The mask shatters, and he sees you. He sees you as you've been seeing him for years and you see him seeing you; your eye in your head and your eye in his head; you see double. You see both sides.
You feel.
You feel his exhaustion, his bone-deep shock, the nausea, the horror, the denial, the sinkhole of his despair.
"You can call me by that name if you want. To me, it means nothing."
You feel vindicated. See him struggle, see his eyes impossibly wide (feel the tears come, stinging and prickling, bloody red and salty clear, but they're his, now, and not yours anymore). Feel his stomach heave. You can nearly taste the bile. Good. Let him break. It's been a long, long time coming.
His gaze wavers, and drops.
Then he looks back up at you, a decade and a half younger in an instant. "Did you survive?"
And obviously, you did.
"And if you were alive, how come until now—"
Your survival isn't the point. It hardly matters at all, except that now you may have a chance to fix things yourself. Fix this world. Permanently. But in this moment, you just want to hurt him. You want to bury the knife in his belly and twist and twist and twist.
"If you really want to know why…" and they're hanging on your every word. They all want to know, but you just want to bring Kakashi crashing down—"It's because you let Rin die." And oh, you remember her last breath. You remember how it killed you, too. Or at least, who you used to be. You see him falter. You feel his world start to shatter.
"Don't be hasty. And don't make that face, Kakashi—"
Kakashi's voice is scraped raw. You've hit him hard. "Aren't you going to blame me?"
"It's pointless to blame this useless reality. I'm not interested in this world, since it's going to disappear." You're going to tear it into pieces, burn it to ash, and rebuild it in silence and serenity. Kakashi is shivering, shutting his eyes against the perverted truth of his world.
You've got nothing left to say to them. You send fire their way instead. As expected, Naruto lunges in to defend Gai and Kakashi, and then—there, from the ground, Madara rises again. Suggests you're having fun.
You haven't had a moment of fun since your world was buried under a hundred tons of rubble.
There's a tug on your Sharingan, then, and you turn to meet Kakashi's gaze once again. He still doesn't understand. He still has no clue.
So you remember the pain. You bring it screaming to the fore; inexorable pressure, the first taste of numbness, paralysis; relief and silence only just out of reach. The blood pooling around your organs. The grind of your bones into your muscles and nerves. The pressure. The pressure in your skull, and the taste of death itself sliding into your mouth. You remember it at him, and you smother him with it. And of course he wavers more. You see how it saps his dwindling strength. How he can't stand it. Not the way you did. No, you survived that, and a hell of a lot more, besides.
Something in him is begging. Pleading weakly with you to stop this (this means all of this; the pain, the blood, the hate, your great and terrible plans)—and of course you won't. You'll never stop.
You survived—it doesn't matter, though. You lived, you fought, you wanted. You wanted to come back to her. To her, to him, and to them.
Rin shone in your mind. She was brilliant. She was home, and safety, and everything you needed to survive for. To come home for. To move, though you were a shaking, bleeding, broken thing. To eat, though it was agony from start to end. To breathe, around a crushed ribcage, lungs punctured in six places. To fight. Fight to live, fight to stand, fight to tear this abomination of an existence to the ground and finally fucking grind it underfoot.
So you could be with her again. So you could finally tell her.
(Worse than trash)
Now you hurl your chakra toward his Sharingan with laserlike precision; projecting down through the pupil; gripping the retina, sliding up the nerve and into Kakashi's brain. He can't block a genjutsu cast by his "own" eye, now, can he? So with a jerk, the two of you slip away from the conscious world, and down into the prison of your mind.
It's stiller and quieter here, no movement but your bodies, no sound but your breathing and the echoes of those breaths.
And Kakashi, still as stone.
And his shoulders hang now. His fighting stance is lowered, and grief pours off him in waves. It's at once both delicious and sickening. You've dreamed of this revenge for years, imagined crushing this lying Konoha bastard (bastard you trusted, gave everything—everything—for). Your whole right side aches just thinking about it. And the rage you've nurtured like a parasite at the very core of you, ah, that burns hot and sure.
