_DISTORT_

Kurosaki Ichigo had always been... different compared to normal children.

For as long as he could remember, and longer still from what his mother had used to tell him, he'd suffered from both nightmares and night terrors - to the point that his parents had taken him to the doctors about them. Apparently, most children grew out of night terrors but Ichigo never had and sleeping medication had never worked on him either. So, even into his teens, he'd wake up from dreams he couldn't remember, muttering in his sleep about armies and zombies, or with faint impressions of red moons and loss and fear. In fact, they'd gotten even worse when Karin and Yuzu were born. The dreams increased in frequency (to the point where he would have nightmares 2 or 3 times a week and night terrors at least once) but all he would wake up with was a sense of loss and overwhelming grief that wouldn't go away until he'd seen his siblings. Some days he would wake in the middle of the night grasping at his chest or to the side of him as though he was reaching for something, he could never go back to sleep after those dreams.

(By the time he was twelve, he had become an insomniac out of sheer necessity)

He had always had this overwhelming love of water. His mother used to joke that he was a mermaid with how quickly he'd learned to swim - having been put in lessons as a toddler due to his habit of trying to jump into any water he saw. There were some things that he just knew and understood but couldn't explain where he had learnt them, and other times the most basic of things would trip him up completely. He had always seemed to be able to tell where people were with just a thought but would sometimes open his mouth as though to say something to someone only to stop himself when he realised there was no one there. He was observant but had trouble fitting in with people his age. He took to protecting the twins after their births with a nearly disconcerting ferocity and sometimes acted so much older than he actually was.

And, after his mother died when he was nine, Ichigo just got worse. He took to raising his sisters both as though he'd done it before and that it was expected of him - he taught them to cook and helped with their homework, walking them to and from school and signing them up for clubs and just being there for them while their father worked. He constantly stumbled over his body, as though he'd had a growth spurt despite not growing an inch, and kept trying to fall into katas and motions that he hadn't learned but felt almost natural. It was suddenly very obvious that something was very different about him.

But it wasn't until Ichigo was training to regain his shinigami powers that everything finally made sense.

Coming out of the shattered shaft was like coming out of a genjutsu. Like everything had been distorted but he hadn't realised until that moment when everything cleared up.

Suddenly he remembered. That last barrier, the one that had always prevented his memories from following him into the waking world, was gone. He remembered Senju Tobirama - he remembered decades of war and death and loss and grief, he remembered years of love and family and hope and peace. He remembered being shinobi.

And standing there, with a mask and a sword and a head full of lost memories, Ichigo-who-was-Tobirama had never felt more whole.

_QUESTION_

The problem with questions is that sometimes you don't actually want to know the answers. Other times, you already did but didn't want to accept them.

For example, why did Ichigo keep his memories after being reincarnated?

(It wasn't normal. Everyone was supposed to forget their past lives - reincarnation was meant to be a clean slate. So why did he remember?)

He'd asked Kisuke about it once, back before the war had properly kicked off. It had only been a few months after regaining all of his memories, so he'd been at the point where it had still shocked him sometimes to look in a mirror and see orange and brown when he had half expected to see white and red. (He was taller and tanner than before, his hair shorter though just as unruly with no facial tattoos, but it had still been hard to distinguish between who he was then and who he was now - especially back then).

Kisuke had theorised that it had been to do with the strength of his soul and his experience in the use of spiritual energy - apparently, old souls skilled in Reiryoku manipulation were able to recall more of their past lives than other old souls did. So when he had begun to, unconsciously at first, manipulate his Reiryoku in this life it had triggered the slow awakening of his memories. (Which wasn't quite right, he'd always been remembering for one; he just hadn't realised it, but Kisuke wasn't working with all the information so Ichigo would let him off. He'd already decided not to tell Kisuke that spiritual energy manipulation wasn't likely to have anything to do with it - otherwise, there would be a lot more cases like him around - and that his soul really wasn't that strong).

Shinji, who had been in the room at the time, had told him that it was his own damn fault - that Ichigo was holding onto the things that he couldn't, wouldn't, forget and when his stubbornness was combined with the strength of his soul it had allowed him to remember everything - which was probably the cause of the dissociation that he had sometimes. Which made more sense to him. After all, he was clinging to his memories. Why wouldn't he be? For all the grief and pain and loss that came with them, why would he want to forget?

They gave him the advantage he needed in order to survive in this world of shinigami. (They were the only thing that he had left of Kawarama and Itama and Hashirama, of Madara and Mito and Tsunade, of Koharu and Saru and Homura, of Kagami and Torifu and Danzo. Of Konoha, of the home that he had founded alongside his brother and Madara. Of an entire world of Shinobi that no one else remembered. Why would he want to give up his only link to that?). They gave him the upper hand in a fight - decades of memories of war after war after war after war, of endless hours of combat and training and experience. (They made it so that he wouldn't have to fail his siblings again. He'd lost them all once, in a life long past in a world long gone, and wouldn't lose them again. He couldn't lose them. Not again. Never again.)

Personally, while both explanations had some sense to them, he didn't particularly agree with either of them - though if he had to choose then he would pick Shinji's as it made more sense with what he knew.

But the part of Ichigo that was still Tobirama, the part that didn't believe in coincidences, was fairly certain that he knew who was to blame for this.

