Despite Kakashi having slithered his way into the position of Obito's best friend almost immediately after the bell test, Obito didn't know much about him for the longest time.

Part of it was that Obito had no interest in learning about Bakashi, as that meant admitting they were friends, and ten-year-old Obito just couldn't stomach being friends with the competition for the longest time. He couldn't afford to be sympathetic to the guy Rin was constantly making eyes at.

Later, it was because for all that Kakashi put on the show of being Kakashi, he was actually a very private person. He put on a good act, but to really know the heart of Hatake Kakashi took time, patience, and years.

As a result, Obito had no idea about Hatake Kakashi until he was thirteen, just before the Kannabi Bridge incident.

He only learned details after he became Lee's apprentice.

While Lee was, in many ways, as private as Kakashi, she was also far more willing to talk about these kinds of things with Obito. She didn't go into depth about Minato, about her own experience in the war, or even her childhood, but she wouldn't skirt around the issue either.

Which was how he ended up talking to her about it.

"You want to know about that shit show?" she asked with a sigh, pausing the television to look over at him.

Obito was fourteen, he'd only been Lee's apprentice for a few months, only become acquainted with Lee's television even more recently than that and hadn't quite found his comfort zone with her.

He shifted in his seat on the couch, crossed his legs under him, and looked away from both her and the movie he could barely follow even with the subtitles Lee painstakingly crafted for him, "I didn't even know about it for years. I mean, I was only six at the time and—"

"And it's old news that nobody talks about anymore," Lee finished for him. "Which is funny, because at the time you'd have thought everyone would be gossiping about it for years. I think at some point Sarutobi-sama must have laid down the law and told everyone to get back to work and it sort of died off as public but somewhat boring knowledge. Not that people aren't still bitter."

She looked out the window, musing, "Stores still bar him and Kakashi entry, you know. I have to go for them or else they have to go in henge. I think the store owners know they're getting around it, they just feel like it's the principle of the matter or something."

Then, looking back at him, she asked, "But there was something you wanted to know?"

"I didn't get many details," Obito started.

"That's because nobody has details," Lee dismissed. "It was a top-secret mission. That the entire goddamn village knew about it meant that somebody leaked it. Not enough to give too much away, but enough to paint Sakumo-shishou in a very bad light."

Her face darkened. "My money has always been on Danzo. He had the resources, and things turned out very well for him thanks to Hatake Sakumo's fall from grace."

Lee waved off Obito's questions with a hand. "The mission's not really the important part. What is important is the rumor that ran rampant after he returned. Hatake Sakumo knowingly failed the mission, knowing it would start the third shinobi war, simply for the lives of his teammates."

"I heard that part," Obito said with some annoyance.

"Well, that is the part," Lee said. "That's all there is to know. He was placed on probation for months, only pulled back into ANBU when the war effort turned desperate enough to need him, was never allowed to take another apprentice, and was eventually placed back on the general mission's roster. Now that the war's over he's been happily anticipating retirement."

"It's just—"

"Oh, I make it sound simple," Lee said, "But I'm not kidding when I say it was a shit show. It—Let's just say Sakumo-shishou did not take it well and had every reason to believe Kakashi would grow up under the shadow of his greatest mistake."

"You think it was a mistake, then?" Obito asked.

"No," she said simply, "But many did and still do. I think they're missing out on the bigger picture, the reason why Konoha was even built in the first place, but it's a complicated issue and this third war has been very long. Sometimes even I wish we could have put it off another six months."

She smiled at him. "But I'm one of those fools who believes we should strive for a world where we value the lives of our friends. It's part of the reason I don't, and never should, wear the hat."

With that, she turned back to the television. "But enough about all of that, you have some good old English-speaking television to catch up on."

Of course, she'd dispense more details throughout the years. He'd learn that she had only been fourteen when it happened, that she'd been field promoted to jonin so quickly in part just to get her out of Hatake's sphere of influence and shoved into the war effort in ANBU.

She didn't tell him, but he figured out for himself that that was the point when Lee's childhood officially ended.

Regardless, he didn't change his mind. In the end, he still believed what he'd told Kakashi: that his father had been a great man and the kind Konoha was often unworthy of.

The streets were in chaos by the time Anakin made it outside.

He had no idea how long he'd been out, how long the Chancellor had been dead, but however much time it was, it was more than enough for everything to fall apart.

The streets were flooded with stormtroopers, the air with military ships flying downtown. It looked as if every trooper stationed on Coruscant and in orbit was making their way towards the Jedi temple. Civilians ran through the streets screaming, ducking into buildings, as the stormtroopers marched indifferently past them.

Palpatine's private office wasn't far from the senate, so there was no mistaking where the great plumes of fire and smoke—as well as the endless stream of civilians—were coming from.

