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Becoming Tobi is the first time Obito Uchiha steps into a skin that feels like home in a long, long time. For so many years, his body has been retwisted from its mangled shell into a version of a shinobi that befits someone else’s broader plan for the future. A tool. A symbol. An amalgamation of ideology and muscle.
Sliding behind the orange mask and acting starstruck by his Akatsuki compatriots is freeing. It allows Obito to be so much more like the boy he once was than has been feasible since Kannabi Bridge.
He skips and shouts and pouts and it feels like part of him is reclaiming that childhood he lost to blood and broken bone and the vestiges of his ancestors. The Curse of Hatred coursing through his grafted veins, spurring him toward a future without hate or loss or sadness.
A future Rin Nohara would be proud of.
A future where Kakashi Hatake gets what he deserves, though Obito’s vision of what that means flickers like a candle flame before a window—in and out, shadow battling light—never the same for longer than a moment.
Sometimes, Obito hates Kakashi. It is visceral, burning through him as if someone has exchanged his blood for lantern oil and struck a flint stone against his puckered skin. Other times, Obito longs for his old teammate in a way he cannot articulate as anything but desperation. He aches for true camaraderie, for someone to look into his scarred face and see him for all he is instead of only what they wish of him.
He thinks Kakashi might be such a person. Sometimes. Once, he even laughs as he imagines what Kakashi’s reaction to Tobi might be one day. How disgruntled and offput he will be by Tobi’s juvenile antics.
He imagines Kakashi as a child still, folding his arms over his chest and rolling his eyes, grumbling about wasting time and energy on such foolishness.
Unlike Obito—the architect of the Infinite Tsukuyomi and the Fourth Shinobi War—Tobi can be late. He can get lost on the path of life. He can make jokes and be laidback and ridiculous and no one bats an eye because half the Akatsuki think he is a moron and the other half think he is only playing a part to disguise his identity.
In truth, Obito is not so sure whether it is Tobi who is the disguise anymore.
Maybe Tobi is who he was always meant to be; carefree and dangerous. Deadly, but with a sense of humor. Maybe Tobi is what Obito left behind. The twisted, discarded parts of his body still pinned beneath a rockslide in Grass Country.
Perhaps becoming Tobi is Obito’s way of reclaiming the broken boy who longed to be Hokage one day, even if his dreams are different now.