A/N: I haven't mentioned this before, but this fic's got an unofficial soundtrack. (Actually it's just the playlist I listened to while writing this, but it turned into an unofficial soundtrack.) I might have to post the song titles or something, 'cause everybody loves fanmixes! ...Well, I do.

I only mention it now to inform you that this chapter's theme is that song from Brokeback Mountain. You know the one.

(And if you don't, you need to look up "The Wings" by Gustavo Santaolalla right now.)

Enjoy the chapter, and please remember to review!

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UCHIHA MADARA'S WILL

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"I am not dead." That was Madara.

"Actually, you are. I'm sorry." And that was Hashirama. "That's how I know this is a dream."

Madara rolled his (even now, still beautiful) eyes. "Does this look like a dream to you, Senju?" He spread his arms, gesturing at their surroundings.

Hashirama looked around. The "sky," such as it was, was a pitch black void; and all he could see was an endless plain of blank, white, square pillars, scattered about, jutting up at random heights, descending into the darkness below. "Well, it looks pretty realistic..." he said thoughtfully, crouching down to examine the shadows cast on the surface of his pillar. And then he glanced up at Madara, standing on a pillar a bit taller than Hashirama's. "But you're still dead. So this is a dream."

Madara threw up his hands. "Fine. Have it your way. Believe it's a dream if you want." He sat down on his own pillar and crossed his legs, glaring critically down at Hashirama. Under his breath, he muttered, "It's not like I've got time to argue, I've only got until you wake up crying."

Hashirama was mildly offended by the suggestion that Madara thought he'd start crying, although it was still impossible for him to get angry at Madara. "So, if I'm going to wake up, then this is a dream."

"I never said that," Madara said. Before Hashirama could respond, he snapped, "Oh, drop it already! There are more important matters to deal with. I'm here to pass on my Will of Fire."

Hashirama opened his mouth to say something. And stopped. And tried again. And stopped. Now he knew he was dreaming. "But, that's... Madara, you don't even believe in the Will of Fire."

"I don't believe in love either. That doesn't mean it isn't real, does it?"

Hashirama sensed there was something terribly paradoxical about that statement; but since he was dreaming, dream logic applied, and he let it slide. "You're... you're not passing it on to me, are you?"

"Why else would I be here?"

Hashirama stared. Madara glared.

"Why?"

Madara looked at Hashirama like he wished he could come back from the grave just to strangle him. Through gritted teeth, he said, "Because you're the only person I can trust."

Hashirama continued to stare. "But... why?"

Madara sighed heavily. "Because, Senju. You're the only person who cared about me enough for me to trust you with it."

Hashirama flinched in shock. "You knew that I...?"

"I know now, don't I?" Madara uncrossed his legs and jumped off his pillar, landing on Hashirama's. "So, the Will of Fire. Will you take mine?"

"I... of course, Madara, anything—"

"Fine." Madara marched up to Hashirama, placed his hands on his shoulders (a chill shot up his spine), and stared into his eyes (he willed his knees not to give out). "My clan has nobody to protect it," he said. "No living Uchiha can do what I did for them. They have nobody to be their champion." The look in Madara's eyes said and you robbed them of that.

The look in Hashirama's eyes (since this was not only a dream, but a lucid dream, and he could make his eyes as expressive as he wanted) said and I will never forgive myself for it. Madara's glare softened a bit.

"You, Senju," Madara said, "have to take care of my clan. You've got to stand up for them when nobody else will, and remember to treat them fairly. As a Hokage, you've got more say in what happens to them than anyone else. And the Sage knows your... 'brother' won't do anything for Uchiha."

Hashirama nodded slowly, never breaking eye contact with Madara. "But... how do you want me to do that?"

"Treat my clan the way you would treat your own family."

(Now, where had those butterflies come from and what were they doing in Hashirama's stomach.) "Madara, I don't know what to... It's, it's an honor, but I... I don't know how I could possibly—"

"You convinced my clan that the best thing they could do for their future was form an alliance with their worst enemies. If you could do that, you can do anything." Madara finally took his hands off Hashirama's shoulders, took a few steps back, and surreptitiously wiped his hands off on his pants.

Hashirama just shook his head. "I don't get it, Madara. You've never trusted me in your life. Why would you start now?" Besides the fact that "in your life" didn't really apply anymore.

Madara glanced sideways at the audience as if saying can you believe the things I have to explain to this moron. Since this was a dream, Hashirama was the audience; and since Hashirama was also the moron having things explained to him, he felt duly insulted. (Dream perspectives operated the same way as dream logic; they made perfect sense as long as nobody expected them to make any sense at all.)

