Chapter Text
The hall outside Madara’s room wasn’t in the best shape, with scuffed floorboards and shoji that was more yellow than white. The stress of the past year meant that cleaning the private areas of their house had been low on their list of priorities.
(Their house was nothing like those houses. Those houses had fancy electric lights that only civilian nobles in the capital could afford and shoji so pristine that even the tiniest drop of blood was easily visible—)
Izuna slid Madara’s door open and peered inside with one red eye, smiling at the familiar but always ridiculous sight of his brother sprawled in a nest of hair. Madara mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep and rolled over. His leg snagged on a blanket and sent it flopping off the futon.
Madara was alive and in good health. More than capable of fighting off anyone who ambushed him, assuming the would-be assassin could even make it this far into the compound.
(No one would blink an eye if they saw another Uchiha in the compound. Madara rarely had his guard up at home—)
Izuna deactivated his Sharingan and carefully closed the door.
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He didn’t remember much from the good nights. Most of what he did remember made little sense.
(Colorful dango offered by a girl with strangely shaped eyes. Conversations over a campfire with a boy who looked like an older Kagami. The grumpiest infant Izuna had ever seen.
Children who were obviously from different clans playing and laughing together. Foreign delicacies, some of which he’d never even heard of, selling at prices comparable to local crops. Senju heads carved into the side of a mountain, what the actual fuck.)
The scenes were often peaceful. Some of them would even be nice if not for the abomination of a mountain looming in the background. On a good night, Izuna could almost forget that he was looking through the eyes of a traitor who loved a village of outsiders more than his own clan.
“Look out!”
Izuna tilted his head and hooked his finger through the blunt training shuriken that had been about to collide with his ear. Small footsteps hurried out of the courtyard he’d just passed.
“Sorry! Sorry! I am so sorry! I didn’t expect it to curve that much—”
“Don’t worry,” Izuna hummed. “There’s a reason we only train with dull blades.” He took a moment to compose his expression before looking down at the boy hovering at his side. “Are you working on projectiles this morning, Kagami?”
“Yes! The teachers say my shuriken technique is perfect!” Kagami beamed at him. “But. Um. Myaimcanprobablybeimproved.”
Izuna made a show of glancing around to make sure no one was in eavesdropping range, then knelt and gestured at Kagami to lean in.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispered as he handed back the shuriken. “From what I’ve seen, your aim is almost as good as mine was back when I was your age.”
Kagami’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Really,” Izuna said seriously. If anything, Kagami was probably better, at least in training; Izuna had been an impatient child prone to throwing the moment he saw the target. But there was still some time before Kagami would be sent into the field, whereas seven-year-old Izuna had already been running courier and supply missions outside Uchiha territory. His options had been to improve quickly, die, or watch clansmen die due to his childish incompetence. “Keep working hard, Kagami. I promise it will be worth it in the end.”
“I will!” Kagami bounced from foot to foot. “Please excuse me, Izuna-sama!”
Izuna activated his Sharingan to watch the boy run off, taking in the fan stitched on the back of Kagami’s shirt; the children training in the courtyard; the lone guard keeping an eye on them from a nearby roof.
Naka met Izuna’s tense gaze with a questioning look and dropped a hand to his sword. His eyes spun red and blinked rapidly in rhythms almost too fast to be seen without Sharingan—inquiry-problem-danger.
Izuna blinked back—clear.
“Didn’t sleep well,” he mouthed, and Naka’s expression softened with understanding. If there was one thing all Uchiha knew, it was that perfect memory was both a blessing and a curse.
The perfect memories in question were usually their own, but Izuna supposed he’d always had a rebellious streak.
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The sprawling stone garden behind the guardhouse had been a personal project of his mother’s, or so his father had said during one of Tajima’s rare bouts of sentimentality. Fireside tales from Tajima’s dwindling agemates painted a more detailed story: it was Izuna’s mother who’d arranged the stones in a pattern that trapped ambient chakra and his father who’d painstakingly collected the rare petrified logs that served as benches; his father who’d carved lanterns from limestone imported from the Land of Earth and his mother who’d spent months undercover in an outsider’s seal workshop to learn how to keep the flames always burning.
Izuna had never seen his father set foot in the garden or do anything remotely artistic, but Madara never refuted the stories so he supposed he could take them at face value. To Izuna, whose memories of his mother were fuzzy at best, the garden had always been a communal clan project tended by a rotating roster of noncombatants.
One such gardener, a girl who looked barely old enough to be in the field if she was a kunoichi, was lurking by the guardhouse when Izuna approached. Her geta were just high enough to allow her to peer through a window.