Anakin instinctively ducked into an alleyway and out of sight, eyes wide as he took in the evidence of the Jedi temple's destruction.

It would not be the first time the temple had been damaged.

This was not even the first Jedi temple. The main temple had been moved to Coruscant ages ago, after the Sith had been pushed back from the planet, but nevertheless it had stood there for so long and become so ingrained in Coruscant's culture.

It had survived a thousand years of warfare across the republic. Some part of Anakin believed that it, and the Order, could survive this.

However, the deeper part of Anakin, that part of him that touched the Force directly, somehow knew that this was the end. They had been spread thin from war; to Anakin's knowledge, the only council member currently on Coruscant was Mace Windu.

Obi-Wan had left this morning, and Yoda days ago.

Most masters, knights, and padawans were scattered across the galaxy, fighting the war in all directions, and so there was no one left to defend the Jedi temple. Only Mace Windu and Lee, who had—

Anakin barked out a laugh, running a hand through his hair, ignoring the civilians and stormtroopers moving past him. Instead, his mind flashed back to Lee, Lee Skywalker, the closest thing he had left to flesh and blood kin in the galaxy.

He remembered Tatooine. She never tanned, never burned either, but instead was a glowing unnatural white beneath the twin suns. He could always pick her out of a crowd in the marketplace because of that fluorescent skin and bright hair. It always annoyed her, as it meant everyone and their brother mistook her for an outworlder at a glance.

Naboo, the victory celebration after they'd driven out the Trade Federation. She'd been thirteen, he'd been only nine. He'd had his hair shorn with only a single padawan's braid remaining. He'd been such a mix of emotions then. Grieving over Qui-Gon's death, over the opportunities the man had represented, grieving over his mother still on Tatooine, uncertain of his future yet hopeful despite it.

He remembered he'd been jealous of Lee's hair. She'd always had such beautiful hair, and then, because she wasn't going to become a Jedi like him, she'd been able to keep all of it. Of course, it didn't last. Less than a year later she cut it short when she became Tobirama Senju's padawan, but he remembered the way she smirked at him and ran a hand through it.

Later, he imagined she'd been trying to distract him from everything he was leaving behind.

And now all he could see was that last moment, the way her cold, green eyes had looked through him.

They'd still been green, not the unhealthy yellow that typically came with the dark side. More, there'd been no sense of the dark side within her. Walking out of that elevator she'd been the same as she ever was.

Nothing in her had looked the part of a Sith.

Lee, to Anakin's knowledge, had never struggled with the dark side. She had no rage, no bitterness, no overwhelming grief and fear. She had always, so easily, been able to take everything as it came to her and work her way around everything else.

Of course, in retrospect, why shouldn't she? Palpatine had warned Anakin that the universe didn't work the same way for Lee as it did for the rest of them. Lee had cheated her way into becoming a Jedi, cheated her way out of slavery, probably spent every mission taking the easy way out.

She'd had that much power and she'd left their mother to die in that barren wasteland. Perhaps she'd even let her master, Tobirama Senju, die in deep space. She'd gleefully leave Padmé, Anakin's wife, to die in childbirth so that she could take off after that Sith's shit apprentice of hers. She had just murdered—

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus, to tune out the screaming and the scent of smoke.

Why? Why did she do it?

There'd been no warning, no more than usual. Lee hated the Chancellor, but she'd hated him for years. She'd never indicated, never once made it seem like… It'd felt like a nightmare, one he still couldn't come to grips with, as if he'd wake up any second and find the Chancellor still alive, the temple standing, and Lee exactly where she should be.

So, why—

A Sith lord.

The dream, or that moment that had felt so much like a dream, slowly came back to Anakin.

The golden man had said Sheev Palpatine was a Sith, the Sith master perhaps, and that Lee had chosen to assassinate him.

No—

No that couldn't be right.

Palpatine had always been Anakin's friend, Lee's friend, if she wasn't too pig headed to see it. True, he was a deeply learned man even when it came to the Force, which those who weren't Force Sensitive usually had very little interest in. However, he had always encouraged Anakin and offered him support when Lee wouldn't.

Lee might certainly believe he was the Sith lord—

Yes, that was it, wasn't it?

It suddenly came together.

Lee simply thought Palpatine was a Sith lord. The way she acted, she'd likely suspected it for years, and that was why she'd turned against him. How old was she then? Fifteen? Either way, she'd been too young, too inexperienced, to confront him directly.

The—now—something had happened. Something convinced her that she couldn't hesitate any longer.

Was it the council? Had they fed her paranoia? Had they, in fact, ordered her to do it? They had always been unreasonably suspicious of the Chancellor as well. Obi-Wan had certainly made his misgivings known.

