The earth beneath his feet is torn from countless violent Justus, scared beyond recognition. Not a trace of the even grass valley is left. It is slippery. The mud of dust and spilled red blood making it hard to move. He has to waste chakra on making his footing more secure.
The battle has been going for half a day already and shows no sign of ending. The ringing of metal against metal is a constant noise in his ear. A welcomed one. For the only alternative are the painful screams that tear through the air and fill his veins with ice. Sage of six paths knows, he has already lost a quarter of his men here.
Yet there is no time to take a breath, to look around and confirm his suspicions. No time to stop. Madara knows that, should he waver for a split second, he will lose all his men, as well as his own and his brother's life. His heart is beating in his chest, a rapid pace that matched the flow of the fight.
The Sharingan, red and glowing, keep spinning and spinning in his eyes, tracking his opponent's movement with precision. The addictive power of it already a familiar burn. His bones are heavy with exhaustion that has settled in hours ago. The normally precise and powerful strikes of his sword are losing momentum with each blocked attempt. Madara's grip tightens on the hilt of his katana to stop the fatigued hands from shaking.
The man standing before him tries to yell something at him, wishing to be heard over all the noise. Madara ignores the familiar words with practiced ease. He pretends not to see the determination, the despair and the honesty in those warm brown eyes he knows so well.
Aggressively throwing the katana into the ground, burying the sharp tip, he forms the necessary hand signs faster than an eye could follow. His opponent is ready. A wall of wood meets his fire, growing from the earth at an impossible pace. The scorched marks at the very top of the wall are the only evidence that he hit at all. The lack of damage doesn't anger him like it used to months before. The attack was meant as a distraction after all.
Sharingan eyes urgently take in the surrounding battlefield. A body of a boy catches his attention, merely two feet away from him. Stomach is torn open, guts spilled on the ground. Pain is forever imprinted into a grimacing young face. Only nine or ten. The warm blood is still gushing from the wound. Another drop in the already muddy ocean of red. Bile crawls up Madara's throat.
"Please," Hashirama calls for him again, "Madara. We can stop this."
He glances in the direction of the voice, and for a moment he sees a young boy - dressed in rags, with a stupid bowl haircut - in place of a young man standing before him. The childhood long gone takes his breath away and he longs to take the extended hand, craves the ease and lightheartedness of the past.
Instead, Madara grabs his sword again and rips it out of the reddened earth. The vision dissolves into nothingness. He steals himself and moves in to attack again, ready to deny his once friend, ready to behead the embodiment of his naïve dreams, to remove the last proof of their existence.
He is willing to fight against his dream, for the reality, he lives in.