“Can you take a little more?” Hashirama murmurs, and there's a whisper of something else beneath the velvet of his voice, heady and heavy like the power that curls across his skin, and Obito shudders, moans.

“Hang on,” Obito whispers, pressing his hand against the back of Sakura's head so she won't have to watch the White Zetsu approach. “Close your eyes, Sakura, you’ll be fine.” Maybe he can bargain with them, or maybe he can stall them, useless as he is. Maybe there's a way she can survive this, even if Obito can't. And then there's a step, loud on the rocky bank. “I think,” a voice says, calm and perfectly even, “that you're trespassing on Senju lands.”

There's no division between the forest and the citadel.

Obito meets a version of himself from another world. And another, and another, and another.