Or was it that padawan of hers, Obito Uchiha? Obito was one of those special cases of not simply being powerful but also far cleverer than anyone gave him credit for. He had the midichlorians to be quite powerful, everyone knew that. What got him his reputation as a lackluster Jedi was the way he'd so noticeably struggled with the dark side of the Force.

Ever since he became her apprentice, Obito had fed into Lee's mistrust of not only the council but the order as a whole. Anakin had always found it kind of funny, and frankly a little refreshing, given the way Anakin chafed at the restrictions of the order. In retrospect, given what Obito was now, it was anything but.

Wasn't it convenient that only a week after Obito Uchiha fled Coruscant as a known Sith, Lee made her move?

Obito couldn't be the apprentice or the master. He was too young to be the master, he'd have been a toddler in the creche at that point, and Dooku had clearly been the apprentice for ages. However, he could certainly be a pawn, a spy, who used Lee as a tool on behalf of whoever he worked for.

Not only Lee, but Palpatine too. Obito had taken advantage of Palpatine's fear, his ultimately correct fear, that a Jedi would assassinate him. That message he'd sent out, just why had he prerecorded something like that unless he'd somehow been goaded into it? How long had Obito spent painstakingly setting up these dominos?

In a single move, with only a few years of effort, Obito Uchiha had destroyed the Jedi Order.

And Anakin had let it happen.

Someone stumbled into the alleyway. Anakin started and nearly drew his lightsaber. At the sight of Anakin the man's eyes bulged out of their sockets, he turned tail, and fled back into the streets.

Fled because, per Palpatine's final message, it had been the Jedi Order who had assassinated him and attempted a coup, and Anakin was still wearing Jedi robes.

"Padmé," he suddenly breathed.

He looked out towards the senate and temple again. From this angle, it was impossible to see exactly what was on fire. Surely the stormtroopers would protect the senate, but what about the Jedi? What if Palpatine hadn't been entirely wrong, what if there'd been some truth to his fears, and not just an eighteen-year-old boy behind the scenes?

Anakin couldn't take the chance that some part of the Order might be as corrupt as Palpatine had feared. Certainly, Obito Uchiha had been more corrupt than any of them had ever feared.

After all, Lee had walked into the Chancellor's private office and killed him dead like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Anakin took off running. Not through the main streets, not when he was so recognizable as a Jedi, but instead through back alleyways and across rooftops. It didn't matter that Anakin had had nothing to do with it, had tried and failed to defend the chancellor; the stormtroopers would shoot him on sight.

As he got closer to the senate the flames grew hotter and brighter, the screaming louder, and he started to recognize senators fleeing in their midst. The skies were blocked with stormtrooper transports, only a few senator shuttles able to weave their way past them, and most senators had given up and were running on foot.

As he made it to the main plaza he stopped in his tracks. The Jedi Temple was more than simply on fire. An entire squadron of stormtroopers were marching inside, utterly unopposed and indifferent to the raging inferno coming from within. Decorating the steps were the blaster ridden bodies of Jedi knights, flesh bubbling and melting against the heat of the fire.

There were too few bodies.

There weren't many Jedi on Coruscant, just Anakin and a few others, but there were still too few bodies on the steps. He couldn't see Mace Windu, couldn't see any of the many children—Unless, of course, the children were inside.

This, Lee had done this, Lee had acted knowing this would be the consequence.

No, not Lee. Obito Uchiha was responsible for this.

Anakin forced his head to turn towards the senate. It was still standing, but it was surrounded by stormtroopers, likely preventing anyone too Jedi-loving from doing anything stupid. Most of the senators weren't bothering with that, they were just running. Padmé wouldn't though, no, she'd try to rush straight into the temple, looking for Anakin or anyone else she could pull out.

Anakin would somehow have to make his way past all those eyes, anyone who would recognize him as a Jedi, and find her. Find her and then—

And then what?

"Was revenge not the obvious answer?" a voice asked behind him.

Anakin whirled and there was the man, that man from the dream. In person he was just as oddly familiar and unfamiliar as ever. The face was strikingly pretty enough that Anakin should have remembered him. Even with his golden hair and tanned skin, features not uncommon on Tatooine, he would be distinctive with those eyes and that face.

Yet, Anakin couldn't place him, except he was sure that he'd met him somewhere.

It wasn't just that though. Something about him felt wrong, as if he was just a shell, perfectly crafted on the outside but absolutely hollow on the inside. Anakin could barely feel any presence in the Force coming from him at all.

"Who are you?" Anakin asked, his throat suddenly dry.

The man smiled. "A very old friend."

Anakin scowled. "I think I'd recognize an old friend."

"You'd be surprised," the man responded, unphased. "These things have a way of slipping the mortal mind."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you have no imagination," the man said with a sigh, "And that you can call me Haruki."

