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Chapter Text

The Senju Clan was one of the few clans in Fire Country that were not vassals – or vassals of vassals, or vassals of vassals of vassals and so on – to the reigning Uchiha Clan, the Clan that had decades ago conquered Fire Country and great swathes of the neighboring countries as well, eventually killing the Daimyo and naming themselves Emperors of Fire.

As a Shinobi Clan, they had refused to allow other rival clans to exist, and forced all other clans, even the haughty and proud other great doujutsu using clan, the Hyuuga, to bow to them. All the clans under the Uchiha’s rule had to check with their rulers before accepting any mission, and the Uchiha could seize an interesting mission for themselves or their favoured vassals whenever they wished, or simply tell their servant clans that they were not to take this mission - which meant that in order to take missions, the lifeblood and money-flow of a shinobi clan, the various clans needed to be liked by their Emperors.

There were a few holdouts, such as the cunning snakelike Yashagoro clan or the wild lightning-white Hatake and their wolves, but those holdouts were far lessened then they had been before the Uchiha had seized control, and eventually would probably give in and swear fealty.

The Senju, meanwhile, were unaffected by the Uchiha’s take over for much the same reason they were not forced to be vassals – most people didn’t even know they existed.

The Senju had never participated in the wars between most clans. They lived in a secluded compound in the middle of a sprawling forest that only the Senju could navigate, and that was commonly considered to be haunted, in the middle of a mountainous valley. Their most common interactions were with the small monasteries and villages that littered the surrounding mountains, and most of the missions they took were for things such as requests for healing or bodyguarding or the occasional courier mission.

The Senju’s Kekkai Genkai, the Mokuton, allowed the user control of all plants, and so they had no need to worry about food, with farms and orchards and gardens filled with fruits and vegetables and herbs, and the forest around them to hunt in for meat. The Mokuton could grow the cotton and hemp used for clothing, while they also kept a stock of sheep for their wool. They had shelter, food, protection from invaders - in all honestly, the only reasons Senju ventured outside their forest for missions at all were either on missions of mercy, as other’s didn’t have the Senju affinity for healing, or for money for luxuries, which is what Tobirama had done.

Tobirama, unlike the rest of his clan, was eternally curious, often questioning and inventing and experimenting – and experimenting was expensive. The day Tobirama had turned 12 he’d sat down and written out all the things he wanted to stock his dream lab with – and then calculated the costs.

It would take a lot of money, so he’d ventured out to find missions to take, and found that the most lucrative were assassination missions. It turned out that the Uchiha, by setting up a monopoly on missions, had also created a vacuum – if you wanted to assassinate someone the Uchiha didn’t want dead, or even an Uchiha themselves, you could hardly go to them, could you?

While any other Senju raised child would probably have balked at that, Tobirama had just shrugged, and set about finding ways to successfully assassinate his targets. Most of the big paying ones involved the politically powerful, those who had guards and walls and the protection of both Samurai and Shinobi, so Tobirama had spent the next little while practicing his stealth and planning. He needed a way to assassinate his targets, get away clean, and also live on his own when his small pouch of money – pressed into his hands by a teary Hashirama as he left, and accompanied by one of his brother’s great, rib-cracking hugs – ran out.

Eventually, he hit on a way to do all three.

~~

O-Ume-San was the proprietor of the most popular Okiya in the Capital of the Land of Fire, and she had gotten to that position through being very smart, very discreet, very cautious – and also seizing the rare opportunities that came her way. When the Uchiha had taken over the capital in a rain of fire a good three decades ago she had not protested, simply bowed and smiled and accepted the slight increase in taxes and done her best to learn the tastes of the most powerful men in the world. It was these traits that had lead to her Okiya becoming the most popular one, as she had quickly become the Okiya that the Uchiha clan went to when they wanted either an entertainer for their meetings without foreign dignitaries, or a warm body to love them for the night. She’d also learned their tastes – particularly towards those with pale hair and skin, the lighter the better, and red eyes.

Apparently, they found them holy.

So when one of the men who guarded her Okiya from the dangers of rowdy customers entered, small dirty form of what seemed to be a street rat in his hand, and informed her that the small boy had been scavenging for food in the bins outside, and managed to bite the man when he was trying to chase him off, and the street rat peered up at her through dirty, tangled, matted bangs and revealed red eyes - well. She had seen an opportunity and immediately pounced on it.

“Oh, you poor dear,” she had cooed, emanating the sense of a warm, compassionate, motherly figure with practiced ease as she bent down and looked the ragged boy in the face. “You must be so hungry – come! We’ll get you fed and bathed and give you a warm bed for the night, how does that sound?” And she’d bustled the blinking, shocked and suspicious child away from her guard and towards the kitchen, where a quick but thorough interrogation had taken place as she gently asked the boy questions while feeding him the plain broth and rice that wouldn’t upset a stomach used to starvation.

“And what’s your name, dear?”

The boy had looked at her as though she was asking him if he liked to fly. “Don’t have a name,” he’d mumbled, clutching the bowl close to him with one hand and speedily eating everything she’d given him as though expecting it to be taken away the moment his back was turned.

“There’s nothing people call you?”

The boy’s brow furrowed up as he thought. “Demon,” he said. “White demon…I don’t like it.”

In the bathroom, she’d learned why they called him that as the soap and water and vigorous scrubbing cleared off what seemed like years’ worth of layered dirt and grime and revealed – pale skin, smoother than silk and lighter than milk. Those deep red eyes she’d already noticed. Fine bone structure, soft, full, pink lips and the crowning glory – white hair, tinged silver in the dying light, long and full and fluffy as a servant dried it off with a towel. Looking at the marvelous creature before, O-Ume-san smiled. She was going to make so much money.

