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When Madara wakes up, he's no longer laying on a hard, cold table. Instead he's laying on a bed. There's a heavy quilt over him. The rustle of someone else in the room.
Everything smells strange. Fresh and sharp. There's a breeze from an open window. Sunlight against Madara's face, although he can't see it. He's been cleaned and healed.
A familiar and unexpected voice says, "You're safe."
Senju Tobirama. His brother's rival. Standing across the room, from the sound of it. Overly cautious, maybe — even with peace between their clans at last, tensions remain high. Especially where Izuna and Tobirama are concerned, so it's not really any surprise that Hashirama's younger brother would be wary of being in the same room as Madara when Madara wakes up after a long while in captivity.
"Did Izuna ask the Senju for help?" Madara asks. There are other concerns — his missing eyes, for instance — but they're too raw. He can't focus on them now. Bigger picture first. The state of the clan. Tobirama has rescued him instead of slitting his throat, so presumably Izuna hasn't broken the peace, although Madara knows his little brother will have been sorely tempted.
"No," Tobirama says, "we didn't know you were missing. I sensed you."
Madara can hear the displeasure in his voice, the frustration that he'd had to detour from whatever mission he was on to drag Madara out of his predicament. And Madara can't even be annoyed about how sour Tobirama is about it. A ninja of Madara's calibre shouldn't have found himself captured at all, and certainly shouldn't have needed rescue.
He stays silent. There's probably some kind of diplomatic phrase he should be offering now, some thanks for Tobirama's intervention, but nothing rises to mind.
"I found the men with your eyes," Tobirama goes on, when Madara remains silent.
"Did you destroy them?" Madara levers himself up off the bed as far as he can rise, just barely off the bed, supported on one elbow, unable to make his uncooperative body spring out of bed no matter how urgent the need.
"I killed the bloodline thieves and retrieved your eyes." Tobirama's tone is flat. Like it means nothing to him. "I don't have the skill to transplant them back, especially not in field conditions, but they're fine. Hashirama could probably do it. Or order it done."
"Give them to me," Madara demands, although he doesn't expect it to work. Surely, he's thinking, surely it won't be that simple—
Tobirama crosses the room and presses a scroll into Madara's hand. "It's a storage seal. But you shouldn't take them out until it's time to put them back."
Storage scrolls are extremely rare and incredibly valuable. No one in the Uchiha even knows how to make them. Madara has never touched one before.
"Thank you," Madara says. Their fingers brush when Tobirama hands the scroll over.
It's an incidental touch. Meaningless. Much better than anything Madara's gotten since he was captured, and he wants — for just a moment — he wants —
But it's useless. Better to clutch the scroll to his chest (if it were fragile, surely Tobirama would have said something?) and roll over and sleep.
He jerk awake sometime later, choking on nothing, lashing out at things he can't fight. Maybe the worst thing about his captivity had been not being able to see what was about to happen to him, having to guess and wonder. Not knowing what they looked like, who was in the room, who might be watching him.
Even now, he's not sure if Tobirama is in the room — he fears he's alone — until Tobirama says, "Madara?" in a tone so wary and disgruntled that Madara is briefly reminded of Izuna in the early mornings.
"It's nothing," Madara chokes out, clamping down on his panic, searching the bed for the scroll that Tobirama says contains his eyes and holding onto it as tightly as he dares. Eventually he'll be alone with Izuna in the main house, and Izuna isn't prone to affection but if Madara needs them to sit close together, if Madara needs them to sleep in the same room, so that Izuna is never more than an arm's length away when Madara wakes up... Izuna will do it.
There's the rustle of Tobirama standing up. The distinct, purposeful sounds of him crossing the room while making sound that Madara can track. It's surprisingly courteous, although maybe he's just worried about Madara's reaction to being startled. Which is probably fair.
"It's obviously something," Tobirama says. "I should do another diagnostic jutsu. Hold still."
Madara holds still, because if Tobirama had wanted to do anything to him he would have had plenty of time to do it already.
Soon a hand that buzzes with chakra touches his arm. When Madara very, very carefully doesn't react, it slides up his bicep, over his shoulder, skirts his clavicle, and comes to rest on Madara's chest, palm flat, over his heart. Bare skin against bare skin, Tobirama's chakra sinking into him carefully and unobtrusively.