"Haruki?" Anakin asked. He didn't recognize that name. It sounded again familiar, but he couldn't give you a planet of origin.

"I could also be Minato Namikaze if you prefer," the man said, "Since I've taken to wearing his face."

Rather than explaining what that could possibly mean, the man, Haruki, leaned forward. He looked Anakin up and down, pale blue eyes assessing every inch of Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin couldn't help but stiffen, hair rising on the back of the neck, and he felt as if a thousand eyes were on him. Not just this man's but the Force itself, picking him apart and putting him back together, judging Anakin even by the parts of him that he couldn't see.

The plaza, the stormtroopers, temple, and senate seemed to fade away. Anakin couldn't focus on them, couldn't even focus on the threat that they might be shot; somehow that didn't feel like a possibility anymore. As if, while this man was looking at him, the universe held its breath.

Finally, he said with a smile, "Anakin Skywalker, I have a job for you."

"A job?" Anakin balked, feeling reality come rushing back in.

"I told you I would," the man reminded Anakin, referring to that—had it been a Force vision?

At the time it'd seemed almost natural, somehow, that Anakin would find this man inside his dream. Just like it'd seemed almost natural that Anakin would find him standing right behind him here.

"If you haven't noticed—" Anakin motioned around them, to the stormtroopers who miraculously had not noticed them "—I'm a little busy."

"I will see to your wife," the man responded. "In fact, in exchange, I can ensure her survival."

Anakin felt cold ice pour down his back. "What are you talking about?"

"Your wife will die in childbirth," the man noted calmly. "Either she dies naturally, lacking medical attention in the chaos of the war, or you kill her in a fit of paranoid rage fueled by the dark side."

At Anakin's look of terror the man only said, "You know this."

Anakin had had visions, was what Haruki meant to say. He was right, Anakin did have visions about Padmé's death. Anakin's visions had never been wrong before. And he knew that it would take—it would take far more than the Jedi Order to thwart them.

"How could you possibly manage that?" Anakin asked.

The man tilted his head, considering Anakin. "Once again, Lee has thrown us off balance and into flux. The universe I dreamed is no longer the universe that is. Anything, now, is possible."

At Anakin's blank look the man explained, "If Lee Eru can kill Sheev Palpatine, then Padmé Amidala can most certainly survive childbirth."

Anakin nearly crumpled with relief. For some reason, he believed it, believed this man had the power to do exactly what he said when no one else did.

However, before Anakin could thank him, the man held up a hand. "I will see to your wife and children, and in turn, you must see to Obito Uchiha."

"Obito—"

"Is the true enemy," Haruki finished for him. "Not simply of the Jedi but the galaxy at large. He has knowingly chosen to oppose life itself and has taken great pains to make himself a grave threat."

"Then it was him!" Anakin spat, mind spinning, his vision going black at the edges as he saw the brat smirking up at him. Anakin had held him in his hands, had him right there, and he'd slipped through his fingers because Anakin had hesitated for a second.

"Lee would not have acted were it not for his disappearance," the man agreed. "Things would have been very different had Obito chosen to remain a Jedi."

Haruki placed a hand on Anakin's shoulder, both comforting and grounding. "If you can destroy Obito Uchiha, you will not only save your sister, but save your wife. If the board is still set, if Padmé still faces death at every turn and I cannot rewrite it, then she certainly can. However, while Obito is alive, she will never stop searching for him."

Haruki's face darkened as he looked at the burning temple. "I understand that now."

Could Anakin trust Padmé's life and well-being to a complete stranger?

The Force itself seemed to be screaming yes. Yes, Anakin could trust this man with Padmé, trust him above all others to keep her protected and get her away from Coruscant. He'd take her back to Naboo, protect her if she did something wonderfully brave and stupid, and when Anakin came back to her he'd meet both her and their child.

Anakin, in turn, would gladly do what the man could not. There was the feeling, somewhere out there in the Force, that the Force could only make puppets or else act through men. The Force had no mortal, sentient, presence in this universe.

A puppet made from illusions and shadow, no matter the swordsmanship perfected over millennia, was too flimsy a thing to directly confront Obito Uchiha.

Anakin Skywalker was the greatest tool the Force had to eliminate Obito Uchiha.

Anakin had failed once, he'd had his chance and he'd let Obito run, but now he had some idea of what he was up against. The longer Obito went unchecked, the more dangerous he became and the more damage he could unleash on the galaxy.

A half-remembered conversation came back to him, the man looking at him and saying, "I need a pair of hands."

(Distantly, with the Force all but screaming in his ear, Anakin wondered if he in fact had a choice in agreeing or not. If Haruki hadn't promised Padmé's safety, if Anakin hadn't believed in that promise, would he have been able to say no?

