Uchiha Obito is many things.

Traitor, lover, friend, foe, widower, comrade, brother, father, cousin, guardian, angel, demon, martyr, monster—

Many more things, in the vastness of time and possibility. The seeds of a life are planted long before the whole person is, spinning threads out into the future and the past like a cosmic spider, lines like golden silk in the present and the perhaps, in the could-be and has-been all bound up in fate and the march of worlds. It is beautiful and terrible in its complexity and expanse.

Obito (crybaby loser failure) is thirteen years old. He's given everything he has but it's not enough and now at least Kakashi has that eye of his and by the merciful kami he hopes it will be enough because there isn't anything else he can do when he's trapped like this and dying by inches and he wishes he could do more to keep them safe

Obito (headstrong loyal jounin of Konoha) is thirty. He won't let that bastard take anyone else from him not when there's still so much they need to live to see Kamui has to last long enough for some kind of reinforcement Sensei anyone at least someone's going to see tomorrow even if it won't be him and he refuses to regret a single instant of this jutsu that's killing him because dying like this in the defense of someone he loves is a better death than he could have asked and if he's lucky they'll find a way past the Six Paths and he'll save someone anyone

Obito is thirteen-going-on-thirty. I don't want to die/I'll take him with me if it kills me

Obito (Please, protect Rin where I can't anymore.) wants to live and protect the people he loves. I'll be watching out for you, Kakashi.

Obito (Come on, come on, just gotta hold on a bit longer…) dies doing just that. Damn… I couldn't even take one of them out…

Would you like to play a game?

Obito Uchiha is thirteen years old, and he has just gained his Sharingan and Mangekyou soul-scars in an instant. He looks up at an achingly familiar night sky, stars spread across the sky in a silvery silken blanket, and listens to the gentle, patient murmur of Sensei's voice as the pain of the past is laid out before him. All the while, his hands shake as though they belong to a far older man and his eyes sting with remembered pain.

He will get no sleep tonight.

Neither will the spinners of fate's grand design, seeing the loom crack and the cloth burn. The threads of fate are loose and fragmented without a guide, and the greater weave of history trembles.

GAME START

He's nearly thirty. He's Uchiha Obito, married to one Nohara Rin, and is a happy if somewhat flustered uncle/brother figure in a family built and thriving on improvisations and chaos. He and Kakashi are the oldest (well, technically, Obito's about seven months older than Kakashi and has mentioned this rather a lot over the years, but no one cares) boys, Rin the oldest girl. Iruka comes next, if reluctantly, and then Itachi and the brats. Sasuke, Naruto. Four months apart, closer than peas in a pod (or possibly magnets, which reflected their natures better). Minato and Kushina—Sensei and Kushina-san—are the sometimes-proud parents to what amounts more to a pack than a family, but it's theirs. All of theirs. They built it with their own hands and made it work where people said it shouldn't, made Konoha stronger with their bonds and their blood. And he loves—loved—all of them so much that sometimes he thinks—thought—that his heart would burst of it. They live and breathe and fight and die for one another, closer than blood in many ways, and now Obito thinks that he's just the first to drop dead.

He didn't expect to outlive Kakashi. Maybe that's why the last thing he remembers is pain of the heart and a surge of power through his veins and chakra coils like heat through a wire and feeling his eyes burn and realizing that he had the power to stall even someone as dangerous as Pain. Kamui against Shinra Tensei, the image of Kakashi's head pinned to the wall by a black stake through his head (NO NO NO NO NO)—all imbedded in his mind as though someone had carved it in with a kunai. In some ways, he's surprised he even lasted long enough to realize how utterly screwed he was, past the red haze of rage.

He's not sure he survived. Looking at his hands, calloused only by training and the occasional smooth burn from an exhaled fireball, he wonders what kind of genjutsu he must be in if he didn't. The feel of his chakra and the movements of his body tell him that whatever happened, he's weakened and vulnerable in this form, and he can't quite figure out how to fight when he should be thirty centimeters taller than this.

He has to spend at least two hours just to reflect on how much he's lost by waking up in Kusa. He spends some of it trying to dispel the genjutsu that has to be there—a subtly activated Sharingan that makes his eyes ache, "accidentally" jabbing himself with a kunai (which gets him an eye-rolling from this smaller clone of Kakashi, worry from Rin, and some questioning glances from Sensei) and brief flares of his chakra intended to just dispel it. None of this new world changes.

A quick glance at his team—Sensei, Rin-chan, Kakashi—feels like a clawed fist tightening around his heart.

He can't look at Kakashi.

(red red blood splashed against the silver and cream and blue and he's never seen so much of his friend's face and he can't look but he has to because this is all he'll have because the breathing's caught up with his brain and there's nothing and he hates this and all there's left to do is fight)

Can't look at Rin.

(oh kami he has no idea where she is she could have been in the hospital where's Tsunade-sama that bastard flattened the whole district with one shove how are we going to get people out where's Rin-chan where's Rin-chan where's his Rin the hospital's gone gone gone)

Can't look at Sensei.

