Two weeks into his new existence, they took him home.
Not to the small apartment that served as his current prison, but to the place where he had learned to throw shuriken and practiced the Great Fireball Technique and dreamed of inheriting the legacy of his clan. The Uchiha compound stood empty now, its streets silent and its houses dark, but the bones of his childhood remained unchanged.
Tsunade herself had authorized the visit, though Obito suspected the decision owed more to psychological evaluation than mercy. His therapist—a requirement of his sentence—had recommended exposure to significant locations from his past as part of what she called "identity integration therapy." The masked persona he had worn for fifteen years needed to be reconciled with the boy he had been, and apparently that process required confronting physical reminders of who Obito Uchiha had once been.
Yamato walked beside him through the compound's main gate, his presence both protective and restraining. They had left the usual escort of ANBU operatives at the perimeter—even Tsunade wasn't cruel enough to turn this pilgrimage into a public spectacle—but Obito could feel their surveillance like weight on his shoulders.
"When was the last time you were here?" Yamato asked as they walked down the central avenue.
"The night of the massacre," Obito replied. "I came to collect Sasuke, to bring him into the Akatsuki. He was stronger than I expected."
The memory felt surreal now, layered with implications he had ignored at the time. He had walked these same streets while they were still wet with blood, had stepped over the bodies of people he had known since childhood, and felt nothing but cold satisfaction at a plan executed successfully. The boy who had grown up here would have been horrified by such callousness.
They passed the house where Mikoto Uchiha had taught young children to cook traditional dishes. The building where Elder Setsuna had held court, dispensing wisdom and settling disputes with the authority of his years. The training ground where Fugaku had drilled the police force in tactics and teamwork. All empty now, all silent, monuments to a genocide he had helped orchestrate.
"Tell me about it," Yamato said. "What this place was like when you were young."
Obito paused at a intersection, looking down streets that had once bustled with daily life. "Loud," he said finally. "Always loud. Children playing, adults arguing about politics or police work, old people complaining about how the younger generation was going soft. You could hear the life from blocks away."
"Sounds pleasant."
"It was. Overwhelming sometimes, especially for a kid who preferred reading to socializing, but... warm. Safe. Like being wrapped in a blanket made of belonging."
They turned left toward the residential district, passing houses that grew progressively larger as they approached the clan head's compound. Each building held memories—birthday parties and training sessions and family dinners where multiple generations gathered around crowded tables. The accumulated weight of a lifetime's worth of ordinary moments in a place that had felt permanent.
"The irony isn't lost on me," Obito said as they walked. "I spent years planning to save the world from pain, and I started by destroying the one place that had never caused me any."
"Did you think about that at the time? About what you were helping to destroy?"
"No." The honesty felt like swallowing glass. "I had convinced myself that the Uchiha were a symptom of the world's problems. That their obsession with power and their resentment toward the village proved that the current system was irredeemably flawed."
"And now?"
Obito stopped walking, his attention caught by a small playground tucked between two residential buildings. The swings hung motionless in the still air, their chains rusty from years of neglect. He remembered playing there as a child, competing with other clan kids to see who could swing highest or jump farthest. Simple competitions with no stakes beyond childhood pride.
"Now I think I was looking for excuses," he said quietly. "The Uchiha had problems, real ones. The clan's isolation, the police force's reputation for harshness, the growing tension with the village leadership. But those were problems that could have been solved. Instead, I helped turn them into justifications for murder."
They resumed walking, passing more ghosts with each step. The house where Shisui Uchiha had lived before his mysterious death—another tragedy that could be traced back to the paranoia and mistrust that Obito had helped cultivate. The apartment building where young couples had started families, their children growing up in a community that felt like extended family.
"How many people lived here?" Yamato asked.
"At its peak? Maybe three hundred. Children, adults, elderly. Three generations living side by side, sharing traditions and stories and responsibilities." Obito's voice caught slightly. "It was everything the village was supposed to be, on a smaller scale. A place where everyone belonged, where individual strengths served collective good."
"And you helped destroy it."
"Yes."
The word hung in the air like an indictment. There was no softening it, no contextualizing it into something more palatable. He had taken everything good about his childhood and used it as ammunition against itself.
