Three days passed before Obito found the strength—or perhaps the courage—to ask for a mirror.
The medic-nin, a different one this time, hesitated at his request. Her name was Yuki, he had learned, and she possessed the particular brand of gentle persistence that made good healers. She had been checking his bandages, noting his progress with the clinical detachment necessary for her profession, when he had spoken the words that made her freeze.
"I need to see."
She understood immediately what he meant. There was no ambiguity in his tone, no room for misinterpretation. He wasn't asking about his wounds, though they were extensive. He wasn't concerned with the progress of his healing, though his body was knitting itself back together with supernatural efficiency thanks to Naruto's lingering chakra. He wanted to see his face.
His real face.
"Are you certain?" she asked, and he appreciated that she didn't try to dissuade him or suggest waiting until he was stronger. She simply asked if he was ready for what he would find.
He wasn't. He never would be. But readiness was a luxury he could no longer afford.
"Yes."
The mirror she brought was small, practical—the kind used for checking patients' pupils and throat conditions. Nothing ornate or decorative about it, which somehow made it worse. This wouldn't be a moment of vanity or self-regard. This would be an examination of evidence.
When she placed it in his hands, Obito felt the weight of it far exceed its actual mass. Such a simple object, reflective metal and glass, yet it held the power to show him what he had become. What he had always been, perhaps, underneath the masks and personas and comfortable lies.
He lifted it slowly.
The face that looked back at him was a stranger's.
No—that wasn't right. It was his face, unmistakably, but it belonged to someone he had forgotten existed. The boy who had dreamed of becoming Hokage, who had believed in protecting his precious people, who had loved without reservation or cynicism—that boy's face, aged and scarred and marked by choices that would have horrified his younger self.
His right side was a map of old trauma. The scars from his supposed death at Kannabi Bridge had never fully healed, leaving his skin a patchwork of raised tissue and discolored flesh. But it was his eye that drew his attention—his real eye, not the Sharingan that had been his tool and burden for so long. It was brown, ordinary brown, the same color it had been when he was twelve and stupid enough to believe that dying heroically for your friends was the worst fate that could befall a shinobi.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He had given Kakashi his Sharingan in what he thought was his final moment, a gesture of friendship and sacrifice. Yet here he was, still alive, while that gift lived on in his former teammate's eye socket. Had Kakashi looked in mirrors over the years and seen Obito staring back? Had he been haunted by this face the way Obito was now haunted by his own?
But it wasn't just the scars that made him a stranger to himself. It was the weight in his expression, the lines etched by years of anger and manipulation and pain. This was the face of a man who had orchestrated the Fourth Shinobi War. This was the face of someone who had turned his back on everything he once held sacred and convinced himself it was justified.
This was the face of a killer.
He studied each feature as if it were evidence in a trial—which, he supposed, it was. The trial of Obito Uchiha, defendant and judge both. His mouth, which had spoken lies with such conviction that even he had begun to believe them. His brow, furrowed by years of scowling behind masks that hid his humanity. His cheeks, hollow from the strain of carrying secrets that grew heavier with each passing year.
And yet...
There was something else there, something that surprised him. Underneath the weight and the scars and the accumulated damage of his choices, he could still see traces of the boy he had been. The shape of his jaw, inherited from his father. The curve of his nose, which Rin had once said made him look distinguished when he argued that it was just crooked. The way his hair fell, defying gravity in patterns that had persisted despite everything else changing.
That boy was still there, buried beneath layers of trauma and ideology and carefully constructed hatred. Still there, but almost unrecognizable.
"How long?" he asked without lowering the mirror.
Yuki didn't need clarification. "Since you stopped wearing the mask?"
He nodded.
"The reports say it's been over fifteen years since anyone saw your real face. Since the massacre of the Uchiha clan, at least."
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of hiding behind orange masks and false names and manufactured personas. Fifteen years of being Tobi, being Madara, being anyone except Obito Uchiha. Fifteen years of letting the boy in this mirror die a little more each day until even he had forgotten what was underneath.
The mask had been more than protection or disguise. It had been permission—permission to be someone else, someone who could make the hard choices and live with the consequences. Someone who could watch the world burn and call it mercy. The mask had let him become a monster while telling himself that Obito Uchiha was still innocent, still good, still that boy who died for his friends at Kannabi Bridge.
But there had been no death at Kannabi Bridge. There had only been the first step in a long journey toward this moment, staring at his own face and seeing both victim and perpetrator looking back.
He thought of all the times he had removed his mask in private, in the safety of his dimensions or hidden bases. Had he looked at himself then? Had he seen what he was becoming? Or had he avoided mirrors entirely, afraid of what questions his reflection might ask?
The truth was more damning than fear. The truth was that he had stopped seeing himself at all. The physical act of looking in a mirror had become as foreign as genuine emotion or unguarded laughter. He had existed for so long as a concept, an idea, a force of nature, that the simple reality of being a human being with a human face had become irrelevant.
Now, holding this small mirror in hands that shook despite his efforts to remain steady, he was forced to confront the most basic question of identity: who was looking back?
Not Tobi—that laughing madman was a performance, a role played to deceive others and himself. Not Madara—that had been borrowed gravitas, stolen authority from a dead legend. Not even the Masked Man, that shadowy figure who moved through the world like a living nightmare.
This was Obito Uchiha. Broken, scarred, guilty beyond measure—but real. Undeniably, inescapably real.
And for the first time in fifteen years, he had to figure out what that meant.
He lowered the mirror slowly, feeling something shift inside him. Not healing—it was far too early for that—but recognition. Acknowledgment. The first step in a journey he wasn't sure he wanted to take but knew he couldn't avoid.
"Thank you," he said to Yuki, though he wasn't sure he meant it. Being thankful implied that this revelation was a gift, when it felt more like surgery without anesthesia—necessary, but agonizing.
She nodded and took the mirror back, but not before he caught her studying his face with professional curiosity. She was probably wondering the same thing he was: what did you do with someone who had forgotten how to be human?
That night, alone in the darkness of the medical tent, Obito touched his scars in the dark and tried to remember what it felt like to be the boy in the mirror.
It was harder than it should have been.