Petrichor

Hashirama receives the summons after dawn, the world quiet and the compound only just beginning to stir. It makes him pause for a moment, but it is strange for his brother to ask after him so formally. He’s certain it has to be connected to the long nights Tobirama has tried to keep hidden from him — some new discovery, he figures, and it is that thought that spurs him to abandon his office to seek Tobirama out; his brother so rarely speaks about his work, let alone outright asks to demonstrate one. By the time Hashirama finds Tobirama on the lip of the engawa, staring out into where the tree line is spring-young and voracious, he’s torn between curiosity and the faintest stirrings of apprehension. He steps a little heavier. Tobirama glances over at him, eyebrows raised.

“Should we move to one of the training grounds?”

“No,” Tobirama says, his voice rough. Too little sleep, Hashirama guesses, and the thought makes him ache. “This won’t take long, and it isn’t —”

Tobirama clears his throat. He stands, too, waving Hashirama closer. He slips something from his pocket, the edge of it glittering in the sun, and Hashirama squints. It is a kunai, simple and vicious and Iron-made, no doubt from Tobirama’s mother’s collection, and Hashirama’s ache grows like ivy at the sight of it. Tobirama gestures at the tree line.

“Pick one?”

Hashirama hesitates before obliging. He chooses one of the older trees, and he finds it is a good choice; it hardly cries out to him when Tobirama sends the kunai flying, the blade sliding right through the bark with appalling ease. Hashirama is, as always, impressed. Tobirama’s marksmanship is a thing to be envied, nigh beautiful if it wasn’t so hideously lethal. Hashirama opens his mouth to say as much but when he looks to his side, Tobirama is gone.

Foolishly, Hashirama’s first thought is that he has imagined all of this. The war is getting weightier, the clan is getting hungrier, and neither he, Tobirama, nor Mito has had more than a few minutes of peace between their duties. Hashirama’s chakra saves him from physical exhaustion, but there isn’t a cure-all for mental aches. It is moments like these that make Hashirama almost miss his father; Hashirama doesn’t regret what he had done, but he only wishes, sometimes, that he hadn’t had to do it so early. His hands are tied more days than not by clan head responsibilities, and if he had been more patient, had been more like Tobi and less of himself, maybe Butsuma could have been better used as a buffer, like mulch on fresh soil.

The feeling fades nearly as fast as it came, replaced by the familiar sensation of Tobirama’s bright moon-salt water chakra rushing over the edges of his own. Hashirama follows it like roots to water, his shoulders softening in the fond wake of its undertow: silly anija, where are you looking? I’m right hereherehere.

“I see you,” he says because for all Hashirama is, he is too clumsy to answer back with his own chakra. There’s too much of it, and Tobirama is too sensitive — it is easier to let his brother in rather than accidentally destroy him. Besides, Tobirama is more his mother’s son than Butsuma’s. His head tilts across the yard, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his kunai. Hashirama squints. “Teleportation?”

“Yes and no,” Tobirama says, meaning that it is more complicated than Hashirama can even imagine, and too new for Tobirama to begin figuring out how to simplify it.

“Aren’t you fast enough as it is?”

Hashirama means it as a joke, but his throat catches awkwardly on the words. It’s already hell to keep track of Tobirama on the battlefield — sometimes, on their most overwhelming days, even on clan grounds — and the older Hashirama grows, the more he worries about his brother. Tobirama is only fifteen. He’s as consummate a shinobi as one can become, but he’s still so young. The trees still call him sprout when he passes underneath them, and his shoulders are still too wide for his body, his face still too smooth and soft. Hashirama looks at Tobirama and sometimes sees the towheaded baby his father stole from the Hatake heiress, precious and still blood-warm from the poor woman’s labor pains.

“Are you jealous?” Tobirama asks, moving back to the engawa. Hashirama laughs at the unexpectedness of it even as Tobirama flips the kunai around to show off the seal stamped into the handle. Hashirama knows better than to touch it.

“Did Mito help you with it?”

“No.”

Hashirama thinks of how fast his brother had moved — how suddenly his chakra had shifted — and hums. “Because she couldn’t, or because you knew she would think you shouldn’t?”

Tobirama ignores him entirely as he is wont to do. There’s something important here, Hashirama figures, and he tries to unravel it. It’s a task much easier said than done. Tobirama once likened his mind to something both overgrown and fickle — a flytrap, Hashirama had offered, trying to understand, carnivorous, and Tobirama had smiled sweet enough to show the pale, silver-sickle curve of his fangs — and in some ways it’s wholly unnavigable even to himself. Hashirama has gotten stuck enough times in its brambles to be both wary and awed by it.

Tobirama points his sealed kunai back toward the trees.

“Another?” He asks, and then, “The last time, if you want.”

Hashirama sacrifices a younger tree but raises his eyebrows when the kunai sails through the air only to miss, embedding itself into the trunk just behind it. He says nothing, only waits, smart enough to keep staring at the tree line, and yet — and yet he hardly needs to this time around because Tobirama disappears and reappears the same way thunder might: loud, terrible, a cacophony of monsoon-salt water-drown that makes Hashirama’s hair stand on end and his blood sing. His chest clenches. The air around them is loud with the thrashing of Tobirama’s chakra, its eddies dragging Hashirama so furiously that he takes a step toward him on instinct, and it cries out in a language Hashirama doesn’t know.

“Are you hurt?” He calls, thinking of carnivorous and unsafe seals, the weight of Butsuma’s only good mistake in the crook of his arms.

“I’m alright,” Tobirama answers. He’s standing by the younger tree Hashirama picked, one of his hands pressing into the bark as if to break it, and he looks so very young when he looks back at Hashirama. “Did you feel the difference?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to do it again?”

“No,” Hashirama says. He isn’t a sensor — the trees speak to him if he asks and even more if he doesn’t — but he thinks of Itama and Kawarama and fears. Tobirama frowns. His chakra settles, pooling, and Hashirama learns to breathe again. “It’s alright. It only — maybe another time, otouto.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you.”

Hashirama waves the apology away, curling his feet into the fragile, embarrassed forgive me, anija that comes his way. He sighs. It is not fair, he thinks, that Tobirama gets to know everything and him rarely anything; the only consolation is that Tobirama can only read so far into Hashirama's chakra without giving himself away with a nosebleed or a migraine. Mischievous, Mito often called him, half-heartedly swatting his side or stomach or arm with her sensu, always seeping into places people think sacred — is Hashirama’s fear sacred? As the older brother, he hopes so.

He gestures at the tree.

“Is this to help with Izuna?”

