Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Konoha is quieter, at night, but once the witching hour descends, it’s never truly peaceful. The magic is too strong for that.

Three ley lines cross through town in broad strokes, and no pair of them has the decency to intersect outside city limits. Magic flares in unpredictable bursts, with lulls of quiet that can last months before erupting without warning in a firework show of power. Picking out purposeful, directed magic against a backdrop of tumultuous natural upwellings is… difficult.

Someone has to do it, though, to keep the chaos to a dull roar rather than allowing it to descend on the city like a pack of ravenous Hellhounds.

So here Madara is, in the dead of night, keeping watch to make sure no one’s taking advantage of the witching hour to do anything stupid.

Perched on top of the third tallest skyscraper in downtown Konoha, far above the general fog of magic that hangs down by the streets, he keeps a special eye on the paths the ley lines trace through the city and its outskirts. Konoha isn’t a small city, but there’s still a truly improbable number of flashpoints compared to the population statistics. The places where the ley-lines intersect bear particular watchfulness, as do a handful of other spots ripe for ritual.

It’s a little like watching from a distance for the dust from an explosion that’s already gone off. Most powerful mages get wishy-washy feelings to tell them when a dangerous amount of power is being channeled or used, but while Madara is plenty powerful, he isn’t a mage. He’s shit at sensing magic. But when he activates his sharingan, he can see it, and in the clear air above the everyday haze from magically inclined humans going about their daily lives, he can see for miles.

Witching hour starts okay. A couple sparks fly up from the south side fo town, but that particular pattern tends to mean the kind of magics that don’t—ahem—need anyone watching. Or, well, they do, usually, but you couldn’t pay Madara to see that much of any stranger’s naked skin if he has any means of escape. It’s not a ritual that’s going to dump Konoha in another dimension on accident, and it’s not his job to call in incidents of public indecency. Madara is staying right here.

Or he plans to, until he hears the slow creaking of old iron, creeping out across Konoha like steps over a grave. The rattling of frozen chains.

Madara goes utterly still for half a second before wheeling around like he’s been pulled, almost falling off of the building. Gravity tries to take its bloody vengeance on him, but he manages to find a better grip on the awkward-looking gargoyle some tasteless architect thought this roof needed. He strains his ears to figure out exactly where that—that sounds is coming from. It’s impossible to mistake for anything else; he’d recognize it turned around and upside-down while drowning underwater. His heartbeat picks up, shoulders winding tighter, but he wrestles down his fight-or-flight response.

He wonders if he might need better ears to find where it’s coming from. No, there—east, along part of the stretch of forest no one with a scrap of magic would allow to be bulldozed. Rowan Ave. and an unnamed dirt road that leads into the woods. Crossroads, with a leyline running right under it, empty of people at this time of night. Pure, powerful bait for some idiot mage with delusions of grandeur. Or, more likely, a malevolent one.

There’s no good reason for someone to be summoning Hell’s Gates, but there are plenty of bad ones.

Madara forces himself to take a deep breath. He heard chains, so the Gates aren’t open, at least not yet. He rises to his feet and steps out onto the cement gargoyle’s misshapen head. The street is a long way down.

He shrugs off the outer shell of his illusion of humanity, the layer that makes it real, and lets himself fall.

His wings snap out to catch the air, leveling him out in a wide swoop that never delves too close to the street. No need to bother with the foot traffic, minimal as it is this time of night; Madara won’t be seen if he doesn’t want to be. The feeling of wind through his feathers loosens something inside him, which reminds him all over again how much he misses flying just for the sake of flying. This is all practicality, tonight. It’s much faster to get to the crossroads as the crow flies. He doesn’t want to be too late to find out who’s foolish enough to summon the Gates of Hell, even if the steady rattling of chains assures him that nothing’s come through.

Yet.

Madara glides in silently, landing just beyond the tree line. Mist hands thickly here, away from the city proper with all its soaring metal buildings and paved streets. The light of the moon, nearly full, gives the fog a dim, ethereal glow. Wisps of it snake and twist in the air unnaturally, steeped in active magic.

Hell’s Gates are still grinding against their bonds, but the summoned chains seem to be be holding well enough. He takes a moment to sigh quietly and roll his eyes heavenward before ghosting forward to see what punk of a mage nearly startled him off of a building. If Madara’s lucky, maybe he’ll have the chance to return the favor.

The mist grows denser as he makes his way to the center of the crossroads. It would be almost impossible to see more than a foot in front of his face without his sharingan, and his range of vision isn’t that great even with it activated.

A Hellhound’s thwarted snarl trails into faint growling at the very lower edge of Madara’s hearing; still distant, good. Several moments more of careful, silent steps and narrow-eyed searching, and finally he sets his eyes on the youn man standing directly at the magical epicenter of the crossroads.

Definitely young. Tall. He’s wearing skinny jeans and those hipster shoes Madara can never remember the name of, so probably under twenty-five. His coat is thick and plain but fits him well, and he has a rucksack slung over one shoulder like an afterthought. Certainly not someone who would draw more than a casual glance on the street, even with that shock of white hair, but to Madara he’d be impossible to miss—the man is almost too bright to look at, his magic shining like sunlight filtered through ice.

Madara grimaces at the brightness, but doesn’t deactivate his sharingan. A little light-blindness is less of a hazard than trying to navigate the mist without his sight. A powerful mage, then. Strong, but not the smartest, if he’s standing in the middle of the road when the visibility’s this bad—a human with no magic of their own won’t be warned away by their own instincts.

Not to mention how moronic—or desperate—a person has to be to start knocking at the Gates of Hell.

The Gates almost fade into the mist. They’re ghostly, not truly present, but even this projected image brings the Hellish plane close enough to the mortal plane that Madara’s skin itches. He wraps his illusion of humanity tighter around himself, invokes it, makes it real again, but the sensation still won’t fade completely.

The man leans slightly forward, like he’s trying to peer through the Gates without opening them. A young, idiot thrill-seeker, Madara decides with an internal eye-roll, with just enough self-preservation for nothing to have eaten him already. Probably—if Madara is lucky enough, anyway—the type to retreat and rethink his life if something Hellish spooks him enough.

Scaring dumbasses out of their skins is literally the only fun part of his near-nightly patrols. Madara is going to relish this.

He starts feeding his magic into the mist, building sparks and embers light enough to be carried by the movements of the mist, turning silver wisps into dark smoke. The pale eeriness of the night beings to twist into something more sinister without much more than a touch.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for the man to notice and whip around, concentration breaking. The light-beneath-ice magic just under his skin fades to deeper in his core, dimming as the indistinct image of Hell’s Gates dissolves into the fog. The distant baying of Hellhounds fades.

The boundaries of Hell draw away from the mortal plane to where they should be, but Madara’s nerves are not particularly settled. The man’s eyes are a deep red. It’s enough to make him hesitate for a bare moment, wary. But there’s no pattern within them, and his pale hair and skin point to the source of those eyes being albinism, rather than anything magical. He doesn’t feel like a demon, and even after seven years lurking around Konoha, Madara would be able to tell if he was: takes one to know one and all that.

The more distinctive features are the… scars. Tattoos, he hopes. If they are scars, the wounds that made them were unnervingly deliberate: a slash on each cheek, and one on the chin. He’s not aware of any human trend or cult that would incite those markings, but they’re certainly a decent identifier.

If he’s dabbling in Hellish summons, he might need that. Or his acquaintances will, when someone eventually dredges his body out from wherever an unfriendly demon might dump it.

The man narrows his eyes, but there’s no way for him to see Madara through the magic and the mist, not with human vision. Madara builds an illusion for the man to see instead, offset several feet to draw attention away from where he actually is.

There’s a hundred monstrous forms he could summon, but he mimics one that his father had been so fond of, before Madara had murdered the bastard. A beast nearly the size that the Gates had been materializes out of the mist. Giant, razor-sharp tusks jut from its skull, capable of ripping a human in two without much more than a flick of its head. It has mad, rolling eyes that swirl with the pattern of Madara’s mangeykō. Its wild mane ripples behind a crown of curling horns as it growls, a low, angry sound that makes the air shiver.

Madara circles the man unobserved. What to do, what to do… maybe countless unintelligible whispers, next? Human images of Hell and its horrors are an excellent tool to scare people, even if they’re usually wrong.

The man doesn’t so much as blink in the face of his construct, expression cold and bored. Madara frowns in annoyance and tugs the illusion forward. The creature snarls viciously and lunges, teeth snapping within inches of the man’s face, but he still doesn’t flinch, utterly unconcerned. Madara narrows his eyes, suspicious, only for them to fly wide in surprise when the man smoothly turns to look directly at him through what should be impenetrable, illusionary smoke mixed with the mist.

Fuck, he’s probably a sensor. Just Madara’s luck.

“I hope you’re not trying to intimidate me.” The man’s voice is colder than the frigid air of the autumn night. “C minus for cliche.”

Madara can’t help but bristle. Sure, his father was a horrible example of sentience and had all the creativity of an electric chair, but he was invoking the Hellish cliche on purpose. Of course and idiot human wouldn’t appreciate—right, where was he. Madara steps hard on his temper, inhales deeply through his nose, and lets the illusion of an overtly calm but very very deadly demon settle over him. Nothing so simple as a magical illusion; this is forging his own being, through sweat and blood—not always his own—and will be that much more effective for it.

He chuckles lowly as he steps out of the mist and smoke and into the man’s line of sight. “Forgive me if I don’t pull out anything creative for a child playing with things he doesn’t understand.”

The human narrows his eyes. His coat is not quite thick enough to hide the wire-tight tension in his shoulders. “The world moves quickly these days, and we humans grow with it. I understand it might be difficult for one so… matured… as a demon to keep up.”

Madara twitches. He’s twenty-five, that’s not old, especially not for a demon! Too young, if anything, but he’s powerful and—that’s irrelevant to the situation at hand. He grist his teeth and counts backward from ten in his head, quickly as he can.

This does not go unnoticed by the man, if his unimpressed expression is anything to go by. Madara lifts one side of his lip disdainfully, thins his personal illusion just enough for his teeth to sharpen, and shows a flash of fang.

“And what could a child be looking for around here?” Madara steps forward threateningly, drawing his heavy magical presence up around him like a cloak.

This time, the human steps back, but he doesn’t stumble under the weight of the magic in the air. He has one hand wrapped around something in his pocket, and his stance is solid. A knife fighter, if Madara isn’t mistaken, which means whatever’s in that pocket as a potential hazard.

“Go on your way, demon.” The man’s eyes are flat, like spilled blood in the dim light.

Madara huffs amusedly. “You did not call me, but think to command me? You can’t be very familiar with demonic magics.”

His face darkens. “I’m not stupid enough to ask a demon to do something.”

…Alright, that’s fair. It’d make Madara’s life easier if he tried, of course, and left himself open to a payment of Madara’s choice. He wouldn’t be cruel, but it’d be an easy way to get a potential threat out of the way. This guy is, unfortunately, proving himself not to be a complete novice. And on second look, those aren’t those hipster shoes, they’re short, practical boots. Admittedly, human fashion is not Madara’s high point, but it’s a mistake any demon could make. He can roll with it.

Madara hums, lets his mouth curl up in a smirk. “You’re still alive, so you wan’t have learned that from your own mistakes.” He keeps his voice low and amused, even as he tries to pick apart what this human is doing exactly, if he’s not a novice. Hell’s Gates do not normally rattle. He doesn’t know precisely how they were summoned, and can’t snoop around for the seal the human used while said human is right there, but the next best thing he can do is try to find out why.

“That’s what the rest of humanity is for,” the human says arrogantly.

Madara’s temper flares again and he suppresses a snarl. He may not be human, but he happens to like humans well enough, and they’re not here for this asshole to trod roughshod over. He skewers the human with a harsh glare, takes a breath to rant—and lets it out as a hiss, as his sharingan catches on the slow internal shifting of that cold magic. “Necromancer.”

The necromancer raises his chin stubbornly. “What of it?”

“You can’t possibly be any good,” Madara sneers. He doesn’t like necromancy much, but he knows the basics. It’d be foolish for a demon not to. “Not if you’re out here looking for a demon to boost your ability. Necromancy is to be studied, not—”

“That is not,” the necromancer snaps, voice cold, “why I’m here. Careful of your presumption, demon.”

He says demon like it’s supposed to be an insult, which is honestly more offensive than the word itself. Madara isn’t a demon because of anything he did, unlike most; his parents had both been damned souls, and Madara’s never been human in the first place. He thinks he turned out better than anything could have reasonably expected, considering that. Being judged by a necromancer knocking on Hell’s Gates on purpose is just rich.

Then the pieces connect—a necromancer skulking at a crossroads, taking a peek at Hell’s Gates, with no intention of dealing with a demon—

“You’re trying to raise someone from Hell?” Madara’s smooth demon facade cracks right down the middle. It’s an effort not to start sputtering. “There’s not a lot of things stupider than dealing with a demon, but damn is that one of them.”

The necromancer draws himself up in all his aloof, frigid glory. He’s got a good handful of centimeters on Madara, which patently not fair. “History has been scattered with great minds that passed through Hell’s Gates before they could begin to unlock the secrets of this world.”

Madara snarls. Not every single soul in Hell necessarily deserves to be there, true, but well over ninety-five percent of them do. History’s great minds? History’s monsters, most of them. He jerks forward, ready to get in this punk’s face to get the message across loud and clear. No one’s bringing that sort of trouble to Konoha on his watch. “You try to drag a soul back through those Gates, and I swear—”

You’ll regret it, he means to finish, but that’s the same moment the necromancer decides to take his proximity as a threat. He pulls his hand out of his coat pocket, revealing not a knife or even a weapon, but a little ink bottle. It looks like a joke, but the top is unscrewed and the bottle is positively glowing with magic, visible now that it’s further from the necromancer’s magical core. A chill goes up Madara’s spine.

The necromancer throws, holding onto the bottle while the ink lashes out like a living thing, lightning fast. Madara lurches sideways, fully intent on escaping the ink snaking around his feet before the seal forms fully, but the moment he tries to cross the closed outer circle it feels like he’s just run face-first into a red-hot iron.

No, not quite. Madara’s been burned before, and nonmagical heat doesn’t pack nearly this sort of punch. Madara yelps in pain, undignified and all the more furious for it.

No one buys pre-mixed ink for magic, of course; that’s just asking for a seal to rebound and force your own magic to flay you from the inside out. The consequences only get more grisly if you try tangling with the likes of demons while using subpar materials. But this little bastard took it one step further, and apparently had the foresight to mix his ink with holy water. Madara’s less demonic than the rest of the Court thanks to the years he’s spent living on Earth, but he’s still plenty Hellish enough for holy magic to hurt like a bitch.

“I’m sorry did you think I was going to stand here and listen to a demon trying to tell me what to do?” The necromancer is still stone-cold as he turns dismissively to leave, putting his back to Madara with utter confidence in his sealwork.

The worst part is that the seal really is that solid. He’s reluctantly impressed, or would be, if the human was a little less of a bastard.

Madara resists the urge to yell after him just to have the last word—he has more pride than that. The necromancer is obviously not the novice he’d appeared to be, but Madara is capable of recognizing where he went wrong, if only in hindsight.

He huffs, more frustrated with himself than anything, and casts a glance down to the seal under his feet to check approximately how long he’s going to be stuck here stewing about it. He almost swears in surprise. Not a novice at all, fuck—the necromancer’s good. Throwing a seal this well put together, while maintaining eye contact with a pissed off demon? Madara’s sharingan is still active, and humans flinch from it more often than they don’t. Nerves of steel and a matching mind like a steel trap.

The disdain on the necromancer’s face when Madara had accused him of trying to summon a demon for a necromantic shortcut makes more sense, now. A demon can sell a human more power to work with, but they can’t give anyone this kind of concentration and attention to detail; only years of study will do that. Though… the necromancer had seemed a little young to be this good…

Madara shakes his head. It’s going to take him at least an hour to evaporate enough of the water holding the blessing to be able to slip out of the seal, and he’s probably going to end up with another handful of holy burns before he escapes, so he had better get started.

Smart as the human seems, he’s still an idiot if he thinks raising some ancient brute from Hell is going to end any way except terribly. And it won’t even be a simple sort of terrible, like “whoops, I burned down my house,” no; he’s barreling straight past that and heading for the “demon running around in a fully-functional resurrected human body and causing havoc” kind of terrible. Where havoc implies murder, torture, rape, and who knows what other unsavory pasttimes a demon might find appealing. Well—Madara knows, is his point, and he doesn’t want to see it happen in Konoha.

He lets out a slow, unhappy breath. Madara likes, humans, is the thing. He’s proud to be a terrible example of a demon; he got kicked out of Hell for a reason, and trying to save this necromancer from himself—and other humans from becoming collateral damage—would, at this point, just be playing to type. Humans are kind, or they can be, and that’s what drew Madara to them in the first place. Most of the demons he knows may call it stupidity, but he can’t think of it that way. It’s a softness he could barely find among his own brothers, much less the rest of the Court. A gentleness demons never dared to foster, something that deserves to be protected, even if only by a demon, even if Madara still wonders if he can ever hope to touch it—

He scowls and glares over at where Hell’s ghostly Gates had loomed and lets his sharingan work to pick out what’s left of the summoning magic there.

Enough of the seal has already dissipated into the mist that he can’t just memorize a copy to reverse engineer later, if he even could, considering the necromancer’s skill and his own sealing knowledge, which is barely beyond rudimentary. He can pick out a clear rune or two, at least, which is helpful. Binding and barrier, which explains why the Gates didn’t open. Whatever symbols were used for the summoning itself is long gone, unfortunately. Considering that the necromancer can bind a High Court demon in under five seconds with the seal Madara is impatiently trying to simmer away, he’d probably be very specific about how he’d summon any denizen of Hell, but the only other symbol that’s left is the focal point, the target—

Madara’s heart sinks down to his shoes, heavy as lead. Stark in the center of the seal is a very familiar demonic sigil, only just starting to wisp away into ambient magic.

Uchiha Tajima.

What, exactly, does the little necromancer want with the former Prince of Hell?

The walk back to his apartment is freezing cold, and while Tobirama doesn’t exactly run hot on a good day, it’s still a bad sign when he can’t feel his fingers anymore.

His visit to the crossroads was very nearly useless, too. He hadn’t been planning to let anything out of the Gates, of course, but being stood up by a demon that should have been forcibly dragged to meet him via some careful summoning magic was… disappointing.

If he was stood up.

The demon that had bothered to put in an appearance had done so from the wrong direction, but he had also conveniently activated his Blood Eyes, and he hadn’t had the tomoe pattern of a lower demon. That had been a pattern of the High Court—the Uchiha. The individual patterns of the Court demons are reportedly as good as fingerprints for identification. Better, even, considering the observable physical forms of most demons tend to be somewhat fluid with illusion. The demon had grown fangs in an attempt to intimidate him, but they were gone when he yelped at getting trapped in the seal.

Tobirama gives a thin smirk at the memory, but it fades quickly. He has the sigil of the demon he’s looking for, but that’s all he has. No eye pattern, no common appearance, no name other than Uchiha. The illusion the demon had used was horrifically familiar—but even that wasn’t exact. Less blood and more horns, he thinks.

He doesn’t know that this demon is the one that stole his little brother’s soul. But he doesn’t know that he isn’t, either.

The day Tobirama first saw Hell’s Gates will never, ever leave his mind. But if tonight did one thing, it showed him that the memory isn’t as clear as he’d thought it was. Blurred from the concussion that nearly cost him his vision, so much of what happened afterward is made of impressions from what had then been very underdeveloped sensory magic. The excruciating clarity is all about Itama. He hadn’t cared about the damn demon. It had simply been a part of the horror, part of everything that had greyed out around him in self-defense.

The summoning should have brought that demon forward while keeping him locked behind the Gates. If he hadn’t been in Hell… that could change things. It’s still possible he could have felt the summoning, and been drawn to the crossroads, but not been locked behind the Gates. The idea is alarming, dangerous, and Tobirama is taking it into account before daring to try summoning anything again, but this time he’s survived learning the lesson. If it’s true, then this demon could very well be the one he’s seeking. Hypothetically.

Still. You did not call me, the demon had said. The sentence could have been intentionally misleading; Tobirama isn’t sure if a demon can directly lie or not. It’s a common restriction for non-human entities, but demons lie in some unspecified gray area as far as that classification goes. Tobirama can sense falsehoods along with magic and emotion, and he hadn’t sensed one from the demon, but he’s hardly infallible and he’s not going to stake anything he can’t afford to lose on the theory that a demon can’t have fooled him.

But the demon had abruptly started talking like an actual human being when Tobirama surprised him. A dangerous being, yes, but maybe not as old or inhuman as Tobirama was expecting. He emoted like a person, rather than a monster. He didn’t feel cruel.

The demon’s magic feels the same as that night, but Tobirama can’t swear as to why. He doesn’t make a habit of meeting demons. That could realistically just be how Hellish magic feels.

The demon either is the one he’s seeking, or he isn’t, but Tobirama… doesn’t know how to be sure.

Tobirama shakes his head. He doesn’t have enough information, but trusting anything the demon himself says could very well be the last thing he ever does.

Demons are like people, in the very worst way. Human evil is more terrifying than any fundamentally magic being Tobirama has ever encountered, and every scrap of research he’s found on Hell claims that that is the evil that will eventually become a demon. It’s just good practice to assume every demon you meet wants to rip out your spine and use it as a drinking straw.

Even if he knows there exists at least one demon capable of something like mercy.

Tobirama fumbles for his keys with stiff fingers, swearing softly when he drops them. His apartment building is much warmer than it is outside, but his hands are still essentially blocks of ice chiseled into rough approximations of human limbs. He presses his fingers to his lips and breathes on them, trying to bring back some feeling and, with any luck, enough dexterity to get his damn door open. Mostly he just succeeds in making his face even colder.

He’s so fucking tired. Life would be so much easier if the witching hour weren’t in the middle of the night. He can’t just go nocturnal, he has responsibilities and too much to do besides, so he’s left running on a handful of hours of sleep here or there, and it’s taking its toll. But he can’t give up the power of the witching hour—it’s safer, ironically, than trying to perform the same rituals during less spiritually charged times. The air itself will hold enough magic to relieve some of the burden off of Tobirama’s concentration and reserves. He needs that sort of edge, if he’s going to get Itama out of Hell and away from the demon who stole him without getting himself killed in the process.

Tobirama finally gives in to the demands of gravity and stoops down to pick his keys up. He’s more careful the second time, and by some miracle actually gets the lock open.

His wards hum welcomingly as he steps over the threshold. Tobirama nods to the ghostly snow leopard standing guard in the entry way. She’s a necromantic construct, with misty, translucent flesh and rune-carved crystal summoning rods serving as bones. Tobirama has experimented with countless schools of necromancy these past years, and while this one, like so many others, hadn’t given him what he was looking for, it had at least granted him the loyalty of the snow leopards when he calls them to this plane.

“Yukime. Any trouble?” Tobirama keeps his voice low. It’s well into the wee hours of the morning, and the apartment isn’t empty, or he would have been confident the wards could have guarded it alone.

“The crafty one is here.” Yukime shifts in a glide smooth as water to wind around his knees like an oversized house cat. He braces himself against her weight and tries not to let her knock him over. “The cub hasn’t woken. They are both safe.”

Tobirama lets out a slow breath as the buzzing anxiety in the back of his head finally fades. He trusts Yukime, he trusts the way his own senses spread out over the entire block, but he worries anyway. “Thank you for your assistance. You are dismissed.”

Tobirama rests his hands lightly on the ghostly fur between her ears and unleashes the magic tying her to this plane with a sharp, internal tug. She dissipates like so much mist, fading quickly to nothing more than a cold bite in the air that makes him shiver. The crystal summoning rods tumble to the carpeted floor. Tobirama spares a glance for the pattern, but he’s not the Senju with a head for divination, and there’s nothing he recognizes. He scoops them up and slides them into their pockets in his rucksack before setting it against the wall near the door.

Touka is on the couch in the living room, dead asleep. Her mouth is open and she’s slouched with her psychology textbook in her lap, but at least she isn’t snoring. He stops next to her, hesitates, and finally eases the textbook from her hands to mark her place, close it, and set it next to her. He doesn’t dare try to move her to a more comfortable position. Her wrath if he accidentally wakes her up at two thirty in the morning would be fearsome and full of glitter.

Tobirama moves on toward the first bedroom in the hallway and turns the knob silently to peek inside. The bedclothes are perfectly made and empty, and his chest tightens in irrational fear. Yukime said he was asleep, she would have known if he wasn’t safe, she would have told him—

He would know. He sucks in a half-panicked breath and holds it as he shuts the door quietly, focusing on senses other than sight. There: quiet and calm in sleep. Just a little way down the hall.

The door to his own bedroom creaks just slightly as it opens. Tobirama sighs in relief at the sight of the small lump in his bed, the approximate size and shape of a brat of a five-year-old. Kawarama is going to give him a heart attack, one of these days, and then Touka is going to have to take him in and everything will end up on fire because Touka is terrible with small children.

Tobirama doesn’t turn on the light. He has decent night vision and doesn’t want to wake his little brother—toddlers need their sleep, and Kawarama’s a sweet kid, but even he would be justifiably grumpy at being woken up at a truly unreasonable time of the morning. He does take the time to check on him, though, studying his soft, chubby face, peaceful in sleep. No nightmares tonight, thank the gods.

The tightness in Tobirama’s chest doesn’t ease; it strangles his heart, makes his throat close up with unnameable emotion. Sometimes he still has heart-stopping moments where he thinks this must all be a dream, that the resurrection failed and Kawarama is still dead and Tobirama is still utterly alone.

He learns down to sweep Kawarama’s hair back and kiss his forehead softly. Here, alive, breathing.

Tobirama changes into his pajamas and climbs into bed, careful not to wake Kawarama. He curls his body around his brother’s, presses his face into that small head of hair, and breathes in the newly familiar scent of lavender kids’ shampoo. They’re okay. Tobirama is here, the wards sing with strength, and Kawarama is safe.

It would be better if Tobirama had both of his little brothers again—but Tobirama’s working on it.

It shouldn’t be long, now.

Chapter Text

Touka glares at him narrowly when he shuffles into the kitchen far too early the next morning. He managed about four hours of sleep, which is scraping at the edges of what he needs to stay rational as well as functioning, but Kawarama is revved up and ready to go for the day. Sleeping through a small child’s noisy excitement is a skill Tobirama outgrew years ago, and four months has not been long enough to get it back.

At least Touka’s as much of a mess as he is. Her hair is still up in yesterday’s twist, and the flyaways are becoming obvious. She’s sipping coffee out of Tobirama’s favorite mug, but the bags under her eyes promise vengeance if he tries to take it from her.

She also has her Tarot deck out, which probably has something to do with why she looks like she wants to rip his head off.

“Tobi-nii, I want pancakes!”

Tobirama sets a hand on Kawarama’s head to show he heard, and proceeds to grope around the kitchen for an unused mug. There’s still coffee left in the pot, so Touka is, at least, not feeling completely heartless this morning.

It takes a minute or so, but Tobirama’s brain cycles through startup until he’s pretty sure he can form a coherent sentence if he tries. He peers down at Kawarama. “I’m not putting chocolate chips in your pancakes.” Kawarama pouts at him, but Tobirama stands firm in the face of a hyperactive threat. That face deserves a bargain, though. “You can have blueberries, if you want.”

Kawarama wrinkles his nose. “Ew! No blueberries.”

Right. Itama was the one who liked blueberry pancakes. Tobirama has to take a steadying breath before fetching the pancake mix. Over the years, the sharp, stabbing pain from every reminder of his little brothers had slowly faded, dulling like a jagged stone left in a river. Kawarama’s return has whetted that knife back to a fine edge; Itama still isn’t here, and it hurts because Tobirama knows he should be. And he will be. The in-between is just—hard.

“Pancakes, Touka?” He is the host, after all, no matter why his witch of a cousin is here. That’s not an insult—she’s actually a witch, specializing in divination and really obnoxious vengeance hexes. He’s keeping one wary eye out as he collects breakfast things throughout his kitchen, because he doesn’t know how he got on her bad side but know from experience that it’s a terrible place to be.

“You’re looking positively reanimated today, Tobi,” she says, voice laden with an extra helping of faux-cheerful sarcasm, belied by the mixed annoyance and frustration boiling under the surface of her magic. “I’m really digging the corpse look.”

He gives her a flat look. “Truly, a scathing assessment. I have definitely never been compared to a dead body ever in my entire life, and may never recover. As scintillating as always, dear cousin. Blueberry or plain?”

Touka’s glare deepens. He stares blandly back.

“…Plain.”

Touka taps her foot like a peeved metronome the entire time Tobirama is cooking breakfast. Thoughtfully, she doesn’t try to interrogate him until after the plates are out and he’s cut up Kawarama’s pancakes into bite-sized pieces.

“Where were you last night? I know you didn’t get back until after the witching hour.” She taps her Tarot deck pointedly.

“Why do I get the feeling this is a rhetorical question?” Tobirama says mildly.

“You always call me to babysit, unless you’re doing something you know I wouldn’t approve of.”

That’s a very broad statement for a state of affairs that’s only lasted for four months. The generalization would be a lot easier to combat if she weren’t still right. “I didn’t leave until nearly eleven, it’s not like he was awake to need much watching. Besides, Yukime loves Kawarama. She wouldn’t let him come to harm.” He starts spreading peanut butter on his pancakes before drizzling on the syrup, and enjoys the face Touka makes at him for it. “You didn’t have to let yourself in last night.”

“If you didn’t want me to come over, then you shouldn’t have given me the key.” Touka draws a card off the top of her deck and flicks it at him without bothering to look at it. He flinches as it hits him harmlessly in the cheek. It falls to the table face up.

The Devil, upright.

He raises his eyebrows at her. Touka knows he’s terrible at divination. He’s aware that there’s more than one meaning for each card, and that they don’t always mean what they look like, but that’s about it. He’s never bothered to learn the cards when he can’t feel the meaning in them.

Touka smiles sharply at him. “Besides the obvious?”

She definitely know he went to a crossroads last night. Having a cousin who can figure out nearly anything she thinks to ask is the worst.

“It means addiction, Tobirama. Obsession.”

Tobirama goes still. Then he leans back in his chair and glares at her, jaw clenched. “Is this an… intervention?” He’s not consorting with demons for the adrenaline rush, and damnit, Touka knows that. He will unravel her key to the wards before he lets her try to stop him.

Touka seems to read that on his face. She sighs, reaching across the table to retrieve the Devil and fold it back into her deck. “Not like that. I just wanted to smack you in the face with some common sense and remind you to ask for help. From me, preferably. If you can’t, for whatever reason—then ask somebody. Except a demon! Don’t ask for help from a demon.”

Tobirama rolls his eyes, because he’s not an idiot or suicidal. No one asks a demon for help and expects to come out unscathed. “Why would you help me? You don’t approve.”

“I think you’re getting reckless,” Touka tells him frankly, which is rich, coming from her. “I have no moral objections to resurrection, and I do understand why you’re doing this.”

“Nice to know someone does,” he snaps.

They both freeze, the words hanging between them and turning the air fragile as glass. Tobirama closes his eyes briefly and reaches for his coffee. If he just said that out loud, he’s obviously not awake enough for this conversation.

Touka gives him an awkward, crooked grin that doesn’t look much like a grin at all. “…Just be careful. There, intervention over.”

“I am being careful, Touka.”

“You better be,” she mutters, but she still sounds subdued. Her next attempt at a smile works a little better, but it’s still a small, wry thing. “I’d miss my favorite cousin.”

Kawarama squawks and leans over the table with wide eyes. “But Touka, you said I was your favorite cousin!”

Touka huffs a startled laugh and wrinkles her nose at him, reaching out to flick him in the forehead. “You’re my favorite brat.”

“Tou-ka,” Kawarama whines, with the full-body pout that makes all innocent bystanders melt a little on the inside.

The awkward, somber mood is thoroughly broken, and Tobirama can breathe again. He stands to put his dish in the sink, but Kawarama reaches out to snag his shirt as he passes.

“Tobi-nii! I know you’re old now”—Touka coughs to smother a laugh, which means Tobirama has to risk her vengeance hexes to remind her that she’s six years older than him sometime in the next few days, preferably within Kawarama’s earshot—“but Touka’s right, you gotta be careful!”

Tobirama gives Kawarama’s earnest, upside-down face a serious look. “I will be, Kawarama, I promise.” He drops a kiss on his forehead. “I won’t leave you alone.”

Touka purses her lips, uneasiness creeping through her magic. Tobirama resolutely pretends he hasn’t noticed.

“You’ll stay forever?” Kawarama double-checks. “For sure?”

Tobirama checks Kawarama’s plate, decides it’s nearly empty anyway, and scoops him up from his seat to settle on his hip instead. “Well.” He makes a big show of thinking about it, and Kawarama pouts at him. “I have to go other places sometimes, I’m not allowed to stay in the apartment all day—”

“Touka won’t let you,” Kawarama says wisely, and the witch snickers at him.

Tobirama shoots her a reproachful glance and fakes dropping Kawarama about two inches, just far enough to give him a jolt so he squeaks and holds on tighter. “I go places on my own. Sometimes. Like—” It’s probably not a good sign that he has to think about it, but he really does leave sometimes, and he has a meeting with a client coming up sometime in the next few days. What day of the week is it, again? Tobirama checks his phone suspiciously and grimaces—it’s already Friday, the eleventh. The reminder to make sure he doesn’t miss it is supposed to go off in less than twenty minutes. “Today, actually. Touka, can you watch Kawarama for a few hours this morning?”

Touka squints at him doubtfully. “We just went over—”

“And I’m asking for help,” he says pointedly.

“How much sleep did you get last night?” Touka persists. “You and exhaustion aren’t a good mix. Take a breather and a nap for a few hours and then I’ll watch him.”

“I’m not—” Tobirama breaks off and stares at the ceiling. He is well aware that sleep-deprivation doesn’t look good on him, but he’s nowhere near manic yet. Besides, he’s not hunting down demons in the daylight, as much as he almost wants to let her believe he is. “It’s an appointment. …For my day job,” he admits grudgingly.

Touka goes from concerned to gleeful like the flick of a light switch. “Oh-ho.”

“Shut up,” he grits out.

“So you’re not chasing demons, just—”

“Shut up.”

“Ghosts?” she finishes brightly.

Tobirama hates his day job. He’s not even sure he can call it a day job, it’s infrequent and just as often occurs after sunset, but: he hates his day job. Touka has a real day job, when she’s not busy with school—she works at the shop her mother owns, and peddles her more harmless hexes alongside her mother’s spells of healing and protection.

But working in customer service day in and day out sounds like his own personal Hell, because while he’s aced every psychology course he’s ever taken, he’s still terrible with people he doesn’t know. He can’t make small talk like—like some of the more social members of his family, can’t bring himself to care about a stranger’s worries and little inconveniences. Tobirama has been described as emotionless more times than he can count, and even Touka tells him semi-frequently that he emotes like either a robot or a dead body, depending on how recently he’s gotten her mad at him.

All he can say for himself is that freelancing as a spiritual medium seemed like a good idea at the time. He’s barely been out of school for six months, and communing with the dead is one of the only legal ways to market his skill for necromancy. He could have worked with seals instead, since they need to be hand-drawn to work as expected, but recreating the same seals over and over would have bored him out of his mind in short order. Answering concerns about possible ghosts seemed like a reasonable alternative.

He’d lasted for about two months, and switched to seances the second he’d finally figured them out.

“Ooooor an alley cat at two in the morning?” Touka continues, grinning like fiend. “Or a loose window pane?”

“You are a terrible person, and that happened once,” Tobirama reminds her acerbically. He should never have told her any of this, no matter how much he’d needed someone to rant to when it had happened. “I don’t do claimed hauntings anymore, I do seances—”

“Not even for creepy houses with locked basements?” Touka suggests, with far too much amusement at Tobirama’s expense.

“—and if I ever get dragged into one again, I’m calling a home inspector to check it out first.” Tobirama shakes his head in disgust. “Poltergeists are not nearly as common as everyone seems to think they are.”

Touka subsides still snickering. “Yeah, I’ll watch the brat. You go play with ghosts.”

“I’m not a brat!” Kawarama protests indignantly.

Tobirama takes a deep breath through his nose and reminds him that correcting Touka is pointless, because she knows the difference between hauntings and seances. He still wants to beat her over the head with Hagoromo’s treatise on the path and fate of souls.

Better idea: “Kawarama,” Tobirama says solemnly, “can I trust you to keep an eye on Touka and make sure she doesn’t do anything silly while I’m gone?”

Kawarama beams and clings to his arm. “You can count on me, Tobi-nii!”

“Oi,” Touka protests.

Tobirama makes sure to smirk at her when he leaves the kitchen to get ready. If nothing else, at least this’ll be something of a break, before he has to go looking for a demon again.

Madara met Mitarashi Anko, proprietor of specialized necromancy and seal-work shop The Merchant of Death, seven years ago. He was a week into his exile to the mortal plane, newly stripped of his authority and the only home he’d ever known, all of eighteen and completely, utterly adrift. With the wisdom of hindsight, he can recognize that he probably looked a little like a half-feral drowned kitten, which might explain why Anko immediately latched onto him.

Or, more likely, he just looked like a sucker.

He hadn’t exactly proven her wrong. He had a number of magical items on him at the time, but no understanding of their going rate in human currency, and she bought them off of him for a borderline dishonest price. Even new in town and out of his depth, Madara could still smell a cheat from a mile away—but he needed the money, so he went along with it, right up until she asked him where they came from… and he promptly drew a blank on a believable lie.

She grinned, said she respected a man who protected his sources, and said she’d pay well if he got her more. A procurer, Anko had called him, leering, but he’d never been naive enough in his life to miss the connotations of that.

So, now he’s an acquisitions specialist.

It’s enough for food, but not really an apartment. Usually, that’s fine, considering demons don’t need to sleep—but if the migraine creeping up on him is any indication, sitting in a dark room with no bothersome humans for a few hours would do wonders for his composure. Fucking necromancers.

“Mitarashi, I got you five hundred grams of Hellish ash last week.”

“An-ko,” Anko says, rapping each syllable onto the checkout counter with her knuckles. Her reanimated sales associate in the second aisle slowly looks their way at the sound, but when no further orders are forthcoming, it haltingly turns back to sweeping. “Say it with me. It’s Anko.”

That may be, but Madara was raised old-fashioned by sadistic souls who remembered living in bygone eras, and calling an older woman by her given name would have been the kind of insult that got your legs ripped off for a long crawl home, if you even made it that far. He’s been among humans long enough to adjust, by now, but Anko’s also kind of a bitch and needs to have someone in her life who won’t let her run rough-shod over them. He will call her by her given name when this cluttered mess of a shop burns to the ground, and not a single moment before.

“Your name is also Mitarashi, unless you managed to trick some poor bastard into marrying you and giving you his some time in the last week. Now, the ash. You can’t possibly be out already.”

Anko bares her teeth in a lazy grin. The soft roundness of her body might make some write her off, but that sharpness in her expression makes the back of his neck prickle, and he automatically looks for a spark of magic or a knife. But there’s a counter between them, at least, and since they’re… acquaintances… her usual weapon of choice is a “friendly” punch to the shoulder. She hits like a freight train.

“I sold it, punk. That’s usually what happens in a shop.”

Madara growls. Punk? Rich, coming from a woman in her forties who dresses like she’s about to go clubbing with vampires. Anko fully committed to the goth aesthetic back when she was nineteen and never looked back, he knows, thanks to her absolutely cursed habit of oversharing. Some things, no man nor demon was meant to know.

“Five hundred grams?” he says, frustration beginning to edge into his voice. “In less than seven days? That usually stays on the shelf for a month.”

Anko shrugs. “Someone’s got a project. But they were willing to pay, and I’m willing to pay, so…”

Madara scowls and chews on the inside of his cheek. She doesn’t know he’s a demon—few humans do, and none that he’s met in daylight. Hellish ash is a powerful component in some inks, but it’s literally Hell to procure for the average human mage, and it’s technically illegal to have more than a thousand grams of it in one building in its base, pure form. Both of these are useful checks to how much of it a human with nefarious purposes can get a hold of at one time, and that is not a balance Madara wants to mess with. He’s put a lot of time an effort into keeping Konoha on a fairly even magical keel.

Plus, Hellish ash is expensive, and if Anko had any idea he can get it as easily as burning up some wood with a little Hellfire, she’d instantly start trying to exploit that. He really does like humans, and he tolerates Anko, but humans are rarely at their best when there’s money to be had.

She’s also a necromancer, and while she hasn’t done anything illegal yet—or at least, hasn’t been caught doing anything illegal—that will always tinge her with suspicion in Madara’s eyes. Necromancy is the kind of art that only draws the desperate and the obsessed. He doesn’t know which one Anko is, and it’s strange that she’s so satisfied here in a little shop with punny advertisements and the occasional undead body. That kind of drive doesn’t just disappear. Madara’s seen glimmers of it when she pulls a knife and starts looking more like a hungry vampire than a sketchy shopkeeper, but he doesn’t know what she wants.

Well, besides Hellish ash.

“I might—might,” he stresses, because Anko is getting that little smirk he hates, like she thinks she’s already won, “be able to get you some by next week.”

Anko hums. “Well, I’ll pay you an extra twenty percent of the usual if you do. I don’t like being totally out of stock. Or, hey, I’d give you a fortune for your source.”

Madara snorts. If he were that much of a sucker, he would never have lived to adulthood. “Very funny.”

“I’m serious.” Anko puts her elbow on the counter and leans over it with a sly smirk. With a shirt… corset… article of clothing that low cut, it has to be a calculated movement, but it would probably be a lot more effective if Madara were at all attracted to women. Anko may or may not know this. He wouldn’t put it past her to be fucking with him just because she feels like it. “What d’you got, a warded jar of Hellfire?”

“That would be extremely unsafe to leave unwatched. I’m not that reckless.” He always makes sure all the embers are out before he leaves the ashes to cool.

Anko regards him for a moment, then squints and points a somewhat pudgy finger at his face. “One day,” she threatens. “One day I’ll find out.”

“But not today.” Madara grins back at her, sharp, but careful not to let any hint of fangs show through the illusion. This is not a place he can afford to slip up. “Now, do you have anything for me slightly less difficult than trying to double my usual haul of ash?”

Anko rolls her eyes at him and reaches into her bra—no, that’s a corset—to grab the folded list of items she needs, and they haggle. She’s a formidable task master, but he can hold his own pretty well, even if that migraine is now threatening to pound against his skull.

He massages his temple and presses the heel of his palm to his right eye with a grimace. Anko catches the movement immediately. “You know, sweet cheeks, there’s a nice little cafe a few blocks down that can get you some caffeine for that migraine.”

Madara bites back a reflexive never call me that again, because there’s no faster way to ensure she will call him that every time she sees him for the next decade. “Is their coffee any better than yours?” Anko’s coffee is actually pretty good, but he’s not about to tell her that.

“Fit to wake the dead,” she smirks.

If she’s quoting something, he’s going to riot. “Just give me that goddamn list,” he sighs.

Madara leaves Merchant of Death with three more acquisitions on his do-do list and a cafe address scribbled on the back, trying not to squint in the light outside or curse out this migraine out loud. He didn’t even know demons could get migraines, when he was younger. Then again, maybe they can’t. Maybe it’s just a symptom of the change from demon to human that started the moment he left Hell. Even if he doesn’t really notice the changes, even if the magic of Konoha stalls the change to a glacier-slow seeping of Hellish influence, he knows he’s not quite the same as he was seven years ago. Mortal concerns have a hold on him now, if only a tenuous one, and with that apparently comes migraines.

Still, he feels pretty confident on blaming the ultimate cause on having to deal with two necromancers in as many days. He may not be in a place to point fingers at classes of magic, but he didn’t choose to be a demon. It’s just what he is. Necromancy isn’t like that. Nobody’s born with the affinity, just with the intelligence, drive, and serious dose of sheer crazy that incites them to start fucking around with the boundaries of life and death.

Madara scowls at the sidewalk, taking care to look up before he manages to walk into a streetlight. Nobody gets quite close enough to bump into—a subconscious reaction to the way his pool of magic dwarfs their own. he could hide it better, but it gets uncomfortable after a while, and it’s not like he’s jumpting to get elbowed on the street just to pretend that he’s normal. Like sleeping, it’s just not a human experience that he finds really necessary.

Slipping the piece of paper out of his pocket, Madara takes another look at the cafe’s address. It should be just around the next corner. Somewhere. Anko thoughtfully neglected to write down the actual street number, so he hopes it’s the only cafe along that street or he’s going to have to ask around for who knows her order, and he would rather stab himself in the eye with a plastic knife than admit that he knows her.

Coffee, then war planning. Or fight planning. Some sort of planning, anyway, and hopefully faceplanting somewhere the humans won’t step on him for a couple hours before the migraine gets any crankier. He has no idea if that necromancer is going to go knocking on the Gates of Hell again tonight, but if he does, Madara would like to be on top of his game and prepared to twist him up into a pretzel.

Ideally, Madara will trip over something that convinces the necromancer that his idea is stupid, but that might take some work. Humans are stubborn. It might be easier after he’s twisted him up into a pretzel. Anko probably carries enchanted rope. Kidnapping’s illegal, sure, but probably less illegal than raising an evil, murderous zombie demon.

