Chapter Text
When you wake up, there’s grass tickling the back of your neck. The right side of the back of your neck. You haven't felt much besides pain in the right side of your body for a long time. Warm air passes through your nostrils, making a whistling sound. You freeze.
That’s a mistake. There’s someone beside you on the grass; not lying down, but close enough that they sense your sudden lack of movement. It’s a rookie mistake, to suddenly move (or stop moving) with a hostile so close to you. Now you’ll have to kill them. Which is for the best, really, so your blunder is in their best interests.
“Obito?”
The voice startles you more than the name. Rage, white-hot, sears through your senses. Your heart hammers in your chest. Your hands curl into fists. Your eyes snap open.
And you scramble back.
Rin’s face is looking down at you with mild concern through a piss-yellow film.
“Obito,” she repeats, starting to lean towards you.
You rip off the goggles over your eyes, and everything is clearer. Dimly, you notice that under the confusion, your body doesn't hurt. Your body always hurts.
“What’s wrong?” Rin stands up, and you realize that you’ve stood up at some point, though you haven't reached for your weapons yet. “I’m gonna get closer to you, alright? Obito? Is that alright?”
You look around as you throw the goggles aside. It’s just a grass field beside a forest, picturesque but generic. A gentle wind rustles the leaves and sweeps over the tall grass. There are probably thousands of areas like this around the Land of Fire.
“Obito,” repeats the person who looks like Rin. “Can I step closer to you?”
You can't really tell if she’s a decent approximation of Rin. It’s been so very long since she died. Her behavior, though, that’s all wrong. The Rin of your childhood would not have hesitated to get in your personal space. The Rin of your childhood had known that you were just a clumsy fool in love with her. She would have had no need to be careful of you.
You glare, and it’s a good enough one that she grinds to a halt, a foot away from you. You almost want to smirk, but this whole thing is insulting. Who exactly thinks that they can neutralize you with some cheap disguise? You’ll rip their throat out through their mouth--
When you try to activate your Sharingan, it’s like someone pours acid into your nerves. The whole world is briefly as clear and sharp as a diamond, and that hurts almost as much as the back of your eyes. You’re used to pain, though, so you hold it. You look at the girl who is pretending to be Rin, grasping for any sign of a genjutsu or a transformation technique. Any sign that she isn't real.
“Oh, Obito, your eyes!” She clasps her hands together and smiles, but your Sharingan shows you that it’s a strained movement, that the muscles of her face are trying to move in several directions at once. “When did you activate your Sharingan? Why didn’t you say anything?”
She walks closer to you. You take a shaken step backwards. There’s no jutsu on this rotten earth that can trick your Sharingan, or anyone’s Sharingan, for that matter. What is she?
“Obito?” The worried look that crosses over her face is real.
Also, where the fuck is your Rinnegan?
The girl who can't be Rin ignores her training and strides over to you. And you could kill her; doesn't she fucking know who you are?
You know who you are. Pain is nothing to you, so you force more chakra through your burning nerves. You’ll need Kamui to annihilate her the way she deserves to be annihilated. More chakra than you have, apparently. Your heart accelerates and your vision blurs. Hard as you try, you can't keep your Sharingan active, much less get Kamui going.
Not-Rin reaches you and puts her hand on your shoulder. You push her back, or try to. The world is going black around the edges.
“Obito--”
You vomit bile on her toes before she can say anything else, and then you pass out.
A medic is standing over you when you open your eyes next. She has grey streaks at her temples and a severe crew cut that does little for her looks, if she ever had any to begin with. Her headband announces that she is a Konoha-nin.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she says, obviously bored. “Your family’s on the way.”
You almost can't resist asking her what the fuck she means.
“One of the clerks will bring you lunch soon,” she says. “Eat it, and you can go.”
You don't say anything.
The medic yawns and walks off. You lie back on the bed, ready to assess the situation you’ve landed yourself in. First thing’s first: your body. It feels better than it has in decades, aside from the gnawing nausea and the burning of your retinas. You check all your muscles for baseline strength, and run your joints through the standard ranges of motion. Your right side is alien in its comfort. You can't stop expecting the next painful cramp, but all seems to be in working order. The medic has you hooked to monitors, and they all beep along in steady harmony.
Next, your chakra reserves. Garbage. Embarrassingly garbage. You’re practically a fucking civilian with atrophied tenketsu. No wonder your eyeballs almost exploded when you tried to activate Kamui.
You take a deep breath and open your eyes, though you’re not sure what you expect. It’s just a standard Konoha hospital room, with its ammonia stink and pale green walls. You don't even warrant a window. There’s a painting of Hashirama and Madara on the wall to your left, a cheap one that barely gets their likenesses. You glare at Madara out of habit, then start pulling off the monitors on your chest.