Tobirama whacks the tree with the flat of his hand, and Hashirama imagines it to be with his ninjatō instead. The image isn’t a pretty one, but — but Hashirama remembers the last skirmish, remembers the way Izuna stalked the war plains with his lip curled over his teeth and his eyes Sharingan red, and suddenly feels as ancient and bloated as one of the Senju oaks.

“Could be,” Tobirama slowly says, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him just yet, and Hashirama tips, tentatively, into the fuzzy place war often brings.

“Was it close the last time the two of you fought?” It hurts that he has to ask, but Tobirama is so fast, Hashirama so slow, and the trees don’t like to speak when katon sears across their bark and singes their leaves. Hashirama wishes he could be more understanding but he is Hashi first, Senju second, and trees do not laugh at their first taste of sake or lay in the rain just to bathe in the scent of petrichor.

Tobirama sighs, but before he can answer, the shoji opens behind Hashirama.

“Is everything alright?” Mito asks, the tips of her fingers and the edge of her nose stained ink-blue. “I felt —”

“It’s alright,” Hashirama says, and the pinch between her brows softens. She rubs her nose, and Tobirama snorts when the mark smears. She gives him a funny look, and Hashirama can’t help but smile, crinkling his own nose in sympathy. “Tobi was just showing me his newest trick.”

“It isn’t a trick, anija.” It’s a long-suffering answer, and when Hashirama glances over at his brother, he expects to see some version of a scowl directed his way. Instead, Tobirama’s attention is all on Mito, his face earnest in a way that Hashirama hasn’t seen in years — doesn’t Mother look different to you? She smells different. And sometimes I swear I can hear her heart beat double. Is she sick? Can you heal her, anija?

“Ah,” Hashirama says. It’s a reflexive sound, and Tobirama’s eyes flit over to his, knowing and a little flustered and so very smart. Mito looks between the two of them, lost, before turning to Hashirama. It should sting to know that she considers him the easiest of the two to wheedle information out of, but instead, he is embarrassingly fond. “Have you been feeling alright, Mito?”

Tobirama purposefully turns back to his kunai, back to what he eventually calls the Hiraishin — which Hashirama later learns is time-space jutsu, not teleportation, and yes, Mito is aghast when she’s told about it — and Hashirama is foolish enough to think he has finally navigated a piece of Tobirama’s mind; Mito gives birth to their first child in the thick of that winter, and it’s a week later that Hashirama tastes salt water on his tongue and wades through what his brother has wrought as the battlefield sinks, arriving just in time to staunch Izuna’s bleeding under Madara’s considering gaze.

Madara’s Sharingan flickers when it lands on Tobirama — useless, Hashirama realizes. Tobirama moves through space and time, now, and not even the tomoe can predict that — and Izuna gasps, wet and bloody, under the green glow of Hashirama’s iryō-ninjutsu. When Madara speaks, his voice is katon-rough: ash-coated, seared, thick.

“You could’ve killed him.”

“Yes,” Tobirama answers and Hashirama hates the dual swell of pride and relief that rushes through him at that single word; war is an awful thing, and Hashirama can only be a fool so far. Izuna shudders under his hand, but Tobirama stands, sinking his ninjatō into the ground. “The winter is going to be cruel. Food supplies are low, no? And so is medicine and manpower.”

Madara drags in a breath and it catches violently in his throat. The air curls with the heat of his exhale. He’s a great shinobi, Hashirama thinks, his equal, but winter is Tobirama’s domain. It is when his brother flourishes most, growing fat with cold water and the shine of moonlight on barren plains, and under his care, the Senju thrive in greenhouses, good hunts, and safe passage over frozen rivers; the problems Tobirama lists are not theirs.

“Is that a threat?” Madara finally says. His Sharingan finds Tobirama again, but Tobirama only meets his gaze. How brave Hashirama’s brother is — but then again, Tobirama had stared into red eyes far before an Uchiha ever tried to wield them against him.

“It’s a fact,” Tobirama says. He pauses. “But those often sound cruel, don’t they?”

Madara blinks. He’s unsettled. Izuna is, too. The younger Uchiha stays, stiff and silent, under Hashirama’s hand. His heart pounds in the vulnerable softness of his stomach, his new skin pink and chakra-warm.

“There,” Hashirama says. “All fixed.”

Madara’s face swings toward him. He does not look over Izuna because, after everything, he still trusts Hashirama. He does not trust Tobirama, the White Demon of the Senju, and there is something animalistic in the way he steps between Izuna and Tobirama, fingering his gunbai. Tobirama crosses his arms. Hashirama gets to his feet, tense. He can barely see his otouto from over Madara’s shoulder, and war is such an awful thing —

“What do you want?”

Tobirama looks at Madara as if he has said something extraordinarily stupid, and if it had been any other time, any other place, Hashirama would have laughed; instead, he wishes Tobirama had been born less brave, had taken less of his mother’s anguished howls and blood-scent and more of the softness Hashirama tore, uprooting, from the Senju. Madara bristles.

“I know what he wants,” he says, gesturing at Hashirama. “But –”

But Tobirama is what the Uchiha fear and the Senju admire, a shinobi parallel to his older brother but unmatched in his duty. What his clan needs is what he will tirelessly acquire, as unstoppable and ever-changing as some great river. Tobirama had followed Butsuma into battle, yes, but he had also been the only one Hashirama trusted enough to let see what he had done, had stared at his father’s body before turning to his brother — he didn’t hurt you any, did he? — and pulling the blood — it’s mostly water, Hashi — free from the floor. Hashirama knows that if Tobirama wanted to, he could curl his hand and bloodlet an entire body or squeeze his fingers together and pulverize Madara and Izuna’s eyes both before they even realize just how dangerous a suiton user could be, and yet — and yet he only stares at Madara, disarmed and waiting.

“I want the war to end,” Tobirama says, and Hashirama thinks, suddenly, of the way his daughter looked curled in the crook of his brother’s arm, Tobi’s fingers drifting so gently across her face that it had put her to sleep.

Madara snorts.

“You almost killed my brother for peace?”

“No, I let Hashirama heal him for peace,” Tobirama says, and the difference is so slight, so smart and twisting. His voice grows softer. “It’s up to you if you want him dead.”

Madara jerks. In the distance, their clansmen call out for them; they are on Senju territory. It would be so simple to capture them and force a peace treaty, but Tobirama remains motionless even as Madara snatches up Izuna’s wrist and pulls him upright, the Uchiha patriarch’s fingers curling into a shunshin that scorches the short grass he had been standing on.

Tobirama sighs. He retrieves the Hiraishin kunai.

