Kakashi finds him in the Mountains' Graveyard, six months after Rin dies.

It's strange, jarring, to turn the corner and find a fragment of his old life waiting. Obito stops dead, caught unmasked and unawares, and stares at Kakashi with one of the eyes they share, not entirely able to believe what he's seeing.

The silence stretches for a long moment, and then Kakashi laughs, sharp and ragged, and pushes his slanted hitai-ate up. The Mangekyo Sharingan darts across Obito's face, practically drinking him in, and Kakashi breathes, "I knew I wasn't just going crazy."

It's the wording, more than anything, that makes Obito pause instead of reaching for a weapon or giving in to the tempest-lash of rage that splinters through him. He looks Kakashi over, takes in the unwashed clothes, the limpness of his hair, the bags under his eyes. It's like he hasn't slept since Rin died, half-manic as he trembles under Obito's stare.

A part of Obito wants to burn him alive. Another part, deeper and far more desperate, wants to throw his arms around Kakashi and sob the way he hasn't been able to these aching, festering months, caught up in the throes of grief with no outlet to be had. The rage helps, sometimes.

More often it doesn't.

"How did you know I was alive?" Obito asks, and it comes out steadier than he expects, less like he's cracking to pieces on the inside, falling apart now that such a clear reminder of his past is in front of him.

Another ragged breath, and Kakashi reaches up, pressing a hand over his Sharingan eye. "We see the same things, sometimes," he says. "I just…followed."

For the first time, it occurs to Obito to wonder if Kakashi is alone. He looks past him, down the tunnel that leads to the surface, takes a step to go and check—

"No!" Kakashi catches his arm, trips and stumbles and falls to his knees. He buries his face in Obito's robes, clutching at him, clinging like a small child, and says, "Don't leave, please, don't—"

That tone sends a shock right through Obito, almost as much as the contact does. Carefully, hesitantly, he lifts a hand to Kakashi's hair, lightly rests his fingers there and feels as much as hears the sob that shakes through his former teammate. It's…familiar. Painfully familiar. How many times has Obito wanted to break just like this, over the last few months? More than he can count, really, and the only thing that's stopped him is a complete lack of people he can trust to catch him when he falls. He hadn't really thought there was anyone like that left in the whole world, with Rin gone.

Now he has to wonder if Kakashi's world is a black hell right now, too.

"I'm not leaving," he says, and the words crack in his mouth. He frees himself from Kakashi's hold for just long enough to drop to the ground in front of him, their knees pressed together and his hand still in Kakashi's hair. "I just—why are you here?"

"Where else would I be?" Kakashi asks, and he sounds honestly bewildered by the question. "You're alive, and you're here, so where else would I go?"

Obito can't even begin to make sense of that answer. "But Konoha—and Minato-sensei—"

Kakashi raises his head, meets Obito's gaze with one of the fiercest stares he's ever seen, and suddenly his short, skinny teammate looks like the jounin he is, deadly and determined.

"You're my best friend," he says, like it's as simple as that.

Maybe it is, but hearing the words like that—

Something inside of Obito cracks right down the center, and it's like the ice at his core is finally giving way. The heat of rage and the pain of grief aren't welcome, aren't pleasant, but—

Surely it's better than feeling nothing at all.

Somehow his hands are curled around Kakashi's, holding so tight it's like he's daring the world to pull them apart. There are tears on his cheek, sliding crooked and uneven down his scars, but Kakashi makes a quiet, shattered sound and reaches up, brushing them away.

"I want," Obito starts, but his breath hitches, he shakes, and an instant later Kakashi is dragging him into a hug so tight it aches, desperate fingers in his hair and hitching breaths on his ear. Kakashi's cheeks are wet, too, and Obito curls his fingers into worn cloth and says, "I want to destroy the world, for what it did to her. For what it did to us." And maybe it's the first time he's acknowledged it, that this isn't solely for Rin but for himself as well, selfish grief and self-centered anger directed at everyone and everything, but with Kakashi right here, suffering just like Obito is, he can't do anything but admit it.

Kakashi doesn't immediately recoil—doesn't even loosen his grip, upon hearing that. He pauses for a long, long moment, and then whispers, "Rin would hate that."

A sob tears from Obito's throat, and he shakes apart, the ice falling away to leave the gaping wounds beneath visible. He hasn't said her name out loud since the night she died, hasn't allowed himself to think just how much she would hate him for this plan, how he doesn't care as long as she's back.

There's no way to block out those four little words, though.

Kakashi clutches him tighter, drags Obito in until it's hard to figure out which limbs belong to whom and where each of them definitively ends. "She would," he says, almost an apology. "But…if we can't destroy it, we can save it. So there's never another story like hers."

