Uchiha Obito tore the world apart to build a new dream.

He ripped a demon from the heart of the moon to dissolve reality itself.

He sold his heart, mind, and soul to the devil, and all he asked for was utopia in return. For a chance to move forward. To forget.

But in this, as in all things, he was a failure.

The Juubi was fighting them. His and Madara's control on it, while absolute when the beast was in its underdeveloped form, waned with every passing moment as it absorbed and refined energy, and grew and grew. They would have to make a decision soon.

The Moon's Eye Plan was all he'd dreamed of for eighteen long years. A final end and the promise of a new beginning. A chance to forget the loss, the pain—all of it. It was all finally within his grasp. And Madara wanted him to die for it. To resurrect him and sacrifice his own life in the process. Obito had played along for as long as he possibly could. The army below was reorganizing. Naruto had refused him yet again. There'd be no convincing them—any of them, it seemed—to just wait and see.

It seemed that the only way out was through. He'd have to become the Juubi's Jinchuuriki himself, Madara be damned, and there wasn't much time left before neither of them would be able to seal the beast into themselves and all would be lost. He focused his energy inward, letting his chakra mingle with the yawning chasm of the monster's, the thin stalks connecting his body with its immense bulk suddenly sprouting branches like the roots of a tree. It was like staring into an abyss. He shivered despite himself and prepared to take the plunge, calling to mind the series of seals he'd committed to memory.

"You always were stupid," Madara declared from beside him.

Obito turned his head sharply, but before he could respond, Madara's eyes flashed, and Obito felt a wave of gut-deep horror as his body went utterly still. He could feel chakra warping his vision, forcing his hand. Madara's genjutsu swallowed him entirely. His mind buckled under the thick, overpowering miasma of Madara's power, and, despite fighting against it with every ounce of power he had, his hands began to move, puppetlike, through the series of seals that would begin the Rinne Tensei jutsu.

The wind was whipping, screaming shrill, and above the sound of it, Madara gloated. "What did I tell you about haste, you idiot child?" Madara's smile widened slowly and took on a cruel edge. "I've been playing this game for decades before you were born. You showed your hand far too early."

The Juubi bucked and thrashed under his feet, and Obito's blood pounded in his ears. Madara's power was like fingers tightening across his throat, but the connection of Hashirama's cells to the Juubi's body remained. He could take the plunge, if only he had the will. He may never have been the pride of his clan, may never have had the power to stand on equal footing with Uchiha Madara, but he was an Uchiha nevertheless. So, pushing all his energy into his one Sharingan, going a little lightheaded with the strain of it, Obito dug in his heels and forced back against the oppressive chakra. If he had one thing, one scant advantage, it was his own living body and Madara's reluctance to see it harmed, at least until he could be revived completely. But his hands were still forming the seals. His stolen Rinnegan throbbed in his eye-socket, ready to act. His pulse pounded in his ears. There wasn't time to become the Jinchuuriki. There wasn't time to do anything but throw his chakra at the beast and hope and hope—

Infinite Tsukuyomi descended on the world without warning. Obito had blinked, and in the blinking of his eyes felt a pull, a deep, soul-sucking draw on his chakra that weakened his knees, then, as his eyes opened again, he saw a world painted red.

The sky glowed faintly, a dark bloody red in the light of a red, red moon. Across the battlefield, all was suddenly still and silent; the amassed shinobi army was, to a man, sitting still on the ground, eyes cast skyward, reflecting the crimson light. Squinting down, he saw Uzumaki Naruto in the midst of the squadron, the bright blaze of his chakra guttered down to a faint ember-like glow like the rest of them. He saw Hatake Kakashi—and ignored the slight surge of bile that came with looking at that face—twitching minutely, fingers, wrists, feet and neck. But he sat like the rest. The red washed out the details of his eyes and bled into his hair. The land around them was cast in monochrome, transformed into an utterly alien landscape in the space of a moment. A gust of wind swirled by, dusty and cool, and Obito wondered, is what victory feels like?

The Juubi sat still, a mountain of disorganized tissue, the energy streaming from its huge eye pulsing like a heartbeat. Madara—the dead husk that Madara inhabited, anyway—was immobile, staring up vacantly with his mouth slack like everyone else below. The slightest smile tugged at the corner of Obito's mouth. Finally.

He took another look around at reality, arrested as it was now. Ended. Perfect. His fingers reached back to brush against the stalk of wood-and-tissue that connected the Juubi to his nervous system. The exterior was smooth and continuous, but within the Juubi's flesh and into Obito's body, it branched deep, coating nerves and plunging into ganglia, mingling synapses and chakra flow alike. Obito envisioned a web of roots, striving into the layers and crevices of his brain. Dimly he felt a backlash of emotion, some of the mindless anger and confusion that must surely have been coming from the Juubi itself. He accepted it too, letting it swirl in his gut for a moment.

