Faith
Despite being relatively close to one another, there’s a stark difference between the forests that bloom across Senju lands, and the wildwoods that tower the land inhabited by the Uchiha.
Oriented towards nature from their very roots, the Senju nurtured their land, treasuring it as a valuable source of nourishment and refuge. Generations of Mokuton users left behind canopies of golden, heart-shaped leaves and tall oaks for building houses, stocky apple trees and fragrant citruses, and clusters of walnuts. Leafy medicinal plants crawl the soil and shield the roots from the cold, and not even in the winter do the majestic canopies seem to lose their inherent, boastful life.
In contrast, the forests where Madara played as a child are sparse in foliage, even at the height of spring, dark shades of green and burnt out wood thrumming with an undercurrent wildness. Tall pines and dense eucalyptus harvested for essential oils, thorny bushes and painfully sharp pine needles littering the bare earth. Cold and unforgiving land, wild and lonely. Nothing like the warm breeze that carries sweet wisteria and willowherb to him and makes him think of his mother’s kind smile.
And yet, as Tobirama gazes out at the cheerful trees of his childhood, he can’t help but wish for the peaceful quiet of uninhabited land, can’t help but scan the air for the telling whiff of scorched wood amongst evergreen pines. It’s a sudden, unexpected yearning, and it brings to his mind the memory of Uchiha Madara’s toothless grin. This in turn reminds him of Madara’s black eyes the night he appeared to Tobirama like a spiteful ghost, which makes him grimace.
He vividly remembers the feeling of displaced air as the dagger flew at him, can practically feel the second cold metal touched the skin of his temple as the blade embedded itself inches from his flesh. He can still see the few stray silver hairs whispering their way to the floor--
Don’t look so upset. You know I never miss my mark.
With a huff, Tobirama throws a stone at a tree with enough force to make leaves fall and birds flee it in a startled flock.
The close encounter with Madara left him rattled, and with more questions than answers floating around in his head, banging at the insides of his skull. He can’t for the life of him figure out the meaning of the man’s words, or figure out how he’d manage to shield himself from Tobirama’s perception at such close range. He would be tempted to consider it all nothing but a profoundly disconcerting nightmare, if it weren’t for the fact that the spectre had left behind a token of his visit.
The dagger is a mystery he can’t even begin to wrap his head around, a piece of metal hiding within itself a core of chakra powerful enough to bend the structures of space and time. Not only is it’s existence baffling, but it’s creation something he can’t imagine. The amount of power and skill required to create such a piece, such a weapon--
Using his chakra.
There is no doubt about it, that coiled into the entrails of the metal is Tobirama’s lifeforce linked with Madara’s. Not only is the concept impossible, but also bordering on the absurd. And yet--
“It’s not my job to help you, Senju,” Madara had said, genuine spite weaving through his practised indifference. Never had his own clan name felt so wrong to Tobirama’s ears as it did in that moment, vexing as that admission is. It was almost as if something in him rebelled against the idea of Madara addressing with such obvious scorn, such little familiarity, such little...affection.
Disgusted at his own train of thought, Tobirama groans loudly and massages his temples. He can feel a headache coming.
It is true that, in contrast to young Madara’s obvious delight upon seeing him, present Madara’s derision became even more obvious. It is also undeniable that, when faced with this, Tobirama had felt off-balance. Shocked, like a bucket of freezing water had woken him up from peaceful sleep. Suddenly he cannot hide away from the fact that, in his mind, Uchiha Madara’s place has gone from hated enemy to--to--
For the thousandth time in the past few months, he curses every single choice that landed him in the current moment. Then, for good measure, he curses Madara, but there’s almost no spite in it, which only makes him angrier.
“I could feel you brooding all the way from my house,” Hikari-sensei says somewhere behind him, her cracking voice carried by the wind.
“I was unaware of your sensor skills,” Tobirama deadpans, but it doesn’t carry any bite.
She chuckles,“It only works on a handful of subjects, I’ll admit. Sullen child,”
She comes to stop by his side and sits down on the log. The surface of it is too low, and her movements are slow and jerky, but he’s aware that if he were to even think of mentioning anything resembling an offer of help she would smack him over the head.
