(OOC: 1/5/2020 upload 2.)

—-

Previously:

"Even though we know that Pein, with the Juubi, would ultimately win out in the end, and accomplish his vision to become reality in the end, the point is that so many lives are sacrificed for it. Is it worth it? Pein would say yes: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 infinite lives of peace, in exchange for a few billion deaths. But you and I...would say no," Obito ended in a whisper.

—-

"Of course we'd say No!" Sakura agreed. "Human life is important, you taught me that. That's why we want to revive everyone." (Hana flashed through her mind.) "We don't want to cause a billion deaths to achieve peace."

"Correct," Obito smiled. "That's the easy way out." A few deaths is okay since that can be reversed, or a trillion. Obito thought in his Tobi-voice, but didn't voice allowed, and continued in his deep, guttural voice. "Even if we kill a billion, we can reverse it." He raised a hand before Sakura could protest— "We won't, though, because we don't need to. We only need Tailed Beasts; simple, right? We can probably get this done without taking a single life." Obito's eyes crinkled as he smiled down at Sakura, red eyes meeting red.

"Y...Yes...without killing anyone." Sakura felt more attuned and more accepting of Obito-kun's plan now.

"Good girl, Sakura-chan," he said in a Tobi-voice. "Sakura-chan is a good girl."

—

"So Obito-kun...You pretend to be Madara Uchiha to everyone you meet...except for me." Sakura remarked, feeling honored at that. "Am I the only person who knows your true identity?"

"Yes..." Obito acquiesced. Technically Madara knew, but Madara was currently dead. Zetsu knew too, though. "Because you're special." Because I recklessly pretended to be the real ghost of Obito Uchiha when you were a child to scare you for trying to impersonate me, and then trained, molded you because you were malleable, and later on, realized that would have made no sense for me to switch identities to Madara and try to make you believe that I was Madara all along. Not only would that have confused you, you trust 'Obito,' (or at least, the pacifist version of Obito that I used to be.) You don't know Madara, and if you've read your history books, you'd distrust and hate Madara.

Not to mention...I'm not Madara, I'm Obito. And Sakura was his version of adult Rin; he forced her onto the path of medical ninjutsu and mentored her, in order to 'make' her that way. And Rin was Obito's friend...Obito's childhood crush...She was dead though, due to Kakashi. That's why Tobi is trying to make things right for them both.

Regardless, Tobi still had preferences. Tobi wanted Sakura to treat him like "Obito-kun," not "Madara-sama."

Sakura reminded him of Rin, which keeps him from forgetting his true end-goal, he keeps telling himself. He used to "remind himself" to keep going, by spying on Kakashi mourning at the memorial stone within Konoha, but not anymore; now he has a better tool to "remind himeself;" he has Sakura, which is why he intends to keep Sakura near. Failing that, he could simply check (spy) on her whenever he "needs to."

-Flashback-

What Obito— no, his name is Tobi now— Obito is no more.

What Tobi doesn't understand, is why that portrait of Rin he keeps in his kamui dimension dissatisfies him.

Tobi grabbed a pink crayon, waddled around adn colored over the brown hair in the portrait, making it pink. He made Rin's tiny smile into a wide grin resembling his own face during childhood... no... resembling Sakura's grin.

"Who am I kidding...This is Sakura." Tobi dropped the portrait to the ground. "Why do I end up thinking of you, whenever I want to think about and enjoy my memories of Rin? Why?" Tobi dropped to his knees, staring at his badly ruined portrait of what was once Rin.

—

He later genjutsu'd each of the best artists across the Land of Fire and all of the Elemental Nations, to draw varous portraits of Haruno Sakura. (He didn't explicitly name her, he meticulously described a certain pink-haired girl, and her characteristics.)

He used genjutsu to make the artist draw and paint Sakura, then erased the artist's memory afterwards.

He ended up with 30 beautiful portraits of Sakura:

-Sakura in kimono.

-Sakura in wedding dress.

-Sakura in ninja wear.

-Sakura in a hotspring.

-Sakura in a ballroom gown.

-Sakura dressed as a nurse.

-Sakura dressed in a lab coat, dissecting Sharingan eyes.

-Sakura in a night gown, taking a stroll in a midnight garden that resembled the one he used to visit in his childhood during his Uchiha days.

-Sakura with dozens of expressions.

-Other portraits of Sakura in other color schemes.

In every single portrait, Sakura was simply beautiful...

It was his side-hobby to "commission" these various portraits, over the nine years he couldn't meet Sakura.

Anyway, Obito felt something was off, and got the next artist to draw Sakura in her navy blue and orange outfit, carrying tons of groceries for the elderly, sweating and expression exhausted and cheeks puffed out, not at all elegant. Obito laughed at this portrait; he decided then, he liked this 31st portrait the best. He didn't need all the other ones, he can just give them to Sakura (in a totally not at all creepy way, Obito thought indignantly.)

... Tobi. He thought again. His name was Tobi.

—-

He would keep them all, in his special kamui dimension. Tobi hung all 31 portraits around his kamui dimension. He could pull any of them out into the real world to gaze at whenever. It was all he could do, to reminense about Sakura, since he couldn't simply kamui next to her like he did in the past, now with Kakashi always hovering around her.

— much later on, when he reunites with Sakura. —

Obito wasn't shy about it at all. He had already come to terms about the portraits. (About why these were portraits of Sakura instead of Rin. It was because he didn't want to desecrate the 'real thing.' No portrait in this rotten would could ever capture Rin's beauty and goodness. And the reason he kept portraits of Sakura was for the same reason he used to spy on Kakashi at the memorial stone.) There was nothing embarrassing about his reasons, though for obvious reasons, he can't reveal these real reasons to anyone.

