Archive of Our Own ^beta

Among the Uchiha, there was little as feared as the all-encompassing darkness that came with blindness. Madara ached to trash in his bindings and voice his outrage—the agonised terror he felt—but his limbs were as heavy as his mind was sluggish and no sound went past his numb lips.

Eternal darkness was all but imminent, and the last image he’d ever see—burned into his mind’s eye for eternity by the might of the Sharingan he’d lost—was the silver tool of his clan’s doom, glistening in the flickering light of the cave Madara had been following child traffickers into like a fool.

He should have known it was a ruse. Had known it was a ruse. But what else had he been supposed to do: Leaving children behind to suffer as his clan’s children were in constant danger of suffering whenever they were picked off the streets? No. Madara might be known as the Bringer of Ash, the Calamity—and while he detested his monikers and what they stood for, he had to admit each of them had their justification—but even he had lines drawn in the sand that he wouldn’t let anyone cross. The most important one: Child trafficking within Fire was unacceptable.

Madara shouldn’t have taken on the hunt alone, though. There was a reason the Uchiha had a policy against solo missions, and Madara could only hope he’d have the chance to reinforce it again when he returned home. If he returned home, that is. Even if he survived the night—his capture and the trauma that was only staved off by his hell-bent attempt at disassociating from the situation—there would be a long track home.

Impossibly long, if he took into consideration the expected level of exhaustion after his body burned through the drugs keeping him paralysed. The only shortening cut through a stretch of impenetrable forest, rumoured to be abandoned by all life since the Demon had taken up residence following his banishment. Certainly no place any Uchiha should venture into, a vulnerable one even less so.

Despite his near frantic efforts to distract himself, another glint of silver recaptured Madara’s attention—the Sharingan never able to not catch movement and redirect an Uchiha’s focus to a possible threat.

He desperately wanted to close his eyes to his fate, but the thieves hardly came unprepared. While his eyes and the surrounding area were the only part of his body that Madara had any control over in his current state, the medical device they used to keep his eye wide open—laid bare for the immediate removal—circumvented even this little autonomy he had left.

Madara tried to wrestle his chakra back under control, a last desperate attempt at shutting off his Sharingan and leaving them with nothing more than a useless ordinary eye—desperate not to immortalise the memory of his ordeal in crippling detail—but the drug they doused him with, the poison that had to be specifically tailored to hunting Uchiha down, didn’t allow him the mercy, and instead forced his chakra in an even flow to his eyes.

His eye. Singular. The one he had left after the other had already been removed before the pain-numbing properties of the poison had fully run their course.

The agony would stay with Madara just as much as the images seared into his brain. Already, Madara could feel the first tell-tale twinges of phantom pain in his missing blind eye as he realised the device’s core was close enough for its teeth to be buried into the barely there gap between eye and socket. The sensation-memory of having the thin metal edged where it didn’t belong was vivid enough to have its echoes searing along his nerves despite the knowledge that it wasn’t real, that he couldn’t feel anything with the poison finally saturating his every cell. The pain distracted him for only a moment, but then, just like the last time, there was a wet sound and-

And Madara was left in absolute darkness.

With his eyes taken, his ears deafened by an inhuman screech resonating inside his head, and his nose clogged by the iron and salt of blood and tears, there was nothing tethering him to his surroundings, nothing to take him away from the agony of having his body, his soul, mutilated.

Madara ached for the peace of death that was sure to come, but he knew there wasn’t much relief to be found in unwanted solitude. Without his eyes, he had lost all chance of finding his loved ones in the pure lands, he couldn’t follow the threads forged in life that bound them together. Without his eyes, he would never see the golden halls of his clan’s motherly patron goddess.

They might have ‘just’ taken his eyes, but it had left Madara with nothing.

Instead of the cold kiss of steel against his throat, Madara was jarred from his spiralling thoughts by horrified screams that drowned out the cacophony within his head and the half-imagined impression of hot liquid spraying over his face that couldn’t be anything but blood.

Straining his ears, Madara could make out sounds of a fight that seemed terribly one-sided. The screams cut off one by one, until a roar similar to a thousand birds taking flight at the same time left behind an eerie silence that allowed Madara no further insight into what was happening around him.

