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It started less than satisfactory. As it was, Tobirama noted as he looked over the desk haphazardly shoved into his office, this seemed to be an extremely unfortunate circumstance. One brought from his elder brother meddling too much into his personal life, and if he didn’t know to assume any better, some sort of revenge plot from Madara.
It would make sense, he had shot down the man’s idea for the roadways of the developing village, with the grace of a rock hitting one’s face.
And now, Madara was using his own little brother as a tool within their own feud. And Izuna didn’t seem to know any better about it. Tobirama shook his head, before rounding the corner of his own desk — and settling himself in for another tireless day of mindless work, paying no heed to the Uchiha who sat uncomfortably close to him.
He's sure that Izuna could share the same sentiment as him, given the situation they found themselves caught in. Izuna was caught in the crossfire, it seems.
As he unraveled a scroll, he was almost certain this was Madara’s idea of revenge. Using Hashirama’s worry and concern over the stiff and argumentative relationship between the two youngest siblings as a tactic to force proximity to distract Tobirama from his work. Perhaps to throw him off his game?
He doesn’t see the appeal of it. Not when Izuna seems to be perfectly capable of sitting silently, and keeping his eyes on his own work.
Perhaps then, Madara wasn’t as good of a strategist as he would have originally thought the man to be.
Or, perhaps, Tobirama had gotten much too ahead of himself.
Izuna was not a joy to be around, that much he would have to remind himself when, about a week later, the aforementioned Uchiha burst into Tobirama’s lab — while he was hunched over a corpse and sauntered in like he owned the place.
“Hokage-sama told me to come help you.” Izuna provides as an explanation, walking up to the decaying body Tobirama was working over. He pokes it. Tobirama smacks his hand away.
“I don’t need help.” Tobirama shoots back with a half-hearted glare, more focused on pushing Izuna’s unwashed and incessant hands away from the corpse.
Izuna batted his eyes at Tobirama in response. “But Hokage-sama said so. He’ll be very upset if I don’t do as I'm told.” He sighed in a woe-is-me fashion, before decidedly draping himself across the corpse. That didn’t last very long, not before Tobirama was shoving him off of his corpse and onto the floor.
Izuna frowns up at him and Tobirama almost feels bad for his actions, but he's had younger brothers before. He's distantly aware that this may just be crocodile tears from Izuna. An attempt to instill some sort of guilt in him.
It doesn't work.
“You can stay,” Tobirama forces himself to state, as Izuna looks up at him from the floor, “But only if you’re silent. We’ll tell Hashirama that you helped.”
There was no mistaking the utter glee in Izuna’s eyes as he jumped up from the floor. It made the albino wonder if he made the right decision, or if this would come to bite him in the ass as well. Regardless, Izuna made good on that, and stayed silent for the remainder of the night. It would be.. everything else that was the issue.
Despite his silence, Izuna’s presence in the lab was still very clear. Clear to a degree that wasn’t appreciated by the other man. Poking around at his scrolls, unraveling and looking over theories that Tobirama hadn’t finished yet. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Tobirama could deal with people poking around at his work. He certainly didn’t like it, but Hashirama was as nosy as they came, so he learned early on how to deal with it. No, the worst of it came when Izuna had bored himself with nosing about all of Tobirama’s work — and had decided to lean up against the man’s back instead, to watch Tobirama work on the corpse from over his shoulder.
He narrows his eyes at the corpse, and wishes his brother would have taken mercy on him, instead of putting him through this forced bonding with Madara’s younger brother. There’s a moment of silence between them, before Tobirama begrudgingly concedes to Izuna. “What is it now? Bored of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
Tobirama feels a brush of hot air as Izuna huffs against him. “You keep it too cold in here. Are you trying to freeze to death?” The Uchiha complains against him, “What are you even working on, anyway? I didn’t know you were into necrophilia.”
Something in Tobirama bristles.
“It’s a jutsu to bring people back from the dead. I believe it could be useful, if the village was low on shinobi.”