(This was probably revenge for Edo Tensai. And that updated Shiki Fuujin. And that medical jutsu he had started to make that allowed the user to use their own life-force to bring someone back from the dead)

(To be fair, the irony didn't really surprise him)

(But who would have thought that the Shinigami was that petty)

_SACRIFICE_

Ichigo knows sacrifice. Knows it intimately - like he knows the feel of Zangetsu's hilt in his hands, the burden of duty on his shoulders, the sounds of his sister's voices, and the weight of his armour on his back.

(He knows sacrifice in his mother's death. In how Masaki hadn't even hesitated to give her life so that he could live. In how, even as she lay dying, she had still begged him to run and save himself. In how she had died with a smile on her face, knowing that he was safe)

(He knows sacrifice in how Rukia gave up her powers to him. In how she had decided to save his family despite knowing the consequences. In how she was prepared to die by her own people, just for a human boy and his sisters)

(He knows sacrifice in how his siblings always came before himself.

In how he had taken over raising Yuzu and Karin in the months after their mother's death. In how his schoolwork and friends and life took a backseat to their needs and wants.

In how Hashirama and Itama and Kawarama had always come first. In how he would step between their father and his brothers - would take blows meant for them, would ask for extra training in order to shift attention from them, would take the blame for mistakes that they had made. In how he would guard their backs on the battlefield even if it meant leaving his own open)

(He knows sacrifice in Mito. In how his sister-in-law had sacrificed herself - sealing a demon within her own body to protect their people. In how she became a literal human sacrifice of her own free will)

(He knows sacrifice in his own death. In how he had chosen to make that final stand so that his students would make it home, so that no more of his people would have to die, so that the war might end. In how he had decided to put the lives of his village above his own without any regret or second thoughts)

Ichigo knows sacrifice. He has lived it, breathed it, died for it.

Ichigo is a sacrifice.

(A hybrid born with the hope of stopping a madman. A child tested, again and again, constantly improving, taught that duty comes above all else. A teenager who was thrown into a war, without a second thought, by those far older than him.

Ichigo is the shinigami's sacrifice)

People don't seem to realise that.

_WATER_

The thing is, people just keep comparing Ichigo to Kaien.

He's not. No matter how many people look at him and wonder. No matter how often they ask - and they always ask, when they find out that he's an old soul. He's not his cousin.

He's not Kaien.

It really shouldn't irritate him this much, it shouldn't. He's more than old enough to know that you can't control what people think of you, and experienced enough to prefer to be underestimated by people. So even when people slip up, even when their first thoughts on meeting him are of his cousin, it shouldn't bother him. Hell, it's not like he doesn't get it. They had known Shiba Kaien after all, some of them had known him for centuries, so it shouldn't bother him that they compare him to him. But it does. And Ichigo hates it.

(The thing is, Ichigo remembers. He remembers decades spent in the shadow of a beloved elder brother. He remembers a time when he was always compared to others - when being second best wasn't good enough and it got people killed. He had worked for years to be seen as his own person and not as an extension of his brother or his father - to not be the spare heir or the voice of reason, never being able to live his own life.

And now he's right back at the start again)

Maybe Ichigo would be more understanding if they actually looked all that alike. But they don't, not really. Yes, they share the same facial structure, but so do most of the Shiba he's met - his father included. Their eyes are different shapes, their colouring completely different, and he has a more slender build when compared to his cousin's brawnier one. Not to mention that Kukaku said that Ichigo was actually a couple inches taller than Kaien was. Ichigo takes far more after his mother than he does his father, the mix just makes him look more Shiba at a glance.

And he's been told, multiple times, that their personalities are completely different - Kaien had supposedly acted more like a toned down Hashirama more than anything.

(Ichigo was stubborn and caring and charismatic, yes. But he only opened his heart to a select few trusted people and was practically ambivalent to everyone else. He rarely smiled, especially in public, and his love was only shown in private.

He was a shinobi from the warring states era, and only the dead wore their hearts on their sleeves)

But people look at Ichigo, at his Shiba looks, and at Zangetsu, who gave him some control over water, and they see Kaien and Nejibana. Ichigo hates it, but he can wait. One day they'll realise that he isn't his cousin. He can wait until then.

Water is patient after all.

_GAP_

The more that Tobirama learnt about this new world, the more the gap between it and his old one widened.

They were just so different. (Sometimes the differences were enough to make him ache. There was just so little to remind him of home).

This world was so much bigger for one: with multiple continents, hundreds of languages and cultures, and billions of people. The Elemental countries had consisted of a single, large, continent alongside a smattering of islands - populated with no more than a couple million people in total.

Here, schooling was compulsory up until, at least, a person's late teens - and many went into further schooling into their twenties and even beyond. And adulthood was decided by an arbitrary number that was different in different countries, not by a defining event. It was almost unbelievable to Tobirama, who had never attended formal schooling himself and had founded Konoha's Shinobi Academy as Hokage, who had been considered an adult since he'd seen his first battlefield. (Who had killed his first man at six, who had lost 2 brothers to war by twelve, who had never really been considered a child).

(Though Tobirama would never admit that he was looking forward to the more advanced schooling - where he could learn as much as he wanted to about a subject, could spend days in labs experimenting and discovering, without worrying that someone would die in the meantime. In this world the only thing holding him back was time and money)

There was no chakra in this world - instead, people waged war using guns and bombs and technology in a way that was almost foreign to him (war was so much less personal here. It was odd to a man who had waged war using jutsu and strategy and fists and blades). The lack of chakra made everything feel strangely dull to his senses, as though it was missing a vital component of life.

Even the culture and the expectations of this world were vastly different to what he was used to. Strength and training and improving yourself for your clan and village wasn't the norm here - everything was more individualised despite education being more standardised.

