Warnings: Dark AU! Character death! Lots of Orochimaru hating on the characters' part too.
Disclaimer: Naruto (c) Kishimoto and probably a bunch of other companies whose names I don't know. No material profits being made here.

I.

Obito's hands were shaking when he reached into his pocket to take out his house keys. Tears obscured his vision, but he could tell that the corridor outside his apartment was empty. He was thankful no one was around to witness the sorry state he was in.

As he struggled to untangle the keys from a loose thread from his pants, he was hit with the unexpected booming noise of some neighbour hammering a nail into a wall. It had him jumping out of his skin like a rabbit and tossing his keys like they had burned him. They landed three feet away from his door with a muffled thud. The inconvenience of walking that further distance and picking them up, though, was more than he could handle at the moment. He dropped to his knees and tried to hold back a sob, telling himself that if he started now he would not be able to stop.

He berated himself for his weakness and punched the floor next to him with determination. With that same hand, he reached up and wiped the tears from his eyes and the snot from his nose. He took a deep breath to pull himself together and got back on his feet. He was too close to the safety of his home to break down now. He picked up his keys and put them to the lock. By the time the ugly brown carpet of the corridor was replaced with the green one of his home and the door was shut at his back, he had himself under control once again.

Obito was relieved to hear the water running in the bathroom. The last thing he wanted to do was to go out and spend another moment with the cold-hearted population of Konoha. Monsters, all of them. Obito could not understand how they could so calmly walk away from the afternoon show like nothing had happened. He managed not to remind himself of how disgusted he had felt when he saw his family directing the spectacle. The only family he cared about now was in the bathroom, two rooms over.

"Is that you, Obito?"

Obito bit his lower lip to hold back a relieved cry at finally hearing a friendly voice. He heard the squeak of the old tap being turned off and then silence, until a cautious figure emerged from the far door to his right. Minato was keeping a hand casually hidden behind his back and his face was guarded beneath the blank veneer of a professional ninja. His expression melted into concern, though, as he took in the sight of his once student and current housemate leaning against the front door, looking three shades paler than normal and with tear tracks down his cheeks. Obito was compulsively worrying his hands.

Like Obito, Minato must have just arrived from a mission. He was halfway out of his ANBU uniform, still wearing dirty and blood-stained dark pants and a form-fitting shirt.

"What happened?" he asked as he approached.

Obito wanted to walk up to him, but he found himself unable to let go of the support of the heavy door behind him. The answer to Minato's question was so horrible that he was afraid reality would ram the door down and contaminate the shelter of the apartment if he let go. So, taking in a deep breath, the nineteen-year-old jounin waited for the other to reach him.

"Obito?" Minato was demanding now.

A vague memory of the rare instances in which his teacher had scolded him for doing something wrong during an assignment when he was younger flittered through his mind, before Obito clamped it down. He shook his head. He did not want to think about the old days right now.

Obito did not know if he could bear to hear a description of what had happened in the sound of his own voice, but he was also aware that he had no choice.

"I... I was... Rin... in the square..." the Uchiha floundered. "Rin... Rin's dead, sensei."

Even though Minato had told him that they were equals on the day that Obito had been promoted to jounin, he had never stopped referring to the blond who had taught him everything he knew as "sensei". Minato was not exactly like a father to him, but neither was he just a friend. He was sensei.

Seeing the disbelief on the man's face now was devastating. It only compounded on Obito's own shock and added an extra layer of guilt. Obito had failed to follow Minato's teachings; he had failed to protect a friend and a teammate.

"It was madness outside today, sensei..." He said it like it was some sort of macabre confession and he had been the one to pull the lever that had taken the floor from under his tied up friend's feet. "They... and the ANBU... they killed her and two others..."

Obito took a deep breath and sniffled. He had not realised he had started crying again.

"ANBU? But Rin is... Why would they do that?"

"I don't know... No one explained what was going on, they just rounded up everyone in the main square to watch the show," Obito's voice cracked on the last words.

Minato was shocked. Being an ANBU captain himself, despite his special position at the Hokage's personal beck and call, he knew public displays were strictly against protocol. He also wondered who the other "they" that Obito had mentioned before were, but thought it was better not to ask. It was hard enough to go over the basic facts without making the young man relive every detail.

