Friends Turn Foes, An Interrogation

Fragments of the mask scattered at Obito's feet, glimmering with a pearly white sheen beneath the Ten-Tails' blood-red radiance.

Obito stood amid the fragments, the face he had hidden for twenty years finally exposed beneath the moonlight. Three scars ran from the end of his eyebrow to his cheekbone, stark against his pale skin. One Three-Tomoe Sharingan and one ordinary black eye gazed calmly ahead.

Kakashi knelt amid the rubble. His right eye was no longer bleeding—not because the wound had healed, but because his body had no more blood to spare. His ordinary left eye, devoid of any special power, stared straight at Obito. From the patterns of those three scars on Obito's face, to the curve of his brow bone, to the slight downturn at the corner of his mouth—every detail felt as though it had soaked in his memories for twenty years, only to be dredged up now from their deepest depths with a heavy, dripping sound.

Obito was alive.

He had been alive all along.

Beneath the Memorial Stone's shadow, during every self-righteous visit Kakashi had made, in every nightmare that began with "if only back then"—he had been alive. For twenty years, Kakashi had seen the world through the eye Obito gave him, watching everything Obito had wanted to protect be eroded bit by bit. And Obito himself stood at the very heart of that erosion.

"Obito..." When the name forced its way out of Kakashi's throat, his voice was hoarse, like a rusted iron door being pried open. His lips trembled. His fingers trembled. His entire body shook uncontrollably. It was not fear, but the weight of an entire mountain that had pressed down on him for twenty years, crashing onto his chest in less than a second.

Obito looked at him.

That Sharingan