1: The distance between us

It feels like an eternity since he's done this last—staking out his targets in the dark in the manner typical of shinobi, gathering intelligence in the shadows to the background of the cicadas of early spring. The only difference between now and then is the knowledge that he is safe within village boundaries and not in the midst of enemy territory. It's almost enough to lull him into a sense of security.

But his target tonight is far from ordinary. By the same token, neither is he. The forest shrouds him as one of their own, the child of the forest that he is, until he is indistinguishable from the scenery. This extra precaution is not unwarranted; his target knows him just as well as he knows his target.

He hasn't taken the time to admire the shimmering lights of the night sky since the founding of the village almost a year ago.

Among other things, it's just something else to regret.

The incongruous creak of a gate draws his attentions from the heavens back down to the earth. A figure in black emerges from behind a door and he feels a momentary sorrow that no one has taken note of these secret excursions until now. No one has stopped him from leaving, and no one knows if this departure will be the last; no one cares.

He shows his concern in the imperceptible, slow growth of roots beneath shuffling sandals, and with impeccable timing, pushes up.

Hashirama Senju ensnares Madara Uchiha in the most overplanned, blown-out-of-proportion version of a prank in almost a decade, and it's almost a waste of his best shunshin when he tackles his best friend to the ground. Not that he needs the help—the root did trip him up pretty well.

It's a testament to Madara's reflexes that Hashirama just narrowly manages to derail the kunai speeding towards his neck with his sword. It doesn't surprise him at all to find that he's staring into the blood-red gaze of the Mangekyō Sharingan. He meets Madara's gaze unflinchingly; the kunai was superfluous. "What the—Hashirama?"

"Madara," Hashirama says, making sure to wear his sternest look, but he's self-aware enough to admit that it comes out looking more like a pout. The fact that Madara hasn't yet withdrawn his weapon doesn't escape his attention. The hollow, gaping feeling returns and Hashirama returns his sword to its sheath first with deliberate care. "I'm disappointed in you. Have you been slacking? You should've seen me coming a mile away."

Madara goggles at him before finally withdrawing his kunai. "You ambushed me to—to test my skills?"

"No, I came to drag you back to the village," Hashirama huffs, pushing off of Madara's chest to move off him and offering his hand. He watches Madara bristle visibly at both his suggestion and at the outstretched hand. But he is gratified to find the feeling of a gloved hand in his own and he pulls Madara up and back onto his feet.

"Your effort is wasted here," Madara informs him, turning away to continue down the path out of the village. He knows Madara is too prideful to show Hashirama the anger in his expression, but he's never been good at keeping it out of his voice. He stifles a sigh and follows. "Besides, I've been doing this alone for the last three months and no one has ever stopped me."

"I'm doing it now," Hashirama says firmly. This has got to stop, he's let this go on for too long. This is the part of the conversation that he has been dreading for the three hours he's waited in the trees. Talking with Madara nowadays feels like treading on thin ice when it used to feel like a highlight. He misses it, their easy camaraderie, like an amputee misses a limb. "We can't be antagonizing—terrorizing—every neighboring clan that doesn't agree with us. We'll never gain their cooperation that way. It doesn't foster loyalty at all, just resentment."

Madara doesn't even spare him a glance. "They will fall into line. Between death and compliance, there is no real choice." He snorts, and a flicker of red diverts itself momentarily in his direction, derisive. "What is the point of all the power you wield if you don't even use it? Power will keep them in line, not some flimsy sense of loyalty. You can't trust loyalty."

For a brief moment, Hashirama hates himself and the power he has. The notes of resentment and envy reveal themselves clearly in Madara's voice because he wears his heart for everyone to hear in it. Is that how Madara truly feels? That on the day of their armistice, it was either truce with the Senju or die? More than anything else, Hashirama hates the notion that he has coerced Madara into accepting a false peace, mislead him into accepting a broken philosophy. Their peace was supposed to be the example, not based on a lie.

He has to fix this. He just doesn't know how, or if it's too late.

"There is power in conviction," Hashirama tells him, reaching out to place a hand on his armored shoulder, "you'll find that people will do more for you when they're willing, not subjugated. Ruling like a dictator is not an effective long-term strategy, Madara."

