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Chapter Two

All in calmness-

the earth with half-opened eyes

moves into winter

-Dakotsu

Tobirama always found it a strange thing, the way he felt dawn approaching even before light ever fell on his eyes. Quite different from every other morning, he allowed himself the time simply to lie there, as if sleep still consumed him, or as if it could again. Being the natural born shinobi he was, it proved challenging enough to lie there while his senses roused with each passing second. Nevertheless, he found a mixture of discomfort and content in the tranquility of it all. He didn't even shift as he felt his brother's presence approaching his door.

A subtle slide of the shoji door sounded as the man entered. Softly, Hashirama sat, presumably cross-legged, in front of the seemingly sleeping Tobirama. In the midst of the patient silence, Hashirama spoke a nearly inaudible, "Tobi."

Peeping a sanguine eye open at the man, Tobirama sighed at his brother's gentle tone before groaning his slight annoyance, "Whatever it is, perhaps it can wait until-"

"Father is dead."

Eyes patiently opening at the revelation, Tobirama stared blindly into the space before him. His ears reverberated with the processing information; the information that he had so long expected to hear at some point in his life just as he did for every soul in his life, yet somewhere within himself never considered a possibility until it became a reality. Sitting up from his futon, Tobirama began to see the tiny, translucent dots manifesting in his line of vision before the ache began to pulse steadily in his cerebral cortex; he took the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, squeezing.

"When," he inquired, on impulse.

"Not two hours ago, I think," Hashirama spoke softly, his brown eyes worn by the night's events. "But there's more, Brother."

Tobirama looked at his brother, a glint of incertitude and rage in his eyes. "What do you mean?"

Hashirama searched for the words, as if in disbelief, before his gaze lifted to meet his brother's. "They won't let us have his body."

Wordlessly, Tobirama removed himself from the futon and moved to his armory. Layer after layer, he assembled himself, the sound of clanking metal filling the otherwise silent space. Hashirama stood and brought himself solemnly to his brother's side. "Tobi."

Tobirama secured armor onto his shoulders, "Don't."

Glancing down at himself, he took in each chink in his armor, mere reminders of the brushes with death he'd had over the years. The death that he had so skillfully evaded. The death that seemed to, slowly but so surely, consume everyone and everything around him.

Paying no mind to his brother's silent pleas, Tobirama fixed his hitae-ate onto his face, turned on his heel, and exited the room.

"Brother," Hashirama called after him, finally catching him by the shoulder a few meters outside of the house. "Do you really find it wise to throw yourself into battle, and so blindly?"

Tobirama shrugged off his brother's grip abrasively, "Fine. Tell me, please, oh great Hashirama of the wood style- what would you propose I do? Let them keep my father's body? Leave him to rot, or better yet, be food for the crows?" He gripped his hands into fists as they threatened to shake. "You suggest I allow them to rob us a moment's peace even in death?" Crimson stared almost threateningly into brown as he glossed over every image of his father, every stern talk, every time he fought beside him. The moment he closed his eyes, if only for an instant, he was four years old again and it was springtime. His mother sang, sewing up the holes in Hashirama's pants while his father fixed a leak in the ceiling, casting a warm, reserved gaze her way; so few moments of peace did his father have, so painfully few. In a life as difficult, as careful as the one they lived, Tobirama had willed himself over the years not to resent the man, not to take the beatings so harshly, the stern looks to heart, nor to confuse the lack of kindness as a lack of humanity. At the end of the day, his father had been a man fulfilling his duties, first and foremost as a leader to their people.

Tobirama opened his eyes, bearing them earnestly into his brother's. "I will not allow them to rob my father of his peace."

Hashirama averted his eyes, his face shadowed with dismay.

"Where are the men?" Tobirama demanded.

Hashirama merely shook his head, disappointed, though not surprised. "About a mile north. Waiting for my command."

