The Sharingan.

Wasn't.

There.

Obito stared at the mirror blankly.

His knuckles turned white. With a crack, the ceramic sink fractured.

He stared at the mirror, those brown, brown eyes—his own eyes—mocking him with their utter mundanity, their utter uselessness.

Maybe it had been a fluke. Maybe the chemistry in his brain hadn't yet adjusted. Maybe, maybe, they were still there.

Gritting his teeth, he focused even harder, eyes drilling into his reflection with a burning intensity. He willed the three spinning tomoe to come out, demanded his eyes to obey.

Not even a speck of red.

With a snarl, he slammed a fist down on the counter. It shook, the pipes creaking. His old toothbrush and cup fell to the ground with a clatter.

"Godammit!" he hissed. And even his voice sounded wrong, too high, too young.

So close.

He had been so, so close to finally completing Infinite Tsukuyomi. The Bijū had been sealed, Madara had been revived, the Gedō Statue had been summoned. His goals had been hours, hours, away from completion, and then this had happened.

Fate hated Obito.

He exhaled, closing his eyes. He needed to calm down, and think.

This didn't spell the end for his plans. This was merely an irritating setback, a minor impediment in the grand scheme of things. Two decades of careful planning were not about to be eradicated by something as sudden and ridiculous as time travel.

He opened his eyes.

The dingy mirror towered over him, suffocating in its size. No, not just towering—taunting, it was taunting him, with his reflection and that dull, disgusting brown in full display, right in front of his face. On his face. And it was as though everything else was blurred out—everything else, but those eyes.

Suddenly, Obito found that he couldn't stand the sight of it.

He ripped a towel rack off the wall and hurled it at those cursed brown eyes.

The mirror shattered into a cloud of jagged shards, pieces raining down on the floor and on the countertop. The metal rack clattered to the sink.

Obito let out a bitter laugh. Here was typically the point after his outbursts where he would teleport away to his Kamui dimension to compose himself and gather his thoughts in an environment where he knew no one could disturb him.

Now, he would have to settle for the questionable privacy of this derelict apartment.

He shoved open the bathroom door and strode out, coming to a stop in front of a window. Stretching upwards onto the balls of his feet—damn this small body of his—he lifted the windowpane open and gazed out.

Konoha was awash in a sea of red and gold. Fallen leaves sprinkled the streets, and a hint of chill was in the air.

Autumn.

His face twisted into a humourless smile. Obito remembered autumn all too well. Autumn, a harbinger of change, and destruction, and the crisp scent of death.

And he knew from the discarded newspaper on the ground and the grim atmosphere hanging over the village that this was none other than that autumn.

Autumn, when Iwa had dropped through the Land of Fire's borders in a silent massacre, leaving only the ashen remains of bodies and villages behind.

Autumn, when Konoha had raised herself in righteous fury, shoving her quarrels with Suna aside—they were practically falling apart themselves, anyways, with an absentee Kazekage and feuding clans—to strike back at Iwa with a vengeance.

Autumn, when Team Minato had been ordered to destroy the bridge that was supplying Iwa with weaponry and rations. Leaving as a four-man cell, returning as three. When Obito's entire world had shifted on its axis.

He clenched his fists.

At least the gods had been kind enough to grant him a quick means to reawakening his Sharingan.

Once he had his eyes back, Obito would need to plan a return. Vague memories of having seen "Kamui" and "dimensional travel" in dusty old scrolls were hovering at the back of his mind. Of finding ancient, rambling records in the Uchiha shrine room, records that he had once thrown aside with a disbelieving scoff.

He almost laughed at the irony. If only he had known.

He glanced out over the village, at the hustling afternoon crowds and busy streets that seemed so normal and mundane that it felt wrong. For a long moment, Obito did nothing but stare, letting himself sink into his whirlpool of thoughts.

Konoha, Kakashi, Kamui. Infinite Tsukuyomi.

A cool breeze drifted in, tussling his hair and rustling the collar of his jacket.

Obito shook himself out of his thoughts. He had mulled long enough—it was time to take action.

His eyes narrowed. This little dimensional trip would not be taking any longer than it had to.