Madara is capable of killing him, if he can’t stop him any other way, he just doesn’t like killing humans. Even asshole necromancers. Though if his soul ends up drifting down to Hell, that’ll absolve pretty much any guilt Madara might feel over it.

He turns the corner and stops dead. Speak of the fucking devil.

“You!”

The necromancer from the crossroads last night eyes his pointing finger like he wants to rip if off and shove it down his throat. Narrowed red eyes meet his and wow, that’s an impressive bitchface.

Which. Might be because Madara is being dramatic in the middle of the sidewalk on a Friday morning.

Madara drops his arm and resists the urge to clear his throat. Seeing Anko out of her natural habitat of her creepy shop is weird. Seeing this guy walking about in the light of day, like he isn’t liable to level Konoha in his hair-brained scheme of resurrecting a demon is downright surreal. What on earth are the rules of engagement for something like this? Madara wants to snarl at him, but he can’t do that out on the street.

He stalks forward, tightening his hold on his illusion of humanity before it slips in a fit of temper. “What are you doing here?”

The necromancer quirks an unimpressed eyebrow and raises one hand just enough to draw attention to the coffee cup in it. There’s a kitschy logo on the side with a skull decorated Día de los Muertos style and the words “Wake the Dead” in a particularly eye-searing orange. Madara stares at it and is faced with the sinking realization that Anko had recommended him a shop with puns as awful as hers, frequented by actual necromancers who apparently also have terrible taste.

He cannot growl. There are perfectly innocent humans around and he cannot growl.

The necromancer smiles politely, with all the warmth of a glacier. “I’m not sure I caught your name. Uchiha, right?”

…Dangerous. Very, very dangerous, and Madara can’t let himself forget that. Information on Hell has been going up in smoke for decades, now, and very few humans know the name adopted by High Court demons, much less how to recognize one of them. But names are names and sigils are sigils—only one can be used in seals, and he’s young enough that his sigil isn’t on record anywhere in the mortal plane. There’s very little the necromancer can do to him with just a name.

“Uchiha Madara,” he offers, reluctant all the same. He can afford a tiny bit of manners. “Yourself?”

Human names don’t do most magical beings any good to manipulate—too changeable—but the necromancer still hesitates a wary moment before replying. “Senju Tobirama.”

Ice trickles down Madara’s spine. If he wasn’t on guard before, he sure as Hell is now. “You’re Senju Butsuma’s son.”

Tobirama’s eyes go coolly calculating. Madara can’t read the emotion behind them, if there is any. His voice doesn’t give anything away. “I take it you’ve met.”

There are so many ways Madara could react to that that he doesn’t even know which one to choose, and every option comes with its own storm of reactions. There are maybe three things in the entire world he wants to talk about less than one of the crazy necromancers Tajima used to arrange deals with. There’s been hundreds of mages like him during the century and a half Tajima had reigned as Prince of Hell, as he’d expanded his power and influence over Hell and every scrap of the mortal plane he could reach. Madara’s read the details on maybe four, back when he had no goddamn sense and hadn’t yet learned that the kind of shit that entices humans to deal with the denizens of Hell can give a demon nightmares—the young, relatively naive ones like himself, anyway. A list of names is all he needs, anyway, because anyone who gave Tajima what he wanted is immediately suspect of being on the shortlist for entry to Hell anyway.

Madara grimaces. He’s not discussing that with someone who might be trying to follow in his father’s nefarious footsteps. “Heading out to violate the world order now that you’re caffeinated?” he says poisonously.

“Some of us have day jobs.”

Snippy bastard. Next to emotionless, too. The bitchface has faded to be replaced with a blankness that barely allows hints of annoyance to show through. Madara is annoyed right back on principle. “You reserve that for the witching hour, then?”

Tobirama’s mouth twitches up in a bare suggestion of a smirk. Madara bristles automatically at the indication that’s found something funny, but all he says is, “The ambience lends something the… activity, I think. Same place tonight?”

That’s a weird tone to use for—oh. Oh. Gah. With a necromancer?

It’s like talking to a stone wall that occasionally slams you in the face before you can even run into it. Madara tries to contain his sputtering; there are still normal humans milling around them like they’re a boulder in a stream, and honestly, some sort of—of—tryst is probably the easiest explanation for a human to accept, without letting on that he’s consorting with a necromancer in less scrupulous ways. That’s not something he wants floating around in gossip.

For one, Anko would never let him live it down.

The alarming part is that Tobirama just told him where he’d be tonight. Suggested Madara come along. That’s enough to get every hair on the back of his neck standing straight up. What does he want? Is this a trap? It’s probably smart to think it’s a trap, to believe that he’ll try to pin Madara down and try—something. Madara can think of a lot of things another demon would do with a pinned demon, but humans are usually not quite that depraved. Then again: Senju. Tobirama damn well might torture him.

If he tries it, Madara can kill him. It’s like those movies Anko forced him to watch: if it’s a trap, he’ll just have to spring it.

Besides, it’s going to be sort of hard to convince him to put aside their plans for… world domination or whatever the hell it is necromancers daydream about, if Madara’s trying to stay out of the blast zone. Demons heal quick. He’ll be fine.

That doesn’t mean he can’t try his hand at pissing off the human when he’s the one that started it. Madara leers a little, looks Tobirama up and down—he’s not bad looking, actually, though Madara prefers them with a little less crazy up top. “Just have to come back for more, hmm?” he purrs.

Tobirama’s nostrils flare, but that’s the only outward sign of annoyance. So the necromancer can dish it out but he can’t take it, is that how it is? “It’s a date, then,” he replies, face awfully flat for someone who’s supposed to be at least pretending to be interested. He strides right past Madara, almost knocking their elbows together, and disappears around the corner.

Well. Conversation over, apparently. Rude.

Then it hits him that he just agreed to meet a necromancer at a crossroads during the witching hour, like he’s ever been the kind of demon that does that sort of thing. His migraine is starting to squeeze his skull like it wants to wring his neck for being the dumbest demon alive, and he can’t find it in himself to blame it.

He marches into Wake the Dead scowling and annoyed. “I need coffee,” he tells the cashier.

“Of course, sir, what kind?” She’s a chipper redhead who definitely gets bonus points for not being as sarcastic as his inane statement deserves.

Madara squints at her, then at the menu behind her. The kind with caffeine in it is probably not an acceptable answer. He mostly just drinks whatever Anko hands him, which he should really stop doing since it’s bitten him in the ass more than once, and the grand total of two times he’s gone to a cafe with another human, he’s just gotten whatever they ordered. One reminded him vaguely of tar, and the other was sugary enough a pixie would have puked it up afterward. Neither of those sound remotely palatable right now, but he also has no idea how to order something like what Anko makes, which is pretty good as long as she’s not deliberately trying to make him regret her entire existence as well as his own.

Expresso shots have lots of caffeine, he’s pretty sure, and he thinks he’s heard of an Americano before… He stares at the prices, does some quick math in his head and tries to remember what the hell the tax rate is for something like coffee, smirks, and orders.

The total comes out to 66.6 ryō. Madara tucks the receipt into his pocket, so he can add it to his collection later. It’s not like the number does anything, or hurts anyone, it’s just familiar. An inside joke with just himself. The little stack of receipts might get him taken for a cultist if anyone found them, but even if he’s not necessarily proud of being a demon, that’s not something that’s going to change anytime soon.

He may or may not be a little bit homesick, if just for his brothers. It’s been a couple months since he’s snuck back into Hell to talk to anyone, but right now would be a terrible time for it, with a necromancer to keep an eye on.

His coffee takes a few minutes to come out. In the meantime, his migraine has decided it doesn’t like the lighting of anything, ever, and is trying to smudge them out of existence, to Madara’s detriment. The second his drink arrives, he snatches it up and leaves, squinting and grumpy and now sporting a terrible kitschy logo on the cup.

He has a necromancer to meet in a questionable location in the middle of the night. Normal people probably grew up with horror stories that start that way, but usually someone like Madara is supposed to be the nightmare in that sort of scenario. It’ll already be awful, he’s willing to bet, but it’ll be much, much worse if his migraine doesn’t clear up by then. There’s not that many options when he doesn’t own an apartment, so he’s going to find a roof with decent shade cover and lay face down on it until midnight.

Madara huffs in disgust with his life at the moment and takes a distracted sip of his drink. Stops, blinks down at it in surprise. That’s good coffee.

Tobirama’s going to have to dump the coffee before he gets back to his apartment. It’s good, excellent, in fact, or Tobirama would never have stomached the gaudy logo and its lurid color scheme in the first place. But if he brings the cup back and Touka sees it, she’s going to mock him until the day he dies, which might be immediately by way of sheer humiliation. She’d introduced him to the cafe by physically hauling him inside despite his protests, cackling like a stereotypical mad witch. All on the grounds that he was thirty percent zombie on a good day, so Wake the Dead sounded perfect for him—to which he’d acerbically retorted he wouldn’t be caught dead in there, either.

And then the coffee had the utter, calling nerve to be good.

The pun, Tobirama doesn’t mind, but gods, the color scheme is an affront to his eyes. he always takes his coffee to go, if only so he doesn’t have to look at it for long. That usually works out well for him.

At least on days that he doesn’t run into the fucking demon that may or may not be the very same one that signed deals with Butsuma.

What the—excuse the equivocation—Hell is a demon doing walking around Konoha in broad daylight? They belong on an entirely different plane. Surely something must keep them there, if they haven’t already overrun the mortal plane; why is this one somehow exempt? How dare he walk these streets like he belongs here instead?

Tobirama’s hands aren’t shaking, because they never shake. Yet another trace of Butsuma, showing up like bad pennies and night terrors, just like Uchiha Madara himself.

Forget Butsuma. He’s dead and ash. Madara didn’t answer whether he knew him or not, so Tobirama had no chance to feel for a lie. All he detected was wariness, and some mess of emotion Tobirama hadn’t been able to parse. What he can do is trace back the demon’s path based on what he remembers from his sensory net, referencing it against where other humans are walking now to match his mental spacial map to his magic sense.

Two streets down. Turn the corner. Tobirama is so focused on the empathy trail that he doesn’t recognize where he is until he stops right across the street and looks up.

The sign reads, in professional dark lettering, The Merchant of Death. Below that, in cheery red paint that Tobirama is honestly not sure doesn’t contain some sort of blood, it says, The Odds and Ends Justify the Means.

He knows it. The lower sign is Anko’s addition—Tobirama never met the previous shopkeeper, but he’s given to understand that he’d been somewhat more dour. Formerly audited and nearly closed under that same owner. Carefully legal, now, under Anko’s iron fist. Reanimated sales associates, which always disturbs—disturbs some people. Tobirama gets most of his esoteric materials here, since he knows the licensing is iron-clad, and black market deals are rarely worth the hassle if there’s another option. That, and no other shop seems to be able to keep Hellish ash stocked—

Madara had lingered here. Tobirama closes his eyes and hisses out a breath between his teeth.

Does Anko know what kind of being she’s buying her ash off of? She’s never struck him as a particularly careful person, but she’s not suicidal, either. She can’t know. Can she? Tobirama pinches the bridge of his nose and suppresses the urge to let just a little bit of the magic roiling under his skin lash out. He is so unequipped to deal with this right now. As if it weren’t enough to have to look that demon in the eye and be polite—

Tobirama takes a deep breath. Lets it out. The anger he’s feeling is useless. The annoyance is useless. The shock and the pain is useless. He needs to be rational about this: assign priorities to the new information he’s gained from the encounter and then move accordingly.

The source of the ash he’s been using in his ink is of little importance, unless there’s a latent connection to the demon that created it after the flames are out and the ashes cooled. Hypothetically, there could be an effect on the power of a binding, for good or for ill. That’s quite the long shot, though, so while researching the possibility will stay on his list, it’s low on the priority queue.

Whether Anko knows the source of the ash is even less relevant than where it came from in the first place. Trying to find that out can wait until the next time Tobirama needs to buy something, which will be in the next few days anyway, if his dwindling supply of ink pigment and yew ash has anything to say about it. Anko likes to talk; Tobirama doesn’t, and she knows that, but a careful question won’t be out of place.

Searching for the name Uchiha Madara has a much higher priority. It’ll be difficult, with how many demonology references have vanished in the past few decades, but it’ll also be worth a veritable gold mine if he finds anything.

Highest priority falls to the meeting at the witching hour tonight. He needs to be able to keep an eye on Madara, at least until he figures out a seal to identify a demon for certain. He’s not sure his summonings have any effect, so keeping him nearby in the meantime is going to take some good old-fashioned manipulation.

Tobirama switches his cup of coffee to his other hand, trying to keep his fingers from going numb. The anger is starting to simmer again, now that he has a game plan, but he can’t help but feel a flare of doubt all the same. There’s little pieces that just don’t fit: Madara’s dramatic surprise, his snippiness, his total lack of subtlety, his—Tobirama hesitates to call it humanity, but that’s what it feels like.

Of course, monsters show up in human skin as well.

He’d best get started preparing for the witching hour, then. There’s no guarantee Madara will actually be there, but if he had to guess, he’d say the demon will show.

Tobirama needs him to. He will uncover the demon’s secrets. He doesn’t doesn’t care if Madara intends to cooperate or not.

Chapter Text

Kawarama meets Tobirama at the door to the apartment, which means he was either very quick, or Yukime told him he was coming. He’s beaming like the sun and literally bouncing in place. “You’re back, you’re back!”

“I was only gone for two hours,” Tobirama says, locking the door behind him to reactivate the wards. Despite the stress and near-disaster of the last thirty minutes, a smile tugs at his mouth; it’s so nice to come home to someone excited to see him. He makes an exaggerated severe expression. “Did anything explode while I was gone?”

“Nooooo,” Kawarama says, with the sort of fidgety tone that nearly makes Tobirama glance around to double-check. “But Yukime can jump really high!”

He jumps, theoretically to illustrate the point, and gets less than six inches off the ground.

“Oh, really?” Tobirama scoops Kawarama up into his arms, even he’s probably too big for this and weighs much more than Tobirama’s rucksack. But Kawarama clings to him, still anxious for affection and reassurance even after months of safety and companionship, and Tobirama has plenty of moments where he’s just as desperate. He won’t be stopping any time soon. “Was she showing off again?”

Yukime bats at his ankle in chastisement as he passes, but her claws are sheathed and she doesn’t hit him hard enough to make him stumble. He’s probably only safe as long as he’s carrying Kawarama, but he’ll take what he can get.

“Your brat opened a window and a bird got in,” Touka informs him from the couch. She’s only mildly exasperated, so the whole ordeal probably happened over an hour ago, though Tobirama is a little worried to ask where the bird went—“Are constructs supposed to get hungry?”

Ah.

“It was hot in here,” Kawarama grumbles into Tobirama’s shoulder.

Tobirama pats his little brother’s shoulder understandingly and eyes Yukime with what he hopes is minimal suspicion, poking at her with his empathy. A summoned construct such as she shouldn’t be hungry for anything on a material plane like this one, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she can’t eat.

She feels a little overly satisfied for a snow leopard, powered by necromancy or not. Tobirama has to ask, “If I dispel you now, am I going to be cleaning that bird up off the floor?” He doubts it’ll hurt her, if she ate it in the first place, but he wouldn’t put it past her to arrange it so a half-digested bird winds up on his carpet, as petty vengeance for not being able to hack up a hairball on his pillow that won’t disappear when she does. She is a cat.

Yukime’s tail flicks. “Give it an hour,” she says.

That’s probably as cooperative as she’s going to get. Tobirama rests his cheek against Kawarama’s hair and focuses on his magical sense. Everyone is calm, and no magic lingers except what clings to Yukime to keep her anchored to his plane. The wards are strong. No one is afraid.

It’s safe.

Most of the residual tension from Madara’s unexpected presence finally bleeds out of his shoulders. Paranoia will keep him alive while dealing with demons, but he can leave it at the door with his rucksack. There’s space here for other things.

“I need to do some research,” Tobirama begins. Kawarama visibly droops and Touka gives him a deadpan look; Tobirama ignores her entirely and focuses on Kawarama. “But I have plenty of time to cook us some lunch first, and then you can pick a show to watch while I’m busy.”

“Magic School Bus!” Kawarama cheers, bouncing as well as he can while balanced on Tobirama’s hip. “Can we have pancakes?”

“We had those for breakfast.” Tobirama does a quick mental run-through of what they still have in the fridge that he can cook up. Leftover rice from yesterday, and some eggs, plus veggies. If they’re out of fresh ones, he can dig up some cans, or maybe the bag of peas in the freezer. “Why don’t we make some fried rice?”

“Yum! Can I cut the carrots?” Kawarama asks mischievously.

Tobirama taps his nose. “Touka will cut the carrots. You can shell the peas. No knives until you turn eight, you know the rules.”

Touka quirks an eyebrow at him. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s assuming she’ll help them cook, or if she thinks eight is still too young. Tobirama had been five, the first time Butsuma had handed him a knife as long as his arm and taught him to butcher a deer carcass he’d brought back from hunting. He hadn’t gotten hurt, but Hashirama has a three-inch scar on his left forearm from a similar ordeal. It’s one of the many life experiences that he doesn’t think Kawarama ever needs.

Still, knowing what not to do isn’t the same as doing it right. Maybe he’ll check with Touka later.

Kawarama talks while they cook, and Tobirama is happy to listen, even when he says with complete seriousness that he wants to grow up to be a snow leopard, or at least turn into one when he gets better at magic. Tobirama is pretty sure shapeshifting is genetically determined unless it’s involuntary like lycanthropy, but he’s also invented a new application of necromancy or two himself, so maybe magical breakthroughs run in the family. Touka tells Kawarama she might be able to turn him into a cat, if she found the right spell, which makes Kawarama gasp with stars in his eyes while Tobirama tries to suppress a twitch. Raising Kawarama feels a little like herding cats, yes, but he prefers that to be metaphorical.

They sit down together to eat. Yukime climbs onto a chair of her own to watch them calmly, like they’re kittens who need her supervision.

She’s not necessarily wrong. Tobirama has, historically, been terrible at taking care of himself. Even when he sets timers for meals, it’s easy to work right through them, ignoring hunger and fatigue to find the next answer he’s searching for. He can’t do that to Kawarama, though. Timers have become much more effective for meals, with the hovering paranoia that a five-year-old can’t be expected to feed himself on his own, and he makes sure to get at least a couple of hours of sleep a night, because he’s a nightmare when he’s sleep deprived and he never wants to subject his little brother to that. He still gets absorbed in his research, but he can’t see that ever changing, and Kawarama is getting used to pestering him out of his fugue when he needs something.

Sometimes Tobirama is tempted to keep Yukime here as a permanent babysitter, just to make sure he doesn’t mess it all up somehow. But the one time he’d brought it up to her, she had unsheathed her claws and deliberately laid one paw on his thigh, perilously close to the artery.

“Do you understand why what you just said is stupid?” she’d said evenly.

Tobirama had taken the chastening with as much grace as he could muster, agreed, and gotten some sleep before exhaustion could give him any other idiotic ideas. He’s not about to foist his responsibility for Kawarama off onto someone else, no matter how weighty it can be. But Yukime will help, and so will Touka, even if—

Even if he doesn’t really have anyone else, anymore.

Touka breaks his pensive mood by reaching over the table and stealing a bit of egg from his plate, presumably with the excuse that hers is already empty. She’s probably just doing it for attention. “Alright, inquiring minds want to know: was it a poltergeist this time?”

Tobirama’s eye twitches. “I wasn’t even investigating a haunting.”

“That’s not an answer,” she sing-songs.

He hates his cousin. Well, he loves her, but he loves her better when he’s not forced to deal with her idea of a joke, which seems to be his entire life, now. “I was meeting with a woman about arranging a seance. She wants another consultation before she agrees.” She was very distraught when Tobirama informed her she’d have to pay extra for a second meeting, but by all the gods, if he has to deal with strangers, he’s going to get something out of it.

Communing with a soul that’s moved on to another plane is not a one-size-fits-all sort of endeavor. It takes skill, and minor but precise alterations based on gender, age upon death, and how long ago they died—preferably an actual date, so Tobirama can get ahold of the astrological signs. Tobirama is quite good at actually performing the seance; it is, as always, the people aspect that trips him up.

“Odds that this seance ends in tears and possibly blood?” Touka says drily. “Like the lady who liked flowers—” She snaps her fingers like she’s trying to remember exactly what happened, even though she will never let him forget. “—you know, the politician’s wife that threw a vase at you?”

“You’re the worst,” Tobirama informs her flatly. That whole ordeal had not been one of his high points. It turns out that seances don’t work so well when the soul is in Hell, due to the amount of protections keeping Hell-bound souls inside their intended plane. He now has a painstakingly practiced speech meant for informing a distraught family that a seance failed while carefully not mentioning why it failed. Touka helped him write it after he spent nearly two hours picking porcelain shards out of his clothes and rucksack.

The technical aspects of a seance are fine. That’s his specialty. But Tobirama doesn’t deal well with excess emotion, and he doesn’t like people he doesn’t know—so perhaps he should have expected that mediating between two people that he doesn’t know, who are often both very emotional, would end up as exactly the sort of pain in the neck that it is.

“I’d say I hope that at least nobody dies,” Touka continues, smirking, “but…”

Tobirama hates that his mouth twitches upward, but it does. It’s a morbid thing to joke about, but that seems to describe most of his sense of humor. He spends too much time among the dead and mourning. “The worst,” he reiterates, but Touka doesn’t feel like she believes him.

After lunch, Kawarama settles agreeably to watch Magic School Bus, and Tobirama gestures to Yukime and Touka that he’d like to speak with them in the next room.

“I’m planning to go out during witching hour again tonight,” he tells them. Yukime’s ears twitch. So does Touka’s left eyebrow. “Yes, I’ll get some sleep beforehand, before either of you ask. My plan is call you back, Yukime, just before I leave. Touka—you decide. The wards will be up, and I know you have classes—”

“Not tomorrow I don’t. Today’s Friday, or did you forget already?”

Tobirama’s sleep schedule bears more resemblance to Kawarama’s crayon drawings than any sort of chart, so he may have, yes. He did at least make it to his meeting on the right day of the month, and he deserves points for that, even if the specific day of the week is a little… fuzzy. “Right. So if you can stay…”

Touka squints at him, but he’s not sure what she’s looking for. She doesn’t feel doubtful or annoyed, just somewhat concerned, probably for Kawarama. “I should be able to. As long as I get a few more pillows for your damn couch.”

Yukime is still staring at Tobirama, unblinking. It’s not quite judgmental.

“I can summon Shizuyo instead,” he tells her, almost a warning, “but Kawarama likes you better.”

Yukime’s ears and nose both twitch this time. Only a hint of smugness seeps through as she nods to accept this statement as her due. “You may call me, provided you dismiss me soon to rest. It is too warm here, and I need somewhere I can nap comfortably.”

Tobirama thinks it’s already getting plenty cold outside, but she is very much a being of ice and winter and probably view the mid-autumn temperature as only barely not sweltering. She matches his magic well, but Tobirama’s frail mortal form doesn’t and never will handle the cold like she can.

“I’ll do that. Feel free to dismiss yourself—after you’ve finished digesting the bird, please.”

Yukime doesn’t visibly move a muscle, but she feels extremely amused. “Very well.” She slips out of the room to rejoin Kawarama and accept his tribute of pets. Kawarama is always awed to be allowed to stroke her soft, ethereal fur, and he is very gentle under her instruction.

They both watch for a while through the doorway of the kitchen. “I can’t believe a cat is better at babysitting than I am,” Touka finally mutters.

“I can.” Tobirama glances at her sidelong. “Also, she probably heard you.”

Touka makes a face at him, because she is six years older than him but apparently still six years less mature.

“Besides, there’s always a chance she may be unable to stay to protect him. If I’m sufficiently incapacitated, her connection to this plane will snap and she’ll discorporate. It’s a very small chance, but it’s still there.”

Touka gives him a look. “And what are you planning that’s so dangerous you’re even brining that possibility up?”

Meeting a demon who may or may not be his worst nightmare. Meeting a demon at all. “You said you wanted to help,” Tobirama says defensively. “This is just”—paranoia—“a possibility I need to keep in mind, so I’m letting you know.”

“I could come with you if it’s going to be dangerous—”

“No.”

Touka scowls at him with narrowed eyes. Tobirama doesn’t mean to insult her ability, if that’s what she thinks he’s doing. But in his head, there’s a nightmare in technicolor that plays out with his and Touka’s simultaneous violent, messy deaths, Yukime’s sudden discorporation, and Kawarama being left absolutely, utterly alone. A child in an apartment too big for him, in a city and a world too big for him alone, with no one left to even wonder if he’s alive. No one to protect him or love him or at least find someone who can.

Even if Touka doesn’t stay here tonight, so long as she’s not with Tobirama when something happens, he can trust her to look after Kawarama, even if she isn’t a fan of childcare. He’d rather she go home than come with him. If something happened to her…

In Tobirama’s experience, the police won’t be fast enough or attentive enough to save his little brother, and he’s not particularly friendly with his neighbors. Without her, would anyone notice that Kawarama had been abandoned, before Kawarama was forced to run away from the tomb this apartment would become?

The mere thought leaves him cold, hollowed out. But then, he’s used to being empty.

“I know what I’m doing,” Tobirama says, rather than trying to voice the unspeakable. “Adding more variables would make it more dangerous, not less. I will come back, and I—” Touka said she should help him if he asked, so he forces out, “I’d feel safer if I knew that Kawarama had you here with him, too.”

By some miracle, it seems to have been the right thing to say. Touka’s expression softens. The sympathy in her magic doesn’t even edge toward pity, but it makes Tobirama itch uncomfortably anyway.

“I’ll watch him, just in case,” she allows. “But you better let me know you’re okay as soon as you’re done.”

Oh, thank the gods. “You’ll know,” Tobirama says absently, already turning his mind to his research, now that she’s agreed. “If Yukime doesn’t vanish then I’m alive and almost certainly conscious.” The demon’s illusions are a powerful tool, and he needs a better way to combat it than relying on his sensor abilities, which can’t fully replace sight and certainly can’t stop the illusions from becoming solid and dangerous. He has a few ideas for a seal that might work, if he does some finagling with the pattern for true form—

A spike of irritation makes him blink, and he refocuses on Touka. She has a hand over her eyes, now, but Tobirama has no idea how to interpret that. She’s not angry but he only knows that because of his empathy, and it’s not very good for sorting out a muddles mess like whatever that is leaking through her magic with the irritation. Historically, she’s probably exasperated with whatever faux pas or emotional landmine he’s managed to trip over now, but he isn’t sure what he said to elicit that reaction this time.

Rather than suddenly deciding to explain herself, like someone helpful, she changes the subject entirely with the sort of forceful yank that’s obvious even to Tobirama. “Are you making dinner later or do you want me to handle it?”

“I’ll set a timer.”

Touka feels skeptical, but Tobirama really is much better about answering meal timers now that he has Kawarama to worry about. Every second thought seems to be for his brother, but it’s all he can do when he’s pretty much the beginning and end of the list of parental figures Kawarama has to feel safe around.

Which is a terrible, terrible joke, when there are adults who very reasonably don’t feel safe around Tobirama. No matter how hard he tries.

“Is eight too young for a child to learn to use a kitchen knife?”

Touka shrugs. “Google it. What the fuck do I know about kids? They’re small, and can’t do stuff until suddenly they can. Only child, here.”

“Language,” Tobirama says reprovingly. She’s almost in the same room as Kawarama.

She spreads her hands. “My point exactly.”

Tobirama rolls his eyes and heads to his study. He may not be an ideal caretaker, but at least he isn’t Touka.

The temperature is barely below freezing, but with the sun currently lighting the other side of the planet and the wind picking up from the north, it feels much colder. Tobirama lasts about three minutes standing in the crossroad before he hikes over to the trees that start a few feet from the dirt lane. It’s still cold, but at least the windchill is less of a factor.

Madara isn’t there by ten minutes after midnight, and while the witching hour does last until two a.m., Tobirama doesn’t particularly appreciate him taking his time. He keeps his senses spread, alert for any magic that doesn’t match the backdrop of Konoha.

As his magic sinks into the ground, he’s able to pick out the little animal bones under his feet, hidden by layers of dirt and dead leaves and new growth. He’s bored, despite the cold and the tension, so he tugs at them until they shiver up through the soil, piling up like a doll-sized cairn of bones. Another twitch of magic, and they shiver again, beginning to assemble, but the mouse that tries to form is missing too many bones, including the entire skull save half of the jawbone.

Necromancy isn’t a common magic. It’s not an easy one, or a forgiving one. If bones dance to his tune, it’s because he’s bled for it. Necromancy takes years to master, usually decades if one isn’t naturally inclined to it or hellishly—sometimes Hellishly—dedicated, but Tobirama is both. Plenty of magic users have dabbled in it, true. It’s tempting, for those drawn to the allure of power, and the grieving flock to it like moths to a candle. But grief doesn’t create skill, and most move on or give up before they get even halfway to the mastery required for raising the dead. Actual resurrections are thin on the ground, which luckily gives them a nebulous legal status that Tobirama can work around with minimal red tape, but they’re rare because they’re difficult and dangerous. A necromancer has to put their own soul on the line to bring to bear the power to create a house for another human soul, and only the foolish or insane would do it for money or anything but deepest need.

Necromancy is an art for the desperate and the crazed. Sometimes Tobirama fears what will happen to him, should he drift from the former to the latter.

Still, for all its darkness, it’s beautiful, in a way. For the rush when the pieces fall together in artful collapse, for the way his magic flows so naturally into it, for what it’s brought him. Like Yukime and the rest of her family. Like Kawarama.

And sometimes he can just… play with it. Preferably when there’s no one else to see any silly at-will constructs like the bone dragon the size of a house cat he’d made in undergrad, or this little creature currently doing its utmost to scramble together under his direction, now with a handful of bones from what was probably a vole.

The vole’s skull is missing as well, probably carried of by a scavenger before it could be buried. He digs his magic a little deeper into the earth, seeking, and finds a joint of a larger animal lodged partway under a tree root. He spends almost seven minutes wiggling it free to join the rest of his new collection; until the demon shows up, he has nothing but time to waste.

The joint makes a terrible skull. He amuses himself fiddling with a few different patterns, and finally pulls them together and up—large joint in the middle, three sets of eight similarly-sized bones arrayed out from it. A smaller joint from another animal, pitted by time and whatever damage has occurred to it in the forest, attaches itself to the larger. It’s somewhat sloppy, but still recognizably a spider. Sort of like those anatomically incorrect Halloween decorations that the grocery store put up a few weeks ago and won’t stop shoving in his face, cheerfully dismissive that some people may not like to celebrate Halloween, and scoffing in the face of scientific knowledge as well as common sense.

He may have just turned his house to glass with this construct. But at least he knows spiders don’t actually have skeletons in the first place.

No flesh, magical or not, is going to manage to cover such a patchwork, but the magic is at least willing to be coaxed into forming connections resembling bastardized tendons. He walks the construct forward and backward, then side to side like a crab, but it seems to be moving alright. It’s sort of endearing, in a way, but admitting that would make Touka glare at him and tell him to stop bringing creepy crawlies home, like he’s six instead of twenty-three.

Fire approaches from the direction of downtown Konoha. Tobirama turns toward it, even though it’s still much too far away to be seen with physical eyes. Uchiha Madara is finally on his way.

It makes him frown. Everyone’s magic feels different, to his senses, like recognizing someone’s face or the way they walk. It’s not the same as their emotional makeup, no matter how Tobirama’s sensory-empathy likes to mix the two together for him, but they almost always complement each other in some way. The main impression Tobirama gets from Madara is heat. It’s not the same as searing flames, which is what he expected from the fiery nature of the demon’s magic. It is, however, a match to the emotional template Tobirama’s steadily laying out for him, which is even more unsettling.

Because Madara, a demon, somehow doesn’t feel dangerous.

Or—he does, but only in the way a rattlesnake is dangerous. Like he’ll start rattling before you step on him, with that strange dramatic flare and blazing temper that only sparks and doesn’t scorch. Like if you don’t deliberately put your hand in the fire, you won’t be burned.

He feels… human, almost. True, the few scholarly books Tobirama can find on the subject agree that demons almost certainly were human, once. But Madara hasn’t felt like sick glee or bloodlust at any point in their admittedly short acquaintance. Hasn’t ever settled into killing rage. Tobirama knows what those feel like. Madara feels like a sane human—but sane humans that can function in society without trying to destroy it or their fellow humans aren’t damned to Hell to become demons. It doesn’t make sense.

Tobirama’s magical awareness gives him true information, but he can’t always parse it, and detecting lies gets tricky if the person doesn’t they’re lying, or if they believe righteously enough that he shouldn’t be allowed to know, or is a psychopath and has no baseline reaction to lying at all. It works roughly nine times out of ten, as far as he can tell, maybe a little more. But that’s not good enough.

If Madara is a psychopath, he can’t keep the facade up forever, not within his own magic. Tobirama will just have to be careful.

He crouches briefly to set his hand against the dirt. The at-will construct obligingly skitters up his arm to rest on his shoulder. Halloween’s just under three weeks away; no harm in looking a little festive. Tobirama strides out from the tree cover and back into the biting wind to meet his… associate.

The demon regards him coolly as he approaches, but his magic betrays that he’d rather be glaring outright. Not angry, exactly, but annoyed. Bad-tempered, without the internal iron control Tobirama expected from an Uchiha.

Then Madara’s eyes land on the bone creature on Tobirama’s shoulder. His entire face twitches, magic swirling into surprise, bafflement, and an unnecessary amount of wariness. “What. Is that.”

Tobirama raises his eyebrows. Expressively. “A spider.”

“That is not how spider anatomy works,” Madara retorts immediately, eyeing the construct like it’s going to lunge at him.

Tobirama blinks. This idiot tried just yesterday to tell him he must be a terrible necromancer, and he’s not even familiar with at-will constructs? It’s one of the few areas of necromancy that doesn’t require extensive study in the art of seals—he’s been able to make them since he was twelve. Tobirama doesn’t know whether to find the Madara’s ignorance insulting or droll; but then, why can’t it be both?

He tilts his head slightly in faux-curiosity and keeps his face straight. “What do you mean?”

Madara gives him an incredulous look. “Spiders don’t have bones!”

“Of course they do. This spider obviously has bones.”

“But—” Madara narrows his eyes. “That’s not a spider. It can’t—they’re bugs.”

“They’re arachnids,” Tobirama corrects him blandly, wondering how far Madara is going to let him go. His magic is growing increasingly, amusingly frazzled. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“When I asked if you were going out to violate the world order, this isn’t what I meant, Senju.” Madara puffs up like a posturing bird, somehow even more offended than the rich clients Tobirama is used to meeting, who view his vocation with the distaste of the sheltered. Seeing it on a demon is… new. “Bugs don’t have—arachnids don’t have bones.”

Tobirama hums, short and precise and supremely skeptical. “Can you even name three types of arachnids?”

Madara sputters. This is… surprisingly entertaining. Like arguing with idiots back in undergrad—which, admittedly, did nearly get him turned into a toad once, so Tobirama should probably take that as a warning to be more cautious with Madara than he currently is. He just thought a demon would be a little more refined than this, is all, but then, he certainly doesn’t hold to dignity well enough to keep from nearly making a scene in the middle of the street.

“Scorpions—look, that’s not the point,” Madara snaps.

Which means he probably can’t. Tobirama lets himself smirk, just a little.

Madara scowls at him thunderously. “Those bones aren’t supposed to do that and it’s just—it’s not how this works!”

If Tobirama tries speaking now, he’ll give the game away. He has the construct scramble over to his other shoulder to give him another moment to keep his expression unruffled.

Except Madara bristles like a cat and hisses when it moves, points a finger at it, and yells, “That is an abomination of nature!”

Tobirama’s composure cracks right down the middle. He turns the first burst of laughter into a cough, but the crossroads is dead silent around them and there’s no way to disguise his briefly shaking shoulders.

Madara’s face is turning red, or maybe purple; it’s hard to tell in the dim light of the moon and stars. “You can’t laugh at the laws of nature!”

That is literally the entire point of necromancy, but obviously Madara doesn’t know as much about it as he’d like to think he does. Tobirama refuses on principle to respond with more than a deadpan look. Madara growls at him, because apparently a demon is supposed to be a conglomeration of six different animals’ twitchy instincts.

Tobirama rolls his eyes. “Now that you’re done making a fool of yourself—”

“I’m not—”

“Done?” Tobirama interrupts smoothly. “Then by all means…”

Madara inhales like he’s about to breathe fire, lifts his eyes to the sky like he’s praying for strength. An odd gesture for a demon; more likely he’s counting to ten, or possibly a hundred.

If he can count that high.

Tobirama, however, would like to get back to business. Toying with a demon isn’t what he came here to do, and while it’s certainly amusing, it’s also not the best idea he’s had in the past twenty-four hours. In his defense, the placement of the witching hour is wreaking havoc on his sleep schedule.

So he grants the demon just a bit of a break. “There’s plenty of tiny bones scattered in the forest. I just linked some together in the form of a spider.” Then, because it’s difficult to remember he shouldn’t banter with Madara even if he’s currently emoting like a human, and he can’t help himself: “Solid B minus for at least knowing spiders don’t have bones. F for not knowing what an at-will construct is.”

“Oh, fuck you, Senju,” Madara snarls, but at least he doesn’t look like he’s going to start a dragon’s barbecue any second, now.

“No, thank you. I wouldn’t want to catch anything.”

“Hey!”

Madara takes an aggressive step forward, shoulders drawn up and obviously doing his best to loom. It’s no more of a threat than his presence here is, but when dealing with demons, a large personal bubble is just good sense, and Tobirama is patently opposed to anyone who isn’t his family getting into his space. Madara hasn’t crossed that line, but he’s damn sure toeing it.

Tobirama pulls a little spray bottle filled with holy water out of his coat pocket, making sure to hold it like the weapon it is.

Apparently, Madara isn’t a complete idiot. He gives the spray bottle a wary eye, as he well should.

“You yelped like a puppy when I caught you last time,” Tobirama says, but there’s no amusement in the hard sliver of a smile that he offers. This is a threat, plain and simple. “I thought a spray bottle was… appropriate. I have questions for you.”

Madara’s face twists. “Do you have a death wish? Taunting a demon is fucking stupid.” But he slowly takes a prudent step back.

Tobirama tries not to let on how his shoulders ease. He’s taken precautions, yes, but the demon hasn’t even attempted to claw his throat out, and it’s throwing him off a little. The signs so far point to Madara’s emotions matching his intentions as well as his actions, but Tobirama is still too wary to trust it.

At least the atmosphere is back to open hostility. Now they can have a civilized conversation like two natural enemies should. “It’s not a death wish if you have the skill to back it up.”

“Humble, too.” Madara sounds disgusted. “Explains why you’re trying to raise a soul from Hell, like a moron.”

Tobirama ignores that. The words don’t mean much coming from an idiot, anyway. “If I have a demon’s sigil, how do I scry its exact location? Or discern the demon past an illusion?” He’s not likely to get a straight answer, but it’s worth asking anyway—whatever he does get in response will give him information to work off of, whether the demon tries to lie or not.

Madara’s expression goes flat. “And you want a demon why, exactly? Unless you mean the one you’re trying to raise.”

“I’m seeking a human soul,” Tobirama snaps. He immediately reigns in his temper, and cools his voice before he speaks again. “I am not planning to resurrect a demon.”

“Any human soul cast down to Hell turns into a demon sooner or later.”

Tobirama’s mouth tightens. So the books say, but nothing he’s ever studied, no one he’s ever asked, has ever been able to sufficiently explain why. “Allow me to guess: the more terrible they are, the faster they turn and the more powerful they grow?” It’s a common literary device, at least, and presumably it had it roots somewhere in truth, once.

“That’s a fucking myth.” Madara doesn’t try to get in his face again—wise, since Tobirama would spray him with holy water without blinking—but he does narrow his eyes and try his hand at looming menacingly from several feet away. “Every soul in Hell turns into a demon. Demons who torture or kill do it because they were once humans who did the same thing. The speed of the change, the power, those depend on the soul’s malleability and strength. Whatever historical monster you’re trying to raise is going to be a demon, and it’s a stupid idea to let them loose.”

Tobirama cannot detect a lie in the demon’s magic. All he can feel is the demon’s frustration and his own heartbeat, just a little too fast.

His senses could be wrong, but he can’t think of a reason for a lie, either. Madara either has no way to guess he’s seeking a soul that doesn’t belong in Hell, negating the usefulness of such a lie, or he’s the demon who imprisoned Itama’s soul in the first place, and Tobirama will have to go through him to get to his brother anyway. With no way of knowing why human souls change in Hell, what the catalyst is or what might stop it, Tobirama can’t say if Madara is wrong or right—but he doesn’t think he’s lying.

Itama has been in Hell for almost ten years. He’s a Senju, with all the magical potential that implies, even if he died before so much as beginning to master it. That should give him plenty of power; as for malleability? Tobirama doesn’t know how anyone would measure the malleability of a soul. How long does the average change take, he wants to ask, how do I know if they’re human or not—but he’s not sure he wants to give that much away just yet.

And they’re pointless questions anyway, aren’t they? If Itama is a demon by now, then it looks like Tobirama will be raising a demon. He’ll still be Itama in every way that matters.

Tobirama adopts an affectation of disinterest. “Does it ever go the other way around? A demon changing into a human?”

Madara raises his eyebrows, impressively skeptic. There’s a swirl of wariness in him, but nothing more suspicious. “Whatever you want from his,” Madara says lowly, “raising a demon is foolhardy. It’s going to get you anyone around you killed.”

Tobirama’s going to take that a no, or at least that no one’s figured it out yet. Frustrating, but he’ll do it himself if he has to.

Part of the frustration starting to boil is certainly the demon’s attempt to manipulate him into letting go of his goals. Appealing to his morals is a surprising tactic, but ultimately a useless one, because Tobirama isn’t putting anyone else in danger. The only question left is if the demon is trying to dissuade Tobirama due to his own stake in Itama’s continued captivity, or if he’s simply being what he is, leading humans astray and attempting to break their hope.

“Only if I get it wrong,” he says coolly.

Madara growls low in his throat, regarding Tobirama narrowly through spinning Blood Eyes. True anger sizzles in his magic for the first time, hissing and spitting with the resentment building alongside it. “You’re a selfish bastard, aren’t you?”

He says it like it’s cutting, like he thinks such an inane statement is going to break through Tobirama’s determination. It would almost be funny, if it weren’t so damn tiresome. Plenty of people think Tobirama’s a selfish bastard—hearing it from a demon is new, but he’s heard worse from people he values much more.

He’ll be selfish, for his brothers. Someone has to be.

This conversation may as well be over. Tobirama has his answers, or purposeful silence he’s analyzed into answers, and he has zero desire to stick around and listen to Madara try to give him some backwards lecture. All that’s left is keeping the demon distracted long enough to test the seal he was working on this morning.

“I’m sorry, am I supposed to be offended?”

He begins unscrewing the bottle of ink still in his coat pocket, careful not to spill it. The stains probably won’t even show up, but he doesn’t want this kind of power soaked into his favorite coat. Powdered pearl, to hold a magical charge matched to his own water-based aura; Hellish ash, almost certainly from this very demon, in order to reach into Madara’s nature. The addition of the ash means he couldn’t add any holy water for proper confinement without nullifying the entire mixture, but that’s why he has a spray bottle as a deterrent.

It only takes a moment to saturate the bottle in magic, powdered pearl humming in response. Just as the demon opens his mouth to retort heatedly, Tobirama flings the ink at him.

Madara is learning, that much must be said—he jerks out of the way as soon as he sees it coming, escaping the first curve of a circle. This might have helped him if Tobirama had already let go of the magic in the ink, but he still has a firm grip. The ink glitters strangely through the mist as Tobirama whips it around in a tight arc to follow him, and the seal blooms beneath the demon’s feet even as he stumbles back. The seal won’t hold him in place, this time, but he’s still within the outer circle for the single critical moment Tobirama needs to activate it.

Like the shedding of a snake’s skin, cast-off demonic magic dissipates into the mist around them, and Madara’s illusion of humanity falls away.

The sound of fabric tearing rends the air as Madara’s wings spread. Feathered, mostly pitch black, but scattered in reds that resemble blood in the darkness of the witching hour. What’s left of his shirt and jacket hangs raggedly from his wings and arms, twisting his formerly human silhouette into something monstrous. Scraps of cloth and leather slip to the ground like shreds of discarded snakeskin as his wings fan out and rise up in a threatening display. That wingspan is easily two, maybe two and a half times Madara’s armspan. Longer than Tobirama expected, but then, he’s never seen the wings of a full-grown demon.

Two sets of horns frame Madara’s skull. The top set starts above his temples, curving down towards long, furred, almost rabbit-like ears before they jut forward and up again. The lower horns curve underneath the ears and taper sharply down.

The tattered remains of his shoes lie beneath feet like a bird’s talons, feathered heavily up until they disappear into dark jeans. The knee bends the wrong way—at least, the wrong way for a human, but the demon remains well balanced. Ready to lunge? Tobirama can’t tell, considering he isn’t even particularly good with human body language.

The long, tufted tail lashing back and forth is a clue.

Yet Madara’s face looks much the same as he always does. Tobirama expected—well. A face that looked human, but surely not the same one that Madara willingly wore among human humans. Surely the demon would hide himself completely. He doesn’t know how to react to the familiarity of that face.

