Epilogue: Hashirama, part 2

"Anija, no! Stop! ... Oh. Too late."

Satisfied, Hashirama looked at his work. He had made a house sprout from the ground in front of them with his Mokuton and to his impression the result was presentable. Tobirama apparently saw it differently.

It made people nervous to know that the four former Hokage, two of their wives and, on top of that, Madara were in the village when they should have been dead long ago. When Hashirama had heard that his park was still standing, where they used to experiment with his Mokuton, he had had the idea to simply build a house for them here, where they could stay until they disbanded the Edo Tensei. The park was just outside the village, so they wouldn't be constantly running into other people and causing them trouble.

"Couldn't you have waited until I could have at least given you a draft?" continued Tobirama.

"Stop complaining, Tobirama," Mito said. "The house has four straight walls and a roof, and that's enough. It's not like it's going to last forever."

Tobirama actually gave peace and accepted the house as he stepped forward and marked it for his hiraishin. Of course. Old habits did not die, even after death, and he had already spread his markings across half the village. When Hashirama had asked him why he had limited himself to only one part of the village in the process, Tobirama had explained that Minato had taken the rest.

"I'd better go then," Madara said quietly, already turning to leave.

Hashirama grabbed his hand and gave him his best innocent look. "But why?"

"You know very well. And stop looking at me with those puppy eyes."

Hashirama grinned. "That one always used to soften you up."

Madara conceded defeat.

On their way to the house, Kushina, Minato and Naruto approached them. Since Naruto's own flat was too small for more than one person, Hashirama had casually suggested that he could stay here with his family. And later, when they disbanded Edo Tensei, he could keep the house if he wanted. Hiruzen would also join them for the duration, even if he was currently still avoiding Tobirama as a precaution and just discussing something with Tsunade.

Naruto looked up in amazement at the trees, which were whispering to each other and bending their branches towards Hashirama. "That's eerie," he observed. "It's like they're talking to each other. What do trees talk about? The texture of squirrel droppings?"

"They do indeed talk to each other," Mito said. "You get used to such things happening around Hashirama. Just don't go too deep into the forest at night, that's where the failed experiments are."

Naruto laughed out. "I know. I used to play there a lot as a kid, imagining that the trees were people because they looked a bit like that. Was really creepy, believe it." He pointed at the trees. "That doesn't happen with sensei Yamato, though."

"That's because of my Mokuton, only I possess it," Hashirama explained to him.

"I know, but sensei Yamato is also proficient in it."

Mito raised an elegantly arched brow. "Unless he is also our great-grandson or an otherwise lost relative, I don't see how that is possible."

"We should ask him," Hashirama said enthusiastically. The prospect of even more relatives was great!

Madara looked at him with a sly grin. "I've always said it, you Senju are like weeds. Just can't be killed."

Judging by the way Tobirama looked at Madara, some spiteful comment was on his lips, but he refrained from it. Instead, he entered the house. They followed him.

It was sparsely furnished, because not everything could be created with Mokuton. Hashirama had remembered the floor plan of his old home, which Tobirama had designed back when Konoha had just been founded, because admittedly there was really no architect lost on him. As he walked through the house, he made a few more corrections.

"Say, is it possible that you forgot a bedroom for me?" noted Madara when he too had finished his tour.

"No, you stay with Mito and me, of course. Unless you have a problem with that, in which case I'll change it immediately!" added Hashirama hastily.

This apparently left Madara speechless. He looked at him and Mito big time. "But ... she is your wife."

"Yes, so what?"

"Listen," Mito said. "You know that our marriage had been purely political. And I've known for a long time that you two idiots had been - and still are - hopelessly in love with each other. I, for one, have no problem sharing Hashirama with you, I never did. I had told Hashirama that then, and now I'm telling you."

Hashirama grabbed Mito's and Madara's hands. "I love you both, you know that, right? You are the most wonderful people I have ever met. Besides Tobirama, but I've had to deal with him my whole life, so maybe that doesn't count." He laughed out.

Mito smiled and snuggled up to him. Madara's gaze softened too and he bent down to kiss Hashirama. Hashirama's heart warmed.

"I am so grateful that I can finally have both of you," he murmured as he hugged them.

"I'm sorry," Madara whispered in a trembling voice. "I was an idiot."