(Sensei please where are you why aren't you here what did he do to Kushina-san please everyone's gone we can't hold on where are you)

Obito pulls his old goggles (hasn't seen them in years/seconds) down and closes his eyes, relying on his semi-developed chakra sense to tell where he's going by the movement of his teammates, and quietly curses the Sharingan in all its forms. He doesn't want to remember any of it, but it's his reality and the Sharingan won't let him forget until he's dead for real. This—whatever it is—is not real. Can't be.

Because if it is, he has no idea what he's going to do.

He just wants to find a rock to hide under until the world starts making sense again.

(okay Kakashi's okay we're almost out ohhhhhhh shit)

…Or maybe not, in reflection. Where did that come from? He wonders, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a wave of phantom pain. For a moment, it's like there's a terrible weight trying to flatten him into a piece of paper, along with a creeping numbness that speaks less of loss of pain than loss of sensation altogether, but it passes in a moment.

…I did not get anything like enough sleep last night. More sleep (or, failing that, coffee) sounds like an excellent idea, but there isn't any time to relax in territory that's infested with Iwa-nin.

From the remarkably complaint-free silence he only becomes aware of as they start to approach their destination, he's pretty sure his team thinks he's had some kind of psychotic break. If he's got the timing right (which is only a possibility—he gained his Sharingan later in this mission, after all), he'd probably frozen up when they'd fought the jounin from Iwa with all the kage bunshin. And gotten a decent chewing-out, considering. Then there'd been the conversation about the Hatake he never got to meet—emulating the man is fine in any time period, he thinks—that he'd zoned out in the middle of.

Shock explains some stuff, but he's going to have to make better excuses than ever in his life if he plans on keeping this up.

He supposes that he's lucky in having Kakashi for a friend for so long, even if it all turned to shit at the very end—Kakashi is, and has pretty much always been, a pretty good liar (mostly to himself, the selfish bastard). Picking it up from him had been almost like breathing. Putting it into practice…less so. But then, Obito was kind of used to not being believed. There had to be a way to apply that in reverse.

Still. For now, he's keeping his goggles on, his Sharingan hidden behind plastic and subtle genjutsu, and following along with this strange script. He needs more to know what the hell he can do in this body, and the weird twist of his chakra coils (man, is he out of shape or what) tells him less than he'd like.

Assuming he lives through this again, he's training his ass off. He feels like he's been in the hospital for a month.

Though, since he's about six months from his first major teenage growth spurt (if he has his math right, and he freely admits in his own head that he could easily be wrong), at least the issue of differential heights won't be a problem for too long. He started and stopped growing sooner than Kakashi did—which, for right now, means that he had the reach to take out Iwa-nin just the hairsbreadth faster that might make the difference. The Iwa jounin he remembers had been no joke (even if they were stupidly overconfident—but then, who ever expected the Sharingan to randomly come into play?), though he isn't sure if that would stay the same in the face of his extra experience. And that experience gives him an edge on more than just them, he thinks with a glance at Kakashi.

Kami, if he'd gone up against Pain and lasted more than an minute after the Rinnegan-using bastard had decided he ought to be dead, a couple of chameleons would be cake.

Sensei doesn't say anything to indicate that he thinks something is wrong. Maybe he can't afford do. When they're all so close to Iwa (even if most of what Obito sees at the moment is Kusa's distinctive grassy plain), a teammate cracking could lead to discovery—and shortly thereafter, panic, confusion, and probably death—and they can't even afford to acknowledge it until they get back to Konoha. Besides, it's not like Obito would have gone with Sensei instead if he had a choice. His place is with Kakashi and Rin—hopefully keeping them alive through this gauntlet to adulthood.

It's easy for him to deal with Kakashi being in command now. Maybe it's because he has the benefit of something like hindsight—there are all sorts of details off and he's still wondering where Nariko and Momo got to—or just because all he can see is a white-haired kid trying to prove himself just as much as Obito had been at the time. Kid's a genius, sure, but Obito has sixteen years on him in his head.

Youth and talent will never trump old age and treachery.

Even if this time it's just sixteen years—about one and a half shinobi generations, unless you're going back to the Clan Wars era. Kakashi's been combat-ready since he was what, five? And I made genin at nine. Sheesh…

It's weird how, the more he thinks about it, the less it hurts. Not a lot, granted, and he thinks there's going to be a deep, dark pit inside his head for a long time (love hate fear longing), the kind that even bijuu would stay the fuck away from and he's hanging onto sanity by his fingertips, but he can go around it. It'll take effort but he can train himself to do it, since he has to.

He's looking away from Rin because he can't quite do it, yet, with his hands behind his head and Sharingan spinning behind his goggles and genjutsu. It's the only reason he sees the bastards this time around.

It's almost sad how obvious it is with his eyes like this. If he had a Hyuuga take a look, he suspects it'd be pretty close to what he's seeing now, but with chakra circulatory systems and maybe skeletons instead of the "let's play the indecisive chameleon" game he's got. He suspects that the Iwa-nin here have literally no experience with Uchiha clan members with active Sharingan eyes.

He waits.

And when Taiseki (why does he remember this so well he hasn't seen a bingo book from the Third Shinobi World War in years) leaps up to confront them with Kakkou (sometimes having the Sharingan sucks), and in doing so cancels the camouflage genjutsu (Meisaigakure no jutsu argh argh he is never going to get this out of his head), Obito's hands are already flashing through his favorite seals and chakra is gathering in his lungs and throat.

