Author's Notes:

I'm still trying to bridge the language gap in Naruto. The literal translation of jinchuuriki is "power of human sacrifice." "Living sacrifice" comes close without being quite that clunky a phrase and while still being every bit as ominous. Hokage translates literally to "Fire Shadow." Also, "God's authority" is the literal translation of Kamui.

Tsukuyomi and Izanagi are left untranslated because, rather than being silly phrases Kishimoto made up while writing Naruto, they're actually proper names—specifically, the names of gods from Shinto mythology. (All of the Copy Wheel's named techniques are references to Shinto gods, in fact.) And outside of Hokage, ranks and titles are left alone because I'm probably already pushing my luck translating everything else :-)

~oOo~

Chapter 2:

After Death

~oOo~

She was wrong. In quiet moments she could hear it roaring and feel it raging. She felt trapped, wishing she could go to teacher for help, but knowing that if she went back now the Three-Tails would destroy everything.

Whenever Rin tried to sleep, she started drowning. Ocean filled her ears and lungs and she'd snap awake. She spent three days growing increasingly tired. On the third night she let herself drown, and she spent the whole night dreaming that she was treading water in a storm, always on the edge of exhaustion and death. She woke up barely rested.

"Rin," asked Obito, "Do you need help? 'Cause I can use my Copy Wheel to help you sleep."

He'd offered three times already, and before she'd turned him down because she knew from Kakashi how the Copy Wheel worked, what he'd feel with each use. She didn't want him to go through that just for a sleep aid. But she was being worn down—by the monster, not Obito.

(Obito was just doing that thing where he hovered around the few people who cared about him and constantly asked if they needed help. Which would've been kind of sweet, if Obito wasn't predictably worse at everything than them, and his "help" usually made things worse. Minato, Kushina, and Rin had gotten very good at gently deflecting his offers. He'd only gotten more insistent after death.)

It was day four and she was only getting more tired and grumpy. If she waited any longer she'd strangle Obito for irritating her, then collapse. Barely an hour ago she'd tried casting an illusion on herself, but the monster just shredded it. She was so worn that, at this point, the whole world could catch fire and she'd still just want to sleep.

She gave in.

"Yes."

Thanks to Obito, she finally got to sleep well that night. He wove an illusion to block out the dreams at night and block off the monster's torments during the day.

He didn't know why she was so reluctant for him to use the Copy Wheel—he hadn't even needed the Kaleidoscope. Getting his last tomoe for it hadn't even been that painful, and the flashback wasn't too bad.

He'd died. (Yes, he'd technically been alive when Zetsu had found him, but it felt like he'd died, and he thought of it as dying.) But for all the pain, the memory was bearable. By then his exposed eye had already been given to Kakashi, and his entire right half lay pinned under a boulder. His Copy Wheel couldn't show him anything because he hadn't been able to see a damn thing, and while the crushing pressure he always felt was unpleasant, it wasn't so bad if he was moving.

~oOo~

He knew it wouldn't last. Rin wanted the illusion, and a willing recipient normally made an illusion much stronger. Between that and the Copy Wheel, peerless as it was in the illusory arts, it should've been an eternal illusion. But a tailed beast was too strong. Her peace was broken by noon the next day.

He was asking about supplies.

"Are you sure you don't need other stuff? Like tampons?" he asked.

"No," she said, "I have a technique for that." Thank the sages for that, because she was leery enough asking the Zetsus about underwear. (She refused to wear the same damn clothes for however many months it took her to learn to control the Three-Tails.) When she'd asked it where it got fresh rations for her from, the Zetsu had simply shrugged and said there was nobody alive to miss them.

She looked intently at him. "Where did you get your clothes?" What unfortunate ninja had they been taken from?

"Oh, these are Madara's old clanwear. He even tailored them for me!"

She sighed. Of course. Of course Madara, whom Obito had been praising to the high heavens for days now, could fucking tailor clothes. Hidden Leaf's greatest traitor could do anything, apparently.

At least that was one less worry. She felt the tiniest bit better. But that small relief was dwarfed by her greatest concern: the illusion was rapidly fading, and she could feel the monster again.

Rin got that pinched, tired look that she always had when the monster was acting up.

"I can make it stop permanently," Obito offered as soon as he noticed. "The Kaleidoscope can control tailed beasts."

He was almost eager. He hadn't used it since the night Rin died, and the pain had faded. Sometimes he wasn't sure if she really had died, and the monster was a miracle worker that now sought to torment the very life it'd saved, or if she'd merely been brought back from the verge of death. But the Kaleidoscope showed her death, and it felt like she'd died, and he'd thought of her as dead in that moment. But Rin was alive now and right in front of him; he'd spent four days with her. He'd gotten the most powerful form of the Copy Wheel for free!