"Because," Madara said, "you founded Konoha because you wanted to make sure you'd never had to choose between sparing me and protecting your clan. You only agreed to be Hokage because you were worried that letting me be Hokage like you wanted would cause the alliance to break down. You named the village Konohagakure no Sato because it was my idea. You called yourself Hokage because you wanted to honor my clan. Nearly everything you've done in your life worth noting has been either because you wanted to help everybody in general, or just me in particular. I've got every reason in the world to trust you, don't I?"

Hashirama tried not to cringe after every sentence. He looked down; he couldn't meet Madara's gaze. (And yet, he somehow still saw Madara's eyes. Dream perspectives.)

"Don't I?"

Hashirama smiled wryly. "I guess so." He forced himself to look up again. "But... then, why didn't you trust me?"

For once, Madara wasn't glaring at Hashirama. His (beautiful) eyes didn't have any hatred, or distrust, or suspicion, or anger. He just looked sad. "Because I never knew any of that."

He never...?

What if he had known?

(Hashirama couldn't speak. He didn't know if this was an effect of the dream, or if there was something in his throat, or...)

"I never even considered it. Why would I? It's not the kind of thing that crosses your mind. Not about your worst enemy. I never had a reason to suspect any of that, and you never gave me one," Madara said. "It's ironic—isn't it, Senju? I'm sure you wanted the best for me, but in the end, you treated me worse than anyone else you knew."

(Now he knew; he was just choked up.)

"I could have been your greatest ally. I could have been your closest friend. If we had worked together from the start, maybe we could have done it. Achieved world peace. Ended warfare forever." Madara shrugged. "Now where are we? I'm gone. You're alone. War is coming. And sooner or later, the rift between us is going to tear the ninja world in two."

Hashirama had no idea what that meant, but he didn't doubt that it was true, oh hell, he didn't doubt it for a second.

"I'm sure you would have liked for us to be allies, wouldn't you?" The anger was back in Madara's eyes. "But you didn't let that happen, Senju."

What had he done?

His legs finally gave out, and he fell to his knees, speechless.

What was wrong with him?

Somehow, Madara heard that question: what was wrong with him? (Dream logic.) "Who told you there was anything wrong with you?" Madara asked, smirking. He crouched down in front of Hashirama, put one hand on his right shoulder, and leaned in to whisper into his left ear: "The first time you spoke to me, I told you that you're a romantic. Didn't I?"

Hashirama nodded weakly. (He could feel Madara's breath brush his ear, Madara's hair brush his face.)

"And that's what you are," Madara said. "You always believed that love is the true key to peace." (He could feel Madara's hair brush his lips, Madara's lips brush his ear...) "Why didn't you act on it?"

Hashirama woke up.

Crying.

xxx

Hashirama believed all dreams said something, something worth understanding. They were messages from the Will of Fire. From Hashirama's ancestors, his friends, his family who had gone before him, from the Senju clan, perhaps from the Sage of the Six Paths himself... now, perhaps even from Madara. The Will of Fire guided him in all he did.

And it had been trying to tell him something for years.

He was in love. He should have acted on it. He should have admitted it, at least. At least to himself, he should have admitted it.

Everything good that Hashirama had done in his life, had been because of love. Hadn't he protected his clan for love? Hadn't he founded Konoha for love?

And the single worst decision he had ever made in his life had been because he'd been trying to deny his love.

Why had he tried to deny it?

xxx

Where was he.

He was sitting up, in the cold, alone.

Where was he. The Land of Water.

Tent. Heading home. By himself. Campfire outside. In the cold.

Where was Madara.

Where...

Hashirama stepped outside his tent. Orienting himself. Waking himself.

In the black of the smoke of a midnight fire. In the cold of the moon and the heat of the inferno. Black deeper than the darkness of the sky, a black that chokes out starlight. Roiling and coiling and drifting and twirling and always burning burning black. The smoke smothering, sucking the oxygen, the air, the life out of Hashirama. The blackness suffocating him in an inescapable, irresistible heat. The smoke coming from that all-concealing, all-revealing, all-consuming, all-seeing fire.

And that fire was Madara's soul, heart, and blood. You could smell it in his words, you could see it in his beautiful beautiful eyes, you could feel it in his skin, his face, his lips...

It took Hashirama a moment—tear-blinded and sleep-dazed as he was—it took him a moment to realize that his campfire was cold and dark and had been so for hours.