It was now that he finally stood on the edge, marveling that he'd truly subjugated the world and was on the verge of getting the only thing that he had wanted for eighteen years, that he felt a twinge of apprehension. This was a step into the unknown, and as much as he feared it, he hungered for it with everything he had. Obito let his hand fall from the stalk in his neck, breathed deep in the twilight of the world he knew and loathed, and looked skyward until the red, red moon was the only thing he could see.

He could hear a girl's voice singing.

He knew the melody if he thought back hard enough; it was a simple children's song about a firefly with a rich father, and he remembered hot summer afternoons by the river, honouring the dead with floating paper lanterns, gorging on okonomiyaki and dango and fire-roasted squid, watching the fireflies take wing amidst embers as evening descended on the woods.

He remembered his festival yukata had itched horribly, and in that remembering he found himself scratching at his arms, and at his back. Obito looked down, and he was wearing the severe black and navy blue thing that he'd hated so, the "festive" attire of the austere Uchiha men. He looked up, and the sky was deep, starry blue above him, and fiery oranges and reds toward the horizon. The trees were tall and thick, parting around the width of a river.

They passed a few children with their families. Obito recognized the Third Hokage with his young son, and his eyes caught sight of a little boy with a shock of bright silver hair, borne giggling on the shoulders of a tall man who could only be his father.

His heart caught in his throat when he saw the singer, and for a long time his mind grappled, struggling, with why. It was a girl perched on a rock that jutted into the river's slow current. Her yukata was a lush green and her hair a rich brown. She sang softly, ostensibly to herself, yet the sound carried sweet and clear to Obito's ears.

Over there the water is bitter,

But here the water is sweet!

Come, come, come, firefly!

She reached down to the water, a lit paper lantern in hand. Her arms were short and thin, and she had to press her small body flat against the rock to make the lantern touch the surface. Orange light reflected back from the dark river, and cast her face in a warm, inviting light. Fireflies danced lazily above her head like a natural halo.

Obito felt an intense urge to call her by name, but he found that he didn't know what that name was. But he glanced at her delicate wrists, the curve of her neck, and he wondered if that strange, curling, near-nauseous feeling might be what the bigger kids called a crush. She was pretty—lovely, really—with her big eyes and her slightly sad half-smile—he really wanted to go over and say hello.

Obito took one step in her direction, then felt a vicious jerk on his right arm. He turned and looked up, and up to see his father's stern, scowling face looking back down at him.

"Don't get distracted, boy. I have to meet some of the other officers over there," he said, tossing his chin in the direction of some park benches beyond the food stalls.

Obito's sister, Hisako, held firmly in their father's other arm, giggled, reaching her arms up toward the fireflies. "'taru!" she cried, not quite three years old and enjoying being able to mangle a new word. Obito followed his father dutifully, but he craned his neck so he could continue to watch the little brown-haired girl as long as he possibly could. He saw her get to her feet and go running back into her parents' waiting arms.

The lantern had joined the others and was now floating downriver in Obito's direction. With one squinting glance back over his shoulder, he made out the characters, black against the glowing paper, which read Nohara.

Obito smiled a little to himself. He'd have to remember that name.

Hisako had drowned in that same river on the eve of her third birthday.

Obito had killed his father himself.

Nohara Rin was dead.

Rin was dead.

And Kakashi had—

Rin was dead.

Obito awoke in the dark of his bedroom, his heart hammering in his chest. Outside his window, the moon was high in the sky, though it and most of the stars were obscured by a thin film of cloud. His breath was loud and harsh in the dark, and the only other sounds were the faint scratching of the family cat using its litter-box, and the quiet drip, drip of the leaky faucet in the bathroom down the hall.

As he gulped for air, he tried to remember what had startled him out of sleep so abruptly, but, as with most dreams, the memory faded more and more with each passing moment.

Tomorrow was to be his first day at the Academy. He'd dreamed of the day ever since he could say the word ninja; he was going to do his clan proud and become the first Uchiha Hokage. People would look to him in admiration. He'd be the strongest shinobi since the Sage of Six Paths. A hero. A new legend.

But first, he had to get through his first day. And just then, with his hands shaking and a lingering disquiet thrumming through him, he got the feeling it wouldn't be as easy as he'd imagined.

Just then, for a fraction of a second, the moon seemed very, very red.

It was incomplete.