“Dear,” she said, “how would you like to stay here with me, and have three full meals a day, a roof over your head, and the chance to learn a calling?”

~~~

Later, lying in a small room, Tobirama reflected that that had not been nearly as hard as he had thought it would. An experimental seal based off his older brother’s regeneration had grown his hair (and also his nails, which he’d simply bitten off) and he’d spent the next little while making himself look like a child from the streets and learning the mannerisms and accent those children showed. And now he was in and would soon start learning to be a Geisha. Honestly, the strangest part of the whole thing was that he’d learned that in the capital, hair and skin and eyes like his were considered beautiful, prized. It was odd, to a boy who had grown up among the broad shouldered, broad featured, tanned and dark haired and eyes Senju, but it was…nice, in a strange way.

Using his sensing to make sure no one was watching – and they weren’t, he really had fooled the Okami, an older woman so blinded by greed and sure of her superiority that it had been easy to pull her strings – and he bit his thumb and with a few small hand gestures summoned one of his smaller cats.

With a puff of smoke, a small tabby appeared and promptly sat down and started licking her paw. “Summoner,” she greeted.

“Okuri-san,” Tobirama whispered back. “How are my brothers?”

When he’d announced he was leaving, Hashirama had made a big production of it, wailing and crying with a cloud hanging over his head, and Itama and Kawarama had followed him. Tobirama had sighed and, after kicking Hashirama out of the way to even more overdramatic wailing, set about comforting his two little brothers with the fact that he wouldn’t be gone long and that he’d bring them back interesting presents, and eventually their tears had dried. As he’d stood on the doorstep they’d crowded around him, getting in some last hugs – and Hashirama, serious for once, had also pulled him into a tight, rib-cracking hug, and whispered to him to be careful. Hashirama, with his Mokuton, was one of the few Senju clan members that usually left their safe, hidden home in the forest, and so he’d seen more of the outside world then Tobirama, who had seen that he was serious for once, and nodded and taken his words to heart. Hashirama had also showed him the cat contract that Tobirama had signed – and Hashirama’s name on it next to his, written in blood.

With them sharing a contract, that meant they could communicate through passing letters to their summons.

“The kittens are fine. The littlest one missed you so much he tried to bleach his hair,” Okuri replied, jumping up on the bed beside him. “His brothers found and stopped him before he could finish, but he still managed half his head, so now he’s half black and half white.”

Tobirama paused and tried to picture that, shaking his head while ignoring the small warm feeling in his chest at the proof of his littlest brother’s love.

“The other kitten is normal, though he still doesn’t know how to pet properly,” Okuri continued, tail lashing in memory of sticky hands ruffling her fur the wrong way. Tobirama winced.

“Kawarama is very young,” he soothed, reaching out and stroking the cat gently between her ears. Okuri’s bright yellow eyes closed in pleasure as she putted her head into his hand. “I’m sure he’ll learn.”

“He should learn from you, summoner,” the cat said. “We’ve trained you well.”

“And Hashirama?”

Okuri’s tail lashed as her ears went back.

“Ah.”

“If it were not for you, we would not have accepted him as a summoner. He is far too loud, and messy, and he has no hunting skill – he is the type who would let the mouse go, instead of pouncing when it is cornered. He should find a contract with the sloths,” Okuri said with epic disdain, before narrowing her yellow eyes and delivering the finishing blow with relish. “Or maybe the dogs.”

Tobirama winced again. “It’s only a temporary contract,” he hurried to reassure the small housecat, “Just to help me. I’m very grateful to you all, for putting yourselves through such trials for me. In fact,” he said, an idea blooming in his mind like a sunrise as his lips curled into a mischievous smile that wouldn’t be misplaced on one of his summons. “As payment, you can go and get anything you want to eat from this place’s kitchen.”

Okuri purred happily as her eyes went half lidded in joy and she reached up and rubbed her cheeks against Tobirama’s before nimbly jumping off the futon and padding across the room where Tobirama slid the door open for her and left her to go cause chaos, before heading to sleep with a smile on his face.

Chapter Text

It was the kind of thing seen not even once a lifetime – the Sage of Six Paths (who was apparently not a myth, and didn’t that make Tobirama itch to experiment) recruiting the Kage of years past, some in bodies formed by Tobirama’s Edo Tensei, others there purely in spirit, to reach out in a summoning Jutsu to bring back the Bijuu and the four Shinobi who had fought a war against a goddess and won.

In the center of a crater in the middle of a deserted field that had once been a battlefield, they succeeded, and a viewer could be awed by the sight of the most powerful shinobi in the world, both alive and dead, and the nine forces of nature arrayed around them – and yet despite that, despite the presence of Team 7 and even the Sage of Six Paths himself, Hashirama only had eyes for Madara.

As usual.

Tobirama had come to terms with the fact that as far as Hashirama was concerned, Madara was the brother he would have preferred instead of the one he got, but it still hurt to look at him crouch over the dying form of the madman who had attempted to end the world and smile at him and talking to him of drinking together in the afterlife.

Feeling the Jutsu release was a relief, and he closed his eyes as his soul drifted up and away from the false body it was bound to.

He wondered what the pure land was like. He’d never actually gotten there, with his soul going from dying to Kumo to awakening to fight Saru to being sealed and then awakened one more time. Or perhaps he had, but had forgotten while he was in the living world?

It was an interesting thought experiment, and Tobirama rolled it over and inspected the corners as he relaxed into the feeling of movement. He was growing bigger, or perhaps smaller, and could feel a warmth on his face and hear a song, see a light of love and life and laughter and everything warm and good, where he could rest – and then suddenly there was a jolt, and the light was ripped away from him as he went careening sideways. Or for the love of –

– He hit the ground with a crash, and darkness claimed him.

Tobirama blinked his eyes open with an effort of will that was normally only necessary after a week-long research binge, and dug his fingers into the soft loam beneath him. He was lying on grass, and as his blurry vision cleared, he could see the clear blue sky behind a fringe of green leaves. He sat up with a groan, wincing. Everything hurt.

Which was odd, since when he’d been in his Edo Tensei body, he hadn’t been able to feel pain.

Holding one hand up before his face, Tobirama’s sinking feeling was proved right. His hand was the same as always, pale and calloused with sensibly short nails – but it was made of flesh, not the strangely cracked papery appearance of Edo Tensei. As he breathed in, he felt his chest contracting and expanding with his lungs, the beat of his heart, the rush of his blood through his veins.

He was alive. Properly alive, that is, not just in a summoned body.

What had happened?

Tobirama levered himself off the ground and took stock. He was in his armour, his kunai pouch was full, the storage seals he carried with him everywhere (despite Hashirama laughingly calling him paranoid) were all there and still worked when he tested them. He had his normal levels of chakra, not the infinite levels he’d had as an Edo Tensei, and his body seemed to be exactly as he remembered it.

Somehow, instead of moving on to the pure world, he’d somehow come back to life instead.

Had Hashirama?

Judging by the trees, he was still in fire country, so he knelt and pressed a finger to the ground, focusing his senses and spreading them out. While normally, this technique was only useful in getting a basic grasp of how many and how strong the people in his range were, Hashirama’s chakra was so strong that if he was anywhere within fire country, Tobirama would feel it. He cast his mind out, searching out the flickering lights of peoples chakra signatures and – there.

He knew that chakra, as well as he knew his own – better, even. Sight had never been Tobirama’s first sense, especially with his albinism making his eyes worse and worse as the years passed. When Hashirama had been alive he had healed them regularly, but after he’d died they had degenerated. By the time he’d died, Tobirama had been near blind. It hadn’t effected his fighting at all. Tobirama had been born with his eyes closed, sensing. The first thing he’d ever sensed was his brother’s signatures, bright and warm and full of the sense of life and green growing things even then. The first thing he’d ever seen was his brother’s smiling face.

This one was Hashirama’s, distinctly Hashirama’s, but it was…different, in a way hard to describe. Like a merciless sun instead of a warm light, like plants that choked and strangled and broke apart rock and stone and earth that were in their way. Like the darkness of a shadowed forest, instead of the light filtering through the leave. Twisted.

And his own signature was nowhere to be found. Tobirama pulled his finger away from the ground and narrowed his senses back down with a frown.

When he’d been inventing the Hiraishin, he’d discovered much about the space/time continuum, and created several theories about what would happen if time travel were possible. A stable time loop, where you time travelled because you were meant to time travel and therefore couldn’t change the present, a paradox where the universe exploded, the time space continuum reacting to a foreign presence and simply wiping it out like an immune system targeting and infection, being able to change the past and then return to a changed present because all of time was one time – and the most interesting one, that the timelines would split, like a river with a boulder in the middle. It could merge again into one if the change wasn’t too big – or it could be turned into two separate rivers if the changes built up.

Which had of course led to the idea of alternate dimensions.

It would make sense, Tobirama considers, irritated at the very thought. But there’s no point in making a conclusion before a hypothesis, especially with so little data, so Tobirama puts it from his mind and sets out towards his brother’s altered signature.

A day of swift paced travel later, Tobirama perched hidden in one of the trees surrounding this version of Konoha. It was definitely not Konoha as he’d ever known it, either the small ramshackle collection of buildings without even a wall as it had been in the beginning, the thriving village he’d known when he died, or even the rebuilt one he’d seen when he was resurrected both times. Instead, this Konoha…

It was a mess!

No order in the buildings or where they went, the dirt roads went higgledy-piggledy all over the place instead of ordered like Tobirama had laid out when he designed the village, the hospital was on the complete opposite side of where it should be and therefore not in the most efficient position to receive injured patients, there were parks everywhere but no central market place –

It was an outrage!

Tobirama clenched the branch he was perched on so hard it broke under his fingers. Forcibly relaxing his hand, he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, before opening them and looking at the village again with an analytical eye.

What did this tell him? That his previous theory was right and he was in an alternate dimension, for one. That the absence of his counterpart’s chakra signature meant not that he was on some mission far enough away to be out of his range, but that he had never had anything to do with building or designing the village – which meant he was probably dead, and had been dead since before the village was founded.

A thought hit him, and Tobirama reached out again, this time searching for a signature he hadn’t felt in years – the distinctive fiery crackle of Uchiha Izuna.

And found it. Close by was another powerful signature – Madara. This one didn’t have the twisted knot of madness and grief infecting his chakra though, nor was it the cold blizzard of fire frozen by insanity that he’d felt during the fourth shinobi war (and gods but there’d been two more wars in between the one he’d died in and the one he’d just fought in, two more and how many children had died? He’d left Konoha in Hiruzen’s hands and it had led to two more wars and a massacre, a government sanctioned genocide, the death of babes in their cribs and the complete twisting of his brother’s dream and his own words – because how could his team not have understood what he meant? The good of the village WAS the good of the people inside it. If every structure he had built had been destroyed but the people had survived then the village would have survived as well, how could they misread his words so horrifically – no. this was not the time for that. Focus.).

Tobirama took another deep, careful breath. So. He had died and been resurrected with his own technique – which still burned, damn Orochimaru – fought against two maddened Uchiha’s with the powers of a God and watched the new generation surpass the old and then finally gone on to the Pure Land, only to land instead here, in his body at it’s prime, in what was clearly some sort of different world. Perhaps in their final battle Izuna had been the victorious one and not Tobirama. That might explain how different Hashirama’s chakra signature was…

Or…Or perhaps…

Perhaps the differences had come earlier.

Perhaps…

Frozen still, not moving a muscle, refusing to allow himself to hope, Tobirama reached out again – this time focusing on tentatively searching for two chakra signatures he had not felt in decades.

Breath caught in his throat and heart beating fast despite his best efforts, Tobirama looked for either Kawarama or Itama’s signatures, desperately combing through the many signatures crowded inside this shoddily-built Konoha. Nothing.

It would have been years though, their chakra signatures might have changed (even though chakra signatures didn’t change THAT much) or they might be on a mission out of his range –

Tobirama was grasping at straws, grasping at hope, and he knew it was pointless but he did it anyway. With a handseal, he made a dozen clones and sent them off to and explore this twisted version of Konoha, then, after pressing a hand to the branch he was on an placing a Hiraishin marker on it, Tobirama headed off himself, chakra tucked in small and using all his skills to avoid the patrols. They weren’t as well done as he remembered, and he found it easy to slip through several holes in their patrol routes, making mental note of them, and the Walls – and the barrier seals bound to them – hadn’t been created yet, so he didn’t need to worry about that either. Soon, Tobirama was making his way into this version of the Hokage tower, heading for the records room.

The tower, as the center for administration and the headquarters of the village leadership, had been one of the first things created in Tobirama’s Konoha, and judging by the small signs of wear this, at least, was similar to his own dimension. The layout, however…

Huffing in annoyance, Tobirama glared at the empty storage closet that should have been the records room. The tower layout was as big a mess as the rest of the village, rooms placed wherever, stairs in the wrong spots, important parts of the administration – like the records room – completely away from other important parts so that you had to run the length of the whole tower just to get from one to the other –

By the time Tobirama finally found the records room (also a disgrace, and not organized at all) he was ready to murder someone. With a surge of chakra and a larger puff of smoke then he’d had since creating the jutsu, he made even more shadow clones and had them spread out and start reading through and memorising the contents of the room. Every time they completed their sections they would pop and send the memories to Tobirama.

Tobirama, meanwhile, set about sitting down and meditating. He had, through experimentation, trial and error, and a whole lot of headaches and occasionally passing out from information overload, discovered that when he wanted to use his clones to gather information, whether by spying or simply as versions of himself that could freely risk their lives in his more risky experiments, meditating was the best way of parsing the clones memories as they came.

As they started quickly looking through the records, memorising as they went, and eventually getting so sick of the haphazard organizational system (they had a copy of food imports next to a record of a mission next to a copy of a contract for a renegotiation of payment for a mission – not to mention that the missions themselves weren’t organized, with Tobirama’s ranking system, either for missions or the Ninja’s themselves, nowhere to be seen) that they started organizing it as they went, in the same manner Tobirama would have - and had, once upon a time for his records room in his Konoha, by type, then date, then in alphabetical order by author – Tobirama slowly started to frown.

There were several things that were disturbing about this new world. The way Konoha was laid out, as if by an idiot who had never studied village or city planning, could be explained by the fact that, if Tobirama wasn’t there and Hashirama had simply created building as necessary with his Mokuton (and he had, Tobirama could feel his Anija’s chakra signature, still so dark and twisted and wrong, echoing through every plank of wood in this building, and kept his own chakra tucked in deep where the wood wouldn’t sense a strange signature and alert their creator, a trick Tobirama had mastered years ago out of sheer self-preservation in the face of an intrusive, nosy older brother.), then it had, in fact, been created by an idiot with no knowledge of architecture or urban planning. That could be explained.

But…

Even just on his way through the village, Tobirama had noticed a difference. There were no children playing in the streets, no laughter or happy chatter – people had moved around with their heads down and their shoulders hunched as if to avoid scrutiny. And there were trees, so many trees, on every street corner and every intersection, radiating that twisted Hashirama chakra and filling the air with the heavy scent of the blood red flowers that perched on their branches. People actively avoided those trees.

And as the information his clones were memorising started coming to him, Tobirama frowned even deeper. The date was wrong. It was the year Konoha had been founded, the year he’d killed Izuna and Madara had been defeated and agreed to peace, the year he had turned 22 – and yet the village had apparently been in place for several years. With that many extra years, even without Tobirama there, surely things should be more streamlined? But the reports of taxes and imports and exports and missions completed and failed and requested showed that the village was barely holding on, much less thriving, and pretty much the only reason it was doing so well was because of Hashirama’s Mokuton. As well, the documents that were copies of various clan’s agreement to join Konoha were all different – they read more like the clans were surrendering to a stronger power rather then joining an alliance.

Finally, one of the clones stopped, read over the scroll in has hand one more time, then dispersed himself and Tobirama froze as the information flooded in as if he had been the one to read it.

It wasn’t much. Just a family tree. The Senju family tree, identical to the one he’d known – down to the birth and death dates of Kawarama and Itama Senju. Tobirama closed his eyes and ruthlessly refused to allow tears to fill them, falling into deep meditative breaths. He’d known, hadn’t he. Known that they weren’t on a long-term mission, that they were where they’d always been, in those too-small coffins in those too-small graves. Hope was stupid. All it did was disappoint you. Reason and pragmatic logic were better.

It didn’t help the small knot of pain in the center of his chest, and with a growl Tobirama stood and, seeing that the rest of his clones had finished the reorganizing, caused them to disperse with a thought. Ignoring the sharp pain in his head from too many memories, Tobirama paced over to the scroll with long strides and opened it again.

Everything was identical to the one in his universe – except for one thing. There was no ‘Tobirama Senju’ name between Hashirama and Kawarama’s. So that was the major divergence between this world and his, Tobirama thought, staring down at the innocuous scroll and not sure how he should feel.

He felt like the ground had fallen out from under him and now he was adrift, uncertain of what to do or where to go. His body working automatically while his mind simply sat and dealt with all the events of the past day (and god it had only been a day, hadn’t it? One night as a resurrected Edo Tensei Reanimate fighting Madara and his insane plan, then dispersing back to the pure land, then being thrown here somehow and now finding out he was standing in a world where he had not just died but had never even existed and what did that mean for him? How could Konoha have become this different and cold simply because of Tobirama’s absence? He wasn’t important, wasn’t an idealist or a visionary like his brother and, much as he hated to admit it, Madara. He was a shinobi and a bureaucrat and an inventor and a scientist and a teacher and a brother and a murderer and he had failed, failed his students and his brother and his village, let the darkness in his students rot the roots of the tree that was called Konoha without even realising that it existed until the precious lights he had loved and guided and tried to fan with his own flames, paltry as they were in comparison to Madara or Hashirama’s, had thought it was a good idea to murder children, slaughter babies in their beds and use another child to do it and there had been two more wars even after he died and his brother was gone and he was alone in a strange world where everything was wrong, a twisted reflection cast by a shattered mirror, and – he just wanted to go home. He wanted his brother.) Tobirama reached up and filed the scroll where it belonged, then turned towards the door, about ready to leave this darkened mirror of his village – and that, of course, was when the door opened, and Tobirama met the eyes of this world’s Hashirama Senju.

Chapter Text

The next few weeks Tobirama didn’t take any missions. His store of money was well hidden, and O-Ume-san, as the Okami of the Okiya he was living in, provided him with food and board and clothes – and besides, the things she was teaching him were interesting. Dancing, singing, playing the Koto and the Shamisen, Ikebana and the associated flower language, the meanings of dress and hair and jewelry – Tobirama drank it all up like a sponge, always eager to learn new things, and O-Ume-san beamed brighter and brighter in self-satisfaction as the newly named Tsuki quickly proved himself a prodigy. With his long hair falling around his face and down his back like a feathery white waterfall, and his eyes shining red in his small, puppy-fat rounded face, he trailed behind her like a duckling and watched and listened and learned.

People, especially adults, Tobirama learnt quickly, would be taken by his looks and coo and cluck over him, resulting in him having to put up with them touching his hair and pinching his cheeks and exclaiming over his eyes – and then when they were done they would ignore him, putting the small Maiko sitting demurely by O-Ume-san’s side out of their minds. To the adults around him, Tobirama might as well have been a particularly pretty lamp for all the notice they gave him.

Tobirama had always known adults were stupid, but this just confirmed it, and he made a silent, solemn vow never to become like that as he grew up.

Tobirama, in the guise of Tsuki, had learnt what O-Ume-san was teaching him so fast that she had had him start following her to her many appointments instead of simply showing him how to sit and eat and converse with clients. O-Ume-san, Tobirama copying her dutifully, dined with high lords, entertained the heads of several Shinobi clans, including high ranking ones like the three leaders of the InoShikaCho alliance, and hosted banquets in the various Ochaya that O-Ume-san’s Okiya frequented where the various Maiko would dance and play the Shamisen and serve tea to the lords who attended.

It was these meetings, where he sat and listened and learned far more then he was supposed to not just about posture and composure and holding conversations, but also about the political state of the country, that, he knew, he would be using later on once he had settled in and started actually performing assassinations. Tobirama smiled brightly at the shinobi sitting before him, and poured his tea, paying careful attention to the position of his arms and his long dangling kimono sleeves, before sitting back. He was sitting before a man who guarded the Minister of the Left himself, and that man thought he was just a pretty, delicate Maiko.

Tobirama, it turned out, by being so quick to learn and so ‘uniquely beautiful’ (and it still surprised him, to be considered beautiful) and advancing so quickly to the point where he was ahead of Maiko who had been learning for years, despite only being there for a month, had earned some resentment from some of the other Maiko living in O-Ume-san’s Okiya.

So it was that as Tobirama, bedecked in a flowered Kimono of pale pink and with his bangs pulled back from his face with a dangling Kanzashi of delicate white and red flowers (O-Ume san had decided not to have him wear the full Maiko hairstyle, choosing to let his hair stay down as it was one of his best features. He also didn’t have to wear the traditional makeup, being naturally white as snow, bar some red lipstick and red shadow around his eyes.) was accosted in the corridor by a senior Maiko named Momo.

“Tsuki-Chan!” Momo trilled, bustling up to him in the small steps they were forced to take in their confining kimono, smiling happily and radiating vicious satisfaction and anticipatory glee to his chakra sense. Tobirama, used to living amongst his clan who were open with their emotions (some, like Hashirama, to the point of exuberance) and often uneasily avoided for his habit of keeping his emotions in his chest instead of on his sleeve or written all over his face, had found the Okiya a revelation. Every single woman here, from the lowest Maiko to the Mother of the House, O-Ume-san herself, put on masks. They smiled and bowed and lowered their eyes while internally wishing horrible things would happen to the person they were smiling at, and praised people they hated through red lips and gritted teeth, and disguised tears and homesickness and love longings behind a painted white face and elegant movements with a fan. If Tobirama had not had his chakra sense that told him what these people were really feeling, he would have been lost.

As it was, he was mostly just impressed, and had dutifully applied himself to learning how to act, even if sometimes holding his sharp tongue made him want to scream.

Tobirama admired Momo’s mask, and Tsuki smiled guilelessly up at her, blinking soft white lashes, long enough to gently caress his pale, smooth, pink tinged cheeks as he met her own dark eyes with his large red ones. Momo’s chakra echoed the sickly burn of jealousy that she felt at Tobirama’s – Tsuki’s, rather – looks, and he took a petty joy in it. Of all the Maiko that had been bothering him, Momo was the worst. She was always doing her best to make his life miserable, whether it was ruining his breakfasts, giving him instruments that she’d damaged or untuned, or whispering mean things about him with other Maiko behind her sleeve with cold, mean eyes and a sharp tittering laugh when she knew he could hear her. Tobirama told himself it would be below him to hate her.

