Chapter 1
She seeks for remnant of him in the fragments he left behind. The scattered detritus left of his beloved lab when the self-destruct seal is done; all of those things he deemed most dangerous gone (almost). She finds the pieces of himself he thought to throw away, the bits of his heart he didn't think others would value. The most precious of them are the oldest; written in a shaky unpracticed hand they are the thoughts of a too smart little boy who just wanted his brothers back and didn't know he shouldn't break the world to do it. (Tiny stories to himself of days gone by and small faces peer up at her from the margins.)
She finds nothing of his brothers in Hashirama. He refuses to speak of Tobirama and turns his face away from any mention of his other brothers. Mito searched for them in him; where was Itama who like a magpie loved bright things and was weaned on the milk of bitterness? Kawarama who was so, so, clever and so, so, young? Where are the stories of childish pranks and shared memories, all the little things gathered over a life? (What about their children? Would he weep to meet them? Tobirama would have wept to be an uncle- she had looked forward to it.)
Mito gave those scraps of Tobirama’s heart to Madara in a burst of anger- she wanted to Hashirama to see how much it should hurt, so she hit him in the only soft spot she could (even in her anger she wouldn’t endanger the peace, not after all that had been lost for it). She still can't decide if she regrets it or not (she doesn’t, not when she sees how he treasures them).