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Hashirama, Tobirama thought (not for the first time, or even the hundredth), was a jerk. The constant fighting with Father (what good was that ever going to do?), growing flowers on the buildings (people live in those houses, Anija, what do you think your flowers are using to grow, aaaand he's not listening again, stupid termite), skipping out on training to get lunch (for himself), folding all his homework into messy origami instead of doing it (what sort of Clan Head was he going to be, if anybody could get disastrous policies past him because he couldn't read the fancier words?), and now...
Tobirama did not sigh. He was on a mission, and even though he couldn't sense anybody close enough to be a threat (just the scurrying of agitated, barely-there civilian chakras in the noble compound he'd left far behind), making any noise was a stupid habit to develop. But oh, did he want to sigh. Or scream, or shake Hashirama until whatever missing link blocking him from seeing sense connected.
Or kick Hashirama out of the sickbed he'd tantrumed himself into, Mokuton popping thorns and serrated leaves uncontrollably off every inch of skin so he could barely move without slicing himself (to be fair, Tobirama didn't think his brother had known that was possible -- the times he'd lost control of his Mokuton as a small child, it'd always been things like getting caught in sudden tangles of ivy or carpeting the walking paths in daisies), and dunk him in a vat of weedkiller like that wouldn't just make him actually sick. Honestly, was he ten or two? Who did he think would be assigned the assassination he refused to do?
(Twelve years old, and competition for some baron's nephew, and she'd been curled on her side in her sleep -- too young for a maiden's updo to require she sleep on her back. Tobirama had slid his thinnest knife through the base of her braid: the quickest death he could give, and one of the cleanest, and left before the blood and brain matter started trickling onto her pillow.)
So he didn't sigh. But he could... no. He couldn't hide on the border for the night, couldn't wrap himself in Madara's chakra for a few hours before finishing his trip home. Madara had been on a mission for the last two weeks, his warm-cloves-blanket chakra just barely at the edge of Tobirama's range only during this midpoint hour of the journey...
... Wait.
Madara's chakra had been exactly this far away on the trip out, as well as now.
Tobirama paused, crouched high in a tree. It'd still been daylight when he ran past the first time. Madara shouldn't still be there, long enough after midnight that morning dew was starting to form. At the very least, if he'd decided to camp he should have set up another three or four hours' run towards Uchiha territory. What was he doing, to be in the same spot?
He hadn't even finished the thought (or the next one, what if Madara was hurt) before he was five trees away and accelerating, making a beeline for that unmistakeable chakra so far from home.
It seemed like only a minute later (it wasn't, it was an hour and a half, Tobirama's sense of time was too well-trained to lose track on missions, but it seemed like only a minute and yet an eternity), when Tobirama finally got close enough to feel more than erratic flickers and flares of Madara's chakra. Not that the roiling blaze normally did that; for all of Madara's temper and physical flailing, his powerful chakra tended to stay steady, a slow rise and fall over the day to match his sleep cycle, as far as Tobirama could tell.
The failed-katon-sour tinge of distress was all but completely unnecessary by the time Tobirama could identify it. (What had happened? What could've happened? This felt like that flashpoint burst of horror that day at the river, the moment that Father's sword should've hit Izuna.)
(Izuna couldn't be out here. He'd been crackling in the Uchiha compound when Tobirama passed, deep in their training grounds with his chakra bouncing some unmastered jutsu off a target, he couldn't have been sent on a mission after a full day's training, the Uchiha didn't do that for anything less than a Senju battle. They never sent their children off in the night, either. What had Madara as upset as the moment he'd recognized his little brother almost died? How was it just continuing relentlessly like this? It'd been hours.)
The trees started to fade with false dawn, squaring off, branches flattening into hazy, indistinct rooftops and porches. Genjutsu. Powerful genjutsu, splashing over Tobirama's perception of the area like patches of fog without the caster even being aware of him -- the vision of buildings would be solid, a painted tarp dropped over the chakra shapes of reality that Tobirama could always feel and trusted more than his eyesight, if the caster had noticed he was there to drag into the illusion.
Tobirama slowed, his chakra suppressed, mouth just slightly open to silence his breathing as he crept carefully closer. The scent-taste on the air... Madara, astringent with exhaustion and the particular olfactory mix of a body too worn to eat or bathe or take care of any of its needs -- but barely any blood, and no reek of disease or the medicinal herbs that Madara could've gathered if he'd lost his supplies.
The petrichor of disturbed leaf litter.
An unknown adult male, his chakra pattern looming close behind Madara's as they wandered over the leaves, churning them up in an unnatural, genjutsued silence.
Tobirama finally reached the closest tree to Madara, and, peeking around the trunk through a gap in the leaves...
Madara was stumbling around blindly in a small clearing, arms and legs glinting with bloodied scratches where he'd lost his armor and padding. A tall, slender man walked barely a step behind him, clearly unnoticed, wearing a soft, dark lounging kimono with his hands folded casually behind his back and with his head tilted ever-so-slightly in... amusement, possibly.
One of the patches of genjutsu fog drifted ahead of Madara-- movement. A figure scampered deep in the haze, a small figure that Tobirama knew, even if they'd only ever seen each other for a few minutes. Izuna, bouncing cheerfully before Madara, walking backwards and chattering in a vague buzz through a grin sliced from ear to ear, oblivious to the blood covering his jaw and soaking into his kimono shirt and vanishing into forest-scented darkness as the man toppled forward onto Madara with Tobirama's knife sticking through his skull.
Tobirama stared at his open, outstretched hand. He hadn't even thought. Just threw.
And now he couldn't move. Could barely breathe, eyes on the body, on Madara struggling to get out from under it and mumbling incoherently. Maybe Madara wouldn't notice him, if he didn't move. He seemed dazed enough to miss the bright white shape at the end of the knife's trajectory, and his chakra was sliding from sour distress to a banked-coal confusion when his eyes landed on the knife.
Madara's face tilted up towards Tobirama's tree, and that chakra froze in shock.
"Senju?!"
Madara's eyes, bruised and bloodshot with exhaustion, were pinned to Tobirama's face. He didn't move, didn't even finish pulling his legs out from under the body, his hands splayed in the leaf litter and mouth agape in a sickly pale expression that Tobirama couldn't read.
"Uchiha," Tobirama replied, trying for neutral and probably coming out flat. No answer. Just that same unreadable astonishment that Tobirama did not sigh at again. Was it really so impossible...? (Of course it was, idiot, the only Senju who wouldn't have gone for two kills instead of just one -- and prioritized Madara's death to boot -- was, as far as Madara knew, Hashirama. Who more likely would've gotten caught in the genjutsu himself or tried capturing the man to ask questions like the situation wasn't obvious.)
