#maybe I should (Even tho he doesn't consider himself a Sans) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tryingahandinholdingapen · 7 days ago

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I'm flattered /gen

glad you like my silly little au fjbsjfh

okay. I mean I said I'd write more of this anyway, so...

let's add even more tropes into the mix actually

- The Senju clan's healing ability is ridiculously superior to the Uchiha clan's, which is actually pretty shit really. They're doing their best but they don't have nearly as much knowledge or inventions or justu relevent to healing and prevention as the Senju, meanwhile the Senju clan's ability to heal horrendous injuries+illnesses is absolutely unbelievable. Neither party is quite aware of the extent of this discrepancy tho,,,,the Uchiha are slightly more aware of it than the Senju are but. Yeah big knowledge gap

- Hashirama et al has lowkey been planning to Get Rid Of Butsuma and take over for like, ages. He's not old enough or experienced enough to take over the clan yet but he + Tobirama + others have quietly been working towards the eventuality in which Hashirama IS old enough to do so for. years

- Tobirama has leopard summons which okay yeah does make him act a teeny tiny bit like a cat sometimes. The instincts are there

okay now I need to backtrack to my original post because now that I've added these tropes in I wish to expand on the ending paragraph. the bit about the Uchiha clan at large attempting to befriend the young Blessed like he's a stray/feral cat, meanwhile Tobirama starts dropping metaphorical dead mice on their doorstep as he gradually warms up to them? that bit

okay so after that encounter that broke the stalemate, in which Tobirama was wounded and the Uchiha gave the young Blessed medical supplies to try and help, there's a few realisations. The Uchiha realise this Blessed is almost certainly a recognisable (and therefore probably important?) member of a neutral or, more likely, enemy shinobi clan. Tobirama realises, after a few similar encounters (Butsuma has a few months of beyond usual paranoia and keeps sending Tobirama on missions that are too difficult/dangerous for him really), that based on how bad the Uchiha seem to think his injuries are vs what supplies they give him....the state of the Uchiha's healing supplies is possibly a bit shit. hm

(Tobirama's also warming up to the concept of peace with the Uchiha due to these encounters. He already wanted the war to stop, because it was killing so many of their people and didn't make sense to continue when they didn't know why it STARTED and it almost got Itama killed (he survived, but now stays in the compound learning to be a healer and that's Tobirama's baby brother that nearly died!) buuuuttt now Tobirama's not only like "we should stop the war" but "we should start an era of peace", you know? Subtle but very important difference. He's willing to be more proactive now and maybe if he does nice things for the Uchiha then if/when he reveals his identity as Senju Tobirama it could help cement peace? He considers talking to Hashirama about the possibility but uhhhh then he'd have to admit he's been sneaking onto Uchiha lands sans disguise and he doesn't want to do that. Not because he doesn't love and trust his Anija, of course he does! But this is HIS thing he wants to keep it to himself,,,plus Hashirama would get so emotional about it he just KNOWS he would and he doesn't want to get sobbed all over again, thanks)

Anyway. After the Uchiha found him injured that first time and determined the Blessed was almost certainly from an enemy clan, they decided plausible deniability was the way to go, on the theory that if they pretended he wasn't an enemy or even that they hadn't noticed him, he would also pretend he wasn't from an enemy clan and therefore 'why would I spy/hurt/disadvantage the people who let me hide on their lands and give me free medical supplies? enemies? who? the Uchiha aren't my enemy don't be stupid'

This tactic is incredibly successful actually. Tobirama hadn't wanted them to know that he was from an enemy clan at all, if possible, but the moment he picked up on the fact that a) the Uchiha clan likely knew he wasn't exactly from a neutral/allied clan and b) they were pretending they didn't know in order to avoid conflict, Tobirama was very happy to play along. Thanks for solving the problem he had no idea what to do about! Plausible deniability is absolutely something he can do, he's great at that actually (fuck you Butsuma)

(Sighs of relief on the Uchiha side of things, when they realise the Blessed is happy to play along despite being discovered)