Instead, he gazes out at the wilderness, and tries not to think of how painfully old his master has become. Time, it would seem, has become the centre of all his problems these days. He feels he’s fighting it, in a lot of ways, or at the very least going against it, and it repays him his mutiny by reminding him, in moments like this one, that its slipping away from him like smoke through his fingers.
On his last travel, he spent two hours watching Madara play with his brother by the river, and came back to find three days had gone by. How long, he wonders, until he gets yanked back to the present to find his whole life has gone by? That his family is dead? That his clan is destroyed?
What story will he tell himself then?
Hikari-sensei doesn’t press him, doesn’t say a word, and the silence seems to be more about company than anything else. She worries, he knows. They all worry.
“I came to return this,” she says after they’ve stared out into nothing for a while, pulling out the dagger from her pouch, the sharp gleaming metal wrapped in a length of cloth.
He felt it on her as soon as he felt her chakra approach him, but the sight of it still makes him flinch. He forces himself to grab it, the sizzling energy of it seeming to nip at his fingers even through the cloth. It feels a little bit like fire, wanting to dance over the surface of his skin. Impulsively, he peels back the wrapping, wanting to catch sight of the object that’s been plaguing his thoughts non-stop for two weeks now.
It is a slim shard of metal, slightly curved and polished to a high shine, the wicked sharpness of it seemingly almost an afterthought. It’s masterful work, either by a forger or a seal master, but he’s not sure which. He’s already concluded that it is indeed the dagger which holds the power to make him jump through time, but he hasn’t figured out how. For all that Madara was the one to give it him, his younger version claimed not to have the slightest clue about it’s existence when Tobirama asked him in his latest travel. For some reason, he doesn’t think the child would lie. Not to him, anyway. The instinctive certainty he feels is vexing.
When he looks up, he finds Hikari-sensei regarding him evenly.
“Chakra like this can only be given away freely,” she says meaningfully, tapping a finger to the dagger. It reacts to her too, only instead of a gentle ripple the energy lashes out like a whip, “It’s a seal of protection, a lifekeeper. Exact same measures of opposing forces wound together into a single element--rather impressive, actually. I’d never seen it done before,”
“But you’ve heard of it?”
She looks to the West. It is simply because he knows where to look that he can see her ancient gaze stretching over the hills, beyond the plains and across the deep blue sea, where he knows Land of Whirlpools rests like a gem on the surface of the water. She looks to her home, where she may never return.
“Fuuinjutsu master Uzumaki Akane somehow healed her husband with it during the Battle for Hitobi Mountain, when he was struck down by one of our poisoned arrows. The general rose like he’d never even fallen in the first place,” she blinks, turns her owlish eyes to Tobirama, and the morose pathos around her falls off like snow in June, “Don’t ask me how. I studied her notes, when I became Uzumaki-sama’s library keeper, but I could never make true sense of them. As far as I knew, that was the only time it was ever used and she died shortly after, though I cannot tell you what the cause was,”
Tobirama runs a finger down the side of the blade, entranced at the way energy blooms under his fingertips. Lifekeeper.
“Would the strain of the seal weaken her?”
“Possibly. Chakra depletion is always a bitch,” Hikari shrugs, “Then again, it was war. Records weren’t kept very well, so most probably she met her end like countless others before and after her: at the pointy end of some lucky kunai,”
The hiraishin mark carved into the metal startles when he presses his fingers to it, causing a reaction somewhere on Tobirama’s chest. A pull, a calling. The reason why this whole mess started, right here: the symbol that so effortlessly came to him that day in his study, the same one that so effortlessly has managed to make him go to it so many times. More than a jutsu or a seal, it feels like the ancient children stories his mother used to tell him and his brothers, where arcane magic bound together those whose fates were meant to touch.
“Curse the day you started teaching me about seals,” Tobirama mutters, but even as he rages inside at this situation, a part of him remains utterly fascinated. Hikari-sensei pinches his shoulder, hard.
“Do not blame your foolishness on me, boy. I’ve told you all your life that curious head of yours would get you in trouble if you did not keep it in check,”
He sighs, wrapping the blade back up. It hums, almost as if...disappointed. Interesting.
“Yet here we are,”
“Here we are,” she echoes. The breeze picks up. Gray hair once yellow and bright plays with the wind in the space between them, “Now will you tell me why you’re sulking?”
