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Hashirama knelt beneath the red moon and watched the end of the world. The moonlight’s brightness shamed the sun, its glare piercing walls and shadows alike. As one, the shinobi alliance raised their eyes, faces bathed in the bloody glow as Infinite Tsukuyomi ensnared them all. Hashirama’s voice died in his throat. Calling to them would be futile now. The ground shuddered and the earth was torn asunder as the God Tree surged up and unfurled, raining down fine soil as it rumbled overhead. He watched as it sought their chakra with unerring, sightless precision and covered them in creepers pale as spider’s silk.
He watched because he could do nothing else.
A current of chakra—familiar, yet tainted—ran between the chakra rods embedded into his back, paralyzing him from the neck down. He could see only as far as he could turn his head, but that was more than enough for him to see the results of Madara’s handiwork. When at last the moonlight dimmed enough and night was restored he could see the hulking outline of the tree, stretching beyond the horizon in every direction. Its branches were heavy with cocoons, swaying in the breeze like bodies on the gallows. Nothing moved. He had escaped the tree’s hunger only by being dead.
Tobirama. Saru. Fourth. If he were unaffected, they had to be out there somewhere too. It should be no trouble for his brother to find him, though he would be of little use unless they could figure out a way to free him that didn’t involve touching his restraints. Nothing good would come of that; the rods themselves weren’t what bound him. It was their chakra, communing with his own, insisting he should stay where he was so strongly it almost made him want to be still.
He was not much of a sensor, but even the most chakra-blind person couldn’t have missed the huge surge of power somewhere off in the distance behind him. It was unmistakably Madara’s, and it wasn’t alone. ‘He’s fighting Sasuke and that Naruto boy. They must stop him.’ They must succeed where he had failed. Sasuke’s resemblance to Izuna must sway Madara, as he had been unable to. He believed there was a chance: Madara would’ve killed Sasuke immediately otherwise. If Sasuke could talk to him just long enough to bind him…It was foolish, but even now he wanted to stop Madara without killing him. Not again.
The battle was a short one, though to him it seemed that hours passed between each explosive clash. The warring chakras dimmed and winked out, too weak for him to sense. All save one. The power that restrained him grew stronger as the source approached, until his veins were thrumming with it. His body felt as if it were trembling when the shadow passed overhead and Madara descended from the sky before him.
The power of the Juubi had changed him as it had changed the other jinchuuriki before him: his long black hair was bleached white as bone, and his skin had a ghostly greenish tinge. A staff of shadow was clasped in his hand. But most disturbing of all was the eye, vertical, in the middle of his forehead where an eye had no place being. It blinked as he stared into it, the tomoe swirling slowly before the pupil looked away, to the heavens. It wasn’t in synch with Madara’s other eyes, which were fixed on Hashirama’s face. As his toes touched the ground, Madara grinned and spread his hands.
Oh Madara. “What have you done?” Madara’s smile slipped slightly, as if he had been expecting another reaction, as if there were another reaction for this.
“What have I done?” he echoed, drawing closer in a whisper of robes. He stopped scant inches from Hashirama, so that he was forced to crane his neck if he wished to see any higher than Madara’s groin. “I have saved this world.”
“Saved?” Hashirama looked pointedly at the closest branch of the God Tree. “Is that what you’d call it?”
“Yes,” said Madara simply. “Soon I will join them in sleep.” His smile softened at the thought.
“...What did you do to Sasuke and Naruto?”
Madara cocked his head to one side, his brow furrowed as if Hashirama had asked a very obvious question. Hashirama wished he wouldn’t; it made the third eye appear to bulge. “Them? They were in the way.” He shrugged. “I got rid of them. And I sent your brother and the other two back to the Pure World along with them. You’re the only one left.”
Hashirama closed his eyes.
Madara seized his chin. “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he hissed. The black gloves he wore were made of no material Hashirama knew. They felt cool against his skin. The crescents of Madara’s fingernails dug into his cheeks, the sensation dull, as all sensations were in this body.
Hashirama looked into Madara’s eyes – the normal ones, not the aberration on his forehead. Though even these were strange to him. Madara’s eyes as he remembered them were red with the Sharingan, or dark as coal without it. The cold lilac of the Rinnegan only served to remind him that Madara had changed, in ways beyond his knowing.
“So you’ve won,” he said. His own part in this battle was over; he hadn’t been able to overpower Madara before he’d become a jinchuuriki. There was no chance now. They had all failed. “Are you satisfied?”
Madara assumed a thoughtful look, studying him with all three eyes. His fingers slid up Hashirama’s jaw to caress his ashen cheek. His teeth flashed in a smile. “Almost.”
How long had it been since Madara had last touched him like this, a touch not meant to wound? More than a lifetime ago surely, before he’d left the village. Regret was an old companion of Hashirama’s, one that had never left him until he’d died. Regret was with him now, because now he knew he had killed Madara for nothing, in the end. “Do it then,” he said sadly and closed his eyes once more to await death’s embrace. If Madara struck his head with that staff of his, it would only take a single blow.
Madara huffed and took a step back. “Very well.”