Obito swallows, wants to pull back to look at Kakashi but doesn't quite dare in case this all shatters into a dream. "I—yes," he whispers. "We have to change it. We have to—I just want her back—"

"There has to be a way." Kakashi's fingers are tight in his robe, and Obito can feel him swallow. "There—somewhere. Someone must have a way."

If they do find it, they can't bring her back to this world, though. Can't bring her back just so she can face more war, more death, more children slaughtered. Something that's almost a laugh shakes through Obito, and he wonders why he never thought of his alone. Too much time spent listening to Zetsu, probably, and his devotion to Madara's plan. Obito isn't devoted, though, and this is Kakashi.

"We'll save the world, and then we'll save Rin," he whispers, and feels Kakashi's slow, steady breath against his cheek, the faint tip of his head in agreement.

"Together," Kakashi says, and somehow, when he pulls away and kisses Obito hard, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to kiss him back.

Thirty is approaching old age for a shinobi, but Kakashi wears it well, Obito thinks, still sprawled out on their bed. Kakashi moves through the half-dark with even more grace than he had as a child, or a teenager, and a self-assuredness that doesn't come from all but ruling half the world, though Obito supposes that can't hurt.

In the slanting light of the full moon, Kakashi is a thing of starlight. His hair is the silver of distant clouds, and his eyes are the deep, dark grey of rain breaking. Easy enough to look at him and see the lightning he hides away in his bones and the fire he keeps in his veins, the only man who can challenge Obito and the only one he'll ever surrender to.

The world is theirs. Fire Country, Earth Country, and Lightning Country might not know it yet, but they'll learn. All the other countries have already.

(Minato looked at them with grief and bitterness, the last time they met on the battlefield. He didn't seem to notice that none of the shinobi on their side were under sixteen, that no children haunted the lines even at the very back. Didn't seem to know or care that under Obito and Kakashi the smallest nation has exactly as much say as the largest. They're emperors, but they're not despots.

If they were, half the countries they rule wouldn't have accepted their banner without even putting up a fight.)

"You're looking thoughtful," Kakashi murmurs. He drapes black and crimson cloth over Obito's back, bending down to lay a kiss to the bare skin between his shoulder blades.

Obito shivers with pleasure at the touch, feels his breath catch at the sweep of Kakashi's hand down his flank. By all rights they should be sleeping, gathering strength for the politics and power-jockeying that will come with the morning, but a little indulgence makes the whole day sweeter.

Rolling over, Obito lets Kakashi's Akatsuki cloak pool beneath him, twists to wind it partway around him just for the hunger it puts in Kakashi's eyes. In a moment, Kakashi is sliding on top of him, bracing his elbows on either side of Obito's head as he leans in to kiss him, and it sparks like heat lightning through Obito's veins.

"You're like a storm," he says, and can't tell if it's its own thought or an answer to Kakashi's implied question. "A storm constrained by human skin."

Constrained by him, he sometimes thinks, in the darkest parts of the night. He isn't one to doubt, to waver, but sometimes he thinks of Minato, of Kushina bristling with fury at his side and Jiraiya behind him, and thinks that there's an empty place that Kakashi should be filling. One of the resistance, a hero of Konoha, a pillar of the Will of Fire instead of this…tyrant Obito has turned him into.

Kakashi is his everything, is all the bits of Obito that he can't quite bear to lose, but sometimes he looks at him and wonders how it would be if things were different.

With a light, thoughtful sound, Kakashi kisses him again, slow and deep and filthy, more intimate then some sex they've had. Obito moans into his mouth, and Kakashi chuckles, nipping his lip as he pulls away.

"That means you're a wildfire," he murmurs, right into Obito's skin. "Always burning, always my light, scorching the earth but leaving fertile soil for new growth."

"That's all I can hope for," Obito says, a little wry. He hesitates, and then offers cautiously, "Minato thinks my eye corrupted you."

"Minato can think whatever he likes," Kakashi says flatly, and it's a sore point that Obito usually tries not to pick at, but—

Kakashi's kiss stops his next words, and he gives in gratefully to the distraction, wrapping a leg around Kakashi's waist and flipping them easily. Kakashi makes a low, intent sound as Obito settle astride his hips, and Obito shoves down the vague shadows of doubt that linger.

Kakashi is a storm in the moonlight, and the world is theirs. They're saving it, even if some people would call it conquering.

Obito's never been afraid to stain his hands, and neither has Kakashi. They'll do what they need to in order to bring a brighter future, even if it means that ruin comes before redemption for some of the countries.

Between a storm and a wildfire, the world can be remade, and there's no one who can stop them.

He kisses Kakashi, and it tastes like rain and lightning on his tongue.