Chapter Text
Blood, mayhem, screaming. A battlefield carried the same signs of carnage, even when those warring with one another were born, bred and raised to fight and die silently. But there was no stealth involved when the Uchiha and Senju found one another.
The crows circled in the sky, anticipating a rich feast when the shinobi concluded their clash for the day. They didn’t care for victor and defeated, all dead flesh would taste the same.
To Hashirama, the battlefield always narrowed down to a single being in existence; Madara. The ever-present thorn in his side, the one Uchiha peerless among his own in terms of power. The only one to stand against his mokuton.
They were destined to meet in each of these clashes, and only they decided the outcome. It was not the limits of their powers that proclaimed the end; rather, the position and condition of those that fought at their side. Whoever lost the most clan-members tended to retreat first.
That’s how it had always been. At least, until this day.
The blood on his hands was not his own; it was Tobirama’s. His brother had fought with Izuna, little brother to Madara. The Uchiha had won. Hashirama could shed no tears; not like this, not for his last brother, who had just slipped from life in his arms.
He got to his feet, Tobirama resting on the ground. He’d never rise to chide Hashirama’s lack of ruthlessness again.
Across the field, Izuna’s blade dripped with blood. Tobirama’s blood. The last of his brothers, the last of his blood, the last person that Hashirama had held onto and protected throughout each battle. His last shred of hope, if you will.
Enough. He would end the clan that took so much from him. Every last Uchiha would die here, today.
His chakra cracked the ground, a network of thin fault lines splitting the very earth apart.
For a moment, Madara wondered if he went deaf. There was a particular kind of silence on the battlefield; the loud kind that got left behind by the sudden cut off of noise.
Then he nearly stumbled when he felt an intense pressure crush down on his head. He caught himself before he fell but his clansmen weren’t strong enough - some of them fell entirely, dropping their weapons. Some fell to their knees and vomited.
Madara didn’t wait. He whirled around and found Hashirama in an instant, and the air was punched out of him when he saw where he was. He was standing and at his feet was a crumpled body in blue armor. White-haired.
Tobirama.
But how -? Madara knew the answer before he even finished his thought. There was only one other person aside from himself who could challenge Senju Tobirama. Izuna stood a short distance away from his body, clutching his sword tightly, unmoving as he stared at Hashirama.
“…Izuna,” Madara breathed. The pressure was heavy enough that he felt weighted down, like he was walking underwater. “Izuna!”
His brother wasn’t moving. He was just looking at Hashirama, locked into animal stillness.
Madara leapt to his brother’s side and shoved him. “Run,” he told him harshly as he raised his sickle in Hashirama’s direction. “Izuna - run!”
There would be no place in this world far enough away from Hashirama for Izuna to run to. There was no sound in his ears, no thought in his head but the unbearable pain in his heart.
Hashirama didn’t know if he was screaming or not, he didn’t know if anyone else was; it didn’t matter. His chakra ballooned out, seeped into the ground, sent it into a rumble that would give an earthquake nightmares. He sealed without thought. This time, nothing mattered that was on the field. His clan would be stupid to get in the way of his wrath. If they wanted to live, they’d retreat. Hashirama had never lost control over himself, but he’d also never lost a brother since obtaining his powers. Powers that, unmatched as it was, still wasn’t enough to protect the one person he’d vowed never to lose.
The trembling ground produced writhing roots, thicker than a man’s body. They whipped long furrows into the ground. Anyone unfortunate enough to not avoid them would become a smear of bloodied mud.
The forest erupted into a writhing wall of livid wood behind the Uchiha’s side of the battlefield.
There was the deep roar of heaving earth, the sound of splitting wood, and the battlefield split apart into a nightmare. Men screamed as they were speared through by thick branches. Bodies were pulled apart as black thorns sprouted inside them. Thick, heavy-petaled flowers budded and released noxious pollen that coated everything in poison sleep.
Madara lost sight of Izuna. He wanted to run after him but that wouldn’t help him. He had to trust his brother to survive, to be strong when the very forest wanted to tear him apart - and Madara had something he needed to do.
There was a circle around him, he noticed, a space where the trees did not grow, where there were no flowers, and Hashirama’s chakra was harsh and fierce like the sea before a storm, but it wasn’t anything he was unused to. Wind buffeted Madara’s hair back but he simply gripped his sickle tighter and leapt towards the center of the chaos.
“Hashirama!” he shouted. Fire poured from his mouth and burnt the trees where they grew, scorched them down to their roots. He was unafraid of the reaching branches, and he was desperate. “Hashirama, enough!”
They’d always fought, of course. But there’d been an unspoken agreement between the two of them - that they could both decimate each other’s clansmen like so many children, but they wouldn’t. That they would only fight each other. This wasn’t battle anymore. This was a slaughter.
Enough? Enough what, blood shed? There could not be. No amount of life given would equate to Tobirama being torn from his side. No amount of Uchiha blood would clean the wound left raw and open in Hashirama’s heart.
He never thought revenge could satisfy him, but he was willing to try it out. Madara was close to him now, but he was no longer an opponent. He was merely an obstacle. One that Hashirama should never have let delay the Senju victory for so long.
“Enough?”
The wood battled through the flames, chased Madara, grew to cage him.
“Yes. This ends today. It will be enough when I put an end to this war. And every war to come.” He should have listened to Tobirama. He should have done this months ago.
“By killing them all?” Madara demanded. A tree reached for him, its branches grasping like claws, and he cut it apart with a vicious slash of his sickle. He spun in place, his eyes blazing. “I won’t let you!”
