Prologue
There is a young boy standing near the edge of the water. He reaches down and picks up a stone.
“This time I’ll reach it for sure.” But before he can throw the stone, another stone flies past. It skips a couple of times on the water before making it to the other side. The boy looks behind him to see who threw the stone.
The first boy looks at the other in disgust. "I don’t need you to tell me that. It will reach the other side if I put my all into it!" He turns to look at the other boy. "Who the hell are you anyway?"
The other boy hums. "Right now, I’m just your rival at stone skipping." The boy smirks. "Though mine has reached the other side."
"I asked who you are!" the boy named Madara shouts at the other.
“It’s Hashirama. I can’t tell you my last name due to reasons.” Hashirama laughs at the other.
"Hashirama, eh?" Madara turns to face the river again. He gets himself ready to throw the stone. "Just watch. I’m gonna make it this time." He reaches his arm back and throws the stone with a familiar sound.
The way he throws… it’s the shuriken jutsu! Hashirama thinks. The stone that has been thrown doesn’t make it all the way to the other side. Instead, it disappears in the flowing river.
This cuts to the stumped faces of the boys. Madara is sweating before he turns to Hashirama again. "You stood behind me on purpose to distract me!" Hashirama in turn winces backward. "I’m the type that can’t even pee when someone’s standing behind me!" Madara shouts at the other boy, who’s getting more panicked by the second.
Then Hashirama falls down to the ground with a depressive aura surrounding him. "S-sorry." He stammers out. Madara just watches in astonishment.
"Don’t take it so seriously…" Madara tries to soothe the boy. "I was just making excuses."
"I didn’t know…" There is a banging sound. "That you had such an obnoxious self-diagnosed neurosis."
"I can’t tell if you’re a nice guy or a nasty guy!" Madara points at Hashirama, who stands up again and laughs happily.
"One thing’s for sure! I’m better than you at stone skipping!" he teases Madara, who gets pissed off not long after.
"Want me to skip you instead?" And Hashirama’s depressive mood is back in full force.
"I didn’t mean to upset you." He says. "To make amends, I’ll let you throw me into the river." Madara’s eye twitches. "Go ahead and throw me."
"Do you even notice your own obnoxious neurosis?" he stammers out.
"I just hope I reach the opposite shore." Hashirama says as he makes a funny voice. Madara does not think it’s funny, though.
"You’re a real eyesore! Get lost!" Madara shouts at the boy. Who gets up a second later.
"Well goodbye then." As he turns to leave, Madara grabs him by the shoulders.
"Wait a second!".
"Which is it? Why don’t you be more clear?" Just as Madara was about to object, a body floats past in the river. Hashirama walks over the water to get closer to investigate. At this moment, Madara realizes the boy is also a ninja.
“Are you a ninja?”
"This location will become a battlefield soon. Go home." Hashirama mutters out. He takes a look at the body. This is a Hagoromo clan crest… "Sorry, but I’ve got to go." He jumps up to the other side of the river and is about to say goodbye. "Uh?"
"My name is Madara." Madara smirks. "Not proffering one’s family name to a stranger is ninja law."
"I knew it. You’re a ninja too?"
After that they don't see each other for a while until after Itama’s dead. Not long after that they start meeting up more frequently after that until their father's Discover it.
He reached the river. Madara was already there. Hashirama stopped at his bank.
“How about we just skip rocks today?”
“…yeah.” Madara pulled the little rock from where he’d tucked it in the fold of his kimono. It fit perfectly in his palm, and it was the rock that Hashirama had thrown him the last time they met.
He hoped he could read what he’s scratched onto it. It’d been a rush job, but he’d tried to make it legible.
They exchanged no words. The water splashed as their rocks skipped across the sluggish river.
They each caught each other’s rock, without another word spoken.
Hashirama glanced down and found a word etched into the pebble. A warning. So Madara’s family had found out too, and his life was just as much in danger.
“I gotta go, Madara. Maybe some other time, yeah?”
They didn’t have much of a window if they wanted to escape. Now was kind of the only shot they had at avoiding a confrontation.
“Yeah, I forgot something… later!”
