Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Must you weep for him, anija?” Tobirama snapped. 

His older brother did not even twitch, look up, acknowledge Tobirama in any way. Hashirama turned away, and did not dry his tears. 

Hashirama had returned from the edge of the Uchiha lands an hour ago, and he hadn’t yet stopped crying. He sat at their kitchen table, spine bowed and head almost touching the wood, and all around him planks groaned, flowers bloomed and died. The air thickened and seethed with the scent of perfume and decay. Tobirama hadn’t seen his brother like this at their father’s death, hadn’t seen him like this since the day he’d found Itama—

Anyway, Tobirama was worried. About his softhearted big brother, and said softhearted big brother’s irrational attachment to the head of the Uchiha clan. The Uchiha had long brought the Senju nothing but blood and tears—and now, no matter how much his (foolish, sentimental) brother extended the hand of peace, they always slapped him down. Hashirama had even gone over to the edge of the other clan’s territory to offer a ceasefire–to offer lifesaving aid, no less–and the Sage-damned Uchiha would rather die than accept the aid of any Senju. No, Uchiha Izuna was not worth Hashirama’s tears. 

Far off, in the Uchiha compound itself, Tobirama could feel his rival’s chakra, weakly flickering, sputtering, dying. Madara’s caustic chakra roiled alongside it in the distance like a uncontained wildfire. Izuna would be dead soon, and Tobirama would not mourn. Uchiha Izuna was a deadly opponent, with his loss, the Senju clan would be that much safer. And yet Tobirama’s brother grieved. 

And Tobirama couldn’t see how to fix it. He didn’t regret what he’d done. Couldn’t regret it. But how could he salve his brother’s wounded heart (how could he make Hashirama see, how could he make Hashirama value more greatly the clan before him than a long-estranged childhood friend and a childhood dream of impossible peace?)

Hashirama wept on, seemingly blind to his younger brother standing lost in thought before him. How could this be what broke Hashirama? The clan needed him. Tobirama needed him.

“Hashirama—it is done, and cannot be undone,” Tobirama said. Moving slowly so as not to startle Hashirama (the last time he'd done that he'd almost been skewered by a piece of wood), Tobirama sat beside his brother, placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Why are you wasting your time on them when those bastards don’t want your help? They don’t want anything from you but to kill you—and that is something I won’t allow. You have to get up—Hashirama–say something. Please.”

Hashirama clenched his fist on the table, little cracks forming on its surface like the fissures formed in the ice after one puts a foot down wrong on a frozen river. All around them the house shook, timbers groaning like the very world was coming down around them.

(Would he have grieved like this if Izuna had been the one to cut you down? A small, selfish part of Tobirama’s brain asked. Madara would certainly have celebrated his enemy’s brother’s death, not mourned it. Tobirama told himself Hashirama would have wept for him, and it rang true—yet a little ache remained.)

“Uchiha Izuna killed so many of us. Tokara was cut down by his sword. Chen died of infection after being hit by his Grand Fireball. Azami is growing up without either of her parents because of that Uchiha. And I could name more,” Tobirama spat. “With his death, their deaths are revenged. Our family’s dead can rest in peace, with him gone–”

Hashirama lifted his head. Behind the bedraggled curtain of his hair, his bloodshot, wet eyes bored into Tobirama. 

“And how many of them have you killed,” Hashirama ground out. “How many have died by your sword, or drowned by your jutsu, how many Uchiha children are growing up orphans because of you?”

Tobirama flinched back and released his brother’s shoulder, his hand settling down at his side. This wasn’t the response he had intended, imagined, expected from Hashirama. But it was a response. It was something, more than the terrible blankness of before.

“They know the risks of attempting to attack me,” he attempted, his voice flat. “And what does that matter? They’re not our family—they’re our enemies—it’s war.”

“And it always will be war at this rate!” Hashirama cried. “Madara only wanted peace for his brother's sake, to protect him. If Izuna dies, what am I going to do? I can’t let our dream die, but what else can possibly be the outcome?”

“We will keep fighting, as we always have, and we will survive. Without Izuna, we might even be able to win. This, ultimate victory—and not some impossible peace—is the only true way to keep our children from dying in battle.”

“But I don’t want any children dying in battle. And they will. When we have killed their mothers and fathers, when there is no one else left, do you think the Uchiha will just stop? Give up, move somewhere else? We’d have to wipe them all out, or in a generation this would all start again. But I couldn’t do it. Could you?”

They would never give up, Tobirama realized, Tobirama-who-loves-children, who the orphans come to for snacks and stories. And suddenly he, too, felt like weeping. “For the clan, anija?” he said, and tried to force his voice to ring sure, certain and not desperate, “ Anything. ”

Now it was Hashirama who recoiled from Tobirama. “And these attitudes–how much do you think they’re why Madara has never been willing to trust us to peace in the first place, even before you killed his last brother and snuffed out all my lingering hope? You’re no better than our father—cruel, warmongering, do you even care? I’ve forgiven you a lot, Tobirama, but I can’t—I don’t know if I can ever forgive you this.”

Tobirama’s face crumpled.

“Would you rather I had been the one to die instead?” Tobirama turned away, scrambling up, out in his attempt to get away from his brother.

As Tobirama fled, Hashirama seemed to sense he’d just deeply hurt his brother. “Wait, Tobirama that’s not what I—“

But Tobirama was already gone, jumping through time and space to one of the kunai lying on his workshop table. He was too afraid to hear his brother’s answer, not with the words you’re no better than our father still ringing and ringing in his ears. 

On his lamplit workshop table, a row of kunai gleamed, their newly sharpened edges catching and scattering the light. The repetitive motion—whetstone in one hand, battle-dulled kunai in the other—normally grounded him and soothed him. But it had been a full half-hour since Tobirama began his weapons maintenance (since Tobirama fled from his brother), and though outside the last rays of the sun were fading from the sky he couldn’t seem to settle into the usual calm. 

Maybe it was the tangled, sad-angry knot of Hashirama’s chakra spilling grief over the compound. 

Maybe the constant awareness of Madara in the distance, chakra buzzing like a cloud of furious bees.

Maybe the weakening flutter of Uchiha Izuna’s chakra. There it was, there again—and. Gone.

Madara’s grief blasted out in a shockwave of chakra. Tobirama shuddered in his seat, clutching his chest. A sharp pain caught on his thumb, shocking him back to attention. He extracted his hand and the offending object–he’d accidentally cut himself on a kunai tucked into a fold of his clothes. Stupid! Where was his situational awareness?

On the edge of the blade, Tobirama’s blood stood out bright red against the rust-red of old blood. As he watched, a drop slid down to the wrapped handle, where the carefully drawn lines of his prototypical hiraishin seal barely showed under layers of grime and blood. Uchiha Izuna’s blood.

This was the kunai he’d used to jump to the Uchiha–when he’d picked it up after the battle, his hands and sword had been dripping with his rival’s blood. It hadn’t bothered him then. (He didn’t let it bother him now). He changed tack, changed his attention: he was only looking at the seal, not the bloodstain. The seal which–had a flaw. A line, ever so slightly crooked. An ever so slightly deformed circle. 

And yet it had worked! Tobirama was fortunate that the jutsu had still functioned–his flawed creations had a habit of exploding in his face (not to mention the two months he’d spent tearing his hair out that every time he applied a new version of his experimental space-time seal to a kunai, the blade would promptly vanish, taking a chunk of the surrounding table with it. Neither Hashirama—for the constant table regrowth—nor the clan’s beleaguered armorer who he’d had to beg new kunai off of had been well pleased with him for that). 

