Theseus's Paradox
There are still formalities to complete in the capital regarding the village that will become Konoha. Meetings are planned with the Daimyo and his ministers, treatises are drafted and debated over, and the seeds are at last planted for what Tobirama has done his best to bring to fruition. He ought to stay and help Hashirama with all of it; no doubt his knowledge will be of use and his brother will appreciate having the burden shared.
Still, Tobirama chooses to return to the Senju compound.
He makes plausible excuses for his departure of course—Mito would appreciate his assistance, it’s a busy time as they must begin preparing for harvest season, one of his experiments will be yielding results soon, Touka has been sending letters about how she doesn’t want to deal with any more Elders. Hashirama doesn’t seem particularly convinced by any of them, but he frowns at the shadows under Tobirama’s eyes and the pale undertone to his skin, and he sees Tobirama off without any protest.
“I am always here for you,” Hashirama says before Tobirama departs, holding him close by the elbows. “You only ever have to ask.” ‘You only ever have to let me,’ he doesn’t say and Tobirama pretends not to hear the half-plea in his words.
His chakra is an uneasy mass of concern that makes Tobirama’s stomach feel like a yawning pit of dread—it has always made him want to get away, to snap and sink his teeth into something until the overbright fear is gone from his brother’s eyes. Before his memories essentially provided a step-by-step guide on how to better understand and handle Hashirama, Tobirama hadn’t reacted well to the fragility his brother tries to impress upon him in times like this. Now, running on little sleep and with his nerves frayed from the lingering tension of his dreams, Tobirama can feel that instinct to react with agitation again.
He swallows harshly, pulls his own chakra away and close to himself, focuses his senses inwards and carefully doesn’t meet Hashirama’s eyes.
“Write to me if you require my assistance,” Tobirama says.
Hashirama sighs. He nods after an awkward stretch of silence. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will. Good luck, anija.”
And then he is gone in a flash of gold, slipping in between dimensions as easy as breathing, finding his way to the hiraishin marker in his room and appearing there with barely a thought. He doesn’t bother lingering, immediately setting off to exit the house. Tobirama forms the seals for a clone and sends it away to go formally greet Mito and announce his arrival. In the meantime, Tobirama himself heads towards the one person he is certain should be able to provide some clarity if there is any to be found.
He finds the elderly woman tending to her garden when he arrives at her house in the older residential district where the ancestral properties are located. “Kawako-san,” he calls out, lingering at the gate.
Senju Kawako looks up, squinting past the sunlight for a moment before smiling. “Tobirama-kun!” She waves him inside. “I didn’t know you’re back. How are you?”
He smiles back as he draws closer to her and bows slightly. “I just returned. We received formal approval to form the village.”
“Oh, how wonderful! Hashirama-kun must be so pleased.”
There are not many even among the elders of the clan who can treat the clan head and heir with such familiarity, but Kawako is an exception. She served as Head Medic to the clan until just over a decade ago and is the one to have overseen the delivery of all four of Butsuma’s sons. Kawarama had even been named partially in her honour. She remains a well-respected member of their community well into her retirement.
She is also one of the continent’s foremost experts on the brain and continues to further her research in neurology even now from what Tobirama has heard.
Tobirama does not understand his dreams or why he is having them, but he doesn’t believe them to be a product purely of psychological duress. He isn’t unduly stressed, hasn’t faced any recognisable triggers, and his symptoms do not seem to exist outside his sleep. Moreover, there is some vague instinct—some sense of otherness, perhaps—that pushes him towards considering that the issue might be easier to narrow down from a physiological perspective.
He hasn’t had to contend with these issues before. He must assume then that they could be cropping up as a result of his unplanned trip through time and the subsequent merging of his soul. Tobirama supposes that it’s about time he tried to make sense of just how that might have affected him.
And there is no one better equipped for it than Kawako.
The thing with the diagnostic techniques their clan implements is that to understand the input from the jutsu, one has to have enough understanding of the body to parse through the information. It isn’t that Tobirama cannot cast an advanced diagnostic on his head and receive results—he simply wouldn’t know what to make of them. Like attempting to read a research paper when one is at the level of children’s textbooks. It’s enough to pick out more obvious anomalies, but the finer details are lost on him. Tobirama simply never had to learn as in depth, and his interests tend to skew towards physics and chakra theory anyways so he never wanted to learn either.
