Chapter Text
No one can know this, but he came from the moon. When the sun falls and the stars breathe life into the sky, he stares up at the biggest star of them all, and reaches for it. But his arms are too small, and he’s too weak, and even if he stretches really high, it’s too far away.
But that's okay. One day, when he’s all grown up and strong, he’ll jump as high as he can, and cross the distance between them.
Until then, he has to live. Because only the living can meet again.
The creatures here are not pleasant. They gawk and stare, whisper things in their native tongue, things he can’t understand but knows aren’t good. When he tries to speak with them, they back away. They’re intelligent—must be, to have built the dens they live in, and to have tamed the land’s other native beasts. Regardless, there's something about him they don't like, and any effort to ask for help falls on deaf ears. They don't want to offer aid to outlanders.
He thinks he might die, which should be avoided. It's hard to know what substances are safe to ingest when nothing looks as it does back home, and when he tried to drink from a large crater of water, the dense salt made him shrivel up. If all this planet’s water is like this, survival is impossible.
Days without water leave him wilted against the hard outer shell of a local den. No matter how wonderful the sun feels on his fronds, without water, he’ll dry up in less than a week. The landscape is arid, a balmy heat that he shies from, and it has not yet rained.
A shadow blocks the sunlight from reaching his toes, and he looks up, finding the young of one of the locals. It crouches before him, its arms over its knees, body covered in layers and layers of fabric.
It says something, but they don't speak the same tongue. The hand it holds out connects, though, and with nowhere else to turn, he takes it.
Its name is Rin. Every day, it fills just one clear cylinder with water, and offers it to him. He drinks with endless thirst, and this time, there is no salt to shrivel and kill him. The water is clean and pure, and he shakes, because for a while there, he truly thought himself dead.
Rin’s parent is unsettled by him, like most of the native fauna are, but it doesn't push him away. He gets to sit in a corner of their den with a crooked fern and bask in the sun, no longer baking in the open streets. Every day, the small one speaks to him and familiarizes him with the language.
“Rin,” it says, pointing at itself. “Rin.”
Then it presses a hand to his chest, looks up as though thinking of something, and smiles. “Obito.”
He thinks this is the word the locals use for his people. If that’s so, then their species are Rin, right?
This, he learns, is incorrect. The young one is named Rin, and she has named him Obito. She's female, as is her parent. The settlement they now inhabit is Suna, and it's part of a desert country to the south of their continent.
The boy, adopted by the locals as Obito, picks up the language quickly. His kind specialize in absorbing and copying the species that surround them, and before long, he can mimic the noises they make.
Rin’s mother, after some months, treats him like one of her houseplants. She waters him once daily, and the fear she once held for him is gone, but she isn't as warm and friendly as her daughter. Still, she smiles at him, and will talk to him while checking his extremities, assuring he hasn't wilted in the night.
Obito likes them. They're kind locals, and now, he may not die.
But not everyone takes kindly to his presence, and on the day the village casts him out, Rin’s eyes keep leaking.
They don't kill him. Maybe they don't know how. But as Suna’s gates close behind him, he faces the desert and doubts he'll ever find kindness in this world again.
Obito can hold basic conversations with the locals, but he doesn't look like them. They continue to whisper and refuse him aid. His lips are cracked, the walls of his throat are like sandpaper, and he listlessly wanders from one place to the next.
Fortunately, beyond the desert, it rains. He stands in the mud, wearing the loose robes that Rin made, uncertain how to account for the ring of fronds around his neck. The fabric sticks to his skin as he stands beneath the rainstorm and soaks up all he can, trying not to break down as he realizes that, once again, he’s survived.
He misses the glasses of water Rin’s mother would feed him, and the language lessons Rin gave.
This planet is cruel, scary, and lonely. But he's too small to reach the moon, and too young to go back, anyway.
One day, Obito is attacked. A large local tackles him to the ground and jabs at his shoulder with a sharp blade. A cry breaks from his chest as he leaks clear fluid across the man’s hand and glove, and this is it. This is how he dies. Only months into his new life, and it's over.
But the moon goddess must look upon him favourably. His attacker falls into a heap on the ground like a puddle of meat, and the one standing over him has pale colouring.
The colours are like Obito’s. They remind him of his homeland.
In his heart, he thinks of this local as one of his own.
The man gapes at him and at the hole in his shoulder, the lifeblood leaking from him. He stalls, arms hovering uselessly, before he crouches down.
“Oh, dear,” he breathes. “Oh, sage, what in the world are you, little one?”
Obito thinks, and because he has not yet learned the name the locals gave his kind, he says, “Obito.”
The man shudders, as though shocked he can speak, and pulls him close. He removes the bladed weapon from Obito's shoulder and presses down on it with some sort of fabric, holding it there.
“Sage, Pup, I hope this works,” the man says. “Does it hurt?”