Curious now, desperately needing a distraction from the feelings of grief saturating the atmosphere, Tobirama grasped the kunai again, and cautiously poked at it with his own chakra. The lines of the seal writhed, twisting on themselves in a complex loop, reddening as they absorbed the blood from the hilt’s wrapping. At the end, nothing but a flat, perfectly circular reddish-black spot remained on the hilt. What?

No poking or prodding could get the blade to do anything else, however, and it didn’t take long for Tobirama’s thoughts to return to his brother. I can’t ever forgive you this. You’re no better than our father.

This is useless, he thought, disgusted with himself. He stabbed the kunai into the surface of the table. He turned his attention back to Hashirama, and found that Mito had managed to drag his brother to his bed to sleep, where their chakras curled comfortably around each other. Perhaps sleep would make things better. Consciously processing the world today was just—so much.  

Tobirama had long kept a futon sealed in a scroll in his workshop, for late nights and delicate experiments when he couldn't leave his work. He rolled it out now—he couldn’t bear to return to the clan head’s house that he shared with his brother. Going back now—if he woke his brother, if he had to face his sister-in-law or his cousin—would just keep making things worse. He’d sleep here and face his brother in the morning. They’d come through hard times before—they’d get through this. He had to believe that.

Tobirama retreated to the futon. He sat cross-legged in the corner, and wondered for the first time if he’d done the right thing. He didn’t understand his idealistic fool of a brother—loved him, yes, and would follow him anywhere—but peace? With the Uchiha? A village? It could never have worked. Could it? And now Uchiha Izuna had died at his hands, and Tobirama was left wondering. Could there have been a better way?

He sat there for a long time, staring emptily into the dark. Yes, his actions had hurt Hashirama (and presumably Madara, whose chakra burned like a bonfire on the other side of the river). But death is the logical outcome of war, and more than that, his actions were now in the past. And we can’t change the past, only move forward and live with it. Uchiha Izuna’s death had brought the Senju that much closer to safety. Maybe by the morning Hashirama would realize this, and maybe not (definitely not, but Hashirama wouldn’t be Tobirama’s idealistic dreamer of a brother if he did).

But Hashirama would have to keep leading their clan his own way, and Tobirama would just keep protecting them all as much as he could, in the only way he knew. 

I’ll talk to Hashirama again in the morning, thought Tobirama. He laid back and closed his eyes, and sleep was a long time coming, but it enveloped him at last.

Abruptly, he was aware again, aware for an instant—less than an instant, a flash—in the oppressive nothingness of the hiraishin. And then he was out in the light of day, following through on his existing, calculated momentum with his arms already moving in the technique he’d practiced so many times before (the momentum conserved from before the point of activation, a blow that couldn’t be predicted and wouldn’t miss) to slash with his blade at Izuna.

Just like he remembered doing the day before.

The sweep of his blade pushed the other shinobi to the side as it cut through flesh, muscle, bone—knocking aside, easily, Izuna’s pain-weakened attempt to counter sword with sword and wound Tobirama in return—then Tobirama was skidding to a stop behind where Izuna had been standing. Just as he had calculated when he’d thrown the marked kunai, just had he’d remembered it playing out before.

Tobirama fell back as Madara raced across the battlefield to support his injured brother, who’d hunched over at the waist, coughing up blood. He listened, again, as Uchiha Izuna refused to lay down the feud and watched as the Uchiha brothers disappeared from the battlefield. As the smoke faded, Tobirama stood back and stared at his hands. Somehow he knew with certainty that Izuna would not return, and he wondered if he’d gone mad. It took all of his concentration to resist his hands’ urge to shake. He hadn’t felt this unsteady since—since Itama’s death so many years before, like the foundations of his world had shaken and broken down to their core.

The past was past, and it stayed that way. It was supposed to stay that way. And yet—

Every moment felt familiar, he remembered doing all this before. 

They’d won, so why did the victory feel so empty?

Slowly, the Senju returned to their compound. Hashirama left, on his (ill-fated? Why did he know that? ) quest to ask again for a ceasefire so he could deliver medical aid. 

And Tobirama knew his unease was showing.

Tōka had asked him, urgently, “Are you alright, Tobirama? Are you hurt?” and barely been pacified by a promise that he was alright, just needed to think some things through and that he’d talk to her later, I swear. The rest of the clan murmured and parted around him, wary of anything that could spook the famous White Demon of the Senju. He just had to think, and figure out what was happening to him.

Tobirama retreated to his private workshop–sharpening kunai would give him just the right opportunity to regather his mind. He reached for his bag of ninja tools, then remembered that he’d been too shaken on the battlefield to grab more than just the one marked kunai he’d used in the attack. It stared at him from atop the table, seal twisted into that tight circle that he remembered from the last nighttime in his workshop. This was new. This hadn’t happened before. What could it possibly mean? Tobirama felt panic rise in his throat–what was happening to him? Why were some things familiar and some different? Why did it feel like he’d lived this day before, and yet–not? He needed to be calm. He sat down to meditate and put his thoughts in order.

Focusing on just his own chakra, pulsing through his body with every breath, it was still taking Tobirama a very long time to find calm. It didn’t help when Hashirama came crashing back to the compound in a haze of grief, and every fiber in Tobirama’s body cried out that he should go to his brother, comfort him. Not until you figure out what’s happening to you, he told himself. It’s too dangerous otherwise.

It didn’t help that Tobirama’s mind stubbornly refused to stop searching out Uchiha Izuna’s fading chakra signature. When it finally faded, he let Madara’s wave of anguish sweep over him,  and something in him relaxed. Was this what he had been waiting for? He let his mind drift, for just a moment—

—and opened his eyes to the blank nothing of an instant of interdimensional portal.

One mortally wounded Uchiha Izuna off the battlefield and one Senju retreat later, Tobirama sat down at his workshop table to weigh his options, flipping the kunai that still had that strange, circular seal on it over in his hands again and again. 

So the day was repeating—from the point of time where Izuna died and he detached his mind from the world via meditation or sleep to the moment when he used the hiraishin in battle against Izuna. Once could have been coincidence, an overload of chemicals released by his overtired, overstressed brain creating a temporary deja vu effect. Twice, twice was a pattern. Twice was conceivably enemy action. Somehow, this phenomenon, whatever it was, was connected to his moment of hiraishin, connected to that strange, incorrect kunai. Was possibly, almost certainly, connected to Izuna’s death.

Was he in a genjutsu? He checked his chakra system for any incursion of foreign chakra, flared it in the particular way meant to break genjutsu. Nothing. The world stayed the same. And more than that, the world felt real, and he, as a powerful sensor (with the level of detail he could perceive) would be very difficult to fool.

There were two possibilities. Either he was truly in the past somehow (unlikely), or he was trapped in an intricate, as yet undetected genjutsu meant to break his mind (also unlikely, since until now he would have said that he’d be able to detect any illusion he was trapped in, even if he didn’t know how to break it).

But the Sharingan was known for its incredible illusory capacity. Could it be something new? The only possibility left, for something illusory of this duration and detail, was if they’d tricked his mind into filling in every last detail of the world itself. If that was what it was—well, every illusion had its limits. There were things about the world that Tobirama himself did not already know, there he would be able to find a crack. 

No one but a sensor as powerful as Tobirama could study the intricacies of another person’s chakra systems in as fine of detail as he could. He checked his own, he checked Hashirama’s (on his way back from the Uchiha compound)—they were as he remembered them. But he knew his brother’s signature like the back of his own hand, and after living with them his whole life, he’s closely inspected the rest of his clan’s signatures at one point or another—they were familiar as well. His mind could have made this all up. He checked the strange kunai again—still nothing out of the ordinary.