There was a huge gap between what he needed to know to survive as a shinobi and what he needed to know to survive and thrive, in this world.

It's a good thing that he liked a good challenge.

_TALENTED_

Senju Tobirama was a genius. Both when it came to shinobi skills and when it came to mental abilities. He was one of the strongest shinobi in his generation and had many talents - he was a prodigy when it came to suiton manipulation, a natural at fuuinjutsu, a powerful sensor, and a brilliant scientist.

(He was also extremely bad when it came to interacting with, and understanding, people and had an extremely morbid sense of humour. He had a tendency to forget basic needs, such as food and sleep, when focused on something and had a habit of disappearing for stretches of time randomly because Science)

He was also, oddly enough, talented when it came to logistics.

It was probably the talent of his that surprised people the most, really. When most people looked at him, they saw a cold calculating shinobi and a warrior. Some others saw the odd, eccentric scientist who craved knowledge. Very few saw the warm man who doted on the clan children and his students, who brought food for the poor and would sit and talk to the orphans.

Almost no-one looked at him at saw the face behind Konoha's administration.

(It shouldn't be that much of a surprise to people honestly. Hashirama, while a genius in his own right, was a bit of a flake when it came to both long-term planning and paperwork. Madara was far more likely to set everything on fire or delegate it to someone else than sort it out himself. And Mito had already been occupied with the dealing with the security of the village and clan politics and trade agreements.

For Konoha to survive and thrive beyond a few years, one of them needed to sort it out and do it properly.

(Tobirama had grown up as Hashirama's shadow: the spare heir, the common sense behind his optimism. Hashirama dreamed of peace and so Tobirama would plot and plan and learn until it was achieved. His brother and the safety of his clan came above everything else, especially himself))

That talent was probably also the hardest one to just turn off, especially since it wasn't specific to his world. He was an observant man - a shinobi doesn't survive past his teens without being so - and helping to found a village followed by decades of experience in helping to run said village meant that his brain processed infrastructure and logistics almost automatically. Even as Ichigo.

(Especially as Ichigo)

Which was irritating. Since the more he learns about Soul Society, the more he wants to smash his head into a desk. Or through a few walls. (Well, actually, the more he wants to go and slaughter everyone responsible for this fuck up. But he can't, partly because murder isn't socially acceptable in this society but mostly because Aizen had already done that. So, he'd have to make do with what he can).

Because he knows military organisations, knows them in the way that only someone with decades of experience in running one can (years spent as the heir-presumptive to his clan, years as his brothers left land, as the Hokage himself), and this is quite honestly the biggest mess that he'd seen since trying to found Konoha (while preventing any of the clans from killing each other when the only thing holding them all together was Hashirama's optimism and a shared dream of peace). Why was a well-established military organisation, that had been running for over a millennium, worse off than a dozen clans shoved into close-quarters after centuries of ongoing warfare?

He hadn't thought that was possible.

(He wasn't going to try to fix this. These weren't his people, this wasn't his world, and this wasn't his problem. It wasn't his job. Not this time.

He wasn't going to fix this.

He wasn't)

_FOX_

Foxes were intelligent and cunning tricksters, viewed as the messengers of Inari.

Ichigo had heard Gin compared to a fox. He could see it if he squinted a bit and tilted his head just so. Gin was cunning, he supposed (his plan to double-cross Aizen was decent at least), and while he was a bit of an idiot (use your fucking brain Gin) you could definitely be an intelligent idiot - Hashirama had proved that decades ago. He was a bit of a trickster as well, from what little Ichigo had seen of him, though probably not much of a messenger.

But, a fox wouldn't have been his first thought for Gin. A snake maybe, but not a fox.

Maybe it wasn't quite fair of him, but whenever he heard someone say fox he thought of the Kyuubi (Kurama, he had heard the Uzumaki boy call him) and when compared to him, well.

Kurama was a Bijuu, he could cause tsunamis with a single swing of his tails and could shatter mountains without any effort, and while Ichigo hadn't met him often (before Madara's rampage and Kurama's sealing he'd only seen the Kyuubi twice, both for short periods of time from a distance, though he could always sense him - to the point were it had almost hurt when he was sealed away) he'd always been the epitome of a kitsune to him.

And, in comparison to the strongest of the Bijuu, Gin wasn't much of a fox.

(Didn't make him any less annoying though)

_MONSTROUS_

Senju Tobirama was a legend, long before his death.

His name and face were known all across the Elemental Nations. He was known as the prodigy of the Senju Clan, only outshone by his elder brother, the man who was able to keep up with Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara. The man who invented both Edo Tensai and Hiraishin. The shinobi who became the Nidaime Hokage of Konoha, who lead them through the First Shinobi War. The Hokage who had created ANBU and the Konoha Academy. His skill with suiton manipulation and his sensing abilities were unmatched, his prowess on the battlefield nearly so.

In Konoha, for the most part, he was beloved - seen as a hero and a leader and a protector - but distant. To the Uchiha, in later generations, he was to be loathed - seen as the monster under the bed, the man who had begun the ostracising of their clan. And, to the rest of the Nations, he was respected but feared - this man who could slaughter entire squadrons of shinobi with nary a scratch, the pinnacle of the warring states era shinobi.

(What did that say about him? What does it say when a man is met with fearful respect everywhere he goes?)

Senju Tobirama wasn't all that surprised when, a lifetime later, he woke up with a monster inside his head.

