The first time Obito saw Uchiha Madara, his ancestor was a regal stone statue standing as a pillar beside the grand waterfalls of the Valley of the End. It faced a similar sculpture of another man, one his mother told him was the first Hokage. That was before he even learned to speak. They happened to travel near the falls when his mother pointed it to him and said, that's your forefather, the legendary Uchiha Madara. Tall and eternal, to Obito's young mind, Madara was as much a force of nature as the water gushing from the cliffs that has begun flowing since the creation of the world.

In the training dojo where his father brought him to watch the elder Uchiha spar and fight, the varnished bamboo walls are lined with long paintings that span floor to ceiling of Madara's battles, pictures done in shades of red and black: red of the incarnadine blood, sharingan eyes, his armor's maroon lacquer. The blacks are the solid outlines, fog-smoke from battle fires, and the jet dark of Uchiha hair. They are framed in glass to keep the ages-old sepia paper underneath from damage.

He could stare at these pictures for a long time, more fascinated with them rather than the fight happening in front of his eyes. Sometimes, even the actual fights are a distraction compared to the battle raging on inside the drawings. Obito imagined them moving: Madara standing straight, leading a chariot of fire, blood erupting from bodies cut in half, the sound of metal against metal as sword-blades clash. In the reality in front of his eyes and out of his imagination, the other onlookers cheered and he saw a boy standing over another sprawled on the rubber-covered floor. The standing boy was blocking his view of Madara unsheathing a sword.

The name 'Madara' was said with adulation, but also spoken along with warnings about the danger of pride. Madara was known as the strongest Uchiha, but one so blinded by power that led to his eventual defeat and death. Obito hears: The higher you fly, the harder you'll fall. It was another of his clan's cryptic sayings taught to their young, a zen koan, a puzzle phrase to ponder and meditate upon to find the meaning for themselves.

#

Once, playing hide and seek with his cousins, he hid himself in the family library's basement filled with piles of books and boxes covered in thick dust. He had chosen his hiding place so well they haven't tried to find him here yet, or maybe the others had decided to finish the game and forgot about him. In curiosity, he opened heavy tomes that sent dust clouds to the air, making him sneeze. He didn't know how to read yet, anyway, but still turned brown pages that crumbled in his fingers.

Then he saw the painting. Leaning against the wall and as large as a door, it showed a young man with long hair wearing ancient battle regalia, but his pose was casual and the least battle-like. He was sitting on a simple wooden chair, his left hand holding the hilt of a sheathed katana placed across his lap, and the other hand presenting the onlooker with a small flame hovering above his palm. The painted fire seemed to illuminate the portrait with its own inner light. The man's face was smiling slightly as if amused. The painting had looked so lifelike that Obito reached out his hand and expected it to touch a space leading to another room, where the man might make the fire in his hand disappear with a flick of his fingers and stand from the chair and simply step out the door-sized frame to greet him – but his hand met canvas. He touched the flame, expecting it to burn.

"Obito-kun, your cousins said you were lost," said his mother's voice. In his surprise, his hand flinched away from the picture, as if he was burned. She walked towards him and looked at the painting. She knelt down next to him, her face right in front of the painted fire.

"I haven't seen this for a long time, it was painted by my great-uncle," she said. Her finger hovered and traced around the outline of the fire, not touching it. "But they took it down, because most found it disturbing. Beautiful, though, isn't it?"

"Yes. Madara?"

She nodded. "It's Uchiha Madara. Here's the title," she said, and pointed to the lower left corner of the painting, signed with the artist's name. In small, white brushstrokes, was the title:

Deathless

"Or it can mean: Immortal. You share the same birthday with his brother Izuna, Obito-kun. When I gave birth to you, they told me you were going to be strong like Madara's brother, and will stand by him."

Obito's eyes went wide, in a silent question.

"Oh, you're thinking how can you stand beside someone dead long ago? You know, they give mothers riddles when a new child is born. It's not literal, of course. The elders, they speak in cryptic, poetic sayings. Very amusing," she said. She stood to leave, and Obito followed her out. "Anyway, you shouldn't touch paintings. Don't you know your hands are full of dirty oils and acids that can damage them? I'll have to tell them to keep it somewhere safer, or at least cover it."

