Part Ten: Obito reaps some of the consequences of his actions and a council of sorts is held between Lee, Obito, and the ring itself to decide its fate.

When Obito opened his eyes, it was with an odd surreal calm the kind of calm that had him suspect that he was dreaming. He was staring up at the ceiling of a cave. No, not a cave, the cave. He knew each jagged rock and corner intimately, months and months of staring up at it having engraved the image into his memory even without the sharingan.

However, there was no rustling or chattering of Zetsus, white or black, or any hint of Madara's miasma of killing intent. The only sound was Obito's own breathing, steady and in time, in and out again, as well as a soft, warm, crackling as if from a fire.

Obito stood, righted himself, and looked deeper into the heart of the cave. It was glowing, pulsing with heat and light as if a heart made of fire was stored somewhere deep in the depths. Obito, barefoot, found himself walking over the oddly smooth stone of the cave towards it.

And as he did so Sauron's song echoed along with the clanging of a hammer against steel, "Ash nazg durbatulúk, ash nazg gimbatul. Ash nazg thrakatulúk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."

Except now, somehow, Obito knew their meaning despite having every reason not to, "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

On saying the words he found himself standing over the edge of the heart of his dream, the crater of Mount Doom inside the depths of Mordor, where unseen and unknown by the elves of the second age, Sauron crafted the one ring of power which would spell the end of an age.

Sauron in the gilded elven disguise of Annatar, holding the ring aloft, then turned his head towards Obito so those pale eyes could meet his. A smile, slow and curving on his face, and then a proclamation, "You are a fool, Uchiha Obito, who does not even know when he is already damned."

And then Obito woke up.

Unfortunately, taking a stuttering breath and returning to the land of the living he realized a few rather awkward things almost immediately.

The first was that he had fallen asleep during his watch. Perhaps to be expected given that he hadn't slept at all the night before and that putting on the ring and taking it off again was, well…

He was basically back down to being just shy of chakra exhaustion.

It was more than that though. The ring had… Obito didn't exactly know but he still didn't feel quite right. For one thing, his eye, the sharingan eye still felt… Different. It was more draining than it'd been before, sharper vision, and there was just the odd feeling of more chakra there than there had even been this morning.

Lee had written it off at the time by just patting him on the shoulder, almost consolingly as they'd slowly started their way down the road south again, and saying rather awkwardly, "Well, Obito, we should probably talk about that later. You know, when we're not surrounded by the corpses of slaughtered demons and nin dragons."

Obito couldn't help but blithely point out that it was the metaphorical corpses of the Uruk-hai and nazgûl as they were now little more than shadows, light, and dust but he'd gotten the point even if the prospect of walking was suddenly daunting.

She'd also, with a rather odd look on her face, as she slung a supporting arm around his shoulders, asked him if he was feeling particularly mad with grief at the moment.

Which, mostly he just felt tired, and kind of itchy. Like his own chakra was restless in his skin and was even now nagging at it in an attempt to reshape it into something more suitable. Suitable for what he didn't really know, bearing the ring he supposed, but either way it just left him feeling vaguely uncomfortable as they kept walking along.

Uncomfortable, and, if he pushed past the sheer exhaustion and discomfort, unnerved and alarmed. It was reminiscent to how he'd felt when he'd first woke up in the cave. He hadn't been able to see himself, see his own reflection for months until he was back in Konoha. But he'd known even then, beyond waking up from injuries that should have killed him, that something was very wrong and different and Obito wasn't the same Obito he used to be. Except this might be worse, back then he'd felt the scars, been able to stare down at the patchwork that was his body and could imagine his face looked similar enough. He hadn't liked the idea of it, it had left him with a dull and sort of aching horror that he had bitterly tried to suppress while he hoped in vain for escape or rescue, but at least he'd had some idea.

