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 new 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?

He loved playing with the children, teaching them songs, showing them all the jutus he knew, telling them stories, listening to music with them and watching the movies he'd downloaded before he and Tobirama came here, reading them the eBooks he had on his phone and, occasionally, like today, signing along with some of the songs. That seemed to be the kids' favorite, even though Madara wasn't all that much of a singer.

Either way, spending time with so many people that seemed to genuinely like him, no matter their age, was doing wonders in helping him forget the tragedy that was his actual life. And it was helping him not think too much about the memories that, day by day, became clearer, even if the pace of it was frustrating.

Training helped. He had not realized how much he missed working up a good sweat until all of his muscles were soar and his stomach demanded sustenance. On the days he was too tired to cook up a meal for himself and Tobirama - Kurama had, at least, stopped pretending to need food, even though he liked to steal strips of chicken from Tobirama's plate ever chance he got just to annoy the man - the older shinobi seemed eager to take him out to the restaurants and food stalls around the village to spoil him.

Though he was pretty sure they both regretted it when they allowed the Akimichi Clan Head's wife to drag them off into her own establishment. She had deemed them both severely underweight and the amount of food she all but stuffed down their stomachs still made them break out in shivers at just the thought of it. Too bad they could't just brush her off. Her son, Torifu, was one of Tobirama's genin students and her husband practically a politician the two of them dealt with almost daily, if Madara bothered to go to the Tower with his friend. Thankfully, Madara had managed to convince both his housemates that Kurama should accompany them. The biju was a chakra construct and didn't need nourishment even if he could eat. Given his true size, he could definitely stomach all the extra food neither the Uchiha nor the Senju had any hopes of finishing.

The things they did for political boons and village unity, honestly.

Another thing that helped were the various hawks that found him at the most random times. He remembered some of them as his, which meant the ones he wasn't familiar with probably were, too. People were weirded out to see them. According to Kagami, they had been released a few years ago and no one had seen them since. Apparently, they still knew who their master was.

What bothered him about the situation, though, was Kagami's wording. Not 'They were released after your death', but 'They were released a few years ago when you ... Never mind!'. That implied they were released before he died and not by someone else, as the birds always came back to him.

Which means his past self had released them.

The implications of that did not escape him, even if there were several. He just wasn't sure which ones were the most likely and, truthfully, he didn't want to find out because he didn't like either option. He saw the way people feared him and it wasn't just because he was supposed to be dead, according to everyone and their uncle. And it wasn't even just his power that they feared.

They feared him, which didn't imply all too much fondness being directed at him when he had been alive here the first time around. The disappearance of his body and his new reappearance only made them even more uneasy, especially since he was so friendly with Tobirama.

He hated the confirmation that Tobirama had hated or at least disliked his former self. He had not wanted it to be true.

"Mada-jii?" He blinked, startled out of his thoughts rather suddenly when Tsunade called his name - well, her preferred version of it, anyway - and poked his cheek in order to get his attention. When he focused on her again, she and the other kids were all staring at him in worry. They must have been calling his name for a while now and he hadn't been responding. The song playing in the background was definitely not the one he remembered singing before getting lost in his own mind. He must have trailed off as soon as his thoughts had.

"Sorry, my thoughts took me to a different place," he apologized while smiling at the little blond in reassurance - where the hell did that gene come from, anyway? Hashirama supposedly looked like his father and Tobirama was a spitting image of their mother and Mito said her family was full of redheads so, seriously, what the hell? That was some weird genetics at play right there - until she stopped fretting, even if she sent him an adorable suspicious frown while gauging the honesty his answer. She spent too much time with her uncle.

"The place you came from that you won't tell us about?" One of Tsunade's friends, Orochimaru, pouted at him in a rather uncharacteristic manner. Though, given that the kid was a second coming of Tobirama, the denial of more knowledge was bound to initiate such a reaction.

"No, that's just a saying. I didn't mean literally. My thoughts just drifted off to something else and I guess I trailed off. Forgive me?" He asked them with mock puppy eyes, wondering when was the last time he had acted this childishly. If ever. In either life.

Tsunade's other best friend, Jiraiya, pondered for a moment before sending him a stern, serious, far too cute look. "Only if you sing us something new."

