Dedication: For my brother, whom I followed into the world, followed through childhood, followed to America (and into fandom), followed back home, and will more than likely follow right back out of this world as well. You are my lightness, my rock, my laughter, my twin, and I truly cannot imagine a life without you. The world would be so much darker if you weren't by my side, and I love you for everything you are and everything you aren't. I'm the luckiest sister in existence, and it's about time I told you that.

Rating: T

Warnings: Slight language, dialogue lifted from canon, violence, Tobirama angst, brotherly insecurities, etc.

Word Count: ~4600

Pairings: Pre-Madara/Tobirama, past one-sided Hashirama/Madara, vague Hashirama/Mito.

Summary: In which the Sage of Six Paths decides he doesn't like the ending, and Tobirama gets dragged along to fix things. The outcome is most definitely not what he expected. Pre-slash.

Disclaimer: Hah. I want some of whatever Kishimoto's been smoking, but Naruto's not mine.

Notes: So when I asked my twin what he wanted for his birthday, he said, in order of desire: a vacation somewhere exciting, time-travel fanfiction (gay is okay) featuring his favorite Naruto characters, and a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Well, brother dearest, here's the first on your character list—especially apt, I think, considering he shares our birthday. And, for the record, this is totally your fault.

The title/chapter titles comes from ee cummings' dive for dreams: "dive for dreams/or a slogan may topple you/(trees are their roots/and wind is wind)/trust your heart/if the seas catch fire/(and live by love/though the stars walk backward)

dive for dreams

1. trees are their roots

He comes to in the cold light of morning, the taste of briefly glimpsed paradise lingering on his tongue, and takes a startled breath of air sharp with a chill wind and dry earth and newly broken stone. There is a man on the ground in front of him, drained and beaten, a sword in his hand, and Tobirama has stood here before, knows this place in his very bones no matter how long it's been since he last was here.

His brother kneels beside him, pale with exhaustion, shoulders slumped and expression sad for all that he's won the fight. Hashirama's eyes are not on Tobirama—they never are—but instead on his opponent, the man whom he has always wished to be his brother instead of Tobirama.

(Tobirama has never allowed himself to overlook the fact that this is a good portion of the reason for his dislike of Madara. He is many things, but blind to own faults is not one of them.)

'Second chance,' something in the back of his mind whispers, and Tobirama freezes. Not his own voice, not a jutsu, because he can sense no foreign chakra effecting himself, but not a hallucination, either. Familiar, but not, heard once before when the Sage of Six Paths appeared before them, and surely, surely this isn't what he thinks it—

The Senju are standing back, waiting, watching. The sword is heavy in Tobirama's hand, sharp and keen and well-remembered. It hung on his wall, after he gained Raijin no Ken, because for all it was a simple blade it had served him well, but here and now it is still new, having only just tasted its first blood less than a year ago. Here and now, a simple swing will leave Madara dead and the future he just saw obsolete. Quick and merciful, and—

Hashirama is still watching Madara, his heart in his eyes, and Tobirama has always wondered bitterly if Mito knew, if she saw the same things he can. If she knew her husband loved another man so blindly, so desperately. If she cared at all, being wed to someone whose heart was never fully hers. Maybe not. She was always a strong woman, always so impossibly firm and steady as she walked her own path.

Right now, Tobirama could kill Madara. He could erase the future where war still rages and so much has gone wrong. He could protect the village that has yet to be created, as is his duty as its future leader. With one downward stroke, he could save hundreds of lives, if not thousands, and ward off the suffering that comes with so many pointless wars. He could save Mito from becoming a jinchuuriki, from starting the world on a spiral of destruction as those power-hungry trap and seal the tailed beasts in innocent victims. He could save Hashirama the grief of having to kill his best friend, the man he calls his brother but loves as something.

Second chance, he thinks, and steps forward, raising his sword. Madara looks away from Hashirama for the first time, half-glazed eyes locking onto Tobirama's with furious hatred flaring in their depths.

The voice in the back of his mind is absolutely silent.

This time, unlike the first time, he does not waste words on empty threats. Madara is still a threat, beaten as he is, and there's no room for empty gloating. Izanagi is a possibility, but Tobirama would like to see Madara use it in the instant it takes to sever his head from his body.

The blade catches the weak winter sunlight, one heartbeat of cold brilliance as Tobirama brings it slashing down. Madara's eyes widen, and in the same instant Hashirama jerks around with horror writ large on his face, mouth opening to cry out a denial. But Tobirama has always been the merciless one, the ruthless one, even when his brother has despaired of it and him in equal measure.

He strikes and does not hesitate, does his duty as Hokage-yet-to-be, and cuts Madara's head off with a single sharp blow.

Hashirama screams a denial, leaping to his feet with grief spilling from every pore and carved into his body like a miasma, but Tobirama cannot hear him.

The moment blood spills, the voice is back, thundering through him like an earthquake through a forest and sending him to his knees with a stabbing, tearing surge of pain.

"Tobirama!" Hashirama bellows, aching and furious as his voice breaks. "Tobirama, how could you?"

Tobirama doesn't even have time to catch his breath, let alone attempt to answer.

'Try again,' the voice tells him, sharp and inescapable as it reverberates through his skull, and then all Tobirama knows is darkness.

He comes to in the muggy heat of a summer battlefield, the taste of briefly glimpsed paradise lingering on his tongue, and takes a startled breath of air thick with blood and humidity and the screams of dying shinobi. There is a man in front of him, fierce and deadly, a sword in his hands, and Tobirama has stood here before, knows this place in his very bones no matter how long it's been since he last was here.

Uchiha Izuna snarls and lunges at him, and Tobirama knows this battle, these steps, knows that no matter the power of the Sharingan a single jump with his Flying Thunder God technique and he'll be out of range and in a position to strike, but—

But Izuna's death is what gives Madara his hatred. Izuna's eyes are what give Madara his power.

He ducks back, dodges, but Izuna's Sharingan eyes follow the motion, use the very faintest muscle twitches to predict his movements, and the Uchiha strikes.

Dimly, he hears Hashirama scream his name, and—

'One more time,' the voice says, ever so faintly exasperated. Tobirama wants to protest, to object to that tone because he is very, very far from a child and has done nothing to deserve it, but the world spins sickeningly beneath his feet, and then all Tobirama knows is darkness.

He comes to in the cold light of morning, the taste of briefly glimpsed paradise lingering on his tongue, and takes a startled breath of air sharp with chill wind and dry earth and newly broken stone. There is a man on the ground in front of him, drained and beaten, a sword in his hand, and Tobirama has stood here before, knows this place in his very bones no matter how long it's been since he last was here.

(He can't tell anymore, like this. Years? Moments? Months? Hours? Or is time irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, as he's thrown through its waves like a rock skipping across storm-churned waters?)

Madara lies before him, a shadow of himself, and Tobirama could kill him, has tried once, but that wasn't the correct answer and he knows that. Without Madara to push Hashirama forward, there will be no Konoha, and regardless of Tobirama's feelings for this particular Uchiha, he has never been as devoted to anything—even his sense of right and wrong—as he is to the village that doesn't yet exist.

'Another chance,' the voice in the back of his mind whispers, and Tobirama doesn't freeze this time, half-expecting it. Still not his own voice, still not a jutsu, but the legendary Sage murmuring behind his ear. Familiar, but not, heard once before in something like life and then several times afterwards, and surely, surely this will end. Surely this won't continue until he loses all sense of sanity and self and—

The sword is heavy in Tobirama's hand, sharp and keen and well-remembered. He grips the hilt, clenches his hand around it until his fingers threaten to go numb and the leather wrapping on the pommel starts to cut into hand, but he doesn't strike. Instead, he shifts his hold and sheaths it smoothly, and the sound of steel sliding over bamboo and silk draws all eyes to him. Madara's are narrowed with suspicion despite the surprise in them, while Hashirama's are startled but approving and their clansmen's stares are shocked. Tobirama has never made any secret of his dislike of Uchiha Madara, and now, with him beaten and powerless, he will never have a better chance to strike.

But he doesn't, because Hashirama's heart is in his eyes, and even if Hashirama loves Madara as something more than simply kindred spirits, Madara has never expressed interest in more and Hashirama is content to call them brothers. It aches and stings, that Hashirama would dismiss his real brother so quickly, but Tobirama is grounded and levelheaded and likes to consider himself reasonable. He can hold his tongue, can adjust, if this is the price of peace and a better future.