(He had always known was he was)

(If you see a monster, you should always show respect over fear. All fear does is irritate them - respect may save your life, but all fear will do is get you killed)

_AFFINITY_

Even before he'd regained his memories, he had always had an affinity for water.

His parents had always had more trouble getting him out of a bath than into one, he would laugh and ask to play outside every time it rained, and his parents had had to put him into swimming lessons as a toddler because of his habit of jumping into any body of water that he would fit into. (Which, at that age, was most of them). He'd nearly given his parents heart attacks thinking that he'd end up drowning if they'd just taken their eyes off of him for a minute.

Not even his mother's death had lessened his love of the rain and through it water. It had just made him more quiet and introspective, people were more likely to find him watching the rain rather than playing in it.

But for all of his love of water, any water, you would sometimes - for no observable reason - catch him staring at the water with something like frustration and almost-betrayal and emptiness in his eyes for a few moments. Even as a toddler, sometimes he would stare at the water like he had lost something that was so important but he had no idea what it was.

All he knew was that, sometimes, when he looked at water it hurt. (Hurt like a gaping hole in his chest, like he was missing a limb that he could sometimes feel only to realise that it was all in his head, hurt like he'd lost something that was a part of him. Like a part of him was broken beyond repair).

It wasn't until after the shattered shaft, until he was fully himself again, that he realised why.

Once upon a time, water had been part of him. He could always feel the water around him, could pull water out of the air even in the driest of deserts, could control tsunamis with half a thought, could make raging tides bend to his bidding. He could make the water into a hundred different shapes, could manipulate it in thousands of intricate ways. Once he had understood water better than he had understood people.

And, while working with Zangetsu gave him a small fraction of that affinity back, he had lost that part of himself with his death.

Senju Tobirama had been water but Kurosaki Ichigo wasn't.

Sometimes, that was enough to break his heart all over again.

_MOURN_

Some days, the memories of what he's lost hurt so much that he isn't able to breathe.

On those days, he mourns.

He mourns for his brothers. For Hashirama - for his older brother who had dreamt of peace to the exclusion of all else, who took years to see him as something other than an extension of his father, for the optimist who had always tried to see the best in people, for the brother who had loved him even if he didn't understand him, who had always been just out of reach. For Itama - for his little brother with a heart of gold, who had loved everything and everyone, for the child who had felt that he would never live up to his brothers, for the boy who would crawl into his bed at night when he had bad dreams. For Kawarama - for the baby brother who he'd lost far too soon, for the child that he had practically raised, for the boy who had loved to learn anything and everything with a smile on his face.

He mourns for his clan. For the Senju who were once so prosperous. For Touka who had helped to raise him, who he could always count on, who had loved a good fight and was always there to talk too, who had understood him the best of anyone in the clan. For the elders that had taught him strategy games and chakra control. For the cousins who he had grown up with and trained with and had had to watch die one by one. For his aunts and his uncles, for his nieces and his nephews, for Tsunade and Nawaki. For the children of his clan that had grown up in war, and for the children in his clan that had only known peace.

He mourns for his world. For Konoha and its clans and its promise of peace. For familiar streets and the hum of life in the air and the scent of rain on the trees. For his friends and his students and his colleagues. For his people and his home and his life. For chakra and ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu and being able to feel for miles.

He mourns who he was, before reincarnation and a whole new world with its new wars.

He mourns.

He mourns. But he is shinobi. So he moves on.

_PEACE_

Before Rukia, before the shinigami and the shattered shaft and his memories, Ichigo hadn't really understood peace.

Why would he have? He had been born to loving parents in a country that had been at peace since before he was born, his siblings and friends who were all also born in a time of peace. The closest that he had ever gotten to war had been in textbooks and literature and news reports. And whenever the news reported war or famine or natural disasters or conflicts, they were always so far away - in either physical distance or time.

To truly cherish peace, a person must know war. And when he was young, Ichigo hadn't known war - even after his mother's death.

But Tobirama was war-born and war-raised. For the first two decades of his life, peace had mostly been an abstract dream of his brothers and Madara. Yes, everyone had dreamed of peace once or twice - but nobody had any idea what it actually meant. To someone raised to know that everyone who wasn't an ally was a potential enemy (someone raised to know that leaving the compound risked death, some raised with nigh monthly funerals and frequent battles and memorial visits and constant training and violence), the idea of peace had seemed like an impossible, naïve dream. It wasn't until Konoha was founded that he had finally understood what peace meant (and what peace meant to him, specifically) and that peace had only lasted a little over a decade. So Tobirama had treasured peace because he had known war. He was a man born in war, a man forged in war, a man who died in war.

Before Rukia, Ichigo hadn't cherished the peace that he had had. After (once he remembered, once he understood) he regretted that. (Even if he hadn't remembered, he would have come to regret it eventually). Because now he was fighting another war - one that was so strange to Earth but wouldn't have been out of place in the Elemental Nations.

But people always treasure things more for having lost them once.

_VIRTUE_

Patience is a virtue. And it's one of the few virtues that Ichigo has left.

Tobirama hadn't been a particularly moral person. Or well, he was, but only for the period of time in the world that he was born into. Moral's had been a lot more flexible back in the Warring States era. He had never raped anyone, he tried not to kill children unless necessary, he wasn't a kinslayer, and he avoided indiscriminate slaughter when possible. But other than that, well... Tobirama had been perfectly willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything. Even if that meant killing hundreds, or even thousands, of people. Even if those people were children, even if they were innocents. He hadn't liked it - had never liked the deaths that were necessary as a part of his life - and had tried to limit it were possible - only taking missions when necessary and only killing those who absolutely needed to die - but he had done it anyway. (Missions, assassinations, were carried out to the exact wording of the request; never more or less). All to protect his family.