One of the ways this plausible deniability manifests is that the young Blessed is gradually demonstrating a number of preferred places to hang out/hide on their lands. The Uchiha steadfastly pretend not to be aware of this, sometimes walking by and COINCIDENTALLY not seeing the kid scrambling up the tree to his favourite perch for example, but by some happenstance a few of their patrol routes have altered ever so slightly so that the kid's preferred places are more strongly protected than they had been previously. Wow what a weird coincidence am I right

Anyway after that first encounter that broke the stalemate, subsequent encounters with the Blessed now routinely include giving the kid (11-14?? idk man I'm still undecided on ages) a shirt. Because for some reason whenever he's injured he's also absent proper clothing. They really aren't sure why this is the case? He wears proper clothing when he's not injured! Injuries and lost clothing do not normallt have such a strong corrlation as they seemingly do for this kid so like, what the hell is hapoening there?? But they're not gonna leave the kid to freeze when a shirt is one thing they have plenty of sooo shirt and medical supplies it is

The Uchiha have no way of knowing this, but the reason Tobirama keeps ending up needing a shirt whenever he's injured is because when Tobirama plans in advance to go hang out on Uchiha lands, he can ensure he's dressed appropriately with outer layers etc that don't have the Senju mon on. But if he hasn't planned it in advance, and is just trying to hide because he's injured and doesn't want to go home (partly conscious planning to avoid Butsuma and partially unconscious cat instincts to go hide somewhere nobody (that he really knows personally) can find him) then that usually means that his armour and outer layers etc all had the Senju mon on, since that's somewhat required for missions, and therefore he has to discard them before he can safely go on Uchiha lands. Thus any time he's injured on Uchiha lands he's also usually more or less just in his underclothing which...okay, honestly? He rarely cares at the time because yk injuries but looking back on it thinking about the sheer number of random Uchiha who have seen him in his under things is pretty embarrassing. Mm. Let's not dwell on that

Tobirama isn't so proud as to refuse the clothing they offer, because that would be stupid. It's fucking cold without his outer layers and yeah yeah he could stay warm using chakra circulation but that would use energy and chakra that he really ought to be dedicating to healing those injuries. So a shirt is better

However! He can't really keep the shirts? The younger and cockier/stupider Uchiha keep giving him shirts with the uchiwa fan on, which obviously Tobirama can't risk being spotted with back home because it would be impossible to explain, and depending on who found him with it he probably wouldn't even get a chance to try and explain himself. If it's one of the older/more experienced Uchiha who offer a shirt then he usually doesn't have to worry about them giving him something with the uchiwa emblazoned on it, but then it's also usually big enough on him that it's not reeeeally worth keeping since he can't exactly wear it regularly

So instead, he starts using the gifted shirts to wrap up medical supplies from the Senju healing halls (stuff that's better than what the Uchiha have been able to gift to Tobirama, but he's careful to ensure it's neither so good as to be obviously Senju nor marked in any identifying way) and occasionally also food, during times he has reason to believe the Uchiha clan (who do not have mokuton on their side) may be struggling a bit with that e.g. in the middle of a particularly harsh winter. So yeah he uses the gifted shirts to make little parcels of food + supplies

And then he starts sometimes leaving these little return parcels near any of the hangout/hiding places that he knows the Uchiha know of ('plausible deniability' does not mean 'so subtle Tobirama can't pick up on it' and it was never intended to be, and all parties know it). Only on times he's sure he hasn't been spotted though. Kami forbid he doesn't want to risk being spotted leaving them gifts or, even worse, having to explain himself. Let him have his own plausible deniability here, please, he's just returning the favour of the shirt+medical supplies gifts

Welcome to the 'Tobirama leaving the Uchiha clan gifts like a cat depositing dead mice on their doorstep' era

The Uchiha clan did NOT expect their gifts to be reciprocated but they're very excited about it! I mean the Uchiha patrol that were (un)lucky enough to find the gift were also somewhat embarrassed because now they have to admit the full goings-on with the Blessed to their higher-ups and the clan at large (the various shinobi routinely on patrol may not have yet confessed to smuggling the kid shirts and medical supplies. maybe. they also maybe weren't supposed to have some of those supplies and got in a fair amount of trouble for stealing from the limited healing halls surplus. oops) which was almost physically painful tbh,,,the disappointed stares for stealing from the healing halls,,,,but the return gifts the Blessed left pretty much redeemed them so like. It's fine it's all good. And hey, they even got the shirts back?