Later, in the middle of sleep, he'll dream about the painting in the darkness of night in the basement. In the dark, the flame did burn bright in the man's hand, a dim light spilling across the dusty floor. His red eyes were gleaming like wet blood, but his smile was kind.

#

Years later...

An old man is praying, to whatever gods that may hear, asking for a disciple. He has lived too long, but kept death at bay a little longer each time it threatened. He was nothing now but a near-corpse kept powered by chakra, alone with only the clones he had made for company. They are his spies, his eyes to see the outside world he had no longer glimpsed since he shut himself away in this cave.

Years passed, he was still alive, still patient. But he needs someone, and Madara trusts his instinct that the right person will come. Until…

"Same old, same old. The Uchiha elected a new clan head. Fugaku was his name," one of them reported, and he nodded in assent.

"We saw an Uchiha boy activate his Sharingan, it's not the mangekyo, though."

Madara looked at him, asked for him to continue.

"I didn't notice him at first. He and a Hatake boy were on the way to save another teammate..."

"What is his name?" Madara asked him.

The clone looked startled. Most of the time, Madara never asked them anything, they usually just told him whatever they have seen or known. They found enough amusement among themselves from watching the daily activities of people outside.

"Obito," he said.

They trailed the boy, after that, frequently mentioning him to Madara. They told stories about him helping the village elders, always late, not that talented but determined, a boy with a crush. Madara didn't care the least, more interested in news of politics between the countries and hidden villages.

"The boy we're always talking about, we found him crushed under a rock. Before that, he was dying and gave one eye to his companion. I think he's alive, but just barely."

"Ask them to bring him here. Do it fast," Madara ordered.

When one of the white men carried a crushed boy back to the cave, the old man prayed again to whoever gods that listened to him and thanked them for their gift. Now he had a disciple, after many years of waiting.

The boy still breathed, but half of his body was a whole broken bruise. Broken, but still intact. The rock crushed him in half, perfectly. A fresh white golem with a blank face was brought to Madara, who cut in half with his scythe. He laid the new body next to the boy, did a hand seal, and the injured and bloody parts were slowly replaced with white matter. He instructed them to patch the boy, bandage him, and let him rest.

Later, he woke up. The boy had first thought he was already dead, that Madara was a doorkeeper to the afterlife.

#

Funny, how desperate the boy was to go back to Konoha, even crawling down the floor like a worm in a failed attempt to get away, as if he'd crawl on his belly back to his home if he could. From the way the kid snarled, it looked like he would really do that if only there was a way out.

He had explained his plan he had thought and rearranged for decades, to the inattentive boy who only had his former teammates in mind. He already expected the reaction. The boy thought it was a silly, impossible dream of a senile man. This one, young and stupid, would see soon enough. Madara had lived long enough to know that it is true: Hell is the way of this world, and will always be. Madara knew to wait. The boy would learn it himself soon enough.

Successful conversions only work when the convert has known faith by himself.

#

When Madara woke from dreams inside the illusion worlds of his own mind, the boy was already dressed to leave, saying thank you, old man, but I'm leaving to save my friends, I'm going home and not returning.

He didn't even have to interfere, just as Obito was running to them, the clone reported that the Mist captured the girl and made her jinchuuriki of the Sanbi. Madara saw it, too, a vision from Obito's eyes. The girl, killed in front of him by his very friend who had sworn to protect her, the boy whom Obito gave his eye as a gift. Madara saw it in a vision as well, the mass murder that followed. Obito killed all of the Mist nin, using an impressive Mokuton.

Just as he expected, the boy returned, fresh from his first massacre. Madara can tell he had just awoken the mangekyo.