Kakashi pulls Rin clear, thank the merciful kami, because the chakra he's gathered is at least double what they used to use in practice and, though he hasn't mentioned it, this particular variant of the technique is a little harder to avoid than usual. Obito remembers spending weeks on this, once upon a time.

Katon: Gokakyuu no jutsu (Uzu).

He doesn't think there's an Uchiha alive who's managed to make their fireball into a deadly spiral of heat bloom and open flame, because no one bothers to refine the coming-of-age technique any more than their teachers' teachers had. Obito, during a fit of jutsu-creation born of his then-strong rivalry with Kakashi, had been determined to prove them wrong.

(he'd failed of course but that was never the point)

So when Obito can still see and sense both of their chakra signatures, he's somewhat disappointed, though not as much as he is in his chakra capacity. This is like diving into a swimming pool and finding out too late that the water's a foot deep.

Seriously, screw these guys.

Taiseki goes after him first, while Kakkou apparently decides that his variation on today's theme (whack the Konoha-nin) is to pick on Kakashi.

Well, Obito might not have his old chakra capacity, but his control is much tighter than it used to be. He can make use of what he has far more effectively than even a jounin—this, though, is another thing he chalks up to the Sharingan. It's easier to perceive the flow of chakra when you can actually see it move, in addition to feeling it. Rin had helped.

Taiseki's face twists when Obito successfully blocks his kunai without losing an inch of ground (why does this battle need to be fought on top of a pond) thanks to this chakra reinforcement, rather than dodging or panicking. And that's when Taiseki makes the mistake of looking Obito in the eye.

You're getting veeeeeeery sleepy…

Obito's specialty is not genjutsu, despite the subtle layering bullshit he can pull off with his Sharingan and a lot of luck (he's still not sure he's fooled Sensei). But the Sharingan gives him that last crucial edge he needs over a jounin and he takes it, dropping Taiseki straight into Stage Four sleep with no resistance whatsoever. That's about when he launches his trailing foot off the surface of the pond and reinforces his kick with enough chakra that he temporarily numbs his leg from the ankle down.

(take it easy it might be war but you're still a kid)

Taiseki goes flying from a roundhouse to the lower jaw, though, which makes it all worth it. Kakkou has to break off from Kakashi in order to make sure his teammate doesn't break every bone in his body on landing. That proves that he can still fight effectively, even in this body.

The flailing and mandatory retreat to the water's edge before he drops into the pond due to miscalculating the amount of chakra his limbs can channel, on the other hand, doesn't. Twenty-odd years of being a shinobi and still making genin mistakes. Clearly, I am an S-class ninja. Fear me. He lands hard on his rear, more annoyed than surprised, and really, really wants to get back into the fight and nail Kakkou to a bamboo stalk before he can hurt Kakashi or Rin when he comes back.

On the other hand, he thinks as Rin immediately gets to work on his chakra-numb limb, maybe it's best to keep holding back. Better look like an idiot than a genius, I guess.

"I'm thinking Iwa jounin." Obito says, catching both of his teammates' attention since it's about the first thing he's said all day. That said, their stares are kind of awkward and he has to stop himself from automatically trapping one of them in a genjutsu by looking past them. "Rin-chan? Kakashi? Am I the only one doing this assessing thing?"

Given that he can only see about half of Kakashi's face at any given moment, he's somewhat surprised to note that the little jounin's expression can best be described as "huffy." He has officially known this guy (kid kid he's just a kid) for way too long. The little "hn," which has not been a word in the history of the universe and no one is going to manage to convince him otherwise despite overuse (Kakashi Sasuke Neji Yamato does he attract these idiots or something), does not help his mood.

"Don't give me that look, you asshole." Obito snaps, finally feeling like he's getting back into the flow of things. This? This is cake. It also helps that shouting is keeping him from laughing. This is way too familiar and I don't have time for this. He glances at Rin, and notices that yes, he can flex his toes again without feeling pins and needles. "Thanks, Rin-chan."

Then they're all back on their feet, senses extended outward to find the Iwa jounin. Kakashi's posture changes, from wary to quarter-second-from-murder and Obito's hidden Sharingan sees Taiseki—apparently snapped out of the genjutsu already, to his annoyance—surge toward them like an avalanche behind a waterfall. Kakkou is smarter and faster, but Obito's hands are already most of the way through another sequence of seals even if this choice is not exactly suited for the moment.

In hindsight, they should have drilled on hand-seals religiously, but Rin's techniques don't require seals and Kakashi seems more inclined to stab than flash-fry people at the moment. Rat, tiger, dog, ox, rabbit, tiger, monkey.

One solution to invisible opponents (he can see them perfectly well but no one else can) is area-of-effect attacks. Luckily, he knew the seals for this even when he was eleven, so he's pretty sure he can even pull off his modified version without trouble. Still charging chakra in his lungs and throat, he reaches into his shuriken pouch and pulls out all fifteen of them.

Pity he's not going to get his shuriken back after this.

Katon: Housenka Tsumabeni.

And like that, blazing metal rains down on the enemy positions. This technique isn't as powerful as he'd like—he's working with a thirteen-year-old's chakra coils, after all, but it's worth it to see the enemy panic at the realization that the fire is not going out. Suck on that, Iwa bastards.