The barely felt touch at the corner of his eyes would have made Madara violently flinch if he weren’t still incapacitated by the poison in his body, although its hold seemed to lessen with sensations returning to his skin. As it was, the only outward sign of his sudden bout of resurfacing terror was the tear he could feel well up without any path to go but filling the empty space where an eye used to be.

“Shit,” a vaguely familiar voice cursed heartfelt but far too close for comfort. Madara had the barest sense of his head being moved before a metallic crash at the far end of the cave had his currently useless fight-or-flight response in overdrive again.

Careful fingertips ran over his eyelids, pressing them closed over empty sockets with no devilish device keeping them forcefully open. The voice hummed, a soothing tune that somehow managed to slow down Madara’s pounding heart despite the adrenaline that left him with an itch to move he couldn’t scratch. Madara wondered if the increased bodily reactions were another sign of the poison losing its hold, but the sudden loss of touch on his face redirected his attention yet again.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” the stranger announced, “but I need to take a look around. I’ll be back, hold on.”

It wasn’t as if Madara had other options than to comply. For a time, there was nothing but the sound of steps echoing around the cave, the rustling of heavy objects being pulled over uneven ground and the fluttering of papers being thumbed through too fast to be read without the aid of a dōjutsu. Madara couldn’t help himself but be thankful for his rescuer’s consideration. After the proficiency shown by their quick fight against an outnumbering force, the noise they made had to be entirely on purpose just for the off chance that Madara might be conscious enough to hear.

It was a small mercy, but one that reached into Madara’s chest and squeezed his heart until it felt as if he’d choke to death if he were forced to think any more of it.

Madara was drawn out of his thoughts by the soft steps returning to his side. There was a pause, and Madara had the vaguest impression that his companion wasn’t prone to excessive talking. But before he could dwell on it, they had gathered their wits again.

“Bad news, first: if they used a child to lure you in, she’s dead.” The crisp delivery did little to hide the cold fury buried underneath. Strangely enough, it gave Madara’s sluggish mind a flighty image of fluffy white hair and sharp red eyes. A feeling, as if he was supposed to know them, him, but try as he might, Madara couldn’t put a name to the voice. “I found the body on my way in. I can only assume she tried to escape as the scum was busy with, well, you. While she didn’t make it, her failed attempt—the juvenile chakra flickering out within my range—gave me the incentive to take a closer look at this cave, so there’s that.”

The man’s tight voice betrayed his actual feelings about the unknown girl’s death, but Madara appreciated it. At least he wasn’t alone with his morals for once. Izuna often berated him for his misplaced compassion for anyone not of their blood, but what was the point? If they solely focused inward without lending a hand to anyone else, how could they expect help if the Uchiha ever were in need? Wasn’t their continued feud with the Senju strenuous enough as it was? Why add to their dangerous lives by pushing direct neighbours into resentment if it only took little effort to lend aid?

Well, Little effort and apparently an eye or two. Izuna had been right, and Madara would never live it down. How could he, when he had-

Oh, by the sun, Madara had lost his-

“Now, the good news,” the deep rumble broke apart Madara’s spiralling yet again. More by the underlying pitch of nervousness that seemed entirely out of place than anything else, though. “I did find your eyes, they are safe.”

In the haze of frenzied colour exploding in front of his inner eye, Madara wanted to snarl, to show his teeth and sink them into a soft throat, painting the world in red until no one would ever be able to see any colour but the one of life draining away. How dare the man speak of Madara’s eyes being safe while they were outside of his head? How dare he frame finding Madara’s stolen eyes as something good rather than the tragedy it was?

Madara was Uchiha, and any Uchiha had basic skills in healing eye trauma—and yes, for an Uchiha ‘basic’ encompassed even emergency eye transplantation or reattachment, it was required knowledge for any Uchiha, awakened Sharingan or not, to leave the security of their home and run missions. But his rescuer wasn’t Uchiha. And considering his skill at taking care of the thieves, he wasn’t a medic either.

His rescuer might have found Madara’s eyes, but by the time help arrived to set them back in, it would be too late. Already, Madara could feel his chakra preparing to cauterise the frayed ends of his pathways, to permanently shut off the connections that would be needed for his eyes to properly settle back into his body and, more importantly, reintegrate with his chakra system.

