Author's Note: As every story on this site is a testament to wish fulfillment, this is mine; the only Naruto story I ever wanted to write. As inspired by Naruto's themes of unconditional love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and pacifism, my one wish would have been to see how these tender themes would have been handled in the extreme case of Team Minato, whose fragile lives were torn apart by the greatest darknesses of the shinobi world.

This is my attempt to tell the story that stayed in my heart, long after the war was over.

Additional Note: This story retains all canon up until the juubi's extraction from Obito.

A Cord of Three Strands

Chapter I

In Her Name

It was the height of battle, and then it was all undone.

He held his hand up to the sky, obscuring the moon. Rattled to his feeble core, Obito Uchiha considered what feelings had just transpired inside him… Feelings that even a teenage boy could see, plain as day.

Despite the mask that sealed his face and intentions away, was he really so transparent all this time?

Was it really all that futile?

All those years in silent, blood-soaked revolution, staying the course towards the finish line where his tormented soul would find peace. Years of enduring the nightmares, the flashbacks, the terrors he suppressed in dark and quiet hours, simply for the moment when all would be made right.

And here, at the finish line, his feet were cut from under him.

The end would justify the means. And here Obito lie, as he had always been: the orphaned son in a clan of prodigies that would never claim him; a heart so big that when darkness befell it he had taken the whole world straight to hell.

But that hell was a necessary evil, a waiting room he must subject the world unto while he procure the antidote. And any suffering he need release upon the weary world would be worth it for the cure he was crafting with his own two hands.

And in the moment of his rising, of becoming the juubi's jinchuriki, the same fate that he hoped to christen upon the world had visited him, and he found that what he had forced himself into believing he wanted most was a sham.

All those means would never erase the hell of loss. All those means would give rise to a pain that would birth a thousand Obitos. All these years of tireless walking, and he was never one step closer to peace.

There never was an end, all these wasted years.

When the juubi's power tried to rip him from his nature, he couldn't lose himself, as much of a waste as he was. And more importantly, he couldn't lose his friend, his sensei… He could never lose her.

Oh Rin! His thin line between light and darkness, her fragile body that held back all the pain of his world. Her purity and good-heartedness laid bare before him as Obito, in abject horror, fully realized what his actions had caused.

Precious Rin, visibly distressed when he and Kakashi called each other names.

And in her name, he had set fire to the world.

His body began trembling in emotions he had pillaged nations to keep at bay, but one unexpected feeling surged above all others as the weight crashed upon him.

Fear.

The cause to which he had so blindly devoted himself was over. Even if Madara's plan were to somehow succeed, the veil of pain which had colored his world was now gone and he saw things clearly… Things he had been too afraid to see for all of his adult life.

His dream was to protect. He displayed it as a boy by all the elderly he aided, all the sick he nursed. He valued the lives of those helpless to care for themselves. He would have been beaten black and blue before he would have allowed anyone to harm a gray hair on their lowly heads.

This was Obito Uchiha. The hope of Hokage wasn't for fame or glory, but rather, that he might be entrusted with the task of caring for everyone. And if any pride were garnered by his position, he would devastate his own body in defense of the world simply so his name might fall on her ears in passing, and she might love him.

Obito Uchiha's one true dream was the care of all.

Obito Uchiha's one devoted pursuit destroyed the entire world.

A broken man in body, a shattered man in heart, he considered everything he had done.

In pursuit of Tsuki no Me, he had slaughtered more than the whole of Konohagakure that he had so yearned to protect. Even now, their faces played out before him, the sounds of death, the names they uttered before they died.

And for the first time since he was a boy, Obito Uchiha was able to clearly see the world.

Not only was his life an absolute contradiction to that hope from all those years ago, there was no way left for atonement. Even if he could muster enough strength to use the Rinnegan for a noble end, redemption was seventeen years out of his reach. All those deaths, all this suffering! Whatever was beyond death, he could never find peace. He didn't deserve it. And if there was a place Rin was, he would desecrate her name by entering in. Even if an angel and a devil found one another, where would they live?

In this moment of clarity, at the end of all things, he realized a damnable truth: Tsuki no Me would never reunite him with Rin; and now, in death, hell would be too good for him and Heaven was a slum for Rin.

Tears streamed down his scarred and battered face. If he was finding himself again at the end, the only part of him that stayed true, that followed like a loyal dog, was the part of himself he most hated. Whether innocent or evil, he was still the hopeless failure that ruined everything he touched, and nothing in the world would ensure the destruction of a thing more than Obito willing it to succeed.

