It was with some confusion and no small amount of annoyance and alarm that he realized that he'd accidentally delayed his own release from the hospital.

"Are medics always like this?" he asked his roommate in an attempt to distract himself, leaning back against the raised portion of the bed and carefully folding his arms so he wouldn't tangle or be tempted to yank off the wires he was attached to. He was now connected to several machines via sticky-dots all over his person, with a crown of them circling his head.

It wasn't like the whole ward was in a panic over him or anything, but the medics who had been coming in and out of his room were now gone. They'd all vanished into a separate room to go over the readings as if he were the biggest medical mystery to end up in their grasp.

"Well, this is what usually happens when you hide big things like this from them." The man offered sagely. The skin around his eyes crinkled, giving away his amusement with a grin kicking up a corner of his mouth.

"I wasn't exactly hiding it." Obito snorted, smoothing a hand over his own mouth so he wouldn't accidentally mirror the expression. "I said my memories were all scrambled, why are they acting like they just noticed? Got my hopes up for nothing. I want out." He grumpily kicked the tangling blanket off of his foot and accidentally tapped Lumpy's leg with the sole of his weird shoe.

His toes were exposed.

"Maybe because you were acting so calm about it no one realized how bad it actually was?" Lumpy theorized, turning a page of the medical journal he was holding without really looking at it.

"It's not like panicking would change anything." Obito sighed, leaning over his elbow to peer at it, adjusting his sunglasses as they tried to slip off his face. Lumpy helpfully brought the book closer and tilted it for his viewing pleasure. "… is that supposed to be legible?" He heard his own faint voice ask when he saw what the man was apparently reading.

It may as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

A long moment passed where it seemed like Lumpy was debating with himself between keeping his elbow where it was or moving it. Almost like he was trying to figure out a way to get an arm around him without disrupting the wires. Then Obito felt himself scooped up off the mattress and popped back down on the guy's lap, tucked up against his chest with the book now held in front of them.

"Well, it's only natural to have trouble reading kanji at your age!" Lumpy's replied breezily, ignoring the unimpressed look Obito was levelling at him like a champion. "Want me to teach you how to read?"

"Do I have a choice?" he asked tartly, carefully tucking his own elbow in from where he was pretty sure Lumpy was still injured.

"… we could always cuddle?"

OoO

Reading became easier the longer they spent going over the medical journal.

Obito wasn't reading fluently by any stretch of the imagination, (which might have had something to do with the reading material), but by the time they heard familiar voices outside their room he was starting to recognize a few of the words before Lumpy read them out loud.

"—that much chakra swimming about in his head I'm surprised he isn't a vegetable let alone amnesiac, count your miracles. The best I could do is drain some of the overflow, but the brain is delicate, and I don't think I have to tell you how risky that particular procedure would be, especially at his age. Were this some kind of Genjutsu breaking him out of it would be simple, but this is mental and no one knows the mind better than the Yamanaka." The blonde medic's voice sounded through the partially open door. "If you are absolutely opposed to having them help sort out his memories you can always wait it out and see if it happens on its own, his body might reabsorb some of it."

From the sound of things Senju Tsunade was offering a treatment that had the potential to 'restore' his memories and was being stonewalled. Why wasn't Mikoto jumping for it? The Clan had been so hot under the collar for a genius to show off that they'd almost driven him insane, what could possibly make her so hesitant to take the medic up on that? Fortuitous turn of events, this was falling in line with his plans, but... was the clan worried that word of what had happened would get out? Or did the Uchiha think he'd be that much easier to control with his brain scrambled?

It could be a combination of all that and more.

"How long would that take?" Mikoto asked, and he almost had to hold his breath. It was as if she were actually considering letting him go along without the treatment for his supposed amnesia. "For him to filter through the chakra naturally?"

Lumpy's arms tightened around him for a fraction of a second and the man's abruptly tense body locked up. A tight expression crossed his face, fixating on the door with narrowed eyes and a low, nearly inaudible growl rumbled through his chest.

