Something Precious

Chapter Sixty One

Pain. That was the first thing he felt when he came back to the conscious world. He blinked open his eyes - well. . . eye - only to be met with panic inducing darkness. What had happened again? He couldn't remember.

"So you are finally awake." the deep voice resonated in the silence. He shivered. It was a voice that was filled with ice.

His eye frantically scanned his surroundings, desperatly looking for some speck of light to reassure him. "Am I dead?" he wondered out loud.

"No. Though you were close." the same deep voice responded from somewhere in the blindness.

Then his vision adjusted at last and the focused on a man with long hair that was white from age. His face was wise and wrinkled. Something about him though. . . he seemed. . . evil? Was that the word to put to it? Maybe not quite, but close.

"Who are you?" he croaked to the man. His own voice was hoarse  from disuse.

"Well, my name is Madara Uchiha." the voice sounded proud of this, as if it was some great achievement to hold such a name as that.

Obito froze. A rush of recollection flooded his mind. The last memory of consciousness he had. Rin. Kakashi. Rocks. Naruto; more specifically, what Naruto had said.

"Remember this - whatever you do, don't trust Madara." his voice was urgent and he seemed almost. . . afraid.

Obito caught his breath and a rush of panic hit him. He glanced over to the man again. Was he really dangerous enough to strike fear into someone like Naruto, a man who feared nothing and no one? Who could take on a legion by himself without flinching. If he was that dangerous, then what did that mean for Obito? If not to kill him, what purpose does Madara intend for him?

"Is something wrong?" Madara inquired in a softish tone of voice as if trying to mimic caring, but such a thing was unfamiliar to this Madara.

Obito's mind was a whirl of fear, his thoughts incoherent and jumbled. 'Come on! Get it together Obito!' he chided himself. Now was not the time for cowardice. He took a

"Are you alright?" Madara asked him in that same sickening tone.

Obito took a deep breath though his nose and painfully pushed himself up from the table where he lay using his left arm because his right felt strangely dead. "Um, yes. You said. . ." Obito wracked his brain for something to say, anything really. Then he remembered a history lesson Minato had given the team a few weeks after he had taken them on as a team. Madara. . . had that not been the First Hokage's greatest foe? Right, and what had happened to him again? "You said you are Madara Uchiha? Didn't he die like, a hundred years ago at the Valley of the End or something?" he wasn't really that curious. Of course he was a little, but Naruto's warning rang in his mind over and over like the clear chime of church bells on bright Sunday morning when all you wanted to do was sleep, so he didn't feel overly concerned over how this supposedly dead historical figure was well. . . not dead (though he seemed close by the look of it).

"Yes, well the story you were told was incomplete." and then Madara went on to tell Obito all about what happened during and after his battle with the infamous Hashirama Senju while Obito used the time to think of a way out.

The more time that passed in the cave, the more Obito's sight adjusted to it's darkness. There seemed to be a weak light coming from somewhere around Madara, illuminating him just a little more than everything else.