Asuka woke up and didn't immediately feel like vomiting. Immediately his guard went up. Darkness. A weight on his abdomen. Flickering lights. Trickling water somewhere in the distance.

God fucking dammit.

Somehow, he hadn't died yet! Asuka was still in the fucking cave!

He tried to get up and was shoved back down immediately by someone cooing at him.

"Fuck off," Asuka hissed. He was greeted with the sight of "Madara" clutching on to him like a lifeline. Shakily, Asuka pushed himself up. He coughed.

"The transplant was a success. Good job, Kabuto-kun." A sibilant voice said. The owner of said voice stood at the head of the cold metal table that he rested on. "Now, now, ANBU-chan, no sudden movements. We wouldn't want to upset your new liver, now would we?"

"What happened to my liver?" Asuka blurted, panicked.

Knowing the fact that infamous missing-nin Orochimaru of the Sannin had apparently saved him made Asuka extremely nervous. He was inclined to believe the snake sage took it for their lunch.

Asuka was ignored.

"Kabuto-kun, come here," said the Sannin, pressing two fingers to the space where the slope of his neck met the beginning of his shoulder. "Run a diagnostic jutsu here."

Kabuto, a gray-haired kid around his age or maybe a few years younger than him, poured green healing chakra into his neck. A shuddering exhale escaped him. He hadn't noticed the burning in his neck until it subsided.

"Her body is accepting the seal," Kabuto said. Orochimaru hummed. "Madara" clutched Asuka's hand like he was afraid it would disappear from his grip.

"What seal?" Asuka asked.

Nobody answered him.

"What seal?" Asuka repeated, louder.

"Madara, would you like to test it?" Orochimaru said, looking up at the masked man, who nodded.

Dread sunk into his stomach like lead.

"What seal?" Asuka repeated again. He grabbed the arm of the teenage medic and shook it. "What the fuck did you people do to me?" The medic glared at him and wrestled his arm from his grip. He stopped his jutsu and stepped back towards the Sannin.

As much as Asuka wanted to get angry, kill everyone and escape, he knew he was very, very outclassed. He heard a whisper in the back of his mind of Spider-taichou telling him that one day his hair-trigger temper would get him in trouble.

Asuka felt a pang in his chest.

He was afraid he'd never get to have Spider-taichou yell at him again.

"Rin–"

"I told you already, that's not my name."

"-try taking off my mask."

"My pleasure," said Asuka, yanking his hand out of the man's sweaty grip. He lunged for the ugly, swirly thing then gasped and fell back against the stiff table. A white-hot, searing pain had exploded in his neck and spread down to the rest of his body, rendering him paralyzed.

Orochimaru stood over him, golden slitted eyes gleeful. "It works!"

Asuka bit back a vicious curse and groaned.

The burning stopped, and the man in the mask stood over him, remorseful. Asuka contemplated spitting on him.

"Fucking fuck!" Asuka sat up again and swung his legs over the sides of the table. He noticed that he was wearing a white yukata over freshly replaced bandages.

Why go through so much trouble to save his life if only to give him some sort of cursed seal? What the hell was happening with this mysterious cave group? Who was this masked man really and why did he insist on everyone calling him Madara?

Was he going to be tortured for information on Konoha?

That… didn't make much sense either.

The masked man had gone through the trouble of procuring him a new liver, after all.

Plus, his affiliation with Orochimaru was… strange.

He watched as the missing-nin and their apparent student cleaned up the space where they had operated and silently left. The masked man watched Asuka the entire time.

There were rumors back home in the village that Orochimaru had joined up with a mercenary group of S-rank missing-nin, but they weren't particularly active, so most hadn't believed it to be super important to verify the rumors. Now, Asuka was pretty sure they were true.

He noted the clear dress code. Black cloaks with red clouds on them.

Hideous. Absolutely hideous.

"Why did you kidnap me?"

'Madara' let out a low chuckle. "You were dying. I saved you."

"Yeah, but you put me in that state in the first place. Come to think of it, why were you all the way out there in Water Country in the first place, huh? What reason did you have to attack two ANBU black ops for simply doing their jobs?"

"You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"

Asuka clicked his tongue. "Always was the bane of my instructors' existence back at the Academy. Enough about me, though. What's your actual name? Why 'Madara'?"

A pause.

He hears wax dripping off of a candle onto the stone floor.

"Uchiha Obito."

He had a name. Asuka supposed that was a good start. The name twigged on his memory for some reason.

"Why were you–"

"I made a reckless, foolish decision. I've nearly jeopardized the plans that I've been setting up for years," here he laughed. It was self-loathing and echoed across the cave walls, "All because you look like her. I know Rin's gone. Yet…I saw you and for a while, I lived in a world where she wasn't. That's what everything's all about isn't it? A perfect dream world where no one ever has to suffer any more. You made my dream, even for just a moment, a reality."

What the fuck is this guy going on about?

"I can't lose focus, not now," Obito's voice cracked.

"That's great," Asuka nodded, "Can I go home?"

He saw red, the red of his sharingan. He felt like he was being lulled to a comforting dream, a dream he would never want to wake up from.

"I'm so sorry but you can never go back to that village again. I'll be your home now."