Author's Note: A few notes of warning. One, this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read a fair bit of that you'll be rather confused. Two, this is obviously NOT CANON.

In the end, Tobirama felt that everything that had happened, everything that had spiraled out of control until they'd reached what had to be his lowest of lows, could be summarized in one simple question, "Why did I let you talk me into this?"

Lee, for a moment, said nothing. This was not unusual for her, after every single disaster with her at its center that he had ever witnessed, she usually would pause for a moment, as if caught in the eye of the hurricane and not realizing that there was a storm just beyond her sight.

Then, usually, she'd say some blithe asinine thing that even his brother knew better than to say out loud (or at least to Tobirama's face). She'd tie up their adventure, which they were usually still in the middle of or facing the horrifying aftermath, with a neat moral bow and say some lesson they had clearly all learned.

Such as the meaning of friendship, how true love really does conquer all, communicating and not standing in buckets is important, every heinous shinobi mastermind secretly longs for world peace in his cold black heart, bijuu plus overpowered sharingan plus some mysterious other factor that Uchiha Madara had never fully explained all summed to profit… and world peace, or Tobirama's personal favorite that ramen really is the solution to all our problems.

Finally, in a voice with far more confidence than she deserved, Lee answered, "Because retirement didn't really suit you."

He barked out a laugh, bloodied hand through his hair, far beyond caring about hygiene at this particular moment in time. That, unfortunately, was rather accurate.

Retirement hadn't suited him, for more than ten years it hadn't suited him, and for all his attempts to let go and step back even when he itched to fix this village his brother had lived and died for…

Well, that was the trouble, Tobirama had never truly been able to let go.

Even when confronted with his own past mistakes, or the decisions he'd made that could be mistakes or could simply be the start of snowballs that rolled into avalanches in the years after his demise, he still couldn't quite let go.

No, perhaps because of that, the isolation and segregation of the Uchiha clan, Danzo, the grueling death factory that was ANBU, Tsunade's abandonment of the village… Perhaps because of all those things he could not quite bring himself to truly step aside, or at least, not easily.

Looking at her now, Lee staring back at him with her typical calm and cool expression in the face of any kind of mayhem, her features so foreign and her eyes so green, he thought that Eru Lee had helped far more than she would likely ever know.

From dragging him and Hashirama back from the dead for ramen, to obliviously creating thousands upon thousands of S-ranked techniques which propelled Tobirama's own research, to her distant home on a rainy island in another world that she loathed talking about, to the man who had trapped himself inside of her brain on accident, and to her own attempts to provide missions for herself in the wake of peace and her own reputation Eru Lee had always kept him busy.

And if she wasn't keeping him busy then she was keeping him alive and pushing forward Hashirama's dream when his brother could not. Pushing and pushing in the face of all those old shadows like Uchiha Madara, Tobirama's newest painful regrets like Shimura Danzo, and threats that Tobirama could scarcely imagine.

People often forgot that, when confronted by Eru Lee, as many had overlooked Senju Hashirama until they had been forced to see him differently. Though they respected Lee's techniques and prowess they would often overlook the heart of who she was in favor of her eccentricities.

That despite all the damage she caused, all the madness she instilled, she and his brother weren't so different at the heart of things. Both fools, certainly, but the best kind of fools.

What had she said, when she'd first taken Hashirama's hand in hers after their abrupt resurrection, after calling them gentlemen and scholars? Ah yes, "You're my textbook's favorite hokage."

Lee interrupted his thoughts with a rather familiar cheerful smile, "On the upside…" she paused, frowned as she searched to some upside to this catastrophe, then pointed to the bleeding, stunned, Uchiha Izuna who was staring at Lee and Tobirama in horrified fascination. Sharingan flickering on and off as he kept trying and failing to see through the illusion that simply wasn't there, "At least we saved that guy."

Tobirama sighed, and yet, the corners of his lips twitched upwards in undeniable amusement, "That's the downside, Lee."

Lee blinked, blinked again, and Tobirama explained, "That's Uchiha Izuna, Madara's younger brother, by saving his life and taking my knife for him you have caused a paradox."

Tobirama didn't even have to look over to know that his past self, so much younger he looked even when hardened and brittle by the clan wars, was looking at his future self as well as Lee in fascination and horror.

In fact, this great deciding battle between the Senju and the Uchiha, the battle that would cement Madara's path to madness and Izuna's death, that would give Madara an eternal mangekyo sharingan, had come to a complete stop.

Understandable given that he and Lee had both tumbled out of another dimension, seemingly out of thin air, only for Lee to somehow appear right where Tobirama's past self was materializing out of hiraishin to plunge a knife into Uchiha Izuna's back.

