Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Finally, it was all coming together.

Madara had waited. For so long had he waited. He has so much work to do, and none of it truly possible until he could obtain the same eyes as the Sage of the Six Paths. The years had turned into decades, and the decades had crawled nearer to the century’s turn, and yet the Rinnegan had not awoken as the writing on the stone had foretold. So much he needed to accomplish, and so little time. The urge to give up and abandon this world to its fate was nearly overwhelming at times. It was only sheer force of will that had kept him going in his dogged pursuit of a dream that seemed as unreachable as the moon itself.

It had taken nearly dying bring on the change. Afterwards he cursed himself for a fool for not realising it sooner – the Rinnegan were eyes that could see beyond the borders of life and death into other realms. Of course that was it – the spirit in a liminal state on the border between life and death. Of course that would do it. At last, he could begin! 

Unfortunately, while the spirit was tireless, the body was not. He was old. Weak. It was only determination and the chakra he siphoned from the Juubi’s husk that kept him alive at all. Bitter though the realisation was, Madara was forced to accept that he was no longer capable of making his dream real. Not alone. He would need someone else to prepare the way for him. 

It would have to be another Uchiha. Someone with potential for greatness, yet malleable, with not too strong a will. A child. Madara had sent his creations, the beings formed from Hashirama’s DNA, out into the world to spy on the members of the clan that had once been his to find a likely prospect.  

Madara selected a handful of Uchiha youth who seemed they might do and kept careful watch on them, waiting for the opportunity to acquire one. A handful of times, such children had fallen into his possession, but they had been too weak to withstand the power of Hashirama’s cells. The last had been twisted by the Mokuton, his face a rictus of agony with branches sprouting from every visible orifice. Luckily one Sharingan had still been useable so it hadn’t been a complete waste of his time – the spare came in handy later, when he had been desperate enough to implant his Rinnegan into an Uzumaki child.  

But now the heavens had finally smiled on him with Uchiha Obito. As Madara worked tirelessly to piece the broken boy back together, his heart swelled with an emotion he had almost forgotten: 

Hope. 

Everything would proceed as it should now. He tucked the child into bed and had Zetsu assist him in changing the bandages, shooing the plant-beings away with the sharp edge of his scythe for making remarks about how they were looking forward to eating the boy if he should die. Madara wouldn’t tolerate such talk. This one would live, he could feel it in his bones. He fussed over his patient and waited eagerly for him to wake from his coma so that his re-education could begin. 

It might have happened that way, once. This time, fate had other ideas.  

Madara couldn’t understand what he was seeing at first, when the intruder strode into the cave.  Perhaps he was still trapped in a genjutsu of his own making. Or perhaps old age had finally robbed him of his senses. What other explanation could there be, for coming face to face with himself? 

And not just himself, but his truest self. Young. Straight-backed and proud, with not a silver hair in sight. Madara stood from his Mokuton throne, feeling feeble and inadequate before this apparition. Every ache and pain seemed to increase tenfold just to mock him. He tightened his trembling fingers around the scythe that doubled as a walking cane and watched like a slack-jawed idiot as his other self strode across the cave, pausing by the boy’s bedside to look down at his sleeping, mangled face.  

“What is this?” Madara demanded, voice hoarse with disbelief. “Who are you?”  

The other gave him a sidelong glance, and Madara realised with a jolt that his eyes were the violet ripples of the Rinnegan. “You know,” he said, his voice both foreign and yet more familiar than Madara’s own. “You want to disbelieve your senses because it’s illogical, but let’s not kid ourselves here.” 

“Illogical isn’t the word, it’s impossible!” Madara hissed, taking half a step backwards away from his younger self as the other came towards him. “You can’t exist.” 

“And yet.” The younger Madara spread his hands. “Here I am. And I’ll tell you why I’m here, shall I...I failed. Everything I worked for was a lie. There is no real dream.” 

Cold spread through him at the words, and Madara denied them as powerfully as he denied the world itself. “No,” he declared, tone iron. He turned back to his throne, the roots implanted in his back scuffing against the floor as he sat down, his whole body trembling hatefully. He closed his lone eye as if by doing so could block out what he was hearing. 

Since this was himself, it came as no surprise that the other Madara was merciless. “I was a fool to believe in the Infinite Tsukyomi so readily. Wasn’t it all so convenient that some ancient relic just happened to contain the answer to all my prayers? As if text is sacrosanct just because it’s old, as if anyone or anything with opposable thumbs can’t put things down in writing—come out and face me, SLIME!” he bellowed, the force of his unexpected shout nearly making Madara jump out of his skin. The Rinnegan roved over the Gedō Mazō slowly, then moved to scan each corner of the cave. The imposter’s lips twitched downwards, eyes narrowed in anger. “It was all lies,” he continued harshly. “The real Infinite Tsukuyomi was monstrous, not at all what I wanted. Everything – it was all for nothing in the end.” His fists clenched by his sides, his head bowed. 

The world was falling to pieces around Madara and he was powerless to stop it. “Stop. Leave me,” he pleaded, his chin trembling as he shrank back in his seat.  

