Chapter Text
Madara didn’t know what made him look.
Hashirama might still proclaim to be his friend—and he was, in some abstract way that Madara couldn’t ever hope to be able to explain—but it was arguably the height of stupidity to take your eyes off your opponent. Even more so when your opponent was as excitable and thus unpredictable and erratic as the latest Senju clan head. But despite it all, Madara’s eyes were drawn away from Hashirama’s grinning face and-
“IZUNA!”
In an instant, Madara was across the battlefield, evading wayward attacks with ease until he dropped to his knees at his brother’s side, helplessly trying to stem the blood gushing from a gaping wound between Izuna’s ribs with shaking hands.
“No, no, no. Izuna,” Madara’s voice broke when his brother coughed up blood, lips moving with no sound getting past but a wet wheeze that chilled Madara to the bone. “Come on, Izuna. Don’t do this to me, please,” Madara begged while Izuna clung to the collar of his battle robe with a rapidly weakening grip. “I can’t lose you, too.”
“Madara…” Hashirama landed next to the Uchiha brothers, but his words were cut off when Madara greeted him with his teeth bared in a feral snarl while his blurring eyes stayed focused on his brother’s too-pale face. “Go away, Hashirama.”
“Madara, I can-” Hashirama tried again, only to get interrupted by the demon himself.
“No.” It was said without any inflection, but this, more than anything else, provoked Madara to raise his eyes from Izuna’s tortured expression.
Hashirama had tried to pass by his wretched brother to heal Izuna but was held back by the arm across his chest. If Madara were willing to suspect the demon had any human emotions in the first place, the depth of his red eyes might have hidden something vaguely resembling compassion, maybe even regret. But as he tilted his head in consideration, his life-less face was as undisturbed by the micro-expressions of emotions as the mirror-like surface of a deep lake.
“If you want your brother to live—if you want him safe— then you’ll accept Anija’s final offer for peace.”
At this moment, Madara realised Izuna had told the truth about his self-proclaimed rival and that he hadn't ever laid eyes upon anyone as inhuman as Senju Tobirama—spouting calm demands as his sword still dripped Izuna's blood. All Madara could hear was the telltale rush in his ears that spoke of fire and destruction, of blind rage ready to consume the world. How dare this bastard, this devil in disguise, tell Madara what to do? How dare he try to leverage Izuna’s life against Madara?
“Tobi…” Hashirama started again tentatively. This time, though, he broke off without being silenced. His eyes focused intently on the demon’s face, who continued staring Madara down with his bloody sword still in hand, Izuna’s life essence trickling from it just like it did from the wound inflicted by the very same steel. Madara’s vision bled red, and the demon dropped his gaze in favour of staring his clan head down. “Do it.”
“I-” Hashirama hesitated as if he could taste Madara’s blood lust in the air.
“Do it, Anija, for there won’t be any chance after today,” the demon said with an almost careless nod to Madara’s slain brother before he turned around and left his back open to Madara as he stepped away at a sedate pace, commanding the Senju forces with a lazy handwave. The callousness almost drove Madara insane with the need to stake his prey—to wet his hands, his teeth, with its blood—but he wouldn’t abandon his brother. Not now, not ever.
As soon as the demon was out of sight and no immediate threat to his gravely injured brother anymore, Madara eventually deigned Hashirama with his attention, Izuna still clutched close to his chest, the sound of laboured breaths an impending requiem at his ear. “You would dare?”
Hashirama hesitated but then visibly straightened in determination. “Tobirama is right, though. You never accepted my offers before. This might be the only way. And our last chance.”
The underlying accusation made Madara speechless, a single moment of stillness surrounding them as Madara was thrown by the audacity of the man he had once believed to be his friend. They once shared the same dream of peace where their remaining brothers would be safe.
When their warmongering fathers died, and they took over the respective duties of clan head for their clans, Madara had believed the moment to be right, his quiet but consistent efforts at bringing the clan around to his dream to bear fruits at long last but-
“You spouted nonsense of peace since you were a child without power. How could I accept your ‘offer’ when, as soon as you got power," Madara sneered in barely contained rage, "it was merely words spewed on a battlefield trenched in my clan’s blood? There was never anything tangible about your peace!”
It had been a topic of strife between himself and his clan.
Madara had ached for peace since he had to bury his siblings one by one. When they'd met as children, he had thought he wanted it almost as much as Hashirama, but as they grew older, Madara had to realise that Hashirama’s actions spoke louder than his childish words, and they didn’t speak of peace. Every single one of Hashirama’a actions ever since he'd become clan head was a nail to the coffin of Madara’s dream and a log on the stake the Uchiha council would burn him on after he had tried to prime the Uchiha for peace that he had been sure to achieve as soon as Hashirama would take over the Senju.
A peace that never came.
With his Sharingan active, Madara could easily spot the wince Hashirama tried to suppress in response to his truth, but he didn’t care for the small victory. Not when his most precious person was dying in his arms, breaths already growing weaker.
“This could be something tangible, though?” Hashirama implored, stepping carefully closer with his hands still glowing green but, for once in his life, sensible enough not to step into Madara’s personal space to reach for Izuna. “So tell me, my fr- tell me, Madara: Will there be peace between our clans?”
The red haze blurring Madara’s vision distorted the green of Hashirama’s visible chakra, and only then did he realise his eyes had developed into the Mangekyou Sharingan without his notice, tears of blood streaming down his face and obscuring his true tears. His eyes flicked down to his brother’s face, terrified of having missed his passing without witnessing the soul passing over into the Pure Lands, but Izuna was still drawing breath, eyes still unseeing but not blinded by death.
Apparently, the emotional turmoil of seeing his brother—the focal point of his Sharingan—like this was already straining enough on his chakra system to develop their clan’s kekkei genkai’s rumoured final stage and in a split second, Madara decided he wouldn’t stick around to find out what would come next. There was no doubt in his mind that Izuna’s actual death would send him spiralling in a way never seen before, not even among the hot-blooded Uchiha.
“Peace,” Madara agreed, voice flat and eyes on his on his brother rather than the man he’d once thought to be a friend. “As long as Izuna lives.”
Hashirama closed his eyes, shoulders sagging with a heavy exhale that belied the tension he had carried, and set to work. Madara watched with his improved vision how the wound at Izuna's side closed, and colour came back to his face as his breathing became easier.
When the green around Hashirama’s hands flickered out, Madara raised to his feet, keeping his merely sleeping brother close to his chest as he turned around and followed after his quiet clan without glancing back.
Izuna would live. He might feel crippled by peace and the remainder of his injury, but he’d live.
For now.