With how fast he had been running in his attempt to track the traffickers, they had to be miles outside of any resemblance of civilization. Even when his clan realised that Madara had been hunting on his own, even if they sent a team after him, no help would come in time. His rescuer might as well crush Madara’s eyes under his heel and save him from the pain of holding onto what was lost to him in every way that mattered.

“You’re lucky it’s me who found you,” the man continued, unaware of the beast clawing at the inside of Madara’s rib cage, begging to be let out and inflict the anguish he felt on the world around him. “I don’t imagine there would be many people able to heal this kind of damage without lasting effects. Granted, I’ve never worked on a Sharingan before, but my skill should be enough to tide you over.”

Silence.

Around him, the world ceased to exist. The man’s calm scientific explanations flew straight over Madara’s head as his drugged mind found a sudden moment of clarity only to stop working entirely as it circled around the bold claim, trying to find any hint of falsehood and coming up empty. Madara didn’t dare to hope, but he couldn’t help the longing in his chest translating to another tear slipping out. In any other situation, he might have thought it a disgrace, but-

Madara might have not lost his eyes—the haven of his self—for good.

“Ah shit, I’m so sorry.” There was a fluttering noise right beside his head as if the man was flailing without knowing what to do, and it was a strange mental image to have since his saviour had been nothing but the embodiment of sheer competence so far. “I shouldn’t have gone into every gory detail. Not helpful, Tobirama. Dammit.”

Tobirama, huh? The name sparked something in Madara’s mind—cool blue and a sharp smirk painted red by a spray of blood—but the drugs held strong and Madara slipped under their influence again with the surge of his chakra burning out by the relief he’d felt at the possibility of getting his eyes back after all.

“Look,” the man, Tobirama, broke off with a strangled moan and muttered something under his breath, too quiet for Madara to phase through in his current state. “I really need you to know—no matter what is said about me and no matter what it seems like right now—I don’t have a habit of experimenting on unsuspecting victims, alright?” What a strange and suspicious thing to point out. “I’d never operate on someone without their informed consent,” he stressed as if it was supposed to mean something to Madara, “but I have a strong inkling that we’re kind of under time pressure right now. The tenketsu points connected to your eyes are already shutting off—and I have no idea how or why—so I can only assume it has something to do with the Sharingan, and I think I really should stop babbling now and get going.”

For some unfathomable reason, it was strange to hear the deep voice raising a pitch or two in what Madara could only assume came down to anxiety. Sure enough, though, with his attention shut inwards, it was easy enough to confirm Tobirama’s observation. With Madara’s ire, the little chakra at his disposal had flared up and actually started to burn away the pathways leading to his missing eyes. Thankfully the poison affecting his body and mind had also subdued his chakra responses or it might have been too late already.

This day was just full of surprises, wasn’t it? Here Madara was, unable to move and without his eyes—utterly helpless at a vaguely familiar stranger’s mercy—but still thankful for the blood thieves’ apparent inner knowledge about the Uchiha’s Kekkei Genkai. How else would they’ve known his chakra needed to be suppressed, too, for their tortuous procedure to work?

If Madara got out of this, when he got out of this, he’d call a hunt and purge Fire from the scum nipping at his clan’s heels. He’d be the last Uchiha to have lost his eyes at their hands, and he would use his reclaimed Sharingan to its fullest extent to force empathy until every last of them burned on the pyre of their heartfelt regret before they died in the agony only Amaterasu’s Wrath could bring.

Madara was distracted from picturing his triumph born in fire and ash, when the heat in his blood was doused by a wave of cool chakra crashing over him, engulfing him in a soothing chill as it pulled him under without apparent effort. With his chakra sense swamped, Madara was reduced to only his hearing, which in turn was made useless by the sound of blood rushing in his ears. It felt like drowning, floating away from his body and tethered to the world solely by Tobirama’s calm words coming through the static noise from far away, washing over Madara without their meaning registering in his brain.

It was a strange experience. Against his better judgement, the anxiety caused by his helplessness drained away and was replaced by calming blue running along his pathways, soothing his agitated chakra into a restful pace like a dragon’s wrath might be pacified by a phoenix’s alluring song. Madara had never experienced anything like it, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure how he’d cope with going without it for the rest of his life.