It is on the tip of his tongue to snap that he is not sulking. Then he remembers he’s been sitting on a log since daybreak, wishing for the forest to be another, pondering questions and trying to figure out the answers, and succeeding in nothing. He did scare the hell out of some birds, though.
Mostly, he came out here to be alone. The truth is that the compound feels oppressive, the usual comfort of having his people closeby where he can feel them --alive, alive, alive-- becoming overbearing to his senses. After the night of Madara’s sudden appearance in his room, and following his absolute refusal to fill his brother and cousin in on the true nature of his jumps through times, his house became unbearably harrowing to live in. Touka became distant, her hurt anger seething at him from the next room whenever she isn’t avoiding him by spending hours at the training grounds or at the forge, but however much her distance pains him, he much prefers it to Hashirama’s worry lapping at the edges of his awareness, flooding him with guilt for making his brother so absolutely miserable and scared.
He can’t tell them about Madara. He just can’t. He fears what they’ll say, what they’ll want him to do, what they’ll think of him. This whole thing has become too real, now that present Madara has acknowledged that it’s all true. He can barely allow himself to think about it, let alone try to explain it. All he knows is that, somehow, they’re intertwined in an arcane way that boggles the mind, that goes beyond simple coincidence.
The stress of the situation, coupled with the constant fear that he’ll be yanked through time at any moment, is making him anxious in ways he hasn’t been since childhood, back when he still hadn’t had complete control over his power and being in a room with more than five people in it overwhelmed him to the point of tears. Only now he no longer has his mother to calm him down, and the strain he’s under is beginning to cause him physical pain.
“I do not know how to speak to them,” he finally admits, swallowing convulsively. “I don’t know where to start,”
It is an understatement. Hikari hums in thought, “I might seem awfully unoriginal, but starting at the beginning tends to be the logical course of action. Practical, too,”
Tobirama huffs a laugh, shaking his head. What beginning? The first time he met Madara, that day on the river when he was ten years old and sent to spy on his own brother, or the first time Madara met him? Which, for him, hasn’t even happened yet.
He can barely understand it himself.
Hikari lays a hand on his shoulder, the worried warmth of it not enough to calm his tattered nerves, “What frightens you, boy?”
That other people seem to know more about my life than me. That when the moment comes, I won’t know what I’m supposed to do.
He remembers the feeling of being alone in the world, that day spent at the emptied Uchiha compound years into the future, and the thought of returning to that is almost enough to send him into panic. In his pocket, the dagger pulses like a promise, or a threat. All around them, the forest is alive with the joyous chirping of birds and rustling leaves.
With a sigh, Hikari-sensei pulls away her hand. Tobirama feels even more bereft than he did before.
She looks to the West. It is simply because he knows where to look that he can see her ancient gaze stretching over the hills, beyond the plains and across the deep blue sea, where he knows Land of Whirlpools rests like a gem on the surface of the water. She looks to her home, where she may never return.
Tobirama lands in Land of Rice Fields, a mile from the southern border. He’s on edge the second his skin touches the soil, the alarms in his head going of screaming foreign foreign foreign. His skin prickles, cold sweat gathers at the back of his neck, and he ducks for the cover of darkness almost instinctively. He touches three fingers to ground and lets his senses carry him outwards, searching for friend or foe. He finds nothing. The silence is worse than being surrounded by enemies.
Land of Rice Fields is not home to many shinobi, but the few clans that inhabit it are powerful, and very territorial. Tobirama searches for the chakra signature he’s become familiar with, a touch of annoyance dripping into his mood. What the hell is Madara doing in enemy territory?
His monstrous chakra, that rippling, bubbling energy that’s nearly too much for his senses sometimes, is nowhere to be found, almost as if it’s been swallowed up by the earth itself. Tobirama wants to slit his own throat when he recognizes something like concern threading through him, but can’t help himself. For all he knows, Madara is a child right now.
He can’t feel him anywhere. He knows, logically, that the kid has to be out here. He has to be out here, because otherwise Tobirama would not be here. He can feel the pull of the mark, now that he knows where to look for it, somewhere in his chest: a technique that feels nearly like magic calling for him. It’s fascinating.