This time there hadn't been a cave in, there'd been no waking up with Madara explaining the remains of Senju Hashirama injected into his skin, but there was that similar feeling that putting on a ring of power was akin to having half your body crushed under a mountain. Like you couldn't put that thing on and come out even looking the way you had a second before. And, if you did look the same, it just meant something more insidious beneath the surface of your skin was spreading roots.

That combined with the fact that he still found himself wanting the ring like he'd never wanted anything in his life, had had him volunteering for first watch as soon as they'd set up camp.

He'd been all but certain that it was going to be another long and sleepless night of wanting but not daring to touch, at watching it glitter in the firelight dangling from the chain from Lee's neck, listening to it whisper in his ear…

At some point though exhaustion must have won, and Obito could only thank god for Lee's ridiculous seal work that had probably kept the orcs and god only knew what else away from their small camp just off the well-worn trail.

However, that wasn't the really embarrassing and awkward part. No, Obito could have lived with falling asleep. Granted, Lee might have given him some minor amount of deserved hell, but he could have survived it.

No, the part that made Obito want to crawl into a hole and die was the fact that sleeping Obito must have decided it was a grand idea to snuggle up behind the sleeping Lee-shishou, get as close as physically possible to her so that he could feel every single inch of her body, and then reach over her to not only put his hand in the perfect position to fondle her breasts but in an even better position to fondle the one ring of power.

Which he was, currently doing that is, unconsciously twisting the ring of power between his calloused fingertips.

And he was somewhere between enticed and on the verge of being truly aroused, by a piece of metal conveniently accompanied by a woman. Worse, said woman was very clearly awake as well, but was staring silently forward at the wall as if it could somehow inform her what the hell was happening.

This was the bullshit Obito woke up to.

Well, there were two things to do, Obito thought. First, he could fling himself to the other side of the cave, roll around to face the other wall, and pretend that none of this had happened. The other was to play it cool, pretend he wasn't doing what he was doing, and it was all in Lee's head and that Obito was perfectly fine.

And that no, he wasn't having some sort of sexual crisis where he realized that he was feeling more interest for a piece of jewelry and his own shishou than he ever had Rin. That Rin, as the ring had warned, seemed to be slipping further and further away from him in the present moment.

And he certainly was not consumed by the thought that the idea of ring of power plus Lee-shishou in the same context was somehow even more enticing, a thought that in the theater of Uchiha Obito's mind seemed somehow on par with any Icha Icha novel despite the absurd reality that it starred a piece of jewelry and his own master.

Clearly that thing had just dragged his mind through a gutter and left it there to rot, and that he'd better stop thinking that sort of thing now unless he wanted this to get even more awkward than it already was. Though, he supposed on the bright side, that this was somehow less embarrassing when the ring of power had been a hobbit.

Unfortunately, Obito's paralyzing indecision cost him, as Lee spoke first, "Obito."

Obito at first said nothing, found himself stiffening as he tried and failed to force himself to let go of the ring and back away. It was… a more difficult thing than you'd think, even more so than the first time he'd given it to her. That had somehow seemed different. All the same, there was a part of him that knew he could let it go again, if she asked and he knew that it was going straight into her hands, but there was also a part of him that just refused to see the need to do so. If it wasn't on his finger, the eye of Sauron wasn't burning down on them like a second baleful sun, and they weren't about to be shanked by orcs it was unbelievably difficult to tell his fingers to let the thing go. As a result, Obito's fingers tightened around its surface.

Slowly, arms tightening around Lee and in turn the ring, he found himself deciding to play it cool as best he could and calmly responded, "Yes?"

For a moment there was silence, no doubt Lee wondering if she was really the one who was going to have to address this situation and what someone even was supposed to say to their sixteen-year-old ring addict apprentice groping master plus ring in sleep.

Obito, meanwhile, wondered how his life had managed to get himself into this situation. This hadn't seemed like the sort of thing that could possibly happen to him when he was a bright eyed and bushy tailed genin shouting about becoming hokage. Still, at some point from starting from Point A to ending here at Point B Obito must have made some ghastly mistake that enabled this whole dumpster fire to come together. At this point he might as well throw out the classic Bakashism that he'd somehow managed to get lost on the road of life.

