Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day his father sees it, he’s told never again. “You do that one more time, boy, and I’ll tear those eyes right outta your head.”

Obito is a genin, fresh from his first mission in the war, his uniform covered in the blood of his teammates. It slides down his arm and soaks into his glove, where it makes its forever home as a stain on his wrist. He leans heavily in the entryway, dragged inside by his father’s harsh grip.

“Do you want to end up like your mother?”

His father doesn’t ask if he’s okay, or how he’s holding up. All he can do is shut his mouth and shake his head, obeying when he’s told to wash. The water dilutes the evidence of his first battle as it circles the drain, a tint of pink, not the harsh red forever burned behind his eyes, and he wonders if, when he wakes up tomorrow, everything will go back to normal. As the shower spray falls across him, and as he cleans the open sores on his skin, he breaks down and cries. He cries, and cries, because if he doesn’t do it now, he won’t ever have a chance.

The nightmares that chase him are a secret. He doesn’t confide in his father, because he knows that if he tries, he’ll be mocked. You’re weak, Dad would say, you’ve always been weak. This is what our village has come to after ousting the traditions of the Bloody Mist.

When he drinks, Dad tells stories of his graduation exam. How the adrenaline felt as he faced off against those children who were once his classmates, how he retched when he saw his best friend’s body sinking into the marsh with a kunai through her eye. The smell as he sat for days, hiding in a mound of corpses, lying in wait for the last remaining examinees to wander close enough to snare.

Obito doesn’t share that at night, he dreams of the moment he failed his team. He sucks in his tears, buries them deep, pushes back all those demands that he fix his wretched self, and plugs his ears to the lectures of how his weak generation is the reason their village is losing the war. You’re soft. It’s because of kids like you that this country is rotting from the inside.

He hides those nights where sleep won’t find him, the intervals between one restless moment and the next, when he looks in the mirror and stares at the red that once stained his clothes, made permanent in his eyes, like those memories he cannot shake.

Kiri doesn’t like Kekkei Genkai. For a while, they lived in rural Water Country with Mom, thinking it was safe. It wasn’t. Not for long, certainly not forever. He was there the day they came for her, he saw it and watched and did nothing as his father covered his mouth and held him still, as they took her from him.

Kiri’s ANBU did not connect her to the father and son living nearby. His parents’ marriage was unregistered, and as far as the government was concerned, he was just another orphan of war taken in by a man with no one left to carry his name. There were hundreds like that, after all. The body count of the war was just as high as every other slaughter in the Bloody Mist.

He blinks, the red fades, but the memories remain. For every person who sees, another body is added to the mound at his back. No one knows, no one has to.

To maintain his peace, he’ll earn the name of the Bloody Mist.

On his tenth mission as a chūnin, he goes down. The concussion is bad enough that he vomits when his squad reluctantly carries him to the nearest stronghold, and it persists when he’s brought home with some of the other soldiers. For minutes, hours, days, something feels off, like he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be. Like this isn’t Kiri. But the mist is unmistakable, circling the air like a wraith.

They call in someone from Torture and Interrogation. Obito sits in his hospital bed as he’s questioned for his name, his family, his shinobi identification number. Age, sex, medical history. They don’t have his records, and don't recognize him. But the interrogator’s genjutsu prevents lies, and as he recounts his place in the village, T&I kicks up a fuss.

There was a fire in the records room. A team of unidentified ANBU snuck into the village and blew the Mizukage office to hell and back. Though the damage was contained, a host of important documents are now ash, forever lost. They determine that his files, too, must have been lost, because his sharp teeth mark him as Kiri-born, and their jutsu confirms that every word he speaks is true.

He doesn’t tell them that he’s met them before, that the interrogator’s assistant is a friend of his father’s, and that they’ve been over to his house several times in the past. It’s the concussion making him think these things, confusing them with different people. That’s the only way it makes sense.

When he asks if his father will visit, they look between one another and explain, almost clinically, that the man he claims to be his parent has been dead since the Second Shinobi War. It’s the concussion, they say. You’re just confused.

But his father’s words burn like acid in his head, and he knows that what they’re saying isn’t true.

He says nothing. Questioning authority in the Bloody Mist is no different from setting one’s neck on a guillotine.

The Mist wills it, so Obito is an orphan.

Kiri continues to lose ground in the war. By now, Konoha and Iwa are squaring off on the bloodiest battlefronts, and the Mist is hardly considered a threat. Its forces wane, the body count too high. The now-defunct graduation exam ensured that only the strongest of warriors became shinobi, and squandered their numbers in the process. Kiri’s shinobi forces have always been lacking when compared against the other Five Great Nations, comically so, and despite the beliefs of the older generation, a few prestigious elites rarely out-perform a sea of soldiers. The logic of the elders just doesn’t add up, never has, and now that tradition has been ousted, genin and fresh chūnin make up the bulk of Kiri’s forces. But still, those old fools on the council, and perhaps even the Mizukage, himself, prioritize the survival of its elite.

Obito sees more classmates die with every dawn. For each squadmate that falls and friend whose life bleeds out of them like ink on a page, it gets harder to wake up the next day.

Lying in his sleeping bag, he stares at the stars. It’s been three hours, and though his body is tired and his mind is worn, as the last on his team with a still-beating heart, he needs to get up. Five hours until rendezvous. Get up, food pill, scout. Spotted Iwa in the area, they’re based somewhere nearby. Squad 31 will be taking provisions over the border from Kannabi Bridge, and you’re the only one left. Get them to the front line.

But he’s weak. His arms shake when he pushes off the ground, and shivers wrack his body. It’s been three weeks of ferrying supplies along their cargo route, three weeks of switching from one team to the next as enemy forces ambush their caravans. The Kannabi Bridge trade route was once Iwa’s territory, up near Kusa, but Kiri has a foothold in the area now and has been using it to push them back. It’s a well-known passage, and they know it won’t be long before one of their enemies takes it from them, so they’re making use of it while they can.

He stretches; his muscles scream. Rubbing his sore eyes, blinking away the fog settling over his thoughts, he makes his rounds. There are sounds of a skirmish nearby, the crunching of leaves underfoot and the unmistakable thunk of kunai eating into tree bark. It’s close, too close to the bridge, and if it’s not dealt with before the rendezvous, it could affect their supply chain.

Rolling his eyes, he concentrates chakra into his optic nerves, the world crisp and vibrant, and pulls his blade from its sheath.

He wears Mom’s gift now, in the heat of battle, because the dead tell no tales.

No one will know, no one has to.

Fucking Iwa. Fucking Konoha. Fuck both their villages, and every sage-damned shinobi who ever set foot in them.

He’s weak in earth release and hangs back as the Iwa-nin draw the Leaf squad into a rocky cavern. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes what they plan on doing here. While the Iwa-nin are distracted with their little Konoha infestation, he suppresses his chakra to a whisper of what it would otherwise be and snakes behind them, keeping to the trees, melting his body into the puddles and sliding through the waterlogged ground. Yesterday’s heavy rainfall works to the advantage of Kiri-nin, and the two four-man cells take no notice of him. They’re fixated on their prey in the cave, two members caught inside with the enemy, waiting to pick off anyone who makes it out alive. Obito doesn’t mind being ignored.

His hands glide through the water’s surface, chakra pulsing through his blade, and slit the first shinobi’s Achilles tendon. The man goes down, a shrill scream drawing the eyes of his teammates, but before they can act, three of his poison-tipped senbon make contact, and already their muscles are failing.

For the rest, all he has to do is lean into his mother’s gift.

Obito flicks his chakra blade, flecks of blood leaving spots of colour in the puddles, and heads to the cave. There’s shouting—arguing— we have to go —and he tilts his head, confused that a warfront team could be so carelessly loud, like a squad of fresh genin. It doesn’t matter. There are two Iwa-nin inside, and he counts three voices screeching from within. He scratches his head, the front of his vest soaking in the blood of the shinobi he felled, and supposes he can wait for them out here. Pick off the survivors, just as the Iwa-nin would have done. With them dead, there should be no interference with today’s supply run.

The ground shakes. The screaming turns frantic. From his vantage point, Obito sees the way the rocks above the cavern disappear beneath its roof, and understands. Well, if they all get squashed, that makes his job easier, doesn’t it?

It goes quiet. The rocks settle, but they’re not stable, and that roof will finish caving sooner or later. No one has run out yet, so either they’re dead or pinned, and Obito wonders if he might aim some jutsu at the precariously-sitting rocks up above and wash his hands of the matter. As he weighs the pros and cons of not being able to confirm his body count on such a high-importance mission, he hears something. Wailing, choked back and quiet, muffled behind hands. Crying on a mission? Maybe they are genin, after all.

His stomach knots.

“Shut up! I’m not abandoning you!”

It seems not all of them are pinned. Someone is, and the rest are staying behind. That’s foolhardy, and it almost gets a laugh out of him. They would risk their mission objective to comfort one crushed teammate, really? Their lives, too? This keeps getting easier and easier.

