The arguments over their ridiculous childhood dream are to be expected. They always have been.
From the moment they first met on the opposite sides of a battlefield instead of a riverbank, Madara has become used to being singled out, picked from the crowd of dark-haired red-eyed Uchiha men like a beacon fire amidst a forest in the night, led away from the main conflict to be evenly matched, blow for blow against his rival, his enemy, the fool so eternally caught up in the words spoken between two oblivious children that he constantly yammers on about it even as they're actively trying to kill each other.
"We're friends, Madara!" Hashirama always yells aloud, no past tense at all; in his deranged head, they are still friends, always have been, always will be, even as gouts of flame singe the tips of his hair and he tosses a spear of wood right back without the slightest flinch. "We can still show the others that fighting isn't the way! We can bring peace, the Senju and the Uchiha, together!"
"Do you ever get tired of living in a fantasy?" Madara asks, an edge of frustration in his tone, because this whole exchange is so familiar, too familiar; they've had it a hundred times, a thousand times, on a hundred thousand different battlefields, tossing shuriken and words and jutsu at each other over and over like it will eventually solve the problem. If it were someone else – anyone else – Madara would have gotten annoyed a long time ago, would have cleaved the man's head from his shoulders instead of listening to his useless drivel again.
The dreams of children don't belong here, in the blood drenched earth and the flame-scorched sky of war, but Hashirama persists like a bad itch, his words impossible to scratch at and get rid of.
Because the man is annoying and persistent and stupid as he was when he was thirteen – because apparently maturity is unheard of among the Senju – and peace is just an unreachable goal that the world will never attain, and that's simply the way things are.
His words should mean nothing by now, should be easy to ignore and push out of his mind with the ease long repetition affords you.
But he can't.
The compelling itch of those words, the familiarity that stays his blade, the meaning is not lost on him, not now, not even after everything that's happened in between; the wondrous babbling they'd exchanged on the clifftop still rings in his head, echoes through his brain and reverberates though his skull:
"Somehow, someway, we'll build a peace that will last for generations!"
"A village we can call our own."
"A place where children can grow up!"
"Somewhere to keep my little brother safe."
He hasn't forgotten a single word of it, not since the day skipping stones became defending each other from their own families.
He hasn't forgotten, but as he sees proud clansmen and brave comrades alike fighting and dying all around them, he shoves the sentiment out of his head.
His blade rises, his stance shifts, and his Sharingan traces the roots lurking just beneath the earth.
"No more talk, Hashirama," he says, though he can feel something sour in his mouth – not guilt, gods forbid. "Come."