Chapter Text
"Thank you for your help, boy," Kazue-obaa-san says, tiny frail hand going to pat Obito's shoulder as he almost topples over himself under the weight of a water barrel he's desperately trying not to drop.
"Not a problem, Obaa-san!" he goes to try and flash a bright grin at her but falls short, cheeks deep-red, sweaty hair clinging to his hitai-ate, the inside of his goggles completely fogged up from extortion.
Obito plunks the barrel down, limbs a bit stiff, wobbling on his unsteady knees. Kazue-obaa-san lives just outside the Hyuuga compound, and he had always wondered if maybe she was a Hyuuga herself--she was tiny and sickly and blind, irises milky-white and pupils unseeing. Izanagi-ojii-san, Obaa-san's husband, was an Inuzuka--he always smelt of wet fur and smiled with a mouth full of sharp fangs. Obito used to help Kazue-obaa-san when Izanagi-ojii-san had fallen ill a while back, doing chores and running to get fresh food from the market so Obaa-san can stay with Ojii-san and look over him, until one day he was just-- gone.
Obito still makes it a point to visit Kazue-obaa-san when he can, even if she nags and pretends she can do everything on her own--and she can, she moves faster than Minato-sensei sometimes--but she has nobody left and Obito knows loneliness. Random tasks for Obaa-san is never too much of a chore.
"Obito," Obaa-san says, hands unwaveringly moving over the door, deft fingers going for the keyhole in a practised movement, "I'd invite you in for tea since you were such a gentleman today, but didn't your sensei pick up a mission for you?"
He blinks, gaping at her for a bit, and then slaps his palms over his cheeks, a frustrated groan rumbling from his chest.
"Yes, sorry, I--we got a mission, I will see you later, Tsunade-obaa-chan was--she--she asked to invite you for dinner next week anyway, so!" he rambles away, already a few paces away from Kazue, hand going to broadly wave at her as if she'd see it.
"Try to make it there on time, boy," Obaa-san sighs but it's--fond, just like Tsunade-baa-chan sighs sometimes, and Obito doesn't turn to her, already sprinting through the streets, "you don't want to be--
--late, it's too late, his entire body inflamed, blood throbbing in his temples. He can faintly hear Kakashi's half-hysterical wheezing next to him, trying, hoping, begging for the boulder to move--but it doesn't, Obito knows it won't move; he can't feel half of his body, heart thrumming in his chest, coppery taste of blood gurgling in his throat, and Rin is sobbing, he thinks, and Obito wants to say that it's fine when it's not fine at all--but he needs them to leave, he needs them to leave before the Iwa nin make it here, he needs them to pull it together, to go, to flee, or they, too, are going to--
"--die there, you hear me?!" Tsunade-baa-chan regards him with a stern look, eyes narrowed, as she goes through Obito's pouch, trying to stuff in more wrapped up soldier pills in-between copious amounts of bandages and extra gauze pads. "Or I will find you and kill you myself, brat."
Obito solemnly nods from where he is perched on the table, already half-undressed and mostly sleeping, trying not to think of tomorrow's trip to Kusagakure. He is drowning in baa-chan's dark-green kimono shirt, surrounded by still not-gone leftover warmth of her body and a faint scent of rock rose and an oak tree.
"I made these pills based on whatever used to help grandfather restore his chakra," she keeps rummaging in the pouch, seemingly rearranging everything in there to suit her tastes. "Should work on you-- will work on you, of course, because you're a Senju, but do tell me if you use any, I need to know how you feel and--"
Obito doesn't have the strength to groan out he is an Uchiha, and he won't need the pills because he had trained so much with Shodaime and Nidaime, and even if he still can't use Mokuton in front of his team because adults are paranoid, he is stronger than he had ever felt in his life.
Baa-chan finally snaps away from the pouch, noticing Obito drifting away, and she sighs, taking a couple of steps to wrap her arms around him and lift him off the table like he weighs absolutely nothing. Obito'd flail at that because he is a chuunin and not a kid that she can manhandle wherever she wants but--it's warm there, and he stressed himself over going on that mission, but he is also-- excited, how he hasn't been in a while. Nidaime had taught him shunshin last month, and Obito was giddy with excitement as he kept scaring baa-chan by appearing behind her across the Senju compound, cackling as she tried to take him down just to shunshin away from her again.
Nidaime didn't smile much, but he smiled the brightest then, the first time Obito had managed to disappear in a whirl of leaves, reappearing near a half-ecstatic Shodaime half a training ground away. Each of his smiles is special, feeling forbidden to look at, like Obito is sneaking a peek at something precious--Nidaime's eyes are bright and glowing in the low light, lips curving upwards, brilliant white teeth on display as he beams at Obito, looking happy and proud and in his element.