There are whispers then, echoes that don’t quite survive beyond the mouth of the cave, and Obito leans in to listen. Unfortunately, Mom’s Kekkei Genkai doesn’t do jack shit for his hearing, and the words are nothing but white noise to the creaking and groaning of the settling landslide. Footsteps bounce off the cave walls, and Obito sinks into a puddle as the bodies of two young shinobi flee the cave with tears in their eyes, back to their objective, ignorant of the corpses Obito dragged into the brush. It’s likely that Konoha sent this team to collapse the bridge, so that sucks. He can’t get a good look at them from the limited view of the puddle, but they seem to be physically fit, and neither are limping. The two remaining Iwa-nin must be dead. That leaves one more.

The Konoha-nin will die on his own. It doesn’t matter. Obito’s main focus is swinging back around to stab his chakra blade straight through the necks of the two who fled.

I’m not abandoning you, the teammate insisted, but he’s gone and left, hasn't he? He left his comrade to die like they always do, because shinobi are cruel and war is brutal and living is hard. They’re disposable, after all. Worker ants in a colony of thousands.

I’m not abandoning you, but he lied, and he did, and that would be the last thing his teammate ever knew.

I’m not abandoning you, then Obito emerges from the puddle, his liquid body settling into flesh and bone.

I’m not abandoning you, so he takes his first step, those words spellbinding, as though they came from his own throat.

And enters the cave.

Stupid dry fucking cave. Stupid fucking Iwa. Konoha-nin, those pieces of shit.

So, the cave collapsed. He had the time to duck and roll, placing himself in an alcove before everything came tumbling down, but now his damn leg is caught in the debris, and he doesn’t know a single earth jutsu. The ground is dry, especially considering yesterday’s rainfall, so there isn’t enough moisture to draw upon and move through as he did outside. He can form beads of water, but even if he made suiton bullets, they wouldn’t be large enough to displace the stupid fucking rocks on his stupid fucking leg.

What a dumb move. He must have been possessed to pull something so unhinged. What was his plan? Haul a half-crushed enemy out of a cave so he could properly kill them in the daylight? How would he have even unpinned them, and why bother? Now, that kid’s teammates are heading for Kannabi Bridge three hours before the caravan is set to arrive, and they’re going to either ambush the supply cart or blow the whole damn pass into next Sunday.

Obito drops his face into his hands and groans. He kicks his good leg out in frustration as his father’s venomous words snap back at him, you’re such a bloody fool.

From somewhere to his left, a wet cough echoes.

His eyes widen, his hands fall. He listens closely to the uneven, stuttering breaths of someone else in there with him. But the scary thing about caves is that they have no light. Not one stray sunbeam hits his face, and all that exists is inky black. He can’t see his hands, much less the other person he’s suffering alongside. But they’re alive, whoever they are. They’re alive, trapped in here just the same.

They’re an enemy, and he has to kill them.

But his leg hurts and hurts and hurts, and his heart is thrumming unsteady patterns in his chest from sleep deprivation. Obito thinks the cut on his thigh is infected, too. He got it in the confrontation that took his team from him two days ago. And if this enemy hasn’t moved yet, they certainly won’t now.

Another cough. Obito sighs.

“Who’s there?” The voice is young and weak, croaking. It sounds like something is applying pressure to his chest, and he can’t get enough air. “Ah… you came back. Idiot.”

Obito says nothing to keep from breaking this kid’s delusion, because the peace of dying among comrades is greater than dying with your enemy.

“Did Rin get out?”

He continues to say nothing, growing restless in his silence, until finally, he leans into the lie. “Yeah,” he says. “Rin’s gone. It’s just me.”

The boy doesn’t call him out on the tone of his voice or his manner of speech. Maybe he wants to believe in the lie, too. “Good. She can still finish the mission.” A long, quivering breath breaks up his words. Then, “You shouldn’t have come back.”

“Agreed,” Obito mutters flatly.  “I really fucked up there. Don’t know what got into me.”

A wet laugh is his reply, and though it comes from a dying Konoha-nin, it eases his nerves. Calm sweeps over him, the steady drip of water bouncing off the walls. Caves are always so creepy because sound reverberates off everything and it’s hard to pinpoint. He’s made camp in them a few times while on or near the frontlines, and—

Drip, drip.

There’s water nearby, after all. When the cave collapsed, some of the rainwater collected on the higher platforms could have been displaced. Even if it sinks into the dirt, he can pull it out again. The problem is whether it’s close enough to utilize.

Alright, okay, breathe, Obito, you stupid piece of shit. Now that he’s calm, he remembers the chakra blade at his hip and unsheathes it. The alcove is too narrow for him to get a full swing, so he won’t have the momentum to break the rocks, but as he presses chakra into it, it glows. Soft, watery blue. His chakra is like Mom’s, and Mom’s always reminded him of the sea. It settles the butterflies in his stomach, those sparks of nerves that tether shinobi to their failures.

It’s not as bad as it looks. His leg is mangled and his foot is caught, but if he can get it out, he can splint it. Obito has soldier pills in his supply kit, and the necessary first-aid on hand. It’ll last him eight hours, at which point he’ll be at the stronghold and among medics. Yeah, okay, sure. He can break his body for now, and piece it back together later. This could be so much worse.

Another cough reminds him that it is. He wonders if the Konoha-nin’s lung has been pierced. Death will come for him soon, so Obito shouldn’t worry.

The issue is getting his leg out, and then finding safe passage from his alcove to an exit. First, he searches for water, and of course, sees nothing. It must be beyond the wall of rock, which is great perfect fan-fucking-tastic—

A wheeze, a shift, the sound of the boy trying to move.

Obito flares his chara blade to the left, but there’s only more rocks. There’s a barrier between himself and his fellow failure. “Save your strength,” he calls, his words little more than filler. “You’ll only die faster if you move.”

The boy breathes for a bit, as though catching his breath. “That might be nice. Hurts like a bitch.”

Obito snorts.

“Are you hurt?”

He’s in the middle of unsealing his field kit when the words catch his ears, and he stops, trying to peek around the wall of stone. If he pushes chakra into his eyes, he could see without the chakra blade, but it would burn through his reserves faster. That can come later, when he’s actively trying to leave. “Not terribly. My foot is caught, and my leg’s a bit mangled, but I can set the bone and splint it. The problem is unpinning it from the stone.”

There’s nothing, and he wonders if maybe the kid went and kicked the bucket while he was talking. Then, quietly, “A clone?”

“Not enough room,” he sighs. “I’m stuck in a small recess in the wall. I wouldn’t even be able to stand.”

“What—” Another cough, wet and raw and choking. It takes a moment for him to recover. “What about a transformation?”

Obito clicks his tongue, wishing he thought of that. But as he analyzes the space and the precarious placement of the walls, he dismisses the idea. “The cave isn’t stable. If I move my leg carelessly, it might be enough to send this part of the roof down on me, and then I’ll really be stuck.”

“So, you need to switch it out with something…”

“Right, yeah.”

He’s bemused to find the Konoha-nin aiding in Obito’s efforts to escape when his own situation is so dire, but honestly, the kid has probably given up. If he can save his teammate, this liar who he thinks came back for him, then maybe he can leave in peace.

But this liar did come back for him, and isn’t sure why.

“What do you have on you?”

“Nothing big enough,” Obito affirms as he reads through his scroll. Shit, but it hurts. Wow, sage, that’s bad. At least it’s keeping him alert. Pain is grounding in a way nothing else is. “Rations, field kit, first-aid kit,” he grimaces when he remembers his empty canteen and skips over it, “spare leg wraps, kunai pouch, signal flare, chakra blade—”

“Chakra blade?” The voice is hazy, but he hears another shift accompanying the question. “Since when do you fight with a sword?”

“Since now,” he mutters, “shut up. Anyway: two spare uniforms, twenty-seven paper bombs, a senbon pouch, and,” an Uzumaki-style silencing seal, “that’s it.” If he hints that he has supplies from Uzushio, this kid will know exactly where his loyalties lie. 

The Konoha-nin hums, then turns and spits at the ground. Blood must be gathering in his mouth now. How did he fall? If he’s lying on his back, he could drown in it. Not a pleasant way to die. “The first-aid kit. What about wrapping your uniform around it?”

Obito considers this, unsealing it, emptying its contents back into the scroll, and rolling his pants and shirt around it. He frowns. “Not ideal. The tin will bend too easily, and even with the padding, it’s not the right shape. I’d get maybe two seconds before the whole thing goes down.”

A soft tsk fills the air as the boy clicks his tongue.

Obito stares at the first-aid kit peeking out from beneath sleeves and pant legs, and tilts his head. Drip, drip echoes in the cave, too indistinct for him to follow, and beyond that, the soft sounds that water likes to make as it moves. Drip, drip, and these sounds are too distinct for a bit of wet earth or mud. Maybe they’re looking at this the wrong way: they can’t keep the cave from collapsing. If they want to get out, they’ll need to break through the stone, and that will destabilize it again. What it’s sounding like, to Obito, is that his first instinct, the one he so easily dismissed, might be their best shot.

“Let’s try a different approach: is there any water near you?” Obito asks.

“I… think? I can’t see.”

Right, fair. He doesn’t have a chakra blade. It’s hard to tell direction in a cave because of the way sound bounces.

There’s a space between two of the rocks that leads to where the Konoha-nin is pinned, which is how his voice is carrying through so well. Obito wedges the blade through it, offering him its light, his chakra coils steadily feeding into the hilt. There’s a gasp, small and short, and the sound of more painful movements.

“There’s… yeah, there’s water. Right next to me.”

Excellent. “How much?”

