X.
Obito woke much earlier than he would have liked the following morning, as someone decided it would be a good idea to come banging on his door.
"Obito! Wake up, you lazy bastard, you're late!"
The young Uchiha recognised the growling voice as that of his partner from the Police Force, Yakumi Uchiha. At first he wondered what he could possibly want with him, but then he realized that the sun was shining through the window curtains and he was supposed to report at the station for an early shift.
He got up at once, blankets flying everywhere, to keep the man from waking up the neighbours. Either that or rouse the entire pet population of the building, who was sure to confuse the low pitched, rumbling sounds that the man produced when he opened his mouth for a sign of an impending earthquake or other natural catastrophe.
Obito was ready to leap straight into his uniform, when, the moment he came upright, he felt an intense, stabbing pain that had him screaming and clasping his hands over his head.
The agony was such that it robbed him of thought. All he could do was hunch over, tension rippling through his body, and hope that the pain passed. It felt like his head would break in two before it eased any. To make matters worse, as feared, the dog of the neighbour who lived above him had started to howl in response to Yakumi's continued pounding.
"Obito?" a sudden gentle voice whispered next to him. It was Minato. "What's wrong?"
After a few seconds, the pain started to recede a little. It was still trying to murder him from the inside out, but at least Obito could start making sense of his surroundings. Why was he feeling like his head was being pressed in a vice? Looking at the gaping hole on the wall in front of him that offered a view into the living room provided a clue. It reminded him of how his eyes had stung the previous night after unintentionally using the Mangekyou Sharingan. This was the same pain, only ten times worse.
"It's just my eyes..." he rasped out, trying to reassure his sensei. "They're still recovering from yesterday... but the pain is passing... I'm all right..."
Minato seemed to believe him, because, after a pat on the shoulder, he left. Obito heard his footsteps as he went to answer the door and then the murmur of his voice as he talked to Yakumi outside.
The young Uchiha was wary of moving at first, but mustered the courage to test his body little by little. First looking from side to side, then shifting his head, then straightening, until he was sitting on his bed and the only left-over discomfort from his crisis was a dry throat and a mild headache.
"I told him you weren't feeling well, but that you'd meet him at the station soon," Minato said when he got back to the room, but, despite his words to Yakumi, he looked unsure if Obito should be going anywhere. "What happened, Obito? You were screaming."
His sensei was standing in front of him, looking as earnest as he knew how and sporting a tremendous case of baggy eyes. It looked like he had not slept at all that night. Obito bit his lip, glancing at the hole on the wall one more time before replying. If he had been screaming, that certainly explained the burn in his throat.
"It was the Mangekyou. I'm sure of it. It was the same kind of pain as yesterday," Obito said. Even in its regular form, his bloodline limit consumed chakra like crazy. Over the years, he had gotten a couple of mild cases of chakra exhaustion from excessive use, so it made sense that something like the Mangekyou would have even higher requirements. He hoped. It was not like there was anyone else in the clan with personal experience that he could go talk to. "Don't worry about it, sensei. I was just too tired yesterday and it spent too much chakra."
"But you've had a chance to sleep and recover since. It doesn't make sense for it to still be bothering you this much."
Minato's argument was reasonable, but Obito did not want to consider what it might mean for him, what the repercussions might be of having awakened the eyes that led to his ancestor Madara's madness. This was no time to be having problems with his health, so the last thing he wanted to think about was of how he might have accidentally caused himself some sort of permanent damage when he had triggered the advanced technique without preparation. Moreover, he did not want to think about what Minato had suggested about the possible connection between the Mangekyou Sharingan and Madara Uchiha's descent into insanity.
"I'm okay... The pain only lasted a moment. Everything's back to normal now," he said, putting on a brave smile and hoping Minato would not catch the half lies he had snuck into the reply. His eyes were still aching slightly and things were definitely the furthest away from normal that they could get. "I'd better get dressed and go out to the station or Yakumi will have my head."
It had been a long time since he had broken his habit of being late wherever he went, something he was rather proud of actually, so imagining the comments that he would be getting from his coworkers all day for this brought him pain of a different variety.
Obito stood and made his way to the bathroom, determined to focus on cleaning up and getting dressed, rather than the myriad things that he had to deal with at the moment. No special Sharingans or creepy seals that covered entire rooms. No heartless Hokages, threatening Hyuugas or secret resistance meetings, either. Most of all, he would not think about Rin.
