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His hands are small.
Tobirama flexes them carefully. There's a cut across the meat of his thumb, a result of inexperience that will scar over because Tobirama's father has never believed in "coddling" even the youngest of the clan's ninja, Tobirama least of all.
Years from now, Tobirama would have run his hand over the scar frequently while thinking over problems in the village. While considering academy graduation ages, while working out the logistics of setting up a hospital and a health care system, while considering how to set up genin teams. It would have been a scar that meant nothing, gained in a spar where Tobirama didn't learn anything, just another one of his father's tests and subsequent punishments. It would have been a reminder to strive to be better than Senju Butsuma in some small way.
It's a fresh cut, now, gained less than an hour ago, and there's no meaning to the pain of a fresh cut. Tobirama scrapes up chakra from his tiny, child-sized chakra coils and uses the Mystic Palm jutsu to heal the damage until his small hand is unblemished. He'll have to do exercises to make sure the new skin stays elastic, but there's no visible mark.
Tobirama has already changed something, even if it is something personal and insignificant.
It's the height of summer, a bare month after their father had discovered that Hashirama was meeting an Uchiha regularly in the woods. A bare month since Tobirama's younger self informed their father of Hashirama's friend.
What Tobirama expects is for his father to storm around the house, scowling at Hashirama but keeping his peace because the long weeks of yelling at each other have already passed.
What Tobirama does not expect is how Hashirama treats him. The hesitation, mostly, but also the careful looks. He drifts out of any room Tobirama is in or training field he shows up to within an hour of Tobirama arriving, except for at night, when Hashirama is pointedly silent, feigning sleep badly. What conversations they manage to have are full of a lot of long pauses and short, terse sentences from Hashirama's side of things.
His younger self had interpreted this as Hashirama being exhausted from the various punishments Butsuma had come up with, but it's easy to see that that's not actually the case.
Tobirama had been looking forward to Hashirama's incessant babble of conversation and is discontent to miss it. He knows if he leaves this alone it will work itself out — or at least had seemed to, until Tobirama had killed Uchiha Izuna and nearly wrecked Hashirama's peace before it started — but Tobirama didn't come back in time to just let things be as they were.
"I had to do it," Tobirama says, when next they're alone on one of the more remote training fields, somewhere no one should overhear if Hashirama feels the need to shout at him. He never said this last time. He hadn't thought it needed to be said.
Hashirama's face twists. "You didn't have to do anything."
"I did," Tobirama says. He means to say more, but he can't get it out — he's waited so long to see his brother again, to not be alone, and the look of contempt on Hashirama's face knocks all of his perfectly logical arguments from his head. He can only repeat, "I had to, Hashirama."
Hashirama walks away. Tobirama trains alone, knowing that there's no point in chasing after him. Not yet.
What Hashirama doesn't know, of course, is that Tobirama is already thinking about the village. Already thinking about how they can better maneuver politically leading up to it. Already thinking about whether or not he'll have to kill Izuna again. It had been a great relief to know Izuna was dead and buried, and Tobirama doesn't look forward to facing him again, knowing that whatever edge he has over Izuna now will likely eventually be lost because Uchiha always eventually push themselves rise to the level of their competition.
And yet... if Izuna lives, maybe Madara won't break, and Konoha will stay so strong as to be untouchable. If Madara had been on the battlefields of the war that had followed the village's founding things might have been different.
Tobirama is sent on a mission soon after. It's just himself and an older cousin who doesn't talk to him more than absolutely necessary, an absolutely inadequate team composition given that Tobirama is still a child and his cousin isn't quite of age to marry yet. Even worse, the interpersonal balance of this two man team is...bad. Tobirama has never been popular with his clan in general and this elder cousin in particular..
When he had really been a child, and then a teenager, and then a young adult it had felt like he was unlikeable. But then the village had come together and Tobirama had found people who think like him. Nara and Sarutobi and Akimichi and Aburame.
It will happen again. And this time, Tobirama will make more time for students.
Halfway through the mission, after he's been separated from his cousin and fought for his life two or three times, Tobirama realizes that he recognizes this mission. Vividly. He knows how to complete it quickly, and he knows not to bother looking for his asshole cousin. He heads straight home.
He takes a different path than he had the last time he completed this mission. He has to skirt around an ongoing fight, passing through a stretch of forest where some kind of jutsu has already knocked down a large swath of trees.
There's a chakra signature among the detritus. Tobirama should just pass it by, but the more he looks at the trees and thinks of Torifu the more sure he is that this is multi-size jutsu. In the distance two chakra signatures fight a third, which means...
He finds a Nara on the ground, half under some bushes, surrounded by hastily erected traps. He's clutching a gut wound and dying slowly. When Tobirama appears he lets go of a wire so that a set of kunai fling themselves at Tobirama, who dodges them and closes the distance with the same shunshin.
The Nara catches his shadow, but it's a weak grasp and the Nara don't yet even have the shadow puppet jutsu. This is just a stalling tactic, a weak one at that, although being a child Tobirama is in poor position to resist.