“A small stream. It looks like there’s a cavern below this one. I think it was unearthed by the Iwa-nin.”

“Right, okay, good. You’re losing your light privileges now.” He pulls back the chakra blade and drags his body as far as his leg will allow, grits his teeth through the pain, and reaches his hand through the small opening, coaxing the water forward. It’s hard, right on the edge of his range and so damn weak, but it does heed his call, steady and slow, and he stamps down his excitement. There will be time to celebrate at the stronghold. “What’s your status?”

“I’m fine.”

“Answer the fucking question.”

A long, burdened pause. Wheezing breaths. “I’m—stuck. My legs, my chest. I can’t feel my left side, and I’m… If you move me, I might bleed out.”

So, he’s dead, wasting his last moments on the well-being of his fake teammate. Obito bites his tongue and continues pulling water through the hole in the wall, gathering it in a cocoon, holding his hand seal steady and firm. Then, as the alcove fills with water, as it takes up the little air they have left— air, we need air, we’re trapped, we’ll suffocate—

I don’t want him to die like that.

All at once, the water smacks against the dirt, floods the passageway, and Obito sinks with it. He flows through the puddles as they waterlog the ground beneath, and the cave shakes, trembles, groaning awake like a sleeping giant, and comes up through the hole to the open space on the other side of the rocks, where the Konoha-nin rests. Obito can’t see, his chakra blade inactive as he weaves through the water, but he feels the way the puddles disperse around something, crashing into the boy’s side and thigh.

Obito’s arms break through the earth, wrap around the boy’s shoulders, and drag him down.

They follow the stream as fast as Obito’s bleeding chakra reserves will allow, and come up just beyond the cave, far from the corpses of the Iwa-nin and the trail of death he left in his wake. He pulls himself through first, then eases the broken body through the barrier carefully, unsure of its state, or if the boy even survived the trip. They're soaked, fabric clinging to their skin, and the boy coughs up a mouthful of water.

Obito could have given him warning. Then again, everything was coming down by the time Obito’s leg came free.

He sets the wheezing, gasping boy down by the stream and analyzes him carefully. The kid is young, a few years younger than Obito is, or maybe he's just small. Either way, he looks like a ghost, between his pale hair and paler skin. There's a deep gash bisecting his left eye, blood mixing with streaks of water across his face. And oh, no, he's not doing well at all. Multiple lacerations catch Obito’s eye all down the left side of the kid's body, and his limbs are mangled, gnarled things. Yes, he's bleeding out, but not as alarmingly quickly as Obito would expect.

The Konoha-nin opens his good eye, a smokey grey, clouded with pain. A cloth mask rests around his neck, stained black from all that blood he hacked up.

The medical supplies come first. Obito compresses whatever wounds he can, starting with the deepest, and says nothing as he stitches flesh together piece by piece. The kid’s on his own for whatever internal damage he undoubtedly has, but Obito can give him a better chance at survival.

In the back of his head is a warning he can't shake: the mission comes first, the mission is in jeopardy, this kid’s team is going to lose them the war.

Obito fucking hates Konoha.

The boy watches, silent, and after a minute, declares, “We’re out.”

“Yeah,” Obito grunts, already over it as he threads sutures through torn flesh. “Now shut up.”

The boy does not shut up. The boy is defiant. “You don't know suiton.”

Obito looks up, his hands pausing for just a second. He finds it curious that the kid still believes him to be a comrade, even out in broad daylight. But then he remembers his concussion, and all those words he never shared with a father who was long dead.

“I sure hope I do,” he retorts, almost teasing, “because it's my best affinity.”

The boy’s brows knit together, but he doesn't say anything. Then his eye finds the symbol of the Mist engraved on Obito’s hitai-ate, and widens. He sees now who it is he helped, this liar who pretended to be a friend while robed in the uniform of an enemy. Obito doesn't care; he has a team to crush and a bridge to save. But guilt won't let him leave just yet. Not like this.

Fortunately, the kid’s lungs are fine. He must have been having trouble breathing because his ribs were compressed, maybe even broken. But now that they’re out, his inhales don’t sound as desperate.

“A henge?” the boy wonders cautiously.

“Believe what you want,” he says as he pulls apart the damaged skin of the boy’s left eye with his fingertips. It's nasty underneath, the eye is undoubtedly blind, and there's nothing he can do about it. He's not a medic. There won't be any saving it.

After doing what he can, Obito turns his efforts to his own leg. He slips off his glove, places it between his teeth, closes his eyes, and sets the bone. His teeth ache from how hard he bites down, stifling a cry, and he blinks away tears as he splints it. Next, a soldier pill, swallowed dry. He shudders, waiting for it to kick in. There’s one more pill left in the bottle; his jōnin commander took the other two before her death.

With a forlorn sigh, he holds it up to the Konoha-nin. “Open your mouth.”

The boy looks at it, and his once open trust is now buried, slowly coming to understand that the shinobi he’s with is not an ally. Obito won’t blame him if he refuses. “A food pill?”

“Soldier pill,” he corrects. “It’ll make you feel like you can take on the world. Want it?”

Kiri’s soldier pills pack more of a punch than the ones offered by its enemies; they numb pain so completely that even soldiers on the brink of death will rise again, and completely restore chakra. But the pain they’ll be in after eight hours, the sheer exhaustion that will overcome them, isn’t worth it.

This, he doesn’t tell the kid. He’s a liar, after all, and if luck isn’t on his side, the Konoha-nin won’t last the eight hours, anyway.

The boy opens his mouth, and Obito offers him the pill. He hasn’t moved since he came up from the water, and maybe he can’t. Maybe Obito fucked up and paralyzed him. There’s nothing to be done.

His body tingles, energy surges through him, and it’s time to move.

Obito unseals his signal flare. This will draw both friend and foe, so it’s rarely ever utilized, but Obito has scouted this forest all week and knows that the only people in the area were the camp of Iwa-nin, now very dead around the front end of the once-cave. With luck, the Konoha-nin’s teammates will take notice and fall back, choosing their friend over their mission.

The Konoha-nin sees what he’s about to do and tenses. “No, Obito—”

Why does this kid know his name?

When the mangled lump of human tries to get up, it pulls at all his fresh stitching and bandages, and he fails. Instead he nods to the scroll at his hip, his arms too unresponsive to pull it free. “Hiraishin kunai. Embed it in a tree, and Sensei will come. Less dangerous.”

His words are slurred and sloppy, and he needs more help than Obito can give.

But a Hiraishin kunai? The only shinobi known to use those is—

This is the Yellow Flash’s subordinate.

Cautiously, Obito pries the scroll free of the boy’s belt loop and unseals the Hiraishin kunai. He holds it, staring at the three-pronged teeth of its blade, and drops it in the dirt. A sole grey eye follows it, wide and shaking. But Obito doesn’t grab it, nor does he embed it in a tree.

“I don’t feel like dying today,” Obito says, winding back his arm. “Call him yourself if you want, but leave me out of it.”

He throws the flare, and plumes of red smoke fill the sky. The boy is left with his superior’s kunai next to his immobile left arm as he struggles to reach for it.

Obito hopes, somewhere deep inside, that he survives.

They’re blowing up the bridge. Obito hangs back, crouched in the trees, numb to what should be a screaming pain in his leg. He can’t make out their faces and doesn’t bother pushing chakra into his eyes for a better look. There’s no point.

He’s faced with two options: kill them, dispose of the explosives, and hope he can manage it all before their teammate calls upon the Yellow Flash; or go to the supply cart and reroute before Squad 31 is noticed.

No one outruns the Yellow Flash. Both options will end in blood. The enemy is right there;   the supply cart is an hour and a half away by foot. This is the only bridge within two days’ travel, and without it, it would take Kiri four times as long to aid its soldiers.

Kannabi Bridge sits over a ravine. The Konoha-nin are tagging paper bombs to the legs of the bridge, their feet stuck to the sides of the gorge. For the hundredth time today, Obito melts into the water upstream and approaches one of the nin from below. A boy, maybe Obito’s age, with dark hair and deep blue clothes digs into his pockets for yet another round of seals. He’s crying, blubbering like some academy-fresh genin out in the world for the first time.

The girl stands higher up, close to the top of the bridge. She notices the signal flare and calls down to her teammate. “It’s from the direction of the cave!” she yells, her eyes switching between the smoke and her comrade. “Do you think…?”

The boy scrubs his face with his sleeve, his back to Obito, and crushes the stack of seals in his hand. “We’ve gotta check. We can’t just—we just… we left him there, Rin. We left him, a-and what if he’s alive, and…”

They agree to go for him once their objective is complete. Obito bemoans their dedication, and waits for them to go back to tagging the bridge. When their backs are turned, he rises from the riverbed, the raging rapids deafening the enemy to his movements, and shoots spikes of water at the wall of paper bombs. The boy snaps back to look at him, but Obito has already reached him, dragging him l into the water. He pushes the Konoha-nin down, his grip crushing as the boy struggles.

A familiar red stares back.

He watches as a stranger wearing his own face drowns.