(It was unlikely, and getting unlikelier with each new detail that he wasn’t sure he had originally remembered—but the alternative was that he was really in the past. Which was close to inconceivable as well. Even as each new test and his own senses only confirmed the reality of the world around him the most plausible option was still a new, more powerful Sharingan illusion. Could Izuna have—)

He needed something where he was going in without any preconceived notions. He needed something where any discrepancy in the fine detail that would be fed to him could give an attacker away. He needed—Uchiha Izuna. And if the pattern continued, Tobirama would have him. 

He’d made many notes, proposed many theories on how exactly the Sharingan worked and yet none of them fully explained all his observations of the dōjutsu. He was missing so many key pieces, sure that there were many things about them he currently did not know or understand. Observing Izuna’s eyes, seeing whether their structure there exactly matched what he’d theorized, with all that missing information, could put the truth or the lie to the idea that Tobirama was trapped in an illusion of his mind’s own making. 

He had the instant during and after teleportation to make changes to his approach to Izuna—not a lot of time, but perhaps, just enough to alter the path he’d engineered his momentum to take him on, to slightly change the trajectory of his blade, if he focused. And knew exactly where Izuna would be. He knew exactly where he would land. He knew where the unaltered path of his blade would. He just needed to get in close, and then the Uchiha bastard would pay.

That night, when Tobirama lay down to sleep—Hashirama’s words of censure after another failed attempt to comfort his brother still ringing in his ears, the mirror to his words on the first night of this awful loop (why couldn't he make Hasirama understand that this was the only possible outcome)—he did so on the assumption that the day might repeat as it had before. And he concentrated; he centered his plans in the forefront of his mind as the world slipped away...

White. A moment of nothingness, and then the sensations of the battlefield once again assailed Tobirama. Directly in front of him was Izuna—Tobirama followed his new plan, re-angled his sword’s blade just a little, and in a split second of motion had impaled Izuna through the chest. His forward momentum brought their bodies together, and Tobirama let it, never mind Izuna’s death-weakened blow slicing through his side. This close together, Tobirama could touch his opponent, could reach out and—there. Before his fingertips, the chakra pathways of the Sharingan glowed, dissipating in the characteristic flare-flare-flare-down pattern of death. And it was unexpected. Beautiful, complex, built of spiraling fractals and pinwheels–so, so different from what he’d predicted. Something of this complexity, which he’d never encountered before, coupled with the minute details of death read through a chakra signature—it was impossible to fake. Impossible to fake for a sensor of Tobirama’s skill, paying the closest attention he’d paid to anything before in his life. That was Uchiha Izuna, and Izuna was really dead. So this was real. And not a Sharingan illusion. Real. Tobirama could have wept with relief, just to know what was actually happening to him.

A roar of rage and pain sounded from across the battlefield, and Tobirama wrenched himself out of Izuna’s faded chakra pathways. Too late, too late to do anything but catch a glimpse of Madara coming for him like a human comet of fury.

—a flash of a blade, pain ripping through his senses, and then—nothing. White.

Distracted by the pain of death, Tobirama let his momentum carry him forward unaltered, and by the time he’d fully gathered his wits back together, Izuna was already collapsing from his sword-wound.

He let the end of the battle play out as before, caught up in his own thoughts and speculations. If he wasn’t trapped in a genjutsu—and he’d checked (he winced at the memory of death by Madara’s hands), then there must have been some other deciding factor.

What was causing the loop? It had reset on his death—death was important, was a trigger. His death. Uchiha Izuna’s death as well? The evidence wasn’t yet decisive, but something deep in his gut told him it was Izuna’s death which had triggered the loop, on the days when it was sleep that brought him back to the hiraishin. His first detachment from the conscious world after Izuna’s death. But why?

Some higher power that had decided to tie their fates together? Some fluke or accident of nature? A strange set of coincidences involving a faulty seal on a kunai? (This seemed the most likely, and Tobirama's analytical mind itched to experiment more. The hiraishin was a space-time jutsu after all. But whatever had happenedd to the kunai, it had been completely inert to every investigation Tobirama had made thus far). Whatever it was, it seemed likely there was something that wanted Izuna alive, and Tobirama alive with him. Or wanted Izuna to not have been killed by Tobirama—killed by Tobirama at that exact moment?—killed by Tobirama at all?) There were just too many variables—but it seemed to be Izuna or Tobirama’s deaths resetting the loop, which. Suggested a plan of action with which to (try to) stop the loop. Not a great plan, by no means a plan that Tobirama liked, but. A plan. 

If it would end this blasted loop (and it might! It very well might!), he’d happily heal Izuna with his own hands. So he would.

His brother was an excellent healer—he’d pioneered many new medical techniques, and because of his outrageous chakra stores, he could even just—shove chakra at a wound until the body was able to heal itself (if the body was able to heal itself). Tobirama was decent, for a Senju—which was, if their spies were correct—leagues ahead of almost every other clan. 

And Hashirama’d never learned stealth the way Tobirama had (he was too powerful to need it, the outrageous chakra monster), so Hashirama stood no chance of reaching Izuna without the permission of the Uchiha—which they would never give. Tobirama might. Tobirama wasn’t as powerful, but he was more precise. And if he could get in and out of their (doubtlessly well guarded, highly trapped compound) unnoticed—it might be just what Izuna needed. It might end the loops. It was worth a shot, at least.

And he didn’t have to wholly heal Izuna—with an abdominal wound of the type he’d inflicted, healing Izuna wholly might not be possible at all (infection and sepsis were fickle beasts). (saving Izuna from a wound this severe might not be possible at all, even for a healer of his brother’s caliber, but that was future-loop Tobirama’s problem, if it came to that—if infection had already set in, all that even the best healers could do was support the body’s existing response and resilience, and hope for the best—or, in small enough sections, excise and repair any infected tissues).

But chances were high he could stop Izuna from dying—or dying immediately—while leaving him incapacitated enough to stay off the battlefield—he could break the loop, and keep his clanspeople safe from the deadly Uchiha brother. And, at least for today, he could stop hurting his elder brother and his brother’s impossible dreams of peace. Hashirama would no longer look at him like a monster—like the echo of their father...

It had to work. It had to. If this loop went on much longer—well, even the thickest ice will crack under enough pressure. Tobirama was a rational person, and he knew his own mind. He wasn’t sure he could bear it.

On the battlefield, Izuna died, and died, and died, and died again. Going from mortal wounds to mortal wounds, only ever losing the weight of crippling pain for a split second before he was stabbed through again. By that demon, Senju Tobirama. It was worse, almost, to have that moment free from pain before he was forced to remember. To die—to fade into the black and do it all over again. Once he had died near instantaneously with a sword through his chest, only to wake up to a new sword, ripping through his side. Three times now, he’d breathed his last with his brother’s hands clasped desperate in his, a vow of vengeance ringing in his ears.

And here he was dying for a fifth time, in the same bed in the Uchiha compound. 

How he hated this futon. Every breath hurt like jagged glass in his chest, and he’d spent so long now looking at the same ceiling that he saw it even when he closed his eyes. 

Soon, Madara would come again, and he would give his brother his eyes, and say goodbye, and find out if this infernal loop would continue to reset.

From beyond the door a commotion sounded—shouting, crashing, the sound of metal on metal, the wet, slick sound of the start of a plea cut off in a spray of arterial blood. This was new.

And then Madara walked in, covered in blood, a viciously satisfied look on his face. In his blood-coated right hand hung the distinctive face-guard of the Senju’s White Demon. This was new.

Caught this one coming to finish the job, snarled Madara, and threw the piece of metal to the ground by Izuna's feet.