It's intimate. It makes Madara shiver, to have Tobirama touch him even lightly. It makes his pulse quicken to have sustained contact. He wants more.
"Mostly normal," Tobirama mutters. He starts to pull his hand away and Madara's breathing hitches.
He's never felt more pathetic. He's never felt more needy or more worthy of contempt. But the scathing comment he expects from Tobirama doesn't come. Instead, Tobirama pulls away completely. "You're healing fine and recovering chakra at the expected rate." There's a pause. "You need to bathe."
"Fine," Madara says, with great reluctance. It's true that his hair is a disgusting tangle and that he feels shamefully grimey all over, but it's doubtful that Madara will even be able to make it to a bathtub, let alone clean himself without drowning. He sits up more, intending to swing his legs out of bed.
"Not yet. I have to draw the bath. Wait here." Tobirama's hand presses against his chest, encouraging him to lay back down without adding much strength into the gesture.
Madara lays back down obediently and waits as Tobirama leaves the room, as water thunders into a tub in the next room over. Their accommodations must be pricey if they're staying in a place with private, plumbed bathrooms, but Madara can't even feel scorn at the needless extravagance because he's pathetically grateful that he doesn't have to wait here alone while Tobirama draws the water in buckets from some well, heats it, and then hauls it into the room.
When Tobirama comes back, Madara rises to his feet with no small effort. When he stumbles, Tobirama is there, grabbing his arm, keeping him from falling. Madara needs assistance to get to the bathroom, assistance to get undressed the rest of the way, and assistance to get into the tub. Tobirama does all of it silently — no complaints, no mockery, just sure and steady hands doing what needs to be done.
He only eventually speaks when Madara is struggling to comb his hair even with the water and shampoo making it slick. Tobirama says, "Let me help. I've done this for Hashirama."
Madara is in no position to argue, and would rather not have to cut his hair off or wait to get back to Izuna before his hair can be sorted out. He hands the comb over to Tobirama and expects that it will hurt but be over quickly, that Tobirama will do what needs to be done to complete his task and stop touching Madara as fast as possible.
Instead, Tobirama is gentle and meticulous. He starts at the ends and works the comb through one tangle at a time, working up the length of hair, always holding Madara's hair tightly just above where he's trying to detangle, so Madara only feels the occasional tug.
Eventually, Tobirama even breaks the awkward silence between them. He says, "Hashirama grew his hair out after an argument with our father and then never stopped. You wouldn't believe the things he's gotten in his hair since. The things he's asked me to help him remove from his hair." Tobirama huffs strangely, and then tells a story about Hashirama coming home from a fight with a Land of Honey ninja who'd actually fought with honey. It takes until Tobirama has worked the comb three-fourths of the way up Madara's hair and told another three stories before Madara realizes that Tobirama's weird sound was, of all things, laughter.
Madara has never heard Tobirama laugh before.
"I've never heard you talk this much," Madara says, before Tobirama can launch fully into a fifth story about why Senju Hashirama doesn't deserve to keep his long hair.
Tobirama's hands pause. "It's a standard Senju medical practice to make conversation with someone who's recently been held captive." He returns to his story, which lasts all the way until Tobirama can run the wide-toothed end of the comb through Madara's hair from roots to tip smoothly and rinse the shampoo out of Madara's hair. "It needs a second washing," Tobirama mutters then, and adds more shampoo, working it firmly into Madara's scalp.
He has to take Tobirama's word for it, but Madara doesn't mind. The scrape of Tobirama's blunt nails and the repetitive motion are surprisingly soothing combined with the long string of anecdotes about Hashirama.
"The village," Tobirama says, eventually, when he's helping Madara out of the bath and back to the bed, dressed in new clothing whose provenance Tobirama had not cared to establish. He doesn't complete the thought.
"The one we're in?" Madara asks, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. His wet hair is draped over one shoulder, soaking the shirt.
Tobirama says, "No." His tone implies, you idiot, as if there was an obvious conversational thread for Madara to follow. "The one you and Hashirama were thinking of — do you want it still?"
"Yes," Madara says. He can barely speak the admission above a whisper.
"Good. Hashirama and I have already done a great deal of planning."
Tobirama presses a towel into Madara's hands. Tobirama launches into a long, hypothetical explanation of ranks, and finances, and departments, and academies, and city planning. Madara listens until he falls asleep to the sound of Tobirama's voice and dreams of the future.