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There wasn’t much that surprised Tobirama anymore in regards to his brother, Hashirama, for all that he was a dreamer and a futurist, he was also very blind to the present and the ramifications of his actions and words for those nearest him. He’d known that Hashirama had been going down to the river to meet with an Uchiha, he’d also known that his brother wouldn’t have guessed it was an Uchiha, simply too caught up in the actions of making a new friend outside his clan. He’d done all he could to keep his father from intervening, to give his brother some happiness to distract him from the ever-present knowledge that Kawarama lay unwaking in the medical building, his small body struggling to overcome the injuries it had suffered when child-hunter allies of the Uchiha had caught up to him on his courier mission. Tobriama had simply been grateful that he’d caught his brother’s chakra signature fluctuating on the outskirts of his range that day, that his mission had been delayed by a visiting Lord and he’d needed to be paraded about as his father’s prized weapon. Itama, for all that he’d been inconsolable the day that his twin was found, rarely left the medical hall, quickly becoming their most skilled healer, and instead of one brother being lost, it had been two, one to an unbreaking sleep and one to the fixation of a task incomplete. When he did surface from the medical hall, he was vacant, his mind stuck elsewhere and his attention turned to a place Tobirama couldn’t reach.
So, when he’d stumbled across the meeting of an Uchiha and his brother, he’d watched and when they greeted each other like old friends, well. Perhaps, this Tobirama could do. Could give to the one brother he had left.
And yet, the peace he’d tried to give Hashirama through lies and misdirection his father hadn’t bought had led to Touka being sent in his stead to find out what Hashirama was truly doing. Not a week after the report had been made, a stoic Touka swallowing her protests as her baby cousin was punished for his misdirection, Butsuma had Tobirama lead a squad down to the river, followed along just to see just which Uchiha his heir was dumb enough to meet with, let alone meet by himself knowing how dangerous their eyes could be. Tobirama swallowed the bile rising in his throat as Hashirama’s betrayed gaze fell on him, and beyond him stood the one person Tobirama would never be able to touch.
Uchiha Madara, Taijama’s heir, his Match. Even as he felt his brother recoil from him in anger and betrayal, Tobirama’s world shifted and slid into a new form, with Madara held as the center, a bright, blazing sun to his faltering senses. Madara’s stardust-jasmine-home chakra battered at Tobirama’s defenses, overwhelming and undeniable. The stand-off passed in a blur, with Madara and the clanmates that had burst onto the riverbank in his ‘defense’ leaving and a new declaration of enmity thrown between himself and Hashirama.
Later, when Hashirama had locked himself away in his room and the war council had been dismissed, Tobirama found himself alone with his father, and the looming punishment for continuing to hide the fact that Taijama’s heir had been close and still he’d been allowed to draw breath. Butsuma’s rage was a quiet sort, icy and implacable, and Tobirama had borne more than one scar from garnering it. That night, when he lay trembling in agony on his futon, blood pooling thickly as it slipped over his sides, he dreamed of the stories an Elder who’d insisted he call her Baba had told him once, before a sickness had claimed her for the Pure Lands.
(“Being a Sensor is a great and terrible thing, Tobirama.” She’d caution in her whispery voice, long grown thin by age and injury. “It affords one with the ability to see the truth otherwise hidden, to track and monitor, to defend and protect. It also takes from the user, always seeing, always open. A Sensor’s mind is always vulnerable to being overrun by that of those within their range, little one. So always, always must a sensor be on guard, constantly alert and aware that should they look a little too long, a little too deep, their minds could be lost, swallowed up by the flow of life around them.”
Tobirama, all of three and far too smart for his own good, frowned up at his Baba. He’d known that he was a Sensor, heard it in the whispered conversation between his Clanmates that they didn’t know he could hear. He’d felt the truth of it when at two years old he’d felt the thrum of life within the forest near their home, had vanished into the cradling hum of it for hours before his brother had found him near catatonic at the edge of the compound. The sensation of slipping away from his body, of dissolving into the thrum and flow of the natural chakra around him, anchor-less and wandering, alone and nameless until his brother had flooded him with his own earth-forest-sunlight chakra. It had been a jarring enough difference from life-leaves-water-air that Tobirama had jolted back into his own mind.