Most of Izuna’s interactions with civilian children amounted to smiling at them while on his way to discuss business with their parents. He took a moment to recall the girl’s name—she was the daughter of one of the traders, if he remembered correctly—and deliberately tapped his next step audibly against the ground.
“Good morning, Takayo-chan.”
The girl jumped and spun to face him with a bright smile. “Izuna-sama! Good morning! I was just… um… lost. On the path of life.”
Izuna bit back a laugh. “Has that line ever worked for you?”
“No.” Takayo’s smile turned sheepish. “I just think it sounds better than ‘I lost track of time.’ I saw Naori-san’s butterflies—oh, I wasn’t spying or anything, I just—!”
“They’re lovely, aren’t they?” Izuna waved at the door. “Would you like to go in?”
The girl blinked. “Am I allowed? I thought only warriors…”
“The guardhouse is a public space. All are welcome.” Well, all Uchiha. Izuna didn’t need to clarify, of course—civilian or shinobi, everyone here was clan. It wasn’t like that compound, where they were surrounded by outsiders who could practically stroll in on a whim.
Takayo stared longingly at the guardhouse and opened her mouth—
“Takayo!” A stern voice rang out from somewhere around the corner.
“Uh oh.” Takayo scrambled away from the window. “Another time, Izuna-sama!” She grabbed the tool-filled basket she’d left on the side of the road and hurried off.
Izuna watched her go with amusement. Then he opened the door and stepped into a butterfly lover’s paradise.
Kind of. Naori’s genjutsu constructs were already disappearing as Izuna walked through them, a swarm of translucent-winged butterflies disintegrating into wisps of chakra that brushed against his senses like a warm breeze. Naori herself had her hand raised over an ink-splattered scroll, murmuring something to the single solid butterfly perched on top of her fingers. Blue wings fluttered and the ink began to twist into legible words—a report of the night’s activity along certain strategic sections of the Nakano River.
Sitting nearby was Rai, still dressed in travel-stained clothes, scarfing down leftovers from last night’s dinner and writing, in a stranger’s handwriting, what looked like an incredibly pretentious grocery list with the swift, confident movements of someone copying from perfect memory. A finished scroll lay open on the table beside him, containing what looked like a silk merchant’s balance sheet from the past year.
Not exactly stunning additions to the Uchiha library, but everything had value. The scrolls would be filed away in the handwriting archives—a collection of similarly insignificant documents that the clan had built up over generations from every corner of the world, with handwriting samples from people of all ages and every background—and used to help create flawless undercover identities for the assassination and intelligence missions that the Uchiha excelled at outside of battle.
(Did the clan archives still exist in that cursed compound? Izuna suspected he wouldn’t like the answer.)
The common room was much emptier than usual, a consequence of having most of the clan’s fighters away from the main compound—escorting traders, out on missions, or on their way to relieve border garrisons. And now that Rai was home early, no one else was expected to return for at least a few days.
It was a risk to leave the compound so sparsely protected. Unfortunately, the risk was a necessary one—the unusually harsh winter had forced a temporary halt to all but the most essential missions and patrols. They needed to quickly recoup their losses, retain their clients, and prove to their vassals and allies that the Uchiha were still able to honor their commitments.
Izuna just hoped that the stupidly wealthy Senju also needed time to recover. Dealing with them was the last thing anyone needed right now.
“Good morning,” he sang out of habit as he walked into the main office. No one answered, of course. Madara was still asleep at home, enjoying his first uninterrupted night of sleep in what seemed like forever. Izuna had spent a year watching those eye bags worsen and he was not waking his brother for anything less than an emergency, even if it meant he had to do all of Madara’s work himself.
The only other person with the authority to walk in uninvited was Hikaku, who’d left yesterday on an urgent mission responding to reports of strange sightings near the northern shrine. The missive from the northern garrison was still on Madara’s desk, with a hastily scribbled note in the margin saying Hikaku had been sent to investigate. Izuna traced a finger over his cousin’s name.
(He traced a finger over the family tree. This particular document listed only those who’d been citizens of Konoha, and as such named only three clan heads. His finger passed over his father and grandfather to land on his great-grandfather’s name.
The surrounding space was conspicuously empty. Uchiha Hikaku, the forty-fifth head of the Uchiha clan, had been…
And that was when the Sharingan deactivated, taking with it the crystal clarity that allowed Izuna to recall every detail like they were his own memories. Honestly, the one time he wanted to remember… but Izuna had enough information to draw some conclusions. After all, if Hikaku became clan head after Madara—)
Izuna sighed.