They come up downstream. Obito drags the body of his enemy by the collar onto shore and settles on the rocks, arms slung over his knees as he catches his breath. Now and then, he observes the boy carefully, remembering the ghost stories his older cousin used to share with him before bed, they say everyone has a doppelgänger. How much stock he should put in that, he doesn’t know. Regardless, the bridge is safe; with the paper bombs wet and tearing, they won’t detonate. What remains on the girl’s person isn’t enough to down the fortified structure of Kannabi Bridge, and with one teammate well-crushed and immobile and the other here with water-filled lungs, Squad 31 should have no trouble taking out the last remaining threat. Now, Obito needs to heft himself up and try to make it back to the rendezvous point before time is up. If that pale-faced ghost he left behind happens to call the Yellow Flash, so be it. They’ll all die. At least he can say he tried his best.

A wet cough cuts into the serene white noise of the rapids, and Obito hangs his head. Or not.

He’s gone soft, sparing two lives in one day. His father would seethe if he knew—if he ever knew, if he was anything more than Obito’s delusion. The Bloody Mist still stands because it’s as ruthless toward itself as it is its foes. A Kiri-nin’s kindness is in the speed they kill, not the lives they spare.

And yet.

The Konoha-nin vomits. Water, first, then the rations he had for breakfast. Groaning follows, tired and heavy as the boy rolls onto his side and tries to get his limbs under him.

Obito sighs. “If you play dead, I might spare you. If not,” he waves at the unrelenting current, “into the water you go.”

The boy stills, only just now realizing he’s not alone, and slips his shaking fingers into his kunai pouch. Obito feels eyes on his back, analyzing his standard-issue uniform, getting a feel for who it is threatening him. “Kiri?”

Obito snaps his fingers, keeping his eyes forward but his senses trained on the enemy, and points back at him. “Kiri.”

There’s still water in his lungs as the Konoha-nin sputters and chokes, taking in big gulps of air. “You’re working with Iwa?”

Obito scoffs, rolls his eyes, and doesn’t think about the heat gathering around the cut in his thigh or what it means. It’s been spreading quickly since the cave, radiating out.

Konoha must not know that Kiri has a foothold in this area, that they’ve taken Kusa and set up a base there, or that they’ve steadily pushed Iwa back. Their Intel is outdated, meaning Kiri might be able to get one over on them if word doesn’t spread. He files this away for when he retreats to the stronghold.

The Konoha-nin rises on unsteady legs, kunai drawn and level, and when Obito looks back, familiar red eyes lock onto him. Chakra ripples along his optic nerves as he matches the threat. Two black tomoe draw patterns as he stares at this trait he’s only ever seen in himself, differing from the three in his own eyes. His is incomplete.

The boy startles upon seeing Obito’s face. “You’re—”

Obito makes the first move, his senbon shooting out, narrowly blocked by the boy’s clumsy efforts, and they match each other’s movements too well thanks to their shared Kekkei Genkai.

Obito retreats to someplace far away as they clash, muscle memory propelling him forward. The boy lacks experience, as though he’s new to war, like this hell they live isn’t their every day, and like mercy is something they can have. Step by step, Obito pushes him back, drawing his chakra blade from its sheath.

Because failure is only an option in death.

Because the Bloody Mist doesn’t show mercy to its own, let alone an enemy.

Because if Kannabi Bridge falls, more of Obito’s comrades will die.

Because this boy has seen his eyes.

No one will know, no one has to.

It takes four minutes to pin the teenager to the ground, half a second to reel back his arm, and one more for his blade to eat into his double’s chest. The scream torn from the enemy’s throat like a death thrall rings terror through his mind, sounding so much like his own.

The Konoha-nin leaves him with a parting gift. Before he can pry his sword free of the bones and muscle that grab it, the dying boy draws one last breath, and a windtunnel of flames marks all he can see.

He can’t get away.

Later, he would learn that this jutsu is called The Great Fireball.

Obito wakes to failure, raw and stinging like the burns on his skin, in a room that smells of sickness. Fallen comrades are strung along the ground, tucked into thin futons as the short-staffed medic-nin hurry across the floor. Dozens of voices moan and speak and cry, and his head throbs almost as badly as his body burns.

Beside him, his father sits, legs crossed and back to the wall, an arm draped over his knee. His eyes find Obito, tired and piercing.

Six months have passed since he was convinced his father was dead. Yet here he is, crushing Obito under his endless disappointment, for his generation is weak and Kiri will fall and all of it is his fault.

It must be a concussion. The delusions have returned.

They say they found him in Kusa, that they suspect he was a prisoner of war, but it doesn’t line up with his memories. He thinks of the pale-faced Konoha-nin in the cave, the way his torn flesh sewed together with Obito’s well-practiced field aid, and of the doppelgänger who taught him to fear fire. The water-logged paper bombs, the three-pronged kunai he left in the dirt, a signal flare blowing red smoke through the sky. The last Kusa-nin he encountered was three weeks prior when they slaughtered the small village’s border defence force and carved out a stronghold among their corpses. Kusa is a small, weak village that the big five easily exploit, no different from Ame or Tani. He may have been found there, but he was not imprisoned.

“What happened?” his father asks, the first two words he’s said to his son in six months, and Obito bites his tongue. Kannabi Bridge fell.

But he doesn’t know how.

Chapter Text

Kannabi Bridge cost them the war. That's what they say, what’s on everyone’s tongues—that if they kept the bridge, they would have taken Iwa’s land. That Konoha, with its waning forces, would not have stood a chance. They took Kusa, after all. That village bent and broke beneath their might, and they would do it again, if only given the chance. But none of those people fought in the battles near Kusa, or saw how brutally their allies were slaughtered for that small patch of land. They were too detached to realize that no matter what they did, Kiri’s future was dead in the water.

Nevertheless, it’s Obito’s fault. He survived when the bridge did not, he outlasted his teams, he was captured by Kusa.

Kusa, which they had destroyed. Kusa, whose prison was overtaken by Kiri.

Kiri took Kusa’s land, but its shinobi remained. That’s what they tell him.

It’s hard to say what really happened to Obito that day. Sometimes, he thinks those six months of memories were the real delusion, brought on by the head trauma of his tenth chūnin mission. But then he catches his reflection in the bathroom mirror, drawn to the scars on his face, down his neck, his chest, his forearms. He remembers the lick of too-hot flames as he shielded his eyes, the terror as he screamed, the satisfaction on his doppelganger’s face to see that he wouldn’t be leaving without a fight.

Obito tilts his head left, and the scars pull taught, the tissue straining ever so slightly on his neck. He touches the pads of his fingers to them, these blemishes from his day of weakness, and understands why Kiri insists on ruthlessness.

At age sixteen, Obito is promoted to jōnin. His father’s words of praise taste like ash on his tongue.

For the first time in Kiri’s history, a jinchūriki claims the title of Mizukage. The council fears that the village has been too soft, and after the devastation left in the wake of the Third Great War, wants someone who will rule with an iron fist.

No one knows what to make of Yagura. He looks small and weak, almost childlike, and has an easy demeanour as he surveys Kiri’s wetlands in the earliest days of his tenure. For the vessel of a tailed beast, he’s unassuming and easily dismissed.

In typical Kiri fashion, anyone who thinks him unfit to rule takes matters into their own hands. It wouldn't be the first time the Bloody Mist ate its own.

Everyone who tries comes up dead.

Obito crouches on a railing overlooking the street as his (former) jōnin squad falls into lumps of flesh at the feet of the Mizukage. He leans with his arms on his knees, head tilted, wondering how he's supposed to react to the slaughter of his comrades, what Dad would expect of him.

Yagura looks up at Obito, splattered in the blood of his treasonous subordinates, and waits. “Well?” he presses when nothing happens. “If you're going to try, do it now. I have a meeting with the council in an hour.”

Obito holds a hand to his chest, fingers splayed in Kiri’s sign for peace. “Don't feel like dying today, Lord Fourth. Carry on.”

Yagura considers him a second longer before turning in a flourish toward Mizukage Tower.

Three days later, Obito is assigned as Yagura’s personal guard. This completely breaks protocol; Kage guards are exclusively made up of ANBU escort teams, which is greatly above Obito’s paygrade. So, it doesn't come as a surprise when he’s scouted into the ANBU program or given his probationary mask. The dull grey uniform clashes with his warm complexion, and he complains to Yagura when he's called to stand by his Kage’s desk.

Yagura laughs at him.

Obito decides that one day, he may very well try his hand at killing this brat.

Yagura’s policies focus on safety and security in the years that follow the war, when resources are scarce and the Elemental Nations are freshly pockmarked with the wrath of the shinobi who crossed them. He addresses the food shortage and lowers the bar of entry into the academy to secure the future of their village. In time, he wants to tear down the survivalist mentality of the elders, and to rule with fairness over fear.

This is not what the council wants. This is not why he's here.

For all the power the Mizukage holds, he is only a puppet for the elders to string along.

Kiri improves, at first.

Then the council tugs its leash and demands their dog to heel.

In his hands rests a porcelain mask, patterns like crashing waves inked in blue and gold across a white canvas. Thin half-moons mark its eyes, and on its forehead, the proud and bloodied symbol of the Mist. In place of standard field armour, Obito is handed a familiar blue kimono and a dark turtleneck to wear beneath it. One by one, he pulls on the layers, ending in the brown hakama he ties at his waist, and when he sees himself, he knows he’s lost something.

Kiri calls them undertakers. Most of the world knows them as hunter-nin. After one year of standard ANBU training, he has been scouted to assist the Corpse Processing Team with the recent waves of defectors among Kiri’s ranks.