Simultaneously, he also found himself thanking the gods that Minato-sensei or Kakashi weren't here to see this. They would kill him, they would kill him first by themselves, resurrect him, and then kill him together. They could never, ever, hear about any of this.

Lee slowly rolled over so that she was looking directly at him, considering him with that cool and unnerving green gaze while Obito tried to nervously smile back. Finally, as Lee moved he forced himself to allow the ring to slip through his fingers so that it could dangle enticingly in front of him.

Laughing at him, Obito was somehow utterly certain, as even in the world where he did not take the orange mask it was inevitable Uchiha Obito would play the fool.

Finally, after far too long of a silence, Lee decided to skip past the awkwardness entirely and instead cut straight to the heart of the matter, "I think, Obito, that we should probably take a look at whatever the hell is going on in your head right now."

Obito blinked, blinked again, flushed and rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment not sure if he was relieved or just confused at being let off the hook, "Oh, yes, right um… What?"

(Or even, an unnervingly large part of him, somehow disappointed as if he'd wanted something more to come of this.)

Lee heaved herself up into a fully upright position with a sigh, cracking her neck in a circular motion, then motioned to the ring dangling from her neck, "Whoever this is, he's managed to mess you up enough to somehow get you the mangekyo sharingan without any dead people."

"The what?" Obito stammered, now sitting fully upright as he clutched at his eye in near panic, "It gave me the what now?!"

That was… That was not something you just got. Well, Uchiha Mikoto supposedly stumbled across it in what had to be the clan mystery of the ages, but Obito had come to suspect that had something to do with Lee herself versus strange happenstance. The point was though, that you didn't just get it, it couldn't be cheated, and you were not supposed to be able to get it just by slipping a ring on your finger.

"And that's not even getting to your hair," Lee continued, ignoring Obito's slight panic attack at the idea of now having the most evolved form of his clan's dojutsu (and god they were going to kill him now, weren't they? They'd been pissed enough at the sharingan and his giving the sharingan to Kakashi, his now earning the mangekyo on top of that would have them rioting in the streets.)

"What's wrong with my hair?" Obito asked, now wishing that he'd grown it out long enough to be able see some of it. As it was he was just kind of patting it and it felt the same as ever, that coarse thick Uchiha hair that perpetually either curled or stood on end, but apparently it was not looking par for the course.

"Not to mention the spurts of fluent Sindarin and sudden increase in vocabulary, the erratic behavior, and the fact that I'm sure he's made himself right at home in your mindscape while I wasn't looking. That, and it would be kind of nice to talk face to face and get at least some idea of what this bastard wants before we decide what to do…" Lee shrugged again, sighed, and said, "I suppose there's just no helping it."

"Helping what?" Obito asked, now feeling more than a little wary as Lee's casual resignation turned into serious contemplation regarding her apprentice.

"You remember legillimency?" she asked, and he nodded slowly, remembering that it was an English technique of what was more or less a replication of some of the Yamanaka clan techniques.

Naturally when the Yamanaka had heard of it they'd thrown a miniature fit as well as had something of an existential crisis. Luckily for them mastery took years, it and the opposing branch of occlumency could not be attempted or mastered by anyone, and since it was English only a select number of shinobi had even heard of it.

Obito himself had never seen it in action, had merely heard offhand who happened to be proficient or else excellent in which and made it a point to generally avoid eye contact. Which, as an Uchiha felt a little strange as usually it was the other way around and only great uninformed fools or the suicidally brave made direct eye-contact with the sharingan.

"I happen to be something of a natural," Lee said, motioning to herself with a rather wry smile before adding, "That said, I'm pants at occlumency, so I would kindly advise you not to wander off the beaten path, so to speak, as you'll likely end up in my head instead which… Well… I've been told it's an interesting place."

