Rating: K

Summary: Obito explains. Rin isn't happy- but neither is Obito, once he realizes just who she is.

Her first thought is, No.

Because it couldn't be. Even with that single, blood red Sharingan staring at her from that scarred, horribly familiar face- it couldn't. He looked back with that one wide eye in shock, and she can't help but notice that it was the exact expression Obito had on his face the first time Rin had talked to him, all those years ago.

Messy spikes of black hair draped over his forehead, but they did nothing to hide the horrific whorled scars that cover the majority of the right half of his body- scars that Rin remembered, from his stint as a medic nin, as caused when when the human body tried to recover from immense amounts of pressure... for example, being crushed by several ton of rock.

The other side of the man's face is unmarred, and it is that side of his face that makes Rin gasp in shock and disbelief. Though without the baby fat that had plumped out his face back when they were still just children and almost two decades older, she can't mistake him as anyone other than who he is.

"O-Obito?" She stutters out uncharacteristically, and reaches out- was this just a hallucination of some sort? A genjutsu? But, even as the man shies away slightly from her fingers, she feels solid flesh.

"Rin," he says, voice choked. "But you're- you're dead."

"Funny," Rin manages, "I wanted to say the same."

Because this is Obito, no matter how hard it was to believe. Only he would have reacted to her in such a way- and he looked like him too, down to the missing eye and tousled black hair. He looked at her with shock, yes, but under that, the same adoration she had seen almost two decades past.

But that raised only more questions.

"But Obito- how are you-" Rin asks, before she hears the crack of a twig being snapped and whirls around to see Deidara's furious face.

"What the hell, un?" The blonde shouts, staring at them in disbelief. "What the fuck are you two doing?"

Rin realizes then, an uncharacteristic blush on her face, just how provocative their position is. Tobi-Obito backed up against the tree and her leaning forward forward that way... Of course, she had been threatening the man with a deadly weapon, but it looked like something else entirely.

Fortunately, she was saved from explaining by a high pitched interruption.

"Senpai! You're back!" Obito cheered, orange mask on his face- he must had put it back on as soon as he heard Deidara coming- completely back in his Tobi persona. "Did you know Haruhi-chan's a medic nin? I fell and hit my head and it really hurt and she fixed it for me!"

It wasn't a very believable lie, but Deidara seemed to have fallen for it. "You're a medic-nin, un?" He looks at her quizzically. Missing nin tended to be shinobi geared toward battle, not toward healing.

"...I have training for it in the past," she replied smoothly, "Not much, but enough to patch up the gash on your partner's forehead."

He stared, open-mouthed. "You- You saw his face?" The man managed finally.

Rin decided to go for the truthful route. Besides, how would she get to the forehead wound without doing so? "Yes," she said crisply.

Deidara looked stunned. Rin was suddenly reminded of the Team Minato bonding sessions when everyone would work together to get Kakashi's mask off- due to skill and sheer luck, the Hatake got away every time.

"Alright, whatever, un," he said at last. "I brought supplies, but I pissed off a bunch of villagers. We should probably get out of here, un."

Obito pushed past her with a deliberate childlike clumsiness to get to his partner, arms flopping around exaggeratedly. He took their brief close proximity to whisper lowly in her ear.

"Play along."

And she did, pretending that nothing had changed since Deidara had left, a few hours before- while in reality, everything had.

He does explain, one night, as the two of them took watch while Deidara snored the night away in his tent. They sit, free of all of their masks- both literal and metaphorical.

He tells her of the ancient Uchiha who had nursed him back to health after the mission, how he had spent months underground wrapped in bandages and not much else. He stays oddly mute on the subject of just who the old man had been, and how he had recovered from a mortal injury with only scars on the right half of his body.

Rin doesn't probe. She has her own skeletons in the closet; it's no skin off her back to let Obito keep his.

Obito explains that he joined Akatsuki along with someone he called Zetsu, who he had met during his long months underground. He tells her that he did so to pay the old man back for saving his life- the man had had some sort of vision, and had made Obito promise to continue working for his dream after his own death.

She takes it in silently. "Why didn't you come back?" Rin asks finally. "It's been seventeen years."

He pales imperceptibly. "I wanted to, at first," Obito admits. "But I was too weak to make it back. By the time I had the strength to..." He gives her a meaningful look, and she understands.