(That didn’t stop him from being happy when Okuri had taken one look at his forced composed face when he’d summoned her a few days ago, wormed what was wrong out of him, and then gone off on her own. The shriek Mom had given when she’d discovered all her fine kimono’s shredded and peed on had brought a smile to Tobirama’s face that night as he curled up in his futon with Okuri in his arms, a small, warm, purring bundle of fur that smelt like home.)

Momo moued at him with her painted red lips, eyes falsely concerned and chakra gleefully spiteful and Tobirama braced himself for another meanspirited prank. “Why Tsuki-chan!” Momo exclaimed with false concern. “What are you doing just wondering around – O-Ume-Sama wanted you to come and attend her during her appointment, don’t you know? If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late!”

In a moment, Tobirama decided. He could refuse and avoid whatever Momo was planning – or he could acquiesce and later tell O-Ume-San that it had been Momo that had sent him and get her off his back for good. Tobirama bowed, hands positioned in front of him so the long sleeves of his Furisode didn’t fall over them, and said in a soft voice, “of course, Momo-San. I’ll go immediately.” Then he turned around before she could respond and headed for the Ochaya where Momo was entertaining a powerful nobleman named Lord Soma.

The Ochaya, or tea house, where O-Ume-san most often entertained guests was a quick walk from the Okiya, which was good because the heavy kimono Tobirama wore, as well as the high sandals, made it difficult to move quickly. Tobirama kept his head high and ignored how people on the streets looked at him, the occasional double take or pause to stare or even how one man, a visitor to the flower district with the Uchiha’s famed red and white fan Mon on the back of his indigo kimono and a scarred face and wild hair caught back in a ponytail, walked into the edge of a door as Tobirama passed, and soon he came to the large gate of the Ochaya. It was called the Ichiriki Chaya, and Tobirama swept aside the large curtain, called a noren, that prevented those outside from seeing in, and walked in.

As the noren fell back behind him it seemed to cut out the sounds of the outside world, muffling the calls of merchants hawking their wares and people talking and crying out to each other and all the other busy noise that came from living in a city. Tobirama, used to the peace and quiet of his clan’s compound and its surrounding forest, had found the cities noise a trial, and enjoyed spending time inside the walls of either the Okiya or one of the tea-houses, all of which were designed to protect the patrons privacy.

Politely – and with a silent sigh of relief – Tobirama removed his high Geta, and made his way through to the beautiful garden where O-Ume-san was performing a tea ceremony for Lord Soma. Padding as softly as one of his cat summons Tobirama scanned the garden for the bright kimono he’d seen the Okami wearing before she’d left. It was an ornate silken kimono in bright red, with fish swimming across it embroidered in real gold thread. Tobirama silently calculated that it could feed the entire compound for a month, or the various street children he’s seen in the capital for 6 months, or buy him an entire set of the finest glass beakers from the artisans of wind country. It also would undoubtedly clash with the peaceful, natural beauty of the garden. Not seeing it, Tobirama instead headed down the path towards where he could sense O-Ume-san faint chakra signature.

He’d been in this Ochaya before, had even served tea in this very garden, but the delicate loveliness of the layout still took his breath away. The Ichiriki Chaya was the most famous, reclusive, expensive, high-class tea house in the capital for good reason.

With the Ochaya’s walls blocking the outside world from intruding it was as if the garden was in a different world, a world of serenity and beauty. The garden was softly lit by the gentle light of lanterns and Tobirama was easily able to make his way along the small winding path in the middle of the garden. The wind whispered through the expertly cultivated trees, the water of the small river winding through it flowed with a gentle rushing sound and everything was calm and peaceful. As he walked, Tobirama found his breathing slowing, his heartbeat matching the repetitive sound as the small bamboo souzu filled with water, tipped over and hit a rock with a small clunk and moved back to its place to be filled with water again. Tobirama had been working on a portrait of this garden during his free evenings with the intention of sending it with Okuri along with his regular letter. Hashirama loved gardens and would adore the sight of this one.

Turning a corner Tobirama found himself before the small tea ceremony pavilion. Unlike other tea ceremony rooms, this one was open to the elements so that the guest could enjoy the sight of the Ochaya’s famed garden around them, and O-Ume-san and her patron both turned at his approach. “Mother,” Tobirama greeted, bowing to the woman. “You requested my presence?” O-Ume-san’s white painted face was blank, but her chakra flared with panic. Tobirama hesitated, unsure. He’d expected anger, or annoyance, at his interruption which was why he’d made it clear with his greeting that he had not come here on his own – but panic?

Then the lord spoke.

“Ume-chan – who is this lovely creature?” Lord Soma was not a ninja, but he was, like many lords in the capital, descended from Samurai, and he practiced their arts. As such, the tall, broad man was also powerfully built, with thickly muscled arms and legs and a firm torso that Tobirama could see was shading to fat as he aged. Despite that, he was still fit, clean shaven and with his salt and pepper hair pulled back into a topknot, and Tobirama idly noticed that he was what would be considered rather handsome.

Tobirama had heard the other Maiko giggling over various customers – particularly the Yamanaka head, whose long blonde hair was ‘exotic’ and ‘beautiful’ – enough that he felt he had a pretty good grasp of what was considered attractive, and lord Soma was definitely very symmetrical, and the ninja in Tobirama appreciated the strength implied in his muscles. Luckily, Tobirama had yet to hit puberty or experience all the annoying things that came with it that he’d watched Hashirama suffer through, like pimples and growth spirts and voice breakage and Hashirama freaking out at night in their shared bedroom over staining his futon with the results of his wet dreams. Tobirama had rolled his eyes, told Hashirama it was perfectly natural and he could tell him all about the biology behind it if he wanted, then washed them for him and accepted his desperate pleads to keep it secret. He’d also dealt with Hashirama suddenly realizing that people, male and female and everything in between, were all very good looking and mooning over various clan members and villagers and everyone in their sister clan the Uzumaki’s small compound when they’d visited their island. Apparently, Hashirama really appreciated red hair.

Once he got all his materials, and also some extra things he’d found he wanted in his time in the capital, like some rather expensive books, the first thing Tobirama intended to do was invent a way to skip all that.

Tobirama, of course, looked to his Okiya’s mistress to introduce him, still bothered by her panic - it was still there after all, suppressed but burning, and while her face was as still as the waters of a pond he felt sure that if he’d gotten close enough he to feel her pulse it would have been beating as fast as a hummingbirds wings.

Lord Soma, on the other hand, felt…odd. He had chakra, though not as much as an active samurai or ninja, but it felt…dark. And cold. Like something warm and bright had been twisted somehow. Tobirama had been fascinated by a scroll on astronomy he’d found years ago, which had held that the stars were suns, like theirs, simply so far away that all they could see was their light – and moreover, that when stars died, they either expanded and burned even brighter for a brief time – or they collapsed and folded in on themselves and created what the author had called a Black Hole. The corpse of a star, empty darkness sucking in everything around it, even light.

That was what lord Soma felt like, and Tobirama felt a thrill of unease down his spine.

“This is Tsuki, our newest Maiko,” O-Ume-san said, drawing Soma’s dark eyes towards her.

“I wasn’t aware that your Maiko were so skilled they could perform a full tea ceremony at so…young…an age.” Lord Soma gave Tobirama another look, raking those dark eyes over his form, and even swaddled in the full Kimono and long Obi Tobirama felt as if he were naked. His throat felt dry.

“Oh, that’s not it all,” O-Ume-san said, smiling composedly. “I didn’t call for Tsuki to come here – it seems one of the other Maiko decided on a little joke for our newest member -Tsuki, head home –”

“No.” The word fell from Soma’s lips like a gravestone.

Tobirama hesitated, having already turned to leave, sending a questioning glance at O-Ume-san. She hesitated, but nodded to him to listen to the lord. Tobirama turned back towards Soma, who was smiling with self-satisfaction now.

“Come sit over here and do the tea ceremony for me Lovely.” Soma gestured to where O-Ume-san was currently sitting, and she moved out of the way without a word, only sending Tobirama a quick glance, her dark eyes warning…something.

Tobirama was missing something here, and he hated it. Still, he didn’t let it shows, and instead bowed and settled in seiza before Lord Soma, starting the tea ceremony. Tea ceremony was very strict, and Tobirama usually had to concentrate to make sure everything was right – which was made difficult by Soma’s fixed gaze. Then to make it even worse the man started to talk, asking Tobirama questions. How long he had been studying as a Maiko, where he was from…Tobirama did his best to focus on the ceremony.

“And how old are you, lovely?” Soma asked, something about his demeanor seeming darker at the question, as though the answer was important.

“Twelve, sir.”

“Twelve,” Soma sighed out, voice seeming to caress the number. “What a lovely age.”

Finally, it was almost done and Tobirama reached forward to place the tea bowl in front of Soma, desperate to be gone, to get out of here, away from this pavilion with its dim lights and strange atmosphere and undercurrents that he couldn’t read –

– Soma reached out and grabbed Tobirama’s arm, callused fingers bruising his skin as Tobirama cried out at the sudden pain. Soma smiled at him and leaned in close. Tobirama could smell the tea on his breath. “And have you had your Mizuage yet?”

Tobirama was frozen, heart beating fast, skin prickling with cold sweat. He thought wildly of the kunai strapped to his thigh, the poisoned pins in his hair, the many other daggers tucked into he folds of his obi. He could pull them out, stab the hand holding his arm, thrust a kunai into Soma’s chest or a senbon in his eye or –

Nothing. He could do nothing. He was completely helpless. He hated this he hated it he wanted to go home –

“I d-don’t know what that is,” Tobirama said, cursing the waver in his voice. “And you’re hurting me –”

O-Ume-san stood up and both Tobirama and Lord Soma’s snapped their heads towards her. Her lips were pressed together firmly. “Tsuki is too young for Mizuage – and that is final,” She added when she saw Soma about to protest. “Lord Soma, I apologise for the abruptness but we will be leaving now. Tsuki, come.”

Tobirama, grateful for the escape, quickly followed her.

Later, curled up in his futon, Tobirama waited tense for Okuri to come back from her spying. When he’d gotten back to the Okiya O-Ume-san had briskly asked who it was that had sent Tobirama to her, then sent him to bed while she called Momo to her office.

Tobirama had done so, and then promptly sent Okuri out to spy on their conversation, and now he waited for her to come back while curled up in his futon which he’d dragged into a corner so his back was to the wall and he could face the window and door, wrapped himself in the kakebuton, the thick duvet that he slept under, and held his brother’s letter close to his heart.

It was stupid! He was far away form that pavilion, form Lord Soma, and he hadn’t even done anything, not really, except for that grab at the end which his arms still hurt from - just asked questions and looked at him and he was reduced to this shaking mess with a bit in the center of his chest that was fighting back tears.

Okuri slunk into the room through the window, closing it behind her, and made her way under the kakebuton with him, curling up in a small ball of fur as he adjusted his position to let her in. Despite it being a relatively warm night, and being under the kakebuton, she didn’t complain.

“What did you hear?” he asked softly.

“The Mother was scolding the annoying one with the bad smell,” Okuri reported, purring voice equally soft and quiet. Even if someone had come into the room, they probably wouldn’t have bene able to hear them. “She said things…”

Tobirama felt a strange sinking sensation in his stomach, and the absurd urge to ask Okuri not to say any more. He squashed it. “What did she say?”

“She was angry the annoying one –”

“– Momo,” Tobirama interrupted, not out of any desire to give the Maiko face but rather because it was shorter.

“Momo,” Okuri corrected, “had sent you to the Bad Man.” Tobirama shivered, and clutched Okuri tighter, and the proud cat kindly let him.

“Momo said that the Mother hadn’t minded the last time she sent someone, and the mother snapped that the last time Momo had sent a Maiko her own age, not a child. Momo was confused, and the mother…”

Okuri trailed off, sending him a worried look with her bright yellow eyes. “Tell me.” Tobirama said.

Okuri made a discontented rumbling noise, but continued. “The mother said that the Bad Man didn’t like girls Momo’s age – he liked them younger. Much younger. She said you – or Tsuki rather – could have been ‘ruined’ by him.”

Tobirama was confused. What did she mean by ruined? And what was a Mizuage?

Okuri growled. “He’s a bad hunter – only an awful hunter would prefer to pray on kittens who can’t defend themselves. And only a terrible one mates with them. There’s no point! They can’t have children yet! They can’t even enjoy it!”

Tobirama lay there frozen as he realized what Okuri meant. That man, Lord Soma…he liked children. Liked to have sex with them.

He’d first heard about this, and the dangers of it, when he’d been following the capitals street children. It had horrified him, the stories he’d heard – of brothels taking in children younger the Tobirama, of men who would pay extra for children, of depraved noblemen kidnapping street children and locking them in their dungeons to do horrible things to…

Was Lord Soma one of those noblemen?

As he lay there, Tobirama thought, and came to a decision.

Tobirama had read several books about the human mind and how killing effected people, and had decided that his first kill would have to be special – not someone else asking him to kill a random person for this reason or that – lust or greed or revenge or power – but one that he had chosen.

Specifically, one that he had chosen for being such a horrible person that the world was better off without them in it, and Tobirama would be able to assuage any feelings of guilt with the fact that he was not killing people for money, but making the world a better place.

He’d just found his first target.

Snuggling closer to Okuri, he let out a deep sigh as all his tension and fear left him, and went straight to sleep with a smile on his face.

Chapter Text

Even as he fights the Gold and Silver Force, one part of Tobirama’s attention is on the anguished chakra signatures of his students as they get further and further away. He’d taken out most of the force of Cloud Missing ninja’s quickly, leaving only the troublesome Gold and Silver Brothers, and if he and his team hadn’t been coming from a month of consecutive battles, leaving him close to chakra exhaustion, with a hairline fracture in his leg and several ribs that were at least bruised if not broken, and almost completely out of Ninja tools, he would have been able to deal with them quickly too. The brothers liked to boast about how they’d almost killed him and the second Raikage, but what they failed to mention in those boasts was that Tobirama had almost killed them as well and would have succeeded if not for their states as pseudo jinchuuriki. Not to mention, the moment he’d gotten away from that battle he’d asked Mito for help in coming up with ways to fight them should it happen again – as Uchiha Izuna could have once attested, just because something worked on Tobirama once, didn’t mean it would work again. As it was though, he was exhausted, and not just physically – Tobirama had been an older brother for a little over seven years of his life. He had been a younger brother for almost three decades, and then Hashirama had died had smiled at Tobirama and patted his shoulder and said he knew he could trust him with the village since he already practically ran it and had left to go die, as his own regeneration ate him up from the inside out and his eyes had been fixed far away. As they always were.

Sometimes, it seemed to Tobirama, Hashirama only ever saw Madara’s back, even when Tobirama was right in front of him. He hadn’t listened to Tobirama’s protests, his arguments that he’d solved the issue of Hashirama slowly turning to into a tree by helping him learn sage mode, his issue of slowly turning to stone by helping him master sage mode, and that he could figure out a way to solve this as well. No, Hashirama had been thinking of Madara, and how his sword had pierced Madara’s heart, and how his own heart hadn’t been enough to soothe his madness or keep him in the village (keep him with Hashirama), and had gone off to die.

And he had left Tobirama alone. And – he’d done it, dammit, he’d lead the village and done his best to help the clans all come together and created the military police to try and channel the Uchiha’s curse of hatred into love for the village instead and raised six students to almost adulthood (though in his mind, they would always be children. His children, much as he’d never say as much out loud.) and – he’d done it. He’d set the village up and running so it wouldn’t crumble the moment he left, and he’d fought on the front lines in the war that had started when his brother died and the other villages no longer had to fear his power and he’d done his best and –

He was so tired. He just wanted to rest.

He wanted to see his brothers again.

In the end, it wasn’t a surprise when the Gold and Silver brothers managed to corner him, knocking his sword out of his hand and shattering his armor with a blow that had him coughing up blood before forcing him to the ground with his hands together above his head and forcing a kunai through the palms of them to stop him from making hand-seals.

Tobirama bit his lower lip till he tasted blood to keep from screaming at the blaze of pain that radiated like fire from his maimed hands. His fingers twitched and he almost passed out.

There would be no hand-seals for him.

Tobirama opened his eyes to see the brothers grinning down at him with identical smiles, strangely shaped noses and whisker marks combining with their wild hair that almost looked like horns to give them a devilish appearance, like a wild animal that was about to eat him.

“Caught you, Senju,” they chorused in unison. He sneered at them. “Just do it already.”

His students were far out of the way, and he was ready to die – even if dying to these idiots was a humiliating way to go. The brothers got closer, crouching down, and one of them – the silver haired one, Ginkaku, the smaller and younger brother, reached out and grabbed his chin, tilting his head up. Tobirama tried to jerk out of the hold, but couldn’t. “Now why would we do that?” Ginkaku asked. “After such a long chase, we finally caught our prey – should we let him go so easily, Kinkaku?” Ginkaku addressed Kinkaku, who was on Tobirama’s other side.

“Not at all, Ginkaku,” Kinkaku agreed, leaning in starting to remove the shattered remnants of his armour and his shredded shirt, leaving his torso bare and bloody and bruised in the dim forest light.

Tobirama tried again to get out of Ginkaku’s hold, failed, and closed his eyes instead. So it was to be torture then. The brothers had been fascinated by him since they’d attacked the peace conference. They hadn’t been, at first, focusing on killing the second Raikage – which had allowed Tobirama, battered and bruised from their attacks, but not as badly off as they had assumed, to nab some of the Raikage’s DNA, grab one of their men, use Edo Tensei on him, and then send the Raikage after the brothers. As he teleported everyone else away, he’d been able to see the looks on their faces as they saw the multiple exploding tags on the Raikage’s chest, and realized they’d been tricked. They’d been shocked, angry – and impressed. As he’d vanished, they’d looked over at him and grinned.

It was why he’d been sure his decoy idea would work. The brothers would be far more interested in fighting him again then in going after his team – and they had been.

Someone slapped him briskly in the face, but he refused to open his eyes. “Are you ignoring us Senju?” One of them asked. Tobirama let his silence answer for him. He’d gone through anti interrogation training. He was pretty sure he could get through the brothers playing with their meal until they got bored and killed him, or the blood-loss from the wounds he’d already gotten did it instead.

He was expecting more pain, perhaps from the kunai piercing his hands or from his torso which they’d stripped naked – instead one of them stroked a hand down his chest, light as a feather, smearing blood on his skin.

“You look good like this Senju,” said what he was pretty sure was Kinkaku. Tobirama opened his eyes in confusion, and Ginkaku, still holding his chin, smirked at him and reached out and ran a rough thumb over his lips. “All covered in red,” he agreed, smirking at him. Tobirama glared.

Kinkaku leaned over so he could see him. He was smirking too. “We’ve thought about this, Ni-Dai-Me-Sa-ma,” he spelt out all the syllables in Tobirama’s title in a mocking growl, and rested on hand on Tobirama’s flat stomach. “Thought about you, naked and beaten and at our mercy,” Kinkaku continued. “You ever been fucked before Senju?” Tobirama didn’t respond, but something in his eyes must have given him away, because they broke out in identical smiles. “Guess we’re lucky, Kinkaku,” Ginkaku said. “We get to have his first.”

Kinkaku nodded, and started cutting apart Tobirama’s pants.

Enough of this. Tobirama closed his eyes again and did his best to distance himself from his body. Let them do whatever they wanted, humiliate him the way they were planning – he didn’t care. He just needed to get through it and they’d kill him. He only regretted that he couldn’t take them with him somehow.

Actually, that gave him an idea.

“I think the Senju isn’t paying close enough attention Kinkaku.”

“Perhaps we played too hard and he’s about to pass out Ginkaku.”

“Or perhaps,” Tobirama said, managing to make his voice dry and his expression disdainful through sheer force of will, “you two just don’t impress me.” He sneered at them through bloody lips.

He should probably not be taunting the people who had beaten him and had him captive and wanted to rape him.

He did it anyway.

“Which isn’t surprising since apparently you two have to force people in order to get them into your bed – what, were the whores too expensive for you? They probably upped their prices when they saw your ugly faces –”

Kinkaku punched a bruised section on his side where Tobirama was pretty sure he had broken, or at least fractured, his ribs, and Tobirama broke off with a pained gasp. But, he was pleased to notice, the brothers weren’t smiling any more.

He spat blood at them, and Kinkaku hit him again.

Good. Let them get distracted with his defiance, and punishing it, and not pay attention to who he was – Senju Tobirama, the Second Hokage, the man who had invented the Shadow Clone and Edo Tensei and so many other jutsu’s he couldn’t even count them all.

And especially, the first man to ever create a time-space Ninjutsu – and a sealmaster.

Seals didn’t need paper and ink. They were trappings, ways of helping the sealer picture what they were doing – all seals really needed was will, and a touch of chakra, and when you knew your seals, inside and out, you could place them with a touch, like Tobirama could do.

The Gold and Silver brothers may have taken his hands, but it was not his hands, or his chakra, or his sword that was Tobirama’s greatest weapon.

It was his mind.

So Tobirama kept part of his mind on taunting the brothers and keeping them distracted, and set the rest of his mind to devising the seal he needed. They were pseudo Jinchuuriki, though not the extent of a full Jinchuuriki like Mito, and so they would heal from just about anything – but that just about gave him a lot of room to maneuver.

Tobirama had created the Edo Tensei after his brother’s death, purely because while he’d thought of it earlier, he’d known what Hashirama’s reaction to it would have been. Tobirama had created jutsu’s that were so deadly, on such a large level, that they were banned – many of them even. All of them had been banned by his brother, whose moral compass Tobirama trusted far more than his own. Even during this war, Tobirama hadn’t touched any of those jutsu’s, even when they could have turned the tides, sticking to the ones his brother had approved of, and any new ideas his mind had come up with.

He didn’t now. He didn’t have the time.

Instead, he went back to an old seal he’d created years ago, in his teens, that Hashirama had taken one look at and banned – a seal that fractured the very bonds of reality, tearing apart the threads that held the building blocks of creation together. It had been his first attempt at Hiraishin, and if he hadn’t had the foresight to set up a barrier around the seal he might well have destroyed the lab. Or the compound.

Or the country.

Now, Tobirama took the basics of that seal and changed it on the fly, altering the aspects of it, changing this bit here and taking away that bit there and did his best to ignore the fact that Kinkaku had gotten sick of his defiance and had his brother gag him by stuff his fingers in his mouth, and was currently cutting up his pants.

He finished just in time.

Tobirama looked at Ginkaku, and had the joy of watching the man’s sadistic smirk die as he took in the confidence and victory in his eyes. “Kinkaku –” the missing nin started to say, but didn’t get a chance to finish.

Tobirama smirked around the fingers, bit down as hard as he could, and at the same time Ginkaku was cursing and ripping his hand from his mouth, Tobirama sent what little chakra he had left through every tenketsu in his body and forced it and his will on his blood staining the ground.

The seal formed around them, A large circle with Tobirama in the center, and the Gold and Silver brothers barely had time to start to react when it activated, tearing them atom from atom. Tobirama watched as they disappeared into so much dust with a smirk, and then laid his head down and let the seal tear him apart as well. It didn’t hurt.

Actually, it felt sort of like Hiraishin.

At that thought, Tobirama instinctively reached out to the bright marks of each of his Hirashin anchor seals in his mind, felt their bright sparks flare, and – he hadn’t intended to activate the jutsu. Had intended to die there, go to the pure land and see his brothers again, hug Kawarama and pet Itama’s hair and finally get to look Hashirama in the eye and tell him he’d done the best he could, set things up, entrusted the will of fire to the next generation.

Maybe it was that he wasn’t completely done after all.

Maybe it was simply that he’d long since marked all his students with the anchor seal, and he could feel them, grieving.

Maybe it was just instinct, formed from countless battles.

Either way, Tobirama tried, at the last moment, to activate the Hiraishin and flee the seal he’d set.

Everything went black.

*

Tobirama came halfway to consciousness and registered distantly that he was swaying. There were voices, signatures flaring around him, people talking – arguing?