But he's lived this scene out before, knows what comes next.

"Tobirama?" Hashirama asks softly, gaze relieved but questioning, and Tobirama lifts his chin and steps back to his brother's shoulder, leaving the choice of whether Madara lives or dies to him. It's no choice at all, in Hashirama's eyes, and as he looks back at his opponent Tobirama can see the resolution in his expression, the determination to bring Madara around.

Tobirama takes a breath once he's no longer the focus of his brother's attention. Takes another, because he knows the cost of Madara's alliance, knows what Madara will demand with his next words. Knows what Hashirama will pay, and what seeds he himself will sow, and that he cannot allow it to happen again, for the good of Konoha.

Hashirama will always be the Shodaime Hokage, but if Tobirama is not an option, Madara will be the Nidaime. Once already in his lifetime Tobirama has gone to his death for the sake of the village, and this is in no way different.

(Oh, but it aches that Hashirama would go to such lengths for a man who moments before tried to kill him, that he would kill himself for a man who does not even have the support of his clan any longer, a rogue shinobi without care for the tentative peace of the world right now. But Tobirama has never been first in his brother's eyes—too stoic, too boring, too devoted to laws instead of the people they govern, too firmly grounded and far, far too ruthless and merciless—and he's had an entire lifetime to accept that, or at least learn to put it aside. He can do this. He can. And for Konoha, he will.)

Hashirama is talking, pleading, but Tobirama only comes back to himself in time to catch Madara's next response.

"You took my last sibling from me," he rasps, and grief and fury wage war in his eyes. "I can never trust you again."

Hashirama's face falls slowly, pleas giving way to a steady, grim determination. "Then…how can I earn back your trust?" he asks stubbornly, and Tobirama closes his eyes, bracing for the verbal blow.

"If you really want to earn my trust back," he hears, exactly as he expects, "you'll have to kill your brother with your own hands…or kill yourself. That will wipe the slate clean—that will allow me to trust your clan."

Two choices, but it's really only one. They all know it, because Hashirama is and always has been a hopeless fool.

Tobirama takes another breath, opens his eyes, and draws his sword again.

Behind them, where the rest of the Senju who accompanied them are scattered over the battlefield, Tōka bellows her denial, because she's always been his best friend and greatest support, but Tobirama raises a hand to silence her. He'll suffer for it later, likely—or would if he were alive to do so—but he's made his choice already.

For Konoha, for his brother, for the future he has seen—

"Would it suffice," he asks blandly, stepping up beside the two kneeling men, "if I killed myself?"

Madara's eyes go wide, clearly startled, and Hashirama pales with horror. "No," he bites out, staggering to his feet. "Tobirama, I will—"

"It is your dream, brother," he interrupts, though he doesn't look away from Madara's red-and-black gaze. "Allow me to contribute to it the only way I can."

Madara bares his teeth, and the hate in his eyes is a living thing, wild and deadly. "No," he growls. "By his hand, or he must take his own life."

Tobirama will never be as good a ninja as his brother. Hashirama is already called the God of Shinobi, is a legend even in their war-torn world, but right now he's exhausted. He's been fighting for twenty-four hours straight through, and can barely stand and hold a kunai at the same time. Tobirama is comparatively fresh, and he has the advantage of remembering a life that's yet to come—will never come now—and he has no compunction about lunging forward, grappling with his brother until they're pressed right up against each other. Hashirama's hand is on the hilt of Tobirama's sword, and Tobirama touches the blade to his own jugular, fingers wrapped firmly around his brother's on the pommel. Hashirama stares at him with wide, desperate, terrified eyes, and Tobirama smiles back at him, not allowing the expression to waver.

"You share a dream," he says, and it isn't soft enough to be for his brother's ears alone, but he can't bring himself to speak directly to Madara. Not right now, with mere seconds left before him, a future to be unmade. He wonders, vaguely and with some regret—though not enough to make him waver—what will become of Kagami, Saru, Homura, and Koharu, what will happen to them without him there to guide them. But…perhaps Hashirama will take them under his wing. Or Madara, even. This is his end, but it is not the end, and that is a good distinction to keep in mind. "I have not said it as often as I should, brother, but I believe in it. With all of my heart and soul and will, I believe you will bring peace to this world."

