.

.

There are certain advantages to being an Uchiha: girls, money, prestige - the status of Elite Motherfucking Shinobi, and knowing that if anyone even thinks about messing with you, you can whip out your badass sharingan and show them who's boss.

Sometimes Obito wonders if he was born into the wrong clan.

"You know why you don't have the sharingan, don't you?" Kakashi says. Obito glares and Rin sits with her hands on her knees, listening attentively. "It's because you lack the talent."

"Teme!" Obito says. Kakashi shrugs.

"It's true," Kakashi says. "The other Uchiha our age have already awakened it. Maybe you're just learning impaired."

"Kakashi! That's enough," Minato says, and behind him, he hears Rin trying not to laugh.

Obito's lack of sharingan continues to plague him through the rest of the year: at the chuunin exams, no one believes him when he tells them he's an Uchiha, staring suspiciously and squinting their eyes. "Where's your sharingan?" the other genin ask.

Obito mumbles and rubs his neck, "I haven't got it yet," and the other genin squint.

"How come?" they ask. "I thought all Uchiha get it by now."

"Well I didn't, okay?" Obito says.

He doesn't need the sharingan to see the Uchiha genin roll their eyes.

"You shouldn't get so down on yourself," Rin says later, after they both pass, Rin by a comfortable margin and Obito just barely so. They sit on the swings, Obito and Rin, and Rin pushes herself lightly, her hair moving slightly on the breeze. "You're a good ninja, even if you are a little goofy."

"Goofy?" Obito makes a face. "Who says I'm goofy?"

"Everyone does," Rin says. It hurts Obito's feelings but Rin touches his hand.

"I like that you're goofy," Rin says. She's leaning close, and Obito can feel his heart thudding in his chest.

"Rin," Obito says. A drop of sweat forms at his brow. "Rin, I-"

"Kakashi!" Rin says. She jumps up from the swing, smiling. "Kakashi, what are you doing here?"

Of course.

Rin is the only one who's kind to him. Even when she ignores him, tagging alongside Kakashi and making Obito the awkward third wheel. She laughs and smiles and touches Kakashi on the arm, and when she notices Obito sulking a few paces behind her, she stops and runs beside him, gripping Obito by the hand and pulling him forward.

"You're gonna get left behind, dummy. Stop walking so slow!"

Her hand is warm and good and Obito feels himself start to blush. "Does he have to be here?" Obito says. Rin laughs at him.

"He's our friend. Of course he does."

"He doesn't have to," Obito says, but Rin is already distracted, catching the battered sign of a goofy photobooth in front of the drugstore.

She insists on taking a group picture. "Why?" Kakashi says, and Obito just stands and glares at him while Rin laughs and shakes her head.

"Because I want something to remember us by," she says, and she wraps her arms around both of their shoulders, Kakashi and Obito, bringing them close and smiling broadly into the camera.

The picture that comes out is telling: Kakashi bored and Obito nervous, and Rin smiling, broad and wide.

xXx

.

After the Zetsus confessed that they told her everything-showed her the armory and even laid out all of his battle plans, Obito had told her bluntly that she was too much of a risk to let go. She took the news the way any good shinobi would, stoically, but with a touch of desperation. He could almost see her considering whether or not it would be prudent to try stabbing him in the neck with her pen, but one look with his sharingan knocked enough sense to keep her from trying it.

The situation, Obito realizes, is getting entirely too hard to handle.

She is nothing. A nuisance, a well-placed clog sticking the wheels of his war machine. It irritates him more than anything, and more than once he wonders if it would be better to just be done with it and kill her, and resurrect her later.

But he can't bring himself to kill her.

Somewhere, in that dark, old part of him, Obito knows there is a chance his plan may not work. The war might be stopped; the bijou might be released. The shinobi forces might interfere, and if Obito loses, he would risk losing Rin too, and he does not want to die with her blood on his hands.

He is, if nothing, meticulous. He will lock her up, if only to keep her safe.

He takes over guarding her because he can't trust the Zetsus to do it, and so he watches her quietly, counting the slow rise and fall of her breath as if it would purge the longing from his body. Despite himself, he feels that vapid, boyhood fervor rising like a tidepool in his mind, stupid, banal crush, the soft warmth of her skin a poisonous temptation.

But he would not use her needlessly. Once the Moon's Eye plan goes through, he will give her the life she should have: one with Kakashi or someone else, any man of her choosing. And she will be happy and healthy and forever alive.

xXx

.

There is a sound coming from Rin's room, and when Obito enters, he sees it: two Zetsus lying unconscious, Rin brandishing one sharp, sword-shaped thorn.

"Don't come any closer," Rin says, and she holds the blade against Zetsu's neck. "I'll kill him unless you let me go."

"You should," Obito says, and he can see how her eyes just barely widen, how she's caught by surprise. "Anyone as useless as to get caught is of no consequence to me."

She shoves Zetsu on the ground, holding out the blade. "Oh? What's this?" Obito says. He lets his amusement show. "You cannot threaten me."

Rin gives him a deliberate look, then moves the blade to her neck. Obito's eyes widen.

"There," Rin says, and she presses the blade closer, a bead of blood welling at the tip. "I'm valuable to you. You want me alive for some reason. Well. Step closer and I won't give you the chance."

"Think carefully about what you do," Obito says, and he steps forward.

"Not another step!" Rin says, and the blade digs closer.

Obito slowly raises his hands. "Fine," Obito says, and he backs up into the shadows.

He teleports faster than she can see it, whirling from the corner of the room and re-appearing behind her, grabbing her by the wrist and forcing her to drop the blade.

Rin cries out. He shoves her back against the bed, kicking the weapon to the side.

He twists her arm back. "Never do that again."

He shoves her forward, making her stumble then sag, falling to her knees.