Kawako, on the other hand, has spent a vast lifetime dedicating herself to this particular study and has even invented specialised techniques to be able to read chakra scans of the brain in more detail. Techniques that Tobirama could learn in theory but might accidentally liquidise his brain if he attempted to cast them on himself without extensive supervised practice.
He can’t do this on his own.
“I require some help, Kawako-san,” he admits haltingly.
Kawako looks surprised. “Has something happened?” she asks, rising slowly to her feet, joints cracking stiffly as she does.
“There is a matter I believe you are uniquely suited to provide insight on,” Tobirama hedges, uncomfortably aware of the possibility of unwanted ears on them. “A matter requiring discretion.”
Kawako has dealt with the Senju main family for long enough that she catches on quickly and ushers him inside her home without needing any more prompting. She instructs him to wait in the sunroom while she removes her gardening gloves and goes to get changed into a clean set of clothes.
“Now, speak freely and tell me what’s wrong,” she says when she returns in a plain pink cotton kimono, sleeves pinned back and grey hair neatly pulled away from her face.
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” Tobirama says factually after a half moment’s hesitation. “Odd dreams. I find that they’ve been causing emotional irregularities and uncharacteristic stress responses.”
Kawako lets nothing show on her face, nodding once. “A result of an emotional trigger?” she asks him, no judgement in her voice whatsoever.
Tobirama shakes his head. “It’s not that,” he states with emphasis. “I wouldn’t be here if it was. I think—I am of the opinion that it might be something else.”
She arches a brow at that but doesn’t ask, which is to be expected since she probably doesn’t want her diagnosis being influenced by his opinions when he is the patient and obviously biased. “And you are aware of the possibility that you might be mistaken and this is possibly an emotional ailment?” she asks rhetorically.
Tobirama nods. “I’ve had a few close calls this past year,” he says quietly. “The ambush on my mission and then—” He pauses, pursing his lips.
“The poisoning,” Kawako infers.
“I’d just like a scan to be sure.”
Kawako nods. “Well, there’s no harm in taking a look even if the results surprise us. We won’t know till we try. Any head injuries in the past six months I should know of?”
“No.”
That’s all there is to it really. All Tobirama has to do now is close his eyes, relax and hold still while Kawako's chakra slithers into his coils, made neutral and denatured so as to not interfere with his own chakra’s nature while her probe finds its way up and into his head. It’s an odd sensation—it doesn’t quite feel like anything and yet remains an identifiable intrusion as it cradles the inside of his skull. If Tobirama were any lacking in self-control, he might’ve shivered.
It’s slow going as far as diagnostic procedures are concerned. Tobirama counts nearly twenty minutes of them sitting like that, unmoving and basically meditating. And then finally the foreign chakra retreats from his system, creeping back like molasses.
When Kawako opens her own eyes, she looks almost...unnerved.
Immediately, Tobirama gets the sense that this does not bode well for him.
“It’s odd,” she says after a moment, a trace of something unidentifiable in her eyes as she studies him contemplatively. “You are familiar with the structure of the brain I presume?”
“Yes.”
“There are irregular signs of atrophy. Some shrinkage in the hippocampus, though the cerebellum remains as it should. The prefrontal cortex is still in the development stage as is normal for someone your age, but its volume is slightly reduced, which isn’t. The oddest thing is your white matter integrity—some of it is well-myelinated like a regular youthful brain, but some areas show clear degradation where there shouldn’t be any for at least another decade. Your resting state brain activity is young but the amygdala is enlarged and hyperactive. It...doesn’t make sense frankly.”
Tobirama listens and feels oddly disconnected to this information, like this is a strange case study and not his own brain they are discussing. “Could they explain my symptoms?”
Kawako appears confused as she thinks this over. “Possibly,” she decides after a moment. “You must know, Tobirama-kun, that this area of study is still developmental at best. There is much that we simply don’t know or understand yet, and very little research has been conducted on shinobi brains in particular. Some of your results could be a response to sustained trauma and stress. However, I would say that most of them are more in line with aging, despite how irregular and scattered the atrophy is. Naturally, the issue with that conclusion is that you’re not even in your twenties yet.”
Which must worry her because it doesn’t make sense for his mind to be responding in unforeseen ways to no known stimuli. It makes sense to Tobirama though.
When his souls merged and he received the knowledge of a lifetime he has and hasn’t lived through, the phantom lived experience must have forced his brain to adapt to keep up. If it hadn’t developed in this odd way, Tobirama might have simply lost his ability to function or process the world around him.
But where does that leave him? Which version of himself is he? What does it mean for him to be some freak mixture of ages and maturity, both old and young and somehow neither at the same time? Tobirama hasn’t deigned to linger on the subject beyond the few disparities in his experience as a nineteen-year-old now as opposed to what this age had been like for him in the other lifetime he remembers. But perhaps he ought to have considered these differences sooner.
It hadn’t occurred to him that the shifts in his soul would result in physiological changes as well.
Of course he was aware that his memory system and decision making had generally become more advanced. The hyperactive amygdala is a surprise but it explains the increased fear response despite how uncomfortable the thought of that makes him.
“What about the hypothalamus and limbic cortex?” Tobirama asks.
“As they should be in the brain of an advanced nineteen-year-old like you,” comes the careful reply.
Tobirama considers this with narrowed eyes, grimacing to himself. His logical centres have been altered and show signs of aging but his emotional and hormonal systems seem to have been left alone for the most part.
“How bad is the atrophy?” he asks. “Is there cause for concern?”
Kawako frowns. “If I had to guess how old your brain was just judging by those parts, I’d guess I was looking at someone in their mid-to-late-twenties. Maybe early thirties. It could be reason to worry later on, but not for a good two or three decades at least. Once you hit your forties or fifties, I suppose it would depend on how your brain has been holding up and if you’re showing any symptoms typical of someone in their twilight years.”
“So there’s no way to tell until then.”
Looking weary, Kawako shakes her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Tobirama-kun. The best I can offer you is theory and conjecture.”
He shouldn’t be surprised; soul merging is a pretty unprecedented phenomenon.
“We could perform cognitive assessments to better gauge your mental faculties and capabilities if you’d like.”
“No.” Tobirama shakes his head. “I don’t believe there is any pressing need.”
Kawako falters, her eyes edged with something that sits right on the edge of empathy and pity and has Tobirama setting his jaw and avoiding her gaze. “It’s highly likely this may be a trauma response, Tobirama-kun,” she says gently. “There’s no shame in that—”
“I know,” he says, frowning.
“If you find yourself needing help, please seek it.”
He sighs. “I will keep that in mind, Kawako-san,” he says after a moment. “I trust you will keep this appointment between us.”
“Naturally.” Because Kawako has taken the same healers’ oaths the rest of them have and knows when she must exercise discretion. “If you require anything else, please do not hesitate to come see me.”
“Thank you,” Tobirama tells her sincerely.
When he leaves, he does not falter or hesitate. Nothing of this discovery shows on his face. Tobirama supposes there really isn’t much else to it. This is how things are, how they have been for a while, and there simply isn’t anything he can do about it.
Tobirama lived and died and didn’t die and lived, and now he has become something else entirely.
Hashirama and Madara are the ones to scout the land upon which the village is to be built. They choose a valley nestled at the foot of a range of low mountains, lying further along the path of the Naka river that both the Senju and Uchiha have lived by for centuries.
It’s a decent location. Generally flat, fertile soil, defensible position, and most importantly, it is unclaimed. The Daimyo approves without fuss. Within a week of the approval, Hashirama raises a temporary base of operations for the representatives of the clans to gather and plan out the infrastructure and legislation of their village.
Madara had been expecting months if not years of work, disagreements, planning and building. To his surprise, Tobirama shows up on the first official day with an armful of prospective blueprints at the ready, detailing initial plans for electricity grids, underground plumbing, and basic infrastructure layout. It appears that city planning is just one among many talents in Senju Tobirama’s arsenal. Izuna must be sensing a chill in the air wherever he is with the rest of the committee working on formal legislation.
Nara Shikataro stares blankly at the blueprints spread out on the long rectangular table that the village planning committee (consisting of a collection of the brightest minds each clan has to offer) is gathered around. After a moment, he turns to the Senju heir and reaches out slowly to poke at the other man’s cheek with narrowed eyes. Shikataro feigns exaggerated surprise. “Wow, he’s so lifelike.”
Tobirama rolls his eyes and barely blinks as Shikataro’s glass of water ends up splashed across his clothes with a simple flick of Tobirama’s finger. “My hand slipped,” he intones insincerely in response to the truly impressive string of expletives the Nara clan head lets loose.
Madara ignores both of them in favour of scanning the blueprints with his sharingan to parse through them quickly. “You’ve modelled them off of the capital and the Fujiwara’s home territory,” he observes.
“I condensed their layouts to a smaller scale since both are exceptionally systematic cities,” Tobirama confirms. “The plumbing system is also partially based off Uzushio’s. Aneja very kindly lent me the drafts for those.”
“How did you acquire plans of the Fujiwara’s capital?” Yashogoro Nao asks, her eyebrows raised. “I know the capital’s are available to view on request at the Royal Archive but the Fujiwara didn’t offer theirs for public viewing as a security concern.”
“I asked one of Shikataro-kun’s colleagues at the University.”
Shikataro gets a brief knowing look on his face and Madara watches as he and Tobriama exchange glances. It seems that Nao has caught on as well because she asks no further questions. It is clear that the information must have come through the ethically dubious channels of a political science major’s network. It is for the best that they maintain plausible deniability.
A few years ago, Izuna had passingly mentioned the possibility of enrolling into the course himself as higher secondary education has always been something of a status symbol among the nobles of Fire. Madara had categorically refused for one simple reason—Izuna would be too good at it and somehow end up ruling over an underground criminal empire if left unsupervised among other morally bankrupt budding politicians.
Hashirama is lucky his little brother is too much of a scholar to get into that kind of trouble. Izuna would probably go take over a remote island and install himself as a dictator if he ever finds himself with nothing to do. Then he would get bored of ruling and make it Madara’s problem while he goes off to unleash chaos upon some other unfortunate corner of the world.
Madara shakes his head to physically banish the thought before it somehow manifests into reality. He focuses back on the task at hand. “I think we should switch these two districts,” he points at a residential quarter and market square in turn, “and put the school closer to this quarter.”
Aburame Shiho silently makes a note of Madara’s suggestion. She has yet to say a word but she seems to have appointed herself the minute-taker.
“Let’s also bring the archives closer and put the T&I office further away. We’re trying to appeal to civilian sensibilities,” Shikataro adds.
“I haven’t added any sort of prison yet either,” Tobirama says. “I wanted your opinions.”
Nao hums. “Adjoined to the peacekeeping corps’ headquarters perhaps? It’d be convenient.”
Shikataro grimaces. “Outsider civilians won’t like it,” he states.
“Headquarters should be approachable to anyone wanting to file a report,” Tobirama agrees. “Close to the centre so it’s fairly equidistant.”
“Then a branch office with a prison facility further away,” Madara suggests. “By the forest for good defence. It will discourage jailbreaks too once security measures go up.”
Security measures meaning those nasty half-sentient trees Hashirama has managed to breed with his bloodline limit. Madara still isn’t totally convinced Hashirama hasn’t just trapped some sort of demonic entity into them somehow.
“Close to T&I perhaps,” Tobirama muses.
Shikataro blinks. “A shared holding facility?”
“Efficient,” Shiho states, speaking up for the first time and managing to startle just about every occupant of the room.
Madara narrows his eyes at her. Her face is blank but he thinks she did that on purpose. The Aburame have always had a skewed sense of humour after all.
“It could get confusing,” Nao points out.
“It could also get confusing to separate them,” Madara counters. “It’s more work from an administrative perspective. Someone could slip through the cracks.”
They settle on a shared prison.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Nao brings up while Tobirama carefully makes the required changes to his drafts, “ but shouldn’t you two be with the others as clan heads?” She looks pointedly at Shikataro and Madara.
Madara has been told several a time that he has a very expressive face that reflects his thoughts before he has even finished thinking them. He has barely registered Nao’s query but his mouth is already twisted at the thought. He hurries to correct it.