It's times like this when Obito thinks, Sometimes, I wish I had more Raiton techniques that aren't Chidori variants. Side effect of a secondary Earth affinity, and of spending too much time training with Kakashi as his only sparring partner not named Gai (is he still supposed to dislike this guy for kicking his ass in his first two Chuunin Exams or not). He doesn't know any Raiton techniques he can justify using in that nebulous period before his Sharingan activated anyway, and overcoming Iwa-nin usage of Douton is a totally different and extremely relevant issue.

He thinks he'll learn to get very, very tired of people shrugging off his attempts to kill them.

Kakashi, meanwhile, proves himself willing to take Taiseki apart by inches even when flaming shuriken are pretty much everywhere if he has to, with Rin as support with her chakra scalpels (is she literally hacking at his shins what kind of weird alternate universe have I dropped into). He feels the flow of chakra as Kakkou uses some kind of Douton jutsu to split the fight down the middle, water and bedrock and gravel exploding underneath all of their feet and forcing Obito back toward the bank.

And, just like before, Rin's on one side with the two Iwa-nin and Kakashi and Obito are on the other (dammit not again why does this always have to happen to Rin he'll KILL THEM).

No snappy one-liners, this time. Just another smoke bomb.

For a long moment, Obito and Kakashi stand there and pant. Jounin taking them seriously hadn't been a part of the plan, not really, and they still had the bridge to destroy and now Rin's gone and Obito is seriously considering going on an epic journey to find the manifestation of Fate and kicking it/him in the balls. Failing that, stabbing in the face works just fine.

He deactivates his Sharingan, along with the genjutsu over his eyes, and pushes his goggles up onto his hitai-ate. He doesn't want to accidentally hit Kakashi with a genjutsu, since he seems to be misfiring a lot or at least thinking he's about to, which is a bad thing. He hates being thirteen.

"We're going back for Rin." Obito says, in a flat tone that's nothing like how he would have said it if he really had been his physical age. This still feels like the right choice—though the tone of command hasn't ever really worked on Kakashi. He doesn't want to have to argue about this, but he's also not sure Kakashi has enough of a conscience at this age to actually listen.

"The two of us will continue our mission, Obito."

Kakashi was such an asshole at age thirteen. What did he even say last time to make Kakashi at least consider second-guessing himself?

Kami, just listening to this kid is making him wonder, vaguely, how the hell he's supposed to grow up into the laid-back White Wolf of Konoha he knows (knew) so well. Obito isn't really familiar with growing old, having never actually managed such a feat (hey Kakashi we're getting a bit over the hill aren't we), but listening to Kakashi—new jounin, barely a teenager, still-incomplete Chidori and a voice that still cracks—makes him feel ancient.

The worst part is that Kakashi's looking at him with the same eyes. (have to follow orders the mission is paramount can't dishonor anyone else won't let them can't fail)

Obito wonders what Kakashi sees in his (he won't let a single comrade die). "No. Maybe this is something you won't do, with what happened to your dad" —and it almost hurts to say it, when his words bring that haunted look to Kakashi's eyes— "but I can't leave Rin to face two jounin on her own." His smile isn't quite false. It's complicated. "The White Fang was a hero, and screw whatever anyone else said. And I'm gonna follow his example here, even if you can't, because that's who I am."

"And if she's dead? If she's already given up the information they want?" Kakashi challenges him, because it's a perfectly reasonable point and Obito's simultaneously way past this and yet in the moment. "Then Iwa gets to keep the bridge intact and the war will drag on for years." Kakashi was born in the wake of the Second Great Shinobi War. Now they're neck-deep in the third one. He knows.

"I believe in Rin." Obito says simply, because he knows from experience Rin is strong. "But if you think for a second that I'll stand around twiddling my thumbs when they're trying to use her to hurt Konoha, you're an idiot."

Kakashi says, in that infuriatingly flat voice, "I'm still captain. You still have to obey my orders. No matter what happens, the decisions are still in my hands. And we're continuing the mission." It's weird how this argument doesn't make Obito want to punch his lights out. Maybe it's because he knows he actually could. "Obito, you haven't got any special talent, which is why I'm capta—"

Stomping on all of Kakashi's personal buttons seems like a bad idea, but he can't stop. One of the minor ones is being interrupted. And it's complete bullshit that he doesn't have any talent—he's just hiding pretty much all of it at the moment. "It's true that in the shinobi world, those who break the rules and regulations are called trash." Obito admits softly, still refusing to face his teammate because it's harder to remember if he does. His Sharingan throbs. He knows Kakashi gave him this stupid speech the other day, because there's no reason he wouldn't. Pity it's been years from his perspective since Kakashi was this much of a pain. Obito takes a deep breath. "But you know what? The most worthless rat bastard on the face of the world is the one who ditches his friends and calls it 'necessary evil.' If that's what being a ninja is, screw that because I'm doing this my way."

Obito tilts his head, feeling oddly serene for the first time since "waking up." "So, if you wanna come with, I'm open to having a jackass of a friend helping out. But I'm going after them no matter what." He's gotten better at twisting words over the years. "So, it's still your decision, captain."