Kakashi appeared suddenly, kunai in hand, resolved to do what should have been done so long ago. But then, sensei was there. Sensei! Another casualty by his hand.

The two teammates began talking. And men who had moved in the darkness, taken on masks of Akatsuki and ANBU to hide their grief, lowered them to the ground.

Kakashi saw, to astounding pain, mannerisms before him that he believed to have been buried forever beneath the Kannabi Bridge.

Obito looked into the eye he saw in the mirror ever day of his young life and mournfully consoled himself in the fact that at least one aspect of who he was had been used for good, even if it had to be wholly divorced from his being to do so.

As sensei's son ran to meet the battle head-on, Obito's sadness was pulled from his confessions to Kakashi and channeled into another thought. How tragic that this boy, this hero, could so appallingly remind him of himself.

This orphan who dreamed of becoming Hokage, who desired nothing more than to protect others and find beauty in a life that had so horribly abused him. Their personalities, their hopes… Sensei's orphan had grown into a son that the whole village would claim as their own while Obito, the bastard, would die on the battlefield flanked by the best friend whom he had made his enemy and the master who was dead by his hand.

As the former teammates watched Naruto disappear into battle, Obito's self-loathing was interrupted by Kakashi's voice, tired and holding the deeper sadnesses of a stricken life,

"He does so remind me of you, Obito."

Obito only stared at the disappearing silhouette of their master's son, too burdened to say one thing more. After a weary pause, Kakashi continued, a considerate caution in his tone, but the deeper need to unburden himself of demons no other audience in the world, before this moment, would have fully understood. With a sigh, he lowered his eyes to the ground.

"And Sakura, she reminds me of Rin."

Minato, who had been staring away from them, turned and lowered his eyes towards his former pupils. The pause was long and still, so quiet that all three could hear the dust kicked up in battle begin to settle around them. Unexpectedly, Obito spoke first,

"Every girl in this world has a shadow of Rin," he spoke so gently it was just above a whisper, "And every place I've ever been is a backdrop to her ghost. I have walked this earth in silence, and in that silence, I could sometimes hear her voice."

No man moved. To many, the battlefield might seem an unlikely place to unburden one's most fragile treasures, but the most seasoned shinobi knew that nowhere else could such tenderness land in the midst of men and be handled with such reverence. And on the eve of this battle, which might mark the end of them all, the reunited Team Minato all understood that no others, living or dead, needed to speak of Rin Nohara in the way that they did.

"What does she say when you hear her?" Kakashi asked, gently.

There was a pause so long that Kakashi wondered if Obito might have passed. But when he answered, there was a surprising strength in his words.

"Do you remember that D-rank mission we did near the Nara lands, right before you made chuunin? It was for an elderly couple who had a farm near the forest's edge?"

Kakashi, who had an incredible memory even before his sharingan copied the world, strained to remember.

"Did someone lose a cat?"

Sensei huffed in quiet amusement while the corner of Obito's mouth curled upward ever so slightly.

"Forget the Hidden Leaf, we should have been the Hidden Cat Village." Obito said with a hint of levity to his aspirating voice.

His comment struck Kakashi unexpectedly, both comically and yet, so horribly sad. This was the kind of snide comment Obito used to make when complaining about cumbersome missions, an attitude that Kakashi secretly found to be both annoying and amusing. And here, years past his youthful agitation, he could see this light-hearted, comical aspect of his old friend come into total maturity. It was still so uniquely Obito, but with finesse and delivery that had progressed with his age. And Kakashi found it so odd that such a human trait could have so wholly developed in the menacing darkness behind his mask, in the ranks of terrorists and the blood of genocide.

How strange, how sad… But how honored he felt to see such a thing before he died. Oh, Obito… Wouldn't it have been a better life if we could have grown together?

Obito continued, "You were gone, looking for the cat. You felt burdened by Rin and me, so you struck out alone. I was mostly renovating the old man's barn while Rin tended to the old animals. They didn't have a lot of livestock but every one of their animals were sick. Rin spent all day with them, healing them and tending to their wounds. I remember thinking that if she would ever agree to marry me, we could take care of every old person and every old animal in Konoha between the two of us."

Obito, terrorist and warlord, smiled almost serenely for the first time in years, even as the tears bit his eyes,

"And I remember that day, all the love I had for her somehow tripled. I would have done anything if it could have just brought me one step closer to being able to love her more."

