A/N: *grumbles.* This is not my fault. I had to write it. Kishimoto has a fascinating habit of writing characters in patterns and I have a genetic predisposition towards over-interpreting everything, that's what the matter is. The fact that I stay up late, get bored and end up writing psychological dissertations on anime characters at two in the morning may be a contributing factor.
This is similar to my other fic, Parallels, except that instead of Sannin= Team Seven as my starting formula I used Hashirama+ Madara= 3, collaborated with Hashi/Mada= Hiruzen/Danzo= Jiraya/Orochimaru= Naruto/Sasuke, with some Tobirama/Mito thrown in for flavor. (It doesn't really make absolute sense according to the formula, but bugger that, I like them). So, warning for implications of those pairings. If you have an objection, feel free to depart.
As you can see, I like math, and shipping, and over-analysis. Enjoy.
Balance.
In the time just after Konoha's birth, the word arrives in Hashirama's mind, placed there by some unknown breath, a voice which might just be his own.
Balance.
He curls himself around Madara, burying his face in the younger man's shoulder. They are so close, here together, but sometimes he feels that they will never be close enough for his satisfaction.
Hashirama's hands splay across pale, heated skin; the Uchiha has always been warm to the touch, scorched by some fire inside.
Balance.
That is what this is, this fragile peace, this village grown from an idea, always ready to fall or to bloom again in more minds, infectious. That is what Hashirama is doing, now, holding his sleeping enemy to his chest with careful, certain hands. He keeps the balance.
And Madara, Madara who will submit to touch only when humbled by slumber or lust; Madara keeps it too. If Hashirama had his way, they would be bound so tight that the scales would be broken, magnetized together. If Hashirama had his way, they would be happy.
But Konoha, or its shinobi, or the world itself; they would not be content with happiness. Instead, the first Hokage and the man who has blazed a trail into his head, into his heart, into the very network of his chakra to take what is most precious; instead they must give their lives. Simple joy is insufficient. For the sake of balance, there must be love, and battle, and terrible grief. Such is the price.
Madara, ever pulling them apart, opens his eyes and glares sleepily at Hashirama, shrugging the Senju's hands away.
Balance.
Madara flees; Hashirama dies in battle some years later; the village moves on. Its equilibrium, bought with blood and words, claims new supplicants. Most of the affairs are quiet, hidden away, offered and then abandoned at the altar of fate.
The Second Hokage, who perplexes his people by showing no signs of marrying, rules and fights and dies, in the end, just as his brother did. Many cry for him, but the greatest sorrow belongs to Hashirama's widow, to Mito the jinchuuriki, who has lost the man she should not have loved, and must go forward without him.
The Third, who will preside over Konoha for so many years and imprint himself so deeply on the psyche of the village, also pays his debts. When Tobirama names him Hokage, there is only one protest. Danzo, whose obsession with his rival has now turned to simmering rage, withdraws his adoration in favor of silence. Hiruzen Sarutobi, who must govern Konoha now, sighs and accepts this sour ending to a childhood of tension and strange friendship. He has lost Danzo, but the village needs his love more, now.
Balance exacts its tolls, in order to be kept. Justice carries scales, the moon waxes and wanes; there is a tide to emotional entanglement as sure as the ocean's ebb.
The strong ones (Mito, Hiruzen) move onward; they have the gift of rebirth. But for those who are damned to love once, it is not so simple.
For the heirs to the Sage of the Six Paths and his way, for the shinobi of the world, equilibrium exacts a price. Sometimes the price breaks hearts.
Balance.
When he is twelve, and the world has ended, Naruto Uzumaki listens to his time-worn sensei telling him to forget about Sasuke Uchiha.
Jiraya, too, paid for the sake of who he is, for how he has served Konoha. He and Tsunade have a love which is tangled and humorous and infinitely sad; it will not end happily. Perhaps, if things had been different, it could have, but the world has moved on. Hashirama's beautiful granddaughter will never belong to him.
That is a bitter story. However, Tsunade is not the only sacrifice Jiraya has been forced to mare. The warning he gives to his determined, indefatigable student is born from something more bitter still; a thing with black hair and golden eyes, a friend/lover/rival torn away.
Orochimaru was a genius filled with lust for the forbidden, for knowledge and power and strength outside the communal matrix of the village. Jiraya was a loud, impatient boy with more soul than anyone gave him credit for, until the end.
They fit the pattern perfectly; more perfectly than Tobirama and Mito, more perfectly even than Hiruzen and Danzo, the rivals. Jiraya and Orochimaru grew up together, fighting, cooperating, sometimes kissing fiercely in dark alleys, waging another kind of war.
Then, in the manner of the old story, Orochimaru left, and Jiraya could not bring him back. Jiraya could not save his teammate, not with all his love or his rage or his burning will. And so Jiraya, lonely, served Konoha in the way many have served it; with his life, since he had nothing else to do with that life, now.