Obito nods. The pain is dull now, though, reminding him that he's hurt but not crippling him as it did before. Pain is always like that.
“Where did you come from?”
With his good arm, Obito points at the sky, and the brightest, biggest light that shines down on them.
The man is kind. He stops Obito from leaking all his lifeblood out on the forest floor and tries to stitch the edges shut. But when Obito's skin tears, brittle from dehydration, the man instead wraps the hole in strips of cloth, and tells him not to move.
His name is Sakumo. He's a shinobi, whatever that is. Obito has wandered into dangerous lands, and there is conflict nearby. Sakumo explains this while carrying Obito on his back, legs wrapped around the trunk of his body.
Obito has never been carried like this before. It's nice, and the man is warm. He closes his eyes, listening to the soft voice by his ear as it shares all sorts of stories he only half understands, and wonders if this man will let him stay beneath a window, and offer water.
Obito runs away from Sakumo when they near a guarded village. He hides in the brush, out of sight from the road, as this new human thing tries to coax him back out. But Obito remembers Suna, how they separated him from his Rin, and won't let that happen again.
He's old enough now that he should be able to mimic humans to a greater extent. Passing down the road is a group of three, all wearing the same clothes, with thick, dark hair and blackened eyes, and he concentrates. He's weak, in need of nutrients he's sorely lacking, but feels the vibration of the cells heeding his call. His body morphs and twists, conforming to these creatures he's spent so much time with, and when everything stops, he looks down at his hands. No longer are they the pasty white of his natural tone. His fronds are gone, melted into his body, and it's strange not seeing them poking out at the edges of his vision.
Sakumo’s coaxing has silenced, and his arms hang at his sides.
Obito ducks his head. “Do I look right?” he asks. “Will they accept me?”
Sakumo's jaw snaps shut, and he takes a breath, reaching out his hand. “Yes,” he says softly. “Konoha will welcome you, Obito. You have my word.”
For perhaps his first time since landing, Obito smiles. He takes the man’s hand and dares to hope.
Humans are… strange.
Obito is the size of a small, young human, and though their physical growth rate seems about the same, they appear a bit… empty-headed when they are young.
Sakumo’s small one isn't steady on his feet yet. He looks to be a little smaller than Rin, and doesn't converse the way his father does, but he's very cute. He has the same pale colouring of Obito’s homeland, and as Obito plays with the small one, he finds himself smiling.
The leader of this settlement calls him an Uchiha. Sakumo insists he's not, that only his colouring is similar, but that wilted human with the large protrusion from his head will not acquiesce. Sakumo hasn't shared with the village that Obito is foreign, or that he bleeds differently from the humans and is only mimicking them to survive.
Apparently, the ‘Uchiha’ things want him, thinking he's of their genetics. Obito thought to change his colouring to match Sakumo’s, but Sakumo says it's too late and that humans can’t alter themselves in the ways he can. If he changes, they'll know something is amiss.
Obito may be absorbed into the Uchiha now. He’d much rather stay with Sakumo and the small one.
Obito lifts the small one into the air, and he stares down blankly at Obito.
“Are you okay to do that?” Sakumo asks from the squat table across the room, where he sips from a little cup. “You've been very weak.”
“I was dehydrated,” he says simply. “But I'm feeling better now. My body is strong.”
A tiny hand finds his hair, and he thinks it sweet until it tugs painfully, and he yelps, lowering the small one back to the ground. He's grateful his fronds are gone, imagining the little human tearing them from his skin.
Now that he's transformed, his body requires solid food to keep his transformation, and he hesitantly tastes the human dishes Sakumo prepared. His mimicry is deeply accurate, so with his human-like taste buds, it's wonderful, and he eats everything within reach.
“Not that,” Sakumo laughs. “Don't eat the chopstick; that's a utensil.”
Obito shrugs. Another strange custom of the locals, he supposes. It tastes bad, anyway.
“How old are you?” Sakumo asks. “You speak well for how small you are.”
Obito counts on his fingers, and holds them up. “Three cycles!”
Sakumo watches him, then moves to his son, who refuses to partake in the customs of his homeland and feeds himself with his hands. “Kakashi’s age, then. But you look older.”
Perhaps their growth isn't quite the same; Obito's species grows rapidly in the first three years, and then slows. They are self-sufficient by three cycles, at least in theory, and are pressed to develop on their own from then on.
Obito turns to the small one with a smile. “We are age-mates, then, Kakashi!”
Kakashi looks entirely unimpressed. He is a rude one, having not said a word since they met. But Obito will win his heart in honour of his benevolent father.
Sakumo laughs. “Well, that may be so, but Kakashi has a bit of growing to do before he catches up to you.”
Obito nods. That much is obvious. But Kakashi listens keenly when they speak, and Obito imagines that he understands more than it seems. He has intelligent eyes, like the members of Obito’s clutch.