As he leaned over the sink, his eyes lingered on a small scar on the back of his hand, all but faded – a wound he had gotten once while being silly and that his friend had insisted upon treating.
He should not wait to tell Minato about the meeting of the rebellion that he had witnessed the day before. His sensei had talked about putting together a plan to free Naruto and then confront Orochimaru and he would need to know that they were not the only ones who shared that goal.
Obito and Minato were not concerned about the distant future of the village. They had just taken it upon themselves to enforce the immediate solution: to remove the Hokage at all costs, avenge Rin and end the injustices Orochimaru perpetrated. The rebellion, on the other hand, was looking out for the stability of Konoha. They no doubt had plans to fill the power void that would come after the Hokage was deposed, so as to not let the village suffer any more than it already had. They could work together.
Right now, though, he did not want to think about any of it. He was so tired. Could it not all just be over?
"Obito?" Minato called from the other side of the bathroom door. "Maybe you should call in sick today and visit the Hospital to have your eyes checked or, at least, talk to someone from your clan to make sure that there's nothing wrong. This is serious, you shouldn't just ignore it. It will be worse in the long run. What if..."
The young Uchiha interrupted him.
"Sensei, please." They were all good points, but none that Obito felt like he wanted to deal with at the moment. He was not even sure if he wanted his clan to know that he had awakened such a skill or not. They had once dubbed him a failure. Did he really want to gain their recognition now only on account of this? "I'm fine now, really, and I promise I'll be careful. I won't even use the Sharingan until I'm sure it's okay."
Minato took some time to reply, but, when he did, he sounded like he was still uneasy about the whole thing. "If you say so..." he relented. No doubt he hated that he could not just tell the nineteen-year-old what to do like when he was a genin under his charge, but Obito felt a pang of gratitude for the small vote of confidence implied in the fact that he was accepting Obito's choice.
"Thanks, sensei."
o
Rin, Orochimaru, Genma and the resistance, Minato and Naruto... Obito's concerns did not stay at bay for long once he had left the Police Station to go on his daily rounds with Yakumi. The task was so dull that it left his mind with too much room to wander. There were so many threads occupying his thoughts at the moment, so many questions, that he did not quite know which way to turn. It was daunting and overwhelming.
Should he not still be sad about Rin? Or perhaps excited about unlocking a superior form of Sharingan? Proud that he had been one of the few in the entire history of the clan to do so? Should there not be a little shiver of dread every time he looked at the Hokage Tower and remembered what he and Minato were planning to do? Some nerves about going up against the full force of the ANBU defending that place or disappointment at the possibility that Kakashi might be among them?
Obito was sure that he should be experiencing at least one of these things, but, as he took a moment to lean against a street corner and study the toes sticking out of his sandals half-way through his assigned patrol route, he could not separate any individual emotion from the jumble of thoughts going through his head. Perhaps he had simply reached his breaking point and was beyond feeling, after the tumult of the past couple of days.
"Are you even here today, Obito?" his partner Yakumi groused from where he stood on the middle of the street, waiting for him to catch up.
The call snapped Obito out of his lethargy and back to what he was supposed to be doing. He scrambled to conjure one of his usual smiles and light apologies, but for once he was sure that they came off as false and fooled no one. He was just too exhausted and in no mood to deal with boring patrols, working for a man and an institution that was disgusting him more and more by the day.
"Come on! We have work to do."
Obito inwardly cursed Yakumi seven ways to hell for choosing the most inopportune moments to harass him. The other Uchiha was older than him by a few years only, but had the disposition of a ninety-year-old. Dry to the point of rudeness and as intolerant towards deviation from duty as they came. Humour was a foreign concept, which was odd, considering that he and Obito usually got along rather well. They would never be great friends, but there was something to be said about the way their diametrical personalities complemented each other. Right now, however, Obito was not in the mindset to appreciate those differences.
He was saved the hassle of coming up with a way to appease his partner, when a pair of small kids walked up to him.
"Hey, are you Obito Uchiha?" one of them asked. He was a short, scrawny child with a spiky ponytail and half-lidded eyes that made Obito reconsider the definition of "bored". His friend was chubbier and had two swirls painted on his cheeks – an Akimichi, if he had ever seen one – but was paying more attention to the bag of potato chips that he was devouring than the conversation. Both of them looked about six years old.
