Chapter Text
Obito wakes up reaching his hand out for someone that never reached back.
Rin’s smile flashed before his eyes. Speaking words that he couldn’t hear as she reached for his hand. He had wanted to ask her then, if he deserved forgiveness, if he deserved to be here at all- here, in the Pure Lands, with her and everyone else- Rin’s face, then, was distorted and smeared. As though someone had dragged their hand to an ink mark that has yet to dry. Her expression blurred with the edges of ink. She was speaking to him. Replying to his question.
Obito was underwater. He must be. Her words were slurred and barely legible. Resounding with the echoes of the waves of the ocean, mixed with Rin’s soft voice.
What did you say? he wanted to ask. Underwater and drowning with the weight of Rin’s words that he couldn’t quite hear. His consciousness drifted farther apart than it had when he had died for Kakashi.
Obito wakes up on a concrete rooftop. Solid beneath his hand. The earth upon his fingertips and the sea drowning him no further. He was half-delirious. His mind had not yet resurfaced from the depths below. The world around him absorbed in a red haze that was disturbingly comforting.
He puts a shaking hand upon his body. Finding it solid and whole and not a crumpled heap of ashes as it was supposed to be. His hands similar shades upon each other. A human’s hands, those were. No longer those of the Juubi’s jinchuuriki.
He exhaled, his breath trembling under the weight of his mind going haywire. Questions filling it faster than he could answer. Faster than his sharigan could observe. A steady stream of, When? How? Where? What? filling his head and making it hurt.
He didn’t want to think about the why.
There were multitudes of why’s. Obito didn’t have all day to list them all out. Packaging them into a neat novel for the world to see and judge. He had spent an awful lot of time doing an awful lot of things and during that awfully long time, and he had learned that it was best to not look behind at the carnage he left.
Rule one of committing heinous crimes, never remember them. Let alone list them all.
Madara didn’t teach him that. Obito spent an awfully long time wading through the murky depths of his guilt and ’what ifs’ in the short break between ruining lives and the world to learn that. Madara, most likely, would have had killer advice. If he deigned to give it, which he hadn’t. Having a thesaurus worth of crimes under his own belt from his practically immortal like time alive. Perhaps he never wanted to think upon the ‘why’s either. Only focusing on the “what we need to do now” and “what step of the plan are we on” and “how to fix Obito’s fuck ups of this one part of the plan”.
Obito wondered, briefly, if Madara also had seen Izuna and then was promptly left to dry out on some concrete rooftop. Going delirious with his chakra going against his body.
Chakra. God, his chakra. It was going mad. Just as mad as Madara. Striving to burst out of his body with its intensity. Wanting to escape its pathetic host. Growing stronger with each intake of air. As Obito’s ”why, why, why” reaches its zenith with each breath taken. His chakra was going out of control. Spiraling into a tangled web that was an excellent resemblance of whatever Obito’s current mental state was.
No wonder he was delirious.
He makes a move to stand up. No invisible hand to help him now. The motion tugging at old wounds that Obito thought he’d never have to feel again. Obito thought he’d never have to deal with anything again. Suffering and pain included alongside being alive.
If Obito were any less trained, he’d stumble. As he were now, he was long used to making his body ignore itself and move. His body hadn’t protested like this in quite a while. Or perhaps it had become white noise along with other things that Obito learned to toss out and hope don’t bite him later.
The rain met his face as he steps forward slowly. Mocking him, surely, as it dripped down, down, down onto the earth. He breathes in again. His sharingan worked harder than it should’ve to catalog everything around him. Tall, towering buildings, flashing signs, and flashing images. The indistinct chatter below of a large crowd. The sheer scale of it all.
That’s not Konoha, Obito thought. His eyes moved from place to place at rapid succession.
That’s not anywhere.
“De… detergent,” something said. Obito’s neck snapped towards it faster than he should’ve.
Faster than his mind could process anything at all, Obito crashed into the monster he’d come to face with. Hands moving to grab at something- a kunai- anything- as his chakra soared and soared with his heightened stress.
Not human, it was an understatement to describe it in its hideousness. Deformed and shaped as though a child had taken upon a block of clay and tried to make the beginnings of a human but never got farther than the idea itself.
“What are you?” Obito asked. His voice deceptively calm. Sharp wood sprouted out of his hands into a poor man’s blade as he pressed it against the thing’s body. The neck was hard to locate on such a body, so Obito went for the next best thing in the thing’s eyes. Or what he assumed were eyes. Good model shinobi actions, he thinks. Young Kakashi would approve.