Nostrils flared, Tobirama contained himself, "And what, you came to consult with me? Hashi, you're a lot of things, but dull is not one of them. Was this not what you expected?"

The tall, tan man raised his gaze from the dirt, staring off into the trees; they went on for miles. It was precisely the thing the Senju boys had so favored about Fire Country. There were trees as far as they eye could see, could enjoy. Some part of Hashirama wished so terribly in that moment to return to those indulgent days of childhood, where moments with his brother to sit and enjoy the world had seemed innumerable.

Yet here he stood, looking into the vengeful eyes of a man who just yesterday had been a small boy, wondering, with such sincerity, where the flowers went in the wintertime.

"Do you suppose they turn to snow, Brother?"

Hashirama smiled, a wry smile just as he had all those years ago, the wind sweeping over his features and through his hair.

"I don't know, Tobi," he responded, half-expecting to turn his sights to a perplexed four-year-old with sanguine eyes far too wise for his years. Though, eighteen years later, only a man hardened by a ceaseless war and a long inured heart stood before him.

Tobirama merely nodded, his features straying into dismay, reiterating a soft, "You don't know," to himself. Beginning a trek into the northern forest, Tobirama stopped, turning a cheek to his brother, who didn't have the heart to watch him go. "Either you're with me, or you're against me in this."

It was hardly audible as Hashirama uttered his next words; still, knowing Tobirama heard every bit of it. "The attack. Father provoked it."

The silence between the two maintained itself before Tobirama's gaze finally fell away, setting itself solemnly into the earth.

"And still," the silver-haired man spoke, "I think even you knew that changes nothing."

Hashirama watched his brother disappear into the trees.

"Okaa-san."

Deep brown eyes glazed over as they seeped into the very scene before her; fires flitted their reflections, dancing, across the shine of her distracted gaze. She slumped over, onto her knees, sinking further and further into the ashy ground where her home once stood. The singed agony on her side was raw, bleeding, black with the residue of the night. She was not certain at what point the pain had dulled itself, a distant ache, only that along with it had gone every other sense of consciousness.

The crisp crackle of burning wood sounded around her, though her ears had long closed themselves off from the chaos that erupted in the settlement she once called home. Charred remains of her home, the only home she had ever had, lay in jagged ruin before her. Its fine wooden arches and the porch, which her father had long ago built for her mother with his own two hands, had been reduced to blackened wreckage. All of it- rubble, that pinned her mother to the very earth before her.

Prudent fingers reached out to trace the delicate rivers of ebony that Haruka had in her youth considered curtains to shield her from every fear in life. So many times she had taken her mother's hair into her grasp and tucked herself securely beneath it, hiding from the world and its uncertainty. How badly she wanted to cast herself beneath that security, and to feel her mother's hand on her back as she softly spoke, "It's okay, it's okay."

Stillness had long taken over her mother's features, though Haruka had not moved since, had not breathed, had not felt her heart beat in her chest if only to let her know that some part of the life she had remained with her, even as she watched her mother leave the earth.

She leaned over to inspect the woman's face; half-expecting to see the same face, brimming with beauty and a smile that rivaled the sun itself. Haruka only found herself partially surprised that her mother could, even covered in grime, dirt, and blood, manage to look so lovely.

Frantic, she had run through the Uchiha settlement, which stood on shaky ground as it turned to ash before her eyes. Running, running, running, as fast as she could manage, sparing glances in each direction. She had spoken futile words of reassurance to herself as she turned each corner, her heart sinking further with each step. It was an odd thing to watch everything she had ever known turned to ash as if it had never been anything but that- ashes.

Desperately, she had come across her mother, pinned beneath the rubble of their family home. Hopelessly, she had pushed at its burning remains to free her mother, even as the woman lacked the energy to speak. Even as the wood burned itself into her side, she had pushed, the smell of her own burning flesh and hair not reaching her nose. Sobs overtook the breath caught in her throat, not leaving energy for the screams of agony that sounded in her brain.

