The air is always a little bit too warm in the Pure Lands, a tepid staleness reminiscent something left alone a little too long for comfort. An unpleasant reminder to say the least. It only served to heighten his dissatisfaction that had served him well in life and poorly in death. Perhaps that was the result of all the decisions he made that resulted in the cascade of events that followed, like dead fish showing up due to an excess of fertilizer applied to the arable land upstream.
Tobirama sighs and pushes his outer robe onto his shoulders. The Pure Lands resurrected them at their happiest. Subsequently, Tobriama is a child. The last time he was happy was when he was surrounded by his brothers, play fighting with them underneath the peach blossoms and reveling in the sunlight that the Sage graced them with. It was slightly inconvenient now, with his brother stuck wizened and old and prone to cooing at him like he did his granddaughter. Tobirama snorts at the last image of Hashirama stuck halfway up a tree with all the vitality of a man several decades younger and still struck terrified of his angry wife.
His daily trek follows a meandering stream, resplendent with the koi fish that he had cared for in life twisting their way through the current absent-mindedly, flashing gold orange red. The sight of it lingered in his mind. The reflected beauty of the plane below, a painting with no-one other than he to enjoy. Tobirama had never stopped to watch it before, far too busy and grief-stricken to care, all the color leached out of his world, but now all he had was time. Time and a never-changing environment to explore at his own leisure. The only change being the people inside.
The sloped back of a dark haired child sits before him, a proud Uchiha fan presented on the back. Tobirama restrains himself from sighing once more, his death only aiding to the deep exasperation he had in life regarding interpersonal relationships. Carefully, he lowers himself to the ground, the habit of cushioning his once-old bones too ingrained to let go easily. The boy takes in a sharp breath as he glances towards the side, taking in Tobirama’s profile.
His mouth opens as if to shape words, but they seem to be stuck in his throat. “Am… am I dead? Hallucinating?”
“No,” Tobirama replies simply. “You aren’t under a genjutsu either, but you’re welcome to try breaking it. It’s a place for decisions”
His eyes flash red, and then the boy simply grumbles, frustration evident in the small sparks that he spits out. “Deciding what.”
“Whether or not to accept your fate. Life or death.”
“And did you do the same, oh high and mighty master?” Disbelieving and sneering, the boy dares Tobirama to deny his allegations. Bold for someone who hasn’t even looked at who he’s talking to.
“I chose to die.”
The boy rears back, regarding Tobirama with honest confusion in his face, his brows furrowed. It’s not unlike what he looked like in life, Tobirama thinks, distantly amused.
“You, the White Demon of the Senju,”
“I never understood that,” Tobirama muses, the boy’s face scrunching up at the non-sequitur. “Hashirama and Madara didn’t understand, but I thought you might’ve been different. The Uchiha were trying to kill me as much as I was killing them. If I had tried to let them live they would’ve slayed my clansmen with abandon, or my father would’ve whipped me bloody for daring to leave an Uchiha alive. Not to mention the fact that they were being spared by a Senju child would have shamed them enough to try and kill me harder in the next battle”
The boy dropped his head into his hands. “You… aren’t wrong, but can you damn me for wanting more of my clan to live? If you weren’t there hundreds would remain alive.” His eyes peek through his hands as he peers up at Tobirama, grief for his clansmen displayed without shame.
“I don’t, considering I wished the same. But nonetheless you have a choice to make, Izuna.” Tobirama raises an eyebrow when Izuna has the audacity to be surprised. “You thought I didn’t know who you were? Give me some credit.”
“You’ve grown a sense of humor, you bastard. I thought you would’ve killed me again if you ever saw me again considering the situation that we had left.”
“It’s been several decades for me. Time passes differently in the Plains. Besides, I wasn’t always at war Izuna, I had a family as well. The Uchiha seem to forget that their opponents were just as human as they were.”
“Don’t pretend that the Senju were such pillars of morality, White Demon.” Izuna snarls. “We were demonized just as much as we vilified your people.”
Tobirama raises an eyebrow and gets to his feet, absent-mindedly sweeping his pristine robes off the rich soil. “ At least you can accept that your people were less than perfect.”
“I am not a fool, Senju. When did you die?”
“In my late forties, suicide via enemy nin. I suppose it wasn’t true suicide, but by then I was tired and grief-stricken enough that I only had the strength to go on long enough to save my students.”
