"It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality."
— Virginia Woolf
They say the greatest genjutsu are the strongest, the ones that can ensnare a victim in a net so fine that they have to cut themselves into raw, bloody ribbons to escape.
They say the greatest genjutsu are the fastest, the ones that shake the earth and shatter the sky in the blink of an eye and defeat the victim by surprise.
They say the greatest genjutsu are the cruelest, the ones that bring night terrors and past regrets to life, breaking the spirit and the body.
(They are wrong.)
Water:
Madara has always hated and loved it, hated it for being opposite to his nature, loved it for bringing him peace with its chaos. Senju Tobirama would be dead if not for his water. But he supposes he would be, too, if the river had not drawn him with its alien coolness and caused him to forget, if temporarily, that he was alien as well. Everyone else, his father, his mother, all of his clansmen — they had all strived to be gods, to burn and smite what they wished, to live and rule without consequences. He, though, he was born with an immortal purpose. With a destiny so divine that it was carved into stone before he was even conceived. With a burden so heavy that he'd sought to share it.
Drip.
He wipes the water away, an impatient movement, though he has all the time in the world.
Drip. Drip.
Here in this cave so dark even the sun would struggle, time holds no meaning.
Drip.
(He rubs moisture from his face, though the stalactite protrudes from the cave ceiling at his legs. For a few weeks? months? years? he thinks on betrayal and the nature of revenge. How can he forgive someone who will not admit he is wrong? He thinks he can forgive Hashirama. Even if he has to take the man's penitence himself.)
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He loves the rain.
Rain brings life, and growth, and the opportunity to run through it with people he cares about, laughing with them or at their frowns or the way hair sticks to their cheekbones like seaweed.
So he gets married in the rain. Not on purpose, mind, but because the weather in Konoha is unpredictable in the summertime, and too many guests had travelled just for the occasion to delay it. Something about it makes him giddy (in a nervous way, because Uzumaki Mito is surely too beautiful for him), and right when the ceremony ends he tugs her out of the temporary pavilion he'd built and into the rain.
She does not pull away. She laughs, even as rouge runs off her cheeks and lips, but when Hashirama bends to kiss her her smile freezes and she turns away. Only a little bit, and with feigned shyness, because there are onlookers.
A prophecy, of sorts. There will always be onlookers in their marriage.
"Don't." Mito lowers her lashes though her eyes flash with steel. "You don't love me."
Rain traces the contours of her face, and, for a moment, she looks wild and dangerous.
(He begins to have dreams of blood, falling in heavy torrents from the sky. The clouds are dark, covering the world like night. It paints Konoha a gruesome crimson and whenever he looks at his hands they are red and they shake as leaves do in the wind. His hands never shake.)
People say he is mad. They say he is mad because they are afraid, of his drive, of his straightforwardness, of his power.
He's not mad. Madness lies in contradictions, in those who says one thing and does another, in people who act kindly but think cruelly. He's not mad, because he always does what he means to. He is elemental. Fire does not change. It will never become less hot or less fierce.
Hashirama, though, is a study in contradictions. He should be patient — he gardens, after all, and he plants trees, a labour of decades. But he commands flowers to bloom and trees to grow, and they do as he wills, all because of the strength of his restlessness. He does not seek power, yet men and bonsais alike turn to him and wish to do his bidding. He is bright and the sun and the most charismatic man most will ever meet, yet he stabs his oldest friend in the back with frosty words and cold steel.
(He dreams of the ocean, though he's only seen it once or twice. It'd left a bad, gritty taste in his mouth, like ashes. He doesn't understand what those Uzumaki savages see in it except unpredictability and death. Madara has never learned to swim, though he's sure that he can, if the need ever arises. There is just something that bothers him about its vastness. If he walks the sea, would he have enough chakra to get to whatever is beyond, or would he drown? He is not interested in the unknown — he cares only for that which he can control.)
Monsoon season hits harder than usual. The village drowns in grey and humidity. Even Tobirama complains about the rain.
Someone is watching him.
Wet footsteps, shadows at the edge of of his gaze, a stubborn chill between his sheets, darkness (darker than night, darker than nightmares) at the window, a lingering unease.
He knows no-one is watching him. It's impossible. Irrational.
His heart skips at odd moments, though, as if squeezed by an intangible hand, and the headaches — they fill his brain with fog and all he can think on is guilt and the past, of what he has failed to do rather than what he has achieved.
(And he has failed to do rather a lot. The world once again teeters on the brink of war. His daughter is a stranger to him. The Uchiha want more land, more influence, more which the other clans are no longer willing to concede. He still sits out in the rain sometimes, letting it wash over him. It used to be cleansing. Now it soaks his clothes, and he trudges home with sodden hair and a heaviness on his shoulders that he can no longer shake.)
He's watched Hashirama enough to understand how it works. You plant a seed, a tiny, sometimes mangy-looking thing. You dig a hole in the ground and drop it in, then you cover it up.
Add water, perhaps. Then you wait.
Just like that.
Of course, planting something into the mind is a little harder, but the basic principle is the same.
Wait, and it will grow, whether or not you watch it.
(In his dreams, he is never alone. Folly, perhaps, but somewhere along the way he'd incorporated Hashirama into all of his plans. Change. Peace. Immortality. The other man has a role to play in all of these, as catalyst, as ally, as companion. There is nothing he hates more than a plan gone awry.)
Regret, he's found, is a mostly useless emotion.
It changes nothing, because the past is inalterable. It's also an exercise in self-indulgence.
The present and, most importantly, the future, is his responsibility. Hashirama has no time or energy to spare for remorse.
Still, it feels like betrayal when he kisses his wife, when he laughs with his brother, when he pats his granddaughter's head and she looks at him with trust and love and potential in her eyes.
(Hashirama is slow. Careless. The man may be many things, but he is not careless. He could have dodged that last blow, but he didn't. That samurai should have been dead minutes ago. He hadn't gone for the leader first, and now the enemy is regrouping. He lets them, eyes shut tight, as if fighting an internal battle rather than an external one. He shakes his head. Even through the imperfect vision of his clone, Madara can see the change, the distance in his gaze, the way he's changing his stance like he's fighting one foe instead of a hundred.
They cut up his corpse into pieces, because he is a figure of near-myth, famed for recovering from lethal wounds and regenerating limbs. Shinobi cannot afford to be careless.)
They say the greatest genjutsu are the strongest, the fastest, the cruelest. They are wrong.
The greatest genjutsu are the ones that last the longest. The ones that stay and stay and stay until they are more fact than fiction. The ones that dissolve and melt and settle like lead — traces of metallic poison that can drive even the clearest of minds insane.
The greatest genjutsu begin as little more than a shadow on the moon.
Notes: A gift-fic for pikecheeka for the prompt: "Madara getting 'revenge' on Hashirama post-VotE by haunting him for years". This doesn't fit into the usual timeline I work with, but it hopefully works for the prompt.