.

.

He starts obsessing over the idea of the baby dying suddenly. Rin blames it on a lack of sleep.

He stands at the doorway, watching the baby as he sleeps. It has been a few hours since the baby last woke up, which is unusual and has sent Obito panicking. "Please don't wake him, he's just sleeping," Rin had said, but Obito went and checked on the baby anyway.

Multiple times he checks. Keeps getting up every few hours, will pace restlessly by the door or rest a hand on the baby's chest to make sure he's still breathing. They called it Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and even though he and Rin took all the precautions, the idea of the baby dying in his sleep makes him nervous.

"Obito, I love you, but you're driving me nuts," Rin says, as Obito gets up to check again. "The baby's older, he's sleeping through the night now, just enjoy it and go back to sleep."

"Look at the baby monitor. He's not moving."

"He's not moving because he's sleeping."

"I just want to check on him," Obito says again, and Rin groans and rolls over, pulling a pillow over her head.

She had thought he had be doing okay - Kushina-san and Sensei openly forgave him, and Itachi was willing to trust him, he no longer seemed as haunted by his past - but now the thought of her or the baby dying becomes another thing to latch on, and pretty soon he starts spiraling. "I know it's hard, Obito, but waking up the baby isn't a good way to manage your anxiety."

"I know," Obito says. He holds his head. "I just can't shake the feeling something will happen."

"Nothing will happen. Come to bed."

"You know, the worst thing that ever happened to me was seeing you die and cradling your dead body-"

"Obito-"

"-I just keep thinking, what if that happens to the baby?"

She sits down and rubs his back, and he leans into her touch, which seems to soothe him. "Honestly," Rin says, and she slides her hand up and down his back, "me leaving you because you won't let me sleep is more likely than the baby dying."

Obito's head jerks up. "You want to leave me?" Rin holds up her hands.

"No, no, I was just joking-"

She gets a little bit of a taste of what it was like for Kakashi.

When she was haunting him, she had been impressed by Obito's meticulous planning. If he needed Itachi and Kisame to do something, he also had Kakuzu and Hidan waiting in the wings as a contingency. If they failed to capture the jinchuuriki, at least there was a secondary objective the team had to complete. He didn't trust Nagato and Konan, so he infiltrated his own group ostensibly to spy on them, but it also helped to have another Uchiha on task to capture jinchuuriki. Things would go wrong but he would adapt because he had already planned for it; even if things went to shit, everything still went relatively smoothly.

At the time, Rid just thought Obito had grown to be a master tactician, someone smart enough to realize things could go wrong and to prepare for all possibilities. Now Rin realizes all those plans and multiple backup plans were just a way to cope with his anxiety.

"I didn't even think of Kabuto finding Madara's body," Obito says. "For all the things that could wrong, Madara being brought back as an undead zombie was surprising."

"What would you have done had you thought of it?" Rin asks. Obito considers.

"I would have burned the body," Obito said. "Keep a lock of hair or something in case Nagato couldn't do the Rinne Tensei. The idea of someone bringing him back prematurely didn't even occur to me."

They fall quiet. Rin starts to drift to sleep.

"If the baby dies I could probably resurrect him with the Rinne Tensei-"

"Oh my god, Obito, go to sleep."

"Sorry."