(Seriously what is going ON with that kid and his clothing. He clearly has clothes, so why isn't he always wearing them? Or if he doesn't have ENOUGH clothes to always wear them, or something [admittedly Tobirama does have a fairly limited number of outdoor clothing absent his clan mon so if any Uchiha was paying enough attention they may notice he was cycling through like, three shirts and two pairs of pants or something ridiculous like that], then why doesn't he keep the clothing they offer him?? What??)

Anyway they're very grateful for the medical supplies, and the food in mid-winter is a fucking BOON let them tell you that. Woo some actual fruit+veg instead of just fucking rice for the last stretch of winter! Some of their healers are sparing as much time as they can to try and reverse engineer the medication the kid left them, but it's really difficult and so far they haven't really had any success. The young Blessed helpfully used the same (knots? colour?) code as the medical supplies they left him used, for painkillers vs sedatives vs antibiotics and stuff, which is excellent

They try leaving him a thank you note near one of his hiding places once, but decide NOT to do that again because it fucking spooked the kid. He had been routinely hanging around about a third of the way between their outermost patrols and their compound, but after the Uchiha found disturbed ground by the note (which he notably did not take with him) the young Blessed a) vanished off the face of the fucking planet for like, two months and b) returned to lurking around the very very edges of their lands instead of coming further in

So outright straightforward communication is a bust, they guess.

Damn.

Somewhere in the distance Tobirama is quietly panicking because he can rationalise leaving them gifts as simply returning a favour/debt but writing to a clan his own are still enemies with? That's a bit too close to treason for him to deal with calmly

(Yes this is irrational when he is involved in actively planning much worse treason against their current shitstain of a clan head, but emotions are rarely rational, to Tobirama's eternal frustration)

So the Uchiha clan abandon direct communication as an avenue to winning this Blessed over, but they refuse to fall into ANOTHER stalemate with the quiet exchange of gifts and plausible deniability, they want to keep making some sort of progress towards winning the kid over

There's a lot of discussions back in the compound about this, throwing around various ideas. I think it should be someone from the main family (your choice who) who eventually suggests that making some of the young Blessed's hangout spots more hospitable may be a good move. After all, he's spent a fairly large amount of time on Uchiha lands, but considering he never comes inside the compound or outposts...he can't exactly be all that comfortable

(this is true he isn't, he just deems the discomfort worth it)

This is deemed a high risk, high reward idea. It might work really well! It may also just spook the kid again, probably badly enough to scare him off for good. They'll try it, but they'll only target one (1) of the kid's chosen places, in the hopes that even if he elects to forever abandon it once they actually acknowledge they know where it is and have even meddled with it, he might still use the other places. Also, whoever suggested the idea REALLY wants to help with making a cozy place for the Blessed, or tag along to see his reaction to it, or SOMETHING, but alas is strongly outvoted on the basis that altering one of the Blessed' safe spaces AND introducing a new Uchiha shinobi who doesn't routinely patrol and from the kid's perspective would have no reason to be there,,,could only end badly

There's a lot of whining about this, but they stand firm. No tagalongs. Yes even if it was your brilliant idea in the first place. Can't risk scaring him off. Eventually Tajima backs them up on this and the whining stops. Good

Time to go go spruce up a ridiculous hiding place for a young enemy Blessed shinobi

(how have their lives come to this)

let's combine some tropes

- red eyes are blessed (and therefore Tobirama has been hiding his face (and possibly generally his appearance via seal) bc they're not sure what Uchiha do with red-eyed people)

- Tobirama is a v strong sensor

- He finds Uchiha chakra in general and Madara's chakra in particular to be v pleasant

- He sometimes hides at the edge of Uchiha land borders when he's having a bad day, or just when he feels like it, in order to better immerse himself in chakra he finds comforting