"I'm not interested in efficiency, you naïve fool, I'm interested in peace," Madara snarls at him, violently shrugging off his hand and increasing his pace to pull ahead and away from him. "If all you're going to do is nag me, go back to the village and leave me to my work. At least I'm doing something with my time to help the village, unlike you."

Nothing ever worth doing came easy. It took a decade to make peace with the Uchiha, and if it took a decade more to make peace with Madara, it would be a decade well-spent.

"If you think I'm going to leave you to fight alone, think again!" Hashirama sings after him, putting in a burst of speed, chakra pooling in his toes. "It'll be fun! We haven't gone on a mission together in ages, we can camp out together and stuff! Wait, who are we fighting again?"

Madara's frustration could probably be heard as far as Iwa.

"You're such a pest, Hashirama, go away!"

One of the things he likes most about Madara is that he's curious. And that's why while he's capable of maintaining a good, even commendable stony silence, he can't help but be the first one to break it, ironically enough. It makes teasing him several orders of magnitude more fun.

"How—how long were you waiting up in those trees, anyway?" The sound of Madara's voice after almost two hours of the cold shoulder washes over Hashirama like cool water to a parched man. In the corner of his eye, he sees Madara's shoulders slump with defeat as his own face brightens. "And is it really a good idea to leave the village unprotected?"

Hashirama gives him a flat stare. "Unprotected? Did you conveniently forget that we formed a settlement full of shinobi? They're hardly defenseless. The Senju and Uchiha are the strongest clans in the Land of Fire, not to mention the allied clans we've managed to gather under our banner."

"It just doesn't feel right leaving it without one of us in it to guard it," Madara says, crossing his arms. His intuition tells him that Madara isn't frustrated with Hashirama's unexpected company; it seems more like he's frustrated with himself. "I was fine leaving knowing you were there to guard it, but now that we're both out..."

"I'm flattered that you think so highly of my abilities," he says, and he really is, "but you have to admit, all these clans that we've gathered are pretty formidable. Trust them to do the hard work once in a while, hmm? Give them a chance to earn their keep." He can't help but let out a boisterous laugh—completely unwise for a ninja to do in the dead of night, but he doesn't care—and slings an arm around Madara's hunched shoulders. "You have to admit that you and I are the exception, not the standard."

Hashirama has known Madara long enough to recognize how the edges of Madara's eyes soften. "Yes, I suppose we are." He doesn't hold his gaze for long and he turns his head to stare at something far off in the trees. When he looks back, he's smirking. "I revise my question. Is it a good idea to leave the village in Tobirama's hands?"

"Uh," Hashirama says, letting Madara go and scratching the back of his head sheepishly, "if we finish this mission quickly, I'm sure that it'll be the same village we left..."

The huff from his left is what passes for Uchiha laughter, though it's pretty weak compared to the one he's familiar with. He's actually pretty over-the-moon to hear it, really. No matter how quiet it is. He hasn't heard Madara laugh in almost half-a-year and he's ashamed to admit that it's probably his fault, just like everything that he's let happen to Madara since their truce. The administration and expansion of the village has been consuming his time, but he finds it a pitiful excuse for neglecting his friend.

Madara hasn't been himself—and while Tobirama is fond of harping on about what a danger Madara is to the village with increasing fervor, it was only last night that that Tobirama had shown a significant measure of personal concern. His nightly escapades had reached Uchiha ears, and rumor had it that they were growing wary of their leader. Hashirama usually ignored his warnings and he'd been ready to dismiss it as unfounded, but—

He wouldn't have let himself be surprised like that. His ambush, no matter how well-planned out in advance, no matter how skilled Hashirama was, should have failed. Madara was a better sensor than himself, possibly better than even Tobirama on his best day. He should have seen Hashirama no matter how good his nature camouflage had been.

And that was why he refused to let Madara venture out into danger alone. By some miracle he'd escaped mortal danger so far, but shinobi achieved success—survived—by listening to their instincts, and Hashirama knows that something bad is going to happen soon.