"Fantastic, Kawarama," Nidaime says, hand going to ruffle Obito's hair even as he pretends to try and duck away from it. "I always believed you can--
"--do this!" Kakashi cries somewhere above him, hands bloody from popped calluses, red dropping over Obito's forehead. "I can do this. I can destroy the rock if I put enough fine control into Chidori. I can--"
"It's fine," Obito repeats because he wants them to believe it more than he does himself, because he didn't manage to shunshin away like Nidaime had taught him. He pushed Kakashi and was too late to do anything after, and everything should hurt but it doesn't, and Obito just feels so tired, and if he'd just close his eyes and go back to sleep everything should get better, gone like a fleeting--
--nightmare, Obito convinces himself, wrapping himself tighter in the blanket, shuffling across big and empty halls of his home, his new home, bare feet loud against the oaken floors.
He gets out to the dojo, looking over the big and empty hall, eyes skimming over dropped blades Tsunade-baa-chan tried to teach him to use just like that guy from the Academy, Asuma, tends to prefer over any other means of close combat.
"Can't sleep, Kawarama?"
Obito whips around, eyes wide, hands clutching the blanket, quickly zeroing on the figure of Shodaime. He is sitting on a step leading to the central fighting area, some book perched on his knee, and Obito remembers that one time when Shizune wandered to a training ground when Shodaime was holding and cleaning Obito's fogged up goggles. It was funny, the way she hissed like a scared cat and proceeded to screech at him that there is a yūrei, haunting him, haunting her, until Obito snatched the goggles back from Shodaime's hands and weaved some improbable lie of training Fūton.
Shodaime and Nidaime were probably yūrei. Obito wasn't very well-versed; no one was there to tell him about yūrei before, and he had never talked to the Hokage about who--what--they really were. He knew only he could see them; he knew they could go wherever they pleased, Nidaime oftentimes wandering off to the Academy building, and Shodaime aimlessly roaming the streets. It was like they were real but for some reason, only tangible to him --Tsunade-baa-chan walked through Shodaime often enough, and the broken look on his face could only be wiped off by Obito tugging the man's sleeve to bring him into a warm hug.
"I can sleep," Obito says, defensive for no reason, and stumbles to Shodaime, plopping down the steps too, pressing into the man's side and squinting in low light into the book. "What's that?"
"Just some old stories," Shodaime goes to wrap an arm around Obito's shoulders. "The ones our mother used to read to us."
Obito digs his fingers into Shodaime's shinobi dress shirt, clinging to him, and tries to imagine what it would be like to have a mother that would read him stories before the bed, or during quiet afternoons when Obito would be too lazy to move after lunch.
"What are they about?" he asks instead because he can't imagine any of that.
"The yōkai," Shodaime turns a page, then another one, as if thinking Obito can see anything without his goggles in this much darkness. "About the spirits of the moon, dragon kings, goblins without bodies, water imps, sun goddesses, animal spirits, and underworld for lost children."
He pauses and points proudly at one page, pressing his cheek to Obito's temple as he huddles over himself.
"That used to be your favourite one. Momotarō. You always liked the talking dog in there. Hoped to have one of your own, just like mother's wolf summons," Obito turns his head, curious, staring at Shodaime in the gentle light of early morning, "A shame none of us managed to inherit her summoning scroll. The Hatake wolves would've loved you, Kawarama. Maybe we could still--
"--do something," and Kakashi sounds so broken, and Obito never thought he'd ever hear him like this, would've been so gleeful if he had heard him so desperate a day ago, but it was too late now--too late to be regretful.
"No," he croaks out instead, Sharingan spinning wildly in his eye socket, tears burning more than the dull ache of tiredness of his entire body. "Please. Just take it. You need it more than I do, please, just take it out, take it--"
Rin sobs, fisting shaking hands in Obito's jacket--his new jacket, the one he had bought after a year of doing D-ranks, the one he refuses to let Tsunade-baa-chan touch because it's the only thing he has left from the Uchiha compound, the only thing that still has an uchiwa engraved into it--and he tries to lift his arm to touch her in return but--his body's too unresponsive, too heavy, and Obito just feels bone-deep tiredness underneath everything else, and he just wants this to end.
"It's your eye," Kakashi keeps arguing, mask ruined by blood and tears and snot, and Obito realises with a start how much smaller Kakashi is than him and Rin; realises that Bakashi is even younger than him and Rin.