The other Madara looked down on him from the lofty height of someone not stooped by age, his expression cold and dispassionate. Then he moved with incredible swiftness, crossing the distance of the cave to reach the Gedō Mazō. When Madara saw what he meant to do he rose with a cry to stop him, but it was as useless as a pebble standing before a hurricane. He hit the dirt hard, sharp pain radiating from one hip. He was left winded as the other Madara set about destroying everything he had worked so hard to achieve.

Zetsu dropped from the branches of the tree sprouting from the statue like overripe fruit, bodies sharp with toothy thorns. They were slaughtered, swiftly and without mercy, though there seemed suddenly to be an endless tide of them that came forth to protect the demonic statue. What is happening?

Nothing made any sense at all. Madara lay panting on the ground, his ears ringing. The sounds of shouts and fists meeting flesh and flame crackling into existence reached him as if from a great distance. When a black shadow shot up from the ground like an oil slick to stab the younger Madara through the back he thought for a second that there might still be hope, but the strange creature—for some reason the sight of it made his skin crawl—had fallen for the replacement technique and only managed to get a wood clone. The young Madara wasted no time in pinning it down with black rods and incinerating it. The sound of its dying screeches blended into the general tumult of noise. 

Then came the moment when the Gedō Mazō lost its head. A gasp tore from Madara’s lips as the chakra keeping him alive was abruptly cut off. He lay curled on the ground in a foetal ball, choking on his final breaths. 

“Why...” he managed to get out as the victor approached and knelt beside his barely breathing carcass. “Why would you...?” 

The other Madara reached out and cradled his withered face in his strong, unlined hands. “My mistakes must never be repeated. If it had only been true...” he sighed, smiling wistfully as he shook his head. “I’m going to fix it. Rest now,” he said. His grip tightened on Madara’s head and with an abrupt twist of those hands— 

—Uchiha Madara knew no more. 

-x-

Madara sighed again, slipping his hands from the clammy skin of his older self’s face. He waited for some horrific consequence to result from killing his past self. When the universe failed to collapse in on itself and butterflies everywhere kept beating their wings in the same rhythm, he was disappointed almost more than he was relieved.  

Now what, was the question. He’d done what he’d set out to do, the moment he’d found himself alive and nearly two decades in the past. Once he’d gotten over his helpless rage at the Sage of Six Paths for not sending him back earlier (he could’ve saved Izuna , he could've saved everyone) he’d known he needed to get rid of the threat of Black Zetsu and Kaguya once and for all. 

Even without a head, he could not completely destroy the Gedō Mazō, though he would seal it back into its prison at once. He would have to destroy the stone tablet, he supposed, just in case any other fool with dreams of peace got ideas. But destroying the stone would require him to return to Konoha... 

Madara turned away from his own corpse to regard Uchiha Obito. All the ruckus had done nothing to disturb him, which came as no surprise. His frail, broken body was deep in a healing sleep; it had taken months for him to wake up the first time. If Madara left him alone, there was a chance he might still live. It wasn’t as if he could die of thirst or starvation, not with Hashirama’s modified cells attached to him. He would wake up some months from now in the dark, confused, frightened and alone. There would be no one to help him with his rehabilitation. But he would be alive.

It would be kinder by far to kill him now. He wouldn’t feel a thing.

...On the other hand, he could do the decent thing and take Obito home, allowing him to grow up and live a life that was free of the burdens Madara had placed on his shoulders. Obito may have betrayed him in the life he’d left behind, but in the end he’d been right to do so. This boy had yet to betray anyone. He was kind to a fault, naïve, and knew nothing of what it was to live in darkness. Madara had once dreamed of Konoha as a place where children could live safely, without being raised up as weapons. The hypocrisy of his own actions wasn’t lost on him, and he regretted them. Not his goal—that, he could never regret—but some of the means he had used to get there were wrong. There, he could admit that. 

He had wronged Obito. And now he had a chance to do the right thing. He may not be able to save any of his loved ones, but he could undo this mistake if nothing else. He would take Obito back Konohagakure and destroy the tablet in the Naka Shrine while he was there. Then, once all traces of Black Zetsu’s machinations had been eradicated, he would gut himself and rejoin his family in the Pure Land. Hashirama too. He owed him a drink, after all. 

There was a minor snag with this plan. Obito wasn’t well enough to move yet. The artificial body parts Madara had grafted onto him weren’t fully integrated and wouldn’t be for some time. They might tear off at any moment. And he knew little about caring for people deep in a coma; for all he knew, moving the boy might kill him, or leave him irreparably damaged.  

There was nothing else for it. He grimaced faintly as he looked around the cavern littered with corpses. Bending down, he closed his older self’s eyes and lifted the body into his arms, repressing a shudder at how light and frail it felt, like a dead insect. Once he’d disposed of all these bodies, he would stay here and look after Obito until he was strong enough to travel.

It couldn’t be that hard.  

