it.

“Do I know about this?” Itama asks.

“Um,” Hashirama says again. Another thing he hadn’t thought about.

“Is this something that should have been shared with your allies?” Mito asks, her eyes dancing even as she pretends to scowl.

“Um,” Hashirama says.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re amazingly bad at information exchange?” Izuna says. “It’s actually shocking how bad you are. Why is ‘hide everything’ your first instinct every time?”

“Clearly it’s because our family’s guardian spirits are a burrowing species,” Hashirama says brightly, relieved by the change in subject and ignoring the way both Madara and Izuna look pained at the reminder. Tobirama’s completed Susanoo kitsune apparently has something of a magnetic effect on their own tengu, leading to some fairly hilarious results. “Tobirama, it’s yours, so if you want to share, go ahead.”

Tobirama nods and closes his eyes to concentrate, his chakra tugging lightly at Hashirama’s own to pull in what he needs.

Hashirama turns to look at everyone’s faces.

Sure, there’s a gigantic chakra monster heading towards his beloved village, intent on destroying it, and probably everyone’s going to hit him for keeping this a secret for so long (he’s going to get punched until he’s black and blue, he just knows it), but he’s only going to get to see their first sight of the Rinnegan once, and he plans to savor it.

Tobirama opens his eyes.

“What the fuck?!”

(It’s totally worth it.)