"It was a public execution?"

Minato did not say anything as Obito nodded a confirmation, shedding enough tears for both of them. His heart skipped a beat as Obito's very visible grief drove home the fact that, yes, this was happening, but he let himself go no further than that. He was a ninja and had experienced enough tragedy to be beyond breaking down from emotion.

He closed his eyes as he imagined sweet, innocent Rin dead, shuffled off in a plastic bag by strangers to some unknown location where her eyes would dry, her flesh rot and her smile be forgotten. It would be business as usual for the team that would clear her body of any traces that might reveal village secrets. They had never known her kindness. They would not care to preserve her or choose a spot that she would have liked in the cemetery.

"Was she..." Minato started to ask but then stopped, unsure of what it was he wanted to ask. Was she tortured? Was she aware? Was she given the proper respect? Was she caught doing something she should not have been doing? Did any of it matter or would thinking about it just make her death harder to bear? Nothing would bring back the lovely Rin.

Minato clenched his fists and told himself to move on. He could ask all the questions he wanted, but it would not change a thing. He could run down to ANBU headquarters and demand to be told about what had happened - he was the Hokage's Hand; he had the authority. But, deep down, he already knew the truth. He had killed plenty of people whom he suspected to be innocent himself. The truth was that the Hokage did as it pleased him and his ninja obeyed.

"Will there be a funeral?"

Obito's head snapped up to look at his teacher. He could not believe that his teacher was being so accepting. The resigned voice, the mournful look: did he care so little for Rin that it was that easy for him to put the horror of what had just happened behind him?

"A funeral? Is that all you have to say? Rin is dead, sensei! Rin!" he shouted. "Those bastards killed her!"

"Be careful what you say, Obito," Minato warned, speaking slowly and casting a wary eye in the direction of the single window in the room. "ANBU are at the Hokage's command and his commands are absolute. To every ninja."

Obito processed the words for a moment. His hands had gone back to shaking, but for a very different reason this time. He was doing his best not to punch through the wall in disbelief. This could not be his sensei.

He could not believe that Minato could be siding with the Hokage while, in his mind's eye, all Obito could see was Rin, scared and bound and gaze locked on his, until...

"You can't be serious!" Obito growled. "How can you... They killed Rin in cold blood!"

"Let go, Obito. You're a ninja, just as I am. There's no room for that kind of emotion in our lives unless you want to be branded a traitor and get yourself killed."

Minato's eyes were solid chips of ice as Obito looked at him. The Uchiha had always had trouble following that particular rule. Ninja were supposed to be emotionless tools, at the service of their village, their Hokage and their fellow ninja, but try as he might Obito had never been able to put aside his feelings. He always felt like he was killing part of himself and becoming less when he tried. He had always been driven by passion and it was what spurred him on to be better and do better. In time, his teacher had come to accept that and stopped trying to drill the book of regulations into him. Minato had praised him for forging his own path. To have that thrown at his face now was insulting.

"Better off dead than being any part of this!"

His body was aching from repressed fury, begging him to take action, while his mind told him that he should just take Minato's advice and accept the sorry spectacle he had witnessed on the public square in front of the Hokage Tower. His heart, on the other hand, was urging him to trash all the promises and oaths he had made throughout his career and do what he knew was right, even if it meant destroying the village that had birthed him in the process.

"I'm warning you, Obito. If anyone heard what you're saying right now, you'd be the one with the knife stuck in your gut," Minato said, eyes jumping between the door and the windows. He did not know how he could possibly help his student if any unwanted ears heard the commotion.

Obito could have punched him. Instead, he stomped out into the middle of the living room and took his anger out on the coffee table. He kicked it into the bookcase, and when the scrolls, magazines and weapon catalogues tumbling onto the ground failed to satisfy his need for chaos, he kicked the broken pieces. A bottle of oil to dim the metallic gleam of weapons shattered, splattering liquid black on the wall and the carpet. The wood of the coffee table splintered on his foot. He ripped all his favourite manga in a blind rage and it still was not enough.

