Superposition
What starts out as a relatively normal day for Hashirama quickly takes a turn for the worse when he finds his little brother hanging on the edge of death in the woods just outside the compound with a group of five shinobi in hot pursuit.
Admittedly, Hashirama’s mind goes blank the second that Tobirama’s eyes fall shut, and he falls like a puppet whose strings have been cut loose.
Tobirama’s face is so ashen, and he lies so still, that for an endless heart stopping moment, Hashirama thinks that his last brother has just died before his very eyes because he had been too slow to save him.
He is caught by the very real fear that Tobirama has left him behind just as Kawarama and Itama did. That he failed his final living brother too. That he has been left all alone at last, and none of his brothers will get to live the peace that Hashirama has dreamt of for them for as long as he has been old enough to know of war.
But there—Hashirama watches almost in trance as a fresh bloodstain blooms against the bandaged wrapped around Tobirama’s thigh. If he’s bleeding, then that means his heart is still beating and they stand a chance. Hashirama hasn’t lost him yet. There is still time.
Immediately, he flies into action. His panic has cost him time they cannot afford to waste. Hashirama falls to his knees at Tobirama’s side and flairs his chakra thrice in quick succession to alert the nearest patrol that he needs their assistance even as he starts running a diagnostic jutsu over his brother’s prone form.
Three fractured ribs, a fractured radius, a high fever from an infected stab wound about five inches long and an inch deep, some sort of toxin in his bloodstream, presumably from the wound, and almost fatal chakra depletion.
Hashirama swears colourfully and carefully gathers Tobirama in his arms before rising to his feet and taking off towards the compound immediately, bursting through the gates and making right for the medics’ hall without paying any mind to anything else.
He doesn’t remember what he told the healers as they pried Tobirama out of his hold and immediately started preparing for emergency surgery. He thinks he might have babbled something incoherent at them as he was forcefully led away so he wouldn’t interfere with the procedure in his state of panic. He almost certainly cried.
What he does remember is that Tobirama’s heart needed to be restarted twice during the healing process. He remembers holding his brother’s hand for hours after and channelling his own chakra into Tobirama to forcefully keep his organs from shutting down from a lack of chakra, Keeping Tobirama’s heart beating artificially until it is strong enough to do so on its own. He remembers laying out wet cloths on every inch of exposed skin to reduce the fever that refuses to go down despite their best efforts.
Somehow, seemingly against all odds, they manage to stabilise Tobirama enough for them to be out of the woods for now. Still, he does not wake.
“It’s almost like his body is fighting itself from the inside,” Head Medic Saionji tells Hashirama, her brows furrowed with concern for their clan heir. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s no telling how things might turn. All we can do is wait to see if he gets any better. For now, until his body manages to repair itself some more on its own, he will remain unconscious.”
So, Tobirama stays asleep, and Hashirama stays right by his side, holding his brother’s unnaturally cold hand and steadily funnelling chakra through to ease some of Tobirama’s bodily functions and gently coax the rate at which his chakra is replenishing.
Everything about how still and pale Tobirama is just rings in Hashirama’s head as…wrong. He looks almost corpselike as he lays on his sickbed and it makes bile rise in the back of Hashirama’s throat even though he struggles to tear his eyes away. Almost compulsively, he finds his fingers pressed against the weak pulse beating at Tobirama’s wrist while he tracks every shallow rise and fall of his chest.
Tobirama has presented himself as so impossibly put together and near infallible since they were children. Hashirama had even resented him for it sometimes. He distinctly remembers grumbling to Madara once, back at that riverside almost a lifetime ago, about how he thinks that his father much prefers Tobirama to him. Secretly, Hashirama had wondered that if it hadn’t been for his bloodline limit and the fact that he was born first, Tobirama would have been made heir in his stead.
Where Hashirama tends to be ruled by his heart and his overwhelming emotions, Tobirama has always just been able to listen to his head. Of the two, Hashirama might be stronger, but he believes that it is Tobirama who is the better shinobi, always capable of doing what needs to be done with seemingly no hesitation. Their father had seen it too; it’s why he chose to mould Tobirama into his perfect weapon to be wielded in the name of the clan.