Obito somehow thought that was an understatement.

"And it may get… Uncomfortable," Lee finally settled on after a moment, shooting him a winning smile, "We're likely going to have to go very deep into your head and pass through all sorts of nasty things."

"Oh," Obito said slowly, not quite sure what else he could possibly say to that, except maybe to wonder out loud if he had the option of skipping past all this. Judging by the determined expression on her face, he didn't.

"Right," She scooted closer to him so that their knees were touching, the ring dangling between them as she lined her eyes directly up with him, "Are you ready?"

Swallowing rather nervously at the close proximity, feeling his heart pounding in his chest, he was sure that "No" was not the right answer. So, all he did was give a fraction of a nod, forced his eyes away from the ring and instead to meet hers.

And it was like falling into them. He couldn't feel himself moving forward and yet it was like he did, kept moving closer and closer until he was falling through her eyes as if jumping into strange green pools.

Only, at the bottom as he floated down were not the deep forests of Konoha or else the green foothills of mountains, but instead the forests just outside of that great bridge in Kusagakure, Iwa's supply line in the third war and the beginning of the end of Uchiha Obito as he had once been.

Here it was as strong and sturdy as ever before its destruction, the act of which Obito hadn't seen for himself, as somewhere in the mountains he had already been presumed dead. Dead by all except, perhaps, Hatake Kakashi who in turn would manage to convince only Eru Lee to come and find him months after the fact.

Looking back over his shoulder, away from the bridge, Obito could make out Konohagakure painted in a strange rose-gold tint that gave it a surreal almost glittering effect. There, though he was much too far to be able to see these details, he could somehow see the drifting of cherry blossoms in the Spring, the light reflecting off the river, and the sound of distant laughter as well as his own proud insistence that he would one day become hokage.

Lee's voice sounded beside him, right next to his ear, "That must be your childhood."

Obito, turned, whirled and caught her standing next to him. She was dressed as she normally was when on a mission, dark drab colors, the flak jacket and chunin vest, but she somehow looked more ethereal here. Like she was a being made of light and air rather than flesh and bone, the dark circles, the dirt on her skin, all that evidence of the physical world and a mortal body scrubbed away from her in this place.

Lee looking out with him, her eyes reflecting the golden Konoha, continued, "It's where you've sorted everything before the Kannabi bridge."

Obito supposed that made sense, he'd often though his mind would be cleanly divided into a before and after, and perhaps even into those memories he'd prefer to think about and those ones that he wouldn't with the Kannabi bridge linking the two. It would make sense that his own mindscape would reflect that.

"I suspect that we'll have to cross the bridge if we want to meet our friend," Lee said, turning Obito to face the bridge and the more imposing path shrouded by the woods on its other side.

"Of course we will," he said, more to himself than to her, and even in his own mind and memories it took a firm steeling of will to be able to take the slow steps forward towards it and then, finally, to step on its stone surface.

It was longer inside of his head than it had been at the time. Granted, it had been long, spanning the great dried out river, but this seemed to go on for miles and miles as the shadows around them grew darker and more menacing with each step. The leaves, as they rustled, no longer comforted him but instead reminded him of men made from leaves inside of a cave.

Or, rather, men who were once turned into leaves.

Lee's voice cut into the silence like a hot knife through a stick of butter, "So, Obito, I know until now we've been heading south east, if only to avoid more ungodly foot soldiers but there remains a decision to be made."

"A decision?" Obito asked distractedly, a part of him grateful for Lee taking his mind off of exactly what he was doing and a part of him too distant to listen. It occurred to him that they weren't just walking across the Kannabi bridge, they were walking across the bridge into all of those things that Obito never wanted to think about.

Everything he'd ever suppressed, everything he'd shut out and pushed down into the darkest corners of his soul, everything would be on the other side of this bridge and his only solace was that he at least had Eru Lee as a guide.

"Do we return to Mordor with the ring or not?"