When Minato was convinced it had gone on long enough, he grasped Obito's arm and pulled him back, making a point to hurt him with his tight grip and to twist the fool's shoulder until the articulation strained against its limit. He pushed him onto the couch and stared at him calmly.

"Have you had enough?"

Obito begged him with his eyes.

"They killed Rin!"

"I know," Minato consoled.

"They actually did it... she's... I'll never see her again..."

The dam Obito had been trying to contain finally broke. He had plenty of tears left to water his sorrow and enough fuel to keep his grief and his anger blazing for a long while. Minato felt like an intruder, watching his grown student break apart. He laid a hand on Obito's shoulder, but otherwise tried kept a distance. He eyed the mess Obito had made of the coffee table on the other side of the room and waited it out.

"They were there, you know. The military police." Obito's voice rose up, nasally and muffled. "The bastard running the show was my cousin Yashiro."

Minato glanced at Obito. His eyes were swollen and red, focused in the distance, lost in memories.

"I begged him to stop. I told him what they were doing was crazy... I shouted and pleaded and fought them, but in the end it was all for nothing. They went through with it anyway."

That little confession caught Minato's attention. He hoped Obito had been smart enough to keep his mouth in check. He had already lost two students. One more and he would be left all alone.

"This cousin, Yashiro... I see him often at the police station when I go in to work. I bought him a coffee once to be friendly. That bastard." Obito's mouth twisted like he had bit into something sour. "He disgusts me. And the rest of them. The lot of them disgust me. To think that I had been trying to be a part of that family..."

"Obito..." Minato sighed and sat down next to the Uchiha.

Obito's issues with his family were a recurring problem. He had moved in to stay with Minato when those issues had become too serious to keep under one roof and their living arrangements had soon become permanent. Minato had encouraged him to try to keep in touch with other members of his clan, if not his immediate family, but Obito had never made much progress. It did not look like he ever would now.

"They killed Rin," the Uchiha stated with a newfound strength and shifted to stare at Minato. "I'm going to kill Orochimaru."

Chills went down Minato spine. "That's crazy talk, Obito. Stop it."

"What about Naruto?" the black-haired young man continued. "Are you okay with what happened to him? Someone has to stop that snake! And with Rin gone and you and me being the only ones left of the team, I don't really have anything to lose any more, sensei."

"Trust me, Obito. You have a lot to lose."

Obito reached into the pouch by his belt and pulled out his police badge. He had little more authority than a rookie, but all badges looked the same to anyone outside the police force. "I could get into the Tower with this. I could say I'm on some errand, maybe even throw Yashiro's name around, and get close enough to the Hokage."

"Obito, put those thoughts out of your head. They will do you no good." Minato was getting seriously scared now. He had to keep his student's imagination from gaining momentum.

"It will just be a matter of putting him under the Sharingan and killing him," Obito argued before his eyes gained an even more feverish light. "Or... I could put him under the Sharingan and make him feel the pain he's causing others. Then I'd kill him. Yes, that would be better..." he drifted off into a mutter.

Minato shook him harshly until he was sure he had his student's attention. "You will do no such thing!"

With Minato's grounding gaze steadily locked on him, Obito's rational half surfaced once again and he let go of his badge. "Sensei... I've got to do something. This isn't right!"

Minato knew Obito did not stand a chance against Orochimaru. He tried to imagine what it would feel like if the blood still clinging to his clothes had belonged to Obito rather than some nameless chuunin, and shuddered. Orochimaru was a ruthless tyrant. He had played his cards well to gain the position of Hokage and Minato would rather not receive more orders to take out any more worthy ninjas of Konoha, especially not if they had his student's name on them.

Obito was right about one thing, though. In truth, they had little to lose. They had already sold their souls to the devil and he could not let Obito face the danger alone. His reckless student would get himself killed before any good could come of his actions.

"No, it's not," Minato agreed, "but if we are going to do anything, we are going to do it right. You will do as I say."

Obito's eyes widened and, had his Sharingan been active, they would have been spinning in fast circles to interpret all the nuances of his teacher's grimace.

"You mean you'll help me?"

"Yes."

Where Obito had been desperate before, now he was confident. With Minato's help, there was nothing they could not do. The snake who called himself Hokage had his days numbered.

The young Uchiha would see to it that no one else suffered because of him.