Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Obito gets flashes of memories that are not his.

There’s a pug wearing a flak vest with the henohenomoheji on his back, floppy ears and droopy eyes and the softest looking paw pads that he would reach out to play with if he could, except he can’t. Because when a hand goes out to gently press them, it’s not Obito’s hand. It’s smaller and paler and whoever owns it has long, bony fingers that remind him of his Baachan who had been their clan’s most talented Koto player.

Sometimes, he catches a flash of silver and then he’ll find himself lounging on the apex of the Hokage mountain just before sunrise. Obito has never sat on the Second’s headband much less sat on their monument to watch something like the sun, too busy cursing his inadequacy and cursing Kakashi who always seemed to be two worlds ahead of him, but his breath catches anyways, the first ribbons of yellow and orange teetering over the edge of the horizon, slowly illuminating the cobbled streets of Konoha. It ignites something in his chest, a cavity where Home and Sensei and Rin and even Stupid Kakashi had wormed themselves in, their presence filling in the leftover cracks of his parents’ death like gold tinted lacquer to piece his broken self back together. 

Occasionally, he’ll stand at the Memorial stone for a few minutes before taking a long-winded path around their village, a journey that seemingly led to nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Ichiraku’s stall slowly transitions from being a small cart into a sturdy building located just at the edge of their marketplace. There are old ladies he’s never met before but look delighted to see him as he offers to carry their groceries or water their plants or keep them company because no one else would. The black cat that Obito used to avoid was no longer a family of one and had grown to a pack of seven. Unlike Obito, the person stops by to pet them and feed them and in return, they all purr and rub themselves against bandaged calves that look familiar, except Obito can’t place them with his hazy, clouded mind.

And then he sees Rin, looking just as beautiful as he last saw her, only there’s something different to her now. There was grief hanging onto the corners of her lips when her smile fades, there was sadness and longing in her eyes when she thought that people weren’t looking. There was desperation in the way he sometimes caught her going home late from a shift at the hospital during his own strolls (to shake off the residual fear that he could detect in his bones, a terror that Obito knows isn’t his because he’s only ever felt this fear once and that was when Kakashi had taken a blow meant for him), only for that look of distress - be better - you need to be better to disappear when she sees him heading her way so he could accompany her home.

Then there’s stygian fire, hell and brimstone and a determination that lights up her entire face when she stares at the body that Obito’s mind was inhibiting. Oddly enough, he doesn’t mind that it’s not directed at him, only glad that he was able to witness a side of Rin that he’s never seen before in the first place. 

Those memories are not his and he would think they were fabricated. But Minato-sensei had once said that you can find the devil hidden in the details and there was no genjutsu in the world that can mimic the way Rin’s clan marks scrunches weirdly when she smiles or Minato sensei’s half dimple that only pops up when he’s laughing really, really hard or the way Kakashi’s silver hair glistens a pretty white underneath any light and -

And Kakashi’s face.

Obito shoots up the bed then, heart drumming erratically in his chest, his Sharingan spinning wildly as his lone gaze flickers around the room. Madara-jiisan looks at him with tired, dead eyes, and Shiro only shoots him a concerned look that Obito waves off before he goes back to wrangling Guruguru into submission. Obito leans back against the headboard and curls his knees to his chest as he pants, hands clutching at the place where his heart thumps and thumps and thumps.

Obito has memories that are not his and he doesn’t think they were fabricated, but he hopes, dearly, desperately, he hopes that he’s right for once, that they weren’t a figment of his imagination.

Hopes that what he’s seeing is something real, something he could experience for himself one day.

Chapter Text

Kakashi thinks that Obito would like this.

Pakkun is on his lap, wasting their day away like the lazy dog he is. He gives him scritches behind his ears and squishes his paw pads once he stops the customary grumbling. Pakkun only pretends to be bothered but Kakashi knows he likes it when his paw pads are played with. Kakashi won’t tell him that he uses them as his personal stress balls but he suspects that Pakkun knows anyway, because Pakkun seems to know everything. 

