Title: Cut

Author: Tuliharja

Summary: To not repeat his mistakes and thus remember them, Tobirama decides to mark his skin with patterns. However, those patterns are made in a questionable way that will eventually lead a certain person to make sure there won't be anymore in the future.

Disclaimer: NARUTO belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. I'm merely writing fan fiction about it. I don't either own the cover art of this.

Author's note: Thank you IAmTheQueenOfMe for betaing this.

Chapter 1

First cuts

Tobirama took a slow breath between his clenched teeth. He glanced the mirror front of him the tenth time, making sure the lines on his face are clear enough. He used charcoal to draw horizontal lines on his cheeks and then one vertical line across his chin. The lines are thin, delicate, and beautiful. They gave an artistic touch to his pale skin. Yet Tobirama knew it would change soon. It had to.

Slowly, he lifted the kunai and glanced in the mirror. He had made sure to put the mirror far enough away to make sure it wouldn't get dirty. Having such beautiful mirrors like this one was rare. In fact, the mirror wasn't even his, but his late mother's. Again, someone he had failed. He had failed so many of his comrades, but the heaviest failures have been his brothers. He failed Itama and Kawarama by letting them get killed. Not by directly by his own hand, but he could have as well done that when the Uchihas killed them both. He should had been faster and stronger. He should had been better!

Taking a shaky breath, he lifted the kunai and made a small cut across his cheek. For a moment everything seemed to still within Tobirama's vision, before pain came to him like a tidal wave. It made him want to whimper and heal the wound he just made, but he knew he couldn't.

'The cut isn't deep enough,' he thought as he prepared himself for another cut, and this time let the kunai's blade press firmer against his soft skin. It pierced the skin deeper than before, cutting his tissue and leaving red behind. The pain shot through his body, making Tobirama blink his eyes several times, but he already had made another cut.

'Just a bit more…' He thought as he made the cut, but this time it was enough deep. He drew the kunai across his cheek, before he pulled the blade away, looking at it briefly as his hands trembled. Yet, as he looked in the mirror he can see how the blood is making the half of his face his brutalized red. It looked almost like Inuzuka clan's tattoos. But he knew once he finished and cleaned up his wounds, those won't look anything like those mutts' tattoos. No, they would look fierce and they would remind him not to fail anymore.

Tobirama lifted his kunai once more and pierced his chin. Yet this time when he does, he could hear someone behind himself shuffling around. Then he heard Hashirama's booming voice. Having been too distracted by his pain, he didn't sense his brother until now. That was the fatal mistake he had made as his older brother opened the shoji screen. There was a lot of shouting, mostly made by Hashirama as he rushed up to Tobirama, hoping to stop him. Yet the younger one had already finished his deed.

"Tobirama, what did you do?" Hashirama yelled as he lifted his hands to heal Tobirama's face.

Tobirama smacked his brother's hands away, a feral snarl making it's way across his features. He knew his brother's chakra was too powerful, too kind. It would heal and hide his failures, try to cocoon him up into a blanket of utter ignorant bliss which he couldn't afford. He must remember. And the best way to do that? Each time he would see his face it could remind him of his failures. No, not his failures, but the fact he has to be better, to be the ruthless machine their father designed him to be. That way he wouldn't fail anyone again.