Time Heals All Wounds
Summary: The day Tobirama died happens earlier, during Hashirama's time as Hokage when they are at war with almost every mew village but years after Madara's death. Only he didn't die. He somehow ended up in a time not his own and met a familiar face he though gone forever. Can he get back? And what of his new friend?
Tobirama was resigned to his fate. He really was. He was tired. He was severely injured and his opponents outclassed him in chakra reserves even when he hadn't spent two days out on the battlefield. At least he had managed to distract the squadron of ninja hunting him and his six students down while said students escaped. He would have never allowed for his precious students, children still, to come to harm while he drew breath.
Senju Tobirama would happily die for those teens.
(For a moment, he wondered if Uchiha Kagami's old Shishou would finally not think all ill of him to learn he was snuffed in this manner, but brushed the thought aside as frivolous. The man was dead and Tobirama only in his final absence realized perhaps none of them had ever been worthy of the man's regard in life.)
He had nothing to be ashamed of in his final moments, as the twin monstrosities stood before him, jeering and mocking his exhausted self. He had put up a good fight. He had saved his squad and had left a final message imparted on them before he had sent them back to inform his closest of his passing. Hashirama will morn, will cry but stay strong for those who need to draw strength from him in their time of need. Mito will be more dignified and quiet in her sorrow, leaving no doubt a single white lily by some picture of his. Touka will take out her frustrations on her enemies until she collapses of exhaustion, though he hoped someone was close to her when that happens so she didn't perish in her grief. Little Tsunade, only five years old, probably won't really understand until much later why her favorite uncle wasn't coming home.
The village will offer him a small, public service and his name will be carved into stone as a hero once the bloody war is over.
His students will mourn. Koharu will be tight lipped about it. Homura will keep whipping the mist from his glasses. Hiruzen will probably feel guilty because Tobirama had refused to let him be the one to lead the shinobi away. Torifu will offer him a prayer despite knowing Tobirama didn't believe in any sort of divinity no matter how many interesting stories he had once pretended not to be interested in when a once ally had been telling them by a camp fire on the rare few joined missions they had attended together. Danzo will ponder and probably feel ashamed still that Hiruzen had offered to sacrifice himself first. And Kagami ...
Well, Kagami will be as angry as he is sad. He'll be angry at Hashirama because it had, ultimately, been Hashirama's inaction that had cost him two mentors, one twice even. Kagami, for all that he didn't act much like the other Uchiha, still loved just as fiercely as any of his clansmen. He was already never going to forgive Hashirama for what happened with his Shishou and now his Sensei will die, too.
That was perhaps one of his rare few regrets, along with never having been able to save his brothers and now causing his last remaining brother so much pain. He just hoped Konoha won't suffer too much from his loss. He was only one man but he had been their second most powerful shinobi for years, a title that fell upon him the moment Uchiha Madara was lost to them. He regretted pushing the man to his limits, diving him away until everyone, including his clan but for his young apprentice and closest and last remaining direct cousin, feared and distrusted him. Madara was many things but in his absence, Tobirama had only then realized those things were not only bad ones. Perhaps if Madara were still here, they could have ended all of this bloodshed. The name alone was power. He was, after all, the first man to stand as a commander of a biju even if he was defeated by Hashirama.
His death had been a relief at the time but also an invite for the newer hidden villages to declare war on Konoha. For surely if such a powerful ally was gone, Hashirama won't be enough to defend it, not against all of the other villages allied against them. Never mind that Hashirama had done what was practically impossible.
In the end, they had been right. Hashirama was not an enough of a deterrent and war began.
Which is how Tobirama found himself lying so damn close to Konoha's borders with next to no chakra left, the last two of the squad hunting him down leering down at him as they held their weapons high, ready for the kill at any moment.
The Silver and Gold brothers were out of his league by a far margin simply because they had a small portion of the Kyuubi no Yoko's chakra in them. If rumor is to be believed, they got it when they tried capturing the beast but ended up swallowed by it instead and the only way they could escape or survive was by eating the flesh of its stomach from the inside until the great fox spat them out. True or not, they had a portion of its incredible chakra and when they were together, they were practically unstoppable. Tobirama had stood on chance. He had killed their squad-mates but they had nearly flattened him with the first exchange of blows. To make matters worse, they had some sort of ancient, powerful weapon with them that was really doing Tobirama no favors.
In the end, his defeat was imminent and he was grateful that he could at least feel his students' chakra signatures at the walls of the village, safe enough and close enough to get to absolute safety before any enemies could reach them. That was all he needed to know to be accepting of what fate he might find himself facing.
Still, that didn't mean he was going to just give up. That was not his style. He hadn't survived his family's centuries old feud or the grieving madness of a raging firestorm trapped in a human body just to give up the first time things got rough. He still had things to fight for. There were still people in Konoha waiting for his safe return. Even if survival was unlikely, he absolutely refused to enter the Pure Lands and meet the Uchiha brothers without at least being able to say he tried his best. Izuna would be offended to have fallen at the sword of a quitter and Madara ...
Even years later, at his death breaths, Tobirama was still uncertain of what he though of his Anija's once best friend and the madness that took him. Hashirama had mourned but surprisingly not all that much. Touka, who had thought the man's temper amusing, had not been able to look at Hashirama when he had brought the body home. Mito had wanted to put a stasis seal on it but the body was gone in the morning and no amount of searching or investigating could prove whether Madara had faked his own death or if the disappearance was the work of bloodline thieves. Uchiha Hikaku, Madara's last remaining cousin, cursed Hashirama's name and had no choice but to become the official Clan Head of the Uchiha, something he had refused to do as long as his cousin drew breath, no matter where he may be or if he'll ever come back. Kagami awoke the Mangekyo Sharingan at seeing his Shishou's body and Tobirama ...