“– too dangerous –”

“– a child –”

“– could be a trap! The emperor is cunning –”

“– his hair…obviously one of ours –”

“– his hands are too…what kind of spy would…never use jutsu…”

The fragments of conversation he could hear didn’t make sense, the flaring signatures were making his head hurt, and returning to consciousness meant he could feel again how everything else hurt, especially his hands, and he made the executive decision to fall back unconscious.

The rest could wait till later.

Chapter Text

There was a boy crying in the forest.

He was young, about thirteen or fourteen, a boy on the cusp of manhood, and he was crying like he didn’t care if anyone saw big gasping sobs and tears and snot flowing down his face. He had brown hair cut short in an unflattering bowl cut, and wore a white haori lined with green, grey hakama, and woven sandals.

From behind a tree, a small figure watched him, curious. The boy paid the figure no mind, sure that he was alone with his grief. The trees told him so after all. He was used to listening to the trees, the flowers, the plants. The grass didn’t whisper of any foreign feet standing on it, the trees didn’t broadcast the weight of a person on their branches, the bushes didn’t report feeling anyone pass by them, and so the boy, whose name was Hashirama, felt certain in his solitude, and cried as he hadn’t been able to at the funeral.

“It’s not fair!” he cried out, talking to the trees and, unbeknownst to him, his watcher, who shifted closer in curiosity as Hashirama spoke. “It’s not fair, he was only six! I promised I’d protect him, I promised –” he trailed off into wails and snuffles, the occasional mumbled word being heard, but mostly just keening his grief into forest, where he always felt best.

Sometimes, he’d used to pretend that the trees could hear him, when he talked to them. Sometimes, he’d almost imagined that he could hear them talking back.

But that was years ago, the fanciful imaginings of a child, he told himself. Perhaps, if he’d been less of a child, less of a dreamer, he’d have been able to save –

“Itama!” Hashirama sobbed harder. The watcher cocked their head. What was an Itama?

Hashirama continued to cry. “I lied,” he sobbed to the trees, “I lied to my friend, to Madara – he said he had one brother left and I said I did too but I don’t because I’m a terrible big brother! Maybe, if it wasn’t a lie, he would have stayed and still been my friend.”

Hashirama drew his sleeve across his face, trying to wipe away the tears, but they just kept coming. “I wish it wasn’t a lie! I wish I did have a brother left – or a new brother! I don’t care how – I wish I had a brother!”

The figure stiffened. Hashirama continued.

“I promise, if I get a brother – I’ll protect him! I won’t let anything happen to him! I’ll love him forever, no matter what! Please!” he looked up at the trees. “Please, if anyone’s listening – you gods – I don’t know if you’re real! But if you are – if anything is – please! Please, just give me another chance! I promise I won’t waste it this time!”

A wind blew through the trees, but nothing else happened, nothing changed in response to Hashirama’s request, and he drooped, and started crying even more.

This time, there were no words.

The figure stayed and watched over him anyway.

Eventually, night fell, and Hashirama left the forest and trudged back to the Main Families house in the Senju Compound. There, he skipped dinner and, exhausted from his tears, fell into a deep sleep, tear streaks on his face silver in the moonlight.

Softly and silently as a cat, the figure from the forest entered Hashirama’s room and knelt by his bed, observing him for a moment. Eventually, one hand reached out to touch his straight brown hair, choppily cut short. The figure ran the hair through its fingers for a moment, thinking. Then it reached for a kunai that was under Hashirama’s pillow.

Hashirama woke up, yawned, and started to stretch, only to freeze in an odd position with his arms out and his mouth hanging open as he opened his eyes and saw his bed. It was covered in long silver strands. Curious, Hashirama picked one up and inspected it.

It was hair.

It wasn’t just on his bed either – there was a trail of it, leading out of his room, and Hashirama followed, picking up the strands as he went. It was beautiful hair, fine and straight and soft, and shone like liquid silver in his hand.

The trail led to the bathroom.

Hashirama reached out and opened the sliding door and saw –

A boy, younger than him, was standing in front of the mirror on a small footstool to be tall enough to see it. His hair was the same colour as the hair on the floor, and he was cutting it with a kunai, each pass causing more long swaths of hair to fall to the floor, leaving him with fluffy, curling locks that stuck out around his face like a halo.

The boy turned, and looked Hashirama right in the face with big, bright red eyes. Hashirama had been taught almost from birth that red eyes meant danger, meant enemy, meant Uchiha, and that he should never meet his enemies eyes in battle – but these eyes weren’t like the ones he saw on those warriors across the battlefields, the ones he’d seen in Madara’s face as his friend turned his back on him. Those were bloody crimson, and cold. These eyes were warm, a lovely scarlet that shone in the morning light, and smiled at him just as the boy did.

“I’m sorry it’s not straight like yours. I didn’t realise it would stick up like that once it was cut,” the strange boy told him, not moving from his place on the footstall.

Hashirama shook his head to rid himself of the almost spell that had bewitched him, and fell into a defensive stance. “Who are you and why are you in my house?”

The boy blinked slowly at him with those bright red eyes, face not changing. Hashirama, instinct coming back, quickly looked away.

“I’m your new brother,” The boy said casually, voice steady and almost toneless. “I’m fixing my hair, so it matches yours. That’s what brother’s do, yes?”

“What?”

“I heard you, in the forest. You wanted a brother. I can’t bring your Itama back, but I can give you a new brother. Like you asked for.” He tilted his head, choppy bangs falling across his face, which still didn’t change. His voice didn’t either as he asked - “Aren’t you happy? Do you want me to go?”

Hashirama, silver hair still clenched in his hand, looked at the strange being in the form of a boy before him, mouth open, before shaking his head wildly. “No! No I don’t want you to go!” he beamed and stepped forward and hugged the boy, who stood stiffly in his arms as if – as if he didn’t know what a hug was!

“This is a hug!” Hashirama said. “It means I love you! You hug back – put your arms around me.” The boy tentatively followed his instruction, and Hashirama smiled happily down at him, tears filling his eyes - but this time they were happy tears. The gods had heard him! Or maybe it wasn’t the gods, maybe it was something else – maybe it was the forest, or his brother’s spirits – whatever it was, Hashirama didn’t care. He would keep his promise, and take good care of his new little brother.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, hitting his forehead with his palm as the boy blinked up at him curiously. “I didn’t ask your name!”

“I don’t have a name.”

Hashirama gasped. “No name! That’s awful!”

The boy shrugged. “It is what it is. You need to give me a name. If you name me, you can keep me – if you don’t, it means you don’t want me, and I’ll leave.”

Hashirama’s eyes widened in horror as he grasped his new brother even tighter. “NO, don’t leave! I’ll name you, ah –”

His mind darted around, trying to think of a good name, one ending in Ma of course because his new brother would be main clan – “ah – Tobirama! Yes Tobirama!” he smiled down at him. “Your name is Senju Tobirama. Do you like it?”

The newly named Tobirama looked up at him, then slowly, gently, began to smile. A soft, sweet smile that showed that he had dimples. “Tobirama,” he said softly, wonderingly. “Mm! I like it!” and then he buried his head in Hashirama’s chest and hugged him tightly.

Hashirama squealed a little at the cuteness, and promptly picked him up.

“Wha – Anija, put me down!” Tobirama squeaked, frowning at him. Hashirama laughed. “No can do! I need to go introduce you to father after all! And then we need to start training you, and get you proper armour, and I need to introduce you to everyone…”

Hashirama carried him down the hall, and Tobirama pouted at him but didn’t struggle too hard to escape him.

Behind them, silver strands littered the floor.

Chapter Text

This world’s version of Hashirama stared at Tobirama in shock and it was like looking into a twisted reflection. It was his brother, identical in all ways to how he’d been before he’d died, no strange black sclerae or papery cracked skin from the Edo Tensei, and Tobirama wanted to hug him, wanted to fall into those broad arms and let him embrace him the way he’d always tried to do and Tobirama had backed away from for years – but his chakra, oh, his chakra –

It was wrong, dark and cold and twisted into knots, and so it was like looking at an imposter, someone who had completely mastered the physical traits of Hashirama Senju, the God of Shinobi, but missed everything that made him him. Tobirama was only able to stop himself from reacting through years of control, years of living on a battlefield where the slightest flinch or distraction or waver in your heart could get you killed. He reached out his senses and found the Hiraishin marker he’d placed outside the village, but didn’t teleport yet, even as Hashirama quickly got over his surprise and tendrils of wood burst out of the records room floor to wrap around Tobirama – or rather, where Tobirama had been, because he had moved the moment he felt his brother’s chakra stir.

Hashirama turned, expression set, hands moving into the hand seals he used to aid his control of the Mokuton.

“Your organizational system is awful,” Tobirama said, folding his arms and glaring sternly at the other Hashirama.

Alternate Hashirama stopped, utterly baffled. “What?”

“Your organizational system,” Tobirama repeated, waving a hand at the walls of wooden cases lined with scrolls. “If it could even be called that. It was a mess. I fixed it. Here –”

He pulled out a blank scroll from his armour – one of many he carried, a necessity for a seal -master – and started writing down the changes he’d made, explaining them out loud to wrong Hashirama as he went. Then he wrote down a better layout for the tower. Then he started drawing a small map of the village with the most important buildings and places in better places, a more organized road system, suggestions for things that this version of Konoha didn’t seem to have…

Other Hashirama watched in confusion for a while, before tilting his head and moving his hands carefully away from the seal he used for Mokuton – though, Tobirama noticed, his chakra was still ready, and still reaching into the wood around him. A lot of people thought that Hashirama could only do Mokuton with the hand-seal, much like people thought Tobirama could only do water jutsu with hand-seals. Common knowledge, after all, stated that while it was possible, through time and practice and knowledge and experience, to reduce the hand-seals necessary for a particular jutsu – even to do them seallessly – it was not possible to do that with an entire branch of ninjutsu.

Those people were wrong.

For Tobirama, who had been sensing all his life, including the natural energy the nature gave off, manipulating water was like moving his arms. He only needed seals when it came to the big things, the powerful, flashy jutsu of the battlefield, the water dragon and water bullet and water whip. For the more subtle uses, he could do it with only his mind and chakra – like altering the level of water in someone’s lungs, or brain. Pulling blood around until it formed a clot. Reaching for the moistures in people’s bodies, in their veins and arteries and organs, and forming it into needles or simply taking control of it and making the person dance to his tune.

People often forgot, when they thought of water jutsu, that the human body was over 70% water. Even after seeing Tobirama pull water from the air, the earth, the plants – they never questioned where else he could get that water from.

Tobirama was very good at assassinations. He’d taken most of the ones the clan got, even before Father had died – hell, even before Kawarama and Itama had died. By taking those missions – the dirty ones, the mean ones, the ones that paid so well they couldn’t turn it down but left a patina of blood on your hands and on your heart – he had kept Hashirama’s hands and heart free. As he’d grown older, he’d even been the one who did most of the paperwork, deciding on which mission requests would be taken and which would be refused, and while he’d taken those papers to Hashirama for him to check and sign and stamp, as both the Clan Head and the Hokage, there had been missions that hadn’t been in those piles, that Tobirama had done on his own, adding the payment into the clan’s coffers quietly. Without those missions, the clan would have starved multiple times – but they were dark, dangerous, painful missions. Missions like killing the pregnant lover of a married noble who refused to get an abortion. Missions like wiping out a rival’s family down to the children. Missions that involved lying, cheating, stealing, seducing and killing.

Missions that Hashirama, who lived in the sun and saw the lighter missions, the guarding and courier and protection and retrieval and occasional assassination or help putting down a rebellion or bandit eradication to make him think those were the worst ones, would never have been able to stomach – not and remain Hashirama. Hashirama had always fretted over those missions, doing research to be sure that the target or targets deserved it, and even on one occasional helping the rebellion instead of the Lord who had hired them to put it down. It was that nature, that light, that Tobirama had wanted to protect, even as they formed Konoha.

There was a reason he’d created ANBU, after all.

Hashirama, much like Tobirama, was able to do simpler, subtler things without the hand-seal – growing plants and flowers, moving already created Mokuton vines and tendrils and branches – but he preferred to use the seal anyway. Hashirama had never been very good at subtle, and had preferred to let people know when he was about to use his awe-inspiring, terrifying powers. He never had liked scaring people, after all.

This Hashirama apparently didn’t have that problem.

With a pang, Tobirama wondered who had taken over the darker missions for this Hashirama. Touka maybe? Surely, someone had…

He hoped so.

As long as he wasn’t left alone. Hashirama didn’t do well on his own. This mockery of Konoha seemed to only emphasise that.

“Are you here to join the village then?” Hashirama asked, a smile so fake it seemed practically painted on crossing his face as he moved closer and looked at the paper Tobirama had been writing on. “It’s an interesting method of showing your worth, breaking in, but very creative! I commend you!”

Fake. So fake, and so wrong, and his chakra was still dark and twisted and hungry as he reached for Tobirama –

Tobirama rolled up the paper and whapped him on the head with it in one swift motion. Hashirama’s fake smile fell away, and for a moment so did his chakra readiness as he just stared at Tobirama in utter disbelief, as if asking if he really did that.

Tobirama raised an eyebrow at him, unconcerned. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Hashirama asked, genuinely baffled.

“That,” Tobirama gestured at him. “The fake smile bullshit.” He crossed his arms and frowned at this Hashirama.

A lot of people thought that Hashirama, as the God of Shinobi, must be faking his personality, his smile and happy go lucky nature – Tobirama knew the truth.

Hashirama wasn’t faking, but he did work at it. He had decided to be happy, to be idealistic, to not let the bloody shinobi world around them or their father or their brother’s deaths dim his smile, and he had fought for it with every inch of his stubborn soul.

Even if it was a different version, even if this one had never known him as a brother, even if judging by the state of Konoha this Hashirama had fallen into his worst impulses and decided to just make everyone else’s decisions for them ever – this was still a version of his brother, and Tobirama would not allow him to fake the happiness that his Hashirama genuinely felt.

Alt Hashirama (he really needed to come up with a way of calling him…Senju maybe?) was still looking at him in bafflement, and Tobirama sighed and rolled his eyes and handed the scroll to him. “Here. I’ve fixed a lot of the major problems. Now do better.”

Senju opened up the scroll cautiously, with one eye still on Tobirama, and started to read, eyes widening and flickering across the plans Tobirama had written down in shock, before looking up at him in amazement. Tobirama resisted the urge to shift or blush.

Had his Hashirama ever looked at him like that? Even when he’d helped him build the village, even as he’d come up with invention after invention to help make his dream a reality, had Hashirama ever looked at him as though he were a gift from the gods, as though – as though he were Madara?

No, he didn’t think so.

Tobirama pretended that didn’t hurt.

“And the answer to your question was no – I didn’t come here to join your village. I broke in to investigate it.”

Senju cocked his head to the side and stepped slowly closer, like Tobirama was a deer he was trying not to spook, oddly wondering look still on his face, along with a half-smile. This one, Tobirama was pleased to see, was real. “And what did you find?”

Tobirama arched an eyebrow at him, and waved a hand at the scroll he’d given him.

Senju laughed sheepishly, hand going to the back of his head in a familiar gesture that made Tobirama press his lips together to hide the surge of pain.

He needed to get out of here.

Senju took another step closer and Tobirama smartly stepped back. “I’m leaving now,” he said, reaching for his hirashin marker.

“Wait, no, don’t go!” Senju cried out, eyes wide in sudden distress and reaching out for him. “You can’t go – I’ve never met anyone like you before!”

Tobirama, backing away from Senju’s grasp, blinked in surprise. Never met anyone like him?

“What, you’ve never seen an albino before?”

Senju paused, arm falling by his side, expression suddenly pained, and Tobirama resisted the instinct of years to go and comfort him.

“My little brother was an albino,” Senju said softly, eyes far away. It was a perfect opportunity for Tobirama to leave, but he hesitated. Kawarama in this world had been -? Hashirama seemed to notice his confusion and smiled. “My first little brother,” he explained. “He was born sleeping. He was so still and pale and cold and stiff – but beautiful. Perfectly formed – ten little finger and toes.” His eyes were still distant, as though he were seeing his stillborn little brother in front of him. “He was pure white, all over, his skin and the little tuft of hair on his head. I have no idea what colours his eyes would have been – red like yours, or pink, or blue or violet – but I’m sure they would have been beautiful.”

Red. Tobirama didn’t say, realising. They would have been red. Like mine. Exactly like mine.

Well, father had always said he was a weak runt lucky to be born –

“They didn’t even name him,” Hashirama continued, eyes suddenly present, and furious. His chakra filled the room, dark and heavy, and Tobirama bowed under it, hiding his own chakra in a little ball in his chest, as he had learned to do years ago, when his father and brother fought, titans to his senses, and felt like they had blinded him. He’d never told Hashirama how much those clashing chakras had hurt. “There was no point they said,” he hissed with pained viciousness, coming closer, as Tobirama abruptly realised he’d been back into a wall. “No point!” Hashirama let out a bitter laugh. “Then they buried him in an unmarked grave – but he was mine, my little brother!” Hashirama leaned in close, looming over Tobirama, eyes bright with – tears, Tobirama saw. He didn’t Hiraishin away. “My little brother. My first little brother,” Hashirama whispered, “my first failure. I named him. I named him.” He hung his head, long hair falling around them, and Tobirama looked at him, this familiar stranger, and reached out and gently rest a hand on his back, rubbing it in soothing circles.

“What did you name him?”

“Shiroma.” Hashirama whispered, lips quirking slightly. “I know it wasn’t the best name but I was only three –!”

“It’s a beautiful name,” Tobirama interrupted, making Hashirama look at him once more, eyes still teary, but searching his as if to find a hint of mocking. He wouldn’t find it. Tobirama meant every word.

“I’m sure – I’m sure he would have loved it.” Tobirama said hoarsely, swallowing dryly and looking away from Hashirama’s eyes, that suddenly seemed to much – too bright, to intense, too amazed, looking at him as if he’d hung the moon in the sky. “I need to go.”

He ducked under Hashirama’s arms – or tried to. Suddenly, they were holding his instead, pressing him against the wall, thumb pressed into each of his palms and stopping him from making any hand-seals. Hashirama smiled at him, long and slow. “I told you,” he said chidingly, as though scolding a child. “You can’t leave. You need to stay here, with me.”

“Oh, I can’t, can I?” Tobirama said, eyes narrowing.

Hashirama smiled guilelessly at him. “You’ll like it here! I’ll protect you, and take care of you, and you can keep making changes and I’ll introduce you to everyone! You can’t leave,” he said firmly. “I won’t let you.”

Tobirama stiffened, and glared, and if his Hashirama had been there, he would have been wincing and shaking his head at his alternate self.

“Hey, Hashirama?” Tobirama asked sweetly.

“Yes?”

“You can regenerate, right?”

Hashirama blinked. “Yes, of course –”

Tobirama smiled, soft and gentle and deadly, and took a deep breath and – as Hashirama’s eyes widened, spat out a stream of sharp water that promptly separated both of Hashirama’s hands from the arms. Hashirama staggered back, cursing, blood flowing from his severed arms, and Tobirama straightened up, took a step forward as he shook the severed hands off, and glared poison at Hashirama, who was, indeed, already regenerating.

“Word of advice,” he said shortly, still glaring. “Never try and tell me what I can and cannot do.”

And then he made a seal and promptly vanished.

Chapter Text

The woman who ran into the meeting room was someone Madara recognized, but barely, just another familiar Uchiha face that lined the compound. She was a kunoichi, he knew that much, and specialized in…wire, maybe? But he couldn’t be sure. And he could not, for the life of him, remember her name.

The meeting room was large enough to hold every single Uchiha currently alive, and currently held most of the adults, (beyond those who were on patrol, guarding their borders against the Senju, or out on missions, the proceeds of which would go to help support the clan) and they stirred as the woman entered. Her hair was undone and wild, not in the nature that some Uchiha (like himself) have naturally wild hair, but as if it had previously been neat and tidy and had been ruined by her running her fingers through it. Her skin was deathly pale, almost grey, and her lips were pressed together so tightly he could see the white around them.

Her sharingan was activated and blazing, and it was that, most of all, which made the gathered Uchiha shift nervously. One of the gathered clan members – and this one, Madara was pleased to note, he did know – another kunoichi named Kikyo, who was excellent at Genjutsu gasped “Hannei?” in shock. Madara made a mental note of the name as the woman ignored her clan member – and friend? – and instead stepped forward, her knees buckling as she prostrated herself before him. Madara’s eyes widened despite himself.

The Uchiha, as a clan, were proud. To prostate oneself – to essentially put yourself entirely in someone else power and beg them for help or forgiveness – is not something the Uchiha usually do. For Hannei to do so, especially before all the gathered adult Ninja of the clan, meant that whatever she is asking for meant more to her then her pride, then her standing, then her name – even then her eyes.

It was no wonder that the room was filled with the noise of all the watching Uchiha inhaling in shock at the same moment as the entire room gasped to see Hannei humble herself. Her friend Kikyo let out a noise of shock and instinctively stepped forward, arm outstretched, as if to pull her to her feet. Hannei ignored Kikyo and the watchers, and instead pressed her head further to the floor.

“Clan head,” she begged, voice hoarse and thick with tears, “I beg of you – I cannot find my son, Kagami. I have searched the compound, I have searched for his chakra – he is not here!”

Kikyo let out a muffled curse. “Madara-sama,” she said, stepping up beside her friend and bowing the exact depth required to the head of the clan. “Kagami is two years old.”

Madara resisted the urge to curse himself. Uchiha children did not leave the compound at that age. Even during his father’s time, when children started training as soon as they could hold a kunai and were on the field doing simple missions as young as five or six and participating in actual battles with other clans at seven, toddlers were kept safe in the compound. For a child that age to be missing – and he was missing, a mother with a Sharingan could find her child’s chakra signature wherever he was, if Hannei said he wasn’t in the compound then he wasn’t – meant he was in grave danger.

“Are any other children missing?” he asked immediately. If it were bloodline hunters, child thieves, and they had somehow infiltrated the compound – Hannei shook her head.

“I checked – it’s just Kagami.” She swallows. “I – he’s a bright child, and curious, always wandering off, it’s possible –”

“– that he wondered out of the compound on his own,” Madara finished for her, mind racing. That was both good and bad. Good in that it meant Kagami hadn’t been kidnapped, bad in that it meant he could be anywhere in the forests that surrounded the compound – the forests that lead to other clan’s lands.

Clans like the Senju.

And even without that, there were other dangers, wild beasts and weather and holes and poisonous food and –

Suddenly, Madara realized why Hannei had prostrated herself. There was no need to beg just to let him know that her son was missing. He would have sent a squad to look for him automatically – no, what Hannei wanted was something more.

“You want to use the Crystal,” he said.

There was another gasp among the gathered Uchiha as Hannei nodded, then a hushed silence as they waited to see what Madara would do. His father would have dismissed the plea out of hand.

Madara didn’t hesitate.

“Granted,” he said. “Izuna, go get it – Hikaku, Hiei, Misaka, go around and gather everyone in the compound with the reserves and control to assist.” He wished he could summon the patrols back as well, the Uchiha who guarded their various boarders, but that was a step too far even for him.

There was a rush of movement as the people he’d ordered obeyed, and as Hannei looked up at him, realized he was serious, and collapsed in tears of relief as Kikyo drew her into her arms and whispered reassurances.

Soon, everyone was back, and everything was ready. Izuna carried the box the crystal was into the center of the room where Madara, with his massive reserves, Hannei, with her blood connection and memories of the boy, and Izuna himself with his control would be doing most of the work, though the other Uchiha present would also send their chakra through the seals that had been carved into the wooden floor long ago. That chakra would activate the seals, which would in turn activate the seals carved into the wooden base that the crystal, clear and round and smooth, rested on. Those seals would, if they worked, allow the image that formed in the crystal to be projected into the world, like an area of effect genjutsu, so that all the gathered Uchiha could see it.