Fine. Let Madara be too stunned to think. Tobirama could live with that.
He unhooked the water flask from his belt and threw it at Madara's... well, not his feet, considering the body, but next to his scraped-up knees. Then a food bar, the mochi turned a disturbing muddy green from being made with health-boosting herbs and spices, still wrapped in one of Hashirama's oversized maple leaves.
No movement. Madara's stare didn't even flicker to follow the supplies.
Tobirama considered for a long moment, then threw one more thing down -- a partial medkit, the portion with the antiseptic bandages he kept over his heart (a stab there would make that kit. well. painfully unnecessary) -- and let his own stare harden. "None of it's poisoned, Uchiha," he snapped. (Stop looking at me like a ghost. Please.) "It's my gear and I would have to finish getting home without water if I did that. I don't have the supplies to neutralize and clean poison out of a bottle here."
Slowly, finally, Madara's hands shifted, reaching out to warily grasp the water. Still staring at Tobirama like he could activate his Sharingan from sheer disbelief. And then attack Tobirama, obviously.
The coming attack was, of course, the only reason that Tobirama settled into a comfortable, long-wait crouch to watch as Madara slowly sipped at the water, then wiped his hands and bare skin as best he could with the kit's medicine-soaked handkerchief and wrapped the scratches up, expression going motionless in the way that good training made you handle the sting. Then nibbled at a corner of the mochi, making a face this time at the flavor. Madara's eyes kept shifting suspiciously back to Tobirama whenever possible, only leaving for a sustained time when he had to wrap the bandages properly.
At least Madara's chakra was settling into a clumsy version of its proper bonfire warmth as he tended to himself.
Tobirama waited until Madara was done and had finished the mochi before he murmured, "You might," making Madara jump, "want to change clothes."
Madara glanced down at himself, then two bright spots of mortified-red horror bloomed on his cheeks. Another glance up, but Tobirama was carefully looking at the top of Madara's head, completely nonchalant. "... Well, well don't watch!"
"I would never," Tobirama replied, bland and honest. He tipped his head minutely eastward. "There's a bit of a stream over there. Wouldn't trust it to be drinkable," or safe to wash in with open wounds: the faint scent of water was decidedly stagnant, "but it should work well enough for emergency laundry." Madara clutched at the waistband of his trousers, like Tobirama had just threatened to strip them away himself to wash. "And I can start looting the body, if you'd," trust me enough, "be okay with me coming down there."
"... Fine."
"Are you willing to wear his clothes?" Tobirama asked before Madara could go, getting a completely unsurprising flinch. He pointed out, "I'm a bit small to loan you mine." Madara was going to have to either steal the man's clothes, run home in wet, dirty pants, or run home in just his Uchiha coat. Which was long enough for modesty at their ages, but it'd probably be nerve-racking on top of everything else.
Madara abruptly stood, face darkening, and shuffled hastily out of the clearing and towards the stagnant water without another word.
Tobirama supposed that was about as close to permission as he was going to get. He hopped out of the tree and knelt to get the man stripped before his clothing became as unuseable as Madara's. Shoes (too large, and lacking any sort of hidden blades or compartments in the worn soles to make it worth taking them). Pants (fine blue-gray silk, reversible with a lining the same color as the herbed mochi, and interfaced with a featherweight mesh armor, nice). The obi (more silk and featherweight mesh, in a subdued mouse-brown that would work with both sides of the pants; Tobirama might have to steal this color palette for future missions), the kimono shirt, and there was a small crest printed under the fold of the collar.
Kurama clan. That explained a lot. Tobirama folded the shirt wrong to get the crest showing on top for Madara to see, and went after the weapons. A brace of senbon on each forearm; a pipe just the slightest bit too long and bowl-heavy, basically a club in classy disguise. An inro box hanging from an oni-faced netsuke, the cord pinned to the inside of the obi by a half-size 'geisha's emergency' senbon.
The box had three layers of innocuous compartments (packed with tobacco, an inkstone with a divot worn into it, and tiny pellets of rolled willow bark respectively), each with a hidden underside. Those held unmistakable Akimichi mission pills (either stolen or bought from a clan member that was going to get executed on site if they were caught), fragile powdery candies that Tobirama recognized as a sweet and fast-acting poison... and, in the bottommost and deepest of the hidden compartments, tiny locks of hair in every color, wound tightly into toothpick-sized sticks with gossamer silk thread, and a black hank twisted into a loose knot on top.
Tobirama held very still, exhaling slowly and shoving away the emotion thick in his throat. There was only one thing this could be. Only one of the people out here had black hair, and it wasn't the dead guy. (Trophies. The dead man took trophies. He'd touched Madara's hair--)
No emotion. Business now. Finish looting this monster before Madara gets back.
The usual razor wire in the man's loose ponytail and silk garottes pretending to be bracelets, both of middling quality -- daywear for lazy shinobi, too good for training and not good enough for work. Earrings with a high gold content, the metal brushed matte and etched with purely decorative designs, that could be sold to civilians for a fairly good price. No actual money, though, so this man either didn't bother paying for goods, or he was affiliated with the chakra signatures clumped together (and mostly sleeping) in a stronghold nearby.
Finally, Tobirama yanked his kunai free and used the tip to push the man's gore-soaked ponytail off the back of his neck, using his fingers to feel around for the telltale spinal bump at the base of the neck.
"He doesn't have much worth the bother, except the clothes," Tobirama said as Madara crept back into the clearing, damp pants draped in his arms and eyes catching on the kunai. Tobirama pretended to ignore that, and started to slice through the skin.
(Tobirama was not going to mention the inro. The only things of monetary value in there were the contraband mission pills, and those were just a death sentence waiting to get caught.)
"... what are you doing?" Madara asked, voice still raspy despite the water.
"What does it look like?" Tobirama worked the kunai between vertebrae and twisted, the spine popping apart with a sharp, sticky-sounding crack. That was the hard part done, the rest of the throat was just meat. "I'm going to stake this outside the clan compound about twenty minutes south."
"What?! Why?!"
"Reasons." The head rolled loose, and Tobirama set it upright to drain. Then he wiped his kunai clean with the man's handkerchief, sheathed it, and dug into another pocket. Paper, tiny brush, capsule of soot... Tobirama spat onto a curling leaf and mixed the soot in to get field ink.
Madara stepped warily closer and peered over Tobirama's shoulder as he wrote 'You owe a blood debt.' Madara squawked, his chakra stoking up, a fresh hearth fire starting to take on a stinging-sweet edge of smoke and cherrywood. "How much did you see?!"