So Tobirama hadn't been a virtuous man. And a lot of that had been passed onto Ichigo alongside his memories, even if certain aspects were watered down by the merging of the personalities.

But Tobirama had had patience. (Patience with his students, with the children, with the council, with Hashirama and Madara. If he hadn't had patience he probably would have slaughtered most of Konoha's upper echelon within a few years.)

Patience is the one virtue that Ichigo-who-was-Tobirama has always had.

(And fuck but he's going to need it. These shinigami are worse than Madara in a snit)

_RESTRICT_

Most of the shinigami have no idea how much Ichigo restricts himself (how much of himself that he holds back) every single day.

They look at him and see a human boy, a ryoka with little training. Someone who is powerful, yes, but also inexperienced and uncontrolled. He's been an enemy, an ally, a friend - but he has never been one of them. And that blinds them.

They don't realise that he was trained to always be lethal. That to him, living enemies are a liability. That if you leave people alive, they'll come back to try to kill your people later. That, unlike shinigami, he was trained to kill. Not to incapacitate, not to maim. To kill. And he wasn't trained with hollows. All of his enemies had been humans, humans with faces and families and dreams and lives.

They don't realise that he's a war veteran. That he probably has more experience in actual warfare than they do. That he killed his first person when he was 6 (an ambush on a border patrol on an allied side. He had killed two people to save his cousin on a mission that should have been safe) and had continued to kill people until the moment he'd died. That he had spent the majority of his life on one battlefield or another, fighting and killing and watching people die.

(They don't realise that he died. That some days all he can remember, all he can feel, is the phantom blades piercing his skin, the electricity crackling in the air, the pain and the satisfaction and the peace and the regret as his vision started to fade. That he had lost his family and his friends and his students and his clan and his village and his world...)

They don't realise that he is so much older than he looks. That he is old (so old for a shinobi) and paranoid and tired.

So they push and they pull. They treat him like the child that they see him as while simultaneously expecting him to help them fight. They monitor him without his permission and yet do not step in to help when he asks. They act as though he is under their command but continue treating him as an outsider.

(They treat him like a known enemy agent - someone who is useful but also disposable, who can be taken out at any point. Sometimes he has to stop himself from just killing them all. Other times and the only thing stopping him from disappearing completely and leaving them to their problems are his friends and his sisters.)

The shinigami know that he is an old soul, but most of them don't understand what that means. Kisuke, Shinji, Yoruichi, some of the older captains, and a few of the other Visored - they're the only ones that treat him like an adult with actual experience and opinions, they actually ask for his input and listen to what he says with an open mind.

(But even they don't know everything. They don't know about the fuuinjutsu that protects his house and his sisters. They don't know about the nightmares or the flashbacks or the number of weapons that he has to carry on himself at all times to feel safe. They don't know how many people he has killed, how many deaths he has ordered, how many hours he has trained for)

Every day, he restricts himself. He stops himself from reacting first, from stepping forward to ask questions and demand answers, from drawing a blade when someone tries to sneak up on him, from going for the kill shot when someone attacks him. He does this purposefully: both to prevent himself from killing anyone and to keep them from knowing what he can do.

The shinigami have no idea just what he is capable of.

_NEUTRAL_

Honestly, Ichigo had been planning on staying neutral in the shinigami's war against Aizen. Aizen hadn't actually done anything to him that he couldn't deal with, he hadn't even killed Rukia in the end, and the war wasn't really any of his business in the first place - he wasn't shinigami and just because Aizen happened to reveal himself while he was there didn't make it his problem. Also, if he was telling himself the truth, he didn't particularly want to fight another war against a megalomaniacal genius attempting to become a god. Oddly enough, it got rather irritating after the first time. (Been there, done that, got the stab wounds).

Then, of course, Aizen had to go and purposefully strike against those under his protection, harming his friends and kidnapping Orihime, and he changed his mind. He couldn't continue to stay out of it after that - at the very least, he had to retrieve Orihime or Tatsuki would kill him for getting her girlfriend killed.

(Fuck it, but he'd actually been enjoying his semi-retirement)

So he had put together a small strike force (after once again asking for shinigami help and being denied) to infiltrate Hueco Mundo, retrieve Orihime and then escape again with as little contact with enemy forces as possible. Of course, fate wouldn't allow that to happen, so it was several dead Arrancar and collapsed buildings later before he had finally managed to make a garganta back to Karakura. Thankfully, Kisuke had already told him about the plan to switch the town with a life-size model in Soul Society as a way to minimise civilian causalities and allow the captains to fight at full strength. (And the mutual information exchange that he had with Kisuke was probably the most helpful thing that he'd gotten out of the shinigami so far. And Kisuke was an exile with the deal being completely off the books). So he had known that the battle would be taking place in the human world.

Having been on many a battlefield, Ichigo had had a fairly good idea of what he should have been walking into. (In general, battlefields didn't tend to change all that much in vague terms. Even when the fighters were able to walk on air). So he'd set the garganta to place him about a mile away from the main battlefield and had stepped out with all of his senses on full alert and Zangetsu in his hands, ready to fight. Only, hardly anybody was actually fighting. Oh, a few of the seated officers and lieutenants were engaged in battles with some of the Espada, but most of the captains and the Visored were with Aizen. While Aizen was-? What?! They were just standing there listening to Aizen monologue.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me!" Was he seriously telling them exactly what his plans were? Why were they just standing there listening to him?

