There are ghosts crawling on his back. Their hands are cold and intangible, gripping at his spine and clawing their way up to his neck. He feels them pulling him down to their level, feeling the grip of the decades worth of decay gripping at the edges of his clothes, feel their ghostly fingers clam onto his back and neck and forcing him to face forward. Turning his eyes to the front and telling him to

look.

Look at the boy in front of him. With dark hair and darker eyes. With an anxious face he can 't quite hide and a boyishness about him that would 've been stomped out years ago if the world had a say in it.

He looks like Sasuke, from before,

before.

Like the Sasuke from the faded photographs that hangs around in the Uchiha head 's home. The one that Itachi had touched with bloody hands and smeared across, leaving nothing behind but a smiling picture of one happy boy.

Obito would know, he 'd seen it.