“Let’s go home,” Hashirama offers, and Tobirama falls, as easy as breathing, into step with him. He even lets Hashirama curl an arm around his shoulders, their armor brushing against one another and reeking of battle. There’s a brief wave of tenderness, an I want to sleep, anija, and Hashirama tucks his smile into his brother’s white hair, smelling sea water and the metallic tang of lightning, the Hiraishin dangling between the two of them.

It will be another half-year before Hashirama hears its call again. Konohagakure is alive by then, sprouting up after nearly two months of negotiations, a mixture of Hashirama's mokuton and Uchihan metalwork. By Fire Country summer, the village has promise but little life; to better ease the infrastructural and cultural ache of transporting two clans, the move had been approved in stages, beginning with the main families and civilians before spreading out, incorporating the branches and then additional clans. Several clans had already shown interest in claiming land plots — the biggest among them being the Sarutobis, whose vote of confidence in the village also piqued the interest of their once–vassal clans, the noble Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi alliance. This, coupled with the fact that the daimyo himself was beginning to offer Konohagakure high-paying and high-priority missions, had the village’s meager government offices closing early, all the advisors and administrators meeting in Hashirama’s house to enjoy some celebratory sake and simply breathe. A week later, Hashirama is still breathing, staring up at the trees that were once Senju and were now Konoha. It is a heady thought. It is then, of course, that he feels the Hiraishin.

It is the worst one yet. It comes as a storm might, the world falling still and breathless right before, the sudden quiet making the sensitive hairs on the back of Hashirama’s neck and arms lift in danger, and he half-rises, turning back to look into the house.

“Mito?” He calls.

His wife does not answer — or maybe she does. Hashirama is not sure because he’s suddenly stumbling forward, one of his hands digging into the shoji frame, choking on the eruption of wailing waters-fresh blood-hurt that runs right through him. His chakra lashes out at it, but it rolls, furious, like a rainstorm, and Hashirama cannot breathe because — because it is Tobi’s chakra, but Tobi’s chakra has never, not once, felt like —

“Hashirama!”

It is Mito’s scream that has him moving again. He pushes off of the shoji, crumpling it, and tears through his house. From her room, his daughter screeches, and Hashirama thinks — he thinks of nothing more than reaching his wife, his Uzumaki princess, his gentle waves-ink swell Mito who continues to scream for him even as Tobi’s chakra rips his apart.

He erupts out of the house, thudding across the back engawa and into the treeline, and he finds Mito kneeling on the bank of the river, her hands in the water.

“Mito,” he yells, but her head stays down, staring at the river. “Mito, what —?”

There is something in the river, Hashirama realizes. There is something in the river and it has hair the color of moonlight and the fingers of an artist if they were not so calloused and blood, so much blood, vibrant and scarlet and spreading through the water, and its face is half-hidden under the water but Hashirama — Hashirama knows the curve of its nose, the fan of its pale lashes, the start of its cheekbone, has memorized them ever since the wild Hatake woman had clawed at his shoulders as Father’s baby came too-fast and too-hard and too-big between her shaking legs, Hashirama’s hands reaching for it as it fell, the pulse of freshwater–new moon–hello settling into his bones at the touch, waking up the part of him that is sunlight–strong bark–life that had rested dormant for centuries in his body. Mother had tried to take it from Hashirama, had raved about bloodlines and bastards and bitches, but Hashirama loved it and the Hatake woman called it —

Hashirama is in the river before he even realizes it, already shoving his hands into the water to catch Father’s baby again, to pull him up and keep him close because those are Tobirama’s curls and Tobirama’s hands and Tobirama’s face and Tobirama’s blood. It is Tobirama, and Hashirama loves him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Izuna is there. Izuna is there and for a brief moment, Hashirama thinks the Uchiha has finally done it, has finally caught up to Tobirama and killed him like he always wanted to — and then Hashirama surfaces during a break in Tobirama’s chakra, hating himself. Izuna keeps babbling, his eyes wide and spinning.

“The mission went bad. Tobirama — he and I — we tried —”

The sound of his voice buzzes in Hashirama’s ears as the older Senju digs his fingers into Tobirama’s backplate and lifts, tilting his brother onto his back on the bank. Mito’s hand goes to his neck.

“He’s alive,” she says. “He’s alive.”

Hashirama places his hands on Tobirama’s chest and gives, the space around all four of them turning green under the strength of his iryō-ninjutsu. Tobirama’s body soaks it up like it is nothing, greedy for it, and Hashirama leans closer, digging and churning and uprooting his chakra to give his brother as much as he needs.

Tobirama groans, thick and low, and Hashirama shudders.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s okay, Tobi. I’m here. Anija heard you, alright? I heard. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”

Hashirama is not sure how long he stays like that — bent over his last brother, their legs sinking in the river sullied with Tobirama’s blood — but he knows the second Tobirama starts breathing again, the minute he has to turn him to the side for the blood to slide out of his lungs, the moment when Tobirama’s chakra whittles down to barely more than a pond of stale water, tinier than it has been in decades.

“Hashirama,” Mito murmurs. “We need to move him. We need to get him inside.”

“He’ll die.”

She cups his head. Hashirama feels her fingers sink through his hair down to his scalp, the tender skin of her palm holding the cradle of his skull.

“Hashirama, we have to. He’ll die if he stays out here.”

She’s right, Hashirama knows. Tobirama needs more than iryō-ninjutsu, and Hashirama, despite wishing more than anything in the world, cannot give him that. All Hashirama has is his chakra, and he wants to laugh — he is the God of Shinobi and yet he has never felt so much like a man — but he gently curls his arms around Tobirama’s body and rises, pulling him free from the water he loves so much. He is so light in Hashirama’s arms, only sixteen now, and he is older than Itama and Kawarama but he is still younger; it is not fair, Hashirama thinks. He’s the oldest. If anyone should die, it should be him.

Something falls from one of Tobirama’s half-closed hands. Mito bends to pick it up, her hands shaking, and Hashirama does not need to look to know what she’ll find: the Hiraishin, the kunai half-melted and the seal charred, a lightning-rod meant only for Hashirama.

It is then that he gets it, that he finally understands what the Hiraishin means. It is anija, I need you, anija can’t you come, anija, anija, anijacarry me home, please and Hashirama wants to tell Tobirama yes, here I am, always, I will carry you always but all he can do is unloosen Tobirama’s armor in the house, river water and blood dripping down the legs of the kitchen table, his brother so pale and cold that summer no longer exists in Konohagakure. 

Mito runs to alert the medics and Hashirama is left alone to press towels into where Tobirama has been split open from shoulder to hip, guiding his chakra into Tobirama’s coils to keep his brother’s body from shutting down. It is torture. It is war all over again, but Hashirama is not his brother, is not as smart or brave or mischievous, and so he presses. He gives.

