Obito's experience in the war was different from many padawans.

Rin remained mostly in the temple serving as an apprentice to the jedi's advanced medical staff. As with all the medics, whether in the field or in the temple, she had been kept very busy since the start of the war.

Kakashi had more of a typical experience and accompanied his own master to the front. His master lead a battalion of clones and together they attempted to liberate outer-rim worlds from the Seperatist army and desperately hold position as the war stretched further and further across the galaxy. As a result, Obito had hardly seen Kakashi since the war started.

Obito, on the other hand, wasn't confined to the temple or planet-bound for any extreme amount of time with clone troops at his back. Instead, Master Lee Eru had infamously refused to lead any clone troops under any circumstances and spent the war hopping from planet to planet to extract jedi forces when everything went wrong or else sabotage the equipment of an invading force against all odds.

And she was very good at it. It was how she'd gotten away with so much defiance and independence in a time of war. It's hard to tell you to lead troops when you still got the job done without them.

This meant that they didn't interact too much with other jedi or civilian populations. They came, conquered, and then left to travel on to the next mission handed to them by the council. Occasionally they'd come across familiar faces like Skywalker and Master Kenobi but it wasn't all that often.

As for Obito, it meant that ever since the war started, he felt as if his world was growing smaller and smaller until him and Lee were the only true people inside of it. He imagined that she ended up feeling the same way if she hadn't felt that way already.

Certainly, at some point, it dawned on him that she'd started telling him more than she'd ever told anyone else; even her younger brother Anakin.

They were camped out on one of the galaxy's many, barely habitable, desert planets. They were parked out in the desert, away from any tempting settlement that either housed Seperatist troops or would draw them like flies if they suspected it housed jedi. In the distance Obito could see the colorful tents of local nomad tribes under the moonlight but it was comfortingly far leaving Obito and Lee with only the sand, the cliff faces, the stars, and the moons above them.

Lee tended idly to a fire, a worn and pensive look on her face, likely considering all the flying they had ahead of them.

It was Obito who broke the silence, "Does this place look anything like Tatooine?"

She glanced up, blinking as she focused on him, and said, "No, too many rocks, too much structure. Tatooine, Mos Espa at least, was just endless shifting dunes."

She smiled then, "I don't miss it much."

She sighed then, "Not much to miss anyway, not with Shmi Skywalker dead and buried. Anakin and my last tie to that place has long since been severed."

Obito for a moment couldn't quite comprehend what she'd just said. It'd been so casual, so blunt, that it didn't register. Shmi Skywalker was Anakin's mother, Lee's mother for all intents and purposes. He'd known that for ages, but he hadn't—

"It was a few years ago," Lee said quietly, "Just before the start of the war."

"You didn't say anything."

"Well, I wasn't supposed to know, and if I knew I wasn't supposed to care," Lee said with a shrug, "And—Both Anakin and I are watched, it's not wise to let my feelings show that blatantly."

"Besides," Lee added after a moment, "That was the price I paid, the price she was willing to pay, for both me and Anakin to join the jedi order. I think she had a feeling what would happen before we even left that hell planet."

"What do you mean?" Obito asked.

For a moment she said nothing, just stared into the fire in contemplation, then slowly, "I suppose I never have told you how I came to this galaxy or how I joined the order."

"I know the basics," Obito said, "Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi found you on Tatooine during the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo. Despite your age, he brought you both back to Coruscant hoping you'd be trained as jedi. Master Jinn then died on Naboo, so Obi-Wan Kenobi took Anakin Skywalker as a padawan instead. Later, Master Tobirama Senju took you as his own padawan."

"You're not wrong," Lee mused with a hum, "But you lack many of the finer details."

"I showed up on Tatooine when I was four years old," Lee began, "And before you ask, I really have no idea how I did it. One moment I was in Surrey, the next I was willing myself anywhere else entirely. I don't know if I'd hoped for a better future, or something, but whatever I'd hoped for I quickly found myself trading one form of slavery for another more brutal and blatant form of slavery."