Flailing was good. Better than that stiff uncertain confusion. But the question... Tobirama blew on the blotchy note to dry it. "About the last ten seconds," he answered, mostly honestly. The patches of genjutsu that had just been partial buildings and dirt paths didn't really count as personal, he was pretty sure. (A younger brother, though...) He glared at the lettering, ignoring Madara's hissing inhale, and added, "Which was more than sufficient."
Silence. Then Madara twitched hard in his peripheral vision (Tobirama's fingers clenched into open claws, blocking his reflexive hand signs for jutsu) and bent to snap up the discarded pants. He kicked the headless body, sharp-edged soles gouging a shallow peel of flesh off the ribs, and disappeared from Tobirama's line of sight. Tobirama could still hear him, though, leaves rustling underfoot and fabric shuffing in a way that had to be deliberate given shinobi garments.
(That was... really oddly nice of him, though completely unnecessary, of course.)
Tobirama folded the note and stuffed it into the head's mouth, then stood (Madara's hands clawed in blocked reflex this time) and rummaged through nearby bushes until he found a usefully sturdy branch, then he snapped it free with a sharp kick and stripped off the leaves. Then he turned to look at Madara, now fully dressed, using the obi and the rest of Tobirama's bandages to strap excess fabric close and keep the salvaged pants on.
"Uchiha territory's that way," Tobirama said, jabbing a thumb vaguely northeast. "And I was never here, so make up whatever story you want." He scooped up the head by its ponytail to cover the awkward moment, and turned towards the stronghold in the south. "... Bye."
Madara didn't even glance homeward before following Tobirama into the forest.
Oh, for... "You don't have to come with me." Seriously, Tobirama was hardly going to walk up to an unknown clan and get backup to hunt or capture Madara, not carrying the head of one of their own. What did Madara think he could possibly do if the Uchiha's eyes weren't on him?
Madara made a few inarticulate sounds before landing on, "You aren't going to... burn the body? Or... whatever Senju do, I guess..."
Small coffins being lowered into the ground. "If they want him, they can do it themselves. I'm not wasting the effort."
Madara fell silent. Not for long, though: twenty minutes to a stronghold meant ten to reach the edge of the forest, the clan's cleared perimeter a broad swath of open land far larger than the Senju or even Uchiha bothered with.
Or so it seemed. Tobirama's chakra sense told him a very different story than his eyes. He moved a small leafy branch in the direction of a slight breeze, using the leaves to hide his pale face and hair while he peered at the castle in the distance. Its white plaster was just that faintest bit too bright for the current crescent moon, the terrain between dotted with boulders and the occasional tree just that touch too visible in the brightening twilight.
"The famous Dancing Palace of the Kuramas," Tobirama murmured, dry and barely audible. Ridiculous thing, it supposedly moved about the landscape as you approached, shifting every time you blinked. "It's said even the Sharingan can't penetrate the centuries of genjutsu laid over it." That got a sour glare out of Madara, and Tobirama huffed through his nose. "I can't believe people fell for that," and Madara's gaze snapped sharply back to him.
"That the Sharingan doesn't work...?"
"That there's genjutsu here at all." Madara stared, agape, as if he somehow didn't see what Tobirama saw. (Why not? For all that it messed up sightlines for precision work -- arrows, kunai, jutsu that didn't annihalate entire acres at once -- they were shinobi. It was pretty obvious what was going on.) "It's all optical illusions."
Centuries of very careful landscaping, full of hidden ravines and scree-covered rockfalls to block the different perspective shifts. Perfectly natural-looking trees, the kind that matured to very similar sizes within their own species, the kind Fire ninja automatically used to judge distance in their thick forests... only some of them were bonsai'd to under half of what they should be (and carefully pruned to true wild shapes rather than telltale 'natural' sculpting), and the rest were clustered on tiered sculptured trunks, two or more at a time to look bigger. Even the cliffs behind the palace had probably been adjusted with doton over the centuries.
"The building's a lot closer than it appears from here," Tobirama told Madara. Maybe it was an Uchiha trait, overreliance on their vision making them that much more susceptible to these tricks? And the dancing palace story was more of an open secret among the adults than something they actually believed? (Tobirama wasn't going to hold out much hope there.) "I'd bet that it looks much closer than it really is from other directions, or offset to one side or another."
"Could you not admire that clan's skills right now?" Madara not-quite-whined.
"Who's admiring?" Tobirama scoffed. "Like I said, I can't believe people fell for cheap tricks like this." Madara's chakra coiled around a sliver of icy-bile shame. Tobirama may have jammed the head onto the stick a bit harder than necessary at that. "But it does mean they've probably grown complacent, especially on this side. 'Oh surely an enemy would get right in range to kill before ever realizing it.'" His eyes narrowed. "I'm going to terrify them with how precisely I place this thing. Be right back."
(It actually worked. They really had gotten lazy about this.)
Madara was still there when he returned, creeping through the grass in time with the morning breeze, having stuck the head exactly (not even a finger's width off) at the border of their maximum shot range, at a point where most of the sightlines from the castle walls overlapped each other. Exactly where he should've been seen, and an arrow already shot with the expectation of hitting him three steps too close.
(No arrow hit the dirt at his feet. Hah. That would really freak them out: the clan would think he'd stolen the arrow to look more impressive, but when nobody fessed up to firing anything this morning...)
Tobirama couldn't help it. (He won.) He flashed a smirk at Madara, stunning the older boy speechless once again, and turned to head home.
Very little was said on the long run back:
"You didn't sign the note."
"They didn't deal with him. Let them sweat wondering who could've done this," who was skilled enough to do this, who was offended enough to set out a blatant threat instead of just abandoning or obliterating the body in the forest, who was smart enough to not give the clan an opening to pretend their monster was an innocent victim and force... huh, he really should've signed that note; the Uchiha would've had to pay through the nose for murdering a somewhat high-ranked (going by the loot) member of another clan, "and what you'll demand."
(Madara's chakra warmed, finally starting to regain notes of clove.)
And:
"You don't have to escort me back."
"I'm not?" Madara lied very badly. "We're just going the same way."
"Don't you want to take a break? Get a nap, settle your nerves, get me out of your hair--?" Madara hissed at that, and Tobirama shut up.
And, finally, about five minutes out from the border:
"Remember, I was never here." Tobirama paused. "... And Izuna's fine," he added awkwardly. "He seems to be sleeping in."
And Tobirama left, angling away to circle around Uchiha territory at a somewhat safe distance, leaving Madara with a weirdly lost look on his exhausted face.
-0-0-0
A patrol had found Madara sometime after that, and he all but stumbled along in their group, attention fixed somewhere behind him/towards Senju lands. He barely noticed entering the clan compound, or being pushed over to the healers and the sting of their fresh antiseptics, or wandering into his home in clean, well-fitted clothes that hadn't been stripped from an enemy by Tobirama's hand.