But he had seen something, half-dreaming, he had seen something...

Fire.

The Will of Fire—

Madara's—

Guided Hashirama, in everything he did.

For the rest of the night, Hashirama sat outside, in the cold, alone.

Behind his eyes, he watched a fire burn in his mind.

It was the fire that had once burned in Madara's eyes. His soul. His Will of Fire.

This wasn't the first time Hashirama had cried for Madara. Nor the last. He had countless times before and would countless times to come.

However, this was the hottest his tears had ever flowed. With Madara's Will of Fire, burning behind his eyes.

Why hadn't he acted on it?

He knew that love was the only way to peace. Why hadn't he acted on it?

Why had he tried to deny it?

Why had he let himself destroy... destroy Madara, destroy Konoha's future, destroy—

Why had he DENIED it?

What was wrong with—

Who told you there was anything wrong with you?

He shut his eyes. Hot tears slid down his cold cheeks.

He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve Madara's Will of Fire.

He would just have to make himself worthy.

Treat my clan the way you would treat your own family.

He could—could he? He couldn't—he could, he would.

We all move in together and form a big happy family and never fight again.

Madara had said that... how long ago, five, over five years ago? Said that like it was a bad thing. But he had said Hashirama was a romantic, too. Who told him there was anything wrong with that?

He would. He would. Hashirama would treat Madara's clan like his own family. He would protect them as Madara could not.

Hashirama had created a village for Madara, he had challenged the world order for Madara.

He would protect that village, for Madara. He would change the world, for Madara.

"I promise," he whispered (into the cold night air, his breath clouding like smoke from a midnight fire, like he could start breathing fire), "I will live for our clans. For our village. For our world. And I will die for them."

As he could not live and die for Madara.

Behind his eyes, Madara's soul, Madara's Will of Fire burned on. Guiding him.

xxx

On the other hand, perhaps it was just a dream. Just the nonsense nighttime babble of the mind. Hashirama believed all dreams came from the Will of Fire; but, on the other hand, Hashirama didn't know what caused dreams. He knew nothing about firing neurons of flowing neurotransmitters, about rapid eye movement or sleep cycles, about the pendunculopontine nucleus or its pontine tegmentum. He didn't even know about nocturnal penile tumescence, which could have cleared up quite a bit of his confusion. Perhaps everything was just a projection from his unconscious mind. Or the aftereffects of the brain's natural nightly clean-up and filing process. Or a tangle of memories synthesized into something half-original. Or just mental static that his brain tried to make sense of.

Perhaps the dream was nothing more than a chemical reaction. Perhaps the Will of Fire had nothing to do with it.

Perhaps the Will of Fire didn't even exist.

But perhaps it did. Perhaps his dreams were, indeed, messages from the Will of Fire, as he believed, as he had always and would always. But who's to say that he understood the messages? He had taken this one literally. Was he, then, supposed to literally interpret the dream in which Madara had almost confessed something to Hashirama? Was he supposed to literally interpret the dream where they were somehow simultaneously making war and making love? If that were the case, then that meant the Will of Fire had been trying its hardest to convince Hashirama that Madara was in love with him.

Perhaps he was. Or perhaps the dreams were meant to tell Hashirama something else. And perhaps this one meant something other than the literal, as well. Perhaps it was not saying that Madara, personally, wanted Hashirama to carry on his Will of Fire. Perhaps this was just the Will of Fire's way of trying to get Hashirama to pay attention again; and if the only way the Will of Fire could get its message across was by using Madara's face, perhaps it had settled on that.

Perhaps the dream was indeed from Madara. His ghost, consumed by the Uchiha curse, that cry for vengeance. Trying to sabotage Hashirama.

Perhaps he had not left behind a ghost at all. Perhaps he hadn't even died. Perhaps he had slipped into Hashirama's dreams with genjutsu, to take advantage of some confession he might have heard shouted at him, beneath the roar of the Kyuubi. Or perhaps as an act of conciliation.

Or perhaps he had heard no confession.

Or perhaps he had decided that, with everything else taken into consideration, the confession had no importance; the same way Hashirama had been forced to decide that there was no importance in the fact that Madara had finally said his name.

Perhaps Madara had not come into Hashirama's dreams, whether in spirit or in illusion. He might have been somewhere else; perhaps he was in hiding, in waiting, masked and murderous, impatient and resentful, being eaten at alive by that curse.

Perhaps Madara was simply dead, and gone, forever. Leaving nothing of himself in this world but a name that others might exploit.