She spared Obito a wry smile, "Weeding the garden and vacuuming the living room has nothing on the Hutt's spice mines and pleasure domes."

"Thankfully," Lee said without waiting for a response, "Shmi found me, decided to claim me as her daughter, and hoped that our similar enough features would get us by. And then, a few months later she was pregnant without a man to be the father."

Lee tapped her fingers on the ground, sifting through sand as she thought, "Anakin didn't know, not until he was a jedi I think. Then again, he might have known, because he never asked. And it wasn't out of shame or fear of just who that father could be but because he genuinely didn't seem to care. He knew there wasn't anyone else."

"For three more years we were Gardulla the Hutt's slaves. Shmi worked in a sweat shop and Anakin and I were considered too young to be of any use. Then, Watto bought us to help run his shop and perform manual labor and that was where Master Jinn ended up finding us six years later."

She smiled then, laughed to herself, "That was an interesting story, you know. They didn't intend to land on Tatooine, desperately wanted off the planet as soon as they'd touched down. The only thing that brought them to our doorstep was that they needed a part only Watto had. Then… Then Jinn saw Anakin."

Lee glanced at him, "He was never much interested in me. He liked me well enough, he'd help me if he could afford to, but I wasn't Anakin Skywalker. I didn't have the midi-chlorian count he did, hell, I was three and a half years older than he was and that much more dangerous. The truth is that Qui-Gon Jinn didn't free me from slavery the way he did Anakin Skywalker. Originally, it was supposed to be just Anakin who left but I—"

She paused, stared up at the sky, "Shmi told me to go with him, that I had no future on Tatooine, no destiny. Anakin would need me out there in the wide world, need me to help him become a jedi master. Even Haruki—"

She cut herself off deliberately, biting her tongue and organizing her thoughts, "When I left Tatooine, I chased after them through the desert and barely managed to jump onto their ship as it was leaving. Then I somehow, miraculously, managed to find and deactivate the chip that was supposed to blow off my head if I ever ran for it."

Obito wanted to open his mouth, inject that this must have been when they recognized her as wothy of training, that that was the moment her future as a jedi was set. Lee, however, wasn't finished.

"When we arrived on Coruscant they gave Anakin a test, Master Jinn practically begged them to and his midi-chlorian count was compelling. I was not given a test, was never intended to be accepted into the order, especially if Anakin ever was. It was only after we went to Naboo that—"

"That was Anakin's final test to become a padawan, more, it was Master Jinn's final wish that Obi-Wan Kenobi would train Anakin in his stead. If they hadn't accepted Anakin, then Obi-Wan would have left the order right then and there."

Obito couldn't help himself, "And then you were accepted too."

"Nope," Lee said with a small smile and a laugh, "I just worked up my resolve to fake it until I made it. I showed up at the temple, used mind tricks to convince the creche instructors I was an initiate just on the edge of having my ass hauled to Telos, and slept in Anakin's closet."

She rubbed the back of her head, her smile now sheepish as she indulged in memories, "Master Tobirama ended up catching me red handed only a few months in, before Anakin was even done with the courses he should have been taking years ago. He decided right then and there that I was 'too dangerous, willful, and clever' to possibly be left untrained and took me as his padawan learner on the spot. I've been Lee Eru, rather than Lee Skywalker, ever since."

That appeared to be it, the last of her story, and Obito…

He'd always assumed that Lee had had an easier time getting in than Anakin. He'd known it was difficult, that they'd barely made it in and even now Anakin at least often met opposition everywhere he went, but he hadn't thought that she'd never truly been accepted into the order at all.

Especially not when she'd climbed through the ranks the way she had.

However much Lee kept her secrets, hoodwinked her fellow jedi and the council, she wasn't a bad jedi. In the war she'd been instrumental to their efforts so far and in peace she'd had her own air of wisdom and way of viewing the world that had her progressing quickly through the order.

That the order would want Skywalker and not her at all. That if it hadn't been for Tobirama Senju, probably the only man who had given her any real faith in the order, she never would have become a true jedi.