"You let Rin die." You say it again, loud and damning in the silence. And each word hits him like a sledgehammer, breaking him down and down until he's driven to his knees.
"Obito," Kakashi croaks, and you move forward. You grip the fabric of his mask in your hand and you tear it away.
"You took my mask away, Kakashi," you say softly, tracing the lines of his face with your mismatched eyes, cataloguing the plain features, the scars on his pale skin, this mouth, twisted in grief, that you've never seen before, "I'm just evening the score." And he doesn't resist—he lets you do as you wish.
You wonder if he'd let you kill him. Would he fight then? If you had your hands around his neck? A kunai in his gut? Your fire charring him to greasy ash? Would he betray his village the way he betrayed you? Deprive them of one of their precious ninja tools, and just roll over and die?
You would kill him. He's more than earned it. But for reasons you've accepted—and some you really, really haven't—you won't. And you refuse, absolutely refuse to consider the alternative; that when the chips are down, you might find that you can't.
That would hardly be a mercy to him, though.
"I can't have her anymore," you find yourself saying, "but I have you." And he blinks up at you and it's sad, really, the way hope and horror mingle in his eyes. "And when we go into that peaceful darkness all together, you'll be mine. Just like this." For eternity. You'll bind him in his failure, shackle him with his meaningless words. Tie him to you with your battered face as a constant reminder of just how good his word is.
No free will. What would that be like? You do wonder often; how different would it be from being a ninja, in the end—slave to duty or slave to a single mind? But you'd be better than the world they all know. You'd be compassionate. You've had to kill to be kind. That sweet blissful dark would mean peace in the end. You're certain. You're certain.
There'd be no peace for Kakashi, though. His fate lies in hell right alongside you.
Inside this genjutsu, Kakashi moves however you move him without a hint of the usual resistance. It's like posturing a child's doll. Everything about him is yielding. Surrendered. Defeated. So very unlike him. He kneels in front of you; still, lax. Nothing.
"Even if I let you fight, you wouldn't, would you, Kakashi?" and you feel his answer before you hear it. You loosen your hold on his autonomy a little. You're curious.
"No," he says, his voice hoarse and breaking. He presses his forehead against your thigh—and you stiffen—and his eyes close. "No, I wouldn't".
And your hand knots into his silver hair, damp with sweat. And it might tremble a little. You might feel a lump in your throat. "Why."
"Because I'm tired," he whispers. "I'm so tired, Obito—do you know? I tried to save her. I swear I did."
And here the rage bites you again and you jerk his head back, tugging his hair at the roots. And it's punched out of your throat like those screams, years ago, when your muscles spasmed and wrenched around your battered bones. "But you didn't, Kakashi. You failed her, and me, and everyfuckingone, don't you give me that. I was there. I saw."
Yes, there, that sharp inhale. That crumpling of his face—pure anguish. "You…"
"I saw you come too late. I saw the light leave her eyes. I saw her die."
"How—I'd have—"
You yank him closer now, using your free hand to press your thumb against his Sharingan eye (nevermind that it hurts you both, that he makes a pained sound and his hands twitch). "How do you think?!" You were underground, spine and limbs in torturous braces. You couldn't run to her. Couldn't save her yourself. Oh, how you'd screamed. How you'd wept. And you were met with nothing but cold stone and Madara's basilisk stare for all your pain.
Never again.
No one will suffer like that again. Nobody will die for war or conflict again. You'll see to it.
And then, fully outside of your control, despite your influence, Kakashi's hands have found their way to your thighs. You hear a sharp gasp—and you realize an instant later that it came from you. Kakashi's grip tightens, and he holds himself against you of his own free will. He wants to be here. He wants something from you, too. You tell yourself it's only natural, your reaction now; hardly fair, really, how Kakashi is exhaling these shuddering, hot puffs of air there, so high up your leg. You think of Rin for a moment; how you'd dreamed of her there, much the same. Years and lifetimes ago, just a pubescent boy in his bedroom and imagining her mouth on you, her eyes twinkling up at you as she took you in—and how, some nights, it wasn't your darling Rin with her shining eyes and her lush brown hair, but instead bored-looking dark eyes. The shock of silver hair. A mouth you'd never actually seen, only imagined—one that might tease and torture instead of sweetly pleasing.