"Yeah..." was Obito's slow, hesitant reply. He did not particularly like children. They were too annoying, he found. "Why? You kids need help or something?"
"My dad wants to talk to you," spiky ponytail kid said.
Obito sighed. He really had a low tolerance for silly miniature people such as these two, how they thought the world revolved around them and everyone else automatically had to know what they meant. "Look, kid, I don't have a clue who your dad is, so I find that hard to believe. Just go bug someone else, all right? All right. Cool."
Contrary to what he would have liked to see happen, the boy did not run away back to whatever playground was closest, though his friend's attention finally did shift to something other than stuffing food into his face.
"That's not a very nice thing to say to Shikamaru," the Akimichi boy complained, but Obito could not care less.
Meanwhile, the first kid, who had been staring at him unimpressed, turned around with a frown and pointed at the symbol stitched on the back of his light green jacket. Obito instantly recognized it as the crest of the Nara clan.
"Oh! Your dad's Shikaku Nara?" Obito realized.
"Yeah, that's him. So, are you coming or what?" he asked then finished with a sigh. "This is so troublesome..."
Obito's eyebrows twitched at the kid's reaction. He had almost been embarrassed about how he had spoken to the heir of the Nara clan, but after that condescending response, he was more inclined to feel that his earlier annoyance was more than justified.
"Sure, whatever. Tell him I'll stop by his house after I get off work."
The Nara kid grunted an acknowledgement, before being on his way, Akimichi in tow, and if the boys were glad that they did not have to talk to him anymore, Obito was doubly so.
"What was that about?" Yakumi asked him once Obito caught up to him on the street.
"Augh, just kids being stupid, you know? They wanted to drag me along with them so they could tell their little classmates that they had a cool friend in the Police Force!" he explained, dramatically shaking his head. "Can you believe it? Kids..."
Yakumi rolled his eyes, silently agreeing that children were a worse plague than bedbugs. There was a reason Obito occasionally did get along with his ninety-year-old of a partner, after all.
The rest of their patrol went by in a blur of roaming the same streets over and over again, while Yakumi complained about whatever trivial things popped into his head. It was numbing work, but Obito did not mind. It kept him free enough to wonder about what Shikaku Nara might want with him – or rather, what the rebellion might want.
He had left the meeting the previous day with the distinct impression that they had decided that he could not be trusted, so this interest might be seen as suspicious. He tried not to think about the Hyuuga clan head, though, and how, in the end, he might have made up his mind to carry out his threat after all and silence the potential Uchiha spy.
When their set patrol route finally came around to the Police Force headquarters, marking the end of their shift, Obito stayed only long enough to check in with his boss and leave the bulkier parts of his standard police uniform in his locker.
Just as he was about to cross the door, however, he remembered something that made him go back to his desk. Yakumi, whose seniority came with the privilege of dealing with paperwork that Obito never had to see, shot him a curious gaze that he had returned. Obito ignored him and leaned over the table top to reach into the first drawer on the other side.
When he had been a genin and worried that he would never get his clan's bloodline limit, Rin had given him a gift that he had treasured ever since. She had already been training as a medic then and had taken the time to research all the books and scrolls that she could find on optical health and the Uchiha genetics. She had then created custom-made eye drops for him, shots of vitamins and other helpful substances that would make sure his eyes were in top shape and hopefully improve his chances of awakening the Sharingan he so desired.
Back then, Obito had been both parts touched and amazed at his friend's genius. He had used them with pride every day. After finally getting his Sharingan, he stopped using the drops as much, but kept them for when he felt like his eyes became tired after a long day or some particularly strenuous training. His hope now was that they would work just as well with the Mangekyou.
He pocketed the small plastic bottle that he picked from the drawer. It was the last batch of eye drops Rin had ever made for him. Trying to pull his thoughts away from how much his friend had always helped him, was still helping him ever after her death, and how he had ultimately failed her when she needed him most, Obito did his best to focus instead on how happy and proud of him she had been when he showed her his Sharingan for the first time. The good moments, those were what he should remember. Not her expression when...
He left the station with an absent wave at Yakumi, for once wishing that his eyes were just regular eyes, not cursed with the ability to record every tiny detail of everything they saw.
A/N: So this is back! Sorry that it was kind of filler-y, but Shikamaru and Chouji made a cameo, so it can't have been all bad, right? I'll try not to let another two years pass until the next update... ;)