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The day after Uchiha Madara forsakes Senju Hashirama's friendship, his mother dies and it's his fault.
His first sharingan memory recalls with perfect clarity Senju Tobirama's face, his fox eyes and their pale red irises, dark in the shadow of his face guard but unmistakable. That was the day they realized Senju Tobirama is a Blessed Sacrifice, sacred to the Uchiha. It follows from the gods—Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi fell from the blessed eyes and left weakness behind so that the Uchiha might have strength. Out of respect for the origin of their strength, no Uchiha may raise a hand to a Sacrifice, second heir to the enemy or not.
No Uchiha.
This hallowed duty always falls to the head family. Mother volunteers, back when Madara doesn't even understand what she is volunteering for.
They dress her in funeral whites with a funeral shroud, and she smiles at him before she lies down in the coffin with the clan symbol painted on the lid. It is carried onto the unlit pyre amidst the low chant that Father leads and the soul-deep drum, beating in time with Madara's anxious heart. At times Father’s voice raises in a call and the clan calls back. Madara joins in softly, uncertain. His littlest (last) brother hides his face in the back of Madara's sleeve, mouthing the syllables because he does not know all the words.
The coffin reaches the pyre. The chanting ends. The cymbals clang. The drum answers. Clang! Thud. Clang! Thud.
Silence.
The eight coffin bearers breathe as one and light the pyre.
A bell chimes. The drum starts up again, gently, lighter, and the flames rise. Father takes up a different chant, light and steady and melodious. As the flames overtake the casket, the clan joins in to fill the harmony lines and the coffin lid comes off.
The person inside stands and walks through the fire, the paper uchiwa on her back burning as she goes. Mother dies as Uchiha Atsumi, and the person walking out of the Uchiha compound’s gates is Izumi the yomotsu-shikome, hell hag and hunter-guardian of the Blessed Sacrifice to keep him and the Uchiha both safe, and bring him home.
Madara is the clan heir so he and Father go to make the offerings of food to the new yomotsu-shikome-sama. Kaname is not allowed; he sulks and cries until Father says shinobi do not behave as such, and Kaname perks up at finally being allowed to go on missions, even if not battle on the front lines.
Yomotsu-shikome-sama does go to the front lines, where the Senju apparently saw fit to place Tobirama. Yomotsu-shikome-sama is a very capable shinobi, but war is sometimes a test of fortune rather than ability. She dies a second death within the year.
Madara and Father burn the body and gather her bones to be placed with the other yomotsu-shikome in the columbarium outside the clan compound. It is only the two of them, and there are no songs or chants of the Uchiha to send her to the pure lands.
The head family still has its hallowed duty. Now the head family is only Father, the clan head; Madara, the clan heir; and Kaname, not even aged ten summers.
It weighs on Father terribly.
"We could adopt your cousin Hikaku, and he could—" Father starts, but Kaname sulks, and Kaname cries, and Kaname insists.
Madara insists too, but for once his words hold less weight than Kaname’s do. He might as well have said nothing for all the difference it makes.
They hold another funeral with a much smaller coffin. This time Madara learns the words, learns the music, learns the phoenix katon-jutsu needed to walk through fire unscathed and spends every waking hour for three days teaching and testing and making sure Kaname knows it too, because none among the living are allowed to interfere with the sacred fire once it is lit.
Uchiha Kaname dies, and Izuna the yomotsu-shikome and hunter-guardian of the Sacrifice can never return until Senju Tobirama is with the Uchiha, or dead.
Madara is going to bring his brother home, no matter what it takes.