The thought was as unexpected as it was unwelcome, but thankfully, it was lost to him when he realised that—while he still had no control over his body—sensations were starting to return for real. The precise touch of cool fingers against the delicate skin around his eyes didn’t cause his heart rate to spike. Instead, he felt the strangest urge to lean into it, to seek relief against the smooth hands that treated so carefully and might be able to soothe the itch of his skin that suddenly felt too tight, a confining cage to his soul.

“Alright,” Tobirama’s relief filtered through the noise in Madara’s ears with little effort. “That should work. I’ll just-”

The void of Madara’s existence was brightened by a flash of pain so intense it made him see light again. He wanted to shout and yell, to curl up into a ball and hide his face against his knees, but his body stayed still as the agony abated under the glowing caress of green-tinted blue and-

Green-tinted-blue!

Madara still couldn’t properly see—nothing more than a bright blob against a dark canvas, illuminated by the glow of medical chakra surrounding the hands cradling his face—but he wasn’t left blind anymore. He wasn’t-

With a metallic glint, the world became dark again.

Madara couldn’t suppress the flash of panic that threatened to take his breath, but then he realised the darkness to be more organic than before. Madara’s vision wasn’t reduced to a void of black but tinted a muted red from the glow of Tobirama’s hands visible through his closed eyelids.

And even when Tobirama’s chakra receded from Madara’s pathways—-leaving him achingly empty, cold and burning at the same time, ravenous for the lingering flavour of salt enhancing hidden sweetness that seemed left on his tongue—there still were colourful patterns growing behind his closed lids. It was a relief that Madara wasn’t able to put into words, and it didn’t recede when his sight turned black again—his lifeline of colour caused by brightness reduced to unpredictable patterns of imagined light, as his head was carefully manhandled until soft cloth covered the sensitive area of his eyes as well as his head.

“You need to keep the bandage for a few days, at the very least until a healer has looked you over,” Tobirama murmured, mindful of his proximity to Madara’s ears. This close, as Tobirama secured the bandage around Madara’s head, the copper smell of blood and salt of fresh sweat rose to his nose, hiding a hint of rain on a summer day underneath. Madara had half a mind to burrow himself into the scent, to hide his vulnerable face in the protective curve of his rescuer’s neck, mingle his long hair with the soft strands that had caressed his cheeks as Tobirama reached around his head to properly secure the bandage, but he still couldn’t move and for the fracture of a second, Madara was thankful that it spared him the mortification of his mindless actions. For all that sensation was returning to his skin and limbs, his mind was apparently more affected by the drugs than he’d initially thought possible.

Madara was settled back against the table, and in the sudden silence, he felt Tobirama’s heavy gaze prickling on his skin. The continued vulnerability was difficult to stomach, even more so when, after a long sigh, fabric rustled next to his body by deliberation—to expect anything less from a shinobi of Tobirama’s reputation was madness—and-

Oh. Oh fuck.

Tobirama’s reputation. Senju Tobirama’s reputation.

How had he missed that his rescuer was Hashirama’s precious little brother who had acclimated a reputation across the Elemental Nations so bad, it had him banished from his own clan no matter Hashirama’s personal feelings. What the fuck did his capturers put into their poison that even with a name and the vague memory of a face, Madara hadn’t connected the dots?

His hand was picked up by careful fingers, and Madara waited with bated breath what the man would do now. He couldn’t take any visual clues from the micro expressions his clan prided themselves on reading as clearly as shouted exclamations, so it came as a surprise when, haltingly, Tobirama began speaking.

It was obvious the Senju had little to no practise in mindless chatter or small talk, his attempts at carrying a one-sided conversation were awkward at best and his voice got rough barely a few minutes in—evidently unused to constant use, and Madara wondered when was the last time the man had had someone to talk to in the first place—but Tobirama kept pushing through and Madara- Madara couldn’t contain the tear escaping his eye and thankfully being absorbed by the bandage protecting them.

Bad reputation and nominal enemy or not, Madara wouldn’t want to imagine how much worse this experience would have been if he’d been left in silence, utterly alone and vulnerable in his helpless state.

It was an unexpected kindness by a man rumoured to be a Demon, a man on whose head was a considerable price for the gruesome nature of his reputation as mad scientist and bloodthirsty eye-stealer. But here Tobirama was, giving Madara’s tortured mind something to focus on with his ears rather than his eyes by telling Madara anecdotes about his oaf of a brother, painting a picture of the God of Shinobi so ridiculous it couldn’t be anything but true—just as true as the wistful emotion carried by his cracking voice that made Madara’s heart ache with emotion no matter how much he tried to harden himself against it.