Obito forced his eyes away from the other side to look at her, to recognize her question, and to supply the almost instinctual answer of, "Of course we don't."

Suddenly he found it easy to set aside where they were going and what they were doing, his voice rising and with it very recent memories of being ambushed on the road flooding through the crevasse beneath them, "Shishou, he couldn't even wait until we got back to even stab us in the back. He not only took the first opportunity, he took the first opportunity with utter glee by assaulting us with the nazgûl. You know if we return through the black gates the first thing he's going to do is dispose of us, if not something far worse and more permanent than that. Giving him the ring is stupid, more than that, he simply doesn't deserve it."

That, really, was the crux of the matter for Obito. Yes, there was the pragmatic sense of danger and recovering from being betrayed by a foreign king. More than that though, he was insulted and that idea kept running through his head that since Sauron wanted the ring so badly he should be the last person on Middle Earth to get it.

"Were they sent by him?" Lee mused and Obito found himself balking.

"Of course, they were! Who else has command of the nazgûl?!" Obito asked, granted he couldn't speak for the Uruk-hai, especially as those had come from the west rather than the east but given that he'd sent the goddamn ring wraiths Obito doubted Sauron would have been displeased by that turn of events.

"Well, I don't know," Lee said, and there was something very pointed in her expression as she looked at him, "I didn't even know that you knew they were called the nazgûl."

Obito stopped on the bridge, looked out not at either shore but instead out into the great crevasse of his memory. Finally, distantly, he noted, "I… must have heard him say it somewhere."

And he had, now that he thought about it, it had always been him and Lee who had referred to them by their clear function as hunter nin. Sauron had always referred to them as the nazgûl, the ring wraiths, he had just never made it explicitly clear that it was only the ring they hunted. There were no nuke nin from Barad-dûr.

Slowly, he began walking again, recovering his initial thoughts and his initial arguments, "Either way, shihou, even if he somehow wasn't aware or responsible (which I can guarantee you he was), you have to agree that we should at least gather some solid intelligence before we even think of approaching the black gates."

Lee still considered him, not seeming to be listening to him at all but rather staring past that, but then she nodded and said, "Fair enough, and we're making a good start on that meeting this thing face to face. All the same, what do you think we should do with it?"

Do with it?

Obito supposed he hadn't thought that far ahead. He'd been caught on the idea of giving it to Sauron being terrible but doing something with it…

It was with a slow and terrible dread that Obito realized he had had every intention of taking it back to Konoha. There'd been no question of giving it to someone else here, to even loaning it to someone other than Eru Lee, inside his mind it had been a done deal that of course he would return to Konoha with the ring on his finger.

Even as he realized that this was…

If there was something that could destroy Konoha just as easily as a bijuu, simply by existing, then it was this.

And yet even with that, even with that almost certain knowledge that to bring back the ring was to realize his worst fears, he was still more than tempted. As if he could simply keep it on a box on the mantelpiece, only taking it out to look at it every once in a while, perhaps on the odd occasion slipping it on his finger…

Closing his eyes even as he continued to walk, he forced himself to say, "I don't know."

With that, suddenly, he found himself on the other end of the bridge. He looked down at the ground, somehow bleaker and colorless compared to the golden other side. Looking back over the bridge, Konoha was no longer visible. The only thing he could see being the tree line and the path back into childhood.

And ahead, the imposing walls of the Uchiha clan compound as seen from the outside, and of course, above their heads, the rocky path to Madara's cavern. Only this time, as in his dream, the entrance wasn't dark but was instead emitting a soft and dangerous glow.

Something made of shadow and fire dreaming within it.

"That looks very promising," Lee said, clapping her hands together and rubbing them.

"If by promising you mean ominous, then I agree," Obito could only add weakly, once again wondering if it wasn't too late to turn back now and say they'd given it a good solid effort.

Lee strode in front of him, entirely too confident given that it was Obito's goddamn head she was walking in, while Obito trailed reluctantly behind as he braced himself to not only see all his favorite Zetsus again but Madara himself as well.