If the mark’s power is enough to summon him through time, it should also be enough to carry him a distance, he muses, looking up at the sky. Tobirama wants to claw his own eyes out, because he’s curious. Gritting his teeth, he calls up his chakra to him, water and lightning crackling at his fingers. He concentrates on the pull right under his ribs, on the tingling on his limbs, on the mark in Madara’s dagger.
“Gods be fucked,” he mutters, already regretting it, and then he fades away. Madara squawks like a chicken when Tobirama lands on top him.
For a moment, there is stunned, absolute silence. Madara--at least sixteen, older than Tobirama’s ever seen him in his travels-- stares up at him, coal eyes comically wide, wild hair splayed around his head like spilled ink against the floorboards. Color spreads from his nose outwards, faint but fast like a wildfire, and Tobirama is struck by the fact that he’s watching Uchiha Madara blush.
Then the door slides open, and Tobirama remembers he’s kneeling on top of a teenager. And he’s naked.
“Nii-san, do you think we can--OH MY GOD MY EYES!” Izuna screeches, then covers his face with both hands and turns around.
Tobirama teleports himself away as far as he can, cornering himself behind a desk so that only his head is visible, a wall at his back and a clear view of the room. Madara turns a spectacular shade of crimson, and scrambles to his feet. For a few moments, no one speaks.
“I feel violated,” Izuna says morosely through his fingers, still looking resolutely away, “I feel ill, and violated, and I hate you both,” then, almost as an afterthought, “But mainly you, Senju dog,”
Tobirama is too stunned to feel affronted. Madara rolls his eyes, but his face is still dangerously red.
“Nothing happened, Izuna,” he grumbles, grabbing a pack that’s lying on the floor next to a pair of rolled up futons, and rifling through the contents. “Tobirama appeared...on me. That’s all. You know he can’t control it,”
“How convenient,” Izuna huffs. The amount of sheer contempt in his voice makes Tobirama wonder how it can all fit in his small body, but he turns around to gaze solemnly at his brother, “You’ll have to take my eyes now, nii-san. This, I cannot unsee,”
Madara chucks a shoe at his face. Izuna squawks
“Don’t be so dramatic. You’ve seen him naked before,”
Tobirama blanches behind his desk, “He’s seen me naked before?”
Madara gives him a sheepish grin, “Half the Clan’s seen you naked by now,”
“Plus some unfortunate nin from Land of Water last summer,” Izuna pipes in cheerfully, “It was traumatizing for everyone involved, but they died and we didn’t, so it was a fortunate misfortune,”
Madara hands him some clothes, his black eyes carefully averted, faint blush still clinging to his skin. Tobirama rises from his hiding spot, carefully shielding himself from sight, and takes them.
“Why are you so stripey?” Izuna asks in all seriousness, head cocked to the side.
Tobirama splutters, “I am not,”
“You are, though,” Madara says, pointedly staring at the reddened scars--akin to those on his cheeks and chin-- that curl around his biceps, and slash over his chest and abdomen, “They do look a little bit like--”
“They are not stripes,” Tobirama hisses, spitefully turning the haori inside out to hide the Uchiha crest before throwing it on, “They are the markings of the Iron Wolves, and I got them once my training with them was concluded,”
Madara looks suitably impressed, but Izuna scrunches up his nose and closes one eye, “Does that mean you are a Senju wolf instead of a Senju dog? Is that better or worse?”
Tobirama breathes in very slowly, trying to keep his frayed temper in check. His chakra lashes out before he can hold it back, and chips of wood fly from the surface of the desk.
The child is oblivious, “Since when do wolves have stripes anyway?”
“Quit pestering him, brat,” Madara snaps, swiftly stepping in and effectively keeping Tobirama from committing infanticide, “I caught some fish upstream. Go make dinner,”
Izuna groans, “You always make me cook,”
“Would you rather eat my cooking again?”
The boy blanches, face constricting with revulsion at the memory of what must have been a culinary fiasco, and obediently scurries off, sliding the door shut behind himself.
Madara huffs a laugh, “I always thought they were stripes,”
Tobirama, now clothed, crosses his arms over his chest and shoots him an unfriendly look.