(if he thinks he can be ordered around he's got another thing coming)

It's not just because of Obito's Sharingan eyes that he can guess at what Kakashi's thinking. He's known the man for most of his life, growing up together like the idiots they both are—fighting (mostly with each other), living, succeeding. That's why he can tell Kakashi's afraid, not because of any special kekkei genkai. Kakashi's been a shinobi for eight years already, and up until now he's been shoving everyone away because he's convinced they'll leave—either voluntarily or through death. He drives people away to preempt any more pain and the only voluntary exception to that so far is Sensei, if only because everyone thinks their sensei is invincible.

Kakashi is just starting to realize that his teammates have wormed their way into his heart, without him noticing a thing. And it's sinking in slowly, like ice melting into freezing water. It terrifies him.

"Later, captain." Obito says, and turns to leave. "We'll pick this up later if we both survive the next few hours."

A kunai shoots past his face, barely missing his ear on the way, and Obito knows that he's definitely got Kakashi's attention. Kakashi's fist crashes into his shoulder a second later, spinning him around and to the ground with the force of the impact, and Obito has to fight down a grin. He turns to face Kakashi, expression locked into a scowl, and they glare at each other for a moment before Kakashi roughly yanks him back to his feet.

"Then take this as an order, soldier." Kakashi says harshly, "We are going to rescue Rin and we're all going to make those Iwa-nin regret putting a bridge up over the Kannabi. Or so help me I will make your life hell."

Nice to have you at my back again, Wolf.

"What's with all the drama? It was my idea!" Obito protests, but it's not serious. He lets the scowl slide off his face, replaced by determination. "Kakashi, let me lead the way. My Sharingan"—and here, he blinks and the three-tomoe form of his eyes makes the world simultaneously clearer and somehow unreal—"activated in that last battle, and I can see through their genjutsu. Trust me."

Kakashi nods curtly. Then they leap among the bamboo thickets and in pursuit of their enemies.

As it happens, Taiseki is a total pushover when it comes to round two. Kakashi leaves him entirely to Obito, who waits until the Iwa-nin is too close to dodge and promptly blasts him point-blank with Katon: Housenka Tsumabeni. Sure, that's Kakashi's entire stock of shuriken gone, but it's also a dead Iwa jounin, which is going up there on Obito's personal tally of foes killed with a single jutsu.

Next up is Kakkou. The remaining Iwa jounin is smart enough to be a threat, but Obito's lived through this once already and pulls Gai's taijutsu out of his memory for all that it happened a lifetime ago and he doesn't have the training for it just yet. Kakashi's fast enough to keep up and Obito will not allow Kakkou to lay a single finger on his teammate even if it means he can't use his arms. When the Iwa jounin collapses, Obito follows up by imbedding a kunai in his skull. And he doesn't turn his back on the corpse until he's sure it wasn't a bunshin or the subject of a Kawarimi.

He does not want to deal with a cave-in again. Especially since this time there's no Nariko to make the dash for safety.

Then Obito finally goes to make sure Rin is okay, if still under genjutsu. Dispelling that is easy enough, and Kakashi takes care of the ropes.

"Let's get the hell out of here." Obito mutters in an undertone as Rin gets back to her feet. Kakashi glances at him. "Captain."

"Right. Move out, team."

It's never that easy.

Even the first time around, there'd been a crowd of some fifteen Iwa-nin waiting for them when they emerged from the cave. He supposes that it's too much to ask that they wouldn't show up when his world is repeating itself. He's still somewhat annoyed that Nariko and Momo haven't made an appearance yet, blasting enemy ninjas with fox fire and stupid one-liners.

They're outside. They're completely surrounded.

Obito's Sharingan spins (round and round we go where we stop nobody knows) and he holds his hand out to Kakashi for a kunai. Rin is behind them, chakra scalpels flaring because if nothing else they're going down fighting and she doesn't intend to be taken alive. Kakashi pulls his father's chakra saber from its scabbard and drops his kunai holster into Obito's grasp with his free hand.

Obito pulls out Sensei's Hiraishin kunai and lets it fly. If this doesn't work it's going to be a bloodbath.

Luckily, it does.

Technically, they don't actually need to help because the Iwa-nin are in a panic and Sensei is killing them left and right. Technicalities are not about to stop them now.

Rin cuts the tendons of a fleeing Iwa-nin with one feather-light touch of her glowing hands, and Sensei leaps and lands on the man's back hard enough to break it. Obito's plethora of fiery techniques box the enemy in and Sensei kills two of them at once, a kunai in each hand. Kakashi's chakra saber makes him almost as much of a threat to them as Sensei is (every fight with Sensei ends at zero range and a single slice) and between them the rest of the Iwa-nin go down screaming.

And then it's over.

Obito finally deactivates his Sharingan, lungs burning. Between the Katon jutsu and the chakra toll of an active Sharingan and the multiple taijutsu matches and a few spare genjutsu, he wants to collapse into a bed and sleep for a week. This body doesn't have the chakra or fitness level he's used to—frankly, a sustained firefight wouldn't have been his first option then either, but he'd also have been capable of pulling off a bastardized version of what Sensei just did if he was still an adult.