Besides that, there was also the festering problem of Madara's self-imposed mission of warring against independent clans. It was politically detrimental, and though Madara hadn't threatened any powerful clans yet, he and Tobirama had already faced challenges fending off the demands for concessions from the broken clans. It was a double-edged sword—Hashirama would never tell Madara this on pain of death, but other clans grew to admire or fear Madara's strength and had come forward to negotiate their safety. But it ran entirely against his concept of peace through negotiation, and he would not sit idly and watch as Madara's warpath tore apart what little trust survived the Warring States Era.

In a way, Madara was right. Power expressed through violence was the loudest voice in the era they'd just left, and for a long time, it worked on a smaller scale with clan alliances. But what had been didn't have to be the template for what could be. Shinobi fought and as long as they had the power to, and he felt that they always would, for whatever causes they believed in to be right—it was simply who they were. But the entire point of the village system was to prevent them from fighting for such base needs as security, to turn their skills to something more productive like the well-being of others. He had hoped to turn shinobi from the mercenary tools of feudal lords to protectors.

He thought that they'd shared this point of view. Maybe he had before Hashirama had dropped the ball.

In truth, he has not the faintest idea about how to deal with this. It had already been a struggle to piece together how they'd even gotten to this point.

He had plenty of reasons to follow Madara out on his quest like the pest he claimed he was. He wouldn't be able to live with himself after if something had happened to him when he could have done something about it.

"So you didn't answer my question earlier," Hashirama ventures, briefly twisting around to adjust the Scroll of Seals on his back. "What clan are you warring against this time?"

"Don't pretend to care, I know you disapprove," Madara says, distant again. The toneless reprimand makes Hashirama's nose wrinkle involuntarily. "But it's the Hagoromo. They've been making threats to dam the water supply to the village unless we entertain their foolish notion of trading for food."

"The Hagoromo?" Hashirama repeats, thinking back to their first meeting and the body floating down the river. It was a clan name that had crossed his desk only a few times in recent months, mostly from the regular security reports. They were, by all indication, a rather harmless clan. They had no remarkable bloodline of their own or secret techniques except perhaps their affinity for Water Release, but they had always managed to hold their position at the head of the river system, which gave them a geopolitical strength to compensate for their lack of unique ninjutsu, which was a virtue all on its own. Their river base likely explained the body they'd seen that day. But he doesn't remember anything about a trade negotiation. Perhaps he's just been behind in reports. "I don't see why we shouldn't negotiate. It's not as if they're demanding food from us and it's not like we don't have other sources of water. They're offering a trade, right?"

Madara's sudden halt and Hashirama's inattention cause their shoulders to collide, and the red ceramic plates of their armor clatter against each other, discordant. "Negotiate?" He thinks he can see the flyaway strands of Madara's hair stand up with his fury. His expression is nothing if not the very definition of disgust. "I cannot believe you—if it weren't for me or, and I hate to say it, Tobirama, you would rend the village to pieces to appease anyone who asks." By the way that Madara's fingers inch towards his hair, he might be missing more than a few strands by the end of this mission. "It's the principle of the matter! They have no right to demand anything of us! If anything, we have the strength to command them!"

He sighs, reaching out to pry Madara's gloved hands from his hair. Amusing as Tobirama's reaction might be to the appearance of bald patches, he thinks Madara would thrash him later for not stopping him. "Sorry, sorry," he says, holding his hands firmly in his own to keep him from throttling him. "Just promise me that we'll talk first, ninjutsu later?"

Madara gives him no promises but a pointed silence as he stares at their joined hands. Then he yanks them out of his grip, crossing his arms again and continuing down the path without looking to see if Hashirama is following. "Fine. But do not blame me if they end up a few ninja short of a clan."

"It really is good to get out more often," he hums, cheek resting on his palm as he watches Madara chew through his dry rations bar. It's three hours to sunrise and Madara has decided on a short nap before they lose the cover of night. "Is that why you've been going out? You miss nature?"