- (and also Butsuma Sucks. he's abusive to his kids, esp Tobirama bc woe red eyes akin to sharingan and Butsuma's never been the most rational about his hatred. on a related note he's a passable clan head but he'd be a lot better if he didn't let said hatred guide his actions more than his reason)

...I don't think this post will get too long but I say that every time and then it does so maybe I should just preemptively stick a read more here??

basically au in which, from a p young age, Tobirama sneaks off to chakra bathe when he's sad or stressed. the Uchiha clan haven't actually found any red-eyed people in a while so the Senju aren't sure what they do with them but rumours still abound and all the rumours Tobirama have heard have generally been... well they've been bad. very bad. but they've also all had a common theme of 'the red-eyed person is not immediately killed on the spot', which is better than Tobirama could hope for from Uchiha as the Senju surety heir. so anytime he's hiding/skulking around the edges of Uchiha land, he makes sure that, unlike usual, his true appearance+eyes are on display as well as ensuring he doesn't have the Senju mon on him anywhere

he absolutely does not want to get caught by the Uchiha but also it's only sensible to take precautions so that if the worst case scenario happens and he IS caught trespassing, he should at least have a bit more time to try and escape, bare minimum, right?

so that's Tobirama's side of things

the Uchiha side of things is more like

okay they haven't found a Blessed in some time now and it's not like there's a strict manual what you should do if you find one. it's more like "these people are important, don't hurt them if at all possible, help and protect them if at all possible, bringing them into the clan and teaching them abt all things Uchiha including our religion would be a very good thing". so there's like some guidelines but it's fairly vague

this means the patrol predominantly made up of fairly new shinobi has absolutely no idea what to do when a while after sun-down they come across a Blessed child fast asleep, but slowly blinking awake, in the branches of a tree near the edge of their lands. like. hello?? small child?? why are you here how are you here do you want some soup

they're only standing around in confused and slightly awed shock for like, 3 minutes MAX but unfortunately that's long enough for the child to wake up properly, take one look at the patrol and then fucking bolt off Uchiha lands

cue surprised and self-recriminating cursing from the Uchiha shinobi. they can't just abandon their patrol route and they're somewhat wary of a potential trap for (relatively) newbie shinobi, so they don't all go after the child. but they do send their fastest after the kid because cmon that's a tiny Blessed!!

no luck, they return empty handed

apparently the Blessed child is unreasonably fast and tricky

damn

what now?

baby Tobirama returns home absolutely furious with himself. he can't believe he fell asleep!!! of all things! yeah he was exhausted and yeah he was snuggled up in warm comforting chakra but to fall asleep in enemy territory! he's so mad at himself. it was stupid and it was reckless and it was incredibly selfish of him to risk such a thing when his family, his clan, need him and- (continues telling himself off for like, 3 hours, until his brothers eventually manage to distract him from his horrible mood)

he doesn't return to Uchiha lands for ages after that. but he does, eventually, return

he isn't spotted every time he sneaks onto Uchiha lands, far from it, maybe one time in twenty or less, but it definitely happens enough times that they must know there's a little red-eyed child who keeps skulking around their territory and then bolting whenever he's spotted. oops. regardless he's very stressed and very sad because one of his little brothers is now gone (I kind of want this to be an au where his brother lives but is now stuck in an arranged marriage/learning to be a diplomat in the capital or smth, but regardless of how Kawamara is gone now and baby Tobirama is very sad abt it) and despite how many times they've spotted him, none of the Uchiha have actually managed to catch him yet, so he deems it worth the risk. (he maybe is not thinking incredibly rationally rn and just willfully disregarding anything against what he wants to do. give him a break his life sucks rn let him have this one thing)

meanwhile the Uchiha are like. where is this tiny Blessed child coming from/going to and why does he keep running away from us? like okay we know there's some horrendous rumours abt what we do with Blessed and we can't correct those rumours bc doing so risks others using Blessed against us but like....if that was the reason this kid was running from us then surely either he'd be trying to hide his features or he'd stop sneaking onto our land?