"Not dead yet, kid," the Nara says.
"You will be soon," Tobirama says.
The Nara huffs a laugh. "You got me there."
He doesn't let Tobirama go, so Tobirama uses the replacement technique to switch to a position where the Nara can't hold him still, where he can see the Nara's wound better, where he can see the Nara's face better. The Nara's wound is bad — deadly — and his face is familiar. It resembles Nara Shikayū's face, the clan head with whom Tobirama had spent so much of his time haggling and adjusting village logistics and politics.
"I could help you," Tobirama says, because he's young and this man almost has the face of a friend and there's no one here but the two of them.
Tobirama knows he can't afford to die here, of course, which makes this a terrible choice... but he also knows that the Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi alliance doesn't field children as young as he is now. He knows this Nara won't want to kill him and neither will the Nara's teammates, as soon as they make it back here.
"I suppose at worst you'll kill me quicker." The Nara sighs. "But you'd better be quick."
Tobirama approaches with due caution, kneels in the mud and forest detritus, and then gets to work. He has to burn away contamination with chakra and knit together not just flesh but important parts of several organs. It's messy, hard, detailed work. It doesn't leave a lot of room to pay attention to anything else.
When Tobirama looks up, his head spinning a little. There's an Akimichi woman and a Yamanaka man watching him. Under his hands, the Nara man is unconscious but undoubtedly looking better.
"He'll live," Tobirama gasps, and stumbles away from the Nara. The sun has gone down. Tobirama leaves without a backwards glance. Neither of the adult ninja watching him follow.
Back in the clan compound, Tobirama is pressed into the healing hall for several days to recover from the chakra exhaustion that had made him collapse the minute he was within sight of a Senju patrol. On the second day, he wakes to find Hashirama at his side, reading aloud a little clumsily to Tobirama from one of Tobirama's books — stumbling over unfamiliar words, but persevering.
Well, until he notices that Tobirama is awake. Then he drops the book unceremoniously to lunge forward and lean over Tobirama, his face lighting up. "Tobira!" he says. "You're awake!"
Knowing that Tobirama is too weak to escape, Hashirama collapses on top of him in a hug that knocks the air out of Tobirama's lungs so firmly Tobirama can only wheeze in protest. Chakra exhaustion makes his limbs too weak to do anything but wiggle helplessly under Hashirama, but he doesn't even bother with that. It won't dislodge Hashirama and Tobirama doesn't exactly want to. It's probably only been a few weeks since Hashirama embraced this body, but it's been years since Tobirama experienced it.
He wouldn't trade it for anything.
Hashirama pulls back and spends a few moments telling him absolutely everything that's happened since he left home for his mission, including his older cousin actually getting in trouble for leaving him behind this time. The whole time, Hashirama keeps a tight grip on the sleeve of Tobirama's sleeping shirt. It's a desperate, childish tell, fearing Tobirama might be whisked away from him, but there's nothing wrong with letting Hashirama be young for awhile longer. Not when there's no one but Tobirama here to see.
Finally, when Hashirama has run out of things to tell him, Hashirama asks, "The patrol that found you said no one was chasing you but — but was it Uchiha? Did they—?"
Hashirama doesn't finish the question, but Tobirama knows what he's thinking about. Itama. Kawarama. The other children who had been lost that summer, no matter how distantly related.
"No," Tobirama says, because he could lie about it in an attempt to turn Hashirama against the Uchiha, but that's antithetical to Tobirama's goal. Hashirama needs to understand that the Uchiha are dangerous right now, but they won't always be enemies. Better to tell the truth, although if Hashirama blabs to anyone Tobirama will be in more trouble than Hashirama has been recently.
"I was helping someone," Tobirama says, keeping his voice to a low mutter, aware that even this private room in the healing house isn't actually private.
"Helping someone," Hashirama repeats. "A civilian?"
"No," Tobirama whispers.
"Then..."
Tobirama feels suddenly, actually young, looking up at his older brother and feeling desperate for his approval, for some sign he's lived up to Hashirama's expectations at last. And under that emotion is the cold calculation that Tobirama knows will never really leave him. He wants to tell Hashirama because he thinks Hashirama will approve, but he also hopes he can use this.
"A Nara," Tobirama continues. "A Nara man, he — he was dying. But I couldn't let him. So I saved him."
The blood has left Hashirama's face. "Tobirama, you idiot—" His hands shake Tobirama's arm roughly. "You could have died."
"You could have too," Tobirama shoots back. "And at least I thought about it before I did it, you idiot! What do you think would have happened if dad and I hadn't been there?"
Hashirama makes a choked, emotional noise and hauls Tobirama up into a hug that Tobirama is once again completely unable to escape and totally willing to accept. And if Hashirama's tears wet the collar of his sleeping shirt where Hashirama's face is pressed against his shoulder... no one but Tobirama has to know.