And now, inside your own illusion, despite the nerve damage and the long rehabilitation, now and here with that same silver head right there, you're starting to get hard. And Kakashi knows.
And Kakashi moans, deep and low in his throat and buries his face there between your legs, a suddenly feral, hungry surge. He has his mouth on you through your pants, damp heat coming through the fabric. And the blood rushes south, and you press forward against him, a harsh exhale drawn out of you like poison from a wound.
Getting hard always hurts at first, and it has always hurt since the rocks fell. But you've learned to like it, the cramping pain in your most intimate place. It's a reminder that even pleasure hurts in a world like this one. You take the pain, put it into a curl of your lip that warps your scarred right face. You twist your grip in his hair, and his hands slide up immediately, what a good boy, to unfasten your pants and guide you out. Kakashi looks up at you with your own eye, seated next to his own, and he places his tongue on the tip of your dick.
And he projects please, thank you, always wanted—always imagined— at you and come back to me please can't lose you again won't lose you to this and a desperate need to taste, smell, show me you're real Obito, please, please… and he is hard too, painfully so, even causing you to throb in sympathy. His hands are on you, though, and you know suddenly that he won't touch himself. That he wants this to hurt, too. Kakashi parts his lips.
It's clearly not his first time, you are coming to realize, but you don't need to ask; he's broadcasting snippets of memory to you both as he goes through a familiar motion. "I'm sorry," he murmurs against your shaft, mouthing down to the very root of you as his hand begins to work higher up. "I'm so fucking sorry, Obito," and sure, there are some tears, but he has your hips stuttering, the way he's working you now, lips to the underside of your cock, tongue lapping at your balls. It's so good. It's like nothing else you've had.
"Damn you, Hatake," you hiss—because how can you love and hate someone so much at the same time? You want to kiss his eyelids. You want to rip out his throat. He's drawn back now, licking the blurt of pre-come as it trails down from your slit. You want your come all over his face. You want your cock in that pink mouth, suffocating him.
"Sorry," comes out harshly one more time before he takes you into his mouth fully, inhaling sharp through his nose, hollowing his cheeks—doing a beautiful job, really, because you begin to slip. The walls of your genjutsu fluctuate, expanding and collapsing and bringing flashes of three worlds—the stalemated battle in the real world, the mist and shade of Kamui, and here, this private world you've spun that's anchored by both your eyes. Your chin tucks to your chest and you exhale as you feel the back of Kakashi's throat bumping rhythmically against your dickhead. Your hips drive in, fucking his face as he groans and clutches at your body harder and takes it like he can't get enough.
And I've loved you slips from his mind to yours.
And you can't hold on—
And I wanted you to be at peace, as he swallows you down while you come and you curl up over him, tugging his hair, gripping his shoulder where it meets his neck. And you cry out, and huff, and growl, and it breaks.
The illusion breaks like a snapped rubber band and you're suddenly standing on the promontory again, the statue of the Outer Path bellowing its anguished roar behind you. And Kakashi's twenty feet away—propped up by Gai and only your Sharingan—not your Rinnegan—picks up the minor sway in his posture, the little phantom twitch at the crotch of his pants. But his eyes meet yours and hold. He has questions; he wants to know.
You're back now; Madara chiding you for being too hasty (with an all-too-knowing look on his face), Naruto still crackling with power (more fuel for your jutsu; don't forget that), the world on the precipice in the last breath of calm before the storm descends.
"Obito, what happened to you? Why did you team up with him?!" Kakashi is rallying admirably, still willing to try, willing to fight for you.
Did I …die?
You tell him.
Where am…I?
You show him.
Kakashi tries to stand firm, tries to school his masked face into fierce resolve again.
"We'll stop you. We have to."
You'll try, you think, building up your chakra and focusing your eyes.