Anakin couldn't focus on the thought though, it seemed too far outside of his grasp. The Jedi, Obi-Wan, Lee, and even Padmé paled in comparison to Obito Uchiha.)

"Where do I find him?" Anakin asked.

"Alderaan, high in the mountains, though his exact location changes rapidly." Haruki grimaced in annoyance. "The soft approach of Kakashi Hatake and Rin Nohara has only made him flightier than he already was. With luck, they will be able to delay his departure."

Haruki looked back at him. "When you arrive in Alderaan's orbit I will give you a more specific location."

Anakin nodded curtly, only to pause and ask, "And when I find him?"

Haruki looked at him as if he were being desperately stupid. "You kill him."

Suddenly, Anakin was standing over Dooku again, looking down at his terror-filled face as he realized what was about to happen to him. "It is not the Jedi way."

"He is not of this world, Anakin Skywalker; your Jedi rules need not apply to him," Haruki said before turning to survey the temple once again. "I gave him a place in this galaxy, I allowed him to keep his master, Lee Eru, and yet that wasn't good enough for him. I let him run, offered him a path back to his master and everything he once knew, and yet that was not good enough for him or Lee. His very existence is the most dangerous thing that exists in this or any world. I must both eliminate him and assimilate him fully, and the only path to that is death."

Haruki looked back at Anakin with cold, knowing eyes. "Surely, Anakin Skywalker, such a fate does not bother you?"

No, no it didn't, and now that Anakin had been granted permission it never would.

"The Force will be with you," Haruki said with a small, almost fond smile and turned on his heel.

Anakin watched as the man disappeared around a corner, masquerading as any ordinary mortal, and only when he was out of sight did he spare one last glance towards the senate.

Padmé would be fine, Anakin told himself. Everything would be alright.

"Can't you feel it?"

Obito cracked open a single eye, forcing himself out of sleep, to look at Jinn.

Jinn Qui-Gon had made an appearance only a few hours after Obito had relocated. At first, Obito felt that was something that should concern him. If Jinn was able to find him so quickly, it meant the Force did indeed know exactly where he was, or else had been able to figure it out in only a few hours.

Then Obito had figured there was nothing he could do about it.

As Jinn himself had said, Obito did currently live in this universe, and if that meant the Force was able to track him down just by Obito sitting in a cave, then there wasn't much he could do about it. He could only hope that once he was out there in the vacuum of space it'd be a little harder to find that needle in a haystack.

Until then, though, he put up with Jinn being the Force's unwitting spy, put the last touches on the ship and started stealing fuel from the capital, and waited for Kakashi and Rin to make their next appearance.

He also, for once, had been trying to catch up on sleep outside of Kamui.

Unfortunately, it seemed Jinn wasn't going to leave him to it.

The cave looked the same as always, barren aside from the wards and monitors Obito had installed. Even Jinn looked the same as always, still blue, still transparent, and still dead. To the naked eye, even to the sharingan, nothing had changed.

Yet Jinn looked as if he'd just watched a dear friend, Kenobi perhaps, be run over by a bus.

"Feel what?" Obito finally asked, forcing himself to sit upright.

Jinn looked at him as if Obito just said he was blind, as if it'd been a rhetorical question, because of course Obito must have felt it.

Then, a slow look of realization passed over Jinn's transparent features. "You have cut yourself off from the Force."

Obito dearly wanted to retort, "No shit," but he just barely contained himself.

Thanks to having been brainwashed for a few weeks, Obito did have that mystical connection with the Force he previously lacked. At least, Obito thought he might; there were times when even with the sharingan he didn't know where Obito the Jedi began and ended.

The truth was that he wasn't taking chances.

As soon as he'd fled the Jedi temple, he'd cut off any and all chakra connections to local senchakra, in other words, the Force. He couldn't truly cut himself off completely, there was always a sensation of the universe's eyes on his back. No, to do that he had to be in Kamui, Obito's blessed extra-dimensional storage unit and retreat. However, he liked to think he was doing the best he could given the circumstances.

Actually, now that Obito thought about it, that probably was how the Force had found him. The Force didn't need to look for Obito specifically, he only had to look for the blind spot on Alderaan.

Better would be to let the Force see just enough to allow Obito to blend in.

But that sounded tricky, and like something that could wait until he was in space and had ditched Jinn.

Jinn walked over towards the mouth of the cave to look down at the valley below. Joining him, Obito couldn't see anything different. The little village in the valley below, barely visible even with the sharingan, looked as healthy and whole as ever.

The skies were still clear, there was no hint of the snowfall that would soon be coming during the winter months, and everything looked exactly like how Obito left it.

"Many people have died tonight, many Force Sensitive sentients," Jinn explained as he stared out at the distant stars. "The Force is overflowing with their pain as they join the it."

