The conversation they should have had fifteen years ago finally came on a Tuesday.
Obito had been moved to a more secure facility by then—not quite a prison, but certainly not a hospital either. It was a single room with reinforced walls and a chakra-suppression seal that hummed constantly at the edge of his awareness, reminding him with every breath that he was still considered dangerous. Which, he supposed, was fair. Trust wasn't something that could be rebuilt overnight, especially when the one seeking it had spent decades systematically destroying it.
He had been expecting Kakashi's visit, had seen it approaching like a storm on the horizon. The interrogation had opened wounds between them that couldn't be left to fester, and his former teammate wasn't the type to leave important conversations unfinished indefinitely. Still, when the door finally opened to admit the silver-haired jonin, Obito felt his breath catch in his throat.
They were alone for the first time since Kannabi Bridge. Really alone, without the distraction of battle or the presence of other observers. Just two men who had once been boys together, now separated by an ocean of choices and consequences that seemed impossible to bridge.
Kakashi closed the door behind him with deliberate care, the sound of the lock engaging unnaturally loud in the small space. He moved to the single chair across from Obito's bed, but didn't sit immediately. Instead, he stood there, studying his former teammate's face with the intensity of someone trying to solve a particularly complex puzzle.
"You look like him," Kakashi said finally. "The boy I knew. Different, older, marked by everything that's happened, but... still him."
Obito felt something twist in his chest at the words. "I'm not sure that's true anymore."
"No," Kakashi agreed, settling into the chair. "Neither am I. But the resemblance is there."
They fell into silence, the weight of everything unsaid hanging between them like a physical barrier. Where did you begin a conversation that should have happened before either of them knew what they were capable of becoming? How did you address fifteen years of deception, manipulation, and betrayal with someone you had once trusted absolutely?
"I tried to kill you," Obito said, choosing perhaps the most difficult place to start. "Multiple times. I looked you in the eye and tried to end your life."
"Yes."
"I used your guilt against you. I knew exactly how much Rin's death tormented you, and I exploited that knowledge."
"Yes."
"I turned your sensei's son into a weapon and aimed him at everything you've spent your life protecting."
"Yes." Kakashi's voice remained steady, but Obito could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands clenched slightly at each acknowledgment. "You did all of those things."
"And you still came here to talk to me."
It wasn't quite a question, but Kakashi treated it like one anyway. He leaned back in his chair, his visible eye distant with thought.
"When we were kids," he said, "you had this habit of talking through your problems out loud. Not asking for advice, exactly, just... working through your thoughts by speaking them. You'd analyze missions, relationships, training techniques, whatever was bothering you, and somehow hearing yourself say it would help you find solutions."
Obito remembered. It had driven Kakashi crazy at the time, this verbal processing that the more reserved boy had found unnecessary and inefficient.
"I used to think it was a waste of time," Kakashi continued. "All that talking when you could just think things through internally. But after you... after Kannabi Bridge, I found myself doing the same thing. Talking to your grave marker, working through problems I couldn't solve alone."
The admission hung in the air between them, vulnerable and unexpected. Obito had never imagined Kakashi visiting his memorial, let alone speaking to it.
"What did you talk about?"
"Everything. Missions that went wrong. Team dynamics. How to deal with Sensei when he was being impossible. Later... how to live with failing people I cared about." Kakashi's gaze sharpened, focusing on Obito's face. "I told that grave marker things I never told anyone else. Treated it like a friend who would understand."
"And now that friend turned out to be your enemy."
"No." The word came quickly, firmly, surprising them both. Kakashi paused, seeming to consider what he had just said. "Not my enemy. Something more complicated than that."
Obito felt a familiar frustration rising in his chest, the same feeling he had experienced during their final battle when Kakashi had refused to hate him cleanly. "I killed your sensei's wife. I orphaned Naruto. I spent years trying to destroy everything you protected. How am I not your enemy?"
"Because enemies are simpler than this," Kakashi said. "Enemies are people you can fight without reservation, defeat without guilt, kill without regret. You... you're something else entirely."
"What am I, then?"
The question seemed to catch Kakashi off guard. He sat quietly for a long moment, his gaze moving from Obito's face to the sealed window, then back again.
"You're the friend I failed to save," he said finally. "The teammate I let down when it mattered most. The brother I lost to my own mistakes."
"That's not—"
"And you're also the man who caused incalculable suffering. Who manipulated grief and trauma to serve your own ends. Who became exactly the kind of person we swore to protect the world from."