Oh look, he just revealed his weak spot. Thanks for the information. We'll just continue to stand here and not do anything.

What the actual fuck? Tobirama was from a time where nobody would dare monologue, you just tried to kill each other. And if anybody had tried, they were killed while they were talking. You didn't let an enemy talk, you didn't let them humanise themselves, you didn't give them a chance to get in your head, you didn't reveal any weak points, and you certainly didn't hesitate. There was no honour or fairness in war, you just killed them and moved on. Fuck shinigami, they were acting like fucking samurai.

'Fuck this shit.' He was a shinobi and he wasn't going to deal with this crap. If they wouldn't finish this then he'd have to fucking do it himself. 'Zangetsu?' His zanpakuto hummed his agreement.

Once upon a time, Tobirama had been the fastest shinobi alive. Zangetsu had made him even faster. Especially when he was in bankai. With a half-decent plan, his Reiryoku suppressed, and the knowledge that he hadn't seen Aizen's Shikai and so wouldn't be affected by his genjutsu, it was the work of less than a second to separate Aizen Sousuke's head from his shoulders. To make certain, he stabbed the Hōgyoku through with Zangetsu - shattering it.

Then he used a kido to burn the body.

("There's no kill like overkill." Damn it, Kagami)

Turning to eyeball the shocked shinigami, Ichigo raised an eyebrow. "Really? Every single one of you is more than old enough to know better than to let an enemy talk. And also, bankai is a thing. You are captains, you are able to use bankai, the entire point of this bloody plan was for you to use your bankai. So what were you not doing? Using your damn bankai. If you were worried about your people, then maybe you should have thought up a better fucking plan. My students knew better than this at 12. [Somewhere in the afterlife, Sarutobi Hiruzen winces]. You know what? Fuck this shit. You deal with the rest of them, I'm going home."

With a scoff, he turned on his heel and stalked away.

Che. Monologuing. For fuck's sake.

_FAMILY_

The first time that Ichigo saw Tatsuki after that 'Whole Fucking Mess With Aizen' (as he'd taken to calling it after making triple sure that he'd killed the bastard and yelling at 80% of the captains of the Gotei 13) she punched him in the face.

Then, before the shinigami around him could decide how to react, she pulled him into a tight hug. "You stupid brat. How dare you leave me behind, itoko."

A beat. Two. Then Tobirama was hugging her back just as hard, reaching out with what little remained of his once-legendary chakra sense. Tatsuki had always felt slightly familiar, in a way that only his clan had been at one point, but now she shone in his senses (earth and wind wrapped around a spine of polished irritation. The sun after a day spent inside, the ground solid under your feet, a naginata guarding your back without fail. Spars in the early morning and tea in the evenings and spending time with children. Love and loss and life and determination and anger and irritation and love) in a way that he had once known as well as he had Hashirama. A woman who could have taken over the world if she had ever wanted to. Touka. He couldn't help but grin. "I'm sorry. I'll make sure to stop by and grab you before I go killing any more people trying to become gods."

A laugh. "So much sass. Be careful little cousin, or it'll be you that I'm coming after."

"I'm not the little one anymore. Though I can't say the same about you." He said, letting go.

"Oi, you..!" He scrambled away before she could react, ducking the fist aimed at him and darting away whenever she got close to him.

Around them, the shinigami murmured confusedly. They had no idea what was going on, though Tobirama could see some of the more intelligent ones making connections. At some point, there would have to be explanations and politics and arguments and theorising.

But.

That could wait, just for a while. At the minute he didn't really care. He had a member of his clan, his family, back - another Senju, another shinobi, someone else who remembered. And it was Touka. His favourite cousin, the one member of the clan that he could always count on to back him over his brother or father, who had been his partner on countless missions, who he trusted. If it could have been anyone, he was glad it was her. (He had never expected anyone to remember. Had expected to die once more before being able to see another shinobi again. But this, this was far more than he'd ever dared to even hope).

He wasn't alone anymore.

_SCANDAL_

"Oh please. That is nowhere near the most stupid or embarrassing thing he's done. Fuck, that doesn't even make the top ten."

From over where he was discussing dimension travel with Kisuke, Ichigo's head jerked up to glare at where Rukia, Tatsuki and Orihime were sitting. Shit. This wasn't going to end well for him. "...Tatsuki."

"Oh shush Ichigo," she didn't even look at him. He groaned, he knew that look of delight on her face - nothing short of an apocalypse would stop her now. "The stories I could tell you... Where should I start? There was that time with the princess dress, a tea party, 2 three-year-olds, 4 dolls, a guard and the daimyo. Or there was that time with the zombie cats and the immortal rats. Or that time with the cult of the lizard people and the human sacrifices. Or that time when he was a kid and would get naked and jump into every body of water that he saw - it didn't matter what he'd been doing beforehand, even training, he was in the water almost as fast as you could blink. Or that time when he was 6 with the alcohol that made him act like a squirrel on crack. Or that time..."

Rolling his eyes, Ichigo sighed. This was the problem with having family that you're close to - they've been around long enough to know all the embarrassing secrets - especially when they were a favoured mission partner. And there was no stopping her when she got like this, not that the others would let him by the looks of it. Even Kisuke had abandoned their discussion in order to gather blackmail on him, alongside most of the Visored and Yoruichi. Still, it wasn't like she was telling them anything he cared all that much about (he'd heard pretty much everything under the sun about it all before anyway) and since everyone had gotten at least the basics of their past lives it wasn't like she was doing any real harm. (Except to his reputation).