.....maybe he's not worried abt us noticing there's a Blessed child on our lands. he doesn't seem TOO bothered by us getting glimpses of him in the relative distance after all. so...he doesn't want us to see him close up? why?

..maybe he's like, really obviously from a neutral/enemy clan or something when you get a better look at him? hmmm

maybe he'll let us talk to him/catch him eventually if we keep trying. I mean it doesn't seem like he plans to stop sneaking onto our lands and WE'RE certainly not going to stop so surely its only a matter of time before he realises that if we wanted to actually hurt him we absolutely could have been throwing jutsu or weapons at him from this distance or senbons laced with sedatives or-

(should we do that instead actually? hit the kid with a sedative, deal with the rest later?

no, then we might permanently fuck over any chance of him ever trusting us and that would make helping/protecting/integrating him SO much harder

urgh. you're right I guess. okay)

anyway. maybe the little Blessed kid will relax eventually

(Tobirama does not relax eventually)

they've fallen into a frustrating stalemate in which Tobirama will fairly frequently lurk around Uchiha lands and occasionally an Uchiha will spot him and halfheartedly attempt to catch him, only to fail because Tobirama is unreasonably fast (....part of me wants to start spouting my mokuton secondary agenda again here to explain his Speed) and also they're trying not to hurt him in any way which makes it a lot harder

Tobirama has technically relaxed somewhat in that he's now significantly less worried about the prospect of the Uchiha hurting or catching him (as long as he's obviously red-eyed and absent any Senju mon, at least, all bets are off on missions/battlefields) and has as a result started to a) gradually creep further into Uchiha lands each time bc hey if the Uchiha aren't too much of a threat then it's better to be within the patrols who would stop any bandits or rogue shinobi right? and b) has started wandering off to Uchiha lands whenever he feels like it instead of just when he's near his breaking point. like now whenever he has a free moment he's like 'hmmmm do I want to spend time fucking about with research or with Touka/brothers or do I want to go chakra bathe' and they're all weighed up near equally in his mind

(assuming that said free moment would also give him the time/cover/distraction needed for him to reach Uchiha lands and back without Butsuma noticing, ofc. he isn't stupid nor does he have a death wish. That Man assuming he'd gone traitor would be.............bad.)

so I mean the Uchiha were sort of right in assuming he'd relax once he realised they weren't incredibly intent on hurting/catching him. they were just wrong in hoping he'd relax ENOUGH to let them catch/talk to him

they're very disappointed. however they're also cautiously pleased that the Blessed child has not stopped coming back over and over again, and also that he is gradually coming further into their lands and two months ago when some (significantly less welcome) trespasser turned up and tried to attack the kid he even ran to an Uchiha patrol for help! Admittedly he didn't say anything, or stick around after, but hey he at least trusts them a tiny bit to go to them for help against an enemy, right? Progress! It might take a billion years at this rate but they WILL win over the Blessed kid eventually!

at this point it's been like, at least two years since Tobirama was first spotted. probably significantly more. the stalemate truly is getting a bit ridiculous but neither party is willing to break it for fear it would end badly (and probably specifically end badly for Tobirama/little Blessed child, realistically. given he's a small child and they're an entire clan whose land he is trespassing on, there's v few ways they could break the stalemate which wouldn't risk - at best - the kid simply never returning again or at worst the the kid/Tobirama dying or living but hating+distrusting the Uchiha forever or Tobirama getting kidnapped and suffering [unspecified bad fate bc Tobirama doesnt know which rumours may be accurate but he hates them all])

eventually, fucking years later (I'm imagining Tobirama somewhere between 11 and 16 but truly can't pin it down further it depends if/what plot I include later in this theoretical fic) the stalemate does get broken, but not exactly by choice

Tobirama was on a mission and fairly badly injured. not enough that he's at risk of dying, unless he does something truly incredibly stupid + fucks up his own condition further, but he's in a lot of pain, his adrenaline is sky high, and he generally had a shitty time on the mission. he completed it successfully- barely - but it sucked and he's pretty miserable at the moment. he knows what he SHOULD do is go home and report to the healing hall to be fixed up and then go recount the mission (and his many failures/perceived failures on said mission) to Butsuma but.

but.

he doesn't want to do that

to put it mildly

anyway, the Uchiha is significantly closer than his own clan due to the direction the mission led him in, and he's exhausted and hurt, and his disguise is compromised..

