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raendown · 5 years

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A brief interlude in to the Senju compound!

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Chapter: 6/18 Word count: 1707 Summary: When Tobirama is exiled from the Senju clan without warning, without even the chance to plead his case, it feels like his life is over. What does he have to live for now without his older brother to believe in him? Captured by the Uchiha in his moment of weakness, Tobirama slowly learns to live again with the last people on earth he would have ever expected to care for - or to fall in love with.

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KO-FI in the blog header!

Chapter 6

She was twirling a blade between her fingers when she sauntered in to the room. Not a kunai because she was always very serious about how she treated the weapons that protected her own life and others’ during battle but instead a bare blade that had broken away from its handle, probably scooped up after it was shattered during some training session or another. She perched herself on the corner of his desk with a casual set to her mouth and a razor sharp focus in her eyes, hard as agates.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” she noted. “Is it because you’ve been thinking about what a massive fucking prick you are or is it because you’ve been wondering what other terrible decisions you might have made in your life?”

Hashirama lifted his brush away from the letter he had been composing and carefully set it aside before the tremble of his fingers could ruin the elegant calligraphy.

“Did you need something, Touka?” he asked in a steady voice. When he dared to peer up at her his cousin was staring over his head just as she had been for the past several weeks, looking through him as though he wasn’t even there.

“I need you to pull your head out of your own ass.” Her answer made him sigh.

“Touka, don’t start again. I have the Nara on the cusp of an alliance. If I can sign a treaty with them then the Akimichi and the Yamanaka are sure to sign as well. That’s a lot of lives that could be saved but to do it I need to finish this letter.”

Lounging back over top of some very important papers, she sniffed dismissively. “Funny that, you worrying about saving lives when it was also you that threw the best of us away like trash.” With her eyes turned away she couldn’t have seen how his hands fisted against his knees and squeezed tightly, veins rising along his arms as his knuckles turned white.

“Don’t,” he warned her quietly.

“Oh, did I hit a sore spot? Well, terribly sorry if I don’t actually feel very sorry about that. You see, I’ve got this sore spot myself nowadays, this gaping hole in my chest where I should have two living cousins instead of one, and it’s your fault he isn’t here.” Touka’s head snapped down to bore her heavy gaze in to his own. “I hope you were prepared when you made that decision to live with it because I won’t forgive you for this, Hashirama. I won’t. Not if we both live to be a hundred; I will never forgive you for sending him away.”

Staying calm was hard but Hashirama had been getting rather good at clinging to his own sanity lately. He forced his spine to stay straight and his voice not to waver.

“Tobirama”–they both flinched at the name–“desecrated the graves of children. He was discovered at the scene, committing the deed, and there is research in his laboratory to prove it was done with intent, not by accident. There is only so much–”

“Discovered by who? Were you there, oh mighty clan leader? Did you see this evidence with your own eyes?”

“Not the research, no. I…I could not bring myself to…”

“We’ve had this conversation a dozen times and your answers never get any smarter, you know that?” With a tired shake of her head, Touka lifted herself off the desk and turned away. When she reached the door she paused to speak over her shoulder without looking back. “We follow you, my lord, because we believe in your judgment. Because we believe you care about those you lead. What is there to believe in when a man will send his own brother away to die?”

Hashirama took a moment to breathe around the emotions that flooded through him at her words before he was able to gather himself enough to ask, “Did you come here for anything else?”

“You wanted to know when the patrols came back. Nothing unusual to report…my lord.”

She left without a reply, her duty done.

Once she was out of sight Touka stormed down the hallway as quietly as she could, not wanting her cousin to hear just how badly she was still affected by the situation, but she didn’t make it far. Mito sat in the living room calmly darning a pair of socks. By the time Touka saw her it was too late; she’d been spotted herself and there was nowhere to run.

“You are too hard on him,” Mito told her. Touka snarled.

“He sent my baby cousin out to die. His own brother!”

“There is no evidence that Tobirama has died.”

