#not to sound Old but fandom etiquette is really a lost art.... sometimes

[valyrfia]

i respect u sm for using the anti tags, like that's so polite of u <3 more people should do it tbh

old fandom etiquette runs deep in me i'm afraid. i try to tag all my stuff as best as i can because i know a lot of people follow me for a lot of different reasons and i encourage everyone to do the same! end of the day we all share this same space and it's a nice way to be respectful to those we share it with.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Eyestealer 3 - ao3 link

Fandom: Naruto Pairing: Senju Hashirama & Senju Tobirama (mostly gen, hints of other relationships later)

Summary: Hashirama really doesn’t approve of the thoughtful way his father looks at his younger brother’s bright red eyes. He’s sure it doesn’t mean anything good for anyone.

He’s right.

A/N: a quick (but sadly short) update for @blackberreh-art, who needs something to read on the flight

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The one ability of Tobirama that their father seems to actually respect is the strength of his sensor abilities.

"No Uchiha could have reached that far," Butsuma says begrudgingly when Tobirama reports comings and goings from the edge of his extremely impressive range.

It may be the nicest thing he's ever said to Tobirama, who is all but walking on air for the next week, even if no one who isn’t Hashirama or Kawarama or little Itama would be able to tell. He doubles down on training that ability thereafter, broadening his range even further and increasing his precision to focus on additional details.

He gets very, very good at it, too. Hashirama has found that when Tobirama puts his mind to something, really puts his mind to something, there's very little he can't do.

(This is, sometimes, a problem - Tobirama is extremely creative, smart and unorthodox, but unfortunately he, like their father, is a brilliant tactician. Fantastic for battle, absolutely fantastic; wonderful in the short term and, at least for Tobirama, sometimes in the medium term, but when it comes to thinking long term...ugh.

Seriously, sometimes Hashirama wishes he wasn't born as good a strategist as he is because he's pretty sure he's going to be driven up the wall by the fact that he can so clearly see future consequences that no one else ever seems to think about. At least Tobirama is learning, even if he still hasn't quite figured out that just because you can invent something doesn't always mean you should.)

Still, as much as Tobirama wants to make their father proud, as much as he loves him, he hasn’t lost his reason or his sense of caution. He tells his father anything that might be helpful, practical useful things, but Hashirama is the only one who knows the true extent of his sensing: how sensitive he is to the nuances of others' chakra, how he can all but replicate exact details even from a distance, how much it hurts sometimes -

How he's always sensing, always, whether he's asleep or drained of chakra.

Even though he's grown up well past the usual dangerous age, Tobirama's chakra still has a way of draining far too fast sometimes, no matter how little he's doing. Recently they discovered, through some impromptu games of hide and seek with little Itama, a happy soul, that it helped a little if he kept his eyes closed. Ever since then, Tobirama has spends increasingly more of his time in his private quarters wearing a blindfold, purportedly as a means of further training his situational awareness - not that he needs it, given that he learns to move around fluidly without his sight within the course of a few weeks.

Outside the home, where walking around with a blindfold would be more embarrassing and require more explanation, he takes to adding a happuri to his armor so that he can draw it down over his eyes whenever he has a moment to rest.

Things are going well.

Hashirama starts to feel happy: Tobirama's sensor abilities are a blessing, something he can be cheered for throughout the clan. Finally, he thinks, there was something that Tobirama could do that would bring him only joy.

(He should have known better than to tempt fate.)

It happens in public, at a formal clan dinner with all the elders and their father sitting there, and no one knows that Tobirama's senses are still working but Hashirama.

But because Hashirama is the only one who knows, he's the only one who has even the slightest idea what's happening when Tobirama suddenly drops his bowl, his expression twisting in horror, and throws himself out the window without a word a second later.

"Please excuse us," Hashirama says on his behalf to the outraged elders and their father, then follows him out before they have a chance to respond.

He doesn't know exactly what it was that Tobirama sensed that so overwhelmed him, but that expression means it's nothing good.

There are very few things Tobirama cares about that would make him willing to so breach the rules of etiquette so thoroughly beaten into him -

- and Kawarama is out of the compound on a courier mission.

Hashirama's already resigned by the time they're out in the forest, running faster than thought but still not fast enough, but Tobirama shrieks as though he was the one who was stabbed, his too-powerful senses showing him all the details he would never be able to excise from his too-perfect memory, staggering and beginning to fall even as he reaches the clearing that should have been safety, having exhausted himself in speed and left nothing for fighting.

Hashirama is just moments behind him, though, and he reaches out with the forest to try to strangle his brother's killers.

He gets two of the squad, mangling their bodies beyond recognition without the slightest ounce of pity, leaving them only identifiable as Uchiha by the scraps of fabic that flutter to the ground, but three others manage to evade him, disappearing in a flurry of leaves and shadow.

When he turns back, Tobirama is on his knees, sobbing and tugging futilely at the swords and kunai that pierce Kawarama's body. "I should've been faster," he says, voice broken. "I should have kept better watch - I should have been faster, I could've helped if I'd only been faster - Hashirama, help me! I don’t have the chakra reserves to heal him!"