Coming to finish the job— Madara’s words looped in his head. This had never happened before, and Izuna certainly hadn’t done anything differently this loop. So. Someone else had.

Which meant he wasn’t the only one in the loop.

And Senju Tobirama’s actions have been different once already. His mind whispered through the haze of pain. —Yes, but that was the barest difference in the angle of his sword—it could have been a fluke, could have been me moving just a little slower or differently than on previous loops. That could have been a fluke. This, this I could have done nothing to affect.

Coming to finish the job, his mind snarled. Coming to look at his own handiwork. To gloat over a fallen enemy. Fresh hatred, thicker and more potent than ever before, bloomed in Izuna's chest. 

The Senju had already proven himself capable of creating one incomprehensible, unstoppable technique. Why not two. One to kill Izuna, and one to watch him die over and over and over again.

But he was not going to let that bastard win. 

Tobirama thought he could keep reliving his moment of glory? Well, did Izuna have news for him. 

It was impossible. Either he wounded Izuna grievously, and Izuna died—and if Izuna died on the battlefield, Tobirama was immediately obliterated by Madara—or he tried to avoid hitting Izuna, and the Uchiha landed a killing blow.

He knew where Izuna’s blade was at the instant of his exit from hiraishin—but after that, it seemed like any infinitesimal, even unintentional variation in Tobirama’s approach caused Izuna to do something different.

And Izuna was so fast—so even with only a fraction of a second to move, practically all of Tobirama’s vital organs were in easy-stabbing range.

As he had found out, painfully, over the last several loops.

With the amount of forward momentum Tobirama had, he couldn’t change course and retreat before Izuna stabbed him.

With the amount of time he had, he wouldn’t be able to mold his unprepared chakra into the complex form required for a hiraishin to get himself away fast enough—while also concentrating enough to shift his blade from its fatal course—and also avoiding getting stabbed fatally himself. And he no longer had the time or focus to refine his technique to initiate faster.

He just couldn’t see any way for both of them to survive. And yet that seemed to be just what the loop demanded.

It was unsustainable. There were the days Izuna died slowly. Tobirama's original blow had been perfectly calculated to both injure Izuna and block a potential blow from his sword, and sometimes Tobirama needed a break from dying, or he wasn’t concentrating enough to redirect his momentum, or he miscalculated, miscalculated, miscalculated–it was all he seemed to do these days. But then Madara would rush his wounded brother from the battlefield and Tobirama would have a few hours to to try to break into the Uchiha compound, or fruitlessly poke at the kunai with the circular seal, or test out new reasoned arguments and attempts to comfort Hashirama (these inevitably ended badly, and he'd been called cold and uncaring more times than he cared to remember), or sometimes, just to breathe before doing it all again—and it wasn’t like Izuna would remember a couple extra deaths, anyway. When he had the time he tried to gather his frazzled nerves to research, but he hit dead end after dead end. There was no literature on time loops in the Senju library. Attempts to recreate the suspicious kunai that Tobirama suspected played a role either did nothing or led to kunai that just disappeared on him without explanation. Attempts to destroy the kunai had no effect.  And inevitably he would run into Hashirama—his brother, in every iteration now, seemed to have noticed something was wrong with Tobirama as well, but they never ended the conversation without a fight, these days. He had all the variations of his brother’s “you killed our hope of peace/you’re just like our father” speech practically memorized by this point. And somehow it still stung every time. 

Was he just like his father? Butsuma had been a cold, cruel man, who abhorred any sign of weakness and lived only for war. Tobirama didn’t regret killing Izuna, that much was true—but he hadn’t relished it. It had just been his duty. (Was it bad that it rarely bothered him to kill, anymore? He was a shinobi, that’s what they did). Still, the thought of all that hard work wasted and his clanspeople back in danger from Tobirama’s own quest to now save Izuna stuck in his throat. But that was his only option. He needed to get free of the loop, and he’d deal with what happened after when it happened. He missed making new memories with his brother, missed his cousin Tōka’s bright smile when she saw him (they were all so worried about him, these days. This day that nobody else ever remembered). He was so tired of fighting, of dying, of war. 

He just, he just needed a way to disable Uchiha Izuna, preferably permanently, WITHOUT killing him or getting himself killed. But nothing short of a mortal wound incapacitated Izuna immediately on the battlefield—and if Izuna wasn’t incapacitated, Tobirama died. The hiraishin had just brought them too close together, too far into each other’s range, to get out without one killing the other. If he tried to secretly heal Izuna afterwards, the Uchiha caught him and killed him. And this many days in, stimulants had stopped working, so he couldn’t even keep himself awake and away from the battlefield. What he wouldn’t give for some real, uninterrupted sleep….

Now if only he was able to research— or focus, or—

 Izuna was getting pretty damn tired of dying. The Senju demon had been toying with him for weeks now, and he was done. Oh, he tried to give as good as he got, and had taken the bastard down a fair few number of times. But he was tired of this. He was tired of his brother watching him die. Even so many repetitions later it hurt so much to see Madara cry. What was it even for? Some new kind of torture? No one had asked him anything. Revenge?

What the bastard did have was an obsession with coming to see him die. Izuna could take some petty pleasure, at least, in just how Senju-proof the Uchiha compound was turning out to be. The place was booby trapped to the gills, as Tobirama had learned several times. Then there was grief-crazed Madara, alert to any threat within the compound walls—another seven deaths, each Izuna had found more satisfying than the last. If Tobirama was so desperate to gloat over his own handiwork, Izuna’s opinion was that he deserved everything he got. Especially if what he got was decapitated by Madara’s war fan. 

And this last round, Izuna had found a kunai in his clothes, seen the shadows shift, and fried a suddenly-appearing Tobirama to kingdom come with the very last of his chakra. Why was Tobirama doing this? What did he have to gain?

Hadn’t the White Demon had brothers who were killed by the Uchiha—what were their names again? Izuna still remembered the celebration that raged in Uchiha compound when their hunters had gotten Senju Butsuma’s third son. There had been music and dancing all night long. Madara had stolen a whole pan of sweet buns, and they had sat together on a roof gorging themselves on the sweet bread filled with red bean paste and watching the revelry below. Tajima had been in a good mood that day, and just laughed when he found out where all the sweets were going instead of delivering the reprimand his sons had feared. And now the taste of red bean paste always brought him back to that moment—laughter, sweetness, and love, and the warmth of his brother’s arm draped over his shoulders, his clan safe and celebrating in the streets below. It was strange to remember that that day would have been one of great sorrow and fear for the Senju. Strange to conceive putting himself into Tobirama’s shoes. Though he knew intellectually the other had lost both his younger brothers to the Uchiha, any sympathy Izuna might have had had long since been burned out by an endless tide of hate. Hatred he was sure that Tobirama felt towards him as well. And hatred could motivate great atrocities. What better way to get revenge than to kill the Uchiha clan head’s brother, once he’d figured out how. Over and over and over again. 

Yes, It was probably revenge. And he could see no way, no way to escape. Izuna’s mouth had only tasted more strongly like blood and death with every loop, and even the memory of sweetness, of buns-with-red-bean-paste felt faded and further from him than ever. And if he clung particularly hard to his weeping brother—if his vows of bloody vengeance were hopeless and exhausted—what did it matter. By the next reset they’d be wiped from existence, every fragment of those moments ground to dust beneath the broken wheel of time. 