The blue ribs of Susano’o curled around him, forming a protective barrier that denied Hashirama’s expanding forest. Flame-wreathed fists crushed trees, swept aside twisting vines, and smashed through wood and roots. Madara pulled a struggling Uchiha out from where he was being crushed and he roared at him. “Run!”
His clan was fleeing the battlefield. He didn’t know what the Senju were doing. Madara pushed through the thicket, his hair whipping around his face, his face starkly lit up by the alien glow of his chakra. “Hashirama! There is no point to this - you know this!”
Hashirama was not listening. He signed for the wood golem and it rose up, the dragon wreathed about its shoulders roaring.
There was no point to continuing a battle that he could win. And Hashirama had held off on his victory for the sake of what? A friendship that could never bloom?
Foolish. Foolish children committing to foolish promises. No more.
“Tobirama…” he’d been right. And now he was dead. Because of Hashirama’s negligence.
The burned stumps around Madara exploded with new vigor to assault him.
There was no point in trying to reach him. Madara set his jaw grimly and ignored the aching pain in his eyes as he pushed Susano’o to its strongest form. In moments, he was perched on its head, and level with Hashirama’s grief-ravaged face.
He could lose. If he did, perhaps he’d die too.
Madara accepted that fact. If it bought even one more Uchiha time to escape, if it bought time for Izuna to run… then it was worth it. They would regroup eventually and find a way to weather even Hashirama’s wrath.
Susano’o lifted its sword for a devastating strike. Madara braced himself.
The wood golem raised his arm to block, the dragon rearing back to strike. This time, Hashirama wouldn’t make it a fair back and forth; this time, he’d end this with every ounce of power he had.
-x-
When the Susano’o shattered, Hashirama knew the battle was only a matter of seconds from over. Finally. Madara had kept him far too busy to destroy the Uchiha, but he’d paid a hefty price for it. His defeat, once and for all. And without him, nothing would stop the Senju from claiming a bloody and final victory. Every other clan that defied Senju rule would follow the Uchiha footsteps of extinction, should they resist.
The giant fell apart. Hashirama could see the small figure far below, on the ground. Madara, a stain of black and red. He deserved a better death than the rest; a clean one. Hashirama descended, a blade in hand, the sage chakra still lining his face receding, the earth trembling beneath his step as he left his wood golem behind. The sky had torn itself into a stormy black, above them, the battlefield was only shared with the dead and the devastation now. Even the crows had fled this scene.
Hashirama stood over Madara.
For the first time in hours, Madara’s back touched the ground.
He didn’t move when Hashirama approached him. He was too drained. His skull pounded miserably and his vision kept blurring out, occasionally going black entirely. He didn’t know if it was just exhaustion, or something worse.
When Hashirama stood over him, his sword at the ready, Madara just sighed. This was it, then.
“It’s… an honor, to die at your hand,” he said. There was a wetness to his voice, a soft gurgle that might have been blood. He tasted copper. “Won’t it be enough… to just kill me?”
A life for a life. One brother for another.
Madara’s hand twitched towards Hashirama, then fell back down again. This was as far as he could go. A part of him was saddened in a dull, distant way. Izuna had been right to warn him against making peace. The Senju… Hashirama… were fallible. Kill their loved ones, and even the best of them would eventually fall to the dark.
Some dreams were better left as that. Dreams.
“Let my life be enough, Hashirama.”
The sword rested heavy against his palm and fingers. It wouldn’t take much to bring it down on Madara. Through his chest, pierce his heart. Cut his neck, take off his head. He could even ram it through his bloodied face, should he choose to.
But Hashirama’s rage waned in the face of Madara’s readiness to give his own life. For his brother, in turn.
“Madara…”
His chakra, the terrible thing that had warped the world around them, clung to Hashirama alone now, no longer forcing the forest and ground to turn against the Uchiha.
A raindrop hit Madara’s cheek as the skies slowly opened up to a downpour.
Hashirama knelt beside his former friend, the sword stuck in the muddy soil, not Madara’s body.
There was nothing he could say, nothing he could feel but empty sorrow. Just as when he’d lost Kawarama, just like when he’d found Itama. A broken sob escaped him, then another, and soon, rain and tears stained Hashirama’s face, washing it clean of dirt and blood.
He waited, but the final blow never came. When Hashirama began to sob, Madara turned his head enough to look at him.
“You’re…crying,” he rasped. His hand twitched, and he dragged it up until it rested on his knee. A part of him could understand - if it had been Izuna who’d fallen, his wrath and sorrow would have overtaken him too. But would he have killed Hashirama, if he could?
…he didn’t know.
Hashirama had every chance to kill him, and yet he sobbed over him instead. What did that mean?
You can’t see what people are really thinking. You can’t look into their guts.
But when it came to the final choice… didn’t they show their true natures?
Madara’s vision was going dark and he felt cold in the rain. “Hashirama,” he whispered, his hand twitching into a squeeze, “…you are… too kind… thank you.”
His eyes slid shut.
Hashirama stayed where he was, at Madara’s side. Even long after the rain stopped. The only movement was his hand on Madara’s arm, making sure he stayed alive as Hashirama considered what all of this meant. What he should do.
He could end this clash with the Uchiha, with finality, and without giving the world another brother’s broken heart.
When the rain stopped, Hashirama lifted the prone body before him in his arms. Madara would make for a potent enough prisoner to end all Uchiha aggression. Without him, they would never dare attack again. They stood no chance against him.
But to kill Madara would inspire the entire next generation to vengeance, and so, Hashirama was going to have to think of a more creative solution.
After Tobirama’s funeral.