"Ssh!" Obito hissed, reaching up a thankfully free hand to slap a hand across the man's mouth. "I want to hear what they're saying!"

"Forry" Lumpy croaked around his hand, tightly corded muscles slowly relaxing as the sharp gaze and expression smoothed, evening out along with the tension in his body. Obito wiped his hand on the man's shirt, disguising the movement as reassuring pats and ignored the gentle pats he got on the head return, attention already fixated back on the conversation. He was going to have to ignore the misplaced mothering whenever it happened. The man needed to project his paternal instincts in the direction of his own kid, where it belonged.

"Six to ten years." The medic replied brutally, apparently as unimpressed with Mikoto's reluctance as Lumpy was. "If you're lucky. The chakra escaped the circulatory system through the broken channels around his eyes and saturated his brain almost completely. You can thank his pedigree that he's even remotely capable of coherent thought. If he didn't have the capacity for it he would be a lump of living flesh right now. Carefully consider your next move, Uchiha and be reasonable. He's eight years old, how much could he possibly know about whatever your Clan thinks they're hiding? Realize that if you set a precedent like this, then imagine what your clan could do to your son."

The hair raised along Obito's arms at Mikoto's in-drawn breath, clearly audible in the sudden silence and his heart started to beat a little faster.

"Okay," Mikoto relented, voice falling flat. "Call the—"

"Tsunade-Sama! Sorry I'm late!" A male voice cut in, sounding a little out of breath. "I was in the greenhouses when I got the message, the runner you sent fell through the skylight and got a face full of Berry Bite. Had to drop the idiot off in Emergency before getting here. Remind me to bill him for the repairs?"

"Sure." The medic answered cheerfully and then, "Oh, sorry Uchiha-sama, did I give you the impression I was asking for permission?" she asked, her tone dripping with sarcastic sweetness, before hardening into something cold, "It was going to happen whether you liked it or not."

"You don't have that kind of authority—!" Mikoto started hotly.

"I have more authority to make that decision than you ever will." Tsunade cut in savagely. "Who do you think has more standing? An active soldier who is also the head of the hospital, a student of the sitting Hokage and grandchild of the First, or a citizen that gave up their position as a ranked officer in a time of encroaching war because of clan politics, who is now of precious little value beyond her ability to breed?"

"This is a clan matter—"

"That was made into a village matter the second he stepped into the hospital!" Tsunade snarled, "Count yourself lucky, If you'd have refused I would have sent you out of the window like the last Uchiha I had in here, pregnant or not. Your clan's abysmal training of your so-called prodigies has given rise to more mental instability and field-deaths than any other clan in this village. Also mind your tone little girl, you're stepping on my last nerve and I'm not exactly feeling generous right now, not when faced with someone who would push a child so hard it brings them to the brink of brain death. On that note, did you know a brain dead woman can still give birth with the proper medical attention? Give me a reason."

"… holy shit." Lumpy whispered.

"I, um… T—Tsunade-sama?" The male voice their medic had greeted earlier stuttered, "I—I could come back another time?"

"Oh, no need for that." Tsunade replied, "This young lady was just leaving."

"What? No! He was supposed to be released today!"

"That was on the assumption that I was treating his eyes, charka exhaustion and the backlash. Funnily, when I went to collect his file to check it against what medications he might be allergic to, I found out how many times he has lost consciousness in the past year. He has an underlying condition I still need to treat. Run along now, I'll send a message to your Clan when he's ready to be released." The medic finished bitingly. "Nohara, escort this civilian from the hospital."

"Y—yes, Tsunade-sama!" Nohara Miina replied sharply. "Please come this way, Uchiha-san."

The door rattled and Lumpy brought the book they had been reading up like they were still in the middle of their impromptu lesson, but he ignored the cue to play along and kept his eyes on the door. They were going to try and treat his amnesia now?

Senju Tsunade walked in, lips snarled furiously. "Goddamned Uchi—".