Here Tobirama was, holding Madara’s hand to allow him to ground his spinning mind in a touch not aimed to hurt, as he spoke of his brother’s foolish attempts of peacemaking and how to do them better.

Madara couldn’t twitch a single muscle as Tobirama kept prattling on—at this point clearly just speaking his thoughts as they came with no filter in between—telling Madara’s seemingly unconscious body about his old annoyance with Hashirama’s childish attempts at peace, demanding harmony while their families were locked in battle around them and not caring for any middle ground between his dream and the reality of blood-soaked earth. Tobirama’s exhaustion—before he had been banished—at having Izuna rabidly nipping at his heels as he’d tried to keep the casualties down as far as possible on both sides to ensure there was enough left of either clan to fill the village his brother dreamed of with life rather than ghosts. How hard it was to keep blood thieves and child traffickers out of his immediate territory with little more than his carefully built reputation, because he couldn’t split himself more than he already did, not yet at least (and, wait what??).

And then, Tobirama told him with grim pride how he had taken the banishment his brother had been forced to declare by their elders and used his new freedom to make a statement. How he had taken care of their old child hunter squad, ran them down until they were nothing but exhausted shells drowning in tears and blood like the kids they’d liked to hunt for sports—and how no child had died on Senju grounds ever since.

But as Tobirama voiced his resigned understanding that Madara didn’t do the same, that Tobirama could still feel the murderers of his little brothers milling around at the compound, Madara realised that his own efforts for a more peaceful future weren’t known by the Senju.

Uchiha weren’t allowed to kill their own, not when any and each of them was a child blessed by Amaterasu herself. But where Madara couldn’t take heads, as soon as he became clan head he had taken hands. Actively constricting the despicable men to the compound and to the mercy of the women who had always condemned them for their actions. They might be alive, but unlike what Tobirama seemed to think, their life was far from being comfortable, or even safe.

Although, Madara conceded, they were safe from the idle plans of revenge that Tobirama had apparently toyed with over the years and now retold in impressive detail before he trailed off with a heavy sigh and admitted that he’d long since forced himself to let go of his vengeful desires and instead commit to his brother’s dream of peace without reparations to be demanded from either side, lest he’d end up as the demon everyone but Hashirama liked to treat him as.

Madara’s hand twitched at that last confession, actually twitched, and Tobirama stopped his hoarse rambling. There was another wave of pleasantly cool chakra, this time causing an actual full-body shiver that shook Madara’s frame as his muscles and pathways came alive under the reviving touch.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m cold,” Tobirama apologised and drew back in an instant, his chakra and hand alike, and Madara felt bereft. “It wasn’t my intention to cause any discomfort or overstep, but I needed to do a medical scan. Please don’t try to open your eyes, Uchiha-san, you have been injured. Can you hear me?”

Ah, Uchiha-san it was—as if Tobirama didn’t know exactly who he had under his care. Madara couldn’t fault him for it, though. He was known to trust his brother’s words and while Izuna had always been convinced most rumours surrounding his Senju rival were bullshit, he still had been very outspoken against his person regardless. There would need to happen some serious reassessment of the whole situation as soon as Madara was back with his clan. But for now-

Madara tried to open his mouth, but other than a twitch of his lips, he had no success. Apparently, the paralysis of his face was much stronger than that of his body, since he could at least somewhat clench his previously held hand. With little else to do and missing the thumb stroking the back of his hand in a repetitive motion almost as much as the soothing chakra caressing his sore pathways, Madara kept doing it with great concentration until Tobirama got the hint with a hitch to his breath.

Carefully, slowly, Tobirama slipped his hand back into its previous place and Madara clutched it as tightly as he could. It wasn’t much, granted, but enough to get his point across and ease Tobirama’s held breath as he settled back at Madara’s side a little closer than before. It made Madara relax, and Tobirama seemed to pick up on it even though he thankfully didn’t comment on Madara’s childish demand to have his hand held.

