Time Flows Like Ink

Summary: After a fuinjutsu experiment gone wrong, Minato is yanked into a future where his family is dead, his team fell apart and the Uchiha were slaughtered. With the defective seal burning in his palm, Minato struggles to stay afloat in a Konoha that isn't his.

Chapter 21

Obito tracked him down mere hours after Minato's arrival. He must have set up surveillance or planted a spy in the village. Nothing about him had changed since the last time Minato had seen him in the future. At least Minato assumed so – he couldn't see much due to that awful, impersonal mask.

"You know." There was neither triumph nor apprehension in Obito's voice.

"I'm sorry," Minato said quietly. "I'm so sorry, Obito."

Obito didn't react to the sound of his own name. His head was tilted, making him look like a curious bird. The silence was unnerving. Not being able to see his face was even more so.

"Obito." Minato hoped against hope that hearing his name was doing something for his old student. "I need you to help me. I'm starting to figure out what happened, but I'm still missing pieces."

Obito showed no reaction.

"What happened to you?"

"Pieces," Obito mumbled. "That's funny."

Minato hesitated. "What is?"

But Obito didn't answer. He seemed absorbed in his own thoughts and wasn't interested in giving Minato context.

"Do you know who I am?" Minato burst out, desperate to spot any kind of recognition in Obito's behavior.

Whoever pulled Obito's strings was interested in Minato. Obito knew him as his mission. But did he recognize him? Did he know Minato on more than the superficial level his conditioning allowed him to?

"... Minato." Obito said the name as though it was something precious tottering on the edge of a deep abyss. He'd paused before saying it, like speaking it out loud was enough to shatter it. "The Yellow Flash. Dangerous."

Minato had tried to prepare himself. He'd known on some level that the conversation was likely to end in a fight. Now that he knew the stranger's identity, he wasn't going to let him slip through his fingers a second time.

The thought didn't make it easier to dodge a kunai wielded by someone Minato considered family.

"Don't make me fight you," Minato said, the words somewhere between a warning and a plea.

Obito didn't listen. He dove forward, a kunai blade swirling in his hand. Minato dodged without touching his teleportation kunai. He didn't want to hurt Obito. Neither, so Minato hoped, did Obito want to hurt him. They'd fought before, back in the forest with Kushina to back him up, and Obito had done the bare minimum to keep the two engaged.

Minato ignored his frantically beating heart and tried spotting a trace of the Obito he'd known. Anything to show him that his student wasn't completely lost.

"Jiraya told me what happened." Minato blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "Your mission failed. Somebody – something – abducted you."

Obito showed no sign of listening.

"Rin and Kakashi came back for you. They wanted to save you." Minato kept his body relaxed and reached for a kunai out of Obito's line of sight. "Why did you kill Kakashi?"

Obito went stiff and Minato lunged forward. Obito's mask went flying. Minato laid eyes on his grown-up student for the first time.

The sight stole his breath like a punch to the gut.

Obito's face was unmarred aside from a pair of criss-crossing scars on the side of his jaw. His hair was short, cut raggedly as though whoever had done it hadn't cared about doing a proper job. His face was void of emotion. There was no anger, no denial, nor anything else. He was a blank slate.

"Obito–"

Obito threw himself forward and Minato took a tantō to his shoulder. He leaped back, formed a Rasengan – shoved away the voice in his mind screaming at him for attacking his student – and phased right through Obito when his student made no move to dodge his attack.

Minato stumbled. The Rasengan dispelled while he regained his balance. He'd never seen a technique like this before.

Obito moved mercilessly fast, dealing out one lethal attack after the other. Minato scattered his kunai and tried to stop thinking of his opponent as Obito.

He was too fast for Obito to hit. Obito phased straight through every attack Minato threw his way. It looked like neither of them were going to be able to win – except Obito's technique seemed to take a lot out of him.

Obito's movements became frantic. His expression pinched. Minato held back instead of pressing his advantage, and he found himself facing a fireball surging right at his face.

Something flashed across Obito's blank expression, something other than the unnerving nothing it had been since his mask had come off.

Minato teleported away and narrowly avoided the blast of fire that instead charred the tree behind him coal-black.

His heart pounded against his rib cage. His breathing was steady, and yet he felt like he was suffocating. Had he not dodged, Obito would have killed him.

But Obito no longer looked emotionless. He stared at the charred remains of the bark, looking shaken. Embers swirled around him, quickly suffocated by the billowing smoke his attack had left behind.

Minato lunged at Obito and missed. He flung himself back and forth between his kunai, so quickly that he appeared to be everywhere at once. Obito couldn't keep up. Minato threw the last of his kunai, flashed forwards, tagged Obito and aimed a Rasengan at his chest.

Obito warded off half the kunai, seized up and went limp. One kunai sunk into his shoulder. Two into his arm. Another two pinned his robes to the forest ground.

