Chapter Text
They stopped for the first time deep into the borders of Fire Country, the forest alive with the sounds of life and the moon gleaming high in the sky.
"We'll keep going in the morning. We should reach the desert sometime tomorrow afternoon- Gaara-sama's delegation will be waiting at the border." Kakashi folded his arms as he faced into the dark, his back to their campsite and his voice curiously calm. "With any luck, we'll be at the village tomorrow night."
Obito watched Kakashi's back, and said nothing.
Kakashi padded silently back to their campsite, folding himself down into a loose ball on the forest floor. He didn't look at Obito as he slid his pack off, instead remaining in a companionable silence. The scratch of his fingers against the ration pack came in tune with the creek of crickets and cicadas, and for several minutes it was just Kakashi, breaking off bits of rice cake and chewing in the firelight.
"I'll take first watch, then?" Kakashi said finally. He looked at Obito with a raised eyebrow, a book already settled in his lap. "Unless you would rather?"
Just how they'd used to do it. Kakashi first, and Obito second.
This time, Rin and Minato weren't here to take the third and fourth.
"There's not any point, you know."
Kakashi's eye flicked to him again in an inquisitive light, his hand stilled in mid-page turn.
"Keeping watch." Obito looked away into the inky darkness, enveloped all around them and the trees that melted into the black. "What exactly is going to be attacking us out here? Even if someone did want to try it, what could they do to us? I'm not sure anyone could kill me even if you let them try."
He said it for the look on Kakashi's face, really. That was all.
Even if you let them try... because we both know I wouldn't stop them.
But as ever, Kakashi refused to rise to the bait.
The jounin shrugged carelessly, his one eye bright and his face so utterly relaxed it was a night at the onsen at the end of the longest day. "You're right, of course. This is probably the safest either of us have ever been." He smiled at him in the way only Kakashi could, the faintest shiftings of a face that was visible only as little more than an eye. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep without someone watching my back any time soon, though, Obito."
The crickets kept up with their racket, and Kakashi stayed cross-legged there on the hard-packed earth, turning page after page in the flicker of fire.
Obito curled on his side, his back to him, and listened until Kakashi came to wake him for his shift.
Sunagakure had fared better than most of the other countries, in the aftermath of the war. Their village was small but strong, the people durable, and held together by the care of their beloved Kazekage. They were met at the border by Gaara's personal guard, the quirky brother and the headstrong sister, welcomed as honored guests instead of trespassers, and greetings of respect were exchanged between the three as if they were old friends.
Obito lingered back, caught between waning trees and hard sands, a hand pressed to the wood.
It wasn't a question that he did not belong.
"Gaara-sama has requested that you assist with our greenhouses, a little to the west of the village. They've been on a decline for some time now." Temari pointed into the desert, her fan demarcating a line in the sand that cut as sharply as the wind. "Our plan is to head straight there immediately. Anything that you need from the village, just ask us, and we can retrieve it for you."
Kakashi bowed his head, perfectly polite. "We thank you for your hospitality."
Obito still said nothing.
They weren't to be allowed in the village, then.
A stupid thing, wasn't it? In his childhood, Konoha and Suna had been bitter enemies, and the border between their countries carved in a river of blood. No guests from Suna were welcomed into Konoha's gates, and no delegations from Konoha were greeted at the desert's borders with respect and friendship. Even the history between their own little group was of discord and violence- Kakashi's father had brought devastation to Suna in the wars, and these two siblings here had spearheaded the invasion that had lead to the death of Sarutobi Hiruzen.
To be kept at arm's length, eyed with distrust and met with knives... it wasn't an insult, it wasn't cause for complaint. It was what ninja did. This was who they were. It was the world Madara had wanted to end and the dream he had passed onto him.
But they were in a new world, now. A brighter one. A fledging newborn, still finding its way and growing its roots, but a new world nonetheless.
Obito simply had no place in it.
"Let's get going, then," he said. The sand siblings both stiffened together, but Obito ignored them both, and he ignored Kakashi, too, turning his back to all three of them to face the desert with his pack on his shoulders and his hands at his sides. "Unless you all want to get there so late we're stuck in the desert in the middle of the night?"
Temari and Kankuro followed without delay, stepping together with an almost military precision. They were, at the very least, mercifully quiet.
Kakashi lingered for just a moment, his grim gaze boring a hole into the back of Obito's head.