There’s a plate of unsweetened fruit tarts on the coffee table that Haru-san sent him home with after offering to fix the shitty water pressure in her shower and a cup of lukewarm River country tea that Mitsuki-san had him sample when he’d helped her keep track of her merchant stock. Obito likes sweets just as much as Kakashi despised them and Kakashi’s opinions on tea are much more favorable than Obito’s delicate palette. It’s a compromise that he’s allowing himself to make, a nod to a teammate that deserved so much more than a half crushed life.

“Boss, stop sulking,” Pakkun murmurs, head butting against Kakashi’s stomach. He makes an ‘oof’ sound and lightly tugs at Pakkun’s ears in retaliation, “You have an appointment in an hour.”

“I don’t see how me sulking correlates to my appointment with Takato-san.” He says, conceding to Pakkun’s wishes and giving him another loving scratch behind his ears when the dog whines.

“He’s almost as bad as your blond sensei with the mother henning,” Pakkun says, “I didn’t even know Uchihas could mother hen. I thought Uchihas hated you.”

Kakashi tolerates Pakkun’s comments with a bemused air, “Does he not? Hate me I mean.”

Pakkun opens one eye to peek at him in disbelief.

“Boss, you’re his favourite person,” He says, body wiggling from its perch in Kakashi’s lap, “It’s so obvious. Everyone in med knows, your medic-nin knows, hell - your sensei’s mate knows and she’s oblivious as hell.”

“Rin?” He muses, “Now that you mentioned it she’s been asking me tips on how to get into Takato-san’s good graces. I’m pretty sure she just wants my files but Takato-san won’t share them,” He huffs, flicking his bangs away from his face with a deft movement from his head, Obito’s eye staring at Pakkun in askance, “Though Kami knows why she thinks I can help her. Takato-san is mean.” 

“Not to you.” Pakkun insists.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kakashi looks at the clock on his wall and notes down the time. He has forty minutes to kill before his appointment so he decides to get up and make himself a light lunch. Takato-san seems to always know when he skips meals before his biweekly appointments and Kakashi’s energy these days are stretched thin, so thin that being scolded for something as basic as eating leaves him exhausted. He blames it on the chakra drain from the Sharingan but Minato-sensei and Pakkun and the purple bags underneath his eyes tell otherwise, “He’s mean to everyone.”

Pakkun hops off his lap and trots after him when Kakashi pads towards his tiny kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards for something he could eat.

“He’s less growly with you,” Pakkun says, nails clicking against the floorboard, “And he likes when you bring him unsweetened tarts.”

“So he likes when I’m bribing him, and not necessarily because of my charming personality,” Kakashi murmurs. His hand touches the cereal box and he contemplates eating cereal at half one in the afternoon before shrugging. Food is food and Kakashi will take what he can get, “That’s not really an endorsement of my character.”

Pakkun scrambles around his legs as Kakashi goes to grab a bowl and the carton of half-finished milk in his fridge.

“Also he told me himself that I’m the worst patient he’s ever had,” Kakashi smiles underneath his mask, “It would hurt a lot more if I didn’t hear the same thing from Rin all the time.” 

Pakkun snorts, “Sure, Boss. You can keep denying it but everyone and their mother knows you’ve grown on that Uchiha.”

Kakashi hums absentmindedly, “Whatever you say, Pakkun.”

—

Uchiha Takato was an Uchiha eye specialist from the side branch of the family who was given as little as no opportunities to showcase his talents. Like all bastard children and black sheeps, he was kept at arms length while simultaneously hoarded for what little Uchiha blood he had running inside his veins. Obito had been the same, kept inside the compound but relegated to the outskirts where they didn’t have to put up with his presence. Unlike Obito however, and even six year old Shisui who descended from the Uchiha line that married a Senju some generations back, Uchiha Takato was neither obnoxiously happy nor chronically late (as Shisui occasionally was) and instead of hiding his pain and anger behind his cheer, he used his spite to fuel him instead. Much like Kushina-neesan, he managed to build a reputable name for himself as someone who was very, very angry and very, very competent while he was cursing the world to hell and back.