Hashirama kissed the corners of his eyes, where now there might be tears, would they be able to cry with these bodies. "What is past is past. What matters is the here and now."

"I could revive us properly with the Rinne Tensei," Madara said softly. "I would lose my eyes, but we ... would be real."

Hashirama stroked his hair. "But that's what we are. As real as it gets, and that's enough. We exist in this world thanks to borrowed time, we should be glad we were granted that."

Madara was silent, and for the first time Hashirama really felt that Madara was content with what he had. He smiled gratefully.

A short time later, Tsunade joined them with Hiruzen, a stack of documents in her arms and Shizune and Tonton in tow. The little pig balanced a tray of sake bowls on its back, Shizune brought the sake bottle. Hashirama grew a table and enough chairs, then they gathered around it and Tsunade pushed the stack into the middle. She gave Naruto an unwilling look, then glanced at Minato and Kushina, then let the boy join them at the table anyway. Shizune handed out sake to them all.

Hashirama was disappointed to find that alcohol had no effect on him as an Edo Tensei. Frustrated, he stared at the sake bowl he had just emptied. "Tobirama, your jutsu needs improvement," he said.

"I didn't develop it so you could still get drunk after your demise," Tobirama grumbled.

Tsunade reached for the sake bottle and poured it straight on. Then she pointed at the documents. "There is one thing I had not been able to find a solution to all these years. Not that I have tried, but ... well. It's about Orochimaru."

"He is currently under ANBU surveillance," Hiruzen continued. "Which, however, will only be fine as long as he cooperates. If he really wanted to, then he could escape. He always has some trick up his sleeve. He poses an enormous risk, but one that I cannot master alone."

Without comment, Mito took four pieces of sealing paper from her kimono and then began to draw seals with quick, clean brushstrokes. She handed one to each of the four former Hokage. "Now that I see where this is going, it's about time for this too. This dissolves the Edo Tensei user's control over the summoned."

She took Hashirama's seal and affixed it directly to his forehead. He felt the already tenuous connection to Orochimaru dissolve. Unlike his brother or even Hiruzen and Minato, he probably could have severed it himself if he had put his mind to it, but better safe than sorry.

Realisation flashed in Tobirama's eyes when he saw the seal. So he had probably talked to Mito about that possibility in the past. Minato also looked at the seal with obvious expertise.

"That's impressive, Mito-sama," he said. "I wouldn't have thought that something so complex could be broken down so easily."

"Fūinjutsu was what we Uzumaki had been known for, and I was among the best," Mito said with a smug smile. She refrained from rubbing it in Tobirama's face again, as she had sometimes liked to do in the past.

Naruto's eyes lit up when he heard that. After the destruction of Uzushiogakure, there hadn't been much left of the Uzumaki and he had had to grow up without clan and family. The prospect of finally being able to learn more about his roots seemed to excite him. "I want to learn that too!" he also said promptly.

Mito put on her grandmotherly smile, with which she had also often given Tsunade in very similar situations in the past. "Of course, Naruto-kun. I'm sure you'll find it very interesting."

Hashirama accepted the fact that Naruto was probably something like his grandson as of now, too.

Madara, meanwhile, had been looking at the files Tsunade had brought them. They were documents about Orochimaru and his crimes. He skimmed some of it, then looked up. "In our time, I have ordered seppuku for less."

"What is this?" wondered Naruto.

"Ritual suicide," Minato explained to him sombrely. "An ancient practice in which the condemned person disembowels themselves and is then executed by beheading. However, this sentence has not been carried out for a long time. The last time must have been about seventy years ago, and after that it was abolished."

Hashirama also looked at the documents. He remembered that Orochimaru had summoned him and his brother once before to force them to fight Hiruzen. That alone argued for a heavy sentence. As he browsed through the files, he realised the full extent of the man's crimes. That he had once been Hiruzen's student and Tsunade's teammate was only the tip of the iceberg.

"Orochimaru maintained secret hideouts all over the country where he had conducted his experiments," Tsunade said. "I don't think we've been able to find them all by now, but enough. He was researching forbidden jutsus, and he didn't shy away from human sacrifice. Most recently he had kidnapped Sasuke and wanted to use his body as a vessel to rejuvenate himself. Sasuke is also the only one I know of that he managed to kill. Though apparently not permanently. Long story short, I don't know how to deal with him to render him harmless, and the only ones who can deal with him are you."

