AN: So. Months ago, during chapter 612 of the Naruto manga, this started out small, like 'trope bingo fill' small. And then I wrote a bit too much, making this the fic that ate my other fics.
(Overall disclaimer: Don't own a thing, other than the obvious candidates of storytelling. Some swearing and graphic descriptions.)
I remember back, in the beginning
I remember the years all too well
I remember dreams of a better world
And I remember what they did to me
(Remember – In This Moment)
-v-
CHAPTER 1: (was a legacy, in more ways than one.)
-v-
'Obito…what you left to me in the past is still here,' Kakashi's words resonate with a renewed strength, fist clenched and eyes not without a glint of calculation, 'what I can do now is protect my comrades!'
Kakashi, ever the scarecrow. The same mantra, from years in the past to a darker present. Icy disgust on Obito's part is the least of it, but. There's so much to be accomplished in so little time. Madara gave him orders to distract, and Obito's days of insubordination have long passed.
And so:
Obito isn't nearly blind enough to miss what the kyuubi jinchuuriki's planning, the brat launching Kakashi in his direction. Sheer force of habit has him warping the jounin to kamui's dimension, near effortlessly, barring the prickling drain of chakra.
Next is avoiding the brat's rasenshuriken—inches away from dealing serious damage—wind chakra whirling, and yet lethal in precision. Unhesitant, he shifts into the other dimension. And anticipation has him jumping back to one of the many grey prisms mosaicking the landscape, an omnipresent blanket of darkness in stark contrast to Kakashi's hair and attire.
Only. There are no kunai greeting his arrival. No chidori. Kakashi looks, to all appearances, irritatingly calm, hands held up in a placating gesture, almost resolute - Obito narrowed his eyes - for what?
Kakashi answers the thought, likely expecting Obito's reaction, the teammate-slaughtering bastard.
'You need to know the truth, Obito,' a warning look, almost daring him to interrupt, though a shade of tension blooms in the form of the jounin's increasing rigidity, 'Rin was killed by iwa nin not long after you, months after the war—'
Hand twitching towards his kunai holster, Obito is half seething with murdermurdermurder—
'—we never obtained a body, though the ambush took place near the border of water country. It was a two-person mission. Her partner was poisoned, and only survived long enough to warn us on a possible iwa-mist collusion.'
—and half frozen, transfixed with the vicious satisfaction that Kakashi was lying through his teeth. Even the worst of circumstances could bend the unyielding, for all of the jounin's supposed integrity. Memories flicker through his mind, calling up an image of Rin, impaled by chidori… (but unnaturally silent. With no words of surprise on her part? Obito dismisses the thought.)
I couldn't protect her. Couldn't have, not in those circumstances, are the words left unspoken. If Kakashi wants him to consider the predicament reasonably, the nin has another thing coming.
However.
(Something stays his hand; a nagging sensation in the darker corners of his mind. Is it prudence guiding his actions, with Madara's lessons taking forefront, or remnant loyalty?)
Either way, he can afford the delay.
Apparently satisfied with Obito's reaction, or lack thereof, Kakashi continues, his words adopting a steely tone, 'they wanted revenge on Minato. In any way they could. We were too busy grieving from our losses, so we never realised their intentions in targeting Rin and I, believing us to be sensei's weakest links,' the jounin faltered momentarily, 'against orders, I went to investigate. I found Rin, reanimated, barely alive. A puppet. They wanted sensei to suffer that same way they did…'
'So you killed her,' Obito says in a low tone, carrying an undercurrent of vitriol as his vocal chords strained in protest, ignoring Kakashi's pained look, 'was it a mercy kill, Kakashi?' he snaps, voice rising in a mocking baritone. 'Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night, you fucking bastard?'
It isn't hypocrisy if Kakashi's too emotionally compromised to connect the dots, he contends, not without a tinge of hysteria. But the jounin will arrive at the conclusion eventually. Of that, Obito has no doubt.
But, really, if he were in the same position as Kakashi at the time, would he have done anything differently? There's a thin line between faith and needless suffering. This, he knows in close detail, a product of years of manic research in forbidden healing jutsu, looking for some way to resurrect the dead. And, even then, there was no body to be found after discovering a means.
Calming from the outburst, some part of him is still reeling in an amalgam of shock and hate (towards whom? Kakashi's no longer a viable scapegoat, laughs Spite).
For so long, he's been blinding himself to the hints of manipulation on the elder uchiha's part.
(Madara's sudden curiosity regarding his team. Being left alone under Zetsu's supervision. Obito's assisted escape. His coincidental timing in witnessing Rin's death. Mist nins under Madara's command, he infers. All part of the plan.)