And then of course Lee, already injured enough to have considered blindly teleporting through dimensions a reasonable option, had spluttered, coughed blood, flailed (which for her was shown through reality defying, horrifyingly dangerous ninjutsu) and then asked Tobirama to pull the knife out of her back while screaming, "It's just a flesh wound!"

By that point, they just about had everyone's goddamn attention, Senju and Uchiha alike.

"Oh, well…" Lee paused, frowned, looking at Izuna then back at Tobirama, "Oh, right, well, if it really was a paradox then it wouldn't be able to happen."

Lee's eyes lit with delight, a bright grin curving across her face as she clapped her hands together, ignoring the barely healed wound on her back, "Think about it, if this was universe ending worthy, then you'd think the universe would have some sort of self-preservation that would never have allowed this to happen in the first place. Well, I mean, unless it was falling apart already, which is a very likely possibility. But in that case I can't see how this would really matter. Either way, probably, and neither of us realize it, this had already actually happened and…"

Tobirama cut her off before she could get too far with that as he casually motioned to his stunned and wary younger self, "Lee, I'm standing right there, if this had happened I would have remembered it."

Lee spared another glance towards Tobirama the younger, who was now looking somewhat wary at her attention though still mostly confused and horrified, as Lee then turned back to Tobirama, "Concussion."

"No," Tobirama said shortly, not even willing to point out that giving his younger self a massive concussion was very unlikely to make him believe he'd killed Uchiha Izuna, "Besides, I didn't have a concussion at the time."

She paused, but only for a moment, before insisting, "Genjutsu."

"No," Tobirama wasn't even going to touch that one

Lee paused again, stared out blankly at her surroundings, shifting her red braid back over her shoulder and sighing, "Well, on the actual plus side, we just saved an entire alien civilization from certain doom and may very well be worshipped as gods for years to come."

"By dooming our own," Tobirama finished for her.

"I was looking on the bright side, nidaime," she bit out in frustration, crossing her arms and hunching forward as if that might make the reality of their situation go away. It truly was amazing, how despite being a woman in her mid-twenties now, long since established as one of the most frightening shinobi to have ever walked the earth, she still sometimes acted just as she had when she was only twelve.

Except, no, no some part of him was very aware that she was no longer a twelve or even sixteen-year-old girl.

Tobirama… had never had time for marriage. Had his father or brother insisted he likely would not have resisted, but Batsuma had been too focused on Hashirama's arranged marriage to Mito, and other than the Uzumaki there was no clan whose expertise he needed to buy via marriage. Then Hashirama had become clan head and had refused to resort to such measures, allowing Tobirama a freedom that he… simply never acted upon.

First there had been the clan wars, then the founding of Konoha, then Madara's desertion and betrayal, and then suddenly Tobirama himself was the only one left standing to be hokage and to build what had been an idea of a hidden village into a functioning reality.

Except, except others had gotten married, even during the first war and second war they had gotten married and had children. So, after his death when time slowed down and his body became a static thing, he wondered if it was simply because the right person had never been there. It wasn't arrogance, it wasn't that nobody was good enough for him, he'd simply been waiting for something that even he couldn't put a name to.

What had Mito said once, before he had died but after Hashirama had? "It would have to be quite the woman or man who could keep up with you, Tobi."

Yes, and he had said in response, with a sly amused smile and resigned eyes, "Who said I wanted someone who could merely keep up?"

No one could ever say that Lee, thin, lean, foreign, overpowered, eccentric, pale, red-headed, green-eyed, exotic, beautiful, god of shinobi and death, simply kept up.

"How about this?" Lee said, pale hands rising in a motion as if to weigh their metaphorical options against one another, "We go, we find the nearest village, and we get hideously drunk on sake."

What a solution! Except, it was just the kind of solution he'd expect from her. Pragmatic in all the ways that it shouldn't be pragmatic at all. With a sort of cheerful desperation and optimism that triumphed even in the sign of overwhelming despair.

Tobirama threw his head back and laughed, ignoring the confused and fascinated stare of the younger version of his older brother, of the uncorrupted Madara, of bitter and hate-filled Izuna, of fierce proud and alive Touka, and even of himself who had so far yet to go in his life and after life.

Standing, pulling Lee up with him so as they stared past the blood, the bodies, and the littered knives and swords, he simply smiled and led her towards the nearest village and the nearest bar (where no doubt Hashirama would be pouncing on them within the hour with untold glee), and said, "I'll drink to that."

Author's Note: Requested by the 100th reviewer of "Eru Lee and the Sundance Kid" Pocket Bug who asked for a Tobirama/Lee fic, so we ended up with this short bit of the kind of madness one would expect from Lee and Tobirama in the future that perhaps could be but won't be. Where they go from here, how ridiculous their drunk conversation sounds, what adventures they were on beforehand, shall be left to your imagination.

Still, for all the ship-a-palooza that goes on with Lee these days, she and Tobirama really do have good chemistry.

Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter