Day 4
DAY 4 February 16th,details / pen and sword / robes
Tobirama knelt down in the Senju main house, a hit on his side from the earlier battle still blooming into a disgusting bruise and a cut on his thigh and arm still aching from the jagged edge of the Uchiha weaponry.
"Tobirama, why?! You know how much I have been trying for peace, how close I was to getting Madara to agree! Yet you go and stab Izuna to the point of near death!" The scroll in Tobirama's hands was the only thing grounding him from breaking fully.
"Anija, a fight is a fight. I cannot always accurately predict where Izuna will step when I attack. I was aiming for his arm." And the bastard knew that. We'd planned that.
"Yet he had to be led away holding a gushing side wound!" His own leg wound ached as he tensed his muscles.
"A battle is a battle Anija we-"
"No! I will not hear a condescending 'Anija' from you any longer!" With a heart held together by strings, Tobirama closed his eyes and spread his senses out, blocking out his brother and sensing his way towards the Uchiha compound. It always felt like a campfire there, so many sparks of flame dappled with small hints of air.
He found his mark easily, Izuna's chakra being something he was familiar with after so many years on a battlefield. He was alive, signature strong. He pushed at the lava that Izuna's chakra was, magma and cinnamon, electric and energetic. He was met with a small push back as well, tentative as Izuna was not great at this type of communication, but there. He felt how sorry the man was but steely determination in the push. As they had practiced, Izuna tapped out a message in his central tenketsu on his chest, pulses that Tobirama could feel. 'Plan' 'Go' 'Leader' 'Yes'.
Tobirama pushed whatever emotion of affirmation he could manage before slowly pulling back. Madara's inferno of a chakra signature, feeling of moonlight and a raging hearth, cloves and spice was closing in on Izuna's again and he didn't want Madara to feel his presence there.
Once back in his usual range he re opened his eyes and tuned back into his brother- who was still pacing the room and yelling.
"Bowing your head does nothing to the situation Tobirama! Izuna could die! Years of hard work destroyed! All because of your inability to show mercy!" Those last strings of his heart snapped, and something began freezing in its place.
Tobirama then stood up without warning, making eye contact with his clan head as the brunette stopped pacing to look back at him in somewhat shock.
"Mercy was me stepping between you and Butsuma every chance I had, mercy is me letting you grieve with your friend and keeping father's attention away from you until I no longer could without him hurting you and then still taking the beatings that were meant for you!"
He chucked the scroll at the man, the force winding the brunette.
"Mercy was me not keeping this scroll." The other stared at him and then the scroll, shocked, and confused, and hurt.
"Be careful not to destroy it, in it you will find myyears of work into your dream. You'll even find notes where Itama had scribbled about an academy." Hashirama opened the scroll and with huge eyes looked back up to him, documents spilling out, neatly clipped together in folders. The last thing out being a treaty that he and Izuna had finalized a week ago after their last meet up.
Tobirama turned and took a few steps forward to the door, hand on the frame.
"Uchiha Izuna will live to insult me another day, and for many days after. Send the treaty. Uchiha Madara will not decline."
"Tobirama-" he looked back at his teary eyed brother, deciding he'd shown enough mercy for one day.
"I was raised to be your sword, your terrifying weapon. Honed to the point I'd be able to cut down all your enemies and those who wish to hurt the clan. But I had always known the pen was far mightier, written and spoken words dealing wounds that even your hands can't heal.
"Thank you for exemplifying that."
"To-"
"And as you so graciously implied, you'd rather it was I who ended up injured in today's battle. While you may be sparring with Madara, soliloquies about peace rolling off your tongue, the rest of us are actually trying to survive.
"So enjoy your peaceHa-shi-ra-ma. This lowly merciless one will be in his quarters until Clan Head-sama calls for him next." It was a low blow, Hashirama knew Tobjrama only ever called Butsuma that.
He turned his head back and hiraishinned his way to his lab where Touka stood waiting with a medkit and a meal.