He felt his breath growing louder and more labored, pressure on his chest from the weights that had almost always been on top of it as Madara waited for him to comply with the eye of the moon plan, his fingers began to tingle and go numb from cold even as the air became unbearably warm as they entered.

Madara wasn't there, neither was Black Zetsu, White Zetsu, or any other variety of Zetsu. Instead it was empty of all signs of life, even the grotesque black statue from the outerpath gone, and in its place further into the cave there was the fire bred from corruption.

"Are we sure we want to do this?" Obito found himself asking, his voice oddly rough as it caught inside of his throat.

"Well, there's no time like the present," Lee said, perhaps a tad too blasé. Even so she reached backward and grabbed his scarred hand in hers, squeezed it for reassurance, and slowly lead him down into the heart of shadow and fire.

Except, when the reached that central chamber, it was not the great fiery shadow that Obito had expected, the remains of a corrupted maia, but instead an oddly familiar ethereal figure. He was… Familiar was a strange way to put it, Obito thought, because while clearly from Middle Earth he didn't necessarily look like anyone Obito knew.

Everything about him was golden and silver, as if he was made not only of light but of precious metals shaped into the form of a man with his eyes glittering pale blue jewels. There was an odd, almost shimmering, beauty to him like the way that sunlight across the surface of water was beautiful. Something that tantalized and caught the eye, drew in, but could never be held directly in one's hand.

He was, in his own strange way, more beautiful than even the fair form of Sauron.

Except, something in that thought had him stopping, had Obito looking over the features once again and eventually landing on those odd eyes and the way his lips curved into a smile. Obito felt himself pale, his dread as well as his awe and desire slipping away from him to be replaced by profound irritation and dull rage as he cried out, "Oh, you gauche son of a bitch!"

Sauron, lord of Mordor and shadow of the wasteland, now making a bachelor pad of evil in Obito's brain, looked ever so slightly taken aback as he asked in a lyrical and almost painfully beautiful voice, "Pardon?"

Obito however was just shaking his head, gripping the bridge of his nose and trying to tell himself to remain calm, that flipping over the furniture that didn't exist in his head as he threw a temper tantrum would get him nowhere, "Why am I not surprised? Shishou, tell me why I'm not surprised."

"I don't know, Obito, I'm a little surprised. After all that fire and brimstone, I expected something that didn't look like it belonged in an English boy band," Lee said, evidently not recognizing this stray piece of Sauron's overwhelming chakra as she tilted her head slightly to the side.

Sauron's smile disappeared as he realized that they were not falling in worship of his latest and greatest extreme makeover, "Belong in a what?"

"No, shishou, we know who this is," Obito then motioned towards Sauron's misplaced chakra in a mocking introduction, "Shishou, meet Sauron's other half. Sauron's stray fëa bound to the one ring, meet Lee Eru."

"His other half?" Lee asked, now looking him once over and appearing to actually look beyond the physical appearance to the chakra itself, "Well, I suppose now that you mention it there is something kind of familiar… Except, why would he put this much of his own chakra into a ring? And why is he so blonde?"

Sauron opened his mouth to answer but Obito cut him off before he could even start, crossing his arms in irritation as he was forced to witness what looked like Sauron's latest and greatest overdramatic disaster taking place in his own brain, "Well, isn't that the English nin's shtick? Putting chakra in things he likes?"

And why did that now sound twice as awful given that Sauron had apparently stuck his chakra straight into Obito's head.

Lee just haplessly shrugged, not even looking as Sauron opened his mouth to again cut in as she said, "Sure, but he does that to avoid dying, or at least, that was the idea I got. As far as I understood Sauron already just naturally avoids death. So, I don't see what storing large amounts of chakra into inanimate objects could possibly get him."

"Are we really asking for logic in the actions of a man who tried to bang us collectively while possessing a hobbit?" Obito asked, eyebrows rising past the point where he thought they could go. Still, it needed to be said that this whole disaster had started in a pub in Bree.

