25. Cure

Rating: T

Verse: Warring Clans Era AU

Inspiration/Idea: me

Izuna fell. Face front. That cursed Senju was about to deliver the finishing blow when Madara jumped into the scene. The enemy took a step backwards, obviously calculating his chances. Madara charged forwards.

As expected, the Senju, spineless as always, shunshined away.

Madara fell onto his knees next to the unmoving body.

"Izuna! Izuna!"

Instead of words only blood escaped his brother's lips.

"Hold on. Izuna, hold on there. I'll get you out of here. All will be fine. Just save your strength."

He could get him out, of course he could. But what then? The wound in his brother's chest looked horrendous. And his breathing was getting whistling. As if something was punctured inside of him. Madara gulped. One didn't survive such wounds. Even with the blood tamed and infection fended off. That thrice-damned Senju damaged something too crucial. Cold sweat trickled down Madara's spine. Different sweat than one from the effort of fighting, different even from the one from chakra overuse and exhaustion and dizziness that followed. Madara knew it already – his brother would die. Not now, still not within the next hour maybe, but he was beyond saving.

Only a miracle would…

A miracle.

But the Senju were capable of such miracles. That was what gave them the edge over the other clans, over the Uchiha as well. They could resuscitate the wounded standing at the doorsteps of death. They didn't lose their shinobi. Madara couldn't count how many times he was shocked seeing the face of a Senju he was sure he had killed. It took some time to realize that and to adjust the strategy. Now he was leaving opponent dead, not dying.

Now he needed that kind of miracle.

They had some intel already. They knew that Senju had developed a technique, maybe not necessarily a jutsu, but a method of chakra usage. No one ever saw it in practice, but a scout had seen the dying being taken to a tent with black walls, with seals woven into the fabric to prevent the spying. After an hour or so, the one that had been carried in bleeding and unconscious - went out, walking on his own.

It would have been prudent to wait. To intercept one of the healers once they left the tent. It would have been the correct course of action. But Madara couldn't wait. The knowledge that Izuna might have been drawing his last breaths made him act not like the clan leader should. Still, barging into the Senju camp wouldn't end well, a reciprocation would follow and the Uchiha desperately needed to regroup else the next clash would end with a massacre.

So, despite his instincts Madara resorted to stealth. The falling darkness as his ally, he put on a henge and propping himself on a makeshift crutch he limped towards the tent. Hopefully no good sensor would be around, no sensor skilled enough to recognize chakra of an Uchiha.

He didn't know what to expect there. Not even how many people. There were four of them – three women and a man, two of them standing by a bed with a badly injured shinobi, performing some strange ritual involving greenish chakra, and two other talking in hushed voices in the other corner of the tent.

At his entry all heads turned. Good. That was what he needed - with one powerful genjutsu he trapped them all. They fell to the floor like puppets released from their strings. The wounded on the table didn't react – he was unconscious anyhow, and with his healers gone he would bleed to death now.

Madara stepped deeper inside the tent. Whom to take? So much would depend on such a random choice… If the medic denied cooperation for too long Izuna would die… He came up to the two healers that were performing the ritual. And older man. And a young girl. Very young, fifteen maybe. Was she also capable of healing? Madara examined the image from couple of seconds prior, burnt into his brain with the Sharingan vision. Yes – she was producing that green chakra as well. She would be easier to break into obedience. And significantly easier to carry out inconspicuously.

Madara took off his cloak, positioned the girl on his back, and covered her with the fabric, pulling the hood over his head. With a bit of luck that should do.

He pushed past all his limits speeding to the Uchiha compound, chased by the dread of coming too late. He didn't. He was in time. When he deposited the unconscious girl on the floor next to Izuna's futon, his brother was still breathing.

He pried her eyes open to release the genjutsu, and immediately had to restrain a flung of her fist. He needed both hands and his body weight to pin her down so feisty she was fighting. And even then, she attempted to bite his arm.

