2.
Madara remembers.
Two months have passed since the dream and the Uchiha clan is slowly starving. They have already run out of functional armor; now food is just as scarce. Tajima Uchiha is practically a skeleton, not that that makes him any less terrifying, and talk has already turned to Madara taking his place as clan leader. But Madara cannot be clan leader, not if he can't even protect his brothers.
(Protect your clan, Madara!)
They are raiding villages for sustenance more often now, surviving off of less and less as the days turn colder and the nights become longer. Tajima Uchiha eats last, bathes last, goes to sleep last. The clan is a starved and wounded wild animal, crawling along on all fours, dragging its bloody body through the snow.
But there is something much worse, something Madara can't bring himself to think about without deadly hot guilt curling up in his stomach. He is a traitor and he knows it. This is equal parts thrilling and dreadful. He prays Izuna won't notice, at least. He must appear unshaken. He remembers the dream again and doubt writhes in his chest, hangs sour on his tongue. Each waking moment is agony.
Hashirama is in his head and he won't leave.
Madara wants to cry and tear grass to shreds and pound his fists into the earth because Hashirama is in his head, always smiling, always pleasant, and it hurts. The night of the ambush, the night Madara first awakened his sharingan—
That night Madara woke up sweating and gasping for breath, his bedclothes hanging half off him, the dream still clinging dead center in his mind. The sharingan blazed scarlet in the blackness.
Hashirama's hands—
Hashirama's hands on his throat, Hashirama's lips on his neck, behind his ear, at his sternum. The covers were wet; he was sticky, he realized with dawning horror.
Madara probed at his slippery thighs, shame unfurling in his throat. Everything was too hot. The newly activated sharingan throbbed. Madara felt it again, felt Hashirama's deceptively soft fingers trailing over his skin and his lips pleasantly whispering betrayal down his chest, lower and lower until—
To his left, great deep slumbering breaths from Izuna. Madara shuddered and untangled himself from the blanket and went to clean himself up. Trying to go back to sleep was pointless, he realized, mere minutes later.
By morning, he still couldn't get the dream out of his head.
Madara loves the old Hashirama, one who is no longer there. Hashirama is his enemy now, and that's the absolute end of it, because Hashirama is not that same child from the riverbank; neither of them are the same, not anymore, and this war is reality. Just as it has been for centuries, so will it continue on long after he and Hashirama are both dead. Dead—If he's dead, who will take care of Izuna? He needs to protect Izuna. He needs Izuna to survive.
(Someday, someday between now and the moment of his death, he knows he won't be able to protect Izuna anymore.)
"I'm not afraid of my father," he had said to Hashirama once, on the riverbank. The tremor in his voice betrayed him. At once, the sunny day felt colder.
(You were supposed to protect them, Madara. That was your job. Protect your clan!)
Betrayal, Hashirama whispers in his head, and Madara shoves the dream from his mind once again, a shudder running through his body. He is the future clan leader, the prodigy of the Uchiha, and he remembers how he once watched Hashirama strip off his shirt after a sparring match like it was nothing and dive flawlessly into the river and then surface with his skin dripping wet and his stupid hair slicked back from his forehead.
Madara pulls his blanket up to his chin and slips his fingers below his waistband and gets to work.