He did, however, notice when the person in the occupied room sat up and ordered, "Report."
Father. Father's face, stone over worry, his furrowed brow and deep frown, an inkbrush in his hands hurling a blade straight at Tobirama's head cold water underfoot the clang of Hashirama's kunai blood drowning the world screams in his throat
Tatami in his teeth. A knee in his back.
Black.
-0-0-0
Madara woke to his own ceiling and futon, his heart leaping into his throat for a split second before no, my Center saved me, that man can't have known to try making up a Center, this is real. ... Though the leather straps crisscrossing his body, pinning him flat on his back on the floor with the trailing ends weighted down under his tatami mats, that was also a big clue.
That man would've woken him with nothing visible pinning him down at all. Again.
"So." Madara rolled his head to the side, finding his father sitting next to him on the floor, pointedly on the tatami over the right side of Madara's upper body straps. (Red haze and father's blade flying--) The straps jolted, knocking the breath out of Madara's lungs and his body back into the futon's cottony grasp, and his father's expression darkened under a mildly disappointed facade. "Care to explain yourself?"
Madara hissed. "You tried to kill my Center!"
"Yes, I gathered that much from the incoherent screaming," his father said dryly. "Try again with a bit more detail."
Madara's eyes and teeth and fingers all ached with the need to smash Tajima's face into the dirt. But fine. If father couldn't figure out the important parts from 'you, Center, threat'... Well, clearly he didn't know the sheer gravity of what he'd done, and thaaaat was probably Madara not actually explaining who it was.
Hm.
How to say this, since his father would stop listening after his Center's name. He'd have to put it last, for all that Madara wanted to scream it to the skies. "I fell out of several days of genjutsu," he snapped, "to find my captor dead on my Center's knife. Headshot. No hesitation. Still looking a bit stunned about it, because Senju Tobirama should've killed me."
His father's eyes flashed red. "You were captured by Senju Tobirama?"
"Rescued by him," Madara couldn't quite help snapping. "Tobirama then looted the body, chopped off the man's head, and staked it in front of the Kurama clan compound with a threat stuffed in its mouth," Madara finished increasingly dreamingly. His Center was amazing. The incredible surgical strike of a plan, thought up on the spot out of sheer moral offense. He'd been so adorable shoving that stake up the head's throat, with his little nose wrinkled up from vicious plotting. And then his smirk when they left, just barely showing he had a lost tooth second to the right...
"Focus, Madara." His father rubbed a hand over his face, muttering something only half audible about going to regret and teenage. Couldn't be at all important. "This is a fine mess you've gotten us into."
It was not. Nothing about finding his Center could be... um. Okay, there was the Senju problem, but that could be fixed with a little kidna-- wait, no, that wouldn't work. His (amazing, wonderful, cunning and vicious) Center could sense Izuna from well across the border, he'd notice them coming. Which also ruled out assassinating Butsuma, who never left his stupid compound.
(Offering a ceasefire, much less a treaty, was just out of the question as long as that warmongering word-Madara-wasn't-supposed-to-know led the Senju.)
"You're starting to see the problem," Tajima said flatly.
Yes, but he also had proof that Tobirama wasn't against peace. He no doubt could sense the entire clan from Senju territory and Butsuma hadn't come to kill them all. No way he could know, then: no way Tobirama had told him. The problem was Butsuma.
Maybe throwing a sob story at the daimyo? Boo hoo, we want to stop fighting but. Uh. "We have to stop the child hunting squads," Madara said in blank horror. (Tobirama's little brothers.) Tajima slapped a hand against his own face, but that wasn't a no. So, sob story, boo hoo our lord we want peace but can't risk the Senju betraying it, and then when Butsuma refused the daimyo they'd have all the clans on their side and--!
The daimyo hated shinobi. He'd never go for it. Why hadn't they stabbed that guy yet?
Madara gave his father a somewhat lost look. He needed his Center. Needed him. But the stupid Senju...
Sage. The first time he and Tobirama were on the same battlefield, he would attack whichever Uchiha dared raise a weapon to him. Knowing he was an Uchiha's Center or not. Madara couldn't do anything else, it was as inevitable as needing to breathe. And they couldn't just... not field Madara, he'd have to be chained down and unconscious every single time or he'd just follow them anyway. And the Senju certainly weren't going to keep Tobirama safely at home...
The world reddened again.
"I swear by the Sage, you are every one of my gray hairs," Tajima muttered. "Turn those off."
"What?" Madara growled.
"Your Sharingan."
Madara stared. "I don't have that yet," he said, realizing even as he said it and the red haze faded that the color wasn't from his temper. Oh. "When...?" This was supposed to be a... not a happy occasion, not with how the eyes woke, but a notable one at least, and he hadn't noticed. He certainly hadn't had them before Tobirama's rescue, and the only thing that'd really happened since was... "I activated them trying to attack you?!"
His father just gave him a flat stare. "You're ten and had your first Center-rage," he informed Madara. "I wouldn't expect anything less, though you are very lucky you're my son and I love you. It will not happen again." He paused, letting that sink in, then softened almost imperceptibly. "On either of our parts," he sighed. "I will change the hunts to captures, rather than reveal your Center. You have until Butsuma fields him to learn some self-control. If you go feral in battle, I will mercy strike. Understand?"
Madara swallowed. "Yes, father."
Tajima stood, shoulders heavy, and left.
He did not remove the straps.
So Madara could barely even flinch in failed escape when Izuna pounced.
(A bright grin bleeding from ear to ear, like a kushisake-onna.) But no, Izuna wasn't grinning at all; his eyes were wide with eager, insulted curiosity. "You actually managed to bite Dad!" he whisper-shouted incredulously. "He was super mad," Izuna continued, "but like... really weird about it. Like that time I burnt half the roof off."
Madara certainly remembered that. About three years ago, when Izuna was still trying to figure out Great Fireball. ... Only a few months after their youngest brother and their mother died. Izuna had been weird about the house for a long time after that, throwing hysterical fits when people tried to take him out of sight of it, but also trying to avoid being inside. Until one particularly strong attempt at the fireball went wayward and hit the thatch.
They'd reroofed the main house in tile after that. Several years early, but, well, it wasn't like they were going to have children in the house again for a couple of decades. They didn't need expensive baby-thatch to keep fires too cool and quick-burning to really catch in the structural timbers.
It made enough of a difference that Izuna returned to willingly sleeping in the house.
Madara explained about Tobirama -- without names this time, he wasn't stupid -- and Izuna's eyes went wider.
"A Center," he breathed. Then, "Can you even get a Center before your sharingan?"