When Obito didn't say anything Jinn just turned to look at him. "Something terrible has happened to many Jedi."

Something terrible?

Last Obito had left, the Jedi Order had been perfectly fine. Well, they'd been at war with the separatists, and Coruscant had been goddamn invaded by Grievous, but that had been over a week ago and if they were all going to die in the invasion they would have done it already.

He—

Obito the Jedi had been afraid, anxious, but he had been more anxious about what would happen to Lee and the child. His great fears had revolved around Lee being forced to give the child up to the Order or something happening to her specifically. It had never occurred to him that something horrible might happen to the Order as a whole the moment he turned his back.

Obito the shinobi, however, suddenly remembered what Haruki had said. Thirteen years, he'd said back then, thirteen years and both the republic and the Jedi would fall. A dark, Sith empire would take over with Palpatine at the helm, and society as Kenobi knew it would crumble.

Soon, he'd said in the hallway when he'd offered Obito one last chance. The Jedi Order would fall to pieces soon.

Perhaps, then, it had finally happened.

"Do you know who died?" Obito pressed.

Surely, not Lee. Haruki would do everything in his power, which being the universe was quite a bit, to ensure her survival and safety. Even if the Jedi Order collapsed, even if Lee hadn't had a chance to leave yet because of the pregnancy, she would survive it.

And even if she did die, Obito remembered, Lee would come back. The question was if she'd come back still under the genjutsu or not and if the children would survive. No, if she'd broken the genjustsu then she would be here already, she had to know he was on Alderaan if Kakashi and Rin did.

Lee, no doubt, had survived the purge as the Force had always intended.

"No," Jinn said quietly, "No, it doesn't work like that, not when there are so many at once."

Still, what did this mean? Were there just a bunch of dead Jedi somewhere? Had Palpatine torched the temple? That wouldn't be that many Jedi, it was only the children left in that place with the war on. Was the republic still standing or, as Haruki suggested, had it become Palpatine's empire?

If it had, would Palpatine bother to continue the hunt for Obito in the Jedi's stead? Probably, if he had Haruki whispering his ear. It'd be just like that bastard to promise the man Obito's sharingan or something like that.

Perhaps he'd be too busy with the separatists. Grievous and Dooku were still out there. The separatists had taken hard losses but they weren't down and out. Without the Jedi to oppose them they'd undoubtedly take advantage of the situation and make a second push for Coruscant and the core system.

Most importantly, what did this mean for Obito?

With some amusement, Obito realized that Haruki had been right. It didn't mean shit to Obito.

Obito had only one goal now, and it had nothing to do with the state of the galaxy.

He was no longer a Jedi. Republics, separatists, Jedi, Sith, and the fate of the universe no longer concerned him.

He stepped away from the entrance and made his way back to the wall, allowing his eyes to drift closed again. In a few hours, he'd wake back up and get back to work, then by the end of the day he could set out and finally get off this planet.

Where he'd go was a mystery; he had a few lingering ideas, but what he did know was that he couldn't stay in the core system.

"You're just going to sleep?"

Obito sighed and forced his eyes back open. "They're already dead, aren't they? Would my not sleeping miraculously bring them back from the grave?"

Jinn didn't say anything, but his glowering disapproval spoke louder than words.

"Not to say that Lee and I told you so, or anything," Obito continued, "But Lee and I told you this was coming. We said, 'Hey Jinn, now, don't panic or anything but your dictator over there is pure evil and is probably planning on murdering all of you tomorrow.' We even gave you details, but none of you wanted to hear it."

Obito motioned to the entrance, to the great universe extending beyond them. "Even when Kenobi clued in, you thought it was so absurd that you threw him out of your club when he refused to drop it and get therapy."

Jinn knowingly inhabited a universe in which he'd been killed off by the Force so that it could use him and the rest of a galaxy as a convenient backstory to convince Lee to happily become his wife.

And he was a little surprised that something bad was happening to the Jedi.

"Forgive me if I'm out of fucks to give," Obito finished.

Perhaps Haruki was listening, Obito thought Haruki was probably always listening to what Obito had to say to Jinn, but at that moment the proximity alarms went off again.

"Goddammit!" Obito cursed.

That was it, he was never going to get that last-minute nap in. He might as well fly sleep deprived because the universe was going to ensure he never got any sleep. If it was Jinn, Kakashi and Rin, then it was going to be a meteor aimed straight for his cave and goddamn everything he just wanted a nap!

"Your friends?" Jinn asked.

"The cheap imitations of my friends," Obito countered.

Not that he was entirely sure what the Kakashi and Rin of this universe were supposed to be. There was always the possibility that they were just overly intricate illusions. Except, now that Obito had partially broken through the genjutsu, they should have seemed cheaper. Hell, he'd have accepted them never having really existed and always being conveniently out of sight.

