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Kisame does nothing to hide his amusement as he slips into his spot at the end of the dining table, nodding in greeting to their guests as he rinses his hands, wrists, and mouth off before serving himself; eating accomodatingly around the Miho shaped lump that's currently still attached itself to his chest and neck. Obitos knee brushes his under the table and he reaches down, leaning over, to steal some of the pickled daikon from his plate with no shame.
Unaware of social convention as she usually is Kagome is the first to break the silence, leaning around Chihiro and asking how his mission had gone, eyes shining with joy when he turns his attention to her to answer.
It is easy, easier than he'd expected, to disregard the four rigid pillars of power staring him down from the other side of the table to focus on her. Chakra purrs along his back, tickling his palm, and he smiles crookedly; tugging at the small tendril of wood that creeps over and between his fingers, tucking the small scroll into his sleeve with a flick of his fingers as Miho shifts and lets herself drop down to sit cradled in his lap instead. Expectantly Orochimaru holds her plate out to him- Kisame rolls his eyes above her head but takes it and feeds her small bites as, slowly, conversation picks back up in fits and starts around the table.
As if this is completely normal.
He chuckles softly, trailing a gentle touch over Miho's scalp. If it's not one thing it's another, as if the universe itself can not let Obito and Kawarimono rest for a single day. Of course, he thinks to himself as that knee brushes against his again, the drama of their lives can't always be said to be bad.
---
Dinner is put away, Kagome and Chihiro sent to wash the dishes, Orochimaru wanders off with Miho tucked to his chest to wash up and give her her supplements away from prying eyes. Obitos team each step to the side to talk about some final things with him before vanishing as well, while Jiraiya pushes and pulls and nags to get the genin team out of the house and back to their temporary apartment; until Kisame and Obito are left alone at the table with the Namikaze, Hatake, and Uzumaki.
There's a long slow moment of silence, unbroken as the three of them stare at Obito with meaning, expecting for some reason that he would be the first to say something. Kisame holds in a laugh- as if Obito wasn't the king of avoiding awkward conversations.
Kisame shifts and all four of them lock onto him as he pulls a pipe from his sleeve, leaning back with meaning.
"You don't mind if I smoke in here, do you?" Obito glares at him for a brief second, lips pulled tight over his teeth before he gives it up, just rolling his eyes.
"My nose is a bit sensitive." Hatake says, voice stilted, and Kisame hums as if he hadn't know that; tapping it against the table with a shrug before leaving it there to stand up and slide the doors to the garden wide open.
On his way back he grabs a small box, nestled in the decor, to set down in the middle of the table before sitting Seiza.
The reaction is immediate, a calming to the prior sharp alertness, a softening of Obitos swirling chakra, and a shifting as Hatake moves to mirror him. Leaving Obito, Namikaze, and Uzumaki seated still as they please.
Pulling the sake from the box he arranges the tokurri and o-choko among them, with a deft hand he swirls the cold sake before serving Namikaze and Obito, waiting for them each to sip in silence before he serves Uzumaki, and then himself; grinning at the flash of shock on their faces as he sips with her, before serving Kakashi and turning his eyes, accepting the loud slurp and click of the o-choko before he turns back. Bowing softly.
"Welcome to our home, Hokage-sama, Uzumaki-sama, Hatake-san. Thank you for drinking with us. For dining with us." He pauses, rising from his bow, his smile escaping his control and lifting past his teeth. "What business do you have with Ame-Yon-sama?"
There's a slip- a falling of masks- where pure shock shows on their faces before they slip back into the politeness of ceremony and Namikaze takes a subtle fortifying breath before turning to face Obito.
"Why didn't you return to Konoha, if you were alive?" Kisame can admit, then, to admiring the fact the man obviously is willing to be cut throat both on the field and off, even as Obito wavers for a moment on how to answer.
"I had a duty to preform, at the time. Once I had escaped the man who... brought me back to life." Kushina makes a soft cut off sound of distress at that, mourning the pain and sorrow they had missed and that Obito has spent decades- time still- healing from. "It would have been the easier decision in some ways, the safer and known option, to return. However there were things that had changed, that made me unsafe. Any man tortured and held captive as long as I had been, especially so young, becomes a ticking time bomb.
"Then past a certain point it had just become unreasonable to expect that I could extract myself from the things I had involved myself in with any clean resolution, with any way that would have left me a fully loyal shinobi of Konohagakure." Obito trails a finger absently along the rim of his o-choko, staring off into space, seeing things Kisame hadn't been there yet to see alongside him- that he had only heard of second and third hand. "And of course while I never acted against the direct interests of Konoha in such a way that it left you vulnerable, simply always as a response to actions taken against my own person or to my own peoples, but there are... certain things I have done that should I have come back after doing them would have been impossible to hide."
"Like what?" Namikaze's eyes are like steel as he asks, his spine rigid.
"Well, I kidnapped Orochimaru, for one." Namikaze immediately blusters in shock, obviously having assumed the Sannin had abanoned them at will. "Then there was the matter of Shimura Danzo."
It is Obitos turn to turn to steel, eyes flinting as he meets Namikazes stare head on.
"The matter?"