“Why are you in Land of Rice Fields?” he demands, eyes roaming his surroundings. A sober, plain room. Possibly a cottage or a cabin.
“Mission,” Madara states simply, worrying a lock of hair between his fingers. It’s grown out past his shoulders, “It’s done. We rest tonight, and leave at dawn. I haven’t seen you in a while,”
This makes Tobirama’s eyes snap back to him, “The travels stopped?”
“No,” Madara says, averting his gaze, “I saw Tobirama a month ago. You I haven’t seen in a year or two,”
There’s a clear accusation in the teenager’s tone, and it sounds a lot like--
Hn. Not you.
Once again he’s separating Tobirama into two entities: his current self, and--whoever Madara was hoping to meet, when he showed up. The thought of this boy knowing things about him that he himself does not know yet makes him unreasonably angry.
Tobirama narrows his eyes, “We are the same person,”
Madara’s face darkens, eyes darting down to the dents on the wood of the desk. “Hn. Clearly not,”
With this, he exits the room, leaving Tobirama speechless, staring after him. Never, in any of the by now dozens of encounters, has Madara ever willingly left Tobirama out of his sight.
Alone in the room, he allows himself to slide down to the floor, his back propped up on the wall. He can feel his own heartbeat, hard and fast, on the back of his throat, anxiety crawling over his skin. It’s been a long time since the tight leash he keeps on his temper slipped, even a little bit. This past week is taking it’s toll on him, the stress and the doubt getting to him like little does, anymore. Coupled with the feeling that he’s in foreign territory, it’s enough to have him nearly jumping out of his skin at the slightest provocation. He knows he’s on the edge of panic, but it’s like there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
He stays there, with his head dropped against the wall and his eyes closed, for what feels like hours, staving off the anxiety and hoping for this visit to be a short one, hoping that not much time will have passed once he returns. He can feel Madara and Izuna in the next room, two bubbling bundles of energy in repose and at ease. He concentrates on the contentment he can feel radiating from them, tries to catch some of their calm to wrap it around himself so that it’ll keep away the cold he can feel creeping into his bones. Madara is like a furnace, his chakra bubbling bright and nearly unfathomable, with an undercurrent of something dark and nearly too hot, but contained. Next to him, Izuna is more subdued, his control much better, more stable, than his brother’s was at that age. They both carry the same signature, the same fire that laps at his senses in a nearly inviting way, like they do not mind him prodding. Once again he wonders at the existence of sensors amongst the Uchiha, then realises that there’s a rather large chance he’s the sensor that taught them how reach out for him like that. Only it hasn’t happened yet.
“Laugh, Tobirama,” he mutters to himself, banging the back of his head on the wall, “Laugh, or you might cry this time”
Once it becomes obvious that the visit won’t be a short one, he rises to his feet with a sigh. He needs a distraction, something to take his mind away from all the variables he can’t control. He wanders into the main room of the cabin, which is just as unfurnished but for a stove where a stew is slow-cooking, and finds the two Uchihas sitting on the floor, a shogi board between them.
“Sure you don’t wanna give up, brat? While you still have your dignity?” Madara asks, unconcernedly checking his nails as he makes a move that places the other boy’s king in check.
Izuna nearly howls in frustration, “No! I’ll beat you this time!”
One look at the board is enough for Tobirama to conclude that no matter the boy’s positive outlook, this will not come true. He makes a valiant effort, but Madara has him beat, quite ruthlessly, within five moves.
“Seems like you’re on clothes washing duty,” Madara says, feigning sympathy.
Izuna sulks with his whole body, “Not fair,”
“Hey, you’re the one who said loser does the laundry,”
“Still not fair,”
“You’re a terrible loser,”
“Two out of three!” the younger boy pleads. Madara pretends to mull it over, but then shakes his head.
“Nah. Shogi gets old after awhile,” he says, and coal eyes meet crimson. After a moment, Madara smiles, “Hey, you can play with him,”
Tobirama raises an eyebrow, askance. Izuna looks positively appalled.
“Nii-san, no!” he whispers quite loudly, “We can’t play games with Senjus! Father made a rule about it and everything!”
Madara flushes in embarrassment at that, and Tobirama smirks. It’s not very hard to guess why that rule had to be issued.