The blow did not come from Madara’s staff, but from within; chakra surged through him and for a moment he felt nothing, knew nothing. Then all at once he was bombarded with sensations: the feel of air coming up his throat and rushing past his lips as he panted for breath, the echo of his heartbeat, pumping hot blood through his decades-dead veins, the ground hard and stony beneath his knees, and a numb, prickling feeling in his limbs. He breathed. He lived.
Madara swept his robes out the way and took to one knee beside him, pulling Hashirama against his chest. Unable to return the embrace, Hashirama let his lids fall closed, Madara’s collarbone pressing against his cheek. His skin tingled with the awareness of the other man’s closeness. It had been so long. While his eyes were closed this moment existed outside of the present and might’ve been any one of the embraces they had, or should’ve, shared.
After a few moments, Madara set down his staff and began wrenching the chakra rods from his back. He wasn’t gentle about it and Hashirama sucked in a pained breath through his teeth when he felt how deep the holes were. Madara clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Have you forgotten how to heal yourself? This should be nothing to you.”
The back of his shirt clung to the skin around the wounds, soaked with blood. He had regained enough use of his arms to reach back with numb fingers and lift the cloth away from his back so they could heal properly. Madara paused in his work, one hand still curled around a chakra rod, to watch the skin knit itself back together. He’d shown fascination with Hashirama’s advanced medical ninjutsu since the first time he’d seen it, when a blow from his scythe had rent open Hashirama’s stomach to reveal a glimpse of glistening intestines. Afterwards there had been no scar.
“I can do that too now,” Madara said conversationally when Hashirama remained silent. He yanked the receiver out and tossed the blooded thing to one side. It hit the ground with a clang before dissolving into fine black dust.
“Why?” Hashirama said at last.
“Tsk. You aren’t that dense. You know why.” Madara slid his left hand under the collar of Hashirama’s armour so it was cupping the back of his neck, the right gripping the last receiver. Madara kissed him, soft as the brush of a feather. “I’ve tried your dream Hashirama,” he breathed against his mouth. “It’s only right you try mine.”
Hashirama met his eyes with a mournful expression. “Konoha was our dream.”
“Yours,” Madara corrected him. He twisted the chakra rod, corkscrewing it deeper into his flesh. “Yours alone, by your own admission.”
Hashirama gritted his teeth against the pain. “You made the distinction first.”
For a moment there was nothing but the sound and feel of Madara’s breath. Then he began turning the chakra rod the other way. “I followed my true dream. And I have succeeded where you failed. There will be no more war. No more loss. Only happiness.”
Madara’s chakra inside him was weak now, too weak to restrain him. He could move. He could fight. Fighting for what he believed in until the very end, that sounded like the right thing to do. But what would be the point? Even if he were strong enough to defeat Madara, Infinite Tsukuyomi would not end, and Madara would never reverse it. He believed in the righteousness of his cause too strongly for that. Fighting would achieve nothing but death: Madara’s (futile, and too painful an experience to repeat) or far more likely, his own. However noble the gesture, his death would make no difference to the dreamers.
The only person his choice would make a difference to was Madara.
“I want you to know that happiness,” Madara said, drawing back to look him in the eye. “I want to show you.”
Brushing away the lingering influence of the last chakra rod, Hashirama took hold of Madara’s shoulders. “Answer me something. Would I be in your dream?”
Madara eyes darted away, then back at him. He scowled, more out of habit than true feeling. “I can’t get rid of you. I’ve never been able to get rid of you. So, yes.”
Hashirama kissed him. It was returned, Madara’s lips parting beneath his. Hashirama fisted his hands into Madara’s robes, pulling him closer until Madara was in his lap and their abdomens were flush together, one of Madara’s hipbones digging into his side. He hardly noticed the pain when Madara wrenched out the chakra rod at last. A little pain was nothing when he had Madara alive and warm in his arms again after all this time.
“Share yours with me,” he panted when they broke apart. “Madara, don’t give me a dream of my own. Let me be part of yours.”
Madara looked at him, stunned. “I don’t—”
Hashirama smiled. “I don’t want to live in a world with any other Madara but this one.”
Madara snorted. “You still say the sappiest things.” But he was smiling. He stood and offered a hand to help Hashirama to his feet. He was grateful for it; he’d been kneeling so long he felt as wobbly as a newborn foal. “I’m not certain it’s doable,” Madara said. “But…” He trailed off and clasped his hands into a very familiar hand-seal.
Where the tall pillar of the God Tree had once stood when it made its first appearance, something shifted. A great bud sprouted from the stump and bloomed before their eyes into a pure white lotus the size of a house.
“I would still have you sleep beside me,” Madara finished.
A dead man had no hope of reversing the infinite dream, but a dreamer might. He hadn’t succeeded in reaching Madara with words before, but given time…there was a chance, however slim. But he would’ve been a terrible liar if he told himself that was the only reason he’d agreed. He was tired of always having to oppose Madara. It would be good for once, to live a life with him that wasn’t fraught with pain and separation.
The wind was cool against his cheeks as Madara took to the air, supporting him with an arm around his waist. They flew over to the flower and settled in the centre, where its sweet perfume was strongest. There they lay down to sleep, and Hashirama saw a fine dust of pollen on Madara’s eyelashes as they fanned against his cheek, before the sky above was obscured in shadow.
The petals closed.