(suspicion worry what is his problem not paranoia so fast)

Obito blinks and Sensei is crouching in front of him. His expression is unreadable and when the weight of his hand settles on his shoulder, Obito starts to unintentionally lean in that direction. It feels a little like the world is sliding sideways and he can't bring himself to care. Sensei immediately tries to steady him, but Obito realizes that the only explanation is chakra exhaustion and he's going to need a minute to get his brain back into working order.

Come on, come on, there has to be chakra left or I wouldn't still be awake. He closes his eyes and tries to focus, pushing chakra away from his eyes so his Sharingan will stay inactive for a while and stop being a chakra sink, but it's really a jolt of purified chakra from Rin that brings him back to awareness.

"Thanks, Rin-chan. Needed that." He doesn't need to fake the embarrassment in his face or his tone. He should really know better than to push himself that hard on a mission, whether Sensei was around or not.

He still staggers when Sensei tries to get him back on his feet, though. He's always been a bit unsteady after stuff like this, no matter his physical age. His chakra feels deadened and tired, to match the rest of him, and he leans heavily on Sensei despite the fact that he really feels like he ought to be at least able to walk away from this kind of fight (should have would have could have).

"…So what's this I hear about you finally activating your Sharingan?" Sensei says, and it sounds like it's coming from somewhere far, far away.

"…Were you saying something before?" Obito asks blankly. Rin looks worried and Kakashi looks like he might be worried if he was more expressive. Bah. "I think I kinda zoned out there…"

"Oh, just general congratulations since you seem to have done well." Sensei says, and his voice sounds clearer the longer he talks. Neat. "Want to hear your part?"

"Sure." Obito says, distantly.

"Obito, in going to rescue Rin and keep the Iwa-nin from hurting your teammates, you've done your whole village proud." Sensei grins, and Obito's attempt to return it is probably a little weak. "Though the next time something like this happens, try to keep a closer eye on your chakra levels so I don't have to carry you back to Konoha."

Obito snorts. "Sure thing, Sensei." Wait, had there been a bit of extra emphasis on the word "eye?" The little thrill of excitement gives him enough energy to stand on his own and attempt a victory pose. So what if it's just a thumbs-up? "Sensei, I awoke my Sharingan! I did it!"

"So I heard. Straight to three tomoe?"

Oops. Busted.

"Well, it was really more like two in each for a bit." Obito says. This is, strictly speaking, true. Just stretching the timeframe like a rubber band, since it took him six months and a mission against Taki to get three tomoe last time around. "Kept the whole thing under wraps with a genjutsu since, you know, it's better to surprise enemy shinobi with something like that the first time."

This is bullshit. He'd been more worried about his team's reaction than anything—the Sharingan was the kind of kekkei genkai that would be activated under stress regardless, and he'd needed it active and hidden to compensate for his body's current condition. Specifically, the problem of being thirteen years old again.

"And it evolved in the fight?" Sensei asks. His tone doesn't reveal a single thing. Dammit.

"Well, during a fight you weren't around for, yeah. Ask Captain Kakashi, he was there for all of it." Obito says with a shrug.

"Since when do you call Kakashi 'captain'?" Sensei asks, glancing at the other jounin briefly. Kakashi is rolling his eyes.

"Since I learned it'd piss him off." Obito replies easily. "Still, it worked, didn't it, captain?"

Kakashi grumbles something inaudible. Obito sticks his tongue out at him and ducks the inevitable attempt to punch him in the face. And then he tackles Kakashi to the ground. Sure, he's running on very little chakra and Kakashi's a jounin, but Obito has six centimeters and quite a bit of arm span on him for right now and neither of them are actually trying to kill each other. It probably doesn't look like it to outsiders, though.

(blood brother lover teacher comrades family home)

He thinks it's going to be okay.

It's never that easy.

When Rin dies, he thinks he's going to follow her.

He's never really thought about all the close calls he knows they'd had over the years, even after arriving in a past free of youkai interference that somehow follows the greater trends he remembers. He and Kakashi are friends now, and Rin seemed to have been sorting out her crush on Kakashi (which he doesn't mind this time, because she's so young and Obito can't actually remember what it would have been like to have a crush like that anymore). He's getting stronger, more used to his new (old) body's capabilities. Sensei is Hokage. The war is winding down.

He'd just never thought that Kiri could come back to bite them so thoroughly.

There's no way to call Sensei. There's no kitsune daiyoukai or immortal miko to help them calm the raging Sanbi long enough to get home. No secret Hiraishin seals. There's no backup. They're surrounded again, but this time it's Kiri ANBU and they're miles from anything like a border. There's no way out, until Rin finds hers at the end of Kakashi's Chidori.

Obito doesn't remember the next five minutes even though he knows his Mangekyou Sharingan activated and the way the corpses litter the ground afterward tell him that he activated Kamui fifteen times in the fight and every strike was a kill. He remembers, mechanically, sealing Rin's body into a transportation scroll and picking Kakashi up and starting the journey home via Kamui's shadow dimension, even if he can't remember the details of any of it. It wouldn't have worked before—all he really understood about Kamui was the ability to cut someone else's limbs off via misplaced portal, and he hadn't used it since its initial activation some months beforehand. He hadn't understood that there was a way out.

