Interlude I
He fell out of a distortion in space, dropping to the ground like a malformed birth. He landed on his face, and stayed there, hurting, bleeding. He was Nobody. He wanted to be Nobody. So when did those memories become so shallow that a fledgling Yamanaka was able to reach them?
When had he become so crippled that he could not even stop a fledgling?
He had let It get too far. To think he would lose a battle of Sharingan against a non-Uchiha (Kakashi), against a mere Jōnin (son of the White Fang, genius), a dog of Konoha!
The holes were closing. Another fledgling. How many did it matter? He should have still… should have still…
"I knew it was too much for you, even with backup." A bloody gurgle was the only response he could manage. Another distortion of space accompanied this one's approach, a silent ripple in the ground as it phased through the earth towards him. "You're sick," the white one said plainly, none of its frivolous chatter padding its words.
He spat out a mouthful of blood, his mask long fallen off. "What happened on your side? The intel?"
"He betrayed us."
He could not even fake indignity. Really, he had seen this coming.
"You saw this coming," the black one gravelled, disapproval dripping from his words like venom. He suppressed a moan; even thinking about poison, or any method of killing right now was painful. "You were too hasty in accepting him. Akatsuki is still in hiding and we do not even have seventy five percent of the Bijuu, yet he came to us. The stench of a rotting rat wishing to be a snake, and you still took him in."
"If I die, the plan fails, and this rotten world will go on to greater and greater despair. I. Cannot. Die."
"So you were desperate."
"His medicine helped, if only a little."
The white one mumbled something. "Spit it out."
"Are you sure it's not Itachi's blood you sucked up?"
"I'm not that careless," he was still bleeding, but he could sit up now that most of the holes were closed. Madara had left plenty of insurances to make sure he was abominably hard to kill. "Besides, our little rat ran his tests. Itachi's illness and It are different. Also, It started before Itachi betrayed me."
"That was why you lost the Three Tails."
He remained silent. Deidara did not let him hear the end of it right up until his own death.
"Three Tails, Six Tails, Eight Tails, Nine Tails. Four Beasts are roaming about. Yet you went after a Has Been legend, a Branch-House Hyūga and two chūnin with only their family names to them. And LOST."
He suppressed the urge to touch his chest. If Black Zetsu was so disgusted by his actions, it was no wonder he was in crippling pain throughout that fight. Crippled by his heart's curse, crippled by It. Four Tailed Beasts still loose. And now Kakashi…
He blinked hard, dispelling that silver hair from his vision. "You're right," he admitted to the impenetrable blackness that glared at him. "I should have taken… more loyal backup. Nagato is too obsessed with the Kyūbi vessel, but I might have persuaded Konan. If she was there… It doesn't matter. I'll send her after the Six Tails. After I rest, I'll go after one of the others. Everything else can come –"
The air clung to him then, gentle hands brushing against his face and playing with his tattered cloak.
It was coming.
He gripped the earth, fighting before It arrived to mercilessly rend both earth and him.
Zetsu glided back. The earth was never literally split. He just couldn't stand the screaming, and could not risk being sucked into that cold, dark, and desperately cold dimension again.
It always came as a masquerade, a gentle Eye within a bloody storm. He was floating, in perfect synchronicity with the earth, the sky, the stars themselves. Bliss, the same bliss with which he wanted to swallow the world, filled up his bones until they overflowed.
Peace. Beautiful, lulling peace. The peace he longed for. The new reality he would write to replace this despairing one. A perfect dream.
Shattered. Its shards, the shards of a dream cut into him, making him bleed. That was not the worst part. As he bled, his body was slowly and methodically ripped apart. One arm torn from his torso like ripped paper. Then the other. Then his legs. His head was split in half, his mind destroyed.
That was fine. That was always when Rin saved him. When his mind was split, so was her smiling face. And to put her together again was to pull his parts together, scream by throat-ripping scream.
The mind hated pain. Thus when faced with affliction, it retreats to the memories that bring the most comfort.
'Go for it Obito! Become a cool Hokage and let me see how you save the world! It's a promise okay?'
Aah. That's how they got so shallow, so easy to reach.
