[Konoha — Naka River bank, Fire Country, just past midnight, day forty-three of the Ranking Broadcasts]
The river ran black under a thin moon, the water moving slow the way rivers move at the hour when even the frogs stop arguing. A heron stood on one leg in the shallows near the far bank, neck folded, asleep or pretending to be. The reeds smelled green and wet, with that faint undercurrent of river-mud that Konoha kids grew up learning to ignore.
Two men sat on the bank with their boots off.
One of them was breathing.
That was the part Madara couldn't stop noticing — not the moon, not the heron, not the absurd small fact that the Scroll had given him back a body that worked, lungs that pulled, a heart he could feel ticking against the inside of his ribs like a beetle in a jar. The part he couldn't stop noticing was Izuna. Izuna, beside him, in a yukata the Scroll had apparently considered appropriate (gray, plain, no clan crest — a small mercy or a small insult, Madara hadn't decided), with his hair loose down his back the way he'd worn it as a boy before the war had taught them both that long hair was something an enemy could grab.
Izuna was skipping stones.
Badly.
"You were always bad at this," Madara said.
"I was better than you."
"You were not."
"Brother. I was."
Izuna thought: he's old. When did he get old. The hands. Look at his hands. They used to be smaller than mine, I swear they were smaller than mine, when did — okay focus. Stone. Skip the stone. Don't cry. Skip the stone. Don't cry.
The stone hit the water, sank, did not skip. Izuna swore softly in the old dialect their mother had used when she burned rice. Madara almost smiled. Almost.
[Group Chat — "Shinobi Ranking Live Reactions" — muted by 41 of 47 members]
The chat was, for the first time in forty-two days, quiet. Not empty — the green dots were still there, the little circles indicating who was online — but quiet, the way a temple is quiet during a funeral. Even the people who usually couldn't shut up had shut up.
HashiramaFirst: tobirama
TobiramaSecond: Anija.
HashiramaFirst: are you watching
TobiramaSecond: I am watching.
HashiramaFirst: he's
HashiramaFirst: he's laughing
TobiramaSecond: I see it, Anija.
HashiramaFirst: tobirama i
TobiramaSecond: Anija. Breathe. The hour is his. Not ours.
HashiramaFirst: ...yeah
HashiramaFirst: yeah ok
MitoU: hashirama come to bed sweetheart you can watch from here
HashiramaFirst: mito i can't sleep
MitoU: i didn't say sleep i said come to bed
HashiramaFirst: ...ok
[Naka River bank, same moment]
"You haven't asked me," Izuna said.
"Asked you what."
"If I forgive you."
Madara picked up a stone. Smooth one, flat, the kind that wanted to skip. He turned it in his fingers the way a man turns a kunai he isn't sure he wants to throw.
"I haven't asked," he said, "because the answer is yours to give or keep. Not mine to request."
"Tch." Izuna laughed — that short Uchiha laugh, the one that wasn't really a laugh, the one their father had used when something hurt too much to address directly. "When did you become wise, brother. You weren't wise."
"I died. It does things."
"You died twice."
"It does things twice."
Izuna leaned back on his palms. The yukata sleeve rode up his forearm and Madara caught — without meaning to, the way an old soldier catches everything — the long pale scar that ran from Izuna's elbow to his wrist. The one from the Hagoromo skirmish. The one Madara had bound himself, in a tent that smelled of horse and gunpowder, with strips torn from his own undershirt because the medics had run out of bandage.
"I forgive you," Izuna said, looking at the river. "For the obvious things. The eyes. The war. The choices."
Madara said nothing.
"I don't forgive you," Izuna said, "for the things after. The Mountains' Graveyard. The Statue. The boy with the orange goggles you broke and called student. The plan with the moon."
"...Mm."
"That last one I'll never forgive, brother. Even now. Even here."
Madara skipped his stone.
It skipped four times.
"I know," he said.
Madara thought: four. The water's calm tonight. He's right about all of it. The boy with the goggles especially. I told myself it was mercy. It was not mercy. It was a man teaching a child to carry his hatred for him because he was too tired to carry it himself. Disgusting. Skip another. Don't think. Skip another.