Hashirama gasps out a denial, something frantic and broken, and Tobirama has to look away. He turns his head, glancing back, and the expression of pure shock on Madara's face is no relief. "By his hand," he agrees, and hopes his brother will be able to move on from this. But Hashirama is strong, and his will is even stronger, and his dream is strongest yet. Konoha will be born again, and that's all Tobirama needs to know to be able to go to his death with a smile on his face.

So he does. He lets himself smile, watches the flicker of confusion dance through Madara's dark gaze, and then looks back so Hashirama can see it too.

Perhaps this is cruel, but Tobirama has never quite managed to learn his brother's mercy.

He grips Hashirama's wrist, pushes closer until steel kisses flesh, and feels skin part beneath the finely honed edge. Blood, hot and wet as it slides down his neck, and Tobirama closes his eyes, thinks of peace, and lets the blade cut deep.

Somewhere in the distance, through the haze already descending over his eyes, he hears Hashirama begging, Tōka screaming, and Madara's wordless sound of what could be shock or victory or a thousand other things he no longer has the will to care about.

Suddenly, like vast hands catching him halfway through a fall, everything stops.

'Still the wrong answer. You are more stubborn than I thought,' the voice says, sounding somewhere between vaguely amused and distantly disappointed. 'But you will understand things better in a different situation, perhaps. Try again.'

A whirl of mad light, and then all Tobirama knows is darkness.

He comes to in the twilight, the taste of briefly glimpsed paradise lingering on his tongue, and takes a startled breath of air rich with evening and rain and recently turned earth. There is a grave in front of him, newly filled, and Tobirama has stood here before, knows this place in his very bones no matter how long it's been since he visited.

"Kawarama," he whispers, and the voice is wrong. The height is wrong, his senses are wrong, the ache of exertion in every muscle is wrong, but he feels it nevertheless as he stands before his younger brother's grave.

This is the body of a child. Tobirama's body, yes, but it hasn't truly been his in decades. His hands are small, the calluses not quite fully formed. He carries no weapons, when Tobirama knows he is rarely, if ever, without them. Was without them, because he has lived already, died already, and he doesn't understand his presence here, in what is once again the past. So far back, with so very much ahead of him, but the damp earth beneath his feet doesn't lie. This grave is new, Kawarama has only just died, and Tobirama is ten years old again, a child.

He remembers this. Remembers the funeral, Kawarama being buried alongside so very many other shinobi, his age and older, because none of them can refuse to fight regardless of their years. It was an ambush, to catch the squad alone and isolated as they carried messages back from Whirlpool, and Tobirama has already grieved for his brother, but seeing the freshly-cut flowers laid atop the grave somehow drives the loss home all over again. Tobirama's breath catches in his throat, and he's never been one to show emotion beyond what's absolutely necessary, but his eyes burn dryly and his chest aches and he wants to know why. Why, if he truly has returned to the past, couldn't it have been a few hours sooner? Yet another loss, and—

With the smell of grave dirt in his nose, with the evening wind raising goosebumps on his arms and the cloying sweetness of lilies filling his lungs, Tobirama closes his eyes. He takes a breath, another, and it's getting easier with each inhalation. Easier to accept, easier to adjust, and this—

This is penance, this endless cycle. All of these times waking up in the wrong body, the wrong time, are his karma for what he done. Because no one spoke a word of blame, during the war, but Tobirama is nothing if not clever and well able to see what his own hands have wrought. Madara driven to insanity by Izuna's death, brought back to life by Edo Tensei. The Uchiha, all dead but for a single survivor, because of the seeds of mistrust Tobirama had unwittingly sown. His own legacy, twisted and perverted by one of his own handpicked shinobi, dividing the village and sending darkness creeping through the roots of his brother's creation.

Perhaps there is good as well, but Tobirama can hardly see it. He has done so much damage, caused such hate. He is responsible for Madara's madness, because he did not turn aside his blow even though he knew how Hashirama only ever wanted mercy. Izuna died under his sword, and everything that came of it is therefore Tobirama's responsibility. Even Hashirama's death can be laid at his feet, if one follows the ripples forward, and that aches more than anything. For all of Tobirama's faults, he has always loved his brother dearly.

Tobirama is not one for guilt or grief or regrets, for looking back when there is still a way to push forward. He is a shinobi, has never been anything else, has always been proud of his legacy and the road he set Konoha on after he took his place as Hokage.

