Nocebo Effect
The Senju retaliate against the Uchiha a fortnight before Madara’s birthday, drawing them out to the no man’s land between their territories where most of their clashes take place. It is a vicious battle, more so than usual, and neither side is anything less than savage.
It is Madara who calls for a retreat first once again, brow furrowed in an uncertain sort of anxiety while Hashirama watches his friend flee with pursed lips and pained eyes.
Izuna learns soon after that the Senju clan head had plainly stated, “I cannot let you keep forcing my hand this way, Madara. You have gone too far.” There had been a resigned sort of gravitas about him that had set off warning bells in Madara’s head.
He thinks that they might have finally pushed too hard, though he doesn’t share how that makes him feel no matter how many times Izuna prods.
No matter. Madara might try to hide it from him, but Izuna knows him well enough to know that his foolishly soft-hearted brother is probably mourning a friendship that has been dying a slow death everyday since that fateful encounter by the river, almost a decade ago. It was always only a matter of time; Izuna had been saying so for years already. Hashirama would have given up sooner or later once things got too tough.
He is a Senju after all. How could he ever hope to match up to the standards of love that Uchiha hold for the people in their lives? It is ridiculous that he even tried.
That said, Izuna really has more important things to be worrying about than Madara losing some ill-fated childhood friend.
For example, the White Demon acting…strangely for the entire duration of their fight.
Having stood against Tobirama for all these years since they were both children in their first few battles, Izuna knows the Senju heir a lot better than he’d like to admit. Izuna knows to read Tobirama just as well he knows how to read his own name. By now, he can predict how every breath turns into fluid motion. Sometimes, even when he closes his eyes, he sees flashes of Tobirama’s blade.
And he knows that it is the same for Tobirama. Though the Senju is a widely acknowledged genius at ninjutsu, Izuna has never allowed him to get out of reach, stubbornly meeting him blow for blow. They are equals forged by blood and fire, for better or for worse. Perpetual to each other in the worst way possible. Always chasing, always parallel.
Except that, this time, they were not. Izuna hadn’t realised just how habitual it is to fall into rhythm against Tobirama until the other man stumbled in their practiced dance as if he had forgotten the moves. That isn’t to say Tobirama was bad. He certainly didn’t allow for any exploitable openings.
But he was different. Employing techniques that are uncharacteristic, moving in ways that he hasn’t before. Oddly stilted in his responses as though the reflexes were being startled out of him. Hesitant in his fatality where the rest of his clan had been anything but.
Looking at Izuna as if they were strangers and not reflective constants.
It had grated on his neves, the sudden unfamiliarity setting his teeth on edge. What the fuck had Tobirama been doing on his stupid vacation to have somehow managed to get better and worse at the same time? Why the hell would he retract his blade in one breath only to devastate Izuna’s jutsu with his own in the next? It doesn’t make sense.
Then to make things worse, the Senju start making strange moves again.
It is a different sort of mobilisation than when there had been a sudden increase in their comings and goings during the autumn. This time, they stick doggedly to their side of the forest, circling the boundaries like caged dogs and agitating the Uchiha’s own patrol squads.
Had Madara not tamped down on his shinobi with strict orders to observe and not engage, Izuna is sure they would have already had a fight on their hands.
As it is, however, a fight does not break out. The Senju keep their strange erratic motions up for a few days, and then just as inexplicably, they retreat further away from their borders than they have in years.
“A trap perhaps?” Akashi, one of their squad captains, suggests in the meeting that is held to discuss these observations.
It is not a trap, they soon come to learn. Somehow, against all rationale and laws of nature, the Senju have managed to erect multiple barriers around their territory that cannot be perceived by anything less than a mangekyo sharingan. Where there are no barriers, concentrated patrol checkpoints have been established.
“They are refusing to engage,” Madara realises, clearly startled. “That’s what he meant in our last battle.”
It is unexpected.
And oddly enough, it is unwanted.
Izuna doesn’t like surprises. They have never meant anything good, certainly not where the Senju are concerned. Such an act is unprecedented. They have never simply refused to engage before; it doesn’t add up when neither side has been willing to let up on an endless list of grievances that demand retribution in blood.
“It’s cowardice,” he decides, unsure even as he makes his declaration and all the more agitated for it.
“It’s a final bow,” Hikaku argues dispassionately. “They had their last laugh when they took revenge for the attack to their compound. Now they can hide behind their shields, and no one will be able to say that they let the Uchiha win.”
“Hashirama got what he wanted,” Madara observes, lips pursed and gaze unreadable.
That just pisses Izuna off even more. Who knows what stunt the Senju are trying to pull here, and still all Madara seems to be thinking about are fantastical notions of a friendship with Hashirama that has no place in their reality.
In the weeks that follow, even as winter fully settles over Land of Fire and they all retreat to preserve energy and limited resources, Izuna insists on keeping an eye on those infernal barriers for whatever nefarious scheme is sure to follow.
Except that it doesn’t come.
The Senju too have retreated for the season, all motion restricted to only what is essential and expected. Their patrols remain behind their borders and barriers. No provocations follow.
Izuna…doesn’t know what to do with that.
Madara watches Izuna prowl restlessly at the edges of Uchiha lands like a caged animal, unwilling to relent and relax. Or perhaps, unable to. Sighing, he turns away to look skywards at happier, freer creatures that do not remind him of how his little brother has become prisoner to his own paranoia.
It is not as though he can’t understand why Izuna is the way he is. Madara knows all too well the tragedies that have shaped his younger brother into the man he is today. Still, he cannot help but long for the simpler times when Izuna had still been small and open-hearted.