He could tell she was at least considering it.

"Madara says I might even be able to remove the Three-Tails entirely with God's Authority," he said.

She raised her eyebrows at that. "Did you seriously name your eye 'God's Authority'?"

"Not my eye, its power," he said.

"That's almost as bad as teacher's Flying Thunder God nonsense."

"But I didn't name it."

Rin's opinion of Madara dropped, somehow, even lower. The greatest traitor in Leaf's history also had terrible taste in names.

"Obito, there are so many reasons not to take Madara's suggestions."

"No, I mean, that's how bloodline techniques work. The name just comes to you when you first use it. And with Kaleidoscope stuff, I already know what it can do and its limits and stuff without even messing around."

She was deeply skeptical about it, because it was horribly ridiculous (God's Authority!). But she also didn't know much about how bloodline techniques worked. Their precise mechanics were closely guarded secrets. That Obito was telling her so freely said a lot about how little his own clan had raised him.

She said yes because she was desperate and Obito was willing.

~oOo~

She pulled him out of the water. Then she waited for him to finish coughing.

Rin's mindscape sucked, he decided, though he knew better than to tell her that. He couldn't believe he'd almost drowned just entering. As he stood and activated his Kaleidoscope, bracing himself for the sting of salt water in his eye that strangely never came, he learned something.

He was wrong. The Kaleidoscope still showed him the worst moment of his life: seeing Rin die. He'd thought her presence would make it bearable. Instead it was surreal, seeing her dead, feeling like he'd just seen his best friend die, and still seeing and knowing her, alive, right in front of him. The Copy Wheel was supposed to sweep aside all illusions, distractions, and trickery to show him the world as it was. Yet he still couldn't tell what was real.

But that was the past it showed him. In the present, he saw everything, already committing it all to memory. The Kaleidoscope effortlessly cast out nets of chakra, ready for him to pull and trap whoever he chose in an illusion. He could perceive the finest details, and use them to predict anyone's movements, sometimes even before they were aware of their own choices. It also guided his own movements, granting him a flawless grace beyond even Minato.

Its extraordinary power alone almost made him willing to keep using it through the flashback of Rin's death, through seeing her death and her corpse in every moment. But what really put it over the top was the vision. He saw the past and the present in exquisite detail, but he also saw the far future. He saw himself and everyone happy, living in a world where teammates didn't kill each other and clans didn't abandon their own. Every moment the Kaleidoscope was on he hurt, but he knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew exactly what it would take to get it.

He needed the Moon's Eye.

"Obito?" Sages, that was creepy. His Kaleidoscope was fixed on her, but his face told her he didn't really see her.

"What? Oh, sorry. Well, uh, it's your mindscape. What do you want to try?"

There it was. That tight, blank look she'd always seen on Kakashi whenever he used the Copy Wheel. She saw it on Obito for the first time, and it seemed even worse than with Kakashi. But he had volunteered to help her, and frankly, she needed it. The faster he helped her, the faster he could turn off that infernal Kaleidoscope.

They ran along the dock until they reached an island. A glance was all it took to take in everything—that was all the Copy Wheel needed. He saw the island. He saw the tall cliffs walling the monster in on three sides, and the great chains sealing it on the fourth. And he finally grasped what all this was. He should've realized earlier, but he hadn't quite made the connection until now.

His first teacher had been a seal master, and it hadn't been for nothing. He knew you could paint a storage seal on practically anything and store whatever you wanted inside. It just couldn't be alive. Dead things could only hold dead things, after all. If you wanted to stuff something living in a pocket dimension, the medium had to be alive.

He also remembered the now very dire setback that the living medium would die when you pulled whatever was stored out.

Rin was a living sacrifice.

She saw him look at her, his face pale. "I know," she said.

"You!" the monster boomed like cracking ice, one red eye glaring to match Obito's. "How dare you come here!"

It turned to look at Rin, head moving with the gravity of tides. "And how dare you bring this living curse into this sanctuary!"

"It's not much of a sanctuary with you in it," Rin shot back. "And I asked him to come."

"This creature is a danger to us all," it said, words dragging them like a current.

"That's my line," said Rin. "And since you seem to be afraid of him, I'll make you a deal: if you let me get some sagedamned sleep, and stop roaring in my ears when I'm awake, I won't have to bring him here anymore."