And still it was not enough. Because at this, the apex of his resistance, the world itself pushed back.
And instead of being ripped apart, he was crushed.
The earth happily offered him, pushing him up to the wroth sky as it descended, the entire force of the heavens thrust down to smash him to pulp. Caught in this pressure, sandwiched between these two mighty bodies, what could he do but scream in small, futile, final protest as his lungs collapsed, his bones snapped, his eyes popped and his skull cracked open, brain matter oozing.
This was It. More painful than being ripped apart, more frightening than losing his mind, It was a simple declaration, shouted with all of the World's might, for him to die. An upheaval of his existence from the very existence he wanted to erase, an utter rejection of him from its reality.
It was the world's sentience that recognised him as utterly repulsive, and did everything in its power to wipe his wrongness from her soil.
Bring it on.
He would never let it win. He pushed against both earth and sky, refusing to die to the very last. And, somehow, he did not die. But the battles left him broken out of pain, and trembling out of fear.
At It's end, nothing was ever changed. Not a grain of soil was ever moved out of place. The sky, beyond the cave's ceiling, was as serene and dumb as it had always been. His bones and body were whole.
He laughed; laughed with a heart as inhumanly cold as his dimension. The darkness whirled out of his madly cackling Sharingan, an inky storm stretching out to claim whatever was in its reach. Zetsu wasn't, not this time.
"Are you going crazy?" White Zetsu asked tentatively, still a few paces back from him.
The whirling blackness receded. He stopped laughing.
Was he crazy? Was all this just pressure from so many things going wrong all at once: Sasuke, Itachi, the four remaining Tailed Beasts?
No. He had watched his comrade run his arm through the girl who loved him. After that, he would not lose his mind over mere stumbling blocks.
It was a real force out for his very existence. That was fine. It just remained to be seen whose existence would be snuffed out first.
"I'm going to rest," sobered, he pushed himself off the floor with trembling arms. "And after that, I will be getting Kakashi's eye."
"You've forgotten –!"
"No!" when was the last time he had gotten passionate enough to shout? Black Zetsu's eye widened, undoubtedly asking the same question. "I will never forget! I will see the Eye of the Moon through to the end! But if I go up against a Jinchūriki or a Bijuu in this state, and It claims me again, I will die. I need to find and destroy It's cause before I can go any further."
"You're going after the Uchiha cat?" asked White Zetsu, his tone a bit lighter.
"He knows nothing compared to us. However, he has given me a valuable clue."
"But you said that you couldn't find Nekobaa."
A black fist clenched. "I have the trump card. Only Madara knows of the old and malignant tumour embedded in this world's past; only I can cut it out. That cat-woman is worthless to me now." He pushed against the ground that would have pushed back a few short minutes ago, and rose to his knees. "Once I get my other eye, everything will be made right again."
White Zetsu swallowed. "That'll be tough, even for you."
"The Uchiha cat is still a problem."
The Sharingan whirled.
"My other eye, and then I'll fix everything. All of the remaining Uchiha will be rounded up before this is all over." Zetsu swore they saw a ghost of a smile in the man's Sharingan, before it faded and Obito Uchiha collapsed face down in the dirt, out cold.
White Zetsu thought, as they carried him to a bed and cleaned and dressed his healing wounds, that silence was going to reign unless he did something about it. Too bad he couldn't think of anything particular to say. Not that that ever stopped him before, but his other half seemed to be in a bad mood so he at least wanted whatever he said to have a modicum of cleverness.
Just as he thought of something, Black Zetsu spoke.
"He's chasing after his own goals. Relieving his disease is more important now than Madara's will."
"Um, I don't think that's really what he –"
"This detour of his is going to take even more time away from Madara's plan. He's always been slow. It's been almost two decades already, and four Beasts are still loose."
"He's a lost cause then?"
"No. He still has his use." The darkness pulsed and White Zetsu shuddered, never liking this 'bottomless pit of black madness' feeling he got whenever Black Zetsu got riled up. "But I'm going to be working a bit harder now."
"Oh no…" White Zetsu groaned from true dread.
That meant more work for the both of them.