Madara's plans to head straight to Uzushiogakure are stalled when he sees a snow leopard pelting full speed straight for him. This would be slightly less terrifying if it had been on solid ground instead of the middle of the fucking ocean. It's not even the same snow leopard that was stalking him earlier, considering this one is coming from farther out into the ocean instead of, you know, the mainland. A summons is the only rational answer. He slides back into a defensive position, swinging his gunbai around to brace for the coming collision.

It never comes.

The leopard passes by close enough for him to reach out and touch with nothing more than a short, assessing glance. Madara watches it for a moment, mystified, before deciding he shouldn't test his impressively bad luck and booking it towards Uzushio. Whatever is going on with the snow leopard summons, he doesn't want a part of it. Who even has snow leopard summons? He sort of doubts it's the Uzumaki— they prefer carnage and chaos prone summons. More to the point, why does whoever-it-is keep sending the damn snow leopards to him?

He has to slow down when he gets closer to Uzushiogakure so that he can avoid the numerous whirlpools instead of being sucked in and drowned. That's no way for such a brilliant shinobi to go. He ignores how close he is to getting sucked in several times and also how easily an Uzushio patrol skips around the whirlpools when they pass. He's doing fine, thank you very much.

"Madara-sama," the chunin sent to pick him up greets at the entrance to the village. The girl eyes the puddle of water growing at his feet and then raises her brow at him. He studiously ignores her and silent blames the water on the mist that settles around Uzushio. It's a bad excuse but no one can call him out on it if he doesn't verbally use it. The streets of Uzushiogakure are chaotic in a manner he's never known another place to be. The people of Uzushio never rest. Mito had been an outlier in her stillness but her manner had always reflected the restless thrum of her homeland. Madara wonders if Konoha is like that, the Senju and Uchiha clearly different but just as clearly sharing that selfsame core. He wonders if she will be when her people have been hers for a longer time.

There is an edge to the way Uzushio's people interact with Konoha's. A disconnect that Madara had caused. He isn't generally the cause of any bad blood between Konoha and other villages but this... this had been his fault. His mistake, an honest mistake, but that's no excuse, not in this line of work.

"Madara-sama," The Uzukage greets politely when Madara has been led into his office.

"Yasumi-sama," he returns, just as polite. He genuinely respects Uzumaki-Maebara Yasumi for a myriad of reasons, the most prominent being that they actually have the ability to control their psychotic little shinobi. He has never actually met another person beyond Yasumi and Mito capable of wrangling anyone of Uzumaki descent. Mito, he understands because the woman is the most terrifying Uzumaki around (she may not act it but don't let her fool you, she causes just as much chaos as her kin) but Yasumi had married in and thus lacks (most of) the innate Uzumaki crazy. Madara doesn't understand how they do it.

"Tobirama-kun will be here shortly," Yasumi says. Madara doesn't miss the familiar way they addressed the runaway Senju, nor does he miss the sharp look in their eye. No matter what has happened, Madara can't imagine Yasumi will allow him to treat Tobirama as a missing-nin. Not that he had planned on it but it's sort of nice to know that Tobirama had always had an ally in Uzushiogakure even if he had refused to return home to Konohagakure.

It takes all of his willpower not to flee when Mito enters the office, Tobirama at her side. The children attached to the albino probably help him keep his cool, even if they give Madara a bad vibe. They're children, there's no way they could be contributing to how on edge he is. Mito's greeting is sharp, just this side of rude. Madara leaves it be because he deserves her distaste, deserves her hatred. Tobirama calling him Madara-kun, however, is too much. Far, far too much.

His heart is a weak thing, you understand.

Admittedly, reacting with flailing and calling Tobirama's random child a 'that' is probably not his smartest idea but you can't blame him. He was panicking! He's still panicking! Tobirama called him Madara-kun, it is totally reasonable to have a heart attack! He falls automatically into a glare at Tobirama's dry comment, used to Izuna using a similar tone to poke fun at him, but lets it drop with a huff when he realizes it only sets Tobirama (and the girl perched on his shoulders) more on edge. This is already going sour and he hasn't even done anything!

"I didn't take you for the nurturing sort," he says, trying for curious, for apologetic. By Tobirama's reaction, he misses the mark. He doesn't know what he's doing wrong, doesn't know how to fix this. He turns desperate eyes on Mito but finds her confused, watching Tobirama almost warily. Madara doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but he doesn't want to fight with Tobirama, even if the other is reaching for one. He has to try something else- a different angle- doing something that can't be misconstrued as anger or hate or- or derision or anything.

The Uzukage steps in and while Madara is sure they don't truly mean the slight in their words, the way they had implied Konoha couldn't help Tobirama as well as Uzushio snaps his already frayed nerves. From there, any tenuous control he has over the situation is gone. They had somehow insulted Tobirama's ability to keep himself alive and out of trouble, the second half of which doesn't exist, and now the wayward Senju is threatening to fight them which would be less concerning if two kids weren't at risk of getting caught in the middle. Of course, when Madara tries to voice this, Tobirama takes it as a threat and really, Madara wants to just go home and drown his sorrows in spiked tea.

In the end, he supposes he's more surprised at Tobirama's sudden disappearance than he should be. The entire situation has been clearly leading up to this. Madara still curses despite knowing this, his failure to diffuse the situation weighing like lead in his gut. When Mito takes off, he follows, hoping she has a better idea of where Tobirama might have gone. This is gonna be difficult.

(He feels the chakra Tobirama gathers in his room, feels it mixed with chakra dark and cloying, feels the dread mount like lead in his stomach. The Uzumaki jounin with him undoes the seal just as he slams a chakra enforced shoulder into the door. He meets the Senju's eyes in the milliseconds before the man disappears. Madara tastes the failure like ash in his mouth.)

It takes two hours of fruitless searching and a near panic attack after Tobirama teleports away from Uzushio for Mito to pin him down, trapping him in some room before Madara can take off to search the rest of the Elemental Nations the second time.

"You can't force him to forgive you," she says sharply. Madara flinches away from the words and the memories of fire and mokuton that they unfailingly dredge up. Sometimes, he thinks he can still feel the blood, sticky and thick, on his skin. He can't, of course, but try telling his stupid brain that.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Madara lies. Mito's completely unimpressed look is rude. Deserved, but still rude.

"Whether or not my husband's death was an accident or not or your fault or not, what matters here is that Tobirama blames you and no matter how much you bluster and yell, you can't just make that ingrained anger disappear," Mito says, her words sharp and cutting straight to the center of the matter, as always. Madara can understand why Hashirama had fallen for her, in a strange sort of way. He knows she's right- he finds that she almost always is when she decides to interfere -but that doesn't make it any easier to accept. He just wants to make it up to Tobirama. It'll never be enough, nothing is ever enough for taking away a family member, and he knows that Tobirama likely won't accept it. He just wants to stop feeling so guilty.

"I know," he says quietly. "I know."