There were many Rules. The Rules were simple.
No activation or use of the Sharingan was allowed.
Since he was unable to deactivate the Rinnegan, his left eye was to be covered at all times, instead. Sasuke said he was looking for ways to switch the eye off. He also said it wasn't looking promising.
No use of jutsu, unless explicitly sanctioned by his scarecrow of a handler. This included self-defense. This included in the defense of others.
Follow orders. Follow them all. When in Gaara's custody, Gaara's orders were to be taken with just as much weight as if he were the Hokage. How far this expectation extended was still an up in the air hypothetical, one that the council had purposefully shied away from answering and that Naruto had insisted wasn't necessary. Obito got the feeling that if Gaara were to order him to stand there in his office and kill himself, it was still an order he was meant to follow, and the only thing stopping him from doing it was that his body was physically incapable of being destroyed that easily.
Unlike other ninja, Obito didn't have the option of defecting if presented with an order that he could not or would not follow.
The irony was inescapable, of course.
Uchiha Obito had died at thirteen swearing to be a decent man and friend first, foremost, and always, and to fight as a shinobi and a tool second. Naruto and Kakashi, in this ridiculous bid to try and resurrect that child that had died there in that cave-in, had now turned him into more of a tool than he had ever been.
The thing was-
It was all voluntary.
Obito knew he could escape. He could stand up at any time, say no, warp himself into his kamui dimension, and that would be that. No one, not even Kakashi or Sasuke, could follow him there. He had the power to slip out from Konoha's thumb whenever he wanted and disappear, and from there... whatever he wanted. He could go wherever he wanted, and be whatever he wanted. And Kakashi knew it.
He hadn't broached the topic. Not once. He hadn't mentioned it back in Konoha, to the council or Naruto or anyone else, and he hadn't brought it up to Obito, either, once they'd left. He had never asked Obito if he was going to leave. He had never asked Obito to stay. He'd just been Kakashi about it, silent and brooding and with judgment in his one eye, the bastard, but he'd known- and he'd left it up to him to decide what to do.
He trusted him.
Gaara didn't trust him so far as the borders of his village. Konoha didn't trust him to the point that they ordered a good will mission instead of an exile just to get him out of the village. But Kakashi did.
The trust was misplaced.
Obito didn't stay because he wanted to. He didn't stay out of any loyalty to Konoha, and he didn't stay for Kakashi. Kakashi was quite clearly best off without him.
He stayed, because he had no idea where else he would go.
Obito and Kakashi, as promised, were sent to Sunagakure's greenhouses. It was a smaller, more isolated district, shaded by mountain caves and populated only by a skilled team of water release users and researchers. The village had always struggled with agriculture, and in recent years, even their hospitals had begun to suffer, unable to utilize medical herbs, unable to even research when it was so hard to get their hands on the materials. It was a poor, dilapidated little settlement, with derelict greenhouse after derelict greenhouse passing them by, cultivating drooping vines and white flowers that wilted almost down to their roots.
Their decline had been years in the making, a tumble downwards that hadn't even been hurt by the war and Obito's violence to the world, simply because they had only barely been clinging to life as it was.
In other words, it was the perfect task for Uchiha Obito: one of the only people left in the world capable of the wood release.
And it wound up being not all that bad.
It was hard, mind-numbing work. He spent most of his time experimenting, testing different methods of climate control, various forms of water storage, how to increase the density of each plot to get the very most that they could out of the limited soil. It was nights passed elbow-deep in textbooks and experiment notebooks, lying on his stomach on the floor of lodgings that were little more than a cave; it was days sitting in hot, sweaty greenhouses squinting into sun as bright as the driven snow, surrounded by a struggling rainbow of newborn flowers all born from his own hand.
It was something it'd be easy to lose himself in.
Which was probably exactly what Kakashi was after, if he ever let himself stop to think about it.
The Sunagakure shinobi they were assisting were grateful enough- or desperate enough- for the help, so much so that they were... polite. That was probably the most accurate word for it, in thinking about it. They provided the materials that he requested, answered his questions when asked, and asked questions of their own in return. On the easier days, some of the team would even try to sit with him. He learned that they were older shinobi, with little combat prowess, and few scars leftover from the battles Obito had spent so long engineering. Instead of being a victim to all that had been done, they had stayed home to guard the village and these greenhouses during the war, looking after this one flourish of life in the desert, and were genuinely thrilled to have him here trying to help.
