A/N: I've had this written up for ages. With each chapter Kishimoto-sensei releases, it gets more and more AU. Oh, well. Warnings: may cause disorientation.

crash, crash, burn (and then you plummet)

Character(s): Hashirama, Tobirama, Izuna, Madara (mentioned)

Pairings: Mito/Hashirama

Tobirama catches him before he hits the ground. It's lucky it's so early, he says – lucky that no-one is around to see the great Shodai Hokage collapse just inside Konoha's great gates – a mimicry of the hero he is supposed to be.

Tobirama's armor cuts into his rib cage, one arm around his shoulder, calloused hand against his cheek.

"Did you kill him?" Tobirama asks, "he's dead, isn't he? You wouldn't have gotten back otherwise – "

The look on his brother's face is a howling vortex of emotions, anger, pain, exhaustion – but despair is what twists his features beyond recognition – and then he speaks, and Tobirama feels as if he is listening to a madman talk.

"He's not dead," Hashirama says hoarsely, "he's not dead – he's alive – I know he's alive – " and Tobirama wonders if his brother died with Madara Uchiha.

He sleeps like he's never going to awake, still and silent and motionless – and on the third day, the fever sets in. Mito sits by him almost constantly, poring over her scrolls with almost frightening intensity, one healing seal after another evaporating off Hashirama's body in wisps of smoke. He is flushed and shivering and soaked in sweat, hair and skin drenched with it – an infection, Mito says, and she doesn't know if he has the will to fight it.

Tobirama sits at the Hokage's desk during the day and paces outside his brother's fusuma panels by night – because there are trade deals to be settled and disputes to be resolved and a fledgling village to run – and although he is a great administrator he doesn't have the flair Hashirama does and he is lacking in every other way.

A week after Hashirama's return Tobirama slides the panels to his brother's bedroom open and Mito is bent over his brother's form, her long red hair surrounding them both like rivers of flame and her hands are fisted in his and she is incoherent and hysterical and the words Tobirama does hear he wishes he hadn't and so he slides the panels shut and walks down the hall to his own room and sits with an elbow against the kotatsu and stares off into space.

And he wonders how different life would have been for Hashirama Senju if he had not met Madara Uchiha.

Later, Mito will say it was her funinjutsu that brought Hashirama back. Tobirama will say it was her sheer energy.

At the time, it doesn't matter, because when Hashirama Senju opens his eyes a few days later, Mito Uzumaki crumples, strength utterly spent, and Hashirama combs through her hair, long, nimble fingers smoothing out the tangles.

She is crying openly and his eyes are moist and Tobirama steals away again.

This time he goes to the Uchiha compound and walks past the houses built with Hashirama's moukoton towards the grassy enclosure near the back where a solitary headstone sits and the Uchiha give him strange looks – a Senju walking purposefully among their own – but it is peacetime, and nobody stops him when he sinks to the ground by Izuna Uchiha's tombstone and runs his fingers over the grooves of Madara's halting kanji.

"If you hadn't gone," he asks, "would things have been different? Would they have been better?"

The Izuna in front of him sits just like he used to in life, leaning back against the stone, cross-legged, knees against Tobirama's, and he sees a flicker in Izuna's sightless eyes as they settle on him.

"Who knows?" Izuna says, "maybe – and maybe they would have been far worse."

Tobirama stares blankly at him. Izuna shifts and ducks his head, dark Uchiha hair – so different from Tobirama's own – casting his face into shadow.

"Really," he says, "I'm not going to give you empty words of comfort. Count your blessings, Tobirama, because you've got more of them than you know." He smiles, the curve of his mouth transforming his face, and Tobirama can't help but smile back. "Wise-ass," he says, and they sit quietly for a moment – and Tobirama leaves the compound.

The truth is: nobody who ever knew an Uchiha could forget them, and Madara was the greatest of the Uchiha, so who is Tobirama to blame his brother for clinging to the memory that never was? When Tobirama wakes up in cold sweat from nightmares where Izuna's empty eye sockets bore into his you gave up, Tobirama Senju, you gave up –

- and if Hashirama walks a little slower than he used to and if Mito's arm is never far from his elbow (and she is supporting him, not the other way around) and if he sometimes hesitates before looking around a corner with the slightest flicker of hope on his face (that dies every time) who is Tobirama to judge?

A/N: About the halting kanji ... I've a headcanon Madara was never very enthusiastic about reading and writing. Thank you for reading.