“Uchiha-san had been captured by bloodline thieves,” Tobirama started, his voice slightly modulated into an unfamiliar tone and speaking pattern. “A child’s body was found and I investigated. I couldn’t avert their initial attack on Uchiha-san’s person, but I was able to reverse any harm done. I would still like to advise Uchiha-san to visit a healer post-haste and not removing the bandage before doing so.”

It was the most useless mission report Madara had ever gotten, but he had to hand it to Tobirama: if he hadn’t already known who had saved him, he’d never even suspected the banished Senju.

Tobirama kept up a slow stream of overly polite words, now much more careful with what he told Madara and mostly sticking to describing their surroundings in exhausting detail—it was astonishing how drawn-out Tobirama managed to explain the walls of a cave. Madara would have been bored to tears if he hadn’t entertained himself by trying to sense the short bursts of cool chakra scanning his body and monitoring his pathways. For all that Izuna always cursed about the demon’s freezing touch, Madara found he would like little more than to sink himself into it, having his inherent heat banked by the currents of the younger man’s chakra. Madara imagined he’d be able to relax into it like nothing else, finally able to let go rather than constantly keeping himself in check of fear he’d set the world aflame.

When Tobirama’s chakra drew back like the tide after another brief scan—his tweaked voice a constant whisper at Madara’s ear, lulling him into a moment of peace as he ignored the boring words—Madara couldn’t help himself and reached out with his senses, too, trying to hold onto Tobirama’s chakra and mingling it with his own.

All drowsy attempts at connecting with the other man tumbled from his mind when Tobirama froze up beside him and Madara realised his own bodily reactions at the same time. While his mind had been lulled by Tobirama’s soothing presence, Madara had missed the poison having almost run its course. His heart rate was spiking as his muscles twitched, his hold on Tobirama’s hand so strong he could feel the delicate bones grinding—Madara couldn’t tell if it was his desire to hold on or the consequence of having a seizure—but he didn’t care about the bodily signs. Not when Madara finally had access to his chakra again and used every shred of awareness to gather it and push through the remaining poison holding him captive in his own body.

“Shit!” Tobirama cursed with his own voice rather than the decoy he’d used since he knew Madara was aware. With a hiss of pain, Tobirama ripped his hand out of Madara’s punishing grip as he tried to burn through the poison’s hold by throwing the pitiful might of his sluggish chakra against it. Suddenly, the now familiar hands were back on Madara’s face, and a pronounced chill flowed over the expanse of his body, drenching him akin to water, ensuring neither Madara nor his clothes went up in flames by the heat he put out. “That’s it, Uchiha-san. Keep going, I have you.”

Tobirama kept muttering encouragement as Madara forced his chakra to comply, to purify his pathways and burn away the lead on his muscles and nerves, keeping his body and mind prisoner. Mouth falling open, Madara let out a great roar, back arching—nearly dislocating Tobirama, who seemed all but kneeling over his sprawled-out body in his attempts to keep Madara from harming himself—before he fell back on the table with a tingling sensation crawling over his limbs like ants, followed by exhaustion so heavy it made him feel floaty.

“There you are. Well done.”

With great effort, Madara reached for Tobirama only to have his searching hand evaded with the sound of rustling clothes. A high whine crawled up his throat but Madara couldn’t feel any shame for his involuntary reaction when it caused Tobirama to step back at his side, invading his space with comforting noises and an impression of flailing hands as he seemingly kept himself from touching Madara.

It took the last of his remaining focus, but Madara managed to blindly pluck one hand from the air—clutching it tightly as his arm fell to his side, unable to withstand the strain of having it moved on his own—and his mind started drifting again, the exhaustion taking its toll.

Madara snapped to attention with a sudden spark within Tobirama’s chakra that had been gently lapping against his senses before but now was crushing over him like a broken wave of ice cold water. With how much the Senju had concerned himself with Madara’s comfort, something ought to have happened and Madara scrambled to get up, get back on his feet for the first time since the ground had been pulled from beneath them and he had found himself helpless as no grown Uchiha ever should be.

“Peace, Uchiha-san, all is well,” Tobirama tried to soothe Madara with his unbothered fake voice as he pressed Madara back into the makeshift bed with strong but ever-careful hands on his shoulders. It would have been more convincing if Madara hadn’t already been so in tune with the younger man that he easily caught the strain hidden underneath the calm words, the torrent moving within the sea-deep well of chakra—washing over him in what Madara could only assume to be a reflex of some sort—before it drew back into the vessel of Tobirama’s flesh so deep Madara couldn’t even catch a hint of its coveted briskness despite being still connected to the impossible man.