And Tobirama had met that expectation with the same perfection he achieves everything else with. Time and time again, to the point that Hashirama often questions if his brother is human after all or some forest spirit that followed their mother home one day.
He doesn’t question that now though. He doesn’t have to.
Not with the unmistakable fragility weighing upon Tobirama, the flush to his cheeks and pallor just about everywhere else, the laboured breaths he barely manages to take on his own. He is all too human now—breakable and mortal. Standing at the threshold of death itself and waiting to see which way he ought to walk.
Hashirama dully wonders what Tobirama would choose if he could. Would he come back, or would he choose to move on just as their younger brothers did?
Then he snorts wryly and shakes his head, turning the pale hand in his own over to examine the callouses there. As if Tobirama would ever choose to abandon his duty like that. He might leave Hashirama behind someday, but never the Senju. It is barely a question worth asking.
And yet, Tobirama was almost lost to them anyways. Even now, there is no telling how things will turn out. Hashirama can’t even imagine what must have happened for the situation to get so out of hand for someone as strong as Tobirama. Had Hashirama hesitated for even a second or taken just a moment too long to find him, Tobirama would have—
Taking a shuddering breath, he dismisses the thought, unable to complete it even in his own mind. He doesn’t want to consider what might have happened. Even approaching the subject strikes an ache into his heart that feels almost physical.
There is so much he and Tobirama have unsaid between them. It isn’t that they don’t get along or butt heads often, but…there is a distance between them now that has steadily built over years. Perhaps since that day at the river when Tobirama led their father to Hashirama’s most precious secret. A distance that both of them allowed consciously, neither knowing how to bridge the gap or what would be the right thing to say.
Perhaps it is unfair. No, it almost certainly is, as much as Hashirama doesn’t want to admit it. He knows he tends to take Tobirama for granted sometimes. They’re such different people, that despite all the love that he knows is between them, they rarely manage to truly understand one another. Hashirama has tried, but Tobirama certainly doesn’t make it easy, and well—it’s easier to let things lie sometimes.
Rather naively, he has always assumed that they will have a lifetime to fix what is damaged between them. After all, for as long as Hashirama can remember, Tobirama has been there just as surely as Hashirama’s own shadow. Some part of him assumed that nothing could take that away from him. That Tobirama would continue to always just… be there.
Looking at his brother now, Hashirama wants to laugh at his own stupidity. If he wasn’t caught in such a state of disbelieving numbness, he might have even done just that.
Instead, he wonders if Tobirama will ever even open his eyes again.
‘No,’ he chides harshly, shaking his head, ‘of course, he will. Tobirama will heal and he will wake up. He will. He has to.’
Repeating this in his head like a mantra, the Senju clan head sits at his brother’s side and keeps vigil.
“It has been five days, Hashirama-sama,” Elder Takao points out quietly, voice grave. His eyes, as he peers over his thinly rimmed glasses, are full of something that could almost be called pity. “Medic Saionji has already told me he might never wake if his body cannot cope. You must—”
Filled with a distant sort of horror, Hashirama cuts him off with a whispered, “No.”
“Hashirama-sama,” Elder Kaname admonishes in a sigh, closing his eyes. “Please, do not make this more difficult than it needs to be.”
Elder Hanabi nods, though her face is arranged into something far kinder. “We understand that this is not an easy time for you, and we sympathise with your position, Hashirama-sama. However, you must remember that you are not just a brother now. You are our clan head.”
Picking up where she left off, Kaname says, “And as our clan head, you must consider the possibility that Tobirama-sama might be…unable to carry out his duties until further notice.”
Hashirama stares at them, and firmer this time, repeats, “No.” He shakes his head and swallows. “No. He’ll wake up. He will.”
Takao’s face softens. “We are all praying for his recovery, of course,” he murmurs gently, “but Tobirama-sama has faced a lot. You have to keep that in mind, Hashirama-sama. Not everyone is able to recover from such things even if they want to. Tobirama-sama will hardly have a choice if his body takes too much damage to be able to continue shinobi work, even if he manages to wake up.”
