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He watches as Kakashi stares above at the endless sky above. To call is a sky would be a stretch though, wouldn’t it? There is no sun, neither a moon, no stars in the sky or constellations to trace in the stretched shadow above. An apathetic endless void. It’s full of nothing and they are equally nothing beneath it. “I’m tired,” Kakashi says. His voice is gravel and shattered glass beneath heavy boots. Obito can’t stand it.
“No, you’re not.” He refutes. Obito’s wrong, he knows it. They’re both tired. Acknowledging it will mean that they’ve spoken its validity into existence and with it the consequences. Obito doesn’t want to see Madara anymore. He doesn’t want to see much of anything but home. Konoha.
Kakashi doesn’t respond. The silence seems to speak louder than anything either of them could say.
“I…” the pale haired boy begins only to cease. “You - God, I wish I knew what to say to you. Even if this isn’t real, its - nice. I missed you.”
Obito stares at the ground beneath them intently. This is real. He wonders if it would be kinder to confirm his friends belief. To confirm that Obito had died in that cave and hadn’t survived to become something that makes him feel less than human. A pawn. A person who survived only because of the stolen and cultivated cells of the long-dead Shodaime and the babbling machinations of a madman.
He’s a science experiment at best and a monster of patchwork flesh at worst, stolen abilities that aren’t his but are still a part of him as much as his heart is. His long outgrown hair sticks to the back of his neck unpleasantly. He doesn't want to think about it.
They’re sitting next to each other just like they had on the grassy patches near the training fields back home. It feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was. “You’re different,” he says instead.
“I would have left Rin if not for you,” Kakashi replies quietly, an admittance, a secret that they both already know. If there ever were a breeze in this world, it surely would have been carried away, lost within it. “I showed you that I was the worst type of scum and I- you saved me.” His friend’s voice grows strained, tight, and choked in desperation. It’s that gutted tone that he absolutely hates, something he never would have thought to associate with Kakashi (“So what if I’m Captain!? So what if I’m Jōnin!?”). “You saved me and I left you to die. I changed. You changed me. You’re why I’m different.”
“You didn’t leave me to die. I was always going to bleed out there whether you stayed or not, you know. Half my body was crushed. I was always going to die.” It warms him. In a sick way, maybe - that Kakashi had enough to feel guilt over him. That he regretted. He sees Kakashi flinch at the reminder. Half of his body turned into a bloody pulp. It wasn’t any better an experience from either side, it seemed.
He looks at Kakashi and tries a grin, the same one he used when he shouted his apologies for being late, it pulls at the snarling scars on the side of his face making it appear more lopsided than it naturally was. “Bakashi, you sure got dumber since I left. If you stayed or tried to get me out we both would have died.” His smile morphs into a pout, he crosses his arms.
Belatedly, he realizes it's one of the first times he smiled since Kannabi. The first time he’s acted like how he used to be since then. Somehow, that isn’t surprising. There’s a vague indignant type of amusement flowing in the undercurrent beneath his skin and around his heart because of course. Of course, the first time he’s smiled since he’s died is because of Kakashi ‘stick up his ass’ Hatake. It’s like the start of a funny joke that doesn’t have a proper punch line.
And Kakashi? Kakashi laughs.
A short and shocked thing. Like the strings on a koto being plucked in the wrong order, like the sound has been startled out of him. Foreign and alien to even himself if Kakashi’s wide dark onyx eye and the hand slapping over his mouth are anything to go off of. It’s… endearing. God, yeah, Hatake Kakashi and endearing in the same sentence. Isn’t that something?
Obito thinks that he might not be alone in the strange amusement. The smirk pulling at his mouth feels good. Natural. He forgot what it was like to bring someone else laughter. “Should have recorded that with my sharingan, who’d have thought? You, laughing at something I said.” He grins smugly. It feels nice. Really nice. The feeling blossoms in his heart, new growth flowering among the ashes of a forest fire.
“Still as much of an idiot as I remember,” Kakashi’s eye curves into what Obito thinks is a smile. It’s a good look. Obito doesn’t want to forget it, especially not when he has to leave here - a shared world both picking at a wound and healing it - to see Madara.
“Shut up, I thought you missed me. What happened to that?” He sniffs indignantly.
“I did- I do miss you.”
“Oh.” He says dumbly. Kakashi. Right. He still thinks this place isn’t real. That I’m still dead, his mind replies unkindly. Maybe. Maybe, he can let himself have just this one thing.
“I-” his face warms in a familiar way that it hasn’t done in a long, long time. “I miss you too,” he admits. Because it's true. He does miss Kakashi. He misses Rin, and Minato sensei and Kushina. He misses Konoha. He misses helping out where he could and he misses the cat in the alley behind his apartment and he misses the sprawl of green trees and the sun on his skin and he misses candy and wearing his goggles and more than anything he misses the people. The sounds, the hustle and bustle of people where the cave is cold, starkly silent. Quiet, quiet, quiet, only broken by the sound of his own breathing. It makes him want to pull out his hair.
He just barely resists the urge to cuff Kakashi around the head and mess up his shitty gravity-defying hair. “Stupid Bakashi. Always making me say dumb things.” He pouts again, his nose in the air, pointedly not looking at Kakashi or anywhere in his direction lest he notice the red coloring his face. Somehow, Obito feels like he probably already knows. Kakashi’s always been like that.
