Prisoner's Dilemma
Tobirama has no clue what Uchiha Izuna is doing in Land of Iron or why he’s in this particular village, but what he does know is that it’s going to become exponentially harder to keep him alive if he keeps projecting killing intent like that. Hinode is already baring her teeth and lowering her body in preparation for an attack, and Eizan doesn’t seem much better off judging by the line of tension in his shoulders.
The fates of Konohagakure and a handful of chakra beasts depend on Tobirama’s ability to keep his wolf from ripping out the Uchiha clan heir’s throat.
“What the fuck are you even doing here, Senju?!” Izuna demands, and like a dam has been broken within him, he carries right on before Tobirama can offer an answer, the pitch of his voice rising with each question. “Why do you have a wolf? And what’s with the Hatake clan crest? Did you defect? And—”
“Izuna-san!” Eizan snaps, cutting him off before he can really get into it, frowning with disapproval. “Tobirama-kun is the eldest grandson of our clan head—”
“Since fucking when?!”
Tobirama sighs and gives in to the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose even though he knows it will not stave off the headache building from Izuna’s sheer volume. Has the Uchiha considered weaponizing his screeching yet?
“Since always, Izuna. My mother was the Hatake heir before she married into the Senju,” he says before pointedly adding, “not that it’s any of your business.”
Izuna’s glare bleeds with sharingan red as he snarls in a wordless threat. Hinode evidently doesn’t approve of that because she snaps her teeth in warning.
“You make one wrong move and I’ll tear those eyes right out of your head.”
“Hinode-san, please.”
“Your wolf speaks?” Did Izuna even register the threat to his precious dojutsu?
Headache intensifying, Tobirama exhales slowly. “I am here,” he begins with emphasis, “because the Hatake requested aid against the measles outbreak, and I am the only one who could get here fast enough to give it. Will you stand in my way?”
“I don’t trust you, Senju.’
Tobirama openly scoffs at that. “I don’t need you to trust me, Uchiha, since you obviously don’t require treatment if you have the time and energy to waste on arguing over something you can’t control anyways.” Eyes narrowing, he drops his voice, “Listen very carefully, Izuna, because I will not repeat myself. There are people here who are sick and afraid and quite possibly dying. People who need help, and right now, I am not just the best, but also, the only option to get them that help. So, you can either come to an understanding of my role here as a physician, or you can leave, but I promise you if you get in my way, you will be removed.”
Izuna’s face goes blank, eyes narrowing to slits. “Is that a threat?”
“I don’t deal in threats, Uchiha; I deal in facts.”
Before Izuna can say anything to that, Shimura Gen speaks up, “Can you really help?” She swallows, brows furrowed. “I know the Senju have become popular medics, but I didn’t realise the clan heir himself knows how to heal.”
Tobirama pointedly removes his gaze from Izuna’s to look at her. “I invented several of the medical ninjutsu techniques my clan uses right now myself. Although I am not specialised in dealing with diseases, I do have enough experience with genetic research and treatment that I’m sure I will be able to make some difference.”
Eizan comes to stand beside him and pat him on the back, smiling slightly. “Tobirama-kun is a genius. He even managed to treat our clan head’s brain tumour.”
Gen’s eyes widen and something unreadable passes over Izuna’s face.
Tobirama inclines his head. “I am not a genius, I just have wide range of knowledge,” he says, because he doesn’t believe there is an objective definition for such a loose concept. “If that is all then I would like to take my leave and meet the patients now. I’m sure there is much to be done.”
Clearing her throat, Asahi Tomoya offers him a strained smile. “Of course, Senju-dono. If you’re heading to the camp now, I’ll have someone sent in an hour to escort you to your quarters afterwards.”
“Thank you, Asahi-sama.”
“I’ll show you the way, Tobirama-kun,” Eizan offers quietly, glancing briefly at Izuna before gesturing for Tobirama to head the opposite way.
He could probably find the camp for himself by sensing, but he doesn’t point this out right now. He knows Eizan has probably been tasked with his safety by his grandmother though Kitai would never mention as much to him. It’s best to just let the general have his way now or he’ll be more suffocating and difficult to deal with later.
Instead, Tobirama simply turns and lets the man escort him down the corridor, feeling Izuna’s eyes burning into his back all the way.
“I did not realise your clans are enemies,” Eizan comments, arms folded as he watches Tobirama methodically run through a set of basic diagnostic tests with a little girl, hands gentle and sure, no sign of the usual harsh set of his mouth as he rewards her with a subtle smile.
Izuna sneers at the display and generously does not scoff. “Only several centuries of war between us; nothing to write home about really,” he drawls. “I’m surprised you didn’t know considering you married your clan heir off to the Senju.”
At this, Eizan snorts and he shakes his head. “We didn’t do anything. Maiya found herself a husband and the rest of us just had to accept it. End of story.”