Swallowing harshly, Hashirama looks at the three elders with furrowed brows. “So, what—you want me to give up on him? How can you expect me to—”
“We expect you to do your duty,” Kaname interrupts swiftly.
“We are not asking you to give up hope, Hashirama-sama,” Hanabi tacks on, far softer. “But this world is not favourable to those who are unprepared, and in case Tobirama-sama never wakes or is unable to be rehabilitated, then this clan will need someone who can take his place. You will need someone to be your heir until you manage to have children of your own who are old enough to take the burden. The position cannot be allowed to remain empty.”
“Not with those damn Uchiha just lying in wait for us to show even a hint of weakness for them to exploit,” Kaname grunts.
Quietly, Takao says, “It has only been five days, yes, but with no signs on when we can expect Tobirama-sama to wake up, we can afford to wait only so long. You have to understand that, Hashirama-sama.”
“Please,” Hanabi implores, looking at him intently, “at least consider it.”
And Hashirama doesn’t know what to say to that. He can only stare at them dumbfounded as they continue to express the importance of him picking a substitute heir and training them to replace Tobirama’s place in the structure of their clan’s functioning. Eventually, they see themselves out and allow him to return to his place by Tobirama’s sickbed, but even then, Hashirama has barely processed anything that was said to him.
A substitute heir, they had said. A replacement. Tobirama isn’t even dead, and yet, they’re all acting like he may as well be going cold in his grave right now.
It makes Hashirama’s skin crawl with an indescribable sense of repulsion.
As if anyone could ever take Tobirama’s place. As if his brother could so easily be replaced and forgotten. As if Tobirama isn’t still stuck in bed, fighting for every breath he takes. As if Hashirama could be expected to do such a thing.
They may as well ask him to rip his own heart out and offer it on a silver plate.
Silently, he vows he will give their words all the consideration they deserve—none, that is. Tobirama will wake up and prove them all wrong.
Hashirama has to believe that.
It is the dead of night when Tobirama’s eyes finally open for the first time in over six days.
As soon as the measly amount of his brother’s chakra stirs with awareness, Hashirama is jerking awake from his own light doze, shooting to his feet and leaning over Tobirama to watch as silver eyelashes flutter slightly before finally opening and revealing the familiar crimson of Tobirama’s eyes, dulled and glassy from incoherence.
“Tobira,” Hashirama breathes, heart all but beating in his throat.
In his hold, Tobirama’s slack grip spasms and tightens. His brows furrow slightly as his lips part, gaze fixed on Hashirama with an open sort of bewilderment written on his face that Tobirama would ordinarily never let show if he had full hold over his bearings.
“Anija?” Tobirama ventures, voice hoarse and scratchy. He sounds so young.
Hashirama swallows down the lump in his throat and blinks the tears out of his eyes, lips wobbling with a smile even as he nods and reaches for the glass of water at Tobirama’s bedside, holding it up to his brother’s lips and supporting his neck as Tobirama sips, eyes never wavering from Hashirama’s.
Pushing the glass away once he has had enough, Tobirama blinks slowly. “You—” He pauses, breath catching. “Is this real?”
The sound that tears out of Hashirama’s throat is an involuntary one that he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. “Of course, it’s real,” he stresses. “Why wouldn’t it be real?”
“Because I died,” comes the instantaneous reply.
Hashirama freezes. “You didn’t die,” he says, and his voice sounds odd and faraway to his own ears. “You didn’t die,” he repeats, thought he can’t tell if it’s for Tobirama’s sake or his own. “I found you, remember? I found you and brought you back home and you’re going to be okay now. The shinobi chasing you have already been dealt with. They will never ever be able to hurt you again. Okay?”
Tobirama watches him for a moment. Then, slowly, he exhales and nods, easing back into his futon. “Okay,” he agrees softly. “Must have been a dream then.”
Letting out a strangled laugh, Hashirama nods and carefully smooths the hair away from Tobirama’s face. Normally, Tobirama ensures that he presents himself as wiser than his age even though he is only just approaching his prime at eighteen-years-old. He keeps his face impassive and holds himself tall, and most times, he feels infallible even to Hashirama who has admittedly been spoiled by his brother’s reliability. Now, however, he looks painfully fragile. This time, Hashirama will remember that. Tobirama is only human after all. He too needs someone to rely on, and Hashirama wants to make sure to always be there when he needs it.