“Dete… rgent.” That was all the thing said. Or was capable of saying. Making a move to toss him away from it. Its muscles bulging unnaturally as Obito stabbed one of its hands down. It made a wounded sound. Garbled amidst the steady downfall of rain.
There were footsteps, then. Breaking through the jumbled moan of the thing beneath him. Obito’s muscles tensed. His chakra pathways straining with effort as his Sharingan whirled to life. He hadn’t felt this exhausted pulling on his Sharingan in a while. Since the first time he activated it.
He saw the exact moment two others barge onto the rooftop. A man with slicked hair and an odd suit, and a boy in a black uniform.
Their fashion was an odd one. But in this place of strange towers and stranger things, Obito felt that perhaps he was the odd one here.
The man, eyes hidden beneath a green pair of goggles (were they? They were too small for that, much smaller than Obito’s own pair of goggles, left behind when he died), moved his head to stare at Obito. Accessing him.
They weren’t shinobi, Obito noted. Even if the man stood like he was prepping for a fight. Stance practiced, from years of toil, no doubt. Shinobi posture was different from that of a fighter’s. While fighting was a big part of them, shinobi was mostly linked with stealth. They blended into the scenery, hidden away.
The man and the boy were anything but. They stood and made themselves known.
“What are you?” the man asked, his voice was tense. Shinobis don’t do that, emotions. Good shinobi hide their tones beneath a false mask of amicability until the moment they have to stab you in the chest. Or where they knew combat was inevitable and they gave their last, weak, effort of trying to stop it through intimidation.
What are you, the man had asked. The same question Obito had asked the creature. As though he knew that Obito wasn’t human.
Obito hadn’t been human in all the ways that mattered for years now. But he didn’t think the man meant it like that.
“What are you?” Obito asked, almost blandly. His hand, out of view, readying to use Mokuton if need be. Placing a hand on the concrete rooftop and feeling for the plantlife beneath.
“Nanamin- is he-” the boy (pink haired- Kakashi’s brat had pink hair. Bold and vibrant. Screaming for the whole world to hear her name and brace for impact before she shattered it all with her fists) started then was cut off as the man (Nanamin?- odd name) move to stand in front of him. Blocking the boy from sight.
It was an obvious move of “Don’t look at him, look at me, I’m the threat here- so don’t you look at him”.
“I don’t recognize you,” Nanamin said. His hand moving beneath his jacket. Grabbing a weapon, perhaps.
Obito grinned, pulling at his scarred face. “I don’t recognize you either.” Obito doesn’t recognize anything at all.
“That pulse of cursed energy earlier- was that you?” the man pulled out an odd blade, wrapped in cloth. “Were you just born?”
Obito looked down at his body, that of an adult, surely. But Nanamin sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and letting the man know that he was out of depth wasn’t good. Lack of knowledge to shinobi meant giving the opponent and edge, and Obito was nothing but wary.
“Sure,” Obito said easily, rolling his knuckles on the ground below. Keeping the thing beneath him in check as his Mokuton speared through the thing from below. “Something like that.”
The man grew somber, then. With no warning the man charged at him.
Obito knew enough to spring away from the monster. Standing upon the concrete rooftop as he dodged. Engaging in the fight to at least draw out some new information for this strange, new place. His Sharingan proving helpful in his evasive manuvers as he fought with his fists. Not keen on pulling out his gunbai just yet. The man sliced at his arms, Obito feeling faint shock as the blade cut through, despite still being wrapped in cloth.
It was healed easily enough, Hashirama’s cells made sure of that. But it was still odd. Chakra enhancements, perhaps?
“Interesting skill,” he said. Moving back to kick the man’s stomach with his own chakra enhanced strike. Nowhere near Haruno Sakura, but it was enough. The man stumbling back as he steadied himself, Obito dodging to the side as a pair of fists aimed for the back of his head. The boy- reminding him eerily of Haruno Sakura with his hair- joining the fight.
“Itadori-kun.” Itadori- not Haruno Sakura- winced slightly at the man’s tone. “Stay back and handle the other cursed spirits.”
Cursed spirits, what the fuck was that?