It takes the rest of the night to stabilize Tobirama. The medics are doubtful about his recovery. Tobirama has lost so much blood and chakra, but Hashirama has seen his brother look Uchiha Madara in the eyes and he has seen him step right in front of Butsuma’s hand when it was meant for Itama, so he bundles Tobirama up again and carries him into the room they used to share when there had been four Senju sons, not two. Mito follows. Together they wipe Tobirama’s body clean, careful of the new scar tissue and the stitches and the puffy, pink-white burn of Izuna’s hand on his thigh — I tried to stop the bleeding but I couldn’t and I panicked and so I — and Hashirama cups his hands under Tobirama’s neck and pours the softest katon he knows into his fingertips to dry his brother’s hair because for all Tobi loves water he does not like to be wet.

“He’ll be okay,” he says, and his voice does not sound like his own.

Mito puts her hand on his arm. Hashirama leans into the touch like a willow in the wind, but he does not take his hands off Tobirama. If Mito hates him for it, she never says, only covers Tobirama in a blanket and drags an extra futon into the room. Hashirama crawls on top of it like a man defeated, slotting his fingers through one of Tobirama’s limp hands — his brother is so still like this, so quiet, and it is so wrong; Tobirama runs like a river, constantly moving, and Hashirama has to cup his other hand above Tobirama’s heart to make sure it is still beating.

Tobirama survives the night. He lives through the next one, too, his body slowly stabilizing under the constant flow of chakra Hashirama pushes through it, but he does not wake. On the third night, he catches a fever. The medics are called again. Hashirama is told that it is a traumatic response to the damage done to his body, and Mito escorts them out before the next round of Lord Senju, you must prepare for the possibility that — there is only one possibility in Hashirama’s mind, and in it, Tobirama wakes up. Tobirama has to wake up.

“When Kawarama died, it wasn’t — he was old enough to fight, but he was still young. We weren’t really surprised. There were four of us. Statistics weren’t on our side,” Hashirama says, the words spilling out of him. Mito watches him silently; she is an only child raised in peace. As much as Hashirama loves her, and as much as she loves him, there are things he cannot express to her and things she cannot understand, but they try then and there. They both try so very hard. “It was Itama that surprised us. He was younger. So young that he never fought. He never got the chance. He just went for a walk one night and then Tobirama — Tobirama felt him go. Felt him die. Father didn’t even want to retrieve his body, but I had the mokuton then and Tobi asked so many times that it was just easier to give in to us than fight.”

Hashirama pauses. His throat clicks when he swallows.

“We were both so angry. I refused to join Father in any battles, and when I learned that he was just taking Tobi instead — Tobirama said it was fine because he was older then and faster, but he always came back hurt, and Father didn’t care. No one did. I don’t even think Tobirama really cared, but I did. I cared. When it got bad, I used to dream of a place where I could take Tobirama and keep him safe. No more war, no more funerals, no more being angry .”

Hashirama laughs. It is humorless and harsh, and if Tobirama were awake to hear it, he would wince; it is the sound of their childhood, the Hashirama this Hashirama shed at seventeen like a cicada, buried at eighteen, and spent the next five years forgetting. He gestures at the house, at the garden, at the world outside their new compound’s gates.

“It’s almost funny, isn’t it? I finally have the place, and yet —”

Mito folds around him. Hashirama buries his head in the folds of her kimono, bunching his hands in the silk, and she holds him tight in a way only an Uzumaki can.

“Let me take care of him tonight,” she says.

“Mito —”

“He is my brother, too. I couldn’t help you protect him then, but let me now, please,” she says, and then, teasingly, “and you’re tired, Hashi.”

She rubs the thin skin under his eyes, and he tilts his face up for her inspection.

“If he even so much as twitches, I shall tell you.”

Hashirama sighs, glancing over at Tobirama. His brother’s chakra is returning, but it hardly matters if it immediately reroutes in the night to try and break the fever. Coupled with the fact that his body is also trying to heal muscle and replenish liters of blood — 

“Trust me?”

Hashirama closes his eyes.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay.”

He sleeps fitfully that night, dreaming of tiny coffins and Butsuma’s voice rising in the dark, blood-thick and violent. He wakes up sweating, the floorboards crooked and curled up around his body, a thick weave of ivy above his head. His body thuds. He crawls to his knees, a hand stuffed into his mouth, and feels like a child again. He reaches, reflexively, for Tobirama, and when he can’t find his brother he struggles to his feet, his house creaking in anxious sympathy. It takes him until the hallway to remember, and somehow reality is worse.

He leans against the wall and breathes. Mito’s chakra is bright in the adjacent room — alert, focused, clear water–gentle waves, and he can hear her softly singing the same Uzumaki lullaby she rocks their daughter off to most nights with. Past that, the house is quiet in the wake of his panic. Sunlight starts to stream, pale yellow and already hot, through the shoji, and Hashirama follows after it in a daze.

The garden thrives outside, grown a little wild from the time he has spent away from it. He runs his fingers over the fragile petals of irises and hydrangeas, the colors staining his skin. The air is still and sullen. It is the type of weather Tobirama loathes. Come on, he would say, staring up at the sky, I know you want to rain. I can feel it and Hashirama would laugh, talking to the clouds, otouto?

“Talking to your trees, anija?” He whispers. His feet lead him further into the yard, and he pauses when he sees the ponds. Both were replicas of the ones in the old compound; Tobirama had spent weeks remaking and safely transporting his koi to their new home, and he spent even more time rebuilding Mito’s wedding gift: a miniature beach. With a mixture of doton jutsu and seals, Tobirama had not only replicated Uzushiogakure’s fine sand but also its gentle whirlpools. Mito had spent nearly the entire day after the wedding standing in it barefoot. Should I be jealous? Hashirama teased, stepping into the pool when Mito held out her hand. Don’t be silly. Tobirama’s too young for me, she said, wiggling her toes, but what a wonder your brother is.

“He is,” Hashirama says. “Always had been.”

He turns toward the koi. It seems like a lifetime ago when Hashirama gave Tobirama the first pair, an early birthday gift and an apology all at once following his first official visit to Uzushiogakure. Tobirama had been doubtful — fish, anija? — but he tended them with a fierceness that was entirely Hatake. When he left for missions, he trusted only Mito to tend to them. In the past days, she had watched over them with a renewed vengeance, as if by some odd property she could heal Tobirama through them. 

The fish bob up to greet him when he peers over the water’s edge, a plump kaleidoscope of whites, blacks, and oranges, and he turns his empty palms toward them, apologetic. They sink back into the water when it becomes clear he has no treats for them. Hashirama snorts.