"...So we all hear this scream of outrage from the Uchiha compound. I'm nearby so I decide to go have a look at what's going on along with a couple others around, usually these things are pretty funny, and what do we find? Hashirama (Ichigo's brother) had apparently gone looking for his best friend, something about a spar or some diplomatic meeting or something, and had just barged straight into the house and the bedroom like he usually did. Only to get an eyeful when he found Ichigo and Madara (the best friend and, supposedly, Ichigo's bitter rival) sleeping in bed together. Naked. When everyone was under the impression that the two of them hated each other. It was such a scandal. And then Hashirama is going bright red, looking torn between outrage and joy, while Madara is screaming at Hashirama about privacy, and Ichigo just sort of looks at all of us, growls and then shoves a pillow over his head and goes back to sleep. Completely ignoring the rest of us killing ourselves laughing in the background. It was completely hilarious. Especially when Hashirama spent the next week constantly challenging Madara over the Ichigo's virtue (like he'd been a virgin in the first place). And the entire village was so confused because they'd been under the impression that Madara had hated Ichigo ever since-"

"Touka." He cut in sharply.

She winced. "Sorry, Tobi."

It hurt, to be reminded of the role that he had played in Madara's descent into madness. Hurt made even worse by the fact that he had loved the idiot.

(It had broken his heart to have to watch, unable to do anything, as Madara's mental state slowly got worse and worse - to have to slowly watch his lover lose himself piece by piece. It had hurt even more to wake up one morning and know that Madara had left - disappearing from his sensing range. (he knows why he did it. Madara had never wanted to cause him pain. And he knew that he was getting worse, almost to the point of no return. So he had left before he did something that he'd regret). That he'd just left without a word or a note or a last goodbye. That Tobirama had never had a chance to say goodbye.

Then his supposed death in the Valley of the End, the battle with Hashirama and Mito and the Kyuubi. Hashirama's death two years later. The start of the war the year after that. They had shattered him in the end. Broken him beyond repair in a way that 40 years of shinobi life had never managed.

Most of the village hadn't known exactly how much Madara had meant to him, hadn't known the exact nature of their relationship, but they all knew that his death had changed him)

(And then the Fourth Shinobi War. Having been brought back with Edo Tensei for the exact purpose of helping to kill his lover. His lover who had survived but had slowly gone more and more insane over the decades. Who had lost almost all of himself to the darkness. Who he almost couldn't recognise.

To look at that man and know that he had started that. That had broken his heart all over again)

As Tatsuki picked up again with a different (though no less embarrassing) story, ignoring any questions over the slip-up, Tobirama left silently. He didn't want to hear about any more of his 'scandals'.

(He couldn't deal with any more people today. Not now).

(He wanted to grieve for the man that he had loved.

Because he had died thinking that he would be reunited with those that he'd lost in the pure world. That he would see Kawarama and Itama and Madara and Hashirama again. That would be able to he speak to them again and tell them he was sorry and that he loved them. And maybe he had been. Orochimaru had been able to call his soul back to fight using Edo Tensei, so he must have been in the pure world. But he doesn't remember any of it. Doesn't recall any of the time that he was, well, disembodied actually.

And that thought - to have had that time with his brothers, with his mother, with Madara - and then to have forgotten it. Nothing will ever hurt, will ever burn, as much as that)

_DEADLY_

Tobirama had always had a fondness for the deadly.

It hadn't mattered whether it was deadly jutsu, deadly sword techniques, deadly animals, or even deadly people. There was just something that caught, and held, his attention that went beyond a shinobi's typical reaction of "oooo, deadly. Yay."

Touka, who had been comparing him to a cat since the first time that he had curled up in the sun for a nap, used that joke that it was a big cats enjoyment in watching baby predators. (In hindsight, signing the leopard contract probably hadn't helped with all of the cat comparisons). After finding out about his relationship with Madara, she'd laughed and told him that she'd seen it coming. Madara was the only person in the village, outside of Hashirama and Mito, who could match him and beat him in an outright spar - and Tobirama was never going to be with someone who couldn't at least match him. (Which she would know, she'd gotten him drunk enough times to learn his preferences. Alongside a multitude of other blackmail). He couldn't even deny it - he hadn't even noticed how attractive Madara was, outside of general aesthetic appearance, until they were in the middle of a spar.

Kagami, once he'd grown up a bit and lost some of that automatic respect, had liked to say that Tobirama was like an Uchiha when it came to deadly things - he only had two reactions, kill it and mine. And, of course, he'd made sure to say that in the middle of the street. The entire village was joking that Tobirama was part Uchiha by the end of the day. (His red eyes, relationship with Madara, and his fascination with how things worked, combined with being one-step-from-love-on-sight with most deadly things, meant that by his death that joke was still making the rounds of the village). The rest of his students hadn't spoken to Kagami for almost a month after the week-long training trip that he'd felt the need to take them on due to that comment, but they were stronger for it.

(No Hashirama! He did not take on students so that he would have an excuse to adopt deadly minions. Damn it, Madara, don't agree with him!)

_SHIVER (19)_

When Aizen died, fate shivered.

(Before he could fully merge with the Hōgyoku, Ichigo separated his head from his body. In its incomplete form it could heal much - but not everything. Not that. Especially not when Ichigo also damaged the Hōgyoku and burned the body.

So Aizen died and alongside him so did his war)

(Killing the leader of the opposing side doesn't stop the war, doesn't stop the fighting. All it does is send a message, and not always the right one. More often than not, dead leaders become martyrs.