The newly instated Nara clan head makes no such effort and openly looks affronted by the very suggestion. “I would rather gargle with dog piss than subject myself to months of aimless political posturing.”
“Descriptive,” says Shiho.
“Sometimes, I want to put your brain in a jar to study it,” Tobirama says, mild intrigue on his face as he looks up to peer at his friend.
“You can have it after I die,” Shikataro responds, nonplussed.
“Thank you.”
“Sure.”
What is wrong with the kids of Izuna’s generation? Was there something in the air that year? Shiho seems to be strange too.
Nao sneers at them and turns to Madara with significantly cooler eyes, making it clear that she will be judging his response. “And you, Madara-dono?”
“I just wanted to avoid dealing with the Hyuuga for as long as possible.”
The Yashogoro heiress obviously finds him lacking but Shikataro is nodding as if in understanding. The Hyuuga are extremely uptight and the Nara are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum with how laid-back they are. It’s no wonder Shikataro doesn’t want to have to deal with the latest addition to their alliance.
Surprisingly, the other person to have an averse reaction to the Hyuuga joining them is Uzumaki Mito who, according to Hashirama, finds the idea of the infamous Caged Bird Seal an abhorrent insult to the art of sealing.
Madara can sort of relate to that. Just the thought of using seals to infringe on bodily autonomy surrounding dojutsu makes him uncomfortable. It’s the sort of tactic bloodline hunters have been employing for decades now. There’s a reason the Hyuuga and Uchiha haven’t been able to reconcile their differences for generations despite being sister clans. The Caged Bird Seal may protect the byakugan from being stolen but it’s also just a thinly veiled form of control to ensure that no branch family starts getting any ideas about their place in the clan hierarchy. It’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to stomach.
And now they’ll have to coexist. What a disaster. He can already anticipate some problematic members of his clan picking fights with the Hyuuga when they won’t be causing trouble about the Senju. He’ll have to remember to have them monitored.
Hashirama himself hadn’t been too keen on the Hyuuga joining since the dynamics between the main and branch families apparently goes against Senju philosophy of freedom of self. Unfortunately, however, it had come down to a matter of politics. The Hyuuga are a noble clan, they’re sure to make strong additions to the village forces, they’re favoured in court, and they are extremely wealthy.
Just because Madara understands doesn’t mean he has to like it. So, he threw Izuna and Hikaku at that particular problem and summarily assigned himself to village planning. This whole peace thing was his dream and surely he deserves to actually enjoy some of it.
“Has anyone come up with a name for the village yet?” Shikataro asks.
The name is an open vote situation. Anyone is free to suggest anything, and whichever suggestion gets the most votes wins. Simple.
Interestingly enough, Tobirama looks up and immediately meets Madara’s eye head on. He looks expectant.
Perhaps Hashirama told him. He always has been a loudmouth and is entirely too indulgent of his precious little brother; of course he blabbed to Tobirama.
Sighing, Madara reluctantly offers, “Konoha. Konohagakure.”
Shikataro blinks. “The Leaf?” He sounds puzzled.
Madara swallows the irrational urge to hide behind his hair and nods. He’s a grown man. He could beat Shikataro into the ground. There’s absolutely no need to feel embarrassed. He chose a name that he likes and he’s going to stand by it no matter what impertinent Nara brats have to say about it.
“I like it.”
It’s a simple enough statement but it manages to startle Madara nonetheless because it’s Tobirama who says it.
“Succinct,” Shiho says, and she sounds approving.
Nao’s brows rise. She says nothing and turns back to gathering her belongings to break for lunch.
Shikataro grins, lazy and crooked. “Looks like Madara-dono is already in the lead. You can have my vote too.”
He’s probably only saying it so he won’t have to come up with anything even as a formality, but...
Maybe these kids aren’t too bad after all. Weird as hell, for sure, Madara's brother included. But not all bad.
“Wanna take bets on how long it takes for a physical fight to break out?” is what Izuna says as he slides into the open seat at Tobirama’s right ten minutes before the weekly progress meeting is set to start.
On Tobirama’s other side, Hashirama blinks bemusedly at the Uchiha heir before turning to Madara who is sat next to him and looks similarly surprised if his slow blink is anything to go by. The seat to Madara’s left is unoccupied.