Tobirama had latched onto his big brother and hadn’t let go for hours after and he’d been using the earth-forest-sunlight feel of Hashirama to anchor him to the world around him, and he hadn’t let himself slip quite that deep into the world around him again. “Not to worry, though, little Sensor,” she’d smiled, her fingers gentle as they’d tapped the top of his head. “For there lives such beings as called Matches.”
“What’re Matches?” Tobirama asked her, eyes wide as he leaned closer to hear her better.
“Matches are beings that the Gods themselves crafted alongside Sensors, a perfect counterpoint. Their balance, if you will, for you see, every Sensor that has found been acknowledged and accepted by their Match has never been unable to return to themselves, no matter how deeply they stray into the flow of life. ” Tobirama had listened as she went onto describe the legend of the greatest Sensor and Match to have graced the Earth, the Sage of Six Paths and his brother, the Reaper.)
Later that night Tobirama blinked awake to the gentle brush of steel-thyme-sage along his wounds, the shaky healing chakra easing what it could. “I’m sorry, so sorry, little cousin.” Touka crooned, soothing the hair from his forehead and cuddling him close as she healed him and Tobirama had never felt so alone, bereft of his match and his brother, alone with no anchor and the heavy roar of natural chakra around him growing louder in his ears.
Life changed after that day by the river, Tobirama had found himself adrift more and more often, his Senses casting out to search for his missing Match, and the safety of Hashirama’s earth-forest-sunlight chakra to keep him bound to his sense of self had been denied since. Kawarama had awoken soon after the debacle that occurred at the river and given the severity of his wounds had been removed from active duty. Tobirama was shamefully grateful that his younger brothers would be safe in the compound, wouldn’t have to risk themselves out in a war zone anymore.
It had been another thing Hashirama had been unable to truly forgive him for, the shameful joy he’d had while the rest of his clan bled and fell for their father’s war.
(Hashirama’s peace was for all, and Tobirama understood that, but his peace was for Itama and Kawarama, his two brothers born of a different mother, but his just the same, the twins he’d raised from babes, been both mother and father to. His precious sea-sunlight-earth-Kawarama and storm-pine-earth-Itama.)
Touka had found Tobirama collapsed in a heap in his private training grounds, his Senses having cast out and been distracted in their search while he had meditated. She’d called him back, the feeling of her steel-thyme-sage chakra reaching for him, just barely noticeable under the tide of life-leaves-water-air, her chakra pool too small to reach any deeper into the flow than she had, and demanded answers from Tobirama had gathered that he’d met his Match but remained unbonded, which while frustrating wasn’t a pressing issue as he’d had Hashirama to lean on in case it got bad.
She had raged when she’d learnt that not only had Tobirama been punished for keeping his brother’s secret, he’d also been all but abandoned by said brother to the mercy of his Senses, Match or no.
“He’s your brother!” She argued hotly, more than ready to leap up and beat some sense into her cousin’s thick skull. “If nothing else, he-”
“He’s grieving, Touka.” Tobirama had soothed, his smile small and tired and special for all it’s rarity. Touka blinked rapidly to clear away the hot burn of tears, he was twelve and already his eyes were old and tired. He was twelve and the parent-brother to the two little boys that never left the medical hall. He was twelve and already a sharpened blade in his father’s hand, solemn and unhesitating. “He believes his dream to be lost.”
“What can I do?” She’d asked, her shoulders slumping in defeat, “what do you need?” Because this was her baby cousin, the first one she’d held in her arms as he’d cried and soothed him back to sleep when bad dreams woke him, the one she’d bandaged all his wounds and soothed away all his hurts as a child.
“Just…” He sighed, huddling into her warmth as the ever present rush of natural chakra in the world around them tugged eagerly at his mind. “Just promise me you’ll keep it a secret. If father knew…” Tobirama trailed off and Touka’s arm tightened. If Butsuma knew there’d be no telling what he’d do to his second born.
“As you wish, Tobi.” She pressed a kiss to his messy hair, the raised edges of scar tissue under her fingers a reminder of the consequences of her actions.
Tobirama cursed as he fell into the tunnel and pressed his back along the rocks, focussed wholly on the bounty hunters that had been trailing him since he’d departed from the target’s home. It was supposed to have been a simple assassination of a low-level Lord that had displeased the Daiymo and failed to adequately regain his favor. However, it seemed as though the Lord had been prepared for such eventualities and contracted a couple of bounty hunter/bodyguards that weren’t too happy they’d been given the slip by a seventeen year old.