With his eyes still hidden, there was nothing betraying Tobirama’s presence other than the familiar weight of his hands on Madara’s shoulders, slowly retreating. Mind still in a flurry, Madara blindly reached up—a burst of relief at being able to so strong he might have wept if he wasn’t so weary of what was happening—trying to keep the point of contact and ensure Tobirama’s presence at his side. Instead of trapping a cool hand within his grasp, though, Madara’s wrist was caught by long fingers squeezing once in reassurance, before something hard and small—a kunai—was pressed into the palm of his hand to be clutched on reflex as Tobirama led Madara’s hand back down to rest on his fast-heaving chest.

“Help is coming. They’re fast approaching.”

It was meant as a reassurance, but all Madara could feel was dread at the prospect of being abandoned by the man who not only had given him back his eyes—the haven of his soul—but also had held the darkness at bay with a lilting voice speaking of brothers and peace. No whispers of the Uchihas’ lost souls—their ancient hate cultivated in blood and tears and time—had reached Madara’s ears while Tobirama had patiently painted pictures with his words.

Madara ached to speak, to beg Tobirama to stay, but his tongue was too heavy, sitting uselessly in his mouth and keeping him from embarrassing himself any further than he already did. With the first burst of adrenaline having run its course, Madara was able to take stock of his actual energy levels, or rather the lack thereof, and the heaviness of his sluggish body. There was no way to tell how much time had passed, all he knew was that Tobirama had stayed with him through it all.

And now he was about to leave, driven off by fast steps closing in from the distance.

“I have to go,” Tobirama whispered, hot breath on sensitive skin as he bowed close to contain the noise and stay undetected. There was a brief pause, Tobirama’s presence still at his side, seemingly caught between drawing away and leaning back in, and Madara wondered if he wasn’t the only one feeling a certain pull between them. Finally, though, Tobirama made up his mind, leaning in even closer than before, close enough for Madara to imagine the sensation of cool lips against his burning ear, “Stay safe, Madara.”

Madara’s mind halted at hearing Tobirama’s true voice. There was no attempt at modulating it to hide himself and by speaking his given name, he gave up on the pretence of not knowing who had been at his mercy the whole time. The Senju were painfully aware that the Uchihas’ perfect memory wasn’t limited to visual input, so—even if he assumed Madara didn’t yet know who his saviour actually was—Tobirama had just, willingly and knowingly, given Madara the means to find him if he so desired and was willing to put in the effort. That was-

It was-

Tobirama was in for a surprise, that much was sure.

Madara suddenly knew he was alone in the cave, alone like he hadn’t been since he had been captured like a fool and Tobirama found him. Without anything for his remaining senses to latch onto—no cool chakra mingling with his own, no scent of salt and ink at his nose, no sound of a smooth baritone speaking just for the sake of filling the silence—Madara felt his thoughts spiralling, catching up with the horror of the fate that would have befallen him without Tobirama there, the fate that had befallen him before Tobirama unmade it, his chakra joining Madara’s to weave a new fate, a new thread.

“He’s here!” a familiar voice yelled before Madara was treated to the vilest curses his sweet little baby brother had managed to pick up before he broke off with a shaky breath, most likely having finally realised Madara’s state.

“Aniki,” Izuna’s voice was barely a breath but then the silence was disturbed by him crossing the remaining distance with loud steps, uncaring for any attempts at subterfuge. “Oh no, no, no, Aniki. Your eyes!”

The sudden touch on his face made Madara reflexively strike out with the kunai, but thankfully he was still too slow to cause damage and Izuna caught his hand without effort. Izuna’s hand was warm, almost as warm as his, and felt small around his own. There was a pang of something in his chest, that Madara felt far from ready to acknowledge, never mind exploring any further right now. It didn’t stop the tremble, though. If anyone were to ask, Madara would swear up and down it was merely due to exhaustion.

