yield with a grace

Madara was a shadow in the darkness of the room, still as a statue.

As if he belonged into the office like a piece of lifeless furniture.

When Hashirama's trembling fingers found the light switch and hit it the room erupted into brightness, making both of them blink to get used to it. They stood at the opposite ends of the room, silently looking at each other, and for the first time in his life Hashirama thought he saw something like desperation in Madara's eyes. They had been fighting for their entire lives before they had founded Hidden Leaf. War was no stranger. What was alien was the feeling of having a place to protect, and something worth it. Fire and Shadow. Hashirama had no idea who had come up with that title for them, but it was accurate.

Finally, he broke the silence. "This could be it."

Madara nodded. "Their morale is weakened. Two years of battle have taken their toll on the Tairo's mercenaries and samurai, as well. Rumors say Fire's Daimyo is occupied otherwise. And face it, every single one of the Tairos would gladly stab one another in the back if it meant more power for themselves."

The Senju shook his head, disbelieving and tired. "It can't be that simple."

"Why not?" His fellow leader shrugged. "Wars that drag out are bound to create mistakes at one point or another. Not even Tokugawa Ieyasu is unfaultable."

"I guess." Hashirama sighed. "We have Takeda to thank. The territorial fights are taking Tokugawa's focus off Leaf."

"This is our chance," Madara said. "Let's take it, Hashirama."

"I don't like it. We've never made dirty deals before."

"We don't have another choice. Stop pretend being unimpeachable. You know very well what has to be done, even if both of us don't like it."

"You're talking about sacrificing lives to save even more. And not in direct combat, either."

"And I hate it as much as you do. But we know it has to be done. This is the reason why we put our children through the Academy."

The thing both of them thought but neither of them voiced stood in the room clearly. It is time this comes to an end. If only the price wasn't what they both knew it would be.

…

Sometimes he thought of leaving.

The woman he loved would never love him back. And maybe she loved the man who was his rival and best friend and partner all in one – maybe she did not – but either way, it did not matter. It wouldn't change anything. They were trapped in a web of lies of their own making, a net whose strands were so thick and choking they could not disentangle themselves on their own. And maybe him saying something would allow for the only escape the three of them had – he could always just take her, or challenge his partner – but he had grown up knowing war and death and he was so sick of it all. He'd lost family to the whore that was war, family and friends and his innocence and his beliefs. Sometimes he thought he even lost himself.

It was enough to make a man think of betraying his home.

Sometimes he wondered if he really would be able to do it, or if he loved them enough to stay.

…

Vision of the future:

He didn't fit in. He stood out painfully. He knew – even with his limited knowledge and experience at the age of six – that he was a stranger, accepted only because his mother was the daughter of one of the Clan Elders. Minato's hair was bright yellow, his eyes the blue of the sun-kissed sea. He seemed taller than the kids of his age, all of them with dark hair and dark eyes and the small, wind-bent and gnarled stature their fathers had and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Sticking out like a sore thumb was the one thing. Being the fruit of a forbidden affair was another. People in this village did not look kindly on adultery, not even when committed outside of marriage.

He stared out over the sea, now knowing what he was looking for.

The expanse of water was endless. His step father and elder brothers had left even before he had awakened. It was something to appreciate: a morning that did not have him suffer under his half-brother's onslaughts, punches and kicks and nasty glances. They didn't like him. They disliked his wheat-yellow hair and his blue eyes, his nimble hands when it came to all kinds of work. And, most of all, they disliked him because he was bright. Minato always had a retort or a quick comment. And despite the fact that he only attended the village school sporadically, he knew enough to correct them. He wasn't aware that he was a prodigy. He just knew his brothers – and the other people – did not like him for what he was.

"Eh, blondie!" A gnarled, muscular man about trice his age rounded in on him, causing Minato to draw back. No such luck. Hard hands grabbed his collar. The man spit onto the street. "Don't run away, son of a dog! There is work for you. Earn your living."

He spent the rest of the day repairing nets. The sharp, stubborn material had made his fingers bleed in the past: now he was used to it. Minato didn't know what whore meant or bastard. But he knew one thing. Here is the greatest secret nobody knows: The future Yellow Flash of Hidden Leaf hates the color yellow.

In the evening, he again stood at the shore, gazing across the water. It was not yet a thought, only a half-formed feeling that had taken root in his heart and had started to grow, slowly and delicately like the crimson star-flowers he sometimes found in the dunes far from the oceal: Someone was waiting for him, just beyond the blue waves of the sun-kissed sea.

…

"I'm so glad you're back."

Sarutobi Biwako clung to her husband with the strength of desperation mixed with relief. Hiruzen laughed; a deep, rumbling sound that carried relief as well as exultation. It was what every man felt when he returned to his home safe and sound and the only time the sadness and anger that all of them felt for the comrades they had lost in combat did not manage to overwhelm every other sentiment. On the battle field, they were hardened warriors – at home, they were human.