Yagura has changed. It was gradual, the way he went from their patient yet ruthless leader to the monster who oversees Kiri with fear. Dad says he's no better than Lord Second, who started the tradition of the graduation exam and spearheaded Kiri’s name as the Bloody Mist. Now, the villagers fear him, the laws are punishingly strict, and everyone with enough skill to outlast the hunter-nin is fleeing Kiri in droves.

There are too many missing-nin. Half of the seven swordsmen have left, starting with Zabuza, who kicked off the growing unrest when he slaughtered his way out of Water Country. Now Kiri is left with an even weaker workforce and no way of compensating for it.

They're desperate.

Obito taps the porcelain shell of his new face, and the tick it makes is loud enough to drown out the room.

He spends three years tearing off the heads of their defectors and burning their corpses into ash.

The pay is good.

The aftertaste is bitter.

Obito folds his hands behind his back, the front of his uniform drenched in blood—what is, for him, a regular look—as ANBU Commander Viper lectures him with her serpentine tongue. He retreats to that place at the back of his head where old thoughts like to hide, then further, to the eidetic memories afforded to him by his eyes, and replays the mission in earnest, searching for fault.

In retrospect, he broke protocol when he went back for ANBU Hare, yes. But leaving her there would have jeopardized the anonymity of their mission and sparked yet another diplomatic incident, and Obito is so tired of war.

Viper doesn't value his justification. “You should have triggered her self-destruct seal,” and “the weak don't belong in Kiri.”

She’s a perfect marionette for Kiri’s ideals. It’s a wonder she doesn’t choke on the Mizukage’s cock with it so far down her throat.

Viper stops her tirade, narrows her eyes behind her mask, and must know what he's thinking.

Probationary measures are taken, and he's off the mission roster. He'll spend the next six weeks on rotation between the Mizukage guard team and security at Torture and Interrogation.

He’ll be bored out of his skull, Viper is such a bitch.

The loneliest part of shinobi life is the caution he finds in a warm bed. Obito lays atop his mattress and stares out the skylight overhead, soft moon beams lighting the cramped space of his apartment. Mei curls into his side, and he swipes a hand across her shoulders, pulling her in, their bodies sticky with sweat. She's been appointed Yagura’s next advisor after the last one kicked it, and as both a congratulatory and consolation gift, Obito offered her his bed. But for all that they've done this for years, he can never relax when his vulnerability is on display. It doesn't matter that they've known each other since their academy days, or that this has been a casual pastime between them since their teenage years. Trust is not something he can give.

No one knows, no one has to.

But he can pretend.

“Babysitting duty,” he scoffs, running his fingers through her hair. He likes Mei. He doesn't love her. Theirs is a relationship of comfort and stress relief, and that suits him just fine. “Can you believe it? All because I saved a teammate.”

Mei snorts quietly through her nose. They should shower, but neither want to move. “You did break protocol,” she reasons. “If something went wrong, and you were caught, Lion would have had to trigger both your seals to keep your mouths shut, which would have put him at risk, too.”

“But it didn't,” he grumbles. “It's not like I pulled a White Fang and kicked off a war. We don't have the manpower to keep losing people like this.”

Sometimes, he wishes he could be like Zabuza and abandon this place. Everyone still residing in Kiri knows how bad the village has gotten. Obito is sure he could outlast the hunter-nin, too, if he tries for an escape. But any time his thoughts linger on that idea for too long, he comes up with excuses.

If everyone leaves, Kiri will never change.

It was going so well. Yagura cared about the village in a way Lord Third never had, and as time passed, he was winning over the subordinates who were patient enough not to try his hand. He would joke with Obito between meetings, and for a while, they almost felt like friends.

Then Yagura went quiet, and things got worse again.

Mei lets out a long breath and buries her face against the pillow, looking like she wants to sleep. “Nothing went wrong, but it could have. That's why you're being punished; you could have become a White Fang.”

Obito grumbles a reluctant affirmation and closes his eyes.

It's his lot in life to spare all the people he shouldn't. He's better about it these days, years of blood on his hands forming an armour against his empathy. But every moment of weakness brings him back to Kannabi Bridge.

Obito shouldn't have gone into the cave.

He shouldn't have pulled the crushed Konoha-nin from the debris or treated his injuries.

He should have let his double drown.

But Obito is soft. He's weak, useless, and pathetic, embodying none of the Mist's core values.

They were just kids, part of him insists. Following orders, just as he was.

They were soldiers, he corrects, bile like acid in his throat.

Mei showers first. Obito stares up at the ceiling, clammy and tired and sore, and falls asleep.

Kiri has a haunting beauty that can’t be found anywhere else. For all that it smells like death and mist hugs the walkways and buildings like a curse most of the year, the lush marshland is brimming with life. Plants coil around the delicate brickwork of old buildings, boardwalks cut through the sinking, waterlogged earth, and on those few days when the fog relents, it’s a sight. Sometimes, he’ll sit on a rooftop or overhang, and watch their hidden village unfurl like a flower in bloom.

Most of Obito’s missions have him tracking high-bounty defectors as an Undertaker or heading assassinations in ANBU. It feels strange to don his uniform within the village walls, and as he dresses in the ANBU Headquarters locker room, he wonders where his six-week probation will lead him. Perhaps Yagura’s company will be so mind-numbingly dull that it’ll give him the courage to go missing, too, like all the others.

He passes over rooftops and snakes in through one of the windows on the second floor of Mizukage Tower, briefly setting off the alarms of the guards already present. They swarm him, weapons braced and hands brought into seals, and groan when they see his mask. Everyone is familiar with it from his babysitting days during his teenage years. He holds his hand to his chest and splays three of his fingers, a sign of peace, and the crowd disperses.

Within the Mizukage office, Yagura is skimming the four dozen folders piled on the corner of his desk, the grey-white haze from the window at his back casting him in shadow. He looks up only briefly to acknowledge Obito when the door clicks shut and the wards go up, deafening the rest of the staff to their meeting.

“You were instructed to wear your hunter uniform, but you show up in ANBU fatigues.”

Obito stands tall at the front of the room, his hands folded against the small of his back, and does not kneel. “It would be inappropriate to look the part of an undertaker in the presence of the Mizukage. Can’t be giving your opposition ideas.” Obito tilts his head. “Unless you’re looking for an easy out. In which case…”

“You would kill me?”

“I would damn-well try, Lord Forth. But it doesn’t feel like a good day to die. The sun’s not even out.”

Stillness punctures the moments that follow, the threat hanging in the air between them.

Yagura laughs. It’s rare these days, bleeding away the tension in the room as he stamps one of the papers he’s been reading, closes the folder, and slides it across his desk in search of the next.

“As it happens, I could use the expertise of the Corpse Processing Team right now. Rather, the threat of them,” Yagura says. He pushes back on his chair and rests his arms in his lap. Even after all these years, he looks so young, like that desk is too big for him. “Konoha’s delegation will be visiting us shortly.”

He thinks of a cave, a bridge, the waterlogged earth as his sandals sank into it, and puddles that acted as his eyes. His throat is dry. “Oh?”

Fuck Konoha. He hates it and all its people, and he hates himself even more for going soft on them. Not a day goes by where he doesn’t regret the decisions he made that day.

Yagura spins on his chair to face the large windows showcasing the wide expanse of Kiri’s land. On the adjacent wall, above the portraits of the Mizukage, stand the proud symbols of Kiri and Uzushio. They allied briefly in the Second Great War, exchanging sealing techniques for military aid. But Kiri did what it does best, and snared their allies before they had a chance to become enemies. War is like that, they say, and now Uzushio is gone, Kiri is alone, and their village is dying.

“The Mist and the Leaf are in talks to form an alliance,” the Mizukage says. Obito thinks of the open sea, the raw terror of whirlpools dragging under ships in the rage of a storm. “Konoha is faring well after the war. They have money and power, and have previously extended an olive branch to both Suna and Kusa. You and I both know that there is strength in numbers, much as the council refuses to admit that. I want this to work.”

Yagura turns, his eyes bright against the greying backdrop.

“However, we can’t overlook the possibility that they’ve come for my head. My approval amongst the villagers is questionable, yes. But the chaos that would erupt from my death would make the perfect distraction for Konoha to attack. I won’t stand for it.”

Today, Yagura feels so much like the baby-faced jinchūriki who would laugh at Obito’s jokes. For the first time in years, when he looks at this man, he doesn’t see the council’s puppet.

“Understood,” Obito says, and finally kneels. Fine, alright. He can afford his Kage respect one more time, give him one last chance. “What do you need from me?”

“I’ll be appointing you as head of village security when they arrive in three days. You’ll attend our meetings, and if they overstep,” he draws a line across his neck with his thumb, “off with their heads.”

Obito looks up, watching Yagura curiously from behind his mask. “My T&I shifts?” he prods, wondering if his punishment might be axed in light of the delegation’s visit.

Yagura smiles like some benevolent god, and says, “Overtime after our meetings. Enjoy.”

If Konoha does attack, maybe Obito should let them.