Snapping gold eyes met his.

"—ha… don't you sassy eyebrow me brat, I just saved you from a lot of unnecessary stress."

"My hero?" he tried, biting his lip against an abrupt grin even as his heart began to thump pathetically against what must be coming. They were going to call his bluff before he could use it and learn about everything else he now had in his head. Maybe he could delay it? God, he was starting to panic, good thing the woman was so distracting. Distraction. Yes, he needed that. Pretty blonde medic in front of him was distracting. Smart, strong, sassy and beautiful? Life really wasn't fair sometimes. "I can only reward such bravery with a kiss!"

"Then where's my kiss?" Lumpy teased, reminding Obito of his existence. The man then leaned over his shoulder, smushed his cheek up against his and made the loudest and most obnoxious kissy noises he'd ever heard.

"You make a terrible wing-man." Obito told him, turning red with effort as he unsuccessfully tried to shove the man's face away without hurting him. The only thing he accomplished was successfully distracting himself from his oncoming panic attack. "I gave you my pillow, what more do you want?"

"… cuddles?"

"Go cuddle your son!"

"I can't, he's on a mission! You're all I've got!"

A clipboard cracked down sharply against Lumpy's head and the man let go with a drawn out whine to cradle his stinging head. "If you burst your stitches acting stupid, I'm going to inject you with a paralytic and you will rest that way until you're healed. That means catheter valves, sponge-baths and your choice of either IV fluid or baby food." The gold-eyed medic threatened as she extricated Obito from the man's lap.

Lumpy twitched, laid back on his side and very slowly pulled his blanket up over his head to huddle under it in an apologetic and meek show of compliance. Tsunade snorted, set Obito and the paper bag he hadn't noticed she'd been carrying down on the edge of the bed and began removing the sticky-dots and wires from his person. Lumpy reached out a time or two to swiftly and silently remove a sticky-dot for her, but she rolled her eyes let it go. When the man's hand inched for the paper bag, presumably to take a peek, the woman snapped it out of reach and the hand pulled sharply back under the blanket like a shot.

"Behave, or I'll have someone go get that paralytic. That's his medication, not yours. No touchy."

"Yes sir!"

Someone knocked on the door to get the attention of the occupants and the owner of the stuttering voice from earlier was revealed. A teenager with chin length, pale blond hair pulled up in a short ponytail and blue eyes smiled uncertainly at them. He looked like a fourth year, if he was any older than fifteen Obito would eat his weirdly shaped shoes without sauce. "So, Tsunade-sama, who was the patient you wanted me to look at?"

Lumpy's head popped out of his cocoon of blanket. "Inori! Look at you, I didn't know you'd learned to mind-walk already! Good on you!"

"Hatake-sempai! Not you I'm guessing?" the boy laughed.

Mind walk? Was that this world's version of Legilimency? Nothing to worry about, what was he even freaking out over? He could defend his own mind, he knew how! Even if it had taken him a while, he'd learned how to do it eventually. If he could keep Voldemort out of his mind he could do the same with a teenager. It would probably be easier now, without the Horcrux inside him giving the other party an unfair advantage.

"So, completely amnesiac or are your memories scrambled?" The teen asked.

"Like an egg." Harry agreed with the last one, nervously shrugging a shoulder and pulled a bit of his hair over his forehead. "… bit of both? I don't know." His fingers found a sticky dot that had detached from its wire and he distracted himself by pulling it away from his skin. When the boy smiled disarmingly in Obito's direction it did absolutely nothing to calm his nerves down, in fact it did the opposite as he was quick to note that the irises of his eyes didn't have pupils.

He allowed his gaze to skitter away from making full eye contact and searched for somewhere to discard the sticky-dot when help came from behind him. Lumpy's hand snaked out, took it from him and flicked it in the direction of the blonde medic, who was half turned away and distracted with the clipboard in her hand.

The sticky-dot stuck to her ass.