Obito looked away, stared into the fire, oddly uncomfortable, "I'm glad you bullied them into it."

"So am I," Lee said, "Things were probably going to get dangerous on Tatooine. I was getting old and pretty enough that it'd be very tempting for Watto to sell me back to the Hutts. I had no future there, even if Anakin hadn't left."

"Shmi though," Lee added, "I think she knew that if both Anakin and I left whatever protection she had went with us. She didn't mind though, she wanted so badly for us to have some kind of a future. Of course, Anakin doesn't see it that way."

Obito tried to think of something to say but nothing felt right. He wondered if Anakin knew that story even now, something made Obito doubt it. He'd been nine at the time, and from what he and Lee said, he'd been self-absorbed and naïve in the way most nine-year-olds were. That, and Lee wouldn't point it out to him, wouldn't tell him that while he'd been accepted into the order she hadn't been. Even if he had realized that, Obito wondered if a nine-year-old boy could have understood what that meant.

So, instead, Lee and Obito sat in comfortable silence as they waited for the sun to rise.

"Jinn"

He didn't say it like it was a curse nor like a prayer.

Instead that single syllable was breathed out with something in between. Something that was at once resigned to the state of the world, bitter and resentful that it had come to this and he'd fallen into it so easily, grateful that at least some of the curtain had lifted, and wary of the long and difficult road ahead.

Jinn, however, looked at Obito as if he'd just gone and answered all his prayers.

"You can see me?"

Obito wondered how he should answer that. On the one hand, he could see Jinn Qui-Gon, a man who in this world was supposed to be thirteen years dead and gone, but on the other hand Jinn still was very blue and translucent for someone supposed to be living.

Obito rubbed a hand through his hair and decided to ask a different question, "Exactly how long have you been sitting here?"

Jinn looked as if he wanted to brush that off, tried to smile, but then said, "Well, I tried to contact many others first."

Yes, that's what Obito thought.

The trouble with genjutsu is that there were multiple stages to breaking them. Despite what a ten-year-old Obito had once whole-heartedly believed, you couldn't just shout "kai!" and go on your merry way.

First, you had to recognize the illusion. You had to know that something in your world wasn't as it was supposed to be. Against rookie genjutsu casters, this wasn't so hard, just look for out of place chakra. However, the truly great genjutsu casters accounted for this, they made illusions that you inherently would not question. Your perception of the world would alter to account for the illusion.

This was the strength of the sharingan, it both cut through these genjutsu tricks, and allowed the casting of them to such a subtle degree that the victim might never recover.

Second, once you realized the illusion existed, you had to pinpoint what exactly was wrong. This wasn't strictly necessary, but if you were caught in a strong enough illusion, it was easier to get out if you knew what you needed to disrupt with your chakra.

Then, finally, you concentrated, found the points of weakness in the illusion, and prayed you had enough chakra to break through.

Being an Uchiha, Obito normally wouldn't have to worry about such things. His awakened eyes placed him in a select group of people who could never succumb to genjutsu and could cast it with little to no failure. Only Lee, he suspected, would have been able to give him both a run for his money and a hard time.

But Haruki was like Lee. He wielded an equally infinite cosmic power that stretched far enough to do what Madara had only ever been able to dream of doing with the unwilling aid of nine bijuu. Haruki had rewritten an entire galaxy in a grander and more expansive eye of the moon.

And Obito, even with the mangekyo sharingan, even having recognized the illusion and begun to glimpse through it, was still trapped inside.

The false memories remained and retained their poignancy, the jedi war and dissolving of the republic still nagged at the forefront of his mind. Jinn stayed hopelessly blue, nothing more than a manifestation of the force from beyond the grave. Most damning of all, he had no idea when exactly the genjutsu had even started and this fake reality had overtaken the true one.

He sat back down on his futon, except sitting was a kind word for it, in truth he collapsed. All the energy departed from his legs at once, leaving his hands shaking desperately in numb shock, his mind caught at the dizzying edge of panic.

"Are you alright?" Jinn asked.