“Bull shit!” Forgetting herself, she neglected to lower her volume as she released the beast that hovered always just under the surface these days. “I tracked his path for hours. I saw which direction he went, saw the footsteps and the patterns and I’m no Inuzuka but I know an Uchiha stench when I smell it. His tracks were there and then they weren’t. He’s gone, Mito. My cousin is dead.”

Her matriarch lifted one stern eyebrow. “Then where is the body? Where are the celebrating Uchiha taunting us with their kill? You know as well as anyone how fast he can disappear when he wants to. There are a hundred other places he might be.”

“I WANT HIM HERE,” Touka screamed, her composure breaking entirely. “He belongs here! And your rat of a husband sent him away! Turned him out with nothing to die unarmed, thinking he was unloved!” Her fists tightened just enough to remind her of the blade she held, sharp against the skin of her palm just like the blade Hashirama had sunk deep in her heart.

“That was not my husband’s intention,” Mito said.

“Yeah well the road to hell and all that.” Touka turned her head to spit, uncaring of the rich carpet beneath their feet. She ignored it when the other woman narrowed her eyes with distaste.

Setting aside her knitting, Mito folded her elegant hands in her lap and lifted her chin until she looked nothing less than the princess she had been back in Uzushio. A gentlelady and a warrior both, she could have leapt across the room and torn out Touka’s throat in an instant if she wanted. Instead she kept her eyes steady and her voice gentle despite the undertone of steel in every syllable.

“You presume much and you accuse more. How many patrols have gone and come back in the past five weeks?”

“Uh…a lot?” Touka faltered at the sudden question, seemingly so off topic. “A lot more than usual, anyway.”

“And where have they gone?”

“Everywhere? They’re running double time around the borders and I know we’ve got scouts out to check on almost every clan we have even a tentative alliance with. What does any of that have to do with this shit?”

“If you think for even a moment that Hashirama has truly forsaken his brother then you have not been paying attention.” One brow raised to add an extra edge to her words, Mito picked up her needles and resumed darning socks as though they were talking about nothing important.

Touka stared, her jaw hanging loose. “He’s…”

“As I said, there are a hundred other places that he might have gone.”

“He…he was the one who sent Tobes away in the first place.”

“And if you found someone with their fingers in little Kawarama’s grave?” Mito asked softly. “Would you have been rational and waited for an explanation?”

It was a damn good question, one she didn’t want to answer. She didn’t need to.

“Mistakes were made. Should not every man have a chance to remedy the things they’ve done wrong? And believe me, my husband is more aware than you could possibly know of how wrong his actions were. He does not need your reminders.”

Unable to listen, Touka spun on her heel and rushed back in the other direction, not wanting to be so much as a step closer to Mito as the moment. Her intention had been to slip out the back door of the home but to get there her path took her up the hall again and passed Hashirama’s office. Her footsteps slowed and came to a stop for her to stare inside at the image of a broken man.

Hashirama held his head in both hands, the letter he had been writing completely ruined by the tears falling through his fingers, shoulders trembling with emotion. Watching him break down in the privacy of his home made her wonder how he managed to appear to be so calm in public. It made her wonder why. Why had he done it in the first place? What was it that stopped him from mourning in public or showing regret for his decision? Her cousin had never been a prideful man, he had never been afraid to admit to his mistakes. Only two things had ever forced him to rein in his own reactions and one of them had been Tobirama himself, forever exasperated as he guided his brother towards more appropriate public behavior. The other had been the rare time when Hashirama did not want someone to see him feel. She wondered who he could possibly be afraid of seeing him mourn.

Slowly, carefully, Touka reached out to pull the door of the office closed, doing her best to stay silent and not disturb the man inside. If she had been wrong about Hashirama she was still too angry to face it. When she was calm she would come here again and ask her questions but for now she needed to be elsewhere, she needed to be somewhere comforting.

Never had she been more grateful to be the only person Tobirama even entrusted with the key to his ward seals. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in the corner of his private laboratory and pretend that everything was fine, that if she only waited long enough he would come home for dinner like a stray cat that finally wanders back to the place where he belonged.

#rae writes #tobirama #touka #hashirama #mito #fanfiction

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