Inori flailed silently, blue eyes nearly bugged right out of his skull and he just barely caught himself from reaching over to remove it for her. Harry had to turn quickly and slap hands over Lumpy's mouth to muffle the man's stupid giggling with both hands, "Are you insane?!", he hissed.

The sounds of Lumpy's stuttered and smothered mirth caught the woman's attention despite Harry's best efforts.

"What are you— Uchiha, ignore it." The medic rolled her eyes, "You can strangle him later." Harry was picked up and set back down on the edge of the bed facing her and Lumpy's giggles continued on uninterrupted. "Yamanaka, get to it, you have other patients to get to after this."

"Y—yes Tsunade-sama!" Inori stuttered, hands sharply flipping through a series of signs, even as his eyes strayed down to the sticky-dot as she turned away to pick up the clipboard again. Wholly distracted, the boy didn't notice Harry's eyes widening in alarm as he reached forward with a glowing blue palm.

Right over where his scar would have been.

At the touch of a foreign mind brushing up against his own Harry felt his hands move without conscious input. His lungs expanded and filled with air and chakra. An internal pressure built up inside him.

Lumpy abruptly stopped giggling.

"Oh shit!" Inori ripped his hand away and staggered back, blue eyes snapping away from the medic's backside and to Harry's reddening face. Harry slapped his hands over his mouth to stop the force building up behind his teeth and Tsunade whipped around, lowered her clipboard and he saw her honey-gold eyes widen before the pressure became too much

Sheer reflex took over.

Harry felt his fingers move to pinch the thread of flamelets that were already spilling out of his mouth. His throat, lungs and abdomen screamed in protest as he struggled to control it and pull it back. There was a deafening bang as something broke behind him and shards of glass and brick flew forwards into the room. A hard arm grabbed him around the waist and pulled him back and the shaky control he had was lost. The heat he'd barely been containing was pushed out of his gut and lungs from the pressure and he choked out a gigantic, painfully bright ball of flames that rocketed forwards into the space he'd been occupying and—

Fit almost perfectly in the hospital room they'd been in and stayed there.

He watched in horrified awe as the flames rolled in around themselves, charring the remaining three walls, ceiling and floor. Ash billowed out of room in blooming plumes for what seemed like an eternity before the massive fireball started to shrink in on itself until finally the flames curled out of existence, leaving behind hissing trails hot smoke that dissipated to the winds.

The arm around his waist slackened, giving him enough room to move. He looked back to see that the person who had grabbed him had been Lumpy, saving him yet again from a hell of his own making, though someone else in turn had saved him. Senju Tsunade had the man by his waist and had a white faced Inori tucked under her other arm. The medic dropped Inori to the grass and set Lumpy down, who immediately flopped sideways over onto grass.

They'd apparently exited through the brand-new hole in the hospital and the window frame was lying not too far away in pieces, looking like someone had kicked it clean off the wall.

"TSUNADE-SAMA!". Someone hanging out of a side-building window screamed in concern.

"What was hell was that?!" Came a voice came from one of the other hospital rooms.

"Oh my god! Are we being attacked?!" Another voice chimed in from the street and other voices clambered and spoke over each other. Heads popped out of hospital windows and there were rubbernecking individuals popping up seemingly everywhere, including a group of several cloaked individuals who touched down on the grass in a protective formation around them.

Harry's chest clenched and he hiccoughed hard. Sparks escaped, red hot and glowing from between his lips. He hissed, coughing and hiccupping again and again as more embers filled the air until he sucked in a deep breath and dropped his forehead against Lumpy's shoulder. He tried to suppress his lurching diaphragm even as his lungs wheezed and hitched, and the insides of his mouth burned with each heated puff of his cheeks and jerk of his chest.

That had not been the plan. He'd meant to use Occlumency, not burn the goddamned hospital down! His body had basically moved on its own without any cooperation from him whatsoever.