The same, Hiruzen thought, chuckling, applied to his wife. Biwako was cool and curt whenever out in public but at home she was kind and warm. As if reading his thoughts, she smacked him on the head with her considerable strength and pushed him away roughly at the same time.

"Let me guess: you're hungry," she almost-snapped, reminding him very much of the prickly woman he had married. When he nodded, she started to bustle through the kitchen. "Of course men would not announce their coming-home date just to annoy their wives," she mumbled, just loud enough so he could hear her. "Not being home for weeks on end and then returning without so much as a notice, expecting to be welcomed with open arms and an overflowing table!"

Smiling, he hung his coat onto the rack by the door and stripped of his armor, carefully stacking it in a corner. She trained you well, he could hear Homura's sneering voice. And the obligatory noise of pain when Kohane slapped him.

"How are the kids?" Hiruzen asked, stepping behind his wife and taking the knife from her hands. "Let me do this."

She left him to cut the loaf of bread and focused on stirring something deliciously-smelling in a big pot over the stove.

"Yuzuki and Tadahito are fine, there's a lot to do in the hospital but I'm glad she's at least spared from field duty. Tadahito can't wait to graduate to genin, you know him. And Asuma…" She made a gesture with her spoon which caused Hiruzen to turn around. Sometimes he wondered whether it was mothers who possessed this peculiar sense of their children or just women in general but as usual, Biwako was right. From the door, a small face was glancing at him, bright, brown eyes and a shock of light hair that probably would darken with age, just as Hiruzen's had.

"Aren't you asleep yet?" Hiruzen picked up his youngest son, sat down on a chair and lifted him into his lap. The little boy's hair was tousled from sleep but his eyes were wide and awake. "How are you doing?"

"Tada said I am too small to be a genin," Asuma complained, snuggling under his father's arm. "He's mean."

"That's what elder brothers are for," Hiruzen chuckled. "Don't let him get to you. You'll grow, soon."

"Will you teach me to throw a kunai, Daddy? Because I want to fight for Leaf, too, just like you do!"

Over his youngest son's head, he caught the glance Biwako was giving him, and for a silent second they shared the pain of being parents in times of war. Carefully, he stood again, hoisting up the boy.

"Come on, Asuma. I'll bring you to bed."

His wife's thoughts echoed in his mind clearly, in synch with his own. It is time this comes to an end.

…

"I would die for you," Jiraiya whispered, and it was absolutely not funny or dramatic or romantic. It wasn't anything, Orochimaru thought, because Jiraiya's voice was completely matter-of-fact. His face was white, his hands were calm and his eyes clear. And he was severely injured. Orochimaru knew how badly because he had watched Tsunade's face when she had cut away the last remnants of Jiraiya's tattered flak vest and shirt, he had seen her face lose all its color and terror flare up in her eyes. And now they were here – very possibly at the end of the war – and they were about to lose everything.

No, Orochimaru corrected himself. We have won. A considerable distance away from them, behind the thick walls of his fortress, a man had been murdered. In his bedroom Tokugawa Ieyasu, most powerful man in Fire Country and leader of the Five Tairo, was slowly bleeding out on the inside. He probably was dead already. For whatever it was worth, they had learned to kill in those past three years. Without the Daimyo, the driving force behind the war was stopped. What would follow now, Orochimaru knew, were skirmishes. But the war was won.

To hell with victory.

Jiraiya was dying.

It wasn't fair. Nothing of this was fair, nothing. So many people had lost their lives, so many children had lost their parents and mothers and fathers their children. So many homes had been torn apart. A whole village had been reduced to ashes and dust, a whole clan annihilated, and for what? Orochimaru valued freedom. And he loved his home, his village. People said a lot about him but Orochimaru loved Hidden Leaf and its inhabitants. And he loved his team mates, and now Jiraiya was on the ground in front of him, bleeding to death, and Tsunade was near delirious from the exertion of trying to hold him back – because there was no denying this was a struggle of willpower, not of ability. Jiraiya would die as surely as Orochimaru breathed if not a miracle was to happen right now – and okay so maybe this war was won but what was it worth without the two people that were most important to him? And he knew he would never betray them, no matter how much it hurt. But what was it worth, this revelation in the face of the loss they were going to suffer?

It had been a simple plan. But, as many plans, the simple part was the intriguing part that was most likely to work. And yet as risky as it came. Maybe Fire's Lord had become careless over the war – or simply weary of Leaf – and maybe he just hadn't expected the enemy to be that bold. Sending shinobi on a suicide mission was nothing unheard of but this hadn't been a mission that would have been possible for normal shinobi. Maybe His Lordship just hadn't speculated on Leaf to actually send the only three shinobi that could have pulled it off. The Sannin.

But they had.