Growing up at their mother’s side because of sickly constitution in childhood, sheltered by her gentle protection, Izuna had been a soft child. He never showed much interest in running around and causing mischief like other kids his age; his little brother had instead been more inclined towards reserved activities like art and music thanks to their mother’s influence.
Madara had looked at that and seen someone for him to protect so that his innocence could be preserved because Izuna had been the only reprieve Madara had had from the war.
Their elder brother and clan heir at the time—Akio—had instead seen a weakness that could not be allowed to last.
It is he who took charge of Izuna’s training, brutally exacting in his standards for what kind of blade their youngest brother would be shaped into for the sake of their clan. Akio had been the one to take Izuna to his first battlefield, inadvertently unlocking his sharingan and ingraining a bone-deep fear of the suffering they had to endure at the Senju’s hands.
Madara thinks that he lost both brothers the day that Akio was killed in a Senju ambush on the way home from a mission with Izuna. Their youngest brother had to be the one to drag his mangled body back to the compound, covered in Akio’s blood with wild grief blazing in his mangekyo sharingan.
The soft little boy who loved art and music had died right alongside Akio, and in his place, Izuna had to survive left with nothing but his rage and bloodied teeth.
Madara doesn’t know how to help him. He doesn’t think Izuna knows how to be helped either. The best he can do is make things as easy as possible and spare Izuna even more burden. He can protect his little brother the way he hadn’t been strong enough to when they were both younger.
He couldn’t have stopped his clan from waging war without risking his own standing as clan head, not when there is always so much pressure from all sides to accept no defeat because the Uchiha-Senju conflict is quite well-known. He would have been unable to refuse Izuna in particular, especially when his brother gets that wild anguished look in his eye again as though he is still in those woods with their brother’s corpse on his back, and the only thing Madara can do to bring him back is relent to battling the Senju.
In many ways, Madara can only be reluctantly relieved that Hashirama took the stance he did and erected these walls between them so they have less excuses to seek out more violence. His old friend did what he has been unable to and forced them into mutual disengagement.
It might not be the true peace they had once dreamed off, but perhaps this will be enough anyways.
“The barriers have been all anyone seems to want to talk about these days,” Hashirama comments, sipping at his tea, the scent of pine needles wafting into the air along with the steam. “There is nothing but praise, although there are some who recognise the lowered opportunities of clashing against the Uchiha and are not so pleased about that.”
Tobirama glances at him out of the corner of his eyes before turning back to watch the first snowfall of the year. “Is that why you insisted on forming the patrol squads and schedules yourself?”
Smiling slightly, the elder of the two shakes his head. “I should have known you would notice.”
“You aren’t exactly being very subtle,” Tobirama points out. “It’s even more obvious after you personally selected the shinobi serving in the capital.”
“You’re the only one who caught on to that, did you know?”
Shooting his older brother a dry look, Tobirama drawls, “I’m sure Kaname-san caught on when you sent off his only daughter to the Daimyo’s private troops. And after you overhauled the patrol squads? They must know by now.”
Hashirama shrugs. “They can take on more missions or jobs and earn more money this way,” he says simply. “Everyone wins.”
Barely refraining from rolling his eyes, Tobirama charitably does not point out that most of the people with political or military influence in their clan are affluent enough that they hardly have need for more. Quite a few of them come from generational wealth after all. It’s why they can afford to want to wage war.
“Hitomi-san sent the formula for the barrier seal to one of the masters on Uzushio by the way,” Hashirama changes the subject, referring to the Elder who had been their only sealmaster until Tobirama surpassed her in the art and she retired in favour of continuing her other academic pursuits. “Apparently they still have trouble believing that you taught yourself.”
Tobirama sips his tea and shrugs in response to that.
He can feel Hashirama’s gaze linger on his profile curiously and is unsurprised when his brother takes the opportunity to pry. “Did you truly teach yourself, Tobirama? I may not understand much fuuinjutsu but even I can tell that you’re extraordinarily skilled.”
“How else would I have learned?” Tobirama asks rhetorically, and Hashirama has nothing to say to that.
His lie might sound strange, but he can hardly help it when the truth is even stranger. People will just draw their own conclusions as they are wont to anyways. There are bigger things for him to be worrying about.
Like Uchiha Izuna for one.
Izuna’s death had marked both the beginning and the end for Konoha in a way that is impossible to deny. In fact, it had been so impactful and with such far reaching consequences for the village’s founding members that it was almost like the man had simply become his death. Like a ghost. The absence of him more damning than his presence ever had been.
To see him again, alive and breathing, young and full of that rage that Tobirama once knew well enough that it could’ve been his own—it had been a strange experience to say the least. In one set of his memories, Tobirama hasn’t seen or thought of Izuna in decades. In another, he still knows his closest enemy like he does the back of his hand. The dissonance of that distant but near familiarity had been difficult to account for in the throes of battle.
Even more so because, now more than ever, Tobirama is acutely aware of the fact that Izuna cannot be allowed to die for the sake of a continued peace that involves Uchiha Madara. The loss will make madness impossible to stave off and will culminate in Madara’s desire for vengeance.
The vengeance that brought the Nine Tails to Konoha’s doorstep. Vengeance that led to the conception of the idea of jinchuuriki—something so abhorrent of the natural order that Tobirama cannot allow it to happen again. The Tailed Beasts should never have fallen into human hands, and they certainly shouldn’t have been distributed between the shinobi villages as weapons. Of course, it had unfortunately been their best option at the time with the Nine Tails already sealed within Mito, but the devastation this decision had resulted in during the subsequent shinobi wars had been indescribable.
The only other way to stave that off is if Konoha alone finds and keeps ownership of all the Tailed Beasts but that would soon turn into something adjacent to tyranny that Hashirama would never accept.
The solution, therefore, is obvious: Uchiha Izuna needs to survive.