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Dust rises in clouds and is tamped down by streams of water and flame. Dirt sprays and gives under twisting heels. Blood spills and drips, oozing from wounds and soaking in to the thirsty earth beneath them. They clash and spring apart, come together and twist aside, again and again and again in the same dance they have engaged in since they were children. This is just another battle in an endless war and Tobirama is tired. But he is not too tired to go on as he knows he must. If Hashirama will not put down the dreams of his youth then Tobirama must be the one to bear the weight of the present; it is not a duty he enjoys but it is one he knows well and he will not falter.
The moment is right. He can feel it in his bones and hear it in the screaming wind that rebounds from a jutsu on the far side of the forest clearing, shifting the clouds of steam that he has concealed himself within after his jutsu crashed against Izuna’s in a spectacular show of chemical reaction. Kunai spring to his hands and as he rushes forward he throws them ahead of himself, aiming not actually towards his target but beyond him. Injury is not the purpose of these blades. They are not for the bite but to mark the kill.
His sword is drawn as he bursts from cover, stepping in to position. Izuna meets his eye and for a split second it’s like the younger man knows what is about to happen. Surely he can see his impending death shining in Tobirama’s bloody red eyes. Tobirama hopes he doesn’t. Izuna may be his enemy by circumstance of birth, he might be cursed the way all Uchiha are, but Tobirama holds no true ill will for the other man. He doesn’t know him enough to hate him. Such is the way of life in their generation and though the Uchiha clan pose the greatest threat to his own out of the rest it does not make them different from any other faceless foe seeking to strike down what is his.
Chakra gathers under his skin until his entire body hums with power and he steps – through space and time he steps and every fiber of his being sings with the current that carries him forward. His blade is drawn and aimed, his strike will be true. Izuna will die with a blade through his chest between the third and fourth rib bones and Tobirama-
Light flashes. Tobirama jerks to a stop, unable to cry out in pain for the sheer shock of the blade that sinks in to his chest. Or quite possibly it is the shock of the face that stares back at him, expression grim and grip steady on the familiar sword in his hand.
It is himself. It is his own face yet deeply lined with age. He can hear the cries of shock as more and more people spot the strange distortion: Senju Tobirama stabbing himself through the only weak point in his thick blue armor. He can feel blood bubbling up until it trickles slowly from between his lips and still he does not move. The sword in him shifts, pulls back, and it tugs his flesh in to the motion until he falls forward against his elder self’s chest. Izuna meets his eyes over the shoulder of familiar plates of armor, as stunned and immobile as he is.
His breath ruffles white fur at the same time as hot air washes over his ear and his own voice speaks in a low, terrible whisper.
“Better my own death than Izuna.”
He wants to gasp but his lungs won’t let him. His fingers claw at the figure holding him in a strangely gentle way – and he listens to himself speak in that awful dead tone.
“I broke it all; the entire world. This moment is when it all fell apart. I ruined my brother’s dream of peace when I put that blade through Izuna’s chest. Let him live. Let Brother offer Madara his hand once more and let the world be rid of the plague that is myself.” Tobirama feels his older self bow his head, lips parting but releasing no sound.
He almost thinks that this must be the limit of human pain until suddenly it doubles, triples, as the sword inside of him is pulled out. A fatal move, he knows. His mind cannot help but remind him calmly that one should never remove an object from a wound until there is a healer ready to begin surgery. His knees collapse and his mind is focusing on the strangest things, skittering away from the gaping hole in his chest. The mud from his jutsu is uncomfortable underneath his knees. A single patch of grass in front of him has somehow avoided being churned with the rest of the dirt, shimmering a rich wet green like a beacon of growth in the midst of so much death just as Hashirama stands amidst the waves of dismissal from his own people and dreams his dreams of peace. His skin feels warm and it strikes him as odd; doesn’t every cliché say that he should feel cold?