Last night had not been a good night. His head still throbbed from the unpleasant experience of another person’s Mangekyo awakening and the even more unpleasant addition to his growing collection of not-memories.
(If nothing else, he supposed it was a small comfort that the boy with Kagami’s face didn’t know—)
Sometimes it was too easy to start thinking of his dreams as real. Too easy to drown in grief and anger for people who didn’t exist.
They didn’t exist.
And if Izuna had anything to say about it, they never would.
Perhaps one day there would be Uchiha with their names and faces. Uchiha who were superficially indistinguishable from the people who lived in the shadow of that fucking mountain.
But they would grow up in the real Uchiha compound, not a pathetic imitation on the outskirts of a village where they were not welcome.
Tobirama supposed he should’ve expected the Land of Lightning to be filled with lightning. Not literally, though the darkening sky suggested that might change soon. No, the natural chakra of the land itself was infused with lightning to the point where kneading chakra felt like immersing himself in a thundercloud.
Logically, he knew it was a matter of familiarity and he would acclimatize quickly if he lingered long enough. The lightning-tinged nature chakra was no more intense than the natural warmth of the Land of Fire. Tobirama had no issues with the heat-soaked chakra back home, being a local sensor who regularly faced Uchiha in battle, but he imagined it would likely prove unsettling to a sensor from Lightning.
He still couldn’t quite shake the small voice that insisted he was making excuses for having been coddled and allowed to grow complacent.
Tobirama pushed past the discomfort and focused on the settlement a few hours away where he was supposed to meet his contact. He was in neutral territory and reasonably far from local clan holdings. Here he expected to find mostly civilians; perhaps some samurai, clanless mercenaries, or the occasional member of a local clan out on a mission.
What he found was all of those and one more, a flickering candle flame that burned as bright as the sun.
Uchiha.
Tobirama frowned. While the Uchiha didn’t seem to be doing anything to hide or otherwise obscure their presence, the odd nature of the chakra signature—as fiery as any of their clan but also delicate and ephemeral, like wisps of smoke that threatened to vanish the moment he looked away—in combination with the lightning tugging at Tobirama’s senses made the Uchiha’s exact location difficult to pinpoint.
He lifted his fingers from the ground as he considered his options. Tobirama was traveling incognito, with his tattoos covered and his hair dyed a much less eye-catching brown. But it was suspected that the Uchiha, either through a genetic quirk or as a byproduct of their Sharingan, had perfect or almost perfect memory that went far beyond a shinobi’s typical attention to detail. If true, Tobirama’s disguise would not fool any Uchiha who had ever seen him.
The chakra signature was distinctive enough that Tobirama was certain he’d remember encountering this particular Uchiha outside of a major conflict. But in the chaos of battle, where he was often preoccupied…
He couldn’t risk it. Tobirama was ahead of schedule, having found and eliminated his targets sooner than expected, but he still needed to deliver the stolen items and collect the second half of his payment. Operating by himself in a foreign country was already dangerous enough without potentially dragging the Senju-Uchiha conflict into a civilian space.
It certainly didn’t help that relations between Fire and Lightning were… strained, to put it mildly. A dispute between the previous Lightning daimyo’s wives had ended with one wife hiring the Uchiha to forcibly exile the other wife’s shinobi clan slightly over a decade ago, and Lightning citizens had been wary of all Fire shinobi ever since.
(The Senju had been very interested in establishing relations with the exiled Lightning clan. There had even been talks of a betrothal between the two main families, as the Chinoike were surprisingly open to sharing their dojutsu…
… but only if their daughter married a son who would be clan head. Breaking Hashirama’s betrothal with Uzumaki Mito, which had been forged before Tobirama’s birth, was out of the question. And while it was common for second and third sons to inherit, the Chinoike had looked at Hashirama and correctly surmised that this was not a clan heir who would die before his time.
There had been a palpable sense of relief in the compound when the Senju stepped away from negotiations for the last time with no new alliance to show for it.
The Ketsuryūgan was not the Sharingan. It had, in fact, already been proven to be inferior in battle. But there were very, very few Senju at ease with those glowing, blood-red eyes.)
Most days, it felt like everything in Tobirama’s life was entangled with the damn Uchiha.
Not today, he silently reminded himself. The Senju had survived the winter in relatively good shape compared to many of their allies, but they had not escaped unscathed. The sizeable payment from this mission was too important to risk.
He checked that the storage scroll was secure, then took off at a chakra-enhanced run. The sooner he finished his mission, the sooner he could return home and alert the clan about Uchiha activity in Lightning.