Madara reached out and opened the box and took out the crystal. The crystal itself was an ancient artifact, created by the founder of their clan, Indra, himself. Madara, needless to say, was exceptionally careful as he removed it from its box. Though he doubted something as simple as dropping it could break it, he still didn’t want to risk it. It was oddly heavy, and seemed to thrum in his hands as he sat down, his knees touching Izuna’s on one side and Hannei’s on the other, closed his eyes and focused as much chakra as he could manage into the gem. Distantly, as sweat broke out on his forehead, he heard Izuna whispering to Hannei to focus on her memories of her son, her impression of his chakra signature, and felt Izuna’s familiar lightning-and-fire signature take the massive amounts of chakra he was pouring into the crystal and wrapping the firestorm around Hannei’s chakra.

There was a reason the crystal was rarely used. It took so much chakra that normally it would require several hardened warriors to sit and exhaust themselves to make the images come, and even than it could only see things a certain degree from where it was. The more chakra pumped in, the wider the range of events it could pick up was, but even with his prodigious chakra reserves Madara was almost out and only barely able to get beyond the borders of their land.

In other words, it was useless to spy on other clans.

In situations like this, though, it was perfect.

Eventually, though, he felt something click and the crystal stopped taking chakra from him, though the humming felt like it had picked up somehow. He knew that it had found Kagami.

Madara, eyes still closed, heard someone give a small whisper of “no!”, another give a groan of denial, and thought he’d open his eyes to the sight of the toddler’s dead body.

Instead, he opened his eyes to something worse.

Kagami was a small boy with wildly curly hair, wearing a an equally small high-necked shirt and currently huddled against the boulder to his back as he cowered away from the reason the watching Uchiha had moaned in despair.

There were five large, adult Senju warriors standing in a semi-circle around the young boy, all armed and armoured and smirking, hate and glee in their eyes as they looked down at the innocent they had cornered and were about to murder in cold blood.

Hannei shrieked, tried to lunge towards the image of her son but only passed through him as Izuna started cursing, sending him an angry look as he did so. Madara ignored it, as he always did when Izuna got angry about Madara’s desire for peace with the Senju, and focused on the situation before him.

“Does anyone recognize where he is from his surroundings?” he called out. There were several negative murmurs, as everyone watched with helpless horror as the Senju moved towards the child. Madara cursed, trying desperately to think, to find some solution – if he could get a message to the patrols somehow, maybe – but he knew it was hopeless.

All he could do was watch.

One of the Senju, the one in the middle, with a large, broad blade strapped to his back, light brown hair and eyes, tanned skin and a large scar on one cheek, stepped forward, a bloodthirsty smile stretching over his face.

“What have we here?” The Senju crowed, like a cock preening and puffing its chest out, making sure the other Senju were all looking at him. Madara had already memorized his face. Memorized all their faces. So had every other Uchiha with an active sharingan. The child killer would not survive long after his horrible action. Neither would any of the others.

“Looks like a spy to me, Taicho,” said one of the other Senju, this one a squashed face man with black hair.

Kagami stiffened at that. He was old enough to know that ‘spy’ was a bad thing. “’m not a spy!” he shouted, teary eyes darting over the five of them like a scared rabbit. “’m not! ’m Kagami!”

The Senju ignored him. “An Uchiha spy, on Senju land – well we know what to do with one of those, don’t we?” He smirked at his cronies as they smiled and laughed and nodded back, eyeing Kagami, and Madara clenched his fists so hard he felt his nails break the skin –

“What are you doing?”

Both the five Senju and the watching Uchiha jumped as the voice came from behind them, turning to see who it was, and Madara, hope filling him, turned with them – missing Izuna’s wince. Izuna knew that voice. He’d been fighting that voice for the past five years after all.

Madara and the other Uchiha saw who had spoken and Madara felt his hope turn to ashes in his mouth as several other Uchiha let out despairing curses, and Hannei started brokenly sobbing.

It was Tobirama.

The White Demon of the Senju stood behind the Senju shinobi, staring at them with cold, flat red eyes as the Uchiha clan watched. For the first time, Madara saw Tobirama in casual clothes and not his usual fighting blacks and worn blue armour. He stood in bare feet and was wearing plain black pants and a loose yukata, worn and overlarge, that fell to his knees and had overly long sleeves that covered his pale, deadly hands. It was a faded green, and for some reason Madara had the bizarre thought that it might have once been Hashirama’s.

He still wore the ever-present white fur, wrapped around his neck and shoulders like a stole, and he appeared unarmed. Not that it mattered. Madara – and all the Uchiha – knew exactly how deadly the White Demon was.

Tobirama had started fighting the Uchiha after Madara had broken off his friendship with Hashirama that day on the river, turning from his once friend’s heartbroken eyes and hardening his own heart as he, Izuna and his father retreated from Butsuma Senju, Hashirama, and Hashirama’s cousin Touka.

Shortly after that Tobirama had made his first appearance on the battlefield (and where had he been before?) and the small boy, pale and white haired and carrying a sword almost bigger then he was, had killed seven adult Uchiha, experienced warriors all, in a flash, expression not changing at all and not a drop of their blood landing on him. Izuna had screamed in anger and attacked, as Madara had cried out in warning – Izuna was not strong enough – and tried to get away from Hashirama to protect his little brother, his last little brother – and had been too late. Tobirama had wiped the floor with Izuna, expression not moving an inch, and only left off when Madara had managed to jump in between them, and both sides had retreated.

Every other battle they were in went just the same. Tobirama seemed content to play with Izuna, not striking to kill, but perfectly happy to wound or even maim, and also not seeming to care at all. If someone tried to back Izuna up who wasn’t Madara, Tobirama would kill them. Madara had silently thanked the gods several times that for some reason (Hashirama?) Tobirama seemed content to merely play with his food when it came to his precious little brother and dreaded the day he no longer did – the day he got bored, or irritated, or tired of listening to Hashirama, and struck Izuna down like the heartless monster he was.

There was no way Tobirama, ruthless, cold and soulless as he was, would let an Uchiha live, even a toddler like Kagami. He might not care enough to kill the child himself, but he would definitely allow the other Senju to do so. Madara could only hope that perhaps Tobirama’s presence meant Hashirama was nearby as well. He would stop this.

It seemed the Senju warriors had thought of that possibility as well, shifting nervously before Tobirama’s blank stare and sending each other looks from the corners of their eyes.

“Tobirama-sama,” the scarred one, the leader, finally said, tone hesitantly respectful. “Are you here with your brother, sir?”

Madara watched as Tobirama silently shook his head, those icy red eyes taking in the situation, moving over each of the Senju before turning to the tiny, shivering, obviously terrified form of Kagami, and felt his heart sink as those eyes somehow got even colder. The Senju patrolmen relaxed, smiles coming back, only to falter again as Tobirama looked back at them.

“You didn’t answer my question, Mikoma,” the demon said tonelessly. The Senju men shifted a little, nervously, but still confident.

Maybe, Madara thought without hope, with them so distracted Kagami could somehow sneak away? Or maybe an Uchiha patrol would see or sense what was happening and come swooping in.

Maybe the sage would appear from the ether and strike all the Senju down with a wave of his hand and deliver Kagami to his tearful mother’s arms and bring his brothers back from the dead and force the two clans to make peace while he was at it.

He almost missed the leader, the one with the scar – Mikoma, apparently – answering.

“We’re dealing with a spy –”

“- really?” The White Demon asked, some form of emotion finally in its voice as it raised an eyebrow. “A spy? That’s the best you can do? He can’t be more than three or four.”

He gestured at Kagami, who was watching everything with wide eyes, darting between one and the other, and jerked slightly when the demon did so, blinking up at him. “’m two,” Kagami said quietly, holding up two fingers to demonstrate, and the demon nodded seriously.

Tobirama turned back to the other Senju. “Two, then. You needed a whole patrol, five strong, experienced, adult Senju warriors, the cream of the crop – to corner a two-year-old. Even the Uchiha who murdered Hashirama’s little brother Itama at least were targeting a six-year-old, who was a shinobi.”

Madara finally recognized the emotion in his voice. Scorn. Idly, he also made note of the odd way he had talked about the youngest of Butsuma’s children. Why call him Hashirama’s little brother, and not his?

The Patrol recognized the scorn as well, flinching back slightly, before Mikoma rallied. “We were together when we saw him –”

“And decided that you needed five adults to murder an innocent child.” The demon took a step forward, and though he was smaller and slighter than the other Senju, all of them took a step back as he gazed at them with pure disgust.

And wait, had Madara just heard Senju Tobirama refer to an Uchiha child as ‘innocent?’

Mikoma apparently agreed, as he snarled. “Innocent? None of them are innocent!”

A single, silvery white eyebrow was raised. “Your clan head would disagree. In fact, I believe he gave rather specific orders regarding the treatment of Uchiha children. Orders that you are defying.”

Madara and the rest of the Uchiha kept watching, baffled, and slowly realizing – the demon was defending Kagami, even if it was only for his brother’s sake. Just as he had consistently stayed his blade from Izuna, which Madara figured must have been another order by Hashirama. Could it be that he was actually loyal, to the position of clan head if not his brother himself?

Red eyes glared, almost glowing from anger, as the demon stepped forward again, walking right past Mikoma without a flicker of concern at letting him near his back, and came to stand in front of Kagami.

Madara held his breath. By the hush, he wasn’t the only one, as Senju Tobirama, the White Demon, the Walking Ghost, the swift-moving death that their strongest men and swords couldn’t stand against, the ruthless, merciless, bloodthirsty killer who Madara had been sure, sure, did not return his older brother’s regard, couldn’t return his love –

(– and he’d even felt pity for Hashirama, some late nights when the moon was high, for being stuck with that heartless monster instead of his other little brothers, because Hashirama looked at Tobirama like he’d hung the moon and the stars in the sky, and surely, eventually, that soulless creature would tire of being held back by Hashirama’s morals and strike him from behind, from the shadows, while he slept or fought or looked away, and take control of the Senju and when he did…when he did, Madara had known, the Uchiha would fall –)

– reached down and gently and carefully scooped Kagami up in his arms, holding him with experience as Kagami blinked up at him, smiled, and then nuzzled close to his new savior, one tiny hand coming up and clutching at the ever-present fur. (Kagami liked this new person, who had saved him. He was warm and nice and smelt good, and had trustworthy eyes, and his fur was so soft and white!)

Tobirama smiled, soft and gentle. Madara’s eyes flew wide in shock as he stared and heard Izuna let out a small gasp next to him. Tobirama, dressed in casual clothes, with his bare feet and a toddler held safely in his arms, smiled down at Kagami’s curly head, cold red eyes now warm and amused, full pink lips (and Madara had never really noticed Tobirama’s lips before, but he was now – how full they were! How pink, how soft they looked!) curving into that soft smile that transformed his face as he looked at the precious treasure in his arms.

“Let’s get you home, hmm?” Tobirama murmured into Kagami’s hair, and Hannei collapsed again, sobbing with relief this time, as the other gathered Uchiha watched in shock.

Madara stared, his Sharingan active, and knew that he would never forget the sight before him, never forget the sight of Tobirama smiling down at the Uchiha child whose life he had just saved – and neither would any other Uchiha who had seen what just happened with their Sharingan on.

Tobirama turned around, and his eyes went cold again as he looked at the patrol men in disgust. “You know, there’s a word for people who disobey the clan head’s explicit orders. ‘Traitor.’”

As one, the other Senju took a step back.

Tobirama smiled again – but this smile was not the soft, gentle thing he had given Kagami. This one was darkly amused and vicious. “Do you know what happens to traitors, Mikoma?”

Mikoma was pale, but held his ground, face twisting even more as he sneered. “We aren’t traitors! We have always obeyed Butsuma-sama –”

“I know,” Tobirama interrupted. “And so does Anija. It’s why you and certain others haven’t already been executed for child killing – he wanted to, but I pointed out that he couldn’t kill you for obeying the previous clan head’s orders, unless he wanted to encourage treason.”

His smile widened. One of the Senju, a slightly paler man with dark brown hair in a messy bun, flinched, and started sidling away from the others, as though trying to say he wasn’t with them. Madara watched him in scorn. Those types were the worse. Fortunately, he had no doubt that very soon every one of the men who had terrorized and been about to murder Kagami would be dead. The Uchiha, after all, knew very well how deadly Senju Tobirama was.

“But now – well, now you are betraying the clan. You are flagrantly disobeying your clan head’s orders – and for what? To kill a child?” Tobirama continued, looking at them in such blatant scorn a few actually looked almost shamefaced.

“He’s an Uchiha,” Mikoma snapped back, wild eyed, glaring at the form cradled protectively to Tobirama’s chest in rampant hatred. “They killed my wife!”

“So?”

Madara jerked at Tobirama’s bored answer, and so did several other Uchiha around him. “Cold bastard,” Izuna muttered next to him, glaring at Tobirama’s pale figure. That was not the proper response to that! Uchiha who lost loved ones were often driven mad by it, to just dismiss that grief –

“I sincerely doubt Kagami killed your wife,” Tobirama continued, paying no mind to Mikoma’s spluttering. “He is, as previously mentioned, two years old. This is what I don’t understand about you people,” Tobirama mused, voice showing a hint of frustration. “It’s like you can’t control yourselves at all. So an Uchiha killed your wife – what does that have to do with Kagami?”

Mikoma stared, dumbfounded. “What does it – he’s an Uchiha!” he pointed at Kagami, who squeaked and hid his face in Tobirama’s fur collar.

“I’ll say it again – so?”

Madara froze, watching what was happening. Some part of him, some instinct, whispered that what he was seeing and hearing, what he was about to see and hear, was important, important to a dream he’d hidden and not spoken of since that day at the river but still secretly kept, hidden deep in the embers of his heart. The rest of the Uchiha watching were quiet as well.

Tobirama saw that the Senju weren’t understanding and let out a faint sigh. He was still blank faced, like the surface of a calm pond, but there were signs of his emotions, like the slight furrowing of his brow, and Madara was learning to read them, memorizing each with an active sharingan, greedy for those hints of emotion and humanity in the being he’d though of more as an ice cold statue, or a barely leashed monster, than a human. “You are taking a group and deciding that the actions of one member of that group should reflect on all of them. One Uchiha killed your wife, so they are all bad and must die, even the children, or the old, or the civilians who have never even touched a kunai. One Uchiha killed your wife – but instead of keeping your revenge to that one person, which is understandable (even though Hashirama disapproves), you have decided to, in your grief and pain and anger, lash out at all of them. You think they’re all bad, and murderers, and deserve to die, instead of judging them each on their own merits.”

Madara, and every other Uchiha watching, was spellbound. That was – it was putting in words something he’d only felt before, when his clan members spoke with such hate of the Senju as a whole, a resistance and burning feeling that if he could just put his feelings into words, he could convince them, get through to them – and now, someone else was doing so, better than he ever could have.

“You people,” Tobirama continued, and for some reason Madara felt he was referring to more than just the five Senju before him, “you believe in collective punishment. That if you kill a father in revenge, that father’s son will grow up and take revenge on you, so better to kill the son now. Or maybe it’s just that you think all the members of a clan are responsible for the actions of one, or a few. And you’re hypocrites!” Tobirama exclaimed. He clearly had had these frustrations for a while now. “You say ‘loyalty to the Clan head is the most important thing, so we should listen and obey without questioning when he tells us to kill our enemies loved ones as revenge or to get ahead, even when he tells us to kill children’ – but then you say ‘that other enemy clan shouldn’t have listened to their clan head and done the exact same thing,’ because – because they killed my wife, killed my son, killed my siblings or my parents or my friends. You’re allowed to lash out in your rage and pain from your grief, and who cares how many innocents die in the process, because you are clearly in the right – because the enemy aren’t people to you, they’re just nameless, faceless monsters, because that makes it easier to kill them.”

Each word fell down like a leaden gravestone, etching its way into not just the Senju’s hearts, but also the watching Uchiha’s. Madara watched, spellbound, soul singing, because yes! Yes, this was what he felt, had been feeling for years, had tried his best with his clumsy words to get through to others, had only ever found Hashirama agreeing with him about – that this war of hate and revenge was stupid, pointless, only caused more pain which caused more hate which caused more revenge and more pain. A cycle of hatred, like the curse that followed in the Uchiha’s shadows. A chain of hate wrapping them all together, trapping them into killing each other – and over what? Nobody even knew why the war had started. Clients didn’t just hire Uchiha to block Senju or Senju to block Uchiha because they were the two strongest clans, though that was part of it – they also did it because they knew they would agree if they mentioned that their enemy had hired the opposing clan, and would even do it for cheap.

Clients greed lead to more blood soaking the earth, and more orphaned children and shattered families and grieving widows and widowers, and more hate and pain, and for what?

For what?

Tobirama wasn’t finished.

“And in your rage and pain, you have lashed out at an innocent – a child!” Tobirama’s eyes were suddenly blazing as he snarled the last word, such fury and disgust radiating out from him in his chakra that it shook the grass and cracked the rock Kagami had been cowering against. Madara’s breath caught. He’d never seen Tobirama lose control like that. Never seen him unleash power like that.

It was beautiful. He could feel the mingled emotions of his clan, their admiration and passion and attraction, and knew he wasn’t the only one to think so.

“You found a lost, helpless child, and instead of showing an ounce of compassion, or kindness, or basic decency, or all those other things Hashirama says are important and what humans should act on, you decided to murder him in cold blood – and you would have thought you were in the right! Because you’re avenging your loved ones – well guess what! Your loved ones are dead!”

Madara flinched. He wasn’t the only one. But no one said anything, not even Izuna.

“They’re not feeling anything, because they’re dead! They’re not hating that their killer’s innocent family members are still around, because they’re dead! And ‘avenging’ them won’t bring them back, or suddenly make their loss hurt less – because even when they are avenged they will still be dead. But this child is still alive! And you were going to kill him! Children are sacred!” Tobirama was shouting now, chakra still blasting from him as the warriors he was haranguing cowered away.

“How dare you –!” Tobirama stopped, and drew his chakra back with a deep breath, visibly regaining control of himself. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in control of himself, though still radiating anger and disgust.

“Even if you don’t understand how precious and important children are, how they should be protected, cared for, and guided, not harmed,” he said flatly. “Even then, you are still committing treason against your clan head. You’re disgraces to your clan name.”

That proclamation sat flatly in the air, before Mikoma, who had been cowering back like all the others, snapped, eyes wild and maddened as he shouted back. “As if you’re one to talk! You’re not even a Senju, just a cursed mutt dressed in the colours of death that Hashirama-sama found one day and brought into the clan after losing Kawarama-Sama and Itama-Sama – you have no right to the ancient, noble Senju name! Or to tell us real Senju what to do!”

Madara’s mouth was hanging open as he took that in, the gathered Uchiha suddenly rustling as they turned and whispered to each other, shocked. That – what?

If he – if he thought about it, it made sense – how he’d never been told by Hashirama any details about his last little brother, how he’d always changed the subject or looked guilty when Madara asked him about it – if he’d lied to make him seem similar to his new friend, or simply wanted to pretend that he still had at least one living brother, and then found Tobirama somewhere and brought him into the clan…

It would explain where he had been before his first appearance on the battlefield, why he was so different to the other Senju, everything!

If anyone had the will and charisma and stubbornness and bizarre luck to do it, it was Hashirama. Madara felt his heart go out to his once-and-still friend, at the idea that he really had lost all his brothers, and instinctively reached out and grabbed Izuna’s hand, squeezing it. His little brother squeezed back.

Tobirama tilted his head in amusement. “No right,” he mused, then shrugged. “Maybe. But Hashirama made a Pact with me and gave me my Name – and part of it was Senju. That’s all I need. Because you’re not just committing treason against your clan head.” He smiled again, that vicious baring of teeth that didn’t really deserve the name as he purred out the next part – “You’re also committing treason against my older brother.”

The pale Senju with the bun got even paler, holding his hands up in a calming gesture and speaking in a wheedling, ingratiating tone. “Now, Tobirama-sama, I understand that we got a bit – a bit carried away, a bit swept along, but we wouldn’t actually have hurt the kid –”

“Shut up,” Tobirama interrupted him, looking at them all with a complete, icy calm as the smile dropped, seemingly as disgusted by the Senju’s cowardice as Madara was. “You seem to be labouring under a misconception here – you think you can get out of this somehow. You can’t,” he stated, voice as flat and factual as if he were stating the sky was blue. “You are traitors, and I’m going to kill you all. You can’t kill me. You can’t run. In all the ways that matter, you are all dead already. You just haven’t realised it yet.”

The five warriors took that in for a moment, frozen, before Mikoma’s face twisted, lips pulled back from his teeth in a rictus, face so red Madara half expected to see him start steaming.

“You think you can kill me?” Mikoma shouted.

Tobirama blinked at him, as if asking why he was asking such a stupid question. “Yes.”

Madara snorted and Izuna, and most of the rest of the watching Uchiha, snickered.

“You’re unarmed!” Mikoma persisted, drawing his sword and getting into a defensive position. The others copied him.

Tobirama let out a small amused huff of breath, as Izuna snorted next to Madara. “Like that’s ever stopped him,” he muttered ruefully, and Madara nodded. Tobirama, after all, while excellent with a sword, was also a suiton master of such skill and control and power that he could use the powerful Water Dragon Jutsu, an old but powerful technique that was only kept from being deadly by the long – forty-four, he believed – hand-seal sequence. Tobirama had somehow managed to use it with one, and had a habit of throwing it around the battlefield, disrupting battles and dousing fire and causing chaos. More than once, Madara had had to sit and listen to Izuna’s complaints over that.

“I'm never unarmed,” Tobirama said, raising a hand into a half-rat focusing seal. That was the only seal he made, and the only thing he said, but nonetheless fog quickly filled the clearing, clouding over the sky and blocking off the trees, until it was as if they were in a little world of their own cut off from the wider reality. Suddenly, the day seemed dim, and the Senju looked around them anxiously, instincts screaming, as the familiar, friendly forest they knew better than the backs of their own hands suddenly became a mystery to them, shadows twisting and looming from the distortion of the fog, like watching a friend’s face suddenly become that of a stranger.

Madara kept watching, his clan silent around him, and a hundred pairs of sharingan eyes memorised the tableau before them, the icy pale, beautiful young man holding the toddler and the five adults, all bigger and broader and older then him, weathered and scarred and experienced – and yet backing away, eyes wide and darting around in the blinding fog and fear sweat shining on their faces.

That…would be a really good jutsu to use against the sharingan, blocking off their vision. That Tobirama hadn’t ever used it, except now, in defense of an Uchiha...Izuna let out a couple of quiet curses and squeezed Madara’s hand, and Madara didn’t protest. His little brother, after all, was the one who had been fighting Tobirama the most, had considered himself his rival, had scraped and scratched and trained day in and day out to match him so he couldn’t kill any more of their clan members all the while knowing that it wasn’t enough, would never be enough, not if Tobirama ever went full out. Now, seeing the truth of that in front of his eyes – of course Izuna was upset.

Madara would offer him whatever comfort he could, as always.

The Senju looked around nervously.

“Well, you are clearly outnumbered –” the plain faced one began, blustering and looking to Mikoma for courage, only to be interrupted.

“And you, Taro, are clearly outclassed.” Tobirama sounded almost bored.

“Kagami,” he said, and the toddler looked up at him curiously. “Put your face in my fur, alright? Don’t look.”

Kagami nodded cheerfully, and promptly did so. Tobirama made sure he couldn’t see, then gestured, spreading his hand out towards Mikoma before curling his fingers lightly in, ever so slightly, as delicately as a geisha dancing – and yanking his hand towards himself.

All the water in Mikoma’s body followed him.

It pulled from him, from his pores, from his nose and mouth and wide-open eyes as he screamed, skin drying and shriveling over his bones like a corpse left in the deserts of wind country for a week. His eyes lost all cohesion, dripping down his face in gruesome strands of clear, jelly-like liquid, before even the water from that was pulled away, curling through the air to coalesce in a round clear sphere over Tobirama’s outstretched hand.

The Uchiha stared, every single one of them shocked silent.