Obito could only look up, stare, and shake his head, "No, no I'm not."

Jinn seemed to realize his question had an obvious answer. That, all things considered, he didn't even have to ask. Except, all things considered, he probably felt like he had to. Like he had to stand here and say something if only to fill the oppressive silence.

Obito's eyes wandered to the door. He wondered if Haruki was listening in on them, the shadow clone itself wasn't present, but that meant nothing. Obito wondered just how carefully Haruki was watching him and what he would do now that he knew Obito knew.

"So, I'm not your first pick then?" Obito asked.

Jinn sat down as well, taking a seat on the futon next to Obito and leaning against the wall, "No, I'm afraid I didn't think of you until sometime later. Of course, it helped that you weren't here at first."

"I wasn't here?" Obito asked slowly and the man just looked at him, as if just now realizing that Obito was still mired in this thing.

"You were on a mission with Lee."

So that's when it started. Yes, that planet. They'd crashed on that wooded world, there'd been no sign of a ship with them, and the last thing he remembered from his past life was Lee's desperate attempt to pull them through to Konoha.

They must have crashed on that world in the process and lost the nidaime somewhere along the way.

A week, it had taken his eye over a week to begin seeing through this world. He felt a sharp stab of panic, his heart instinctively racing, as he realized just how deep he'd sunk into this world.

For an entire week he'd truly believed he was simply a struggling jedi.

Jinn either didn't notice or was allowing Obito to collect himself, "I tried contacting Master Yoda first. I thought that as one of the oldest and wisest jedi, one of the most powerful, he would be able to sense me. Then I tried my own master, then Obi-Wan, Anakin Skywalker, your master, and in despair I came to you."

Obito couldn't help but laugh, "I'm that far down on the list?"

Jinn just gave him a dull, perplexed, look, "I had no idea why you would see through what so many could not."

Obito almost blurted it out, almost reached up and tapped his one dark eye (what should have been his one dark eye), the gift and curse of his ancestors. He stopped himself just in time though, a single thought running through his head: Haruki was watching through Jinn.

Obito had mentioned the sharengan off-hand often enough to Lee in this place, had even mentioned the mangekyo, he'd even activated it in his desperate fight with the sith and unleashed a power even he didn't recognize, but he had never sat down and explicitly described exactly what it could do to anyone in this universe.

He would not hand Haruki the tools needed to destroy him.

So, he simply said, "I have my secrets."

Jinn seemed to accept this, nodded to himself slowly, and then turned to face away from Obito and look at his quarters. Funny, it didn't look like Obito's room, not at the Hatake compound or his grandmother's, Obito didn't necessarily own many personal effects but he'd never been quite so spartan either. There'd always been a collection of odds and ends, trophies won, gifts from family and friends, childhood momentos, little sprinklings of humanity here and there that gave it life.

How had he overlooked that?

Suddenly it felt like the cave, it didn't look like it, but there was that same edge of panic and forced calm. He could almost feel the chains against his skin, the constant drain of chakra, and the pervasive cold that reached into his very bones.

Every day he'd been in there he'd tried to remind himself to think, to search for some, any, means of escape. Always the fear that in his exhaustion and terror he'd overlooked the one exit he had. That every time Madara left his sight he was already running out of time.

Obito breathed in and out, forcing himself to think forward instead of backward. Lee wasn't coming this time, he couldn't sit and wait hopelessly for the rescue even he had never believed was coming.

With a forced calm he asked, "Where exactly are we right now?"

"What do you mean?"

Obito motioned to their surroundings, "This isn't real. I need to know exactly how real it is or isn't. Are we sitting in the jedi temple right now?"

Or was Obito floating in a tube somewhere being experimented on by the good Chancellor Palpatine? Would he even be able to tell the difference? No, no, that wasn't likely. His eye was still in his head, he knew that much, and that made Obito's dystopic tank reality unlikely. Still, he could be lying in a pit somewhere, guarded by drones.

"Ah, yes," Jinn said, "Yes, it's the temple."