Pieces, clues to a larger whole: at first small and unnoticeable to the thirteen year-old Obito - who was a failure and too proud all the same.
A few years older, and Obito steeps himself further into denial.
(attacking Minato. Kushina. Konoha and the kyuubi. All for a better world... an illusion. All for Rin... too selfish, ripe for lies and false platitudes.)
The dam breaks, fragments latching together in a jigsaw mockery of his life.
And then there's clarity, like an overdue morning after an eternity of night. Obito knows what to do. It's not redemption (how could it, with revenge singing in his blood like a dormant legacy?), but it's something close.
Madara has to pay, even if it means giving up Rin to do so.
Kakashi seems to detect the shift in atmosphere, body language tired, but strangely hopeful – eyes shining with something unlike fury, or the barest hint of offense, and. Obito feels at a loss in discerning the exact sentiment.
The jounin speaks up, 'we could put an end to this.' The words leave his mouth, hanging in the air between them.
((…It's time they've cut away the tears and tragedy. Team 7's had too much of the latter, Kakashi thinks, left hand minutely clenching, relaxing, nails digging into his palm.
This is hope, this is pain.))
'We won't,' Obito cuts into the silence, voice trying for acidic but not quite reaching it, 'but I will,' levelling a glare to dissuade any objections. 'Once we leave the dimension, we continue as though this conversation never transpired. Are we clear on this, Kakashi?'
A pause. 'How do I know you aren't lying?' The jounin's expression is unreadable, an esoteric reminder of the nin's earlier years. Déjà vu casts forth a mirror-image, reaching back to a Kakashi from their mission at Kannabi bridge, and. Obito recollects his own words, a promise lost and out of reach—
(Those who break the rules are trash, ...)
'You don't,' the retort leaves his mouth before he can think better of it, and Obito resigns himself to biting his cheek to stifle further slip-ups. But. The uchiha can't find it in himself to summon the embarrassment. His fingers are numb, joints slurring and fluid all the same; in counterpoint to the blood rushing through his ears, mind hyperaware.
Somewhere, in someplace once cold and arid, purpose courses through him like a tempest, charging him with static and certainty. Time to act.
Obito warps the two of them back to reality not a moment later. As though on cue, the worried shouts of kyuubi jinchuuriki are ringing across the terrain. Typical.
(…but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash!)
-v-
What happens next, Obito isn't entirely sure.
Both sides fight it out to near-exhaustion. Pseudo, on his and Madara's part. Obito still has more than enough chakra for the sealing jutsu.
Jyuubi is summoned without complication: a grey, flesh-like monstrosity of tails and protuberant limbs, towering, snaking over the battlefield, blocking out bars of the night sky in its enormity. Controlling it is almost natural, the connection like a whispering, indistinct static in his mind. Obito urges the demon into maturity with success, increasing the mental strain on his part, a feat which proves to be borderline painful. But, for the plan he has in mind, the sooner, the better. If Madara's noticed what he's doing, the man doesn't show it.
Madara calls out, nonchalant, 'shall we begin?' and Obito takes that as his queue join the elder uchiha, warping to the demon. A brief exchange is had, and Madara is smugly compliant with Obito's wishes to start the infinite tsukuyomi ritual. It might have had something to do with the desperation in his voice, or maybe not. Obito isn't so deep in denial that he's unable to recognise a lingering desire to see Rin, but. There's a time and place for everything.
As per caution, he does a quick headcount of the opposition; two jounin, two jinchuuriki, two tailed beasts. Chakra signatures normal. Kakashi and the kyuubi brat seem to be in rapt discussion, but their voices don't carry far enough for it to be coherent. A distraction is a distraction, anyway.
First is sealing the jyuubi into Madara, who would then activate the jutsu with jyuubi's chakra pool to draw from. Or, that's how they planned it originally. Obito's going to take a few creative freedoms. His hands flip through the seals of shiki fuuin, omitting those designed for stability, thoughts filled with a turbid mutation of malice (I hope you suffer choke on your blood cough out your lungs—) and resignation, and. He thinks this is a new beginning. For everyone else.
Obito completes the jutsu. Before blacking out, his senses are flooded with redredred and gloating and shouting overlaid by a booming clarion, inhuman and ominous. Something is being torn from his skull - from the very sinews of his body, phantom claws both tangible and immaterial, sinking in and sinking through.
Pain lances through him like the lightning of slaughter and, soon, he's not the only one screaming.