"It's fine," it's not fine but it will be when they are gone and safe and healed, "it's a--
"--gift," Nidaime says, and Obito's eyes are so wide he feels like they might just pop out of his eye sockets.
"Really?!" Obito's hands are hovering over an assortment of shuriken and kunai, all engraved with a Senju crest, old metal clearly used but well-maintained.
He touches the weapons with reverence, fingers ghosting over the sharp edges, breath held in like he is afraid he might blow them away or make Nidaime take them back, hide them from Obito's clumsy grasp.
"They have always been yours," Nidaime looks sad--the Hokage always look so sad when they talk about Obito, he hates it, he hates making them this unhappy, "It was the last thing I had left from you after you--the only thing they let me have when you--"
Obito goes to ambush Nidaime, propelling himself into the man with as much force as he can, arms wrapping around his midsection as Obito is clinging to him, goggles lopsided on his forehead, and pretends he is not crying for the sake of Nidaime, for the sake of whatever he had lost, because Obito still can't grasp why they keep insisting they know him, and he is probably selfish for not telling them otherwise.
"Thank you," and he means it, because all of his weapons are old and bent and off-balance--scraps he managed to get for cheap, or training equipment he still got from the Academy days.
There is a beat, and then Nidaime sinks to the ground, graceless, pulling Obito into his lap and hugging him again, shuriken and kunai and senbon forgotten on the side.
"No, it's--thank you," Nidaime says then, and his voice wavers if a little bit--Obito wouldn't have noticed if he didn't spend so much time just staring and listening to the Hokage, trying to figure out if they were his imagination or genjutsu or a sign of an unhealthy mind. "Thank--
--you," Obito can't see them, not anymore, but he can hear them, can feel them, Rin's steady chakra on his face and Kakashi holding his hand.
He still doesn't feel pain--not from having his eye removed, damaged and cut eyeball replacing his own in the eye socket; not from the boulder, insistently pinning him to the ground. Obito is just tired, and scared, and--content, somehow, because despite Shodaime and Nidaime telling him he is enough without the Sharingan, the possibility of getting it was his last tie to his clan.
He activated it. He proved everyone wrong. He proved he is not useless, and he had saved his teammates after so many times of having to be saved himself.
"Can you," he gulps, mouth suddenly very dry despite the tangy feeling of blood covering his tongue, "can you tell Tsunade-baa-chan that I'm sorry I died?"
Obito feels Kakashi's hand tremble in his own, and Rin is whimpering, her head falling on his chest.
"She told me not to," Obito explains and laughs, a wretched and hysterical little thing, and he feels so stupid for believing he was ready for this mission--that he was confident and brash and thinking he was prepared to fight and protect his team.
"Obito--," Rin starts, but there is shouting above them somewhere, and Kakashi sucks in a sharp breath, tightening Obito's hand in his own grasp.
It's--it's Iwa nin, and they are still pursuing them, and they are still not gone, and Obito needs Rin and Kakashi to leave now before they, too, get killed. Kakashi can protect Rin--he is a Jonin now, and he has Obito's Sharingan, and Obito trusts him with her life--Obito trusts them to get to Minato-sensei safe.
"Go," he rasps because he is not good at sensing chakra but even he can tell the enemy is here now, and if they linger for a minute too long it will be too late to save his team from another casualty.
Obito can hear--feel Kakashi go to his feet, can feel him tug Rin away from him. It's cold and dark and sticky where Obito is laying, and another thought strikes him before they leave, stiff hand going to the weapons pouch, trying to unhook it from his side.
"Take," he almost-orders to no one in particular, and then someone's fingers--Rin--gently take the pouch away.
"It's--it was a gift. The shuriken. Can you--bring to--," Nidaime, he wants to say, "can you give it--"
There is a sound, and a surge of chakra, and Rin yelps as a deafening sound of moving earth and crumbling rocks starts to suffocate Obito. He tries to smile at them, tries to put on a brave face, and for the first time he is not crying, not cowering before the danger.
He can hear Rin's desperate cry, something that distantly sounds like his name, and then there's--pain, real pain, more broken bones and torn skin and blood pouring down his sides, and Obito feels like he is suffocating, and maybe this is how it feels to die, to become the yūrei Shodaime was telling him about that one night over a heavy book of folktales--maybe this is what Shodaime and Nidaime felt before they became yūrei themselves.
Senju Kawarama died in a skirmish between the Uchiha and the Hagoromo, small body pierced on an enemy sword, his brother's gifted weapons set still clutched in bleeding fingers.
Uchiha Obito dies in a cave-in, in the middle of the forest near Kusagakure, another name on the Memorial Stone among many other, similar, useless deaths carved into its smooth and polished surface.