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Nohara Rin was his best friend.
Her house wasn’t far from his grandmother’s, all those years ago. They would go on play-dates together and hang out at the Nohara’s modest home, playing ninja on the furniture until they were scolded by Rin’s mother or one of her older sisters. Then they would run, giggling, into the backyard, hand-in-hand.
They went to the academy together, were paired together on the same genin squad. She patched up his wounds and cheered him on. She let him sob in frustration after his first chunnin exams, when he failed to advance after being put against Might Guy.
Hatake Kakashi was his friend.
They knew each other when they were little kids. Obito used to go to his house with Rin, and he would cook dinner for the three of them. Obito never questioned why the house was so quiet, or how Kakashi knew how to cook so well at the ripe old age of five, or why Kakashi avoided a very specific spot on the floor, the spot where the bamboo had very obviously been replaced recently.
Kakashi had always been kind of a sullen, quiet guy, but it got worse after his dad died. Obito had wanted to tell him what he thought about his dad, that he was a hero, but he never worked up the guts to tell him. At least, not until it was probably too late anyway.
Nohara Rin was the love of his live.
That’s what it felt like, anyway. He once read somewhere that there were little strings in a person’s heart that helped it contract. If they came under significant stress, the strings would snap. If enough of them broke, the person could die.
Grandma used to assure him it was impossible for someone to die of a broken heart. Your first love hardly ever works out, she would say.
When his first love dies, Obito is fairly certain he’s going to die too.
It feels as if all of his heart strings burst at once, this great burning and aching in his chest. Rin had called it a chordae tendineae rupture when he asked about it. Not nearly as cool as broken heart syndrome, but apparently that was a different condition anyway.
Maybe that’s what’s happened. All of those little strings in his heart have broken, and he’s going to keel over dead too, right next to Rin and Kakashi. Right where he belongedwas standing.
He doesn’t die. Turns out Kakashi didn’t either.
Hatake Kakashi was his enemy.
Kakashi killed Rin. Kakashi let her get captured by those Kiri fuckers. That’s twice now that it’s happened and the first time he hadn’t even wanted to go find her. It had been his idea, his words that had convinced Kakashi to go after her. His words and his fist and his declaration that no, his father wasn’t a shame to the village for putting his friends first. He was a goddamn hero.
He’s pretty sure he saw something break in Kakashi’s eyes that day. Or maybe it was the adrenaline trying to keep him awake, barely clinging to consciousness while he wheezed through a lungful of blood.
Doesn’t matter anymore.
Hatake Kakashi was his enemy.
Everyone is his enemy. The whole fucking world could go to hell for all he cared.
He sheds his name. His identity, everything. Trains himself to modulate his voice, wears masks. He doesn’t want to be anyone. He doesn’t want to exist.
He’s a ghost. He died a long time ago. Maybe he died before Rin, even. Maybe Uchiha Obito died under those rocks and he was merely a ghost, come to possess his corpse. He was the rot that had festered in Uchiha Obito’s body while it healed, the mycelium that stitched his heart back together.
He isn’t anyone. He’s faceless. He was Tobi, the bumbling idiot. He was Madara, an intimidating voice behind a mask. What was beneath those masks? Nothing. Take them off and there would be a void staring back.
Hatake Kakashi is his enemy.
He’s dreamt this fight so many times in his head, but real life was so much different than a dream. In his dreams, Kakashi fights back.
He fights eventually, once Obito has toyed with him enough, once he’s egged him on. But his heart’s not in it, not really. Doesn’t matter. Obito doesn’t need his heart to be in it to get what he wants, a kiss from those bright knuckles that killed Rin—
Something inside of Obito cracks.
It’s strange how a small sequence of events can change a person. How fast circumstances can change in the span of a few seconds. In the offering of a hand and a string of words. In himself, mirrored back at him with Minato’s blonde hair and Kushina’s bright smile.
Hatake Kakashi was not his enemy.
There’s something beyond Madara, beyond himself and Zetsu and the Juubi. Something far more ancient and powerful, something angry. Angrier even than him.
Something that picks them up and tosses them around like toys, picking them up and changing the scenery as she saw fit. A goddess, if Obito still believed in those sorts of things. He had long abandoned the concept of gods at the feet of Rin’s corpse.
Hatake Kakashi was not his enemy.
He almost cried when he saw Obito, he remembers that now. He had been so blinded by anger when he originally saw Kakashi, he hadn’t realized what emotion had actually be playing across his face. Not fear. Sorrow.
He kept Obito from falling into a lake of lava (with a kunai to the palm, but it was better than dying). He carried Obito from dimension-to-dimension in his arms, unwilling to allow him to be left behind. By all rights, he should have. He should hate him, in fact. Obito wouldn’t blame him.
But he only ever ushered him along, making sure he was matching pace with everyone else.
Nohara Rin was his first love.
Kakashi had visited her grave often. He visited what he thought was Obito’s often too. He left flowers for Rin, white ones, in the shape of bells. Their petals curled at the ends. Angel’s Trumpet, he’d heard they were called.
Hatake Kakashi was his friend.
When they put themselves between the bodies of Naruto and his cousin, Sasuke; and Otsutsuki Kaguya herself, he sees her again, briefly. With a rush of white petals and the smell of flowers, her hands wrapped around his and Kakashi’s outstretched ones in turn and pulled them forward, towards the boys, in front of the boys.
All three of them together for one last hurrah. One last mission before the end of it all.
But Kakashi was his friend. Obito has already had enough friends die. Already caused enough friends to die.
His allows the mangekyo to spin in his head, that all-too familiar nauseous swirl of his iris changing. Turns away from Kaguya, away from everything else—and looks at Kakashi.
They’d have to dig him a new grave. Something to actually contain his body, since he would actually be dead.
And on his grave there would be no flowers.
But before he goes—before he really goes, he would give Kakashi something. An eye, both eyes, everything. He would give him everything, everything he had, everything he was. Like he did before. It wouldn’t last forever, this curse would break eventually—but hopefully it would be enough to win.
One last hurrah.
Because Hatake Kakashi was his friend.