Chapter Text
It’s raining.
He can feel each drop like ice against his cooling skin. It would feel nice, if not for the fact that it’s not clean, the smoke from the battle field mixing with the falling drops and leaving smears across his paling skin. He has lived most of his life in war and this one irritation, this one bit of frustration stands out the most.
He’d laugh at the thought if his chest didn’t feel like it is slowly being caved in. The blade piercing his armor into his lung might also have something to do with that feeling as well.
Blood wells up in his throat and he coughs weakly, pain distant as the world starts to fade a little with each minute that passes. He can only hope he did enough. That his sacrifice won’t be in vain and that his students managed to get away.
Around him, the rain falls harder, hissing gently and underneath the sound, the soft crunch of foot falls over gravel announce the arrival of someone come to watch him die. He might have once felt bitter, but…well, he doesn’t really feel much anymore. He hasn’t in a long time.
Like a wraith in the grey shadows of the storm, the shadowed figure sharpens and dark eyes stare down at him from a face lined with age and pinched with hatred. Angry triumph stares down at him and if he’s hallucinating, then he might as well play along with his mind’s final moments.
“Come to watch me die, Uchiha?” he asks bitterly, mouth twisting sardonically around a cough before he settles back against the cold ground. Rain clears the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
“You deserve worse,” Madara hisses down at him, gripping the gunbai in his hand but he doesn’t swing. What’s the point? He’s dying either way. Faster would only end his suffering sooner.
He actually laughs at that, a bitter sound that is wrenched out of his chest and leaves him gasping for breath. “You can’t kill someone who’s been dead for years now,” he gets out between gasping breaths.
“What are you talking about?” Madara hisses and he can hear the creak of leather over the rain as his hand tightens over the handle of his gunbai. The mind is an amazing thing to create such detail, even on the verge of death.
Lifting arms that feel weaker than he’s ever felt in his life, he clumsily reaches for the wooden beads of the bracelet he wears, has always worn for years now. The slide of wood across skin, aided by the rain, is barely felt. Even the pain in his chest is fading.
The seals carved into the wooden beads flash faintly in the grey light and as his hand falls back to the ground, his wrist bared, the henge that always hid part of him falls. A familiar symbol appears, faded…greyed by time and death, standing out starkly against the pale skin of his wrist. “I’ve been dead for a long time Uchiha,” he mutters, eyes blinking heavily as he turns to look up at the heavy clouds. “My body just didn’t realize,” he murmurs, a despairing joke that falls flat.
“This…this is a trick,” Madara growls, hand reaching down to grip his wrist, pulling his arm up harshly, gloved fingers running over the mark but it’s permanent. He was born with it and he’ll die with it.
“Looks like you were right all along, Uchiha. Only a monster could kill their own soulmate,” he huffs out. He has no tears to give. He grieved for decades, sought penance in the only ways he knew how. And now…here on this desolate battle field, so far from anything that remotely looks like home, he will die with ash in his mouth and a blade through his lung.
Madara releases his arm like it burned him, eyes wide with shock. “Can…,” he coughs weakly. “Can I ask one favor?” he asks, though he doubts the man, this hallucination, will do anything for him but the worst he could say is no and he doesn’t have anything left to lose.
“What?” Madara snaps, a snarl twisting his face.
“Can you tell me about him?” he asks weakly, still staring bleakly up at the clouds.
“Why should I do anything for you, Senju?” he snarls.
“You don’t have to. I simply asked. Maybe it’s pointless, but I had to ask, if only the once,” he mumbles, feeling a heaviness settle over his body. It’s not much longer now.
Silence hangs over them but he doesn’t look at his hallucination. Finally, Madara moves, shifting to sit heavily in the mud beside his head. “He was my youngest brother…” Madara whispers, voice nearly lost in the hiss of the rain.
Tobirama lets his eyes fall closed as he listens to Madara talk about his brother…about Izuna. His consciousness fades to the sound of the rain and a murmuring voice and falls away into darkness.
His body is never found on that battle field, despite people sent to recover it. All they find is his happuri, carelessly thrown aside and wooden beads carved with seals. Were any to check an abandoned and over grown cemetery, they’d find a new grave next to one dug decades before. The headstone is blank, but then, no one comes to leave offerings, so it’s pointless.