He can’t risk taking things for granted again. Not when it has become painfully clear to him that he and his brother are no exceptions to the pain of loss.
“Yes,” he whispers to Tobirama. “Just a bad dream. It’s all over now.”
Tobirama’s eyelids are beginning to droop again as his gaze flitters over to the ceiling. Humming idly in thought, he says, “It felt like a lifetime.”
When Tobirama next wakes up two days later, the medics examine him and declare that his condition is much improved and that, if he follows their recovery plan, he can be expected to rejoin the active-duty roster in a month’s times.
It is some much-needed good news, and the clan at large breathes a sigh of relief once it gets out. Tobirama is their second strongest fighter and is held in high regard for how he has optimised their administration. Not to mention how well respected his endless drive for invention is considering how much their clan values all acts of creation. Losing him would have been a huge blow.
Hashirama too is unspeakably glad to see Tobirama’s eyes open and to feel his pulse steadily grow stronger. Just that alone feels like nothing short of a miracle and he knows better than to doubt how lucky they all are for it.
Still, as he keeps a careful eye on Tobirama, Hashirama’s relief curdles back into a gnawing anxiety he can’t seem to shake. Because though he is physically recovering, it still doesn’t seem like Tobirama is…all there.
In the days that follow, Hashirama watches with no small amount of concern as Tobirama seemingly retreats into himself.
His little brother spends hours staring at nothing, lost in his own head and eyes unfocused. Sometimes he starts, as though he’d forgotten where he is. He loses track of conversation when he does deign to indulge Hashirama’s endless attempts at distraction, either tuning out halfway through or trailing off halfway through a sentence in a show of absent-mindedness that is completely unlike him.
Sometimes, Tobirama looks at him like he is looking at a ghost.
It scares Hashirama more than anything else has managed to in years. More than ever before, he is forced to realise that Tobirama really is all he has left now. Of course, he had always known, but there is an entirely different sort of weight in that knowledge now after coming so close to actually losing his only remaining family. It really drives home that Hashirama simply…might not ever recover from another loss. From this loss.
He would be half the person he is now without the brother who he has had for as long as he can remember. The brother he used to insist on doing everything for; the brother in whose stead he would take punishments and beatings because he never could stand seeing Tobirama in pain; the brother he started dreaming of impossible things for in the first place. The brother who would do the very same for him no matter how far their orbits take them from each other.
And then to come so close to losing him? To see him recover and still act like a former shell of himself as if he is in disbelief of the world at large. To be forced to wonder if perhaps he has lost Tobirama in some way even though he’s right here in this room with him. To wonder if he will ever get his brother back in full.
It’s more than Hashirama can bear. If he could take the world and fix it for Tobirama, he would.
He wonders if Tobirama even knows that.
Hashirama watches his brother stare out the window with empty eyes, lost somewhere in his own mind, and he thinks that maybe he should just tell him. He doesn’t want to regret these unsaid things anymore. Doesn’t want to regret anything about Tobirama. Never again.
Quietly, with this resolve, he says, “Tobira, I am here.”
With a slow blink, Tobirama’s gaze slides over to him, watching out of the corner of his eye. He says nothing.
Hashirama leans forward and repeats, “I am here for you. Whenever you need, whatever you need, I will be here.” Pursing his lips, he admits, “I didn’t know if you knew. I just wanted to make sure that you—you know you can rely on me. You can come to me. Tell me anything. Always.”
Tobirama turns slightly to look at him more fully, inclining his head as he simply acknowledges, “I know.”
“I would do anything for you, Tobira.”
At this, something almost sad bleeds into Tobirama’s eyes, softening their sharp edges. “…Thank you for the offer.”
Frowning slightly at the ring of melancholy in Tobirama’s voice, Hashirama stresses, “I mean it, you know.”
“Alright, anija.”
But though he says so, Hashirama has the sinking feeling that, for some reason, his brother…doesn’t believe him.
