Summary: Tobirama meets Kagami Uchiha.

"What is your favourite colour?"

The point of the question was supposedly to get to know one another, to "break the ice" in what had to be one of the most awkward team assignments ever. But ten-year-old Kagami Uchiha was not easily fooled and he knew that the Senju who stood in that training field before him, the Hokage's own brother, could not care less about favourite colours or favourite animals or any other of those inane things he had asked about so far.

It was an act. And Tobirama was not even trying that hard to disguise it. The mistrust shone clear in his eyes. They were both putting on the barest of performances, keeping their discourse as civil in content as possible, if not exactly in tone, all because the leaders of both their clans were friends and under some idiotic delusion that Uchiha and Senju could come to cooperate.

It was ridiculous.

"Blue," Kagami replied, not so much because it was the right answer, but rather because it was the colour that had been staring at him in the face for the past half hour in the form of the Senju's kimono.

It was with some satisfaction that the boy saw Tobirama's lip curl just a little bit more downwards.

Honestly, who on earth had thought that it would be a good idea to put him under the man's tutelage? To pair up Uchiha and Senju ninjas? Kagami would sooner carve out a new scar to match Tobirama's facial markings right across the Senju's damned neck.

If there was one good thing about the arrangement, at least, it was that it looked like the feeling was mutual.

Kagami could appreciate the honesty.

"Anything else you'd like to know… sensei?" The undeserved title was almost physically painful to verbalise, but somehow Kagami managed it.

Tobirama's eyes shifted down to the scroll containing all the questions that he had to ask and all the answers that the young Uchiha had given so far. The sheet was tipped just far enough that Kagami could peer into it and read it upside down. The handwriting on the questions did not quite match that of the answers, which made him think that someone else had probably drafted the introduction quiz.

It made sense. Kagami was not an idiot. The Senju was about as interested in learning about Kagami as he himself was in learning about the Senju, so it made no sense that the man would create such a lengthy list.

He could see that the next question was about his least favourite colour. "Yellow," popped into his head, much faster and with much more certainty than the previous one.

He waited for the question to come. Perhaps Tobirama was having trouble deciphering the script? The brush did seem to have slipped amid over-excited gestures, but it was still perfectly legible. So what was keeping him?

To Kagami's great surprise, Tobirama proceeded to rip the scroll apart and toss it aside.

"This is a waste of time and we both know it, so let's get to the point," Tobirama said.

The boy agreed, but he was so shocked at the sudden change in behaviour that he did not know how to react. He could not get his eyes off the pieces of paper discarded on the ground where all the information about him had been so meticulously inscribed up until now.

"Both of my younger brothers died in battle against your family. Kawarama was the first. He was seven years old. Then Itama, on that very same year. He was five."

Kagami had thought that he could perhaps take the Senju in a fight if it came down to it. The ten-year-old was small and not as strong as a full-grown man, but he was fast and agile and he already possessed a fully matured sharingan. There was a kunai hidden up his sleeve, just ready to be drawn and plunged into the nearest vital point that he could get to. He knew them all by heart: collarbone vein; spine; kidney; liver; lungs; larynx; jugular; heart. One good strike and the Senju would join his dead clansmen.

But one look at those intense red, sharingan-less eyes was enough to let Kagami know how wrong he had been. How very dead wrong.

Tobirama Senju was not like the other ninjas Kagami had encountered in the battlefield before his clan had signed that preposterous treaty with the Senju. And he was not the tame dog that Kagami had presumed him to be either.

His gaze was piercing. Would he attack now that he had enough of their little game? He could. He could say that there had been an accident while they were sparring and no one would be able to find any evidence to the contrary. They were alone on that training field, there were no witnesses and the Senju had the protection of his Hokage brother. Kagami was just some kid no one listened to anyway. No one would contest whatever he decided to tell them.

Furthermore, two dead brothers were a powerful motivator. Kagami knew it well. His own brothers had been cut down by Senju steel. One had been older than him and the other younger. All that he had left of them were a few memories that became vaguer each day and one all-consuming desire for revenge.

