Takes place in an AU where Madara and Hashirama were not the founders of Konoha, but rather shinobi who were born and raised in the village. The ages don't follow canon, hence why for example Tobirama is about ten years younger than his brother. The shinobi wars mentioned are not the same as the ones in canon either.
Warning for mentions of violence (basically whatever you would expect from a shinobi war), but it's not too excessive.

'No', the man grunted without so much as glancing back at the young shinobi.

'But-'

'I said no,' he insisted in a booming tone that used to send men diving for cover, be it a friend or foe. For some unholy reason it didn't seem to work on the brat stubbornly blocking his way. Again.

'You are the fastest shinobi in the village,' the kid insisted, red eyes staring at the man insistently, 'you are the best suited to train me.'

Madara finally looked at the brat, taking in the messily cut white hair and the odd markings on his face, then snorted.

'Like I would want to train you.'

If the kid was affected by the harsh tone in any way – Tobirama, wasn't it? Hashirama used to talk a lot about his little brother – then he didn't show it. If anything, he only seemed more hell-bent on getting what he wanted, which was apparently being trained by Uchiha Madara. A handful people tried and all of them failed, surely he should have been smart enough to expect no for an answer, right?

Except it seemed that stubbornness ran in the family and the two brothers both inherited enough of it to put even Madara to shame.

'I understand that you don't care about my personal wishes,' Tobirama said with a clarity that most twelve year olds didn't possess, 'but you do care about the village.'

It was clear for all to see – Madara might have been a grumpy man, but he fought tooth and nail on and off the battlefield to keep his beloved village safe. He had many friends there, comrades both Uchiha and outsiders he wanted to protect at any costs. No one took more dangerous missions than Madara, not even Hashirama who was supposed to run for the next Hokage elections. Madara was the ultimate weapon, the jounin with the power of a Hokage who was practically the blood-covered patron saint of Konoha. He most certainly wasn't a teacher though.

'My answer is a no,' he insisted just as stubbornly as Senju Tobirama insisted that he should take him on. When it came to a battle of will, Madara wasn't about to let himself be overpowered by a brat.

For a moment the carefully carved mask slipped, showing a tiny glimpse of a twelve year old whose plans came crashing down. It only lasted for a moment though, and Madara could have sworn he only imagined that because in the next the Senju kid looked at him with the determination of a seasoned warrior heading into battle.

'One week,' he said, never taking his eyes off of Madara's, 'give me one week to prove that the jutsu I'm working on is worth your time. Train with me for one week and you'll be able to decide if it can be a game changer for the village. If you still think I'm not worth teaching, I'll never ask you again.'

Maybe it was the overwhelming determination practically rolling off the kid, or maybe it was the fact that not being pestered with this every other day sounded refreshing – either way, Madara reluctantly nodded.

'Fine.'

Just one word, but it seemed to mean the world for the kid. Never once had Madara seen him express anything even remotely resembling feelings, yet those eyes were widening comically and pale lips opened in wonder. It seemed even he hadn't expected yes for an answer.

Madara had a reputation to keep up though, so he most certainly couldn't deal with this for a single moment longer.

'Don't think too high of yourself just yet, brat. I'll put you through hell.'

The threat didn't seem to faze him in the slightest, much to Madara's confusion. Thanks to having Hashirama as an elder brother, Tobirama was kept away from most of the dangerous operations, living a life as sheltered as possible for a shinobi with a noble clan and the best sensing abilities of his generation. As far as Madara knew, the kid never went through anything resembling the war he himself fought in his teenage years (earning himself a flee-on-sight order in three different countries), so training with the infamous Uchiha should have been the scariest possibility in his life right about then.

Although considering whose brother he was, maybe the lack of self-preservation instincts ran in the family.

Three years later Madara was leading a troop in a huge war. Even though he kept insisting that he was a one-man-army and entirely unsuitable for watching out for people AND wreaking havoc on the battlefield at the same time, Hashirama still insisted that he should lead a unit of shinobi (most of them not even adults, damn it) through a hostile area and deliver them as backup for the shinobi trying to seize an enemy stronghold.