Even if the ring, Sauron's stray chakra, looked as if it was choking at the very idea of what Obito had just suggested.

"What's a hobbit?"

"Shire Baggins," Obito said dismissively with a wave of one hand, "Short, harry feet, from the middle of absolutely nowhere and generally are known for doing absolutely nothing important with their lives and liking it that way."

Now, Obito was beginning to suspect that this information was something that had managed to leak over from the ring's chakra, but he wasn't going to spend too much time digging into that now.

"Well, that is a very good point," Lee said rather dully before hesitating and adding, "Still, he seems to have some trappings of logic sometimes even if he does like to turn into a fiery eyeball of rage, sing the lyrics of the worst song over and over again, and try to get back the chunk of his own chakra that he threw into jewelery… I just haven't figured out what it is yet."

"Keep trying, shishou," Obito said with bitter sarcasm, "I'm sure you'll come up with something real soon."

"Excuse me," the ring, Sauron's other half, finally interrupted looking rather strained, his expression eerily reminiscent of his dark-haired twin in Mordor when Lee had finally started speaking a decent amount of Sindarin, "Was there something you wanted from me?"

Both Lee and Obito turned in tandem to stare at the man. Obito wished he could say that he had seen more than enough of the man or something equally witty, but as it was his tongue felt dry, and despite everything he still felt himself drawn in. As if knowing the man's real face, his true purpose, helped nothing.

Lee, however, didn't seem conflicted at all as she walked forward towards the man, then stared down at his feet, "Well, sort of, I mostly came to see how deep you'd managed to get your roots into my apprentice."

Looking down Obito then noticed that there were roots of a kind, strange rivers of light emanating from the man's feet, sinking down into the floor of the cavern and deeper into Obito's mind.

"And you have really done a number on him," Lee said to herself with a frown, reaching out and caressing one of the roots, "Which is more or less what I thought…"

"Shishou?"

"Well, Obito, the prognosis is not good," Lee said as she stood with a sigh, walked away from Sauron and back to Obito as her face became somber, "You're stuck with at least some of him your head for… Until I think of something really spectacular."

"You seem to be under some misapprehension," the ring stated, ignoring how Lee tilted her head back towards him to glare side-eyed at him, "I am the trace of fëa that remains from the smith Annatar who created…"

"That's nice," Lee interjected before he could finish, "But unfortunately neither Obito nor I have the context to appreciate whatever ridiculous story you want to feed us. Annatar, Sauron, whatever you call yourself makes no difference to us. The song remains the same, my friend."

Lee then with a wave of her hand, released golden chains out from her palm, throwing Sauron's golden alter ego against the wall and sealing him there in a casual display of impressive power, "For now, we can at least make sure you don't touch anything important."

At once Obito felt lighter somehow, as if he'd been carrying around a great weight without realizing it. Still though, Obito thought as his eyes moved over the ring pinned to the wall, this meant that he was only sealed here, not that he was gone entirely.

Lee then, with yet another sigh, plopped down on the ground and stared up idly at Sauron with a tilted head, watching as he struggled with growing panic against the chains, "Now, the real question is, what on earth are we going to do about you?"

"Do about him?" Obito asked as he decided, that since it was his own goddamn head and he could do what he wanted, to sit down beside her, "What do you mean do about him?"

"On the one hand, Obito, this is a man's soul we're looking at," Lee said, and here as many times before she seemed to be seeing something Obito simply couldn't as she stared across at the maia avatar of the ring inside of Obito's mind, "However distasteful, overdramatic, and prone to betrayal he is I can understand why he'd so desperately want it back. To the point of even acting out so flagrantly against us. This sort of existence is not something I would force on anyone, even Danzo."

Sauron stopped struggling at that, seemed rather shocked, looking down at Lee with wide and uncomprehending eyes as she looked up at him. For a moment Obito wondered if anyone had seen him for what he was other than her, whatever flame he was beneath the genjutsu and the glamours.