At the behest of his disapproving best friend because Minato-sensei’s look of absolute disappointment was the stuff of nightmares, it was Fugaku-sama who introduced him to Takato-san, telling him cautionary remarks about the lone Uchiha’s disposition that Kakashi ignores, mostly because he’s too busy fending off the shock that they actually lent him an Uchiha eye specialist.

“Fugaku owes me for saving his life one too many times,” Minato-sensei had puffed his chest out, adorably proud for a barely there adult, “The elders might not agree but if there’s one thing an Uchiha would never do, it’s going back on their word. Their pride won’t allow it.”

Kakashi thinks back to the events that lead up to Minato-sensei calling in one of his IOU’s in the first place and inevitably, whatever measurable effort he spared into trying not to get even more attached to his sensei siphons off faster than Minato-sensei had hiraishin’ed them to the hallways of Konoha’s General Hospital.

—

At first, the drain that Obito’s eye had on his chakra was bad and although Kakashi was getting better, his progress was incrementally slow and mostly attributed to meditating for long periods of time to increase his pool of reserves. Kakashi can only keep Obito’s eye open for a measly half an hour and it had grated on his nerves.

Admittedly growing his hair out wasn’t that necessary but it did hide the red glow of the Sharingan whenever he does peel his left eye open so Kakashi refrains from grabbing a kunai and slicing it all off. Besides, it’s a well known dojutsu and Kakashi likes to keep his cards to his chest. These days, the only thing people ever see from him is his right eye and Minato sensei thinks it’s hilarious when he’s not actively fretting about Kakashi’s suicidal mission to keep Obito’s sharingan on for as long as he possibly can.

“It’s inefficient.” Minato sensei had advised him. Kakashi only gave him a languid stare and then responded with an eye smile he’d perfected to pretend that Obito’s death isn’t giving him nightmares that cling to his shadows during the days. He uses it a lot and thinks that it might be more telling than his usual brooding. Asuma had thrown around words like coping mechanisms and traumatised beyond words and Sages that personality shift is terrifying and when Kakashi’s in a good mood, he dials it up a notch just to creep him out.

“Your chakra reserves won’t be enough to sustain this, you know. You’ll only waste it away,” Minato sensei had told him. Kakashi hummed and flipped to the next page of his novel (Gardening for dummies, because Obito mentioned once that he likes plants but never had the time to indulge in that hobby so he thinks that he’d appreciate Kakashi taking it up for him) and then shrugged, “Maa, sensei. I’ll just increase them then,” He turns another page and tries not to think about how tight his chest is as he reads about the pH of the soil and the merits of calcium carbonate in agriculture, “Besides, I’ll always be wasting my chakra away even when I’m not using it. This way, I can at least train myself to get used to it.”

Minato sensei had sighed, a pinched look on his face as he kneeled down in front of him. Kakashi’s eyes had flickered to him in question.

“Is that really the reason?” He had asked, one hand clasping Kakashi’s shoulder. Back then, his hair could barely be tied back into a low ponytail (more of a bush really) compared to what it was now these days. He considered evading him; Kakashi’s excellent at prevarication and Obito’s excuses (while not entirely excuses) are a great deterrent, but he hadn’t really felt like it. Kakashi hadn’t slept well in over three weeks and he was lucky that his militant self-control only allowed the panic attacks to occur in the comfort of his own home, but he had been tired and exhausted and missed Obito fiercely that he had answered honestly before he could hesitate a second time.

“I promised Obito,” He had admitted, shoulders hunching as he hid himself behind the paperback “The future isn’t much right now. It’s bloody and messy and there’s more bad than good, but there are things that I think he’d like to see and I can’t do that if I cover his eye up.”