Then Madara snarls, and now his fangs are visible, sharp and threatening. Tobirama’s hindbrain starts gibbering teeth in a panic, but he holds firm and refuses to take so much as a single step back. That familiar face is definitely not a friendly one; red, spinning eyes and anger roiling in his magic make that abundantly clear.

Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea he’s ever had. His grip tightens on the spray bottle in his hand and he coils his magic through the ink still on the ground.

Madara’s emotions still feel human. Human and angry.

The demon’s magic and rage combined boil from his skin and forces the mist to thicken into dark smoke until it surrounds them both, twisting, alive and furious. It’s so soaked in Madara’s magic that Tobirama’s senses can’t differentiate between the haze and the true magical core, and he feels a thrill of fear as he realizes that he’s been essentially blinded. Somewhere in the mist, Madara lurks, but where?

Tobirama squeezes the bottle of holy water until the plastic begins to protest.

“And here I thought you learned from the rest of humanity’s mistakes.” Madara’s voice echoes through the mist without a hint to where it’s actually coming from, smoldering like dim coals ready to come alive again if prodded just a little too sharply.

Tobirama’s muscles wind steadily tighter until he forces them to loosen; tension won’t help him react any faster. Fear is a biochemical reaction, and when it isn’t useful, he needs to mitigate some of its effects. He keeps his voice steady. “Experimentation is the spirit of—”

Intent spikes and focuses; combined with the bare flicker Tobirama sees in his peripheral vision, he has just enough warning to spin around and let fly a stream of holy water directly at the demon’s face. Madara flinches back with a bark of surprised pain. Clawed hands rise reflexively to guard his face, but they hover over burned skin uselessly, wary of the thin trail of water still dripping down his chin.

Tobirama has the bare moment to feel the first rush of relief before the surprisingly strong, tufted tail sweeps him right of his feet.

I’m dead, Tobirama thinks morbidly, but no. He isn’t yet. His ability with ink is built primarily off his magical affinity to water, even if he’s used to drawing on cold on death. The spray bottle bursts, and the holy water spins out into a very rudimentary protection sigil around him. He doesn’t dare try for anything more complicated. He prepares his ink for magical injection and precision, but there’s no pigment or charged ingredients here, and he’s barely holding onto the water as it is.

It takes several thudding heartbeats for Tobirama to realize that Madara has faded back into the mist, and his brain freezes, trying to figure out whether to panic or not.

On one hand, that’s a good thing. It means that Tobirama’s somewhat shaky water magic is not the currently being put to the task of stopping a demon intent on ripping his face off. On the other hand, the smoky mist is still soaked in Madara’s magic, and he could be anywhere.

A low growl rumbles its way through the fog. “You have fire, little necromancer. I’ll let you live for this insult. Once.”

Silence descends on the crossroads like the calm after a storm.

Tobirama allows himself one shaky breath before he gets to his feet, keeping the water seal flowing steadily. He’s been meaning to get a hold of a blessed knife for a while—obviously, he needs to do that sooner rather than later. But right now, he’s alive, and even if it takes effort to keep his breathing even, his hands are steady as they always are. He stays where he is, still and cautious, waiting as the rage fades and the magic drips away from the mist, leaving it once again pale and dimly lit by the moon.

Tobirama’s senses find the last remaining point of demonic magic, hidden behind an illusion to match the fog. Madara hasn’t left yet.

He will not show fear. He can’t afford to. He still doesn’t know what he needs to know, still doesn’t know if this demon is the one that stole Itama away. He’ll be seeing Madara again, even if he has to hunt him down, and he’s not doing that right after running with his tail between his legs.

So Tobirama speaks with a well-practiced flatness that tends to unnerve the people he uses it on. “Did you want my spider to walk you home?”

Madara’s emotions spike, anger and surprise both, a magnesium-quick flare of embarrassment mixing in only to be overwhelmed by aggravation. He doesn’t reveal himself and doesn’t speak, but Tobirama feels him leave, and only relaxes when the demon crosses the edge of his range.

The night goes silent again, properly, this time, but Tobirama still waits another handful of minutes in the frigid stillness before he feels safe enough to start back home.

Chapter Text

DROP DEAD DEALS, the advertisement on the window declares in bold yellow and black. Underneath the words is a cartoonish outline of a person being electrocuted, and beneath that, much smaller, is written: It’s aliiiiiiive!

Tobirama smirks a little and shakes his head. Anko’s usual sense of humor.

The bell over the door jangles in a cheery counterpoint to the shadowed interior of The Merchant of Death. The reanimation that Anko keeps on as a sales associate looks up at the sound after a short delay, but turns back to the boxes they’re sorting object into a few moments later.

Tobirama mentally runs through what he plans to say to Anko. He’ll be subtle, but he needs to know if she knows what kind of being frequents her shop. For information, primarily, but also for her own safety. He’s been buying Hellish ash from her for a while, now, so he can’t just ask about her source. She’d get defensive, and maybe even suspicious. He needs something to start with that he would actually take the time to tell her about immediately—and that, of course, is obvious.

Anko eyes him as he approaches the register. “You already know where everything is, brat.”

Tobirama rolls his eyes. The first time he walked through these door was on his eleventh birthday, and Anko has yet to acknowledge that he’s a foot taller and more than a decade older. “Obviously. I thought you might like to know that your advertisement is semantically incorrect,” he tells her. “If one drops dead from the deals, they’re no longer alive, and the caption would then be false.”

She gives him a look flatter than roadkill, which is incidentally what she looks like she’d like to turn him into. The occasional spike of bloodlust that accompanies some of her more annoyed moods should probably concern him, or at least warn him to stop annoying her, but she’s never even tried to stab him. This is unfortunately not true for everyone he’s met—he did not have great anger management skills as a teenager, his people skills were even worse, and the knife fighting definitely didn’t help.

“Okay, first of all, stop talking like the stick up your ass swallowed a dictionary. Second of all: are you really going to try my patience? I will chase you out of my shop with a bullwhip.”

She’s probably joking, but he dearly hopes she doesn’t actually have a bullwhip; if she does, he has no desire to know why, where she got it, or especially where it’s been. He decides to sidestep the question entirely and abruptly change the subject to something closer to what he actually wants to know. “I was also wondering when you’d have Hellish ash back in stock.”

“After cleaning me out about four days ago?” Anko treats him to an unimpressed look. “You can’t possibly have gone through it all already.”

“No,” Tobirama agrees. He is nearly halfway through, though, and he still hasn’t made any real progress with locating—or, perhaps, identifying—the demon he’s searching for. “But I’m trying to plan my research timeline, and would like to know when more will be available.”

Anko drums her fingers on the counter. “Worst case scenario, three weeks. I usually get a shipment every month. Best case scenario? You’re in luck, my acquisitions specialist said he’d do his best to dig some up for next week. You want me to call when he does?”

Tobirama raises an eyebrow and shakes his head slightly, affecting impressed disbelief. “Do you have a demon on your payroll? Is that the real reason you’re the only shop that can keep the ash in stock?” He’s not remotely joking, but makes an effort to make it sound like one.

Anko cackles like the madwoman she is. “Kind of wish so, sometimes. You know, if I were suicidal enough to make a deal. Nah, I’ve just got Madara, he’s a good kid and I’ve known him for years. Acquisitions specialist, and a damned good one—he’s got some sort of solid source for it.

Tobirama hums, trying to match even a fraction of her amusement. Anko’s magic doesn’t shiver with even a hint of a lie, at least, and he can reliably tell when she’s bending the truth, so she really doesn’t know. The rest of her information is not at all what he expected, but it is useful.

Madara has been on the mortal plane for years, or possibly has been visiting at least once a month. He gave Anko the same name that he gave Tobirama, implying some sort of attachment to it, whether or not it’s his real one. He doubts the demon ever told Anko his surname; she’s the type to recognize the name of the Hellish High Court. And Anko called him kid, so at one point he appeared younger than he does now, and perhaps is even young enough that he was truly aging, at that point.

That matches very little of the already limited picture he has of the demon he’s hunting. At the very least, he knows that that demon was already an adult ten years ago. Tobirama tentatively—very tentatively—marks this up as evidence that Madara may not be the same demon. It’s still not definitive, but at least it’s information.

“I wonder how he does it,” Tobirama says aloud. Maybe if Anko will give it critical thought, she’ll realize what Madara is, and be able to take measures to keep herself and her customers a little safer. Even if it does mean it’ll be that much more difficult to acquire Hellish ash.

“I’ve wondered about the Hellfire,” Anko admits, tapping her chin thoughtfully. Then she snorts. “Maybe he’s got a demon chained up by contract or something. Gods know he’s high-strung enough for it.”

Tobirama’s expression freezes on his face. It’s like a bucket of ice water being poured through his insides; everything is unnaturally clear, suddenly, and he’s hollowed out. Clean. Cold.

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” Tobirama manages. He hopes he doesn’t sound as unsteady as he feels—it’s just an unfortunate string of words, no matter how his fingernails are digging into his palms. He hides his hands in his pockets. “If you’d call me when you have more ash delivered, I’d appreciate it.”

Anko points an accusing finger at him. “I’m not letting you buy all of it again, so you better plan for that too.”

Tobirama nods to her and turns away as smoothly as he can to disguise how the words have dried up in his throat. A handful of steps bring him around an aisle of shelving and out of sight. He needs space, just for a moment. Just long enough to breathe.

Chain a demon, gods. Tobirama shakes his head to banish the memory of a golden collar and a matching chain. Calling it a terrible idea is one hell of an understatement. Any demon caught that way would take the first split second of freedom to burn the fool that trapped them to nothing but precious ash. And they’d deserve every second of it.

The sales associate at the end of the aisle stares blankly at him, awaiting a request for assistance. Their faded brown irises are backed by black sclera, their skin cast with a dull gray undertone. Cracks creep up the left side of their jaw, onto their cheek, and down onto their right hand, but they’re thin and spidery, a sign of a well-maintained reanimation. The magic that revived them wasn’t a full resurrection; there’s no light behind those eyes, no soul. They operate instead on a limited magical intelligence, able to follow instructions from their summoner, as well as much simpler requests from customers, like leading them to requested wares or retrieving things from the top shelves.

Tobirama tried, once, a long time ago as a rigidly earnest twelve-year-old, to ask Anko their name, or failing that, at least their gender. Anko had given him the blankest of blank looks before grinning bemusedly. “It isn’t a person, kid. It’s just my helper.”

Tobirama stared at the floor and considered that seriously for a long moment. Then looked up and asked, “But the body used to be a person. What gender were they?”

Anko eyed the reanimated being, shuffling into the storage room in the back, and said thoughtfully, “You know, I can’t remember.”

That answer is considerably more alarming in hindsight, now that he’s an adult and has learned that most necromancy requiring a body is performed with artificial cadavers that have never hosted a human soul at all. To a twelve-year-old, the answer had merely been temporarily thwarting. But bodies, even used, puppeteered bodies, deserve respect, and he refused—still refuses—to call one ‘it.’

Hashirama does, some rebellious, venemous part of Tobirama thinks. Or would. If he could even bear to look at it.

It—hurts. Not the idea itself, not really, Tobirama got used to Hashirama’s bone-deep terror of the dead years and years ago. But it always hurts to think of Hashirama at all, these days. He usually tries not to.

He’s just shaken, that’s all. Shaken by old pain. Anko’s flippant suggestion had brought up things he’d tried to hide where he wouldn’t have to remember them, and now the detritus is scattered over tracks of thoughts that are supposed to be safe.

Some things just won’t stay buried.

“Tobirama?”

Tobirama starts, stiffens, and turns as if attached to a string. For a while, fleeting moment if he somehow summoned his brother here by thought alone, but—no. The sense of magic that speaks of green and growing things is woven through a steel-strong golden lattice. His heart sinks.

“Mito.”

Meeting Hashirama’s soulmate in The Merchant of Death was not how he was hoping this day would go.

Her eyes are knowing, a little sad, and Tobirama realizes he probably looks like a deer in the headlights at the sight of her. but Mito was raised with more poise in her little finger than some people have in their entire bodies, so she doesn’t comment on it. “It’s good to see you again. What brings you here?”

“…Yew ash.” And demons skulking about, but he doesn’t plan to mention that. Then, because he has no idea what else to say: “Yourself?”

Mito gestures to her shopping basket and the three containers inside. “Powdered pearl and some blue pigments.”

Something to do with the sea, then, probably. Mito is indisputably a sealing master, and her family hales from islands off the eastern coast. They used to trade sealing theories back when he was still in school, but they haven’t in—a while.

She’s hardly a necromancer, but while Anko’s shop has a poor reputation among the sealing circles with more prestige, Mito doesn’t put up with that sort of snobbishness, and The Merchant of Death has better deals and more obscure products than most of the nicer sealing stores in town.

He sort of wishes he’d remembered that about her earlier, but it’s been months, and he’d stopped worrying about the possibility.

Mito gives him a small smile. “What are you up to these days?”

Tobirama hates small talk. he’s too cold, too closed-off, too unwilling to make friends. Mito had been the last acquaintance Tobirama had befriended on his own, actually, and that was two years ago. Hashirama had always despaired of him: You’ll be lonely, Tobirama, he’d chided, but Tobirama was just as stubborn as he was, and the subject had been at eternal impasse. Besides, he hadn’t ever had much use for anyone other than his family. Loneliness had seemed an empty threat, Hashirama’s advice annoying and misplaced.

Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. Not advice. A warning.

“The usual,” he says shortly. He can’t bring himself to be genuinely rude; Mito doesn’t deserve that, and he does like her. But her presence, the sense of Hashirama’s magic entwined with hers, is tying his stomach into knots. He hunches his shoulder and turns to the shelves just for an excuse to not have to look at her. A row of skull-shaped incense burners in a variety of colors stare back at him with empty sockets.

Which means yew ash is two aisles over, and he’s in the wrong place in a shop he has memorized. Damnit.

Mito is polite, but she’s not patient. When he stops playing along, she wastes no more time before cutting to the core of what she obviously approached him to know: “How is Kawarama?”

Tobirama whirls on her. “Hashirama should be asking that.”

“Yes, he should,” she agrees, calm in the face of his temper. “But I’m not asking for him. I’m asking because I want to know.”

Her expression is open, earnest. He can’t bring himself to meet that gaze for long, so he scowls back at the incense burners. “I’m sure.”

“I want to know how my in-laws are doing,” Mito continues, calm as the fair-weather sea—dangerous, always, but sparkling on the surface. “I’ve taken care of my niece before. She’s a hellion, and she’s only three. Kawarama’s four, isn’t he? It must be chaotic.”

Tobirama can feel her sincerity; it makes him want to crawl out of his skin. He doesn’t want to respond to her coaxing, but just a little sympathy has unraveled the magnesium flash of his ire, and now all he is is tired.

“He turned five last month,” he corrects her. And Hashirama wasn’t there. “But he’s—good. A restoration spell fixed him up after…” Tobirama bites the inside of his cheek, but he doesn’t need to finish that sentence, if he even could. He still can’t bring himself to look at her. “He likes the snow leopards I summon. He reads everything he can get his hands on, he ate my entire chocolate stash and immediately threw it up, he keeps calling me old…”

His throat closes and his eyes sting traitorously. Mito touches his arm lightly in silent sympathy, and Tobirama wants to snap at her, but he can feel Hashirama’s magic under her skin and he needs to pretend for just one moment that it’s actually his brother, back to comfort him like he used to. Even if Hashirama would never step foot in this shop with a reanimation on the premises. Even if he’s been avoiding Tobirama for the past four months.

It’s not like Hashirama doesn’t have somewhere better to be. He has a soulmate, someone who can’t hurt him, even on accident—not with magic, at any rate—someone who understands him and complements him in a way that, apparently, no one else could ever hope to match.

Tobirama stares at the row of little ceramic skulls and tries not to wonder things like why is he bound to you or do you really think he’ll stay for you, because they’re stupid questions and pointless, besides. No one knows why soul matches happen to those they choose, so Mito can’t tell him why. And if she could, maybe she wouldn’t—maybe that’s why she and Hashirama are bound with something deeper than Tobirama, with all his empathy, could ever touch, and why she gets to keep him even though Hashirama always, always runs.

“Is my number still in your phone?” Mito asks.

Tobirama casts her a suspicious look. “Why?”

“So you can let me know if you ever need anything.” She gives him a look just this side of expectant. “Niece, remember? A safety net is a good idea, and I could babysit in an emergency.”

Tobirama’s shoulders tense without his permission. The offer is well meant, but he feels almost nauseous at the idea. He trusts her, but it’s Kawarama, and… well, she’s still Hashirama’s soulmate. “I don’t need charity.”

Mito’s tone drops low in something like disappointment. “It’s not charity if it’s family, Tobirama.”

Tobirama doesn’t mean to flinch, but he can’t help it. Are we family, though? There’s a difference between a family of blood and a family that cares for one another, and it’s a difference he’s had to learn more than once. It leaves its scars every time.

He’s not sure how much Mito gathers from his face, but she purses her lips and joins him in judging the skull incense burners. “I think you two should talk, but you’re mature adults and can figure it out yourselves.”

Ah, there it is. “He’s the one who ran, Mito. I’m not chasing him.”

Something dark flashes through Mito’s magic, like the shadow of a sea serpent underneath the waves. Tobirama can’t help but remember that Mito’s magical specialty is binding, and if she decides to seal him into a matchbox and throw him at Hashirama, he’s going to have one hell of a time trying to stop her. Kidnapping is illegal, sure, but Mito has a temper. Slow to rouse—very slow to rouse—but vicious, once it has.

She also has more self-control than anyone he’s ever met. Mito takes a breath, but only lets it out with a dissatisfied sigh. Whatever she had been about to say sinks beneath the surface again. “Okay,” she offers instead. “No one’s going to make you talk to him. But being soulmates doesn’t make us the same person, and I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me.”

“Alright,” Tobirama capitulates, if only to deflate the awkward tension in the air. It’s a surprisingly reassuring sentiment, but he knows he’ll never take her up on her offer. She’s one of the very, very few friendly acquaintances he’s acquired and somehow not chased off afterward, but her stubbornness is one of the greatest contributing factors to that. This same stubbornness is probably half of what makes her a good match for Hashirama; Tobirama never wants to get between them in a fight.

And Hashirama has made his stance excruciatingly clear.

Mito wraps one hand around his wrist in a loose, non-hostile grip. He nearly pulls away, but Hashirama’s magic flows up and through her fingers, warm and comforting and trusting, and Tobirama finds he’s not that strong. He goes still instead, like some sort of feral creature too frightened to move in the face of a little kindness. But Hashirama’s magic isn’t reacting to him, and he holds tight to that knowledge even as its thorns prick at his palms and make him bleed.

“You don’t have to be alone,” Mito says softly.

Tobirama really does jerk away, then. You don’t have to be alone. Like it’s a choice he made, instead of a mistake. Like he’s the one who made the decision to walk away.

She knows that, though, so maybe she means something else altogether. Something about the way Hashirama’s magic curls through hers, at home and comfortable, the way only soulmates can share it. Hashirama had always yearned for a soulmate, mixed magic with anyone he dated for longer than a week and other besides.

Tobirama doesn’t. His magical specialties are passive, anyway—he’d have to do it on purpose, reach out into another human being and hope that there would be something that reached back into him. If it worked, he’s not even sure what he would do, what it would mean. What it would be like.

If they’d tell him to stop.

Hashirama lives his dream, now, moved in with his soulmate like he wanted. His and Mito’s apartment is always awash in gold and green magic, mingled and vibrant and beautiful. But Tobirama can’t help but wish that he and his brothers had held a place in Hashirama’s heart that he hadn’t merely been able to fill in, like a pothole in old back roads.

It won’t be like that, for Tobirama. He doesn’t work that way. He’s too empty for a soulmate to fill. Maybe if he had his brothers back—he has Kawarama, and he’ll get Itama back, he will, but even then he knows there will be a hole in their family where he’s missing something vital, like a lung, making it a constant battle just to breathe.

It’s not like everyone finds their soulmate, anyway. Tobirama of all people is probably not going to need to worry about it.

There’s a long moment where he can feel Mito debating whether to reach out again, an ocean swell that hasn’t decided whether to crest. He makes the choice for her. This conversation needs to die, and if he has to beat it over the head with a shovel before he can bury it in a shallow grave, that’s just fine.

He turns and walks away. He has things he needs to do, and some of them involve yew ash, which is in an aisle Mito does not have direct sightline to.

Tobirama can’t even focus on the different brands. Hashirama’s magic has been banked to no more than a hint of undergrowth, but Mito still hasn’t left. He waits, jaw clenched, until he feels her move toward the register, and then finally out the door.

The shelves aren’t really made for leaning on, but don’t to much more than creak when Tobirama does it anyway. A gust of air leaves him in something that could have been relief if he could stand to relax at all. All he needs is the ash, and then he can just go—

The reanimation shuffles into the aisle and stares at him, emotionless. Tobirama meets their gaze, but they don’t move or even look away. Waiting.

Like others of their kind, they can’t speak. Their muteness is unnerving to most people, but in his more whimsical moments, Tobirama finds a sort of kinship in their silence.

He scrubs over his face with one hand and reaches for the brand of ash that he usually gets, the finest consistency on the shelf. Anko, true to form, spends the entire checkout trying unsuccessfully to badger her way through his terse silence, but she either didn’t catch his conversation with Mito or has decided for once in her life to leave well enough alone.

Tobirama is just focused on getting home and forgetting as much as he can about that little chance meeting, or at least doing his level best to pretend it never happened. He meant what he said to Mito: he’s not chasing after Hashirama. Not this time.

Not when it would mean leaving Kawarama behind.

4 Months Ago

“You don’t usually want me anywhere near you when you’re doing a working,” Hashirama says leadingly.

He surveys the kitchen with a critical look as they pass through it, but whatever he’s looking for, he’s not going to find it. Tobirama actually has been eating—energy is important, and he needs energy right now. Sleep is… also important, he supposes, but it takes much more time than coffee, and he can manage for a long time without, if he’s careful. He’s had maybe eight hours of sleep total in the past week, but now he’s riding the high of discovery and success, so he couldn’t care less.

He’s charted the final iteration of the resurrection seal. He found his youngest brother’s soul. He can bring one of them back.

Tobirama drags Hashirama into the main room and sits him down on the floor. “Don’t touch anything,” he instructs severely.

Hashirama raises his eyebrows and keeps his hands in his lap. He’s obviously only humoring his eccentric little brother, but as long as he obeys, Tobirama can bear the condescension.

The couches and the armchair have been shoved back to the walls, the wide rug on the floor thrown back to reveal plain wooden floorboards with most of a seal already drawn on them. Hashirama showed up just before he finished, and he hurried to complete it before the ink in his inkwell dries out. Gold pigment isn’t as expensive as it sounds, but it still isn’t cheap and he doesn’t like wasting it anyway. Nor does he want to take the time to mix more gum arabic; not now, not when he’s so close.

Hashirama fidgets as he finishes the circle, eyeing Tobirama with suspicion that is absolutely undeserved. “Is this going to be like the bone velociraptor? If it is, I’m leaving.”

It’s not like Hashirama was ever in danger, Tobirama had filed the teeth down first. He shakes his head impatiently. “Of course not. This will be much better.”

“Oh, gods. Did you find a museum that has non-plaster T-Rex bones? If you stole them, I’m not bailing you out when they catch you.”

Tobirama sits back on his heels. He reviews each piece of the circle, each sigil, but he’s practiced it a hundred times in the past twenty-four hours and he knows that it’s right. At this point, he could draw it in his sleep. There’s a blanket over the child-sized artificial cadaver in the center of the seal, because Kawarama will likely be cold when he wakes up, and he definitely won’t have clothes. But he’ll be alive.

A grin slants across Tobirama’s face, widens until he can’t help but give a little laugh. “No,” he says reverently. “It didn’t have to steal anything. It’s all here.”

Hashirama doesn’t respond for a moment. “Tobirama,” he says, slow and careful like skirting the edge of a precipice, “when’s the last time you slept?”

“I’m perfectly cognizant,” Tobirama dimisses.

Hashirama’s voice goes serious, deeper. “Are you on stimulants again?”

Tobirama rolls his eyes. “I know better, I’ve only had coffee.” And the adrenaline of the first stages of success, but he has always had a love-hate relationship with adrenaline, so he doesn’t give it any credit if he can help it. This is the most awake he’s felt at any point in the last three days. “Now back up.”

Hashirama doesn’t move. “What kind of circle is this? What are you doing?”

“I’m fixing things.”

“Fixing what?”

Tobirama is rapidly losing patience with Hashirama’s questions. He eyes the distance between the edge of the golden ink and his brothers knees, but Hashirama isn’t actually close enough to the circle to get caught in it. He might startle a little, because Hashirama’s magic is of green and growing things, and he doesn’t know anything about seals that he could avoid learning despite his brother and soulmate both being sealing geniuses, but he won’t be hurt.

Tobirama places his hands on the circle, magic rising to feed into the cyclical pattern of the seal. Ice-blue magic meets golden ink and they coalesce into beautiful, beautiful light.

He will never be tired of magic, of the effect it can have on the world, of what he can do. Magic may be a tool or even a weapon, but it’s an elegant one. A captivating one. He can feel the entreaty to Heaven and its angels that he wrote into the circle. Kawarama will answer, will return, and Tobirama knows that because his little brother had told him he would, just three days ago when he finally managed a seance that could reach a soul in Heaven.

“I’m bringing Kawarama back,” he says breathlessly.

Hashirama recoils from the circle. “What? You—Tobirama, how could you? He’s at peace!”

Peace? After being murdered by Butsuma? The idea is so asinine that Tobirama refuses to grant it even a moment of deliberation. Kawarama is coming home to them, and then they can find peace, together, where it was stolen from them years ago.

Hashirama seizes his wrist in a bruising grip. The seal is already fed and functional, magic barely starting to change the cadaver in the center, so Tobirama takes the time to give his brother a confused look instead of shaking him off.

He’s gone pale, his usually tan skin ghostly with dread; his eyes are too wide, almost wild. Fear rises up behind them like a caged animal desperately seeking escape. “You promised,” he hisses. “You promised you’d never be like him!”

There’s only one person Hashirama could mean, with that tone of voice, that emphasis. The name that lies underneath it is one that Hashirama has managed to avoid saying for years. It still takes a moment like an eternity for the words to click in Tobirama’s mind, and he flinches back from the verbal blow. “No,” he denies, bile climbing up his throat. “I would never—”

“Then why are you doing this!” Hashirama shouts, voice cracking.

“I want my little brothers back,” Tobirama snarls. “Don’t you?”

“Not like this! Not as puppets!”

The golden-blue light of the seal dies, leaving Hashirama’s face shadowed. Tobirama twists back to the seal, where a small head lifts from under the blanket in the center.

“Hashi-nii?” Kawarama says, somehow so much smaller than Tobirama remembers, but here. The tell-tale signs of reanimation crack open the skin of Kawarama’s face and his left forearm, and his eyes are hauntingly dark with their black sclera. But those are minor and expected issues, and hearing that childish voice steals his breath away.

“It worked,” Tobirama murmurs. It worked. He summoned Kawarama’s soul back to form the right body, even without his original one, which is almost certainly completely decomposed by now, wherever it is. He still needs to perform the restoration, to make sure Kawarama is truly alive again and not simply reanimated, but he’s built the seals for a necromantic restoration, and Hashirama’s magical affinity to life means that he can help supply the power to it.

Hashirama makes a broken, distressed sound of horror. “You turned him into a monster,” he chokes out.

Tobirama’s mind goes blank. Monster? It’s Kawarama. It’s Kawarama sitting in the seal, looking at them with big eyes and drawing up one hand to nibble nervously on his fingernails. There’s no monster here, just their little brother. He’s saved Kawarama, he’s brought their brother home.

But fear coils up in Hashirama’s magic like a venemous snake preparing to spring, and he holds his hand over his mouth like he’s going to be sick. Shakes his head, denying the first sight either of them have had of Kawarama in thirteen years. Scrambles back as through burned, stumbles to his feet, and runs for the door.

“Wait—” Tobirama starts, but Hashirama’s terror strikes, impacting less like a slap to the face and more like a knife slipped between his ribs, puncturing a lung, leaving him struggling to breathe. The word hangs in the air, but Hashirama has never waited before, and now is no different. He hears the door slam so hard that the old writing desk in the entryway rattles.

He can’t speak. He can barely breathe. He wants to scream at Hashirama to come back (like he would) or cry out because it hurts (like that would help) or just let the world fade until this all becomes some sort of awful nightmare brought on by too many research binges and his usual terrible dreams. He can’t breathe.

Kawarama whimpers, frightened.

The world snaps back into focus so fast that it spins before settling down. Tobirama locks his panic and self-loathing and pain in a box and buries it, lets his heart hollow out until it’s empty, far safer safer than letting it flood into tears or screams. Kawarama needs him. His little brother needs him.

Tobirama tears his gaze from the doorway Hashirama ran through. Kawarama huddles in the blanket, hunched over like he’s trying to look smaller than he already is. Tobirama moves toward him on his hands and knees, but Kawarama shrinks in on himself further. It hits like a punch to the stomach until Tobirama realizes—of course. It’s been thirteen years. He contacted Kawarama’s soul before, briefly, to make sure he hadn’t moved on into the reincarnation cycle, but he’s not at all certain that Kawarama has any conception of how many years have passed or what might have changed.

And all of them learned as children to be wary of adult men. One of the many lessons Butsuma gave them that they should never have been taught.

So Tobirama stops moving, keeping himself down at Kawarama’s level to make his face easier to see. “Kawarama, it’s me, Tobirama. It’s been a long time, so I’m older now, but I’m still me.”

Kawarama peeks up at him timidly, eyes tracing over his face and hair, the coloring that’s still the same and features that time has made less familiar. Finally, recognition sets in. “Tobi-nii?” He crawls toward him, dragging his blanket along awkwardly, and Tobirama leans forward to gently bump their foreheads together. Kawarama reaches out to touch the tattoo on Tobirama’s chin. “Did you get hurt?” he whispers.

Yes, Tobirama thinks, but that’s not what Kawarama means. “No, it’s a tattoo. Like—like drawing on myself, but it’s going to stay forever. See these ones?” Tobirama traces the matching tattoos on each cheek. Three lines of blood he can’t forget: one for Kawarama, one for Itama, and one for what he did to stop the horror. Kawarama mimics him, his little fingers lingering on the mark meant for him, like he somehow knows.

Kawarama looks down at himself and around the room with quick, prey-like glances before he trains his gaze back on Tobirama’s eyes, likely the most familiar thing about him. Then he sniffles. “Tobi-nii,” he says, voice thick and full of fear and hurt, and presses his face into Tobirama’s shoulder as he starts to cry.

Tobirama scoops him up and hauls him into his lap, holding him close and secure in his blanket. Kawarama’s skin is corpse-cold, he’s not actually breathing for the sake of anything other than being able to cry, and his coordination is off as his fingers clumsily latch onto Tobirama’s hoodie. But he’s still moving and speaking and here.

“It’s alright,” Tobirama soothes. “Tobi-nii is right here.” He rocks his little brother back and forth as the sobs ebb into sniffles and then grow into full-on crying again. He’s trying his best not to descend into utter panic, but it keeps trying to swell up inside him and it’s getting harder and harder to beat it down again. He’s so tired without the high of success, so absolutely fucking exhausted, and he needs to sleep before he ruins anything else. But he can’t leave Kawarama alone, he refuses to, and he still hasn’t performed the restoration spell that will allow Kawarama to sleep, too. But with his magic aligned so closely with cold and death, that will be much more difficult to perform alone, if he can manage it at all in his current state. He needs—he needed.

His hands are shaking. Unusual. He stares at them for almost a full minute, which he devotes to trying to get his breathing back under control, Kawarama’s head rising and falling in slowly steadying patterns where it’s pressed against his chest. Then he reaches for his phone, opens the phone app, and somehow manages to tap the right contact instead of fucking up and calling—calling Hashirama instead.

It rings. Rings. Picks up.

“Touka.” His voice is unsteady, but he’s already tried to make it stop wavering and it won’t. “I—I need your help. Bring anything you need for a restoration spell.”

Now

“Tobi-nii?”

Tobirama hums absently, still frowning down at his ink tests. Holy water does not do good things to the yew ash he’s trying to mix into ink. The magic of the blessing muddies and bleeds until it probably wouldn’t do more than sting a demon, and certainly wouldn’t be able to hold one. So far, willow ash is the only type that hasn’t nullified the holy water entirely. Considering that he forgot to pick up plain black pigment yesterday at Anko’s shop, after the… encounter, and that pigments that tend to hold a solid magical charge tend to be on the expensive end, that is—annoying.

Why does willow work, anyway? He has notes on this, somewhere; associations with the moon, with ghosts, with flexibility. None of those sound particularly heavenly, but there are probably more that he’s not remembering at the moment. He needs to find the book. Does yew have any detrimental associations in particular?

A small hand latches onto his elbow, not blocking his movement but noticeable even so. It takes Tobirama several seconds to finish his train of thought and finally tear his eyes away from the set of ink mixes he’s been working with. “Yes?”

Kawarama stares up at him, a little impatient, but he’s used to Tobirama’s habits after the last four months, and knows that whining is not the way to get his brother’s attention. “Can we go to the park?”

Tobirama looks over to the clock on the wall, situated conveniently near the window. The clock reads a quarter after two, and it’s still bright outside, so it’s mid-afternoon. Warmest time of the day. It hasn’t started snowing yet this fall, thank the gods, but it’s still gotten cold enough that it matters.

Within the last five seconds, it has come to Tobirama’s scattered attention that he’s actually exhausted. This is the first time he’s surfaced in several hours from his inks, materials, and a few minor seals he’s been fiddling with, and he’s not even sure he remembers how much sleep he got last night, so he’s rather tempted to tell Kawarama no.

But he also doesn’t remember if he’s taken Kawarama outside at all in the past few days. Touka might have. He’s been outside, often at godawful hours of the night and early morning, but he certainly hadn’t been doing anything he could bring his little brother along for. Pure logic—and the three parenting books he mainlined about a week after the resurrection—say it’s not good for a five-year-old to be cooped up inside for too long, so he needs to do something.

An expedition, then. “Well, I suppose,” Tobirama says, dramatically exaggerating a put-upon air. He screws the tops of the inkwells back on, pushes his chair back, then swoops down on Kawarama to wrap him in his arms. “Are you planning on anything sneaky?”

Kawarama starts wriggling almost immediately, barely suppressing a happy giggle. “No, Tobi-nii!”

“Something fun, then, I hope?” Tobirama dumps Kawarama on the nearer couch before he ends up dropping him headfirst onto the floor. Kawarama is a budding escape artist, and it would probably be turning Tobirama’s hair gray if it weren’t already stark white.

Kawarama twists with surprising grace and bounces onto the cushions like that’s exactly where he wants to be. “I wanna play on the swings. And with Yukime! Can Yukime come play with me?”

There’s about a thirty percent chance that inviting Yukime will prove to be a terrible idea, because some parents can’t deal with any hint of magic around their children without flipping their shit—though why anyone would choose to live in Konoha with an attitude like that, Tobirama will never understand. But letting Yukime look after Kawarama while Tobirama takes a nap in any sunlight he can find sounds like the best idea he’s had all day. He’s probably going to be chasing potential Hellish energies, specifically trying to track a demon, along ley lines either tonight’s witching hour or the next. Or both. There’s three ley lines running through this town, because apparently whoever first settled here had big dreams and no sense whatsoever; if he wants to go over them all, he needs to stock up on sleep before he trips into another manic episode.

“The park on 6^th Street?” Then, remembering Kawarama is much too short to read the signs, Tobirama adds, “The one with two swingsets?”

Kawarama nods so hard that he bounces again and nearly topples off the couch. “And the spaceship slide!”

It’s a plain red tube slide with two clear plastic windows set into the side of it, but Kawarama’s imaginative love of the worn thing is downright adorable. “And the spaceship slide,” he agrees, smiling. “Go get your shoes and your coat.”

Kawarama scampers off. Tobirama sighs down at his own sock-clad feet for a moment, but he can’t deny that it’s not just good for toddlers to get some sun. Tobirama’s naturally pale, yes, but Hashirama—Touka will mock him for looking like a vampire if he manages to get any paler. Or she’ll say he looks like a corpse, but she does that anyway.

Coat, gloves, a handful of defensive seals already drawn out on paper and ready to shove into his pocket—it’s not paranoia when he keeps running into a demon that may or may not want him enslaved, or possibly wants his head on a pike. He hovers a bit as Kawarama wrestles with his coat zipper, but he doesn’t have to interfere. Kawarama manages it fine on his own, and as long as he sits down instead of trying to balance on one foot, he’s capable of putting his boots on by himself too.

The walk to the park does not change Tobirama’s mind about that nap. He stakes out an empty bench in the sun a little ways from the playground, by some miracle managing to snag the back of Kawarama’s coat before he takes off like a shot toward the swings. Tobirama ignores his little brother’s impatient vibrating as he slides his crystal summoning rods out of their sewn-in pockets in his rucksack. “I’m going to take a nap, bu you can play with Yukime on two conditions.”

Kawarama straightens up, opens his eyes very wide, and blinks deliberately to show just how well he is listening for the conditions.

“First: she can’t go on the playground with you, so if she calls for you, you have to go to her. Second: if one of the parents gets upset about her being here, you have to come back over to me.” He’ll watch Kawarama himself if he has to, but anytime he misses a chance to catch up on sleep, he gets grumpy—bitchy, insists the voice in his head that sounds a little too much like Touka. If he has to sit anywhere near the offending parent afterward, he’s going to make them cry, and he can’t promise it’ll be accidental.

Kawarama nods. “Listen to Yukime, come back if someone’s mean to her.”

Not the only trouble will be convincing Yukime not to eat someone’s face if they try getting between her and her ‘cub,’ but Tobirama can probably manage that much. He offers Kawarama a smile, then draws out a strand of magic from his core to loop around the crystal rods. Yukime mists into existence practically on his lap, but she’s thankfully much lighter than a living snow leopard would be, unless she’s actively trying to throw her weight around.

Yukime greets Tobirama with a brief brush of her cheek against his, and Kawarama with a lick up the side of his face that makes him shriek. Tobirama appreciates the agreement he has with the snow leopards, but he’s unspeakably glad that Yukime decided he was an associate rather than a cub when he’d first summoned her at the ripe old age of seventeen. They’ve grown closer, of course, but snow leopards are generally solitary creatures by nature, so she doesn’t try to groom him unless he’s managed to do something spectacularly stupid enough to worry her. Kawarama at least seems to enjoy the attention enough to accept being licked and patted like an unruly kitten.

“Kawarama will be playing on the playground under your supervision. Don’t bite anyone unless they present a violent danger, or we’ll have to leave and Kawarama will pout. I’ll be napping here for you to pounce on if anything goes wrong. …Please do not pounce if nothing goes wrong,” he clarifies after a moment, because Yukime is generally polite, but she’s still a cat.

Yukime blinks at him slowly. Hopefully, this means that she understands and agrees, but it could just as easily mean she plans to pounce on him at the earliest opportunity. Tobirama is just going to have to cross his fingers that it isn’t the latter.

She bumps her shoulder very gently against Kawarama’s ribs. “Go on, cub. I’ll be watching.”

Kawarama takes this as permission to sprint toward the spaceship slide as fast as he can without face-planting in the grass or sand, with Yukime padding sedately after him. Tobirama, in turn, takes this as permission to start in on his nap. He swings his feet onto the bench, lays down with an arm wrapped through the straps of his rucksack to deter any potential thieves, and pulls his beanie down over his eyes. The temperature is—barely—hitting sixty degrees, and without his coat and the sunshine, he’d find it much too cold to sleep.

As it is, it’s comfortable enough, and he’s tired enough that he drift off in under two minutes, straight into the deep rest of the sleep-deprived.

Madara almost walks past the bench without even noticing.

He would have walked by, anyway, but whenever he passes playgrounds, he’s in the habit of subtly checking for anything malevolent that might prey on kids. But one sweep with his sharingan, a dose of perfect recall, and even if the bench is a ways from happily shrieking children, on the very edge of of his vision, he catches just enough to recognize that glimmer of sunlight-through-ice.

He stops cold. First the stupid coffee shop, now a park. Madara cannot believe this asshole—does Senju fucking Tobirama have nothing better to do with his day? Has he devolved from attacking demons to stalking children?

Honestly, he’d love to just keep walking, but just because it isn’t the witching hour doesn’t mean a necromancer skulking about can’t be up to no good. Tobirama’s clever, and vicious, and Madara doesn’t trust him an inch. He sighs and spins around, stalking over to the bench where the necromancer is… laying down?

Sleeping. In the broad daylight in a park. Bundled up in a coat with a beanie pulled low over his eyes, arm wrapped through that rucksack of his like someone might take the worn thing.

…Is he homeless?

Madara exhales on a hiss. He hates being confused, he hates stupid antagonistic necromancers, and he extra hates that he’s a little too wary to actually shake the asshole awake. If he strips off Madara’s illusion here, it’ll be chaos, and someone could get hurt. Probably not Madara, unless Tobirama got something more vicious than holy water in the past thirty-six hours, but still.

Before he can think about it too hard, he crouches down to scoop up some of the fallen leaves littering the ground and leans over the back of the bench just far enough to drop them on Tobirama’s face.

As Tobirama jerks upright, sputtering, beanie still low over his eyes, Madara takes a hasty step back—and then crosses his arms to pretend that he definitely did not just do that. It’s not like he’s still sore about losing his illusion or anything, of course not.

Tobirama brushes leaf fragments away from his lips. “Kawa—” He cuts himself off, stiffening, and practically rips off his beanie to glare at Madara.

His hair is a mess, which Madara would find funnier if it were literally anyone else. He’s not sure what the hell the necromancer was about to say, but he also doesn’t really care; he scowls and does his best to look unimpressed. “Are you homeless?”

“No,” Tobirama snaps automatically, “I’m—” He stops abruptly, and there’s an awkward pause. He fiddles with his beanie and finally shoves it back on before he continues, stilted and stiff, “I’m getting some fresh air. I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

That is probably the least convincing lie Madara has ever heard. “Maybe choose somewhere better than a hundred feet from a kid’s playground for your ‘fresh air.’” He makes sure to do the air quotes, for added obnoxiousness. Tobirama hasn’t reached for any ink yet, so he’s probably fine. “You look like a creeper.”

Tobirama narrows his eyes and his nostrils flare. Honest, angry reaction—hopefully, that means he’s not a threat to the kids in the first place. At least not directly. “Pot. Kettle,” he says frostily.

Madara harrumphs. “I was just passing by.”

Tobirama stares at him. Madara’s tense, waiting for some sort of threat, some sort of attack, but slowly, Tobirama lays down again and pulls his beanie low over his eyes.

The urge to kick the bench is nearly overwhelming. Madara wrestles with it—broad daylight with plenty of witnesses, many of them children, would be a terrible setting for a fight. Best to find him later, during the witching hour, or at least somewhere with less potential collateral damage.

“Fine. Be a hobo, then,” Madara huffs. “Fucking necromancer.”

He spins on his heel and storms away, trying not to feel like he’s running with his tail between his legs. Necromancers are definitely his least favorite kind of human.

Tobirama sits up again once the demon leaves. He guessed right---Madara was unwilling to start anything with witnesses around---but his heart is still pounding. Kawarama is within shouting distance, and the idea that Madara could have found out about him makes his skin crawl.

He needs a blessed knife. He’s been meaning to get one, he has a tanto set aside and knows which shrine he’ll go to, he just hasn’t found the time. Obviously he needs it sooner rather than later, if the demon is going to keep turning up where Tobirama least expects him.

At least Madara had the grace to be predictable once he had shown up. The hissy fit there at the end, when he’d relied on his senses to tell him which way Madara would move, had been amusing. Very… human.

Madara keeps making a habit of that.

He squints at his watch. They’ve been here for almost an hour, but odds are that Kawarama isn’t done playing yet. Tobirama scrubs a hand over his face; his first thought, woken up by dried leaves of all things, had been that it was his brother. The jolt of realizing that it was Madara dumped enough adrenaline in his system that going back to his nap is plain not going to happen.

It’s another ten minutes before Kawarama comes hurtling off the playground, Yukime detaching herself from the landscaped boulder she’d staked out to pad afer him. Kawarama hits Tobirama’s knees like a very soft homing missile and immediately starts babbling about the spaceship slide.

Yukime sniffs once and gives Tobirama a long look. Deliberately, she sneezes on him.

Tobirama scowls, eyeing her. Kawarama, bouncing like the energy bunny, is now pulling at his hand to get him to stand up. He’s adorable, of course. Yukime? Not so much. Not when she’s trying to give him a silent lecture.

“I know,” he tries.

Yukime’s nose twitches. “You smell of sulfur.”

Madara didn’t even touch him. Is mere proximity enough to transfer scent? Was it those damned leaves? Tobirama isn’t even sure he wants to know. “It’s not like I asked him to come here,” he mutters crossly.

Yukime sneezes on him again.

He heaves a sigh and gets to his feet. Kawarama crows in victory, pulling harder to get him to go faster, Tobi-nii, you’re so slow, inciting Tobirama to hoist him up onto Yukime’s back. Yukime eyes Tobirama incredulously, but Kawarama leans over her neck and promptly starts complementing her ghostly coat, so she takes the indignity with grace.