It was unstable.

And 'not good enough' just didn't manage to fully describe the extent of failure that Obito felt then, deeper than his bones and heavier than lead. And he didn't know—

He shouldn't have spent so much time getting Old Man Akimichi up the stairs to his apartment that morning. He should have gotten up earlier. He should have moved faster—but instead here he was, running hard until his lungs felt raw, dirty and sweating through the new clothes his father had grudgingly bought for his first day.

Obito was late, and he ran and ran as though something was chasing him. He had to make it to the Academy on time, or—

This dream was never yours to make.

You gullible fool.

He skidded round the corner, gasping for breath, and out onto the main street. To his dismay, he heard the voices and soon saw the crowd of new Academy recruits, high pitched and laughing—

They're just kids

We're sending them to their deaths

And he saw their faces, their proud, smiling faces, and he hurried forward

to see them drenched in blood

faces, hands,

the despair of a life at war

to join them, to finally start his journey toward becoming the greatest ninja in a generation. Obito was so excited; he only hoped he wasn't too late.

He caught up to them, panting, and the silver-haired kid in the half-mask had to make a snide comment, had to do his part to add to Obito's already considerable embarrassment. Obito turned to scowl at him when a pair of small, delicate hands—long-fingered and with thin white little wrists—thrust a parcel in his direction, with all the enrollment documents, all the things to take home to his dad, and Obito was stunned for a second; amazed that anyone would think to do something so kind just for him. He looked at the good Samaritan, and he swore his heart skipped a beat.

It was the Nohara girl from before, the one wreathed in candlelight and fireflies. It was

Rin

(and blood, a river of blood, blood raining down from above)

Rin

(a shattered vase, scattered flowers, a demon's roar)

Rin

(war, destruction, despair)

And Nohara Rin—he knew her now—smiled, bright as the sun. Obito's world seemed to tilt on its axis, awash in a strange, pervasive kind of bliss. She giggled a little, and that was when Obito noticed the reddish foam building in the corners of her mouth. She started to speak, and Obito watched in horror as blood bubbled out of her mouth and all down her front. He glanced down, following the path of the blood until his eyes fixed on something that made his blood run cold. There were screams now, echoing like background noise, and the sky turned darker and darker and dark, wet red began to spread outward from Rin's chest. From a hole that widened and widened until the white of her shattered ribs stood out brightg amidst the rest of the gore. Obito heard the whimper of a small, terrified child, only belatedly realizing that that child was him. Deep darkness was closing in. With a flicker like a candle in breeze, the sun went out. And Rin was laughing. Rin was smiling. Rin was bleeding out; pale and frail and dying. Her eyes were dead and flat, but her laughter didn't end. All the children laughed, then, laughed with milked-over eyes and blue lips and a thousand bleeding wounds. Obito sank to his knees, bringing his shaking hands up to cover his ears, his eyes—whatever he could. Terror paralyzed him though he wanted so desperately to run. And the moon rose, peering down like an immense eye, and that eye burned grim, certain red.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck rose suddenly, a cold shock yanking him out of his terrified stupor. Obito knew then, was certain beyond any doubt, that he'd failed somehow.

How could it have

"Haste and an incomplete jutsu," Rin said, "Cowardice and deceit." Obito looked up from the false safety of his hands, and Rin stood over him, decomposing before his eyes with a smell that make him gag.

"Rin—" Obito pleaded, eyes watering.

"Remember now?" she said, her voice croaking sweetly, her flesh graying and pulling and coming off in strips, "All the things you did, all the people you destroyed?"

"Please, please—"

This isn't my dream

"Did you really think there'd be a happy ending for a murderer like you? Did you think I'd be proud of you for what you've done? Welcome you with open arms?" She was bleeding skeleton with hair at this point, eyes rolling blind in their sockets as they reached for his throat. "Who could love a monster like that? Like you?"

Obito clung stupidly to the white apron around her hips, sobbing and begging incoherently, stunned at how real the fabric felt, familiar in the very midst of his undoing.

"In a dream, everything goes the way you want," Rin rasped, crumbling to mold and dirt all over him, dust raining down on his head and his hands, "In a dream, the dead can come back to life." Suddenly, Obito heard a deep rumble overhead, the deeply entrenched dread slamming through him as, impossibly, rocks began to rain down on him from above.

Then his body was awash with pain, without any sweet numb paralyis, without the mercy of shock—just live-wire pain over every last inch of him, crushing him while fear stunned him into silence.

And Rin was dust in the air.

And he heard from everywhere around him a demon's ghastly roar—and Madara's laughter, mocking and taunting.