The boy reeked of hate, despair, and resolve. Madara felt it, the black burn of it, and it made him feel more alive to be near a fresh uncontrolled rage still growing, the drug that has sustained his will to live until now. Madara smiled, pleased, to see Obito almost the human incarnation of their clan's curse – pure, unadulterated hate. He had never seen or felt the like in any Uchiha since... himself. It is so fascinating, how the sharingan eyes morph to the mangekyo, each eye and power different for each user, pupils turning to unexpected patterns like the unique designs of snowflakes, or thumbprints. This boy's eye had a black pinwheel pattern.

"Look into my eyes," he said. Obito did as he said, and found everything fade to white, and Madara changed his appearance from an old man to a younger one.

He taught him of the Gedo Mazo, the Juubi, what to do in Ame, Kiri, Konoha. He laid out a detailed plan for changing the world from the moon.

Madara even predicted about their clan's genocide. "Sooner or later, someone will do it."

"Do you know the story of the Sage of the Six Paths?" Madara asked.

"Heard about it. What's that got to do with this? It's just a made-up story. Humans always had chakra," Obito answered.

"Oh. Time someone told you not to discount those legends and myths as mere unreal tales. Where, exactly, did ninjutsu start?"

Madara taught him the tales. The origin of chakra and the Sage, though Madara didn't dwell on it and explained in clear terms what it had to do with their plan.

"That is why we need to gather all the nine tailed beasts to revive the Juubi. Remember, the Juubi itself is a remnant of primordial chaos, the Maelstrom that existed before everything began."

"That sounds like a difficult job."

"One man has done it. We can do it again. I am dying, you see. I will leave everything to you until I return in a much stronger body. I know that this plan will not go exactly as I said, I entrust everything to your judgment," Madara said.

"So, you've taught me everything I need. What else?"

"You need to learn to fight. And, that is what we will do here. Ready yourself," Madara said, his clothes changing to armor, and weapons strapped all over him: katanas, the famed gunbai, sickles and lances attached in chains and strapped on his back. They found themselves on a desert terrain, and Obito launched a fearful mokuton dragon to rise from the ground to swallow Madara, but in time Madara dodged and the control of the beast reversed and it was already chasing after Obito.

Obito did a Katon, fire spiraling down the wooden dragon and burning it, and then blowing an endless stream of fire to Madara, who was always fast, too fast. Obito materialized his own weapons, oversized shurikens and blades, multiplied himself to kage bunshins which Madara effortlessly defeated while he ran, kicking and stabbing along the way, and hundreds of him were gone in less than a minute. Then, only Obito was left and Madara was behind him and holding a kunai near his throat.

Obito was impressed, amazed. This is what made the man a legend, and he was nothing against this force. He did the next best thing he knows: talk it out.

"Can we stop for a while? Slow down a bit? This is too overwhelming," Obito said, and Madara let go.

"Why? I was just starting to have fun," Madara said, smiling from feeling the rush of battle again.

"Huh. That's exactly why. This is your illusion world, you created it for you, you're the god here. Isn't that a bit unfair? You'll always win," Obito said, quite annoyed. "I'm more curious about the transformations." Obito willed a shuriken to appear on his palm, his eyes lit up with possibility.

"Can you change the surroundings as well?" he asked.

"Yes, anything I can think of, will exist," then Madara simply thought, then the desert where they staged their brief fight was gone.

"How much time do we have here?"

"For all eternity, if you wish. Time does not exist here. Seconds can pass outside for the equivalent of years in here," Madara said. He made the white space turn into walls and floors of mirrors, surrounding them on all sides. Thousands of their replicas stretched to eternity. Madara sat cross-legged on the mirror floor, Obito beside him but facing another direction. They are not in front of each other but they can see each other's reflections.

"I really could be anything, huh..." Obito said, and rubbed the scarred side of his face. He made his scars disappear, and he looked at Madara and touched his cheek again, now smooth. Obito looked at his own face, and said, "I look like you."

"Then try something new."

They were in a house of mirrors, so that's the first idea that came to his mind. He closed his eyes, willed himself to turn oval, flat, and solid, his face and clothes gradually turning blank and smooth. His limbs stretched and diminished until they were nothing more than steel framing a black mirror. Obito thought that this is how it is like to be a looking glass, a ceaseless moving painting reflecting the white air. Madara looked at himself through the empty mirror which was Obito, and it didn't show Madara's face but another abyss of mirrors, a hole reaching deeper than the floor. Somewhere in its depths, Obito's face peered.