So did the other Senju. Then Mikoma groaned, tottered in place – and collapsed, dissolving into dust and ashes and dried out bone fragments.

The other four stared at what was left of their leader, mouths hanging open, madness settling into their eyes. The pale man with the bun broke first, dropping his sword and running into the fog. Tobirama watched him with even eyes, not seeming to care that his prey was getting away.

The three remaining tried to attack, but Tobirama just flicked his wrist and sent the water he still held out in a scything, curved arc, cutting through two of them, one at the knees and one diagonally across the torso, sending blood flying as the maimed man started screaming. The other, the one who’d been cut across the torso, said nothing, mouth gaping open as he split in half, and fell to the ground in pieces.

Tobirama frowned slightly, a little irritated wrinkle between his brows, and suddenly the blood from the man who had lost his legs was moving, forcing its way down his throat and stifling the scream. His eyes bulged as the blood, under Tobirama’s control, made its way to his lungs as he writhed on the ground, desperately trying to breath as he drowned on dry land.

The third remaining Senju was the plain faced one, Taro, and he didn’t even spare a moment to stare in horror at his comrades’ gruesome fates. He’d avoided the water scythe by ducking down behind an earth wall he’d summoned, and as his comrades died he leapt over it and high into the air, sword drawn for an overhead slash to come directly down on Tobirama’s head.

It was a good move, Madara acknowledged to himself, slightly annoyed at having to do so. The Senju had quickly realized that in long and mid distance, where Ninjutsu reigned as king, he was helplessly outmatched, so had tried to close the distant and make it a short-range Taijutsu fight, using the advantages of his strength and armour and weapons and larger, broader body type then Tobirama.

Tobirama, expression utterly bored, reached up and stopped the edge of the sword between two fingers. Taro’s eyes went wide in shock, and Tobirama looked up at him, meeting his eyes with his own flat red ones as Taro stayed hanging in the air, gravity not yet able to pull him down (fast! Madara acknowledged gleefully. In noticing and reacting –).

Tobirama moved the sword out of the way and, in the split second before Taro, who was holding the hilt, could follow it, spat water needles at him, seal-less.

Again.

Actually, Madara didn’t think Tobirama had used any seals at all the entire time, excepting the half rat at the beginning, and he hadn’t been at all bothered with having Kagami in one arm either. In fact, Madara mused as the water needles hit their targets, perforating Taro’s eyes, neck, open mouth, and various arteries and important organs, and the now corpse completed his fall to the ground, he didn’t think Tobirama had even moved from his spot!

Tobirama let go of the sword and, with a moue of disgust, waved a hand over the few blood splatters that had reached him and Kagami, and the red droplets followed his hand as he flicked them onto the already gore-covered grass, leaving himself and the child as clean as they had been at the beginning.

“Alright there?” Tobirama asked Kagami gently. The toddler lifted his head and nodded, ignoring the carnage around him to instead smile an adorable smile up at Tobirama – and the last Senju, the one who had run away, barged back into the clearing from the other side he had run from.

Tobirama and Kagami and the entire invisibly watching Uchiha clan turned as one to look at him. The man with the bun skidded to a halt, horror etching itself even more firmly onto his face as he saw both the clearing he had come from – and his compatriots, dead and in pieces, scattered over the ground, while Tobirama stood in the exact same position, with not even a single scratch on him.

For a long moment, the Senju and the pair simply stared at each other, before Tobirama spoke.

“Hatsuharu, wasn’t it? Are you ready to –”

Hatsuharu turned around and sprinted back into the fog before Tobirama could finish speaking, making him narrow his beautiful crimson eyes after him. “Rude,” he muttered to himself.

“’ery rude,” Kagami nodded, snuggling deeper into Tobirama’s arms. “’re we goin’ home now?”

Tobirama smiled gently down at him, and Madara once again marveled at the complete difference it made.

“Not just yet,” he soothed. “I just need to deal with Hatsuharu, and then we can go.”

As if speaking of him had summoned him Hatsuharu, face still terrified, ran back into the clearing out of the fog. He was panting and red faced and sucking in huge gulps of air through his open mouth, and when he saw that he was back in the clearing, he went grey, let out a tortured, horrified moan, and span around to run back into the fog.

Tobirama shook his head in mock pity. “Idiot,” he murmured, seemingly to himself. Madara agreed. Clearly, whatever genjutsu Tobirama had laced into the fog wouldn’t let the man leave. Better to stay and face his fate with his head held high and at least try to fight his way out instead of being run into the ground like an abused horse through his own terror.

“’s he lost?” Kagami piped up, looking up at Tobirama with wide, questioning eyes. Tobirama nodded, eyes full of a mean, wicked sort of amusement, like one of the cats that lived in the compound watching a mouse try and escape. “Very lost,” Tobirama affirmed in a voice full of mirth. “Lost in the fog…”

Kagami clapped his hands. “’ts a gengen! Like Kikyo-ba!”

The aforementioned Kikyo let out a little giggle from where she was sitting next to Hannei, pressed so close their thighs and shoulders had no space between them, and holding her friend’s hand as some other members let out little ‘awww’s’ at Kagami.

Tobirama seemed as weak to the toddler’s cuteness as them, because all trace of mean, vindictive pleasure went out of his features as he smiled helplessly down at him.

“Not quite,” he said, lightly pressing the tip of his finger to Kagami’s tiny nose, which resulted in Kagami promptly going cross-eyed to look at it.

The ‘awww’s’ came again.

“What I did with the fog isn’t a genjutsu,” Tobirama continued, which – wait what?

Not a genjutsu?

“Then what is it?” Someone Madara couldn’t see cried out, which he instinctively nodded at while keeping his eyes on Tobirama. Just what he was wondering.

“Not a gengen?” Kagami asked, also baffled. “’en whaa -?”

“Can’t you tell?” Tobirama’s smile was mischievous again, but it was a warm, gentle teasing, rather than the vindictiveness he’d looked at Hatsuharu’s struggles with.

Kagami shook his head. Madara leaned forward.

“This world is a story, Kagami,” Tobirama said. “The story of the people living in it. Even the word, History, has story in it.”

What?

“My people know that,” Tobirama continued, voice hushed and soft as if imparting a secret.  “We’ve known it for millenia, since before the world tree, and the rabbit goddess turned demon, and the Juubi, and the Sage and Shinigami. Since before chakra.”

Madara listened, spellbound. He wasn’t the only one. The entire gathered Uchiha clan had their full attention focused on Tobirama, as he talked about things they’d only knows as legends as if they were fact. As if he’d been there when they happened.

“The world is a story,” Tobirama repeated, “and if you’re good enough, skilled enough, creative enough – you can change the story. Rewrite it.”

He smiled again, the same small, mean curve of lips he’d given the attempted child killers, as he whispered – “I just made his, a horror story.”

“An ‘orror story?” Kagami whispered back, eyes wide.

“Mm,” Tobirama nodded. “You know those dreams you have, where you’re being chased by a monster, and you run and run but can’t get away?”

“Mm-hmm!”

“It’s like that.”

Kagami took that in, small face thoughtful, as Madara stared at the form of Tobirama before him. Each detail perfect, so lifelike it was almost as if he could touch him, but he knew he would just go right through.

The clan was silent.

What Tobirama had said – what he’d done…if it wasn’t a genjutsu, if he’d somehow changed the world, rewrote what was happening, changed reality itself – and with no illusion, to tricks, no chakra or even handseals…what kind of person could do that? How powerful was he? His people…who were they?

And how had someone that powerful come to meet Senju Hashirama, and decide to become his little brother, submit to him and his orders?

Madara sat and thought, endless questions running through his head, everything he thought he’d known turned upside down – and then the last Senju, Hatsuharu, staggered once more into the clearing.

He saw where he was and let out a broken sob, before falling to his knees.

“I surrender!” he cried out, raising his shaking hands as Tobirama looked over at him. Madara breathed in sharply, air hissing through his teeth as he gritted them. If this man went before Hashirama, shaken and terrified and broken and apologetic and swearing to never, ever do it again – considering he hadn’t actually succeeded in killing Kagami, and wasn’t the ringleader, Madara’s friends, so kind and compassionate and forgiving and always looking for the good in others – might well not kill him for it. He’d be punished, but not by execution. He’d get away with it. No.

No, it was not to be borne!

The clan surged around him, crying out in rage, anger echoing through their chakra, and he knew that he was not the only one feeling this way. They were ready to barge out of their compound and go hunt the (attempted) child murderer down themselves if they had to.

Hatsuharu babbled, sucking in great gulping breaths of air. “I surrender! Send me to Hashirama-sama, I’ll confess –”

“You haven’t been paying attention,” Tobirama interrupted him, eyes cold as chips of red ice.

Madara paused as he saw that look, and subsided, settling back down again, which caused most of the rest of the clan to hesitate in their fury and keep watching as well.

“I told you, I’m going to kill you,” Tobirama said quietly, as though simply reminding Hatsuharu of something he’d forgotten. “I said you’d die here.”

Hatsuharu whimpered. “But I – I surrender –”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tobirama said. “I told you you’d die, so you will die – otherwise, I will become a liar. And I can’t do that, so you see, even if you surrender I’m still going to kill you. Why not try and face your death with some measure of bravery and composure, instead of groveling on your knees?”

Hatsuharu just kept shaking his head, whimpering, eyes wild and broken. Tobirama gave him a moment, then sighed in apparent exasperation as he stepped forward and grabbed Hatsuharu’s head with one hand. “Close your eyes Kagami,” he ordered once more, and then when Kagami did he dug his fingers in, twisted and pulled.

Hastsuharu’s head came off his shoulders with a sickening sound of bone scraping bone and another explosion of blood, which Tobirama avoided by stepping back out of reach, lightly tossing the Senju’s head away as he did so.

“Well that was disappointing,” Tobirama murmured to himself. “You can look again, Kagami.”

He turned away from the battlefield as the fog cleared as quickly as it had come in and started heading through the forest.

“Yay!” Kagami cheered, both tiny arms raising as Tobirama adjusted him so he was holding the child with both his arms instead of just one. Tobirama quirked a smile at him.

“Now, we can bring you back home,” Tobirama said.

The tension that had been ramping up in the Uchiha meeting hall broke with a susurrus of sound, as though hundreds of mouths had just let out sighs of relief. Madara’s was one of them as he relaxed, squeezing Izuna’s hand once in support before letting it go and brushing his fringe out of his eyes. As they watched Tobirama’s straight backed form carrying Kagami through the forest, Madara cast his eyes over his gathered clan. Hannei had sagged as the relief of knowing her son would be safe and soon in her arms again soon coursed through her, Kikyo still holding her close. Izuna was watching Tobirama with fixed eyes. Most of the rest of the clan was relaxing, letting go of the tension that had held them fixed as they had watched. Madara turned and looked around until he spotted who he was looking for.

“Hikaku,” he called, causing his serious, sober-minded cousin to look over at him. “Gather a group and get ready to head to the border to collect Kagami – take Hannei with you.”

Hikaku nodded and opened his mouth to reply, but Madara didn’t hear it. Izuna had sat up straight and was waving him over as he hissed at everyone to be quiet, and Madara, curious, obeyed – and heard what had Izuna listening so intently.

Kagami and Tobirama were talking as they walked – or, rather, Kagami was questioning Tobirama, who seemed content to indulge him.

“Anija called me Tobirama,” the white haired – man? Being? – Senju said, apparently in answer to Kagami asking who he was. “You can call me that.”

“Tobi-tobi-bira-ma – too long!” Kagami declared. “’Bira-nii!”

Tobirama smiled slightly in soft amusement as he nodded and accepted the name change. “Bira-nii it is.”

“’n ‘m Kagami!” Kagami announced, beaming proudly up at his savior as he pointed to himself.

“Kagami,” Tobirama said, meeting the boy’s bright black eyes with a smile before looking ahead again. “You should be careful of whom you give your name to, Kagami,” he warned in a lilting voice, red eyes suddenly distant. “If I were any other of my people, that would have been enough for me to own you, and bring you with me to our home – you are exactly the type of human we like the best, you see.”

And – there it was. A confirmation, carved in stone, from the lion’s mouth – Senju Tobirama, or whatever his real name was, wasn’t human.

Kagami looked up at his savior, dismissing the warning. “’ou wouldn’t steal Kagami,” he said fearlessly. Trusting. “Bira-nii is good!”

Tobirama smiled down at him again. “If you say so.”

Kagami nodded, and tucked his head into his new Bira-nii’s fur as he looked up at him, one hand coming up to curl and place his thumb in his mouth.

“If Bira-nii’s not ‘uman,” he lisped around his thumb, “then what is you?”

“Are you,” Tobirama corrected automatically.

“Yeah, what are you!?” Someone in the hall shouted, letting Madara know that they’d gathered a crowd again.

“Hmmm,” Tobirama hummed mischievously, red eyes sparkling. Madara swallowed dryly, suddenly feeling flushed. “What do you think I am? I promise I’ll tell you if you get it right.”

The hall was suddenly filled with people shouting possibilities – “Demon!” “Ghost!” “Kami!” “Kitsune!” – and Madara waved a hand sharply to get them to quiet down.

“Yay!” cheered Kagami. “A game! ‘kay, ‘kay – are you –” here he grinned cheekily up at Tobirama, who fake scowled down at him while badly hiding a smile – “A…moon rabbit?”

Huh. Madara hadn’t even thought of that possibility.

Tobirama tilted his head to the side in the gesture Madara had come to realise meant he was confused and curious. “A Moon Rabbit?”

Kagami nodded.

“Why would you think that?”

“Cause you’re all white and red and soft and fluffy and pretty! Like a moon rabbit.” Kagami said, reaching up a hand to pet the fur stole again. Tobirama snorted in amused, lips twitching as though fighting the urge to smile. “Rabbits are white and red?”

“Yup!” Kagami nodded, still petting the fur. “’ey’ve got white fur, and red eyes, and long ears, and they’re so soft! And you have white hair, and red eyes, and white fur, and its also soft! And you’re all pale, like the moon! And pretty, like the moon. And –“

Tobirma interrupted before Kagami could keep going. “Well I’m glad you think I’m pretty,” he said. “And I’m sure the moon is also flattered.” Here, his lips twitched, a shadow of that gleeful meanness crossing his face, as though he were laughing at a joke only he understood. “But if I were a moon rabbit – wouldn’t I have ears?” his lips twitched again, as he mumbled, “or horns in the shape of ears.” Which, what?

Kagami considered that for a moment, reaching up to feel around Tobirama ears and head, as he bent down helpfully so the toddler could reach, and then pouted when he couldn’t find any.

“I guess…” Kagami sighed, before perking up again as Tobirama pushed a hanging branch aside with one arm. “Then, a Tenn’o? Are you a Tenn’o?”

Tobirama cocked his head again. “A Tenn – oh, you mean a Tennyo?”

Another guess that Madara hadn’t heard shouted. While the adults of the clan had focused on ideas of power and trickery when contemplating what their strange possibly-still-an-enemy was, it seemed Kagami’s imagination had gone down a different route. Kagami looked at his savior and thought of kindness and beauty, an ethereal being from above, cloaked in moonlight.

Madara found himself thinking that Kagami was more in the right of it then the adult Uchiha watching the two’s conversation so avidly.

“If I’m a Tennyo,” Tobirama asked teasingly, “then where’s my cloak?”

Kagami frowned in thought at that, little lower lip sticking out. “’s it your fur?”

Tobirama laughed. “No, it’s not my fur.”

Kagami frowned deeper, peering up at Tobirama with worried eyes. “’s it stolen? Did the Senju steal it?! ‘s that why you’re a Senju?”

That made Tobirama raise an eyebrow in surprise.

“Cause the Senju are mean and bad and scary, like those men!” Kagami explained. “But your nice, and not mean, and not scary -”

Next to Madara, Izuna snorted, and Madara could feel his face twisting into an odd expression at Kagami’s words. Tobirama. Not scary. Hah. The man was absolutely terrifying – lethal and cold and smart and gorgeous…

“- so it makes sense! If they stole you, I’ll save you, like you saved me!”

In the meeting room, the Uchiha clan was in dead silence, taking that in. Somewhere, someone whimpered. Madara thought it might have been Hannei. In the forest, Tobirama stared down in blank shock at Kagami, apparently not having expected that, before his expression softened.

“That’s very brave of you, Kagami – but I don’t need to be saved. I joined the Senju willingly, as they were Hashirama’s clan. And as I said before, Hashirama gave me the Senju name – I’m more Senju then I am what I was before Hashirama named me and accepted me as his little brother.” He huffed slightly, eyes distant, as he murmured “Humanity is somewhat…contagious.” He shook whatever he was thinking of off and looked down at Kagami again. “The Senju don’t have my cloak – or my cape of feathers, like the swan maidens and the crane wives, or my pelt like the selkie, or my pearl like the kitsune. There is nothing they have of mine that they have used to bind me – my skin is on my body, where it should be.” Tobirama’s voice got slightly dry when he said that, as though exasperated at the very idea of having two skin – or possibly the idea of having such a weakness. Madara had no doubt that if he had been a Tennyo, he would have found a way around needing a cloak to fly.

Beyond that, though, Madara was more than slightly baffled. He wasn’t the most into stories of kami and youkai and strange beings, preferring to keep his feet firmly on the ground, so it wasn’t a surprise that he had no idea what half of those being’s even were – selkie? Swan maiden? – but he shot a look at Izuna, who did like those stories and could recite a list of youkai and ghost stories and the various kami of anywhere they went off the top of his head (which made him great fun on long, boring missions like guarding, because he always had an interesting tidbit or ghost story to tell), and yet seemed as confused as Madara. Evidently he had never heard of those things either, which was…concerning

Tobirama pushed aside another branch, and the two stepped forward into familiar territory – the riverbank, the nominal border of the Senju and Uchiha lands, though it was closer to being part of no man’s land then an actual border. Both clans tended to keep patrols close to their compounds and fields and storehouses, and the area around the border tended to be where the two forces in massive battle’s, instead of the smaller – and thus less damaging – clashes on missions. As such, no man’s land was huge stretches of burned down forests and mud-churned fields – and the area around the Nakano river, where the forest was still thick and verdant and the water was still clear and un-poisoned or dirtied by blood. Madara had never sent an offensive strike int that area, and had never been forced to fend off one either.

Perhaps because both him and Hashirama remembered those few, bright, summer days when two boys of opposing clans and played and trained and laughed and dreamed there, and didn’t want to ruin it.

“We’re here.” Tobirama knelt and put Kagami down gently on the grassy riverbank. “Ah, but Kagami, before you go, some advice - you should be careful with your words.” Tobirama warned gently.

“Huh?”

“Am I moon rabbit, or a Tennyo?”

 Kagami blinked up at him, confused. “No?”

“Are you sure?” Tobirama teased gently.

“You said you weren’t!” Kagami pointed out, pouting, which caused Tobirama to let out another huff of laughter and gently tap one long finger on the boy’s nose again.

“I said you could guess, and I’d tell you if I wasn’t something – but did I? Or did I just let you think so?”

Kagami paused and thought, and so did Madara, mind going over the conversation, frowning as he realized, just as Kagami did, that - “You didn’t!” Kagami exclaimed.

“Mm-hm,” Tobirama nodded. “For the record, I’m not a moon rabbit or a tennyo – or a kitsune or a selkie on any of those things – but a shinobi should be careful of the meanings behind words.”

Madara grimaced and acknowledged that. He wasn’t as good with that part of being a shinobi – much better at the ‘rain down fire and brimstone on your enemies’ parts. Izuna was the sneaky one.

Kagami nodded seriously. “I’ll be careful! And sneaky. Like a snake. Hissss.”

Tobirama smiled down at him, then looked over to the broad, swiftly moving river.

 “Can you waterwalk?”

What kind of question was that? Kagami was a toddler, of course he couldn’t water walk!

As expected Kagami shook his head. Tobirama frowned slightly.

“That makes things slightly more difficult – I could freeze the water for you so you could walk across?”

Madara took that impossibility in and just added it to the list. At this point Tobirama could sprout wings and fly and he’d just nod and accept it.

Kagami looked at the wide bank of the river and reached out and clung to Tobirama’s yukata sleeve.

“There should be patrols that way, so once you cross the river just keep walking straight –”

“No!” Kagami shouted, and turned and flung himself into a surprised Tobirama’s arms.

“Kagami? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t wanna!” Kagami’s muffled voice answered form where he was clinging to Tobirama’s chest. “Don’t wanna go alone. Want Bira-nii!”

“Oh child,” Tobirama sighed softly, wrapping Kagami in his arms and running one hand though his curls as he rocked him gently. “the forest must be scary for you now, huh? Tell you what – I’ll make a fuss, flare my chakra and bring a patrol or two here, and then you can cross the river right to them, and they can carry you home, hmm?”

Kagami grumbled mutinously, shaking his head.

“Why not?” Tobirama prodded gently. Kagami made an irritated toddler noise, and then spoke up enough that Madara and the other Uchiha could hear. “Don’t want patrol. Want Bira-nii. And don’t wanna cross the river by mysel’. ‘ts scary. Can’t Bira-nii carry me? And take me home? I’ll tell Mama you’re a good Senju! Promise!”

Tobirama sighed, face falling. “I’m sorry Kagami. I can’t take you home, or even across the river – this is the border of Senju lands, and if I went into Uchiha lands, even with you – perhaps especially with you – the reaction would be…bad. Yes,” he said as Kagami opened his mouth to speak, “even if you tell them I’m a ‘good Senju’. For most Uchiha, the only good Senju is a dead Senju.”

Madara studiously didn’t look around as his clan-members shifted uncomfortably at that. They knew he was right, after all – if not for the crystal, if Tobirama had showed up in Uchiha territory with an Uchiha child they’d immediately attack him, thinking he’d kidnapped Kagami. Any protests Kagami made would be dismissed as the White Demon fooling an innocent child.

Kagami whimpered sadly in Tobirama’s arms. “But…” he shot a scared glance at the wide river. For an Uchiha child, with fire in their heart, the rushing water probably seemed terrifying. Madara made a decision.

“I’ll draw a patrol here,” Tobirama said decisively. “They’ll be just on the other side of the river, and I’ll be watching the whole time, and I’ll make it so the river won’t hurt you – but I can’t cross with you Kagami, no matter how I wish I could.”

“Why not?” Kagami whined, his rather remarkable patience for his age seemingly at its end.

“I promised Anija I wouldn’t enter Uchiha territory – or the border between Senju and Uchiha territory,” Tobirama answered. “He made me swear not to cross the river, or even go in or on or over it – which was very well done of him,” Tobirama added proudly. “Closing up the obvious loophole. It took ages to teach him to be more careful with his words – but that’s not the point. Kagami, I’m sorry, but I gave me word, so I can’t carry you across.”

Kagami let out another wordless whine. “You can do ‘t ‘nyway,” he said petulantly, peering up at Tobirama with pleading eyes. “I won’t tell, promise! Pinky promise!”

Tobirama shook his head as Madara stood up. Izuna looked over at him. “Aniki?”

“I’ll go.” Madara said. “I’ll head to the river – I know the way. And I can talk with Tobirama while I’m there. Hikaku.”

Hikaku nodded, and went to go call the patrols back. Madara reached out to the crystal, about to shut it off, but paused as Tobirama spoke.

“You’re misunderstanding words again, Kagami,” he said. “I said I can’t – not I won’t, or I shouldn’t, or I don’t want to. Do you understand the difference?”

Kagami shook his head, still stubbornly pouting.

“For instance,” Tobirama explained, “You wouldn’t, say, go up to your clan head and pull his hair –”

“He had better not!” Madara exclaimed, ignoring Izuna’s snicker.

“– but you could if you wanted to.”

“Mad’ra-sama’s scary though.” Kagami sounded doubtful.

Tobirama acknowledged that. “Yes – and if you went and do that thing, you would have to accept the consequences – but you are capable of doing it. It is a possibility. You wouldn’t, and you don’t want to, but if you did want to, you are physically capable of going up to …Mad’ra-sama,” here his lips quirked the slightest bit and Madara flushed, not sure if it was in embarrassment or something else, “and pulling his hair – but you can’t, say, fly, now can you? Or become younger, or instantly paint a masterpiece, or bring back the dead. It’s not physically possible for you, at least as you are now – though,” here Tobirama’s voice changed from explanatory to musing, “if you were good enough at earth jutsu to lighten yourself, or possibly manipulate gravity somehow, or made yourself wings, flying could – hmm. Have to think on that.” He muttered, before shaking his head and snapping out of it.

Yup. Going to sprout wings. Madara had called it. Soon they’d have to deal with him flying. Izuna’s small whimper from beside him showed that his little brother was thinking the same thing.

“Anyway,” Tobirama continued, “there is a difference between can’t and won’t, or shouldn’t – Understand?”

“Yes,” chorused both a very confused Kagami and an equally confused Uchiha clan.

“Well, I can’t lie – which is what breaking your word comes down to, really. Just lie you can’t fly. And I gave my word to Hashirama. See?”

Not really. Madara couldn’t even contemplate the thought of not being able to lie or break your word – though Tobirama was smart and sneaky enough that he seemed able to worm around things and avoid giving straight answers, but not being able to lie at all – what the hell was he?

He shook his head and pulled his chakra from the crystal, causing the sight of the riverbank to flicker out until all that was left was the wooden walls of the meeting room. Ignoring a few people who let out disappointed ‘aw’s’ at no longer getting to watch, he turned and headed from the compound at high speed, still in just his coat, with no armour or weapons, flaring his chakra high so Tobirama would feel it.

It took no more than a few minutes before he was landing at the side of the river with a thud, dust billowing up from where his feet had hit the ground, and he was relieved to see both Tobirama and Kagami still there.