Anyway, back to point. "Sakura-chan!" Tobi chirped jovially.

Sakura peered up from the medical-fuuinjutsu textbook she was reading. "Yes, Obito-kun?" She was allowed to call him Obito-kun whenever they were alone; in front of others, she had to say Tobi-kun, Tobi, or Madara-sama, depending on who was present.

30 framed portraits were dropped in front of her, shocking her into dropping her book.

Sakura's jaw dropped, as she picked up a random portrait, and saw the most beautiful drawing of herself.

"I...didn't know I looked like that. These are all too beautiful...to be me." She gazed at each portrait she picked up. But they're all undeniably me...

Tobi beamed. "I 'commissioned' these all for you." (He was lying, he genjutsu'd for them, and they weren't for her, they were for his own purposes. He was just satisfied with his 31st one that he had no more use for the other 30.) "I just wanted to gift you something for the holidays."

Tears nearly welled up Sakura's eyes. "O-Obito-kun...you shouldn't have... You didn't need to..." She set the portraits down and ran into his arms, hugging him tightly. "Thank you!"

Obito wrapped his arms behind Sakura's lower back, and held her gently back, taking in her cherry blossom scent, feeling the vibration of her heartbreak on his skin, her warmth; portraits could never substitute for the real thing, for this. He hugged her back, not saying anything, until Sakura felt this hug was lasting too long, and felt weird and awkward, and broke off from the hug. (Leave it to Obito-kun to suck at social norms, she thought.)

She rubbed the back of her head awkwardly, (this was her true antic she picked up from Obito; whenever Obito does that, he's just 'acting' as his younger self. He doesn't do that anymore now.)

"So...I can keep all these?" Sakura's words jolted Tobi from his thoughts.

"Yup!" Tobi chirped. "Like I said, I made these all as a gift, for you! It's not like I had 30 commissioned Sakura works made, just to stare at them myself like a creep- err- I mean— they're all for you!" Tobi flailed, his orange spiral mask back on, hiding his red expression.

Sakura burst out laughing. "Obito, you are a horrible liar." She picked the portraits back up, but suddenly, as she picked up a certain portrait- wait, is that a nude portrait? Obito's eyes went wide and he snatched the portrait from Sakura's hands faster than the eye can see.

"A-Actually, I said the wrong number. I only commissioned 29 portraits." Tobi gulped at Sakura's narrowing gaze.

"O-bi-to-kun~" Sakura smiled sweetly. "Show me that portrait."

Obito sweatdropped, and backed away, as Sakura began slowly stalking towards him, menacingly.

"T-This one's not of you."

"You said 30, not 29. You can't say 29 now..." Sakura leapt and tackled him.

For some reason, Obito let her.

For a second, he let her tackle him, caught her collusively, then activated his self-kamui, so that Sakura phrased through his body and hit the floor. That was because he was escaping, but still he let her tackle him first and collide with him successfully first instead of the floor by delaying activating his kamui for a few seconds longer, to make it less painful for her, because Obito-kun was a "gentleman."

She ended up chasing him around soem more until nighttime, when they ended up falling into the grass on an empty field in the middle of a peaceful country (an unknown like Grass Country untouched by war) where they could rest without being interrupted, stargazing. Because Kamui could take them anywhere, any place, to rest...before they have to "get back to work" the following morning...

The Moon's Eye Plan improved...into the World's Eye Plan. The Infinite Tsukuyomi becomes the Infinite Izanagi. The Juubi Tree meant to run illusions becomes the World Tree, wish-granting tree, reality-changing tree.

Because illusions could never beat the real thing.

So they lied on their backs, gazed at the beautiful night sky, the dazzling, sparkly stars, millions of them blinking in the deep, dark blue sky. The full moon at the center shone gently down at them, gentle moonlight lighting the dew drops on the tall grass blades they nestled in.

Sakura tilted her head sideways to blink at him...Looked at his dark, black hair, his physique, and how it resembled another Uchiha... Sasuke. And thinking of Sasuke, made her think of Naruto, and Kakashi-sensei, and Konoha, home... but she couldn't go back now. She had to finish helping Obito-kun first.

—-

Author Note: This might be a Spoiler, but since it's so many years from now, it's merely a POSSIBILITY of what's going to happen in the future. The reason I really wanted to write this chapter, is because I haven't gotten a chance to write Obito for so long, and you probably missed seeing Obito too. Sadly, he only shows up again years later in Shippuden, because he's "busy" doing his evil world-changing schemes, so I decided to give you this "future chapter". Since realistically, you won't get one of these Obito-centric chapters until like 40 chapters later. Since we're not at that point yet in the Sakura Glasses plotline.

I also just wanted to let you know early on, that this is a change from Canon. We're not doing the Infinite Tsukuyomi anymore (no Kaguya,) which I hate. Illusions and putting everyone into a coma is so OBVIOUSLY EVIL/retarded that obviously THAT Obito/Madara are obviously villains (forcing everyone into an illusion-induced coma is evil?) But THIS, Infinite Izanagi? Now that's tricky, all they're doing is giving themselves a wish-granting tree so they can "fix reality" at their whims and desires, particularly all the world's problems. (But they have to kill for it, but they can use the tree to *actually* fix those deaths. Obito's "delusions" seem to hold actual *weight* now. What do you think of that? Is he still a villain or maybe he's good? This is a moral question to you.)

Please leave comments/reviews/thoughts! I'm curious and want to know whether anyone's still reading this story. Thank you!