Tobirama also had the files handed to him and flicked through them. When he seemed to have reached a decision, he put them down again. "I'll get Sasuke." And with that he was gone. Not a minute later he reappeared in the hallway where he had made the mark earlier, Sasuke in tow.

"Wow, cool, you've mastered my father's jutsu, Nidaime-jiji!" exclaimed Naruto excitedly.

"That's because it's my jutsu! I invented it!", Tobirama snarled at him as he pushed Sasuke through the door in front of him and placed him on another chair next to Naruto, which Hashirama had spontaneously grown. Sasuke didn't look too happy, but Hashirama wasn't sure if that wasn't just the boy's basic state.

Sasuke crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked around. "So?"

Naruto gave him a surreptitious glance out of the corner of his eye. Sasuke returned it likewise and then hastily pretended nothing was the matter as he glanced in the other direction.

"You're the only one who's managed to kill Orochimaru so far," Tsunade said. "I want you to report back to us everything you know about him. After all, you lived under his tutelage for several years."

Sasuke turned his gaze to her. "I'm honestly not sure he can even be killed permanently," he said finally. "Last I knew, Itachi had sealed him in his Susanoo with the Totsuka sword, but I was still able to revive him using Anko's curse mark."

"I had tried to seal him with the Shinigami then, but could only take away his arms and thus his jutsus," Hiruzen added. "And even that he could undo."

"Anything can be undone," Tobirama reminded him, one of his favourite lessons.

"Hm. Be that as it may. Anyway, that's what I know." Sasuke began to report, telling them everything he knew about Orochimaru. Which was a lot, far more than was even in Tsunade's documents.

Hiruzen should have killed Orochimaru when he had had the chance. Hashirama understood why Hiruzen had hesitated, but Hiruzen knew as well as Hashirama that he should not have hesitated. For goodness sake, Hashirama himself had killed his best friend and lover in the name of the village! Sacrifices had to be made, even if they sometimes seemed unbearable, and personal feelings were not always allowed to play a role in their position.

But what did one do when someone was proverbially immortal?

Thoughtful silence descended on the group as Sasuke finished his report.

"Izanami," Madara said into the silence.

Sasuke looked up. "Yes. That might work. It did for Kabuto when Itachi caught him with it."

Tobirama looked back and forth between the two Uchiha. "What's that supposed to be?"

"Izanagi is the jutsu I used to undo my own death," Madara explained. "A genjutsu that affects reality itself and changes the fate of the user. The counterpart to this is Izanami, the genjutsu that fixes fate. The person to whom it is applied is trapped in a cycle of events set by the user that repeat over and over again. The jutsu can only be resolved if the person accepts the actual outcome of the events and stops trying to change fate."

Tsunade tapped her chin thoughtfully. "So if we can't kill him, we convert him," she concluded.

"With the only problem being that both Izanagi and Izanami blind the Sharingan they are located in," Sasuke interjected.

"One sharingan is better than none," Madara countered. "No one is about to take away your two pretty eyes, so I don't see where there's a problem in that."

"What?" croaked Sasuke as it must have dawned on him what Madara was getting at. "Why should I sacrifice my eye for that? You're only Edo Tensei anyway, you do it!"

"Because I don't trust you a finger's breadth, you little shit!" snarled Madara. "Not so long ago you were very eager to attack the village, so you might as well do something for the village now!"

"Like you were trying to do anything else then!" snarled Sasuke back. "Where are you better than me?"

"You're welcome to share the experience with me of being stabbed by Hashirama so you can learn your lesson!"

Hashirama rolled his eyes. Madara really shouldn't be trusted with children.

Tsunade slammed her fist on the table, splitting it. The sake bowls clinked. The bottle, however, Tsunade had wisely held on to, saving it. "Enough of this, both of you!" she shouted. "Sasuke, you're going to use Izanami on Orochimaru, and Madara will watch you to make sure you don't mess up. And Grandfather, you keep an eye on Madara, please, because I don't trust that guy very much either."

"Like I don't do that all the time anyway," Hashirama said, giving Madara a big grin.

Madara looked at him blankly. "Oh, come on. You used to be funnier."

Hashirama hung his head.