.
.
"Hashirama. Is that you?"
Madara's voice was thin. Hashi approached him quietly as he lay on his back, battered and broken, bruises and scratch marks marring the skin of his face and chest. She knelt beside him, and she saw his eyes track sluggishly toward hers. He was dying. She knew he wanted to use his last breath to make amends.
"You were always the optimist," he said, and his eyes cracked open. "My dream was crushed, but yours lives on, and is still ongoing."
"We were too hasty," she said. "We didn't need to fulfill our dream ourselves, it was more important to cultivate those who would come after us."
"Which means I would have failed anyway, because I've always hated having someone stand behind me."
His mouth quirked. A ghost of a smile. Hashi felt tears pricking the backs of her eyes as she smiled and leaned closer toward him.
"When we were kids, you once said, 'we're shinobi. We'll never know when we'll die.' That for either side to live, we'd each have to show what's inside of us, and pour a drink and toast as family. But now we're both about to die. Right now, we can drink as war buddies," she said.
"War buddies, huh?" His voice was soft. His eyes were beginning to close. "Well. I guess...that's okay...by..."
His eyes closed. He almost looked like he was just asleep.
At the hospital, she kept vigil by his bedside. Quietly, she'd comb her fingers through his scalp, worrying over superficial scrapes and bruises. Some nights, she'd rest her cheek on his chest, lowering the guardrails to the hospital bed and resting the top half of her body against his. They had crossed the centuries together without him so much as saying a word about his suffering. She resolved to never hurt him that way again.