“Four minutes,” Tobirama says to Izuna. “My honourable aneja is set to start the meeting.”
Izuna looks positively delighted by this information. “I placed my bet on six,” he says conspiratorially. “Shikataro-san said fifteen. He’s going to owe me fifty ryo.”
It seems that Shikataro places a staggering amount of faith in their leaders. “He is not the best at anticipating people outside of battle,” Tobirama says tactfully.
Izuna snorts. “I like to watch him try to interact with the Inuzuka. He acts like he has never met a real life human before.”
“A deer caught before a caravan.”
Izuna laughs.
Tobirama doesn’t realise he’s smiling until Hashirama leans over to whisper in his ear, “I had no idea you and Izuna-kun were so friendly with each other.”
The efforts at privacy are a moot point in a room full of career shinobi. Madara doesn’t even bother pretending to not eavesdrop when he inserts himself into the conversation with a grunt, “Last time I tried to insinuate they were getting along, Izuna wouldn’t so much as hear of it.”
Tobirama turns to raise his eyebrows at Izuna, but the Uchiha heir is too busy glaring at his older brother to notice.
“We weren’t even officially allied at the time!” he snaps, crossing his arms.
“See what I mean?” Madara says and Izuna scowls harder.
Hashirama smiles placatingly. “Well, it’s wonderful that they have come so far, don’t you think? Very admirable of you to set your differences aside.” He doesn’t say that he never thought he’d see the day but it’s fairly implicit.
Madara crosses his arms and mumbles, “That’s what convinced me that maybe peace could be had between our clans after all.”
When Tobirama glances at Izuna at this admission, he doesn’t look surprised in the least.
“I’m proud of you,” Hashirama says, turning to beam at Tobirama and placing a gentle hand on the back of his neck. A familiar gesture among Hatake, particularly towards children—some human mimicry of scruffing picked up from wolf summons no doubt.
Tobirama pitches his head forward ever so slightly, allows Hashirama to glide his hand up into his hair before withdrawing with a smaller, warmer smile. “You feel pride over the simplest of things,” he grumbles, but it’s a token effort and anyone would know it.
“I do,” Hashirama agrees entirely too happily.
Next to Tobirama, Izuna makes a quiet sardonic noise in his throat and eyes them. “You’re going to start giving aniki ideas if you two keep acting that sappy. He’ll expect me to be so tolerant.”
“As if I would ever behave so disgracefully,” Madara retorts immediately, leaning out from behind Hashirama so he can glare at Izuna unimpeded.
Izuna appears to be unconvinced.
How odd. Tobirama has always thought them to be just as close as he is to Hashirama. If anything, he expected them to be closer given how tumultuous his relationship with Hashirama had been through their adolescence. But perhaps their affection is of a less tactile and...sappy (as Izuna so kindly put it) nature. Tobirama himself is more inclined to being publicly reserved but Hashirama has worn him down over the course of their entire lives. It doesn’t quite register as possibly improper to him anymore.
“There’s nothing disgraceful about loving your family, Madara,” Hashirama says with clear affront. “Why should I be ashamed of my affection?”
Madara’s incredulous stare turns to Tobirama as if searching for support but Tobirama only stares back, nonplussed. Uchiha Madara is the last person Tobirama would throw himself in Hashirama’s line of fire for. As far as he’s concerned, Madara dug his own grave so he may as well lie in it.
The two clan heads proceed to swiftly devolve into a hissed argument about propriety, what it entails and what it has to do with devotion.
“Maybe this will be the physical fight that wins me my bet,” Izuna remarks with wonder, peering over Tobirama’s shoulder to observe their elder brothers like one might a roadside circus.
Tobirama blinks. “Does it count if the fight breaks out before the meeting can even start?”
“I sure feel like I’ve won either way.”
He huffs out a laugh at that. “You’re an ass.”
“What was that about my ass?” Izuna says, and when Tobirama glances at him out of the corner of his eye, his mouth is twisted into a teasing smile that is just a bit too close to be innocuous.
Tobirama turns fully so they are facing each other just to see what Izuna will do. Izuna looks surprised for the fraction of a second but he doesn’t move away. Not unintentional then. Tobirama had wondered if he had been imagining this recent tendency between them. An unforseen development; he'll have to consider it later.