“T-Tobirama doesn’t count! He’s from the future! Father’s rule only applies to current Senjus,” the teenager splutters, “Besides, if he loses, he has to do our laundry,”
“I do not recall agreeing to such thing,” Tobirama says, but comes to sit cross legged on the floor. Distraction, he thinks. He needs a distraction.
“Stakes make everything more interesting,” Madara grins, resetting the pieces, “Unless you think you can’t win against my baby brother, Senju,”
His tone is playful, taunting, childish, with an undercurrent of affection that cannot be ignored. It is baffling, but Madara considers him someone can joke around with. He’s known Tobirama for ten years.
Across from him, Izuna seems to have come to a decision, “Alright. I shall play with the Senju dog. But only because there’s guts all over nii-san’s haori and I really don’t want to touch them,”
He nods, almost to himself, and moves the first piece.
“...guts?”
Madara grimaces, “I loathe explosive tags,”
Tobirama cocks his head to the side, but the boy doesn’t elaborate. Izuna clears his throat loudly and scowls at him, calling his attention back to the game. These children are too familiar with his presence for his peace of mind, Tobirama reckons, and makes his first move.
He’s sucked into the game immediately, the rules and strategies coming back to him almost without effort. He’s reminded of how much he used to enjoy it, as a child, the hours he and Touka spent hunched over the board by the fireplace, Hashirama sitting on a side, narrating the match as if it were a true war and not a game to wile away the hours. He misses his family, he realises with a start. He wonders when they stopped having the time to be a family anymore.
Izuna is very good for his age, alternating moments of outstanding insight with almost clumsy moves of childish impulsiveness as the game progresses. Still, it is wholly entertaining to catch glimpses of the strategical genius in him, the grown man whose fighting prowess Tobirama is so familiar with, in contrast with the child he still is. It’s riveting.
Looking to the side, he notices Madara, having grown bored of watching them, has lain down on his side on the floor and is fast asleep, unkempt hair partially obscuring his slack face. His position is open, with his back to the room and his face nearly pressed to the floor, with his thumb hovering near his mouth, forgotten comfort. He sleeps like a child, with absolute abandonment, and it takes Tobirama a few minutes to come to terms with the fact that the boy feels safe with him in the room.
Uchiha Madara sleeps like his neck is not wide open to an enemy’s attack, because there are no enemies in the room. The weight of such trust amongst shinobi, amongst warring clans, is staggering.
Tobirama raises his eyes for them to be captured by the inscrutable coal stare of the boy across from him. Izuna regards him evenly, unflinching, suddenly every bit the general he’ll someday be but is currently only playing at being.
“I don’t like you,” he says plainly. Tobirama blinks, momentarily thrown by the honesty. He considers this for a moment, then nods.
“Fair enough,” he concludes, “I cannot say I like you myself,”
Izuna nods, satisfied, and moves one of his knights, “Check,”
Tobirama frowns at the board for a moment like it’s betrayed him to confirm that yes, his king is in check. Furthermore, a quick scanning of the overall layout of the game allows him to conclude that he’s been cornered into a position where his defeat is imminent, somewhere within the next twelve moves.
This realization is also staggering.
“You turned the board around when you heard me coming,” Tobirama accuses, aware he’s fighting a ten year old but too outraged to care. It suddenly makes sense why the boy’s game is so incongruent: he’s been pretending to play poorly. All the while he’s been laying a trap himself, and it started right when Tobirama wandered into the room and saw him lose.
Where his brother would have grinned beatifically and quite possibly gloated, Izuna shrugs nonchalantly.
“Nii-san did. He hasn’t been able to beat me in about a year. The soap is over there in my bag,”
Tobirama’s stunned stare goes from Izuna, who calmly looks back at him, to Madara, who’s faintly snoring like he hasn’t got a care in the world. The little shit.
Played by a couple of brats.
Tobirama’s eyes narrow. He steels his resolve, and he utters the words he hasn’t spoken since he was twelve years old.
“Best two out of three,”
Izuna grins ferally, expression awkward on a childish face that does not suit him at all, and sets up the board again.
Tobirama is in the armory, discussing supplies with the smitty and getting progressively more and more agitated at the man’s incompetence, and suddenly he’s sitting on a cliff overlooking a river. He hurriedly scrambles backwards from the edge.