Instead, Rin and Kakashi were very much there, and while they'd pushed Haruki's agenda, they hadn't done so in a way that screamed "I am a cheap puppet". Of course, if they had, Haruki wouldn't have bothered sending them because Obito would have had no issue cutting them in half. More, they had to at least have physical bodies, as Haruki wouldn't bother with something that only seemed like it could cut off Obito's head.

They were a threat if only because they seemed so very real. Not necessarily like the Kakashi and Rin from Konoha, but their extradimensional twins, the Kakashi and Rin that could have been in this world.

How much harder would it be for Haruki, really, to create two extra living, breathing, human beings with the same fake memories Obito had poured into them? Anakin had felt like a one-off; Haruki had admitted Anakin was his first attempt at—at becoming something almost mortal and sentient like Lee, but that wasn't the goal with these two. Haruki just wanted two extra people with their own sentience stumbling around to keep Obito entertained. How much harder was that than writing the genjutsu and putting everyone in the right place?

Were all the people younger than thirteen really just an illusion that would disappear when the genjutsu fell?

Obito supposed there was no way of really knowing until after he shattered the illusion.

Regardless, Kakashi and Rin had the worst timing in the world.

He stood, stretched, and prepared himself to go down to meet him. The tree probably wouldn't work twice, that had only worked because they hadn't been expecting it, Jedi didn't have mokuton. Well, he supposed he could see what they wanted, tell them that all the Jedi were dying, Palpatine had just taken over the universe, that maybe that should be their first priority, and then dip into Kamui.

Kamui, he was sure, they wouldn't be able to counter even if they did see it coming.

He almost told Qui-Gon that he wouldn't be back later, he'd have to go find another cave somewhere, but he was sure Qui-Gon knew.

Obito would have to fly off Alderaan before the man, and Haruki through him, tracked him down again.

Instead Obito made his way down the mountain without a word to Jinn. He already had one hand on his lightsaber as he jumped down, keeping an eye out for Rin and Kakashi who were surely sprinting their way up or else waiting to ambush him after slicing through his wards again.

Except, there was no sign of them, not until Obito reached the wards himself and found Rin and Kakashi standing just outside of it.

Only, when they came into view, it was no longer surprising that they hadn't sliced through it yet.

Kakashi was leaning against Rin, using her for support and barely managing to keep upright. His robes were burned off, his skin blackened from fire with an open gaping wound on his torso. Rin, for her own part, wore singed robes and was clearly cut and bruised, but at least she was standing on her own.

Obito could clearly mark their trail up the foothills. It'd been desperate, it looked as if Rin had all but dragged Kakashi all the way up, and even with the Force to aid her, her legs were shaking under his weight.

Kakashi lifted his head with great difficulty, offered Obito a familiar, casual smile, and said, "Ah, Obito, right on time. We were hoping you'd still be in the area."

Unsaid was that Obito wasn't, in fact, in the area. He was still in the same mountain range but they were miles upon miles away from where he'd been the last time they tracked him down.

Kakashi sounded as bad as he looked.

Obito had seen Kakashi in states like this before. Ever since Obito had given him his eye, Kakashi had flirted gleefully with serious chakra exhaustion. He always played it off, always hid it through his incredible willpower, but the fact was that Obito had seen him near death more than once.

Kakashi, teetering on his own feet, slurring as his world went dark and chakra poured out of him, didn't look all that different from how this Kakashi looked now.

"You see," Kakashi continued in a hoarse voice, "We had a little trouble with our ship. It, in fact, exploded."

He waited for Obito to say something, perhaps to press for details, but continued when it became clear Obito was going to say nothing, "We weren't sure you'd heard up here in the mountains, but there's been a Jedi coup."

Here Obito did a double take. "A coup?!"

Kakashi nodded, gritting his teeth against the pain. "Oh yes, it's all over the holos. Of course, Rin and I weren't on Coruscant when it happened, but evidently, a Jedi assassinated the Chancellor and attempted to overthrow the republic in a coup. Since then, as the holos tell it, the brave stormtroopers have been actively hunting down the rogue Jedi to preserve the security of the senate while Palpatine's successor is read in. As for Rin and I—we haven't managed to get into contact with either the temple or any individual Jedi."

This, unlike Qui-Gon's news, did shock Obito. "Palpatine is dead?!"

If Palpatine was dead, or even thought dead, he couldn't exactly take over the republic and turn it into an empire. Either that scheme was more elaborate than Haruki had led Obito to believe, or something had gone wrong.

Something Haruki did not expect had just come into play.

Kakashi waved away Obito's question, speaking quickly as if to get it all out there before he passed out, "Regardless, Alderaanian law enforcement has taken the Jedi coup very seriously, and took more extreme and clever measures than Rin and I expected. Rather than directly confront us, they wired our ship to explode upon ignition."