“It’s completely unappealing,” he says blandly for now.
“Liar.”
A beat of silence. Then Tobirama snorts and Izuna follows soon after, retreating out of Tobirama’s space as if he had never been in it, falling back into place beside him like it is the most seamless thing in the world.
The meeting gets called to order, cutting into the argument Hashirama and Madara had still been engaged in. Mito opens with a report on her ideas for village security, somehow managing to weave carefully hidden insults to Hyuuga Hitoshi into her speech. Halfway through, Izuna reaches casually for the leather roll up case that holds Tobirama’s stationary. He unrolls it leisurely, selects a spare pencil to slide into his sleeve, rolls the case back up and returns it to its earlier location. He makes no effort to hide or acknowledge what he has just done. Tobirama watches and does not ask or stop him.
They are both smiling.
Izuna isn’t quite sure how he got roped into playing a game of go with Tobirama but here they are, occupying an empty tent on base of what will eventually become their village, a travel goban between them and a slow game spreading on its surface.
He doesn’t even particularly care for go, but he isn’t surprised that Tobirama does. When Tobirama had asked casually right after the meeting ended, Izuna hadn’t been able to refuse. Hadn’t wanted to and hadn’t thought to, really. Tobirama had asked and Izuna had simply said yes.
Perhaps, Izuna thinks wryly, it is time to examine that compulsion. He should probably figure it out sooner rather than later, before he manages to truly embarrass himself irrevocably.
“I thought you’d ask Shikataro-san for a game if you felt like playing,” Izuna comments, prodding.
“He looked like he would fall asleep at the board if I did. Perhaps another day,” Tobirama replies in a murmur. He places down his white stone, edging closer to Izuna’s territory in the upper left but leaving it alone for now.
He’d been wearing his trademark fur earlier during the meeting, but he has since taken it off. It sits on his lap now and Tobirama strokes it absently while he considers his next move, though he doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing it.
There is something open and unguarded about him that hadn’t been there before. Izuna thinks he might be seeing a truly relaxed version of Tobirama for possibly the very first time. There is no tension in the space between his brows, an ease in the edges of his mouth, a looseness in the curve of his shoulders. Everything about him appears softened in a way that Izuna had never known to anticipate. Somehow, despite the lack of any such intention on Tobirama’s part, Izuna finds himself caught off-guard.
Sensing his gaze, Tobirama looks up from the board and raises his eyebrows. Izuna hurriedly looks away, hand dipping into his bowl of black stones to place one onto the board without thinking too hard about it. They’re only in the beginning stages of the game; Izuna is sure he’ll be able to recover from any poor moves made right now.
Izuna knows he has a tendency to…fixate on people sometimes. Some are passing flights of fancy, and he moves on from them once he gets bored. Others are different. Lasting. Akio had been his first constant until he died. That fixation then passed onto Madara, and this has remained unchanged since. His only other constant has been the very man he sits across from now.
Since the day they properly clashed against each other for the first time, Izuna has found himself focused on Senju Tobirama like a hapless magnet. It had fuelled his obsession with their rivalry for years, driven him to improve and keep up with Tobirama’s genius as they hurtle together to the apex of their respective careers. There had been a familiar edge to that dynamic, sharp and deadly though it had been.
There’s no need for that edge now though, not when they are at peace. Without that anger to focus his obsession on, however, Izuna is left with an intense awareness of Tobirama that he doesn’t know what to do with. There is still that helpless draw that seems to keep Izuna tethered to Tobirama, keeping his gaze fixed on the Senju no matter how much time or distance comes between them. There is still the compulsion to not be left behind, to be acknowledged, to be seen. To hold Tobirama’s attention as Tobirama does Izuna’s own. To be as central to him as he is to Izuna.
Izuna wants to get close, wants to understand, wants to make sure Tobirama doesn’t look away. He wants to keep finding the sides of Tobirama that are rare to come by. He wants there to be no doubts about that tether between them. He wants to be able to take the quiet intimacy of this relaxed contemplative silence between them and stretch it until it lasts an eternity.
Izuna has spent so long looking at Tobirama that now, even without any real reason, he can’t not look.