Obito didn't know if that was good or bad.

Luckily, Jinn didn't ask him that, instead he elaborated, "Everyone is… Not where they should be, not exactly, but moving about as if they are where they should be. Senators still attend the senate, jedi still congregate in the temple, but instead of the world as it was, they see the world as it could be."

Which meant they really were fighting a civil war, burning their way through far off villages and planets, and that Obito really was living in the temple. The world still existed, they still interacted with it, and it was only the recent past that was the dream.

Obito then inspected Jinn, "And what about the people who aren't supposed to exist thirteen years from now? And what about the people who were written in without a chance to be born?"

Jinn in this world had died on Naboo long before the clone wars had even started. The Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo, in fact, was one of the first major signs that the Republic was headed to civil war.

For a moment Jinn didn't answer, then admitted, "I don't know."

Obito could guess what he didn't know. The children who weren't born yet, the oldest of which would be thirteen, they were specters. Aspects of the illusion just like the memories aimed at keeping it going. As for the many people who were meant to have died…

Obito allowed the sharingan to flicker on once again but no one else seeped through the way Jinn Qui-Gon had. He wondered if Jinn knew, or suspected, what Obito himself was now coming to suspect. Either they were simply trapped on the other side of the illusion or else were trapped in the genjutsu believing they had died. Convinced of their own death, Obito imagined that many had succumbed to it, perhaps most had succumbed to it.

In the real world he imagined every world in the galaxy was littered with forgotten corpses.

Obito had to ask, "How did you break through it?"

Jinn smiled and shook his head, "I wish I knew. When it first happened, I remembered my death. I still remember it, everything before and everything after. My world is not so changed as yours was, only the end, that final mission was anything different. In death though, we are rejoined with the Force, we become one with the very bindings of the universe. I did not remember, but the Force did, and I remembered enough of myself to project onto the world of the living."

At Obito's look, an unspoken question of where the others were, he noted, "It is a rare ability. Difficult to both remember and find yourself beyond the mortal world and even more difficult to find the motivation to do so. Especially in circumstances like these, where the Force itself does… not believe action should be taken."

Obito, under ordinary circumstances, wouldn't know. In his own, native, universe men did not simply pull themselves out of the grave. Either they avoided it with a manic desperation or else edo tensei pulled them from the pure world as living slaves. No one, or at least no one Obito had ever heard of, had simply walked back out of the pure world even as a being of pure chakra.

Obito the jedi, however, had heard of it being done. As Jinn said it was rare circumstances that allowed for it, more, they came as messengers of the Force itself. They advised in critical moments, gave counsel, and guided. Obito had never heard of anyone coming back for personal business let alone business Haruki would not approve of.

"So, in other words, even you don't know if you're a dead man or not," Obito said slowly.

Jinn didn't answer, he didn't have to.

Funny, just a few minutes ago Obito had believed running away from the war and the jedi, hand in hand with a pregnant Lee was the worst of his troubles.

Lee, with a sudden bout of nausea Obito suddenly remembered Lee. It had always been about Lee, since the very start. Obito, the rest of the galaxy, they were merley collateral damage in this. A pleasant backdrop of civil war to distract from the fact that Haruki, that it, had…

"We have to get out of here," Obito said, more to himself than to Jinn.

They had to get out of here now, as soon as possible. Except they'd tried and failed at that already and Lee had been aware enough to remember how to drive. As it was now, Lee would think he'd finally gone mad.

She'd believe him, even in this world, she'd believe him and at least try to understand.

She'd believe him, and even if he couldn't, she'd find a way to fully break through the genjutsu and then out of this universe entirely.

He stood, causing Jinn to shift and look up at him, "Where are you going?"

"Leaving," Obito said.

"Leaving?" he then seemed to realize what Obito really meant, "Obito, I don't believe that's wise. If you're going to find Lee then she is watched more than any other, he will never let you—"

"He didn't let me see through all of this either," Obito spat back.

"Obito!"