The glass walls around them shattered to smoke, and they were back in that endless white space again, only leaving Madara and Obito as an inanimate object. The mirror broke itself, cascading down and scattered the floor in black pearls instead of broken glass, and the steel frame sloughed down the white floor in silver globs of mercury.

Then the liquid metal and dark beads curled upon itself and braided upwards to surround Madara, and Obito turned to a half-dragon half-serpent breed in silver and black. It coiled, its body thick, onyx teeth reaching for Madara's neck but never biting. He curled around him, a cyclops-beast in obsidian and platinum.

It changed again, turning to a black liquid that spilled across the floor, reaching Madara's bare feet and Obito turned into water which turned back again to the black cloth of his cloak. The cloak folded itself upwards and materialized into a grand dark eagle with a wingspan meters wide, above its beak is a single red eye. It flew, passing by Madara in circles, like it was fascinated at how his bones move so swiftly its first time in flight. Through these myriad transformations, he could tell Obito was enjoying it. It flew faster now, orbiting Madara in tighter and tighter circles and Madara reached out an arm to catch him, but the bird went past him and exploded into a hundred crows that flew farther away.

This white space is eternity. Complete vastness and freedom, a blank canvas ready for a house, a creature, or a world, there was no limit to anything he could create. This has always been his favorite place, and since Izuna there was no one to share it with him. He still remembered how they used to sit face to face, palms to palms, did nothing but look at each other's eyes without blinking. The two make a lovely sculpture, so still. Yet no one suspected it... they have stretched time here, this was their playground where they made myriads of worlds and staged a thousand mock-battles. They aged, spent years in seconds, and have built stranger things: Empires. Planets. Entire Galaxies. Spaces with three, four, five or more dimensions. The blank always open with possibility. He might have to show Obito later, all that he had created.

Then, Madara stood near a shore. It was only a picture of a sea, and there was no wind to disturb the clear-glass water. It takes a lot more skill for it to be felt by the senses and make an illusion realistic, but Obito was a fast learner, to be able to change it. Soon the still surroundings moved, and he could now feel strong wind blow through his robe and his hair.

Water and sea foam sloshed gently over his toes, and endless calm silver sea in front of him, and beyond his back was endless white sand. Madara expected a sea monster to rise out the water, in whatever fish-form Obito has chosen to wear. Instead, a black granite obelisk rose out of the waves, sharp and smooth as a sword stabbing the sky. A stone eyelid graced near its tip, and an enormous eye opened, revealing Obito's pinwheel mangekyo. For a long time, Madara stood and heard the other's thoughts in the wind, Obito in mourning and mentioning the names of his family, all the people he had ever known, messages to the names Rin and Kakashi on repeat.

"Rin, the word, not the name, means nothing," Madara said to the air.

"Never say her name again," said the wind. "I am not the obelisk. Here I am, I became the wind, and it feels good to be moving air and not human," the wind said, a breeze curling near Madara's ear, whispering an answer before it passed.

Madara let him wander, let him turn into a hundred other things. When the boy was tired of it and turned back to his normal self, Madara willed the white space to turn into another place, but leaving Obito alone to find him again.

#

Obito stood alone in the middle of a yellow brick road. The sky is black, and neon advertisements floated high above the sky like phantasms, in green, orange, and blue quotes in a language he couldn't understand. There is a wall of a stone village fortress in front of him, the gates wide open in welcome. In the dark, he ventured in. The first things he saw on the empty city were high buildings, temples, and churches. He passed by crumbling modern skyscrapers of broken concrete. Side by side was older-styled temples, mosques, pagodas, towers, castles, totem poles, sphinxes, and ziggurats lining the road.

On a high church belfry where vines grew through the brickwork, he could see the shadow of a great bell on a window up above, and the white face of someone who looked quite like Madara but wasn't him. He looked down on Obito with the faintest hint of a smile before he disappeared. Obito walked farther.