He scared them, too.
They'd heard the stories about him, of course. He may not have hurt these people directly, but they'd heard the stories from those that he had. Whatever it was the people were saying about him, they'd heard it. And even if they hadn't heard the stories-
Well, just look at him.
Obito had had a long time to get used to his reflection in the mirror. He'd learned to embrace it, many years ago- a face suitably disfigured, a body suitably destroyed. A canvas of destruction visited upon him by their world, and the all the proof that he'd ever need that their world was one that needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Now-
It wasn't proof of anything, anymore.
It was evidence of defeat and failure, maybe. The black sheep of the Uchiha, born as the dead last, and he would die a failure. It was ugly. It made the world look twice and pale. It made Kakashi- even Kakashi!- stare silently, his face drawn and sometimes even stricken.
Every day that he fell just a little bit too far into the desert sun and hardy green life, he'd glimpse his face in the glitter of the water, and be anchored right back down to earth.
It was okay. He could do this. He didn't mind the work, and there was something nice about doing something being asked to help with something so unflinchingly peaceful.
But this wasn't who he was.
"I'm thinking I'm going to head into the village proper, today," Kakashi began, one morning over breakfast. Kakashi ate, while Obito read. Obito's body didn't need to eat much. "If that's all right with you."
Obito kept his eyes down, scanning his older notes in the margins of the book. "I don't know why you're asking me," he muttered. "Your mission is to watch me, not the other way around."
The council would probably be scandalized to have heard Kakashi even suggest such a thing in the first place.
But Kakashi only shrugged carelessly, and kept on going as if Obito had not just pointed out the critical flaw in his plans. They both knew Obito had no interest in doing anything to hurt anyone. "I spoke to Temari-san, yesterday. They're struggling with some construction projects in the village and she said some help would be really useful- if it goes well, I might start spending some more time there." He lapsed into a thoughtful pause, arms interlaced behind his head and his eye glazed in that very same sleepy disinterest that had used to be so irritating as a child. "They need the help with construction projects, and asked if I could use my earth release to lend a hand."
Ah. Yes. That makes sense, he mused, turning another page. Sunagakure had always had a dearth of earth users, and struggled with infrastructure because of it. Kakashi would probably be able to really help them. Especially given how long it was looking like they'd be staying-
"They didn't have many to begin with, but they tell me they lost every earth user they had in the war. It's unfortunate, but I'm really all they've got, at the moment."
Obito froze, mid-scribble.
"...if it's all right with you," Kakashi ventured for the second time.
He clenched his fist. He clenched his fist and he stared at it, the bite of his nails into pasty white skin, flesh that wasn't flesh and blood that wasn't blood.
"It's fine," he snapped. He spit the words out, disgust coating the insides of his throat and stomach. He was mad, suddenly; he wanted to bodily pick Kakashi up and throw him, he wanted to tear roots into the ground and destroy the city and build a new one in the same breath. He wanted to scream and shout and tear his own Sharingan out of his head, because what was the point in sitting here nurturing a pathetic, piddly rose garden when this very city was a wreck and ruin of his own hand?!
"If you'd rather-"
"I said it's fine!"
Kakashi stood silently against the wall, a shadow of a scarecrow in the corner of Obito's eye and nothing more. That dammed wordless, judgmental, masked little boy that Obito had spent so many years wanting to strangle.
He refused to look up from his book even as the shadow passed him by. He heard the almost silent pace of footsteps and after that, the swing of the door, but he kept his gaze down and would not give Kakashi's retreating back the time of day.
One of the herbs that had been the very hardest to cultivate was a blue and white flower the Suna shinobi had called the Iron Heart. It was native to the Land of Iron, and grew there almost exclusively, where the samurai cultivated it as a delicacy for its use as a spice and in seasoning. It was an extremeophile, persisting only in the bitter, angry tundra in that frozen wasteland, and a ludicrous luxury only served outside of it in the halls of daiymo and clan heads.
It wasn't anything that Sunagakure needed. In his role here, to help ensure the steady and stable cultivation of grains, cotton, and medical herbs, it barely even qualified as a silly side project. He and Kakashi could leave the village with the project an utter failure, and the village would be no worse for wear.
That day, cross-legged on the floor of the greenhouse furthest away in the settlement, his collar turned up against self-reproducing ice crystals embedded in the soil and his nose stinging with the overpowering scent of hardy plant life, he watched their eighth attempt grow.