His father was two years in the ground and Taijama just the same, taken by injury and illness, and yet for all that Hashirama had called for peace as the new Clan Head, Madara, who had taken his own father’s place had refused to listen. Breathing a quiet sigh of relief as the two turned down the false trail he’d lain earlier, Tobirama sagged back into the stone, closing his eyes for a moment, his Senses had chosen to start going haywire about a mile back, and he attempted to pull his tattered shields more firmly around his mind, tried to ground himself within his own mind.
The quiet scrape of a sandal against stone his only warning before a blade pressed snuggly against his jugular and a heavy weight pinned him to the wall. Stardust-jasmine-home danced across his Senses and despite himself, Tobirama sighed in pleasure as Madara’s chakra eased the roar of the natural chakra around him to a quiet whisper.
“What the hell are you doing here, Senju?” Madara snarled, threat in every line of his body and Tobirama, still lost in the flow of chakra over his strained Senses smiled softly at him.
“Match,” he crooned into the expectant silence and Madara pulled away as though burnt and the violent withdrawal of stardust-jasmine-home had Tobirama crying out in distress.
“What did you just call me?” Madara’s bewildered question broke Tobirama’s reverie. With a chill of fear trailing down his spine and the phantom rip of wounds opening along his back, Tobirama hesitated. Fear choked him, but this was his Match and there was very little Tobirama felt able to deny him. Tobirama squeezed his eyes shut.
“I called you my Match,” his voice a whisper and with a fearful glance, Tobirama threw himself back into the forest beyond the cave, leaving behind the stunned Madara.
Itama and Kawarama were confused when Tobirama stumbled into their room but tugged their brother down to lay between them, long used to Tobirama’s night terrors and their aftermath that they didn’t question the shaking in his hands as he curled around Kawarama. Hashirama cooed over his brothers the next morning and mourned that he’d allowed such a distance to grow between them that Tobirama no longer sought comfort in his older brother, but knew he wouldn’t have known what to say, what to do, as he’d long since grown used to seeing Tobirama as simply an extension of their father.
Tobirama dreamed of a fall of wild, silken hair across his skin and gentle hands soothing old aches. Of dark eyes and the heavy feeling of stardust-jasmine-home. Of sift words and happiness, of a life lived well and in peace. And woke to the emptiness of reality.
Years passed, and Madara avoided him on the battlefield, focused so wholly on his brother that Tobirama ached.
(He never saw the way Izuna for all he tried to kill Tobirama could never bring himself to actually push for a fatal blow. Sensors and their Matches were sacred things, and that his unworthy rival could have such a claim on his brother was madness. But. But Madara’s voice had gone quiet with something like wonder, and he had softened into something closer to the boy Izuna had known as a child, when he’d returned home from a scouting mission and whispered about the Senju Sensor claiming him as his Match and then vanishing into the night like a ghost. Izuna knew that his brother would deny himself every happiness if it meant it would keep their clan safe and couldn’t quite make himself extinguish the little flame of hope he saw in his brother’s eyes as he always, without fail, searched out Tobirama when the Senju fell back to return to their compound.)
(Tobirama never knew that Madara spent whole battles watching him fight, watching the grace with which he moves. The fierce determination to protect his family. The devotion he clearly held for his brother, always falling in at his shoulder, always ready to defend. Madara found himself growing intrigued, because for all that Tobirama was pretty, and oh so very deadly, he was a loyal man and Madara valued loyalty more than anything. Tobirama could be someone he could care for, very easily, and for the first time Madara worried about what would happen to his heart if he ever got the chance to bond with his Sensor.)
(He really didn’t need to worry. Tobirama could-would love him for the safety to be found in his presence alone. All Tobirama knew was war and the cold-heat-pain of his Father’s disappointment and rage.)
Tobirama faltered, his blade glancing off hard bone and sliding deep into Izuna’s shoulder, turning a fatal blow into something else. He barely felt himself drop to his knees alongside his self-declared rival as the tide of natural chakra seized his mind and eased him somewhere else. Distantly he’d known it had gotten worse, enough that even Itama had noticed during one of his rare ventures back to the main house and Tobirama knew that the moment he’d be unable to be called back would be sooner rather than later. As life-leaves-water-air swallowed him down, he barely noticed the earth-forest-sunlight or steel-thyme-sage rushing towards him, the flicker of lightening-smoke-jasmine next to him dulling and flaring sharply as Tobirama’s body fell. Wandering, the overwhelming crush of life-river-ozone dragging him further and further along, anchorless and alone. There was little else here, nothing to see or hear, it was sensation and feeling and he wasn’t sure what his name was or how he’d gotten here, but it was simple, easy to follow as life-river-ozone thundered through, fast and slow, leaping and laying, roaring and whispering, and—
What was that?