As ANBU, Obito’s primary duty is to monitor the halls and prison connected to T&I headquarters. He’s forbidden to listen in on any of the interrogations, or to be present in those private rooms when they’re in use. Mostly, he keeps his cloak up and watches the cells of the main body of the prison. There aren’t many kept here; Kiri doesn’t like prisoners, and would much rather slit the throats of anyone who dares cross them. But there is a protocol they follow when they come into possession of an enemy, and if that enemy might have valuable information, Kiri will dig in its claws for days, weeks.

Years.

Obito stands in the centre of the hall and stares into the blackened cells at the listless, unmoving bodies of long-term prisoners. The lights don’t reach the corners where they huddle, and none acknowledge him with his cloak on. To count them, he pushes chakra through his optic nerves, calling upon his mother’s eyes, and—

The world shifts. He feels fuzzy and wrong, like his body is somewhere else, his head too full and his skull too tight. Obito shakes himself, looking around the prison hall, wondering why it feels two steps left of where he was.

Out of an abundance of caution, he cuts off chakra flow to his eyes, and the headache settles only somewhat. It reminds him, vaguely, of the concussions he suffered as a boy.

Someone draws a heavy breath, and it rattles from their chest. Obito looks at the body shadowed by the stone wall, only their legs visible beneath the dim hall light, and squints. The uniform is ANBU, but it’s hard to guess which village they hail from, as ANBU uniforms carry an uncanny similarity between the Five Great Nations. It’s intentional; shinobi would memorize the looks of the ANBU they fought, and would disguise themselves as their enemy when on high-clearance missions to push the blame elsewhere when they were spotted. Now, after so many decades, the uniforms are standardized, with only their masks and small details of their flak jackets telling of their loyalty.

Obito squints, but this prisoner has no mask. The staff must have confiscated it. It’s a man, young, thin, reeking of filth and blood. They’ve kept him here a long, long time.

He looks over his shoulder. The rest of the cells are currently empty, though Obito swears he saw more bodies when he first entered the hall. He goes to rub his forehead, stopped by his mask, and wonders if he should get examined after his shift.

A wet cough to his left, and he’s in the narrow alcove of a cave wall, his leg pinned, water dripping just out of reach.

Obito whips his head around to find the prisoner there with his still-wheezing breaths. If he squints hard enough, he can make out unruly, pale hair, muted and grey in the dark.

He stops at the bars and crouches there, trying to get a better look.

“Maa,” drawls a low, raspy voice, this man no doubt fresh from torture, “could I have some privacy? I’m not up to entertaining guests at the moment.”

Interesting. Can he sense Obito’s chakra cloak, or is he detecting Obito in some other way?

He looks down the hall, sensing for his colleagues, but he’s the only one stationed on this floor at the moment. Then he drops his cloak, scoots a little closer, and rests his arms on his knees. “You’re not one of ours,” he muses, hollow behind his mask. Most prisoners these days are defectors; it’s been a while since they pulled in anyone from foreign lands, what with Kiri trying to glue together its broken factions. “What’s your status?”

The man shifts, and his arm breaches the light, bony and thin in a way that speaks of malnutrition. Prisoners are fed scarcely, just enough to keep them alive, and are only rewarded with full meals if they share Intel. This one is tight-lipped. “I’m sure your friends could answer that.”

Obito clicks his tongue and supposes it doesn’t matter. His job is to keep the facility secure, not monitor the well-being of the inmates. Something nags him, though. “Come here a sec. Let me get a look at you.” This one isn’t bound to the wall, though there are chakra dampeners on his wrists.

With a sigh, the inmate looks like he might obey, but then sags against the wall, listless as one minute turns over into the next. His rattling breaths even out.

He’s asleep. That’s not good.

When Obito next pulses chakra through his eyes, another bout of wrongness settles over him like a cloud. He breathes through it, steadies himself against the wall, and peers into the cell with his mother’s eyes.

It’s empty. Across the hall, two inmates rest in their cell. The next one over, and two down from that, all have bodies in them. But none match the thin build of the man Obito spoke with.

They say madness runs through the Bloody Mist. Maybe it’s his turn to meet it.

“You’re not mad,” Kohaku sighs as they finish their thorough scan of Obito’s body. “Perhaps you’re a little overworked, though. When was the last time you had a day off?”

“Day off? What’s that?” he asks flatly, dull eyes watching as his medic flits about the room. The hospital is a dreadful thing that hasn’t seen updates since Lord Second’s time. Cracks down the walls catch his eyes, and he wonders when, not if, this whole building will come down on their heads. Defectors have attacked it, enemies have choked out the weak, but somehow, it still stands.

Kohaku gives him a look while filling out the forms to clear him for duty. “Lord Fourth has always liked you, I know that. But if he’s running you into the ground, this has to stop. He either needs to discharge you as an undertaker, or as ANBU.”

That’s not going to happen with the Konoha delegation set to arrive tomorrow. Obito scrubs a hand over his face. Maybe they’re right; maybe he’s just tired. “I have a history with this sort of thing,” he says anyway, mindful that Kohaku wasn’t practicing when he was a chūnin. “Had some head trauma when I was a kid. Any chance it’s related?”

“Doubtful,” Kohaku says, writing their signature at the bottom of the form in their best doctor’s scrawl. “I didn’t notice any brain damage during my scan. There are no blood clots or tumours, and you’re about as healthy as a war veteran can be expected to be… Well.”

Obito leans in. “But?”

The medic whips around to settle him under a curious look. “I noticed that the chakra pathways behind your eyes are abnormally large. It’s possible they could be pulling chakra at an accelerated rate, which could lead to fatigue, confusion, and perhaps delusions. They’ve always been that way, according to your records, which might explain your episodes.”

Obito grimaces, the wording sounding wrong to his ears. He doesn’t share the truth of his Kekkei Genkai, the reason those pathways are so thoroughly-exercised and why his eyes pull so much chakra.

No one knows, no one has to.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe this is an unfortunate side-effect of his Kekkei Genkai, one he never learned about because the only person he knew with his eyes had been dead long before he ever awakened it.

He thinks of a boy, blue clothes and a garish orange, of fire and pain and fear. Mom wasn’t the only one. But that one is dead, too.

Obito is dismissed with a clean bill of health. Kohaku insists that so long as he’s aware of the risk his eyes bring him, the delusions they induce should be minor enough to continue his work as a shinobi. His long career is proof of that.

Kiri medical care is questionable sometimes.

He stares at the form he was handed before they pushed him out the door, sighs, and looks up at the stars. But the mist lingers, persistent in the dead of night, and the sky is an empty haze.

The day Konoha’s delegation is set to arrive, Obito dons his blue haori and brown-grey hakama. He sets down his standard ANBU mask, replacing it with the crashing waves and swirling patterns that brand him an undertaker. Yagura wants to send a message, and Obito will oblige.

He stands at the right hand of his Kage, brandishing a katana-style chakra blade at his hip, with his arms folded against the small of his back and his eyes on Kiri’s front gates. Mei takes her place at Yagura’s left, and behind them, a proper guard waits. The streets are empty; most of the villagers know well to shut their windows and lock their doors when the jinchūriki and his ANBU are prowling about.

“I was told you turned down the offer of joining the Seven Swordsmen last year,” Yagura comments. 

From above Yagura’s head, Mei makes lewd, silent remarks, and Obito hurriedly turns away, his face hot beneath his mask. She’s knowledgeable, wise, and cares more for Kiri than anyone the village has ever known… But she gets bored easily, and in those waiting moments, she makes a menace of herself. Flustering Obito has always been a hobby of hers.

He clears his throat. “The swords look dumb. Half of them I wouldn’t even call swords.”

Yagura looks up, brow raised, tapping his staff in thought. “But if we had a blade you liked?”

“I liked the Executioner’s Blade ,” Obito shrugs. “But I don’t suppose we’ll be getting that back anytime soon.”

“No, I don’t suppose we will.”

The Seven Swordsmen are a sore spot for Kiri at the moment; there are three left in the village, and one unclaimed sword, Kiba , that is actually a pair. They look ridiculous, and Obito can’t imagine utilizing them would be in any way superior to his trusty chakra blade. It’s like that for most of the weapons Kiri proclaims to be swords, and with so many members defecting, the group will likely be defunct in a few years’ time.

Even if Zabuza’s Executioner’s Blade were on the table, Obito would have still refused. Lugging that thing around would have been a pain in the ass. No; his katana is more than enough.

There’s movement behind the gates, muffled voices that don’t quite carry on the wind. Konoha’s representatives were spotted approaching the village half an hour ago, and so they came to greet the group. Yagura is the type to micromanage; he wouldn’t sit around the Mizukage office and wait for his subordinates to bring their visitors to him.

Finally, the checkpoint has been cleared, and enemy-nin robed in jōnin fatigues are granted entry. There are six of them. Obito intends to memorize them but stops, reminded of yesterday’s exam. No; it’s too risky. If his chakra flares and disorients him while in the presence of the enemy, he’ll be less than useless. Instead, he searches their features carefully.

The blond catches his attention first. Blue eyes, a soft face, he looks nothing like a warrior. But Obito knows that hair from the ghost stories that plagued the Third Great War, and feels bile rise at the back of his throat. A three-pronged kunai is there in his mind, discarded in the dirt, inches away from a boy who could not move.

The Yellow Flash is here.

This man cost them Kannabi Bridge. He’s sure of it. But Konoha’s rumours have reached Kiri, and he knows the position the Yellow Flash holds now. For Konoha to have sent its Hokage, they must be really stupid, or really confident. Obito assesses the man carefully, blind to his entourage, taking in his lean build and the calm but prideful way he carries himself. He stands the way Yagura stands.