(if it's something physical like a mask/contacts/dyed hair/etc then he lost it on mission or it got washed out due to how So Many Things Happened. if it's something chakra based like a jutsu or seal then he's too low on chakra and too hurt/distracted to maintain it)

...so trying to get all the way past the Uchiha, in his Senju armour but clearly a red-eyed child, when he's too exhausted and injured to guarantee he could succeed in doing so, would be a really bad idea, right? right. like they'd probably see him at best and then they'd know there was a red-eyed Senju kid and far more realistically they'd successfully catch or kill him in this state

so obviously it makes more sense for him to discard everything that marks him as a Senju, whilst he's still conscious+has the chakra to seal it away surreptitiously, and then go nap on Uchiha lands until he's recovered enough to make it home safely

yeah, that's a good idea. he'll do that

(tbf this is a fairly decent tactic but he's also trying to convince himself because when the options are 'soak up the most wonderful chakra he's ever felt and have a nap safely on territory he knows he probably won't be hurt on' or 'go home and get horribly mistreated by Butsuma for doing so badly on a mission before he even gets a chance to rest' he knows which one he wants to pick)

so Tobirama discards his armour and most of his equipment (urgh why is the Senju mon on EVERYTHING he complains to himself) and seals it away, making sure said seal also isn't at all obvious. all the moving he has to do to get this done really sucks because ow. injuries. most of them aren't that bad, a lot of surface wounds, and none of them are fatal, but OW moving so much aggravates almost all of them

this more or less just leaves him in pants, an undershirt, shoes and a kunai pouch. it's....Not A Lot and the paranoia and vulnerability is prickling at him even once he's within Uchiha patrols on their lands and he keeps trying to assure himself he's safe there but it's not working. he's hurt and exhausted and he barely has any chakra left and now he's not even wearing his armour or most of his weapons and he doesn't USUALLY wear his armour on Uchiha lands but he's also usually wearing more and NOT INJURED and more heavily armed and-

to appease his panic so he can actually rest like he'd intended to, instead of just kind of hanging around or scaling some branches/outcropping, he instead finds a tree that has a small burrow at the roots, just big enough for him to fit and evidently not currently in use by whatever animal made it, and curls up in there. he's careful of course not to let any open wounds meet the dirt, that's just asking for infection - thankfully his pants are long and his undershirt has long sleeves, so he just has to curl his hands up in his sleeves and ensure his head is cushioned on the lightweight cloak that thankfully had no clan mon on it - but he feels a lot safer when he's hidden away in an enclosed space

he reaches out to the warm-spice-passion chakra signatures within the Uchiha compound, shifts a bit for the comfiest position he can find in his little hiding place, and finally feels able to relax for the first time since that horrible mission started

there. safe

he falls asleep

meanwhile a Uchiha patrol has found spots of blood and a lot of scuffed up footsteps along their border, plus one spot that's just, a mess of leaf litter and kicked up moss (Tobirama tripped over a tree root when trying to take his chest plate off, immediately felt irrationally angry about it, and kicked at the stupid root to get it back. he then felt stupid himself and pretended it didn't happen. the rest of the mess is bc he was p carelessly dumping his shit on the floor before sealing it away) and they're concerned about it

is this from a fight?? no signs of jutsu tho, or discarded weaponry....hm. at the very least, someone was injured and (given that as far as this patrol knows, all their clan members are accounted for or shouldn't have returned from their missions yet) probably also trespassing

better go investigate

so they do and they find....that's a Blessed. that's the same Blessed that keeps wandering onto their lands, and he's asleep in a fucking hole and bleeding everywhere. oh shit. also where the hell is his shirt?? that is not a proper over-shirt that is underclothing what-

ah fuck what do they do

ah fuck

they know they're supposed to help this Blessed but they also know that a) he's scared of them for some reason. possibly bc he may technically be an enemy to their clan? they have no proof but its a persistent theory over the years and b) he's definitely a shinobi there's no way he could have outran that trespasser without training nor ended up in some of the ridiculous places he's been (hello?? tiny Blessed?? why are you 30 feet up a tree) without the ability to tree-walk

so like. they want to just take him back to their healing halls or something, but if they try that they'll probably just scare the shit out of him and he'd likely hurt them - and more crucially - himself in trying to get away

so they probably shouldn't do that. but they also can't just leave him injured in a hole. he's a Blessed! they can't leave him like this!