Kakashi tells him her last words, while he's in the hospital for chakra exhaustion. Take care of each other for me. He doesn't remember hearing them, but it's so Rin that he breaks down and cries there in the recovery ward. He doesn't check to see if Kakashi's crying too, but he's not making fun of him and that's enough.

Obito sits in his room the day after her funeral, staring at the tantou he bought as a birthday present he never got to give her, and lets the thoughts slide together until something pings off of some other important idea. He's not in any hurry.

Eventually, he stands. He has shit to do. Funeral to attend (Rin was an orphan too we were her family), teammates to visit.

He gets dressed in funeral black, for what seems like the millionth time this year. Sensei and Kakashi are the only ones he's interested in seeing, even if he knows that their old classmates are probably going to attend if they can. He tucks the tantou into a scabbard and slings its strap over his wrist. He ties it on, slower and more carefully than he would otherwise, and heads out.

He picks up flowers from the Yamanaka shop. He visits Kakashi in the hospital and finds Sensei signing the release forms to get him out early (perks of being Hokage). He ends up splitting the bouquet with them since they obviously haven't been able to get any of their own—Sensei gets chrysanthemums and Kakashi takes the lilies. Obito keeps the asphodel and marigolds. There are roses, too, but they're for whoever else ends up coming. The stuff with meaning—and sometimes he wonders how Inoichi knew—is for their team alone.

It doesn't rain, but it's cold.

Sensei carves her name into the stone, while Kakashi and Obito place flowers. Obito has a picture of their whole team together on the day of team assignments, sealed into his Kamui dimension, and brings it out in full view of his cohort despite whatever they'll say anyway. He places it at the base of the stone with incense and his marigolds and asphodel. He leaves the tantou there, too, as a silent apology (should have been stronger faster better).

In the end, it's over all too quickly. The crowd breaks off with some general condolences and Sensei has to leave to get back to work, because the world doesn't stop spinning for a single life. Kakashi and Obito stand there in front of the stone for a long, quiet hour.

It's there that, in front of what will have to serve as Rin's grave (fallen soldiers end their days in fire), Obito decides that he's going to change. He can't just rely on Sensei or Kakashi to save the day, or even to take care of themselves. So obviously, he's going to have to pick up the slack.

Two days later, Obito harasses a non-shinobi cousin into telling him how to get a job at the hospital. It's the least he can do.

When the war ends, Kakashi joins ANBU. Obito is torn between disapproval and pride, because while he has no interest in seeing his best friend kill his humanity for the sake of serving the village, he also knows that Kakashi can succeed at it and most likely will. He's done it before from Obito's perspective, and he can do it again. He'll be a captain within a few years if Obito's guess is right, and then he'll be "captain" for real.

By that point, Obito is an adept user of the Shousen jutsu, though he's nowhere near Rin's old standard of absolute perfection, but he can at least substitute for the hospital if Kakashi's decided to skip out on his mandatory post-mission checkups. He's hacked off what seems like half of his clan in pursuing medical ninjutsu as opposed to being a straight combat type like Uchiha generally strive to be, but he doesn't care. They can all hang. None of them even know he has the Mangekyou and he's not interested in telling them (they could guess anyone could guess just count the corpses in his wake).

Sensei continues doing his thing—dating Kushina, filling out paperwork, working on his seal mastery, interacting with his students (or just him because Kakashi's never around anymore), and generally just continuing to be Sensei. If he hadn't known Sensei so well and even seen a shrine at Sensei's house—devoted to his parents, his old friends, and now Rin—he might not have thought anything had changed.

But they're alive a year later and that's enough. They're coping. Now that the war's over, it might even he appropriate to say that they're getting back on their feet.

That's when Fate proves to be a vindictive bastard and slaps them in the face with the Kyuubi.

Obito knows ahead of time that something happens the day Naruto is born. In his world, someone powerful enough to be Madara massacred the Uchiha clan and a decent chunk of Konoha's standing army in a single night before being taken out by the combined efforts of Sensei, Kushina, a pair of daiyoukai, and a triad of foxes. He remembers it clearly because he was part of the initial wave of first-responders—not a part of a team, no, but he was the first one to discover that by some miracle, Itachi and Sasuke had been spared. Rin had been there, doing what she could, but it's hard to heal the dead. Kakashi had been there, too, and ANBU then as well. Obito remembers being the one of the few people to encounter that damned ancestor of his and survive, especially while protecting a genin Iruka from point-blank annihilation. In hindsight, he's amazed they didn't all die.

That is nothing compared to the Kyuubi. The horribly malicious chakra presses down on all of them and if he'd been any younger in his head he would have panicked. The Kyuubi is like nothing they've ever been trained to fight, nothing that any of them can fight. All they can do is die.

Obito's crying as it appears, but not out of fear. He alone of his age group realizes that, in order for the Kyuubi to be free and attacking the village, Kushina has to be dead. And that doesn't bode well for Sensei or Naruto either, which scares him so badly he's not sure what to do or who to look at for any kind of direction. No one knows anything.

The adults try to keep anyone under the age of seventeen away from the fight using a barrier seal. Even Kakashi and Gai are kept back, though to be honest he's not sure what they'd be able to do against a bijuu anyway.

Obito taps Kakashi on the shoulder. "Hey, keep my place for me, would you?"