“They spoil you,” he says, and then, softer, as if he’s telling some great secret, “but then I spoil him, too, don’t I?”

“Hashirama?”

He jumps at the voice, almost tumbling into the water. Someone grabs his arm and tugs him backward, steadying him on sturdy land.

“Thank you. I —”

“He would’ve killed you if you killed them,” the person says, and Hashirama smiles. It is Madara, the Uchiha edging past him to stare into the pool, his hand still on Hashirama’s arm. “You know this, yes? He would’ve —”

Madara gestures with his hand the same motion Tobirama makes when he draws water from someone; Tobirama made the mistake of using that technique in front of Madara once and the older shinobi has been obsessed with it since. Tobirama figures it was because it had scared the man, but Hashirama thinks it has less to do with terror and more with awe.

“Please,” Hashirama says, “Tobi would think of something much more imaginative, don’t you think?”

Madara gives him a look at the way his voice wavers, ever so softly, at his brother’s name. Hashirama clears his throat.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been absent lately at the Tower. I can’t imagine the workload —”

“Fuck the workload,” Madara says. “I’m the temporary Hokage during times of emergencies, remember?”

“Emergencies? Has something happened?”

“Your brother,” Madara gently says. “Izuna wouldn’t talk to me about it, but he did have to file a mission report. Besides, the daimyo sent an official response to what happened. He apologizes. There was a bounty, apparently. He’s prosecuting now as we speak — thinks Iwagakure might have something to do with it, but who knows — and he’s doubled the mission payment as compensation.”

Hashirama says nothing. Madara leans in closer.

“Is he — is Tobirama alright?”

“He’s recovering.”

Madara frowns.

“It’s bad, then?”

“I —”

Hashirama’s throat closes. He is so close to crying that it burns behind his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Madara says, and then, again, “I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“It isn’t yours’ either.”

“Tobirama went because I asked,” Hashirama says. “I issued him the mission. I sent him. He and Izuna were the only ones I trusted to manage it — and to show solidarity! An Uchiha and a Senju finally working together? I sent him. He trusted me.”

“Anyone else would’ve died.”

“I know, but at least —”

There is an awful thought there: at least it wouldn’t have been my brother. Hashirama swallows it down and it sinks, heavy, in his stomach. Madara drops his arm.

“I know,” he says, lying; Madara has never lost a sibling. He only has Izuna, and Tobirama spared him. Tobirama has spared the younger Uchiha twice now, and Hashirama cannot help but feel that peace asks too much of him.

“He’ll be fine,” he says, and he hates the way that it sounds as if he’s trying to convince himself. Madara nods all the same, though, agreeing.

“It’s Tobirama,” Madara says, but — but Tobirama does not wake up that night or the next, and his fever grows so violent that Hashirama and Mito spend a sleepless night cooling his body down with damp towels. Hashirama feels hopeless. If it were the other way around, if it was Hashirama lying ill and hurting, Tobirama would have already found a way to ease his comfort: a seal, a cooling jutsu, something, anything. It gets so bad that some of the elders come by the house. Hashirama refuses to let them enter his brother’s room.

“Get out,” he says, and everything wooden in the house tilts, listening. “Don’t you come near him.”

“Hashirama, you must accept —”

“Out!” He roars the word and they flee — cowards, he can hear Tobirama mutter, can’t we get new ones, anija? — but he hates how much he sounds like Butsuma when he does. His daughter seems to agree. She wakes, screaming, in her nursery, and with clumsy hands, he tries to calm her. Mito appears in the doorway, and Hashirama holds their child out to her.

“I didn’t mean to,” he says.

“Hashirama,” Mito breathes, coming closer, and her hands are cool when they touch his face; her fingertips come away wet. “Oh, my husband.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt —”

She kisses him gently, deliberately, and simply Mito, and it breaks him. Hashirama cries loud enough to put his daughter to shame, ugly and heaving, and it feels like bark twisting away, like the crack of branches and the triumph of broken roots, and he cannot breathe. Mito slides her hand over his chest, petting him, and she tips her head into his jaw. His nose fills with her perfume, and he clutches at her hard enough to bruise, careful of the tender line of their daughter still stuck in his arm.

“They’re fine. They’ll both be fine,” she murmurs to him, over and over and over again until the words sink straight into his heart. “You aren’t your father, and she isn’t Kawarama. Tobirama isn’t Itama.”

“I was — I was so —”

His words catch in his throat.

“Scared?”

Hashirama closes his eyes, ashamed. Shinobi do not cry. Senju do not cry, and yet here he is, his war-grown body too big for his peace-made house.

“And I’m still scared,” he chokes. He taps at his chest. “I look around, and I —”

“Oh, Hashirama.”

“He was supposed to be safe,” he says. “I was supposed to keep him safe. And if I can’t protect him, how can I make things safe for her? For others?”

“Hashirama, look at me. Look at me.”

He draws his head up. Mito brushes his hair out of his face, holding his cheek.

“You are a man, Hashirama. A man. You sleep and eat. You bleed and bruise — not for long, certainly, but you aren’t infallible. But you heal. You grow scar tissue and muscle and experience.” Mito turns his face down to their daughter, down to her round nose and her brown eyes, her curling thatch of auburn hair. “She’ll grow. Tobirama will heal. She’ll eat and she’ll bruise, and Tobirama has bled and he’ll sleep. We can’t protect them from everything. We shouldn’t. But we can be this for them. We can hold them. We can love them. That has to be enough. It must.”

“Mito,” he says. “I don’t want to be angry anymore, and I’m scared that I only — what if I can’t let that go? What if I can only be angry?”

“That depends. Who are you angry with?”

Hashirama quiets, thinking. Mito stares up at him with knowing eyes — the eyes he fell in love with, dark and steady — and the smallest of smiles on her lips. There is something sad on her face, though, and Hashirama curls the back of his knuckle over the bone of her brow. She sighs, saying, “Think about it.”

“What if I can’t figure it out?”

“You will. You’re smarter than you think, Hashirama — Tobirama would say the same thing if he were awake.”

Despite everything, it makes Hashirama laugh. He can almost imagine the look his brother would give him, soft-eyed and squinty, and Tobirama would sniff, unamused at Hashirama’s theatrics, but he would ask all better, anija and mean it.

“Tobirama would call me a fool.”

“Tobirama would say he loves you,” Mito says. “And since he can’t, I will. I love you, Hashirama. Do you believe me?”

He does — how can he not, holding the child they made together in the house and village she helped him build? Uzumakis did not suffer fools. If Mito did not see a future with him, there would be no present. She’s like Tobirama in that way, and Hashirama, sometimes, feels his sanest when he is stuck between their waters, their tides and eddies and storms smoothing down his sharpest edges; it is why he can only laugh when Tobirama’s fever breaks that afternoon.