They reached his family's house as the afternoon sun was beginning to set. It was a modest building by Uchiha standards, suitable for a family of three with reasonable income and no particular political ambitions. The garden his mother had tended was overgrown now, wild plants reclaiming the space where she had grown vegetables and flowers. The front door stood slightly ajar, probably forced by wind or scavengers over the years.
"Do you want to go inside?" Yamato asked.
Obito stared at the threshold, imagining what lay beyond. His childhood bedroom, probably still containing toys and books and the detritus of an interrupted youth. His parents' room, where they had slept peacefully each night, trusting that their son would grow up to honor the family name. The kitchen where his mother had cooked meals and his father had told stories about the clan's heroic past.
"No," he said finally. "I don't think I'm ready for that."
But he walked closer, close enough to peer through the gap in the door. The interior was dim and dusty, furniture covered in sheets that someone—probably village cleanup crews—had placed to preserve what couldn't be removed. It looked like a museum exhibit of normal family life, frozen in time and waiting for residents who would never return.
"They were good people," he said, not sure whether he was talking to Yamato or to himself. "Ordinary, decent people who worked hard and loved their son and believed in something bigger than themselves. They deserved better than what I became."
"What do you think they would say if they could see you now?"
The question was cruel in its simplicity. What would his parents think of the man their son had become? What would they make of the choices he had made in their name, the violence he had committed while claiming to honor their memory?
"They would be ashamed," Obito said quietly. "Heartbroken and ashamed and confused about how the boy they raised could have turned into such a monster."
"Would they?"
Something in Yamato's tone made Obito look at him sharply. The man's expression was thoughtful rather than judgmental, as if he was genuinely considering the question rather than simply trying to provoke a reaction.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, they're not here to speak for themselves. You're putting words in their mouths based on your own guilt and self-hatred. Maybe they would be ashamed. Or maybe they would see that you're trying to do better and focus on that instead."
"After everything I've done? After I helped murder their entire clan?"
"Parents love their children even when those children make terrible mistakes," Yamato said simply. "It's what parents do."
The words hit harder than any accusation could have. Obito found himself thinking about his mother's gentle hands bandaging scrapes and bruises, about his father's patient explanations of complex jutsu theory. They had loved him unconditionally, had seen potential in him even when he saw only failure in himself.
Would that love have survived what he became? Would it have been strong enough to look past the mask and the ideology and the accumulated weight of atrocity to find something worth saving underneath?
"I'll never know," he said finally.
"No," Yamato agreed. "But you can choose to believe they would have wanted you to keep trying to be better."
As they walked back through the empty compound, Obito found himself paying attention to different details. Not just the evidence of abandonment and decay, but the underlying structure that had made this place a home. The careful urban planning that had created community spaces for gathering. The architectural details that reflected aesthetic values passed down through generations. The integration of practical and beautiful that had made the Uchiha compound a place worth belonging to.
"I'm the last one," he said as they reached the main gate. "In Konoha, anyway. Sasuke's out there somewhere, but he's not coming back. I'm the only Uchiha left in the village."
"How does that feel?"
"Lonely. Responsible. Like I'm carrying the weight of everyone who should be here but isn't."
"Is that why you want to rebuild? To honor what was lost?"
Obito considered the question as they walked back toward the village proper. Was his desire for redemption motivated by love for what the Uchiha had been, or guilt for what he had helped them become? Did the distinction matter?
"Maybe," he said finally. "Or maybe I just want to prove that something good can grow from the worst possible soil."
That night, alone in his small apartment, Obito sat by the window and looked in the direction of the compound. He couldn't see it from here, but he could feel its presence like a wound that wouldn't heal. Empty streets where children should have been playing. Silent houses where families should have been sharing dinner. A community erased because he had chosen ideology over humanity.
But maybe Yamato was right. Maybe his parents would have wanted him to keep trying, to find some way to honor their memory through acts of creation rather than destruction. Maybe the best tribute he could offer to the Uchiha clan was to become someone worthy of their name.
It was a long road from here to there, assuming it was even possible. But for the first time since visiting the compound, Obito thought he might be willing to try.