Between twin clock towers was an unremarkable building, a small pyramid the size of a house, its white walls shining with faint phosphorescence. He walked nearer, read the name of the establishment in large, black Helvetica: "The Coming of the Age of Aquarius". Above the name, near the pointed tip, was an engraved image showing a hieroglyph profile of a golden falcon with a single, red human eye. A smaller sign invited him in, it read, We're Open, Welcome. Obito touched the wall, and a dark passageway opened to darkness.

He stepped in, the place looked like an empty nightclub, the floor glowed blue in the dark. Disco lights spinned slowly, navigating the walls in LED-bright sharingan designs. Inside were mostly rows of black leather cushions and coffee tables. There was no one here, and he was about to go out, until he saw familiar rice-paper sliding doors behind the bar.

He slid the door open, surprised to see tatami mats, another door on the room's far end. He walked and opened it as well, and to his surprise it was daylight and there were trees outside. Madara was there, holding a tiny cup of tea and watching the leaves. He was dressed in black, hands and feet bare, his armor worn by a standing metalloid mannequin inside the room. He pointed to the tray with another empty teacup and a teapot, and Obito took this as an invitation and sat beside him and Madara poured the tea for him.

"I saw another man earlier, atop a belfry. I thought it was you, but he disappeared just as I saw him," Obito said.

"Oh. That was Izuna's image, probably. Flits around, still. We built this together, but look, there's nothing here now."

"What is this place? Does it have a name?"

"Nowhere. It used to be better, but I like keeping it dark this way."

For awhile, here is where they both rest between rounds of fighting.

#

Time does not exist here. In the endless space they fought, chasing each other and destroying the imaginary landscapes with wood and fire. Madara stayed and looked the same, while Obito aged from boy to man in a years-long war between the two which was far from over. It seemed like a long time has passed, but at the same time all of this felt like a dream he would soon wake up from. Obito soon found himself to have grown as tall as Madara, his hair long as well, but his face retained its scars. Madara is garbed in his usual battle clothes, and Obito has chosen a knight's armor in the style of ancient, foreign, faraway countries from on the other side of the world, far from Konoha. They are back in a room with mirrors for walls again, their forms reflected many times in all directions.

After training this long, Obito's skills were already equal with his. This is their last battle, only relying on weapons and their hands, more like a playful spar between equals.

Obito changed his appearance again. The armor dissolved to a plainer dark blue robe, he ran his hand through his long hair and changed it to a shorter style like the way it was before.

"It seems, that you'll be like this when we meet again," Madara said. "You have learned enough. There are some things I need to still tell you, then our time here is over."

"Weird. It seems that I have spent an entire life here with you, yet I'm not the least bit tired."

"Well, enjoy it while it lasts, it will be over soon enough."

Obito willed himself to turn into his normal appearance again, and before Madara's eyes, he reverse-aged and transformed from a man of thirty back to a boy of thirteen.

#

They are back again to the tatami-floored room inside a pyramid house, both of them the only occupants in this imaginary vast world already near apocalypse. Madara was scribbling on a yellow legal pad, some equations about the Kamui Obito couldn't understand. It had an odd sort of physics and math, all these space-time ninjutsu.

On the low, wide table was a clutter of paper: star maps of constellations, old calendars, and medieval prints of the solar system showing the planets Hermes to Hades, or Mercury to Pluto, all kinds of diagrams of the many permutations of their names in many languages. There were also newer high-definition maps of the world, the moon, the rest of space. There were pencils, rulers, compasses in all sizes for both measuring angles and determining direction.

"Five minutes. That's how long you can make yourself insubstantial," Madara concluded, after a long solution. He handed the pad to Obito, who noticed several symbols he couldn't recognize and a lot of numbers. He wasn't good at math, anyway, so while half-listening to Madara's explanations he flipped through the papers.