The Yellow Flash is known for his unmatched speed. If he went for Yagura’s throat, could Obito stop him? With his eyes, maybe. The chakra passed through his optic nerves allows him to see lines of probability. He can mimic the movements of his opponent and think ahead. But this fucker is known to slaughter shinobi by the thousands, and Obito isn’t so pompous as to think he would be the exception.

Yagura brings his hand to his chest, splays three of his fingers, and bows his head. “Lord Hokage,” he greets, “welcome.”

Obito’s skin crawls for their Kage to offer peace to this man. But when Mei gives him a look, he bites his tongue. They, too, bring their hands to their chest and lower their heads.

“Oh, um. Thank you.” The Yellow Flash’s voice is as soft as his face, and it makes Obito’s scars itch. “It’s an honour, and a privilege, that you would personally come to greet us.”

Politics are not Obito’s game, and as the Kage exchange meaningless pleasantries, he takes his place at the back of the group. Mei stands by Yagura as his first line of defence, and Obito watches the strangers from behind. They all wear Konoha’s standard-issue fatigues, and seeing them against the backdrop of Kiri’s foggy marsh is unsettling and wrong. From one shinobi to the next, nothing strikes him as unusual. The one with the happuri-style hitai-ate carries himself like ANBU, and Obito trusts him to be a skilled assassin. There’s a tired-looking man with his hair tied back and two scars across his face, a younger, bulky fellow who would make a sturdy tank, and—

A shock of grey-white hair catches his eye, pulling old memories loose from where he tucked them away.

“Ah… you came back. Idiot.”

Obito tilts his head and waits, dragging his heels as the Hokage remarks something-or-other about Kiri’s architecture. Most of the entourage is quiet, allowing their leaders to hash out pleasantries in their stead. The Yellow Flash is named Minato, and he has a novel’s worth of questions that Yagura answers with surprising ease. They stop on one of the bridges near Mizukage Tower, allowing their visitors to take in the haunting beauty of this dying land, and the pale-haired shinobi glances back.

It’s his eyes that settle Obito’s nerves, a matching, black-grey gaze, scarless and clear. This is a stranger. Perhaps he and that boy share a clan, or a family. Old history will remain buried.

He brings a hand to his opposing wrist, and scratches at scar tissue.

The man’s eyes linger on him a moment longer, his back slouched and hands in his pockets, half of his face hidden beneath a fitted black mask. Then he smiles, his eyes arched and friendly, and waves, wiggling his fingers.

Obito’s hand itches for his blade. He nods, and turns away.

The meeting is a short two hours and covers introductions between both parties, albeit Obito is introduced by his ANBU title, and not his name. The visitors aren’t so cautious.

“If you wait outside, ANBU Boar will show you to your hotel,” Yagura declares, and Obito whips back to look at him. Damn runt. Obito is supposed to go to T&I after the shift change in an hour, and now, he’s being told there’s more work to do. Yagura smiles at him, patronizing yet friendly. Obito wonders how many days Yagura has left before he loses favour with even his closest guard.

The moment the door shuts behind their guests, Obito rounds on his Kage. “I have to be at T&I,” he declares bluntly. “Send Hare to babysit the Konoha-nin.”

“Hare would be easily overpowered if an incident occurred,” Mei declares in a sigh, leaning by the window to watch the goings on below. No doubt, their visitors are congregating out front. “Did you notice anything odd about them?”

Obito tips his mask up, settling it in his hair, and scrubs at his face. “There’s ANBU among them. That quiet one, Tenzō, and the girl, Yugao. Standard ANBU teams are three members, so going out on a limb here, I’ll bet there’s one more. Not the big guy; he’s too loud when he walks. Probably—” He thinks of a bisected eye, blood mingling with dirty water from a stream. “The lazy-looking one who kept reading porn.”

His name is Kakashi. He was, indeed, reading porn. Tasteless stuff, with a big warning label on the back cover and an unappealing title. He wasn’t as enraptured by the book as he appeared, his ears keyed into the discussion going on without him.

Yagura interlocks his fingers, his face perfectly calm. “It wouldn’t be a stretch to say they’re here for protection. I called upon you for the very same reason, after all. But let’s assume they have an alternate agenda and monitor them, just in case. Hare can take over at T&I; stay with our visitors until the evening shift change.”

Obito groans loudly, pulls down his mask, and stomps out of the room. By the time he reaches the front door, he’s composed himself well enough to hide his misery.

Six sets of eyes watch him.

He clears his throat, gestures down the road, and leads them to the inn.

Guarding anyone, even a Kage, is a pretty easy gig, but it does eat away at the mind when it goes on too long. After ferrying their guest to the inn several streets down from Mizukage Tower, Obito spends the next few hours parked out front, feeling for their chakra signatures to keep track of them through the walls. Passersby gawk at the undertaker standing out here, clear as day, and whisper to one another. The owner of the inn might’ve complained, had Obito not been assigned this duty by Yagura.

Obito isn’t a good enough sensor to tell people apart by chakra alone, but he’s decent at tracking movements and quantity. If someone splits off with a clone, he’ll know, and he can tell who’s approaching him by how big or small their reserves are.

When he feels a particular signature poke outside the inn, he bristles, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

His leg still hurts whenever it rains. During the back-and-forth weather of spring and fall, he sits on his balcony and massages his old injury, ever reminded of that day when he was weak.

A pale hand shoves a boat tray in his face and he leans back, his nose filled with the smell of fresh takoyaki. He eyes the pale-haired Konoha-nin from behind his mask. Smiling eyes greet him.

“You must be hungry,” Kakashi says. “It can’t be very fun to stand out here all day.”

Obito shifts one step away from the unwanted offering, crosses his arms, and feels out the chakra signatures in the building behind him. All accounted for.

Kakashi holds up the tray again, squeezing one of the takoyaki between his disposable chopsticks. There’s a vendor right out front because of the upcoming summer festival, and now that Yagura is locked away in his office, the villagers are back to free-roaming. In a few days, these desolate streets will be teeming with life, and the village square that this inn overlooks will be struck by the crowds.

The snack is, once more, shoved in his face. Obito grabs the Konoha-nin’s wrist, holds it firm, and pulls it away. Kakashi doesn’t fight him. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop,” he says. “I won’t remove my mask. If this is a ploy for me to do so, try something else.”

Grey-black eyes watch him, unblemished. He and this stranger have no ties.

Kakashi relents with a sigh and leans against the same wall Obito does, his snack cooling as he picks at it. It’s only when Obito looks away that pieces of it disappear, but never once does he catch sight of Kakashi’s face.

“Maa, it was meant as a peace offering. I had no ulterior motives.”

Obito squeezes the fabric of his haori.

“Maa, could I have some privacy? I’m not up to entertaining guests at the moment.”

The same voice, the same inflection.

He really is going mad.

“Lord Mizukage sent a pretty strong message when he greeted us while accompanied by a hunter-nin,” Kakashi says, setting his empty tray down on the window sill by his arm. He rubs the back of his neck. “An even stronger one when he ordered you to guard us. But we have no intention of letting this alliance fall through. Our Hokage may have a reputation, but he’s not one to invite unnecessary conflict.”

Obito says nothing, his eyes on the current of bodies moving through the streets, and his mind on the chakra thrumming through the building at his back. Then, when Kakashi makes to leave, “It’s not my place to judge why you’re here. If you want Lord Fourth to trust you, don’t do anything to make him nervous.”

A crescent-eyed smile greets him. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

By the fourth day of endless meetings and negotiations, the bubbling tension has settled into a low simmer. It’s been uneventful; the ANBU have made no moves to act, Minato listens intently to everything Yagura has to say, and Kakashi continues to spend an hour or so pestering Obito in the late afternoon.

On the fifth day, Obito is instructed to wear his standard ANBU fatigues. Yagura no longer sees them as a threat.

When the meeting ends and the Konoha delegation is to be escorted to their inn, Obito is only just arriving. His shift was switched with Fox’s so he could get some rest, as he’s back to T&I duty tonight. The Konoha-nin stare openly at him when he opens the door. The genjutsu on Kiri’s masks makes it impossible to recognize their wearers, and now that he’s in a different uniform, they’re wondering why they’ve been given a new guard. Several of the Konoha-nin have tried to chat with him over their stay. They’ve gotten familiar. Obito hates every damn one of them and the village they crawled out of, but then, for just one moment, he doesn’t.

Obito nods to the hall. “Let’s go.”

Kakashi brightens as he steps in line behind Obito, and his companions follow suit. They start back the same way they always do, and Kakashi comes up beside him as though they’re old friends. “Maa, Boar, could we look around today?”

Kakashi can tell. Can he see through the genjutsu?

“No,” he answers resolutely.

“The festival is tonight, isn’t it?” Minato asks from behind. “We’d love to attend.”

Obito settles him under a dull glare. These shinobi are hardly fit for soldiers. Yesterday, on the way back, they begged Obito to let them sit by the waterfront. Then, when he relented— five minutes, that’s it— Yugao was demanding bird seed, Kakashi and Tenzō asked after the nearest bookstore, Asuma started coaching some genin they passed by on the proper way to carry their blades, and sage, their Hokage’s mouth would not stop. He wanted to know Kiri’s main trades, their harvest months, biggest exports, and the academy’s graduate percentage. As though Obito would know that shit.