“You’re wondering if it will always be this strange,” he hears his own voice say.
His older self approaches him carrying Madara’s (Tobirama’s…?) black fur cloak. Behind him, Tobirama catches sight of a house with a low roof and expansive windows. He focuses his senses on it.
“Don’t even try it,” his older self chides, sitting by him on the grass, “We knew you were coming, so I took precautions. Some things you have to figure out by yourself. I shan’t tell you about them either, so don’t bother asking.”
...We? ...Them?
Effectively, if there’s anyone inside the house they have their chakra masked rather expertly, and any sound is drowned by the river’s strong current and the whistling of the wind. Tobirama sighs, rubbing his closed eyelids. He’s never been this tired in his life.
“I believe I have lost the capacity to be surprised, at this point,” he confesses, looking at his older self regard him evenly. His older self laughs, and proves him wrong.
“I’m assuming you already spoke to Madara?”
“He threw a dagger at me,”
The man flinches, hand flying to his temple, as if he can still feel the phantom whisper of silver however many years later, “He’s...not very good with words,”
Tobirama stares, “Are you apologizing for him?”
“No, I’m not. Simply stating a fact.” is the honest answer, as crimson eyes regard him calmly, “A fact you’d do well by remembering,”
Tobirama gazes into his own eyes, curiosity overcoming trepidation. He didn’t get to ask questions last time, but even if he had received every answer he’d wanted he would not have believed it.
Now, though...Now everything has changed.
“How old are you?”
“Forty-two,”
Forty-two. Tobirama mouths the words in wonder. Eighteen years over his current age, and twelve years above the average. He’s never allowed himself to toy with the idea of growing to be that old.
“What’s the point of all of this?” he asks bluntly, “What’s the--the dire warning from the future? What am I supposed to see here?”
He needs a story that he can tell himself. Otherwise, he’ll go mad. His older self looks thoughtful for a moment, then raises his eyes to the sky.
“The dream,” he says, “You’re not supposed to see it, though. Not really. You’re supposed to understand that it could actually happen,”
“It’s not my dream,”
“It could be. You’re--I’m not like Hashirama. Dreams, faith...those were never my strong suit. If I can’t see something, then it doesn’t--and cannot--exist,”he shrugs, “It’s what life taught me,”
“So you tell me that I’m supposed to see that something could happen, but at the same time you won’t show me my future because there are things I have to figure out by myself,” Tobirama deadpans, askance.
His older self rolls his eyes.
“You think too much,” he concludes, “Just don’t--don’t think so much,”
Tobirama gapes at him, “That’s the dire warning from the future? Don’t think so much?”
“Yes,” is the answer, coupled with a short nod, “And remember: no matter how hard it gets, you’re exactly where you need to be,”
The world fades away before he can answer, and Tobirama is in the middle of his brother’s study. Hashirama gapes at him from where he’s seated behind his desk, pen halted midword.
“I hope that is the new patrol duty schedule you’re drafting,”
Hashirama snorts incredulously, then throws his head back and laughs. Tobirama allows himself a smile.
“Torou-san bullied me into finishing it yesterday, actually,” still chuckling, Hashirama rises from his seat and wordlessly hands over the spare clothes he’s taken to stashing everywhere, from his desk to the stables, “Five hours before deadline. That is a bit of a record, I’ve been informed,”
It also means that the little meeting he just had with his older self costed him three days, Tobirama muses as he shrugs on the loose tunic and leans against the desk. The sheer amount of time that the travels have costed him by now adds up to a month and a half. There’s bags underneath Hashirama’s eyes, new lines of worry etched on his face that weren’t there scarce months ago. He looks miserable, and scared. His chakra, usually calm like the surface of a lake warmed by the sun, is disturbed. Water is rippling out from a focal point where he’s figured out that there is a chance Tobirama won’t come back, next time he fades away, and there is nothing he can do about it.
“I’m sorry,” Tobirama says, averting his eyes, “that I cannot tell you everything,”
Cannot, will not--he’s not certain at this point. All that he knows is that there are shadows in his brother’s sunny disposition, shadows that not even a lifetime of war ever managed to put there, and it’s all his fault.
