Obito POV~

I could see them. Their voices were mere echoes, and their existence was nothing but a shadow, but I could see them.

I could see them, the collective strength behind the boy. By himself, he was formidable, but they gathered around him, lending him their strength and towering above all else.

An unfamiliar feeling corded my chest. 

Was this...regret?

No. Why would I regret anything I was doing?

Naruto Uzumaki watched me, no apprehension in his gaze. Nothing at all. After his deadpan, "Here we go again," we were silent, staring at each other. In our moment of collision, we connected in a way that rarely happened. I could feel it, the swirling chakra that floated around him like lingering storm clouds. It wasn't just chakra, though. They were collective minds, powerful and protective. And, from the way they flared, very angry.

"You want to be nobody." Uzumaki said, his voice betraying nothing. I didn't answer.

The boy tilted his head slightly and kept talking, his voice growing harder and faster, "You want to forget your past. You want to hide from it, and you want to recreate it in such a way that you only want to remember the good things and nothing else." his lip curled in a snarl, baring unusually sharp canines, "Well, guess what? Nothing will help you forget. Nothing is going to erase your pain. Your past will always catch up with you, sneaking up behind you and dragging you down with it. And your past will always run faster than you, so run all you want, but it's not going to stop until you turn around and face it."

I stayed silent, ignoring the uncomfortable tightness in the back of my throat. And the boy just kept going. 

"You can be nobody. I don't give a fuck about that. But you know what? You decided to keep running from your pain, even when it caught up with you and clawed your back. You wanted to keep running, because you don't want to face your pain. Well, WAKE UP!"

His voice echoed, thundering with the force and vigor of a hurricane. It sent vibrations running through my bones. His teeth were bared fully, now, his eyes as hard as a gem yet clear and deep as a pool that you couldn't see the bottom of.

"You left yourself to be completely broken by your past. You severed everything tying you to the life you wanted, YOUR LIFE. You GAVE UP. And now others will PAY for it." as quickly as the storm came, it calmed, deflating into a simmering cloud rather than a raging disaster. "I suppose I'm a hypocrite, considering how I pretty much did the same thing, but you know what makes us different, Obito?"

When I still didn't answer, he fixed those ocean eyes onto mine and reached out a hand, palm up and fingers clawed, almost as if he was offering a hand.

"Unlike you, I did what I did to help someone I cared about. Lie to yourself all you want, but everything you're doing now is selfish. You refuse to see what's right in front of you."

Anger, hot and scalding, snapped at my chest. "What's right in front of me? All there is to the world is pain and suffering. I'm not like my young, naive self! If I want to become Hokage, all I'll be doing is walking over the bodies of my comrades!"

The boy didn't speak for a moment. I realized what I'd said, and also forced my mouth shut. It had been years since I'd felt so many emotions at once. Years since I felt anything other than cold hatred, the blinding pain and burning resolve to end it.

Then, he leaned back slightly, no longer towering. The pressuring presence of the Beasts receded slightly. His control over their chakra was completely eased, unlike my control over the Jubi. Something in his eyes shifted slightly. 

I expected his input to be intrusive. I expected to wave it off as the misunderstandings of everyone else. I learned long ago not to be affected by petty taunts, because they would never understand, and whatever they said was utter nonsense. None of them could understand. 

Yet this boy.

"You know, we're not that different." he still hadn't looked away yet, still searching my eyes with that inscrutable gaze, "If you take into account our childhoods and how we grew up. Look at us, a couple of fuckups trying to convince the other that we're not fuckups." he let out a mirthless chuckle, "I don't want to kill you, Obito. I know it's cliche thing to say considering I might have to kill you anyways, but I don't want to. I hope you understand at least that much."

I don't know why his words were affecting me this way. I was angrier than I'd ever been. So goddamn angry that I couldn't even recognize the other feelings floating around inside me.

"I can make peace a reality." I found myself saying, "Don't you understand that?"

"Do you believe that?"

A beat, then I replied evenly, "Yes. I do."

Naruto POV~

I watched him carefully. There was blind conviction in his voice, but his face betrayed his doubt.

"I don't think you do."

Irritation flickered across his expression as he whirled on me, features lined with anger, "I've made it so far! I can end suffering! Why - " he shook his head.

There was a certain vulnerability on his face that came and disappeared in a flash, the kind that he'd been defending and hiding all this time. I finally saw behind the walls he built, a glimpse of the lost, hurting man who was desperately clinging to the last bit of hope he had.

He thought it was his only chance. 

"Obito." I said, getting his attention. The anger had been wiped off, the guarded expression returning. "You're putting yourself in shackles, keeping hold of everything inside you."

Memories flashed through my head as I said that. Villagers shouting at me to get lost, people whispering about me behind my back, living every day in fear, coming home to seeing the word DEMON written on my walls, being called a demon, nothing but a demon - 

I spread my arms, and Kurama's chakra, warm and light and so full of love, drifted above me.

"Free yourself, Obito."

Obito POV~

Free yourself, Obito...

Obito..

OBITO

A memory broke through the surface.

Rin and Kakashi. Minato-sensei. Little things, sparring and team meetings and such. Big things, Kakashi and I on our last mission together, on our way to save Rin.

Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.

Right. I said that, didn't I? 

It felt like a lifetime ago.

My mouth was moving, the words feeling distant as I said, "I have merged with the Jubi. I have reached enlightenment. I am no longer human. I'm the second Sage of Six Paths."

He simply tilted his head. "Are you, now? Last I remembered, you were just a guy people called Obito."

"I - "

"Just because you merged with the Ten-Tails doesn't mean you're automatically superior." he waved me off, almost dismissive, "It's like giving a child a weapon. You're super strong now, but I can sense it. You have no control over it." he sighed, "You're not fooling anyone, not even yourself."

His words, his tone, they should have made him seem like he was belittling me. They should have appeared condescending. 

They should not make me feel like the exact opposite, and they should not affect me the way they were.

For whatever reason, the boy's eyes raked over my face and he didn't stop talking. "You can claim whatever you want. You can scream to the world whatever bullshit you want, which you've already done, actually. You can tell Kakashi that you hate him, that you never want to see him again, but that's not true. You're suppressing the Ten-Tails. If you want to use its full power, you would give it a little more leeway to consume you. But you didn't." he sighed again, "You still care. Don't try to say that you don't because I know you do. Everything you say is a lie, at this point, and they've all been lies for years now." a pause, then, "Whoever Rin is, you cared about her a lot, didn't you? I'm sure she wanted the best for you. Not this."

There he was, bringing up those past wounds with no hesitation, intrusive yet at the same time not feeling like a stranger at all.

Was he telling himself this along with me?

"'Don't act tough and hide your wounds, you know I'm always watching.' isn't that something she said?"

The pain flooded over me again, hot and blinding and now all-encompassing.

Something small and hurting blossomed up inside me from where I kept it bottled, and the moment broke.

I felt the moment the Ten-Tails was ripped from me. It burned like nothing else, tearing out a piece of my own self with it, but it just left behind an empty shell of a man. That's all I ever will be.

No, Naruto Uzumaki would say, You can be more.

I think I found out what made him feel less intrusive. 

He reminded me of Rin. Just barely, but enough.

The space around me rippled and faded, and I was back in reality. Course, dusty air ran in and out of my lungs like sandpaper, and I could barely see through the fog in my eyes. My whole body ached and hurt, and I could feel myself dying.

He succeeded. I was no longer the Jubi Jinchuriki. 

I felt I shouldn't have been so relieved at that, but I was so tired. So tired of fighting.

My vision cleared slightly, enough for me to notice the figure standing over me. There was no need for me to focus too intently on the face to recognize him, if the silver hair was anything to go by. 

I was talking, then, my hoarse voice squeezing out the words, "Rin was my world. Losing her was like losing my life. She...she was everything to me. Then she was gone, ripped away. My world became a black hell." 

Kakashi didn't reply. After a moment his voice, sounding so tired, said, "It's over, Obito. For good this time. The edo tensei is gone. The Jubi will be resealed. All your allies have been eliminated. There's nothing more you can do to carry out your Infinite Tsukuyomi."

He was right. Thanks to Uzumaki, they have blocked me at every turn.

For some reason, that didn't bother me quite so much.

My body was failing. Whether or not I would survive after this was a mere gamble, perhaps a stroke of luck. How long until my luck ran out, I didn't know. I've already survived one supposedly unsurvivable situation. 

I felt it, then. The inky substance seeping up from the ground and wrapping around my skin like sticky glue. 

Naruto POV~

The Jubi was gone. Whatever Obito had summoned was a small compared to the actual Ten-Tails, not even having a full portion of any of the Bijuu. The separation of its chakra was relatively easy, if energy-consuming, since the bits of Tailed Beast chakra in it were already straining to separate. Once they did, they slotted in easily with the chakra of the Bijuu that I already had, slipping back in with them like dumping a pitcher of water in a river.

I looked around. Obito was defeated. He was alive, still, since the Ten-Tails was unlike other Bijuu, but he could no longer fight us. He had no chance.

Yet I still felt like I was missing something...

I stood up from where I was sitting cross-legged on the ground, now confident that the Ten-Tails was no longer a threat, and hopped over to where Kakashi was kneeling next to Obito. Obito lay flat on the ground, a dazed, foggy look on his face as he spoke to Kakashi.

I was drained, both mentally and physically. Kurama hadn't expended this much chakra in years. Now that the fight was over, the Bijuu no longer felt it necessary to feed me chakra, so they withdrew their power. I could still feel it humming in the background, the link still connecting me to all of them, but their consciousnesses weren't with me anymore, and they wouldn't be until Kurama and I contacted them again.

Kurama sighed. "I'm beat. This Obito guy is giving me a headache."

'Not anymore.'

"Who knows? We might be surprised."

'Don't jinx it.'

Turns out, he jinxed it.

Just as I reached Kakashi and Obito, a black, gooey substance began to spread over Obito's body. Obito noticed it and stiffened, but he was weakened and none of us were prepared in time to react. The thing (Black Zetsu?) spread over his left side, encasing his entire face and only leaving his Rinnegan eye exposed.

"I am Madara's will incarnate." he said, his voice gravelly and so...not human, "Obito, you have outlived your usefulness."