Chapter Text

He’d done it because this stupid time loop had started at the hiraishin, with his leap to the faulty kunai, so maybe that would end the loop. It was a long shot, and a stupid idea—he'd done the analysis, run the calculus and the reason he hadn't tried this yet was because there was almost zero chance it would do anything useful. The faulty kunai couldn’t possibly be more than 50 meters away from Izuna by the time Tobirama would be able to mold his chakra and jump to it, so it was a useless getaway plan which would at best probably not do anything and at worst distract him enough for Izuna to stab him. Or the faulty seal would shred him from the inside out or leave him stranded in the void or something equally unpleasant. But he was out of plans, and there was a tiny chance that it would work. And not more than a minuscule chance it would hurt him in any permanent way, what with the way time was circling on itself like a snake that has swallowed its own tail. And he hadn’t tried it yet (curiosity about what would happen would always be a weak spot of his). And he wanted to get back to his life. He wanted to lie in the sun with Hashirama, catching fish from the river and cleaning, cooking, and eating them right there on the bank. He wanted to train with his cousin Tōka again (often taijutsu only, which was the sole field in which they were equals by skill and thus more fun, but sometimes with everything they had) and laugh with her about Hashirama’s latest stupid idea. He wanted to truly live, not just grind through loop after loop after loop with his mind flagging even if his body never grew more exhausted. 

He was just so tired, tired of death, and battle, and war.

And after this loop, if it worked, he …wouldn’t argue with his brother on the topic of peace. (Even before, he would have followed his brother anywhere. But he would have argued, and tried every rhetorical method in his arsenal to convince his brother otherwise).

Even if it was (as it probably would be), a hotbed for inevitable betrayal, a ploy on any other party’s front to get them to let their guard down before striking. In all  the loops, his every attempt to convince his brother of the inevitability of war had been met with stubborn refusal. Hashirama was not a creature of reason, but after so many deaths, maybe Tobirama wished he himself could believe in something that wasn't death. And despite the idea's obvious idiocy, maybe his brother would think well of him for once, would stop looking at Tobirama with those broken and wounded eyes. There was no rational reason to support this—Tobirama had told himself this many times before. But it almost felt like all Tobirama's reason had been bleached out of him, death by death.

Well. He’d be on alert. And even a false peace would be better than this endless battlefield.

He’d opened his eyes, to the same scene he’d seen in every loop.

His sword came down in the same place it had many times before.

His arm touched Izuna, he tried to wrap their chakra together, and he activated the hiraishin, targeted for that little kunai with the collapsed seal, the indestructible marker of the nightmare he was living in, and gave it everything his body had. Just him, holding Izuna with a sword through his body, and an overpowered hiraishin screaming bloody vengeance at the universe.

And then the world went blank, and everything disappeared once again.

The world coalesced slowly around Tobirama. Birdsong, running water, the feeling of something hard and sharp-edged poking into his left shoulder and arm made themselves apparent first. He was lying on the ground, tremors of exhaustion chasing each other through his body and his chakra stores running nearly empty. But through his closed eyelids he could see that the world was bright around him. He was alive! And not back on the battlefield!

Something had happened. Something new. Was the loop broken?

He opened his eyes, blinking hard to clear away the fuzziness from his vision. He was lying half-on a pile of rusted kunai and wooden rubble, the kunai with the mysterious seal perched almost smugly on top of the pile, right below his left hand. (It still had its seal, did that mean the loop hadn’t been broken after all?). With a start, Tobirama realized he recognized these kunai–they were his own test kunai, the ones that had disappeared and taken pieces of the worktable with them. They were the other ones with faulty seals; he filed that knowledge away to continue surveying the landscape for other risks. It was nothing but a open mountaintop clearing, far enough away from everything he knew that Tobirama couldn't even feel the way home. Deserted but for a few birds, trees, a stream. And beautiful.

On his other side, Uchiha Izuna lay dead—his chakra systems drained, Tobirama’s sword still stuck through his body. Finally seeing his rival’s corpse, Tobirama felt a strange pang of loss. After resigning himself to saving his rival’s life, it felt strange to see him dead and realize this might be the way it ended. But your clan will be safe, Tobirama reminded himself. That was always the final goal.

And if Izuna’s death did still reset the loop. Tobirama now had–sort-of–a plan. He hadn’t yet designed the hiraishin to carry people other than its activator, but if he could get Izuna here alive, somehow, and not lose almost all of his own chakra stores, there would be no Uchiha to stop him from healing his rival here, atop this mountain, and then stranding him here with no way back. Izuna would live, but would no longer be a threat to Tobirama’s clan. Perfect. Except he had no idea how or why the seal had brought himself and Izuna here.

Speaking of Izuna, Tobirama thought he ought to do something with the body. He examined the damage to his rival’s chakra systems carefully—marveled, once again, at the wonder of the Sharingan (even gone dark in death). And then—What did Uchiha do with their bodies? Tobirama didn't know, but still. It felt wrong somehow to do nothing.

An earth-moving jutsu lifted a section of dirt, and Tobirama buried Izuna in the Senju fashion, as one would do for a distant relative who had passed away. 

Now, for research.

He tested jumping to the kunai with the broken seal twice with the dregs of his chakra—it always returned him to the top of the kunai pile. This was good that it was consistent, he would be able to factor it into his calculations. 

He missed his wooden workshop desk, with its endless rolls of paper that he could write calculations on.

The ground was hard, but he had a kunai, and hope for the first time in loop after loop.

He set the point to the ground—uncaring that he’d dull the edge—and drew every diagram and equation he could remember from his hiraishin research. He’d figure this out if it killed him—which it wouldn’t, seeing as the time stream seemed vehemently opposed to his death.

He threw himself into the work like never before, and when he passed out from exhaustion it was to the satisfied feeling of solving an incredibly hard problem. 

 Izuna-live-transport problem? Solved. He was totally doing this again.

The second time, Tobirama landed atop the kunai pile even more exhausted than the first. Holding together all of Izuna’s chakra system in the void was hard work. But they’d both landed alive, if what Tobirama could sense of his rival’s weakly stirring chakra beside him was correct. Through the tiredness, he let himself feel that sharp glow of satisfaction of a job well done.

He turned over, reached out a green-glowing hand to try, finally, his healing against Izuna’s wound, and could only freeze as Izuna ran him through with his own sword. 

The Uchiha stood up on wobbling legs, attempted another pass with a water-rusted kunai he’d grabbed from the ground, and collapsed atop Tobirama’s body.

“Why are you doing this to me?” The Uchiha cried, and behind the expected veneer of rage, Tobirama heard true pain in his rival’s voice for the first time. The trees and sky swam above him as his body shuddered around the sword.

“Are you satisfied yet, you bastard,” said Izuna, “Have you killed me enough?” 

To Tobirama, what Izuna said felt wrong.

“—I wasn’t,” Tobirama tried to say. It came out a pained groan. This hadn't factored into Tobirama's calculations, and he could feel his mind racing a-mile-a-minute trying to catch up. What had gone wrong?

And then the realization came, sharp as the sword embedded through his body. Izuna thinks I did this to him. Izuna’s also in the loop. He’s been here all along.

Suddenly the snarled—”you’ll NEVER wins” from before became clear in a different light. The way Izuna seemed to sometimes anticipate his landing. He’d always thought all the little variations were due to his own different actions. A butterfly effect, if you will. But looking back he could see the threads of Izuna’s foreknowledge in their many brief battles. How could ha have been so arrogant, so certain in his own knowledge, to have missed this?

He shuddered in horror, distracted from the (fading, receding) pain in his own body by the concept of having each of their many loops burned indelibly into his brain. He was already fraying at the seams. How did Izuna stand it?

 As the world went white, Tobirama could only ask himself one question. If he’d ever looked into the Uchiha’s deadly eyes, would he have seen the same sense of defeat, inevitability, that he’d been plagued by all this time?