"His acts aginst Amegakure, and her people, during the third war, as well as his vile criminal acts against members of your own village; both clan shinobi and civilian." Namikaze opens his mouth, closing it when no immediate rebuttal can form. "I suspected you knew. Just as you knew what Orochimaru was doing, as well as why you suspect he fled and left everything behind instead of being abducted?"
"Yes."
"Mm."
There is a long silence.
"And of our ANBU? If we requested their bodies, or ashes, or possessions be exumed and returned would you permit us this?" Namikaze asks, eyes and posture softening with each truth and honesty and vulnerability Obito offers him.
"That is, of course, working under the assumption that they're dead."
"Are they not?" There is shock, confusion, in his eyes and the tilt of his mouth.
"No. Last I heard they're quite content, one of thems picked up glass blowing."
"Where are they? Why haven't they been allowed to return?"
"They're being held in security in an apartment block with every other person who has made an attempt on my life, but for whatever reason has denied the opportunity to wander Amegakure proper to spy or escape." Obito offers with an off hand shrug. "They would be allowed to return if you had requested them, and would still be allowed to if they wished so. I can have someone show you- or someone from your party- to the apartment block during your visit to check on them, if you wish?"
"That would be preferred, yes." Kisame grins to himself, taking a slow sip of his sake and filling his own cup back up. None of the three seem to understand what Obito is playing at, with containing those who try and kill him instead of killing them in turn. But he's been to those apartment blocks, spoken with the staff, mingled with the residents; it's a haven for those who choose to see it that way, who speak with the counselors, who adapt instead of rotting. Deidara is a winning example. A graduate of the program, working now in the shonobi construction team; after the boy had failed to kill Obito as a young teen, barely out of boyhood.
The questions go on in that vein for a short while before Namikaze seems to run out of Hokage questions to ask and turns desperately to his wife, eyes pleading.
"Are you happy?" She asks, voice soft, mouth gentle.
"More than I ever thought possible." Obito responds in kind, meeting her eyes with the same open vulnerability he approaches everything these days, once he's slogged through his anxieties.
"So you'll forgive me when I beat the shit out of you for not even writing!?"
Obito throws his head back and laughs, sake nearly sloshing out of his cup as he cackles.
"Of course! I'll always forgive you, Kushina-san." Her smile wobbles at that, at his softening shoulders and watering eyes.
"Thank-you. For finding and keeping the Uzumaki safe. But... why? Are those kids yours?"
"Yes, they're mine. I have more, but most of them live with other parents, under contract with the understanding that if they, or their children and descendents, ever develop the Sharingan they will join the main family house for training, and take on the Uchiha name hyphenated." Uzumaki frowns subtly at that but nods, it's manipulative, but... not abnormal, for larger clans to have contracts like that; especially when they're small and at risk. Obito is but one man, running a branch of the Uchiha clan all on his own. "Of course there are outs, but most of them rely on the person breaking contract be willing to submit themselves to seal work to contain a major chakra gate. It was a compromise all of the families have found suitable for now, when their children are old enough to negotiate for themselves I will speak to them. Some of them have already taken on the name hyphenated, out of simply a desire to attach themselves to something greater, despite either choosing a civilian path or not having activated the kekkai genkai."
"That night," Hatake speaks up, jaw working slowly over his words. "When Rin... with the Kiri shinobi, was that you?"
"Yes." Obito's voice is a little raw.
"How?"
"It was..." Kisame has heard this story and downs his sake, pouring another for himself, topping up Uzumaki's when she tips her head as well. "That night the man who had held me, let me out for the first time in months, coincidently near you two, coincidently right as you were both struggling, coincidently right at the moment the fate of the world could have been altered... do you see what I am saying, Kakashi?"
"I wish I didn't."
"Very often," Obito starts, his voice soft-slow-gentle like when he is teaching. "I have found myself in the path of very powerful men, with very ambitious goals, who work through violence and slaughter- never words nor proper negotiation- to get what they want, and have decided there is no way in this world that should be followed except their own word. When those men can not be reasoned with, talked down, counseled, seduced; I find the two paths I often have to take are to kill the man himself. Or to destroy his plans, so he can not destroy me.
"That night, you and Rin found yourselves manipulated by the power of the man who found me, tortured me, and tried to control me. Who tried for months to turn me into a man who would follow his words, who would desire to enslave the world, not simply because he was ambitious; but because he was an angry old man, bitter and cruel, who would manipulate anyone and anything he could to get back at someone who hurt him ages ago; only because someone else told him it would be the right thing to do. It should not have happened, the burden of mind you have carried, and the burden of chakra and soul Rin lives with. But they were side effects of a corrupted system that designed and built that man. Hear me Kakashi, if I had not had what I had in that moment, what I still carry with me now, he would have won."
It's obvious that Hatake understands, can see the future laid out, the horror of the death of his last teammate clinging at his own hands. The horror of power that Obito wields casually now, laid out not for peace and restructuring, but for the complete enslavement and destruction of the world as he understands it.
Kisame watches that realization wash over them all like he had watched it wash over countless people before him, the power of speech Obito holds, the way he swells with it; his passion and fire.
Kisame breathes it in; and savors every second of it.
-
Later that evening as they are leaving Obito hands Minato a scroll, black capped at each end, with a solemn air.
"I beleive if you returned this to the Shimura clan, it would be more appreciated than if it came from me."