He turned around to leave, but that was the moment his father and brother chose to make themselves known. At the same time, two Shinobi leaped out from Hashirama’s side of the river. Probably his father and brother, Madara thought dimly beyond his horror.
When the kunai went flying towards his little brother - he was so small next to his father, he was only ten, who let him go - he reacted instantly. “Stop it!”
There was a ring of steel and the weapons fell out of the air. And he couldn’t hold himself back, because that was his little brother out there
Madara jumped into the middle of the fray at the same time Hashirama did, and something fragile snapped inside him to see his friend’s face standing on the side of that clan.
“I don’t care who you are,” he said, water splashing around his sandals. The sleeves of his kimono unrolled a little and fell over his hands. “I won’t forgive anyone who hurts my brother."
Hashirama felt his face fall. It hadn’t felt real until right this moment, when Madara’s father tried to kill Tobirama, and his own father had tried for much the same with Madara’s brother.
How could adult men behave this way? How could this be alright, in any form, in any world? Sending children to kill each other, using children as bait and weaknesses on a battlefield. It was disgusting.
But no matter what, he wouldn’t let Tobirama suffer for their father’s stubborn refusal to open his eyes to the stupidity he was perpetuating.
“Madara…you…” he was standing here, ready to face Hashirama with his clan. But Hashirama didn’t want to fight. Not Madara, not anyone.
There existed a way for Uchiha to conduct themselves on the battlefield. To wear a face, a mask, of cold indifference, so that their internal turmoil couldn’t be seen. Madara had a lot of practice with it thanks to his father.
It hurt to put it on with Hashirama when he was the only one whose company was where he could be free, but he had to.
“It didn’t last long, but I had fun… Hashirama,” he said. It felt like he was listening to someone else talk. It’d only been a few months ago that he kissed Hashirama and confessed his feelings. And now they were meant to fight to the death.
“Three against three,” his father said behind him. “Do you think you can handle it, Madara?”
Could he? He and Hashirama had never fought and meant it. Even their fiercest spars had ended up with one of them stopping before it went too far, and then just ribbing each other. Madara didn’t want to fight him. He didn’t want to hurt him.
“No… Hashirama is stronger than I am,” he said. His voice was flat and cool. He sounded like a grown man. When, Madara wondered, had he grown up like this? When had the world decided it was time for him to fight someone he cared about so much? “If we fight now, we will lose.”
He turned around to go. “We’re leaving.”
“Madara!” Hashirama stepped forward as if to chase after the Uchiha. He didn’t like seeing Madara turned away from him, he didn’t like seeing nothing but his back and hearing cold indifference. It couldn’t end like this, could it? They’d been so happy, they’d…made dreams, plans…
“You’re not really gonna give it up, are you? We, together, we were gonna change things. You and me!”
“You’re a Senju… I wish it had been different.”
The further he walked away from him, the more and more his heart splintered. He saw the calculating look in his father’s eyes and knew that he wouldn’t ever be able to sneak another meeting with Hashirama again. The secret was out - if he ever wandered off like this again, then his loyalty would be questioned.
The potentially disloyal ones were not welcome in the clan.
“My brothers were killed by the Senju,” he said. It was true. Akira and little Tatsuya had both fallen in battle against the Senju, cut down by men thrice their age and size.
But despite everything he said, it was the hardest thing for him to do, to step away from Hashirama. To take the knife and sever this bond before it strangled the both of them.
This is how it has to be, he told himself. His heart cried out against it, but he knew it was right. They couldn’t be friends. Senju and Uchiha were enemies. That was their mistake - to be born under the wrong names.
“That’s why there’s no need for us to be spilling our guts here,” Madara said softly. “Next time, we’ll meet on the battlefield. Senju Hashirama…”
Senju. Senju Hashirama. The boy he’d met by the river with stars in his eyes, the boy with the big dreams and the sweet smile… the boy with the double-sided prong crest and the name of his enemies.
He turned. One last look. It was the worst thing he ever did. When pain lanced through him, he wasn’t sure if it was just inside or if someone had truly put a sword through his chest.
“My name… is Uchiha Madara.”
The words died on Hashirama’s tongue when he saw the red in Madara’s eyes. Eyes that he knew so well, had gazed into, had seen pain and happiness in. Now, they were the color of blood and staring his way