Madara looks up at him with suspicion. He doesn't even attempt to hide it either, classic Madara. "Is this your poor attempt at fishing for information?" It's a strange time to be eating breakfast, but he finishes it and moves back to recline against the base of the tree, closing his eyes. "The village isn't so developed that I would consider it separate from nature, so no. I do not miss the fresh air." He cracks open an eye. "I get enough freshness from you, anyway."

"I—" Really, he could cry. He's teasing him again. You never really know what you're missing until it's gone. He opens his mouth to tell him that 'I've been a model friend, I don't know what you're talking about!' and promptly clamps his mouth shut because he hasn't been. Instead, he says, "Well, I'll prove how respectable I am by taking first watch."

It's clearly not the response that Madara expected. He can tell by the pinch of his brow as he thinks this over. "No, get some sleep."

"You don't trust the village's safety without one of us there but you're fine with our safety with both of us unconscious?"

Madara scowls. "I'll summon something, you idiot." He makes the summoning seals required for a summoning jutsu and slams his hand on the ground, producing a puff of smoke characteristic of the technique. The smoke clears shortly to reveal a hawk of pure white, its pinions streaked with black. The overall effect is rather regal and it helps that the hawk is a little over two feet tall. The look Madara gives it is—well, he would call it adoring if it wasn't Madara he was trying to describe. "Randori, keep watch."

The bird, Randori, clicks its beak in the affirmative and beats its great wings once, twice, before taking off to land in Madara's hair, messing it up playfully before finally taking off past the trees and into the sky. He looks rather disgruntled by the end of it, but Hashirama has to admit that he looks rather fond in spite of the bird's antics.

"Really? 'Catch'?" He sinks further down against the tree; containing his mirth is a futile endeavor. "You really aren't good with names, so unimaginative."

Madara throws up his hands. "It's impossible to talk with you!"

"I haven't seen that bird around," Hashirama manages to say through his laughter. He thinks he'll always treasure the memory of Randori making a literal bird's nest out of Madara's already-unruly hair. It's a pity that he doesn't have the Sharingan and all its associated memory benefits. "I think I would remember a hawk as beautiful as that and with such a personality, too."

"I've had her since—" Madara freezes, a shadow passing over his features that has nothing to do with the clouds passing over the moon. Hashirama immediately regrets his comment and opens his mouth to apologize because he knows what's coming, but Madara continues over him. "She was Izuna's. Then she was mine."

Sometimes Hashirama feels every bit the idiot his brother accuses him of being. "She's in good hands, then," Hashirama manages at last, looking down at his knees. "And she'll take good care of you."

"Hm," Madara says after a while, reaching up to smooth his hair down again. Hashirama breathes a sigh of relief—he isn't offended. "You don't have an animal summon? I've never seen you summon an animal in all of the battles we've had together." And we've had many battles, he doesn't say.

"Not unless you like Rashōmons," Hashirama says, his hands making a chopping motion mimicking the fall of gates from the sky.

He thinks he's getting better at making him laugh.

Hashirama wakes to the sensation of being kicked in the ribs. It doesn't hurt because the offending limb is targeting his chest plate, but the rhythmic thumps do make an effective alarm clock. He sits up and is met with an unimpressed face.

"We're late." They're not late at all. It's barely past dawn. "Come on."

He sighs, hopping to his feet. The long skirt of Madara's outer coat sways with his quick pace and Hashirama has a better idea. He directs chakra to his feet and leaps to the branches, propelling himself forwards until he's ahead of Madara, then dropping down and dangling off a low-hanging branch, his long brown hair falling like a barrier preventing Madara from walking past. "Hey, race you?"

Madara's single visible eye narrows at him. "Juvenile. That is beneath me." But for a brief second, his gaze flickers up to the branches above and—and he's disappeared. Ugh, how scandalous; he used shunshin to lose him using the same trick he once used to catch him off-guard. Hashirama rights himself immediately and speeds in the direction of the mouth of the river system, sensing his friend somewhere above him and to the right.

The Senju pride themselves on their connection to the forest, but what they conveniently like to forget is that the Uchiha have just as strong an affinity to the cover of trees as they do, even if they do have that destructive affinity for fire. It is one of the biggest reasons why their generational wars continually failed to push each other out of the forests of the Land of Fire—a mix of pride, familiarity, and evenly-matched skill.