Minato's Rasengan disintegrated before it made contact. Obito made no move to get up. It was a trick, just like before. Were he anybody else, Minato would have already dealt the finishing blow.

"S-Sensei..."

Minato dropped to his knees next to Obito and kept track of his nearest teleportation kunai, just in case.

Obito's expression flickered between hateful and desperate. Gone was the emotionless facade, gone the pretense that he felt nothing. He looked like something inside of him had broken, and emotions he'd kept locked away for years tried to battle their way to the front all at once.

Minato reminded himself not to drop his guard. This wasn't over.

"You're going to answer some questions," Minato said, forcing steel into his voice. "Do you understand?"

Obito jerked his head. Minato wasn't sure if it was meant to be a nod, but at the very least it told him that Obito was listening.

"Who took you? Back then, after you'd completed your mission, who took you away?"

Obito's jaw worked soundlessly. His throat bulged like he was trying to force out words past a great resistance. "M-Madara..."

Minato's brows twitched. It took a special kind of arrogance to name oneself after the infamous founder of Konoha.

"How does 'Madara' make you help him?"

Obito didn't answer. He kept unnaturally still, as though he'd turned into a statue during the short time it had taken Minato to ask his question.

"Obito, please." He softened his voice into a plea. "I want to help. But I need to know what happened."

"You don't know," Obito forced out through gritted teeth. The words sounded painful. So did the admission. "You don't– Y-You don't know what it was like."

"I don't," Minato agreed quietly. "I need you to fill in the blanks."

Obito looked like he was at war with himself. Conflicting feelings twitched over his expression too rapidly to place them all – they made Obito look grotesquely expressive after all the time he'd hid behind a mask.

When Obito next spoke, his voice came sharper and more coherent than Minato had ever heard it. "You need to promise."

Minato hesitated. "Promise what?"

Obito made a sudden movement. Minato jerked out of range before realizing Obito had only meant to grab his arm.

"You have to end it."

"I will." One way or another, Minato would finish this. "But I need to know what happened."

"No."

Obito's tone sent shivers down Minato's spine. "No?"

This time when Obito reached out, Minato allowed it. He clutched Minato's arm and tugged him close. "You have to end me."

Minato recoiled. Obito held on tightly and stopped him from pulling away altogether. "No."

Obito's grip was beginning to hurt. "Promise me."

"No." Refusal clogged up Minato's throat and turned his words sharp and jagged. "There are other things I can try."

"You did." Obito's lips twitched like he'd forgotten how to make them form a smile. "How often?"

The lump in Minato's throat swelled. He'd lost count of the attempts he'd made to fix this timeline. "It doesn't matter."

"Eliminate the risk."

"You're not a risk, Obito."

"No." Air wheezed past Obito's lips in a short, breezy stream. "I'm a lost cause."

A sharp pain pierced Minato's chest, more intense than being stabbed. Wasn't it exactly what Rin had tried telling him? Not that Obito didn't deserve to be saved, but that perhaps there was no way for him to live? What if there was no version of reality they could live in happily that also spared Obito his fate?

"Promise," Obito repeated, meeting Minato's gaze with an unnerving intensity. "If you have the chance. Promise."

Obito's request wouldn't be hard to complete. If he travelled back and killed Obito as soon as the opportunity arose, whoever tugged his strings – whoever called themself 'Madara' – would be missing their puppet. There was no knowing they wouldn't try to find another pawn to do their bidding, but for the moment, their plans would be ruined.

Just like that, Minato would make sure to spare Obito the suffering he'd gone through over the past twelve years.

"What if there's another way?"

"What if you fail?" Obito asked.

He would doom Obito to live through whatever Madara had put him through – this time permanently. He would risk everything – a painless death for Obito, Kakashi's life, Konoha's wellbeing – on the off-chance that he would be able to put it all right with the very next jump.

He'd let the prospect of perfection tempt him once before. If he'd learned from his mistakes, did that mean saying goodbye to Obito once and for all? Was it fair of him to gamble everybody else's happiness just so he could give it another go?

Obito didn't think so. Who was Minato to put his own wishes above Obito's?

"Promise," Obito said again. His eyes dimmed. His body relaxed. He'd realized that he'd won.

"I promise," Minato forced out. It was worse than signing Obito's death warrant. It was the promise to be his executioner.

Obito closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He looked more at peace than Minato had ever seen him.

Obito tore out the kunai pinning him to the ground, lunged forward and grabbed onto Minato with the strength of a vice.

Their surroundings flickered and they reappeared in a cave. Minato stumbled forward as soon as Obito let go, having lost his sense of balance through the teleportation technique that hadn't been his.

Since when could Obito teleport? Minato's stomach churned. Was this what it felt like when he took others along for a ride? He made a mental note to ask Kushina (and possibly profusely apologize).