[Konoha — Hokage Tower war room, simultaneously]
Hiruzen had not sat down in two hours.
The scroll Kakashi and Itachi had recovered from the alley — the one Kabuto had been sealing into the sewer grate — lay unrolled on the war table under three layers of suppression tags. Tobirama's tags, technically, by way of the Sealing Card; Tobirama had drafted them in chat sixty-seven minutes ago and Shikaku Nara had transcribed them onto paper with the careful, bored handwriting of a man who had stopped being surprised by anything in roughly 1987.
The scroll's contents were laid out in summary on a smaller sheet beside it, in Shikaku's hand:
Roster of seven Konoha jōnin with detailed psychological profiles.
Floor plans of the hospital, sub-basement included.
Schedule of the Sandaime's daily routine, accurate to the minute.
Three sealing matrices, partial, of unknown application.
One name, circled twice: Yamanaka Inoichi.
Hiruzen stared at that last line for a long time.
"He was going to take Inoichi," he said, finally, to nobody. "Orochimaru wanted Inoichi."
"For the interrogation techniques," Shikaku said, voice flat. "Or for the clan mind-jutsu. Probably both."
"Probably both," Hiruzen agreed.
Kakashi stood against the far wall with his arms crossed and his book nowhere in sight. That was how you knew it was serious — when Kakashi's book wasn't in his hand. Itachi stood beside him, perfectly still, in the way Itachi was always perfectly still, like a sword resting in a rack.
"Hokage-sama," Itachi said. "Permission to pursue."
"Not tonight."
"Hokage-sama —"
"Not tonight, Itachi." Hiruzen lifted his eyes from the scroll. They were tired, but they were not soft. "Tonight Madara has one hour with his brother. Tonight every shinobi on the villain list is sitting alone somewhere thinking about who they almost were. Tonight we read. Tomorrow we hunt."
Itachi bowed his head, just slightly. "Understood."
Itachi thought: he's right. He's right and I hate that he's right. Shisui would say the same thing. Drink the tea before you sharpen the blade. Drink the tea. Drink the tea.
Kakashi shifted against the wall. "Sandaime."
"Hatake."
"Inoichi should be told."
"He will be. After dawn."
"Sandaime —"
"After dawn, Kakashi. The man has a daughter who's been crying about a boy in her genin team for three days. Let him have tonight. Tomorrow the world gets heavier."
Kakashi didn't answer. He just nodded, once, and went back to staring at the war table.
[Naka River bank, the hour winding down]
The Scroll had not said how the hour would end. It had not said whether there would be a chime, a flash, a gentle dissolving like fog burning off in morning sun. Madara had braced for all of those. What he had not braced for was the way Izuna, with maybe ten minutes left by Madara's count, leaned sideways and put his head on his older brother's shoulder.
Just that. Just the weight of him. The warm small fact of Izuna's hair against the side of Madara's neck, smelling of river and of the cedar soap the Scroll had apparently considered period-accurate.
Madara did not move.
He could not have moved if the heron across the river had suddenly grown teeth and lunged for him. He sat with his brother's head on his shoulder and watched the moon shift one finger's width west across the sky and thought, very carefully, about nothing at all.
"Brother," Izuna said, eventually.
"Mm."
"When you go back. To wherever you go back to."
"Mm."
"Don't do anything stupid."
"...Define stupid."
"Brother."
"Izuna."
"Don't."
Madara exhaled. Long. Slow. The kind of exhale that empties a man down to the soles of his feet.
"I will try," he said, "to be less stupid than I have historically been."
"That's not a promise."
"It is the most honest promise I have ever made."
Izuna laughed — a real one this time, soft, almost helpless. "Tch. Fine. I'll take it."
The Scroll chimed, somewhere far above them, polite as a librarian at closing time. The moon hung where it hung. The heron, across the river, finally noticed it was being watched and opened one yellow eye.
Izuna lifted his head from Madara's shoulder.
"See you," he said.
"...Mm."
And then he was not there.
Madara sat on the riverbank alone for one full minute, with his brother's warmth still on the side of his neck, and then he picked up another stone, turned it in his fingers, and skipped it across the water.
Six times.
He almost smiled.
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