There.
It felt like what lay beyond the life-river-ozone… like a star given form and left to wander, like what thinks he remembers as his favorite tea, but how does he know that, he doesn’t even have a name? It feels warm and safe, and he wants to bury himself in it until he is called to the Pure Lands, wants to treasure it and keep it with him always.
Stardust-jasmine-home’s voice is soft, deeper than he expected, but soft and careful and it calls him, “Tobirama.” And oh. That’s him, his name, he remembers now. But how did stardust-jasmine-home find him? How did they know? “Open your eyes, Tobirama.” Stardust-jasmine-home murmurs.
“Match.” Tobirama whimpers, turning his face into the softness under his cheek, it had been so long since he’d felt something quite this soft, this gentle.
“Yes, Match.” Madara huffed, “you damned idiot Sensor. What the hell were you thinking? You can’t just waltz onto an active battleground with an unstable bond!” Tobirama whined sadly at the harsh tone in his Match’s voice. He nuzzled into the warmth near his face, feeling the pulse of lifeblood and stardust-jasmine-home beat rhythmically under his temple. His precious Match was mad, he’d done something wrong and with wrongness came pain, but Tobirama was warm and safe and wrapped in stardust-jasmine-home and he hated the bite and cold-heat of pain. But punishment was always given for mistakes made and his Match was certain he had made a very big mistake.
“Match,” he whimpered, tension gathering along his frame in expectation of his Match’s retribution for his wrongdoing.
“What’s—” Madara stilled, a hand along his spine, feeling the thicker ropes of scar tissue through his shirt of past punishments. The scars were too thick, too regular to be from a battle, to placed to have been anything but deliberate. Madara felt sick as he recalled a particularly vicious rumor he'd heard about the previous Senju Clan Head. Tobirama trembled as he waited for the blow that was surely coming. “Oh. Goddess, Tobirama, no. It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you. It’s alright, hush now.” Madara’s arms tightened, cradling him that much more firmly in the curve of his body as he soothed the chakra-drunk Sensor in his lap.
“S-sorry.” Tobirama slurred out, struggling to reorient himself through the wash of chakra he was still half lost in and the remembered pain and expectation of punishments he hadn’t received sine Butsuma had fallen ill and passed. “Didn’t wan’ ‘ou to know.”
“Tobirama!” Madara’s shocked rasp had him crooning thoughtlessly, a clumsy hand patting at the muscle underneath him.
“Was safer,” he slurred, unable to stop himself from cuddling closer.
“You’re such an idiot,” Madara muttered. “Can’t believe I’m stuck bonded to an idiot forever.”
“Bonded?” Tobirama hummed, feeling Madara layer even more stardust-jasmine-home over him, blanketing his mind and anchoring him to the physical world around him.
“You can’t run away from me this time, little Sensor. I won’t allow it. I need you, with you here as a Sensor bonded to me I can finally make the Elders listen to reason and end this stupid war.”
“Peace? ‘Zuna not—”
“Izuna will support me in this, so long as I have someone too important for the Senju to risk at our mercy.” Madara interrupted. “Now rest, when you wake again, we can continue this conversation.” Tobirama hummed and drifted off, because his Match was warm and safe and there was no threat of cold-heat-pain.
Tobirama was summarily unimpressed with the Clan Head and Heir sitting before him. “You can’t possibly think that keeping me here as a hostage is going to force the hand of the Senju Elders and have peace declared. I’m technically not even the Heir anymore! I have next to no political worth since Hashirama was married to Mito-hime, as any child of their union is to be named Heir.”
“Is there a child?” Izuna leaned forward, eyes narrowed as he watched his rival, his dominant arm stuck in a sling as his shoulder healed.
“No, not yet.” Tobirama huffed reluctantly, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. “Even so! They’re more likely to use this as an excuse to prolong the war, and the Senju don’t value the bond between a Sensor and Match the way your clan does.” Madara made a sound of concern as he brushed a hand along Tobirama’s arm, he’d been weaker to the call of the natural chakra lately, having been so utterly submerged just days before.