After the equations were stupid drawings. He really didn't expect this, Madara, his forefather and said to be strongest warrior of the Uchiha – doodling cute angry versions of himself, Hashirama, and the nine-tails. It made him think that after decades, he didn't improve any of his drawing skills. Then, Obito flipped to the last page and saw a rather... dashing portrait of the First Hokage in all his battle glory rendered in ballpoint ink.

"After nearly a hundred years, you still haven't gotten over the guy?" Obito said and sighed.

Madara merely raised an eyebrow. "Weren't listening, I see," and snatched back the paper. Madara looked rather surprised, like he wasn't aware of what he has sketched.

As if to change the topic, Madara unfurled a long scroll from his hand like a heavy carpet over the mess on the table. It was a large map of the moon's visible face, almost a meter in diameter. This zoomed picture showed the moon's craters, the lowland hollow 'seas' called marias named Tranquility, Serenity, Fertility, and many more... The map showed in detail its dead volcanoes and the valleys in between.

"Anyway, why don't we try it out now? The Kamui," said Madara, who held out his hand for Obito to hold. They disappeared to another place, spiralling to nothing.

They arrived in a monochrome dimension, a black sky and uneven square floors.

"Each mangekyo has its own unique power, but this is the first time I have seen something like this. You can travel, make yourself insubstantial, and disappear. We can go to another place. How about... the moon?" Madara said.

"Is that possible? We're only in a genjutsu, right? We're mere illusions."

"It would be like we're ghosts there, but we'll be there for real. Go. Try it."

#

The last place where they are together is the Moon, their bare feet inch-deep on thick lunar dust the color of cigarette ash. They walked for awhile, leaving permanent foot marks as they went along, until the planet this satellite was orbiting was in full view. They sat and watched. The Earth looked pretty from here: blue sea, green-brown lands, and striations of white clouds. They could see the outlines of the countries. Obito held up his hand, and seemed to cup the small disk of it.

"From here, the world looks so peaceful, like a tranquil blue marble. Not a hint of red there, as if blood wasn't shed every day. Maybe that's why the gods, if there ever were gods who made all this and us… they don't bother, anymore."

"See that? We change the world from here," said Madara, and to Obito thought the place would look a lot better if it were stained crimson.

Madara held a moon rock on his palm. It looked no different from an ordinary grey earth-rock. Madara made it ignite, floating and burning in a teardrop-shaped blue flame on Madara's hand, the ashen rock burning to bright volcanic orange. The fire disappeared, and on his palm settled the rock, now a red and black glass sphere the size of an eyeball. Madara held it up for Obito to see, it was a miniature replica of the moon itself, but red. He pressed it to Obito's palm, who clutched the red gem in his fist.

It reminded Obito of a painting he saw of Madara, in another lifetime ago, Deathless...

"Remember this," he said to Obito.

They sat together for a long time, until a whole day on Earth has passed, and they have stayed for the moon's full revolution. Then, Obito felt it was time to go.

They had spent almost an eternity together.

Then Obito felt fear. Now that they would return any minute to the normal world, it didn't seem to compare with all the things he has seen. How could anyone, after seeing all those wondrous things and possibilities of the world, want to stay the way it was before?

They were two in this final revolt, they would change everything. No, maybe. Only him, or Madara.

He realized that this was no kind game. Madara had schemes, plans, and Obito was something he just wanted to use. Obito must counter them, to preserve himself. Obito knew very well that he was nothing to Madara but a matchstick to ignite then discard. For a long time, Obito had let himself forget that while they were here. Ours is a cursed clan. We have killed and fucked and fought each other for power and heirs, incest all the way down from your fathers to mine.

To his surprise, Madara suddenly held him in a loose hug and pressed a gentle, cobweb kiss on his forehead. "No matter what happens from now on, I am proud of you," he said.

Obito snorted, but stayed inside the unexpected embrace. "As proud as you are of yourself?" He shot back.

He could feel Madara's lips curve into a smile against the skin of his forehead. This was like a last blessing. Madara's mouth travelled down his face and settled soft against the closed eyelid of his one remaining eye. For a moment, it seemed to Obito that Madara would suck the eye out and chew it like choice oyster. (The image of Madara swallowing down sharingan eyes didn't surprise him.)