"I was already dead," she says, and he tenses. "You were there, weren't you? In the clearing, when the Kiri nin attacked us. You saw everything."

"Yes," he bites out through gritted teeth. "I saw what Kakashi did."

Oh. Now, his anger makes sense. "It wasn't his fault," she voices quietly.

"He put his hand through your chest," he says in disbelief.

"I asked him to do it," she says, and he stares at her mutely with shocked eyes. "The hunter nin wanted me alive. I rather have Kakashi give me a quick death than a long, painful one at the hands of their medic nin, Obito."

She doesn't explain why the Kiri nin were after her, and her only. She had her secrets, and she would rather die than let Obito- innocent, good hearted Obito, who joined a S-rank organization to keep a promise- know that Rin Nohara wasn't nearly as kind, or as caring he had thought her to be.

"Rin," he asks, "How are you alive? That technique... was it a genjutsu? A shadow clone?" He tries to hide it, but Rin can hear the undercurrent of betrayal in his tone.

This, at least, was a question she could answer. "Neither." She tells him, "I just heal much better than the average person. It's a kekkai genkai that runs in my clan- at least, that's what I think it is. I have never met anyone else with the same clan marks as mine, so I can't be sure. I thought I died, but I woke up a few hours later."

She's very aware of the foremost question in Obito's mind- why didn't she return to the village if she had survived?

But he stays silent, and she's grateful for it. They both have their secrets, and they're both willing to let the other keep theirs in exchange for being able to keep their own.

"...That's why you never came back," she realizes suddenly. "You thought Kakashi had killed me."

"I didn't have anyone else to return for," Obito says, as if imparting a shameful secret.

Rin blinks in shock. What about Sensei? She wants to ask, What about Kakashi? But she doesn't, because she understands now just why she had bonded so quickly and so deeply with Obito. They were similar, more than she had ever knew. They had disguised it with various masks, but underneath it all, they were both lonely children who had longed for a friend- and they had found one, in each other.

She leans over and puts her arms around him, holding Obito tightly. He tenses at her touch and looks at her with one shocked eye, but she holds on and he doesn't resist.

"...I missed you, Obito," Rin says, and kisses him.

He doesn't return the kiss; instead, he stares at her in shock. She draws back worriedly- had their feelings for each other not been as mutual as she had believed?

"I'm sorry," She tells him, suddenly guilty. She should have known things would have changed in the last seventeen years. "I thought you-"

"No- I'm- I thought you liked Kakashi." Obito manages.

Oh. "No- No, I-" She giggles giddily, "Even when we were kids, I've always liked you." And she moves closer, enveloping his mouth in a deeper kiss.

After a moment, he returns it.

It feels almost like a dream come true. How many times had she hoped- had prayed, even- that she could have some second chance to make things right?

Nobody notices. She thinks Deidara might, sometimes. He gives her strange looks. But he never comes up to her, never asks her- and she could almost picture him saying it- "The fuck's wrong with you? You and Tobi?"

Obito hasn't changed much since the days of their youth, she thinks. He treats her the same way as he did when he was only a boy, and she tries to be the same person she pretended to be, all those years ago. It works- or at least, she wants it to work.

If only certain dark secrets stayed where they were buried.

But of course, skeletons never do stay in their closet, no matter how much you wish for them to.

She should have known there was something darker lying under the veneer of Akatsuki's relatively innocuous face. After all, there wasn't much good things that resulted from gathering the tailed beasts.

'Tobi' and Deidara had been the ones to go after the Sanbi. That, of course, had confused her a bit. Last she had heard of the beast, it had been sealed inside the Mizukage Yagura, who had been the successor to the man she had served, all those years ago. But now, it was free from its human host.

Rin wondered vaguely how Yagura had been taken down. He might have been the one to really cement her former village's reputation as the 'Bloody Mist', but she respected him as a strong shinobi. But she had more important things to worry about.

She had went through the ceremony without protest, watching silently as the monster was somehow sealed into a- a really strange looking statue. It was only when everything was over that Rin confronted Obito.

"What was that?" She asked him, once she was sure there were no eavesdroppers. "Why is Akatsuki doing this?"

Obito gazed at her with one baleful eye.

"Well?" Rin urged, impatiently.