"Apparently yeah," Madara replied, rolling his eyes. "Since I just did."
Izuna made a face, but continued on as if he hadn't just asked a dumb question. "So who is it?"
"... Let me up and don't hit me when I tell you."
A blink. Then Izuna's eyes narrowed. "It better not be that stupid Senju," he warned, yanking at buckles. Madara hesitated. "No." Izuna kicked him in the shin (OW, Izuna had stupidly pointy feet). "You can't. Not him. Anybody but him!"
Madara was going to regret this so much. "How about the other one?"
Izuna stared as if Madara had answered in weird Court poetry so old that people just pretended to understand it. "What."
"The younger Senju. The albino," Madara clarified. "The one you tried to hit at the river." .... okay maybe it was a good thing Izuna hadn't finished letting Madara up, he could feel the red trying to rise bloody clarity around the edges of his vision. Their father was one thing, but Izuna would actually get hurt if Madara didn't control this.
(Tobirama determinedly sawing off the Kurama monster's head, blood darkening and tacky halfway to his elbows, blocky precise handwriting with ragged and lumpy brushwork -- field ink was the worst -- demanding a blood debt for Madara, "I'm going to terrify them with how precisely I place this thing.")
Sharp jabbing interrupted his flash of soothing memory. Ow ow "OW, Izuna--!"
"You stupid idiot!" Izuna had not yet started learning tenketsu or pressure points, but that wasn't stopping him. Madara twisted under Izuna, the precautionary straps loose enough for him to wiggle somewhat free, and he caught Izuna's hands.
Izuna snapped a foot up and nearly got Madara in the jaw. It unbalanced them enough that Madara managed to flip Izuna over his head and scramble loose, tackling Izuna to the tatami.
"A Senju!" Izuna yowled, clawing at Madara and only catching loose clothing and hair (this, this was why Madara was never going to cut it). "Dummy! Jerk! Traitor!"
"I am not!" Madara countered, getting Izuna in a headlock (for all of half a second before he had to dodge snapping teeth). "You can't choose Centers on purpose!"
"You did too!"
"Did not!"
They crashed into the shoji with a rattling thump that almost knocked it out of its tracks. Izuna got a fist into Madara's hair and twisted; Madara did the same and slapped away scratching fingers again.
"Boys!" They both froze at the deep shout from farther inside the house. Then, warily, they disentangled themselves.
Izuna gave one more sharp yank to Madara's hair anyway. "A Senju," Izuna repeated, glaring and sullen, his arms crossing.
Madara had to fix this (before Dad came looking to break up a renewed fight). "Look," he said, not quite sure what he could say-- wait. The problem was Butsuma-that-badword. And the fact that Tobirama could sense an assassin coming from... well, probably almost the entire way to the Uchiha compound. But. But. Tobirama had rescued him on the way back from a fairly distant mission. If they set their best sensors on watch at the border or something, looking for Tobirama to leave... "The brothers are the only heirs, and they both want peace. All we have to do is wait for Tobirama to leave and kill Butsuma."
Izuna lit up. "Did Dad tell you that?"
Uh. "No..."
"Well why not?" Izuna huffed. Why not indeed. "That's a great idea! But why do we have to wait for that weirdo--" Madara shot Izuna a sharp look. "-- your Center to leave? Just so he doesn't find the body?"
"He's a powerful enough sensor to identify you from across the border."
Izuna paused. "... Okay. That's. A reason. What about summons? Can I send my weasels in? They specialize in sneaking! I bet even he'd never notice."
Madara was not going to take that bet, but Izuna's weasels were small enough that they'd spot Tobirama trying to get at them if they hid well enough, and be able to unsummon themselves safely. "They'll even be able to tell us when Tobirama's on a really long mission," Madara mused. "And then Butsuma can have a tragic accident." Izuna beamed, and Madara grinned back.
"Let's make it really embarrassing," Izuna said gleefully.
Izuna was the best little brother.
-0-0-0
"You cannot be serious."
Tajima narrowed his eyes, wishing he could sigh or rub his face or show any hint that he wasn't made of stone and hatred. "Entirely," he informed Yashiro flatly. "No more child-hunting."
Several of the Elders made sharp sounds of offense, and a white-faced Chiaki snapped, "And let the Senju grow up into more enemies to murder our children?"
"I said what I said." Tajima shot the woman an all but murderous look. "You aren't the only one who's lost children to the blasted Senju." His first heir, his daughters, a son who hadn't quite figured out crawling yet... But. "We aren't going to lose our heir to this war too."
"So set him aside!" Yashiro yelled. "You have a perfectly good spare available! This is not fuiinjutsu!"
"Isn't it?" Tajima asked, as quiet as a knife in the dark. Yashiro's attitude stuttered against that blade. "Come up with a crime heinous enough for me to disown a ten-year-old." The elders' eyes flicked a hint wider, where other clans would blink in surprise. "One that won't betray clan secrets, or make the other clans wonder why we didn't execute him. I'll wait."
Silence. By the wavering disturbance in their various expressions, Tajima could tell they got the point. There wasn't a way, politically, to set Madara aside this young.
"... You could," Yumi sneered hesitantly, "just say he's in love with a Sen--"
"He's ten," Tajima snapped. "The other clans aren't Uchiha. They would think it's a puppy crush, something he'll grow out of in six months flat. We'd look like rabid lunatics and lose face." Yumi opened her mouth, but Tajima didn't let the idiot get another word out. "Which means losing allies and mission contracts."
The Elders (finally) subsided, the dissenters grumbling, though at least Yamatohime and a few others looked much less stony than they had since... well, since Tajima had ordered their child-hunting policy to counter Butsuma's.
Tajima inclined his head. "Now, if you'll let me finish," he pointedly did not glance at Yashiro, "the child hunting is over, but -- Elder Chiaki -- I am not so foolish as to allow our enemies their soldiers. All children are to be captured."
Yashiro blew up. Again. "We can't afford that!"
"Elder." Why did Yashiro have to be the sole survivor of his squad? (Tajima should feel bad for thinking that, but by the time Tajima was old enough to form memories properly, Yashiro had been a teenager. One so sullen that Tajima hadn't realized Yashiro knew his name wasn't 'Brat' until he was eleven. Sentimental feelings between them, there were decidedly not.)
The other three of that squad had been just as unpleasant as Yashiro, but at least they hadn't been on any councils. "Children don't need to eat much," Tajima said flatly. Not that Yashiro had ever bothered to raise or teach children, or even work in the clan stores, to learn that. "Some stewed greens and a handful of rice is enough. Capture them." More grumbling. "Don't tell me our esteemed warriors are too weak to catch a child without harming it?"