“It’s alright, Aniki. It’s me, Izuna. I’m here, I found you. I-” Izuna broke off his rambling with an anguished sound, and with the soft touch against the bandage around his head, Madara could only guess Izuna had finally realised he had been too late to save Madara in any way that mattered. Or he would have been if it weren’t for Tobirama. What an irony, that it was his brother’s greatest rival that had saved him from an Uchiha’s greatest regret. The only thing worse than losing your own eyes was to find your closest family without theirs, a broken shell housing empty voids and a soul cursed to wander the afterlife without ever finding their loved ones, unable to follow the connecting threads forged in life and blood.

The air grew hot around them, chakra pouring out from Izuna in a wild dance as it concentrated on his eyes. Madara was the only living Uchiha to truly know the price of the Mangekyou, the madness it invited, and he’d done his best to ensure no one but him would be trapped with the whispers of their people’s hateful lost souls, the growing blindness that, eventually, would lead to the same fate as having one’s eyes removed.

No matter how tired Madara was, there was only one way to prove to Izuna he hadn’t found his brother’s breathing corpse. With trembling hands, he reached up and undid the knot holding the bandage in place.

Tobirama had been right, of course. Giving back sight after the removal of eyes was a practice with very unstable results and always, always, needed time to heal without any strain on the visual nerves. But for all that Tobirama might be brilliant—and considering some of the rumours that had in part caused the frankly obscene bounty on his head he undoubtedly was—it was now obvious to Madara that he had no deeper knowledge of the Sharingan nor the Uchihas’ ridiculous healing capacity regarding their eyes. With his chakra purging every cell as he burned out the remaining poison, Madara had finished the admirable job Tobirama had done and while tender, his eyes should be good again.

But there was only one way to know for sure.

Izuna’s breath hitched and his chakra fizzled out into a warm gust of wind caressing Madara’s exposed face when the bandages fell down and Madara’s closed lids were free to the air. Closed, but not falling over empty sockets.

With a fluttering of sticky lashes, Madara slowly opened his eyes only to immediately shut them again when the dim light of the cave proved to be too much. But the single glimpse had been enough to memorise the walls drenched in red and the bodies of his tormentors neatly rowed at the far side of the wall with their hideous eye-stealing equipment broken at their side—the thoughtfulness of the deliberate presentation made his chest ache, but he could not allow himself to dwell on it.

The sole act of undoing his blindfold had exhausted Madara’s meagre strength in full, and had his head swim as he fought to stay conscious. It was easy to ignore Izuna’s fussing and the quiet chatter of his squat as they secured Madara on his brother’s back. He did find some strength, though, to headbutt Izuna after one too many mutterings about the combined weight of Madara and his armour. Admittedly, it was mostly to soothe his brother’s worries. Madara had tried to speak only once since he had been found by his clansmen but for all that he had burned the poison out of his system, there still seemed to be lingering nauseating effects that convinced him to keep his mouth shut.

As he was mostly left alone while the others made their way back home, the movement of his brother’s run rocking him like a babe, Madara’s thoughts eventually circled back to Tobirama.

After all the stories Izuna told of his rival on the battlefield—his empty eyes and scathing words—after all the rumours following the man—of stealing children and murdering camps of merchants off the streets, experimenting on the living and the death with no natural law honoured in his mad pursuit of knowledge—Madara would have never seen the man Tobirama had shaped up to be when there weren’t—pun intended—any eyes on him.

It would be easy to dismiss it as a rouse, an attempt to trick Madara and the Uchiha into thinking him harmless, but the man the rumours portrayed him to be would never have such a mild and caring bedside manner, the man with the bounty of his head high enough to buy a title equal to a daimyo would never have flailed or allow his hand to be clutched like a life-line. Would never have apologised for the feel of his chakra.

But if this was Tobirama’s true self—one that admittedly fit Hashirama’s descriptions at the river when he told of his sweet little brother with a heart and head too big for the world he had been born in, forced to keep the former under wraps if he the didn’t want to lose the latter by their beast of a father—then he had to be a master at wearing masks.

And if the Senju’s Demon truly could be distraught by an assumed Uchiha child’s death while doing his best to save their head’s life and sanity—his eyes that the Senju never knew as anything but a devastating weapon—maybe there was still hope for the future Madara used to dream of as a child.

He didn’t know for sure yet, but Madara was intent on finding out. And with a bond forged in chakra and blood and tears, Tobirama could never hope to hide from him ever again.