“For what it's worth, I'll fight them on your behalf,” Sakumo says. “I’ll open my home to you, Obito. You're welcome to grow up here, if the Hokage will allow it.”
Obito's eyes light up, and he nods eagerly. To live someplace with a pleasant human who feeds and waters him sounds wonderful.
The wilted human with the large, stupid, ugly protrusion from his head must have a grudge against Obito, because he does not oblige Sakumo’s request. Obito is a clansman, he says, and must live with his people. The problem is that they are not Obito’s people, no one here is like Obito, and all the Uchiha have shifty eyes. They don't like him, or trust him, but won't give him to Sakumo because they think he has a bloodline trait. Or something. None of the clansmen want to care for him, so the wilted, clearly ancient human gives him a small den in their territory, and some metallic disks that mark the land’s currency, and tells him to fend for himself.
Immediately, he walks out of the den and goes back to Sakumo’s house. The small one makes grabby hands for him when he enters, and he smiles, picking up the human young and holding him to his chest. Little hands wrap around his neck, and Obito feels like he solved the problem all on his own.
He did not.
Sakumo is happy to feed him while he's there, but someone must have seen him leaving the Uchiha territory, because a uniformed man with the same colouring as Obito comes to collect him a few hours later.
Damn it. (He heard this phrase from a human he passed, and didn't know what it meant. Now, he thinks he understands. Damn it, indeed.)
Nevertheless, he continues to wander away from his sad little den every day for sustenance. Sakumo indulges him, even while warning that the Uchiha will throw a fit. Let them throw all the fits they want. Obito doesn’t know what a fit is, or how dangerous it can be, but surely the walls of Sakumo’s den are fortified enough to withstand such an attack.
One day, Obito visits the Hatake den—that's the blood name for Sakumo and his clutch—only to find that Sakumo is not there. Strange. This is an unprecedented event.
Kakashi is there. He's being guarded by a blond woman with foul-smelling breath who doesn't give him much attention.
“I can watch him,” Obito says. The woman doesn’t seem to be doing a good job of it, anyway. “You can go.”
The woman yawns, looking him over. Her face is flushed, like she's ill, and Obito guides Kakashi behind him. It's doubtful Obito can catch a human illness, but if Kakashi did, it would be very sad. “You're that new Uchiha kid, aren't ya?”
“Yes?” he supposes. That must be another word for offspring.
The woman gets very close to him, and he leans away, shoving Kakashi back a little further behind himself. Eventually, she shrugs and waves her hand, slipping on her sandals at the door. “Alright, then. Have fun. Don't get him killed or anything; Kumo’s only got one of those.”
As though he would let his favourite human die.
When she leaves, Obito looks down at his friend, and pumps his fist. “Come, age-mate! To the kitchen!”
Kakashi mimics his hand movement and follows along behind, as silent as ever.
Obito doesn't know much about feeding and raising humans, but has witnessed Sakumo use the kitchen enough that he can probably mimic the patterns he recorded. They like their meals warm and flavourful, and eat many things at once.
Obito rummages through the drawers and gathers all the utensils atop them, then looks in the food storage box. It's a handy device that keeps everything within it cold, and he wishes he knew how it worked. The ingredients he finds in there are colourful, with all manner of smells and consistency, but he doesn't know what they're called. Sakumo is very selective in what he includes in his cooking, but as far as Obito is concerned, nothing bad should happen if he chooses an incorrect assortment. They're still edible, after all.
He cuts the plant foods into segmented pieces, like Sakumo does, and feels like a monster. These creatures share a vaguely similar makeup to him, and though he knows they don't have the intelligence of himself or the humans, it makes him sad to bring them pain. But it's for Kakashi, and if they’re not eaten, they’ll wither away like Obito’s clutch mates did upon their landing. Kakashi will wither, too, without fuel. He would hate that.
Obito nicks his finger with the blade and winces, staring at the clear fluid leaking from the cut. He holds it up, away from the food, and thinks back to when Sakumo treated his last injury. There’s still a mark on his shoulder from where his attacker broke through his skin, but it’s healed now, and no longer weeps.
He puts his hand over the cut, cringing at the feel of sticky wetness building up beneath his fingers. Humans don’t leak as easily. Their lifeblood clots faster, and they heal well, too. While waiting for the bleeding to stop, he leans back against the counter and stares down at the small one from atop the chair he sits on. Kakashi is doing something strange with his nose… Sniffing Obito’s hand, like one of the lesser beasts of this world. Curiously, Obito hops off the chair and offers his hand to the boy, wondering what he'll do.
Kakashi makes a face at the lifeblood sluggishly leaving Obito’s body, and to him, it must seem very strange. Kakashi probably hasn’t realized that Obito is different from himself and his father.