"One of the last things that I told Itama," the Senju told him, "was that he was going to get himself killed if he didn't give up on the grudges of our forefathers and kept fighting for useless reasons. We are ninjas and so we must keep our emotions in check and live by certain rules. You're still young, but I think that you can understand what I'm saying, can't you, Kagami?"

All that Kagami heard was "my brothers are dead". That thought short-circuited with the other's oppressive presence and had his brain drawing one conclusion: he was next.

Determined not to go down without a fight, Kagami reached for his kunai.

No sooner had the boy felt the weapon's coarse grip brush against the palm of his hand, that the Senju had grasped the wrist of his dominant hand and pulled it back until Kagami's face was pressed against the grass and his own weapon was poised to stab him in the back. The Senju had moved so quickly that Kagami had been unable to follow him without an active sharingan.

Collarbone vein, spine, kidney, liver, lungs, larynx, jugular, heart. One good strike and Kagami would join his dead brothers and the rest of his dead clansmen.

"I know that you don't trust me," Tobirama said. He spoke slowly, seeming to guess that Kagami was so on edge that he would not be able to understand him otherwise. "To be honest, I have my own doubts about you Uchiha as well. But, for better or worse, we are allies now."

Kagami felt the Senju's hold on him ease and he wasted no time in shaking himself loose. There was no resistance, but he still put a few metres' distance between them just to be on the safe side.

"Allies? What a joke!" Kagami's kunai was still in the hands of the Senju, but he was past caring about that. Fear for his life had caused his adrenaline to spike and he was veritably trembling with rage. It was pointless to attempt another attack, but all that emotion had to be directed somewhere: "My brothers are dead because of you! Your clan killed them! They must be turning in their graves looking down on everything that's happening now!"

Unexpectedly, Tobirama backed down. He seemed to shrink before Kagami's eyes, as his chakra stopped flooding the space around them.

"The dead do not turn anywhere. They are dead and can do nothing." His eyes lowered as he stared into the mid-distance. "My youngest brother, Itama, told me the exact same thing once and look at where it got him."

Dead. Like Kagami's own brothers. But still…

"There is no reason for us to fight one another, Kagami."

"What are you saying then? That we should forget about everything that happened? Act like we weren't killing each other before? Move on and become one big happy family now?"

"Don't be ridiculous," the Senju replied.

Somehow, Kagami found his bluntness refreshing. Ever since the truce, it had felt to him like most of his family were living in denial that they and the Senju had ever been on opposite sides of a battlefield.

"We can't erase the past, but we don't need to. We are ninjas. Do you know what that means?" Tobirama asked.

Now who was being the ridiculous one? Kagami dare not say it aloud, but no one could keep him from thinking it.

"Being a ninja means that we fight to protect our family." Except that Kagami had not been able to save his brothers from the Senju. "…Or at least try."

"You're not wrong," Tobirama said. He looked at the stolen kunai still in his grasp.

From where he stood, Kagami could see him turn it this way and that, occasionally catching the gleam of the sun on the sharp edge of the blade.

"Ninjas are those who fight for a reason, and it is an especially good reason if it is to keep our loved ones safe."

"That's what I said," Kagami grumbled.

"But don't you see the problem that lies therein?"

Kagami had been so confident that he had had the right answer all along that he now found himself at a loss. Judging his wide-eyed stare to be an indication that he, in fact, did not see any problem with that definition, Tobirama explained:

"We fight to save our loved ones, by killing someone else's loved ones. I fought for my brothers and you fought for yours. In the end, we ended up killing each other's families. If none of us had done anything, we would still have our families with us."

It was absolutely true and it was so simple that Kagami could not fathom how he had never thought about it. There was a symmetry. The Senju had killed his brothers, but he had also killed Senju. Not a lot of them, but even one was enough to rob somebody of a loved one. He had just never stopped to think that his enemies had been people too.

He had been so sure of his righteousness that he did not quite know what to make of it. Where did that leave him now? Had he been in the wrong? He had no idea.

"So… it was wrong?" Kagami asked.

"There is no right or wrong for a ninja, only survival and whether or not you've followed the rules. What happened in the war before was just senseless. There was no good reason for us to fight."