Obito let the door automatically close behind him, he strode down the hall, fueled by both his rage and terror. The hallway seemed longer than before, stretching out without end, and he wondered if it was his emotional state or the simple fact that he'd never really walked these halls.

All those memories of this place, an entire childhood and life written for him, haunted him. Obito the jedi wasn't dead, simply buried, anxiously fretting beneath Obito's skin about the dark side and the curse of hatred. Obito's fear, his inner mind said, would destroy him.

"You are always such trouble, Obito."

Obito stopped dead in his tracks. There, standing just in front of him and blocking his path to Lee, was Haruki wearing the gilded familiar body of Namikaze Minato. Haruki smiled at him, a kind, almost fond and exasperated look.

As if he had expected nothing less from Uchiha Obito.

The man tilted his head as he looked at Obito, taking him in piece by piece, "Seeing things you shouldn't, talking to dead men, and always trying to chip away at the world you live in. Shinobi or jedi, you see to it that you never quite fit what they're looking for."

"The world I live in?" Obito spat, "You mean the world you made."

"A world I've made," Haruki corrected with bemusement, "This will be the second now, or the third, perhaps, depending how you look at it."

"Of course, world is an exaggeration," Haruki said, "This was not the beginning. I simply borrowed events from further ahead. It's still the same story."

Obito had always been hot-headed. His temper was short and swift, easily rising to the surface. Before the bridge he'd been so easily riled up either by Kakashi or his own slighted feelings. Everything he did was loud, boisterous, and without any hint of patience.

The bridge had taught him to tread cautiously, to wait and think, and to keep his thoughts far from his ruined face.

The bridge had also taught him what true rage was. It had taught him that he'd never truly hated anyone or anything in his life until he'd come across Uchiha Madara. He was wrong, he'd never hated anything in his life until he'd come across Haruki.

Something so vile that even as a jedi, even as a man who was supposed to entrust everything he was to this thing, he'd hated it.

The words spilled out of his mouth without his consent. However, he said them slowly, killing intent frosting his breath as the words spilled out of his mouth, "You know that I know."

Haruki simply tilted his head again, an unspoken question of what Obito was getting at and why Obito would care.

The sharingan flickered on, fueled by Obito's rage, enough to see Haruki's body for the empty shell of chakra that it was.

"You know that I know what you did to her."

"What I did to Lee?" the Force asked as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Obito laughed, a high-pitched deranged laughter that he couldn't recognized, "You raped her. You raped her, forced pregnancy on her, and plan to make her your incestuous wife by possessing your own child."

Obito remembered that, if he remembered anything, he remembered those damning words out of this thing's mouth.

"You are carrying not only my children, Lee, but my salvation. Through you, I will have mortal form and thought, be able to walk in the sun as you do, and you and I can be husband and wife."

Haruki didn't respond. He neither confirmed nor denied it. He looked almost bored by it, the way Minato-sensei used to after a long day of doing nothing but practicing katas or supervising D-ranks.

Finally, he said, "You could be happy here."

He motioned down the hallway, to Lee's room just out of sight, "You could allow yourself to forget and be happy. You, Lee, myself, for once we can all be happy just where we are."

"Happy in a civil war?" Obito asked with a bitter grin.

"The war will end soon enough," Haruki tsked, as if Obito was willfully missing the larger picture, "And I told you, I tried to give you paradise first, and you spat it back in my face."

He crossed his arms, looking down the hallway towards Lee thoughtfully, "She didn't even give the memories a chance to settle before she broke the pair of you through. Then I realized, however she longed for it, Lee simply could not believe in peace. So, I gave her war."

He gave her the third shinobi war.

Obito ran through the memories of his own, his new, life in his head. There were differences, yes, philosophical bents and a religion that the original Uchiha Obito had never bothered with. But with a dawning horror he realized that it was still his life.

Just as Uchiha Obito had been the worst shinobi of his generation all through his training, the jedi Obito had almost failed to become a jedi. Kakashi and Rin, they didn't belong in this world, and yet specters of them were still here to act as pseudo genin teammates through his childhood. The war still raged, fundamentally shaped him, and he still served as Lee's all too loyal apprentice.