“Freak.”
Tobirama elbows Izuna in the side. The man wheezes, pressing his face into Tobirama’s shoulder as he recovers from the attack. They stay like that for awhile, despite Tobirama’s gut telling him to not allow this to happen.
Eventually, Izuna coughs, before he resumes looking at the corpse from over Tobirama’s shoulder. “If you’re trying to bring someone back to life.. Why would you use a dead corpse?” Izuna hummed, leaning his head against Tobirama’s shoulder. “There’s not like.. a lifeforce or anything in a corpse.”
Tobirama doesn’t reply to him immediately, but that’s fine. Izuna is content to watch the way his hands still and see the gears turn in his head. However, he becomes a bit worried when the silence drags on, afraid he might have finally broken the man — before he’s shoved off of the Senju as he stands, snatching up a scroll as he paces away from Izuna. Oh, good. He’s given Tobirama some sort of idea. This should end well.
However, after a long few minutes of silence between the two of them, no such idea is revealed. In fact, Tobirama, the ass that he is, had the gaul to dismiss Izuna for the night. As if he had any sort of autonomy over Izuna! The bastard! Who does he think he is, really? Where in god’s name does he get off, telling Izuna to go home??
Anyway, Izuna returned home for the night without much of a fuss.
The next day, however, Tobirama didn’t even show up to their shared office. So, he was left alone, in their cramped little office — all by his lonesome. At the very least, it gave Izuna some time to snoop around in Tobirama’s belongings, even if he didn’t find anything particularly useful in his desk drawers. The most interesting thing he found was some.. scrapped plans for a police force for the village, centering around the Uchiha leading it. So, outside of that, Izuna was left with boring paperwork to do for the day — and no one to occasionally knee when he needed some form of entertainment.
However, entertainment would eventually be blessed upon him when, just as he was packing up to leave for the day — Tobirama burst into their shared office, looking considerably disheveled with a certain manic edge to him that excited Izuna.
“Lab.” Tobirama says, voice as level as always; despite his outward appearance.
“..Lab?”
“Yes. Now. Come on.”
Tobirama gestures for him, and Izuna cannot recall anyone ever being personally invited to Tobirama’s lab before. His heart stutters in his chest.
“Oh, uh. Why?” Izuna inquired, because while he kind of, sort of trusted Tobirama, he wasn’t stupid enough to follow the man into his lab after watching him poke and prod at a corpse the night before. If he isn’t careful, he could very well be the next corpse that Tobirama decides to experiment with.
“To see your idea.” Tobirama scoffs, as if Izuna should have picked up on that by now. Because clearly Tobirama was being as upfront about it as he possibly could be, and Izuna was the idiot here for not understanding what was going on. The man then promptly turned on his heels and started to walk away.
What in the hell was Tobirama talking about? Izuna can't recall any sort of.. idea workshop he's done with Tobirama recently. He briefly considers the possibility that Tobirama has finally lost it. Gone crazy from all the jutsus he creates, did one so horrifically wrong that the failure of it drives him insane.
…Perhaps not, seeing as Tobirama seemed to be in relatively good health, aside from his crumpled state.
Izuna stared at the empty spot, dumbfounded for a moment — before quickly pulling himself into gear to follow after Tobirama. After nearly tripping over his own feet a few times in his attempts to keep up, he caught up to an inpatient Tobirama waiting for him outside of the lab. Tobirama's Lab. Admittedly, Izuna was a bit out of practice with keeping up with Tobirama's speed. He blames the peace for it. Damn village paperwork, keeping him from working on his training.
He’ll have to get back into it soon. Maybe he can start right after he figures out in the hell it is that Tobirama is talking about.
Tobirama stares at him expectantly, before gesturing to the door of his lab. Izuna swallows. “Yeah yeah, okay. Crypted ass Senju…” He muttered, as he reached out for the door handle. Slowly, carefully, he turns it, then pushes open the door. Cautiously, he gazes into the lab, to find whatever it was that he had given Tobirama such a grand idea for.