That at least got gasps that Yashiro couldn't protest without turning the others' offense on him. It would have to do.
Tajima had no illusions that this wouldn't just make the most fervent hunters hide the bodies, but he had enough control of mission assignments he could break up their little cliques and have at least one shinobi willing to report disobedience in each team. Hopefully.
Sage, Madara, I hope this kid is worth what you think.
-0-0-0
Days later...
"Another one?!"
Butsuma didn't even seem to hear Hashirama. (He never did. Not him, not Mother when she'd been alive, not... not Tobirama. Not unless Tobirama was saying something Butsuma wanted to hear. All of which was 'yes sir' and 'targets over there'.) (Never anyone who said anything but that.)
Hashirama had to try anyway. "Father, he's not-- what do you even think he's doing on these missions?" No response. "He isn't getting Yu's personal contacts or -- or anything like that! He'd be an apprentice for that!"
Still nothing.
How many times had Tobirama told Butsuma that Hashirama was out at the river (had he at all?), out on the border where he could get caught by a child-hunting squad? (Hashirama's head still stung from Touka slapping him with that point.) How many times before he finally landed on 'Uchiha to kill' and got Butsuma's attention?
Hashirama hissed through his teeth, his eyes burning. "How can you stand for your son to be shown off as a personal pet?"
"Enough, Hashirama," Butsuma finally snapped. "Tobirama is doing as he's told. Which is more than I can say for you."
"A personal pet!" Hashirama repeated, refusing to quail under Butsuma's cold eye. "Yu hates him, Father!" Even more than most of the clan. One of the far too many of them who'd bought into Aunt Shoto's 'evil omens' nonsense about all of Butsuma's children. (Hashirama himself included. Up until he manifested the Mokuton. She only pretended to not loathe him after that.)
If Touka didn't cling to her cousins to spite her bitter mother... had ever felt anything but complete screaming horror at the possibility of becoming the heir... Hashirama wasn't sure what would have become of their family.
He certainly wouldn't have ever realized there could be child-hunting squads at the river, or understood what kind of missions a 'pet' could -- would -- have to take, far too soon. Not without a Touka who loved them enough to explain.
He drew himself up as coldly as he could. (It wasn't very much. He tried to think pine-in-winter, tried to mimic Tobirama bitterly grumbling about adults too stupid to make treaties. Touka, the day she finally knocked the naginata master onto his butt. That same master eyeing every girl in the class, you are the last line of defense for your household, and not expecting a single one of them to manage more than blocking nursery doors with their bodies while men came to the rescue.) "One of these days, Father, he's going to sell Tobirama off and swear it was an offer he couldn't refuse!"
Butsuma groaned in exasperation and backhanded him through the door.
Neither of them noticed the tiny white weasel wriggling out from under the house as Butsuma dragged Hashirama off to the training grounds. Neither did any of the other Senju, their eyes flicking away from the house as the sound of the fight spread into the street.
Iwao ran for the compound wall, wriggled through a snake burrow under one of the foundation stones, and darted off into the forest. He deeply wished that reverse summoning would let him bring himself back without a marker that Izuna was too young to manage yet. Getting re-summoned back to Izuna's den at set times... for some missions that would work, but for this one would risk him getting pulled away in the middle of important intel like this.
Still, it was a very long run for a little weasel like Iwao, and the full moon was riding high in the sky by the time he reached the Uchiha compound again. He openly climbed the fire-hardened walls, snapping at a moth fluttering around a lamp under the guard walkways on instinct (mm, peppery-- no, Iwao, focus! He was the best of Izuna's spies! And he had important information! So quickly, too. He'd get the good snacks for this!)
The best weasel ever scrabbled up onto the engawa behind the clan head's house, letting his claws screek on the polished wood because he was also the most polite weasel, and landed wriggling in Izuna's lap.
"Iwao!" Izuna said, scritching very nicely through Iwao's belly fur. "You're back!"
Mm belly scritches. "That place is horrible, little boss," Iwao said, twisting to get his fur combed through the scritches.
"Well yeah, it's Senju land. What've you got?"
Aw, serious time. Iwao rolled half-off Izuna's lap, onto his paws, bracing himself on Izuna's knee to face the kid eye-to-eye. "It's super messed up over there, little boss. Even for Senju, I think." His last summoner had been an Uchiha too. The Senju weren't like that when Iwao was a pup learning sneaky business at his mother's side. "The tree-boy, he was complaining about some mission the other one got sent on, all 'Father he's gonna get sold like a pet'," Izuna's eyes widened, a flicker of glee turning into shock; a shadow jerked in the room behind him, hasty furious rustles of fabric and paper, "and the man just hit him right out of the room! Just POW and the kid went sailing like three tatami away in a five-mat room! Right out the door, knocked the shoji off its track and everything!"
The shoji behind Izuna slammed open. "He did what?!" Madara hissed, hoarse and squeaky. Iwao ducked back into Izuna's lap. The older kid's eyes spun, red threaded with violet, a single tomoe going circle-pause, circle-pause. "I did not just hear you say that Butsuma hit Hashirama."
"Um."
"Or that Tobirama," Madara's voice curled around the name like an angry cat with one kitten, all bristling fur and shining claws and teeth, "is being sold."
Iwao curled more defensively against Izuna. "Tree-boy said 'What do you even think he's doing on these missions?'" Iwao was the best at reporting. Verbatim was the most important skill past surviving, Mother said. (Surviving being paramount, so Iwao kept a mental claw on his self-dispersal home and his eyes on Madara's center of mass.) "'He's not getting Yu's personal contacts or anything, he'd be shown off as an apprentice if he were. How can you stand for your son to be shown off as a personal pet--'"
The shoji cracked under Madara's grip.
Izuna swallowed. "Niichan...?"
Madara sucked in a breath. Then another. Then he slowly dragged his hand off the wood, charred splinters tumbling from between his fingers. "We," he said carefully, "are taking this to Dad. Now."
-0-0-0
"You. Boy."
Tobirama startled like the civilian child he was supposed to be, glancing over at the dark-haired, moderately-bearded man Yu ("Danna-sama, you don't use my name, boy.") had been drinking with. Ensconced at a corner table in the gambling den, the room's pall of smoke thinner over their heads as it drifted out a transom window high near the ceiling, Yu ("Danna-sama") curtly beckoned him over.
He stood from his obedient kneel on the stone step up from the genkan, and didn't wobble when he climbed up to the floor proper and knelt once again beside them, bowing deeply.