"Stop struggling," he said trying to keep the anger, irritation and impatience away from his voice. "I won't hurt you if you comply."

In response the girl struggled even harder. Madara suppressed a sigh. He needed her healing Izuna not playing some gods-damned hero.

"Are you a healer?" he asked and made a deliberate pause. Answering a simple question was a beginning of every cooperation. That's why he didn't reiterate his question when she kept silent. He just waited.

In the end the girl nodded.

"Good. Because there is a dying man here. He needs your help."

The girl didn't struggle more, and her muscles weren't as tense as they had been before. Madara shifted his weight off her.

"There," he said nodding towards the futon while still keeping the girl's wrists in his grip. "There he is."

The girl licked her lips. "Alright. I'll try," she said.

He immediately sat up and let go off her arms. Madara refrained from threats, and from painting scenarios of what would happen in case she failed. It was a matter of trust and he wasn't going to cut this fragile thread that had just been spun between them. And if the girl recognized him, and judging from her reaction she had, the threats were obsolete.

The girl sat up as well. Too quickly. The post-effects of genjutsu still had her body in their hold and she swayed. Madara grabbed her at the waist and moved her towards Izuna's bed. She was so small that he could handle her like a doll, he concluded with surprise. Would she manage to rip his brother out of Shinigami's grip?

The girl carefully pulled down the blanket covering Izuna up to his chest. The blood-red that bloomed through the bandages stood in stark contrast to the whiteness of the sheets. And of his brother's skin.

The girl's fingers were swift and nimble when she pulled one layer of bandages after another.

"You're Uchiha," she stated rather than asked. "And you want me to help you."

"Yes," was all that Madara could answer.

The girl raised her eyes to him. So green, so unlike any Senju he had ever seen.

"Please," said Madara. "Please. He's my brother. My last brother…"

"You won't tell me that you will kill me if I don't? That you will torture me to death with those eyes of yours?"

"No… Because I don't know what I will do if he dies… I really don't know."

The girl's hands started to glow green. "Whatever it will be – my guess is that it won't be anything good." She lowered her palms to Izuna's chest. "And like this… Maybe there is a chance…"

"A chance?" echoed Madara.

"Yes, a chance…"

"For what?"

"For peace."

He learned later that the girl wasn't even a Senju. A foundling, one of the many that the clan of Thousand Hands took, adopted and trained into their soldiers.

But the girl never forgot that it was the shinobi who levelled her village to the ground, shinobi maybe even from the Senju clan itself. A desire for the end of fighting lived in her, stronger than anything else and certainly stronger than the loyalty to her adopted clan. When she had been taken, she had been assigned to healer's training by a man who discovered this technique. A man who secretly dreamt of peace.

That was how Madara learned that Hashirama had never abandoned the dream they shared.

When he deduced that fact from the healer's words and she understood that he knew Hashirama, her attitude to him changed. She never seemed particularly afraid, she was rather apathethic, accustomed to the fact she was used as a tool. But then it became obvious that she must have heard about Madara from Hashi's tales and she started to be friendly to him.

Half a year of her captivity (though captivity wasn't a correct term, she was going around the compound as she pleased and didn't seem inclined to escaping) Madara confined to her about his deteriorating eyesight. Her chakra didn't heal the damage already present, but it slowed the progression to the rate that Madara estimated would last his lifetime. Shinobi never lived long, even those most powerful ones.

It took quite some talking to convince Izuna to 'trust that damn Senju', as he was phrasing it, enough to let her heal his eyes as well. But Madara succeeded.

Three months later and something more from the girl that just her chakra seemingly seeped into Izuna's system during the healing sessions. When Madara raised the idea of signing a peace treaty in a private meeting with his brother and second-in-command, Izuna didn't explode as it would have been the case a year earlier. Pouring himself another cup of sake, he listened.

The hatred, looming over their clan like some curse, was no longer holding Izuna's soul in its grip.

AN: Thank you for reading and I'm curious about your impressions!