Lying half atop his rival’s body, Izuna knew he himself did not have much time to spare. He stripped his wound of clothes, and carefully cauterized it with a hot palm, so he could move, roll off Tobirama’s body and use the last of his waning strength to crawl to a rock on the edge of their mountaintop clearing. 

It was peaceful. The cold numbed him, and the little stream babbling away, the birds finishing their evening song in the trees soothed something of the ache of hatred-exhaustion-despair in his soul. 

He tried to keep himself alert and awake for as long as possible, and as he finally slipped away, the colors of the sunset sky above were so beautiful, as if painted by a brush of the gods. As much as he had wanted his enemy to suffer and die, as much as he feared and despised the Senju, the world here on this peaceful mountaintop felt so much more beautiful. Where was the meaning in a life spent fighting and dying (over and over and over again)? But what else could he do, against such powerful and deadly enemies as the hated Senju?

I wish, Izuna thought, I wish I could just be done fighting, done dying I–

And he lost to the darkness.

Tobirama woke up, and aimed for the shoulder. This time we’ll both get there alive, I swear.

He had just a moment to think —this was a bad idea—as he felt the sharp stab of Izuna’s sword ripping through his side, and then the world was dissolving around them.

If there was a little bit of him that had wanted to spare Izuna suffering—the whole loop, captured in Sharingan, imagine—it didn’t bear thinking about. Perhaps he didn’t wish Izuna any unnecessary harm anymore, but if this jump worked and he could get them there alive, he’d next need to figure out a way to strand Izuna there on that mountaintop. It wouldn’t do to start sympathizing with someone who’d been—who hated Tobirama as much as Izuna did. (Even if he’d been unintentionally tormenting him for well over fifty loops, now).

Think about this logically, he told himself, as the mountain rematerialized around them. Think logically. Think.

This time when Senju Tobirama pulled his bullshit, Izuna was in the process of bisecting him through the gut as they went. They wound up on the same beautiful mountain as last time, Izuna could tell that much, even if he could feel the life running out of him, the trees darkening as Tobirama’s sword shifted more firmly onto the meat of his neck and he lost precious blood to the ground. 

At least his enemy seemed to be running on empty as well, Tobirama’d staggered twice and nearly fallen—left hand clutching the hole in his abdomen—in walking the two steps to crouch by Izuna’s head. 

As his mouth filled with blood, Izuna spat at Tobirama. “Do your worst. I don’t care.”

Tobirama’s expression twisted indecipherably. “Don’t even think about stabbing me this time,” he said, and oh, if Izuna could, you bet Tobirama would be due a sword to the face right about now. Especially since he was reaching out a hand, which glowed green with some doubtless fearsome new jutsu, to lay on Izuna’s wounded neck. 

Inexplicably, Izuna began to feel strength coming back to his body. He struggled under the Senju’s grip, trying desperately to get to his sword. 

Tobirama simply tightened his hands. “Stop struggling, you idiot, and let me help you.”

Help him? Ha. “You have killed me fifty-nine times, and I can remember every last one of them. Why should I trust you?” Izuna said, still struggling.

“And you’ve killed me every chance you got. I’ve got just as much interest in being back on the battlefield as you, so lay still.” Tobirama grunted. “I’m healing you, not killing you.”

That was a shock. No, that was impossible. Izuna’s limbs stilled, his mind unable to accept this ridiculous pronouncement. But he still felt better yet, and the darkness had receded from his vision. Tobirama was healing him. But Tobirama hated Izuna, just as Izuna hated him.

“Why are you helping me? Isn’t this your jutsu you’ve trapped me in? What do you have to gain from helping me?” The words poured from Izuna's mouth, as he felt something shatter and fracture in the way he viewed the world.

“I thought it was yours, at first—and I’m still not ruling out that you had something to do with it, but I’m just as trapped here as you are” Tobirama said, and leaned back from Izuna. “There.”

And Izuna’s rival now held that green-glowing hand to his own abdominal wound, and Izuna watched as that green flickered once, twice, and went out. Tobirama collapsed to the ground, eyes closed. Vulnerable. Clearly utterly spent. 

“I’m tired of my brother looking at me like a monster,” Tobirama said, so quietly Izuna had to strain to hear. “Tired of this stupid endless cycle of death. I meant to leave you here—wherever here is—to keep me from killing you, or you from me. And now I don’t have enough chakra to stick a leaf to my forehead. This gut wound will kill me within the day, even if the impossible should happen and you don’t do the job yourself. And you’re not much better, Uchiha "all-of-my-blood-belongs-outside-of-my-body" Izuna. Don’t try to hide it—I’m a better sensor than you.”

Seeming to come to some sort of resolution, Izuna’s rival opened  his eyes, looking vaugely in Izuna’s direction. Izuna was too shocked even to twitch. Tobirama was tired of the war? He would have thought that Tobirama lived for the battle. And Tobirama said, “Well, either you’re gonna kill me first or this gut wound will—just please, wait until I wake up? I haven’t gotten a real sleep in—well, since this madness started. I’m so tired I could eat a—” and his eyes rolled back in his head. 

What had he just heard? 

“What just happened.” Izuna asked Tobirama’s unconscious body. “Just–what?” 

He wasn’t just testing out new and deadlier strikes? But trying to find the perfect spot to not get stabbed and stab as little as possible. While somehow moving faster than the Sharingan could see. Right after dying, often at my own hands,  Izuna thought, and tried that thought on for size. It almost fit, except it was Senju Tobirama, the scourge of the Uchiha Clan, that Izuna was thinking about. And yet what else could it be? His thoughts spun. Is this the right interpretation? Is this another trick?

Looking at Tobirama’s immobile body, sprawled on the ground after he’d chosen to heal Izuna over healing himself, it didn’t feel like a trick. But Tobirama hated Izuna. But he'd healed him. Izuna crouched down to Tobirama’s head. He was still breathing, but barely. With trepidation, he checked the gut wound that he’d dealt the other shinobi. Still there, but after the few seconds of healing it had closed over on the surface and was no longer obviously bleeding. Tobirama wasn’t about to die immediately. That gut wound would kill him, but it would take a while. And Izuna wanted some answers. 

Tobirama woke up to the smell of fish. The first thing that hit him was that he’d woken up at all, and not simply regained consciousness in the middle of another battle. The second thing that hit him was that he was tied to a tree. With nothing but ninja wire. If he had any chakra stores to speak of this would be child’s play to get out of. As it was, he hadn’t got enough energy to do more than surreptitiously test his bonds. His head hurt, and he felt himself burning up with fever. Infection. It wouldn’t be too long now. 

“You’re awake,” said a voice. Izuna’s voice.

 Tobirama looked up through his eyelashes, studiously avoiding eye contact. Before him in the clearing, a fire burned merrily next to a pile of sticks. Izuna crouched beside the fire, and above the flames, on a stick, was a fish. 

“You’re? Cooking?” said Tobirama, slightly confused at being in the middle of his enemy’s camp.

“Hn.” Izuna grunted, and said nothing for a few long moments. When he spoke again, he changed the topic. “Why did you really heal me? I’m your enemy.”

“Why am I still alive?” Tobirama asked, then cursed himself for so obviously showing weakness to his enemy. “I’m surprised you’re still here, and not halfway down the mountain already,” he deflected.

“I don’t know where your ridiculous  technique brought us,” said Izuna.

Tobirama muttered: “Never mind you could be back quicker by killing me?”  

“I’m not that eager to die again, thanks,” Izuna responded sharply, and turned back to the topic at hand. “And you haven’t answered the question. Why did you heal me? And leave yourself helpless at my mercy?”

Why DID I do that? Tobirama asked himself. He could have just as easily left Izuna to die, and just re-adjusted for the next loop. But he'd seen his rival dying in front of him, and somehow he just—couldn't. “I’m tired. Has it occurred to you that I don’t want to go back to that moment either? That I also don’t want to die?”