A calloused finger tipped his chin up, dragging Tobirama to sit in seiza like he wasn't some lowly indentured servant. The dark-haired man -- Tobirama knew his chakra, knew his most recent destination had been the Uchiha compound, but the man wandered so much Tobirama didn't actually know if he was affiliated with, much less related to, the Uchiha at all. He spent nearly as much time among the Hyuuga and the Akimichi triad compounds, and even then it was a fraction of the time he spent in civilian cities like this one. His element was of no help, either; he had a weak Wind affinity, of all things, with Fire such a distant secondary that his chakra felt like standing outside next to an open bakery door in the winter.
The man tilted Tobirama's face this way and that, eyes narrowed with more attention than Tobirama had ever seen him show before. Then the man's hand dropped, but before Tobirama could return to his bow, the man snapped, "Match this," and hummed a high-pitch note.
What?
But with Y--Danna-sama glaring a very clear 'obey your elders' at him, Tobirama did so in complete bewilderment, which only increased when the man slung the shamisen off his back. "Copy this," he said, plucking a few quick notes before turning the instrument to Tobirama. Again, Tobirama obeyed. Then came, "smile," and "say something," to which Tobirama echoed "Something?"
The man took the shamisen back and looked at Danna-sama. "Five ryo."
What?!
Danna-sama frowned. "He's not for sale."
"Of course he's not," the man agreed, insincere and scoffing. "Five ryo for his contract." He glanced at Tobirama again. "He's wasted as a teaboy. I can make a passable musician out of him. Pull customers with that exotic hair... the right shade of eye makeup will darken those eyes down close enough to brown," he mused absently. "I can make it work. Five ryo..." Danna-sama didn't look convinced, but he was clearly wavering.
Danna-sama, no, Butsuma will be furious. Anija would...
"Five ryo and a rumor I've heard. Worth it if you find a Senju to sell it to fast enough -- I'd sit on it, but I'm not going to be in Senju-allied towns for a while, chances are it'll be worthless by the time I run into one."
Danna-sama considered that. "... Tell me the info, and if it's worth it I'll take the ryo and give you the boy."
No!
The man's chakra twitched in -- offense? Why? It was his offer in the first place! -- but he simply smirked, radiating smug assurance that resonated oddly in his chakra with the glint of fury. "Word is," he said, leaning in closer to refill his sake, "the Uchiha heir's sick."
Tobirama's heart froze.
"So he's got a cold," Danna-sama said, falsely dismissive over a spark of glee. "So what?"
The man (why had Danna-sama not noticed he never gave his name?) flicked the sake bottle to keep it from dripping on the table. "Never said it was a cold. Nobody's saying what it is, at least not to anybody outside the clan," and that rang with enough truth it made Tobirama's stomach twist, "but it's apparently serious enough he hasn't run a mission for three weeks."
The Kurama clan incident. That man, with the genjutsu -- why had Tobirama not thought there could be something else? Who knows what that man might have had Madara eating? Or, or he might've had some sort of drug to make Madara more susceptible to genjutsu, Uchiha were supposed to be resistant and Madara... he had the Sharingan, Tobirama didn't know how long but it hadn't been before that mission...
What happened if a Sharingan woke under genjutsu? There had to be a reason the Uchiha didn't use genjutsu to awaken their eyes as early as possible, did it hurt them? (Had it hurt Madara?) (Why hadn't he noticed?!)
Tobirama only barely registered money changing hands, Da-- Yu's rough shove dumping him almost on the man's travel pack, the man catching him just a handspan from falling onto the shamisen. "Don't break my shit," the man said sharply.
"Yessir," Tobirama murmured.
-0-0-0
-0-0-0
-0-0-0
Notes for the rest, some of it contradicting what's already written:
behind the scenes, yashiro immediately starts plotting to arrange an accident for madara as a clan-protecting mercy kill, completely altruistic, honest. whether zetsu gets involved or not, idk. zetsu might not even be around right now, he could be off somewhere else poking at failsafe plans, secure in the knowledge that there really isn't much to do now that madara's down to one sanity point (izuna) and butsuma's a warmongering nutjob that won't allow a ceasefire -- eventually all four kids will be on the battlefields, and zetsu will need to be there to manipulate things to make a senju (preferably hashi or tobi) kill izuna, but that won't be for a few more years.
(i presume it's a good two or three more years away, since hashirama and madara didn't recognize each other from a battlefield, so they might not have been deployed yet. missions yes, open battles no. and tobirama and izuna are a couple years younger)
anyway.
izuna's got excellent spy summons. hashirama has a tendency right now to screaming fights with butsuma that end with getting hit. tobirama has a tendency right now to getting assigned horrible missions when he isn't being 'trained' by madmen. one of these missions could break through hashi's sulking about the river.
but then what would the mission be? playing personal not-for-sale pet for a senju who deals in shady contacts and goes nowhere near upperclass people? oh that would be good for how tobi learns sociopolitical manipulation without being witnessed by nobles as both clan spare and servant boy. Hashirama furious bc personal pet, he's not getting contacts or whatever out of this, father, he'd be shown off as an apprentice not a pet if he was, and Yu hates him, one of these days he'll sell Tobirama off and swear it was an offer he couldn't refuse!
(which of course happens immediately, Tajima sending one of his most useful spies out to do exactly that -- this happens to be Rinmaru from another fic of mine, a half-Uchiha musician who can pass as not-one if he grows a bit of facial hair; he generally works among the middle and lower classes, getting intel that nobles and the wealthy would overlook)
(the "offer": super valuable intel (gossip) that the Sarutobi are gonna betray the Senju, oh yeah totally, honest, they only allied with the Senju in the first place wanting some of that 'thousand skills', and when was the last time a Senju taught the Sarutobi anything? That's right, never. Dunno if they'll try talks with the Uchiha, they've got some weird religious hangup, but nobody puts religion over jutsu, ne? And boy do the Sarutobi need it, you ever see how crappy their kid-nin are? It's like their little brains don't turn on til halfway through their teens. No wonder they're mad at the Senju, as many kids as they gotta be losing.)
(no it's actually that the Sarutobi don't bother teaching kids all that well until they've proven it's worth the effort -- which then becomes a nasty cycle of only survivors are worth training to survive)
(the betrayal plot is only mostly a lie)
there's also "something spooked the kurama, they've pulled all their people off missions and have holed up in their damn castle"
people have been disappearing or coming out of the region insane or having lost time for years, the kurama make a killing offering 'safe passage' (truth: they genjutsu anybody who doesn't pay out the nose) to traders and pilgrims to some ruins associated with the Sage, word is the whatever haunting their territory just killed one of the strongest of them and left the head at the gate unseen, they're freaked and the sarutobi/religious are taking it as omens, red eyes are also a bad omen to the sarutobi
huh zetsu might have screwed with the sarutobi too, religious this all up so they meddle with uchiha peace and prosperity
izuna's summons come back ok little boss we gotta talk.