Izuna blinks. “What?”
“She found an injured boy in the woods during a hunt one day, decided to bring him home and nurse him to health, and when they fell in love, she decided to get married and leave with him. That’s just how she was. Stubborn and decisive, like her mother, and rather like Tobirama-kun,” the general explains, a nostalgic sort of amusement etched onto his face. “When we learned Butsuma-san was the heir of a shinobi clan himself, we only managed to draw up enough of a contract to make sure she and her future children would have a way of coming back in case she ever needed it. There was no time for any other questions. Besides, Maiya always seemed happy enough with her choices.”
“She lost her life because she got involved in the Senju’s war with us,” Izuna states flatly.
“All shinobi run the risk of losing their lives while fighting someone’s war,” Eizan counters. He nods at Tobirama and adds, “I know she must regret very little about the way she chose to live her life.”
Izuna scowls. What an unfair thing to say while perfect-genius-Senju-fucking-Tobirama is literally soothing babies and healing the elderly. “He’s going to refuse to look at Kazane and Kazuki,” he says. “It’d make sense for him. Why would he heal two Uchiha shinobi when they could turn around and take Senju lives whenever we next fight?”
Eizan arches a brow. “Does he even know there are Uchiha to look at?”
“No,” Izuna admits, shifting slightly. It has been three days since Tobirama’s arrival, and Izuna has spent each of those days tailing the Senju while he makes his rounds around the camp to keep an eye on him, resolutely not breathing a word about the twins who are currently in very vulnerable states.
Tobirama absolutely knows Izuna has been stalking him around the village, but he hasn’t spoken a word to him since that confrontation outside Tomoya’s office. In fact, the Senju hasn’t so much as looked at any of the Uchiha twice, despite the members of the enemy clan all keeping watch of him almost obsessively. Thanks to the Hatake keeping guard around him, Tobirama seems perfectly at ease with his enemies’ paranoia while he does his job as a healer.
And it’s annoying but he’s actually good at that job too. His chakra healing helps to ease the airways and kill the virus, and the patients’ conditions are steadily starting to improve under his care. He even dealt with the pneumonia complication of one of Gen’s shinobi.
“Izuna-san,” Eizan says softly, “you can’t turn away someone’s hand because you think they will not hold it out to you.”
Izuna freezes, unable to think of what to even say for a moment. “We are enemies, Eizan-san,” he says after a moment. “Tobirama and I have tried to kill each other more times than I can count; we’ve been fighting almost as far back as I can remember. His clan killed my father. My clan killed his. If I was in his place, I would have let the Senju die and not lost a wink of sleep over it either.”
“But you are not him, and he is not you,” Eizan counters. There is no judgement in his eyes for what Izuna just admitted, but a sort of steel that says he will continue to push the issue regardless.
“And what will I do when he refuses?”
“You can worry about that if it happens.” Nudging him pointedly, Eizan adds, “You have to ask first.”
Izuna huffs and turns back to where Tobirama is setting up an IV drip for a teenage boy. “He will refuse and then you will owe me 20 ryo because I will have told you so.”
He doesn’t need to see to sense the man rolling his eyes, but Izuna ignores him and stomps over to Senju, ready to prove his point and get this over with. “Oi, Senju,” he calls out. The boy gives Izuna a dirty look for being rude to the healer the villagers all seem to think of as some sort of messiah. Izuna sneers right back at the presumptuous little shit. “I have two more patients for you to look at.” Pointedly, he adds, “Uchiha patients. Shinobi.”
Tobirama hums and finishes checking over the boy. “I was wondering if you’d ask me.”
Izuna blinks. “Excuse me?” That almost makes it sound like Tobirama knew. Did one of the Hatake tell him?
“Will they allow me to look over them?” Tobirama asks. “I can’t force treatment onto a patient if they refuse it.”
“What—did you take some sort of oath?”
“Yes,” Tobirama confirms. “All Senju do before they learn the healing arts.”
Izuna frowns. “And if they refuse?”
The Senju appears to think this over, canting his head in thought. “I can prescribe painkillers and fever reducers instead of treating them manually through chakra, but if there are undiagnosed complications, I will be unable to treat them, and they will have to ride out the viral infection by themselves since antibiotics will not help with it.”
Undiagnosed complications. Four people had brain swelling no one knew of until Tobirama ran his diagnostic jutsu over them. Over forty of them had pneumonia. They can’t afford to miss that kind of thing; not at this stage.
Setting his jaw, Izuna says, “I’ll talk to them.” He pauses and peers at his enemy. “I will be present for the entire treatment.”
“Oh,” Tobirama raises his eyebrows, “you mean like how you’ve done this whole time.”
“Yes!” Izuna snaps, scowling. “So, you’d better not try anything funny, Senju! I’ll be watching you.”