The machines start beeping a frantic tune immediately. You’ll fucking choke that medic if she comes back to whine at you, low chakra reserves be damned. She doesn't, and the machine doesn't stop its shrieking as you put on your clothes. You walk over to it and fiddle with the buttons until you figure out how to get its volume to the lowest setting. By accident, you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the black monitor.
It’s hardly a decent mirror, but it’s enough to briefly grind you to a halt. The boy who stares back at you doesn't have a single scar on his face. You don't recognize him. He could be any random Uchiha with large, dark eyes and thick hair. You can't believe you ever looked like an Uchiha. Fuck, you almost got the looks.
You’re in deep shit.
You sit on the crappy hospital bed, trying to remember where you were before waking up in that field next to Not-Rin. Memories swim in your mind, none of them clear. You remember Kakashi, which means little considering how much you’ve been thinking of Kakashi lately. You’d been fighting. . . which also means little, considering how much you’d been fighting lately. You already had the Rinnegan. You remember that much. But not what that means.
A knock on your door interrupts your muddled thoughts. Before you can yell at whoever it is to fuck off, a girl enters holding a tray of food.
“The kitchen got some extra sugar and whipped up a chocolate cake, Uchiha-san,” the girl tells you, beaming as she puts the tray on the little dresser next to your bed. “Still, I could only sneak you a small bit. We weren't expecting any new patients.”
You stare at her, carefully keeping your face blank.
“We’ve got plenty of the chicken broth,” she reassures you.
You can tell. The smell of it has reached you, and you realize something. The gnawing nausea you’ve been feeling since you woke up is hunger. Shit.
“And your mother sent word that she’s on the way,” adds the girl, wiping her hands on her apron.
Your mother? Now there’s someone you haven't thought of in a fucking lifetime. You can't even remember what she looks like.
“Anyway,” says the girl, “I guess I should give you some privacy?”
She makes it sound like a question, for some reason. You stare at her blankly. You learned that trick from that asshole, Itachi. People don't like being stared at. This girl sure doesn't. Her shoulders draw in and she swallows, then she starts shuffling away. You all but leap at the food when she turns around, but then she whirls back to face you once more, and you freeze. You need to fucking stop doing that.
“I’m sorry, Uchiha-san,” she says, determined, “but don't you remember me?”
She has curly brown hair and light eyes. You couldn't pick her out of a lineup if your life depended on it.
“No.” Your own voice startles you. It sounds nothing like you remember. It’s deep, and the reflection in the monitor had looked so young.
The girl’s eyes legit fill with tears before she whirls around. You would strangle the moron, if only you had a plan on how to get out of this shithole, or at least access to Kamui. But you don't, so you scavenge for patience until she’s out of your room, then rush to the broth.
Your tongue protests that you’re eating bland horsepiss, but it might as well be a feast fit for the daimyo as far as the rest of you is concerned. You’re used to the Zetsu limbs attached to your right side providing you nourishment. It’s the first time you taste anything at all in more than a decade. Tears threaten to spill out of your eyes because of hospital soup, and you never even considered that you missed eating. The pitiful slice of chocolate cake is almost more than you can take.
You’re being stupid. Food is an inefficient way to replenish chakra reserves. You should be mourning the loss of your Zetsu limbs, painful as they were. How the fuck will you manage Kamui without them?
If Kakashi could do it, and with your fucking eye, then so can you.
Somehow, you wolf down your food without throwing up. The medic comes back and asks you how you feel, especially your belly, and you shrug. You definitely feel your stomach, but it’s been so long since you ate that you can't tell if the fullness is normal or not. You’re not in pain, so it can't be that bad. And the medic seems satisfied with your vitals and finally turns the fucking monitor off.
“Seems like you’re recovering well from the chakra exhaustion,” says the medic.
You groan. Though you had suspected that’s what happened, you couldn't be sure. Chakra exhaustion hasn't concerned you in a long time. You’d forgotten the feeling.
“I don't know much about the Sharingan, but I’m sure your family will tell you how to handle it.”
“Yeah,” you say, though you don't know what to expect from them. The day you activated your Sharingan is the day you died, after all. You want the medic gone so you can leave and. . . figure something out. Anything.
“Your mother should be here soon,” says the medic, as she scribbles on her chart. “You’re free to go with her. Make it quick, too. We need this bed.”
Right, your mother. You sigh at the reminder that here, you’re not just a random guy with some hunting skills who can fuck off whenever he wants. You are an Uchiha clansman, and a weak one at that. Beyond that, you are a Konoha-nin. You have responsibilities now, and you aren't strong enough to shirk them.