“You just know, don’t you?” He says, tired and loose from his earlier outburst. He sends another pulse of iryō-ninjutsu through Tobirama, and his chest clenches when his brother rebuffs some of it, Tobirama’s chakra network saying too much, no thank you, leave me alone. “Will you wake up for me? I miss you, Tobi. I miss you so much. Please.”

Hashirama falls still when he feels the faintest push of chakra at the edges of his own, and it murmurs, softly: miss me? Where did I go?

It sounds so confused that it hurts, and Hashirama’s breath hitches.

“Tobi? Otouto?”

Tobirama’s eyelids flutter, and then — and then he looks at Hashirama soft-eyed and squinty, still too tired to even frown.

“Hashi?” Anija?

“It’s me. I’m here.”

“Hurts,” Tobirama mutters, blinking, and Hashirama bites his tongue. For Tobi to say that he hurts — who are you angry with? — well, Hashirama cannot imagine the pain his brother must be in for him to be so open about it. Tobirama makes an odd noise, his tongue feeling at the edges of his lips, and he looks up at Hashirama in a way he has not in decades: lost, pleading, wanting.

Hashirama calls Mito into the room, but his wife is already at the doorway with a cup of water and a handful of pain medicine. Tobirama groans thankfully, and Hashirama lifts his head high enough to drink.

“Slowly,” Mito chides, harmless, already settling on her knees by Tobirama’s side, her hand wicking away the lingering sweat of his body. Tobirama shivers, leaning into Hashirama; his brother has always run cold, the curse of his unmatched suiton affinity. His nose is a thing of ice against Hashirama’s arm.

“Izuna?”

The name is little more than an exhale. Hashirama cards his hands through Tobi’s hair, the younger Senju tilting into the touch like an over-grown cat, his eyes sliding shut until they are little more than twin fans of pale eyelashes and the tiniest slit of red velvet.

“Safe.”

“The mission?”

“Completed,” Hashirama says. He swallows, feels — who are you angry with? — something ugly rear its head inside of him, and breathes out. “You did so well, Tobi. So well.”

“Proud of —?”

“Always. Always.”

Tobirama falls asleep soon after — real, true sleep, instead of unconsciousness — and Hashirama sends a message to Madara. It is still too early for anyone to feel at peace, but the Uchiha brings a slim stack of paperwork the next day and a small pail of shrimp for the koi.

“Here,” he says, handing both over to Hashirama. He points at the paperwork. “So he doesn’t yell at you for shrinking your duties.”

“And the shrimp?”

Madara bares his teeth like Tobi does, but it is not half as threatening or adorable as Tobi’s. The sneer fades quickly. Afterwards, Madara looks nearly thoughtful.

“I had to go through his office the other day. He was handling the Sarutobi merger before everything happened, and the monkeys —”

“Madara, you can’t call them that.”

“— finally responded to his last message with even more questions, and I had to go sort through the older communication so I didn’t end up repeating or messing something up. I found the other letters, but I also — Hashirama, your brother has planned the village to a fault. I’m talking commercial districts, sewage treatment, law amendments, everything. Anything. A school, Hashirama! He has blueprints and a curriculum for a school. Children aren’t even here yet.”

“One is.”

Madara blinks.

“Well, yes. But still,” he says. “But these aren’t new, Hashirama. Some are, sure, but most of them are old.”

Hashirama does not need to ask how old they are, nor does Madara need to keep explaining them. Tobirama learned about the village, about their dream, a little before the river incident, and afterward, he had practically lived in his room, ink stains up to his elbow. Butsuma yelled at him for wasting precious training time, but Tobirama kept writing and kept silent. Hashirama, stupidly, always thought his brother had been creating some new invention or jutsu. He never even considered that Tobirama was only trying to make things right.

“I didn’t know,” he confesses, and he hates himself for it.

“No wonder he’s so good at the meetings. Over half the things we’re doing are straight from his notes, and the other half are just compromises.”

“Are you upset?”

“Yes,” Madara says. “Do you know how much time we could save if we just copied his plans?”

“You’d trust him that much?”

“You built the village, Hashirama, but Tobirama —”

“I know,” Hashirama says, and he is so proud of his brother that he feels like bursting with the pressure. The idea that Tobirama could have so easily been lost to him, to the village, to everyone makes his hands shake. His tongue feels too thick in his mouth when he speaks again. “I know.”

The day after that sees Tobirama sitting up, drinking clear broth, and the day after that is a full soak in the tub, Tobirama’s chakra sparking happily at the feeling of water and clean and warm. Mito forces Hashirama to pry him out at the three-hour mark, and Tobirama lets him scoop him up under his shoulders with the softest hiss Hashirama has ever heard. He eats dinner with them at the table that night. Hashirama tries to mention the notes, but every time he looks over at his brother he — Tobirama is alive, and Hashirama cannot help but marvel at it.

It is why he is so angry when he wakes up to find Tobirama not in the house one day but outside instead, a kunai dangling from the tip of his finger. Hashirama freezes at the sight, disbelieving, but then Tobirama wrenches his bad shoulder back and lets the kunai go, the edge of it just missing the center of the target propped up a few feet away from him.

Hashirama is across the yard before Tobirama’s arm falls back down, and he grabs at Tobirama’s wrist when he gets close enough. Tobirama jolts at the touch, his mouth falling open.

“What —?”

“What in Kami’s name are you doing?”

Tobirama’s mouth slowly closes. He stares at Hashirama as if Hashirama is the insane one, and he flexes his wrist, testing Hashirama’s hold.

“Training,” Tobirama says. “Clearly.”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Hashirama says. He shakes his brother’s arm. “Training? Tobi, you’re injured. You should be resting.”

“I’ve rested enough.”

“You don’t decide that just because you’re bored of laying around. Your body decides when you’ve finished healing —”

“And you, I’m guessing.”

“— and you certainly aren’t there yet. Look. Look! Your stitches are fraying. You could’ve ripped yourself back open.” Hashirama jerks his head up. Tobirama stares back at him, deliberately even, and Hashirama — he knows his brother is in pain. He knows that Tobirama’s body wants nothing more than to curl up somewhere warm and sleep for months straight. Most of all, he knows that Tobirama knows this, too, and is just ignoring it. “Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why are you training? We’re at peace, Tobirama. We have more shinobi than what we even know what to do with,” Hashirama says. “Father isn’t here anymore. The war isn’t here. Don’t you get that?”