Tobirama is so happy that Kawarama is small and sweet enough to flatter the snow leopards. They don’t believe Tobirama when he tries to get on their good side, anymore.

A gust of wind snatches at his coat and Tobirama suppresses a shiver, looking reflexively behind him to the trees at the edge of the park. Madara is long gone, and his senses would tell him long before his eyes would if he weren’t, but Tobirama can’t help the paranoia. It’s like the demon left something else behind besides his sulfuric scent; some imprint of its Blood Eyes, like now the very trees are watching them.

“You’re slow, Tobi-nii!” Kawarama whines, and the moment snaps. Tobirama turns around and starts to walk faster, doing his best to smile. He does his best to shake his unease, but the phantom feeling of nonexistent eyes follows him all the way home.

Chapter Text

16 Years Ago

The first time Tobirama sees a reanimated corpse, he’s seven years old.

Father told them to gather in the sitting room just a few minutes ago. Hashirama is obedient but looking mulish, his arms folded tightly; Kawarama and Itama don’t mind playing in here for a bit, after Tobirama chivied them out of their toy room.

It takes Father almost ten minutes to return, and he’s leading a woman by the elbow into the room. She has long, pale hair, chalk-white skin that’s cracking apart in places, and eyes with pale blue irises and black sclera. Her face is utterly, completely blank, and Tobirama subconsciously mimics her, keeping his expression still and unchanging.

Hashirama does not. He gasps, strangled, and grinds his teeth together over a muted sound of outrage with grief close at its heels. Tobirama wants to reach out and grab his hand, but Father doesn’t like to see them comforting each other, so he resists the urge.

“Boys.” Father looks down at Itama and Kawarama, still playing on the floor, and his voice sharpens. “Boys.”

Tobirama kneels down and places his hands over his brothers’ smaller ones. “Father asked for your attention,” he says evenly, careful not to make it an order and succeed where Father failed.

Itama and Kawarama go quiet and look up at Father. They don’t see him much, and they’re just barely old enough to begin to understand that Father can be dangerous when he’s angry and that it’s best not to make him so.

Father clears his throat. “Boys, this is your mother. She’ll be taking care of you again.”

Tobirama recognizes the body. She’s been in the freezer in the basement for two years, next to where the venison goes after Father’s hunting trips, once Hashirama and Tobirama help him cut up the deer carcasses. Hashirama hates the basement; whenever he’s forced to open the freezer, he has screaming nightmares that anger Father, so when someone has to go down there, it’s Tobirama. Her face, frosted over and eerily blue, features in his dreams, but he never screams. She is why Hashirama and Tobirama know to hide from Father when he hasn’t been sleeping enough.

Tobirama doesn’t remember very well what she looked like when she was alive. It’s strange to see her walking again.

Hashirama is shaking, all over—his knees shake, his voice shakes, his finger shakes when he points it at the new-familiar face. “What is that?”

Father’s face darkens. “This is your mother. You will speak of her with due respect.”

Hashirama shakes his head, eyes wide and horrified. He can’t tear his eyes away from her. He won’t stop shaking his head.

Tobirama steps sideways and grabs his older brother’s wrist to yank it down. Hashirama tries to twist his arm away, but Tobirama holds tight enough for his nails to bite into tanned skin, just enough for Hashirama to really feel it. Shut up stop moving shut up stop moving, he thinks very hard at him.

Hashirama goes still like a frightened rabbit. He’s still trembling.

Tobirama bows to the corpse. “Hello, Mother,” he says politely. “It’s nice to see you again.”

Nausea lurches, in that strange way that means it’s in Hashirama’s stomach and not his own. Tobirama holds the bow a moment longer, then draws himself up, never letting go of Hashirama’s wrist. He meets Father’s eyes, which no longer boil with rage. He seems darkly pleased.

He doesn’t look like Tobirama thought insanity would look, if he ever saw it. it’s not like it sounds in the books he reads. This is quiet. Malicious. Intentional, almost—Father doesn’t seem to want to be sane.

Tobirama will humor him. He will be a good, obedient son, and he will make sure his brothers at least look like good, obedient sons, because he doesn’t want to be stuffed in the freezer and he doesn’t want to see his brothers’ empty faces, covered in ice crystals, every time Father sends him to go get the venison.

“Be good to her, boys,” Father tells them. Then, to the corpse he calls their mother: “Take care of them.”

The corpse’s face doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak. She walks over and picks up Kawarama, who goes very, very still in her arms. Itama falls onto his bottom in alarm and skitters backwards on his hands and feet until he’s pressed against Tobirama’s legs.

Breathe in. Breath out. Tobirama’s hand on Hashirama’s wrist is probably painful right now. It takes a concentrated effort of several seconds before his fingers respond and peel away from their death grip on Hashirama.

Kawarama is okay, and the corpse won’t drop him. The white noise in his head and the throbbing in all ten of his fingers are both adrenaline reactions, and they will fade as his brain processes things and discovers there is no danger, because danger is what adrenaline is for. There are lots of books about the human body in the house, and Tobirama has read all of the ones he can understand and several that he can’t. Adrenaline is not bad, it’s just not optimized for threats that he can’t run away from. It’s a gut reaction. Fight, Flight, Freeze.

Tobirama can’t run. Tobirama can’t fight. So he is still, and he moves carefully, and he doesn’t ever, ever look down.

He leans over, takes Itama’s hand, and nudges him to stand. “Itama, come on. We’ll go back to the playroom with Kawarama.”

The corpse-puppet follows Tobirama silently. When he leads a clingy Itama to the toy box, she sets Kawarama down on the floor and sits woodenly next to the door. Kawarama’s eyes shine with unshed tears of fright and his lower lip wobbles alarmingly, but Tobirama gives him a practiced, insincere smile, and offers him his favorite toy, a delicately carved wooden horse that he keeps chewing on even when Tobirama reminds him not to. “We can play now, okay?”

Hashirama hovers at the door, but he sees the corpse-puppet called Mother sitting in the room and stops like he froze there, ice in his joints. He doesn’t come inside.

Now

“Well, you were up early for a Monday morning.”

Tobirama glances over his shoulder at his cousin, or more specifically the clock on the wall behind her, and frowns. “It’s nearly noon.”

“I meant earlier.” Touka waves her hand, a tarot card pinched between two of her fingers. Ah. “Looking for protection, huh?”

Tobirama turns back to his desk. “I went to the shrine over on 17^th Street. Needed a refill on holy water.” He also needed a blessed knife, which he has now, locked up inside the desk in his warded study, where he keeps everything else he needs to make sure Kawarama can’t get into and hurt himself on accident. The tanto is short, its blade only about as long as the hilt itself, but it’s one he knows how to use. Blessed as it now is, it’ll be enough to defend himself from Madara if he needs to.

But Touka probably doesn’t need to know about that.

“Did you need something, or are you just being nosy?” Tobirama asks, attention already straying back to his books.

“Yes, actually—Zombirama, don’t start reading while I’m still talking to you or I will dump glitter on your head.” Tobirama’s eye twitches at the nickname, but he valiantly does not throw anything at her, or toss some ink on the floor in a pattern that will seal her feet for an hour.

For one thing, that would mean she’d be stuck here in the same room as him, with nothing better to do but heckle him the whole time.

“What,” he snaps.

Touka gives him that look that means she’d very much like to give him the silent treatment until he starts acting like a semi-gracious human being, if only she had a fraction of the patience that would actually take. It’s a very eloquent look, precisely distinct from the look that means she just wants to kick him in the shin and make him limp for a while. He inspires both of these a lot.

“I have a midterm tomorrow,” Touka tells him, because patience has never been her forte. “And then another midterm the day after that. So I can’t babysit, because if you so much as breathe in my direction on either of those days I’m going to snap from the stress, and probably become a fucking case study in one of my textbooks. Got it?”

“Will they have a picture of my corpse by the analysis?” Tobirama says drily.

Touka gives him an insincere smile with too many teeth. “It’ll be a very fashionable corpse. Drowned in glitter and still sparkling like the bitchy diva you are.”

“I’m not a diva.”

“I notice you’re not denying the bitchy part.”

“Don’t use that language where Kawarama might hear you.”

“That’s still not really a denial.”

Tobirama takes a moment to count to ten and remind himself—yet again—that throwing a book at Touka would be bad, because then he wouldn’t have the book. “I will… take your schedule into account. I do have plans for tonight’s witching hour, but Yukime can stay for that.”

Touka mulls that over, threading her fingers through her bangs. “I’ll sleep here,” she decides, “at least tonight. Just as added insurance. But then I’m gone for forty-eight hours during which you are absolutely forbidden from doing anything stupid, because if I have to come call an ambulance or bail you out of jail and then I bomb a midterm, you’re so paying for me to retake the fucking class.”

“Fine.” Tobirama frowns at her in reproach. “And I don’t do stupid things.”

Touka snorts an incredulous laugh, but doesn’t bother trying to argue with him. She steps forward to peer over his shoulder instead. “What’re you looking at? Don’t make that face at me,” she adds, frowning at him, “you like you’re going to start setting things on fire if they don’t start making sense, and if a book is the victim of that, you will pout about it afterward, I know you. Maybe talking about it out loud will help. Anything to get it out of that head of yours.”

He sighs; he’s unlikely to get anything else done until she gets bored, so he may as well answer. It’s not like he was getting anywhere in a hurry before, so who knows, maybe she’s right and running through it out loud will give him an idea.

“Demon compendium,” he replies, to answer her first question. He borrowed it from the college library months ago, and they probably want it back, but he has no plans to return it until he’s good and ready. He picked up a few books from the church as references, too, for all the good that’s done. “I’m trying to find a name or symbol attached to a specific demon. Or a pattern to find a symbol if given a name, but the current sample size isn’t really big enough to tell if there’s even a correlation between the two.”

Touka rests her elbow on the back of his chair. “Can’t you just go find another compendium and get more names?”

Tobirama scowls. “This is the most complete compendium left in Konoha. I’ve already found eight different citations for others that are supposed to be more complete, but they’re all books that don’t exist anymore.” Not since Hellish texts started vanishing, sometimes literally going up in smoke.

He knows it’s paranoid to believe that such a series of events was targeting him, specifically, especially considering he hadn’t even been born yet when it happened. If he suggests as much aloud, Touka’s going to think he’s lost it. It’s just driving him up a wall that the information may have been readily accessible barely thirty years ago, and now he’s left spinning his wheels.

Tobirama leans back in his chair. “If I can’t find a pattern in here, there’s no larger collection to go looking for.” The symbol of the demon he’s searching for isn’t in here, and neither is the name Madara, if that one is real enough to give him any answer in the first place. It was a bit of a long shot in the first place, but it’s still disappointing. “I’ll have to try another tack entirely.”

“Like?”

That’s the question, isn’t it. Tobirama massages the bridge of his nose. “I can’t identify him by name, but I can test if he’s compelled to show himself for a summoning. The compelling might be somewhat non-traditional, if he’s the one already on the mortal plane, but—”

“Already where?” Touka says sharply.

Damn, he hadn’t meant to say that. Touka can’t do anything about the demon’s presence—and neither can he, for that matter—so he figured she’d be more comfortable not knowing. So much for that. “There’s a demon lurking around Konoha.” That’s probably a little harsh. “…Surprise.”

Touka huffs viciously enough to make her long bangs fly upward for a moment. “Surprise,” she echoes flatly.

“I’m not sure how long he’s been here, but so far Konoha hasn’t descended into a pit of fire and brimstone. Hypothetically there are fail-safes to prevent that sort of thing,” he assures her.

“Hypothetically?”

Tobirama chooses to ignore how strangled she sounds. It’s unfortunate that he’s so bad at comforting people, but she already knows that—people can’t stand confrontation with their own mortality, like if they cover their ears and ignore the world hard enough, car accidents or magical accidents or just the cruel vindictiveness of fate will suddenly cease to exist. Tobirama prefers to stare the odds in the face. Looking away has never saved him before.

That’s exactly the sort of sentiment that would probably worry Touka, come to think of it.

“I mean hypothetically in that, while I have never personally gone looking, all the research point to the purpose of angels being the protection of the mortal plane from the denizens of hell,” he offers. He pauses a moment, but Touka doesn’t sarcastically repeat any part of that, so he cautiously continues. “So Konoha as a whole is safe.”

“As a whole?”

Gods damnit. This is why Tobirama hates interpersonal anything.

“I asked you to be careful about the demons,” Touka starts.

“And I am,” Tobirama insists, determined to cut this lecture off at the knees. “I am being careful. If I could do every part of my research at a desk, believe me, I would be delighted to never speak to another demon in my life, but they’re the only ones left that I can study from. Nobody knows these things anymore, if they ever did. I have to discover these things on my own, and demons aren’t safe, which means there will always be some amount of risk, no matter how much I do to mitigate it.”

Touka’s unease is obvious. “I—” She looks away and chews on her lip. “I get it. Just… keep being careful, then. I know you need to do this, but Kawarama needs you too.”

If Touka felt any less like concern than she does, Tobirama thinks he wouldn’t remember how to be kind, in the face of that. Of course Kawarama needs him, how dare she insinuate that he’s forgotten—

Concern is all there is, though. She isn’t accusing, she isn’t angry, so he keeps his voice from rising too far. He stays as gentle as he can. “I will make this work.” Because there’s no other option. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen.” Even though he knows that’s not always in his control. Even though he knows terrible things happen every day.

But Touka can’t tell when he lies to her. Not the way he almost always knows. So he can tell her something that’s a little softer than the truth, a little easier, something he would want to believe if he could ever allow himself to.

After one long, taut moment of silence, Touka lets out an explosive sigh and lightly cuffs him over the head. “Why is talking to you so depressing? I can’t wait until you have another little brother underfoot—I’ll bet you’ll finally smile more than you brood, and promptly make everyone who knows you pass out in shock. Including me.”

The knot in his chest eases. She talks like it’s a given that Itama is coming home, inevitable, and it is, of course, but hearing it from someone else—helps, at least a little.

“I’ll be sure to frown at you at least three times a day to keep your heart from giving out,” Tobirama promises.

Touka rolls her eyes at him, shoves the back of his head hard enough that his nose nearly smacks into the book he’s trying to read, and struts away.

Tobirama gives into the inertia and lets himself rest his forehead on the open book. Just for a minute. He follows Touka with his senses as she stops just inside the living room, worrying over how worried she still is. Magic flares, the telltale twist that means she’s pulling a card from her tarot deck for a brief reading. After it’s over she’s calmer, more centered, less distressed.

His anxieties ease in turn. He has no idea what card she drew or what it means, but if she’s reassured, so is he. Having a cousin with a talent for divination does have its bright spots.

Then Tobirama reaches blindly for the mug he knows is on his desk, only to find it gone. His head shoots up abruptly. “Touka! Where is my coffee?”

“You need sleep more than you need another headache! Go take a fucking nap!”

Tobirama lets his head thud back onto his book and groans in defeat. He hopes, uncharitably, that wherever Madara is skulking about now, he’s at least having a worse day than Tobirama is.

Madara slams the small plastic jar down on the counter. Anko doesn’t flinch—of course she doesn’t, he didn’t really expect her to, but he scowls a little in disappointment anyway. “Your ash, Mitarashi.”

“Sure you didn’t break the jar?” she says wryly, snatching if from him and inspecting the container for cracks.

It’s plastic, it’s not like it’s going to shatter that easily. Madara rolls his eyes. “Jar’s fine.” Probably. Look, he’s got a bit of pent up frustration at the moment, he’s not trying to break anything. Stupid necromancers and their disrespect for other people and the natural world order in general. “Look, I’ve got other places to be, so…”

Anko snorts. “No, you don’t.”

Madara glares at her. He could have other places to be, if he wanted to—which he doesn’t. She doesn’t have to assume.

“I owe you twenty percent on top of the usual, yeah?” Anko says, not even giving him the dignity of enough time to come up with a proper rebuttal. “Just a minute.”

She pops behind the door marked Employees Only in the back of the shop. Hellish ash is expensive, and Anko doesn’t keep enough for a full batch in the register, even though nobody’s stupid enough to steal from her these days. The last person that tried is still off gibbering in a hospital somewhere, and Anko somehow slid under prosecution for it. Necromancers: scary as shit.

Anko takes several minutes longer than usual, but just about the time that Madara starts gearing up to shout and ask her what’s taking so long, she hip-checks the door open, carrying an envelope in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“What, did you get peckish?” Madara says waspishly, and rears back as Anko shoves the coffee practically in his face.

Anko wiggles the mug impatiently when he just blinks at it. “Take it, punk. You look like shit.”

Madara takes the mug gingerly, but it doesn’t explode in his hands or feel particularly threatening. He’s tempted to take a look with his sharingan, but he can’t exactly activate it in front of Anko. She’s probably not trying to poison him. If she was going to try, it would have happened by now.

He takes a sip. Not bad. “Terrible,” he says flatly, somehow cheered by the eye roll Anko gives him.

“Better than anything you can make. Did you get evicted or something?”

Madara looks at her sharply. “Excuse me?”

“Your clothes are wrinkly as hell and you were wearing them three days ago,” Anko tells him. “Your hair’s a mess, too, but that’s not new, so I’ll let it slide.”

Madara is going to be gracious and not pick a fight over that last bit, even if it’s patently wrong—his hair is magnificent, thank you very much. “It’s called laundry, Anko.”

Also, his closet all looks pretty much the same, because he’s never gotten used to wearing anything other than black, black, and more black. But it’s been a stressful couple of days, so he runs through it in his head just to be sure—

Ah. His eye twitches. It can’t be what he was wearing three days ago, because that got all torn to Hell when a certain asshole necromancer decided to fuck with his illusions.

“Then you’re shit at it. Unless you got evicted, then you’re just shit at laundromats. Come on, you can tell me the truth, I won’t mock you for it.” Madara raises an eyebrow, and she shamelessly tacks on, “Much. You can crash on my couch if you don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

She says it dismissively, a little teasingly—she’s ribbing him for looking sloppy, Madara’s sure that’s all this is. But it’s still sincere, and that hits deeper than he expected it to. Anko’s a bitch, and he’s used to her tricks, but sometimes it punches him in the gut all over again that he’s not in Hell, not surrounded by demons, and even the people he can’t bring himself to trust completely are still capable of… kindness.

Anko would laugh if he mentioned it. Sometimes he thinks that humans don’t really understand how valuable kindness is; they give it away like spare change. Madara can’t help but hoard it, even so.

“And now you look like you’re going to throw up all over my nice waxed floor,” Anko says. “Do it and you’re cleaning it up, buster. My hospitality doesn’t go that far.”

Madara shakes his head and, with effort, gets his mental feet back under him, throwing her a dirty look while he’s at it. “You haven’t gotten the floor waxed since I met you.” He rolls his eyes, if only so he can make sure he’s not looking at her when he adds, “I’m fine, Mitarashi. You’re practically paying my rent, anyway.”

A bald-faced lie, since he doesn’t have anywhere to pay rent, but it’s all he can think to say to dissuade her. He certainly doesn’t need to crash on her couch. He’s fine, and he doesn’t need to sleep—he technically can, but he doesn’t think he could ever let his guard down that much if there were anyone, human, demon, or otherwise, that could get to him when he was sleeping and defenseless. Even if this human is… kind. At least when it suits her.

Humans are so weird. That’s why Madara likes them, though, so he doesn’t understand why there’s something hollow pressing at the inside of his ribcage.

Anko gives him a last, critical look before shrugging. “Whatever. Just remember, with a face like that, you need your beauty rest.”

“Look who’s talking, bitch!” Madara snaps back, bristling. He forces his shoulders down and tries to school his temper almost immediately, but he can’t help the huffiness. His face is fine, and Anko’s obvious amusement isn’t doing anything to make him less grumpy. “Do you need anything else? And I swear, if you say ‘more ash’ any time before the usual monthly supply, I’m leaving you for a more considerate shopkeeper.”

“Well, I’d hate to chase you off. This is plenty, I’m not planning on letting one person buy me out again.”

Madara’s jaw drops. “Just one—? By the gods, woman, why?”

“You’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm, calm down,” Anko drawls. “Kid’s a responsible necromancer, he’s not going to burn down the city. He’s still only halfway to the max legal possession.”

Sure, it’s technically not illegal—yet—but half a kilo of Hellish ash in the possession of necromancer Anko calls kid? Then again, she calls him a kid, too, so this person could be thirty for all he knows.

“I’m pretty sure ‘responsible necromancer’ is an oxymoron,” he says flatly. Anko pouts at him. It’s overdone and bordering on horrific, and Madara is very glad he’s pretending to be human and that image isn’t imprinting on his brain for eternity. “Don’t give me that look, we both know you don’t qualify.”

“I haven’t done anything illegal in years,” she reassures him, unreassuringly. “And the Senju brat’s even polite.”

Madara freezes. He suddenly has so, so many regrets. “Senju Tobirama?” he chokes out.

Anko straightens from her slouch over the counter. It gets rid of the pout, so Madara is tentatively willing to forgive the way her eyes sharpen. “That kid ain’t exactly social, how do you know him?”

Madara opens his mouth, closes it, and tries his very best not to sputter. His brain’s gears are stubbornly grinding over the fact that Tobirama apparently has at least 500 grams of Hellish ash. That is… not good. And it’s his Hellish ash, to add insult to injury. It’s probably not going to become a real problem—it’s not like there’s some sort of latent connection to the ash’s creator for a necromancer to hijack to get to him, or anything. But there’s also not supposed to be a way to simply strip a demon of their illusions. Tobirama is a sneaky bastard and Madara’s not giving him an inch—he needs to move forward a little more warily, because the necromancer keeps on fucking surprising him.

And he still has no idea how to respond to Anko; there is literally no good reason for him to know who Tobirama is except for the actual reason he does. Somehow, he doesn’t think ‘He’s trying to raise my dead evil demon father, the former Prince of Hell,’ is going to fly.

Anko’s eyebrows creep higher and higher as his moment of speechlessness stretches awkwardly. Then she grins, all teeth, like a shark that’s scented blood in the water.

“Awww, you think he’s cute, don’t you?”

Madara briefly fantasizes about just dropping dead here and now. His soul would probably just rematerialize in Hell instead of reincarnating properly, but it would almost be worth it. “NO I DO NOT.”

Anko makes a supremely unconvincing sound of understanding.

“I don’t, he’s crazy,” Madara hisses, horrified.

“He’s a good kid,” Anko corrects him. “Probably wouldn’t admit it under fire, but still.”

“He’s a necromancer.”

“Watch it, I’m a necromancer.”

“I know. You’re crazy too.”

By all appearances, Anko actually believes her statement about Tobirama, which is just—baffling. Tobirama is a danger to himself and everyone around him; that’s the opposite of a good kid. But humans fool each other all the time, so Madara just sighs internally and shrugs it off.

“Really though,” she says slyly,” how did you two meet? I have to be able to tease him next time he shows up.”

This time, Madara is lucky enough that his mind falls on their second meeting, rather than their first. “Couple days ago,” he manages. “He was at the cafe you recommended me. Which, by the way, is lucky its coffee is so good, it’s terrible in literally every other way.” There—vague, technically true, and now he can steer the subject to the stupid kitschy cafe, which is much easier to talk about than Senju fucking Tobirama.

“You just don’t appreciate the art of puns,” Anko sniffs. “You think my posters are bad!”

“That’s because they are.”

“Tobirama likes them,” Anko grumbles.

Madara doesn’t know how to respond to that, either. What he knows about Tobirama is starting to stack up like pieces from several entirely different puzzles. Possibly homeless, polite to Anko, likes puns. Trying to resurrect a demon and putting everyone in Konoha, including Anko, in danger. It doesn’t quite fit together, and it’s putting Madara in a snit, because he’s sure he’s missing something.

“Then he has no taste,” he mutters finally. He grabs the envelope from the counter, nicely thicker than usual, and stows it in his back pocket. He’s not worried about thieves; once he leaves the shop, an illusion will make sure nobody even knows it’s there. “Thanks, Mitarashi, I’m going to head out.”

“Next time you see Tobirama, give him my love—not just your own!”

Madara flips her off over his shoulder. Her cackling follows him through the door.

He checks the money in the envelope once he’s out of sight of the shop windows. It’s always the right amount, but he checks anyway, if only to soothe his own paranoia of being caught out as too trusting. That’s never served anyone well in Hell, and now matter times he chants in his head that it’s been seven years, it still won’t leave him—

The count’s wrong. Madara frowns, counts the money again as quickly as he can. Still wrong. It’s too much; she gave him twenty-five percent extra instead of just twenty. It has to have been a mistake. He should turn around and storm back in there to bitch about how she needs to learn to count, and he almost does, except there’s a half-sized bright green post-it note stuck to one of the bills. He peels it off carefully. It’s decorated with nothing but Anko’s rendition of an open-mouthed smiley face, which means it’s somehow managing to grin evilly at him even though it’s only about four ink strokes on a piece of paper.

So it’s intentional, then. Madara stares at the post-it for a few seconds longer, brow furrowed as his brain ticks through all the possible reasons Anko could have for giving him more than she promised him, on top of the usual bonus. Some sort of trick? No, not vicious enough. A test. But what the hell does she have to test him for, after all these years?

Or—she did ask if he’d been evicted. If she thinks he’s in financial trouble, could use a little extra help, then maybe it’s supposed to be… something like a kindness.

Madara stuffs the envelope back into his pocket and crumples the post-it in his fist. He takes off down the street with a gait that probably looks ferociously angry to anyone unfortunate to be in his way, emotions a storm of confusion and something that would make it difficult to speak if he dared try.

Humans. He doubts they’re ever going to stop surprising him.

Madara checks the crossroads of Rowan Ave. and the nameless dirt road first when witching hour starts, but it’s empty of confusing, irritating, possibly-homeless necromancers. He wasn’t here yesterday, either, after Madara saw him sleeping on the park bench. Having Tobirama out of sight for too long doing who knows what makes him a little nervous, but he decides to take it as a promising start to his usual patrol.

Swinging by the ley lines is equally uneventful. The witching hours or early, early Tuesday are usually the least busy of the entire week. The tiring dull-drum of Monday leeches a lot of the ambient magic that people put off, lessening chaotic aura of the town, if only by a little, and that in turn affects most rituals. Sometimes it’s combatted by the new or full moon—but while the moon hangs heavy and full, tonight, it was doing the same last night, so anyone who wanted to use the moon has mostly gotten it out of their system.

Madara is barely halfway through his patrol when he notices an unfortunately familiar sigil in a seal at a crossroads nearly eight miles from Rowan Ave.’s crossroad: Uchiha Tajima.

He scowls at it. Reminders of his asshole father garner a flinch of bad memories even on a good day, and knowing some human is out there trying to hunt him down for some ill-advised project makes him hate it that much more. It won’t work, sure, but no one should be looking for him in the first place.

Madara activates his sharingan and starts looking for traces of which way Tobirama might have gone. The seal can’t be more than fifteen minutes old or it would have dissipated already, and Tobirama has a ridiculous amount of magic for a human, so there should still be a magical trail to follow.

He hasn’t gone far at all. Just a few blocks away, heading back into Konoha proper. Madara stalks up to him from behind, hoping for a jump scare to get some of his own back after that humiliating mess with the illusions. This time, there’s no innocent humans around to get caught in whatever a necromancer’s flinch would do.

Before Madara can even open his mouth, Tobirama spins around sharply. “Are you stalking me?” he snaps, glaring and angry.

Sensor, shit. One of these days Madara is going to remember that fast enough not to make a fool of himself, but at least there’s no freaky fake bone spider this time. “I am not stalking you,” he blusters, drawing himself up with as much dignity as he can muster.

“‘To pursue stealthily.’” Tobirama sounds like he’s quoting a dictionary. Madara would not be the least bit surprised to find out that it’s word for word. “Mind you, your idea of stealthy is a little off—”

“Some of us don’t have eyes in the back of our heads, Senju—”

“—but it’s starting to get a little disturbing. What did you want?”

Madara is going to throttle him. Maybe bounce his head off a couple of brick walls. Usually he can at least get a question out before he gets derailed four times, and this particular skill of Tobirama’s is driving him up a wall.

He shakes it off and bulldozes onward. “You’re out here at weird times of day and night, are you sure you’re not homeless?” Fuck, he sounds worried, that’s terrible. He scowls fiercely to make sure it comes across exactly as he intended it.

From the look on Tobirama’s face, the desire to introduce his head to a wall is a mutual feeling. “Yes, I’m sure.”

…Madara doesn’t really believe him, any more than he did at the park when he twitched and went stiff like a lying liar, but that’s a) not his business and b) not why he’s here. “Whatever. I’m here about the seal you made at the crossroads. Why do you keep trying to summon that demon?”

Tobirama’s eyes narrow. “Am I supposed to try different demons?”

Fucking persnickety bastard. “Why are you summoning that demon in particular?”

“Why do you think?”

I think, if Tajima were in any position to be raised, I’d kill you before you could even try it, Madara doesn’t say. “Presumably you have this idea he used to be a great historical figure—”

Tobirama snorts in disbelief.

Not that, then, which—no, wait, that doesn’t make sense. Ugh, necromancers are the worst, and they give him headaches. Necromancers trying to track down Tajima are worse than the worst.

“—or—” Madara flounders.

Tobirama had mentioned he was seeking a human soul, that night, hadn’t he? He’d be wrong, since any historical figure in Hell would be a demon by now, but that doesn’t mean he knew that. Maybe he’s trying to negotiate with the Prince of Hell? That’s a thing, even if it’s rare, has more rules and exceptions than any country on the mortal plane that Madara’s ever heard of, and usually doesn’t end the way a questing human might prefer. But he’s using Tajima’s personal sigil, when he should be using the one for the title of the Prince if he’s seeking an audience.

Madara kind of hopes that is what he’s intending, actually, even if it means he does eventually find the Prince of Hell. Not ideal, maybe, but while Izuna is sometimes obnoxious in the way that little brothers are and he doesn’t like humans near as much as Madara does, he still isn’t going to let some idiot human drag a ravening demon onto the mortal plane.

“—look, just fucking stop.” Madara takes a testing step forward, just inside where Tobirama’s bubble of personal space seems to start for enemies. He leans back again as, predictably, Tobirama dips one hand into a coat pocket and pulls out a small ink bottle, no doubt filled with some sort of holy ink.

Which he promptly fumbles and drops.

Madara yelps and lunges, catching the bottle before it can hit the cement and shatter. He does not want the indignity of holy burns in a splatter pattern, thank you very much. He doesn’t want the ink, either; he shoves it back into Tobirama’s hands on instinct before he can think better of it.

“Watch it, asshole! Nobody wants—” Their hands actually touch, and Madara is completely derailed by bewilderment. “Why are you made of actual ice,” he says blankly. The night doesn’t feel cold to him, he’s mostly wearing the leather jacket because it looks awesome, but this is a jarring reminder that humans are really fucking fragile. He curls his hands around Tobirama’s fingers without conscious thought, feeding in a little of his magic to make them warm up faster. “No wonder you dropped it.”

Tobirama’s fingers twitch, curl into his palms. Madara almost lets go, except then something occurs to him, and he smirks before saying, “You know, I thought necromancers were supposed to raise the—”

“Corpses, yes.” Tobirama cuts him off with a glare that could peel the paint off a warship. His voice is tight, and he’s still as a stone, wire tense in a way that makes Madara wonder if he’s about to strike out in a sudden flurry of violence, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t pull away, either. “I’m supposed to raise the corpses, not be one, very funny. Everyone has made that joke, Uchiha, I assure you that you don’t have to.”

Considering Tobirama’s skin is paler than Madara’s, he thinks everyone saying it has a point, but telling him that is probably going to mean getting an ink bottle thrown at his head. Not that it stops him from smirking and opening his mouth when another joke occurs to him—

“Everyone has also made the corpse-fucker joke.” Tobirama’s voice is perfectly flat.

Madara closes his mouth and tries not to pout.

Tobirama rolls his eyes in disgust. “You’re not clever,” he says acerbically.

I am a gift to humanity with how clever I am,” Madara argues, annoyed. He realizes that he’s still holding Tobirama’s hands in his, and he drops them like hot coals. Well, cold coals—practically frozen coals—it was a metaphor in the first place, it got away from him, what the fuck ever.

Tobirama tucks the hand holding the ink bottle back into his pocket without even looking like he considers throwing it at Madara instead, so he’s going to take this as a win.

Then he notices, extremely belatedly, the knife sheath hanging by Tobirama’s side, and feels a trickle of ice go down his spine. It’s probably just for any mortals who might be unfortunate to mark him as an easy target at night, despite the strength of his magical aura; maybe even for fae, who fear cold iron. If it were blessed, Tobirama would have pulled that on him as a much more final threat than a bit of holy ink.

But the hair on the back of his neck is standing straight up, and he’s instinctively leery of the thing. He makes a note to watch the knife and tries not to drive himself crazy in the meantime trying to figure out why Tobirama didn’t threaten to stab him now. Maybe he just wanted to escalate later, or something. Get Madara trapped in a circle first.

Madara shows his hands into his pockets, realizes he’s mirroring the necromancer, and scowls self-consciously. “Get some gloves, genius. Better yet, stop skulking around in the middle of the night trying to summon demons.”

“Bold words from a demon stalking humans at two in the morning.”

“At least I’m not risking frostbite, you flavorless popsicle.”

Tobirama doesn’t dignify that with a response. He huffs, steps backward precisely twice, and apparently judges the distance enough to deliberately turn his back and walk away.

Madara doesn’t feel like he’s done quite enough yelling, but he doesn’t know what else he can say when the necromancer is so dismissive of any warning he tries to give. He’s given to understand that people who care for nothing but themselves and their goals are rare on the mortal plane; Hell is, of course, full of them, and Madara thought he’d be better at spotting them even among humans. Maybe Tobirama is one of those, and all this effort is pointless. Maybe he can’t save Tobirama, no matter what Anko has to say about him.

Maybe some people don’t want to be saved from themselves.

He stands on the empty sidewalk, simmering in frustration and some sort of deeper hurt that he refuses to name, before forcing his train of thought onto a more useful track. Like something he can actually do right now.

Tobirama is difficult to find when he wants to be, apparently. He was probably active the last two nights, and Madara just missed him during his patrol—which begs the question if he’s going to miss it entirely when Tobirama does get a hold of the demon he’s trying to raise, if he ever figures out to summon them instead of Tajima. If he suddenly goes silent again or gets sneakier, Madara needs to be able to find him.

Well, if Madara’s going to be accused of stalking, he might as well actually be doing it. Plus, he really wants to know if Tobirama is homeless or not.

He waits where he is for another ten minutes, activating his sharingan a short ways in to watch Tobirama’s magic slowly vanish from the air. Tobirama may be a sensor with much more ability than Madara is used to, but as long as he’s careful, wraps his magic within himself to hide under his skin, he should be unnoticeable, as long as he stays far enough back to hopefully be out of Tobirama’s range. If he judges wrong, he’s sure to get a face full of holy water, so he’s going to take it slow, exercising all due caution.

The trail leads him to a residential area and right up to a nice apartment building, surprisingly enough. Madara doesn’t think he can get inside without using enough magic to alert Tobirama’s senses, but from the street he can see that characteristic glimmer of Tobirama’s light-beneath-ice magical signature in the wards on the second floor—bright and strong, interwoven and interlocked, more complex than any other Madara has seen outside of actual magical prisons. Clear signs of someone very skilled, very paranoid, and apparently not lying when protesting being homeless. Well, he’s seen people do weirder things than nap on park benches before, he supposes.

Madara lets his sharingan spin down, and the wards vanish from sight. But before he leaves to finish his patrol of Konoha, he marks the apartment’s location in his mind.

Just in case.

Chapter Text

13 Years Ago

Every day right after he gets home from school, Tobirama finds Mother in order to report that he has completed all of his homework during class. He doesn’t think she cares, if she understands at all, but it serves the dual purpose of making sure that Tobirama always knows where she is as soon as he gets home. Walking into a room without realizing she’s in it can be… startling, and it’s unpleasant even if he doesn’t usually jump anymore.

Today, he keeps it even shorter than usual. He’s only been home a few minutes, but the air in the house has started sinking into him the way it always does, and threading through the usual dusty dimness, there’s something… rotten. Like a scent too faint to trace. It’s familiar, somehow, and Tobirama is unnerved the whole way up the stairs, until he walks into his and his brothers’ shared bedroom and is nearly bowled over by Itama.

His deep brown eyes are wide and frightened, and he’s practically vibrating with nerves. “Tobi-nii, I can’t find Kawarama.”

Tobirama’s heart jumps, but he does his best to stay calm. He frowns, racking his mind for a reasonable explanation. “Did you two go out to the woods?”

Itama shakes his head quickly, hair flipping this way and that until the part between white and black is a terrible mess. Tobirama reaches out to start smoothing it down automatically, which proves difficult when Itama starts bouncing anxiously on his toes. “We were inside all day! Father said he needed Kawarama’s help, so they left, an’ they didn’t come back to the playroom, even though it was forever ago.”

Tobirama’s hands still as his stomach drops down to his shoes. He’s not sure what he’s afraid of exactly, but the air in the house is strange and heavy, and he knows down to his bones that if Father is the reason Kawarama is missing, it’s not going to be a good reason. He pets Itama’s hair for another moment, more for his own comfort than his brother’s, before inhaling a bracing breath through his nose.

“I’ll find him. Stay here, okay? I’ll go get Kawarama and bring him back.”

Hashirama isn’t home from middle school yet, but Tobirama should be the one to do this anyway. Hashirama and Father get into screaming fights sometimes, which are always terrifying no matter how quickly they burn out, and it’s better for everyone if that happens as little as possible.

Itama hugs him, briefly but with every bit of strength he possesses in his tiny five-year-old frame. Then he shuffles over to sit on the carpet near a wall, clinging to his favorite toy rabbit. Kawarama’s teddy bear is next to him, propped carefully against the wall to look like it’s sitting up on its own, and Tobirama swallows down a sudden throb of foreboding.

The door to Father’s study is cracked open. Something is wrong with the air inside the room, and it’s slowly leaking into the rest of the house. It feels familiar, but Tobirama doesn’t know why—just that it frightens him.

Tobirama doesn’t want to go inside. But Kawarama is probably in there, so he still knocks three times and waits to be invited in. He stays polite and stiffly, utterly blank. Father does not like Hashirama’s displays of emotion, so Tobirama has steadily worked at eliminating his own.

Permission, when granted, is gruff and barely audible. Tobirama bows carefully when he enters. “Father, Kawarama isn’t in the playroom. Has he been up here? I can remove him if he’s disturbing you.”

Father grunts, still focused on his notes. He shuffles them, scowls viciously, snarls, and scribbles something down before violently underlining a word. “Kakuzu would know,” he mutters. “But how to find the damned fae—”

Tobirama waits patiently, and finally, Father’s eyes snap up to him, wild and cruel. His mouth goes bone dry. Just adrenaline, he reminds himself fiercely. The digestive system is at a lower priority in the face of a large, active threat, so no saliva is being produced. This sensation is a normal physiological reaction.

“Kawarama.” Father’s gaze strays to the wall behind Tobirama, like it’s covered in all the secrets he’s relentlessly pursuing. “Didn’t work,” he says shortly. “He’s in the working room. You can clean him up.”

Tobirama bows again, just as stiff, and walks steadily over to the door Father keeps all his magical working behind. Father really shouldn’t be in here, especially not alone, it isn’t safe—but sometimes Father forgets things like that.

Kawarama is in the middle of the room, curled up and sleeping with his head tucked under his arms right in the center of a vast seal drawn in a dark, reddish ink. Tobirama eyes it warily, but it doesn’t look like it’s active, and that’s all he can really tell. He edges forward carefully, keeping an eye on both the seal and his brother. It’d be just his luck if it activates just from someone stepping on it—it can’t be safe for it to go off with Kawarama in the middle of it. He’s just more afraid of what would happen if he asked Father to help.

Whatever the rotten thing in the air is, it’s coming from this room. The sensation is so heavy that it twists. Tobirama has a creeping crawling feeling, like something is terribly, desperately wrong, but he doesn’t know what it is. He just needs to get his brother out of here as quickly as possible.

“Kawarama,” he says softly, reaching out. “Wake up. Father says you need a bath—”

But Kawarama doesn’t wake up when Tobirama shakes his shoulder. He rolls limply over and stares blankly at the ceiling.

Tobirama stares blankly at Kawarama’s gaping throat. Mechanically marks again the red-drying-to-brown color of the seal drawn beneath them.

Almost before his brain has a chance to consciously connect the pieces, he’s scrambling backwards, so quickly that he trips over the room’s threshold and sprawls onto Father’s study floor. He doesn’t stop there, keeps scooting back on his hands and knees until his back hits the wall and he can’t move any further away from—from—

He throws up on the study floor. That’s a normal physiological reaction, too. So is the way his limbs are trembling. The way the burn of vomit in his throat makes his eyes and nose run and his stomach won’t stop heaving. All very, very normal. Tobirama’s head spins and he thinks he might pass out.

When Tobirama finally looks up, Father is staring at him. Father places his pen down on his desk and watches him with cold, cold eyes. “Can’t stomach it?” He sounds disappointed.

Tobirama is still. Tobirama shakes.

Father glowers in disapproval. “I’ll take care of it, then. Get out.”

Fight, Flight, Freeze. Tobirama’s legs are clumsy with tension, but this time he runs.

Tobirama creeps into the basement long after everyone has gone to sleep that night, careful not to be caught by Mother or—or Father.

There are butterflies in his stomach and his heart is pounding, but those are physical reactions caused by adrenaline, things that happen to his body that he can’t control. The only thing he can control is how his body moves, step by cautious step down the basement stairs.

The room at the bottom is dark and cavernous. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all bare cement, dimly lit. The only things inside are the hook stuck in the ceiling in one corner with a drain under it, for hanging deer after a hunt to let the meat drain and age before it’s ready to be cut, and… the freezer.

He unfolds the step stool leaning against the chest freezer and drags it into place. Climbs up to unlatch the lid. Takes one deep, bracing breath, and heaves it open.

Ice. A couple of frost-covered packages of venison that Tobirama put there last time Father went hunting. A whole chicken, from when one had wandered over one of Father’s traps on the edges of their property. Overall, mostly empty.

Kawarama is probably buried in the woods out back, or maybe burned to ashes, or maybe—anything. Father just said he was going to take care of it, and Tobirama doesn’t know enough about the steps of that process for a human to even guess where Kawarama is—where Kawarama’s body is.

But he’s not in the freezer.

Tobirama thinks he’s supposed to feel relieved, but he doesn’t feel anything at all.

Now

Three days. It’s been three days and Tobirama has still reached no conclusion about who Uchiha Madara actually is. No subtle test he’s tried has been answered in a way that doesn’t just provide more questions.

Madara hasn’t tried to lie to Tobirama at all, but it’s possible that any lie just went undetected, so that’s inconclusive. None of his answers imply more knowledge about the situation at hand than Tobirama himself has offered. He didn’t show up until much later than usual, the witching hour four nights ago when Tobirama last went out, so he couldn’t have been compelled to show up—but maybe demons are never compelled to show up in a circle, if they’re already on the mortal plane. Surely someone has done the research on that, at some point, but if they have it went up in smoke decades ago and Tobirama knows damn well that ashes aren’t good for anything other than ink.

His emotions had still felt human, too. Angry, but too mercurial to stay that way. Even when Madara doesn’t make any sense at all, it’s always in a baffling human way, like the ink four nights ago. The ink that Tobirama shouldn’t have thought to use at all when he had a blessed knife at his belt, but had gone for instinctively. The ink that Madara had given back to him, apparently entirely on autopilot.

(His hands had been so warm—)

Tobirama lets out a disgusted hiss and grinds his teeth, glaring at his notes on the demon compendium. Much, much better to think about possibly nonexistent patterns between names and sigils, rather than the unsettling manipulation the demon is managing just by existing. He’s already copied down the sigils two separate times to sort them, once by the number of syllables in the name attached and again by the initial syllable. At this point he’s seriously considering making a third, larger chart, to organize which sigils are associated with a name that contains a specific syllable anywhere within it, keeping the syllables in series order just in case it could help some other pattern pop out at him.

Well, he doesn’t have any better ideas. He pulls out a clean sheet of paper and starts in on it, transcribing each sigil with precision.

Dimly, he hears a knock at the door. He’ll get it—in just a second, after this next line. Three of the last five sigils have all had similar patterns along the bottom, and he squints at the names, but they all have ka in a different position in the names. If there’s a link between syllables, how is one supposed to adjust for order? He frowns and checks his last chart, but of the six names that start with ka, only half have that mark in that position.

“You’re not my cousin, you can’t come in unless my brother says so.” Kawarama’s voice sounds calm, if petulant, a little muffled from a hallway away.

Tobirama inks the next set of sigils, giving them a critical eye before dubbing them correct enough not to cause later copy errors. Wait, is that the same marking on the opposite side of the sigil? Is this—oh, the number of syllables, maybe? No, no, that’s not it…

“Um, one minute. TOBI-NII!” Kawarama yells.

Tobirama automatically reaches out his senses as he starts screwing the inkwell shut. Kawarama doesn’t feel panicked, thankfully, but he’s capable of getting himself into a surprising amount of trouble considering how small their apartment is. If he’s calling for Tobirama then at least he’s stopped trying to clean the mess himself—

—is that Madara’s magical signature?—

—the fucking demon is directly outside the open damned door.

Tobirama drops the inkwell and bolts. He almost trips over his own chair in the process, but he manages not to eat the living room carpet and probably breaks a land speed record getting between Kawarama and the fucking demon that apparently somehow tracked him to his home. Tobirama lunges for Kawarama, grabs him by the back of his shirt, and hauls him back behind his legs. Kawarama yelps, but Tobirama doesn’t care, he is not letting to. Not when he’s the only thing between his little brother and—and—

Madara’s eyes are active, which contrasts interestingly with the way he looks a little like someone just slapped him across the face with a fish, mouthing Tobi-nii in utter bafflement. He’s still on the far side of the threshold, but that has to be from sheer surprise more than anything else.

Tobirama would prefer to surprise him with a bucket of holy water to the face. Better yet, the blessed tanto he acquired to guard against this very demon—but that’s locked in the desk in his study at the end of the hall to keep it well away from Kawarama, and it might as well be miles away for all the good it’ll do him now. He has nothing; the threshold is no more protection than tissue paper would be, since the door was opened by a member of the household and now presents a gaping entry point through the wards.

All he can do is bluff this out.

“Madara,” he says evenly. “What do you want?”

The demon is still staring at what little he can see of Kawarama, hidden behind Tobirama’s legs. Tobirama can’t help but bristle at the perceived threat.

“I had a question for you,” Madara says slowly. “I take it this is a bad time?”

“Normal people call,” Tobirama bites out.

“Oh, well I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we neglected to exchange business cards.” Madara rolls his eyes, which has a strange, kaleidoscopic effect with the pattern swirling on his irises.

Tobirama switches the hand holding tight to Kawarama’s shirt. The death grip might not even be necessary anymore, judging by the way Kawarama has gone quiet and plastered himself to the back of Tobirama’s legs, breathing quickly with fear swirling through his unfledged magic, but he’s not taking any chances. He reaches across the hallway, opens the tiny drawer in the antique writing desk, and snatches one of his spiritual medium business cards to shove at the demon.

Touka had them made, and that’s reason enough to keep them hidden, usually, but his pride is worth nothing against his need to have Madara gone.

Madara takes the card, but doesn’t even glance down at it. His eyes are still fixed on Kawarama, only flicking up to Tobirama occasionally. His confusion has shifted into curiosity, and feeling that directed at Kawarama would be terrifying even if had something to defend his little brother with.

“Leave,” Tobirama says sharply—rudely, but the law of hospitality hardly applies when the demon stalked him here and was not invited in. Was he? Kawarama’s only five, he can’t know all the things to avoid in such a situation, hasn’t had time to learn them yet. But Tobirama will deal with this, he will keep his brother safe—

Madara blinks, shakes himself a little, and nods briskly before shaking back a single step. Just far enough that, when Tobirama kicks the door shut with a bang, it regrettably doesn’t break his face.

He locks the doorknob to reactivate the wards, then throws the deadbolt and fastens the chain for good measure. None of it convinces his heart to stop frantically trying to beat clear out of his chest, so he activates the emergency wards with them.

There. Anyone trying to cross that without the right keys is going to be shredded faster than they blink, demon or no. Technically illegal, maybe, but he doesn’t care. Not when it’s Kawarama’s soul on the line.

Finally, he releases his death grip on Kawarama’s shirt, drops to his knees, and wraps his little brother in a desperate hug. His heartbeat is still so loud in his ears that he wonders if Kawarama can hear it too.

Any words he could say get stuck in his throat before they make it out. All he can do is close his eyes, hold on, and be thankful that they’re both still breathing.

When the door is slammed in his face, Madara can’t do anything more than blink dumbly. Every other reaction is slow, delayed, trying to catch up to a situation that just stopped making sense.

Before he can manage any coherent thought other than what the fuck, the wards around the apartment shift like a kaleidoscope. Magical links that use to be light and thin, hiding their strength, now twist into place like overlapping scales on a dragon’s hide. They were already impressive when Madara had seen them from the street, but now they’re aggressive enough that they’re probably going to take his head off at the shoulders if he dares to try and bypass them.

He blinks again, and finally rubs a hand over his face, because that was… not what he’d expected not at all.

Tobirama the necromancer has a little brother.

A little brother who feels safe in his home. Who’s been taught about “stranger danger,” if that adorably suspicious expression and backtalk were anything to go by. Who’s cared for.

It’d be easier to swallow if he thought Tobirama was just keeping up appearances, but—there had been that look on his face, when he’d pulled his brother behind him. Madara has seen many, many desperate souls reach their breaking point, and he knows rage and pain and terror. That expression had definitely been the last. Tobirama had been terrified by the idea that Madara could get close enough to singe a single hair on his little brother’s head.

Madara shakes his head and scowls down at the business card in his hand, which neatly derails his train of thought. It’s uncomfortably purple, with little misty patterns embossed in it with glitter. The ink is gold and the font has enough swoops and flourishes to render it nearly unreadable.

Spiritual Medium

~ Exorcise your right to a ghost-free home! ~

• Seances
• Exorcisms
• Consultations

~ Keep your spirits up! ~

He flips it over, morbidly curious. Senju Tobirama’s name and phone number are printed on the other side in a blessedly more readable font. He flips it back over to stare incredulously at the entire… effect of the front. Including the fucking puns. It’s honestly kind of hilarious, mostly because it’s so damn absurd. Does he actually hand these out? To real live people he sees on the street? Do they actually respond?

Not that that’s the most confusing thing about this little escapade.

Madara doesn’t know everything about Butsuma and his dealings with Tajima. That’s intentional on his part—the whole story is probably a nightmare from start to finish, because that’s how Tajima was, and Madara is leery of ever having to find out what Senju Butsuma did that was terrible enough to catch Tajima’s attention in the first place. And Tobirama is his son.

But that terror on his face, that care? That did not read like what Madara does know about Butsuma, not at all.

That terror also doesn’t read like someone who’d raise a demon and unleash them on humanity and, by proxy, his little brother, all for the sake of misplaced historical hero worship. Madara is either interpreting his reaction very wrong, or he’s missing something.

Madara has a perfect recollection of that expression on loop in his mind to tell him he wasn’t wrong, so: missing something.

He turns the card over and over between his fingers. He doesn’t need it anymore; one glance, and he’ll never forget it. But he tucks it into his back pocket anyway before he leaves, shaking his head. Why does Tobirama have to be such an enigmatic asshole, anyway? It’s rude.

Madara’s going to have to think about all of this, because he has no idea what to do with any of it.

Tobirama has no idea what to do. The demon knows where he lives. The demon knows where he lives.

The demon knows about his little brother.

“Tobi-nii?” Kawarama’s voice is very small. “I’m sorry for opening the door.”

Gods, he’s only five. He shouldn’t have to sound so scared. If Tobirama could rid the world of everything that could make him this afraid, he would do it in a heartbeat—but the world has never been kind that way.

It’s not even Kawarama’s fault. Tobirama heard the knock at the door, and he chose to take another moment for his research. He’s supposed to be the one keeping Kawarama safe, and he’d completely missed a direct threat to his little brother until it was nearly too late—it could have already been too late. The demon has fire magic, and it’s strong; even if his hesitance was because he was too wary of the wards to cross the threshold, even if he didn’t know they’d been almost entirely defanged, he could have sent a whirling blast of fire straight across it. Could have burned his home and his brother before Tobirama could do a thing to stop it.

Could have ripped Kawarama’s soul out of his body barely four months after Tobirama got him back.

He doesn’t know how he could stay sane if that happened. If he had to watch a demon take one his brothers’ souls again.

His empathy should have warned him. He should have known the first time the demon got close enough to pick out which apartment was Tobirama’s, and he certainly should have known before he got so close to Kawarama. It doesn’t make sense that his empathy simply failed, he doesn’t understand it, except that—

Except that Madara has never felt as threatening as he truly is.

It’s not like Tobirama notices every single time someone walks by their door, must less along the street past their building. His senses technically can catch all of that, but always paying enough attention to parse it all would be a one-way ticket to hyper-vigilance and possibly a manic episode, neither of which Tobirama would like to experience again in a hurry.

His brain categorizes different signatures the same way he recognizes faces on the street; most go into the box of unfamiliar people he doesn’t have to care about, and the rest either fall under potential threat, active threat, or non-threat, with a very narrow column called family nestled in the last. Madara should be categorized as an active threat, because that’s what he is. At the very least, he should be a potential one. But his traitorous brain seems to have taken in his emotional makeup and subconsciously decided that a High Court demon wasn’t a threat at all, because—what, he’s funny? He says stupid things when he’s startled and he bristles like a cat? He has stupidly warm hands and didn’t take the chance to kill Tobirama when he must have known he could have, on the sidewalk that night?

No, none of the situation at hand is Kawarama’s fault. It’s all his own.

“You didn’t mean to,” Tobirama chokes out. “And we’re okay now. We’re both okay.”

Tobirama squeezes his eyes shut and presses his face into Kawarama’s hair, letting the scent of him, his shampoo, and a hint of peanut butter from a mishap during a morning snack all sink into his hindbrain and convince him that he’s telling the truth: Kawarama is okay. He’s safe.

Kawarama clings right back, just starting to shake, breaths turning watery as tears shiver up to the surface. Tobirama can’t say it’s unexpected—Kawarama always used to wait until Father left the room before he’d dare to cry.

“That man is—very dangerous.” He’ll steal your soul like he stole your brother’s, Tobirama doesn’t say. “If no one opens the door, he can’t get in here, but that means you have to be careful. Get me if someone ever knocks or rings the doorbell, okay?”

“Even if you’re working?”

This is so, so much more important than a short research delay. “Even if I’m working. You can be annoying as you want. Just don’t open the door without me.” His voice edges into desperation toward the end. He tries to stop it, not wanting to scare Kawarama more than he already is, but he can’t.

Madara’s magical signature finally budges from where he’s shut out in the hallway by the emergency wards. He moves down the stairs and out to the street and doesn’t stop or even slow down until he’s out of Tobirama’s range of sensing completely.

Tobirama still can’t bring himself to relax. He rocks Kawarama gently back and forth, and slowly his small body stops shaking, his soft, near-silent tears fading into sniffles and the occasional hiccup. When Tobirama can finally convince his anxious mind that his brother isn’t about to be ripped out of his arms, he loosens the hug, but doesn’t let go entirely.

Madara—the demon—isn’t safe. And Tobirama already knew that, consciously, but apparently his subconscious was never on the same page, and that makes the demon even more dangerous. He’s tried to keep an even keel this entire time, reason through all the evidence carefully, but Madara is tricky and Tobirama is no longer sure he’ll be able to ferret out his true identity before he does something unforgivable to the tiny family that Tobirama has left to hold on to.

He can’t afford to give the benefit of the doubt, anymore. If he can’t prove that Madara is not the demon who holds Itama’s soul in chains, then he needs to assume that he is.

And he can’t afford to assume that his apartment is safe. Not again.

Tobirama ticks through different plans in his head, weighing them carefully. When he finally lands on one that seems safe enough to try, he presses his cheek against Kawarama’s hair for one last moment before starting to rise.

Kawarama makes a tiny noise of protest, clinging to him. Tobirama shushes him gently and finishes rising to his feet, lifting Kawarama with him and settling him on his hip. He isn’t ready to let go either.

He makes his way through the kitchen and living room, then all the way down the hall. The simple wards on the room at the end of the hall deactivate when Tobirama threads his magic through them and turns the knob.

Kawarama looks around in silent curiosity. He isn’t allowed back here, even when Tobirama’s working—this is where the dangerous inks and seals go, the poisonous ingredients and the components that would hurt someone who isn’t trained in their use. Tobirama has hardly used this study in the past four months, since Hellish research isn’t usually dangerous without enough sealing knowledge to misuse it. He prefers to work somewhere Kawarama can find him if he needs to, or even wants to. It’s not that Tobirama ever minds questions, it’s just that he gets distracted sometimes.

That distraction has never felt so much like a deadly threat as it does now.

Tobirama walks over to the desk and sets Kawarama on his lap. For a split second, his resolve wavers—but he doesn’t know what else to do. He takes a bracing breath before unlocking a small drawer to one side and drawing out the blessed tanto.

He holds it securely, not removing it from its sheath. “This,” he tells Kawarama, “is a dangerous weapon. You are not to touch it. I am going to keep it very close to me, attached to my belt, in case that dangerous man comes back. I will not use it otherwise.” Tobirama can hear his voice going flat as he distances himself on automatic. He swallows and takes a moment to gentle his voice before he continues. “I need you to promise me you will not try to touch it. If you are curious, ask and I will let you look. Okay, Kawarama?”

Kawarama nods with wide eyes, tear tracks still clearly visible on his cheeks. “Can I see?” he whispers.

“Do not touch,” Tobirama reminds him, and slides the tanto halfway out of its sheath.

Kawarama holds his hands to his chest to keep from touching the blade, leaning forward just a little to get a good look. The blade is as long as his forearm, and the hilt is only a little shorter.

Tobirama has the sudden sense-memory of holding a different knife in a much smaller hand, learning the strength and effort it took to butcher a deer. That knife had only been a little larger than this one is. He’d been five, too.

The crawling question of am I any better than he was creeps up his spine. He banishes it, like he always does, but it takes more effort than he usually needs. At least he tries to keep his family safe and happy. At least he tries.

And he’s been trying; trying for months now to unravel the snarled tangle of trauma that still hangs around Kawarama like it might still turn into a noose if it pulls too tight. But he doesn’t always know how, and now he has to wonder if he can really save Kawarama from any part of the trauma they still share, or… if it’s safer not to.

He has to resurrect Itama. But to do that, he has to free him from Hell, which means associating with demons, which is the exact sort of thing that just nearly got Kawarama killed again. Could he ever find a way justify abandoning one brother for a chance at keeping the other safe—or justify endangering the other to save the one?

Tobirama has no way to answer that. He doesn’t know what to do except continue moving forward. For now, he just holds Kawarama close and tries to forget the sense-memory of that small body corpse-cold and empty.

Chapter Text

12 Years Ago

Tobirama has read nearly every book in the house.

He gets bored, but he doesn’t like leaving, the way Hashirama does. Hashirama has friends, has found people he can care about beyond their broken little family, but Tobirama is too consumed with worry for his brothers to bother trying to befriend schoolmates who think he’s too quiet or too articulate or just too strange.

And anyway, Itama needs more looking after than Mother can provide. He’s started school with them now, his tongue freshly inked with the seal to keep him quiet about the things Father doesn’t want any of them to say, so at least he isn’t alone with Mother and Father for hours every day anymore, thank the gods. Tobirama just worries anyway.

So, while Itama draws in notebooks Tobirama bought for him, or looks through the more child-friendly books that have migrated to their shared room, Tobirama reads everything he can get his hands on. But lately, he’s been helping Itama make his way slowly and carefully through a series of chapter books about a time-traveling treehouse—Father won’t let Tobirama get a library card, and he’s already finished everything within his reach.

Every book except for the ones in Father’s study.

It’s a stupid, stupid idea, and Tobirama shouldn’t even be thinking it. But when Itama isn’t wedging himself into his big brother’s lap and demanding to know why some words are spelled with f and some with ph, he gets bored. That’s something he actively avoids; the house starts closing in on him if his brain stops thinking of other, more interesting things besides how dark the house feels even with all lights on and how crazed Father’s eyes have become.

So even though it’s a stupid idea and he knows it, Tobirama starts planning.

He’s spent years learning the patterns of the house. Hashirama is in and out, with friends when he isn’t at school. Itama goes to school with Tobirama at the elementary school and then is always either with Tobirama or Mother, who follows him from room to room—he’s the youngest child she has to look after, these days. This makes Mother very easy to avoid, when Tobirama needs to, and she doesn’t watch him very closely because he is usually very obedient.

Father’s schedule is the hardest to track, erratic as he is, but there’s still a pattern to it, a rhythm gone sour and out of tune. If he misses one night of sleep, he will definitely miss another, but he’ll falter partway through the third night without rest and he’ll fall asleep on his desk. If he gets his schedule switched around, sleeping in the day but not during the night, the pattern will continue with slammed doors and clattering in the kitchen at odd hours of the night until he has to do a working outside under the sun. Then he’ll spend the next three days irritable as he switches back to a diurnal schedule. The intricate patterns of Father’s movements mostly amount to predicting how angry or manic or careless he is, and Tobirama has gotten very good at decoding his emotional state—sometimes it’s like he just knows.

Tobirama watches, and he doesn’t speak, and it teaches him almost as much as reading does. If he’s quiet enough, sometimes it makes people forget he’s even there.

So Tobirama times it delicately. He creeps into the study infrequently, carefully. He takes small books on the bottom shelf that have just started to accumulate dust from disuse, before there’s enough to show when they’ve been disturbed. He climbs onto Father’s chair and peeks at the notes open on the desk, but he doesn’t dare touch them to turn a page, afraid that Father might somehow notice if they’ve moved so much as a millimeter.

He learns what seals are for, as well as a couple complicated patterns associated with balance rituals, but they aren’t exactly basic primers. He takes notes, copies down precise diagrams, and teaches himself runes.

It’s slow going. But it’s more distracting than his homework, which he’s thankful for.

That’s all it is, distraction with too much danger to it, until one evening he’s balanced carefully on Father’s chair, looking at old notes, and reads, Need a demon for the summoning to work—somehow balance demon and human energies. Kawarama was wasted. Next step: find the Prince of Hell. Cagey bastard doesn’t show up in any of the remaining compendiums…

Tobirama bites his lip, crouches down on the chair so he can wrap his arms around his knees, and stares at the seal drawn on the wall above the desk until the nausea fades. It takes a long time. The words echo between his ears until his head aches and his throat burns, but he’s not sure if that’s bile or unshed tears.

Kawarama was wasted. He wants to rage, but there’s no fire in him, just ice.

Father is going to try again.

Tobirama’s second stupid idea is probably slightly less likely to get him murdered and thrown in the freezer if Father walks in at the wrong time—if only because it’s a lot sneakier than breaking into Father’s study at odd times of night. But it’s still stupid, and he’s going to have to keep his face very calm and keep any physiological reaction to potential distress under control. He’s had practice with that, though, so his chances are astronomically better than Hashirama’s, who isn’t really smart enough for this job anyway.

He knocks politely on the door to Father’s study. Father slept last night, so no exhaustion should be making him wild-eyed, and if Tobirama is perfectly deferential then an altercation of any sort will be unlikely, even if this doesn’t go quite as planned. He waits for a grunted invitation before entering and bowing deeply.

“Father, I was wondering if it would be acceptable for me to study necromancy and ritual magic,” Tobirama says, voice steady even under Father’s intense stare. He practiced this. “I could learn from books, if it would be an inconvenience to spend the time teaching me yourself.”

It will be easier if Father teaches him himself, because then Tobirama will know what kind of rituals Father is working on. But as long as he’s allowed to be in the study at all, allowed to learn anything at all, he can figure out what Father is going to do before he does it. He can save the brothers he has left before Father tries to hurt one of them again.

After a long, awful moment where Tobirama is certain he’s overstepped somehow and brought the punishment of failure down on all his brothers, Father sets his pen down. Then he smiles, slowly, almost pleasantly, the expression all the more terrifying for how it clearly doesn’t belong. Tobirama’s joints lock and he fights to keep from visibly stiffening. His face remains calm and expressionless.

Father gestures him closer. Tobirama marches up to stand by his chair, resolutely not allowing his eyes to stray to the notes on the desk.

Father’s hand drops onto Tobirama’s shoulder. It feels heavier than it should, and it hurts when it squeezes. Father does not seem to know or care how much pressure a child’s shoulder can take before pain begins.

“It’s nice to have a son that wants to be strong,” he says, voice deep and pleased.

The hand on his shoulder holds him like a vice. Tobirama couldn’t run if he tried, but that’s okay—ever since finding Kawarama on the floor of the workings room, he’s begun to train himself not to. Fight, Flight, Freeze. It is always more dangerous to run.

Tobirama returns a smile, much smaller than Father’s but carefully empty and just as cold. He stays very, very still.

Now

“Kai said, ‘I think those were ninjas,’” Kawarama read aloud, slow and halting. His eyes dart every now and again toward the door. “Hitomi’s eyes widened. ‘Oh! I think we’re back before the Five Nations built their capitals and a—abo—’”

Tobirama lets the pause hang for a moment, to see if Kawarama will continue trying to puzzle through the word on his own, before gently saying, “Abolished.”

“‘…and a-bo-lished the mer—’” Kawarama stops again and glances at the door, chewing his lip in anxiety.

Tobirama runs a hand over his mousy brown hair as soothingly as he can, but he has no words to say in comfort. He’s paying attention, this time; each person entering their apartment building gets run through Tobirama’s internal database of the magical signatures of everyone who lives here. There’s a visitor on the fourth floor, three apartments down, and he’s been uncomfortably aware of every time they’ve so much as twitched in the past hour and a half since they showed up.

“Mercenary system,” Tobirama finishes for him.

He’s hoped the book, part of a series about a treehouse with time-travel capabilities, would distract Kawarama for a while—it’d been one of Itama’s favorites, back… well, back. Unfortunately, time travel does not exist except in books, so he can’t go back and bring Itama here with them, or even just go back and fix it so he didn’t lead a demon straight back to his little brother, and Kawarama is obviously too nervous to concentrate. It’s uncommon for him to need help sounding out a word twice in as many paragraphs.

Kawarama will adapt, eventually. If Tobirama can’t keep him safe without simultaneously frightening him, or if he can’t keep him safe at all, Kawarama will one day stop exhibiting anxiety this way. He’ll stare at a book and sound his way through it with a demon knocking at the door, even if he’s shaking inside, because children are adaptable and they will adjust to a certain amount of fear.

Tobirama did. But he doesn’t want that to happen to Kawarama. He wants him to be able to stay bright-eyed and curious and, most importantly, unafraid.

Kawarama shoves the book away. “I don’t wanna read,” he mumbles. He stops welding himself to Tobirama’s side in favor of climbing into Tobirama’s lap and curling up like a kitten.

Tobirama shifts his seat on the rug to keep the sheath of his tanto from digging into either of their ribs and settles his shoulder blades against the front of the couch cushions. Kawarama’s cheek rests against his chest, and Tobirama rests a hand on his head.

He wants to talk to Kawarama about what happened, about what he’s feeling and how Tobirama can help him feel safe. How Tobirama is feeling, too, because allowing children to see and understand your emotions can help them understand their own, according to all those parenting books—but he doesn’t feel anything. He’s empty, a pitcher with a leak, and overturned bowl.

A distraction is going to have to do, for now. “Do you want me to read to you, instead?” Tobirama offers.

Kawarama nods twice without lifting his head. Tobirama reaches over him to retrieve the discarded book, lying open facedown with one page just starting to crease. He smooths it out, but there’s still a suggestion of a fold diagonally across the page, the first mark on this book. Tobirama treats books well, but he’s not one to fuss about a dogeared page; it’s just that the box set of this series in new, and they’re still early in this book.

The original set, the ones that he and Hashirama and Itama all read over a decade ago, were much less pristine. But they’re still in the house they grew up in, left behind with everything else Tobirama had judged nonessential when they could finally leave. Hashirama had gotten chocolate melted on the inside of one of the covers on accident, and Itama had torn an inch-long rip in three consecutive pages in another book. But Tobirama doesn’t have the story in those old sticky fingerprints, anymore—he just has twenty-eight pristine children’s books that only bear the story printed inside, except for the barely-creased spines of the first four and the new accidental fold on page thirteen and fourteen of this one.

Tobirama finds their place on page fifteen and begins to read again. He even does the voices, injecting as much emotion as he can even when his voice keeps trying to flatten out like it’s been ironed.

A magical signature much more familiar than the usual crosses into his range of sensing, and Tobirama stops reading for a moment to focus on it. Everyone in the building belongs there except the visitor, and this new signature is—Touka. Just Touka. She’ll be heading this way, directly to the apartment, but Tobirama is paying attention and knows when to panic about a signature and when not to. He’s fucking paying attention.

Or maybe he’s hyper-vigilant. Some say tomato, and all that.

He takes a deep breath before he can bring himself to disengage the emergency wards. They’ve been up for—gods, almost three hours, now, but Touka is going to need to be able to open the door once she reaches it. There’s no demon around, not right now, and even if there was the regular wards are safe enough as long as the doors are closed.

Kawarama lifts his head. “Tobi-nii? Is something wrong?”

Tobirama realizes abruptly that he stopped reading in the middle of a sentence. “No, nothing’s wrong. I just noticed Touka coming. She’ll be here in just a minute, and I needed to make sure she could open the door from outside.”

Kawarama slumps against his chest. “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” Tobirama promises, feeling the spike in Kawarama’s anxiety. Anyone opening the door doesn’t sound like a good idea right now, frankly, but it’s Touka. “It’s just Touka.”

Despite knowing that, the sound of a key in the lock makes him tense. Kawarama makes himself smaller and tugs one side of Tobirama’s unzipped hoodie to curl into. Tobirama wraps an arm around his shoulders.

“Aaaand the cool cousin has returned!” Touka calls out, before she even gets the door shut. The neighbors probably think she’s obnoxious—which is true, even if she’s also the most well-adjusted of any of them. “If you got up to too much fun without me, I’ll let you know right now, I’m gonna be real annoyed.”

Tobirama prods the wards into locking the door; Touka is taking far too long at it. Her magic hiccups in surprise, and he can hear her sigh.

“Sheesh, I was getting to it. Where are you guys? Couch?” She comes around the corner of the wall and raises an eyebrow at their seat on the floor. “Eh, close enough. Hey Kawa, what’s up?”

Kawarama doesn’t smile like he usually might. Doesn’t jump up to meet her. He barely even glances up at her, preferring to stay curled up in Tobirama’s lap.

Touka obviously notices, but she keeps smiling, even if the expression goes a little fixed. She probably doesn’t realize that Kawarama will know she’s worried anyway; he’s good at reading adults’ emotions. All of Tobirama’s brothers were—are. They had to be, growing up.

Touka’s eyes dart over to Tobirama, looking for some sort of clue or assistance. She’s never been good with children who aren’t excitable and happy. “Or… nothing. That’s okay. That’s cool, I hope you’re having fun with your nothing.” She’s babbling; her second look to Tobirama holds more desperation, a sort of save me from my lack of filter that he thinks would normally be amusing, instead of ricocheting through the emptiness inside of him.

Then her eyes catch on his hip, on the knife and the sheath there. “Going out?” she asks, her voice climbing in pitch and clearly baffled.

Tobirama shakes his head.

Touka’s fixed smile fades entirely. Slowly, she asks, “Then why do you have a knife?”

The alarm rising in her magic echoes around his head. He’s supposed to respond, but all he can do is stare at the knife he’s wearing like it’s an alien thing, like he didn’t put it there. He needs a knife because he can’t protect Kawarama any other way. Yet the knife’s mere presence could be a threat to Kawarama. His mind oscillates, caught, and the only thing keeping it from spinning off into space is the warmth of Kawarama curled up against his chest, alive.

Touka is still staring at his face. He knows his expression is smooth, so he has to wonder what her mind draws on it to fill in the blanks, what it is that makes her swallow and her eyebrows furrow together. “Tobirama. What happened?”

Her hand strays toward the pocket where she keeps her tarot deck, magic twitching for a reading. It’s impossible to keep it from her, when she knows something happened. Of course, divination is never quite clear, so maybe she won’t find out exactly how bad it was, but it also might blow it out of proportion, make it sound even worse, though Tobirama’s not even sure how that would be possible.

And he has to warn her, if she’s going to risk coming back to this apartment.

“The demon followed me. I don’t know how. It came to the apartment, and while no one was hurt—it was close. The knife’s blessed. I’m carrying it until the demon’s taken care of for good.”

Worry and fear builds into a breathless mix of anger, blasting him like a rush of hot air, yet leaving him just as cold as he was before.

“Holy shit, I said be careful!” Touka’s voice is too loud, ringing in the mostly-bare walls of the room. Kawarama turns his face into Tobirama’s chest, tense and trembling and utterly silent.

“Don’t,” he says quietly, “yell in front of Kawarama.”

Touka snaps her mouth shut so fast he can hear her teeth clack together. She’s still for a long, awful moment, almost vibrating with tension. The thread of fear underneath her anger has broken free and grows; it’s a familiar fear, creeping and insidious as a parasitic vine twining through her magic. It’s been years since she first saw the way he empties out when confronted with pain, and he still can never tell if her fear is of what’s happening around them, of what he tells her… or if she’s just afraid of him.

Kawarama tugs on his hoodie. “I just wanna read the book,” he whispers.

Tobirama drags his eyes away from Touka and lets his world re-center around Kawarama. “Do you want me to help you, or do you want me to read it to you?”

“You read it.”

Tobirama opens the book to their place, takes a deep breath, and starts to read. For almost an entire minute and a half, Touka just stands and watches them, and Tobirama does his best to ignore her stare and the upset churning of her magic. At last, she turns and leaves the room.

She’s back in less than a minute, carrying Tobirama’s rucksack. She drops it next to him—gently, which means she apparently has been listening when he scolds her about being careful with his things. He pauses in his reading, just to see if she has an explanation.

“I think there’s someone here who could use some ghost kitty cuddles,” she says, tilting her head toward Kawarama.

Yukime is going to take a swipe at Touka if she calls her ghost kitty inside of her considerable hearing, but she does have a point. Tobirama shuffles through his pack for the set of summoning rods with one hand and strokes the other over Kawarama’s hair.

“Do you want to cuddle with Yukime?”

Kawarama nods silently.

Tobirama suppresses a sigh of regret; Kawarama’s weight on his lap is a comforting focus. But the numbness inside him won’t cut any sharper for not having his brother within easy reach, so he scatters the summoning rods gently to his left and loops a thread of magic around them.

Snowy cold washes over them like the first misty breaths of winter. Yukime lifts her head and sniffs once, then twice, before laying her ears back against her head, unhappy. She can no doubt smell the same fear and distress that he can feel in Kawarama’s immature magic, and it’s worrying her, too.

“We had a scare a few hours ago,” Tobirama tells her, keeping it brief. She can be angry at him later, but Kawarama needs comfort first. He starts shifting his little brother off of his lap. “Kawarama would appreciate cuddling with you—“

“No!” Kawarama wails, latching onto Tobirama’s jacket like a leech. In the same moment, Touka’s anxiety skyrockets and she makes an indecipherable noise of protest, while Yukime lifts one side of her lip in a silent warning snarl.

Tobirama freezes in place.

Yukime settles his alarm and bafflement with an imperious, “Leave the cub where he is. I can comfort him just as well on your lap.”

He considers protesting; Yukime is not a small creature, and she’s liable to flatten him if she gets too annoyed at him or even just forgets that no one wants to have to bear the full weight of her crystal bones and magical muscle. But before he makes up his mind, she’s already climbing on top of him, pinning him against the couch with one massive paw on his shoulder and curling around Kawarama, who is calming down again now that Tobirama has stopped trying to move him.

Yukime is heavy but not crushing, like a weighted blanket, and strangely warm for a being made of winter and summoned by necromancy. Tobirama tests the draw of his tanto with her bulk added onto his lap, just sliding it a little out of its sheath. Yukime has to shift her haunch closer to his knee, and he’s slightly awkward with his offhand even though he’s nearly ambidextrous, but it’s quick enough that he can defend them.

Tobirama relaxes, just a touch. If the demon does come back, Yukime will certainly do everything in her power to rip his throat out with her teeth. She’s not a holy summons, but she’s still a magical creature, so while he doubts she could kill the demon, she could buy them time.

And he has a blessed knife, for the rest.

Properly settled, Yukime starts licking Kawarama’s hair into unmanageable cowlicks in the name of grooming him. When she’s satisfied with the snarl she’s made of his hair, she tucks his head under her chin, her wedge-shaped skull resting in the hollow of Tobirama’s throat.

Touka perches gingerly on the couch, tucking her knees against Yukime’s broad, wiry shoulders. A moment of indecision twists in her magic before she rests a hand gently on Tobirama’s hair.

He can’t—he can’t parse it. He can feel the heat and light pressure of her hand, but he thinks there’s supposed to be some sort of reaction instead of a profound disconnect. It’s like his mind is a spinning record, skipping over the final lines that would make the lyrics make sense. He doesn’t understand.

But if he asks, he thinks Touka would leave, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

Something is trying to fill the emptiness inside him, swelling until it feels like it’s about to crack him in two as easily as an eggshell. It’s so much safer to be numb and hollow. But his hands are cold, so he buries them in Yukime’s thick fur and holds on.

Touka draws in a long breath. Tobirama braces himself for whatever conversation she’s about to try to start, but she doesn’t speak to him. “How are you doing, Kawa? Snuggled enough yet?”

Squished comfortably between Tobirama’s torso and Yukime’s bulk, Kawarama lets out a tired hum. He doesn’t feel so much like fear anymore, just weariness and warmth. “Tobi-nii, you’re bony.”

“I keep telling him he needs to eat more,” Touka says. She keeps her voice light; it works much better now that she isn’t about to vibrate apart at the seams from stress.

“S’okay,” Kawarama murmurs. “Old people are bony. Kaito from the playground says his baa-chan is really bony.”

Touka giggles, too high-pitched, the release of tension making her sound just short of hysterical. Tobirama chokes on something that only sort of sounds like a laugh.

“Is Yukime bony, then?” Touka asks mischievously.

Yukime’s eyes go narrow and she lashes her tail hard enough to smack Touka on the ankle, but she doesn’t move so much as an inch away from Kawarama.

Kawarama gasps, scandalized. “Yukime isn’t old,” he insists. “She’s the softest and the fluffiest!”

She’s actually older than all of them combined, but Tobirama can’t argue with the rest of that when none of them have fur.

“Is Touka bony?” Yukime asks pointedly. Touka huffs, like she doesn’t absolutely deserve that question.

“Umm, I don’t remember. She doesn’t pick me up as much as Tobi-nii.” Kawarama doesn’t sound sad about it, and Touka’s grimace is only a little apologetic; she’s not particularly fond of kids in general, and just because Kawarama gets a pass for being her cousin doesn’t mean she’s suddenly good at looking after them. Tobirama trusts her to keep Kawarama safe, though, and that’s the most important thing.

Kawarama snuggles his face against Tobirama’s chest, seeking a better position for napping, and lets out a soft puff of air. Tobirama closes his eyes and bends over Kawarama’s head to rest a kiss on his hair.

He can hardly remember how to breathe normally with his heart squeezing so tightly inside his ribcage, but he does the best he can. He counts the seconds for each inhale and exhale, the ticking of the clock the only heartbeat he doesn’t have to worry will suddenly stop.

Twenty minutes later, Kawarama’s breathing has slowed to the comforting cadence of sleep. Touka finally got up a bit ago and moved to the kitchen, where he can feel her magic fluctuating steadily, laying out the patterns for a full Tarot reading. Yukime holds a predator’s stillness, ears pricked up and alert for any potential threat, her tail twitching every now and again.

Tobirama’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

He looks at Yukime. Yukime looks at him.

“You won’t be leaving the apartment,” Yukime says. Her tone is mild enough that it’s difficult to tell if she’s requesting a reassurance or delivering an understated threat.

“No, but it could be something that requires a phone call, or some reference to my research. I’ll head to my study. I don’t want to wake Kawarama up.”

Slow as a glacier, Yukime shifts off of his lap, freeing him from her weight. She curls up on the floor, leaving a space just the right size for Kawarama to nestle against her side. Tobirama is careful not to wake him when he gently lifts him up and leans into Yukime to set him down again.

Kawarama’s hand is still curled into his hoodie when Tobirama tries to stand. He carefully eases his little fingers open, one by one. Kawarama’s face shifts into a frown and his grip tightens. Tobirama stills, but he doesn’t wake, so he starts again and transfers his clingy little brother to Yukime.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and slips down the hall into his study.

Now for the phone. Tobirama takes a bracing breath—it’s probably a client. He gets calls and texts semi-frequently, so it’s almost certainly a client. Just because he shoved a business card with his phone number at a demon before he could think better of it doesn’t mean the demon would be texting him already.

Tobirama can’t quite convince himself. He grits his teeth to steel himself as he takes his phone out of his pocket and looks down at the contact number.

It’s Mito.

Tobirama’s breath leaves him in a rush. The icon says that she texted him a video, as if that’s something either of them ever do. He stares blankly at her name long enough for the phone screen to startle him by going dark.

It hurts to even see her name, and Tobirama wishes for a moment that he hadn’t thawed yet—that he were still numb, that he didn’t have to feel anything about being contacted out of the blue. But if Mito thought it was necessary to contact him even after he was so resistant to the idea last Saturday, he needs to check the text, just in case.

He unlocks his phone and opens the text, trying not to think too hard about what he’s doing.

The video is framed around a little girl with red hair and freckles, wearing a purple beanie that matches her eyes. She looks far too much like Mito to not be related, and Mito had mentioned her, anyway—the three-year-old niece that she takes care of, sometimes. Uzumaki… something. He doesn’t remember what her name is, if Mito had ever mentioned it; all he knows is that she’s the little hellion Mito had brought up to ask about Kawarama—

It expands to cover the screen and starts playing before he has time to brace himself for it. The girl spins around, her yellow dress swishing, and she’s giggling manically as she staggers dizzily into the person holding the camera.

“I think you’ve had enough sugar today.” Mito’s smooth voice is fondly amused.

“Nooooo,” the girl whines, but she can’t stop giggling. “Chocolate! Ice cream! Chocolate!” She hops a few times, reaching upward toward the camera, leaning heavily on Mito’s legs.

Mito chuckles. “I thought you wanted ramen? How will you have room if you eat more chocolate?”

The girl straightens with a gasp, and immediately starts to jump up and down. “Ramen, ramen, ramen! Right now? Can we have ramen right now?”

“Soon,” Mito says, and reaches forward. Her manicured nails are visible just long enough for her to pull the girl’s beanie down over her eyes. She shrieks and yanks her beanie clean off, leaving her hair in messy disarray even as she starts giggling again.

The video stops there, focused on the girl’s laughing face. The starting image reappears with a black arrow over it, inviting him to play it again.

Tobirama locks the phone instead. Stares at the dark screen. The dim reflection of his eyes are blank and emotionless, but he doesn’t feel that way anymore. He hurts.

There’s no written words to accompany the video, the message Mito meant to send is obvious anyway. This is an olive branch. An invitation. She knows that he loves Kawarama more than anything else in this world, because how could she not? That’s where she’s trying to connect with him, and she’s silently encouraging him to reciprocate.

And he almost wants to. He called me old again today, he could say. Bony like an old person. He could send along the video he took last month of Kawarama doing his absolute best to ride a very patient Yukime like a baby sloth.

Except he can’t.

Mito is Hashirama’s soulmate. That’s a bond Tobirama wouldn’t dare try to break even if he wanted to, but it also means he can’t afford to interact with one and not the other—and Mito is the one reaching out. Hashirama hasn’t changed his mind. There’s still a gulf that Tobirama cannot cross, and to allow Mito to attempt to bridge it for them is pointless and unfair to everyone involved.

She’s still little more than a friendly acquaintance to him, even if does prefer her company over nearly anyone’s excepting his own family. Mito should be a part of that family now, as his sister by law. But she isn’t. She can’t be, when she’s his sister through her bond to Hashirama, who ran from him, left him behind in a way that family shouldn’t. Tobirama can’t undo that choice no matter how much he wants to, because it wasn’t his choice to make in the first place.

It never is.

There’s just—not enough room in Hashirama’s life for the both of them, it seems. Hashirama had moved out of the apartment they’d shared months before Tobirama made the mistake that turned out to be the real—nail in the coffin, to use a metaphor that would probably make Hashirama flinch from him all over again.

A part of him wonders, and maybe always will, if things would have turned out this way if Hashirama had stayed. If Tobirama had still had someone to pull him out of his research binges before he stayed awake for too long. If maybe he wouldn’t have fucked it up so badly with Hashirama during the resurrection if he hadn’t been so manic. If maybe Hashirama would have been able to accept Kawarama if only Tobirama had planned it better, not scared him with the ritual itself when he knew Hashirama doesn’t like large workings…

If. Maybe.

But it wasn’t the resurrection that made Hashirama leave Tobirama behind the first time, was it? It was when he found Mito.

Soulmates are always broadcasted as the perfect endgame, the white picket fence. It’s no wonder that Hashirama latched onto that dream so hard, but Tobirama—Tobirama doesn’t want one. He already has a family who needs him, and it’s not some magazine cutout pinned to a wall: he has Kawarama to look after, and Itama to find, however the Hell he’s supposed to do both of those things without betraying one brother or the other no matter what he does. He doesn’t have time to look for a soulmate. And even if he did, he’s not about to walk around trying to shift his magic into an active state instead of his usual passive sensing, on the off-chance that there’s someone to reach back and meet him in the middle. He’s not going to leave his brothers, they’re the most important thing in his life—

But he stares at the phone in his hand, the little video frozen on the screen, physical evidence of how Mito keeps reaching out even when Tobirama won’t let himself reach back… and he wonders. Wonders if it was actually the soulmate bond that made Hashirama leave him the first time, that caused the first rift…

…or if it was just Hashirama himself.

When Tobirama is finally sure that he’s gotten a grip on his emotions again, he checks on Kawarama. His senses can tell him that Kawarama still hasn’t awoken, but there’s still something comforting about seeing him nestled peacefully against Yukime’s side like a little snow leopard cub.

Yukime rumbles warningly at him when he walks past her toward the front of the apartment instead of sitting down. “I’m only checking on Touka,” he murmurs, and she subsides.

Touka’s still in the kitchen, finishing a reading. He’s felt her do several of them already, but her magic is winding down, so this must be the last one. He pushes open the door to see her frowning down at her cards as she slowly places each one back into her deck.

“Verdict?” Tobirama asks.

Touka gives him an undecipherable look. Uncertain, Tobirama guesses, or at least the reading may have been—which is alarming, considering everything else that’s happened today.

“Kawarama’s going to be fine,” she assures him, glancing back down at her deck. “The demon isn’t going to get to him, especially not through you. You, however…” She fingers the edges of the last card left on the table, but doesn’t pick it up. “You’re not necessarily out of the woods yet.”

It takes effort not to dismiss that out loud. Kawarama is the one Tobirama is really concerned about—he hadn’t expected much regarding himself. Hearing that he isn’t fated to get his throat ripped out by a demon’s fangs the next time he steps out of the apartment is about as much as he’d been able to bring himself to hope for.

But if Touka is in a remotely sharing mood with her divination, he should probably take advantage of it. “How do you mean? And why aren’t you sure?”

Touka thumps her knuckles on the last card. “The Tower, reversed.” She’s frowning deeply.

“Not a good card?”

“Not the worst,” she says, noncommittal.

Tobirama restrains his impatience as he steps closer to the table and recalculates exactly how much of a sharing mood she’s truly in. Touka’s concerned, and her magic is muddied enough to betray her hesitance. She’s still thinking it through; he can give her a little more time for that.

“What’s the worst card?”

“Depends,” Touka replies, which is spectacularly unhelpful. But for once, she seems to realize that. She grimaces, takes a deep breath, and looks up at him again. “This card, upright. Usually.”

Auspicious. “Overall, not a pleasant card, then?”

Touka hums as she taps the rest of her deck into alignment on the edge of the table. “Reversed, like it is here, it means disaster is averted. Like it was for you today. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay averted—The Tower reversed often means winning a battle even as you’re steadily losing the war, or a temporary truce.”

“So Kawarama—“ Tobirama starts.

“Is not actually a part of this reading, I’ve done several already and his was a lot clearer and more positive,” Touka reminds him. “You’re the one on shaky ground, here.”

Tobirama repeats that in his head until it starts to sound real: Kawarama is safe. Kawarama is going to be okay. There’s always the caveat that he can’t let this knowledge change his actions too much, or the reading will be nullified, but he’s certainly not going to stop planning to enact precautions that would protect his little brother from any enemies trying to gain the apartment. The reading will stay true, and Kawarama is safe.

Tobirama isn’t, but that’s alright. Itama still needs him, and choosing between Itama’s safety and Tobirama’s is the easiest thing in the world. Even if the worst happens, Kawarama will still have Touka as a safety net, with her divination and magical skill to keep him safe. Tobirama cannot justify leaving his little brother to the horrors of Hell for any longer, any more than he could justify endangering Kawarama.

Risking his own life for Itama’s, though… that’s only fair, isn’t it, when he should have been able to save him the first time and failed.

Touka is still frowning, staring so hard at the table that she’s likely to bore through it soon. Tobirama hesitates, eyeing her another moment and thinking about her reading before asking, “What does that card mean when it’s upright?”

“Calamity. Disaster.” Touka’s fingers drum anxiously on the table. “It’s not always bad, but it’s… inevitable. Your tower in all its strength is toppled, and everything changes forever.”

Standing across the table from Touka means that as he stares at the card, it stares right back at him, upright. He doesn’t do divination himself, he didn’t cast this reading, so it doesn’t mean anything—but a chill goes down his spine anyway, before Touka sweeps up the card and finally places it back in her deck.

Chapter Text

10 Years Ago

Hashirama goes to their cousin’s house for Samhain, leaving at noon to help them prepare for the bonfire at sunset. Tobirama stays to help Father with the magical workings he’ll be starting at sundown. Itama stays as well, but he’ll be tucked away the whole night to keep him away from Father while he’s doing magic.