“It’s sweet,” Kakashi says skeptically. It's the first time he's spoken in the two months they’ve known each other, at least in Obito’s presence.
“Is it?” Obito asks. He can’t really say he’s ever tasted it before… But then again, neither has Kakashi. “You can smell that?”
Kakashi nods.
Curiously, Obito sticks his injured finger in his mouth and tastes the faint sweetness of his blood. Huh. Well, it makes sense if he considers that his blood, which is essentially a thin sap, carries nutrients throughout his body. Is human blood sweet, too?
Unlikely.
Obito proudly presents his first attempt at meal-prep atop the low table in the sitting room and tries to make it look neat and pretty like Sakumo does. Kakashi trusts him enough to eat without prejudice… and makes a horrible face of disgust. When Obito tries it for himself, he finds that yes, indeed, it is terrible. Apparently, ingredients matter.
As time goes on, it gets harder and harder to slip unnoticed out of the Uchiha district. The clansmen are fully aware of his escapades, and after teaching him the basics of cooking, Sakumo suggests he try to listen to them for a while and not stir the pot, so to speak. But Sakumo just taught him that if he doesn't stir the pot, its contents will burn, so this is confusing.
After only a week away from his humans, he’s listless, hanging against the bottom rungs of a bridge. The river here divides the Uchiha lands from the rest of the settlement, so by keeping to the bridge, he’s as close as he can get without leaving. He picks at the wooden beams with his fingernail, and the longer he sits here, the more miserable his thoughts turn. Humans like to kill things. They’re a brutish species, and most of their dens are built from the husks of the local flora, which is sad. Obito accepts this because he sees the need, but part of him can’t help but wonder if he might be used for something like this when he dies.
They’ll call it the Obito Bridge, he decides. They’ll paint it orange, because orange is a nice, bold colour, and it will be so bright and so eye-catching that it will be seen all the way from his homeland. That doesn’t sound too bad, really.
Now and then, he’s called into a big, long room with a bunch of humans who share his colouring, and they’ll discuss ‘matters of importance’ that are not so important to Obito. Usually, at the tail end, their discussion turns to him.
Despite demanding he enter their clan grounds against his own wishes, none of them really want him there. They’re so sure he’s one of them because he looks like any other Uchiha child, but can’t fathom who his parents could have been. There are no missing children who match his age and description, and no missing adults who may have gone off to procreate. By all rights, he can’t be from the clan, but so obviously is.
Obito should be flattered. His transformation is good enough to have them all spooked. Instead, he wishes he might have been worse at it, because maybe then he could have stayed with his humans.
The clan leader is a man with a strong jaw and perfect scowl. He crosses his arms at the head of the table, watching Obito with hidden thoughts, and asks, “How old did you say you were?”
“Six,” he lies, remembering that Sakumo said he looked to be about that age. He is nearly at four cycles, he thinks, though his concept of time is a bit skewered.
“Right.” The man is Fugaku, and he’s the one who colluded with the withered old man to keep Obito in this land. “It's time we assess your chakra reserves and enrol you in the academy, then.”
Obito doesn't know what either of those things mean separately, let alone together, but nods along anyway. Kicking up a fuss never worked for him before.
But when one of the clansmen assesses his chakra reserves, the room goes quiet.
“I can't sense them,” the woman says. “But that’s not possible. Even civilians have some chakra.”
Uh-oh. Is today the day he gets caught? Sakumo should have let Obito do what he wanted if he was going to get chased out of the village a week later. It would have been nice to have a few more days with his age-mate.
They make him do a lot of tests he doesn't understand, trying to get his chakra to manifest. Obito thinks he knows chakra, that his parent must have mentioned it before his clutch reached self-sufficiency, but can't recall what it is. On the training grounds where they test him, he sees young humans throwing bladed weapons around and playing with fire. That feels… unwise, but far be it for an outlander to tell these people how to raise their offspring.
Curiously, the fire they play with comes from their hands, as though their body can produce it. Obito never knew this about humans before. Could his transformation mimic that, too?
While the adults argue, Obito analyzes the flame-wielding spawn carefully, and copies the shapes they make with their hands. His eyes have the ability to store what they've seen and recreate it, within reason. After watching for a bit, he thinks he’s got it, and makes the shapes with his own hands. Something tingles in his core, and Fugaku’s quiet argument with the Uchiha doing the assessment falls silent.
Flames erupt from Obito’s hand, and he panics. He didn't think about what he would do if it worked . The fire hisses against his skin, and he shakes his hand, launching the fireball at one of the practice dummies across the field. Oh, wow. He hated that. He hated that a lot.
Everyone looks at him. One of the adults summons water with a flick of her wrist— that is a skill Obito could utilize—and they all silently watch him.
He rubs the back of his neck and turns away.
He might know what chakra is now.