He had just breathed fire! He wasn't a dragon! He had no business breathing fire! That had to have been the worst case of accidental magic he'd ever done, one-upping the Aunt Marge debacle by a fair margin, or comparable to casting spells with the Elder Wand, it had felt that automatic.

A gentle touch and a green glow soothed his throat, steadied his breathing and took the sting away from the inside of his mouth, lips, fingers and washed over his tight face.

"Yamanaka?"

The teenager, who was face-down on the grass, jerked and snapped up to attention. "Y—yes Tsunade-sama?"

"What is the number one rule for dealing with traumatized patients while they're in the hospital?" Tsunade asked lightly, scooping him up into her arms to smooth a hand down his spine. Over her shoulder Harry saw the teenager turn green.

"D—don't use any sudden movements and—and use chakra-binds when possible? I—but Tsunade-sama, he's an Academy student! I didn't think—"

"Yamanaka. You have until I get these two settled into a new room to run to the Military Police Headquarters and back. I need his personnel file, arrest record and time-sheets, all of them. You are then going to go get one of your more competent cousins and come back with them. Start running."

The teenager was gone so fast he left leaves behind in his wake.

Tsunade clicked her tongue. "Should have asked him to get your Academy records while I was at it." The woman grumbled almost to herself as she slid a foot under Lumpy's limp form to hook him up under her arm like a sack of potatoes. The man whimpered and his silver hair dragged along the ground as the medic turned and walked for the building they'd just left.

Harry dizzily pressed a hand to his forehead as black dots started to dance across his vision. The odd thing about the incident was that something inside him was saying that the fireball… shouldn't have taken enough out of him to make him this close to blacking out. It wasn't like he'd used up all of his reserves.

Lumpy was spirited away by other medics as soon as Tsunade stepped through the hospital doors, laid out on a proper gurney and wheeled away before Harry even realized what was happening. He was too busy with the remnants of the fireball he'd spat out into the hospital, it was still making his breath catch and his lungs wheeze, the only thing he could really concentrate on was the hand pulsing with chakra in between his shoulder blades. There was no doubt in his mind that she was numbing his pain, it had stopped the second she'd gotten her hands on him.

She didn't set him down when the medics brought another gurney and walked right past it instead. "Prepare a treatment room—" She started, long strides taking her past the crowd of onlookers. "—and another ward. I need this brat's Academy records, another copy of his most recent chart, his medication, a set of chakra binds and some sedatives. Also a pair of tinted goggles. Who's stupid idea was it to give him sunglasses? He's eight years old; of course he's going to lose them the second he moves."

Harry would have been offended, but when he swiped the back of his hand against his face it came away wet with tears. Here he'd been assuming he'd gotten ash in his eyes.

"Oh for— gauze and padding now!" The woman snapped at a nearby medic, who tossed the woman what she needed from a pouch at her hip without protest. Harry was sat down on a bench in the hallway and his medic skillfully bandaged his eyes shut one handed, the other was glowing and planted firmly around the back of his neck. "You have no common sense." She told him shortly as she tucked the end into the band she'd wrapped around his head. "You're supposed to close your eyes and avoid light when it hurts, not sit and stare at it."

"… I forgot?"

Tsunade paused in the middle of setting him back against her shoulder. "Was that an amnesia pun?"

His lips twitched as he considered it. "I don't know, is it—" a sharp hiccough cut through the joke and he nearly choked on it.

"You have no right to be this adorable after the stunt you just pulled, Uchiha."

"I'm sorry for my reflexes?" he tried when he got his breathing under control, trying not to look obviously relieved that he'd managed to protect his mind. He found it a lot easier when a stronger hiccough shuddered through him. It wiped the burgeoning smirk off his face and he had to smother a cough into his hand, then hiss when his palm burned. "H—how was I supposed to know I could breathe fire!?"

"Stop that!" The woman scolded, pulling his hand away from his mouth. "How are you even an Uchiha? You're making jokes, flirting and everything!"

"I might be a fake? I could have replaced the real Uchiha Obito and no one would ever know!"

