Obito Uchiha is dead.
Obito Uchiha is alive.
Both of the above statements are true, and for the second time in his life, Obito finds himself waking up when he knows he should have died.
(It makes him want to laugh, because really, what kind of luck does he have that makes death pass over him twice?)
People are shuffling around him, moving around the room he is in. Soft humming reaches his ears from one of the people in the room and Obito almost twitches. Almost, because he is a trained shinobi and shinobi don't twitch.
Even if they can't stand unneeded sounds.
(He hates useless sounds almost as much as he hates not knowing what is going on.)
Quickly assessing his condition, and finding nothing that would hinder him from escaping where ever the hell he is, Obito slowly opens his eyes.
To find himself staying at the roof of a tent.
Obito blinks, once, twice.
What the fuck? He thinks staring at the multicoloured fabric that hangs above him.
"What the fuck?" He finds himself saying out loud, staring in distaste at the swirled red and orange that make up the roof of the tent.
Why the fuck is he in a tent? He wonders, Konoha, hell, any shinobi village would have either killed him for what he had done or would have tried to hold him captive. Kakashi and his brats were possibly the only ones that held any sympathy for him, but hell if they would be able to stop the will of five shinobi villages.
So either this is a genjutsu or someone had whisked him away again and placed him in a garishly decorated tent of all things.
Activating his Sharingan quickly dismisses the idea that he had been placed in a genjutsu. Which leaves option number two.
Obito decides then that he's going to kill whoever interrupted his trip to the after life and then possibly become a hermit.
He really doesn't want to play brainwashed weapon of mass destruction again. So he sits up, startling the other two people in the tent that had been walking over to him. He knows his right eye is red, Sharingan spinning angrily and both of the other occupants of the room, a man and a woman, screech as they catch sight of his eye.
Obito can't blame them, the Sharingan is as threatening as it is beautiful. And judging by the fact he can actually see through his left eye Obito is willing to bet he still has Nagato's Rinnegan stuck in his left eye socket.
Obito grins, wild and dangerous, looking every bit the wanted murderer he was. The two in front of him shiver.
Good, Obito thinks, Fear inspires weakness. Weakness makes getting answers easier.
"Where am I?" Obito demands. The two in front of him pale when he speaks, looking at each other with a mix of fear and confusion in their eyes.
The woman says something to him and Obito nearly snarls.
Don't these people speak Japanese?
The man looks at Obito curiously and Obito levels a glare at him, daring him to speak.
The man steps forward, cautious despite his curiosity, and says something in the same gibberish language that the woman was speaking.
Obito does snarl then, and the man takes several steps back.
What the fuck are they saying?
It could be a code, Obito thinks, but then why would they try to communicate with him in it? It makes no sense. Which must mean it's a different language then.
Obito groans, great, fucking great, he's been kidnapped by people who don't fucking speak the only language he knows.
Obito toys with the idea of just killing them all and leaving. But chances are that if the people in the tent with him don't speak Japanese then the others outside wouldn't either. It was entirely possible he was somewhere where no one spoke the only language he knows.
So his best bet is to play nice and hope they are willing to teach him how to speak whatever language they are talking in.
The woman flees the tent after a tense minute of silence between the three of them.
Obito doesn't expect her to come back.
The man looks at him, nervousness and curiosity warring on his face, eventually he says something to Obito that Obito doesn't understand because it's an entirely different language and Obito glares at him.
The man shuts up after that.
To Obito's surprise, the woman does come back, bringing with her a man that could have been mistaken for an Uchiha if it weren't for his garish pink hair.
Obito narrows his eyes when the man gives him a what would have been a comforting smile if Obito was still thirteen and not a mass murderer.
As it is it just makes the man with pink hair seem suspicious to Obito.
"Are you alright?" The man asks, and thank fuck, he's actually speaking a language Obito can understand.
"Where am I?" Obito asks instead of answering the mans question, because fuck if Obito is going to let the man have more know more about him than he wants him to.
The man smiles again, but this time there is steel behind it. As if the man is finally realizing Obito is a threat.
"Florence," The man says, "Italy." And Obito has no idea where the fuck those places are.
He tells the man as much and the man laughs.
"It's not everyday you meet someone who doesn't know where Italy is," The man muses, staring at Obito with open curiosity, "What's your name young man?"
Obito snorts, he hasn't been a young man in twenty years. He's thirty five for god's sake.
"Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine," Obito challenges, because he has always been a defiant little shit and of the man in front of him doesn't know who he is just by looking at Obito's face then it is entirely possible that he is somewhere outside the Elemental Nations.
Which could be a blessing in disguise but really Obito thinks it could lead to one big mess.
"Nico," The man says, and sure, it's an odd name but not as odd as some of the names Obito has heard over the years.
"Obito," Obito says, leaving his last name out purposely. He may have the Sharingan but considering what he has done Obito doesn't really think he should consider himself an Uchiha anymore.
"Well Obito," Nico says, "Mind telling me why your eye is red?"
"Genetics," Obito replies, letting his Sharingan fade away and taking a small amount of amusement from the shocked looks the others in the room give him.
Cocking his head to the side Obito grins.
"What?" He asks, "Never seen eyes do that before?"
"No," Nico says, "I can't say I have." But the man looks excited, as if he has found something he can use.
Leering at Obito, because the only thing that the look on Nico's face can be called, Nico asks him a question that makes Obito want to laugh.
"Obito," Nico says, "How would you like to join our circus?"
Obito winds up joining a fucking circus.
He is not happy about it. But Nico had offered to teach him the language, Italian it was called, that the others were speaking. Apparently the circus recruited from all over so there were a variety of languages Obito could learn while he was there.
It was an opportunity Obito knew that he couldn't pass up. Especially when his suspicions were confirmed and it came to light that he was no where in the Elemental Nations.
So Obito joined the circus officially as one of the resident acrobats, because the one he was replacing had had an accident and wound up hospitalized.
Unofficially, he was the resident freak, turning his Sharingan on and keeping it on to attract customers.
If any of his clan saw him using the Sharingan the way he was using it they would rip his eyes out. Obito would let them.
Because seriously, fuck his life.