Tobirama feels adrift in a world that is strange and yet undeniably familiar to him.
It is inexplicably disorienting to know that his body is occupied by a soul that is not the same as it was when he last left his home. To feel a presence pressing at the back of his consciousness that he doesn’t recognise and yet knows is undeniably him. To have memories and pain that don’t belong to him and yet are his own just as much the heart that beats in his chest.
He feels too young and too old all at once, like he belongs and yet, does not.
So, instead of lingering on that particular issue, he turns to things that he can explain. Problems that he can solve. Tangible progress that he can grasp in his mind to hold onto his sanity and spiralling sense of control.
Tobirama knows quite intimately the risks that come with messing around with a space-time jutsu the way he did with the hiraishin seal.
In another lifetime, he learned his fuuinjutsu from the sealing master employed by the Uzumaki main line themselves. He has read hundreds of books and scrolls on the subject over the course of his life, dedicatedly followed along with any advancements in the field and even made some himself. He had always known the consequences he risks with every use of his signature jutsu.
What most people don’t seem to realise is that the hiraishin is not quite as simple as mere teleportation. What it actually does is use the seal as a physical landmark for the user’s chakra to resonate with so they can use it to anchor and guide themselves through the fabric of space-time itself. It requires perfect chakra control and quite a well of courage for someone to even attempt it thanks to the ever-present possibility of them losing themselves in the endless liminal space of the universe should their concentration slip for even the fraction of a second.
Even at the moment of its conception, Tobirama knew the dangers of meddling with the very threads that make up the fabric of existence. He knew that repeated usage only made it easier to traverse between the dimensions because the user became physically more susceptible to slipping through the cracks.
But knowing something is possible theoretically is very different from experiencing it for himself.
When he used the jutsu while being close to fatally chakra exhausted—that is, lacking in the very thing that essentially acts as the glue tethering the soul to the physical vessel of the body—it used up his chakra halfway through the trip, before he could find his way to any of his anchors, and left him stranded in between the dimensions of the physical world. His best guess is that, after that, his soul simply searched for the best vessel it could occupy and found his own body at an earlier point in time when his soul was untethered enough from this body to allow Tobirama’s older (and thereby, more powerful) soul to bully its way through.
Since both souls are identical and only varying in age, the body didn’t reject the intrusion and probably tried to strike some sort of balance between the two instead, forcing them to merge as one and come to an acceptable in-between that wouldn’t tear him apart from the inside out.
Hence, the dissonance of having two distinct sets of memories and experiences.
For the most part, it seems like the older consciousness has taken something of a backseat. Although perhaps he only feels that way because, despite everything, he still feels like himself. There is the sense that he perhaps isn’t as alone in his own head as before, but the two souls also aren’t separate enough to result in two distinct people sharing a body.
Maybe he is still acclimating to the change? The situation will require further observation before he can confirm or discard any theories.
Tobirama sighs and watches the trees sway in the summer breeze. He hopes insanity isn’t all that awaits him in the future; it would be such a waste of opportunity. After all, he knows no one else who can claim to have travelled through time to the same extent as him. Tobirama doesn’t want to squander this chance and end up getting sent off to one of their vassal territories to ‘recuperate’ where he will be out of sight and out of mind.
He isn’t particularly worried about his presence somehow breaking the space-time continuum. After all, if it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Besides, repeating his life as it had been in the other life would be redundant and a waste of time; not to mention incredibly boring.
Tobirama is a futurist; he believes in looking ahead rather than looking back at that which has already happened and cannot be changed. He has always been far more concerned with progress than nostalgia. Now that things have turned out this way, he wants to see how he could change things for the better.
Could he try to achieve Hashirama’s dream even earlier knowing what he does of the future? What would he need to do for a peace that lasts longer this time? For a better peace. One in which Hashirama will be able to watch his grandchildren grow up for even longer, wherein he doesn’t die of heartbreak after losing Madara. A peace in which Tobirama’s students can grow without a war casting its long shadows over their youth despite their best efforts for the shinobi villages to coexist in harmony.
It would be the biggest experiment he has conducted in either life, and there is no guarantee of success, but well—
It has to be worth the chance, right?