Tobirama was tense and blank-faced, and it was only now, seeing him like that, that Madara could fully appreciate how different he’d been with Kagami, compared to how he was before an enemy. If he hadn’t seen just how human Tobirama could be – regardless of what he actually was – he would have only seen the White Demon holding an Uchiha child, and thought the worst.

As it was, he spread his hands wide, showing Tobirama’s clever red eyes that he was unarmed, as those eyes darted over him, before raising to rest on his nose bridge.

“Thank you,” Madara said.

Tobirama stared, so shocked that his eyes actually flew up and met Madara’s own (black, currently) eyes.

“For finding and bring back a child of our clan – Thank you, Senju Tobirama. Truly.” Madara met his gaze, and didn’t switch to the sharingan, trying to beam his sincerity through his gaze so Tobirama would pick up on it. Something in Tobirama’s gaze softened, so it seemed he had.

“May I cross the river to bring Kagami back home?” Madara asked.

Tobirama nodded, letting go of Kagami with a last, lingering stroke of his wild curls, and backing away from the child as Madara walked across the river and bent down to lift the now yawning toddler into his arms.

“You’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?” Madara murmured to Kagami. “Your mother was worried.”

“Mama? Nooooo…” Kagami yawned, and nestled into Madara’s arms, letting out a soft grumble that Madara could have sworn was ‘not as fluffy as Bira-nii’.

“I might have to disagree with that, Kagami,” Tobirama murmured, closer suddenly, and shooting a glance at Madara’s hair, which he huffed at before looking and meeting Tobirama’s still wary eyes.

Madara cleared his throat. “I meant what I said – thank you.”

This time, Tobirama responded by bowing his head to accept the thanks, as regal as a king.

“When you get home,” Madara continued, “tell Hashirama – tell Hashirama to meet me here with his closest advisor, and no armour or weapons in three days time, at sunrise. I’ll do the same. We’ll discuss a ceasefire – and if that works, an actual peace treaty.”

Madara might possibly have taken a great deal of pleasure in watching those beautiful eyes show their surprise, but he wasn’t done.

“And…if that works,” he said, “maybe even an alliance.”

“For your village?”

Madara couldn’t stop the shock from showing on his face. “He told you about that?”

“Anija tells me everything,” Tobirama answered simply. “You two had a good idea, but you obviously had no idea how to actually go about building a whole village, especially with two previously warring clans, and the possible addition of more later on. And you completely forgot about civilians who would want to come live there!”

Wait what?

“Not to mention you had no idea how to make a village actually work – so I helped.”

“What?” Madara couldn’t help but ask, feeling as if he was dreaming.

“I designed a village. A proper one, with a sewer system and a power system, and an organizational system – I’ll send you the plans later, and you can make any additions or changes.” Tobirama nodded briskly, and turned and walked away back into the forest, disappearing like the morning mist, and leaving Madara staring after him, sleeping toddler cradled to his chest, and heart beating faster.

He turned, and set off back to the compound, to deliver Kagami into his tearful mother’s arms, and then go and think on everything he’d learned and heard and saw today.

And then, he might dig out a small box of old scrolls from their hiding spot, and look at the scribbles he’d made so long ago – plans for his dream village.

For the first time in a long time, Uchiha Madara smiled.

Chapter Text

Tobirama slept.

Occasionally, he would rise from the depths of unconsciousness and hear snippets of conversation, but he instinctive reaching out of his senses didn’t find Anija’s bright light-green growing forest-rich soil-unbending ironwood chakra signature, and none of the voices were his brother’s, or his students, so it couldn’t be that important. And anything that wasn’t the deepest darkness of sleep hurt. Every part of his body ached, especially the sharp burning pain in his hands, so he sank back down into sleep and slowly healed.

After some time, he wasn’t sure how long, he slowly came awake though he couldn’t help but grimace as he did so. He was still exhausted, though he had more chakra now, and everything still hurt but he wasn’t bound and the soft sheets he was lying on and the scent of antiseptic making his nose itch told him that he was probably in the hospital.

Obviously, he’d been found and rescued. If his team had disobeyed his direct orders to come back for him, he was going to ground them all until they were twenty and then put them through such a punishing training schedule they’d be unable to even muster up the energy to complain! He couldn’t deny the warm feeling the thought gave him though. When had anyone ever come back for him, after all? When had anyone ever put him first? If anyone would, though, it would be his students, those precious saplings he had put his all into nurturing, though he wasn’t like his Anija, wasn’t the fertile soil or sheltering trees or bright sunlight that could help little saplings grow. He had tried his best though, and if it had been them, they would undoubtedly be in the waiting room, fretting over him. He reached out with his senses, letting the background hum of chakra and emotions that he could always sense, even when completely chakra exhausted, solidify into focus.

He couldn’t sense them.

In fact… Tobirama’s brow furrowed as he mentally searched out his surroundings.

In fact, he couldn’t sense any familiar signatures. There were people around him, including one over in the corner of the same room he was in, who was writing something from the scrape of pen on paper that he could hear, but none of them were familiar, though several had the unique white lightning crackle of the Hatake.

And, if he was in the hospital, why could he feel bandages and stitches and no lingering remnants of medial chakra in his system? Even the person in the corner, presumably the head doctor, didn’t have the distinct feel of a medical ninja to his chakra.

Tobirama let out a long breath through his nose, and started molding medical chakra, sending it to his hands. He wasn’t the healer Anija was – but he could do this much. He didn’t have all his chakra back, but his control was enough to use what he did have. Molding chakra, he carefully crafted medical chakra, balancing the precise parts of yin and yang chakra needed, and sent it to his hands, a diagnostic jutsu feeling out the damage caused by the kunai – as bad as he had thought. If left like that it wouldn’t heal properly, and he would have to rebreak all the bones to be able to use hand-seals again. Better to fix it now – and the rest of the medical chakra gently pulling his many, small, fine hand bones back into place, where they could heal on their own without the risk of setting wrongly, and then focused on the tendons.

Soon enough though, he was exhausted again, and fell back to sleep, content in the knowledge that his hands would heal cleanly while he slept, and that he could keep healing them himself when he was conscious enough to do so.

The next time he woke, he was thirsty, throat dry as the deserts of the land of wind (and seriously, why the hell had the Suna ninja decided to make their home there? No wonder they’d needed arable land so badly, there was nothing there but sand! And sun. You couldn’t get Tobirama to visit Suna if you’d paid him), but nothing much else had changed. Still no familiar signatures, still no iryo-ninjutsu except what he had done, and the same person sitting in the same corner, writing something from the soft sounds of brush on paper.

With a great effort of will, Tobirama opened his eyes a crack, an action he immediately regretted as light immediately stabbed at his already sensitive eyes. He clenched his eyes shut with a whimper, cursing mentally as the person who was over in the corner heard him, chakra flaring as their attention was caught.

The person walked over to his bedside as Tobirama lay as still as he could, mimicking unconsciousness, and wondering where the hell his pain tolerance had gone.

“Child?” the person – a man, by their voice, with even, steady chakra flavored like an earth type, and no particular feel of any clan that Tobirama could make out in his chakra – asked, reaching out and laying a cool hand on his forehead. Tobirama found himself wanting to relax into that coolness. He hadn’t realized how hot he’d been until the strange man touched his skin, but now if he tried he could sense his body burning with a light fever.

That was alright. It was just helping him with any infections from his wounds. Once he’d healed himself more, he’d take care of it.

That being said…who was the man to call him child? He wasn’t old, no, but he’d lived a relatively long life for a Shinobi, even as the village system had started lengthening the average life span. He was past what he would have considered middle aged. More then that, he was Senju Tobirama, the Nidaime Hokage – who would look at him and consider him a child? Even an elder – and the man, by his voice and chakra and the feel of his skin, was no elder – would respect him and his position enough not to call him such.

Even an enemy, though he was pretty sure judging by the fact that he could still feel mainly ever so familiar Hatake chakra (his mother, Kira, had been half Uzumaki and half Hatake, and he’d spent his first years carried by her and toddling after her as he held his little brothers and watched her attend to her duties as the Clan Head’s wife. Her unique chakra, and his brothers, and his fathers and then eventually the other Senju, had been the first chakra he had ever sensed, and the mixture of wild whirlpools and white lightning still meant ‘safety’ to the small hind part of his brain.) that he was in the hands of allies, if not friends.

The Hatake had ever been Senju allies, since before they had become shinobi, when they were simply farmers and foragers who worked with their wolves to survive and had relied on the Senju to protect them. Eventually, they had learned to protect themselves, and the vassal and master relationship had become one of equals, and so of course they had been some of the first clans invited to the burgeoning village, and had accepted gladly, moving to a compound that bordered a part of the forest. Tobirama had set out their land specifically for them and their wolves.

So why could he sense so many Hatake aura’s, and no Senju? And why so few, when both he and they should have been in the middle of Konoha?

And why was Tobirama in the care of a strange man with no skill in iryo-jutsu instead of a proper healer?

“I’m not going to hurt you child,” the man continued, removing his hand and reaching out and pulling something made of cloth, that cast a cool shadow over Tobirama’s face. “Better?”

Tobirama, reluctantly, tried opening his eyes again, ready to shut them instantly if the light stabbed his eyes again, but found that the cloth had been a curtain that the man had pulled around his bed, and the area was blessedly dim enough for his eyes to slowly adjust.

He looked over at his helper and blinked until the blurry form of the man settled into clarity, showing a man about middle age with weathered lines on his face, hair silvered by age and bright brown eyes, who smiled as he saw him looking at him. “There, see?” the man said soothingly.

“I know you must be frightened, after what you went through before coming here,” the man continued, each word making Tobirama more and more confused, “but there’s no need to fear – you’re among friends now. This is the Rebellion. Whoever hurt you won’t be able to find you here.”

The man busied himself reaching over and pouring a cup of water out of a jar that was out of Tobirama’s line of vision from where he was laying on the hospital bed while Tobirama lay there baffled. Rebellion? Against what? He had said it as though Tobirama was expected to know what he was talking about, but there were always rebellions occurring in various countries or provinces – Tobirama himself had helped either put them down or supporting them until they were successful in various places, depending on who had been able to pay the Senju better. Well, at least that had been the way it had been during his Father’s time. When Hashirama had become clan head the missions had become based more on whichever side Hashirama thought was better, or in the right, even when there wasn’t a better side. That had caused…issues.

As the man brought the cup of water to his mouth Tobirama reached up with one bandaged hand to steady it, regardless of the quick flash of pain – and paused, staring at his hand.

It was small.

Small and pale and slender, with a bulky bandage wrapped around the center – it was not his hand, it was a child’s hand. A hand he’d seen when he’d been a child, though at the time he’d thought himself very grown up. His arm, too, was smaller and skinnier and less scarred then it should have been, he saw as the sleeve of the yukata he was wearing fell back to reveal even more bandages.

Tobirama froze, breath measured, breathing in and out regularly, face still and chakra smooth, nothing to show the confusion and distress and racing thoughts going on between the surface. No chink in the armour.

Feelings, after all, are a shinobi’s weakness. A moment’s shock or grief or anger could shake a shinobi’s mind enough that he could be struck down. Tobirama had learned that early on, (standing on the river, pushing against the Uchiha boys blade, and the flash of light and clink of a stone hitting metal as he realized how close he had come to death, and the explanation later form his father as he went over the battle with him to let him know what he’d done wrong and could be improved on, a habit he had kept into adulthood and done with his own students after training matches) and made an effort to never allow it happen to him – and if it resulted in people, even his own clan, calling him heartless or soulless or emotionless, the scorn on the Uchiha’s faces as they looked at him and saw someone who could never understand the way they felt, the passion that drove them, even his brother sometimes looking at him as though he were a stranger, their father’s weapon instead of a person, a little brother, an older brother…

Well, that was the price Tobirama paid to live as long as he had.

The man pushed the cup up against his lips and Tobirama drank gratefully, doing his best not to drink it too quickly, to the man’s approving nod, as he pulled the empty cup back and went to refill it. The cool water washing down his parched throat was the best thing Tobirama had ever felt, and he couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief that had the man smiling gently at him as he came back with more water.

“Slowly now,” he cautioned, as though Tobirama was a new genin that didn’t know how to deal with dehydration – then Tobirama was reminded once again that he apparently looked like a new genin and had to fight the panic trying to rise in his throat.

First things first.

“Now, you probably have a lot of questions,” the man said, sitting by his side on the bed. “My name is Shiranui Kaoru, and I’m a healer. We found you on a patrol, injured and apparently having used some sort of transportation jutsu?”

Tobirama nodded carefully as the man – Shiranui-sensei – looked over at him in question. If he was a healer, why didn’t he feel like one? And Shiranui – he vaguely remembered the name. A small clan, only a few dozen members, one of many that had come to join their new village, to shelter under the protection of the massive branches of the tree that had come to be called ‘Konoha’.

Shiranui-Sensei nodded at the affirmation, and kept going, voice softening. “I saw you notice your hand – you were very badly injured. Whoever you were fighting put a kunai through both your hands, the barbarian, and while I was able to do some surgery and put most of the bones back in place, the hands are full of tiny bones,” he gestured as he talked, making a motion with his hands to show how tiny the bones he was talking about were, “which are very important to movement so – I’m sorry to say, but you probably won’t be able to use your hands to their fullest extent ever again.”

He looked over at Tobirama, to take in his reaction, brown eyes concerned, but Tobirama just frowned at him confused. “But…I already fixed my hands,” he rasped. Sure, they still hurt, and still had the wounds – but he distinctly remembered healing his hands, and when he sent a small tendril of chakra to check out the damage, it showed that he hadn’t just imagined or dreamed of doing it. And if this man had no iryo-jutsu, why was he performing surgery?

It was almost as it had been during Tobirama’s childhood, before he had reverse engineered Hashirama’s regeneration and figured out a way to use it to heal others, provided one had very precise control and an expert level knowledge of Anatomy.

Hashirama, of course, had been the first person he’d taught Iryo-ninjutsu to, and while it had been difficult teaching him the control necessary (and even to the end, he’d still had a tendency to lean to much towards yang), Hashirama had quickly seized on it and taken it to new heights, always desperate to help protect and save, always saddened at any loss of life – the ability to share his own unique healing with others had made him so happy, he’d beamed at Tobirama and hugged him and babbled to everyone around them for a week at how genius his little brother was, which had had Tobirama feeling like he was walking on air. Added in that Hashirama had accepted Tobirama’s insistence on what was necessary to learn before he could heal others, and sat and focused on his lessons on the details of anatomy and biology and the human body, and Tobirama had been the center of his brother’s attention for what felt like the first time since Kawarama died.

(Since Hashirama met an Uchiha boy with the same dream as him by the river.)

Hashirama had quickly moved beyond what Tobirama had to teach him, showing a natural aptitude for healing, and had started using it on others before Tobirama would have felt comfortable with, but it had worked. Hashirama had saved lives and limbs and gotten better and better, and even started teaching others, until the point where people started calling him the ‘Father of Iryo-Jutsu’…but he had never once told anyone that he had not been the one to invent it. Perhaps because he was never asked.

Tobirama knew his brother. If someone had asked him where he had learned his new ability, Hashirama would have proudly pointed to Tobirama – but they hadn’t, simply assuming he’d created it off his regeneration, or that it was a gift like the mokuton. And Hashirama would also have corrected the assumption if Tobirama had asked him to, but he hadn’t.

Partly, Tobirama could admit now, years later, it was because he’d wanted his brother to correct them on his own. Acknowledge that it had been Tobirama who had invented this new style of using chakra, that his inventions weren’t always deadly and dangerous and insane, that he could help people with them – but he knew that if he had, that if Tobirama had been known as the one who had invented Iryo-Ninjutsu, it would have been looked at with suspicion instead of the gratitude that came from it being ‘created’ by Hashirama. People would have wondered if it was really as good as it seemed, if there was a catch, and hesitated to use it, to study it, and people would have died who might have been saved otherwise.

So really it was all for the better.

And besides, Tobirama had decided, a long time ago, to unconditionally love his family – and unconditionally meant unconditionally. Even when Hashirama scorned him or looked past him, gaze fixed on Madara and their dream, Tobirama loved him. Even when Father hit him or gave him training far beyond what he was able to cope with, he still loved him. Even when Mama had died and he’d been left taking care of a crying newborn Itama and a tantrum throwing toddler Kawarama, he had persevered through sleepless nights and colic and tears and pain and the empty, endless, aching grief that came with their deaths, because he loved them. And Tobirama showed his love through acts, through caring for his little brothers, through helping Father with his work and bringing him his favorite tea and covering him with a blanket when he fell asleep exhausted at his desk, to doing his best to make Hashirama’s dream of a village a reality, even after his death, pushing himself and taking a position he didn’t want purely so he could guide the village into being self-sustaining and long lasting. It was teaching his students everything he could so they would live and prosper, it was backing up Touka when the traditionalists shouted about a woman being on the battlefield, it was forming strategies for his clan so that they would live to see the next battle.

It was watching Hashirama shine in the sun, eclipsing them all in his shadow, and not minding.

Perhaps that had been Madara’s issue, in the end. For someone used to being in the sunlight, being pushed to the side and into the shadows, looked on as a warmonger and relic and second best when he was used to being first, had been too much, along with all the other issues.

Still – Iryo-ninjutsu had spread like wildfire the moment people realized it was a thing, not helped by Hashirama cheerfully teaching it to anyone, even other clans (Tobirama had wondered, once, why not keep it for the Senju, and Hashirama had looked disappointed at him, scolding him that everyone deserved healing – Tobirama had flinched and looked down and backed off, not mentioning that he’d meant that if the Senju had a monopoly they could take missions that involved healing others, instead of assassinations and guarding and other such missions that required fighting. That maybe if they’d changed how they’d done missions, peace would have been easier without them being a threat to the Uchiha’s economic stability. That they’d be able to charge for healing, and therefore refuse missions that were against the Uchiha in the first place, and so less people on both sides would die, lessening the hatred. He hadn’t said anything, feeling guilty and like the bloodthirsty monster he knew his brother and his clan and everyone else saw when they looked at him, and Hashirama had spread healing, and the wars had continued, turning into long bloody battles of attrition where the healers were often targeted first.)

So why did Shiranui-Sensei, who was clearly a doctor, not only have no trace of Iryo-chakra in his system, but also have no idea what he was talking about, judging by the puzzled expression on his face.

“When I woke up last time,” Tobirama tried to explain, feeling like he was missing something and hating the feeling. “I sent iryo-chakra to my hands, because they were the worst off – I couldn’t finish it, but I fixed the bones and tendons and such. They just need to heal naturally now from the puncture wounds. Look.” Tobirama held out his bandaged hands for Shiranui-sensei to inspect, half unsurprised when the man chose to unwind the bandages and have a look visually rather then send his chakra into the wound in a diagnostic jutsu.

Shiranui-Sensei’s eyes went wide as he beheld the much-healed hands Tobirama was showing him. They were still injured, still had piercing holes through the center of them – but as he, with a questioning glance at Tobirama that Tobirama nodded in assent to, reached out and began examining them, turning them over, feeling out the bones, he could tell that the breaks were almost healed, that the wound itself was much smaller, and that everything was in its rightful place.

Just as Tobirama started getting antsy over being touched for so long, Shiranui-sensei dropped his hands, and he gratefully pulled them closer to himself and sent another wave of healing chakra down to them. He was more recovered now then he’d been the last time, and Shiranui-sensei watched in awe as the green glow lit up around his hands and the wounds started closing.

By the time he was done, Tobirama’s hand were fully healed, and he flexed them just to make sure, then judged his chakra levels – low, but not so low he could do another healing, especially if he could replenish them quicker with some food and more water.

“Shiranui-sensei?” he prodded, causing the man, who had still been staring dazedly at his hands, to jolt and look up at him, expression still shocked.

“Ah, yes?”

“Could I have some food? And more water.” Tobirama did his best to remember that he was currently, based on the state of his body, about fourteen or so, a stranger to this man, convalescent, and unknown, and therefore not order him as he would have otherwise. He wasn’t sure how successful he was as Shiranui-sensei jumped as if he’d been hit by a d-rank ration, and stood, nodding frantically.

“Food! Yes food, I’ll, uhh, get that,” he babbled, almost tripping over himself as he reached over to grab the water jar and the cup Tobirama had been using and press it into his hands, sending them another awed look as they curled freely around the cup and handle, and then rushing out of the room that, Tobirama could now see, appeared to be a medical tent of sorts. Though it was a bit different from the usual medical tents he knew. Those were usually set up with the expectation that they would be taken down soon, while this one seemed far more…permanent. But if it was an actual medical center of the people Tobirama could still feel outside, then why a tent at all, and not an actual building?

Unless they only had tents, or had to be prepared to leave quickly at any moment…hadn’t Shiranui-Sensei mentioned a rebellion?

Tobirama drank more water, thinking on everything that had happened, and trying to make sense of it. Nothing fit. The many signatures, most of which he could parse out a various clan specific chakra’s of, that were moving around outside the medical tent, especially the numerous Hatake signatures, when he knew all the Hatake should be in Konoha. The fact that this group, this Rebellion, had apparently never heard of Iryo-Jutsu, when by the time of the war every single major and minor village in the elemental countries had, if somewhat rudimentary, medical ninja.

The fact that he was currently a teenager again, small and slender and far more fragile then he was used to – he was going to have to either find a way to reverse this, or get sued to his shortened height and reach and weight and being smaller then most of his opponents again. Ugh. One of the happiest days of his life had been when he’d finally hit puberty and shot up and put on muscle to the point where he was finally taller then Uchiha Izuna, (and, he’d been pettily delighted to realise when building the village, Madara – he freely admitted to having enjoyed putting things higher then the Uchiha could reach, and deliberately taunting him with his height when the man had still been in the village. Madara would go all red and growl and huff and frown at him – but it had been different then his usual looks of hatred and growing insanity. More human somehow.) and the man had no longer been able to press down on him when their swords clashed, or whisper taunts about his height. The look on Izuna’s face the first time he’d realized Tobirama was taller was one of his happiest memories. Even now, just thinking of it made him smirk.

It wasn’t long before Shiranui-sensei returned, accompanied by a tall woman with silver-grey hair and clever dark eyes, with a long scar stretching down the left side of her face, over her and down to her jaw. Tobirama looked at it and quickly judged that she’d been lucky not to lose the eye. She had the bright white crackle to her chakra that marked her as a Hatake, but even without it he would have known what clan she belonged to. The hair, the predatory confidence in her walk and the way she held herself – and the massive white wolf that walked by her side was also a big clue. She wore faded, scratched, dented armour over her chest (though without pouldron’s to protect her arms or a _______ to protect her lower half) obviously well used, and plain black clothing and mesh under-armour, with bandages around her ankles and closed boots instead of the sandals most shinobi wore. She also, Tobirama saw with a pang of nostalgia, wore a fur ruff around her neck, just like he did – and just like his mother had. His fur, in fact, had been hers once.