When he finds it, his face goes white as a sheet, before he stumbles back and slams the door shut with it.
Tobirama, the bastard, only raises a brow.
As if Izuna was the insane one here.
“What in Amaterasu’s flames.” Izuna breathes, disbelievingly, as he stares at Tobirama.
“I’ll admit, it needs more testing, but I think we’re headed in the right direction with this.” Tobirama says, sounding a bit bored, before shrugging. Izuna isn't quite sure how he's managed to become a part of this.
“We??” Izuna scoffs, “I have no part in.. this!” He gestures wildly to the lab door, frantic in his movements.
“You were the one who gave me the idea.” Tobirama states, with a slight tilt of his head. Izuna wants to punch him, then kiss the mark better. “A good scientist gives credit where credit is due, and your credit is due here.”
“There’s a dead guy in there,” Izuna stresses.
Tobirama blinks at him.
“There was a “dead guy” in there last night as well, but you seemed to have no issue with him then.”
“He wasn’t standing upright and blinking at me last night.”
“He doesn’t seem so dead now, doesn’t he? Quite fascinating.”
“How did you even—” Izuna stops himself, and realizes that he doesn’t quite want to know the answer to that. Tobirama brought someone back from the dead. He brought someone back from the dead with Izuna’s help. Which makes him an accomplice. Madara is going to be pissed at him when he finds out. Oh Amaterasu, forgive him for his sin — and for giving this lab experiment of a man a working idea of how to bring someone back from the dead.
“I can show you.” Tobirama offers, though Izuna isn’t given much of a chance to turn it down, before Tobirama grabs him by the wrist and pulls him into the lab. Somehow, this isn’t what Izuna thinks Hashirama meant to happen when he wanted the two of them to bond. Moreso, he doesn’t think that Hashirama thought that Tobirama would try to traumatize him.
And, like any other person of sound mind and body, he did not fight back when Tobirama got him into the lab. He almost went too easy, too willingly. As unfortunate as it is, Izuna let Tobirama show him the prototype of the Jutsu. Multiple times over.
Izuna is traumatized. He’s never going to a graveyard again. Tobirama showed him how he managed to bring someone back to life, how he reanimated a corpse. Several corpses, actually. He even had Izuna try it. It was..
disgusting.
He's not even sure how Tobirama managed to acquire so many corpses.
But, even if he was kept in Tobirama’s lab late into the night, he finds that he didn’t particularly care that he was preemptively playing god — because Tobirama seemed so.. different when he explained the process to Izuna. His face was as cold as ever, but there was this glint to his eyes that made it seem like maybe he enjoyed this. He took some sort of pride in teaching Izuna such a fucked up jutsu. It wasn’t just that, however, it was the way that Tobirama would guide his hands through the motions of the hand signs. He’d show it to Izuna over, and over again, even if it would have been much easier to tell Izuna to activate his sharingan to get it over with.
All that being said, Izuna left Tobirama’s lab in the early hours of the morning, with a confusing feeling in his chest and an upset brother waiting for him at home. He doesn’t pay any mind to Madara though, even as the man tried to follow him through their home, to his bedroom, with demands to know where his little brother had been.
Of course, Izuna didn't feel the need to placate his brother's concerns, he was sure the man could see it on his face. With Madara’s glaring and suspicious looks, it came with a sense of odd satisfaction. This was bothering his brother. Of course, Izuna found it rather easy to pay his elder brother little to no mind, if Madara wished to pout like a child because his little brother was making friends, then that was something he needed to work through himself. Otherwise, Izuna was going to start eying up the Senju compound to see where he’d like to move in. Tobirama’s house was particularly a place that was catching his eye.
And, if in two weeks, he and Tobirama were caught trying to terrorize the Hokage with zombified Shinobi, their elder brothers truly had no one else to blame but themselves for bringing such a cruel fate onto them.