Just one. Just one small, frail flower, its velvet soft, violet blue petals unfolding around a snow-white bulb.
It was useless.
It wasn't going to help anyone. He'd burned the world to the ground, and now his offering back to them was this meaningless, waste of a plot flower. This thing that he could hand to the people of Suna. Not as food, not as medicine, not as a jutsu, but look at this- it goes great with dango!
There wasn't much point, in him eating dango. Most of his taste buds were dead.
Obito leveled his gaze down at the tiny thing, and considered tearing up the earth from underneath its feet.
"Obito-san? I've been looking everywhere for... oh, my!"
He turned a fraction, just in time to see Asuna, one of the sand shinobi researchers, sliding from curious and searching to bright-eyed and face aglow in the blink of an eye. She dropped to her knees beside him, hands hovering this way and that around the tiny plot; never touching, never prying, but fingertips always stretching as if it took all she had to contain herself. "This is amazing! It finally grew!"
"Yes," he murmured, shrugging. "It grew."
So what?
He could trace its chakra with the Sharingan, and confirm how healthy the flower really was or was not. He could see its chakra even deeper than that with the Rinnegan, and give an estimate of just how long he thought the plant might live.
Those weren't allowed, so he didn't.
But Asuna was blind to all that he could do, and instead fawned over the baby flower with all the excitement of a little girl. "Just look at us!" she cried again, "Oh- we've been trying this for years, Obito-san- and you just made it grow! Just like that!"
"It's not-"
"Thank you!"
Asuna threw her arms around his shoulders, squeezing tight and smiling brilliantly from top to bottom, and yanked him into a hug.
Butterflies swam in his stomach.
"It's- s' not-"
"It's brilliant!" Asuna insisted, pulling back to treat him to another sunny, beaming grin. "Just wait until the others see!"
"But it's..." The words stayed spluttered and muffled as he just sat there, shellshocked and tongue-tied and feeling as if his head had been stuffed with cotton candy. "It's not even... it can't do anything. It's not important, it's not going to help anyone, it's just... it's just a flower."
Rin had loved flowers.
Asuna shrugged again, her eyes shining. "So?" She reached out with one hand, careful fingers passing over the spread of each of the petals, one by one. "Who said it had to be anything amazing? Or ground-breaking? We've been trying to pull this off for years, Obito-san... what you've pulled off here is going to make our whole team very, very happy! Oh, what else is there? What else is there?"
Obito stared, the warmth of Asuna's hand and the light of her smile pressed into him, all around- and between them, the flower flourished just a little more.
That night- well after the heat of the desert had frozen into a biting cold, and even longer after the sun had set- Kakashi came back.
He did nothing to break their pre-established pattern of mutual habitation. He did nothing to bring up this morning, or what he had spent today doing. He made no effort to acknowledge Obito's existence at all. The man simply sidled inside with that easygoing, lazy pace, a physical drawl, his masked nose buried in a book and his shoulders slumped so aggressively they were just about pinned to his ears.
And like that, he traipsed on right past Obito, sunk himself onto his bed, and went lax.
Just like that.
This time, it was Kakashi turning pages in the silence.
This silence between them- this book-infested, dusty, moldy silence, in dark caves and astride campfires and nothing else. This quiet that had persisted for months, now, an impossible void filled with nothing meaningful or significant at all, because Kakashi wouldn't dare push him and Obito didn't know what to say.
He closed his eye, his one, lone eye, and breathed.
"How- er... how was it?"
He felt Kakashi stiffen from across the room.
"...good," the jounin answered, his voice determinedly light. "It was- good. Long." He flipped a page in a loud crinkle, the noise otherwise unbearable in the suffocating quiet. "My back is sore, to be quite honest. Reminded me why I preferred to send Yamato off to do this, in Konoha."
The uncomfortable quiet settled between them again.
For the first time, Obito decided to take another step forward.
Nothing amazing. Nothing ground-breaking.
Just a step.
"Your earth release is the problem."
"It's-" Kakashi stopped short, going still. He breathed in sharply and stared at Obito in wordless surprise. "What?"
"Your earth release," he repeated. Actually turning to face Kakashi was too much, so he kept his eye down on his book, instead, splaying the motions out with his hands. "You learned it from Minato. But he specialized in wind jutsu; earth was his natural opposite. You always use earth jutsu with your arms, but in Iwagakure, they focus on your stance, and your hands." He traced another useless pattern into his book, crinkling the page this way, then that. "You'd be surprised how much you pick up on, when you spend your time tagging along with Deidara."