Madara had to fight back a grin. Too cute. "If that is the price I must pay," he conceded and immediately set his MP4 to random and they all waited for the new song to start. He nearly had a heart attack when a familiar tune started playing, one he hadn't heard since the day he had fought as a shinobi for the first time in this life and in this body. The first thing that may or may not have triggered a memory from him. "There's a fire burning inside me

Cold steel calls out my name

I'm tempted to give into the rage."

Just like last time, images seemed to appear before his eyes, showing him what he knew now to be himself. He was young, his hair still wild but immensely shorter, his bangs only just starting to grow over the right side of his face. The image was new, unfamiliar, showing the child him standing on the battlefield before he had even hit double digits, spewing fire and clashing swords with whoever dared step into his path, his eyes the by now familiar blazing red of the Sharingan. His blood may have frozen when the implications of when he got the doujutsu hit him, of how young he had been and what would have triggered it. The montage sort of sped through his life until a battle that was almost familiar, the Susanoo around him as he fought a man that he now recognized as Hashirama. There was no one to stand at his side as an equal, as his heir, his right hand, his brother and the memory was full of sorrow and loss and betrayal and rage and it was too much, too much, far too much-

"Torn apart by this affliction

Locked up inside myself

This life is much too young to fade."

He wasn't even aware that he had sat up from where he had been leaning against the tree, the kids all but sliding off of him and tumbling to the ground as he stared down at his hand. He remembered ... He remembered walking down the streets of Konoha with his things packed, no intentions of turning back and no destination in mind, just the need to leave, to get away. It's what eventually led to him meeting Kurama and what led to them both being captured.

The memory brought into stark detail the way he had felt when he had fought Hashirama - his friend, his best friend, the last person he would call brother, even if only in arms - so helpless, so angry, plotting and planning, manipulating his own chakra as much as he could, holding back, pulling his punches, aiming in a way that would have made his father scold him and maybe even have him punished. He had refused to be controlled and yet it had been beyond his power so he had chosen his own path. But he did not want to die, that he remembered, so he had set a contingency, a contingency to steal him from death's grasp as much as that thing's-

He'd been a prisoner inside of his own body and he had fought the only way he knew how.

"I ran away from the pain

Always breaking down inside

Incomplete, but now I see

This won't be the end of me."

He'd left Konoha like he had left his own childhood home, running away from the pain and those who would cause it to him, seeking solitude to get over the pain he was already suffering from. If he had stayed - here, at his parents' home - he would have been broken beyond mending.

He may not have any memories now, but he understood the necessity for it. His soul had been hurting, a vital part of who he was had been taken from him, several vital parts, and no one had been willing to hold on to the falling pieces that were left so he had to cling to them himself. It made him stronger and had allowed him to move past the unbearable pain and loneliness.

He had survived his breaking point and what would have been the end of him was now just an experience that made him stronger. He wouldn't be here if he hadn't reached that point and been willing to-

"The world around me

Sells an empty promise

They build you up just to watch you fall

It's time to meet this face to face."

A concept he was familiar with, isn't it? In both of his lifetimes, be it as Uchiha Madara or as Utaha Madara, he had been a tool, something to be utilized while it held a certain value.

As Uchiha Madara, his clan, his family, revered his strength as a gift from the gods, their most prized warrior, beloved by the clan for the way he fought for them, with his life, with all that he was. Right up until the moment when he lost the one person that made life worth living and he was no longer willing to bend without breaking. The peace he had been trying to get them to accept for years ... They had suddenly been desperate for it and he had been unwilling to end the war as his last brother's - Izuna's - last request had been not to trust the Senju with the Uchiha because they would destroy them. He was suddenly the monster, the villain in the story.

They left him, abandoned him, betrayed him and he had never sought retribution.

And yet they still labeled him a monster and turned their backs to him when he needed them.

As Utaha Madara, he had been the wunderkind everyone had admired for his intellect, his skills, his talents, his strength right up until the moment he refused to let himself be used as a tool for his family's continued climb in status due to his martial arts rewards from tournaments and competitions. He was a loved sibling right up until the moment when one of them realized there was no way a woman could recover from giving birth to one child and have another in the same year, let alone in less than ten months. Right up until the moment when they learned that he may not even be their sibling through their father in regards to blood.

He hated how he sounded like the Cinderella of his own life story.

The village discarded him before they could even properly build him up, for fuck's sake! He was the bogyman of their stories and he was the monster of their nightmares, not to be trusted, not to be allowed to stand behind their backs.

