Chapter Text
Madara is never ever telling that goof, but there’s a small part of his brain that’s convinced Hashirama is good luck.
Because soulmate timers are unreliable. It’s incontrovertible fact. Civilians complain because their timers shift: a random day down a random path suddenly adds two weeks or dawdling in your favorite tea shop suddenly cuts off months for no reason. Civilians make entire productions out of trying to understand what actions cause which results while charlatans divine what you should do to meet your soulmate quickly.
For shinobi it’s different: all too often the timer fades to a shifting set of gray numbers as your partner is cut down somewhere else - your only recourse to wait and try again in the next life. Other times that gray dead end is what your born with. And shinobi run missions, even if you are lucky enough to have colored numbers, nearly every mission resets the timer. Even if soulmates weren’t considered questionable in a world where you can only trust your clan, the timers would be useless for a shinobi.
They’re unreliable. Except—
Except Madara’s isn’t. Not anymore. Madara’s has been a steady crawl downward since that first meeting where he and Hashirama exchanged names. Since they became friends. A few days forward, a few hours back, but steady.
It’s more than just good luck. It’s a sign. It has to be. Madara met the first friend to ever agree with his dream, and now his timer’s steady. This one rarity, this one thing Madara’s wanted but could barely bring himself to have faith in, and he might just get it.
So it’s Hashirama’s doing. Somehow.
Not that Madara will ever tell the idiot that.
(It’s bad luck for shinobi to talk about their timers anyway, he figures. The gods laugh at hope.)
.
It’s a random day at the river when Madara realizes the numbers have jumped again. Jumped forward, too.
By a lot.
Madara’s heart jumps into his throat when he sees that it’s less than a week from now. He doesn’t even remember the rest of that meeting clearly aside from a lot of crying on Hashirama’s part and a lot more flailing yelling on his own.
He barely notices their conversation about when they’ll next try to meet until “one week” pins his attention in place. He barely cuts off the urge to snap at Hashirama because he’ll be busy! but—
No. If they’re meeting in a week then he should do what he normally does, right? He should be where he’d normally be.
Just a week. It’s just a week.
.
Except his father finds out. Izuna had followed him and his father knows, but he doesn’t know everything.
Not yet.
Some people cover their timers; Madara’s not one of them. But he’s sitting in seiza and his hands are on his knees and they can’t see the numbers on the inside of his wrist.
Why would they even look, after all?
Madara’s not a natural liar. He doesn’t have the right temperament for it and there’s not much point outside missions, but he is a genius and this matters.
He knows the Senju and Uchiha are similar in the ways that all successful shinobi are similar. If Madara’s here, in this room, with his father, then he’ll stand still for a blade if Hashirama isn’t the same.
Madara knows where he’s expected to be in a week.
And now he knows what that means.
.
Madara lies.
He lies ruthlessly and passionately and with every ounce of strategy he possesses. He lies with the truth: arguing that this is a chance to promote peace. He lies with falsity: twisting just enough information in just the right ways. He lies through Izuna’s surprise and his father’s abrupt interest, and he wins.
Madara walks away, gritting his teeth and looking unhappy, and Tajima begins planning how many extra shinobi they can spare to come to the river.
They’ll head out in six days. Not seven.
Madara slams the door to his room shut and heads for the restroom, hands shaking as he finally closes the door. He breathes, looking in the mirror, somehow unsurprised to see red eyes where black should be, and then he finally looks at his wrist.
The timer has added on years.