Izuna raises his head up and looks into the setting sun, the colors highlighting his face in beautiful pinks and oranges. “I choose to go back.”
Ah. Despite what Hashirama said, Tobirama was almost always proved right..
With a huff, Tobirama pulls the Uchiha to his feet. “Your choice is different this time. Good luck.”
Izuna laughs, “Got any advice for me?”
“Maybe talk to me this time when you get your do-over.”
“ Wait, do over? TOBIRAMA, WHAT DO-OVER”
Tobirama waved, a mischievous smile fixed to his face, as Izuna plummeted through the air. It wasn’t his fault if Izuna failed to ask the correct questions.
----
Izuna wakes up with a gasp, hands going to clasp his temple, only for him to reel back when the hands before him are almost comically undersized compared to the size of the bed. What in the Sage’s name?
Some sort of genjutsu maybe, something that would trap him so that Izuna could be caught unaware. Not this time motherfucker, he thinks viciously, uttering the dispellment and flashing blood red Sharingan eyes.
Nothing.
He attempted it again, using more chakra this time, as if it would make a difference. Nothing happened again. What. the. Hell. What the fuck did Tobirama do. Was the dream real? Fuck that cryptic bastard. If Izuna really was thrown back in time, he was going to fight his way back up to the Pure Lands and strangle Tobirama with his bare hands. Let’s see how long his smug smile would last like that.
A loud crash rang out from outside his closed door, and remembering Madara’s morning wake-up call when they were children, leapt to his feet. Fuck, he hoped that to the Sage himself that his memory was faulty.
Seconds later when he was thrown to the floor with a headlock firmly secured around his neck, Izuna realized his fatal folly. And promptly smashed his face into the floor in regret.
“What a wonderful morning it is,” Madara exclaimed the glee in his voice enough to make their cousins flee in fear, his clothing oddly cold. “Don’t you think so, oh so dear brother of mine?”
Izuna definitely had done something the day before, but since he didn’t even know when it was, his current situation was cruel and unusual punishment.
“I thought so, you see. Until someone , set traps filled with cold water at 4 in the morning.”
Well, that explained the wetness spreading on his yukata. Oh! He did remember the prank that caused this retaliation. Madara had unceremoniously dunked him into the koi pond in front of his once-crush, and Izuna paid him back with an early morning wake-up.
Izuna snarled, the sound distorted due to his proximity to the floor and the arm that was quickly restricting his air intake. “I wonder who it was? Maybe it had something to do with yesterday, hmmm. Actions have consequences, Madara.” He finished off the sentence condescendingly.
Madara ground him into the floor, ruffling his hair in a brutal noogie at the remark, before relinquishing to let Izuna up. “It’s my right as an older sibling,” he saiddramatically, flopping onto the futon, the soaked fabric seeping into his bed like the bastard he was.
Izuna plopped right on top of him, making Madara curl up with a wheeze. “And it’s my right as a younger sibling to prank you when you exercise that right.” He settled further, spitefully ignoring the whining Madara below him.
Okay, so his faint crush on Katsumi had ended a week after he got it when he was what, eight? That was before Hashirama and Madara met. Actually today would be the day that they met. Izuna remembered Madara, scheming his next prank, went down to the river and ran into Hashirama there. That’s what set his brother on this path to begin with. What had led Izuna to die(?) under Tobirama’s blade. It was war, but who could blame him for disliking the man who killed (?) him. (Did Tobirama actually kill him or did he get transported to the Pure Lands? A question for later.)
Didn’t Tobirama also say something about gaining an ally in his younger self? If Izuna went down there instead of Madara there was a chance that he could run into Tobirama instead. From there he could decide whether to kill or befriend the cryptic albino.
Madara seemed to suck the breath that had been knocked out of him before, and managed to push Izuna off. Startled out of his thoughts, Izuna scrambled to his feet and sprinted out of his room with a vengeful Madara on his tail.