That’s how it’s been, the last two years, and that’s undoubtedly how it will be next year, too.

An hour and a half after lunch, Tobirama helps Itama get situated in the small walk-in closet attached to their room. Snacks, water bottles, books to read, a pillow and a blanket. He needs to stay out of sight until tomorrow morning, because the magic of Samhain can make Father a little—manic, and while Tobirama thinks he’s found his own shaky footing well enough to be safe, he doesn’t know if he can protect Itama if Father tries anything. They depend on out of sight meaning out of mind.

“You’ll be alright in here?” Tobirama asks, petting down the ears of Itama’s stuffed rabbit. He mostly stopped sleeping with it when he was seven, under the claim that he was a big kid now and didn’t need it anymore. Tobirama still makes sure he has it in times of stress, though, and Itama has never turned the little rabbit out into the cold.

This is definitely a time of stress.

“Mm-hm.” Itama curls himself around the stuffed rabbit when Tobirama hands it to him. It looks so much smaller than it used to, but that’s just because Itama is nine now. “I’ll keep quiet and out of the way, and I’ll tell you all about my book in the morning.”

Itama isn’t a baby anymore, he knows what to do. Tobirama sighs, leans forward, and kisses the top of Itama’s head, right on the line where his hair colors try to blend together. They’re mixing again; he picks through the part and separates each color onto its own side. “Goodnight, and sleep tight.”

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Itama grumbles. “I’m not finishing it.”

“Sunset is in four hours, and I need the time to get ready for the workings. I won’t be back to wish you good night, so—sleep tight…”

“Tobi,” Itama complains, but he hugs Tobirama, so that’s something.

Tobirama gives in and finishes it on his own. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He runs his fingers through Itama’s hair again.

“Good night, Tobi.” Itama leans over and kisses him on the cheek, because there’s only so long he has to be embarrassed by his big brother when there’s nobody watching.

Tobirama smiles him as he leaves. As soon as the closet door closes, though, he schools his face into blankness. Father will be the only one to see him between now and sunrise, so he needs to be ready.

Father’s given him a list of things to prepare: a handful of seals to memorize for drawing out when it’s time, precise ink recipes to mix and store—crushing viper scales is going to be a pain, and Tobirama doesn’t even know what Father wants with such a corrosive ingredient—and scrubbing the basement floor and walls in the corner with the meat hook.

Tobirama’s brow furrows when he reaches the last item. That seems a waste to do on the eve of Samhain, but questioning Father is dangerous as well as stupid, so he simply does as he’s told.

The seals are easy to remember, the ink mixes smoothly, and finally Tobirama sets in to scrub the basement corner clean. Forty-five minutes and too much bleach later, the cement is free of old dried deer blood, and Tobirama is poking warily at the new hook installed in the wall. It can’t be for meat; it’s far too low to hang anything and the angle would bring it into contact with the unsanitary cement wall. He peers a little closer, and questing fingers finally brush over some sort of engraving. A circle? Ah, it’s a seal. But why is there a seal on the hook and what does it do—

“Tobirama,” Father says.

Tobirama flinches and straightens stiffly before he realizes Father’s voice came down the stairwell without him. But that just makes it more important to respond promptly, or Father will think he’s being ignored. “I apologize, I’ve just finished. I’ll be up in just a moment.” He scrambles to get his bucket, wire brush, and rag together and get up the stairs before Father gets impatient.

The steep basement steps are hard on Father’s knees, so he’s waiting in the doorway at the top. The kitchen lights frame his silhouette like some sort of Divine—or Hellish—being. His eyes are piercing, and Tobirama has to bite the inside of his cheek as he climbs to keep himself from apologizing again for some nebulous possible offense. Pointless chatter is strongly discouraged.

Father grabs him by the shoulder to give him a proper look over once he reaches the top step. Tobirama goes still and tries to ignore the alarm that shivers in his mind. His face is blank, his body language open and empty. Father can’t find anything to be angry with if there is nothing to be found.

He follows Father to the working room a pace behind and to the right. He spends the precious moments away from Father’s fierce regard to package up all the distracting sort of emotions, like worry and fear, locking them into a box to be opened again when the night is over and he can escape Father. Tobirama has gotten very good at staying still in the face of nausea and terror, as working magic with Father provides him plenty of practice, but he’s still working on keeping his thoughts clear while in distress. Nausea is easier to work through, but terror is more important to be able to ignore, since it warns of a greater threat to him or his brothers.

The sun finishes setting just as they enter the study. Tobirama breathes through the sudden magical weight in the air and has to suppress a flinch of surprise when Father grips his arm. His hold is tight to the point of pain, but Tobirama doesn’t make a sound or let his expression so much as twitch.

“We’re starting out with a very important ritual,” Father says, something terrible and manic in his voice. He never seems to feel the magic in the air the way that Tobirama does, but it affects him all the same, lending an unholy light to his eyes and a delighted edge to his curling, cruel smirk.

Control the terror, Tobirama tells himself, as the first stirrings of fear start to twist in his chest. You can control it. You can.

Then father casts the door open and drags him through, and Tobirama finds out that he really, really can’t.

The seal is already drawn on the floor, and in the center of it is a short table raised off the ground—an altar, he recognizes, because on it is Itama. His little brother lets out a muffled scream when he sees Tobirama, but the sound barely makes it past the gag. Big brown eyes shine with panic, tears tracing from the corner of his eyes into his hair, but he’s bound to the altar too tightly to move.

Tobirama jerks forward, but Father’s hand on his arm has turned into a vice.

“Magic requires a price,” Father says, sounding for all the world as if this is just another lesson. Like he’s lecturing Tobirama on the different types of necromantic constructs and not—not—“Sometimes the price is just a little of your magic. Sometimes it’s the value of the ingredients you’ve combined. Sometimes… it’s a soul.”

Tobirama is shaking. His head is blank, filled with cotton, but his mouth opens anyway. “Can it be any soul?” He doesn’t recognize his own voice. His ears buzz like a hundred bees are swarming around his head.

“That depends on the ritual.”

“Can—can’t we use someone else. Father, can’t we use someone else, instead of Itama? If any soul will work, don’t use itama, find—find someone else, please find someone else—“ Tobirama knows he’s babbling, but he can’t stop; he stares up at Father because if he looks at Itama again he knows he won’t be able to get any words out at all.

Father sighs in irritation. He lets go of Tobirama’s arm with a shove that makes him stagger, but Tobirama keeps his feet. It barely even registers, except for the heartbeat where he realizes he’s free and has a chance to reach Itama before—

He’s barely starting to lunge when Father’s fist catches him in the side of the head. Tobirama is knocked off his feet, tumbling into the small worktable set against the wall. His temple meets the table leg and he sees stars. The world goes unbalanced and tilted, forcing him to lower himself to the floor before he ends up collapsing on it anyway. His vision doubles and sways. If he tries to stand, he’s going to end up falling again, if he even makes it up that far in the first place.

Concussion, Tobirama recognizes. Mild traumatic brain injury. He knows the symptoms from clinical texts in the bookshelf in the sitting room. Concussions are… not good. He doesn’t think he passed out at all, but he’s left staring at two blurry versions of the underside of the worktable with a brain that is moving slower than it’s supposed to and this is very bad.

Itama is making desperate, muffled sounds, like he wants to get away and can’t. Because he’s tied up on the altar, right, how can he forget—

Tobirama pushes himself up onto his side and his stomach rolls. His vision slowly refocuses into a single image, but it’s much blurrier than it’s supposed to be, and blinking hard to clear it doesn’t work.

A dark blur, too large to be anything but Father, moves toward the pale box of the altar at the center of the seal. Something metal glints as he passes under the light before he blocks out Tobirama’s sight of the altar. A moment later, Itama gives a muffled cry of pain—then a shriller scream—and finally he dissolves into sobs.

Tobirama wedges his elbow underneath his ribs and hoists himself onto his hands and knees. Itama is crying, and Father won’t comfort him. His little brother needs him, even if all he can do is inch along the floor toward him.

Two shapes appear in front of him, and Tobirama pauses long enough for them to reluctantly resolve into Father’s shoes.

“Get up.”

Tobirama tries. He lifts from his knees to his feet, holding himself in a crouch and carefully lifting his hands off the floor, but when he tries to straighten his knees, the world spins and he nearly vomits. He can work through nausea, though. It’s not usually nausea like this, but he can handle it, even if he’s dizzy and keeps listing to the side when he gets more than a foot off the ground. Itama—Itama needs him—

Father loses patience and grabs his arm, wrenching him upright. Tobirama squeezes his eyes shut, finding his feet as best he can with how horribly his head is throbbing.

“You’re fucking useless,” Father says in disgust. “Stay there and watch. If you can’t help, maybe you’ll at least learn something.”

Tobirama clings to the worktable until the floor underneath him stops rolling like the deck of a ship. Slowly, he opens his eyes: still blurry, but Father’s shape is obvious as he paces around the seal’s edge. His gaze skitters sideways and locks on the altar and the fuzzy shape of Itama’s body on top of it. His sobs are slowly growing quieter, slower. His arms are—they’re red. They’re crimson, and that must be blood, he can see it seeping down the side of the altar. Itama is bleeding.

Itama is dying in front of him.

For a terrible moment, Tobirama’s feet are rooted to the floor, his brain completely blanked out by animal terror. Then Father goes to his knees and activates the seal.

Light erupts from the seal—no, that’s wrong. There’s the impression of light, but it drags away the weak illumination of the electric fixture on the ceiling and leaves the room darker than before. Through it, the lines of the seal shine an eerie crimson, the color of fresh blood. The color of Itama’s blood.

There’s an ominous rumble that somehow doesn’t shake the floorboards, but it shivers through Tobirama’s bones, makes him tremble until he’s sure something has to break, and then: eruption.

Tobirama has read about the Gates of Hell. Nothing he has ever studied could do them justice. They appear with the sensation like the very air is being torn apart as they force their way into a plane they don’t belong in. They are dark and forbidding, ethereal and not quite there, and they make every hair on the back of Tobirama’s neck stand straight up.

The room fills with dark smoke, reeking of sulfur. A beast lunges out of the Gates, so large it could swallow Tobirama whole. Its fangs are huge, each on as long as his hand and dripping with blood, and its snarl makes his knees shake. Tusks jut from its face and a crown of horns curves above its wild, matted mane. Its eyes are red, dark shapes twisting inside them like a kaleidoscope, but Tobirama’s sight is still too blurry for him to make out the pattern.

The beast dissolves into a man: dark flowing robes and dark spiky hair, two sets of large horns spiraling out of his head. His features are indistinguishable to Tobirama’s eyes no matter how hard he strains to see. He’s holding something gold, a sort of string that trails back through Hell’s open Gates.

The man glides forward to stand over Itama. Tobirama wants to scream, but sheer terror keeps any sound he could make firmly locked behind his teeth. There’s something strange, something wrong and awful about this man, the sort of feeling that makes intelligent animals and small children run away—but Tobirama is very, very good at burying that sort of reaction.

“As we agreed,” Father says.

“He’s not quite dead yet,” replies the other man in a low, steady voice. “We will wait.”

It doesn’t take long at all—and Tobirama knows when Itama dies. Knows the very second that his little brother’s soul slips free of his body, because he can feel it, like his own heart is being torn out of him from a distance.

Tobirama’s knees hit the floor. He lets out a small, pained sob, all the sound his throat will allow him to make.

The man gives the golden string a harsh tug, then offers it to Father. “As we agreed.” Then he speaks in a harsh, hissing language that Tobirama has never heard in his life.

Father takes the string and replies with all the same sounds, but they’re stilted, don’t roll off his tongue in the same way. But Tobirama feels the magical transaction complete with a flash of magic, golden and red and screaming with fury. A shape that doesn’t come all the way up to the stranger’s shoulder stumbles through the Gates, attached to the other end of the string.

The stranger lays a hands on Itama’s unmoving chest, then raises it. For a moment, Tobirama thinks he can see something—like glass, like a wisp of mist—but then it’s gone. It feels like Itama.

The stranger closes his fist. “Our deal concludes,” he says, and steps back through the Gates alone. They start to move with an ominous creaking that steadily rises to a horrible shriek as they gain speed, and they slam shut with a toll like the end times.

The feeling of Itama—of his magic, of his soul—cuts out entirely.

Tobirama doesn’t scream, but only because he feels as though his lungs have been ripped from his chest. He can’t breathe. The Gates have disappeared but he can’t breathe.

Itama is gone.

Father takes Itama’s body from the room with the stumbling shape dragged after him on the golden string. Tobirama is under orders to move the altar and scrub the circle from the floorboards to clear the area for the next working.

Tobirama doesn’t want to move ever again, no matter what Father might do to him. Maybe he’ll just die and then—he won’t find Itama, those were Hell’s Gates, but he’ll find Kawarama.

Or maybe he’s wrong, and he’ll be dragged down to meet all the other demons and find Itama again after all. The books say you have to be irredeemably evil for that, somehow broken in the soul until you can do horrific things to other people—but Tobirama can’t think of anything that could make someone more broken than not even crying after watching their little brother die, and he still hasn’t.

His body moves despite himself to do has he’s been told. It’s been conditioned well to keep him alive, to react to Father’s anger and orders, so he climbs dizzily to his feet. As he unsteadily traverses the seal, he tries to ignore how it seems to still move, like glutted veins of some horrific creature. That has to be a hallucination, though; his vision is still too fuzzy to even make out the lines.

He stumbles when he’s nearly at the center and catches himself on the side of the altar. It’s just wood, sanded smooth but unvarnished, yet the fingers of his right hand are… wet. He looks down. Wet and red.

The blood is still warm.

Tobirama blinks, and it’s like he’s not in control of his body anymore. He’s staring at a hand that doesn’t feel like his own. It moves up, up, and lightly touches his face. A reminder, a parody of Itama’s last kiss to his cheek, before Tobirama had left him hidden away, both of them unaware that he would be found and taken, unaware that it would be the last time they ever touched.

The blood drips sluggishly down his face, like the tears that are supposed to be there. He doesn’t understand why it’s blood there instead of tears. he doesn’t feel like the books say he should, at such a loss. He feels numb and empty. Blank like the sky. Like the endless nothingness of space—not like a raging ocean of grief or like anything real at all.

The door slams open again as Father storms through, already angry again. The hand curls in on itself and lowers, but Tobirama can’t move away from the altar. His feet just don’t work, and his eyes won’t look away from the blood.

“Why isn’t the circle cleaned? What are you—Tobirama,” Father thunders. He charges over and snatches up the bloodied hand. “What is this?”

The answer is obvious—which is good, because the words won’t come. Tobirama’s eyes drift toward the pool of red on the altar dripping down the sides.

Father shakes his arm, making Tobirama’s whole body sway. “You’re supposed to be activating the seals with me tonight, and you get blood on your hands? The interactions—I taught you this months ago, I can’t afford a magical backlash when a seal is channeling our power. Do you want to feel your skin flaying from your bones?”

That’s not a threat. That’s just how magic is, when you turn your back on it. It’s not a threat, even though Tobirama knows Father wouldn’t hesitate to put him through that just for a lesson, if it wouldn’t damage his magical pathways irreparably.

Father won’t hesitate about anything. Tobirama should have learned that lesson years ago, but he didn’t, and now Itama has paid for it.

Tobirama remains silent as Father drags him to the worktable, swipes a mostly clean rag and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and starts disinfecting his hand, muttering and growling invectives all the while. He doesn’t bother trying to clean the drying streak of blood on Tobirama’s cheek.

Father moves the altar himself and sets Tobirama to scrubbing the floor clean. His balance is shot and his vision is too blurry to recreate the seals he practiced, so Father has to draw out the next one himself. Tobirama sits against the wall, huddled in on himself, like that might make Father forget he’s there at all.

Finally, Father stands, grimacing as his knees pop. “Get to the edge of the circle,” he barks. “You’ve still got your magic, at least.”

Tobirama crawls to the seal, figuring he’s less likely to overbalance and hurt himself or mess up the wet ink if he stays close to the ground. He kneels at the edge, hands resting on his knees. They are steady and not shaking. There’s no adrenaline left in him, so Tobirama supposes that makes sense.

Father drags the dark, growling shape to the middle of a circle. Father winds the golden string up short and attaches it to a hook hammered into the floor before retreating to the other side of the circle.

Tobirama misses Father’s first signal, but he catches the second, angrier wave of his arm. he reaches out to touch the edge of the circle by detached reflex.

The creature in the middle screams when the magic activates the seal. Tobirama’s breath catches in his throat, but he freezes in place instead of flinching away. The gold is a chain, and the shape is a creature with a tail that lashes and wings that beat uselessly at the air. The sound it makes as it thrashes is horrific, too bestial to be human but too aware to be an animal.

After two and a half minutes that feel like an eternity, the seal dies down, and the screaming tapers off into wounded panting. Tobirama accepts the cleaning supplies Father gives him and starts cleaning up the outermost band of the circle. He doesn’t look the creature’s way; he can hardly see anything anyway.

Eleven seals later, the creature has stopped screaming entirely, and the panting has taken on a rasping edge. Its wings lie limp, but its tail twitches every now and again with a whimper of pain.

It’s almost sunrise. Father shoves the cleaning supplies into Tobirama’s arms and works the chain off the hook, dragging the creature to the corner of the room and out of the way of the central part of the seal that has stayed the same all night. Tobirama can read the sigil only because it’s written with thick, bold strokes, and he’s so close that it’s stopped blurring into indistinctness.

Demon.

Father traded Itama’s soul for a demon.

Tobirama is too numb to even be angry. He finishes his job, picks up the supplies, and carries them to their spot in the cupboards built into the walls. It’s close to where the creature—the demon—is chained to the wall, and Tobirama finally looks at it. Watches it. Searches for some kind of hate inside himself that can break though the ice that has swallowed him up. This thing has replaced Itama.

The demon’s eyes are red and swirling. It bares its fangs—exhausted from the workings, helpless and chained, but still furious at its predicament. It has two sets of short horns, one set curving back over his head and the other curling beneath long, furred ears that resemble a rabbit’s but for how pointed they are. Its hair is a spiky mess, pulled out of its face with a tie that’s coming loose. Its wings are drawn around the rest of its body protectively, feathers puffed out to make itself seem larger than it is. Its fingers are digging into the floorboards in a way that makes Tobirama wonder if they’re clawed, but he can’t tell; they’re too blurry at this distance to make out.

But he can see the demon’s face just fine. It looks… his age. The age of people at his school, in his class.

The demon has a collar around his neck, thick and gold to match the chain. Father didn’t just trade Itama for a demon. He traded him for a slave, an object, something else to use. A being not much other that Itama is—was.

Tobirama is hollowed out and empty. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing left in him capable of feeling, but he can’t hate this… child.

He can’t call the demon it, either. Father will, if he doesn’t kill him before calling him anything at all, but Tobirama won’t.

The demon boy narrows his eyes at him, just slightly. Then he hisses, quiet and testing. Tobirama doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t hiss in return; he simply watches.

Father sends him away to bed as the sun rises along with a snapped order to fix his vision. As if Tobirama can magically heal a concussion in a matter of hours. But asking Father for assistance would be worse than useless, and all of his words have dried up inside of him, anyway. He won’t be going to a hospital, and there’s no one else in the house that can help him, so he goes to his room. He’ll just have to hope the damage to his vision won’t last forever, and pray that when he goes to sleep he’ll wake up again.

Even if he’s starting to think it might be easier if he never did.

Tobirama does not speak at all for days.

Now

Touka is still trying to wrestle her hair into its usual twist when she thumps into the seat across from Tobirama at the kitchen table. He pauses and eyes her warily, curling a hand around his coffee mug in automatic defense. She keeps lecturing him about caffeine intake and a proper breakfast, but she currently has about eight bobby pins pinched between her lips, so if she manages to get a barb out anyway then he might let her have the last word this time, just on principle.

Besides, he did eat a proper breakfast—three hours ago with Kawarama. Touka just wakes up late on the weekends, and she’d probably still be sleeping on the couch except that she’s supposed to have some sort of study group today. He’s not drinking coffee as a meal replacement, this time; he got very little sleep last night, between a handful of old, awful nightmares and moments he’d find himself jerking awake, afraid he’s missed some warning sign and there was a demon just outside.

The emergency wards were up all night, of course, so they were perfectly safe. But that sort of logic doesn’t work on his subconscious.

Touka sticks her last bobby pin into her hair and only then starts eyeing his coffee mug. “So.”

He gives her a warning glare and pointedly takes a sip.

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine, I won’t bring up your ridiculous and unhealthy caffeine addiction. I’ll just assume you’re going to be up late until you’re up early, again, and so I have to ask: are you going to be dumb during the witching hour, or are you going to be chasing ghosts again?”

“I don’t do ghosts,” Tobirama says, frowning. He’s told her this before, several times.

“Oooor seances, whatever. Which, seances still involve ghosts, so I’m technically not wrong. I guess they’re probably less polite during an exorcism, though. Like working in retail instead of, I don’t know, at a bank? God, retail where the customers are already dead. Talk about a nightmare.”

“I’m not taking calls right now.”

Touka purses her lips together. Unease shifts in her magic. “…Right.”

For a while, he thinks that’s the end of the conversation. Then he gets up for a new cup of coffee, and Touka pulls some orange juice out of the fridge and settled right back down across from him.

“What about Kawarama?” she asks brightly. “You were reading a book to him yesterday, does he read a lot on his own, or…?”

“Sometimes,” Tobirama mumbles into his mug. Touka may have not actually been aware that Kawarama can read until yesterday; when babysitting, she mostly acts as supervision and occasionally the villain to Kawarama’s toy dinosaur’s drama-filled grudge matches against his stuffed animals.

Touka heaves a sigh and rests her elbows on the table. “Man, my shoulders are going to be sore tomorrow.”

“Hmm?”

She flicks her bangs out of her face to give him a deadpan look. “From carrying this conversation.”

“…Mmm.” Tobirama swallows and sets his mug down. “Ah. Are you—“ He stops. Thinks. If there’s a purpose to this conversation, then he doesn’t know what it—

Wait. Now that he’s paying attention, there’s an edge of concern in her magic, alongside the stress.

“Are you trying to make me feel better by making me smalltalk?” he asks incredulously. “It’s like you don’t even know me.”

Touka huffs and folds her arms. “Look, contrary to whatever you seem to believe, no one dug you out of a cabbage patch. Or a grave, for that matter. You’re a person and I’m trying to remind you that you are a person who has other people around you, so stop answering my essay questions like they’re true of false. And for the love of the goddess, please start using words longer than two syllables again, it’s like you’re a robot impersonator or something and it’s creepy. Creepier than usual, even.”

He gives her a sour look. “If a more salubrious conversation would propitiate your peace of mind, then I suppose I could overcome my taciturnity.”

“I—“ Touka pinches the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was expecting.”

Tobirama snorts. “I don’t like to say you were asking for it, but…”

“Yeah you do, you liar.” Touka rolls her eyes. “As I was saying, now that you know we’re having a conversation like normal people—does Kawarama like that book you were reading to him? What’s it about?”

“Looking for recommendations at your reading level?”

Touka kicks his ankle under the table. “I’m being concerned and asking about your life—“

He cuts her off and gives in. “It’s a series. Twenty-eight books about a time-traveling tree house. It’s—“ an old favorite, he almost says, but that’s probably better left dead and buried. “Kawarama enjoys it. Usually.”

“What kind of kid doesn’t doesn’t like ninjas, huh? Or weird, unrealistic magic. Wouldn’t time travel break the universe or something?” Touka squints at the ceiling and shakes her head. “Where do you even find out about kids’ books, is there a mailing list or something?”

“I used to—“ Tobirama starts, but he finds he can’t finish that thought. The books he reads to Kawarama aren’t the same books, not the old copies in the old house, and for some reason Tobirama’s throat closes up around that knowledge. “…I remembered them,” is all he can manage, stilted and awkward.

Touka winces. “Oh.”

And now they’re back to square one. Tobirama rubs his forehead. If he has to listen to Touka switch to yet another inane and supposedly harmless subject, he’s going to scream. “You don’t have to—“ Tobirama starts awkwardly, and stops again. “Just because I don’t always speak doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”

“I know,” Touka says quietly. “But I can’t read your mind. I need to hear you sometimes, that’s all.”

Tobirama supposes that’s part of the misfortune of not having empathic abilities… as opposed to the myriad misfortunes of having them. “Can we at least skip the smalltalk? You know I don’t care for platitudes.”

“That’s an understatement,” Touka mutters. She drums her fingers on the edge of the table, gaze drifting off toward the wall as her expression grows troubled. “In that case, I’ve been been meaning to ask,” she starts, aiming for casual and missing it by a mile. Tobirama can feel the tension she’s trying to bury even as it rises again in her magic. “You realize it’s the nineteenth already?”

“Congratulations on knowing the date,” he says cautiously. There’s several notable dates approaching, Samhain not the least of them. Touka’s immediate family always celebrates together, but if she’s offering an invitation, Tobirama can’t accept it. For him, it’s not a celebration—it’s the day his little brother died because Tobirama wasn’t smart enough or fast enough to save him.

Touka cuts to the chase. “You’re brother’s birthday is in four days.”

Tobirama stiffens and tries not to flinch too obviously. “My brother’s birthday was last month,” he says coldly.

Touka’s jaw tightens. “And I was there then, too.”

“Hashirama wasn’t.”

Tobirama knows he just lost whatever sick game it is that makes them tiptoe around the subject—he’s the one that said Hashirama’s name aloud first. No matter how many months have passed since Hashirama has so much as darkened the doorway, his presence still lingers like a restless ghost. Worse, even—Tobirama could exorcise a mere ghost.

“What does it matter when his birthday is?” Tobirama doesn’t like thinking about birthdays in general, after how Kawarama’s had gone. That had been… stressful. Good, at least at first, because Kawarama was alive to experience it in the first place, and Tobirama could finally give him the birthday he’d never had as a child—

But it had been empty, too. Tobirama had tried not to hope too hard, but he’d thought that if Hashirama was interested in making amends, he’d to it then. He’d give Kawarama a plant bigger than he was from that jungle he called a shop, sit down with them, and eat cake. He’d laugh too loudly at jokes that aren’t that funny, and Tobirama would, for once, only be missing one brother and not two even though only one of them is still dead.

He hadn’t shown, of course. Kawarama hadn’t even seemed like he’d noticed the absence until Tobirama started trying to shuffle him off to bed. Then he was all wide eyes and tears as he insisted, But that was my birthday wish! Because Kawarama misses Hashirama too, but after the way the resurrection ended, Tobirama can’t bring himself to ask Hashirama to come back—even for Kawarama’s sake—and chance a no in response.

“I’m not telling you that you have to see him,” Touka says. She sounds almost as tired as he feels. “I know you have a good reason to stay away. But if you wanted something to break the ice, maybe sending a present along would be a good way to start talking again. You don’t even have to write a note with it, and I can give it to him for you. Probably by throwing him at his head.” Touka snaps her fingers and gives him a faux-bright grin. “Hey, if you get him a dumbbell, I bet that would break his nose.”

“And what, start a fight?”

Touka throws up her hands. “Better than this silent war!”

Maybe if Tobirama were in a better mood, he’d appreciate the effort. Maybe if everything weren’t already trying to collapse around his ears, or if this entire conversation wasn’t slicing straight into a wound that’s had four months to fester.

But maybes are worth absolutely nothing when he has to deal with what’s real.

“No,” he snaps. “No, I am not sending him a—a fucking birthday present. I refuse to reach out to someone who’s made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with me.”

Touka makes an inarticulate noise of protest. “As if you’ve even had a conversation long enough to figure out if that’s true—“

“If he wants to stop running away, he can damn well turn around himself!” Tobirama snarls.

Touka snaps her mouth shut. Frustration simmers in her magic almost as violently as resentment is bubbling in Tobirama’s. “Fine,” she says tightly. She takes a deep breath, and continues with a little more poise. “Alright. ‘No’ is an acceptable answer. You don’t have to get him anything, and I’m not trying to convince you to—it was just a suggestion. But, while he’s not my favorite cousin at the moment, he’s still family, and I’m going to go and talk to him on his birthday. I’ll save the throttling for another day.”

Tobirama is so godsdamned tired. “Fine. You’re a grown woman, you hardly need my permission.”

“I’m not asking—“

Her frustration finally reaches its boiling point, and Touka is not given to tears. Tobirama is already bracing himself for a slap as she storms around the table—and then she collides with him in the most aggressive hug he’s been subjected to in months. He staggers back and barely manages to keep them from toppling over, but Touka doesn’t let go. She squeezes tighter, instead, but he doesn’t think that’s why it’s suddenly so hard to keep his breathing even. His ribs can handle far worse; his heart is a frailer thing.

“You are my family, and I love you,” Touka whispers viciously into his shoulder. “Even though you worry me half to death sometimes, reckless genius maniac zombie that you are. I am not asking your fucking permission. I am informing you that I’m going to spend probably most of the day with Hashirama on his birthday. And then by sunset, I am going to come back here, to my favorite little cousins, and I will—I will bring you coffee.”

Considering her usual bitching about his caffeine habit, that’s a surprisingly solid peace offering. Yet it still tastes bitter on his tongue. “No coffee for Kawarama,” he says automatically, because Touka is terrible with children and no one is served by letting her forget it.

“I vividly remember not to do that,” Touka says under her breath.

She unwinds from her hug slowly, patting him once on the shoulder as she turns to put her cup in the sink. The cold quickly chases away every spot of warmth she left behind, but Tobirama still doesn’t move. The bitter taste has solidified and sunken into a pit in his stomach.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he says softly.

Touka shoots him a baffled look. “What, bring you coffee?”

“Come back.”

Touka turns to face face him slowly. Her face and magic have gone almost entirely blank of emotion, which conveniently mirrors exactly how he feels. “…What?”

Ever since Madara showed up at his door, Tobirama has been weighing costs versus benefits. Safety measures versus potential harm. His voice is steady when he says, “The demon knows where this apartment is. Maybe you shouldn’t come back here.”

Touka’s expression shifts through confusion, alarm, and settles on indignation. “Excuse me? I’ll decide what sort of risks I’ll be taking. Are you seriously going to try to tell me what to do ‘for my own good’? Because I can tell you right now that that’s not going to fucking fly with me.” She pauses, and her eyes narrow as her emotions sour into something hurt. “Or are you just saying this because you’re angry with me?”

Tobirama purses his lips. He doesn’t actually know if he’s angry, though he can tell Touka teetering on the edge of it. He’s a mess and he knows it; it’s far, far easier to read others’ emotions than it is to try to understand his own. “…It’s not that,” he says, not quite sure of himself.

He must have hesitated too long—Touka’s actually upset now. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Touka, there’s a demon about. It’s not safe for you to come and go as frequently as you usually do.”

Touka scoffs. “And what about you? Skulking about in the dead of night—if this demon is such a big fucking deal, then you’re not safe either, dumbass!”

“That’s not new.”

“But you don’t change anything about it! I know”—Tobirama opens his mouth to speak, but she talks over him louder than before—“I know you’re doing what you feel like you have to for Itama. But you’re not the only one with a family, and gods help me, you’re a part of mine. You got that?”

Tobirama’s fingers curl into fists until his knuckles turn white. “That’s different.”

“Why? because if you’re the one who dies, you don’t have to sit through the fucking funeral?” Touka bursts out.

Tobirama doesn’t flinch; he’s had too much practice ignoring pain. But it seethes inside of him. Touka is an only child with two living parents, and she’s never found the body of someone she once loved discarded like the hacked up carcass of butchered game, never watched anyone bleed out in front of her. She’s never sat through a funeral—and if Tobirama hasn’t, either, that’s not because he never felt the loss, it’s because he was robbed of any semblance of a true chance to say goodbye.

There’s something cold growing in him that feels like a storm. “Get out.”

Touka slams her hands on the table. “No. I am not running away from you.”

“Why not?” Tobirama’s voice is danger-soft. “Don’t I scare you?”

He watches her go pale, and that’s when he realizes—he is angry. He’s just not quite sure if he got there on his own, or if Touka’s outrage has filled in all his empty spaces. Water can crack open mountains as it turns to ice, if it slips into the right cracks.

“Did you think I didn’t know?” Every time he was too empty to hide the cavern his soul had become. “That I couldn’t feel it?” The fear that he couldn’t ignore, even when he tried. “I scare the shit out of you. If you didn’t already know, sane people leave when that happens.”

If they notice in time. If they can escape before they get caught in the web of danger he’s brought down on their heads.

Touka is dead white, but she doesn’t look away. “I’m not going anywhere,” she hisses, eyes bright with furious tears.

I’m not afraid, she doesn’t say. But then, she knows that Tobirama can tell when she’s lying.

And that—hurts. Everything hurts, apparently, everything tries to cut him deep enough to kill, any time he thaws out enough to let it. It’s safer to be frozen, to be empty, and he needs to make the hurt stop. So he does, the same way he used to when he was young and adrenaline tried to make his hands shake—step to the side. Step out of a chemical-wracked mess of meat and bones. Wrench your heart out with it and it will at least stop hurting quite so much.

His hands don’t quite feel like they’re his own when he folds them together, but they don’t shake. He feels calm again. Cold. “You won’t leave at all? I thought you had to go onto campus today.” His voice sounds distant to his own ears.

Touka sucks in a tight breath, half of a startled hiccup. She angrily wipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “That’s not fucking fair and you know it.”

“Fair,” Tobirama echoes dully. She sounds like a child, as uncharitable as it seems. No part of any plane of existence functions on fairness. Even the fae only operate on twisted terms of equivalence.

“I do have to go,” she says. “But I’m coming back. And if the wards don’t let me in when I get here, so help me I will sit right outside your door until you get your shit together and fix that. Got it?”

“If,” Tobirama starts, before he corrects himself. “When the demon comes back, you’ll be a sitting duck.”

She glares at him, mutinous. “As long as you don’t unkey me from the wards, I won’t be stuck out there, will I?”

“Just go,” Tobirama says without inflection.

Touka draws herself up to her full height. A tear escapes down her cheek, and Tobirama’s eyes follow it more for the novelty than anything else.

“You’re my family,” she says, voice trembling. “And I love you. Don’t you dare shut me out.”

Finally, she leaves.

Tobirama sits alone at the kitchen table, nursing his mug as he listens to her gathering her things to head out and back to campus. His coffee is colder than it should be, but this isn’t the first time he’s literally cooled the room by losing his temper. The heating system is already kicking on, but it was only a few degrees, so there’s no harm done except that he might not be able to feel his fingers for a while, and that’s hardly anything new.

Touka doesn’t come back to the kitchen, instead taking the longer route around the sharp turn of the hallway to get to the front door. The wards part like a welcoming curtain as it opens, and Tobirama’s shoulders tense, but then she’s through, locking the door, and the wards fall back into place.

The silence and stillness suffocates him for all of half a minute before it abruptly becomes unbearable. Tobirama dumps his cold coffee down the sink, watches it swirl down the drain and can’t look away. He feels like smoke. Or maybe like glass, crushed down so finely that it’s become powder drifting in the air. Ethereal, insubstantial mist, refracting light like glittering ice—and so microscopically sharp that he can’t help but cut deep enough to make others bleed.

And he bleeds, too. Even when he doesn’t move.

Tobirama had been doing an admirable job not thinking about Hashirama’s birthday, this past week, but obviously that’s not an option anymore. Still, it’s not like he has to agonize over what to do: he’s doing absolutely nothing. Hashirama has always been the one to run, and it’s not that Tobirama doesn’t want to go after him—he did when they were the only ones left, when they could finally escape the desecrated tomb that old house had become. He’d followed Hashirama to this apartment where they’d built a home in that floundering, awkward way of two boys who didn’t know what a home was supposed to feel like.

But that was years ago, and this time, Tobirama can’t follow. He’s the one that stays, and with Kawarama set up in the room next to his, where Hashirama used to sleep, he can’t afford to keep moving like there’s something chasing him.

Tobirama lets out a sharp breath, almost like he’s in pain, even though there is no pain when he can’t feel anything at all. Torn as if between two choices, when there isn’t choice at all.

It all comes down to this: Hashirama can keep walking without his brothers, can keep putting one foot in front of the other, while Tobirama has planted his feet and refused to move on without Itama.

It’s past time he heads back to his study. Tobirama leaves the kitchen and walks through the living room, but something out of place catches his eye. He stops and stares at the couch, or, more accurately, at Touka’s overnight duffle bag still defiantly taking up an entire cushion, even after he’d told her in no uncertain terms to go.

…She’d said that she would come back, yes, and she hadn’t been intentionally lying to him when she said she wasn’t going anywhere, but—

But there are reasons she should stay away. He may have been angry, but he meant it when he said that she wasn’t safe. If she had the sense of self-preservation that the gods gave a damned lemming, then surely she’d have taken the bag with her, instead of leaving it here in an obvious promise to return.

His knuckles are white. He deliberately unclenches his fists.

Touka called his bluff about the wards before he could even attempt it properly. He isn’t going to actually lock her out, because she’s stubborn enough that such an action would only put her in worse danger. he can’t lock her in, because she is not a five-year-old under his protection no matter how childish she’s acting, and that sounds too much like something that would have happened in that house for Tobirama to feel comfortable attempting it here.

Yet he has to find a way to keep her safe. Tobirama’s own actions drew the demon here, and if Touka won’t leave, Tobirama is going to have to drive it away. He has to do that anyway, for Kawarama; her risky coming and going is only moving his time-table up. He has to move now.

And it’s still, as always, Tobirama’s duty to save Itama this time, instead of letting the demon have chain him for eternity.

But all the determination and duty in the world can’t get him what he needs when he doesn’t have the information. Itama is bound to the demon Butsuma was dealing with, but Tobirama has a sigil, not even a name or a Blood Eye pattern, and no way to identify the demon who took Itama even if they were standing nose to nose. The only person who would know that name would have been Butsuma, but he’s been dead for years.

The thought catches, trips. Butsuma would have known, Tobirama repeats to himself.

And usually he would go far out of his way to avoid even thinking about the bastard he shares such an unfortunate genetic link with, but it’s just been a day for forbidden names, hasn’t it?

Butsuma would have known, and he had a terrible memory that resulted in a tendency to record everything. he kept most of his notes tucked away in a chest Tobirama had never dared try to steal from, but it’d been easy enough to sneak peeks at the pages when he’d left them lying open on the desk in his study, and those ones had rambled on about everything he’d been working on at the time. Everything Butsuma knew about the demon he was dealing with, everything he knew about the process of dealing with him, everything he thought might be relevant—it would all be in those leather-bound journals. And even almost a decade later, they’d all still be intact.

There’s just one problem.

Tobirama sits down on the arm of the couch as the room wavers. His hands are cold and still don’t feel like his, but they don’t shake; they never do. The numbness protects him even when he stands at the edge of a chasm of terror.

If he wants the notes, then he’s going to have to go and get them. The house must still be completely untouched from how they’d left it. He and Hashirama had only taken a suitcase and a backpack each, and they’d left everything else to rot or gather dust as it would. The notes are still in there.

The magical residue that has seeped into the house over the years his family had lived there still echoes of their pain—fear and despair, fury and grief—and it still makes Tobirama anxious when it so much as brushes against the edges of his senses. When he was seventeen, he tried taking a shortcut to a newly opened magic shop along that side of town, but when he’d gotten within a mile of the house, he’d simply blacked out. He still doesn’t remember anything that had happened until he was back in his and Hashirama’s apartment, safe but for the way his heart thundered too fast in his chest. He and Hashirama have always walked the same detours around that edge of town, and by now they’re second nature.

Nine years ago, Tobirama had looked Hashirama in the eye and promised that they’d never, ever have to walk into that house again. He’d thought he was telling the truth at the time—and has far as Hashirama is concerned, maybe it it still true. But Tobirama can never seem to keep the promises he makes to himself, and he’s spent too long training himself out of an adrenaline flight response to let it stop him now.

Hashirama can run all he likes. Maybe that works for him, but Tobirama is going to have to go back.

Chapter Text

9 Years Ago

Hashirama’s birthday has come and gone. In its wake, Samhain creeps closer, and with it, the anniversary of Itama’s death.

Tobirama sits on his bed, cross-legged, holding onto the old stuffed rabbit that Itama used to love. it’s threadbare, and one ear is missing several stitches from an unwise game of tug-of-war with Kawarama—a game that happened years ago, now, before any of them had realized how much danger they were in.

Kawarama’s teddy bear is propped up next to his knee.

Tobirama doesn’t take the toys out very often. He misses his little brothers fiercely, with a yawning grief that empties him of everything else, and he can’t always stand having a tangible reminder. It hurts that they’re all he has left to hold onto.

The door opens and Hashirama starts to come in, only to stop short in the doorway when he sees the stuffed animals. Whatever he may have been about to say dies stillborn, and his white-knuckled grip on the doorknob is visible from the bed.

Tobirama doesn’t turn to look at him. Hashirama has been more tentative ever since Itama died. Quieter, like he’s finally realized that shouting at Father might mean one day being hurt worse than bruises or even broken bones. His magic is green and growing and powerful, and it allows him to heal faster and more completely than the medical texts Tobirama has read say he should be able to—but that won’t save him if Father truly decides to kill him.

After almost three whole minutes, Hashirama closes the door behind him and creeps forward, perching cautiously on the edge of the bed like he thinks Tobirama might shoo him away. He wouldn’t, of course—they were his little brothers, too. If Hashirama asked, Tobirama wouldn’t stop him from holding the teddy bear for a while. He just never asks, and Tobirama never offers.

It takes another few minutes for Hashirama to bring himself to speak. “I’m going to Touka’s for Samhain.”

Tobirama hums his acknowledgement. He doesn’t see Touka often, even though she’s their cousin. She’s nice enough, from what he remembers, but he’s six years younger than her and they haven’t gone to the same school since he was in first grade. Hashirama latched onto her years ago, though, and he’s been spending Samhain with Touka and her immediate family for years. It’s not strange that he’s going—it’s just odd that he’s telling Tobirama outright.

“I… thought maybe you’d want to come celebrate with us?” Hashirama offers, shifting awkwardly in place.

Tobirama turns his head slowly, tearing his eyes away from the stuffed rabbit to stare at his only living brother like he’s an alien. “Celebrate?”

Hashirama falters. “That’s—that’s what Samhain is for. I know we can’t tell them anything, but at least we can get out of this house for a while. We shouldn’t spend—it—here. This isn’t a good place for us.”

He can’t say the word anniversary. Tobirama understands, even if he’s never had Hashirama’s trouble with painful words.

Tobirama shakes his head, tightening his grip on the rabbit. “No, Hashirama. Father will be angry if I’m not there to help him with the workings that night.”

“Fuck Butsuma!” Hashirama hisses, keeping his voice low just in case Mother is in the hall near their door. “You shouldn’t have to spend Samhain with him.”

“He’ll be angry,” Tobirama repeats. “Do you trust his temper enough to believe I wouldn’t be next? I don’t.”

The color drains from Hashirama’s face. “Next?” he says unwillingly, like he already knows. Like he wants Tobirama to tell him he’s wrong.

“Mother, Kawarama, and Itama are all dead,” Tobirama says tonelessly. “We’re the only ones left. Do the math.”

Hashirama opens his mouth. Closes it again. Tobirama can feel the panic clawing its way up Hashirama’s throat as if it’s his own, the same way Tobirama just knows how angry Father is sometimes, the same way he felt Itama killed and his soul taken. He’s only recently started to realize that other people can’t feel other people like that, but not that he’s noticed it, he can’t turn it off. He’s stuck feeling Hashirama’s helplessness, and then the grim determination that comes over him like a death knell.

“Then we have to get out. We have to run.” Hashirama is tense like an animal being chased, ready to bolt if given a fraction of an opening.

I can’t, Tobirama wants to say. “He’ll find us,” he says instead, flat and inarguable. “If you don’t think the seals of silence have trackers on them, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Hashirama leaps to his feet, fists balled like he’s going to fight the very house they’ve lived in their whole lives. “We’ll get out of here, Tobirama,” he swears. “We won’t die here.”

He doesn’t slam the door on the way bout, because they’ve both trained themselves out of making any unnecessary noise, but the tension in every line of his body says that he’d like to.

Tobirama squeezes his eyes shut and tries to find that empty place inside himself, the one that keeps him from capsizing when other people’s emotions—or even just his own—become too strong to bear. It’s easier the farther away that Hashirama runs, and by the time he’s off the property, Tobirama can think again.

Hashirama just turned seventeen. If they can last just one more year, he’ll be able to get out. No one’s going to question him getting an apartment once he’s of age. He’ll get away from Father and he’ll be safe.

But both of them surviving another year sometimes seems like an impossible task, and Tobirama won’t be of age for almost three and a half more years. Hashirama can’t get custody of him before then, not when they can’t tell anyone about the danger they’re in.

He’s trapped.

To make it all even worse, he’s been keeping a careful eye on Father’s notes. He’s trying to summon a moon goddess, a being named Kaguya, and that summoning will require death as a payment. When Father mentions ritual, these days, he’ll eye the demon boy that he traded Itama’s soul for—still growing into its horns, golden chain binding him to Father. But Tobirama knows that Kaguya’s seal requires a joining: she must be summoned during a total solar eclipse, summoned by a seal with a diameter larger than their entire house, with opposing elements in each concentric circle.