Obito felt the words hit him like physical blows, each one finding its mark with surgical precision. This was what he had wanted, wasn't it? Clear acknowledgment of what he had become, honest assessment of his crimes. So why did hearing it from Kakashi hurt so much?
"Both things are true," Kakashi continued. "The boy I knew and the man you became. I can't separate them cleanly, can't hate one without destroying my memories of the other. That's what makes this so difficult."
"It would be easier if you could just hate me."
"Much easier," Kakashi agreed. "But I've never been one to choose the easy path."
Despite everything, Obito felt his mouth twitch in what might have been the ghost of a smile. "No, you never were."
"Tell me about that night," Kakashi said suddenly. "Kannabi Bridge. What really happened after the cave-in?"
It was a question Obito had been dreading and anticipating in equal measure. The moment when he would have to revisit the origin point of everything that followed, the choice that had set him on the path to becoming a monster.
"I didn't die," he said simply. "Obviously. But for a while, I wanted to. The injuries were... extensive. Madara found me, saved me, spent months helping me heal. And during that time, he told me stories."
"What kind of stories?"
"About the world. About human nature. About the inevitable failure of every system we tried to build." Obito closed his eyes, remembering those long conversations in the underground chambers where he had learned to walk again. "He showed me the memorial stone, told me how many names were added each year. Helped me understand that the peace we were fighting for was an illusion."
"And you believed him."
"I wanted to believe him," Obito corrected. "It was easier than accepting that Rin had died for something real and worthwhile. Easier than dealing with the pain of loss."
"When did you stop believing?"
The question was deceptively simple, but Obito knew it cut to the heart of everything. When had the ideology become personal vengeance? When had saving the world become destroying it?
"When I saw her die," he said quietly. "When I watched you kill her and realized that everything Madara had told me about human nature was true. That even the best people, even you, would eventually hurt the ones they loved."
Kakashi flinched as if he had been struck. "You were there."
"I was there. I watched. I saw you choose duty over friendship, saw you put your hand through her chest because following orders mattered more than protecting her."
"That's not—" Kakashi started, then stopped himself. "You don't know what happened. You don't understand the context."
"Then explain it to me."
For a moment, Obito thought Kakashi might refuse. The other man's face had gone pale, his visible eye wide with something that looked like panic. But then he seemed to gather himself, drawing on reserves of strength that Obito recognized from their childhood.
"She was the Three-Tails jinchuriki," Kakashi said quietly. "Kiri had sealed the beast inside her as a weapon against Konoha. She begged me to kill her rather than let her be used to destroy the village. And I... I couldn't. I couldn't kill my teammate, my friend, someone I..." He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
"Someone you loved."
"Yes."
The admission hung between them, raw and painful. Obito felt something shift inside him, a foundation stone of his hatred cracking under the weight of understanding.
"She chose to die," Kakashi continued. "Threw herself in front of my attack when I was fighting her captors. Used my inability to hurt her against me, knowing I would never be able to live with what happened next."
"You both loved her." It wasn't a question.
"We both loved her," Kakashi confirmed. "Different kinds of love, maybe, but... yes. We both loved her enough to want her to live. And she loved us both enough to die rather than be used to hurt the people we were trying to protect."
Obito felt tears he hadn't realized were coming streak down his cheeks. All these years, all the hatred and anger and thirst for revenge, built on a misunderstanding. Built on seeing only the surface of a tragedy he hadn't bothered to understand.
"I could have asked," he said, his voice breaking. "I could have asked you what happened. Could have tried to understand."
"Would you have believed me?"
"I don't know. Maybe not. I was... I was so angry. So hurt. I needed someone to blame."
"And I was convenient."
They sat in silence for a long time after that, both lost in memories of a girl who had loved them enough to sacrifice herself for their shared ideals. Obito tried to reconcile this new understanding with the hatred that had driven him for so long, but found it slipping away like water through his fingers.
"I'm sorry," he said finally. "For all of it. For not trusting you, for not asking questions, for becoming what I became. For using your guilt against you when you were already carrying more than anyone should have to bear."
Kakashi nodded slowly. "I'm sorry too. For not being strong enough to save her. For not being strong enough to save you."
"You couldn't have saved me from myself."
"Maybe not. But I should have tried harder."
As the afternoon light faded outside the sealed window, two members of Team Minato sat together and grieved for the girl they had both loved and lost, and for the friendship that had been buried with her. It wasn't forgiveness—that would take time, if it came at all. It wasn't absolution or redemption or any of the grand gestures that might have satisfied the storytellers.
But it was understanding. It was the beginning of truth between them, painful and necessary and real.
It was, perhaps, enough to build on.