Oh—oh that did explain the burns. In fact, Obito thought, given the kind of explosion these two were talking about, he was surprised they were alive at all and that Rin had escaped relatively unscathed.

"As you can see—" Kakashi weakly motioned to himself "—I took the brunt of that as well as the blaster fire that followed when Rin and I miraculously survived and escaped the ship's burning remains. Since you were in the area, and since our last meeting went so well, we felt we should drop by."

"I left you in a tree," Obito couldn't help but point out.

"I do like trees," Kakashi responded.

Kakashi, finally, fell silent. He closed his eyes, sighing as he left his fate in Obito's hands, while Rin looked up at Obito in quiet desperation on the other side of the wards.

For a moment, Obito just stared at them. They were his age, somewhere around eighteen going on nineteen, but at the same time they looked so young.

Slowly, he raised a hand and offered them the smile he couldn't last time. "Good luck."

He started to walk back up the mountain path.

"Obito!" Rin cried out after him, "Obito, he'll die without your help!"

Obito stopped and turned back to look at them.

Rin stepped closer to the wards, almost touching them, and shifted Kakashi onto her back. "Obito, he needs medical assistance and I can't get him to a bacta tank."

"I don't have a bacta tank," Obito responded quietly.

"He might still live without one," Rin spat, "But he won't live without shelter and you're the only person who can help him. He was your best friend, Obito! He's still your best friend!"

At seeing Obito's indifference, at how he didn't even move, she hissed, "Didn't you once say that those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon the rules are worse than trash! Isn't some part of you still alive in there?!"

The Force was playing with his memories again. It was playing them, the most important moments in his life, like a fiddle. It knew that Uchiha Obito of Konoha would have never left either Nohara Rin or Hatake Kakashi to die.

Obito had sacrificed his and Kakashi's safety to save Rin when she'd been kidnapped. For all that had happened to Obito afterward, he didn't regret it. He didn't regret going back for her and he was so very grateful that Kakashi had sent Lee after him.

Obito did not leave anyone behind.

And yet here he was, forced to look Rin in the eye and callously write off not only her but the man who had once saved Obito's very soul.

Because all that mattered was getting Lee out.

He couldn't give a rat's ass about the republic, the Jedi, and everyone in between. All he had to do was get the power, get Lee, and get the hell out. He'd leave this broken universe and its broken god behind him and he would never look back.

But another Uchiha Obito in a cave, one who had never been rescued by Eru Lee, once said the same thing.

The only thing that mattered was Nohara Rin and a world in which she would never die in war. The rest of the broken world could burn, and he'd bring the kerosene, if only she was allowed to live as she should have been.

Instead of the dying Kakashi in front of him, Obito saw the thirteen-year-old Kakashi outside of the cave in the moment before Obito gave him his eye. He heard him promise that he would come back for him, that no matter what happened, Kakashi would send someone back.

Kakashi had not left him to die despite having every reason to do so.

This was not the same.

Obito was a missing nin in this world, Kakashi a hunter nin actively pursuing him. What friendship they had in this world was an illusion, a joke at their own expense, but—

Obito could picture Lee standing next to him. For a moment, he could see her so clearly, looking at him with fondness and a wisdom that she didn't deserve being as young as she was.

"There are times when the path you know is right seems like the path you should take," he could hear her saying as she looked out at Kakashi and Rin. "Hatake knew that in order to complete a mission and prevent a war, he had to sacrifice his team. Opinions on what he did vary."

"Personally," she continued, "I think we should never give up on the world, even if it just seems like a cheap illusion."

She looked at him again. "Obito, your humanity is one of the few things you have left in this place. He took your master, your home, your memories, almost everything else, but he hasn't taken that. If you throw it away, then by the time you find what you're looking for, you'll lose her too."

She faded back into nothingness. Whether it was a vision or just Obito's overactive imagination was hard to say, but what she'd been getting at was clear. Obito was teetering on the edge of a knife, as always, the curse of hatred on one side and the harder path of retaining his faith in the world on the other.

Giving up was easy and it would prove right everything Jinn, Kenobi, and even Haruki said about him.

Obito lowered the wards and summoned Kakashi's limp body onto his own back, ignoring the way Rin sagged with joyous relief.

"Don't thank me," he said. "I'm not doing it for you.

And it seemed that Obito would not be leaving Alderaan tonight after all.

Author's Note: I think my favorite part is that Obito gets blamed for everything. Granted, if he'd gone off the deep end per canon, Obito's evil Sith counterpart probably would be to blame for everything. Here though, he was just trying to fix a ship in space guys.

Much thanks to GlassGirlCeci for betaing the chapter. Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Naruto, or Star Wars