"Try telling that one to the ward you just destroyed."

"… sorry. About the hospital room… I didn't—I really didn't know that was going to happen. I felt his touch in my head and my body just moved on i… its—"

Holy shit, what had he just admitted to?!

Fingertips pressed his lips closed against the jaw-drop before it could happen.

"Don't try apologizing for that until we understand exactly what happened there. Even if you had done that on purpose, you're listed as Military Police in your file. You should have been wearing chakra binds to prevent something like this in the first place. If you think you're the only patient that's ever set anything on fire in here, you're sadly mistaken. My old teammates got into a fight in here one time and broke through three floors of wards, burned another two and nearly killed every patient in those rooms at the same time."

"… oh." Okay, she hadn't caught his slip-up just then. Or had she?

"Good, now you're going to feel a sharp pinch and after that you're going to feel sleepy. Count backwards from ten."

"Hang on, what—hey!" he yelped as he felt the promised pinprick in the crook of his right arm not even a second later. "That's not fair!" he complained as his head immediately started to swim, reaching to touch the area. A circular band-aid was already in place, his medic was fast! "That's nowhere near… enough time… to… count…"

The last thing he heard was Tsunade's amused voice as he flopped bonelessly in her arms.

"That was the point."

OoO

Dark like the inside of the cupboard under the stairs, enveloping and suffocating at the same time as it was protective and concealing. The flooring he was standing on was familiar, grey and well-worn flagstones. The gritty detail of the world around him was closer to the real Kings Cross then his vision of death, only shrouded in a veil of shadows instead bathed in clean white. The lights were off, the tracks were empty and the platform was deserted save for a single soul.

The man stumbled around the platform like he was blind, hands reached slightly out in front of him and he was stepping cautiously. Long sandy-blond hair was tied up in a high ponytail. A bandana with a metal plate set into it tied around his forehead. Dark blue long sleeved turtle neck shirt and dark pants with bandage wrapped around the ankles. Toeless shoes. Equipment pouches strapped to his right leg and hanging from his belt.

He was so gloriously out of place that it was immediately obvious what was going on. Lumpy had mentioned 'Mind-walking', though he hadn't thought the ability would be quite so literal. "Poor little guy." The man muttered to himself, apparently caught up in the atmosphere of his surroundings. "No wonder he's having memory issues."

Harry watched the man promptly trip over a bench and wondered if he was putting on a show or if he really was as blind as he was acting. Either way, he wasn't welcome.

If this was the world of his own mind then he was its master, any unwelcome guests had better be prepared to treated like Voldemort at his worst. Forcefully shoving at the foreign presence in his mind he put every bit of strength he had in him into it.

"Get out."

The man cringed back as the shadows around him thickened, coalescing against him in a thick black curtain but he remained unmoved, sticking surely to the ground with a thin layer of blue. One of the glass shards embedded in Harry's body pulsed. Chakra, it said with certainty, and the wound the memory was embedded in bit deeper, seeking to sink into his core.

The tee-shirt and jeans he was wearing rippled and was replaced with a painfully familiar uniform torn in exactly the same place and stained with blood everywhere he had memory shards sticking out of him. He staggered and lost height, then gained it back again. He was a jagged mess of Harry and Obito but was stubbornly clinging on to Harry because he needed to. Harry was the one with knowledge of how to shield his mind from intruders. Obito might be better at pretending everything was fine, but Harry knew how to deflect questions and fake honesty.

Most of all, being Obito was too painful right now. Thank every god in existence their tempers had merged or he would not be holding himself together as well as he was. Uchiha Obito didn't hold onto his temper, he let it out in short, calculating moments of pure spite that let him bleed it off over time. Harry Potter's anger was unhealthy in comparison and the only way he'd known how to deal with it was bottle it up and then let it all out in one big explosion. The boy he'd become might not have let that side of himself out very often, but it existed and he'd learned how to deal with negative emotions at the feet of the best.