“Tobirama.” Madara sighed, “don’t strain yourself.”
“What if…” Izuna bit his lip. A conflicted expression on his face, but his voice was steady. “What if you were married. Would that be a political tie and enough of a statement to broker a peace treaty in the eyes of your Elders, then?”
“Well, I suppose, but—” Tobirama began only to squawk in surprise as Madara pulled a length of violet rope from out of somewhere on his person and grabbed his hand. He watched in confusion as Madara wound the length of cloth around their hands and tied it off.
“Come here,” Madara stood and moved them from the table to the couch of the small house Tobirama had spent the last three days in. When he’d woken the second time Tobirama had found himself in the heavily warded home of the Uchiha’s Clan Head and the situation had honestly devolved from there.
“What is happening?”
“Izuna are you okay to witness?” Madara called, seating himself and Tobirama on the couch facing each other.
“Yeah, yeah,” Izuna drawled, sauntering towards the front door. “You’ve been witnessed. Congrats. I’ll inform the Elders.”
“What.” Tobirama scowled.
“Since holding you prisoner didn’t work, then consider yourself bride-napped. We just got battle-married.” Madara beamed.
“What.”
“Um, we married? And now we can have peace? Honestly, Tobirama, keep up.” Madara frowned at his Sensor-husband.
“Is this a regular thing with your clan?" Tobirama felt a twitch form in his left eye. By the Goddess, when Hashirama finds out he'll be insufferable.
"Sort of?" Madara shrugged. "I mean, we carry the ropes, and we acknowledge the battle-marriage as a legal marriage so long as someone else from the clan agrees to witness it."
"So you willingly-" Tobirama coughed, something small and bright and awed threading through his chest grew tight.
“Are you alright? Is it your Senses?” Madara frowned deeper and reached out with a hand and soothed it across Tobirama’s brow with gentle fingers and a soft wash of chakra. Tobirama shivered and swayed closer. “Tobirama?”
Instead of responding, Tobirama sighed and gave up trying to apply logic to the reasoning behind his Match’s actions. He crawled into Madara’s lap and nuzzled into the space under his ear, lips pressing gossamer-silk-soft kisses to the skin there. Madara chuckled quietly and tucked Tobirama into the huddle of his body, sheltering the taller man with his bulk.
“I’ve got you, Tobirama.” Madara hummed, ducking his chin enough to press his lips to Tobirama’s forehead. “I have you.”
Raising his head a little, Tobirama hesitated, lips brushing but not truly touching and waited, Madara was his Match, his husband, but nothing had to be more than it was if that was what he wished, but Tobirama hoped.
His breath caught in his chest and Madara cradled his jaw, tugging it up and closer so the press of their mouths was firmer. Tobirama shivered at the gentle slide of mouths, unhurried and easy, almost sleepy as they pressed together. Tobirama’s breath shivered as he exhaled against Madara’s chin, smiling despite himself as Madara pressed soft kisses along his cheeks, the tender skin of his eyelids, the tip of his nose, and finally the center of his forehead. Here, surrounded by the warm, solid pull of stardust-jasmine-home-Madara Tobirama finally felt safe.
(Peace didn’t seem quite so far off, not here in Madara’s arms. Tobirama quite enjoyed the feeling.)
“Are you ready?” Tobirama asked Madara as they stood together at the front of the delegation sent to the Nara compound. His gaze didn’t leave the approaching group, watching as his brothers took off at a run once they caught sight of him.
“Are you?” Madara squeezed his hand once and let him go when he stepped forward to greet Itama and Kawarama. Tobirama smiled at him over his shoulder, easy and warm after months of preparation.
“With you here, at my side? I can’t wait.” Madara blushed and coughed into his fist, still not used to the quiet devotion the Sensor gave him, not quite sure what he’d done to earn it.
“Oh, ew. You guys are gross. That’s disgusting, you two. Save the mushy stuff for when I’m not here!” Izuna whined, draping himself dramatically across his cousin’s shoulders. Hikkaku shoved him off with a roll of his eyes.
“I’ll always be here. I have you, always.” Madara murmured in Tobirama’s ear as he passed the tangled bundle of brothers to greet Hashirama, who was apparently being restrained to a dignified gait by his wife and cousin. Tobirama’s bright laughter brought a smile to his face as he felt them all join them on the path that they had chosen to walk together, building a future founded on dreams of peace.