"Where are we?" Minato craned his head.

The cave stretched out above them, so high that the ceiling was too dark to make out. The smell of old, rotten wood filled his nose. Minato brushed the nearest wall and realized it felt like bark, rather than stone.

"Is this where 'Madara' brought you?"

A large, vaguely throne-like structure loomed over them at the far end of the cavern. Decaying, snake-like roots lay at its feet, piled up like somebody had torn them out and left them to rot.

Obito had brought him here for a reason. To show him where to find Madara once he returned? Minato would have to look for an exit and figure out how to find the cave again after he'd returned.

A spark of hope flared up in his chest. If Obito was coherent enough to bring him here, maybe he could be saved after all. Maybe he wasn't lost. Maybe Minato would be able–

In the corner of Minato's eye, a glimmer of metal. He whirled around. There was a kunai in Obito's hand. "Wait–"

Blood sprayed onto Minato's face. Obito collapsed like his strings had been cut.

Minato looked down at him, feeling nothing. Then he felt everything.

When the nauseating swirl of colors caused by the seal faded, Obito's body was gone and the cave was no longer empty.

Minato's face felt sticky. His hand shook. Bile rose up in his throat. The seal burned, sending the tingling sensation of licking flames over his palm and into his arm.

Minato took his eyes away from the patch of earth Obito – Obito's body – had disappeared from, took a deep breath to stop himself from violently expelling the contents of his stomach and forced himself to straighten up.

On the priorly empty throne sat an ancient looking man. Roots piled up in front of his feet, reaching somewhere behind his back. A wrinkly, skeletal face was framed by messy, colorless hair. His eyes were closed.

He looked like a dead man. He looked like...

"Madara," Minato breathed.

He wasn't some fanatic stealing a famous name. It wasn't a case of extreme hero worship. The person in front of him looked like an aged up version of a man Minato knew only from history books – like somebody had dug out his body and propped it up on the throne like a doll.

If it weren't for the occasional twitch in his bony fingers, Minato might have actually mistaken him for a corpse.

Obito had told the truth. He'd said that– He'd– And Minato had assumed–

Minato screwed his eyes shut and breathed through the nausea. He needed to hold it together. He needed to not think.

He opened his eyes and realized that so had Madara. Minato's stomach took a nosedive.

Madara opened his mouth, but Minato didn't stop to listen. Vines had begun snaking around his legs and immobilizing him. He tore them apart with a hastily formed Rasengan and leaped back in time to watch a pale figure grow out of the bark next to him. It looked directly at him and grinned.

More vines emerged at the creature's feet and around its body, growing and morphing out of the wooden walls. Minato felt chakra pulsating through them, giving them life. Were they part of the creature, or was it merely controlling them?

Madara regarded him from half-lidded eyes that threatened to fall back shut. "Kill him," he said in a voice so airy, it would have been carried away by a breeze, were there any wind blowing inside the cave.

The creature smirked and looked at something out of Minato's line of sight. Minato reeled back – he wished he still had his teleportation kunai, but they were scattered on the forest ground in some faraway, about to be unmade future – and let chakra tingle in the palm of his hand, another Rasengan at the tips of his fingers.

There was somebody else in the cave with them. A short person half wrapped up in whatever substance the creature was made off, with dark hair, and... Minato's breath stuttered in his throat. The splatters of blood on his face itched.

"Sen... sei?"

A spark of clarity twitched through dull, clouded eyes. The creature swooped forward and Obito attacked.

If Minato had thought fighting the grown-up version of his student was hard, it was nothing compared to fighting him as a child. In contrast to his older counterpart, young Obito didn't keep quiet.

"I'm sorry!" he shouted, his eyes as wide as they would go, "I'm sorry! It's not me! Let go let go let go let–"

The creature ignored him. It made Obito charge at Minato with abrupt, jerky movements, reckless attacks that wasted no thought on Obito's safety. If Minato had wanted to, he could have ended it within seconds.

Did he? Was he going to? Obito from the future would have wanted him to.

But Obito from the future was d– not here. This Obito didn't want to die. This Obito wasn't beyond help. This Obito... was being used as cannon fodder. Minato was playing right into the creature's hands by sparing him.

"I can't stop him!" Panic made Obito's voice sound shrill and several years younger than he was.

"Of course you can't," the man on the throne – Madara – said quietly. "Zetsu is now a part of you."

The creature – Zetsu – showed its teeth in a wide grin. It lunged at Obito and merged with the part of itself already wrapped around him. A mask formed around Obito's face, muffling his scream of horror.

Minato felt like he'd fallen into another world. Wherever he looked he saw bark or stone or darkness too thick to make out anything at all. Though he could see, he couldn't make out a light source. Or an exit.

A living corpse watched his every move through sunken-in, unsettling eyes, and a creature made from vines and goo flung Obito around like a ragdoll.