He leapt out the window and landed on the roof of his apartment, scanning the sprawl of buildings, trees, and people below him.

Now then.

Where the hell was Kakashi?

The Hokage Monument had three heads.

Not five.

Three.

Kakashi took in a shuddering breath. It was true. Obito, the bastard, was actually right.

They were in the past. The past. Or, at the very least, some strange dimension identical to it.

He almost couldn't believe it, but what else could it be? No genjutsu, dream, or hallucination could be this detailed, this real.

For a split second, he lost concentration as he jumped across the rooftops, badly misjudging the distance and nearly losing his balance.

He skidded to a halt and let out a quiet, harsh laugh.

Now that was something that hadn't happened in years. Who'd have thought having normal depth perception back again would be a burden?

He sat down on the rooftop, bringing his knees up to his chin. With his lanky limbs and small body, the action was familiar, automatic, and comforting.

This was as good a place as any to try and gather his thoughts into something coherent.

His eyes swept across the streets below—a distant cacophony of sights, smells, and sounds, all of it so achingly nostalgic, yet so alien all the same.

The businesses that were so familiar, but the buildings that were completely different; this, Kakashi reminded himself, was a time before everything had gone to hell. Before the Kyūbi attack. Before Orochimaru's attack. Before Pein's attack.

The faces, all too young and all too carefree. Was that a teenage Asuma and Kurenai laughing at the dango stand? Kakashi swallowed down a lump that was suddenly in his throat.

The sense of Konoha, of home. Part of him wanted to jump down, to feel the grainy wood under his fingers, and to look into his old friends' eyes—make sure they were really back, really real. Part of him couldn't believe his luck—Rin, Minato, Kushina, Asuma, Hayate, the Sandaime. All alive and happy, and Kakashi could ensure that the past would never repeat itself. A small, tentative smile made its way onto his face.

And part of him felt like a traitor.

His smile disappeared.

Naruto and Sakura were out there, somewhere, fighting for their lives and for the lives of every single person on the planet. Somewhere, just a simple Kamui away, was a world teetering on the brink of destruction at the hands of a madman.

And Kakashi was here, sitting complacently on a rooftop and lingering in old memories.

He gritted his teeth, straightened, and leapt back up. What was he doing? He needed to train. Familiarize himself with this body. Find Obito. Form a... tentative truce. Figure out how the hell they could return back to their own world.

He darted one last glance at the faces below, and left.

Obito stood at the edge of the third training ground, where the setting sun had already begun to cast long shadows across the grass. His gaze was focused on a particular section of the forest on the other side of the field—a patch of freshly splintered trees and charred wood.

Kakashi had not been idling around for the past two hours, either.

Obito walked over, noting the faint scent of lightning-induced ozone that was still lingering in the air. But he strode past the cracked trees, making his way into a small clearing.

His eyes hardened. A lone figure was standing in the very center, facing a worn, stone monolith. The Memorial Stone.

Of course the Memorial Stone.

Obito frowned. Kakashi and his guilt. Why the man blamed everything on himself, and how he could still chose to believe in the good of the world—even after everything that had happened to him—was beyond Obito's comprehension.

But he pushed the thoughts aside and walked into the clearing, coming to a stop a few feet on Kakashi's left.

He eyed Kakashi's unmoving figure.

"Somehow," Obito said, "I'm not surprised at all to find you here."

Kakashi didn't look up, his eyes locked onto the memorial.

"I would come here every day, you know. For hours at a time."

Obito looked away.

He knew. More than once, he had been present as well, a single red eye burning in the shadows of the trees. Watching, listening, learning, because Kamui was a jutsu made for espionage, and Kakashi told the gravestones secrets that foreign villages in wartime would have murdered for—ANBU identities, mission objectives, little details that made pulling the strings in Kiri all the more easier for Obito to accomplish.

In the beginning, he had been furious, of course. He had wanted to rip the lilies out of Kakashi's hands and burn them to ashes. But Obito had reminded himself that he wasn't Obito, he was Madara, and the plan—always the plan—came first. So he had watched Kakashi stand in the pouring rain for hours, listened to every single one of his regrets and apologies, learned about Kakashi's guilt-fraught grief. And over time, the pain, anger, and betrayal raging at the back of Obito's mind had begun to simmer down, instead hardening into something like a muted fury at the world.