Obito ignored the Three-Tail's words. His earlier glance had showed him everything he needed to know. It was physically impressive, to be certain. A giant turtle, fifteen stories tall, 180 feet wide, with its head a good sixty feet wide. Each tail was as wide as its head, and over 800 feet long. Every inch of it was covered in rocky armor plates, save for its open left eye. But sealed as it was, he didn't think it could do much more than make threats and, apparently, give Rin terrible headaches.

"Rin," said Obito. "I think I can remove this with God's Authority."

"God's Authority?" it said. "What arrogance. No god has ever radiated malice like you. The gods made the world, while you only promise its ruin."

Obito ignored it, because with Authority, he could pull this thing out of Rin without killing her—he knew he could. Almost as importantly, it'd be the first of the tailed beasts he needed to complete the Moon's Eye. His vision filled with images of a beautiful, happy world, where he, Rin, and Kakashi finally got what they all wanted.

He could do this now and be that much closer to paradise.

Rin had been hesitating, but Obito seemed sure he could do it. "Go ahead. Get his thing out of me. Without me dying, obviously."

He nodded and began to concentrate.

"What do you see with your eye, monster?" Its voice was a riptide yanking his attention. "How much of the world will be left when you're done?"

He glared at it. "Shut up. You're the monster."

He bored into its eyes, his own Kaleidoscope's pattern now mirrored in the beast's pupil. It whimpered like the last bit of water draining from a bathtub, then went silent.

Rin was pleasantly surprised. That eye really could control tailed beasts.

"Now," Obito said, "to remove it."

Rin tensed as he stepped past the chains and placed his hand on the monster. It stayed silent and still.

Nothing happened. Obito frowned. He couldn't use God's Authority. He couldn't phase out or rip open space. His personal dimension, where his body phased to and where he warped to when using Authority, was closed to him.

This couldn't be happening. Yes, he was... inside Rin's mind? And he didn't really know how things worked here, but this couldn't be happening. He refused to let it be. Getting the Three-Tails now would be perfect. Helping Rin would be perfect.

He tried to force his way in.

Rin lunged forward as Obito screamed and stumbled backwards into the chains. The Three-Tails was staring at him now, Kaleidoscope sigil no longer blinding it. She pulled him past the chains as he pressed his hand to his eye, clearly in pain.

She felt a massive spike in chakra, and her instincts told her to get away. She flipped him around, threw him over her shoulder, and leapt down to the dock. She hit it running.

She heard it roar, and when she chanced a look back she saw a wave so high it dwarfed the monster's island prison. Shit.

She looked forward again and tried running even faster, but that was difficult carrying Obito. Thrown over her shoulder, he must've sensed something she hadn't because a few seconds after her brief glance back, Obito yelled at her.

"Dodge far right!"

She snapped her hands through the signs (awkwardly, because her left arm was holding Obito, and she had to combine her hands by her own head, but medics were trained to make handsigns at odd angles because of just this sort of thing) body flickering twenty feet sideways. A bullet of water 30 feet wide bulldozed past them, snapping off every pillar on the dock.

She was already opening her mouth to yell, "I don't care how much your eye hurts, I need you to carry me now," when she stopped herself.

Body flickering without the crippling vertigo? This changed everything! She looked back again, and the wave had formed into a giant version of the Three-Tails, now sliding across the water. Getting away was now much easier.

She flickered to the end of the dock.

"We're both getting out of here." She looked at the Three-Tails just in time to flicker sideways again, dodging another, even larger water bullet. Then another.

"Take a breath Obito, we're diving."

She stopped pushing chakra into her feet and fell into the water, just as one of the monster's tails slammed down on where she'd been standing. The force from it actually did a lot to push them further down.

~oOo~

Rin was so disoriented when she entered the real world, still carrying Obito, that she promptly stumbled to the ground. Her first coherent thought was "Am I okay?" As she disentangled herself from Obito, her second thought was "Is Obito okay?"

"Are you alright?" she asked him.

"I'm okay," Obito said, still pressing down on his eye.

She rolled her eyes because those words didn't mean a damn thing coming from him.

"Let me see your eye," she ordered. He dropped his hand because he'd learned ages ago not to defy her when she used her "medic voice."

His Kaleidoscope was still on, and it was bleeding. Blood was pouring out like from a bad cut, but she couldn't see one. Hand glowing with chakra, she pressed it to his eye, but found... nothing. There was nothing wrong.

"Turn off your Copy Wheel," she said.

His regular black eye faded into view. He blinked.

"It hurts less now," he said.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It'd been that easy all along. She didn't resist the urge to grumble.

"You're killing me, Obito." He was so damnably attached to his Copy Wheel that he didn't even think to turn it off. It was a good thing he was a sensor now (something he'd mentioned several times), because otherwise he would've never been able to notice and warn her about the Three-Tails' attack. You know, what with refusing to power down his eye even while making it useless by pressing his hand to it.