Even now, he has to admire Madara's speed. His chakra signature cuts through the foliage like a knife, and Hashirama is forced to admit that when it comes to speed, he has him beat. If only he'd bothered Tobirama for that new teleportation technique he'd been developing.

It's good that he doesn't play fair, then. He grins and extends his chakra out and through the network of trees, reaching for the branches ahead of Madara. Judging by the momentary pause in the movement of his signature, it worked. That made it twice in one day that he'd tripped him. He uses this opportunity to overtake him in the boughs above.

There's a short curse from behind him and despite himself, he chances a glance back.

Madara has unstrapped the ancestral gunbai from his back. He refuses to admit that the sound that tears its way out of his throat resembles anything close to a yelp.

Before he can stop to glue himself to a tree with his chakra, a great gust of wind sweeps up beneath him, separating his feet from the branches and flinging him up a good four feet in the air before he's able to grow out a branch to cling to.

He's a terrible ninja and Butsuma Senju would be severely disappointed.

This would never happen in a battle, he swears to himself as he follows the sound of Madara's triumphant laughter. He was just having too much fun to react as he should've. Well, if it were a battle, that blast of wind chakra would've torn him to shreds so it was useless to dwell on hypotheticals.

Hashirama lands with a splash on the river surface right next to Madara's intolerably smug expression.

"You cheated," he sniffs, falling into a crouch and drawing circles in the water. "And here you had me thinking you were the honorable sort."

Madara snorts above him, disbelieving. Even if he's not looking up, the accompanying eye-roll is almost tangible. "Oh, don't you pull that on me. You did it first!"

"Now who's childish? The burden of proof is on you, you know," Hashirama tells him, pulling his head up from his knees and revealing his broad smile. Before Madara can grab and attempt to drown him in the river, he stands up and jumps just out of reach. "Anyway, about the Hagoromo. Leave the talking to me, okay? I wouldn't want you to scare everyone to death within a two-mile radius before we even start negotiating."

Madara's expression turns thunderous. "You'd better not give them any footholds. I won't tolerate it. If you do that, all bets are off."

"Yes, yes," Hashirama says, waving a hand dismissively. But his mind was still stuck on the—well, that it was strange that he didn't know about the Hagoromo proposal first. It was plausible that rumor travelled faster than paperwork, but they were such a small clan. He doesn't like anything about this; it feels like the calm before the storm. "Leave it to me."

The scrutiny that he's treated to is expected and welcome. It makes him feel close to normal for a brief moment in time. Then Madara nods his approval and starts stepping in the direction of the Hagoromo camp. "Come on then."

They walk against the current for almost ten minutes before he first notices something wrong. The chakra signatures collected together up ahead are fewer in number than intelligence would suggest. Madara seems to have come to the same conclusion—the Sharingan blazes to life as they exchange nods and walk back to the riverbank. As a specialist in fire, Madara is more comfortable fighting away from places that might give Water Release specialists the advantage. It's this thought that suggests that maybe they're walking into a trap designed for Madara.

Another five minutes pass before they see the first sentinels. But they're in no state to greet them.

That's not to say that they were dead, simply unconscious, their bodies lying side-by-side on the bank of the river. He can see the rise and fall of their chests and they almost look peaceful in their sleep. He looks to his companion for answers. "Genjutsu," Madara says shortly, the pattern of his Sharingan spinning briefly. "It's... complex. I can't say exactly what it is or who did it, but I wouldn't try dispelling it just yet."

It is good advice; they don't know if the genjutsu is a trap in waiting, an unknown technique rigged to trap them. They also don't know if the members of the clan are enemies or victims. Ahead of them, the riverside camp is a ghost town and a very obvious trap. "I'm going to send some wood clones to scout ahead," he says, folding his hands together and forming four clones, growths of wood that separate from his back into identical copies of himself. They nod at him and venture into the deserted camp. "We should probably find somewhere safe to observe."

