I’m four months late with this but here you go ❤️❤️❤️ Warning: Unhappy Ending, Angst, etc.
Thank you very much for the prompt, as evident I had lots of fun!
Izuna is lost. Her best guess is she’s somewhere in the western part of this ravenous forest, hopefully nearing the center. The trees are so large and their crowns so dense she can’t tell the position of the sun anymore, and in here she might not be able to truly trust even her eyes. She has gotten turned around at some point, she’s almost sure, and there’s a heavy feel to the air that speaks of spores and pollens and more potential hallucinogens.
Izuna is also exhaustedat a bone-deep level. They’ve been fighting this war for months now; the constant battles and changing plans and, at the end of the day, the despair have taken their toll. She isn’t as fast anymore, her Katon jutsu as powerful, her gaze as sharp.
It makes her almost want the days of seemingly endless war against the Senju back, simply because back then all of them could still breathe.
Now, it feels like Izuna’s heart went missing the same day Hashirama did, and her body is catching up to that ever so slowly.
No matter what Niisan might say, this is the best way to end this. The only way, probably.
She takes a deep breath. “I’m here, love,” Izuna yells out in the forest again as she sets more and more of it on fire.
And then, eventually, finally, she sees—her.
It.
It’s her lover’s body, Senju Hashirama’s body, but it’s covered in a dripping and writhing white and black mass of something. The same something that looks out from poison-yellow eyes that Izuna knows are not at the correct position to be actually Hashirama’s eyes.
She doesn’t need the alarm seal resting against her shoulder activating to know that this is actually Hashirama now, not just one of the plant copies.
“You,” the thing says with Hashirama’s voice, and it sounds wrong wrong wrong, like someone mimicking something they don’t understand, “The sister… You’re the wrong one.”
Izuna laughs, and even when the forest around them begins to roil she doesn’t stop, her lungs straining with something almost like relief. “But you came,” she tells the monster who has stolen her lover’s body and their peace and so many of both their Clan’s lives, “you came.”
***
Izuna barely throws herself out of the way of another cluster of grasping roots and branches, and then she’s close enough to–
To–
Her blade is unerringly true, this one time.
The roots finally got Izuna, too, she realises when her next breath doesn’t come. There’s a Mokuton branch the width of her forearm going through her stomach, and blood bubbling up her throat.
But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is her sword buried right through Hashirama’s ribs, the blade even now burning up with heat, bright like a star. It’s a clever seal and jutsu combination she and Tobirama have devised—she knows it will work.
What matters is the white-and-black ugly mass covering Hashirama’s face receding slowly, reluctantly, until Izuna can see the Senju’s eyes again, dark and shining like polished wood.
What matters is the recognition and confusion stealing across her beloved’s face instead, the writhing branches around them dying down to complete stillness.
“It’s alright, my love. Everything will be fine,” Izuna tells her with a smile even as she feels tears gathering in her own eyes.
“But I–there was something… controlling me–” Hashirama gasps, and only then looks down to see Izuna’s sword through her chest, and her own Mokuton root impaling Izuna.
“I’m so sorry,” Izuna pants out, “this was the only way—we tried so hard, but the only way was to kill you along with it.” She’s sobbing now. “I tried, love, I tried…”
Hashirama’s hands come up to cradle her shoulders, settling down almost hesitantly. “I—oh gods, the things I did… Izuna.” Her voice sounds as helpless as Izuna has ever heard her, and a heartbeat later Hashirama surges forward to rest her forehead against Izuna’s. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.”
Izuna doesn’t close her eyes because she wants her beloved’s face to be the last thing she’ll see, even twisted in pain and despair as it is. They’re so close their strained breaths mingle, and it’s enough. “Nii-san will burn the entire forest down with a blaze nothing can escape,” she says after a long moment, because Hashirama will want to know this is truly over, too. “There’s—Tobirama has a seal that will tell him when– …when I’ve succeeded.”
There are more seals, too—seals to tell Tobirama whether Izuna is dead or dying—but the Senju had sworn he will never tell Madara about those.
Madara knew Izuna wasn’t planning to come back from this mission, not really. Defeating this evil, this evil strong enough to possess the Goddess of Shinobi and bring both their Clans to almost ruin, is too important.
And Niisan understands that, surely. Even if it hurts him. But Izuna is selfish, just this once—and privately she thinks that it might hurt her brother more if she came back from this only to waste away in the middle of peace.
“It’s over,” she says into the space between her and Hashirama, their lips almost touching. Izuna gives in to the impulse to close the distance for a final kiss, even if all she can taste is blood. “There’ll be peace now.”