Hashirama comes to stand by his shoulder. His heart hurts, seeing his brother's body like this, but not the way Tobirama's does. Tobirama was the one who raiased Kawarama, raised Itama, not Hashirama; Hashirama loves them dearly, but they're his brothers - to Tobirama, they might as well be his sons.

(And if some part of Hashirama bitterly remembers that Kawarama is their father's favorite, neither his disobedient eldest nor his despised second, and thinks of how despite Hashirama’s best efforts he had begun to absorb some of Butsuma’s more pernicious beliefs, repeating vile things about Tobirama when the other was absent even though it was Tobirama who loved him more than anything - well. That part of him doesn't need to see the surface.)

So it hurts and he grieves, but he also knows that it’s not as bad a blow as it could have been - not as bad a blow as it is to Tobirama.

"We'll take him back for a burial," Hashirama says, because there's nothing before them but a corpse.

Tobirama moans in despair, horrible grief making his voice grate terribly, like the sound of splintering wood, and then suddenly his hands fly up to his face, his chakra levels suddenly draining at an alarming rate.

"Tobirama!" Hashirama exclaims, moving forward at once. "What - a trap? Tell me what hurts!"

He continued his lessons as a healer long after the medic taught him those few techniques and insisted that Tobirama learn, too, counting on his brother's genius mind to start coming up with new combinations almost at once, which he had. They were both very good at it now.

"My eyes," Tobirama moans. "Something's wrong with my eyes."

Hashirama's scanning frantically, looking for the damage, but nothing's coming up as wrong. As far as Tobirama's body is concerned, it's working as designed.

Except Tobirama's chakra is still draining away like he somehow sprung a leak, which means there must be a wound - a trap - a seal - something - but where could it be? With enough expertise, a trap seal could be drawn on any surface, solid or liquid: on skin, hair, tongue, eyes –

Eyes.

"Hold still," he tells Tobirama, more or less futilely because Tobirama is barely even twitching anymore. "I'm going to pop out your lenses."

He hasn't seen Tobirama without his lenses in years, nothing but the brief glimpses when he helped him in the mornings, but he still remembers what they look like under there - what they should look like, that is.

And the second the lenses are off, there it is, whatever it is that's hurting his brother: the black flecks in Tobirama's eyes have changed, turning instead into a pinwheel made of little black waves.

(It's almost like the Uchiha symbols he's seen scribbled on old scrolls, but that makes sense, doesn't it, that the Uchiha would leave an Uchiha trap on a freshly-killed corpse, meant to catch the unwary.)

"Tobirama, I think I've figured it out where the trap is - Tobirama - no, don't pass out - Tobirama! Stay with me...!"

Hashirama doesn't want to leave Kawarama's body behind, but he would do it in a heartbeat if he thought the medics back home would be of any help. He would throw himself on the nonexistent mercy of the Uchiha themselves if that's what it took to save Tobirama’s life, but he knows that they won’t help either.

It’s up to him.

He sits there all night, between the corpse of one brother and the comatose body of another, ignoring everything he’s ever learned about healing in favor of brute-forcing as much of his chakra into Tobirama as either of them can tolerate and a little beyond, and he thinks he might go a little insane in the process.

(Sometimes Tobirama's eyes look as if they themselves have drained of all color, an almost pale lavender with rippling concentric rings around the pupil, but Hashirama manages to convince himself it's a trick of the light and with an concerted effort it goes back to the more familiar red.)

Morning comes.

Tobirama opens his eyes.

They’ve gone back to the normal red-and-black-flecks, Hashirama is relieved to see, and his chakra appears to have stabilized.

“Anija,” Tobirama croaks, his voice cracking. “Tell me –”

But he falls silent.

Hashirama knows what he wants to ask, knows why Tobirama didn’t ask it, and curses yet again his brother’s memory.

He wishes, more than anything, that he could tell him that it had only been a dream.

“Let’s go home,” he says instead. “Get on my back.”

Tobirama’s eyes flicker and change – pinwheels again, and his chakra swells as though he were using some sort of powerful jutsu – but then they return to normal as he forces himself to calm, willpower overcoming his emotions as it has had to do far too many times before.

Looks like whatever the Uchiha did to him, it's not going away anytime soon.

Fine, whatever. It doesn't matter. Hashirama will find a way to make sure Tobirama survives whatever this is - survives and thrives. He will.

He won't let him down again.

“I remember them,” Tobirama says quietly, interrupting Hashirama's thoughts.

“Them?”

“The three you missed. I know what they look like. The next time we go up against the Uchiha, I’ll kill them.”

Hashirama knows Tobirama means it, too; he’s killed before already. If anything, he’s killed more often than Hashirama has, for all that Hashirama’s power is the more deadly – Tobirama knows how much Hashirama hates to strike the finishing blow, so he does it for him when he can, Hashirama finding often enough the shinobi he’s grabbed in the roots of the Mokuton have their throats slit or their lungs filled up with water before he’s forced to crush them.

“Well,” he says, shrugging. “That should make Butsuma happy, at least.”

(It doesn’t save Tobirama from being punished when he gets home, though, and Hashirama’s fists clench so tightly that his palms begin to bleed.)