“I didn’t make you say anything. That was all you, Obito.”
Obito squawks indignantly. He looks at his friend, his teammate, “you little-” he freezes mid-sentence because - because Kakashi is smiling. His mask discarded on his lap and he’s - he’s smiling. Soft, warm. Beauty mark. Beauty mark. Kakashi was wearing a mask to cover a beauty mark. God, what a bastard. Of course that’s what he was hiding. Obito says as much.
Kakashi laughs at his misery. Bastard. But then, then Obito catches a glimpse and pointy teeth and oh, oh those are fangs. “Teeth,” is all that Obito manages to get out in his distracted one track mind. Kakashi looks at him oddly. Yeah, cause he’s the weird one here. Fucking wearing a mask for years to cover up a beauty mark. Ugh. Pretty people.
“Teeth?”
Obito points at his own mouth. “Teeth,” he repeats.
“Oh.”
“I don’t know if I’m jealous or not yet,” Obito purses his lips and squints his eye as he zero’s in on Kakashi’s mouth.
Kakashi turns his head to the side like a confused dog. “What? No. Don’t look at me like that Bakashi. You’ve got fangs that’s like-” cool he wants to say. But he’s already reached his quota for embarrassing things for the day so he will decidedly not be saying that. “-different.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Before he can answer Obito’s form flickers. Shit. “I guess that means I gotta go,” he sighs, put-off. “Man, this sucks. Can’t the old man just kick the bucket already?” He leans his head against Kakashi’s shoulder purely because he can. Not like he’ll see much of the consequences anyway. Kakashi goes stiff. He’s all skin and bones. Pointy shoulders. “You should eat more. Not a very good pillow if I do say so myself.” Something in his stomach settles. He missed being able to touch and be touched. Madara and the Zetsu aren’t- They’re not like he is. They don’t have the need for touch in the same way he does. It’s grounding in a way words will never be.
His teammate ignores the last of his remark. “Do you have to leave?” Kakashi asks, a pale hand grabbing at Obito’s wrist, fingers curling around it securely. As if touch alone could anchor Obito down here with him and God, he really wishes it could. That he could stay and there would be no consequences.
“Yeah. I do.” Obito’s lips tug downward. He closes his eye and presses his forehead into Kakashi’s shoulder, sighing, warm air expelling and with it the good mood he had garnered with his friend. Before he knows it there’s a hand touching the ends of his hair. Almost experimentally in nature, the fingers run through the shaggy midnight-coloured locks. Obito flickers again.
“Guess I can’t keep ‘em waiting, hm?” He lifts his head off Kakashi’s shoulder, looking into obsidian and deep crimson. Kakashi squeezes his wrist, once, then twice. Warm. His hands are warm. “Don’t wait up, I’ll be late anyway,” he smiles kindly at his teammate. He gets up from the floor, looking to roam before finally fading into the other world to deal with whatever demands might be made of him.
“Will I see you again?” He hears as he begins walking. He looks over his shoulder and beams, wide and crooked, the way his smile has always been. His scars shift to accommodate.
“You think I’d leave you alone after everything? In your dreams Bakashi!” he waves a hand in goodbye and starts back down the path he’s resigned himself to. Back to Madara. Back to pretending like he’ll be his successor after Madara schemed his way into Rin’s early death.
Kakashi’s shoulders slump a fraction. Relief, he realizes. “Come back soon,” the other calls back to him.
“I will,” he doesn’t allow himself to look back. If he looks back now he’ll stay and he can’t do that until all the loose ends are wrapped up. He keeps walking. Only thinking of his promise of returning. He hopes, hopes, and hopes that that promise will hold true. That he’ll be able to keep visiting Kakashi like this and even if his teammate thinks it's a dream at least he’ll be able to see him. To interact, make sure he’s okay for himself. Silently, he prays that Madara won’t try to kill off Kakashi like he did with Rin.
The truth is, the visits are the only reason he’s hung onto a shred of sanity. Kakashi has helped him more than he’ll ever know. Even if Obito has to hold him close and then closer still when all his friend can keep muttering about through glassy eyes is how the blood won't come off and how sorry he is that he failed and how it's his fault. Fingers clinging to the fabric on Obito’s back, wound so tight it makes Kakashi’s knuckles turn white. A clothed face digging into the junction between his neck and shoulder.
It’s caring for Kakashi that keeps him going when his anger cannot. When the anger, the all-devouring hatred is too much for him to convert into will and fuel to keep his fire for continued survival under Madara’s watch going. Because if he dies then who will look after Kakashi? Rin can’t. Not anymore. She’s dead. An illusion of her wouldn’t fix anything. She’d still be dead. Madara is a deluded fool. A fool who would rather believe in beautiful lies than see the hideous truth.
He flickers on the black horizon of their shared world. A swirl of Kamui envelops his body and then he’s looking at the rough rock wall of the cave.
He’ll come back home. One day. He’ll make sure everyone will be safe and he’ll come home. He has to.
Kakashi is waiting for him. He hopes he won't be late this time.