"Wise," Madara says, but just as they turn to disappear into the forest, water rises from the river, vaguely humanoid in shape and obstructing their exit. They solidify into Hagoromo ninja, and Hashirama only has a second to note their vacant expressions before combined jets of a water jutsu drive them back towards the camp.

Through his clones, he knows that the ground of the camp is drenched, likely on purpose. It is exactly the last place they should be caught in. Though his wood techniques can dry the ground, to dry the area sufficiently enough to mitigate the danger would destroy the camp. Something is obviously wrong with the clan, and he doesn't believe they should start killing them indiscriminately just yet.

Madara has no such qualms, cutting down one shinobi after another with his kama with something approaching satisfaction, possibly even glee. Hashirama frowns deeply—he knows that his friend has always approached battle with justified confidence, but this reckless enthusiasm is new.

Moreover, the clan's attacks are sloppy. The Senju have faced the Hagoromo in battle a few times before, but their delayed reaction times do not match prior experience. They are slow to attack and slower to defend against his clones, who subdue them with relative ease.

Though they've been pushed back into the camp, they're careful to distance themselves from the large swathes of water littering the camp. He raises a high, wooden platform to stand on above the water as he observes the battle, encasing and incapacitating ninja in wood as he sees them.

He watches Madara clear a spot with a breath of flame and is immensely relieved to see the form of Susano'o rise like blue fire before him. He knows well, better than anyone, how it deserves its reputation as the perfect defense.

From his standpoint above the battle, he realizes that he has significantly fewer assailants than Madara. They swarm around the cage of his partial Susano'o, but only a few dare to attack him on his platform, and it has nothing to do with his having the high ground.

It's then that he hears it: an uttered 'Suiton!' up and to his left, and both he and Madara look up from their respective battles. Hashirama presses his fingers together in the familiar seal—

"Katon!"

A burst of fire erupts from Madara's mouth within Susano'o but it isn't water that meets fire—it's oil. Hashirama's eyes widen, and so does Madara's.

Later, he will pinpoint this moment as the moment where everything goes wrong.

But now, before the oil, now on fire, can reach them both—or him first, he is closer—he raises a wall of wood to cut off the stream. The ground shakes with the force of a small earthquake and he looks down at Susano'o. The look on Madara's face approaches something close to devastation and he takes three steps back into a puddle of water that rises up to his heels.

Hashirama can only watch with horror as an arm, and then an upper body, rises out of the water and spears Madara through the unprotected portion of his back.

It is like watching the world fade into grey—

Stumbling off the platform—

Susano'o dousing itself and flickering out of existence—

Madara turning around and catching the ninja with the Sharingan, thrusting the kama into a neck—

Falling—

He doesn't care about survivors anymore. He can't. The markings of Sage Mode sweep over his features and he singles out every single living signature within a mile of them, impaling them with thorns of wood. Blood pools at his feet and he falls to his knees, dyeing them red.

The wooden lance has speared through his heart and the left lung at a diagonal, through the left ventricle and atrium. Madara's fall has forced the lance to the side, further damaging his lung. If it were any normal injury, he would have left the foreign object in to prevent further blood loss, but the pumping of Madara's rapidly failing heart and gaping wound render this measure ineffective; he breaks the spear as cleanly as he can and slides it out of the thoracic cavity.

A person can survive up to five minutes without oxygen before neurological damage sets in. Most talented medic of his generation or not, the ability to repair the brain is a skill beyond his ken.

The worst feeling in his experience as a medic is feeling the life force drain out from under his hands. Even as he cordons off the damaged section to prevent further blood loss, if the heart stops and he can't restart it, it's all over. The lung is secondary, but he also has to act quickly if he wants to save it. He hates knowing his limits—he can't repair Madara's heart fast enough, not under five minutes. Three and a half minutes, now.

The damage is far too extensive and he can't make the cells replicate fast enough.

He's losing his friend again, and this time it has nothing to do with their growing distance over the past year. His failures mount on his conscience and he has to admit it, accept it. It's the rational thing to do, to give up on a lost cause.

It's fatal.

If it were him, it wouldn't be! If it were him, he could have saved himself—why did it have to be Madara?

The green aura around his hands flickers out.