Another few moments passed by between them. Obito's felt dry and dusty and he gritted his teeth, his skin crawling. It was unbearably uncomfortable, and almost immediately, he wished he hadn't said anything at all.
"...Thank you," Kakashi finally replied, sounding nonplussed. "That will- certainly be helpful. Thank you."
He wanted this conversation to stop already. He wanted to rewind it all the way back until none of this had ever happened, to never have come to Suna; to never have even survived the fourth war at all.
"Or you're just getting old, old man." He swallowed, slipping past another page."That could be it, too."
"Aren't you a year older than I am?"
"Then what's with the grey hair, scarecrow?"
Kakashi's faint grin bored into the back of his head, and he breathed easier again.
"Actually," Kakashi said after several moments, his voice a soft, droll drawl, "in the village today, I spoke with Gaara-sama. They're holding an annual festival tomorrow." He paused, the mattress creaking noisily as he shifted. "We're invited."
For the second time that day, Obito froze.
Kakashi sounded unbearably casual about it. Because of course he did; casual enough that it took him a heartbeat to be anything but shellshocked. A festival. A celebration. And he had been asked to come. "I thought I wasn't welcome in the village."
"Who told you that?"
When Obito did not reply, Kakashi just shrugged, settling himself back down to return to his book. "It's not mandatory, of course. The invitation was merely extended, and it's up to us if we want to take it. He said that if you were too busy with your projects out here, he would understand."
A festival. In the village. A festival for those who had just survived the biggest war their world had ever seen, and were now going hold some sort of ramshackle celebration out of all they had left. And for some reason, the Kazekage said he was invited.
A superficial gesture, most likely. A polite invitation extended because that was what they were supposed to do, especially in this new era of peace; they had been asked here as diplomatic guests on a good will mission, so the Kage was just acknowledging their presence here in the proper manner. He had no doubt that they'd all be much happier if he did not come. He would probably be much happier to just stay right here and work in the greenhouses.
One step at a time.
"Okay," he said flatly, and turned another page.
Okay.
Every autumn, Sunagakure held an annual festival to herald and celebrate the beginning of their short but violent wet season. It was an angry storm of monsoons, that turned the desert to mud and flash floods, but one that kept their village alive all the same, and it was as much a celebration as it was recognition of their renewed, constant fight to survive. Everyone was wearing blue and white, azure fireworks set off in the sky, and there was a spectacle going on with a water dragon jutsu that he was pretty sure Kakashi was almost entirely responsible for.
Obito wasn't a fan of the rain, personally. He'd spent most of the worst years of his life hunkered down in the perpetual rains of Amegakure.
He'd had enough rain for a lifetime.
It was still a nice enough festival, he supposed. He didn't have a frame of reference, because he hadn't been to one since he was a child. But it seemed pleasant enough. Music and lights around every corner, vendors with festival food and bright little toys for the kids, plenty of families.
And it could not have been clearer that Obito's first impression had been right all along.
He wasn't welcome here.
Kakashi was. Plenty of people were thrilled to see him, waving from across the street or calling out or even coming over to shake his hand, and that alone- that was a miracle enough. Just one year before Kakashi's stupid masked face wouldn't have been safe to show anywhere in this village, and now the veterans of the Allied Shinobi Force were all one and the same.
Those same shinobi took one look at Obito, and stayed very firmly on the other side of the street.
In the bright glimmer of the festival lights, a spotlight that glinted in Kakashi's eye and on the kunai of the ANBU following every step they took, it was as if every sentiment, every ill wish, every last thought was on display- and it was clearer with each turn they took.
These were the shinobi he'd fought against. These, right here, were the lives systematically spent years planning to dismantle, and used an entire war to destroy.
He wanted to- to disappear.
Nothing as violent or difficult as it would be to kill himself; nothing as destructive as it would be to hurt someone else, and certainly not to see the look on Kakashi's face when he did it. But to just close his eyes and willfully cease to exist. A permanent void and unfeeling nothingness. An end.
"Obito, Kakashi- I'm glad you could make it. It's good to see you both looking well."
They had turned another corner together, and this time, came face to face with the Kazekage.