Kagami needed a moment to take in that information. He was used to taking orders from his elders, so the thought of following rules did not bother him. But he had always been told that meeting the Senju in battle was fulfilling some sort of divine mandate.

"It was our ancestors that demanded we kept fighting on their behalf. To restore their honour."

"You talk much to the dead, do you? Do you even know why the war began?"

The Senju's deconstructing cynicism was unwelcome. Kagami was stung. But he had to admit that he did not have an answer. The war had just been the way of things, a reality that had been with him since the moment of his birth.

"Trust me. I have talked to the dead before and I can assure you that they do not turn in their graves, or give orders to the living or have any need for us to defend something as insubstantial as their honour. The only reason we fought for as long as we did before was because we let our anger and hate get the better of us. There was no good reason for it.

"And the same thing goes for the other clans who are not included in our peace treaty," the Senju continued, "and the other villages that are following our example and forming their own alliances."

"What are you saying? I… I don't understand…" Kagami was confused. Other villages and other clans that he had never heard about – they all seemed so distant to him, like they could never affect him. The world was a big place. He knew nothing of what was happening outside of the sphere of his clan, but he would take the Senju's word for it. He worked with the Hokage, after all. "What about those other villages?"

"Right now the world is in relative peace. The war has ended. But the powers are shifting and not everyone has learned to let go of the old grudges. Ninjas fight. It's what we do: you said so yourself. Therefore, it's only a matter of time until we'll be forced to fight a war again."

The Senju stated it as if it were an inescapable fate. Kagami was beyond shocked. Right after he had condemned killing, Tobirama went and said that there would be more of it soon. His head was spinning.

There was one thing he could be certain of, however. Among his friends and relatives, the word "war" seemed to have become as taboo as the filthiest of curses. Anyone who so much as suggested that the peace would not last was severely reprimanded. Tobirama, on the other hand, had no regard for such restrictions. He spoke of it so freely.

"But then… then… what's the point of building this village?"

"The point is that our clans, all the clans that make up Konoha, are allies now. And since there is strength in numbers, maybe, just maybe, we might be able to avoid the worst-case scenario this time. Your family no longer ends at those whose family name is Uchiha, just as mine does not end at those that bear the name Senju. We are all in this together now and if we cannot find a way to trust each other, we will only be sparing our real enemies the trouble of bringing us down."

Kagami would have to be a fool not to see the logic in that, but at the same time he could absolutely not let go of one thought:

"But… my brothers…"

Tobirama cut him off before he could say more.

"Your brothers and mine did what they had to do. It's possible that without their sacrifice we would not be here, but times have changed and now we need to adapt. Emotions like those will only get in our way. It is discipline that we need to hold on to now, at least until we can find our balance and get to know each other a little better."

Kagami thought it over.

The thought that war might be return someday did not frighten him. He had been there before. He knew what to expect. What was not easy for him to accept was the idea that he could be fighting alongside a Senju this time, when all his life he had been taught to despise their name and spit on their family crest. But the Senju had been taught the same thing about the Uchiha – he could see it now, could look at himself and at his family from their standpoint – and he knew that he had only done what he had to in order to survive. It stood to reason that the same was true of the Senju. They were only human, not the demons he had been taught to hate.

His brothers were dead and, for a while after the peace treaty had been signed, he had felt like everyone he knew was doing their best to forget that they had ever existed. His mother did not talk about them and his father had scolded him the last time that he had invoked their memories, telling him that he was just a kid who understood nothing about anything.

Tobirama – no: sensei was not like that. He was not denying the past and he was not saying that everything was fine the way that it was now. Nor was he ignoring the possibility that bad things might be ahead for all of them. There were still threats out there and they each carried their hurt. Nothing could deny that.

There was a lot of work for them to do yet, building the necessary trust between the clans to overcome such a bloody history, but, for the first time, Kagami felt like he might like the place where those efforts could lead him.

A future where family did not end in a name. It was an interesting thought.

"Sensei…" he called. The word still did not feel like it belonged on his tongue, but it had come easier this time. "Your brothers… Kawarama and Itama, right? What were their favourite colours?"

If family was to supersede the boundaries of clans, then he would like to start on his new journey by knowing more about his new family members.