These are not soldiers. They’re toddlers with weapons.

Today, like yesterday, he takes a backseat and parks himself on a bench, arms crossed as he marks each chakra signature belonging to the delegation and follows them through the crowds gathered in the village square. Most of the stalls are set up, though the festivities don’t really kick off until the sun goes down. Children with paper masks are already running amok, loud voices carrying on the wind. The heavy fog disperses the light of the paper lanterns hung between buildings, giving the village an eerie glow.

Konoha-nin are strange, he thinks, his arms resting on the back of the bench. The damn Hokage has bought a paper mask and is listening to vendors as they try to sell him on their wares. Their team is lively when they eat together. They’re patient, and teasing, and no one cowers from their Kage. Why are they like this? How are they allowed to be like this? Their village is no less brutal. Konoha has slaughtered more shinobi than any other. They kicked off the war. All those painful early years were their fault.

Obito looks at his hands, feeling the raised scar tissue on his fingers, smoothing over it with the pad of his thumb. You’re soft, his father says, it’s because of kids like you that this country is rotting from the inside.

Another body joins him on the bench. A dango skewer is pressed dangerously close to his mask, threatening the pure white porcelain with its sticky glaze.

“Dango?” Kakashi asks, edging it closer.

Obito swats at him like he’s a particularly annoying fly. “Quit it, Kakashi.”

Kakashi shrugs. He slips the skewer into a paper bag and prods Obito’s hands with it until Obito relents, staring at the bag, feeling the weight of multiple dango skewers within. He doesn’t remember when he last ate something from the festival.

“We’re on a first-name basis now. That’s nice.”

Among the crowds, their foreign guests mingle with the locals. People are smiling, and laughing, and for just a few hours, Kiri feels like it could be a home. But morning will come, the council will bark, and no matter how hard he bites, Yagura will be made to heel.

This won’t get any better, will it? The kids playing in the street today will have no better lives than he did.

Obito rests his chin on his arms as a procession of performers in traditional dress carries through the streets, villagers watching from the sidelines. “This is the one night we can forget everything,” he says to no one.

But Kakashi is there, and happens to hear. He leans forward, his eyes following the line of bodies as they pass. “The war has taken its toll here, I see.”

Something tightens in his chest, like a dam about to burst. “Kiri is dying. Everyone who can leave already has. These people? They’ll be stuck on this sinking ship until they drown. That’s why Yagura’s entertaining this alliance; it’s the only way he can think to salvage it. If we have foreign aid, we might pull through. But it’s like putting a bandage on a festering wound; if you don’t carve out the rot, it’ll spread.”

Kakashi hums. Then, quietly, “The council?”

Obito nods.

Today’s meeting included the council and advisors. Obito doesn’t need to have been there to know how it went. Yagura’s correspondence with the Hokage leading up to these talks was not endorsed by the elders, and that would have come to a head today.

Kakashi hangs his head, scratching his scalp. “I can’t speak for the Mizukage, but our Hokage is stubborn. He won’t back down if there are people here who will meet him halfway.”

Obito snorts. “Suppose that’s true. I resent him for Kannabi Bridge, but even I’ll admit he’s kind of impressive.”

Kakashi smiles behind his mask. “Sensei’s the type to grow on you like a weed.”

His fingers twitch.

“Embed it in a tree, and Sensei will come.”

He licks his lips. Sudden nausea turns in his stomach, and the question on his tongue is one he refuses to humour.

“Maa, perhaps I shouldn’t ask…” Then don’t. Please, don’t. “You were there when Kannabi Bridge fell, weren’t you?”

The celebration is in full swing, crowds drowning out the world, and he pretends not to hear.

Obito stares at the paper bag in his hands, its contents cool. The sides stick together, saturated with glaze. He pulls out one of the skewers, turning it over in his hand, and wonders if Hawk is having trouble wrangling their visitors after the shift change.

He pops the dango into his mouth and thinks of Mom. When they lived in the countryside, she would buy him treats at each harvest festival. It was the only time he had sweets, which were harder to buy out in the sticks, and time-consuming to make. Mom was never much of a cook. She was a worse baker, too, burning anything that required even the lightest brush of heat.

Dad was a shinobi forced into early retirement after serving in the Second Great War. His chakra nodes were fried by a lightning specialist, and now, he can’t cast ninjutsu. Kiri took one look at him, and despite his sacrifice saving the lives of dozens of soldiers, called him a liability.

Obito has never seen his father’s ninjutsu. He doesn’t know how good or bad his father was, if he showed any promise before his injury, or why, despite being a victim of the Bloody Mist, he defends it.

The first and only words of praise he ever heard from that man followed his jōnin promotion, a curt, brief, you did well.

Before heading to his next shift, Obito hangs back, roaming the street of his childhood home. He drops the wards, sits there in the window, and fans his senses across the house. Dad is asleep.

He sets the bag of dango down on the kitchen table, and wonders if they’ll keep until morning.

Dad always liked sweets.

Obito stops before an empty cell, his eyes seeing a ghost. He looks around, counting the inmates locked across the hall, then roots himself there.

He can’t stop thinking about it.

You’re a fool, he thinks, like Dad always said. Soft, and weak. You’re the reason this village is rotting.

If he knows it’s not real, it can’t hurt him. If he doesn’t act upon what he sees, there’s no danger. Kohaku’s assurance repeats in his head.

Chakra pools in his optic nerves, the world crisps, and he can see through the shadows at the back of the cell. Lines of probability bend and twist, bombarding him with information he doesn’t need, but still, that cell is empty.

More, he thinks, and floods his pathways with chakra, his eyes aching as though they’ll burst from his head.

The world goes fuzzy, the ground liquid below his feet. He stumbles, braced against the iron bars, his head throbbing like his skull is too tight.

Still, it is empty.

He sighs in relief. Delusions, he reminds himself. It wasn’t real.

But when he looks around, the other cells are empty, too.

The door at the far end of the hall opens up. Obito frowns, strengthens his cloak, and suppresses his chakra. No one else is supposed to come down this wing of the prison tonight.

Sandals scrape against stone. The harsh light from the doorway casts three bodies in shadow, but chakra still burns through Obito’s eyes. He sees two uniformed guards dragging an inmate, their arms hooked around his. A head of silver hair hangs forward, blood dripping down his arm, leaving a speckled trail in his wake.

This isn’t right. For as merciless as Kiri is, they always patch up their prisoners before returning them to their cells. It’s the only way they can prevent disease or death, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to get information out of a living enemy than a dead one.

The trio stops at the cell where Obito stands, and he takes several silent steps back, giving them a wide berth as they fumble with the lock. The door yawns open, its hinges rusted and creaking, and they deposit the bleeding body against the back wall.

“We may as well kill him,” one of the guards says as he shuts and locks the cell door. “I don’t see why they’re keeping him around now.”

The other shrugs. “A few days of this, and he might crack. If not, it’s no sweat off our backs.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t worry about it; it’s not our business.”

The guards leave, and Obito takes a deep, steadying breath.

Alright, so he’s stupid, and reckless, and this delusion feels infinitely more real than he expects it to. He wonders why his dysfunctional brain would choose Kakashi, of all people, to manifest…

But this one is different. He’s thin, bony, the joint of his wrist a jagged protrusion from his skin. Obito remembers how that wrist felt in his hand five days ago as he pushed Kakashi’s arm away, and this is wrong. He crouches down, hugs his legs, and tilts his head lower, trying to peek at the man’s face. That stupid hair is in the way.

After a moment, he drops his cloak. “Kakashi,” he calls, but there’s no answer. “Kakashi, look at me.”

Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe this man is someone from Kakashi’s clan, a stranger who tried to sneak into Kiri, and he’s been arrested as such.

But the idea that the council might target Konoha’s delegation is very real in his mind, and if something happens to one of theirs, he doubts even the Hokage could look past it.

There is something else his eyes can do that Obito doesn’t understand. He’s never practiced, too fearful that someone might see, no one knows, no one has to. But already his eyes are spinning, chakra is free-flowing through them, and he needs to be sure.

Obito presses another wave of chakra through his optic nerves until his eyes start to burn. He breathes in deep, envisions himself going through the bars, and as he reaches out, his fingers catch on the metal.

Again.

He swipes at the metal, and his fingers wrap around the bar.

Again. Again.

For several minutes, he tries, and tries, breathing in deep to settle his growing frustration.

Then his fingers pass through, and he damn-near screams.

Obito slips into the cell, heart racing in his chest, ready to raise his cloak the moment he so much as hears a pin drop. He stops at the inmate’s side and crouches, arms hovering uselessly as he takes in the bleeding, the purple-green discolouration, several lacerations in various stages of healing, and pock-marked burns on angry red skin.

Gingerly, he brushes away the hair in the man’s face, and takes a deep, calming breath.

There’s a mole. It rests beneath a vertical scar bisecting the man’s left eye.

This is that boy.

This is Kakashi.

The pale-faced Konoha-nin whose flesh sewed shut with his field aid.

A wet cough, the narrow alcove of a cave, his leg pinned, water dripping just out of reach.

Tired eyes open, a matching grey.

But they don’t see him.