There are so many uncertainties, with dreams.

In this case, there is only one certainty: that Hashirama never considered the uncertainties.

He believed—he wanted to believe—he believed, he knew that had been Madara's ghost. He knew he had Madara's Will of Fire.

Because he wanted it to be true.

Incidentally, there is more than one way to be a "man of dreams."

xxx

Who said there was anything wrong with that?

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"I didn't expect to see you again so soon, Hokage-dono." That was the Mizukage's representative, who thought only idiots believed that love would save the world, and who thought it took an especially stubborn idiot to keep believing after seeing what lovingly sharing the tailed beasts had done for world politics.

"I haven't given up." And that was the stubborn idiot who believed more than ever that love would fix everything; and if it didn't, then dammit, you weren't sharing enough love yet.

"Back for another battle?" There was a hint of sardonicism in the representative's voice that was almost familiar. But he kept his voice low, and Hashirama couldn't place it.

He waited a moment, to be sure the Mizukage's representative wasn't going to say more. "I don't want to fight you," he said. "Not here and now, and not on a battlefield in a few years."

He hesitated, waiting for the representative to speak. The representative hesitated, waiting for Hashirama to continue. When neither did, the Mizukage's representative let out a single, short, soft laugh. "You think you have a few years," he murmured. "What was it you wanted, Hokage-dono?"

Hashirama told him what he should have told him yesterday.

"I wanted to protect the world," he said. Before the representative could interrupt, he went on, he would say what he had to say this time. "I didn't found Konoha to save my allies from death on the battlefield. Nor to save my friends, nor my family. I did it to save my enemy." He was saying things he'd never said before and would never say again. But they were things he needed to say—Konoha and Kiri needed to become allies, and this was the only way. Besides, besides, he had Madara's Will of Fire with him. He could feel Madara, Madara was with him. "As long as I live, I will give everything to save the people close to me. But there was no way to save an enemy, the man I was ordered to kill and who threatened my allies' safety. Except by making him an ally as well."

And he told him. He told the representative, that never for a moment, during all the effort to found Konoha, had he thought about anything but peace. He just wanted the wars to end. He just wanted to protect everyone he cared about. Peace was his goal. Peace and harmony. Unity between all the clans, unity between everyone. That was all he'd wanted. He didn't want to take over anyone's clan or village, he didn't want to rule anyone, he didn't want to subjugate anyone. He just wanted everyone to come together. He just wanted peace. He wanted to save everyone. His clan, his village, the world. His enemy.

He told the Mizukage's representative this. He told him that that was his goal, to get everyone to work together, to come together as one. His goal was to persuade everyone that love, not power, would bring peace—and if everyone believed that love would bring peace, then nobody would have anything to fear from each other, and it would, it would succeed. But it wouldn't, couldn't work if not everybody joined in on it.

Hashirama's goal was world peace. Would the Mizukage and Kirigakure help him reach that goal? Would they help him turn the tide?

"No." It was not a whisper, it was a snarl. The representative's gloved hands were clenched tightly. "I will not." It was not a murmur, it was a growl.

Hashirama didn't get a chance to speak before he continued.

"There is no love between Kirigakure and your village. And there never will be," the representative said. And then recovered his temper. (Why had he lost it?) "I'm... sorry you had to come so far, Hokage-dono." He sounded more like he was sorry Hashirama had come at all. "But I'm afraid that Kirigakure has absolutely no need for an alliance with your village. We are fully self-sufficient—unlike you, apparently. We don't wished to be dragged in to aid you in your wars."

"I'm not interested in starting any wars."

"War is coming. You will be at war in a few months at the most, whether you want it or not," the representative said. "How do you think you can prevent war between villages when you can't prevent it in your own village?"

That was it. The representative was a wall. Hashirama had done his best—saying everything he could think of to say. But even with the Will of Fire—with Madara...

"Thank you for your time," Hashirama said.

"I have been more than generous with it," the representative said.

Hashirama returned home.

The representative didn't trust him. And so the Mizukage didn't trust him. Would never trust him. Because he couldn't keep war out of Konoha.

Because he hadn't been able to avoid fighting Madara. Because he had killed Madara.

As it turned out, the representative was entirely right about Konoha being at war within a few months.

On the second anniversary of Madara's death—to the very day—Kiri and Kumo mounted a joint attack on the Land of Fire. The Mizukage had been after war all along.

And sooner or later, the rift between us is going to tear the ninja world in two.

That was what Madara had meant. Wasn't it?

War had begun.

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