"If it were me, I could repair the damage," he whispers, and pulls out a kunai. It's a last-ditch effort but he has no other options. He rolls up his sleeve and scores out a small section of his upper arm, wincing as he pulls away a hard-won piece of his flesh no larger than the length of his thumb. They aren't pluripotent as they are in his hands now, but his cells are unique—he can make them so that they are. His hands flare a deep, verdant green and he lowers the cells into the chasm of Madara's heart.

His cells divide, spanning the damaged organ like a web, not yet more effective than a plug. Two minutes.

Now he has to graft them into the infrastructure of Madara's body. In fifteen seconds, the cells specialize, and they become cardiovascular cells. On the surface level, the heart is whole again. But it's a false comfort—the body could reject the cells at any moment. The problem is not whether the cells are up to the task, but rather the nature of foreign chakra that the cells produce. The only thing keeping the cells from dying immediately is the lifeline of infused chakra.

The next urgent task is to replace the sheer volume of blood lost, but thankfully, it's a medical technique that he's familiar with. Shinobi lose blood far too much and too often for it not to be a common, if advanced technique. It's also urgent to remove the blood flooding his lungs so he doesn't choke to death, among other concerns.

He has the space of a few seconds to repeat the grafting process with the damaged lung, keeping one hand over the heart and the other over the lung. Multitasking doesn't exactly come naturally to him, but he mentally reaches out to his clones, still sweeping the area for threats.

If there are any survivors, question them, he orders, though his attention never wavers from Madara's form. An irrational fear manifests: that if he looks away, Madara will disappear or worse, start to wither away before his eyes. I want to know what's going on. And remove any evidence of Wood Release. It would be too easy to pin the clan's destruction on me and the village.

He takes a moment to breathe once he's sure that Madara's condition has stabilized enough for relocation. Once he's sure that hands have stopped shaking, he gathers up the broken body in search of temporary sanctuary.

One thought refuses to leave him: the Sharingan should have seen through the oil technique. Madara should have known to let Hashirama handle it, trusted him to block it. They have never fought together so asynchronously before. Even as enemies, their fights flowed like fine choreography.

It was like they weren't even on the same page.

His heart's still threatening to beat its way out of his chest when he gingerly sets Madara down on the floor of the hastily-constructed hut. They're reasonably far away from danger now and he has six wood clones patrolling the perimeter. They're out of immediate danger, but he needs to get it together because the possibility that Madara could reject his cells and die is still very much real. As a medic he knows this well, but when he looks at the rapidly paling face of his closest friend, what little composure he has evaporates and all he's left with is dry panic.

He starts channeling chakra into the wound the moment Madara's on the ground, sterilizing what he can first before infusing medical chakra in order to replace the framework of rejected cells. It's gory to say the least—the regeneration of his heart and lung had taken priority over the replacement of his skin, bones, and muscles, and he'd done only enough standard healing to prevent further blood loss. He tries not to focus on the fact that he's literally watching Madara's heart beat.

Once he's sure that there are enough of his transplanted cells to last until the next infusion, he turns his focus to closing up the wound. It will be the work of hours—Hashirama doesn't dare attempt to graft more of his cells into non-critical areas. He doesn't want to increase the risk of rejection.

He winces as he watches Madara's lung seize twice before hacking up a mouthful of blood, splattering against the panels of the crude flooring. The effort only paints another layer of glistening red around his mouth. Because he can't turn him on his side, he briefly takes up the task of removing the blood from his throat.

It's not the first time he's been grateful for the size of his chakra reserves. He switches between tasks for the next six hours, constantly outputting healing chakra. It's not something a medic should ever attempt alone, but he doesn't trust his wood clones enough for this task.

He's just managed to close the wound and replace a few of Madara's ribs when hands shoot up and embed themselves in his shirt, dragging him down. He stares wide-eyed into the face of death, bone-white and blood-crusted.

"Hashirama," Madara gasps, fists clinging to the front of his shirt. His eyes flicker open briefly to look up and—

The white, concentric rings of the Rinnegan stare back at him.

A/N: asdlkf;gl i haven't touched naruto since high school there's just so much nostalgia