Gaara was walking with his siblings, mingling with the same crowds as everybody else. He looked tired, but happy, trailed by an ANBU guard of his own, and raised a hand in greeting as Kakashi once again led the way forward.
"Please," Gaara said, "Join me. I would be honored."
It was Kakashi who answered again; Kakashi, after glancing at Obito just out of the corner of his eye, his masked face unreadable and his eye sharp. "The honor is all ours, Gaara-sama," he returned, bowing his head, but he never fully looked away from Obito. Ensuring that this was all right, that this was something that he wanted to do, and just-
Gods, he wanted to scream.
"It's going well, this year," Gaara said, clasping his hands behind his back. "I've heard you've made a lot of progress with a water storage and purification system, as well. When the rains come, we'll be able to test it. Your efforts here have been admirable, Obito."
"It's... nothing." He swallowed uncomfortably, averting his eye. "I'm just completing the mission."
"A mission that countless others before you have failed. Your efforts are going to be a great asset to us in the future."
"Our villages have always worked best together," Kakashi said, and something about Gaara's returned, perfectly polite smile made him feel sick.
They walked a little ways together, Kakashi talking with the three sand siblings while he simply watched. With Gaara, now, they were stopped much more often, shinobi and civilians alike speaking up with their eyes lighting up at the sight of their beloved Kazekage, and their wariness of Obito was no longer enough to stop any from approach. They all but fawned over him, an adoration that was beyond even what Obito had remembered Sarutobi or Minato earning from his own village, and standing next to Gaara, he even earned a few uncomfortable smiles of his own. The whispering stopped.
Not everyone he saw looked happy, though.
There were- holes. Everywhere he looked, someone was missing; a family of a mother and her young son, with no father in sight. A man standing on his own, eyes downcast and shoulders heavy, with a wedding ring turned miserably about one finger. Many people that they passed wore black scarves or gloves over yukatas, and more than once, Obito and Kakashi moved by sights that looked closer to a memorial than a celebration.
On one corner was a painfully small, redheaded little boy, his cheeks flushed and his mouth turned low. One hand each caught on either side by who could only be his grandparents.
Obito looked at him, and remembered Sasori.
"I'm afraid there's something I need to go supervise, now," Gaara spoke up, when they'd ambled much close into the village. "The perils of being the Kazekage. I hope you have a pleasant rest of the evening. Before I go-" He stepped away for a moment, turning towards one of the ever-present vendors with arrays of festival food, and returned to hold out two small fruits, one to him, and one to Kakashi. They looked like very small watermelons, and most of the people they'd passed thus far had been eating one or two. "This is a guava. It used to be traditional Suna hospitality that we'd serve one to any visitors to our village, but we haven't been able to for a while, now- perhaps with the progress you two have made in our greenhouses, we'll be able to again."
Kakashi and Gaara exchanged politely bowed heads, Obito only managing to kick himself enough to reach his hand out a split second before Kakashi did it for him. The Kazekage and his guards exchanged their farewells, and with that, Obito was left standing on the side of the road, a fruit clutched numbly in his hand and gaping upon being struck dumb.
"Something wrong?" Kakashi asked, with Gaara gone. He carved off a piece with his thumb, slipping it under his mask. "Obito?"
"I don't... I'm..." The words got stuck and couldn't come out, and Obito squeezed his eyes shut, forcing a suddenly ragged breath through clenched teeth. "I don't understand."
"Hm?"
"Why is Gaara- why is everyone-" There wasn't words for it and he gestured uselessly, gestured with the hand holding the ridiculous fruit. "Doesn't he have any idea who I am?!"
It was nonsense, because Gaara did. Gaara knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of. He had been a shadow of so much of Gaara's life in particular in the worst ways possible, and now here he was, being welcomed into his home and given fruit.
What the hell was he supposed to think?!
Kakashi paused next to him, his eye still unreadable. He looked away grimly to carve off another section of guava. "I'm not sure how much you know about this village," he said at length. "But Gaara-sama did some pretty terrible things, when he was much younger. Things only started to change when he decided to change himself, and focused everything that he had on the people of this village. There's a reason why everyone here loves him as much as they do." He paused again, looking at Obito very, very carefully.
"He's been where you are," he said, "and he knows what it takes to come out the other side."
He tossed the guava between his hands again, now half-eaten, and his eye crinkled in a very faint smile. Then, nudging one hand against Obito's shoulder, he led him on deeper into the festival.