The Uchiha as a whole were the crowned and coronated rulers of being mean and were masters at spiteful pettiness. Obito's temperament under pressure was something he had no problem adopting, he was going to need it if he was going to survive living this life.

"Obito-kun?" The man who had entered his mind without permission called out, projecting non-threatening calm towards the wall he would have walked into had Harry not opened his mouth. "My name is Yamanaka Inoichi, pardon the intrusion, but I was sent here by your medic, Senju Tsunade. Apparently you're having trouble with your memory?"

"I don't recall asking for help with that." He bit back dryly, shoving a bit harder. He wasn't going to let the pressure slip in the slightest, regardless of the blatant name-drop. Yes, in the short time he'd gotten to know her, Senju Tsunade had earned herself his respect as a person. That didn't mean he was just going to trust everyone who brought her name up.

The man's body shifted backwards a fraction until the blue glow at the man's feet brightened and any backward progress was halted. "Oof~!" the man braced himself against the invisible force with two arms up in front of his face and pressed forwards again, still walking towards the wall as if he had no idea where Obito himself was standing. "From what I hear you don't recall a lot of things."

"Well, that's just rude." Harry snorted, a part of him unwillingly amused by the man's banter. "Why are you rubbing that in my face?"

"Someone has to." Came the man's aggrieved sigh, "Who did you think was going to pick up the slack? You sent Inori packing with his tail between his legs; he looked ready to piss himself when he came to get me."

"… he didn't tell you the whole story, did he?"

"Apparently not. Why don't you tell me what he left out?" the man offered, straining forward while not-so-subtly trying to build a rapport.

Harry allowed the pressure to lessen for a heartbeat and as expected the man lunged forward, satisfyingly slamming face-first into the wall. He allowed himself a bitter smirk as he reapplied the pressure and relished the pained groan. If he couldn't shove the man out of his mind, then at the very least he could trap him to mitigate the damage. "Go back and find out for yourself. Also, you might want to watch out, there's a wall there."

"Structure?!" The man nasally exclaimed to himself, feeling along the wall he was now plastered to, and swiped a hand across his nose, then sniffed to clear it. "You're certainly more advanced than I gave you credit for." The man was still acting like he was blind, fingertips going back to tracing along the brickwork like he was examining it through touch alone. Was he simply not seeing through the darkness like he was? "… it's very dark in here isn't it?" The man asked seemingly out of nowhere, possibly probing for some kind of reaction.

Harry shrugged silently. It wasn't that dark for him.

"Ooh, no reaction? That was interesting." The man mused to himself. "Strong against suggestions too? Making my job easy, aren't you?" The man asked out loud, struggling against the pressure that had him plastered against the wall until his back was flat against it and he could now look out.

Did the man have any idea how much he was giving away? Or was that another way of making him think he wasn't actually seeing anything.

"Could this be an effect of having awakened the Sharingan?" The man pitched his voice to project, scanning his surroundings.

Abruptly the man's eyes met his, unerringly finding his in the darkness.

"Well, hello there Obito-kun." The man smirked, "Did you know your eyes glow in the dark?"

Clever bastard. He wasn't used to this kind of mental probing. Snape, Dumbledore and Voldemort had always been after information, and he knew how to block people from getting to it. There was no escaping this, his physical body was drugged, he wasn't capable of pushing the man out of his mind and now the man was influencing the way he was thinking just by talking.

Now instead of the relative comfort of the darkness he felt exposed, not completely, but how much longer could he hide himself?

Could he run?

"Please don't run, I'm not here to hurt you, I just want to help. I'll just keep finding you anyway." The man answered the unasked question and Harry's eyes snapped back to his, having unwittingly turned them to the exit.

"In this darkness?" The question was rhetorical. Of course he wouldn't even get any peace in his own goddamned mind.

"If I have to."

Typical.