what do they do??

they have a quiet argument/discussion and ultimately determine that some of them will stay guarding the injured Blessed and some(one) will run back to the compound to firstly explain what's happened + that someone else needs to take over their patrol route and secondly gather what medical supplies they can spare and bring those back here

when the assigned shinobi returns with the supplies they end up accidentally waking the Blessed, which unfortunately immediately confirms their worries because he freaks the fuck out. he seems to want to run but swiftly determines he couldn't get out of the fucking hole + past them without them letting him, and instead twists with a pained hiss, bringing his hands up to hide his face and build as much as possible

which is interesting. he doesn't go to hide his hair, nor specifically to hide the red eyes that mark him as Blessed, no he goes to hide other potential identifiers....which kind of suggests he is indeed from an enemy clan. hm. damn. doesn't make him any less a Blessed but oh boy that may complicate things later on

(hc for the purposes of this fic that as a kid/early teen Tobirama looked fairly generically (mainline) Senju, apart from his colouring, and it wasn't until mid teens when he got a massive growth spurt and his face started changing more that he began to look more like his (outclan) mother and taller+slimmer+narrower than the average Senju, with pointer facial features, and just generally look a lot less like Butsuma+less obviously Senju)

the Uchiha silently and unanimously agree that this would go better if he DIDN'T feel like the wounded cornered animal he currently is, so they get the fuck out of the way. they don't go too far away, still within view, but they make sure the Blessed has a clear run out of the hole and off/away, if he wants. they also ensure that the medical supplies are very visible within that cleared space

a minute or so later they're rewarded when the Blessed stops cowering, and shoots past them faster than they would have believed possible. he takes the medical supplies on his dash past though - victory! woo!

they have a little discussion whilst they wait for him to get whatever he feels is a safe distance away, and decide that yeah that behaviour definitely indicates he thinks some sort of familial resemblance or something is a) noticable and b) gives him reason to fear the Uchiha's discovery of such. so. probably from an enemy clan

but...he's Blessed, and he hasn't tried to hurt any of them or actually get far enough into their territory to spy, or anything like that at all as far as they've noticed, so...?

plausible deniability, they decide. plausible deniability is going to be the name of the game, here

they'll just pretend not to notice he's present/a potential threat and hopefully he'll pretend right back

(also, interestingly, when they send someone to try and follow after the Blessed from a distance, they find that he hasn't bolted away from Uchiha lands as he has every time previously he was spotted. as they expected him to do now, when he's probably feeling cornered and threatened as well as being injured. no, instead he's stayed well within the area the Uchiha patrol (if anything he's actually gone further within Uchiha territory which, what?) and has found another substandard hiding place in which he's using the offered medical supplies to clean and tend to what injuries he can, and then he actually goes to sleep right there. he leaves when he wakes up a few hours later, and they don't try to stop him - REALLY not the time - but. hm. interesting)

anyway that whole encounter pretty thoroughly breaks the stalemate

after that, the Uchiha clan (specifically their patrols) and Tobirama somehow develop a whole new dynamic which honestly is almost identical to the Uchiha attempting to gradually befriend and lure a feral cat into their home, meanwhile Tobirama gradually starts leaving metaphorical dead mice on their doorstep

it's...yeah, it's really weird, actually, but. it's working?? so??

#blessed stray cat au #senju tobirama #uchiha clan #i have more for this! im not done! but this is getting really long again and i gotta go fold clothes for a bit so ill come back to this-#-again later or tomorrow or smth #im glad you liked it!!! i love writing my silly aus

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