Hashirama hums thoughtfully, leaning on the desk as well. He remains in silence for a few moments, and then says, “Remember when we were children and you broke Mother’s flying guillotine?”
Tobirama is surprised by the abrupt change of subject, which is why it takes him a moment to splutter, “I did not--”
“You broke it. I was there. You tried to electrify the blades and it broke. You broke it,” he chooses to take Tobirama’s mutinous silence as acquiescence, which it’s not, and continues, “Remember what happened after?”
“I fixed it,” is the sullen reply, but Hashirama simply nods.
“And what did I do?”
Tobirama turns his eyes inwards. He remembers fiddling with the obstinate mechanism for hours, tinkering with it until he could finally figure out how it worked. It was his mother’s favorite weapon, a relic brought from her home, and he refused to let it become nothing more than a piece of trash. Hashirama had suggested they take it to the smitty, but upon Tobirama’s refusal and assurances that he had more chances at fixing it than anyone else, he’s sat back against a tree and dozed off. He’d trusted Tobirama fix it, and he didn’t doubt him for a second.
Tobirama swallows back a sudden lump in his throat, meeting his brother’s kind eyes. Hashirama smiles.
“I know it sometimes feels like we can never be who we were. And I know that things are not as simple now as they were in our childhood, but...but you must know that all my faith rests at your feet. always,” he says, conviction dripping from every word, “Do what you must. I have your back on any decision you make, even if you can’t tell me what it is,”
“Why?” Tobirama asks, because no matter how old he gets there’s a part of him that will forever need the reassurance of his brother’s love.
He does not disappoint.
“You’re my brother,” Hashirama huffs simply, like that explains everything. And truly, it does. “And we did have an awesome lighting-thrower for a little while there,”
Tobirama huffs out a laugh.
“It was rather awesome,” he agrees, smiling a bit at the memory, “Before it exploded,”
Hashirama chuckles, “Good times,”
Tobirama lands face down on the forest floor, and accidentally swallows a dead leaf. Once he’s done retching, he places his face in his hands and just sits there, trying to force his mind to keep it together as he breathes in and out. On the edge of his awareness, he feels Madara approach him cautiously.
“Are you alright, Tobirama?”
He peeks through his fingers at the boy. About eight years old this time, dressed in sodden clothes, hair wet and sticking to his pale forehead like wisps of smoke. Tobirama drops his hands from his face.
“Yes, I am,”
Madara’s face scrunches up, he closes one eye and cocks his head to the side, “But are you sure? You don’t look alright,”
Despite himself, Tobirama smiles, “Why ask if you’re not going to believe me?”
“Izumi-san says the polite thing to do is ask first,” the boy says, nodding sagely as he shrugs off the wet summoning scroll slung on his shoulder, “Or people will think you don’t care,”
“Do you care?” Tobirama asks, genuinely curious.
Madara thinks about it for a long, long moment, and then he nods, “Yes, I care,” he says simply, activating the seal and handing Tobirama the fur. It’s wet, “Izumi-san says that you’re supposed to ask people if you can help them in some way?”
The rambling sentence ends on a high note that makes Tobirama chuckle.
“No,” he says, “You can’t. But thank you,”
“No problem. Oh, hey--” Madara drops his bag, which is dry (what had the boy been doing?) on the floor and riffles through it, the clinking of metal signaling the contents are, in their majority, weapons. Eventually he crows in victory upon finding a mysterious something wrapped in brown paper, and thrusts his finding at Tobirama, who reflexively grabs it.
Peeling away the paper, he blinks at what he finds: a square, slightly misshapen green tea-cake, with an askew smiley face on it.
Madara grins at him, expertly peeling away the paper of his own tea-cake, “Izumi-san lets me grab as many as I want from the kitchens. Eating my favorite dessert always makes me feel a bit better,”
It’s such a childish, innocent notion, at odds with the arrow heads and explosive tags he can see peeking from the open gap of Madara’s bag, and yet--
“Thank you,” Tobirama says, surprised at honestly meaning it, “They’re my favorite too,”.
There’s no denying it anymore. Somehow, against his better judgement, against every single thing he’s been taught by life, and in between games of conkers, Tobirama’s managed to befriend his most hated enemy.
It is almost an ok thought.