Still, that must've been a lot of pain earlier. Last time she'd carried him while running, he'd whined about it. (He'd asked her if she could carry him bridal style. He'd said it with an odd wistful tone, and despite his broken leg and the enemies pursuing them at the time, she'd almost dropped him to the ground and slapped him on the spot for being weird at the worst possible moment. Though in retrospect, he'd probably been delirious. She'd never had to choose between casting illusions on a patient or on enemies before, and, in her inexperience, she might've given him a few too many painkillers.)

"What happened?" she asked.

"I tried to use Authority. It didn't work, so I forced it. I got backlash," he said.

"Then what was that thing you did to the monster before that?"

"That was generic Kaleidoscope stuff," he said. "I'm sorry, Rin."

Apparently the Kaleidoscope wasn't nearly as powerful as Obito seemed to think it was.

"For what? You tried. I hoped it'd work, but I wasn't counting on it." She winced as soon as she said that. Obito had always resented everyone's lack of confidence in him. Even hers, though she usually broke it to him more gently.

He seemed to brush it off.

"Are you alright, Rin?" he asked. He was rubbing his eye now.

"I'm—" the Three-Tails was silent and she actually felt pretty damn good. Obito might've screwed up, but she'd gotten her team out just fine.

"I'm good," she answered. He was still rubbing his eye.

"Sorry, I messed up. I need to go. I have to talk to Madara," he said. He stood up to leave. The vision of a better world haunted him even without the Kaleidoscope. He'd never wanted anything so much in his life. He needed answers. But mostly, he wanted to know more details about the Eye of the Moon.

Rin waited for a little bit, to see if the roaring would come back. The Three-Tails remained silent. Huh. It really had worked. She decided to nap, if only to test how long its silence would last. She ended up sleeping through until the next morning, not drowning even once the whole time.

~oOo~

So, the boy's Authority didn't work in mindscapes. Madara had been wondering about that. He'd encountered living sacrifices before, but experience only taught him how his own Kaleidoscope worked.

"Why didn't it work, sir?" Obito asked him.

"Because a living sacrifice's mindscape is in between an illusion and a proper dimension. And it's shaped jointly by the sacrifice and the prisoner," he answered.

"But I thought you said it would—"

"I said it might work, boy," interrupted Madara. Had he ever been this petulant as a child? It was grating. "But if it didn't work, then that means, on some level, she doesn't want it removed."

Obito gaped at him.

That was a lie—probably. It was likely the Three-Tails that blocked him. If it had glimpsed Obito using Authority beforehand, the monster could've prepared against it.

A pity. Rin was still a living sacrifice, and there was no avoiding the seal's costs. Clever use of Authority or not, if Obito had removed the Three-Tails, she would've died. That was the plan, after all.

"Lord Madara, sir," said Obito, "could you tell me more about the Moon's Eye?"

Madara smiled. He'd been waiting for this moment.

~oOo~

It was their first real fight. Rin was grateful for his help, yes, but the Moon's Eye plan sounded horrible. On top of that, the monster was giving her headaches again.

She was glaring at him. "It's a dumb idea, Obito."

But it was actually the best idea he'd ever heard, because she'd almost died and he saw her die and she could still die and none of that would happen under Infinite Tsukuyomi.

She had her hands on her hips, stubbornly not giving an inch. "It's slavery. Psychic slavery," she said.

"It won't be slavery if everybody wants it," he said, arms crossed and glaring right back. His Kaleidoscope made it much more intimidating when he did it. It also made the monster worse. The sea drowned out whatever he was saying now, and she forced down her impulse to talk louder over an imaginary ocean. She was a ninja; she could fake it as long as she had to.

"You're not asking anybody's permission. And it won't even be real. You want to kill dozens—hundreds?" she asked. "Thousands? For nothing. For a big lie."

Why didn't he understand? Madara's plan was horrifying. Too many people would die just from taking the tailed beasts. And once they were gone, another war would start.

Every step required killing more and more people. All for something that wasn't even real. The tailed beasts were just to power an inescapable lie. Tsukuyomi was the strongest illusion technique of all, or so Obito claimed, but it was still just an illusion. Making it infinitely strong and etching it into the moon itself couldn't change that. It wasn't world peace, just burying violence under lies.

"It's. Not. Real," she bit out. It was faker than the ocean wearing her down.

He shook his head.