(He'd promised he wouldn't hesitate.)

There was blood on his face and empty air where his kunai were supposed to be, and Minato had to use every fiber of his being not to give in to the suffocating panic ballooning in his chest.

He didn't know what was going on. He only knew that he needed to end it – even if it meant keeping a promise that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Minato-sensei didn't react to anything Obito tried telling him. Obito wanted him to say something – he desperately, childishly wanted to be told that everything would be alright. That he'd get them out of here. That everything would be fine.

But Minato-sensei was as silent as the skeletal remains of the creatures that had once roamed the Mountains' Graveyard.

(Zetsu had taken him outside to see them once, just long enough to spark hope and snuff it out as he realized how far away they were from Konoha. Nobody knew where he was. They had no way to find out. Nobody was coming to rescue him.)

(He hadn't yet stopped struggling. But Obito was tired.)

Minato-sensei was silent, but Zetsu kept whispering into his ear. Obito ignored him like he always did.

(At least he tried. It was difficult to ignore the only company he'd had for weeks. Obito was tired, and he was hurting, and he was lonely. He wanted to go home.)

Obito realized that something was wrong when Minato-sensei took out Zetsu's leg, ignoring that it was actually Obito's.

Obito screamed. The wound wasn't lethal, but it hurt – though Zetsu kept him going without so much as a limp. Obito's pain didn't bother him. Very little of what Obito said or felt bothered Zetsu.

(He'd threatened to take his own life during those first few days. Zetsu had only laughed. "Nothing you could do would stop me from stitching you back together," he'd said. Obito hadn't been brave enough to try proving him wrong.)

Zetsu didn't care about him beyond what Madara needed him for, but Minato-sensei did. He was supposed to. Why was he attacking with murder in his eyes? Why wasn't he trying to separate him from Zetsu? If he had a plan, why hadn't he tried letting Obito know? Obito could help, if only he knew how.

"He's accepted what you haven't," Zetsu hissed into his ears as though he leeched off of every insecurity and dreadful thought in his head. "You're beyond help. You're his."

"I'm not!"

Zetsu could hear his muffled screams, but could Minato-sensei? Did he know that Obito was still fighting? He needed to know. Obito hadn't given up. He hadn't lost!

Minato-sensei gave up trying to reach Madara past Zetsu's interference and focused on them. Zetsu was no match for him. Obito definitely wasn't. Minato-sensei severed a tendon in Obito's hand and forced him to drop his kunai. Minato-sensei caught it, flipped the blade and went for Obito's neck.

Time froze. Obito's heart stuttered. Zetsu pulled back his mask and Obito's horror-widened eyes met Minato-sensei's blank ones.

(Obito had always wondered how he did it – isolating himself from a fight until Minato-sensei disappeared and left a cold-blooded killer in his wake.)

Obito's mouth opened in a silent scream.

Minato-sensei's grip jerked and the knife cut through skin instead of straight through Obito's jugular.

Obito lost time. It seeped through fingers pressed against a wobbling throat, stained his skin and his clothes and the ground in sticky red and escaped through his lips in the form of gasping, desperate breaths.

Zetsu let go of his body, no more remorseful than after tossing a stained piece of clothing.

(Not stained. Ripped. Damaged. A puppet without use.)

Obito struggled against the inky tendrils creeping in on his vision. Somewhere to the side Minato-sensei and Zetsu still fought, but Obito craned his neck the other way.

Madara was on the verge of falling asleep. He'd been a shell of a man for as long as Obito had known him. He clung onto his half-life with the desperation of a man putting the pieces of his resurrection together – but he wasn't there yet. Right now, Madara was weak.

Obito let go of his throat. He let the blood flow. The cut pulsed with every beat of his heart, pumping bitter, white-hot hatred through his body.

(He'd never hated anyone. He hadn't thought himself capable.)

(Madara was a poor excuse for a teacher, but he'd still taught him better.)

Obito pushed himself up on trembling limbs. A shrill ringing pierced his ears. He felt light-headed.

(A distant voice whispered about blood-loss and shock and battlefield mortality.)

(It whispered about sacrifices. Obito hadn't felt this calm in weeks.)

Obito ignored the blood trickling down his neck, picked up the kunai Zetsu had dropped after abandoning his broken plaything and rammed it into Madara's chest.

Madara's body jerked. He stared at Obito in blatant, disbelieving shock. By the time Obito had severed the roots feeding Madara with life force, his eyes had already dulled. Obito stopped struggling and let the darkness pull him under.

A/N: No Kaguya because I'm not touching that dumpster fire of a plot point with a ten-foot pole.

One more chapter to go! :)

My betas are To Mockingbird, Igornerdand PyrothTenka! Go check them out, they're all wonderful writers!

Please let me know what you think!

~Gwen