“Frightening,” the bastard says without inflection. “I’m shaking, really.”
“I’ll kill you after this and the Senju will be finding your body for weeks.”
“Only weeks? How kind, coming from you.”
“You piss me off!”
The Uchiha twins have an unusually high temperature even for a fever. On anybody else, it would result in seizures and possibly permanent brain damage. With their Uchiha physiology, though it is not ideal, it isn’t fatal either. At least neither are pneumatic.
“I will infuse my chakra with fire and run it through your system to purge the virus internally. You should feel only a slight discomfort, so if there is any pain beyond that, let me know immediately. Ready?” He waits for the girl to nod hesitantly before pressing his hands to her back and beginning to gently funnel her system with his tempered chakra.
The treatment itself is relatively uncomplicated. It is only hindered by the hefty and hostile suspicion that the Uchiha squad treats him with, all of them piled into the room despite his warning about infectivity. Hinode looks deeply impressed even as she feigns sleep at his feet. Tobirama charitably does not roll his eyes and ignores them as he turns to the boy next and repeats the whole process.
“Why are you helping us?” Uchiha Kazuki asks quietly when Tobirama withdraws from him.
He can practically feel Izuna’s gaze home in on him like a hawk, waiting for an answer. Tobirama carefully resists the urge to sigh and instead runs another diagnostic just to buy himself some time to think. Hinode too perks up slightly, likely just as curious.
“My grandmother asked me to,” he says finally when he can’t think of a better explanation that isn’t along the lines of, “My brother wants the Uchiha in his future ninja village and I’m trying to better the odds of that.”
“But you hate us,” Kazane insists, butting into the conversation. “You hate us, and we hate you. That’s how things are. How they’re supposed to be.”
He frowns at this. “I don’t hate you,” Tobirama corrects. “I don’t like you, and I certainly don’t trust you, but I don’t hate you either.”
“We killed your brothers,” says Izuna from somewhere by the walls, sounding almost accusatory despite the evenness of his tone.
“And killing you will not bring them back to me,” Tobirama retorts sharply, turning to narrow his eyes in warning. “Nothing—no amount of revenge or spilt Uchiha blood—ever brought Itama and Kawarama back to me.” Hinode rises wordlessly, placing her head in his lap and rumbling soothingly. Tobirama breathes and rubs through her fur in thanks.
A weighted silence presses down upon them.
“When we fight again, you will stand against us,” Kazane points out softly. “And we will stand against you despite the debt we owe you.”
Tobirama frowns but nods. “I expected as much.”
“I don’t understand you,” Izuna hisses, striding closer so he can meet Tobirama’s gaze. He has grown compulsive about this, Tobirama observes. About meet eyes with an enemy he has know from birth. Is he trying to find an opportunity to spring a trap? “Why would you do this when you knew? How is it so easy for you to—”
“It’s not easy for me, Izuna,” Tobirama cuts him off, glaring right back. “Setting aside a lifetime of prejudice and enmity was not easy. Looking past individual transgressions wasn’t easy. Deciding that keeping score is detrimental wasn’t easy.” Izuna’s sharingan flares to life and Tobirama drops his gaze to Hinode.
Something about seeing his dead rival brought back to life by a slip in time is throwing Tobirama off his impassivity. For better or for worse, he has never had to really lie to Izuna, and it seems as though it might not be as effortless as he’d thought to start now.
“Some things are just worth more than revenge or power could ever be,” he says at last.
“What could we value more than our clan?”
“Your clan is not the war it’s fighting, Izuna.” Tobirama frowns. “I haven’t devalued my clan; I’ve devalued war. One where there is nothing to gain. What will the Senju get if we ever defeat the Uchiha? Land? Glory? There are more effective ways to gain both those things that do not attach your name to our victories.”
Kazuki speaks up, eyes defiant as he says, “So, you would have us lay down our weapons and dishonour the spirits of our ancestors who died to fight this war?”
Tobirama has had this entire argument before. Several times, in fact, having sat through more peace talks than this boy can imagine. He doesn’t miss a beat in countering emotional leverage with his own anymore.
“You would have us lay down the lives of our children for the sake of a war waged by those who are already gone? Would your so-called honour be worth the price of their lives?” He turns back to Izuna. “You say you killed my brothers? They would have been alive if there had never been a war in the first place.”
Izuna regards him with something contemplative in the furrow of his brow. “That is a moot point. There was a war. You can’t change that.”
“No,” Tobirama agrees, “but I also don’t see a logical reason to keep fighting this war.”
A flash of realisation that is gone before he can so much as blink and then Izuna is narrowing his eyes. “This is why you put up those barriers. It was you, wasn’t it?”