Distraction only works for so long, just the few seconds it takes for his form to slump forward. His core is damaged, weak, and he finds he does not have the strength to hold himself upright. The same moment that his shoulder impacts the ground, bearing the brunt of his weight and dragging a piteous groan from his lips, the air is rent by a terrible screeching. Touka, he thinks distantly. She’s seen him fall.
From the corner of his vision he can see the older version of himself standing straight, holding out his own hands and looking down at them with the strangest expression of relief. Incredibly, his fingers are rapidly becoming translucent, fading in to the air around him as the rest of him begins to do the same.
“Ah, yes,” he murmurs in his broken voice. “I am disappearing, erased by an earlier death. As it should be.”
Just barely a dozen feet away Hashirama and Madara stand in perfect stillness, their weapons still resting against each other yet neither paying attention to their opponent any longer. Hashirama gapes openly when this strange vision of his brother begins to stagger towards him with one arm stretching to reach out to him in supplication.
“Brother,” the fading man calls. “Brother…how I’ve missed you…”
Mere inches before their skin can touch the fading completes itself, turning a solid man in to shards of light that scatter on the fading breeze. Another moment passes. Touka screams again and it’s as though her voice shatters the stillness. Hashirama dashes forward towards his fallen brother with a cry of his own, sinking to his knees in the mud and pulling the younger man in to his lap.
The entire battlefield holds its breath, both Senju and Uchiha, as Hashirama presses two fingers to his sibling’s neck. When he sobs with relief and lights his hands with the glow of healing green a collective shudder passes through them all, even some of the Uchiha who fear for their life each time they leave the compound without the safety of their second heir’s presence. Izuna himself backs away from the scene they make slowly, crawling to his brother’s side and watching as Touka hurls herself down in his place, a fierce light in her eyes where there would be tears on a weaker woman.
“How can I help?” she demands.
“Chakra,” Hashirama grunts. “I’ll need chakra. He’s already too far from me.”
“Take mine. Take all of it.”
“He wouldn’t want your life in exchange for his.” By contrast, Hashirama’s face streams openly with tears and he shakes his head, expression solemn and regretful as he shatters inside. “That isn’t his way.”
Madara slips an arm around Izuna’s shoulder and gestures to the rest of his forces without looking at them. Not a single one of them protest when he signals the retreat. There is no honor to be found in senseless slaughter, in striking while the enemy mourns, and so the Uchiha begin to slip away in silence. Madara and Izuna are the last to go, watching in amazement as one by one the Senju fighters approach their leader and kneel, offering their chakra to heal the man who fell.
How is he so precious, they wonder, the man who feels nothing?
It’s a question they have no need to ask out loud, one they already know the answer to. All kin are precious. More than bodies to fall and soldiers to expend, their family are their anchors in this blood-soaked ocean of death, more precious than jewels no matter that very few of them live to see their third decade. All shinobi are born to die but they are born loved. Learning to fight does not mean they forget how to feel.
Madara turns his brother away but looks back one more time for himself. He watches the friend he once considered a brother, the tears streaming down his face as he begs the body under his hands to hold on for just a little longer. He watches the man he thought the most bloodthirsty of them all bleed out from a wound none of them understand. If he survives there will be answers. Only he will ever be able to explain how there came to be two Tobiramas, how one of them looked old and worn, the desperation on his face as he reached for Hashirama, why he chose to kill himself instead of his greatest enemies.
As a man who hates unsolved mysteries Madara wants those answers. And as a brother who recognizes that Izuna could have been the one bleeding out in his arms instead, well, it leaves him hoping for something he never thought he would ever hope for.
He hopes Tobirama survives. Not just for his own sake but for Hashirama as well. For the first time in his life he understands that the only way for either of them to come out on top in this senseless war is for one to lose their precious brother, their last surviving sibling. If he cannot even contemplate the idea of surviving so much pain himself how can he possibly ask Hashirama to do the same? How can he ask anyone to suffer losses he won’t?
Perhaps it is time to revisit old dreams at last.