But Aizen controlled his people through fear and power. Very few of them were there because they wanted to be, even few because they believed in his cause. On his death, those Arrancar who could slip away did so quietly - some would go on to fight for the control of Hueco Mundo while others would just go back to their lives before Aizen. Whoever came out on top would have no choice but to remain in Hueco Mundo - their rule too unstable and new to leave, too busy defending their throne in order to fight a war for a world they don't much care about. Most shinigami never bothered those in Hueco Mundo anyway, so they would be mostly left alone. In a few centuries, Aizen and his quest would be all but forgotten by the hollows)

Aizen's death ended the war, earlier than it should have.

(There was no hero to sacrifice his powers to defeat him. There was no imprisonment for the man who started it all)

This left the shinigami to recover and recoup their loses.

(At the start of this war, they had lost three captains (at the start of this war, they lost 6 captains and 3 lieutenants) - Aizen, Tousen, and Ichimaru.

Aizen died at Ichigo's hand. Tousen was killed by his former lieutenant and his friend. Ichimaru was pardoned for his crimes as a double agent but was not offered his position back. (The Visored, Urahara, and Yoruichi were pardoned, the truth of their 'crimes' having come out, but they were suspicious. The shinigami had believed the word of a single lieutenant over all of theirs, hadn't even given them a chance before ordering them all to be executed. They wanted to go home but couldn't trust them. Once bitten, twice shy).

Shortly after the end of the war, Kurotsuchi-taicho died in a lab accident - one of his experiments went out of control and blew him up. (Ichigo remembered how he had threatened to dissect Uryuu. It hadn't been hard to make it look like an accident).

The Gotei 13 had 4 captain positions to fill and only former traitors to fill them.

It had no choice but to change)

Change is slow, no matter where you are. But war is good at change - however short it is.

Aizen died and the future changed. Paths were rewritten, new opportunities opened up. Nothing was set in stone, nothing was the same. Fate changed.

Aizen died and fate shivered.

_SURVIVOR_

Ichigo was a survivor, in all definitions of the word. But the problem with being a survivor?

The survivors are always left behind.

But no matter how many times he got left behind, he dealt. No matter what life threw at him, he coped. Even if all he wanted to do was scream and burn - he moved on. Because he was shinobi. And shinobi were survivors.

He was shinobi.

Even when he lost his brothers.

(Even when they carried Kawarama's coffin home. Even when Itama and Hashirama stood crying at the grave of the child killed by the Hagoromo and the Uchiha. Even when Tobirama was forced to stand and watch as they buried the body of the 7-year-old that he had raised - the body of the boy who had loved cats and blades, who had wanted to be faster than him someday, who had loved sweets and hated vegetables, who had always had a smile no matter what.

Even when Itama died. Even when he had to carry home the corpse of his ten-year-old brother - his brother with a heart of gold and a love of life and a mind that was as sharp as a blade. Who could keep up with him when it came to science, who had looked at the world in a different way, who had loved puzzles. Who had loved his family so much but had loved Tobirama the most, who had wanted to be a medic and to help people, who had cried when he saw someone suffering and could always cheer him up. Who had loved magpies, who would give some of his food to animals, who had a laugh that made everyone smile and hated dango but loved tea. Who had always worried that he wasn't good enough. Who had died mere months after Kawarama, leaving Tobirama to bury 2 brothers in less than a year.

Even when he found Hashirama's body. Hashirama who had been so worn down by Madara's defection, who was running himself ragged trying to prevent a war. Who had died from a combination of illness, exhaustion and an ambush. His older brother who had never quite understood him - never really understood that Tobirama couldn't care for the world only for the people - but had loved him anyway. Who was an optimist, who had loved sweet things and being surrounded by nature, who was a bit of a flake. Who had fought so hard for peace, only for the balance to tip less than a year after his death)

Even when he lost his mother.

(Even when he lost Masaki. Masaki who threw herself in front of a hollow for him. Who knew that she was powerless but had given her life to protect him anyway. Who had never even hesitated)

Even when he lost his world.

(Even when he woke up in a with no chakra and no shinobi and no Konoha and no Senju. Even when he lost his afterlife. Even when he was certain that this was his punishment from the Shinigami for creating Edo Tensei.

(He'd just wanted his brothers back. His little brothers, the boys that he had raised after their mother had died, who had died far too young and so close together. He had just been a boy who had wanted his brothers back. Who had wanted the death to stop. And he could never regret trying. Never))

He is shinobi. And shinobi are survivors.

They know death the way that you do an old friend, but they survive.

...Until they don't.

_FIN_

This is totally blackkat's fault. Before reading her Tobi fics, I was out of Naruto hell - I hadn't written anything for it for years. This is my second Naruto fic in the last month. I'm meant to be writing for my star wars fic, but no. I just keep getting dragged further and further into Tobirama hell. I honestly have no idea where Touka or the MadaTobi came from, both of those just sorta wrote themselves in. Also, rest easy was meant to be a short oneshot - 9000 words later and I'm just.

Also, as I wrote this lit straight after a blackkat Tobi!fic binge, there may be references to their works in here. If you see anything, it all belongs to her and I apologise.

Tell me what you think, tell me your favourite parts, ask me any questions, criticise if you want. Hell, if there's a scene you wanna see, tell me and I'll give it a go. (Please, someone, talk me out of writing an actual fic for this instead of just a oneshot)

Thanks for reading, CharlotteDaBookworm