Now, the kids (because even if most of them looked like adults at first glance, they shook like leaves) were safe and helping out with setting traps, treating the injured and building smaller fortifications for the Konoha troops. So far so good. In fact, Madara felt a bit of pride (aside from the general annoyance that he had to play babysitter) for being able to get them to that point without losing any. Sure, that kid – Danzo, wasn't it? – got a few nasty cuts from an enemy's wire trap before Madara freed him but that was about it. They were all alive and very much combat-ready, so he considered his job done.

'Glad to see you didn't eat them,' Touka spoke up just as he was about to leave. Hashirama's cousin had a tongue just as sharp as her blades hidden in the sleeves of her uniform and had the same lack of self-preservation instincts that seemed to be running in her clan, hence her tendency of poking Madara even though she saw firsthand a decade ago how he singlehandedly slayed a troop of fifty men from Suna.

'Too weak, not my taste,' he replied in kind, because at that point he had nothing to lose by joining in on the inside joke. The woman (along with some others both inside and outside of Konoha) liked to paint him as a bloodthirsty battle-demon sort of thing that devoured his enemies quite literally. In hindsight, the fact that he came back from his missions covered in blood nine out of ten times might have contributed to the questionable image.

'Hn. Picky, I see. Well, here's some info for you – suspicious enemy movement near the Field of Rocks.'

'Details?' he asked sharply, suddenly all business.

'Nothing else,' she shook her head, 'but I'd rather have it checked out. You might as well go – we can hold this area ourselves.'

Judging by the people surrounding her (some of them currently patched up by a young medical ninja Madara escorted there) Touka was going to protect that area all on her own, but he trusted her judgement. She wasn't the most fearsome kunoichi of Konoha for nothing – those illusions cost many enemies their lives.

'I'll see to it,' he said as his parting words, then took off towards the odd little area of the forest where rocks reaching up to your knees were more common than any actual vegetation. Rumor had it that a battle between two or more earth style users created it, although the origin mattered little to Madara at the moment.

Being ambushed by twelve shinobi, getting blinded by smoke bombs that made his eyes water uncontrollably and having his two feet and one of his arms stuck to the ground though? That definitely mattered, and so did the incoming barrage of weapons. Even with one hand, he could fight off the kunai and shuriken aimed at him but it was clear as day that he wouldn't last long like that. A little known fact about the sharingan was that it couldn't activate through closed lids and thus he was left as defenseless as he had been on the day before he took his first weapon in hand. That was an awful long time ago.

'Hurry up, damn it, we have to take him out while his eyes are still-'

Whatever the Iwa shinobi was about to say next, Madara could only guess, because her voice turned into something resembling a wet choking sound. More precisely the sound of someone choking on her own blood.

Without his vision, Madara could only rely on his ears, although what he heard confused him rather than providing him with answers.

'What-'

'Watch ou-'

'N-'

Four seconds. Four seconds passed since the woman started speaking and by the end of the fourth there was complete silence around him. Even the usual sounds of a forest were missing, the animals having deserted those war-torn areas a long time ago. It was… eerily quiet. What happened? Had someone taken them out? Was it a friend? A foe? Was it even a human, or did the smoke keeping Madara from opening his eyes kill them off and maybe he was next?

No matter how he tried to move, the sticky substance kept him glued to the nearest rock. In theory he could have used a fire style jutsu and hope for it to solidify, then break out of it, but there were two gaping holes in the plan. Number one: freeing oneself that way required actually seeing where one aimed the fire and even so it usually resulted in minor burns. Number two: there might still have been an enemy around.

'Will you finally admit that it was worth helping me with my training?'

The familiar voice of the most annoying brat Konoha had ever seen broke the silence and Madara felt his heart skip a beat. Not an enemy. This was an ally. Thank whatever gods or goddesses watched over them because he had been in a really tight spot there and-

The next thing he knew, his face was assaulted by ice cold water and Madara, the mighty warrior of Konoha, nearly choked on it. Once it was gone, he coughed in the most affronted manner humankind had ever seen and then glared at the white haired brat as if he wanted to personally gut him right then and there.