Chapter Text

Pain. Everywhere – hot knives being driven into him over and over again – his head his back his chest his toes. Obito’s jaw clamped shut and the roots of his teeth throbbed. A scream tore at his throat, but all that came out was a thin whimper.

Rin. Kakashi. Rocks. What?

Oh, it hurt so bad. Everywhere.

Obito tried to open his eyes but it was dark and he couldn’t see anything, and one eye wouldn’t open; it was smothered with something hot and itchy. He tried to reach up and pull it off, but his arm felt clumsy and made of lead, twitching feebly in response. He couldn’t move his arms. Or his legs. Why couldn’t he move? Breaths burst from his nose in short, harsh pants, tears and sweat trickling hot down the bare side of his face.

Where was he? His head was still spinning but the blackness all around him started to soften, and he could make out shapes and shadows, a rocky ceiling far above that dripped with stalactites. (Or, stalagmites maybe? He could never remember which one was which.) He twisted his head from side to side to try and get a better view and regretted it, his stomach churning. Obito gagged and bile burned his throat.

“Stop moving,” a voice scolded him. It sounded close by. “You’ll rip yourself open.”

Who is that? Obito tried to ask, but what came out was more like, “Whssrt?” Things were coming back to him in flashes. The cave, the ceiling falling in. Rin and Kakashi – did they make it out? He had been under the rocks, which meant he had to be dead, which meant that he was a ghost right now and if he was hearing voices it had to be the Shinigami coming to get him oh crap no no he didn’t want to go to Hell he’d always tried so hard to be good— Obito saw a tall dark figure come towering over him and whimpered. He tried to get away but his body wasn’t listening and it just made it hurt more, no please—  

“Keep still, I said,” the looming form of the Shinigami complained and seized Obito by the shoulders.

The touch was like a burning brand and Obito let out a strangled scream, spine arched and locked with pain as he fought to get free, only to be let down by his useless limbs. He sobbed in agony as he was held down against the soft surface beneath him.  

Obito did. The man frowning down at him had red eyes that shone in the darkness. Something about this was very familiar to Obito, and it frustrated him that he couldn’t think why, like when he forgot some story only to remember hours after the fact when everyone he wanted to tell had already gone home. As he watched the commas in those eyes began to spin, slowly at first, then faster until they flowed together like the spokes of a wheel turned at high speed. For some reason he found it soothing. The tightness in his chest eased and his breathing grew slower and less shallow.  

“Better,” the man said. “Now, drink this.” Obito found himself propped up off the pillows with an arm behind his shoulders, a glass tumbler pressed to his lips. Despite being calmer now, Obito didn’t think this was a good idea (poison, a little voice that sounded like Bakashi warned) so he pressed his lips together and jerked his head away, causing a little of the contents to splash onto his chest. 

The maybe-a-Shinigami-maybe-a-man lost patience with him. “Drink.” His hand closed around Obito’s chin and pried his jaw open, forcing the liquid past his lips. It had a foul medicinal taste that made Obito gag and he would’ve spat it straight back out but for the hand clamping his jaw shut and the other one pinching his nose together until he was forced to swallow. 

Obito coughed and spluttered but found that whatever it was started working very quickly. His head felt fuzzy and full of cotton but the pain began drifting away. He squinted up at the face that floated before him, a pale man with a mass of long dark hair and those glowing red eyes. Sharingan, he thought. Obito made a satisfied noise in the back of his throat at having remembered before sleep took him once more. 

-x-

The next time he woke up, he wasn’t in such a state. It still hurt—a lot—but he could move his head without feeling like his skull was being split apart. And he remembered what had happened to him now. 

Am I dead? By rights, he should be. No one could have survived that. Maybe if Tsunade herself had been on hand to heal them right away – then maybe. But otherwise, there was no way.  

“Where am I?” he asked, blinking up at the ceiling of the empty cavern. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and his throat felt so dry, but he managed to get the words out. 

Movement in his peripheral vision. Obito rolled his head towards it and watched the person come closer. “You,” he said, watching the man moving towards him. “I remember...you were here before.” He thought so anyway, unless he’d dreamed the man up. But he didn’t think so. “Where am I? Who are you?” 

The age of the man standing over him was hard for Obito to guess. He looked older than Minato-sensei, but younger than Fugaku, which wasn’t too precise, since Fugaku looked about fifty with that sour face of his. This guy had kind of a sour face too, Obito thought, but maybe he was just tired; the bags under his eyes made it look like he hadn’t had much sleep in a while. His hair was messy and wild, and longer than anyone except Kushina-nee’s. And the eyes he regarded Obito with were Sharingan, two soft red points of light in the gloom.

“You’re an Uchiha, aren’t you?” Obito asked. An Uchiha but not someone Obito recognised, not someone who lived in the village. Could the man be a missing-nin?

“In possession of your senses this time it would seem. Good.” He moved closer and sat on the foot of Obito’s bed. “You’re in a cave.” He gestured at the bare rock walls around them in every direction with a gloved hand. “Where doesn’t really matter, does it? You can’t leave in any case, not in your current condition. As for who I am.” The man’s lips twitched and he huffed as if he found the question funny. “I am an unwelcome relic from an era long since passed, clinging to life until my purpose is complete.”  

“I meant your name,” Obito said flatly.  

The man looked at him wearily. “Madara.” 

Obito blinked. No one in the clan would ever name their kid Madara. Which meant… “Uchiha Madara? As in my ancestor, the Founder of Konoha – that Uchiha Madara?” 

Madara folded his arms over his chest and repositioned himself on the bed so that he was sitting facing Obito. “The very same.” 

Well then. His estimate had been way off; Madara was definitely older than Fugaku, even if Obito’s clan head looked prematurely aged through being so uptight about everything. “Oh. Shouldn’t you be dead then?” Obito realised that might come across as rude, like he wanted Madara dead or something. “Sorry.” 

Madara did not seem to care. “Give me time.” 

Not sure what he meant by that, Obito decided to ask some more important questions. “You saved me, didn’t you? Thank you,” he said, smiling softly at Madara, even if doing so made the skin on his lower lip pull tight. He ran his tongue over his lip, feeling a ridge of stitches.

It could’ve a trick of the lack of lighting—Obito was now awake enough to realise he could only see anything at all because he had a Sharingan—but he thought Madara’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I’ve done nothing to deserve your gratitude,” he said, looking at some point in the middle distance. Obito glanced in that direction too, but there was nothing actually there, just a big, raised stone dais with a set of stairs leading down beside it.  

“I’m alive because of you,” Obito pointed out. Even if he didn’t seem to be able to move yet. He could wiggle his toes at least. On both feet, even! Though it hadn’t escaped him that one of his arms was kind of, um - missing. He hadn’t looked too closely at it yet, the thought making his stomach churn uncomfortably. “And I can get back to my friends, thanks to you.” 

“Back to your friends,” Madara scoffed, as if he found the idea ludicrous. But when he turned back towards Obito, the severe expression on his face had softened slightly. “Yes, you can go back. But it won’t be for some time yet. The implants I used to save you have stabilised considerably, but there’s still a risk the grafts could come away. Your body is much too weak to move under its own power, so until that time you’ll have to work on regaining your strength.” 

Obito frowned down at the bedclothes. “But what if they need me now?” 

Madara snorted. “Yes, however will they manage without you.” His gaze roved pointedly over Obito’s bandage-swathed, bed-ridden body.  

This guy...he’s kind of an asshole, Obito thought. He remembered the whole force-feeding him medicine situation now, and while he was embarrassed that he’d panicked so badly, Madara’s bedside manner was atrocious. He could’ve tried actually speaking to him until he calmed down first. “I want to get home as soon as possible,” he said, acting like Madara hadn’t just spoken. “So I’ll need to get walking again.” Obito contemplated the edge of the bed, and the floor just beyond it. He could see a tunnel at the other end of the cave that must lead to the way out. If he could just—

“Don’t even think about it,” Madara warned. “If you burst those prosthetics I made from Hashirama’s cells by acting the idiot, then that’s it for you.” 

Obito glared at him. “Well how am I supposed to get strong enough to walk if I stay in this bed all the time?” he demanded peevishly.  

Madara stood abruptly and jerked the blankets off him, inflicting upon Obito the first glimpse of his own ruined body. Obito stared. His legs looked like matchsticks with knobbly knees and too-big feet sticking off the ends. Both of them were pale, but the right leg was not only pale but stark white. If anything, it looked slightly healthier and more muscly than Obito’s real leg, though when he wiggled his toes and flexed his ankle it felt all wrong, as if he’d laid on the leg funny and made it go numb. He swallowed thickly.

“What do I need to do?” Obito asked, voice subdued. 

Having made his point, Madara laid the blanket over the foot of the bed and sat back down. “You have Senju Hashirama’s cells within you now. That means you’ll heal faster than you would’ve done otherwise, but you still need to take things slowly. If you rush things and destroy your new body, I no longer have the means to replace the parts so easily. It should be possible to grow you an arm,” he added, looking at the bandaged stump of Obito’s right shoulder. “For now, you need to move in order to keep what little muscle you have and to build it back up again.” 

Obito’s nostrils flared as he tried to control his temper and not shout at him. “How am I supposed to do that?” 

“I’ll help you,” Madara said, after a moment, looking strangely awkward. Taking hold of Obito’s arm he lifted it off the bed and gently curled Obito’s fingers into his palm and straightened them out again. After doing this several times he slowly flexed and extended Obito’s wrist, before moving on to his elbow, then finally his shoulder, carefully moving the joint in every direction. Once finished, he set Obito’s arm back onto the mattress and moved down to start doing the exercises on his legs. 

Chapter Text

The last time around, Madara hadn’t cared to involve himself in Obito’s physical recovery after he’d woken up. The boy had been useless to him in such a state, and so Madara had retired from the flawed world into the embrace of dreams. While he lived out several idyllic lifetimes in the prototype Infinite Tsukuyomi, the preparation of his pawn had been left to the White Zetsu.

Now Kaguya’s puppets were dead in droves by his hand, or locked away back inside the moon along with the rabbit bitch’s shell. That he had been played so badly – oh, it would rankle him until his dying breath and beyond.  

Without Zetsu to perform the grunt work, Madara was forced to tend Obito himself.  

Caring for him was a continuous labour. The boy’s feeble body needed turning every few hours to prevent him from developing pressure sores on the still-human parts of his flesh. Before every rotation, Madara would guide his wasted limbs through their available range of motion. He could not stand unaided and so several times a day Madara would haul him upright and set Obito on his own twig-like legs, supporting his trembling form with a firm grip. And he was so weak that he could only manage about ten seconds of this at a time before he became too fatigued. 

“I’m fine...I can keep going...honest,” Obito insisted between heaving breaths. The skin around his lone eye was tense and the eye itself suspiciously shiny. He tried to brace himself against being returned to bed every time they did this, but he was weak as a newborn kitten.  

Madara raised an eyebrow at him and took his hands away. Obito legs immediately crumpled under him and he would’ve collapsed in a heap if Madara hadn’t caught him again. He trembled in Madara’s grip, expression wary and somehow…betrayed.

Little fool. He really was far too quick to trust. Madara broke eye contact. “You’re much too impatient,” he said, adjusting his grip on the boy’s thin frame to lift him back into bed.

“Yeah, well - you’re a jerk,” Obito muttered darkly, his breathing still strained as Madara smoothed the creases out of the bedclothes and told him to get some more sleep.

Obito was starving. 

He was so hungry it felt like someone had scraped his insides out with an ice cream scoop. Obito would’ve done just about anything for ice cream at the moment, and he didn’t even like it that much; it always gave him brain freeze. But the mere thought of eating something, anything, made his mouth water with longing and his empty stomach gargle insistently.  

“I’m hungry,” he’d said to Madara, the day he’d woken up.  

Madara had been leaning back in the big, throne-like wooden chair nearby, his legs thrown over the arm and his attention on a scroll spread out in his lap. Obito’s grandma had always said reading in the dark was bad for your eyes, but the man hadn’t bothered to make a light or anything. He hadn’t looked up from his scroll. “Hm. I suppose you would be. It will pass.” 

Um. What? “I kind of need food, you know? I’ll starve to death.” Obito had spelled it out for him, just in case his strangely long-lived ancestor had forgotten that regular people needed to eat. 

“No, you won’t,” Madara had replied calmly. “The modifications made to your body mean that you don’t need food or water to survive. But your body still craves these things because of its dumb, animal nature. But the mind is master of the body, as all shinobi should know. In time these cravings will abate.” 

“...who are you calling a dumb animal?” Obito muttered under his breath. He supposed Madara was right though; if he was a good ninja, he could endure this. 

It was so hard though. When he wasn’t thinking about home, he was thinking about food. And even when he was thinking about home, he found these thoughts involved food increasingly often. Going to get ramen from Ichiraku with his team. Inviting Rin to go and get katsudon with him on a dinner date. His Aunt Uruchi and Uncle Teuchi’s senbei ... His hunger drummed on the hollow walls of his stomach desperately. 

A true shinobi could endure anything. A ninja should never cry. 

“Please, ” Obito begged Madara, clutching at the man’s sleeve as he made to move away once he’d finished helping Obito with his exercises. To his shame, Obito could feel his chin trembling, and hot tears running down the side of his face, breath hitching into sobs.  

Madara wrinkled his nose down at him. “Get a grip on yourself, boy. I have managed without food for several lifetimes, and I am just fine.” He tugged his sleeve free from Obito’s grip. 

Obito hung on desperately, with a strength he did not think he possessed. “Please, Madara-sama just a little something, I don’t mind what it is, even natto!” 

“You can eat when you’re capable of cleaning up after yourself,” Madara snapped, jerking his arm away. “You smell bad enough as it is, and I am not wiping your backside.” He stalked away. 

“I HATE you!” Obito yelled after his retreating back, still sniffling. 

Madara did not deign to reply. 

He had managed to grow Obito an arm. With his knowledge of Mokuton and the all the research he’d done into cultivating Hashirama’s cells, it hadn’t been too difficult to coax the white substance making up half of Obito’s body to proliferate and branch off from the shoulder. When dissecting Zetsu bodies a cross-section of their limbs had looked something like a honeycomb, filled with thick off-white sap. The plant-like material didn’t have any bones in it, but it could be persuaded to function like a human joint.  

Madara poked and prodded at the new arm, testing its reflexes until he was satisfied. “It all seems to be in working order,” he said, straightening from his crouch by Obito’s bedside. “Just be careful with it, it’s still fragile.” He pressed his thumb into the ‘skin’ of Obito’s bicep. Instead of bouncing back instantly an impression of his thumbprint lingered for some seconds, before slowly levelling back out. 

Obito flexed his new fingers, gazing down at the arm with undisguised awe. “This is amazing. It feels like...” he trailed off, shaking his head. “This is the First Hokage’s chakra, right?” His Sharingan turned as he followed the flow of chakra through his arm, the same fresh green as a new sprout. “It feels nice,” he said finally. “Warm. He must have been some guy, since his DNA can do all these incredible things.” He looked up at Madara, face open with curiosity. 

Warm. Like lying in the sun on the baked clay earth of the riverbank, the water’s surface a dazzling gleam as it flowed over the rocks. Like an echo of childish laughter. But also like life itself, trembling through his veins with every beat of his heart. Unconsciously, Madara laid a palm over his own chest, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yes. He was.” It would not be too long now, and they would have their final reunion. 

“You may be able to use the Mokuton yourself,” Madara said, though of course there was no ‘may’ about it. Even as a young boy, that other Obito had been deadly with it. He had considered saying nothing, but there would always be those who would seek to abuse the remnants of power Hashirama had left behind. It was better that Obito be prepared.  

Obito’s eye widened. “Really?” He looked down at his new arm with a bright, lop-sided grin. “Whoa...” 

He could do this.  

He should be strong enough now; according to Madara, the exercises he’d been doing should give him an approximately ten percent increase in muscle mass each week. At this point he no longer needed Madara to keep turning him over, and he could move all his arms and legs himself, even if it had made him really tired at first. He could stand up for longer now too, and there had been another exercise too, where Madara had shifted his weight from one foot to the other, saying something about ‘postural stabilisers’ that Obito hadn’t really been paying attention to.  

He had managed to stand without rest for two whole minutes yesterday, with Madara’s palms just hovering inches from his ribs, ready to catch him just in case. So he should be able to get out of bed on his own now. 

He didn’t know where Madara was, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the cave was much bigger than just this bit that he’d been confined to for all this time. Wherever he was, he wasn’t here to frown at him and say that it was too soon for him to be doing this.  

Obito eyed the tunnel that led to the exit, to home. He took a deep breath, before raising his chin and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.  

Getting up was the hardest part. He had to grip the headboard, fingernails biting into the wood. They were too long but he had nothing to trim them with except his teeth, and doing that had always grossed him out, so he tried not to. Clenching his jaw, Obito grunted with effort and tried to pull himself up. All the muscles in his back and abs and shoulders screamed in protest but Obito ignored them, even when it made his mangled nerve endings ache fiercely he kept on going. Dripping with sweat and huffing and puffing, Obito levered himself up to a standing position, still leaning to grasp the bed.  

He breathed deeply for a few moments, and then slowly, carefully, eased his grip on the headboard and pushed his body away from the support. It was only a few inches away, but the gap felt enormous. Obito wobbled for a moment and thought for sure that he was going to fall. No! Shifting his feet and holding his arms out to the sides, he fought for balance. 

One second passed. Two. Ten, more. Obito slowly lowered his arms and straightened his back. 

He’d done it. He was standing.  

Laughing breathlessly, Obito turned to survey the cavern. As much as he looked longingly towards the way out, he wasn’t stupid like Madara seemed to think. He knew that was out of the question. Instead, Obito set his sights on Madara’s massive Mokuton chair. He sized up the distance carefully, ignoring the way it seemed to get farther and farther away the longer he stood looking at it. It wasn’t so great a distance, really. He could do this.  

Nodding to himself Obito tentatively lifted one foot off the ground and placed it forwards. Then the other. Walking was something simple that even babies could do. He might be out of practice, but it wasn’t like he had forgotten how. Slowly, painstakingly, Obito shuffled across the cave floor towards his goal. Though he wobbled a few times, he managed not to fall by pinwheeling his arms and trying to stick the soles of his feet to the floor with chakra. Since his body was so unhealthy his chakra control had gotten really bad, but it did help him out a little. 

By the time Obito reached the foot of Madara’s throne he was shaking like a leaf in a storm and streams of perspiration poured from his scalp and trickled down the back of his neck. It hurt, but not as bad as it did sometimes. Sometimes everything was so painful that Obito just wanted to shut his eye and pull the pillow over his head and whimper. But this wasn’t like that, this was nothing. Just a few more steps now— 

Obito’s treacherous legs buckled. This time, the chakra from the soles of his feet only managed to suction a piece of gravel to the ball of his foot, and his flailing arms were too late to save him. The hard, unforgiving stone of the cave floor rushed up to meet his face. 

A pair of arms closed around his waist and stopped him from taking a nose-dive into the floor. Shame and frustration overcame Obito and he glowered up at Madara as if it was somehow his fault. Madara gazed back at him mildly, and lifted Obito the last few feet to place him onto the chair.  

“I was so close,” Obito complained, balling his hands into fists and pounding one of them into the arm of the chair. Since it was his artificial arm, it left a crack in the wood. Obito didn’t notice. Damn his stupid body not doing what he wanted it to, when he needed it to! He felt so weak, so helpless, especially in front of Madara who he always felt was judging him even though he was helping. 

So what Madara said next surprised him.

“You’re making progress more quickly than I anticipated,” Madara said after a few moments of contemplating Obito in intense silence. “But since it’s you, I suppose I should’ve known better.”

Since it’s you. Obito wondered what he meant by that.  