---
Tobirama would very much like to know what is going on. Last he knew, he was drenched in blood, his blade inches away from Izuna’s throat and dizzy with chakra exhaustion. Did he faint? He winces internally as he steels himself for the tears that would surely erupt when Tobirama opened his eyes. Hashirama has always been more expressive and prone to waterworks, and every time that Tobirama wakes up from some injury or over exhaustion, he bursts into tears. An undesirable situation to say the least. Touka had always likened him to a cat dumped into a cold bath whenever he had to deal with feelings of any kind. She’s not wrong. He only has so much empathy to spare for people, and he’d rather save it for the moments when he needed it.
Tobirama slits open his eyes, and upon seeing no hysterical brother nor exasperatedly concerned cousin, sat up in confusion. It was his bedroom? Rolling over, he saw Hashirama curled up next to him.
Baby Hashirama.
He couldn’t be older than 13.
Frantically getting up to examine himself through the mirror, he stares in horror at his pudgy fingers. When Tobirama stares at himself from his reflection, his small child body, chubby face slack jawed and red eyes wide.
What in the Sage’s Name!? Tobirama is slightly used to bizarre things happening due to his wildly powerful older brother, but this was too crazy for even him. He didn’t even do anything!
Unless... Harashin involved traveling through the space time continuum, the seal work was purely theoretical until it’s usage during battle when Tobirama had activated it out of sheer panic. Space time. Unfortunately, it was entirely plausible that he had time traveled.
Fuck.
He brought his hands together and flared his chakra in a soundless kai. Hashirama shuffled in his futon at the feeling of Tobirama’s chakra, a small snort escaping him. Tobirama’s surroundings remained unchanged.
Silently moving towards a small calendar that he left in the corner of his room, he checked the date. Blinked slowly as the revelation. It was the day that Hashirama and Madara met.
I- if he could stop his brother from going to the river, then maybe… Maybe their relationship wouldn’t be strained like it was in the future. If he went down there instead, then he could warn Madara off and Father wouldn’t send him after Hashirama.
It would probably work, the other heir wasn’t exactly the most naturally observant person. Madara was a genius on the battlefield, but he lacked, to say the least, an awareness of sorts.
He thought that all Senju’s were ‘haughty bastards who looked down upon the Uchiha’ or thought that only the Uchiha experienced loss. ‘Hashirama was the exception’ maybe he should take a great big look at the deeds his own people committed before throwing the first stone in a glass house.
Wait. Maybe that was just a people thing though. He knew that some of the Senju held similar sentiments against the Uchiha, but Madara was blind when it came to family. There was no doubt about that. Watching their riverside meetings was more informative about the Uchiha Heir’s attitude than watching him on a battlefield could ever be.
Mind made up, Tobirama slipped his sword off of the wall and slid out of the window, quietly as to not awake his brother, and made his way to the training grounds on the edges of the clan’s territory.
The sun rises slowly, peeking through the trees and sending flares of color throughout the sky. Chirping birds and the familiar noises of the woods that surround the Senju lands sound pleasantly through the air. Sounds of the clan compound slowly come to life with the non-fighting members of the Senju getting ready to start their morning chores. Tobirama doesn’t notice, his form moving stumbling through forms that his older self knew. Slowly smoothing out his motions and remembering the way his younger body worked. Only Hashirama flaring his chakra as he came close brought him out of his training hyperfocus.
His brother enveloped him in a hug, pouting slightly, “Tobiiiii, how come you didn’t wake me up?”
“Anaja, waking you up is like trying to rouse a hibernating bear. I never wake you up.”
When Tobirama squirms in his hold, Hashirama reluctantly lets him go. “But you at least leave a note! Why didn’t you do that this time!”
Another thing he slowly trained himself out of doing after the river. Hashirama had never quite sought him out with the same enthusiasm as he did before since that. Eventually, he didn’t come at all and Tobirama had stopped.
He would have to start doing it again if he didn’t want to estrange his brother.
“I was busy, anaja. There was a new scroll that I had found in the library that showed more advanced forms.”
“Tobi, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Training shouldn’t be the only thing that you do.”
“I know that, but-”
“But what, but nothing. Come on, you should have enough time to meditate with me at least.
Well, it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra time to smooth out his chakras before attempting to confront Madara on the riverbank. Tobriama dutifully followed his brother to a small clearing and then to the waterfall that fed into the river. He took his place next to Hashirama on the slick stones and darted a glance to the boy’s peaceful expression.
He would do anything to protect Hashirama, even if it meant that he had to scheme with Madara to achieve peace.