Tajima like excuse me personal what
Tajima all "ok I want to talk to everybody who has shady out-clan contacts, do any of them have a pet child without dealing in slavery, you're fucking kidding me, you are going to make an offer that man can't refuse and bring the kid back here safely are we understood"
Pet kid: *is indeed Tobirama, who went along with this idiocy thinking he has to keep his clan member's cover, it won't be difficult to escape once they get to Uchiha territory or even inside the compound, this Uchiha's chakra barely ever gets near the main family's, they won't get close enough to recognize him before he gets away*
Uchiha: *takes Tobirama straight to Tajima*
Tajima: I honestly thought Weasel-sama was mistaken. I owe her so many trinkets. What the fuck, Butsuma. (A pet, what was he even setting you up fo-- .... honeypots?)
Tobirama: *hsst*
"you rescued my son"
"did not"
it'll be less than a week before yashiro tries to drown madara in a bucket and frame tobirama. this fails on so many levels bc of how good a sensor tobirama is, he rushes off from wherever he happens to be and tackles yashiro off of madara with like six chasing guards as witness.
(at which point he has his first bloodbending accident, so at least yashiro is no longer a problem and quite a few people who weren't buying "peace or heir will go center-mad" are going "ack yes peace we would very much like to have peace before this talent pops up again on the other side of the battlefield plz")
meanwhile, hashirama is absolutely flipping out (and so is touka), but this is also a huge wake-up call to grow up, get other people to help search for tobirama, figure out politics enough to build this help into clan backing despite his age so he can depose butsuma ASAP (that part's pretty easy, because look, butsuma doesn't care that his own kid got sold off, so what does that say about what he'd let happen to YOURS? a battlefield or mission death is one thing, we've all suffered that and he at least risks his own neck on the field too, but this?)
and then the uchiha start capturing instead of killing senju kids
but they don't advertise this so it's all mysterious disappearances
and butsuma is like fucking weak-ass soldiers, what are they doing in training, playing patty-cake? and sets harsher training probably and STILL the disapperances are happening
and hashirama is like AHEM FELLOW CLANSMEN you might recall what I told you after that guy sold tobirama off
the deposing goes very quickly after that and hashirama bans kid missions
(after a few months of wary nobody-attacking, they start talks, and it manages to not blow up when the uchiha eventually reveal they've got all the kids and tobirama captured and unharmed, though it's a very close thing until the kids admit they were being treated fairly well for what it was and sometimes ppl snuck in extra food and stuff)
zetsu comes back some two or three years later, when izuna can reasonably be expected to be on the field, only to discover the senju and uchiha are in a tentative ceasefire with no butsuma to be found.
the life debt from the kurama clan has to play into curbstomping zetsu in the end, but i don't actually know how. ... or do I?
keanblade's gods fic with ninshu. zetsu just... crumbled away when his purpose was gone.
so. is he at all susceptible to genjutsu?
(maybe madara panics when the whispering in the shadows starts)
(maybe he calls in that life debt just to have experts find and dig out the genjutsu that must have been placed on him. but what they find is so much worse.)
(we need a yamanaka.
we have chura, she's half...?
unless she knows their clan jutsu, we need one. the genjutsu damage is there, but it's... old. ages old. lifetimes of psychic scar tissue, genjutsu and trauma intertwined as clearly as cauterization -- both burns and knives worsening the other.)
(so much of the genjutsu scarring still holds traces of the whispers' rot. not all of it -- kurama arakan is fresh and livid on the top layers of madara's soul -- but so very, very much.)
(induce past-life dreaming to find out why it's targeted madara so constantly?)
(bring tobirama and chura in with the kurama and yamanaka -- his Center, an Uchiha-specialized therapist, the genjutsu healer, the mindwalker making this all work)
this is where we discover tobi learning to synchronize chakra signatures
every new life is landing on a water mirror, seeing the face, and plunging through -- and there is always the fucking Sage glowing off in the distance like an increasingly-sharp mirage, only going solid once they reach Indra
we shouldn't have to see every one. shouldn't try, actually, it's very likely we're looking at dozens of lives and we don't have time for that. but we can skip, since the way trauma builds on and reenforces itself can be used in reverse here. not that we'll be taking it away, debriding a scar just leaves another one, but... well, clan training, you literally wouldn't know the words if I tried to explain it. consider it like jumping over stairs instead of taking every one, we'll hit several landings instead.
(a life where he was a distant branch Uchiha, and fled to sea after a mission showed him the whispers stopped away from land --- hunted down and killed by his own clan, his ship sunk, cold eyes watching to make sure he drowned)
(a life where the whispers started in the cradle, where his talking about it got him mercy-killed as a toddler before he could ever meet Asura) (where his first word -- her first word -- was 'hate' and she sang creepy little songs about blood and internal organs -- the tummy's connected to the liver/the liver's connected to the spleen, and eyes-shoulders-hearts and lungs-hearts and lungs -- where she pulled a teddy bear apart and asked momma why teddy only had stuffing inside) (where she pats her sobbing parents' arms and tells them not to be sad, the moon will fix it) (where one night she goes to sleep and never wakes up)
(a life where Zetsu kidnapped him young, making him watch atrocities and furious when that very much did not trigger Sharingan, much less Rinnegan; Uchiha need personal attachment in their current life to develop their eyes, so even murdering Asura's newest incarnation did not work)
(a life where he was left be to have children, only for Zetsu to hire a reluctant Asura to assassinate them all -- which he did, this lifetime being one where Senju resources were thin and Asura's parent prone to withholding food for disobedience -- this life got so close to Rinnegan before Madara suicided)
(Zetsu spent so many lives experimenting to find out what worked)
(what sort of parent condemns their children to the wheel like that? throws them into a future with a guaranteed enemy and no interest in what kind of people will be caring for them? tajima -- and the yamanakas here -- would just like to talk.)
(maybe the kurama clan has a last-resort forbidden jutsu that, if they do it right, if they match their chakra frequencies and all have the same image, if the clan has enough people and strength and skill, they can be a collective Arakan. Once. Probably once per living memory, like the jutsu scorches their chakra pathways, and the clan would have to wait for the kids who couldn't participate to have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren before there are potentially enough of them again.)
(maybe even at ten, at twelve, tobirama could figure out how to make the jutsu work when the clan is still a few people short -- two or four or so. soothing the flow and controlling the chakra loss from 95 to 99 percent efficiency. figuring out how to tie in himself, or himself and madara, or them and hashirama, to boost the power. to 'flavor' the genjutsu so zetsu doesn't realize in time to throw it off.)
(what if all that's needed to destroy zetsu is to make him believe kaguya's returned?)