The choirs ran by him without him even noticing it as the parallels between his two lives flashed before his eyes, as he saw the way the villagers had shunned him, the way his supposed best friend was blind to it, the way red eyes stared at him distrustfully. He wanted it to stop but even as his voice turned into all but a whisper, the music was still playing in the background, as loud as thunder in his ears and just as impossible to ignore as an explosion.

Black and white melt into gray

Till every truth is stripped away

When nothing's wrong nothing's okay

Everyone has been betrayed.

A being, one half blacker than black, the other almost corpse white, strange round, glowing eyes, stared at him with a demented grip as his will was sealed, locked away, out of his reach.

Konoha, the good and the bad, the potential for greatness and corruption alike, before him, his eyes seeing it all but no one would listen to him, no one would heed his warnings about the Clan Heads and the power plays and the political bullshit.

The clan wars, the warring era, the other villages ...

Both of Konoha's founding clans and both of her founders, the rumors and reputations that follow them, the truth, the actions and inaction behind it all, the promises and dreams, both fulfilled and unfulfilled ...

How much of it was actually known? How much was rumor and propaganda and smear campaigns? How much of it would go down in history? How much of it would influence future generations? How much would the actions and inaction in this present effect the future? In the world he had grown up in, Konohagakure no Sato and the rest of the shinobi world had been all but destroyed, erased from history as little else than rumors and legends, fanciful stories to tell youngsters before bed and an inspiration for manga and anime artists. How much did a bad base influence the death of whole nations in the eyes of history?

How many people actually understood that an actual lack of problems was a problem because nothing is perfect? Man is not god and not even gods were perfect. Everything man-made was not, in fact, perfect, especially not a project that was still, in all actuality, in its infancy. Konoha is not even ten years old and it had just nearly been wiped off of the face of the planet. Obviously, something is fundamentally missing and everyone is just ... blind to it. Madara only even knew this because he came from a time where everything was run on the same principles and he was familiar with this way of functioning in a society.

Konoha's internal structure was still weak. Their alliances with the other shinobi villages was weak and artificial. A second war is bound to start up in the relatively near future. Hell, Madara's sudden death might pitch them right back into it and there's little chance Kurama would stick around to help. He only stuck around for Madara, perhaps waiting to see whether the reborn Uchiha will grow sick of the people's treatment of him here so that they could leave together.

But Madara was sick of running. He'd ran away from Konoha, then he'd ran away from his parents' home and then he'd ran away from his own time. Three times was more than enough. He won't run again.

Besides, no matter how many times he might be betrayed within these walls, he was still plenty safer than roaming on his own or even with Kurama. That thing had found him once and had managed to sneak up on him until it was too late for him to escape. Besides, Konoha, no matter how many shadows are accumulating, was still his to protect. If he leaves, the other villages will attack again. His view of the world is not so black and white for him to leave just because he's the only one who can see them melding into gray. He's ... He's needed here, even if he's not wanted.

By some, now, while he still doesn't have his memories, yes. Tobirama, Kagami, Hikaku, Hashirama, Mito and Toka. They all want him as he is now, the relatively innocent and oblivious Madara they may be hoping to change from whoever he used to be.

(He remembers the rage, the loneliness, the loss, the near madness.)

(He remembers the pain of his own clansmen turning their backs on him, remembers the sting of the words whispered by them behind his own back.)

(He remembers red eyed glares under a short white fringe and remembers the utter lack of trust or any true respect.)

(He remembers a sword piercing his heart from behind, the betrayal and the relief.)

They won't want him when his memories return. They'll be the most likely ones to chase him out of the village. And that hurt.

But he'd suffered from worse and he refused to give in. He'd lost his whole family save a cousin to the very clan he was practically forced to make peace with. He should have provoked those hateful red eyes to pierce him through when he had lain there, on the ground, exhausted, new eyes stinging from overuse and lack of proper healing rest, his body sore from spending days in the same position as he watched over his brother's every last dying breath.

Maybe he would have found peace.

Sage knows he'd suffered enough.

But he was here and he was alive, again, somehow, and it was up to him to stop that thing's plans, whatever they might be. It all must be somewhere in his memories, which meant he'd have to continue searching through the ones he already got back and finding away to get back new ones if the answers he's searching for aren't already there.

'It seems I'm up for another war,' he thought distractedly as he brought the song to the finish. No matter how tough this turns out to be and what the end result might be, he knew one thing for sure.

"This won't be the end of me."