"It doesn't matter if it's real," he said. Madara had been pressuring him to keep his Kaleidoscope on throughout the day. When he looked at Rin, he saw her dying, her standing before him frowning, and her living happily under Infinite Tsukuyomi, all at once. He wasn't quite sure which was happening right now, if that even mattered. "What matters is if it feels real."

He walked away because it always felt odd seeing her dead and alive at the same time.

~oOo~

Kakashi shuffled out of the Fire Shadow's office. He felt numb. The last thing he'd felt—really felt—had been Rin's corpse as it slid off his arm. That had been a week ago.

"Kakashi."

Kakashi blinked. His father was standing right in front of him, and he'd barely noticed.

"We haven't talked since your last mission," father said. He was head of the Hatake clan; Kakashi should've spoken to him immediately after debriefing.

Kakashi had been avoiding this. He didn't want to talk. And he didn't want to remember, but he did anyway.

~oOo~

"You're just going to abandon Rin?" Obito had yelled at him. Rather unnecessarily, too. He was barely two feet from Kakashi, it's not like he needed to be that loud.

The other boy was so angry his fists were shaking. Kakashi just brushed him off.

"A ninja puts the mission before everything else. Even their own, or their teammate's, life."

Obito slammed into him. They fell to the ground and wrestled for a moment. Kakashi was pinned to the ground, facing Obito. He let the other boy have his moment—Obito was terrible at, well, everything really. An awful ninja all around, so it'd be easy enough to put him in his place.

"I believe Sakumo Hatake is a traitor and human garbage," Obito said.

Obito found himself with a bloody nose, pinned to the ground in turn by Kakashi, and his black hair soaking wet from the puddle he was now laying in.

"My father is a greater ninja than you will ever be," Kakashi spat.

"Sakumo could've saved his comrades—" Obito yelled right in his face.

"The mission is always more important," Kakashi cut in, refusing to yell like Obito because he was better than that.

"He threw them away! He let them die so he could succeed! He as good as murdered his own teammates!" Obito said, still too loudly.

"He did what was necessary," Kakashi hissed. "You should do the same."

Obito slammed his hand into Kakashi's throat as hard as he could. So not very hard at all, but it was enough to loosen Kakashi so Obito could push him off. They both stood, glaring at their terrible, terrible teammate.

"Can't you be better than that?" asked Obito. "All I've ever wanted is for you to care. Can't you trust us, be human with us?"

He paused, and his face fell when Kakashi said nothing.

"I wish you did," Obito added, so softly Kakashi almost missed it. Then he turned to leave.

Kakashi shook his head. The other boy still didn't get it, but if he let Obito go off on his own, then the mission really would fail.

That was the day Obito died. And it was the day that Kakashi had the first inkling that maybe, just maybe, he was missing something very important.

~oOo~

Kakashi Hatake looked at his father, the greatest ninja of his generation, the man he'd idolized and striven to become. As he felt his teammate's corpse slide off his arm for the hundredth time, he realized he was now exactly the man he'd wanted to become.

"Father," asked Kakashi, "Do you ever regret killing your teammates?"

Father didn't seem happy with the question. "I didn't kill them. We all understood, as ninja, that sacrifices sometimes have to be made to ensure the success of a mission. A true ninja accepts that duty without question."

Sakumo was quiet for a moment, watching his unresponsive son. "I thought I raised you to understand that."

~oOo~

Obito wondered how Kakashi was doing. Rin had said that Kakashi seemed a lot more open now, and he looked forward to meeting him again. He knew they could finally be good friends, that Kakashi would finally be the brother he'd always wanted him to be.

And if he wouldn't, or he was dead, well, that's what the Moon's Eye was for.

~oOo~

The Heart's Curse Tag was magnificent. It curled around the victim's heart, brutal and straightforward, driving them towards a single goal.

Rin's had been to return to Hidden Leaf and release the Three-Tails. A shame she got it stabbed out of her.

Madara had set Obito's as soon as Zetsu brought him in. Obito was already being consumed by it, obsessing over the Moon's Eye and the illusion it brought.

There was a second curse, too—the Curse of Hatred that lay dormant in every Uchiha's Copy Wheel Eyes. The Copy Wheel burdened the user with the worst of their past, and in return granted them peerless insight into the present. That much was common knowledge, at least among Uchiha. But its greatest power was awakened with the Kaleidoscope. It showed the future, filling an Uchiha with a brilliant vision of all their greatest ambitions realized. The Curse made them willing to burn everyone to ash to make that vision real.

Obito had seen his best friend die, and would continue seeing her die. In return, the Kaleidoscope would show Obito a world where nothing bad could ever happen to the people he cared about. And he would drown continents and set oceans on fire to make it come true.

~oOo~