As for Orochimaru, who was beautiful in all the wrong ways and wanted power, he was cast out. The tree Hashirama planted bears fruit, but some of the crop, rotten-hearted, is banished from the canopy.
Years into the future, Jiraya, courtly, perverted, sorrowful Jiraya warns Naruto away from heartbreak. I thought I could have my home and my friend, his meaning says; I thought I could save the world. I was wrong, kid. I was wrong. Don't chase too much, and have to pay in equal measure to the jealous world.
His words, of course, will not stop the flow of time. Naruto will chase Sasuke as surely as the sun will rise and the tide will go and come back, go and come back. But there are other ways of changing history; ways from within, born of promises and hope.
Balance.
There is a method to it; an ebb and flow to shinobi history. People are fit into slots, waiting in the great dollhouse of time, in order to be balanced.
The story cycles on. First, a life-giver with peace in his head falls in love with an angry warrior too stubborn to stay still. Then, a red-haired woman mourns for her husband's brother. A great shinobi is given power and loses his friend who desired the gift. And a silver-haired boy with too much heart is robbed of his hope by a loveless creature with golden eyes.
There are many stories; more than the scattered handful gathered here. Some are more tragedy than others; in all of them happiness may be found, for a while, before Konoha wants its children back, hardened by grief and sacrifice, broken on the wheel.
Balance.
The stories reel out, threads of brightness in the dark, jewel-colored.
And then, into the world is born a boy with golden hair and a fool's smile. He is a troublesome, loyal, impossible child with the Will of Fire in his heart, and he does not pay tribute to fate or deign to walk inside its temple.
The angry village tells him that he will never be loved. His Uchiha teammate tells him that he is a worthless ninja. A broken, arrogant Hyuuga tells him that great shinobi are born, not made. Hashirama's granddaughter tells him that he will never be Hokage.
Jiraya tells him, a little cynical, a little sad, that he cannot bring Sasuke home, because Sasuke does not want to come back.
But Naruto is a wise fool, and does not listen. If he does not have hope, then he has nothing, and so hope must burn like fire, like red chakra, like the sharingan of the boy he loves too much, far too much for both their sakes.
Naruto, as he fights his way along the road towards everything he is not supposed to have, is never quite sure why he wants to bring back Sasuke.
He tells himself and everyone (Jiraya, Kakashi, Itachi, everyone) that Sasuke is like his brother. He says that he promised Sakura, that he always keeps his promises.
But those are not the only reasons, nor the truest.
Naruto wants to bring the other boy back; he is going to bring the other boy back, because he needs Sasuke to be who he is.
There must always be a counterpoint, with the greatest of shinobi. The Sage of the Six Paths, with his two sons; he knew that. The earth in the bloody time before the hidden villages; it knew that, watching the Senju and the Uchiha weigh each other with careful politics. And when Konoha was built, when the world changed, the village grew up like a great tree, given life by rivals.
Every forgotten, determined boy who ever wanted his face on the mountain and his name in the hearts of Konoha is Hashirama. Every shattered genius too willful to come home has Madara in the back of his mind, a doomed blueprint, an ancient ghost. In the image of the founders, Konoha was created, and with their tragedy, over and over, the village grows.
The first Hokage fought with Madara because he needed him. And the first Hokage lost, because need was not enough.
But if Hashirama needed Madara, then Madara needed Hashirama also, in equal measure, with equal want.
Balance. Balance.
If Naruto, who has hunted and hunted and hunted, needs Sasuke this much, then Sasuke cannot truly be indifferent to him. The broken child who Orochimaru tutored in the arts of death may think that he needs Itachi, instead. Sasuke believes that Itachi is his counterpoint, but he is wrong. He is wrong.
Sasuke will either see his error, or die trying to deny it.
Konoha, the equilibrium, exacts its payment in patterns. Love, division, hatred, grief. Always one is left to serve the Will of Fire mourning for the other, lost forever in some way.
That is the balance. That is the way of the shinobi; the wavelength of history.
But there might be another way. There is always another way, if one looks close enough. And if there is one person in the world who can tear down the walls of what has been done, if there is one crazy, blazing boy who can have both home and heart, it is Naruto Uzumaki.
Balance.
It will be hard, but Justice can be asked to forge her scales again, this time with a different set of weights. With time and tide, the world has gone on, but the moon is only a trapped beast, and sometimes Messiahs come to break prophecies rather than answer them.
Balance.
It is a pattern. But patterns can be changed.
In the past, within the first pattern, Hashirama sighs and pulls Madara back to him, holding tight. He is too tired to play games of pride this time.
And Madara closes his fire-filled eyes and permits affection, allows the indefatigable peace of Hashirama to wash over him, for once. Even an Uchiha grows tired of war, sometimes. The tide, for a time, may be held back.