“You play well,” Tobirama observes, a fleeting smile at his lips as Izuna forces him into atari. He weasels out of it, but it is still a move wasted and is to Izuna’s advantage, however small.
“My mother taught me when I was little,” Izuna finds himself admitting. “Said it is a traditional nobleman’s pastime.”
Tobirama hums. “I learned at the Hachiman shrine in our compound,” he offers. “The Head Priestess was in charge of my early education, and she taught me in a bid to teach me how to sit still because I wouldn’t listen at all otherwise. I only wanted to play outside.”
“I was the opposite,” Izuna says, smiling. “Sickly and small. I hated getting dirty or being in pain. I’d sit inside with my mother all day long if I could. I had to be dragged out and taught or I would’ve died on the very first battlefield I set foot on.” He nods down at the board. “I don’t play regularly though. I’m a bit out of practice.”
“That’s alright. I don’t play entirely for challenge.”
Interesting. Izuna inclines his head, curious. “Then why play at all?”
Izuna is competitive even when he’s an infrequent player. He knows his go reflects that. He makes decisive, aggressive plays and he never quite knows how to leave well enough alone when he’s provoked. Izuna like a challenge, he likes a good chase, and he likes to win.
“Sometimes, Izuna, go is about conversation.”
“I thought go is about battle.”
At this, Tobirama smiles and peeks up at him through snowy lashes. “The two aren’t always mutually exclusive.”
Izuna feels his breath catch for a second before he clears his throat. “I suppose not.” He puts down a stone to complete his pincer into Tobirama’s territory on the bottom right. “There are easier ways to have a conversation if that’s what you desire though.”
Tobirama ignores the pincer and kills a chunk of Izuna’s cluster near the centre. “I often find go to be rather revealing,” he says quietly, calm in that steadfast way of his that seems perpetual outside of battle (and, sometimes, Hashirama’s presence).
He looks up and meets Izuna’s gaze and, as always, something within Izuna settles and curls in satisfaction at the action. He hadn’t understood why he started seeking out the eye contact when Tobirama first began to meet his eyes all those months ago, but Izuna gets it now. Something about the trust and vulnerability Izuna is being invited into is exhilarating. At first, because it had been a simultaneous show of strength from Tobirama who would never take such a step without knowing he could break out of any hold Izuna tried to put him in with the sharingan. Now, it is because Izuna recognises there’s an almost trust there that he finds breath-taking given the history that stands between them.
“Revealing,” he repeats and it comes too quiet, too distracted. Tobirama’s gaze is knowing in a way that makes Izuna feel like he has been seen right through. Like there’s a knife pressed to his bare throat and Tobirama is the one holding it, Izuna’s fate in his hands.
“Go isn’t the type of game you can play without giving yourself away. It may be about a battle between two generals, but to play at all, you must first put your desires on display,” Tobirama says as he puts down a stone and connects a formation on the board. Not once does he look away from Izuna. “You lay yourself bare. Your opponent does the same. You converse without needing words to understand each other. To play well, you have to learn to listen.”
Izuna swallows and looks down at the board, taking in the careful formations laid down by Tobirama’s hand. He makes solid, certain plays. Unwavering and unhesitant, patient and logical and efficient. Just like him.
Perhaps there’s some merit to Tobirama’s philosophy after all.
“It’s why I don’t find shogi to be as satisfying,” Tobirama continues. “It’s too stripped down and functional. There’s little sense of personality to be found and hardly enough time to find it. A game instead of an understanding.”
Before he can think better of it, Izuna is saying, “You make it sound almost romantic.”
“Maybe it is,” Tobirama acknowledges. He studies the shape their game has begun to take on, and his voice lowers ever so slightly in a way that seems to narrow the entire world to just him and Izuna. “Go is about attrition,” his eyes flick back up, intense and crimson, “and we are constantly giving ourselves away.”
Something in Izuna clicks. He thinks to himself, in a daze, 'Of course.’ He thinks, ‘There was never going to be any other way.’ Not for Izuna who has never really been able to see anyone else, and knows with a sudden clarity that he will never manage to do so either.
“I think I’ve lost this game,” he hears himself say distantly.
Quite possibly, Izuna has been a goner from the start.