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Madara never leads again.
Even when...
Even when.
It isn't weakness, or self-pity. It's a fact.
Of all people, it's Kakashi who understands.
"You're ready," he says one day as they're walking Bear. It's become a habit, this. Whatever it is. Walks through London growing longer. Roads and paths and shops. Passers-by stopping to coo at the mountain of fur. Madara no longer flinches from them, no longer sees in each one the certainty of a call to Interpol and a return to...
"I can go a little longer. It's... good. To get outside again."
Kakashi shakes his head. "You're ready," he says again, "to tell him."
There's nothing he's told Kakashi that he's held back from anyone else. Often their walks are nearly in silence. But...perhaps he's becoming irritatingly readable in his old age.
A new year is coming. The fifth, since his arrest. The first, since his release.
Obito can only remain caught in between for so long.
Soke-dai.
Yes, it is time.
He nods, and rounds the corner of the riverfront path.
"When you retired," he starts, hesitant. You came back when he needed you.
"I didn't. I was benched. And I needed it, but...it wasn't the same." He stops and looks Madara in the eye. "This is your decision. We will honor it, Madara-sama."
Silence, for several long minutes over the bridge. Over the water, where Susanoo listens. "He really has done well."
Kakashi smiles. "He has."
"But Sabaku—"
Kakashi's smile grows sharp, white teeth. "Somehow we're still fighting the same enemies we were at eighteen: old men and oil. Some things never change."
"The Americans. Magano, Bellomo, that nutter they just elected—"
"Like I said, sir: some things never change."
Madara breathes out. Izumi's held New York, and with it their most lucrative arms contracts now after the fall of Moscow. Not without cost. She's lost men, an eye, and the relative goodwill of the NYPD. But she's holding out.
Fitting, for Obito's heir.
"I won't abandon him," Madara says, very softly.
Kakashi bumps shoulders with him, warm and solid. "Some things never change."