The man's pale, sky blue, pupil-less eyes never left his. Meeting the glare he was on the receiving end of with steady determination, like he was waiting out the inevitable. Harry envied the man's ability to hold his gaze, there was no way he'd be able to do the same with another Uchiha…

A realization struck him.

"My eyes glow in the dark?"

"Very clearly."

The Sharingan. He might not be able to use it in the real world, but in trying to find him in the darkness, the man had given him an ability that would otherwise be out of reach. Focusing on the man pinned to the wall his eyesight sharpened, and the shadows moved thickly over the man's eyes, smothering his eyesight.

If he'd been faking not to be able to see, he certainly wouldn't be able to now. If the only thing he could see in the darkness was his eyes then even that was too much. Who knew if the next words out of the man's mouth would make the lights come back on? Inoichi would see everything and Kings Cross looked nothing at all like anything Obito had seen of the Ninja world.

"You clever little bas—br—boy!" Yamanaka Inoichi swore. "I'm here to help you!"

"Yes, thank you for your hard work. You can go now."

"I can't do that, I promised Tsunade-sama I'd help you with your memories. The darkness is smothering you, you're going to need help with that at least."

Gaining the upper hand did wonders for his confidence in being able to handle this situation. So long as the man saw nothing of his surroundings it would be… not safe, certainly, but not immediately dangerous. It was uncomfortable, but he could handle it. Being on the inside of a mental intrusion wasn't nearly as painful as it was on the outside.

If he could get the man to focus on him rather than his surroundings and blacked out Kings Cross… he might be able to get the man to leave voluntarily. It shouldn't be that hard either. He legitimately needed some help, the memory shards sticking out of him were painful and they weren't getting any better. If the man could help him blunt even a little bit of it…

"If… if I let you help… would you be able to see the memories?"

Yamanaka Inoichi tried to straighten up, reacting beautifully to the intentional waver in his voice.

Hook.

Inking out Kings Cross was as simple as emptying a conjured pouch of Instant Darkness Powder around them.

"I promise I'll be careful not to look at anything you don't want me to?"

"… I found some memories, but… they really hurt. I don't know where the others went."

"Hurt? I— will you let me see? I might be able to fix that."

Line.

He held the pressure for a beat, like he was still hesitating, before letting it go along with the shadows around the man's eyes.

"Mind if I strike a light?" Inoichi asked carefully, easing himself off the wall slowly as he reached into one of the pouches at his hip, eyes meeting his again. "I can't see in the dark at all."

Physically, there wasn't a lot of difference between Harry Potter and Uchiha Obito. Aside from eye colour they were very similar and currently his eyes wouldn't be a problem. The green, if it showed at all, would be masked by the Sharingan. His hair was black in both lives, and the messiness would blend in with his current state. Anything else could easily be explained away by the difference in age, which on its own would look like mental maturity.

Taking his silence as permission the man pulled out a glow stick, cracked and lifted it.

Blue light spilled over his legs and torso first, catching on the glass-like shards sticking out of him and on the wet darkness staining the fabric of his navy blue uniform. Inoichi sucked in a sharp breath and raised his light higher.

The man's mouth dropped open as his eyes traced the lines of slick wet heat trailing out of the corners of his eyes and down to stain the collar of his shirt.

The glow-stick fell out of the man's hands and to the red-splattered flagstones.

Sinker.

"So, you said you could help?"

OoO

Chapter end!

First of all goddamn it Sakumo, you made this chapter a lot harder to write than it was supposed to be! Also Obito, you currently look like the horror movie that ate another horror movie, go clean yourself up! Tsunade, where did that protective streak come from?

*flips table*

I swear to god I don't know what these characters are going to do anymore, (Aside from my plot, which they keep trying to derail, which they won't cause I have plans and they're not ruining them for me, I don't care if I have to write a few extra chapters chasing them down). They just take the plot out of my hands and run away with it! Rude! Slow down ye bastids! I ain't tha' fast!

As always a healthy and resounding thank you to Araceil and my beta Thirteenth_To_fall. This fic wouldn't exist without you guys!