“You don’t always die,” said Izuna, voice intense. “And is it not the moment of your greatest victory?” 

“My greatest victory,” said Tobirama, bitterness coating his tongue. “Ha.” And he said no more, only leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes again. He thought of his brother's accusation that Tobirama was just like their father. He wouldn't have said so—he saw himself as careful, caring but rational. And yet he would not have imagined that Uchiha Izuna would ever leave him alive, if he had Tobirama in his grasp. (And even in this case, who knew what the Uchiha was planning, even if all he'd done so far was ask questions.)

Izuna ate the fish off the fire. He didn’t offer any to Tobirama, and Tobirama didn’t ask for any, even as the fire in his limbs raged and raged.

Tobirama slipped into a haze, and time twisted and stretched in his head. Dancing colors filled his vision–orange, blue, white. All around him he smelt something green, like tree sap or plants growing. With the dregs of his sensory skill, he felt a powerful presence near. It must be Hashirama, whispered the corners of his mind. Hashirama was here.

“Anija,” he croaked. Cool hands brushed his neck, a familiar chakra signature burning at the edges with leashed anger. 

“Anija, I’m sorry for killing your dream.” The hands withdrew, and Tobirama knew he was babbling, but he went on. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, by killing Izuna. I’m trying to fix that, Hashirama, but I don’t know how I can protect the clan from him and I’m just so tired…”

“I can’t protect anyone properly–not Itama, not Kawarama–how can I protect everyone? How can I ever hope to keep our clan safe if I just keep failing?”

The world fell back into darkness, and if Tobirama continued speaking, he didn’t know it.

When Tobirama woke, there was something soft behind his head. He was horizontal somehow, and warm, and he could think again. He could almost ignore the pain in his gut, and his fever seemed to have gone down. 

“I’ve poisoned you,” said Izuna’s voice, floating somewhere above his head. Dumbly, he blinked his eyes open and looked up into Izuna’s red, red eyes. Shit.

Those eyes screamed pain, danger danger danger. He tried to get away, to move, do anything. And only succeeded in flailing off the soft ...leg? And banging his head on a rock.

Tobirama felt himself give out a pained whimper. This was it. He was toast, and he was so weak he couldn’t do anything but curl up and wait for death, or whatever worse thing the Uchiha had managed to come up with. (some said their eyes contained tortures that could make seconds last for days...)

“Oh shit,” muttered Izuna. Tobirama flinched. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. Well, I did, but… Was it the eyes? That was just a precaution; I thought you might attack me, not react ...like that.”

Gentle hands were propping his fur ruff under his head. Izuna’s hands. 

He wasn’t dead. 

“Explain.” Tobirama demanded, his voice a rasp in his throat.

“Well…” Izuna sounded unsure. “You were dying.”

Yes...?? Obviously? Tobirama thought. Sepsis had him, and he was dying. Sure. 

“...And clearly in pain,” Izuna continued, reluctantly.

That didn’t explain anything. “This led you to poison me because?” 

“I went through my bag and found this,” Izuna thrust a little bottle into Tobirama’s face, “it’s a slow action, very sneaky poison that dulls the nerves and sensation and lowers the body temperature until, well, you die. Deadly if not caught soon. I tried using it on you once a couple battles ago. Didn’t work—obviously,”—this last was a little sour—“But you were dying anyways, I thought this might at least help with the pain…” Izuna trailed off,

“...it has. And I can think again,” Tobirama said. And there was something else he had to say, even if it was hard to grind out from between his teeth. “.... thank you.”

Izuna burst out in hysterical laughter. 

“What’s so funny?” Tobirama demanded. 

“Just—a Senju thanking an Uchiha–” Izuna had to pause for a moment to wheeze—“For poison!”

“Shut up,” said Tobirama, and then he felt something of the tension of the scene break and he was laughing too, never mind that it brought his gut wound back up to a sharp throb from a fading dull pain.

They laughed themselves out, and let silence fall easily.

“Did you know, when I was a little kid, I always thought the adults should just sit down and work out a truce? I thought”—here Izuna saw how Tobirama had to pause to take a laboured breath— ”how hard could it possibly be?”

What could Izuna say to that? Tobirama dreamed of peace, once? Not just the same war-weariness that they all carried, but true peace? It seemed impossible, yet when he looked down there were tears on his rival’s face.

“And then Itama and Kawarama died, and I went out to fight, and I kept fighting, and I broke—a little,  I think. Not in the same way as Hashirama has, with his fools hopes and big dreams. But—it was just so unfair. They were so young—and after that peace just ... never seemed like something that was possible to want, let alone achieve.”

“Itama and Kawarama?” Izuna asked. Tobirama’d mentioned them earlier, in his feverish haze—were they his brothers?

“My brothers,” said Tobirama, confirming Izuna’s suspicions. “Itama wanted to be a medic nin. Kawarama was seven. Hashirama used to grow silly-shaped flowers to hide around the house for them. They’d beg. It was so embarrassing, especially since our father would get mad…” 

“You miss them.” asked Izuna. There was an ache in his chest where it felt like something had cracked. He couldn’t tell himself that this was only about intel gathering, not anymore. Not when he looked at Tobirama and could only see himself.

“Every day.” Tears slid down Tobirama’s face, vanishing into his filth-coated hair, and Izuna turned his face away. 

A long silence fell—Izuna trying to ignore Tobirama’s tears, Tobirama clearly trying to pretend he hadn’t been crying in front of an enemy.

But what could Izuna say to that? Could he make himself vulnerable in turn? Should he?

He cleared his throat. “I only have one clear memory of my older brother, the one who the Senju killed last. I’m sitting on his shoulders, my little hands all tangled in his hair, urging him “faster! Faster!” Madara was chasing us—I think I’d stolen his favorite wooden falcon toy.”

Rustling sounds told Izuna that Tobirama had turned to face him on the ground, but Izuna kept his eyes stubbornly on the horizon.

“Madara says that I used to whine until my brother would give me a ride. That he loved tossing me up into the air and catching me—apparently we’d pretend I was flying. I wish I could remember that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tobirama. The words came out slowly, as if it took too much energy for the other shinobi to say each one.”So much lost to this — pointless war. I can feel myself slipping. You’re right, the poison is painless. Talk to me while I go? Please?”

It was like a dam had broken. Izuna told stories of Madara and rambled on about the stupid (harmless, said the only part of his brain left that still cared about information security) things his brother loved to do.

He finally got a tiny laugh out of the story of the time Madara went 2 months without brushing his hair, only starting again when one of his favorite falcons had gotten stuck in it —“ she had to be hacked out of that birds nest he calls hair, Madara did it, with kunai. Not that you could really really tell since his hair is always in such a state…”

“Your hair ...it’s nice,”  came the weak murmur.

What am I doing? Izuna thought to himself, but he kept talking. “You bet! I’ve tried to introduce Madara to the wonders of hair care before, but does he listen? No he does not.”

Tobirama’s eyes closed, and Izuna could see he was barely breathing. He stopped talking.

“Tobirama?” Izuna asked.

“Hm?”

“Stab me in the shoulder properly next time, yeah?”

“Good one, ... Izuna,” and Tobirama’s pale face stretched into a slight smile  “...if, ... if there weren’t ...so much ..between us —do you think.. we...could have ... been ...friends?” The last word was so faint he could barely hear it.

Izuna froze. By the time his brain put itself back together, Tobirama was gone.

Could we have been friends?