But he was blind, before, to just what he had wrought, and now he cannot be. Now he has seen the world dragged down into blood and hatred and insanity, and the roots of the conflict are the seeds he planted and nurtured into growth. And for that, because of that, Tobirama feels guilt. For that, he is willing to grieve. For that, he regrets.

A long life, so many advances, but what did it come to in the end? What did he give the world, beyond the very thing his brother fought so hard to prevent?

Only hatred. Only pain. Only death.

He thinks of the Sage of Six Paths releasing them, all of the reincarnated Hokage, thinks of brilliant light and a hope for the world and the Pure Land opening up before him. Thinks of peace so close at hand, at last, and then…this.

Descending darkness and a freshly dug grave, a child's body and a second chance given to him yet again.

I hope, he thinks, to the Sage or the gods or whatever being it was that cast him here. I hope you do not expect me to sit back and let things play out as they did before.

There's no answer beyond a whisper of wind through the trees, but that's enough. Tobirama draws in a shaking breath and lifts his face to the darkening sky, staring up at the slim crescent already rising above the hills.

So much suffering. So many lives.

But this time, he'll make sure the path is clear before his brother, that Madara walks it by Hashirama's side unhindered by madness or loss.

"He was only seven! How much longer must this war drag on?!"

Hashirama, but Tobirama doesn't look over at him, can't, not when the last thing he remembers from the previous cycle is his brother's horrified eyes as he forced Hashirama to kill him. That wasn't the right answer either—not Madara's death and not his own. But that's what Tobirama knows more than anything, death and killing and the careful, treacherous balance of vengeance and peace. If that is not the answer, if this is not some twisted game he can win with cunning or strength, then what good is he? What use is he? What use is there in sending him back to so many different points, again and again?

Itama is crying. He always was the most soft-hearted of them all.

"It will end when one side is completely eradicated," their father says unyieldingly, sharp and harsh. "Death and war will pave the way for peace."

He is what this time has made him, and Tobirama neither loves nor hates him for it. He never shed tears for Senju Butsuma, when he died, but then, Tobirama cannot remember the last time he shed tears at all. Perhaps his heart is frozen, he thinks distantly, because even now, with the pain of his little brother's death aching in his chest, he feels no urge to cry. He never has, and though he knows it is no way to measure strength and weakness, he wonders if Hashirama is stronger, since he can freely shed the tears Tobirama keeps locked up deep within himself.

Hashirama takes a breath, and says, careful and soft, pure blasphemy in this time of death and war, "Even if it means doing so with the blood of innocent children?"

Tobirama has lived this through once already, and his feet are moving before he consciously registers the decision as being made. Speed, nothing like Namikaze Minato's but still more than most, and Tobirama steps in front of his brother half an instant before their father's fist descends. The force of the blow snaps his head to the side and makes his ears ring, because for all his memories of strength and all the lifetime's worth of skill he still possesses, this is a child's frail and fragile body.

He staggers, falls to one knee with blood oozing from his split lip, and raises his chin to meet their father's furious, narrowed eyes evenly.

"Father," he says carefully, remembering the excuse that averted a beating the first time. "Hashirama is simply overwhelmed by his emotions. Please, forgive him."

Because, at ten, Tobirama has already proved himself a loyal follower, a good soldier who does not question orders and kills when he's told, Butsuma steps back. He studies Tobirama's face narrowly for a moment, then inclines his head in a brief, brusque nod and turns away. Tobirama doesn't listen to his warning, directed at Hashirama, but raises a hand to wipe the blood off of his chin.

Penance, he thinks again, but that isn't quite right. Another chance, and that's better—not perfect, but closer.

He thinks of peace, of Izuna falling before him, of the grief in Hashirama's eyes when he made Hashirama press the sword against his throat, and he curls his hands into fists.

Oh. I see. The seeds of the future.

Not hatred, turning Madara against them.

Not avoidance of the war, leaving the other side free to retaliate.

Not blind sacrifice at the cost of his brother's brightness and hope.

Another path, perhaps. Not left or right or halted halfway, but…a new trail entirely. For all of them.

'Ah,' the voice says, light and satisfied, and the only darkness closing in is that of the oncoming night. 'Now you are beginning to see.'