The summoning won’t just require one sacrifice. It will require two, and a demon and a human sacrifice to oppose each other would fit into the last pieces of the seal like puzzle pieces, Tobirama can see it. So maybe he only notices when Father is watching the demon, but he’s sure that when he’s not looking, Father is watching him, too.

Father isn’t ready yet, and the eclipse isn’t soon. But Tobirama knows better than to think he’s safe.

His hands don’t even shake as he stares at the stuffed animals in his lap. He can’t run. He can’t stay still. Neither will change the ending of this story, just delay it for a little while—

Fight, Flight, Freeze. Three options, not two.

Tobirama rubs a finger along the fuzz of the rabbit’s paw, mentally calculating how long and at what temperature he’d have to burn it in order to get ash fine enough to make ink out of.

Now

Tobirama leaves Touka’s bag on the couch; if he can’t stop her coming back for it, she’ll just be angry if he moves it. He grabs his rucksack instead and heads for Kawarama, cooped up in his room and playing with a toy set.

He pauses outside the door to pull out Yukime’s summoning rods, but finds himself hesitating longer than he needs. Kawarama’s magic is peaceful, calm. Kids bounce back from all sorts of things, Tobirama knows—but as much as it makes his stomach twist, it’s a good thing. If he can contain the issue, maybe Kawarama can stay unscarred by this.

Taking Kawarama back to the house with him is out of the question. It would hurt him, and make it harder for Tobirama to stay as empty as he needs to. He could walk through fire with the void to protect him, as if nothing at all can touch him, and he needs that shield for what he’s about to do.

Kawarama is already looking over his shoulder and smiling at him when he opens the door. Tobirama does his best to smile back, but it undoubtedly looks stilted and awkward. Lacking any comforting words to say, Tobirama busies himself wrapping a thread of magic around the summoning rods, letting them tumble from his hands just in time for Yukime to land in a crouch cushioned by magic and mist.

“I need to go somewhere for a short while,” Tobirama says to both of them. There’s no need to alarm anyone with the details. “Kawarama, you will be safe in the apartment with Yukime, and I will set up the emergency wards before I go. Yukime, if you have any objections?”

“Is this truly necessary?” Yukime asks levelly.

She wouldn’t believe him if he told her, Tobirama doesn’t like the idea of leaving either—he just has to. “Yes.”

Kawarama rolls to his feet and hugs Tobirama’s legs. “You’ll be back soon, right?” he pipes up, eyes wide.

“Of course.” Tobirama combs his fingers through Kawarama’s hair. “It’s not safe to bring you with me, but it won’t be long. You’ll barely even notice I’m gone.”

Kawarama shakes his head and says earnestly, “I always notice when you’re gone, Tobi-nii.”

Tobirama’s throat tightens; he pats Kawarama’s head and has to take a moment to swallow before he can find his voice again. “Be good for Yukime.”

“Okay!” Kawarama lets go to wrap his arms around Yukime’s neck as she gently butts her head against his chest. “I’ll see you soon!”

Tobirama closes the door quietly when he leaves, cutting off the sound of the story Kawarama has started to tell Yukime, about the small community of stuffed animals that lives under his bed. Part of him wants to stay and listen, but there’s no time for that.

He activates the emergency wards before he reaches the front door, and allows himself exactly one bracing breath before he forces himself to open it and go outside.

9 Years Ago

This October is unseasonably warm, according to thermometers and weathermen, but it doesn’t feel like it. Tobirama is cold all the time, like he’s slowly freezing solid, descending to absolute zero where motion halts entirely. But his body continues to move through old patterns for him even when he stops paying attention to it, so Father never notices.

The demon does, Tobirama thinks. He doesn’t know for sure, of course, since Father sewed the demon boy’s mouth shut with golden thread barely a week after he summoned him. Father has had two scars down the side of his face ever since that still shimmer with Hellish magic, so the demon boy must have fought back—Tobirama is a little envious of that sort of bravery, even if he knows that anyone who wasn’t a demon probably wouldn’t have survived the punishment it earned him.

The demon doesn’t snarl, can’t bare his teeth. He flinches if Father moves too quickly or speaks too loudly, and takes care to keep his head ducked low, like he really is the dumb beast Father treats him as. But Tobirama watches his eyes, and they are pitch-black and wary, always watching.

Tobirama regrets that he never thought to ask the demon’s name back when he could speak. Asking for it in writing would be stupid, even if the demon is capable of writing in human languages; the risk of Father finding out is far too high.

So they can’t communicate with each other—inability on the demon’s part matched by caution on Tobirama’s. Still, sometimes their eyes will meet, and Tobirama feels a… resonance, almost. He knows when the demon is afraid, when he’s angry, when he’s hurt.

He always looks away first. The emptiness of his own emotional state is so much safer than the mercurial rage and helplessness and fear in the demon boy’s eyes.

The demon is kneeling next to Father’s desk, chained there, when Tobirama comes in on the thirtieth to receive instructions on what to prepare for Samhain. Tobirama ignores him carefully, never looking down as Father lays out thirteen seals for him to practice drawing out for tomorrow evening.

Tobirama takes them with a respectful bow and looks through each of them, making sure nothing is smeared or more complicated than what he’s learned so far. But they’re all drawn neatly and intelligibly, and Father is not quite as much of a genius as he believes himself to be, so they aren’t too difficult either. And—while he’s careful not to look at any one seal for longer than any of the others—the fifth seal catches his eye.

It’s perfect. A seal for stability, a seal for peace. It’s similar enough to a circle they used last year that Tobirama can guess what Father intends to use it for. Father twists the definition of peace to a breaking point, strengthening the magic around their home in the network that keeps people looking away from it, drawing the darkness, the horror, and silence close. It needs to be refreshed every so often or something might leak through, so Father does it once a year. But this year, he’s changed the seal more than he usually does.

The urge to look at the demon boy intensifies, but Tobirama resists it. He doesn’t smile, because he never smiles, but—

This is the seal he needs.

Now

Tobirama stares at the dark wood of the front door. Or, more specifically, he stares at the tripwire seal carved into the wood in thin lines that are almost invisible except when seen from the angle of an adult’s height. It certainly explains why Hashirama could never sneak out without Butsuma knowing, but there’s no one left to see the alert it links to.

The doorknob is unlocked. He—he’d left it that way, hadn’t he? He must have. He and Hashirama never had the keys to the doors, so he couldn’t have locked it from the outside. These days, Tobirama knows how to pick locks, so all the unlocked door means a little saved time.

The door sticks in the frame from almost a decade of neglect, and Tobirama has to shove it open with his shoulder. A thick layer of dust carpets the foyer.

Tobirama hesitates despite himself; he doesn’t want to leave a mark in this place, even by disturbing the dust. But he came here for a reason, so he takes a steadying breath and steps inside anyway.

Each footprint he leaves in the dust behind him rouses unquiet ghosts of memories from the walls of the house. The painting in the front hallway is faded and spotted from water damage, and he can’t tell if the couch in the living room is sun-bleached because of the open window curtains or if the color is just because of the dust.

The kitchen is eerily silent without the low hum of an operating refrigerator. Anything left in the cupboards has long since rotted to nothing, so the room blessedly smells of nothing more offensive than stale air and maybe mold. Harmless, if anything in this house can be named harmless—but through the kitchen he can see the open door that exposes the basement stairs.

The doorway draws him like a moth to a flame, but he stops before he reaches the top steps. The cool air drifting up the stairwell carries a hint of… not decay, Tobirama knows how that smells. Mold. This is where the scent of mold is coming from, which means moisture, which probably means burst pipes judging by the cracks in the faded wallpaper in the hallways.

It’s easier to think about water damage than it is to think of what’s still down there. The chest freezer, dead silent with its ice long since evaporated. Claw marks and dried blood on the cement walls, where the demon boy Butsuma had enslaved had clawed at his prison and screamed like a banshee before he had been brutally silenced.

9 Years Ago

After Father has gone to bed, Tobirama takes a pocket knife and one of the ink bottles he’s scrubbed and boiled clean and goes down to the basement, where Father keeps the demon boy chained.

It’s much warmer down here than it used to be, the demon’s Hellish magic permeating every inch of the room. Tobirama always starts sweating after just a minute or two, faster if the demon is angry at father—but he’s never handled temperature changes well.

The demon boy is huddled in the corner of the room, chained to the hook set low in the wall. He never seems to sleep; even this late at night, his eyes are open, and they land on Tobirama for a moment before warily tracking up what he can see of the stairs.

“It’s just me,” Tobirama says quietly. He kneels near the demon, not quite within arms reach—partly for the demon’s comfort, partly because he’s not sure he can trust him not to lash out at the only human he can touch. “Father isn’t here.”

The demon stares at him like he’s taken leave of his sense. Tobirama has never come to speak to him before, alone or not. It’s always been too dangerous to risk it, when Father would certainly punish him for it, but at this point the risk can’t possibly be worse than what he’s already planning.

Tobirama holds up the bottle and the knife. “May I take some of your blood?”

The demon’s eyes widen, large and round and frightened. He presses back against the wall, long ears flattening to his skull, and that’s not what Tobirama wants at all.

“Please,” he hurries to say. “I won’t—I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t take anything unless you say it’s okay. But… it would help.”

The demon boy doesn’t move.

Tobirama holds his breath and reaches, with that listening that doesn’t use ears. The house is dark and murmuring, the freezer hisses like an arctic killing wind; but they’re not as bad as feeling Father’s study, or the working room, gods forbid, so he won’t shake or scream. He can tune them out, until they become little more than static at the edges of his mind.

The demon boy doesn’t hurt at all to feel. He’s in pain, he almost always always is, but it doesn’t drive knives into Tobirama’s bones. And right now…

Wary curiosity rises from fiery magic like so much smoke.

“I have a plan.” Tobirama barely dares to breathe it.

The demon’s ears twitch up.

“I need the right sort of ink. Powerful, with a union of opposites—demon blood should give me the reaction I’m looking for. Especially yours.” The demon’s eyes are wide and dark, expectant, so Tobirama elaborates: “The blood of a demon enslaved.”

It’s not enough. The demon boy is frozen by fear, by the memory of pain. Tobirama understands—your body can betray you, if you’ve been hurt enough. It will flinch when you try to protect yourself, or choke when you need to move. He breaks through it by allowing the fear to freeze until it shatters into nothing, but his magic is cold. The demon’s is not.

Fire… fire must be hot. Angry. Something strong enough to melt the ice. He needs the demon to burn.

Tobirama is not good at evoking emotion, and even worse at injecting feeling into his voice when he speaks, but there is nothing he can do except try. “He murdered my brothers. He hurt you. He’s never going to stop, not unless someone makes him.” Tobirama takes a breath that catches in his throat. “And I… I don’t want to die.”

It comes out like a confession, like a shameful secret. Tobirama has never said it aloud before. But it’s out in the air, now, and he won’t take it back.

The demon doesn’t move for long enough that Tobirama’s hope starts to wane—but then he can feel the decision made. The demon slices the side of his thumb open with a claw, and Tobirama hurries to uncork the bottle fast enough to catch the first drops as they begin to scream down his thumb and drip off of his claw.

“I know,” Tobirama says carefully, eyes trained on the wound and flow of blood, “that you can’t tell Father about this, and that you wouldn’t even if you could. But—“ He looks up, meets the demon’s eyes, and for a moment he’s struck silent by the swirling red-and-black pattern he finds there. “Please don’t let him guess,” he finishes in a whisper.

The demon blinks slowly. His eyes are black again when he opens them, deep and endless as a starless sky. He dips his head in the slightest of nods.

The blood stops dribbling into the bottle, and Tobirama carefully corks it again. There’s more than he’d hope to get, and he’s already measuring ratios in his head, how much ink he’ll need for the key sigils, whether he’s going to have to mix in water to get the right consistency. The demon heals quickly, as Tobirama has learned from experience due to Father’s vicious temper, so there will be no wound for damning evidence by tomorrow’s sunset.

When Tobirama goes to stand, the demon boy wraps a hand around his wrist. He’s gentle, but the sensation of sharp claws dimpling the delicate skin of the inside of his wrist sends a cold chill down Tobirama’s spine.

The demon does feel dangerous or angry. If anything, he feels like he’s making a second decision.

“Is there something else?” Tobirama prompts, and immediately wants to smack himself in the forehead. “I suppose you couldn’t tell me if there was—“

The demon boy pats the cement floor with his other hand and tugs at his arm. That’s clear enough, even without words; Tobirama kneels again and waits, curious what the demon wants to tell him and even more curious how he plans to communicate it.

Rather than pantomiming anything, the demon moves toward the freezer. It’s not far, but the chain around his neck isn’t very long, and he can’t quite brush the side of it with his hands. He grabs the golden chain in one fist, pulling to try to give himself a little more slack, but it doesn’t help.

Tobirama rises into a half-crouch, hands on the cement to stay balanced. “Do you need me to open it?” he asks. There’s nothing in it, not even venison now that there’s nowhere left in the basement to hang the deer and age the meat. He still checks compulsively every few weeks. “Or… I could try to lengthen the chain.” He gives the hook a dubious look. It has a sea on it, but Tobirama still doesn’t know what it does. Messing with the chain might alert Father that something is wrong, and that must be avoided at all costs.

The demon shakes his head, places his hands on the floor behind him, and stretches one bird-like leg forward to scrabble for something underneath the chest freezer. He pulls it back with a short, wide glass jar clutched in his talons and scoots back to the corner with an awkward, three-limbed gait.

Thankfully, he switches the jar to his hand before he holds it out for Tobirama to take.

Tobirama examines it as thoroughly as he can without opening the jar. It’s full of dark grains that are most likely ash, judging by the way it moves when he tilts the jar from side to side. It shimmers strangely in his senses with some sort of strong magical charge. It feels astonishingly like the demon’s own magic—

He sucks in a startled breath. “Hellish ash,” he murmurs in quiet awe. Father has been trying to get the demon boy to make some for most of the year, but he’d resisted even when Father got creative with the punishments. If Father knew that there’d been a jar of it underneath the freezer for who knows how long, and that it’s now in Tobirama’s possession…

It’s odd, how freeing it is to have so little left to lose. Father can do much worse than simply kill him, but now that Tobirama’s made a decision and has a plan, there is nothing he can do that will make the punishment better or worse if he’s found out. The only option is not to get caught—and as long as he can do that, he can simply… act.

Tobirama gives the demon boy a quick, unpracticed smile. “This will be useful.”

He doesn’t get a smile in return, which doesn’t surprise him—the golden threads through the demon’s lips must make it painful to make any expression at all. Tobirama dips into his magic, instead. He feels that same glimmer of hope from before, shadowed by sorrow and… something familiar. It takes a long moment for Tobirama to recognize it enough to put a name to it, and in the end it’s the way it hollows out his chest that gives it away.

Grief.

Tobirama doesn’t know how to respond to that, and he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t, anyway; he bites his lip to hold back his questions. It’s better to give that sort of grief the respect of silence. Finally, he stands—he waits a moment to see if the demon will stop him again, but he doesn’t.

“Thank you,” Tobirama whispers. Dark eyes follow him as he hurries up the stairs.

Now

Tobirama doesn’t know how long he stares down the stairwell, frozen in his own dusty footprints. When he finally registers that he’s been standing still for too long, he turns away.

Losing time—happens, sometimes. It’s like the void that opens up within him can leech the energy from everything around him until there’s nothing there, and he’s adrift in a place that doesn’t exist. It lasts anywhere from a handful of seconds to several minutes, and in especially bad episodes he’s lost nearly an entire hour.

He keeps his distance from the water-stained wallpaper as he turns the corner of the kitchen doorway. He has a goal, a destination, and not nearly enough time to let himself be distracted by old memories.

The stairs, too, are covered in dust, and he ascends them carefully, wary of slipping. In the second floor’s hallway, he thinks he sees—well, it’s nothing. His mind is playing tricks on him. There’s nothing there; just the doorway to his old room, and in front of it, the place Mother’s body had collapsed when the magic animating her died with Butsuma. There’s no mark there, nothing left—Tobirama had taken care of the corpse before he left. But his memory is sharp enough to recall the exact sprawl of limbs, how one slender arm had been flung out to lie across the threshold of his and his brothers’ old room so that anyone trying to enter would have to step over her body. A barrier that remains even now.

It doesn’t matter. The room was gutted when he left the first time. Tobirama turns away from the empty hall and goes up the next flight of stairs, to Butsuma’s study.

9 Years Ago

Hashirama leaves at noon. The workings will start at sunset.

Tobirama sifts the ashes of the stuffed rabbit and the teddy bear into carefully measured piles in separate glass containers. Kawarama and Itama were of their mother’s bloodline and their magic reflected that power, even as untrained as they were. Their magic had soaked into the toys simply because they’d been so beloved, and while much of that magic is gone now, a little still remains. Enough, Tobirama’s senses tell him, though there’s still a part of him that’s afraid it won’t be.

The jar of Hellish ash that the demon boy gave him is larger than the other containers, but he needs the ratio to be right. He meticulously taps out an even measure of ash into yet another container, and finally tips them all into a larger one meant for mixing.

One third ashes with Kawarama’s magic; one third ashes with Itama’s; one third Hellish ash. All mixed together in preparation to draw three sigils. The mirroring feels right, and Tobirama’s fear finally settles.

He takes out the bottle of demon blood—it looks exactly like human blood, which surprises him for some reason he can’t name. Tobirama swishes it around in the bottle a handful of times before he shakes himself out of rumination; now is not the time to be distracted. Blood has a history of being used to draw seals, but it usually works on its own, and is not customarily mixed into ink.

Tobirama is not overly concerned with custom.

Blood will work to adhere the ash to the floor without turning it to powder as the water evaporates, but he’s going to need considerably more blood than he would usually use liquid gum arabic for the same purpose. He wonders if he should add gum arabic in addition to the blood, just in case—but the ink won’t have to adhere for long. Father never has the patience to let all the ink dry completely, so the seal will be activated while it’s still wet.

He measures in about half the blood he’s estimated the ink needs, which accounts for most of the bottle of demon blood. Now he just needs the oppositional ingredient: his own blood.

Tobirama stares at his hands, eyebrows furrowed. He can’t afford to have blood on his fingers while creating or activating any of the other seals, and while his magic ensures he’ll heal from almost anything, it isn’t usually accelerated healing like the demon has. Any wound he makes will still be there later tonight.

He swabs the side of his forearm with an antiseptic wipe and makes a small cut where it won’t hit an artery or a bone. He bleeds a little more than he meant to, but that’s better than not bleeding enough—it doesn’t hurt much, anyway.

He blends the blood together, first. Two victims of a monster. One, a wrongfully imprisoned demon. The other…

Father has done nothing to Tobirama, has left no scars except grief and fear. But Father murdered his little brothers, and blood with always call out to blood. Blood will cry out for blood.

Tobirama mixes the ink, a bit of water added to bring it to the right viscosity. When he’s satisfied, he pours the measure he needs into an ink bottle and stores it in a pocket where the lump won’t show, along with a spare brush.

It’s nearly sunset, but Tobirama is ready.

Now

Butsuma’s study is in just as much disarray as Tobirama remembers. He can still find what he’s looking for, as familiar as he is with Butsuma’s workflow, but the desk is covered two or three layers deep in papers and notebooks, and there’s almost fifteen books stacked in front of the bookshelf next to the desk instead of returned to their places on the shelves.

Tobirama’s fingertips settle on a volume resting on the corner of the desk. Covered in dust, like every other forgotten thing in this house. He leans over and blows the dust off the cover—a decision he immediately regrets, as he coughs and nearly gags on the taste of dust in the air. He holds his breath until it settles again and removes the rest of the dust on the cover with his hand.

Looking around, he can tell that he already has copies of the useful volumes at home. He’d forgotten that Butsuma had any books on elemental or spatial magic and can’t remember assisting with any workings for either type, but if he needs anything more than what he has in those areas, there’s shops and libraries with books that don’t have the magical echo of pain that lingers on everything in this house.

Two of Butsuma’s journals are on the desk. One is open as reference material, the other resting in its place on the short shelf on the wall directly above the desk. Tobirama divests each of them of dust and then opens them with exaggerated care, and though the pages crinkle they don’t feel too fragile. Books can last a long time. The ones that he owns tend to quickly get dog-eared pages and cracked spines, because he doesn’t mind them showing signs of wear and use, but Father hadn’t—

Butsuma hadn’t liked any indication that someone had touched his books. Tobirama is good at putting things back exactly as he found them.

Not there’s a point to it anymore, obviously.

He has two notebooks out of the three he remembers Butsuma using frequently, and he can’t find the third on the surrounding shelves or in any of the desk drawers. The most likely place it would be, then, is the workings room, co-joined with the study. So he simply… has to go inside.

Tobirama is numb down to the tips of his fingers. He blinks and his mind skips over the time it takes him to reach the door, and then his hand is turning the doorknob.

9 Years Ago

The demon boy is already shaking in pain and exhaustion after the first working, but Father isn’t planning to use him as a battery for every seal the way he did last year—just about half of them. He chains the demon to the wall for the next working, and the working after that. Father is conserving his strength, and bending over and kneeling for too long is hard on his aging joints. Tobirama is more precise with the ink brush, anyway, and Father still has to approve each seal he draws before they activate it.

The demon is chained to the center of the seal again for the fourth working, but the one after that, he’ll be at the edge instead, to balance out the hexagonal pattern of sigils. Father drags him to the wall and leaves him out of the way for now. Tobirama starts to clean the floor for the fifth seal, doing his best not to hold his breath.

This is the seal he’s been waiting for.

The clock strokes midnight as they made the transition between workings. The witching hour descends like a blanket of mist over Tobirama’s senses. Father doesn’t seem to feel it, but the demon boy’s eyes glaze over for a moment before wariness clears them again.

It’s officially the first of November. All Saints’ Day. Still Samhain, by the old measures, but counting by the clock, it’s no longer the first anniversary of Itama’s murder, but one day after.

A year and a day.

Tobirama exhales soundlessly and gets to work.

This seal is simpler than the last one, with only two concentric circles. In combination, the six symbols placed between the two circles imply a status quo, a maintaining of health, and a retention of power. Separately, they read eternity, balance, coordination, justice, cycles, and karma. The inner circle holds only the ouroboros.

Tobirama inks the base circles before starting on the sigils. He ensures it looks exactly like the seal he was given, to standards even Father has never been able to scoff at.

With his back to Father, it’s simple sleight of hand to switch to the ink he’s hidden in his coat and retrieve the fresh brush to prevent cross-contamination. He writes balance onto the wooden floor, and then switches the ink and brush back to what Father gave him to use.

Switch—justice—switch.

Again—karma.

Tobirama wipes remarkably steady hands on a handkerchief while Father looks over the circle. He nods his approval, and Tobirama’s heart begins to beat again.

The demon can tell the difference; red-swirled eyes flicker between the three sigils before staring at the opposite wall with resolute blankness. Father unchains him from the wall and drops him down in front of the eternity sigil, between balance and karma. Tobirama kneels at coordination, between balance and justice. Father rests at cycles, between justice and karma.

They each reach their hands forward to rest on the seal. Tobirama doesn’t let his hands actually touch the ink, eyes flicking up to meet the demon’s for a fraction of a second. The demon does not nod or make any obvious sign of understanding, only lifting his hands an unnoticeable millimeter from the seal.

Tobirama is unsure what the seal will do to the two of them if they’re touching it when it activates, but he doubts it would be pretty. It’s definitely not worth risking. He’s sure that it’s going to be disastrous for his intended target—he’s counting on it.

When magic starts to flow into the seal, it’s Father’s alone. he doesn’t notice at first, not even when most of the seal flickers to life and the ink begins to shimmer bluish-black, while the three sigils painted with Tobirama’s ink remain flat and empty. Finally, they start to glow a deep blood red, and the air grows so heavy with magic that Tobirama thinks it might suffocate him if he has to continue breathing it in.

Father shouts, tries to pull his magic away from the seal, but everything he’s already poured into the seal lashes back into him like a living thing, forcing from his throat the most terrible scream Tobirama has heard in his life.

Tobirama flinches and recoils from the circle, reflexively fleeing from Father’s retribution, but—

Father is in no condition to deliver any kind of punishment. Red magic bleeds through his skin, highlighting his magic channels as clearly as if his body had turned to glass. He’s still screaming, his entire body arched in agony. It lasts for an indeterminable length of time before he starts to spasm.

Tobirama finally understands why magical backlash is always described as being flayed from the inside. He wishes he couldn’t feel magic quite so easily, didn’t know so well exactly how irrevocably damaged Father’s body has become in the span of just a few minutes, but—this isn’t like finding Kawarama dead on the floor. This is nothing compared to being forced to watch as Itama was murdered.

He doesn’t look away. On the other side of the room, neither does the demon, eyes swirling red and black.

It feels like hours later before Father finally goes limp, but it can’t be; Tobirama can still feel the magical pressure of the witching hour pressing down on them. What’s worse is that he can also feel that Father isn’t dead. Not yet.

Tobirama stands. His knees don’t shake as he walks to the workbench against the wall, and his hands are steady as he opens the drawer and removes the sacrificial knife Father used on Itama. Now that Tobirama is starting to understand the residual magic he can sense on people and certain objects, he can tell that this is the blade that killed Kawarama, too.

It shimmers to his sense, iridescent: light and dark, blessings and malice, the dichotomy embedded in its magic. It’s tipped precariously toward malevolence, but Tobirama knows exactly how to balance it once more.

He turns back to what’s left of the man on the floor.

Father is still breathing, but he can’t so much as twitch of his own will. His magic has scorched every channel his body has, and nothing is left but his awareness and the ability to move his eyes. They flicker to Tobirama, filled will all the rage and betrayal he can no longer scream.

Tobirama looks at him and feels—nothing. Nothing at all.

“That was for Kawarama.” His voice is surreally steady. He kneels down next to Father, back straight and movements precise, just as he was taught. He doesn’t look away when he says, “This is for Itama.”

The blade parts the skin easily, and Tobirama slices open both arms from wrist to elbow. Then all he has to do is wait. Father doesn’t bleed out quickly, and there’s plenty of time to watch the rage war with fear and pain as his eyes flicker back and forth frantically. Tobirama is still watching those eyes when the light leaves them completely.

But—Tobirama can feel him, still, invisible strands of a soul he can’t quite see. Father is dead and it still isn’t over.

The rotting rage in Father’s soul has turned to acid, now, but Tobirama won’t flinch no matter how much it hurts. His own magic rises within him, larger and greater than anything Father ever was. Acid can melt ice well below freezing temperatures, but Tobirama on his worst day has more magic than Father did at his best.

A spray of acid is nothing to a glacier.

Glaciers have carved valleys, shaped mountains, changed landscapes. Tobirama is not the the ice over a lake, to crack when spring comes. He is not mere sharp shards of glass. He is an ice age, and the acid of pain is a drop against an ocean, a mere whisper snatched away in a storm.

The cold howls in his ears like wolves out for blood, and when it’s over the room is so frigid that he can see his own breath. But finally—

Finally, Father is gone.

And then the sound of metal shearing makes Tobirama’s head jerk up. The demon is rising to his feet, neck bare for the first time that Tobirama has ever seen. His presence is unfolding, enormous and forbidding, much larger than the wings on his back that still tremble from neglect and injury. The frozen air steams as the temperature skyrockets, and sweat breaks out on Tobirama’s forehead in mere moments.

The demon was bound to Father. Of course. Fear rises into the emptiness in his chest as the animal part of his brain screams at him that this is a threat, and is steals his voice as surely as if the demon had clawed out his tongue. Tobirama isn’t sure he can even breathe under the rising pressure of Hellish magic.

His feet stay glued to the floor as the demon boy stalks forward, but he doesn’t try to claw his face off, or lunge and rip his throat out with his teeth. Instead, the demon just looks at him for a long, almost hypnotizing moment, until Tobirama can hardly hear the pounding of this own heartbeat in his ears.

The demon inclines his head and reaches out with one claw to gently, gently rest the tip against Tobirama’s forehead. Just as gently, he swipes the claw down the bridge of his nose.

Tobirama’s eyelids grow unfathomably heavy, and he’s drifting from consciousness before they even close, almost—almost—too insensible to feel the demon catch him before he hits the ground.

Now

The journal is on top of the worktable pushed up against the wall on the other side of the room, closed. An open inkwell sits beside it, a brush still dipped inside.

Tobirama makes his way to the table without looking down.

The ink is all dried up and the brush is utterly ruined, but the journal has suffered nothing worse than a faded cover from daylight from the window. He opens it to check that everything inside is still legible, and the pages fall open to a familiar seal. Tobirama’s chest tightens at the sight, but he can’t afford a flashback while he’s still in here; he snaps the book shut, turns around, and—

Something on the floor glints as it catches the sunlight angled through the window across the room. When Tobirama looks over automatically, he spots the sacrificial knife still lying there. Next to it is the same seal that was drawn in the journal, painstakingly drawn to take up over three quarters of the room.

Three symbols still gleam like their ink never dried, obsidian glinting with hints of ruby. Karma. Justice. Balance. Still vivid even after nine years, stark against the faded gray ink around them, and he wonders if it was the rebound that did it, or if it was the magic he poured into the ink with symmetry and sheer desperation.

A large scorch mark mars the edge of the circle: a body burned into the floorboards, fallen across the seal, scarring out what used to be the sigil of cycles.

Almost a decade later, the room still stinks of Hellfire.

Kawarama is playing in the main room when he gets back. Tobirama drops his coat over the back of the couch and practically collapses in the first handy corner that has a clear view of Kawarama. He’s playing with two dinosaur toys and a little truck, alternately roaring and making car noises. Yukime occasionally lends him a growl, but for the most part she’s purring like a smooth engine.

And then she stops, as Tobirama tugs at the magic holding her to the mortal plane. Her crystal bones clink together musically as they tumble to the rug.

Tobirama doesn’t remember about seventy percent of the way back home. He walked instead of taking the bus, figuring his feet would lead him home where he’d otherwise wind up halfway across the city on public transport. He was right, but—

He counts himself lucky to have avoided a full flashback. He used to get them frequently back when he was fourteen and fifteen, catching him by surprise when he’d open the freezer or start drawing out a room-sized seal. They mostly stopped after the first eighteen months of living in an apartment with Hashirama, but daring to walk back into the old Senju house was a bit like wrapping himself in tinfoil and standing on the roof in a thunderstorm.

“Tobi-nii?” Kawarama’s toys are abandoned next to Yukime’s bones, and now he’s kneeling in front of Tobirama, magic worried and confused. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Tobirama closes his eyes. Opens them. His mind is mercifully blank. he needs it to stay that way, empty and clean. Still, he looks down at Kawarama, and—it’s not a mistake, never that, but his stomach lurches and there’s an ache inside him like something is about to tear wide open.

He is not okay. But he picked up a lot of parenting books after resurrecting Kawarama, determined to do a better job than him, and most of the books say that letting children know what their guardians are feeling is okay. Modeling emotions is good for them. Tobirama’s terrible enough at dealing with his own emotions for the both of them, anyway; he doesn’t want Kawarama growing up with the same problem.

It just means he has to find the words. “I’m… feeling sad, right now,” he says numbly. That’s true enough, he thinks that’s how he would feel if he could feel anything at all right now—sometimes when he gets like this he’s nothing but empty, hollowed out. But he doesn’t know how to explain that to a five-year-old, and he isn’t sure he should try. “Sad and a little bit scared.”

Kawarama looks up at him anxiously and bites his lip. “Can I help?”

“…A hug would be wonderful right now.”

Kawarama latches onto him before he even finishes the sentence, clinging like he thinks Tobirama will disappear as easily as Yukime does. It might not be an unfounded worry—he feels as if, should he find the right strand of magic inside himself, he could tug until it snaps and he would turn to mist and fade away.

Tobirama stares at his hands. They are perfectly steady; he has always had remarkably steady hands.

There’s a moment of disconnect between his decision and when his body starts to move, but he finally wraps his arms around Kawarama and hugs him back. It helps, knowing his little brother is with him, hearing him breathe and feeling the low, earthy hum of his magic. He can finally feel his fingers again, and the scent of his shampoo in Kawarama’s hair is grounding.

It helps. It just doesn’t fix it.

His eyes sting like there’s still ash in the air.

9 Years Ago

When Tobirama wakes, the sun is in the sky, and there’s no sign of the body. No blood on the floor. Only a scorch mark where Father’s body had lain as he died, breaking the circle of the seal still inked on the floor, completely obliterating the sigil of cycles.

Each breath of air holds the lingering taste of Hellfire, and every spot on his jeans and shirt where Father’s blood had been is burned through, but not a hair on Tobirama’s head is so much as singed.

Chapter Text

Now

Usually, Tobirama would study out in the living area where Kawarama could at least play near him, but not this time—not while he’s investigating the journals. Tobirama wants nothing of Butsuma’s anywhere Kawarama could get to it.

He’d apparently picked up the sacrificial knife from the workings room—he doesn’t remember it, but he’d lost a lot of time between the house and the apartment. Once he had his wits about him again and noticed it, he locked it into a small safe in his office that has enough magical shielding built into it to block the aura it exudes. Kawarama’s safe from that, at least, but books can be dangerous, too. Tobirama has learned that lesson well.

None of the notes are encoded; Butsuma was a proud bastard, assured of his genius and power. He’d been so sure that no one would ever breach the protections he put on his home and study, that he would never die, that he wouldn’t never end up on the wrong end of a malicious seal. But he’d been dead wrong, and now everything he wrote down is free for the taking.

That doesn’t mean the journals are an easy read, however. They can be hard to follow, piecemeal and meandering along Butsuma’s train of thought rather than a logical progression. But Tobirama spent more than three years as his understudy, teaching himself seals and necromancy with cast-offs and scrawled annotations—it seems so long ago, now, but he still has the skill of reading Butsuma, even just through words on a page.

The journal from the working room is only half full. He combs each page for mentions of Hell or demons, and almost blacks out when he doesn’t manage to anticipate that seal—the one with the demon’s sigil in the center and the signs for sacrifice and binding neatly printed around the edges. The seal Itama bled out on.

Tobirama stares at his still-steady hands, tuning out the screaming white noise in his head by studiously tracing his fingernails and noting which ones have a bit of dirt underneath them, which ones need a quick file to take care of a scraggly edge.

He turns the page over and continues.

Butsuma only ever refers to him as the Prince throughout the journal, which is… a much higher station than Tobirama had suspected, but certainly a position only an Uchiha could hold. No name yet, but there are other books to look through.

Finally, three quarters of the way through the next book, there it is, in an entry dated barely three months after Kawarama’s death. Tobirama’s lips form the name soundlessly: Uchiha Tajima. Prince for nearly a century, now, risen to the throne through strength, power, and a violence that even the Court of Hell had to bow down to.

And only half a page above that…

Kakuzu, Butsuma’s terrible handwriting states. Something old, very knowledgable. Greedy. Will sell any information for a price—gold, gems, classic hoard treasures. Usually. And then, underlined twice: Guard you heart.

A thrill of triumph bursts through Tobirama’s chest like a jolt of adrenaline, and one corner of his mouth twitches up. Finally, a name. Better, yet, two names; one for the demon, and one for a being that sounds very useful indeed.

He’ll need more information before he can act, but he finally has somewhere to start, and now he can put his researching skills to actual use.

It doesn’t go as quickly as he hoped. After an hour, all Tobirama can say is this: Kakuzu is an enigma. There are no confirmed sources online, no first-hand accounts. He cross-references absolutely everything Butsuma has to say about Kakuzu with books he has on the fae, on minor kami, on beings from other, stranger planes. The planar coordinates Butsuma wrote down link to a largely unknown region of a plane shared by a variety of beings, and while some are benevolent others are… not.

Guard your heart, Tobirama recalls, frowning. Some sort of empath, then, or maybe a telepath, and a being who is both isn’t out of the question, either. Perhaps this Kakuzu is capable of turning someone’s will against them, enslaving them in such a way that they won’t even want to escape? The phrasing is a little poetic for Butsuma, but Tobirama isn’t about to ignore a clue to what Kakuzu might be—or a warning so blatantly obvious.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and his pen stops in the middle of a word on his sheet of notes. If it’s Mito again—well, then he’ll ignore it, and surely she’ll be reasonable enough to eventually stop wasting her time on someone who isn’t going to respond. He shakes his head and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

It’s not from Mito.

Unknown Number: What’s so important that you’ve missed the witching hour yet again? Inquiring minds would like to know.

It’s signed with a purple devil emoji, of all inane things. Tobirama currently does not have the emotional capacity to process that beyond a baffled sort of horror, so he stops trying and instead focuses on the message itself.

Obviously, it’s from Madara. Tajima, Tobirama corrects himself. He takes the time to save the number to his contacts under the demon’s true name, so he doesn’t forget again.

When Tobirama puts his phone down on the desk, there’s a red line on his palm from holding it too tightly. He takes in a breath through the nose, out through the mouth. He’s angry, angry that the message exists at all, that the demon can simply choose to harass him at any time he wants now—but anger isn’t useful, and he knows this was his own doing by giving him the business card with his number on it. Now he has to deal with it.

There’s no threat he can deliver over the phone that Tajima would find severe enough to actually stop contacting him, much as Tobirama would prefer it. He has no way to know if ignoring the demon will make him attempt to contact Tobirama more or less, but a response might encourage him. The question is what action will lead to Tajima not using his number, even if he may know it—

But… that’s the wrong goal entirely.

Tobirama can’t help the ghost of a smirk that forms as a plan forms in his mind. It might be indulging in his vindictive side a bit, but he’s sure it’s been more than earned. He just needs a few hours to get everything together.

Senju Tobirama: Research. Meet me at sunset at the usual crossroads and you just might get a deal.

After all, he’s going to need a treasure fit for a dragon’s hoard if he hopes to get any answers from Kakuzu—and it’s Kakuzu, he’s sure, who can tell him how to free Itama from Hell. Wouldn’t it be fitting, if Tobirama got the key to undoing the havoc and horror Tajima has wreaked…

From the demon himself?

Touka hovers outside the door for almost three minutes before even attempting to come in, and then she opens the door with unwarranted caution that Tobirama finds insulting. She called his bluff, and now she has the gall to doubt that her key still works on the wards?

He’s in the kitchen cooking when Touka finds him; he has to leave soon, and he and Kawarama both still need to eat dinner. He doesn’t turn around when he hears her footsteps stop, and for an awkward moment they’re standing on opposite sides of the room, silent.

“I was wondering,” he starts, just as Touka says, “I just wanted—“

They both stop. Tobirama stubbornly doesn’t turn around, poking at the stir-fry in his pan and allowing the silence to wight on the room.

“I wanted to apologize for this morning,” Touka starts slowly, when it’s clear he doesn’t plan to continue what he’d been about to say. “I shouldn’t have brought up the birthday thing, it’s not any of my business. And some of the stuff I said afterward—I didn’t want to leave right afterward. We should probably talk about it, now that we’ve both had time to cool off.”

Tobirama lets the stir fry continue to simmer and reaches over to stir the noodles cooking in another pot. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Nothing useful, anyway; he has many more urgent things to deal with than the guilt bleeding through Touka’s magic. Her key still works. What more can she want from him?

“You know there is—“ Touka stops herself before she loses her temper, annoyance simmering as she takes a deep breath. “There is something to talk about, actually, but I don’t want to start another fight. So I’ll just say I’m sorry, and we’ll talk later, when you’re feeling up to it.”

She waits—for some acknowledgement, maybe, or an apology in return, but Tobirama does not want any part in this conversation and is not about to invite it in for dinner.

Finally, Touka sighs and drops the subject. “Well, whatever. What were you going to say earlier?”

“I have to be somewhere at sunset. Can you watch Kawarama for an hour or two?”

Touka’s efforts to stay calm are only barely a match for whatever she thinks about Tobirama’s choices. She’s doing her best, but he can still a spike of tension. “Tell me you aren’t planning on going off and fighting that demon. Tell me you’re not that stupid.”

“Of course not,” Tobirama retorts, perfectly truthfully. he has no intention of starting a fight with Tajima—not until he has a proper trap prepared to catch him by surprise.

Touka doesn’t say anything, like that will stop Tobirama from feeling her skepticism as she tries to decide whether to believe him or not. He lets her stew as he takes the noodles off the stove and brings them to the sink to drain.

By the time he gets back to the stir-fry, she still hasn’t said anything, and he rolls his eyes in exasperation. “The demon is the largest and most dangerous roadblock, but he’s hardly the only one. I’m information seeking, that’s all.”

Touka sighs and starts to speak, but the patter of little feet on the wooden floor draws their attention.

Kawarama curiously pokes his head into the kitchen and beams. “Touka! I knew I heard you! Do you have time to play?”

Tobirama turns just in time watch him crash into her legs, miraculously avoiding dumping them both onto the floor. Yukime prowls close behind him on silent paws.

Touka looks tired and tense, Tobirama notices. It’s a disconcerting to be able to see the tightness in her eyes and mouth, when usually she hides what she’s feeling better than that. But she smiles down at Kawarama anyway, rubs a hand over his hair and makes sure he knows he’s wanted like she always does. She’s careful with him, and kind, no matter how many times she’s told Tobirama that she has no interest in having children of her own. “If Tobi has anything to say about it, I think I’ll have a few hours to play with you.”

This doesn’t delight Kawarama as much as she may have hoped. He blinks and turned a faintly accusing look on Tobirama. “You’re leaving again?”

Tobirama keeps his face still and hopes that Touka thinks Kawarama is only talking about his general habit of leaving at odd times for magical purposes. he does not want to try to explain where he went after she left—more importantly, he doesn’t want to explain why. “Only for an hour or two.”

Kawarama slumps in a pout, but almost immediately pops up like a daisy, eyes lighting up with an idea. “Touka Touka Touka, let’s go to the park!”

Touka’s grin freezes into a rictus, and she glances guiltily at Tobirama. “Well, sunset isn’t too far away, squirt, and it’ll be cold…”

Of course. It’s Tobirama’s job to deliver the bad news in these sorts of situations. He crouches down so he can be eye-level with Kawarama, who gives him a curious, trusting look. “It’s not safe,” Tobirama says, gently as he can. “until we know that the bad man who came here yesterday isn’t going to hurt you, you need to stay here where you’ll be protected by the wards.”

He has to watch as Kawarama’s face crumples at the prospect of being cooped up in the apartment for even longer than he already has been. “How come you don’t have to stay?” he demands, scuffing the heel of one shoe against the floor in an understated stomp.

“Because I’m a grownup and can defend myself if he tries to hurt me.”

Tobirama isn’t annoyed that Kawarama is upset, and he certainly isn’t surprised; he keeps his voice level and reasonable and gives Kawarama a minute to process his reasoning—processing which, on a five-year-old, mostly exhibits as a lot of grumpy pouting and very tightly crossed arms.

Tobirama waits until he can feel the welling tears miraculously subside before they fall, tightening instead into a tangled knot of disappointment and gloom. At this point, a distraction will be more use than anything else, so he stands to draw Kawarama’s attention. “Dinner’s ready. Why don’t you and Touka choose where we’ll all sit while I get everything on the table?”

Touka shoots Tobirama a narrow-eyed look for setting her up for a clingy, grumpy toddler to watch over, but she doesn’t say anything. When Kawarama finds his seat, Yukime slinks over and places her front paws up on his chair. She’s large enough that this puts her in ideal cuddling range, and Kawarama quickly latches onto his furred babysitter rather than his clearly relieved cousin.

Through dinner, Kawarama only picks at his food, which is a shame seeing as he usually likes stir-fry. Yukime prods him to eat, and she’s thankfully at least partially successful. Tobirama doesn’t try to help, well aware that if he tries to help he might instead set off the temper tantrum that Kawarama is still hovering perilously close to. He needs to leave soon, and if he abandons Touka with a hysterical child, he will probably wind up hospitalized by a glitter-induced asthma attack, and he doesn’t even have asthma.

Tobirama checks the time on his phone and grimaces. he glances at Kawarama—sufficiently distracted by Yukime, he hopes—and leans slightly toward Touka to murmur, “I have to leave at least forty minutes before sunset, and that’s closing in. Make sure Kawarama doesn’t miss me too much?”

Touka raises an eyebrow that implies she very much doubts his vaunted intelligence if he thinks that’s even possible. It’s a very eloquent eyebrow, but he’s not going to bother responding if she doesn’t use her words, so he takes the time to finish the last few bites of his meal and stands to put his plate in the sink.

He hasn’t even left the room yet, but Kawarama catches on anyway. “You’re leaving already?” he whines, kicking his heels against the legs of his chair in frustration.

“I’m afraid so. I’ll be back soon,” Tobirama says placatingly. He stares at Touka and hopes his eyebrows are half as eloquent as hers, because if she makes him actually verbalize Get over here and stop Kawarama from clinging to my leg as I walk away, you witch, he’s going to be very annoyed.

Touka breathes out sharply through her nose, somewhere between amusement and exasperation, but she stands up and walks around the table. When she passes Tobirama, she slows down just long enough to hiss in his ear, “Tell me I get to keep the cat while you’re gone, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

He can feel Yukime unsheathing her claws to use a chair leg as a scratch post, annoyed at being referred to like a common house cat. He’s not sure Touka realizes she heard that, but Yukime can defend her own honor, and Touka will survive a few scratches.

There’s no magic to it, like there will be at the crossroads, but Tobirama swears he can still feel the weight of something watching when he replies, “Deal.”