Later that day, hours after Madara had helped him back to bed, Obito woke up with saliva thick in his mouth and his empty stomach howling in a way it hadn’t in what seemed like forever. Obito rubbed the sleep from his eyes, confused. What’s that smell? That amazing smell that made it feel like someone was jabbing him in the guts with a kunai, all smoky and delicious. Was he hallucinating smells now?

“Madara?” Obito called tentatively, eye scanning the darkness.

After a moment, the man approached from the direction of the cave mouth. “You’re already awake,” he noted, stopping short of Obito’s bedside. “I was just coming to get you.”

Obito eyed him with silent confusion. Madara always came to help Obito with his rehab, then immediately retreated. He never took him anywhere. So for Madara to be stooping down and scooping him out of bed, blanket and all, and carrying him out of the cave—

Oh. It’s a dream, Obito realised. He kept his mouth shut so he didn’t spoil it and wake up to soon. It was a really realistic dream, he noted, as cool night air fanned against his skin as he stepped outside for the first time in months. The cave opening was covered by large, curving shapes that stood out in dark bars against the segments starry sky visible between them.

In the shadow of them a small campfire crackled and spat beneath the pot that simmered on the flames, and the orange flames were so bright that Obito hissed and squeezed his eye shut.

 Madara was talking, saying something about the sun being too bright for Obito’s eyes as he set him down on the ground. Obito felt hard dirt and little weeds against his palms, and snapped out of his daze. He was not dreaming.

And yet—

“You’re cooking?!” he practically screamed.

“Don’t get too excited,” Madara said, apparently wilfully oblivious to the way Obito’s heart was currently doing a wild dance of joy, complete with backflips and everything. “It’s just rice gruel, your stomach won’t be able to handle anything else.”

Obito didn’t give a damn what it was. It was food. Madara had made him food. Madara had made him food.

“I can only listen to you complaining for so long without giving in to the urge to smother you in your sleep. And since you should be able to clean up after yourself now, I thought—”

Obito couldn’t help it. He started bawling his eyes out, tears streaming down his nose and running out of the corner of his empty eye socket. “’so beautiful—“ he blubbered incoherently, meaning the night air on his skin and the warm glow of the fire as much as the food.

Madara looked quietly appalled at his display. “Stop that,” he said brusquely, and ladled a serving into a bowl, shoving it into Obito’s hands.

Obito snatched it up with trembling fingers and brought it to his lips, not caring how hot it was as he began slurping the thin porridge down in desperate gulps, not even pausing for breath.

Madara immediately clipped him around the ear. Obito yelped at the sharp sting and Madara took advantage of his distraction to tug the bowl out of his grip. “Slow down, you’ll make yourself puke.”

He wasn’t wrong; Obito suddenly felt like his stomach was swimming in a choppy ocean. “Oh yeah. Sorry, it’s just so good,” he apologised, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head. He knew Madara was right; malnourished people couldn’t just stuff their faces. So when Madara handed him a spoon, Obito thanked him quietly and forced himself to eat more slowly. It was like torture, painstakingly sipping one spoonful at a time, but if it meant he got to eat again then he would do it. 

Even though the broth was practically no thicker than water, Obito actually had a hard time finishing the whole bowl. As he drained the last dregs, he felt surprisingly full. “Ahh. That was so good, thanks Madara.” He set the bowl down on the ground beside him and smiled, feeling blissfully content with his full stomach.  

Madara hummed in response—Obito had noticed that Madara seemed to be a bit uncomfortable for some reason if Obito showed gratitude of any kind—and took the dishes, moving to go and put out the fire. 

“Hey, aren’t you having anything?” Obito asked him. There was still a little left in the pot, but not really enough for two people. Madara had only prepared enough food for one. 

The older Uchiha shook his head, long hair falling further over his face with the movement. “No. I told you before, I haven’t eaten in a long time.” 

“But why?” For Obito it had only been little over a month without food if he didn’t count however long he’d been unconscious for, and it had been agonising. He couldn’t imagine going hungry for decades. “I mean, you can go out and get something whenever you want, so why would you starve yourself?” 

Madara rinsed the bowl off and tipped water over the ashes, leaving only the dying glow of embers and a trail of smoking rising into the night. “I have no need of it, it’s pointless.” 

“But don’t you enjoy it?” Obito persisted, not understanding why anyone would deny themselves something so basic if they didn’t have to.  

Madara didn’t answer him for so long that Obito thought this was one of those times when the man was deliberately ignoring him. Worn-out and sated, Obito’s eyelids began to droop. When the answer finally came, he found himself startled out of his doze. 

“This world holds little joy for me.” 

It occurred to Obito, and not for the first time, that Madara was a deeply unhappy person. What must it be like, he wondered, to go on living when everyone who you’d ever cared about was dead? It didn’t bear thinking about, really. And when Obito got well enough to go home, he’d be all alone again. 

He’ll probably be glad to get rid of me, Obito reasoned with himself. In his eyes I’m just some kid that gets on his nerves. Madara probably can’t wait until I’ve gone and he can be left to be miserable in peace.  