Tobirama’s face flushes ugly, spotting pink and red and still far too pale. The medics said that he was still anemic from the blood loss. Blood replenishing pills were helping him stabilize his iron levels, but they were only as good as the blood they could replicate; Tobirama knew that. Hashirama knows his brother knows because Tobirama helped patent the damn recipe.

“Let me go,” Tobirama says. “Let me — Hashirama!”

“And have you hurt yourself more? Absolutely not.”

“You’re treating me like a child. I’m fully capable of —”

“Because you’re acting like one, Tobirama. Worse than one, even. At least when a child is sick they don’t try to pretend they aren’t.”

“I’m not sick. Sick is a fever.”

“Which you had.”

“Key word there is had.”

“Tobirama,” Hashirama says, stopping. He tries again, softer. “Tobirama, please, it’s only been a few days since you even felt good enough to walk. I just don’t want you to go backward and end up bedridden again. It would —”

“That won’t happen.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“I can,” Tobirama says.

“You cannot,” Hashirama yells. “You’re a person. A man, a boy. You aren’t some machine or a weapon that needs to be —”

“I am a shinobi.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be.”

Silence. The emptiness of it — the total, complete quiet — burns the air around them. Hashirama knows before Tobirama even pales, his red eyes widening, that he’s hurt his brother. Tobirama goes limp in Hashirama’s hold, his chakra growing still and then rapidly dimming, folding in on itself. Hashirama — who are you angry with? — drops Tobirama’s wrist, deflating.

“Tobi,” he breathes.

Tobirama turns away from him, his face soft.

“Tobirama, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah?” Tobirama’s voice cracks high-low. He clears his throat, crossing his arms, and glances over at Hashirama. “What did you mean?”

“I —”

Tobirama looks away. Hashirama falls silent again. If he is being honest with himself, Hashirama does not know what he means except that, on some level, it is true. Tobirama is so young and so smart, two qualities that the shinobi life often swallowed whole only to spit right back out.

“Madara found your notes the other day,” Hashirama says.

Tobirama stiffens.

“Did he?”

“He’s very impressed with them.”

Tobirama looks over at him again, and there is something meaner in his eyes, something wild and cunning and Hatake. “Oh, is he?”

“I’m impressed with them,” Hashirama says, and Tobirama crinkles his nose, the very bottom of his lip raising to display the blunt edge of his fang. “I’m just thinking that maybe, with the village as it is, you could step more into administrative work than —”

“Than shinobi work?” Tobirama steps away. Hashirama makes the mistake of letting his brother collect the kunai, makes the mistake of not paying attention as to which kunai it is. Over his shoulder, Tobirama continues. “You want me to retire. Unless this isn’t a want but more of an order. Is that it? You’re ordering me to retire?”

Hashirama says nothing. He is not sure what to say because — because now that Madara had inadvertently put the idea into Hashirama’s head, he wants it. He wants Tobirama to put his armor away for the last time, wants to see his brother stop painstakingly appraising his food for the lowest calorie intake he can find — speed comes at a cost, Hashirama knows, but Tobirama is Senju where it matters: his shoulders, his height, the span of his chest, and it is not healthy what he does — wants to see Tobirama enjoy all the things he has had to go without.

“I completed the mission,” Tobirama says. “I survived. I didn’t mean to get hurt, but when I did, I made it back. The stitches will be out in another week. I’ll be fit for service by the end of the month. You even said that you were — I am a shinobi.”

“You are my brother!”

Tobirama does not hear him because Tobirama is already gone, a remade Hiraishin cupped between his palms. Hashirama is expecting its usual torrential chakra release, but Tobirama had shown him two things that morning so long ago, and he uses the first, disappearing entirely. Hashirama yells out at the empty air, but only the plants respond. They curl toward him, curious, chanting helphelphelp in their many voices, one cadence way. He slaps his hand against one of the trees, chanting yesyesyes, but he already knows it is hopeless. Tobirama is the better sensor, and he does not want to be found. Hashirama tries anyway; the trees in Konohagakure shake with his desperation.

He keeps trying throughout the day even as the sun bakes any bare skin of his that it can find. It has not rained in the village since the spring, and the air around him is stifling, sitting heavy in his chest — or perhaps that is just the guilt he feels. Hashirama does not necessarily regret bringing the topic up. While building the village, it became apparent that the two clans were split between those born to be shinobi and others who simply were. Hashirama cannot help but feel that most of his otouto’s talents are being wasted or worse, that Tobirama’s natural inclination toward the sciences is being stymied by what war ordained him to be. If Hashirama were being honest with himself, he would prefer Tobirama to stay in the village. Maybe then he would finally be able to watch one of his brothers grow old.

Still, Hashirama cannot get Tobirama’s face out of his mind. The younger Senju had looked so betrayed before he activated the Hiraishin. In the moment Hashirama had not noticed, but now, after replaying the conversation for hours, he does not know how he missed it. And the last thing Tobirama said — you even said that you were — makes Hashirama pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Idiot,” he scolds himself. “Idiot.”

You even said that you were proud, Tobirama meant, his voice tight and low in the way it went when he came as close as he could to crying — Tobirama has not truly cried since Itama’s death. Hashirama wonders if it is because nothing has ever compared to feeling Itama’s chakra rot right out of his body, or if Tobirama has deemed it as wasteful as eating until he was full or sleeping in. 

The awful truth of it is that Hashirama is proud. He is. But he’s proud that Tobirama survived, not that he completed the mission, and it stings that Tobirama thought so lowly of him to think that is what Hashirama meant; it takes him far too long to realize that it might just be what Tobirama is used to. Butsuma had been many things, but paternal had not been one of them. He wanted sons the way most shinobis did: for power, for security, for his own agenda. When Hashirama showed signs of bearing their kekkei genkai, it was Butsuma who was praised. When Tobirama could sense Itama’s killers crossing out of Fire Country, or when he could pull storms straight toward Senju crops, Butsuma hoarded him as one might do with an exotic pet.

It is perhaps Hashirama’s fault that Butsuma dug so deep into Tobirama. By that time Hashirama was already a head taller than his father and far stronger. Even after the river incident, Hashirama was more upset that Tobi had been the one to tattle on him than scared of Butsuma’s blustering on about treason and respect. Yet, the more Hashirama thinks about it — really, truly, thinks — the more he wonders if Tobirama ever told at all. His brother certainly could have tracked him, but he had also thought Hashirama infallible at that age. Madara would have been too insignificant of a threat to report. More likely was that Butsuma found out about the rendezvous himself, and to protect himself, Tobirama simply played the fool.

The realization makes him want to hurt something. Butsuma is already dead, but Hashirama — Hashirama had been a coward back then, running out of a home he did not want to deal with only to leave his brother at the hands of a narcissistic war-monger who saw him more as a hound to be trained than a son to be loved. He sighs, the sound hiccuping in his chest.