For a moment, Tobirama is quiet as he weighs the benefits of the gamble he is about to take. Finally, he admits, “Anija is to be engaged early this summer.” Silence. He continues, “It is only a matter of time before he will have a family of his own. Children to nurture and protect.”
With a cold honesty, Tobirama meets his enemy’s gaze and does not look away this time. “I will not let my brother’s children be used as pawns in a war being fought in the name of dead men.”
It is a strange pathological urge that drives Izuna to seek Tobirama out in the evening, several hours after that conversation in the twins’ room at the clinic.
The Senju is sat on the banks of the little pond behind the official’s building, bent over a notebook filled with encrypted writing in a code that Izuna is not familiar with, though he memorises it in a glance anyways. He doesn’t look up even though he has undoubtedly sensed Izuna coming, not even when the Uchiha decisively drops into the empty space beside him.
“You cannot protect your brother’s children from everything,” Izuna says, and observes with some satisfaction when that finally gets Tobirama to look back at him. “It will make them weak.”
“Children can be prepared and made strong without fighting in wars, Izuna,” Tobirama says.
He has been doing that a lot—using Izuna’s name like they aren’t lifelong enemies on opposite sides of a generational conflict. Technically, Izuna supposes they have been on first-name basis for nearly a decade now, but the circumstances were pretty extenuating as well. The decision didn’t mean anything, not when they only ever spat out each other’s names like curses, following quickly with promises of carnage and pain. It feels somehow different now though. He tries not to show just how much that puts him off.
“Coddling them will only be signing off on their death certificate when they find themselves unprepared for the harshness of the shinobi world,” Izuna insists.
An alien softness lends itself to Tobirama’s sharp features as he appears to consider this statement, his stare making the hairs at Izuna’s nape rise with goosebumps.
“Protection doesn’t have to mean the same thing as coddling,” the Senju says finally. “They can learn and grow in safety and be tested to make sure they are ready when it is time for them to step out into the world. And when they do take that step, they don’t need to be alone and thrown off into the deep end to figure it all out on their own. That’s what teaching is all about in the first place.”
Izuna can’t help but stare—it might as well be the first time he is seeing Tobirama for all he recognises in this man he thought he knew. “I had no idea you were such an idealist.”
“And I had no idea you were so defeatist.”
He blinks, frowning. “I’m not defeatist.”
Tobirama lifts a brow at him sceptically and has the audacity to snort when Izuna scowls at the action. “You are so ready to accept defeat that you do not even find worth in fighting. That’s practically the definition of the cynicism.”
“I’m being realistic,” Izuna insists.
Glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, Tobirama turns back to his notebook. “That’s a nice excuse to hide behind, but it’s also untrue. Realism would require basis on facts and evidence.”
“I assure you there’s plenty of evidence to support the fact that we have been at war with each other because neither side has managed to find an excuse to stop.”
“No,” Tobirama refutes, “we have been at war because both sides have people who are too short-sighted to see that we will be much better off not engaging with each other anymore. That peace is easily the better option, therefore making it as good an excuse as they're ever going to get.”
Gods, but Izuna wants so badly to just stab Tobirama and be done with it; he’s so impossibly infuriating. If he didn’t know there are probably several Hatake somewhere nearby, keeping an eye on them right now, he might have even been tempted to try.
“You want to talk evidence? What evidence do you have that peace will even last?”
“What evidence do you have that it won’t?” Tobirama fires back immediately. “You are so afraid to even try—”
“Because the price would be too high to pay when peace fails—”
“The price is already too high to pay when we are at war!” The Senju is starting to look properly aggravated now, carelessly running a hand through silver hair and sending it into disarray. “We already lose so much money, time, lives! What more of a price can you imagine? What are you really afraid of?”
It seems counterintuitive to be admitting any kind of fear to the one person in the world who Izuna can trust to always want the worst for him. The one person who would exploit any weakness shamelessly to carve out the chink in Izuna’s armour and leave him to bleed out at the earliest opportunity.
Except that Tobirama is genuinely demanding an answer, looking close to tearing out his own hair from frustration of not understanding Izuna or not getting Izuna to understand, and his pale skin is flushed from how worked up he is, and he is meeting Izuna’s eyes again and—
“It’s harder to have something be taken away after you’ve been allowed to have it.”
He only realises he has spoken once he hears his own voice, and Izuna startles without meaning to at his own admission. Tobirama, on the other hand, does not look surprised at all, and his shoulders slump as he stares.
“So, you’ll give up before ever even trying.” Tobirama shakes his head and rises to his feet, collecting his notebook and brushing off his robes before levelling Izuna with a final look that is flat and closed off, and more familiar than the careless contemplation he has been wearing since he came to this village. “You’re a defeatist, Uchiha Izuna,” he says and then he walks away.
Izuna watches him go, feeling something acidic take root in his chest even as he tries to shake off the odd feeling of unsettlement that weighs upon his shoulders.