Despite this line of thought, Obito could not help but feel pity. 

The Mountains’ Graveyard was uninhabited for a reason. The mountains were home to dangerous wild beasts, poisonous plants, and treacherous terrain. Madara cautioned Obito from going too far away from the caves on his own.

Obito listened to his explanations and, with great reluctance, seemed to accept the warnings. But when it came to exploring within the caves, there was no stopping him. He no longer needed Madara’s help to get around, and had taken to roaming around every nook and cranny of the tunnels where Madara had once plotted to bring about the end of the world.

There couldn’t be much of interest down there, since Madara had cast anything connected to the Eye of the Moon plan onto the pyre with the corpse of his older self. But Obito seemed determined to make his own entertainment rummaging through the detritus Madara hadn’t bothered to destroy. He leafed through crumbling old maps and fragile scrolls with text so obscure even Madara found reading them a trial. He found boxes of unused tallow candles and left clusters of them melting all over of the cave, popping up from every nook and boulder like waxy fungi with a fiery glow. “It’s too dark down here,” he’d said simply when Madara had made a remark about him using jutsu if he wanted to burn them both in their beds. “It’s not healthy.”  

 Obito had discovered the passage down to the underground river where the clear black waters were filled with glassy and eyeless fish. Obito fashioned himself a fishing spear out a root snapped off the base of his bed and a kunai and spent many hours with the orange light of a candle flame shivering on the water’s surface while he tried to catch himself something more substantial for dinner now that his stomach could take it. He was often quite successful; Madara watched him now as Obito blew carefully on his cookfire, turning the milk-pale eel he was smoking on its spit. 

The boy hunched over his meal, grasping the meat with both hands, hot grease dribbling down his chin as he moaned in satisfaction. “Mm, so tasty,” he said with a sigh of pleasure. “Are you sure—" 

“Yes.” Madara turned his attention back to his book, but unfortunately it wasn’t very diverting. It was a musty old thing, illustrated with faded ink paintings. A book of simple folktales that hid fragments of truth about the bijuu and their history within. He must have read it a hundred times the first time around, and at least ten over these past months. But it’s not as if there was anything else to do at the moment. 

There were urgent matters he needed to care of beside the destruction of Zetsu’s lying words on the stone relic. He could have left to tend to them at any time since Obito no longer needed constant care, but he found his conscience would not allow him to abandon Obito while the boy was still weak and largely defenceless. The likelihood of someone stumbling across him here was very small, but if Madara returned to find Obito killed after all the effort he had expended to keep the child alive, well. He’d be damned if he’d let that happen. 

He did not even have the luxury of escaping into a dream world anymore, as he had done in his past life, leaving him with little alternative but to play nursemaid and sit around twiddling his thumbs. It chafed; it had frustrated him as an old man, but it frustrated him more now when he was able-bodied and brimming with power. From the time he’d been a child, Madara had never known how to be still. A man of action, he had blazed a path through history with his deeds streaming behind him like the tail of comet.  

For all he’d spent so long practicing patience, Madara found himself growing increasingly restless. 

This Obito did not know stillness either. That had come later, when tragedy had weighed down his heart and branded a new pattern into his eye. If the boy could not be doing something, then he would be saying something, an endless stream of mindless prattle about people Madara neither knew nor cared about, but that were obviously very important to him. Chief among them being the girl. The girl he loved. The girl whose death Madara had engineered to awaken Obito’s Mangekyou.  

Just another child whose blood was on his hands. It had been too easy to justify these things to himself, back when he believed he could replace this reality with a better one, when he had thought nothing he did here truly had meaning. It was less easy now, when this world was the only one they would ever have. At least that mistake would no longer come to pass; the Third Mizukage would never give those particular orders. But it was small comfort, next to all his other sins.  

“I hope no one else has moved into my house,” Obito was saying, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “It’s small, but it was just Obsaasan and me for so long, that...I don’t know, I guess it would just feel strange have to live somewhere else. I suppose if I do enough missions when I get back I could save my salary and rent an apartment like Bakashi does. Maybe Minato-sensei would put me up for a while until I can afford it. I hope I don’t have to move into the main house.” He screwed up his face as if he’d tasted something nasty. “Auntie Mikoto is really nice but I can’t imagine living with Fugaku—”  

Madara snapped his book shut and tossed it onto the arm of the chair. “Obito,” he interrupted.  

The stream of chatter cut off as suddenly as if Madara had cut his throat. “Hm?” 

“Since you’re trying to get your strength up again so you can travel, why don’t I help you with your training?” 

“Really, you’d train me?” 

“I said so, didn’t I?” He had made Obito great once. It would be a shame, Madara told himself, to let all that potential go to waste.  

“Yes, you – that'd be great, I’ve been working on building my chakra back up but it’d be much easier if I had someone to spar with,” Obito agreed, smiling at him as if Madara had offered him the world. “Thank you!” 

Madara’s answering smile made the boy look slightly worried. “I’ve told you before. 

Don’t thank me.”