Both Kakashi and Minato stared at the ground. The pure, innocent Obito they knew and loved contrasted with the oceans of blood on the hands of the monster before them. The comparison would have chipped away at their ideals and their consciences if it wasn't all so acutely devastating.

"After exhausting herself with the animals all day, she insisted on helping in the barn. She was up on the rafters, patching a hole in the ceiling. She was still new to medical ninjutsu, so she didn't realize how quickly her chakra had been depleted. She blacked out for a few seconds. Never in my life had I been faster, and I caught her before she hit the ground."

His eyes wandered to a past further than the stars, his voice quieted and slowed.

"I… I held her closely, trembling. Even after she woke up, I couldn't loosen my grip on her. I don't know if the fall would have seriously injured her, but it didn't matter. I was so shaken by my desire to protect her, that even the idea that she might have been hurt and I couldn't save her from it destroyed me. When she woke I was grasping her to me, my heart beating out of my chest. I had… tears."

At the punctuation of the word, his own spilled over, and both his teammate and his sensei saw the same torn expression Rin had that moment in the barn, so many years ago.

"She touched my face. And for the first time, I didn't choke or pull away from her. I buried myself in her hair so she wouldn't see me crying, even though I knew her hands were wet. During this time, you came back with the cat, Kakashi. You walked in, told me to be a man and stop crying. Then you left. Normally, I would have defended myself or insulted you, but that day, I couldn't even pull myself together.

When I finally pulled away to look at her, she was beaming up at me through her weariness. She said to me, 'Obito, you have a heart full of love that motivates everything you do. And when all the world only glances at you, remember that I will always see you.'"

He stopped abruptly, overwhelmed by the memory he had played in his head for eighteen years and never spoken aloud. Kakashi, surprisingly, felt his own eyes sting. Obito's story had taken him back to Rin. After years of relying on his own memories of her that had become stale and anticipated, new life was shot into her by Obito's words and he could see her both anew and how she always had been. She was sunshine and optimism. She always saw the very best and believed so strongly that you found yourself believing, too. Rin was the last sun that set before his world went dark beneath the mask of the ANBU.

"Rin." Kakashi whispered before he even knew he had said it out loud.

Obito began stammering.

"I had to hold onto that memory above all of the others. I couldn't bear to think of other things she had told me… They always reminded me of how far I had drifted from who she believed in. When Naruto was talking to me, that's why I listened… Not because his words were that persuasive on their own merit, but because he was unearthing the truths of her words I had buried a million times since her death. She believed I could be Hokage, she didn't want me to hide my wounds because…

Because she was always watching me! Oh God, Kakashi, sensei… Can she see me now? Can she see what I've become? What I did in her name? I deserve to rot in hell for the things that I've done!"

Obito gasped and shuddered with crushing grief.

Sensei turned his back completely and hung his head down low, while Kakashi brought his hand to cover his own heavy face as Obito cried.

He was right.

And there was nothing either man could say that could alleviate the weight that was crushing him right now. That was the most damnable part of it all.

Suddenly, the wind changed, and in a second, Kakashi was on his feet as Minato fell into ready stance. They both fell in defense in front of Obito, who was so weak all he could do was shift his swollen eyes towards the men who had been both his greatest allies and enemies.

Obito shook his sadness, although it threatened to consume him in a way the juubi never could. If he had any hope of ever justifying Rin or bringing a shred of hope to all the despair he had perpetuated, he would have to be alert to see what might still be needed of him.

The wind whipped up a cloud of dust in front of them, and Kakashi held stiff in a posture that last Obito remembered trembled in a much younger, more compact body.

He was ripped from his thoughts as he saw a tiny silhouette slowly walking through the dust storm.

Before what little chakra he had left registered a single thing about the oncoming threat,

before he could make out the details of the body or color of the clothing,

before he could be further distressed by the way Kakashi's defense suddenly dropped or by the fervor in which sensei snapped his head back to look at Obito…

and before the auburn hair, whipping wildly,

before his sharingan flared, zeroing in on the violet markings of her face or the brown softness of her large eyes, Obito knew.

He knew beyond ninjutsu or genjutsu or senjutsu.

In his heart, the one so large, the one baptized in darkness and resurrected in shame, the one beating against his chest so hard right now that it deafened his ears to Kakashi's words,

he knew.

With the last ounce of strength in his body, he bolted upright as she walked into view in front of them, eyes blank and unfamiliar.

He would have known her if he was blind.

Rin!