"I won't leave you, I won't leave you," she spoke over and over again, a reminder to herself, or to faithless, hopeless life that she would not relieve herself of the burning remains, of her pushing, of her mother.

It was only once a hand caught hold of her ankle that Haruka returned to herself.

Leaning down to meet her mother's fleeting gaze, she still felt as the woman had touched her face, bringing her back down to earth, to say- "Please bloom, my Haruka. There are still so many so in need of springtime."

Long after she felt her mother depart from the body pinned beneath the rubble, leaving only the beautiful shell that Haruka had been blessed enough to love, to seek comfort in, throughout her fourteen years, love cemented her to the ground before her mother, begging, pleading, that she not be forced to leave. Stroking a hand down the length of her mother's cheek, growing colder and colder by the second, Haruka stared with blank, steely eyes into the life before her. Not so suddenly, crimson seeped into dark brown irises, and she faded into unconsciousness.

Haruka could never be certain as to when the fighting began, somewhere out in the miles beyond her home, only that it grew louder as the sun became higher in the sky, and that by nightfall the entire settlement had been swallowed by the great goddess Amaterasu, left to ruin in the flames.

Tobirama watched from the outskirts of the forest as the smoke rose from the ashes of the Uchiha settlement. For as many men as he lost that day, he knew that the enemy had lost so many more. The battle with the raven-haired clan, it had long ago been discovered, was one of ever changing tides. This, however, was monsoon season.

Stony crimson eyes stared into the body bag by his foot; its form hardly resembled the figure with which he had come to associate with his father. His towering, industrial father- reduced to a lump beneath a stretch of burlap. The years of war, of being a soldier, taught him what he needed to know about death, about carrying a body bag. Still, there was a distinct feeling to knowing what was inside- who was inside. It was an odd wonder, to feel that along with the man beneath the burlap laid the very pride for which Tobirama had fought all his life. And as much as this man was gone, Tobirama knew he would never see the end of the fight.

Out of a strange urge in his core, Tobirama swept the vicinity for any trace of- of anything, any one distraction from the gravity at his feet, from the pressure imposing itself on his lungs, from the regret in his heart. He climbed into the canopy of the tree beside him, seeking escape. Swelling every bit of his concentration into his surroundings, he closed his eyes, hand propped steadily against the bark of the tree he stood in.

A pang struck in his chest as he found his senses clinging like the needle of a compass in the direction of the burning Uchiha settlement. Slowly, he zeroed in on the exact perturbation, feeling about for the source. Not so suddenly, he indicated a familiar signature amidst a crowd of fading signatures. Erratically it flared before sizzling out into a low flickering flame of chakra. Gently, it flowed like the streams he so remembered as a child, yet passionately it surged, like a white water river. Still, above anything else, he felt its warmth; warmth, which so deeply confounded him and every true definition he had considered of the word. It glinted in the space between his mind and his eye, like stars in a clear night sky, fading out into amber just before dawn.

Breathless, Tobirama snapped out of his intrigue, fearful realization approaching his senses.

Brows knitting together in regret, he forced himself to think no more of it, pushing every possibility to the far ends of his consciousness. Pulling his father's body bag into his grasp, he allowed himself a breath.

Though even as he trudged off for home, back aching with the aftermath of battle, his thoughts found their way back to that warmth, to that face, soaked in moonlight, all those years ago.

A Note for my Lovely Readers

Hi! Welcome to my second installment of DTW.

We're still establishing character history and timelines, but man, it's been fun doing it. Haruka's story takes a turn here, whereas Tobirama is heading further toward the plotline and character that we are most familiar with concerning him.

I'll have the third chapter out as soon as I can. But in the mean time, thank you, and spread the word about this story! A following gives such a huge boost in the urge to produce.

Thank you so much for tuning in.

Reviews are welcome. (Time to build a readership, I guess!)

-Vanessa