"Obito, what the hell are you—?" Kakashi starts, and then Obito pulls on the fabric of space-time with his Mangekyou Sharingan and disappears in a pop of displaced air. He reappears in the back hills outside of Konoha, trying to find anyone's chakra, and is gone in another pop after Sensei.

This time, he reappears on Gamabunta's head, by Sensei's knee.

"Sensei." Obito says, and Sensei blinks stupidly at him for a moment before he has to return his attention to the Kyuubi. "Let me try."

"With what?" Sensei demands.

Obito activates his Mangekyou Sharingan and turns to the Kyuubi. This time, he doesn't pull, he projects. There's a glint in its eye that tells him another Mangekyou Sharingan user is on the battlefield, controlling it, and all he has to do is displace that chakra with his own for a moment.

The Kyuubi's mind isn't that unlike the Sanbi's. In the end, they're siblings, so all Obito has to do is ask it a question that he doubts has been posed to this Kyuubi before. It might not have worked with the Sanbi, but the Sanbi had Rin's torturous temporary seal to deal with even before Obito had tried to contact it, and Obito hadn't thought to use the Mangekyou then. The Kyuubi is loose and, while he doesn't know the details of Kushina's seal, he can guess that it isn't happy under its "master" either.

"Stalling, Sensei." Obito murmurs, distracted, and asks the Kyuubi to speak to him.

What do you want, Uchiha whelp?

Oh, thank the merciful kami it still has a mind left to contact.

Why are you attacking Konoha? Obito asks, even as the fox's body grows still and eyes narrow at him. Its eyes are a perfect reflection of his Mangekyou Sharingan, which is highly disturbing considering that they're set in a face that's about a thousand times larger than his, but it's clearly sapient and it's speaking to him, which is better than he'd hoped for. He won't release his control of its body just yet, instead gently urging it to stop its rampaging for as long as it's speaking to him. He doesn't doubt that it could flatten them all with a swing of its tails if he does this wrong.

Behind him, Sensei is somewhere between flabbergasted and wary—whoever did this is still out there, and Obito doubts that this is the first thing the bastard did.

This wretched little city of disgusting hairless apes? Why would I not, when your blighted ancestor dragged me here? It roars, all nine tails lashing the air hard enough to lay even the great Hashirama trees out flat. When your tree-hugging founder crammed me into a womb to be tortured for all eternity? Why should I leave any of you alive?

None of us wanted to do that to you! Obito shouts in his head. Uchiha Madara was cast out for what he did to you and to us. He died! The only way we could stop you at the time was to seal you away—we're not perfect, dammit, but I doubt even Hashirama-sama would have sealed you into Mito-sama if he knew what the seal would do to you!

SCUM-SUCKING TWO-FACED UCHIHA SPAWN OF A HAIRLESS SEWER RAT! HOW DARE YOU?!

I dare because this place—these people—are what I'm willing to fight for and protect. All Madara wants to do is kill—HOW CAN YOU LET HIM WIN?!

Then Sensei places his hand on Obito's back and he's pulled out of his mental war with the Kyuubi to blink his way back to reality. Kushina-sama (she's alive she's alive she's alive how is she alive) has the fox in the signature Uzumaki chakra chains at the edge of an old, used-up seal that must have had something to do with how the Kyuubi got loose, Naruto nestled in a basket by her side, and Sensei steps up to them both even as Obito frantically tries to keep the Kyuubi from simply crushing them. Sensei raises his hands. "Kuchiyose: Shiki Fuujin!"

The Kyuubi is going to kill them all.

SITUATION CRITICAL!

…Shinigami are supposed to be bigger, right?

The creature that appears in the center of the lake is actually rather human. While he's sure the shinigami related to the Shiki Fuujin is supposed to be a gigantic white-haired, horned humanoid figure standing over the summoner and its target, what he sees is a white-haired figure in a white kimono with red borders and a yellow obi. It shakes its head, as though confused by this turn of events, and looks up at the Kyuubi. Then at Sensei and Kushina and Naruto.

Then at him. Time freezes.

Oh, fuck.

That's not a shinigami. That's a daiyoukai. She's older than Sanyu and Amaya, the twins from the Uchiha Massacre in his old timeline, but she's missing the blue moon mark on her forehead and her facial stripes are purple rather than blue or red. She's almost blurred, covered by the shinigami funeral shroud, and even his Sharingan can't see past it. She has the shinigami's legendary knife between her teeth like normal, but even as he watches she pulls it out and places it in the bow of her obi and retrieves a mirror on a necklace. But she has the golden eyes and the pointed ears and, going by the steadily growing pulse of youki coming from her, all of the power.

The next two seconds go by as though in slow motion. With his Mangekyou Sharingan, he can see the instant when she turns to Sensei and Kushina, knife suddenly in her trembling right hand, as the Kyuubi opens its mouth to launch another Bijuudama when none of them have any chance to run. The substitute shinigami slashes down as something—and now he's starting to realize the limits of the Sharingan—explodes with white chakra light. He gets the image of the Kyuubi stretching like rubber burned into his mind's eye, along with Sensei and Kushina just dropping and Naruto's high-pitched wail of protest against, well, everything.

The whole world goes black.

...TRY AGAIN?