So he told her. Akatsuki's goal was peace, he said. Using the tailed beasts, they would be able to stop wars, like the one that had taken the lives of so many of their friends and family.

"...That isn't all, is it."

Obito looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I never could lie to you, Rin." He sighed, and gave her an explanation that, if he had been anyone else, would have made her laugh out loud. Because seriously? The Sage of Six Paths, a figure found only in childhood bedtime stories and the mythical Juubi, whose body was stuck in the moon, both existed. And Obito wanted to bring the latter 'back to life'.

"You... You really aren't joking, are you." The Uchiha nodded. "But... Why? What use would some eldritch abomination be to you in your goal for peace?"

"Rin, I can make a perfect world." He explained, almost excitedly. "Don't you see? With the power of the Juubi, I can do anything- I can bring the dead to life, I can make sure everyone gets along, I can make peace. Everyone will be happy, and nobody will ever die, and-" He faltered. "W-What's wrong?"

She stared at him with dull shock. "You aren't just a simple member in Akatsuki," she said with growing realization. "You know too much. I bet that partner of yours- Deidara- has no idea of the reasons behind what he is being ordered to do."

"You're right," Obito admitted, "I'm not just a member. Tobi is my cover. I'm the leader."

Rin couldn't help but laugh, albeit a bit hysterically. "Obito, how the hell did you end up from buried in a cave in Iwa to being the head of a S-ranked organization?"

He looked confused at her reaction. "The old man who rescued me was Madara Uchiha- yes, the one whose statue stands in the Valley of the End. He was my mentor."

"...How is he still alive?" Even ignoring the fact that history books said that the man had died in his final battle against his rival, the Uchiha would be around a century in age.

"He has his ways," Obito replied cryptically. "He told me the truth, Rin. This life we live in... it's a complete hell. Innocent people suffer and die for no reason at all. I need to change it, Rin. We need to change it."

"But Obito," She could hardly believe what she was hearing. What had happened to that cheerful, idealistic boy she had known all those years ago? "You can't force people into being happy. You can't force people into making peace-"

"But I can." In that moment, he looked beyond frightening. "Don't you see, Rin? As long as I have the power of the Juubi, I can."

Rin gazes at him mutely. He looks disappointed. "Look what this world has done to you, Rin." Obito says vehemently. "But again, perhaps that is the fate of all shinobi who survive in this world of ours. Even you have changed, as I did, as Kakashi did. In that world of mine, however... You would not have had to change."

She laughs, harsh and bitter. "No, Obito. You misunderstand. I was never perfect- I was never as selfless, as kind, as great as you thought I was. Maybe Rin was, but... She was just a role I played."

His eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about."

Rin had never thought she would voluntarily tell anyone about this particular aspect of her past. But here she was. "I was never the sweet little girl everyone saw me as. Back in the war... I was a spy, Obito. I was a Kirigakure jounin. That was why those hunter nin were after me. I turned away from their side after Kannabi Bridge." She pauses. "You have to understand, Obito. It's impossible for a perfect world to exist because... there are no perfect people. Not even me. Rin Nohara may have been, but she was never real. Just a fairy tale... like the world you want to make."

His eyes are wide in shock- and then he just looked furious. "No. No. You- You're just lying to me. You can't be-"

"I have no reason to lie," she tells him. "Obito, I-I wish this wasn't the truth."

His teeth are bared in a snarl. "We were best friends as children. Were you just using me as another source of information? Was this a lie, then? Were you just humoring me, pretending that you actually felt something for me?"

"No!" She denies vehemently, "I've always loved you, Obito. I just couldn't- Back then, if my village ever found out that I had feelings for you, I would have been forced back to my village to undergo punishment and you-" She faltered. "You would have had a target painted on your back. Besides, you loved someone who didn't exist. I just couldn't do that to you. And then... you died." Rin bites her lip. "But... I want to think that we have a chance now. A chance to- to try."

Obito looked poleaxed. "Oh," he whispered, and Rin seized the opportunity. "Obito, this world you want to create- No matter how much you want it to be... it will be an illusion. A world of lies. Even if- somehow- in that world, we're still together... It wouldn't be real."

"Rin," he says, "I'm doing this for you."