That was when he had started paying more attention. He had stopped letting his emotions drive his decisions, and had realized that Kakashi was a goldmine of the most classified of secrets. Secrets of the like which only the Hokage's personal guard and former student would be privy to.

Secrets like Kushina's pregnancy.

Obito wondered if Kakashi knew that he was the one who had set loose the Kyūbi on Konoha. He wondered if Kakashi knew that it was Obito's actions that had killed Minato and Kushina. He wondered if this, too, was something Kakashi would somehow blame on himself.

He took in the motionless figure next to him. At thirteen, Kakashi had been short for his age; shoulders hunched, with his hands in his pockets, he looked small. Fragile.

Obito spoke, the words slicing through the silence like a fine blade.

"No matter how many times you speak to the gravestones, the dead can't hear you."

Kakashi turned to him with a piercing glance. "You weren't dead, were you?" He turned back to the Memorial Stone. "Then again, you might as well have been," he said, in a monotone voice.

"I found a new dream, Kakashi," Obito said, his voice tight. "I wanted happiness, not a hat soaked in blood and my face preserved on a mountainside of misery."

"So you left to go play Kage in Kiri instead of Konoha."

"I left so I could be that much closer to achieving real peace."

"And massacring entire clans and bloodlines was part of that peace."

"I did what I had to," Obito snapped.

"You're a hypocrite."

Obito's face twisted. "If I can permanently end all suffering, I will do it. By any means necessary."

Kakashi fell silent.

"I can't believe how much you've changed, Obito," he said quietly. Equal parts of disappointment, disbelief, and disgust coloured his tone.

Obito bit back a scathing retort. Arguing like this was meaningless. He took a slow breath. "I'm not a child anymore. Whatever idealized version of me that you had in your head, Kakashi, you should let it go."

"I thought I had," Kakashi said, looking at him. "It's a little difficult when you look and sound exactly like a child."

"Unfortunately, that can't be helped," Obito said, scowling. "This is... an unusual situation that we are in." He formed a few quick hand seals.

Kakashi's hand flew to the hilt of his tantō.

Obito snorted. "Calm down. If we plan to discuss time travel and Uchiha clan secrets, I should think a sound-concealing genjutsu would be the bare minimum."

The trees had ears, after all. If only Kakashi knew how much chaos his Memorial Stone talks had caused throughout the Five Great Nations.

Grudgingly, Kakashi relaxed his hands to his sides.

"So this really is time travel? I would have thought it was something more like dimension travel."

"Not standard dimension travelling, as our current appearances can attest to. But Kamui is both a space and a time ninjutsu—most likely, this is a combination of both." Obito looked off into the treeline, deep in thought. "Possibly a timeline branching off our original world, a parallel world created the moment we arrived. Or an alternate dimension, in an entirely foreign universe."

"In other words, you have no idea."

"If you have a better idea, by all means, enlighten me," Obito snapped.

"No, your theory makes sense," Kakashi said reluctantly. "Logically, this place can't be our past, but everything is identical all the same."

He eyed the characters engraved on the Memorial Stone. "Except your names aren't here yet," he added quietly.

Obito's eyes narrowed. "I hope you're not entertaining thoughts of staying."

Kakashi stiffened. "Of course not." His eyes tightened, and he looked away. "But they're alive. And it's real." He shot Obito a piercing look. "Don't tell me you don't feel anything at all. Because I won't believe you."

Obito clenched his jaw. "Sentimentality," he said. "This world is not ours. It would only be pointless to linger on its ghosts."

"Ghosts?" Kakashi's tone sharpened in incredulity. "These ghosts are a thousand times more real than any genjutsu illusion will ever be."

"And a thousand times more condemned," Obito spat. "This world is just as broken as ours, and all the more reason to leave."

"How can you—" Kakashi exhaled in frustration. He turned his head away. "So how do we get back?" he asked, voice clipped.