“But Nanamin-”
The man cut Itadori off as he moved at Obito once more, Obito finding himself stuck between the two of them. Itadori, with hair like Haruno Sakura’s and a personality of Uzumaki Naruto, had refused to budge down. Swinging his fists at Obito, enhanced with something feeling strangely like the new chakra in his veins. The man also started speaking to him. About 7-3 and technique and-
And the man’s own chakra soared. Raising his blade towards Obito in a move that Obito knew he couldn’t block without getting damage from Itadori behind him. Letting his Sharingan shift, Kamui activating.
Questions later, intanglibility now.
The man’s eyes seemingly widened with shock as his attack phased through Obito. Obito couldn’t quite tell. Occupying himself with ducking below and slamming his hands on the concrete below before coming back from his intaglibility to kick the two of them away. Letting his Mokuton on the creature disperse.
He had already revealed his hand and had already gained as much information as he could from this exchange. He had to go before he exposed more of the cards in his hand. And while he could, theoretically, try to kill them it wouldn’t do him much good to be labeled a murderer in his first waking hours in this strange place.
One lifetime of being a world ending megalomaniac was enough, Obito reckoned, at least until he finds out where the fuck he was.
“I think that’s enough,” Obito said. Using Shunshin to move to a rooftop not too far away. His chakra already strained as is, using Kamui wouldn’t do him any favors when Shunshin could get roughly the same result with few chakra usage.
They could deal with the monster and the extra presence on that roof, Obito had some information gathering to do.
It was shinobi business, and Obito was nothing but a good shinobi. Madara made sure of that.
Information gathering was both more and less challenging from whatever the hell Obito became. Invisible to the eye of civilians. He couldn’t talk to them, either, and they couldn’t see him. So harder, but also easier since Obito didn’t need to blend in and act as one of them.
Blending in was something drilled into Obito, even during the academy days. Yet he never quite got the grasp of it and he doubted that the ever will. Being the thing that he was. Sharp and wrong and inhumane. Made of half of a dead man’s cells.
It was difficult, though, mentally. Feeling so isolated and alone despite the fact that Nanamin and Itadori had led him to believe that while he wasn’t human, humans could at least see him.
But no, it was due to them being jujutsu sorcerers.
And wasn’t that an odd thing. To have a war going on in the background of a peaceful era. Unseen to the general public. To fight against monsters instead of men. To have a good cause to murder “curses” instead of killing for your village’s sake.
(Kakashi had been so young, Obito thought. He thought about it often. How they’d all been so young. So young and yet took up blades and jutsus all the same to fight in a war.
For Konoha, it was. For honor.
Kakashi and Obito had no choice at all, one a Hatake and the other an Uchiha. They stood no chance against the grand message of shinobi life. Of the will of fire. Even Rin, a civilian born, stood no chance against the widespread message of it.)
Obito, it seemed, would never be on the right side of history.
Obito, as he quickly found out, because it wasn’t hard to put together the dots.
Obito was a cursed spirit now. (Not hooray moment. Obito wanted to murder something when he realized and put the two shitty dots together, but not much he can do now since he was converted by Naruto.)
Something twisted and strange and monstrous. Something to be exorcised for the good of humanity.
The fragile peace beneath the surface was breaking, he’d learned. Felt it in his blood. As a cursed spirit. Something calling to him to destroy, destroy, destroy. Learned it from the way he’d hear about plans and secrets and the way those two “cursed spirits” on the rooftops felt human in a way that no other cursed spirits does. Felt it in the way the sewers beneath promised a good fight to relish in if Obito treaded down below. Radiating cursed energy, as it was called.
Maybe before Obito got exorcised, he could manage to do some good. Then maybe, maybe, he would be granted entry into the Pure Lands.
(He could easily lay down his head now and perhaps let some strange jujutsu sorcerer exorcise him willingly, but then-
There was no mention of the Pure Lands, here.
And Obito knows that once he got exorcised he’d be gone. Have no chances left at going home.
Obito feared that if he were to die now, then he’d end up alone in the afterlife of this strange, strange place.
Curses do a lot of things, don’t they?
Maybe there was one that could get him home.
And he can’t have the world destroyed before then.)
His reasoning was selfish, no doubt.
But selfish was all Obito knew how to be.
But did intent really matter when Obito was trying to do good?
(Obito tries very hard to think about the last time he tried to do the world good and how he’d ruined everyone he cared about in the process.
Obito also makes sure to write an apology novel to everyone to give to them when he gets back.)