Then Madara let go and placed his two hands on Obito's shoulders. This already means goodbye. Now that the illusion will end the next minute, he wants to stay. The world outside seemed so ugly now, so... imperfect compared to all the possibilities of creation.

He almost says: Stay. Be my guide, my teacher, my father, my brother... But then, the feeling was gone as fast as it arrived.

"It is time to go," Madara said at last.

"Wait. I forgot about something... If I am to do a convincing job of acting for you, then I must know everything about you, I hardly know anything about your life," Obito said, doubt in his eyes.

"You already know more than enough, and the rest, you'll learn when it is time," Madara said, and smiled with something like sincerity.

And for the last time, Obito looked, at the red eye mirroring his own.

#

When he opens his eyes to the real world, he was kneeling before Madara, their hands held together. The young face he was used to was now old, so old. Obito will still get used to his own thirteen-year-old hands. Madara smiled. After his last words to Obito and leaving his will as the other half of Zetsu, the cables supporting his expired life disconnected from his spine.

Obito was instructed to thoroughly burn what remains of his corpse. Madara would rise again in much suitable new flesh, and Obito estimated there would be more than a decade to wait for all their plans to come to fruition. Obito lay the body down on straw and stone, and used the Amaterasu to burn a seven-day funeral. He sat in vigil in front of it, until the fire ran out.

Soon after, Obito was left with an army of clones, now his to command. This vast cave he used to think as prison was now lair, a place to call a new home.

He placed his palm over the blank eyes of the Hashirama figure where Madara extracted the black staff, thinking that it still might hold hidden memories. Obito saw it, as if it was a vision purposely left there by Madara for him to find – Madara and Izuna's lives, shaped by deaths and battles, until the dark storm of Izuna's death. He saw it, too, the moment where Izuna gave up his eyes for his brother, of his death in Madara's embrace.

There were memories when Madara was a mere boy with innocent dreams, the friendship between him and a younger Hashirama. There was a long, blood-stained era of wars between clans, and the short-lived truce between the two which formed the hidden village of Konoha. He saw the long last battle between them, Madara's shock at being killed, stabbed in the back by his friend.

Obito flinched at this himself, and the vision ended.

#

When there is a full moon, Obito made it a habit to watch it from the Valley of the End. There are many superstitions and myths about the full moon – the lunar effect making beasts howl and the insane more unstable. He sat atop the statue of Madara, where the waterfall is the only sound. Incidentally, it is during the full moon when his nightmares become more vivid. They are terrible dreams of what-could-have-beens, what if I just give this up, go back to Kakashi and Konoha, forge an alternate past and future? They are visions he could not allow himself to have, and his body didn't need sleep anyway, he only did it out of habit. When he woke shocked from a dream like that once, he decided not to sleep during full moons anymore.

He gazed at the moon, and remembered that a long time ago he and Madara spent a day there, sitting in the moon's Sea of Tranquility, watching the Earth turn. Madara would come again soon, and both of them will usher on a New Age. He clutched the round red moon rock on his palm like an amulet or rosary to pray on, and it gave him strength and hope. It helped to stop those involuntary fantasies that hindered his purpose.

Zetsu is with him. Obito found their bantering voices comfortable, the cynical voice of Zetsu's black half always arguing with his other white half. The white half always complained about this 'marriage', and reminisced the times when he was by himself and not stuck in the same body with Madara's will. "But I will never ever leave you," the black half says to the other, both of them talking, Obito content in silence.

In his mind, Obito utters this silent invocation.

I was never meant to be here.

I am dreaming about a world, I walk on its streets even as I stay in this filthy Earth. It is a perfect place only in my mind, a world that only speaks to me. Someday, all this around me will crumble, and that world will finally rise out of the ashes. I am not afraid. I have remembered the names of those I have killed, I vowed that I will lead them to a better place than this hell of a world could ever be. In time.

That place, which once seemed far away, is getting nearer.

End

AN: This was inspired by Inception and The Matrix. I'm not sure about my writing of Madara... :/