"We repeat what we did to get here. Recreate the double Kamui." Which, infuriatingly, meant that Obito couldn't operate on his own like he would have preferred. Worse, it had to be someone like Kakashi that he would be forced to cooperate with.

Kakashi gave him a stare. "How do you know that won't just land us in another new dimension?"

"...I don't," Obito said stiffly.

Even in the fading light, Obito could see Kakashi lock his jaw under his mask.

"However," Obito continued, his voice flat, "the Uchiha shrine room contains old scrolls on Kamui and time travel. Those would be our best hope."

"What? The Uchiha have writings on time travel?" Kakashi gave him a guarded glance. "How do you know that?"

"What is this, an interrogation?" Obito snapped. "If you must know, I liberated Uchiha artifacts in the aftermath of the massacre."

Kakashi's eyes hardened, and he looked back at the Memorial Stone. "Right."

Obito eyed the memorial. Though the Uchiha had died in their sleep, their deaths had still been "in service to the village". All the same, he doubted they had been given a place on the Memorial Stone, back in their own world.

"Well?" Kakashi prodded, breaking him from his thoughts. "What was in those scrolls on time travel? Don't tell me you didn't even read them," he said, incredulous.

Obito scowled. "I didn't read them because I assumed they were the mad ramblings of a lunatic."

Kakashi grimaced. "...At least this means that there's a precedent, I suppose. Another secret jutsu in the Mangekyō's endless arsenal, probably," he said flatly. "The Uchiha never fail to disappoint."

"My Mangekyō is also what will be bringing us back," Obito said in irritation. "Try to be less derisive." He kindly refrained from pointing out that all this had stemmed from Kakashi's attempt to try and flee a losing battle.

"Well, do you have it?" Kakashi asked, turning to him with a level look in his eyes. "The Mangekyō."

The tone of his question implied that he already knew the answer.

Obito let out a sharp breath. "No." The admission tasted bitter in his mouth.

"I thought not." Kakashi looked back down at the memorial, and closed his eyes briefly. "Next you'll tell me you don't even have the Sharingan, either."

Obito clenched his jaw, and didn't say anything.

"...What date is it? At least the mission will be soon." Kakashi gave Obito a tired glance. "You'll get your eyes soon enough." He said the last part with a tinge of bitterness.

Finding out the exact date should have been an immediate, obvious route of action after something such as time travel. Obito regretted not having done so earlier.

"Just ensure that you adhere to events as we remember them." He pursed his lips. "Only up until the point when I awaken my Sharingan, of course. I have no desire to be crushed under another rock saving you."

"Of course, of course." Kakashi let out a bitter laugh. "And what about awakening your Mangekyō?" Instead of looking at Obito, Kakashi's stare burned into the Memorial Stone, his eyes fixated on a name that wasn't yet there.

Obito bristled. "We'll worry about that later."

At that, Kakashi turned, pinning him with a steely gaze. "Just so you know, Obito." His voice was frigid. "I don't care if this isn't our world. I don't care if we'll be leaving. I'm not letting this Rin, or any Rin, die, ever again."

Obito gritted his teeth, wanting to point out that if he couldn't activate his Kamui, they wouldn't be leaving at all. That if Rin didn't... that there was no other way.

But he turned away. No good would come of a fight. Not when their brief cease-fire was tenuous enough as it was.

They would cross that bridge when they came to it. There was still plenty of time.

He stared out at the fields, his fingernails biting into his palms.

Kakashi straightened. "If that's all you needed to say, I'm going to train," he said abruptly. "You should do the same. You'll need to familiarize yourself with moving in a smaller body."

That was right. Obito had yet to properly test out the limitations of his current body.

Obito looked back at Kakashi. "You say that you'll be training as well?" He paused. It had been a trying day. If he was going to be stranded in this dimension for weeks, or even months...

"A spar," he proposed. "Seeing as our previous one ended on a rather incomplete note."

He would take whatever bizarre entertainment he could get. Even a watered-down, pale imitation of a fight—in a child's body, no less—was better than nothing.

Kakashi looked at him. "A spar."

"To start off our working partnership on a pleasant note." Obito gave him a bleak smile. "Worried I'll shove a kunai through your heart?"