And Lee, Lee he'd done near the same. In Namikaze Minato's place he stood, Skywalker Anakin a bastardized younger brother to replace Hatake Kakashi, Senju Tobirama in Hatake Sakumo's place including his disappearance. The rapid promotion combined with a general wariness and heavy-handed touch. Then the war, her isolated position in the war, in which she was expected to do the job of twelve shinobi.

"It will finish soon," Haruki said, "You once knew that, even thirteen years ago you and Lee saw the signs of the end. Kenobi Obi-Wan left the jedi order to try and fail to warn of it's coming."

"And then what?" Obito asked.

"And then you, Lee, and I shall find some forest world and rebuild your village hidden in the leaves," Haruki said, as if it was all that neat and simple, as if the end of the republic meant nothing at all to him.

When truly, it meant that all the worlds in all the galaxy were held in the hands of a sith, the galaxy would morph back into those old dreaded empires in which free people became slaves and—

"Palpatine," he breathed in horror.

Palpatine was the sith master, Obito had known this, had so easily predicted the republic's fall because he knew it. Palpatine had clung to the position of chancellor for thirteen years, citing emergency powers, while simultaneously dangling the separatist army from puppet strings.

Palpatine had won the war years ago no matter who won out on the battlefield.

"He's of no concern to you, Obito," Haruki chided, "None of this is your concern. Let go, Obito, and I will see to your and Lee's future."

Then, in the tone Minato used to politely threaten someone, he noted, "And besides, you might have the power to glimpse the truth, but you don't have the power to break through it. Do you?"

Obito stiffened and Haruki grinned as he saw it.

"Yes, that's why you need her. You can't do it on your own or you would have done it already. But she can't help you, Obito."

"You underestimate her," Obito snapped back.

The man just shook his head, "She doesn't remember, Obito, not the true extent of her abilities. Even if she chose to believe you, to try and tear apart everything she knows on your word alone, she would have to remember how to do so in the first place."

"And you can't imagine I'll idly sit by and watch you try."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Obito asked.

"I have been very lenient with you, Obito. I have given you liberties no other sentient would dare to take. I have given you freedom and consideration beyond any known by any creature. However, there is a line that you are about to cross."

He looked down at Obito's feet, as if the line was written right there in the floor, "Cross it, Obito, and you will become the enemy of every living thing that ever was. You will become more than a simple sith, you will be a wretched abomination and mockery of life, a bottomless well of the dark side. You will be hunted to the ends of every world, pushed out to the wastelands of space where all you can do is watch, wither, and die."

Haruki stared into Obito's eyes, with those unnerving bright blue eyes that never looked quite like Minato-sensei's, "Lee is fond of you, and it will hurt her gravely to lose you, but I do not need you."

For a moment neither said anything and neither moved.

Obito flexed his hand, shifted his weight, but didn't move forward. Haruki, on the other hand, looked as if he was ready to wait an eternity.

He looked as if he already knew Obito's answer.

Obito couldn't escape this place without Lee's help and even if he could he would never leave her behind. Simply telling Lee the truth would not be enough to break the genjutsu, that sort of thing never was, and the illusion would try to convince her to look the other way.

He remembered Madara's cave again.

There were days he'd wondered what it would be like to just give Madara what he wanted. Nod his head, agree to his crazy murderous plans, and see what would happen next. If he just pretended to agree, then surely, Madara would begin to trust him and start loosening his hold. Nevermind that even pretending to agree was a form of giving in, taking that first step to his own damnation, where he truly would become Madara's apprentice.

Even though it was Madara, even though there had been nothing tempting or good in his offer, there were days that Obito wanted to be able to stand up so badly that it almost hurt not to do it.

The idea of letting it go, of nodding his head and pretending to forget, and running away with Lee to make a life on some barely inhabited planet with the shadow clone of a god felt similar.

Another, different, Obito had willingly chosen to remain in Madara's cave and inherit his name.

This Obito hadn't.