He wondered where it was.

She had a Katana and small tanto by her side. The katana was excellent quality, but the tanto – Tobirama couldn’t help inspecting it with both his eyes (never the best, thanks to his albinism) and his chakra sense. In his eyes, the tanto was nothing, old and worn and poor quality.

In his senses, it sang.

Chakra conducting metal? He knew the Hatake had a tanto like that – but it was exclusively for use by the main line, and last he checked should have been with its owner, young Hatake Sakuya, in Konoha. He liked little Sakuya, who was bright and fierce and wild. He’d had to fight often not to smile at her antics when he was scolding her for them, and he’d been planning to take her as a student when she graduated the academy.

He tore his mind from what he had left behind with an effort. He had to focus on figuring out where he was now (and possibly when. He had, after all, used a time-space technique to escape, and this was not the first time he’d had…accidents, with the time-space continuum. Trying to create Hiraishin and get it to work had been…eventful.) and how to fix himself and get home.

Shiranui-sensei shifted uncomfortably as the two came up to his bed, and Tobirama resisted the urge to stiffen or show any signs of discomfort at being in a position of weakness before a predator like this kunoichi.

“Hatake-sama,” Tobirama greeted her respectfully. She smirked at him and raised an eyebrow while pulling a chair over and spinning it so it was backwards as she straddled it, arms along the back. Tobirama met those clever, calculating eyes evenly. This was a clan head, inspecting a newcomer to ensure they weren’t a threat to those they guarded. He could respect that.

“You can tell I’m a Hatake, cub?” she asked, still smirking.

Tobirama raised his own eyebrows at her, then turned his head to look at the huge wolf standing by her side, its head the same height as hers now that she was sitting, and then back to her exaggeratedly.

The wolf barked out a low laugh. “He’s got you there, ­­­­­­Susuki.”

Susuki said nothing, instead taking in Tobirama’s lack of reaction to the wolf speaking.

For a moment there was silence as the two eyed each other, before Tobirama broke it.

“I’m not a cub,” he said quietly.

Susuki snorted. “Well you’re certainly not full grown – despite apparently having been attacked like an adult.” Her eyes got darker as she took in the bandages that still dotted his form, and he mentally gave her some points for caring about the injuries of what appeared, to her, to be a strange child.

He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. ‘Cub’ is what the adults of your clan call your children, right?” he knew he was. “I’m not a Hatake,” he said, firmly squashing memories of his mother’s warm, low voice comfortingly whispering cub in his ear as she carried him.

This time she was the one to exaggeratedly look up – oh. At his hair.

Of course.

“I’m an albino,” he said casually, no trace of the stiffness that he would have held when referring to his nature even a decade ago. He’d lived a long life, especially as Shinobi reckoned it. He’d come to terms with himself, his nature and his flaws, long ago.

“I know,” Susuki answered, “I could tell from the eyes – you’re not pupil-less, like the Hyuuga or Yamanaka. You have pupils, they’re just red. And you’re squinting a bit. So yeah, Albino.” She shrugged. “That’s not why I called you cub – you saw my tanto when I came in, didn’t you? Or sensed it, rather.”

Tobirama held himself carefully as he nodded, even more impressed with this woman and her sharp eyes.

“I’m a sensor as well,” she smirked at him. “And a Hatake – you both feel and smell like one of us, cub.”

Tobirama pushed his pain down deep where it couldn’t hurt him.

“My mother was half Hatake,” he revealed, much as he didn’t want to. “I’m a quarter, if that much –”

“Doesn’t matter,” Susuki interrupted, shrugging. The wolf by her side let out an agreeing growl. “Clan is clan, regardless of how little or how much blood you’ve got.”

Tobirama fisted his hands in the bed’s covers as he struggled to not show any reaction on his face. The motion drew Susuki’s eyes, and they sharpened at the sight of his obviously much healed hands.

Ah. So it was the healing that had caused Shiranui-sensei to go and get the leader of this place. This place that Tobirama still had no idea about what it was or where it was or why there were so many Hatake here, or why one of them had the Hatake’s head families Tanto.

“I was attacked,” Tobirama began, choosing his words carefully. Susuki’s eyes moved from his hands back to his face. “During the attack, in order to get away, I used a technique of mine that allows me to teleport to certain anchors – ” Shiranui-Sensei made a small noise of surprise at this, which was understandable. Tobirama had invented the Hiraishin for a reason after all – the fact that there was no other way to teleport. “ – but I did this in the middle of another seal while very injured, and had no control over where I landed – I’m guessing somewhere in your lands, as you found me?”

Susuki nodded.

Tobirama nodded back. “Thank you for taking me in and healing me, then. But like I said,  went off course – I have no idea where I am, or who you are, or who the people I can sense outside this tent are, or what ‘Rebellion’ this is, or why you are all so shocked by what I consider a pretty normal technique.” He raised his hands to demonstrate.

Susuki raised her head off her arms, and in one swift movement rose, turned the chair back around, and sat again, this time properly. She leaned back against the chair’s back and stretched her legs out as she crossed her arms.

“First off – you’re welcome. Second, I’m very interested in this technique of yours – both of them, actually, the teleporting and the healing. And you say you made a seal?”

Tobirama nodded.

“Impressive,” Susuki praised. “Are you a sealmaster?”

Despite knowing it was a bit odd for someone of his age to be one, Tobirama nodded again. That cat was, unfortunately, already out of the bag. Better to be honest about some things and hide others.

Susuki’s eyes sharpened at that, and he could tell she was filing that information away and making plans from it.

“And you must have gone very ‘off course’ as you put it,” Susuki mentioned, “to not know the Rebellion – we’re mostly Hatake, and the remnants of a few other clans from the land of Fire who refused to bow to our new ‘overlords’,” here she sneered, hatred gleaming in her dark eyes, “the Uchiha.”

What.

Her eyes took in his reaction.

“You really didn’t know,” she said, musingly. The wolf looked at her and she looked at him and they seemed to commune telepathically for a few moments, though whether it was just that they knew each other so well, or they were actually talking mind to mind, Tobirama didn’t know. Finally, she looked back at Tobirama.

“Where are you from? To not know about the Uchiha Empire, or our rebellion, to have a healing technique you say is common we’ve never heard of – and yet you say you have Hatake blood, and your chakra and scent confirms it. Who are you, cub?”

Tobirama swallowed dryly, mind racing as he took in the information he’d been given and came to the only reasonable conclusion. Not time travel, no – dimension travel. Which meant Alternate Dimensions existed.

Which meant – he was a very long way away from home, and had even more problems then he’d thought.

“My name is Tobira,” he said distantly, some part of him thinking enough to know that a place ruled by the Uchiha was no place to give his full name and it’s distinctive Senju Main Family ending, while the rest of him was busy freaking out and panicking. “And I’m from – very far away from here.”

Chapter Text

Whenever a new Daimyo came into power, they always felt the need to assert their authority over the lands ninja. Whether it was because they wished to show the ninja their power over them or show the Daimyo of other lands or their own grasping, ambitious nobles that same power, didn’t really matter.

In fact, Tobirama mused, vigorously controlling any urge to sigh or roll his eyes as he stood stone faced by his father’s side and did his best to radiate that he didn’t know the idiot next to him who was moping because he’d been thoroughly ignored by Uchiha Madara, it was probably both.

He, at the ripe old age of fifteen, had never had to experience being called to the capital before – the old Daimyo had taken his place when Tobirama was just an infant, and so he and his mother had been permitted to stay home, much like the Aburame clan head’s sister and new niece had been permitted this time. Hashirama had gone though, being old enough at the time to have started training and therefore counting as a ninja, and had whispered to Tobirama as they had travelled to the capital about how boring it had been. Tobirama had taken it with a grain of salt, well used to how Hashirama viewed many things that Tobirama himself enjoyed, like studying, creating new jutsu, experimenting, researching, and meditating, as boring, but after two weeks as the new Daimyo’s ‘guests’, he was forced to admit that Hashirama hadn’t been exaggerating.

The festivities had been a bit fun, though only Hashirama had really enjoyed the many flower viewings, and the clothing and style of the capital had been interesting to look at, and interpreting all the many things communicated through colour and pattern and the tilt of a head or a fan had been interesting enough to keep his attention for a the first week, but after – well, interacting with other Shinobi clans had been something for the adults of the Senju present, none of the other younger shinobi could keep up with him except the Nara heir, who only wanted to keep challenging him at Shogi (as if that would make Tobirama lose, after he’d beaten him ten consecutive times) and with them being in essentially enemy territory Tobirama had been forbidden from training, sparring, exploring, experimenting, or even researching as all his books and scrolls had had to be left at home lest some enemy get a hold of his ideas. And the palace library, while impressive, had been gone through quickly, so there wasn’t even anything to read!

And worse, he’d been bugged by Izuna the whole time!

Much as Madara was ignoring Hashirama’s sad looks, Tobirama stared straight ahead and valiantly pretended that the burning black gaze (not even the Uchiha were arrogant enough to activate their bloodlimit in the Daimyou’s presence) boring into the side of his face wasn’t there.

Izuna had apparently taken the presence of his rival, and being forbidden from fighting him, as some sort of challenge, because he’d taken to stalking Tobirama, interrupting his reading time and at least seven of the ten shogi matches with Nara Shikaro, and even following him when he was simply walking around the gardens the Shinobi had been given access to. He was there constantly , shooting out snarky comments about the Senju as a whole and Hashirama specifically (some of which Tobirama couldn’t even protest), and insulting Tobirama on his colouring, his looks, his sense of style, his nature – and when he was ignored he would pout and fume and make a scene, as dramatic as the Uchiha always were. He was constantly in Tobirama’s face, edging in close and doing his best to loom over him and trying to corner him against walls and into corners – it was incredibly annoying!

Tobirama had been looking forward to leaving the capital, and was glad that it was only two weeks – but now the new Daimyo, a young man around Hashirama and Madara’s age, was sitting on the throne above the kneeling shinobi and announcing that he wished them to stay longer.

The Daimyo, face almost as pale as Tobirama’s (and hadn’t that been a shock, learning that here in the height of ‘civilization’, his pale skin was seen as desirable , whereas his families tanned skin was looked down upon, a complete opposite to what he was used to) and held in an expression that the man seemed to think was ‘regal’ and instead looked as if he was constipated, stared down at them, his eyes meeting Tobirama’s for a brief moment before his gaze jerked away nervously.

He did that a lot, Tobirama had noticed, as the man seemed to have taken lessons from Izuna in being where Tobirama didn’t want him. For the last two weeks, it seemed that every time he went to the palace library or to the gardens, if he wasn’t being bothered by the Uchiha spare he was being bothered by the Daimyo, who would offer polite niceties while looking away from Tobirama’s face and occasionally attempting to say something before seemingly getting tongue-tied and gracefully scrambling away, followed by his attendants, who often seemed to be facepalming. And he could never meet Tobirama’s eyes, though Tobirama was used to that, coming from a clan that opposed the Uchiha and their prized doujutsu as he was.

Still, staying in the capital for even longer…Tobirama stifled a sigh, even as Hashirama brightened beside him, eager to continue his attempts to rekindle his friendship with Madara.

On his other side, his father raised himself slightly from his position, gesturing that he wished to speak. The Daimyo nodded at him with a graceful wave of his fan.

“Yes, Senju-sama?”

“Nobunaga-dono,” Father greeted, bowing until his head touched the floor as he was acknowledged. “May your humble servant enquire as to how long you wish for us to stay? We did not pack provisions for more than a few weeks…”

Not to mention, staying in the capital, with the regular bribes necessary for – well, anything really, it was ridiculous – and the necessary constant changes of clothing and gifts and they’d need to host more Tea Ceremonies and they’d need good tea and –

Tobirama noticed he was chewing his bottom lip in worry as he calculated the expenses, and forced himself to stop.

The Daimyo laughed lightly, a laugh that Tobirama was surprised to realise was not fake. “That is of no matter, Senju-sama. The shinobi clans are Our treasured subjects, and We would not see them dressed in rags or forced to make do with only millet and water in Our Castle! All provisions, including clothing, will be provided for you – it is Our wish that you view them as gifts from your sovereign.” Tobirama noticed that the Daimyo’s eyes were on him as he said this, but put it aside as Father bowed deeply again in gratitude – but then he rose again, apparently not finished.

“And may I ask how long we should expect to be staying here?”

The Daimyo waved his fan again. “Oh, not more then a month or two – do not worry, Senju-sama, We will not keep Our loyal subjects from their homes and families for long.”

Tobirama stiffened in horror. A Month? But –

“But the Spring Rite is in a week!” Hashirama burst out, shooting up with horror written on his face. For once, neither Tobirama nor Butsuma scolded him for his breech of propriety, too busy staring in shocked, horrified silence, just as the rest of the Senju group were.

The Daimyo shifted nervously under the many stares, obviously aware that there was something wrong but not sure what it was. “The – ah, the spring rite?” he asked tentatively.

Butsuma took a deep breath. “It is our – it the…festival, of a sort, that we perform in the middle of spring, to – to encourage the growth and fertility of the plants, to – we –”

Tobirama had never heard his father so uncertain, stuttering over his words – no Senju had ever had to describe the spring rite before, or any of the other rites. They’d never needed to. All the Senju learned from the cradle about their duties to the land.

The Uchiha may boast of their descent from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu and the fact that their legendary founder, Indra, had been (according to legend) formed from stardust and the fire in the heart of a sun by the Sage of Six Path’s himself, and claim that that made them better then other shinobi clans, but the Senju of the Forest were of the land, and came from the land, and returned to the land when they died. And in between, they sheparded it, supported it, helped it grow and stay healthy – the ground, the plants, the trees, the water, the rain cycle. They put their hearts and souls and chakra into all of it, and the various rites were of the utmost importance – but the spring rite was the most important. And the main family, the bearer of the bloodline that had been handed down since honoured ancestor Ashura, the only ones who ever had the Mokuton bloom within them – they needed to be there. Without them…

 The Daimyo fluttered his fan harder. “This is – a religious matter? Then, of course, you may return…”

Tobirama sagged as relief flowed through him like a cool wave, barely noticing how oddly disappointed the Daimyo seemed at the prospect of not getting to keep them there longer, or how he sent a glance in Tobirama’s direction – but then Uchiha Tajima spoke up, voice low and soft and deep and darkly amused.

“Now, now, Nobunaga-dono – he did not say it was a religious rite, merely a festival.”

Tobirama looked over at his father’s rival and noticed the mean glitter in those dark eyes. Of course he would, seeing how important this was to the Senju, act to stop them from being able to celebrate it – but still, how dare he!

Tobirama glared at him as he felt his father stiffen next to him.

The Daimyo perked up. “Of course – if it is a festival, and not a rite –”

Tobirama had a sudden dawning premonition that he wouldn’t like whatever came next out of those painted lips.

“Then I don’t see why you can’t have it here!”

He was right.

“Unless there is something specifically in your compound that you require that cannot be moved?”

Tobirama wished desperately that there was, but while the presence of the Ancestor tree and the grove that surrounded it was usually part of the rites, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary .

Still, there were reasons that they couldn’t have it here, surrounded by strangers and those who were neither their friends nor their allies – at best, there were the neutral clans, who the Senju sometimes worked with or bargained with when their missions required them to go through their lands or they had missions where they were opposing forces, like the Trinity clans of Akimichi, Nara and Yamanaka or the Sarutobi or the Aburame, or those clans that they were neutral with simply because they never really ran into them, like the Hyuuga or the Kurama or the Shimura. Then there were their enemy clans, like the Hagoromo – or the Uchiha.

All the Senju allied clans were either not of the land of fire, like the Uzumaki, or too small and weak to have been invited to the capital, like the Hatake or the Yashagoro or the Maito. Which meant that, if they had the festival here, it would be these people, and not their own clanmembers or valued allies who would be able to participate if they wished.

Surely, they couldn’t!

Tobirama sent a desperate look at Father, who leaned in slightly closer in response as he spoke up.

“That would be…inappropriate, Nobunaga-dono,” his father said, voice stern and back straight and eyes steady, and Tobirama felt his panicked fear vanish. Father was here. Father would take care of everything.

“And why is that, Senju Butsuma?” Tajima asked silkily.

Butsuma turned and met his rival’s gaze, face still as stone.

“Performing the spring rite in a place so far from the rest of our people, with people who don’t know what to expect around to participate, would be…inappropriate,” Butsuma pronounced heavily.

Tajima raised both his eyebrows skeptically. “Inappropriate? How could us being here to see your rite be inappropriate?”

Butsuma froze.

Tajima’s eyes lit up as he sensed weakness. “Are the rumours true then?” he asked, tone dark and anger briefly making his hot smoke chakra flare out of his tight control. “That the Senju perform human sacrifices to ensure their fields growth –”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence as Butsuma turned to him, his own eyes and chakra flaring with anger, even as Tobirama recoiled from the very prospect of what Tajima had said, the desecration – and what did he mean, rumours? What rumours? Just because the Senju’s fields were always fertile and vibrant and full, just because they never had to worry about drought or disease or famine, people were saying that – that they would – how dare they!

“NO!” Butsuma snarled, burning with the same indignation that Tobirama felt, and so were the rest of the Senju – even Hashirama was frowning. “No, we do not, and how dare you –”

“Then what’s the issue?” Tajima asked, smiling like a tiger.

There was no answer.

Tobirama looked up at father only to find him frozen and – was that a blush? He looked around at the rest of the group, only to find that most of them were shifting uneasily or studiously looking away – even his older brother was rubbing the back of his head with his hand while smiling sheepishly and not looking at anyone.

Tobirama rolled his eyes.

The daimyo leaned in, interested and curious, and so did the other Shinobi present.

Butsuma opened his mouth and closed it again, attempting to answer but unable – and Tobirama, fed up with it, huffed out a short, irritated sigh as he crossed his arms. “Oh for – it’s an orgy,” he said.

There was a moment of silence as all the people in the hall looked at him, as though trying to see if he was joking. Tobirama raised an unimpressed eyebrow at them, and the searching eyes turned back to his father and the other Senju, who managed, while still blushing, to meet those eyes and nod in affirmation.

Izuna made a noise like a tea kettle had come to life and was being strangled, and the Daimyo dropped his fan. Madara’s face was bright red and his eyes were darting from Hashirama, to Butsuma, to Tobirama, and back again.

Tajima’s eyes were fixed on his rival, and his chakra was flaring slightly again, though not, Tobirama thought, in anger.

“Fascinating,” he murmured. “And I assume, by the…issues, you have with having it here, with our presence and not knowing ‘what to expect’ means that it is not limited to Senju?”

Tobirama felt a flare of chakra from Izuna and immediately looked in his direction, instincts formed from years of battle with the other telling him to pay attention and be wary even as he knew that even Izuna wasn’t stupid enough to attack him in the Throne Room of the Daimyo’s Imperial Palace – and he wasn’t attacking or activating his sharingan, or even performing a jutsu. He was just staring at Tobirama, eyes simultaneously focused on him and also somehow far away, and blushing bright red as his chakra flared in unsteady patterns that left Tobirama building up his shields against it and tasting the phantom taste of cinnamon.

“Yes,” Butsuma pronounced heavily next to Tobirama, answering Uchiha Tajima’s question and making Tobirama turn his attention away from the man’s weird younger son. Tajima was still staring at Butsuma with an odd look in his eyes.

“As in, people other than Senju may watch – or participate?” Tajima persisted, despite Butsuma studiously not looking in his direction.

Butsuma huffed and crossed his arms. “Participate,” he said, apparently deciding to just answer the man’s questions. “During the spring rite, anyone old enough to participate – so, fifteen and older –”

“Though it used to be fourteen,” Tobirama couldn’t help but mention, pouting.

“It used to be fourteen but I changed it to fifteen and I can change it to sixteen if I wish,” Butsuma agreed, sending him a look and making Tobirama duck his head and do his best to radiate innocence, “ – Swears to accept anyone who comes to them during the rite – that is, from sunrise to sunrise on the spring equinox – and gratefully accepts their offer of their virility or fertility, and we…channel, I suppose, is the best word for it – that energy into the land.”

“Via being fucked,” Tajima said crudely, eyes glittering.

Butsuma glared at him. “Yes,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “through being fucked – or doing the fucking, if that is what the requestor wishes. Not ,” his eyes grew hard and flinty and anger darkened his expression, “through human sacrifice – as if death could ever pay for life!”

Tobirama nodded, scowling, and the rest of the Senju made agreeing noises. The spring festival was about life and growth and pleasure – for a shinobi clan, it was one of the few times they could abandon their bloody jobs and find peace and meaning in the act of giving life, not taking it away. To suggest the opposite was – it was the worst kind of sacrilege, despite the fact that it wasn’t technically a religion – it was the closest the Senju had ever come.

Tajima tilted his head to the side and observed the Senju for a moment, before nodding slightly.

“And by having it here, does that mean those of us here would be able to participate?”

Tobirama found his gaze drawn to Izuna again, who was still looking at him, expression oddly hungry now. It felt…strange, being looked at that way by his rival, and he found himself looking away, body hot and eyes falling on Madara – who was also staring at Hashirama, and then turned his gaze to Tobirama, black eyes tracing over his features and then down his body leisurely. Tobirama stiffened and felt his face get even hotter as he looked away from the Uchiha representatives entirely, even as his heart gave a little jerk and his stomach felt like it had tightened. He felt oddly twitchy, and had to ruthlessly suppress the urge to squirm, heat focusing between his legs.

Butsuma hesitated, before answering. “Only those who are not our enemies are permitted, to prevent bloodshed or betrayal. So, some of those here, yes, but –”

“So if the Uchiha signed a ceasefire with the Senju, we could participate?” Madara interrupted, making Butsuma look over at him.

“Yes of course, but hypotheticals are not -”

“We will sign the ceasefire,” Tajima pronounced, making everyone pause in shock before Madara started to smile, and next to him Tobirama felt Hashirama give a soft, delighted gasp. Tobirama blinked, still in shock, though he could understand Hashirama’s joy. It wasn’t a full on peace treaty, much less the alliance he wanted, but it was a step towards peace – and a greater step than any that had been made before in centuries. But –

“Why?” Tobirama asked, drawing Tajima’s tiger-sharp eyes over to him.

“I’m very concerned with environmentalism,” Tajima said, straight faced.

But that – “But we’re not even doing the rite on your land,” Tobirama said, still puzzled. “So it wouldn’t benefit your field – it will benefit the capital’s, if we do it here. And the cease fire doesn’t count if it’s just for the time of the rite, you’d need to agree to a truce for at least the next six months if you want to count as not enemies – why give up fighting us for that long just for one chance to participate, when it’s not even in your lands?”

Tajima straightened. “Are you saying that performing this rite on our lands would give the Uchiha lands like the Senju’s?”

“Yes?” Tobirama answered, looking at him like he was an idiot. “We just explained it to you – we channel the energy into the earth. We’re the Senju , of the Forest – of the Land. Why do you think our bloodline limit is the Mokuton? The power of life itself?”

Tajima stared at him fixedly, then turned to Butsuma. “I will sign a peace treaty, if you agree to holding the rite in Uchiha lands next year, and every few years after that.”

There was another moment of shocked silence.

Hashirama burst out of seiza and turned to their father. “Say yes – Father, please –”

“Hush Hashirama,” Butsuma ordered, holding up a hand when Hashirama opened his mouth to argue. “I am going to say yes. After this rite we will settle out a peace treaty with appropriate terms. Acceptable?”

Tajima nodded. “Acceptable.”

They did not shake hands, but they did both turn to the Daimyo, who was staring at Tobirama and blushing. He jerked, and pulled his fan in front of his face, but shakily agreed to witness their peace efforts later, and dismissed them.

Tobirama got up, and was promptly pulled into a giant hug by Hashirama, which he squirmed out of when his brother went to accost Madara, talking to him at a mile a minute as Madara stared at him with a fixed, red face.

Tobirama looked at them for a minute, looked at Izuna, who was still staring at him, and shook his head and went to his room.

This was going to be a strange Spring Festival, that was for sure.