'You-!'

Madara didn't quite finish the threat because he realized that he could actually SEE. Oh. Okay, that way the water actually made sense.

'Feel free to swear at me all you want, but burning that thing off you sounds like a more urgent issue.'

Madara sent his former definitely-not-a-student a glare that usually made enemies piss themselves right on the spot (it made the insufferable brat smirk, he couldn't believe this little shit!) and then looked at the yellow goo covering most of his body and sticking him to the stone-covered ground.

'That is, if you can still pull off that one-hand-only fire jutsu of yours tha-'

'Shut it, brat,' Madara barked before forming a few quick seals with his free hand and starting to burn the sticky stuff away. Thankfully it reacted as he expected it to, by solidifying. In less than two minutes he was free, finally able to stand on his own two feet. Looking sideways, he saw the bodies of their enemies lying on the floor in their own blood. All of them had their throats slit, quite precisely at that.

'Hiraishin, huh?'

'Hiraishin,' Tobirama nodded. It was probably the right time for Madara to praise him for his great performance that resulted in a dozen Iwa shinobi taken out for good. It would have also been the ideal moment to thank him for coming to the rescue and saving his life.

So Madara did the most natural thing and-

'The hell are you doing in this area?!'

It took a really brave man to scoff at Madara, roll one's eyes at him, and then resisting the urge to run. Tobirama wasn't even a man at the age of fifteen, yet he leveled his former mentor (a title Madara was going to deny with his dying breath) with a glare that clearly conveyed 'really, now?'.

With a roll of his eyes, Tobirama crossed his arms across his chest. Madara knew from experience that whenever a Senju did that, his sanity was at risk.

'Eliminated,' he said as if taking out the Tsuchikage's brother was a walk in the park, 'obviously. I came here for backup.'

'You should have gone straight back to Konoha!' Madara argued, his recently dried hair sticking out in several directions making him look like an angry hedgehog. 'Your brother will throw a fit if he realizes that you're still in here!'

'My brother,' Tobirama countered calmly, 'has the sensory range of a blind bat. He will never know I was here.'

'But-'

'Besides,' the younger shinobi interrupted, 'what sort of student would I be if I didn't have the back of my sensei?'

At the end of the question his lips quirked up into a wicked smile that made Madara want to bash his face in with the nearest object.

'Why you little-'

His rant (and possible murder attempt) was halted when something hit him square in the face. He didn't really want to wonder when the Senju brat got good enough to throw things at a speed Madara couldn't dodge. Instead he took a look at the small object that just recently collided with his nose.

'Huh.'

'Put some on,' Tobirama said from the relative safety of a higher tree branch. He learned early on what the range of Madara's fury fueled fireballs were. 'Since you're too stubborn to actually look for a medic anyway.'

The Uchiha grumbled something about insufferable know-it-all brats but opened the lid anyway, revealing a white colored salve.

'It looks suspiciously like mine,' he noted as he dipped a finger in it.

'That's because it is,' Tobirama nodded from his branch. Madara's hand stopped mid-air as he looked up at the Senju.

'What?'

'I copied the list of ingredients while you were away on that mission in-'

'You fucking stole it?!', he screeched.

'Copied,' Tobirama insisted with a poker face, 'I also made some improvements.'

Madara was about to give a very loud lesson on what an insult it was to his clan and their burn remedies that the brat just took the list and 'improved' it, but before he could have started shouting, Tobirama silenced him with a few well placed words.

'You might want to be quick too, because two Iwa shinobi are heading this way, probably to check on the ones you fought.'

The Senju failed to mention the fact that he was the one to actually kill them, but really, what did Madara expect? He was an insufferable brat.

'Good luck, sensei' he said with another one of those wicked smirks before taking off, leaving a positively seething Uchiha behind.

'I'm not your- get back here you little shit, I'll set you on fire!' was the first thing the approaching Iwa shinobi heard. Could anyone really blame them for being confused?