Madara has never made a deal with a human in his life.

He’s made deals with other demons, of course; the only way to be sure you’re getting an honest oath out of a denizen of Hell is by using magic, so he’s quite familiar with how it’s done.

But a deal with a human? They’ve always struck him as over-dramatic methods of entrapment, meant to make humans desperate and vicious and drag them down to Hell even when they don’t deserve it. Madara doesn’t even like going to Hell, and he used to be at the top of the pecking order—he likes humans, he’s never denied it, and dragging them into binding deals when they’ve been backed into a corner is nothing less than cruel. Most humans just don’t live long enough or learn fast enough to be able to rules-lawyer themselves out of a bad deal in the middle of the crisis.

Of course, a certain enigmatic, frustrating necromancer might be one of the few who could. But he’s been so careful to keep out of striking range, so far, and offering a deal is uncharacteristically reckless of him. He has to have a plan, of some sort, and if Madara were just a little more paranoid he’d have refused the meeting entirely to avoid whatever it might be. For better or for worse, Senju Tobirama in no way deserves a deal with a demon.

But Madara isn’t here because of what anyone deserves. He’s here because Tobirama asked, and he needs to know why.

Tobirama emerges from the tree line when the shadows are long and the sky is still stained red with the last of the sun’s light. Madara’s waiting for him in the middle of the crossroads, since it would only waste everyone’s time to try to sneak up on a sensor. The wind and cold don’t bother him when his magic may as well be fire in his blood, but Tobirama is as bundled up as he always is. Madara has to wonder if that’s due to his magic, sunlight-through-ice—if he’s ever warm.

Which is a thought inane enough that Madara knows he’s distracting himself.

“You wanted a deal, necromancer?”

Madara watches the flat red of Tobirama’s eyes flick over him in a clear threat assessment and wonders if he should have just used his name. But it’s felt too fragile to say aloud ever since he realized he doesn’t know what the shape of this necromancer really is, and he isn’t sure his tongue wouldn’t trip over unseen edges if he tried.

Tobirama turns his head slightly to the side in the silent suggestion of a scoff. The tattoo on his cheek stands vivid against his pale skin in the fading light. “Don’t get excited, demon. I’m not going to be selling my soul tonight.”

The first thing Madara feels is relief, because what the hell would he do with a human soul? Then the way Tobirama said demon strikes, with all of the hostility and suspicion packed into it, and he remembers that Tobirama is pissed.

Justifiably so, probably, considering the whole mess with accidentally meeting his little brother, but what is he supposed to do? Apologize? Demon’s don’t apologize—and even if that’s not a very strong argument, considering Madara prides himself on doing the opposite of what most demons would do in any given situation, there’s every chance that Tobirama wouldn’t believe him. He’s not going to bother if he’s going to get a splash of holy water right to the face for his trouble.

Maybe Madara can at least try to be a bit less combative than usual, and give Tobirama some space to put his hackles down. A human won’t take that as a sign of weakness the way a demon would. “I didn’t expect you to,” Madara says carefully. “You’re too cautious for that.”

Wait, does that count as a compliment? Madara doesn’t compliment people, as a general rule, and he doesn’t know if he was trying to compliment Tobirama—but he doesn’t know that he wasn’t, either. He takes care to set that thought aside somewhere to look at later, when it won’t make him break out in cold sweat. Which will be approximately never, but that just means it won’t be a problem for any future version of him that has the misfortune to still be trying to figure out what Tobirama is playing at.

Tobirama watches him narrowly, but whatever he thinks of Madara’s commentary, he doesn’t say. “I want a piece of treasure,” he says clearly. “Fit for a dragon’s hoard, but small enough to fit in my hand. Is that something you are capable of retrieving for me?”

“It is,” Madara admits, interest piqued. “What would you offer me in return?”

Tobirama lays out his words with the precise care of a man who knew precisely what he planned to offer before he got here. Smart. “I would offer a piece of pre-negotiated magic—you may have noticed I have some skill with seals.”

If that isn’t the understatement of the year. Not that Madara will say that out loud, because he might not be sure about the caution comment, but that would definitely count as a compliment. He hums instead of trying to figure out a more neutral way to respond, which Tobirama appears to take as a signal to continue.

“The exchange would need to occur four sunrises from now—if you can’t source a treasure that quickly, this deal is no use to me.”

Madara can’t think of any way Tobirama could use a treasure to summon a demon. He can’t think of anything Tobirama could do with it, actually, considering he’s leaving it entirely up to Madara what sort of valuable he should hand over. Maybe it’s some sort of manipulation tactic, and Tobirama believes he’ll receive what he wants anyway, but he’s just too cautious for a play like that to make any sense.

Maybe he plans to sell it? Humans do like their money. Then again, he’s still too canny to make a deal with a demon for mere money.

But he does have a brother.

Madara still doesn’t quite know what to make of the encounter yesterday, but he can’t deny that Tobirama stepped between his brother and a demon that could burn him to ash. Madara knows what he’d do for his own brothers—he burned the image into his brain with the sharingan, and he’ll never forget holding Tajima’s heart in his hand, blood soaking his arm up to his elbow.

If Tobirama needs the money for his brother, if he needs to keep him safe or healthy, then—well. That changes things, doesn’t it? People can do horrible things for the people they love, if they have to, and Madara knows that intimately. If Tobirama is just trying to protect his little brother, then who is Madara to hold that against him?

Maybe that’s not wise. But that’s how it is: Madara doesn’t want to punish Tobirama, doesn’t want to damn him.

He wants to save him.

Madara makes a decision. “In exchange, I want a pendant that protects my illusions from being torn away.”

Tobirama’s lips thin and a muscle in his jaw works, but Madara has no intention of backing down. Being stripped of his illusion of humanity had been uncomfortable physically, mentally, and—dare he say it—even emotionally. He’s felt less naked with half his skin peeled off after an excruciating unplanned acid bath. The illusions are nothing less than armor, and he’s not about to give up something that can keep him safe without a fight.

Besides, if he’s really planning on getting close enough to help Tobirama, he’s going to need a trick or two up his sleeve for any chance of getting out of it unscathed. Tobirama doesn’t strike him as a gracious damsel in distress—he probably claws like a wet cat being rescued from drowning.

“Very well,” Tobirama concedes after a heavy pause. “A seal that defends against the seal I used.”

“And any derivative seals,” Madara immediately stipulates, because he wasn’t born yesterday. Tobirama is still a sneaky bastard no matter how much he cares about his brother, and Madara isn’t going to leave himself open that easily.

Tobirama’s face goes still, eyes flashing—but before Madara can martial any biting arguments to make his point, the necromancer snaps frostily, “And any derivative seals.”

Madara blinks. That was an alarmingly quick concession. He pauses, can’t help looking at Tobirama just a little more closely: anger in the set of his jaw, tension in the set of his shoulders. His stance is balanced, because it always is, he’s always ready for a threat, and… well, Madara still looks like one, doesn’t he?

And yet, Tobirama is here.

Necromancy is for the desperate and the obsessed. He’d assumed the latter of Tobirama, even in the face of his methodical reason, his care and paranoia, because he wasn’t used to seeing mages of any sort with that sort of dedication. But that’s not it at all.

People are never at their best, desperate. Madara wants to see Tobirama at his best.

He steps forward, careful not to move to quickly—Tobirama is too tense to be anything but wary—and holds out his hand. “A deal made, then?”

Tobirama stalks forward with all the graceful caution of a jungle cat looking to rip a throat wide open. “A deal,” he says, and lays his hand flat against Madara’s palm, fingers not clasping. This isn’t a handshake.

“A treasure fit for a dragon’s trove, to be held in one hand,” Madara begins.

The mist has just begun to form in the slowly darkening blue of twilight, and now it starts to swirl. Tobirama’s eyes cut down to track the movement for a split second before he’s watching Madara again.

“A pendant to protect from the seal used to strip your illusions, and any derivative seals.”

“To be brought here to this crossroad.”

“Four sunrises from now.”

The mist is only as high as their ankles, but a twist of it materializes around their wrists to twist around them like a tightening cord. Madara feels the moment that the crossroad’s magic latches onto his own, binding him to the deal he’s just made. It’s not Tobirama’s magic, thankfully—sunlight-through-ice would probably be cold enough to keep him shivering until the deal was fulfilled.

Madara steps back out of reach and waits for a response. Tobirama’s eyes are unfocused, but that most likely means he’s feeling the magic around them rather than trying to keep track with his eyes, and he’ll be more aware, not less. He’s flexing his hand like he thinks he might have injured it somehow, and Madara spares a moment to wonder what a binding deal must feel like to a sensor.

“First deal?” he asks casually. “I’d suggest keeping to the letter of it religiously. Crossroads magic does nasty shit to anyone who tries to double-cross it—I’ve seen some of the messes left when an idiotic demon decides to try to be clever.”

Tobirama’s eyes focus and immediately sharpen into a glare. “I do happen to have the logical faculties to reach that conclusion,” he says icily.

There he goes again, using the longest words he can, like he thinks if he finds one Madara doesn’t know it’ll finally get across just how stupid he thinks he must be. Which, rude—Madara was just trying to give him some advice.

But it’s not like he picks which humans to save based on how nice they are.

Madara rolls his eyes and flicks a hand in dismissal. “Fine, then. I’ll see you in four sunrises.” If all he’s going to get is snark, he’s not going to warn Tobirama about the pull, the way it’ll hurt if he isn’t where they stand now at the crossroads by exactly the appointed time. It’s not going to kill him to figure it out the hard way, as long as he doesn’t actually try to break their deal.

Tobirama is still flexing his hand unconsciously when Madara turns and leaves. But of course, the weight on his magic is a familiar thing to him; dealing with Tobirama felt almost exactly the same as dealing with another demon. The same sort of soul, he supposes, though this time it felt a lot less like the other party was actively planning to murder him, no matter how angry Tobirama was. Strange, but pleasant, just like most of the mortal plane.

Anyway, he has a treasure to retrieve now, and about three and a half days to do it. Luckily, he already knows exactly where he’s going to find something that qualifies. It’s been a while since he’s raided a treasury—this should be fun.

Chapter Text

Madara spends most of Sunday poking a malicious sea witch away from Konoha’s ley lines until she finally leaves in a huff just shy of the point of a violent altercation. Mondays, thankfully, are historically much quieter, especially with the moon in its last quarter and far from being either full or new. He takes advantage of this state of affairs to shed his illusion of humanity and drop in on Hell on Monday morning.

It’s been a while, even if it’s far from the first time he’s snuck in since his exile. His wings are tired and sore by the time he gets through the narrow crack between Hell and the mortal plane.

Madara is careful not to land outside of the palace, or anywhere the locals might see him. But he grew up in that palace, and he knows every secret passage it contains; it’s not too hard to slip through without being seen until he can land in the hallways behind the throne room.

Once he’s standing on solid ground again, he has to take a minute and just… look around.

It’s so strange, being back here. The hallways are the same, obsidian painstakingly polished smooth and shining. The light from the torches reflects as through there are precious things hidden in the walls, but Madara has spent enough long days locked in these hallways to know there’s nothing there—it’s just a trick of the light, like the way the hallways seem to go on forever.

All of it is familiar and not, all at once. Madara doesn’t belong here anymore, not really. Even wearing his own legs feels strange, now that he’s gotten used to the way human knees beng and how shoes grip the ground. He had to pick up a yukata from a thrift shop and cut up the back of it before he came, since jeans can’t comfortably accomodate a demon’s legs. The base of his wings are still rubbing uncomfortably against what’s left of the back after he chopped off most of it, but this is the best he could do on short notice.

Madara is just about to turn around when a curl of mist drifts through the wall ahead of him. He blinks, frowns, and activates his sharingan.

Nothing dangerous, it looks like. It holds the patterns of Izuna’s magic, even if a hidden room of mist doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he’d make. The walls here are built to guard against the sharingan, so he doesn’t expect to be able to see where it came from—but there’s a gap, where it looks like the wall but isn’t quite.

Madara approaches curiously, tasting the air. Dream magic, maybe? But what sort of dream would be kept here, so close to Izuna’s chambers but not in them, and what could it hold?

“What are you doing here?” Izuna says from directly behind him.

Madara tries not to jump like a startled fledgling and only mostly succeeds, turning around and trying not to look like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He doesn’t know that this is off limits, after all, so he has nothing to be guilty of. “Izuna!”

The twitch of Izuna’s mouth says that he noticed the deer-in-the-headlights look and, like the annoying little brother he is, very much enjoyed the rare chance to startle Madara. But that’s hard to care about, because something in Madara’s chest loosens when he sees with his own eyes that Izuna is doing just fine.

His feathers are sleek and shining in health, his hair braided around the heavy circlet that marks him as the Prince of Hell. His kimono is as ostentatious as befits his station, but it’s more casual, not meant for presentation. He looks relaxed, content, without that tightness around his eyes from pain that dogged his heals for too long.

He still has the scars, but most demons do, even with their incredible healing abilities. Madara couldn’t always protect Izuna—but he did what he could, and these days Izuna can protect himself.

“The one and only,” Izuna says, feathers flaring slightly in an obvious preen. “Now, Madara. You’re my brother and I love you, but what are you up to, coming all the way down here?”

Madara tries not to be too obvious about edging away from the mist and the wall. “I can’t just drop by to visit my favorite brother?”

“I haven’t seen you in—what’s it been, a year and a half on the mortal plane?” Izuna raises a pointed eyebrow, and Madara can’t do much but shuffle his feet guiltily. “Also, I’m the only brother you’re on speaking terms with—you never call me your favorite unless you want something. Tell me, what ridiculous thing are you doing now?”

Madara snorts. “It’s me. Guess.”

Izuna rolls his eyes. “You’re trying to save a human again, aren’t you. Alright, what is it you need from me?”

It’s warming, that Izuna picked up on it so fast—it’s really become a habit, these days. Izuna might not like humans nearly as much, but he’s never held Madara’s heroic aspirations against him.

Izuna beckons him to follow and starts back down the hallway. Madara tries to guess where they’re going, but he swears Izuna periodically changes where the hallways lead just to annoy him.

“I need a piece of treasure,” Madara tells him. “So don’t bother bringing me to that empty cavern you call a throne room. It’s austere enough to be both pompous and depressing, which is impressive but also awful.”

“I inherited it like that from you.”

“I had it for less than three years! You’ve had more than twice that to change it up a little.”

Izuna doesn’t acknowledge his very compelling argument, which is unsurprising seeing as Izuna is a brat. “This treasure you want—any specifications besides shiny?”

“I treasure fit for a dragon’s trove, to be held in one hand,” Madara recites. The deal tugs at his tongue; he couldn’t mess up the exact phrasing of his promise even if he tried.

Izuna gives him a sideways glance. “And that relates to helping a human… how, exactly?”

“It’s for a deal.” Izuna’s eyebrow quirks incredulously, and Madara hastily adds, “Not for his soul or anything, just a seal, he’s a reckless necromancer but he’s good at magic and this’ll stop him from… ripping off my illusions. Uh. Again,” he finishes weakly.

Somehow, Izuna’s silence get louder; Madara feels downright deafened. Also judged, but that’s just the usual with Izuna.

“It wasn’t that bad,” he says, too loudly, trying to be heard over that silence. “I knocked him on his ass about thirty second later, he’s a punk.”

“That is not,” Izuna says precisely, “encouraging me to actually let you into my treasury.”

Madara sputters. “It’s—look, I’ve figured out some stuff since then and I know you don’t like humans and hate necromancers in particular, but he’s—there’s more to him than just, you know, spooky magic and abominations of nature.”

“Such as charisma and the ability to manipulate the well-intentioned?” Izuna suggest cynically.

“There’s good in him,” Madara says stubbornly. Tobirama stepped in front of his brother to protect him from a demon with no way to know he’d never hurt a child, and Madara won’t forget that. “I know there is. He just needs a chance to show it.”

Izuna stops and turns with all the slow dramatics that he likes to claim—unfoundedly—that he got from Madara. “Brother,” he says slowly. His eyes are glinting with something between unholy glee and utter disappointment, and Madara can feel his wings starting to spread in instinctive alarm. “Do you have a crush on a necromancer who may or may not be trying to commit unspeakable evils with powers man was not meant to know?”

Madara’s jaw drops, and for a moment he can’t even form words. “Do I—what? What kind of accusation is that? It’s like you don’t even know me!”

“You know,” Izuna says thoughtfully, “with anyone else, I’d say the way you’re acting is an obvious sign of guilt. But no, you’re always this ridiculous.”

Madara snarls and tackles Izuna, who collides with the wall with a yelp and a flurry of flapping feathers.

Unfortunately, one of them has spent the last several years regularly getting into proper fights with other demons, and it certainly isn’t Madara. Izuna’s foot kicks into his stomach hard enough to knock the air out of him, talons ripping four short gashes in his yukata. Madara stumbles back, rolls, and tries to recover, but his talons skitter on the polished floor the way human shoes never do. Izuna pounces, pinning Madara to the floor and undoubtedly adding brand new pinprick holes to the yukata that had been perfectly fine before Izuna got his claws on it.

Madara blows a stray strand of hair out of his face and glares upward.

Izuna’s grin is lopsided and smug. “My, my, you’ve gotten sloppy. Are you sure the mortal plane is good for you?”

“I am used,” Madara spits, “to my legs bending the other way!”

He takes advantage of Izuna’s amusement to twist, buck, and successfully dislodge him, pushing him away with a taloned foot on his thigh, but Madara’s buffeted by black, red-streaked wings before he can press his advantage. He can’t say he’s enjoying refamiliarizing himself with the palace’s floors.

Madara swears. It should not be this easy to forget that he has wings too, considering he can clearly feel their heavy, familiar weight, but—Izuna may have a point about playing human a little too long. But what point is there in being the perfect demon when he was exiled years ago?

Izuna makes a point of smirking down at him before grabbing the front of his yukata and hauls him unceremoniously to his feet. Madara can feel the fabric straining where it was torn to make space for his wings, but thankfully it still holds.

“If you insist. Now, let’s get you a proper courting gift for that necromancer of yours.”

Madara’s tail whips out and smacks Izuna in the leg, but the brat just laughs at him and darts ahead.

Creating a seal on a pendant is much more difficult than trying to create one on paper, which is mostly due to the fact that building seals and carving them are two very different skills. Tobirama compensates for this in the way he usually does for skills he lacks: he adds more magic.

For a pendant such as this, ivory would usually be his preference—it’s easy to cut, easy to source, and holds magical charge well. But the affinity it has to purity and the moon make it an awful choice for an object meant for a demon, so he’s fallen back on obsidian, which is still easy enough to carve as long as he’s careful to dull any sharp edges before he cuts himself on them.

A small bowl of water infused with powdered pearl sits next to the disk of obsidian, and on the other side is a sheet of paper with his finalized design for the seal. The two concentric circles forming the base are already carved into the obsidian, more perfect than any pen could manage.

Tobirama holds a hand over the bowl of water and charges it with just enough magic to life a small stream into the air. He lets magic continue to trickle into it until it begins to spin fast enough he can see nothing of the water but a blur with a fine edge, and, after checking his reference seal, carefully lowers the disk of water to the obsidian to carve a perfectly straight line.

He checks it again after rubbing any dusted obsidian off of the pendant. It’s still, so far, utterly perfect.

Tobirama seethes.

He formed the deal out of sheer practicality. He’s financially secure enough that usually, he doesn’t have to consider barter; usually, he isn’t seeking an object that could very well bankrupt him. An object fit for a dragon’s hoard? In human terms, that means an obscene amount of money. In demon terms, it means something someone forgot behind a couch a century or so back. Most would say that bankrupting himself would be wiser than bartering with a demon, and maybeTobirama would agree with them—but he has Kawarama to look after, and Kawarama is a child who needs a roof over his head and food on the table no matter what Tobirama does.

He’ll still be capable of taking down Tajima if necessary, no matter if he can rip the demon’s illusions from him or not. But on principle, giving Tajima anything to protect himself makes his stomach turn.

Hypothetically, he could sabotage the pendant. It’s not like the demon would be able to tell if he put a line in the wrong place. He could even leave the seal alone and simply carve it with holy water. The first time the demon has reason to put the pendant to use, triggering the seal would probably debilitate him more than stripping his illusions would have in the first place.

But even if Tajima wouldn’t know, Tobirama would—and, therefore, so would the magic of the crossroads, bound to his own by the deal he has made.

Tobirama leans back in his chair and rubs at his chest. It doesn’t help his mood that he can’t stop prodding at the binding of the deal, like a tongue incessantly poking the gap where a knocked out tooth used to be. Not in an attempt to remove the binding, he isn’t stupid—he’s just… trying to get the shape of it.

It doesn’t feel like the demon’s magic. It doesn’t burn him, or feel like a constant fever. Still, the sensation makes him leery, and even if he didn’t have every other reason to be anxious to get on with it, this gives him get another: when the deal is over, the crossroads will let him go.

He’s starting to understand why so many of the few remaining confirmed tales of demon deals end in insanity, suicide, or both. To carry this weight for year after year, never able to forget what you promised, especially if it was your own soul? No. Maybe it’s supposed to be easier for a mage that isn’t also a sensor, but Tobirama is, and he doesn’t think he could live like that. Not for long.

His breath catches in his throat and he scoops up some water to start carving again, if only to make himself stop thinking. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll have to wonder—

Is this how Butsuma felt? Waiting for Tajima to come. Waiting to serve up his end of the deal on an altar. If he’d been bound by the crossroads, why hadn’t Tobirama sensed it? Why hadn’t he had any warning before that night?

Could the demon boy feel it? Tied by someone else’s deal to a monster wearing human skin, chained by someone else’s choice.

And Itama.

Tobirama knows he’ll drive himself around the bend with questions like these, but he can’t stop thinking about it. Wondering if that was why Itama couldn’t hide that day. If Father hadn’t found him after all, if instead Itama was bound by the deal made for his soul and could feel it pulling him—

The spinning jet of water cuts too deeply and the obsidian shatters. Tobirama swears aloud when the glass edged pieces cut into his palm and pushes his chair back before he gets blood on his reference sheet. The water sprayed everywhere when the pain interrupted his concentration, and it looks like there’s much more blood than there actually is, now dripping its merry way down his forearm. He’ll have to wash the wound before the powdered pearl finds its way into his bloodstream and causes an infection, magical or otherwise.

Kawarama is going to panic, and Touka is going to complain very loudly in order to hide that she’s doing the same. Tobirama grits his teeth and braces himself against the impending hysterics before leaving his study to get his hand fixed up.

At least he has extra pieces of obsidian. He’ll have to start carving the pendant over again.

The treasury room is exactly as organized as Madara left it, which was exactly as organized as Tajima left it, which is to say: not very. He’s seen dragon hoards that are much worse, and at least he has a good idea of where to start looking for what he wants, but it’s possible Madara’s been a little spoiled by modern humans and their searchable online catalogues.

Madara squints at an only slightly haphazard stack of gold coins and fancy scrolls. Those don’t look familiar. “Did you put stuff in here? What’s it from?”

“Taxes.”

Madara stops. “Hell has taxes?” he says blankly.

Izuna looks pleadingly up at the ceiling and says, dry as a desert, “Maybe not when you were Prince. Have I ever told you how glad I am that you abdicated?”

Madara decides that ignoring the conversation is the better part of valor. He kicks a golden urn out of the way to get to where he’d seen some of the more impressive jewelry. There’s got to be something in here that’s simultaneously an object Anko would loose her mind over being able to sell off and also the sort of object that isn’t cursed enough to bite Tobirama’s hand clean off rather than be carried.

The gaudy chains of diamonds are certainly expensive, at least for humans, but those are only artificially rare and don’t exactly strike Madara as impressive. The diamonds are pretty small, anyway. He’s looking for something with a larger gem and hopefully a little more colorful—or at least more elegant, if whoever stocked this place decided that color is for peons.

After another twenty minutes or so, Izuna has started to sigh loudly and very pointedly. “This place practically is a dragon’s hoard, anything in here is going to be fit for one. How long are you planning on snooping around?”

“I’m not snooping, I have permission,” Madara argues distractedly. He thinks he may have found something serviceable: an emerald the size and approximate shape of a chicken egg, set into very fine gold metalwork that looks like vines and leaves grown delicately over the gem. The vine motive extends just long enough to wrap a cluster of berry-sized emeralds into the necklace chain on either side, which is made of a net of finespun, interwoven strands lightly spelled not to tangle.

It is, objectively, magnificent work, and will probably cost a small fortune anywhere in the moral plane. Tobirama doesn’t seem like the sort of person to appreciate the craftsmanship, exactly, but he should get a good price out of it. Madara had been hoping to find some sort of sapphire, maybe a pale blue, set into silver. It’d have matched much better to the glimmer of sunlight-through-ice—

Madara realizes he’s trying to match jewelry to an arrogant asshole necromancer’s magic and almost drops the necklace he’s actually managed to find. No. No, he is not going there, because—because no. Emerald and gold fulfills his end of the deal very nicely, and his brain needs to do him a favor and erase the past thirty seconds or so of his thought process before it gets moved into permanent storage.

Anko, and now Izuna—it’s supposed to be a joke. Mistaking his attention for affection specifically to annoy him, teasing him about a crush that’s nonexistent and can’t hurt. And it’s not like Madara hasn’t been attracted to humans before, he’s had coffee with a man or two in his time, it isn’t new. It’s just…

Somewhere, when Madara’s brain had recorded Tobirama’s desperate grab for his brother in the narrow hallway of that apartment, something had clicked. Tobirama is an older brother, like Madara. Tobirama has a heart no matter how protected and well-hidden, like Madara. And right now, Tobirama is desperate; he’s reaching for something to protect his little brother, and if Madara doesn’t understand exactly what it is he’s looking for, he understands well enough to know Tobirama needs help.

He needs Madara. And maybe… Madara needs to be needed.

Fuck. Madara is an idiot of the highest order, but there’s nothing he can do about that little realization right now, so he does his best to table it for the time being. He closes his hand around the emerald and tucks it away into the yukata’s obi before schooling his face and turning back to Izuna. “Alright, I found it.”

Izuna lets out a gust of hair like he’s been holding it for a thousand years. “About time. I thought I was going to join all the dust in here if you took any longer.”

Madara rolls his eyes, but he lets Izuna shoo him out of the treasury, the door banging shut behind them. He turns off the hallway to head up to the Eastern tower; that’ll be the best point to take off from without being seen.

“Excuse you, where do you think you’re going?” Izuna asks, with all the imperiousness of a Prince. “You just got here.”

Madara hesitates. “But—“

“Nope, forget it, I don’t want your excuses. Your mortals can survive without you for a few hours, surely, or they’d have been long gone before you ever got there,” Izuna says exasperatedly. He beckons sharply before turning and striding off without even bothering to check if Madara is following him.

The throne has done Izuna’s personality no favors at all, but, well—Monday is always quietest, magic wise. Konoha isn’t going to sink into the earth in the next few hours.

Madara goes after Izuna, deeper into the palace.

Most of Hell is terminally stuck a solid century or two behind living souls, but Izuna likes his little comforts, and as they enter the vast Prince’s quarters, Madara can see his brothers has taken a page from his own book and looked to the mortal plane for inspiration. Mirrors set into the closet door, a feather pillow on the futon, and magical lights with a switch so they don’t have to be lit with a spell each time. Nothing overt—no demon of the Court would be able to point a finger and bleat about human influence, but Madara can spot it, and it makes him smile, just a little.

Izuna slides open the closet and rummages around in a small chest of drawers on the upper shelf. Once he finds what he’s looking for, he kicks a short stool out from the lower section into the middle of the room, shuts the closet, and takes a seat with emphasis. “Sit,” he orders, tapping his foot in front of the stool impatiently.

Madara belatedly recognizes the preening comb and brush in his hands. “You don’t have to—“

Izuna gives him the sort of incredulous look that says he very well does have to. “Your wings are a mess,” he sniffs. “Sit. Down.” He stabs a finger toward the ground, giving the distinct impression that if Madara continues to refuse, he is swiftly going ot wind up tied to a stake driven through the floorboards in that exact spot.

“You’re an awful little brother,” Madara complains.

“I’m an excellent little brother. You just don’t notice because you are an awful demon.”

He says that like it’s a bad thing. Madara is perfectly happy with that, thank you very much.

“Get that smirk off your face,” Izuna grumbles, but there’s no heat in it. “And get over here.”

Madara snorts and deliberately smirks wider, but he heads over to sit on the floor in front of the stool before Izuna decides to take drastic measures. He undoes the makeshift clasp behind his neck on his altered yukata and shrugs out of the sleeves, letting the fabric pool around his waist to bare his wings properly.

It’s been a while since Madara’s felt truly safe turning his back to someone. He spreads his wings fully, careful not to knock them against Izuna’s knees, but his feathers won’t fluff up quite right to expose anything that needs preening.

That hesitation hisses like a chunk of steaming ice inside of him—this is Izuna, and Madara will always trust him. He just… isn’t used to being preened by anyone but himself, these days. “I’m perfectly capable of doing this myself,” he points out crabbily.

“The state of your wings,” Izuna says drily, “suggests otherwise.”

Madara, unfortunately, doesn’t have a response to that. Izuna has a better view of his wings than he does, at the moment. So maybe he doesn’t preen as much as he should, and his feather are probably a little disheveled, but it’s not like he needs wings in the mortal plane on a regular basis.

Izuna starts with the mantle of feathers growing along his spine, just combing his claws through the feathers for the first pass to catch a few loose bits of down. Madara’s skin prickles as Izuna brushes by the pin feathers growing in to replace the old down with new—well. New as a relative term. Reaching his mantle is near impossible, between his wings as it is; he just doesn’t bend that way. So those pin feathers have been stiff and itchy along his spine for… a while. Under illusion, it’s easier not to feel it.

Izuna gentle rubs the shell of one of the pin feathers between his fingers until it crumbles into bits of keratin that need to be brushed away. One prickly point of irritation fades away, and Madara feels his wings finally start to relax properly, feathers fluffing up to let Izuna reach the bases of his feathers and the powder down that grows close the skin.

Some of the other pin feathers are still too new for the shell to come off without causing pain, but by the time Izuna is using the preening brush to get stray keratin crumbs off his wings, the prickling is down to a minimum. He hears Izuna huff a fond laugh at the way Madara’s wings fluff up in contentment, but he doesn’t comment before dragging the preening comb through for a finer pass than claws can manage, the teeth wide precisely spaced far enough apart to avoid painfully catching any of the feather shafts.

With the accumulated dust, dirt, and bits of worn feather and keratin preened away, Izuna digs his fingers down to the base of the feathers to start breaking up the powder down feathers for proper cleaning. Finally, Izuna pulls each feather gently between his fingers to coat them in powder and zip up the barbs until they lie smooth and sleek down his back.

Izuna moves on to the scapulas along the shoulder of his wings, then the lesser coverts along the leading edge, and Madara finds himself releasing tension he didn’t even know he was carrying. Tiny irritants he’d learned to ignore are being removed from his skin bit by bit, and his feathers are starting to lie flat instead of disheveled and out of place. Izuna clips off the broken end of a feather or two so nothing hangs and gets tangled, but it doesn’t hurt—the feather won’t do as much good, but it can stay until he properly molts and a new, stronger one takes its place.

Madara’s surprised Izuna doesn’t immediately start reaming him out for having any broken feathers, though. It’s a clear sign he hasn’t been taking very good care of his wings, especially since Madara hadn’t noticed them. Although, he’s pretty sure any broken feathers he has are Tobirama’s fault. The shirt he’d been wearing when his illusions were stripped was not designed to accomodate wings, nor were his wings designed to break shirts like that. He hasn’t sat down to preen since then, either—hasn’t had his wings out at all, actually, except to fly down here.

Izuna finally moves down to the tertials, the smallest set of flight feathers arranged near his sides. The flight feathers are always preened after the rest of the top sides of wings, since a stressed demon will react to a threat to their ability to fly with claws first and reason second. Usually, between them, it’s just habit, but this time… it was probably necessary. By now, at least, Madara’s hindbrain has finally remembered that Izuna would probably die before intentionally wounding him. He doesn’t even twitch as his secondaries and primaries are efficiently preened.

And that’s it for the top of his wings. There’s no earthly way Izuna is going to let him get away before preening his underwings, too, but Madara’s actually settled enough that he finds he doesn’t mind.

He can hear Izuna shoving the stool away to sit on the floor level with him, unusually quiet without any snarky commentary. Madara doesn’t think much of it until he turns around to expose the underside of his wings and falters at the distant expression on Izuna’s face.

“You okay?” Madara asks, even though he already knows. He wants to be wrong.

Izuna picks up one of the broken bits he’d clipped out of Madara’s feathers, rolls it between his fingers to make it spin, and gives Madara a look.

Madara’s stomach sinks—but not because of the look. He knows his brother well enough to read the way he draws focus to the broken feather, turning the question around and asking Madara if he’s okay.

No, Madara’s stomach is sinking because he has to read into Izuna’s silence, instead of hearing his voice.

Sometimes Izuna goes quiet. Not out of pain or protest, from what Madara sees, but like his words have flown away, or buried themselves deep inside where he can’t pull them out. Madara is never quite sure what to do or how to help, if it’s somehow his fault or if it just happens, when the wind turns on a dime and leaves them both off-balance and air between them awkward and silent. It’s been like this for years, since before Madara left—they both have scars that the other can’t really understand, and this is one of them, even if it’s gotten less visible over time.

Not that he’s ever going to let a lack of understanding stop him from looking after his little brother.

“I’m fine, the broken feathers are just from a fight.” Madara hesitates, then asks carefully, “Not a word day?”

Izuna hums, which as answers go, isn’t very helpful. But maybe he doesn’t know, either—he was so snippy earlier, bratty like everything in the world was going his way. Madara should know better than to assume that all means he’s okay.

Madara is still puzzling over what he should do when Izuna reaches forward and gently pushes the wrist of his left wing upward. Madara gets the point and obligingly spreads his wing out, so Izuna can inch closer to get the axillaries underneath where his wing connects to his body.

The problem is that Madara isn’t sure if Izuna goes quiet because he needs the silence or because he’s being suffocated by it. He wants to help, wants to reach out, but it’s been years since they’ve so much as lived on the same plane and he isn’t sure how.

When the obvious answer hits him, Madara almost smacks a hand against his forehead.

“Let me preen you.” Madara plucks at the front of Izuna’s kimono. “I’m not so sure I trust the palace servants to do it right.”

Izuna sees right through him, Madara’s sure, but seeing his brother’s mouth twitch up in the bare ghost of a grin makes being so transparent well worth it. Izuna undoes the clasp behind his neck and spreads a wing. Madara moves the preening brush and comb between them, and they start to preen each other’s wings simultaneously like they did back before Madara left.

The silence is getting to him, so Madara starts to talk. he keeps an eye on Izuna’s body language to make sure he’s not crossing any lines, ready to shut up if he has to, but Izuna’s feathers stay fluffed and open for easy preening, and Madara has yet to get any down plucked, so he seems to be in the clear so far.

He tells Izuna about the mortal plane, because it’s something he loves, and he wants to share it with his brother even if he’s never expressed a real desire to see it. Madara steers away from anything about Tobirama, because necromancers are a touchy subject with Izuna on the best of days, which this is not—and Madara isn’t even sure yet that this story is one that will have a happy ending. Instead, he talkes about the lighter things he’s seen in the past eighteen months, dumb things he’s seen humans do with ritual magic and funny stories about spooking reckless baby mages away from their own poor life choices. He tells Izuna about Anko, like he’s done a couple times in the past, but this time he also philosophizes aloud about the strange kindness she shows him, even when she’s a truly obnoxious acquaintance the rest of the time. Humans are so different, but that’s why he likes them—if he were truly part of the mortal plane, Izuna wouldn’t have to be the only person he can let his guard down around.

When he dares to look over at Izuna again, he’s wearing a soft expression of understanding—even though Madara knows he doesn’t like humans much. Sometimes, it’s easier to talk when Izuna is silent, no matter how guilty that makes him feel, but—if Izuna is okay, maybe it isn’t so bad. It’s nice, seeing Izuna peaceful, feeling safe, preening each other like they’re still two young brothers against the world.

Izuna’s wings are much neater than Madara’s seeing as his are preened daily, like any demon that can spare the time. Izuna’s the one doing the real work here; Madara’s mostly just going through the motions, aligning feathers and skritching gently around the base. It’s soothing, and if Izuna’s silence is anything to judge by, he probably needs whatever sort of soothing he can get right now.

They switch sides once Madara’s underwing coverts are finally lying flat again, shuffling around each other’s knees before settling in again. It’s been a long time, but this is an easily remembered rhythm. For just a few minutes, it’s almost like he never left.

And then Madara gently rolls a feather between his fingers to remove the slightly sticky crust drying on it, and his fingertips come away the rust-red of drying blood.

Madara’s words dry up in his throat. He feels more than sees how Izuna pauses and glances over, but he shakes himself and clears his throat before starting in again with the story about the human who accidentally gave himself two extra fingers on one hand, and after a few more moments, Izuna goes back to preening.

Madara knows where the blood comes from. he’s seen this sort of thing before. Tajima used to come home covered in it, some days, and the servants would make themselves small and quiet as they cleaned up the trails of red he left in the hallways and on the furniture, hoping it wouldn’t be their blood next. Izuna isn’t anything like that, but—being the Prince of Hell means he can’t afford to be soft. If someone attacked him, if someone tried to double-cross him, Izuna would kill them. He’s the Prince, and to hold onto his power among demons, he has and will again get his claws and wings and teeth dirty killing anyone who challenged him. He’d have to.

Madara knows where the blood comes from. He was Prince once, too.

And—he could have stayed, if he’d really thought it was worth it. Nothing that happened leading up to his exile was so bad he couldn’t have put on his game face and blustered through, after a little kowtowing to the elders of the Court or simply terrifying them into compliance. he could be living in this castle, he could walk the streets without having to hide and anyone who recognized him would bow. He’s powerful enough taht there’s nothing in Hell that he fears anyway—

Except what he might have become if he stayed.

He and his brothers should have been born human. They didn’t earn their fate, and they shouldn’t be damed, but here they are. Their brothers, decades older, have long succumbed to the vices and violence of Hell, and nothing has ever broken Madara’s heart quite as much as Kou coming to seek the throne, as well as vengeance for Tajima’s death.

He’d been the only challenger Madara hadn’t killed. It makes him wonder, sometimes, if he came back again to challenge Izuna, and what happened to him if he did. But Madara knows himself enough to know that he’s not strong enough to hear the answer to that question, so he keeps that fear tucked close to his heart, and he holds his peace.

If Izuna weren’t down here, Madara would never return to Hell if he could help it. He’s just not sure it’ll actually be possible to stay away. Physically, he can leave, but he’s marked too deeply to be able to run forever. Madara is barely a fraction more human than he was when he left seven years ago, and if someone manages to kill him viciously enough that he can’t regenerate, he has no illusions where his soul is going to go.

He hates it, hates that he knows he’ll be right back here when he’s unlucky enough to die. There’s no escaping Hell for good, and every time he returns, he remembers that.

Izuna finishes Madara’s other wing and lightly shoves him away. Madara goes with the momentum and stands up to get the stool while shrugging the top of his yukata back on.

“No, stay,” he says, when Izuna stands with him. “I’ll get your upperwings too.”

Izuna rolls his eyes and ignores him, fastening the clasp of his kimono behind his neck again.

“Hey, come on, I’m not leaving it unfinished, let me—“

“No.”

Madara is relieved enough to hear Izuna’s voice that he almost doesn’t argue, but the instincts of an older brother is just to strong. “And why not?”

“Bigger problem,” Izuna says. Still in short sentences, but if past experience is worth anything, he’ll be sassing Madara like the brat he is within the next five minutes. Maybe half that, if he can get a quip out in four words or less.

“Which is?”

Izuna gives him a judgemental look, head to toe. “Clothes.”

Madara flushes, all too aware of the ragged hole he ripped in the back of the thrift-store yukata and the makeshift clasp he put together for the neckline. “Look, it was a last-minute sort of thing. People on the mortal plane don’t exactly design their clothes for wings.”

The problem with paying so much more attention to tone when Izuna goes quiet is that Madara has to experience the full load of amused exasperation when Izuna hums, “Mm-hmm.”

Madara huffs, but watches curiously despite himself as Izuna slides open the closet, kicks the stool back inside, and then opens the other side to start rifling through piles of neatly folded clothes. He’s muttering to himself, quiet words less and less disjointed. A good sign, if one that’s going to come at the cost of Madara’s dignity as soon as Izuna finds all his words again.

“Aha!” Izuna emerges victorious with a black kimono embroidered with gold thread, shoving it into Madara’s arms before he can get a proper look at it. “Quick, before your dignity falls any further.”

And there’s the snark. “You’re the only danger to my dignity around here,” Madara says, taking the folded kimono reluctantly. “It’s not like this will help, we both know I’m five centimeters taller than you.” Not usually much of a difference, but wearing a tailored kimono that doesn’t fit him right makes the whole effect ridiculous.

“Four point two centimeters.”

“Izuna.”

Izuna huffs, clearly still nettled. “Besides, bone-headed brother of mine, that’s irrelevant—that kimono isn’t mine, it’s yours.”

Madara looks up sharply. “What?”

Izuna gestures to the room at large. “You barely took anything with you, there was still stuff everywhere when I moved in.”

Madara holds the kimono by the shoulders and lets the hem fall so he can see it properly. He recognizes it now, with the golden dragon embroidered up the left side, its eyes glittering with bits of ruby. The hems shimmer with geometric patterns sewn with the same golden threat. he hasn’t worn anything this finely crafted in… a long time. Humans don’t wear traditional clothing so often anymore, and even if they did, he’d stick out like a sore thumb wearing something like this without the status to go with it.

He doesn’t know if he wants to put it on or burn it.

“I left seven years ago.”

“And what, did you think I threw everything away?” Izuna’s eyes are sharp enough that the way his gaze flickers over Madara makes him nervous. Rude. Little brothers are not supposed to be able to see right through their elders, especially when there’s things they might be disappointed to find. “…Is that why you never asked for any of it?”

“I don’t have anywhere to put it on the mortal plane,” Madara argues, mostly to avoid having to say yes.

Izuna’s eyes tighten. “You have enough space for one kimono, at least. If you don’t want the rest of it right now, then leave it here and come get it when you need it. This place used to be yours, and even if you don’t want it—“

Izuna abruptly becomes very concerned with putting the kimonos back in a pile, like he doesn’t know the servants will come through and refold them all anyway after he messed them up. Like he thinks Madara will just ignore the first have of that sentence if he doesn’t finish it.

Well, it’s Izuna’s job to leave things unsaid. “I don’t want to live here,” Madara says. “But I’ve missed you. I’ll visit more often, but I doubt I’ll take anything when I do.”

Izuna’s feathers fluff up briefly in satisfaction, Madara’s glad to see—he won’t have his brother thinking he meant to leave him, too. “No, you’ll just raid my treasury when you’re here.”

Brat. “Get out, I’m coopting your room to change.”

If he hears Izuna mutter “Thank the gods” on his way out, he’s choosing to ignore it.

The kimono is much nicer on his feathers than the yukata was. He swaps out everything he’d stowed in the yukata’s obi into his new one, double checking that the emerald and gold treasure is secure and won’t fall out, but he pauses over the little plastic case he keeps on hand for when he needs to burn things. Leaving Hellish ash about isn’t a good idea on the mortal plane, and if he collects ash as he burns it, he can sell it to Anko later.

Now that he isn’t wearing it anymore, Madara has to admit that yukata is awful and embarrassing. He burns it and very precisely makes sure the ash lands in the container before storing it back in his obi.

He slides open the door to find Izuna waiting, wings loosely draped over his shoulders. “I suppose you’ll be heading back now?”

Madara extends a wing to brush against Izuna’s. “I don’t want to stay away for too long,” he says, half explanation and half apology.

“Yes, of course, oh grand guardian of the mortal plane.” Izuna flourishes a hand and inclines his head mockingly. Even that small, ironic show of deference would give the elders of the Court frothing fits to see their Prince give to an exile—which, honestly, is probably half of the reason Izuna does it.

“Guardian of one part of it, anyway,” Madara qualifies. Whether Izuna is joking or not, Madara does do his best. “The mortal plane’s pretty big.”

Izuna hums. His eyes are distant, staring at empty air over Madara’s shoulder, and Madara has just long enough to worry that he’s gone silent again before he speaks. “Konoha, wasn’t it? You’ll tell me if you find anyone truly interesting, won’t you?”

“What exactly do you think I’ve been doing for the past hour?” Madara demands, affronted.

Izuna snorts and cuffs him over the head with the wrist of his wing. “Get out of my castle,” he says loudly over Madara’s indignant squawk.

Letting his little brother have the last word simply won’t do. Madara turns, sweeps down into an exaggerated bow and smirks. “As my Prince commands, sir yes sir.”

He escapes down the hall before Izuna’s lunge can catch him, sprinting around a corner toward the nearest tower. Izuna doesn’t chase him very hard, but even the mild feeling of the air rushing through his wings as he runs is suddenly exhilarating—and when he takes off from the highest point of the tower, his newly aligned feathers catch the warm air currents flowing upward. It’s easily the best flight he’s had in over a year.

Maybe he shouldn’t stay away quite so long this time. Nothing aches quite like missing a brother.