Only Uchiha Orochimaru and his snakes could have made it through the ring of Tokugawa's guards and mercenaries. Only Kasuga Jiraiya could have silenced the ones who noticed them quickly and silently. And only Senju Tsunade could have made it into Tokugawa's private rooms and get close enough to fight him – and kill him. It had taken almost six months of preparation in which Tsunade had infiltrated the castle. It was the oldest trick in the book. Take a kunoichi and make her look pretty and shy and naïve. Don't worry for her state of mind when she has to live alone and without contact in a place everyone would kill her without hesitation if she was exposed. Leave her to attract the target's attention and have her kill him in the middle of the night, preferably when he is at his mentally weakest and too sated to fight too much. Go figure what that meant. Dirty work, dirty hands, in more than one way. Six months, and after days she'd probably been desperate enough to cry herself to sleep, but not far enough gone to send out a call for a retrieval team. She had done it. Orochimaru had lost count of the times Jiraiya and he had been so close to storming the castle to get her out. But it had worked. They had been the only ones who had even the slightest possibility to pull through with this. Jiraiya and Orochimaru had known – as people knew of techniques that were used to kill and children knew how children were created – that Tsunade had been trained in the arts of the kunoichi. To see it was a different thing entirely and as intriguing as it was revolting. Orochimaru could just barely stop himself from breaking down the wall and killing Tokugawa, and he actually stopped Jiraiya from doing it. They were nineteen and far from innocent and yet.

But the end justified the meanings.

(Did the meanings justify the end?)

Senju Tsunade slit Tokugawa Ieyasu's throat after the act. And then, just as she hurriedly got dressed again, a maid slipped into the room and saw her master's weakly twitching corpse. Orochimaru employed a poisoned needle and her scream was silenced within seconds, but it had been enough.

The rest of their flight was a haze of walls and corridors, screaming servants and charging guards, of mercenaries at every corner and edges and corners they hadn't had the time to familiarize themselves with. They ran into groups of warriors more than once – Orochimaru wasn't sure when he'd carried away the wound in his side that now ached painfully but he hadn't even noticed then – and then Tokugawa's son had cornered them, sneering and weapons-bristling, and along him a full platoon of Wind mercenaries. And maybe they still could have made it. Maybe they could have defeated that stupid son-of-a-bitch and made a run for it but behind the next corner waited a gang of Iwa-nin mixed with more Sand shinobi, and Tsunade, who went charging around the corner first, caught their first strike in full swing and went down. And then Jiraiya went berserk and finished off the rest of them. And when they had defeated these enemies and a few more they found themselves on the wall, again surrounded, Tsunade still recovering from the use of the Hiraishin, Jiraiya breathing hard and Orochimaru wounded. And they fought – they'd always gone well together, always been able to complement each other during fights and read each other's mind – and Tsunade was weak, Jiraiya was exhausted and Orochimaru was bleeding. Oh, but it was like in the old days – glorious, glorious days – when they were fighting together and loving it, each of them moving in synch with the other, knowing exactly what to do – so when Jiraiya laughed Tsunade grinned, too, and even Orochimaru felt a grim smile split his lips.

And they jumped.

(Fell.)

It was winter in Hi no Kuni. The snow piled up into deep trenches on the other side of the castle walls. It softened the fall but nothing else. Still laughing, they tried getting to their feet again and then the hailstorm of kunai and arrows started. Unable to block anything they stumbled away from the castle walls but still got hit. Jiraiya was the last of them – always the last, the slowest, the idiot to take the blame – and not for the first time Orochimaru suspected it was purpose. Simple, utter, completely idiotic purpose. Jiraiya, stupidest bastard of all, fell behind in order to shield their retreat and so they fled – Tsunade and Orochimaru leaning on each other, Jiraiya covering them – until they reached the cover of the trees and were out of missile range. But they had no place to go. They knew as well as the enemies in the castle knew.

"Come on, come on, come on," Tsunade chanted under her breath, tears running down her cheeks. Freezing on her skin and leaving glistening tracks. "Jiraiya, don't die on me, I dare you, if you do this to me I swear…"

It was time she accepted the inevitable, Orochimaru thought almost listlessly. She had been going around pretending Jiraiya meant nothing to her for years now. She might have fooled everyone else, including herself, but Orochimaru could see. He could see it as well as he could see that Jiraiya had loved Tsunade from the moment they had met. How else could it be explained that the man who was kind to everyone disliked a man as polite and friendly as Dan? Tsunade loved Jiraiya as much as Orochimaru loved her, as sure as that they were going to die here. It had been a suicide mission from the start.

"Don't die, Jiraiya, I beg you, if you die-"

"I would die for you any time," Jiraiya rasped and smiled at her, his bloody hand gripping hers and stilling her frantic efforts to heal him.

Orochimaru closed his eyes and felt the blood soak out of his side. A hand touched his arm and held tight, and he felt the almost nonexistent trickle of Tsunade's chakra. She connected the two of them, as she had so often, drawing a bridge between him and Jiraiya. Her icy blue chakra was barely existent. It wasn't nearly enough to save them, but it was more than that. It was a love letter written with her own blood.

Nothing pathetic, or even romantic. Just an end.

Three years and one hundred twelve days.