Who are you angry with, Mito asked, and Hashirama begins to think he finally has an answer.

He leaves the yard soon after, retiring to the dark coolness of his house. He strips his shirt off, wincing at the sunburns already healing under the gentle swell of his chakra, and climbs onto his futon. His daughter sleeps in the next room over. Mito flickers through the Hokage office, overseeing the final layer of protection seals. Tobirama — from the yard there is the Hiraishin again, and it pushes into Hashirama like waves.

“I’m sorry,” Hashirama says. He hardly moves when his brother settles at his side; Tobirama smells of the water, river scum and lotus, and Hashirama exhales through his teeth when droplets fall on his bare arm. “I’m an overprotective, idiotic, selfish older brother, and I don’t blame you for leaving.”

Tobirama is silent for a moment.

“Two of those things I can agree with,” he finally says. “But selfish?”

“The river incident.”

“Which one?”

Hashirama turns his head, then. Tobirama stares down at him with serious eyes.

“The first one, I suppose. With Madara?”

“Oh,” Tobirama says. “Why were you thinking of that?”

“I didn’t start out thinking about it, but one thing led to another and I — I’m sorry, Tobi. For now and for then and for everything in between. I didn’t watch over you like I should’ve.”

Hashirama expects silence again, but he is wholly unprepared for Tobirama to pinch his side right on the sensitive skin of his hip. He hisses at the pain.

“You’re making yourself sound like a failure,” Tobirama says, heartlessly switching to the vulnerable muscle of Hashirama’s thigh. Hashirama slaps his hand away. "You were a child too, remember?”

“I’m older.”

“And I’m smarter. Your point?”

“I should’ve protected you.”

“Like you wish to protect me now?”

“Is that so bad to want?”

Tobirama hums, considering it, and he nudges Hashirama enough to pool on the futon next to him. They stare up at the ceiling like they are kids again, ten and five with no one except one another.

“I’m sorry, too,” Tobirama says. He tucks into Hashirama’s side, his head on Hashirama’s arm and his legs curled toward his body. “I shouldn’t have been training this morning. You were right.”

“Are you hurting now?”

“The water helped, but — but it will be a while, won’t it? Mito says the medics said they didn’t think I would make it. It must’ve been difficult for you.”

Hashirama curls his hand into Tobirama’s hair, petting.

“I believed in you,” he says.

“I can feel your chakra in my coils, Hashi. You did a little bit more than believe. Mito says you cried.”

“Did she? And what else is Mito saying?”

“She says that we are both stubborn fools who can’t communicate and threatens bodily harm if we aren’t passed this when she returns home.”

Hashirama turns on his side. Tobirama grunts at the change but does not argue; his otouto is surprisingly tactile. Hashirama thinks it has something to do with the Hatake in him — they are pack animals after all — but Tobirama only huffs when Hashirama points it out. Hashirama rests his head against Tobi’s shoulder.

“I suppose orders are orders,” he says.

“Indeed,” Tobirama says. He twitches. “Do you really want me to retire?”

“I want you to be happy. Healthy, too.”

“And you thought that stripping me of my shinobi title would accomplish that?”

“Will you hate me if I say yes?”

“I can’t hate you,” Tobirama says. “But being a shinobi is all that I know, Hashirama, and I know that we’re at peace now. I know that I have a talent for administrative work and that no one would complain if I took up a government office, but I don’t enjoy those things. There isn’t anything rewarding about them for me, and they’re all so tedious. Being a shinobi is — I can turn my mind off, Hashirama. I can go on a mission and just do. Does that make sense? For a few moments, I can just live without thinking about the how or the why, or the what–if. I know that it’s dangerous, but I can’t give it up. I can’t and I won’t and I’m sorry.”

Tobirama’s chakra is so much louder when he is this close. Hashirama is hardly touching his brother, but he still feels when relief–what will anija think –worry runs through the younger Senju. He scratches at Tobirama’s scalp.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I should’ve thought about that. And it was wrong of me to attack you with the idea anyway. I was scared, and I jumped from nothing to everything. If being a shinobi is that important to you, then I want you to keep it.”

“But you’ll hate it.”

“I’ll manage,” Hashirama says. “And I am proud of you, you know. Not because you completed the mission or anything, but — but because you’re my brother, Tobi. I’m just proud that you’re my brother.”

Tobirama flushes. Hashirama watches it start on his neck and spread down.

“I’m proud of you, too,” Tobirama says, his voice so soft that Hashirama has to almost stop breathing to hear it. “You’re very hard on yourself sometimes. I’m an adult, Hashi. When I get hurt it isn’t because you failed to protect me, and when I don’t tell you certain things I’m trying to —”

“Protect me?”

“Ironically, yes.”

Hashirama laughs. He knows, even without seeing Tobirama’s face, that his brother is smiling that sweet, crooked–fang smile.

“You can’t be there every moment of my life, Hasi. Kami, I don’t want you to be, but what Father did to me, to us — we can’t change that. We can talk about it and yell about it and think about it, but it isn’t going anywhere unless we let it go. I’ve made peace with it.”

Hashirama holds Tobirama closer, ashamed.

“I haven’t,” he admits.

Tobirama pats his hand.

“I figured,” he says. “You only get angry when you feel like you’ve done something wrong.”

“I suppose I do.”

“Don’t worry, anija, I’ll teach you how.”

“Should I call you Tobirama–sensei?”

Tobirama laughs, then, quiet and husky and all Hashirama’s otouto. It is a beautiful sound, rare, and Hashirama delights in feeling it twice over, Tobirama’s chakra thrumming with silly, anija.

“That does have a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Hashirama hums. His eyes slide shut on their own, and he drifts, held buoyant by Tobirama’s chakra and the feeling of his brother’s heartbeat strong against his chest. Tobirama basks in the silence, stretching, and when he lifts his head, Hashirama whines.

“Hush,” Tobirama says. “Do you hear that?”

Hashirama listens.

“Rain,” he says, and Tobirama flops back onto him as the smell of petrichor blooms heady between them, lost raindrops falling in through the open window and spreading across the floor. Tobirama reaches out his good arm to touch them, catching the season’s first rain in his palm, and Hashirama breathes out deep and long in the tender quiet. Against his skin beats a thousand tiny victories; Tobirama’s chakra dances to the gentlest Hiraishin Hashirama has ever felt — anija, can you feel that, can you hear that, can you smell the rain, anija isn’t it beautiful — and Hashirama squeezes back I can and I do and that smell reminds me of you, otouto as tightly as he dares.