"Shishou, you can't be…"

"On the other hand," Lee said, ignoring Obito's interjection, "He is in default and at the very least hardly deserves to be rewarded for staging us in the back with his deplorable hunter nin. That, and I just have this feeling that giving it back would have… unintended consequences."

Unintended consequences, Obito was somehow utterly certain, including attempting to bind Lee and Obito into his service for all eternity.

Lee then closed her eyes, gave a small hum of thought, then tilted her head towards the chained ring, "I suppose you don't have any thoughts on where you'd like to end up?"

The ring was silent for a moment, gawking unnaturally down at Lee, looking as if he was torn between asking if she was serious or asking if she was even a person. Finally, he said in that rather wry tone that Obito had come to expect from Sauron in the brief weeks they'd known him, "If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer the former."

Obito snorted, looking away from the ring as he tried to maintain his presence of mind, even with it chained beneath Lee's seals there was that sense of underlying temptation and want.

"Yes, well, we're not going to do that one because we're not that stupid," Lee said, then held up her hands before the man could protest, "If you'd just kept your hands to yourself, and your other half laid off sending in the hunter nin and the footmen soldiers, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation and you'd already be back in Mordor no questions asked. So, I'm afraid you really only have yourself to blame for this one."

"If I kept my hands to myself?!" he asked, lunging forward against his chains, straining them ever so slightly, but not enough to rattle them or even buckle their hold against him.

"You know, I could just dump you in the ocean and be done with it," Lee noted, "So I think I'm being rather accommodating. That said, with that option off the table, is there anywhere else you'd prefer to go?"

The ring sneered, face twisting from something pleasant into something both beautiful and profane, "You think it would be that easy?"

He looked down at the pair of them, eyes unhesitantly moving towards Obito, "Do you think he has the will to simply let it go, just like that? Do you know just how difficult it was for him to give the ring even to you? A woman who he trusts beyond all comprehension? Do you imagine he can simply hand it over to another?"

For a moment Lee said nothing, neither refuting nor agreeing with the ring's words. Obito himself was silent as well, knowing that even if he wanted to, he couldn't agree or disagree with them either. Hadn't he thought as much earlier, that it might very well be impossible to simply leave it behind?

Finally, slowly, Lee said, "I imagine it's in your best interests if he does not hold onto it."

Lee ignored the curling of the man's lips, the amused smile, as she said, "Obito has the… potential for great and terrible power. Pumping foreign chakra into him, skewing his perception and morality… I have great faith in him but just the same I think you'd find yourself moving steadily towards a goal you had no intention of reaching."

The ring asked, again seeming almost amused if anything else, "What is that supposed to mean?"

Lee, however, responded quite plainly and without any hesitation, "It means that the path of Uchiha Obito's annihilation does not lead to Mordor."

She stood then, helped Obito up to his feet as well and ignored the ring's baleful glare. It could just be Obito, his odd mood and the fact that there was a bucket load of foreign chakra now taking residence in his head, but he found himself oddly touch that it was once again Lee who would lead him out of a cave like this.

Her hand, he thought, was always so much warmer than he expected.

With a smile towards Obito she said, "Well, I suppose there's nothing for it. We're just going to have to put it back where we found it."

"Where we found it?" Obito asked, wondering if he'd missed part of the conversation or he was actually supposed to understand what that meant.

Sauron though, seemed to understand at the very least, and incredibly amused and dubious as he said, "Oh, you can't be serious."

He then threw his head back against the wall, laughing hysterically even as Lee said, "Obviously, we're giving it back to Shire Baggins and company."

Author's Note: And so we have the grand and rather anticlimactic reveal! And undoubtedly things going even further off the rails in the future as our pair of heroes try to pawn off the one ring of power and Obito gets used to the chronic illness of "maia in the brain".

Thanks for reading, reviews are greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Naruto, or the Lord of the Rings