"Then just- just be with me, Obito." Her voice cracks. "I'm not be the girl you remember. I'm not perfect. But... none of us are. Maybe we could be, in that made-up world you're working toward- but we could have something real here. Wouldn't that be better than- than some lie?"

He's silent.

"Rin," Obito says finally, voice quiet, "Do you know what I've done for this? How many people I've killed for this? If I give this up now... their sacrifices will be in vain. They would have died for nothing."

"And how many more will have to die for you to achieve this... this 'Moon Eye's Plan' of yours?" Rin demands, eyes wet despite her best effort. "Hundreds? Thousands? Obito, people aren't just going to let you do this. They want to live in a world of freedom, of choice, of truth. And... I want to, too." She bites her lip hard, and tastes blood. "I-If you do this... I can't stay with you. Your path is one I cannot follow."

"Please." She begs. "Obito, don't do this. It's not too late. Give us a chance."

Nobody notices their departure for weeks. Haruhi and 'Tobi' simply drop contact during an extended reconnaissance mission in Wave. No one blinks an eye when they don't turn up on the date they are supposed to. That idiot Tobi probably got lost and dragged his rookie partner along with him. He'll probably turn up in a few days.

But they don't. Sasori tells his spies to keep an eye out for a man wearing an orange mask or a woman with pale hair and stripes on her cheeks- or, anyone claiming to have taken down some Akatsuki members. There are, of course, the usual drunk braggarts in the village taverns, but there are no solid leads. This isn't much of a concern to the majority of the organization. Neither of the two had been especially valuable to Akatsuki, after all. Their rings would turn up eventually.

And if Leader-sama or Zetsu had seem uncharacteristically distraught in the meantime, nobody noticed.

Slowly but steadily, the organization begins to unravel. Orders and missions seemed confused and disorganized. They still hunted the jinchuriki, yes, but Leader-sama no longer gave them the general location and power level of their target. They still made progress, but incredibly slow progress.

What had changed? Leader-sama was the same. If any key informant had been eliminated or discovered, it wasn't known. Zetsu, for his part, seemed to take the loss of his subordinate hard- at least, harder than most would think.

Eventually, Leader-sama made an announcement to the organization- find the man calling himself Tobi. But the orange masked man never did turn up. It was almost as if he had vanished off the surface of the Earth.

They didn't stay anywhere for long. A few days in this small village, a week in another. They took care not to draw attention.

It was easy for Obito. Simply taking off his mask removed most of his distinctiveness. His scars, while grievous, was not out of place. His age marked him as a veteran of the Third Shinobi War, and such injuries were not uncommon among those ranks. The missing eye remained uncovered. He had discovered over the years that an eye patch or gauze tended to draw more attention than a closed eyelid.

Rin's hair was easily remedied. She picked up some hair dye in the first village they had came across and, some time in the motel bathroom, came out looking just a bit more like the kind Konoha medic nin from all those years ago. A pair of contacts finished her 'disguise'. But now, looking in the mirror, Rin wondered whether this was her true face.

They look nothing like Tobi and Haruhi Kihara, S-ranked missing nin. And, judging from their lack of pursuers, everyone else thought so too.

"We should go back," Rin says one day, in their ratty motel room. "We really should."

"And why should we?" Obito asks, from his position near the door. He doesn't ask where they should go back to. He doesn't have to. "They think we're dead."

She frowns, walking over to him. "Maybe that's why we should."

"Rin," he pleads.

She did not relent. "You know how Kakashi is. He's probably blaming himself for everything- that's what he did after we thought you died." Her tone is not accusing. "We should go back- let them know that we're alive, at least. We don't have to stay, and I don't blame them if they don't want us to."

Rin looks back at him and her gaze softens. "Look, it's not going to be easy. We've both done some pretty bad things since then. I'm not exactly thrilled to have to explain to Minato-sensei about my past, but... we owe it to them. Kakashi, Sensei, Kushina-san... everyone- they deserve the truth."

"Maybe they don't want the truth," he argues stubbornly. "Maybe they're better off thinking that we're dead than... what we actually are."

She smiles wryly at that. "Do you really think so, Obito?" She asks. "Do you really believe that?"

He doesn't.

Look for the epilogue for this fic, coming soon. Shouldn't be long. Sorry for the long wait time. Thanks to desertrommel for giving me the kick in the butt I needed to get this chapter done. As usual, please review.