Chapter Text
His hair was less spiky.
Madara wasn't sure if he liked that. He raked a hand through it again. It was still red, smooth, and silky just like it had looked before he grabbed it.
His hair had changed color before, Madara having watched it turn from black to white twice: once from age and the other from becoming a jinchuriki. But this shade of red was so... bloody, so different, and vaguely familiar.
He ran his hands through it some more.
"Aniki," a voice whined, voice lilting in an eerily similar way to that of a certain man.
It reminded him that he was supposed to be dead.
But here he was, very much alive. He wasn't sure what to make of it. He felt calmer than he had in a very long time. Perhaps death had something to do with it, an emptiness that danced just out of reach in the tresses of his mind. Being able to leave the world without some kind of backup plan, to feel everything fade away and go quiet...
"Quit ignoring me, brother!"
Madara was shaken back and forth by a pair of hands. He blinked.
A smudge of blue diamond on her forehead. Big, expressive eyes. And hair. Red, shockingly bright red hair. And he could never forget that chakra signature.
Then he realized this girl in front of him was Uzumaki Mito. Hashirama's wife, the first jinchuriki.
Someone who he knew should've been dead as well.
...And did she just call him her brother?
Madara looked down into the still waters, saw himself as a young redhead in traditional Uzumaki garb, saw Mito's figure, only a little smaller than his, and wondered what he did to deserve this.
But then it clicked. If he was here, alive, back in his own time...
Izuna. His brother could still be here, too. Someone he hadn't thought of for a very, very long time. His little brother, someone he had a second chance to protect, to show the village that had been so empty without him.
He wouldn't make the same mistakes. His dream, his vision for the world had failed. But Hashirama's had lived on, so much longer than he thought it would. He looked into his reflection's dark eyes, and thought for what felt like an eternity.
He could change things, this time around. It didn't hurt to try.