To Be Lost On The Road To Life

Thrice Damned

The first time he woke up, he realized something was wrong.

The fact that he woke up was exactly the problem.

There wasn't supposed to be a "waking up" for him, he wasn't supposed to feel anything or be able to see. Why? Well, that's because he died. He was supposed to be dead, a gone, without so much as a lifeless corpse left on the battlefield. He had been engulfed by the brilliant white light, being led to an eternal slumber and was promised freedom from the world and his past sins. Or, maybe, he was supposed to be sent to hell to atone for all that he had done, all the innocent people he had killed or had a hand in the deaths of.

Regardless, "waking up" was not on his rather short to-do list, and for whatever reason, he had woken up and was alive. He was breathing. And the problem was that he wasn't supposed to be.

Trembling hands made their way to his face and he realized that something else was wrong. His skin felt smooth and young, he felt no creases—be they the frown lines he had developed over the years of shouldering his past pains or the scars resulting from the skin infused with Senju cells.

He glanced around the room he was in, absently noting he was in a room he had long forgotten before dashing over to the full-body mirror by the cabinet.

His eyes widened.

He was in familiar blue pajamas that were (rather distastefully) riddled with the gaudy Uchiha fans that he had so cherished at a younger age. He was about a foot shorter than he remembered being, the last time he checked. As he thought, he was lacking the scars that he had gained after the events in Kusagakure, and his face—

He grimaced. Not only did he have two eyes, both of which were onyx in color instead of mismatched black and rippled amaranthine, but his face was noticeably younger. It was rounder, his cheeks were fuller giving him a cherub-like face(had he always looked so feminine?) and over all he looked rather... innocent. If one ignored the looming darkness in the twin black holes that were his eyes, that is.

There Uchiha Obito stood, a man of 31 years who had lived a life of sin, a man who had incurred the Fourth Shinobi World War, a man who had battled against the Child of Prophecy and lost, a man who, by all rights, was meant to be dead. He had been saved by Naruto, and in turn, had sacrificed his life for the young boy who carried the world on his shoulders.

Yes, he was supposed to be dead, and it was a certain level of pride knowing that he died for a good cause. Sacrificing one's life to protect an old friend and the Child of Prophecy? Surely that could be considered a virtuous act. When the one who made the sacrifice actually died.

And yet, he found himself not only alive, but in the body of his 12-year-old self.

With a powerful sigh, Obito ran a hand down his face to smooth the creases that his familiar near-permanent scowl was inducing.

How had he ended up in this situation? The first thought that occurred to him was that all of it was a Genjutsu. But only the Mugen Tsukuyomi could create a world so like the original, replicate the real world so perfectly. There was no way that a "normal" Genjutsu—even Tsukuyomi—would have the ability to remain undetected by him, so that was the only logical explanation. But if that was the case, if Obito truly was in the Mugen Tsukuyomi...

Did Naruto fail?

He felt a powerful sense of guilt, sadness, and anger overwhelm him. Was Kaguya too powerful for Naruto and Sasuke to overcome, after all? He had thought it was okay to leave everything up to Naruto. He thought the boy would've been able to find a way to defeat Kaguya, to lead the Shinobi world into a world of peace instead of the strife and pain it almost always resulted in.