He had been somewhat relieved. Madara had been unstable and downeight mad in his last battle with Hashirama. He was a danger to all.
And yet he had regretted his death and silently mourned it as well. He wished he could call Madara his friend but that would be a lie. The man had hated him to his core for striking Izuna down and yet ... He still remembered days when they would 'join forces' to make their Hokage do his work or quiet nights of sharing good sake as they did their own in the office they shared with a couple of other administrators in the Hokage Tower. And there was that one time when Madara had practically went off the rails when an enemy ninja had nearly taken Tobirama's head off during a fight and that other time when he had been poisoned during his own and Madara had stumbled upon him while coming back from his own and carried him all the way home, only to there be accused subtly by half of the village to have been the shinobi who had poisoned him himself. Tobirama had only learned of the accusations after Madara left the village when one Hyuuga asked him if he was more relaxed now that his would-be murderer was gone. As if Madara would ever resort to using poison when he could probably burn Tobirama down to ashes if he ever wished to make a clean kill. He never did get the chance to thank the man and their relationship after that incident had only gotten worse.
Tobirama wished he had given the man a chance. Madara had given him one and he had killed the man's precious younger brother. That was one of the regrets Tobirama never let go of. 'Perhaps I can apologize in death.' It was cowardly but he will do it and he will apologize to Izuna as well.
His willingness to greet death with open arms, however, would not stop him from making one last attempt to survive. Even if it didn't work, he won't have to fear coming before one of the men he had come to respect more than most of his family and being accused of being a quitter. He had fought too much, survived far too much and by far much worse situations to just give up without one last attempt to save himself. He owed it to Izuna if nothing else. If he fell the great Uchiha Izuna, second in power only to Madara, then he wasn't going to tarnish the man's reputation by not giving it his all to continue breathing.
"Look, brother, the little bug still wants to fight," the man called the Silver brother, Ginkaku, sneered at him. He and his brother were boulders of men with dark skin but fairly light hair, in the color of their names respectively and whisker marks from having ingested the Kyuubi's power.
"That, at least, is admirable, brother, but let us finish this. We have better things to do in Kumo than stare down at a little bug." The other one, Kinkaku, said with a bored sort of air that he didn't project quite well enough for Tobirama to believe it. He was uneasy about the fact that Tobirama was still struggling to fight and he was trying to hide it but Tobirama didn't need to be the best sensor in the world to know he was faking it. Tobirama had known a man who could affect that air even when he was fighting Hashirama so he could easily see the difference between genuine confidence and this act that the gold haired twin was projecting. He couldn't help but smirk at the knowledge that, even near death, he scared these so called unbeatable beasts they had created of themselves when ingesting the Kyuubi's power.
That, however, displeased his would-be murderers, judging by the narrowing of their eyes. They snarled something at him but he was already too gone focusing on giving up what little chakra he had left for one last jutsu and quietly praying to the very gods he didn't believe in that he had a marker close enough and preferably somewhere safe.
"Die, bug!"
"Hiraishin!"
A flash.
A descending sword.
Black.
...
...
...
...
Tobirama didn't expect to open his eyes, though, no matter what he had attempted. He had quite honestly thought that he didn't have nearly enough energy to reach out to any of his markers and that his last attempt to save himself would be futile and yet here he was, opening his eyes to some strange noise in the distance and the sun shinning down in his face through dancing leaves. Somehow, he had survived and he had apparently been resting for a couple of days as his chakra reserves were starting to replenish themselves to their normal levels. The lack of food was hindering the process but he figured a food pill will suffice until he finds proper sustenance.
The noise was threatening to cause a headache, though. He sat up with a wince and glared at the direction it was all coming from, feeling a bit muddled in the head, which he feared may be the cause of a concussion, something he would rather do without. He carefully stood up, cursing the noise under his breath all the while even as he reached to pop two pills into his mouth. The effect was almost immediate but that still didn't help his headache nor the unfamiliar noise that was probably causing it, or at least a part of it.
He was in some sort of forest but there was no way it could possibly be the one surrounding Konoha or even the one anywhere else in Fire Country. The trees were too small and even too far apart, the soil felt different under his feet and the air had a certain sort of stench to it that reminded him of miner colonies or a blacksmith's workshop, but there was no way a single forge could pollute the air this much. Not knowing what else to do but follow that one lead to civilization he had, Tobirama followed his nose while he tried to get his head together. He had no other choice. He was injured, hungry and still very much tired. If his Hiraishin had brought him here, then this was at least a safe place. Or at least he hoped. His senses weren't picking up any hostile chakra signatures, at least.
...
His senses weren't picking up any chakra signatures! At all! Not even the meager amounts civilians had! Which was impossible! Chakra was the very living energy every person was born with, shinobi were only trained to know how to use theirs to manipulate the world around them with jutsus! Every tree, every rock had chakra in it! How was it possible that he only felt nature's chakra all around him when he had to be pretty damn close to a bigger settlement if they had mines or multiple blacksmiths?!
He hurried onward, pushing himself more than he should considering how tired he was, his injuries and the possible concussion he had but he didn't care. This was unnatural. He had to get to the bottom of this. The forest wasn't nearly as wide as Konoha's and and he soon found himself on a cliff, looking down at the city in the distance with disbelief.
'Something tells me I'm not in the Elemental Nations anymore.'