Obito shifted, moving into a sprinter's position, and the very moment he did a hundred different jedi stepped out of a hundred different rooms with lightsabers blazing. They looked down at him first with the determination that comes before battle, then a dawning recognition and horror as they recognized yet another one of their own driven mad by war.

Haruki, for his own part, disappeared back into shadows and smoke, as if he'd never existed in the first place.

At first, none of them moved, none of them breathed. Then came a pounding of feet down the staircase, Mace Windu rushing down with his purple lightsaber ignited, ready to exterminate the rat in his basement.

And that was enough to motivate the rest of them.

As, per jedi scripture, one did not simply return from the dark side.

Obito threw himself forward, chakra lingering in his legs to give him the power to avoid the first strike. He drew out his own saber, either built for him from that crystal he'd only just received from the ice caverns or built by him in a state of delirium and used it to ward off other blades.

He was almost there, only a few more feet and he'd be at the door, he could barricade it for a few seconds, reach Lee and—

Obito was thrown into the wall by a wave of familiar chakra. He crashed into it headfirst, saber falling out of his fingers with the force of his hit, and only just ducked out of the way of a strike that would have cut off his head.

Skywalker Anakin stood above him, blade ready and eyes burning, watching as Obito summoned his own lightsaber back into his hand. He was tall as an adult, golden and lethal, having grown into his anger and chakra with the years he hadn't lived yet.

"I should have known you'd crack first," Skywalker said.

Oh, did he? Obito wanted to tell him that he hadn't cracked, that Obito had done anything but, and that if the truth was the dark side he'd take it any day of the week.

Instead Obito just noted with a smile, "Do you mean to execute me? You should know murder isn't the jedi way, Anakin."

"That's Master Skywalker to you!" he spat back.

"Knight Skywalker," Obito spat back in turn, "You aren't a master yet."

He wasn't even really a knight, barely a padawan, and a shinobi reject at best. If any native had the power to break through this thing then it should have been Skywalker Anakin. Yet, here he was, so eager to play his part.

Moody, misunderstood, hero of the galaxy and chosen one set to bring balance to the Force in this time of desperation. Balance to the Force when Anakin had gleefully forgotten what the Force even was.

Anakin stepped forward, breathing in to prepare himself, "Knight or not, you have nowhere left to run."

He wasn't wrong. Obito was surrounded, all exits cut off by jedi waiting with bated breath to see exactly what he'd do next. Obito the jedi, helpfully whispering in the back of his mind, informed him what would happen next.

Murder, even inside the heat of battle, was taboo. These were trying times but to sentence Obito to death by beheading here and now was a sure path to the dark side if there ever was one. However, they would lock him away for the rest of his life, restrict his access to the Force and pump him for information.

Was Obito merely a victim of the dark side of the Force, as they'd always expected him to be, or did he have a master?

Regardless, they would do everything in his power to separate him and Lee. She would never visit him while he was in jedi captivity. And should he escape…

Should he escape, the council would grant the order the authority to hunt him down and execute him on sight.

He couldn't see Lee. She should be here, somewhere in this mob, but he couldn't see her or even sense her. His padawan's bond, that strange side-effect of the Force, was fraying and close to falling apart as if he truly had gone to the dark side. It was now held together by only a single thread.

"Someone get the Force blockers!" Anakin shouted, throwing out a hand to pin Obito to the wall with the Force.

Obito couldn't get to Lee, not like this. Haruki would never let him take such an obvious and easy path out of this. Haruki would find ways to distract her, keep her away from him, until Obito had been dealt with permanently.

But Obito had a card to play that it seemed the Force had forgotten.

The mangekyo sharingan flared to life and with it Obito latched onto that power he'd only used once. He grew transparent, slipping backwards into the wall, but unlike the fight in Naboo he went further than that. His eye spun desperately, pushing through at his surroundings with more and more chakra, until they faded and disappeared entirely.

Then Obito was no longer in the jedi temple.

Author's Note: And the plot begins to chug along once again. What will Obito do now?

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Naruto, or Star Wars