How do the Senju treat their honorable dead? Earlier, Izuna might have said (barely even in jest), that they fed them to the older brother’s monstrous tree-jutsu. But now that just felt disrespectful. But not doing anything felt worse.

In the end, he gave the body Uchiha funeral rites, burying Tobirama on the mountainside.  And all the while, he stewed over the Senju’s words. Do you think we could have been friends?

The last shreds of the old hatred he'd held towards Tobirama burst into a thousand shreds. His rival, was just a person after all. Do you think we could have been friends?

Sleep didn’t come quickly. Izuna’s thoughts were just too much. For the first time, he was not hoping the loop was broken. He was looking forward to the battlefield, where Tobirama would once again be alive, alive, alive. But he was afraid too.

He didn’t know what he was afraid of. Of Tobirama wanting to be his friend in reality, or of Tobirama having possibly been lying, and that the tentative suggestion of friendship between was nothing but a manufactured falsehood. He was still a Senju after all, and the Uchiha had never had anything from them but death and hatred (had never given anything but death and hatred in return).

But sleep came for him all the same, and he welcomed the enveloping blackness when it came.

The darkness cleared from his eyes, and the sounds of battle roared in his ears. Before his eyes, Tobirama appeared with his sword in hand, and this would be the moment when Izuna would find out if the last loop was an aberration, or if it actually meant something. 

He opened his fingers, and let go of his sword. 

He felt a heavy body impact him, and pain blossomed high up in his shoulder. Instead of attempting to stand firm, he let his legs buckle and sent them both to the ground.

Tobirama‘s mind awoke in the blank nothing of the hiraishin, and then he was back out in the daylight, his body moving with the momentum he’d tried and failed to stop before. 

Somewhere, the back of his mind shrieked—SHOULDER, and Tobirama knew the outcome of this one—fatal gut wound—but shifted his weight anyway to redirect his blade. It was important. Why? He couldn’t say. But it was.

And then he was …bearing them both to the ground, feeling only a shallow sword-scrape cut across his side.

He landed heavily atop a ...weapon-less Izuna. 

Whose mouth was pressed into a line that spoke of pain and suppressed fear. But the Uchiha didn’t struggle, didn’t attack, barely moved. Held himself still, as if waiting for something. The memories of their last conversation came flooding back. Do you think we could have have been friends? 

Looking back on it, it was possibly the very worst tactical decision that Tobirama had ever made, telling the Uchiha everything that he had in that poison and fever-addled haze. But now he was back on the battlefield, had once again stabbed Izuna, and had yet to have received any harm in return. Could it be?

A second of time—a beat that lasted a lifetime—and Tobirama raised his eyes to Izuna’s red, swirling Sharingan. He half expected to be trapped in a vicious genjutsu, but instead, they were just—eyes. Full of wariness, but just a touch of fragile, guarded hope.

“Your question,” said Izuna. “I think we still can. And I want to try. ”

“Okay,” said Tobirama. “Okay.”

From across the battlefield, Madara and Hashirama finally noticed their brothers’ battle. Took them a good four seconds longer than I thought it would, thought Izuna.

And then Madara let out a shriek of rage and pain, and Izuna realized how it must look—Tobirama kneeling on his limp figure after apparently stabbing him in the chest. Madara thought he was dead, again.

Killing intent flooded the field, and Madara came for Tobirama like a screaming comet, and Izuna moved. He slipped out from beneath Tobirama, and had his sword up in time to stop Madara from slicing the other man in half. He met Madara’s blade with his own, and held it, though his arms shook and his shoulder screamed against its imbedded sword. 

“Madara.” He said. “Madara stop.”

Madara stopped. The whole battlefield stopped, staring in disbelief at Izuna. At his back turned to the Senju who’d pinned him in the dirt. Facing his own brother to protect that same Senju. And not just any Senju: Senju Tobirama, the White Demon of the Senju, Izuna’s own nemesis.

“What,” hissed Madara.

“Izuna, you know you’ve still got a sword sticking out of your shoulder.” Tobirama’s tone was dry as dust, and somehow the only sound to be heard across the whole battlefield.

“I was a bit busy saving you, idiot.” Snapped Izuna. He turned to find his rival no longer lying on the ground directly behind him, but standing some distance away, holding what looked to be a kunai made of sand, which was rapidly disintegrating into the wind. Tobirama smiled, a quick enigmatic flash, and a weight seemed to come off his shoulders. 

“It’s gone,” sighed Tobirama. “It’s gone.” 

In a moment, he was back beside Izuna. “I think we’re safe,” Tobirama said. “Well, except for what you’ve now done to your shoulder.”

”What, this?” Said Izuna, staring at the imbedded sword. “I’ve had worse.” The tone was light, but an injury of this caliber would actually be a serious, difficult task for the medics of the Uchiha clan. But Tobirama didn’t need to know that about the state of their medical knowledge, newfound almost-trust building between them or not.

Madara made a noise halfway between a groan and a sob, and stepped towards his little brother, and Izuna watched Tobirama fail to suppress a slight flinch.

Tobirama pinched his nose in a way that suggested he was done with the whole entire world. But the lightness in his frame remained.

“Look,” he started. “Just— don’t struggle.” he sighed, and with a final wary glance at Madara placed one hand on Izuna’s shoulder and one on the sword.

Senju and Uchiha alike inhaled as one. Madara tensed, subsiding to bristling when Izuna glared at him.

Slowly, carefully, Tobirama drew out the sword, pressing a green-glowing hand to the wound.

“Much better than last time,” remarked Izuna when it was out, and Tobirama nodded absently. Then froze.

Ah, right. They were still in the middle of a battlefield.

Something caught Tobirama‘s eyes and a look of embarrassed affection  passed over his face. Quickly, he stepped away from Izuna, muttering—“don’t be alarmed” out of the corner of his mouth.

 Izuna then had the (dubious) privilege of seeing Senju Hashirama, the arguably most powerful Shinobi of their time—turn into a wailing, crying, smiling octopus glommed onto his little brother. He supposed if you were the so-called God of Shinobi, you could do anything you wanted on the battlefield. And for all that it was extremely improper, it was also kind of sweet.

He could only catch broken pieces of what was being said, but seeing as Hashirama was basically screaming, the whole battlefield caught pieces like “Tobiraaaa—You healed him,” “SO PROUD,” accompanied by copious flailing and something about a “village, and peace” And Tobirama had so clearly—and when had he learned to read the man’s body language—melted into the embrace, never mind the entire field of enemies surrounding the two brothers.

Just in case the excessive emotionality was catching, Izuna surreptitiously edged a couple of steps further away. Just to be safe.

“Hashirama. Hashirama—Aniki!” Tobirama was saying urgently, having clearly come to the decision  that the middle of a battlefield was decidedly not the best place to have an emotional heart-to-heart. “Call a retreat! I need to talk to you.”

“And I need to talk to you,” said a voice behind Izuna.” To his eternal shame, he jumped a little—too morbidly fascinated by the spectacle Hashirama had decided to make of himself—but it was just his brother, who arched a judgemental eyebrow. “You have some serious explaining to do, and the explanation had better be EXCELLENT.”

“Move out!” Called Madara, and the Uchiha clan disengaged. As they left the battlefield, Izuna turned back to look at Tobirama, still caught in the watery clutches of his clan head.

A moment’s hesitation, and then the other man raised his eyes to meet Izuna’s, freeing one hand to offer a parting wave. Trust. Peace. Friends. With the Senju.

It seemed impossible, and yet—if he and Tobirama could do it, when there was so much between them...

There were still so many things to work out, so many potential problems that could crop up, and one (1) overprotective big brother to placate. But for the first time in his life, Izuna had hope for the future. It was going to be great.

Izuna lifted his hand, and waved back.