Minato-sensei’s face had twisted into something ferociously sad and proud all at once and Kakashi will never forget that expression for as long as he’s alive. 

And then it had hardened, his lips tightening into a determined line. He had stood up, abruptly, and Kakashi had blinked at him when Minato sensei declared:

“We’re seeing the Uchiha.”

Kakashi had grimaced, “Why?” Because he knew then that one foot in the compound and they would have his head.

Minato sensei had seen his skepticism and a muscle in his jaw jumped. He placed his hands on his hips and privately, Kakashi had wondered if this was what having a mother was like.

“We’re getting you an eye specialist,” He had told him, and before Kakashi could argue, he had plowed on, tone brooking no arguments, “No. This is non-negotiable. You’re the only non-Uchiha in documented history to survive a Sharingan transplant. Grown adults have died before and before you come at me with the I’m a genius spiel,” Minato sensei stared him down and Kakashi raised an eyebrow in amusement, “You’re still ten years old. As far as we know, it’s something to do with your chakra. Notwithstanding my concerns regarding the Hatake Clan secrets, you deserve to know exactly how that eye is affecting your physiology.”

And how to ease the burden of having such a powerful bloodline limit without being born in the rightful Clan is what Minato sensei doesn’t say, but it had been audible in his tone alone.

Kakashi swallowed down the desert in his mouth and averted his eyes from his sensei.

“And you think they’ll just give you an eye doctor? Just like that? Just for someone like me?”

Minato sensei had barred his teeth, “I’ll beat it out of Fugaku if I have too.”

Kakashi never doubted that he would have but he also knew back then that Minato sensei had been one of the few people that Uchiha Fugaku actually liked. As it stands, the most that Minato sensei had to do was strong arm himself into the Uchiha compound, barge into Fugaku’s room to give him a scolding of a lifetime and call in one of his favours.

Saving the heir of a clan gives you a lot of leverage. Kakashi takes note of that in case he needs to do it himself one day.

—

“You’re late, brat.”

Kakashi nods to the receptionist and she responds by giving him a familiar, jaunty little wave. He slides the door behind him and it closes with a soft click.

“Only by five minutes,” He says, smoothing his hand over his bangs. His hair was past his jaw now, and they would have pooled over his collarbones if he didn’t tie them back. He looks at himself in the mirror sometimes and for all that his mother’s face stares back at him, it’s his father that he sees, “Someone ran over a cabbage stall and the cabbages kept rolling so I went to help pick them up and the nice old man was really stressed out so I let him rant to me for a bit. Also, I come bearing gifts.”

Takato-san’s eyes twitch as he swivels around to face him, cross-legged and cross-armed on his wheelie chair. His hair was cropped short and there was a scar that ran down his lip, curling over his chin and stopping where his jaw connects to his neck. He was handsome and terrifying in equal amounts and Kakashi hopes to grow as deadly as him one day. 

“Bullshit.” Takato-san says without any doubt. Kakashi’s mouth tilts up into a smile, shuffling to sit on the patient’s bed. The one good thing about actively looking for interesting things to do so he doesn’t drown himself in guilt and depression (because that wasn’t Obito’s last wish and Kakashi needs to fulfil Obito’s last wish) is coming across ridiculous happenstances. The absolute glee he feels using them as his excuses, more so because they’re actually real, was unexplainable.

“Mean,” He says, though he offers his right arm and shakes the plastic bag he was holding, “I didn’t lie about the gifts though. Unsweetened fruit tarts from Haru-san. She’s been giving me extras these past few days because she knows you eat half of my stash anyways.” 

“Tell that woman to stop giving you junk,” Takato-san says with no bite, kicking off the ground as he stands up and snatches the bag out of Kakashi’s hands. Kakashi snorts, “They’re not healthy for you.”

“Sure they aren’t,” He says, his visible eye curling into a U, “Still, I am perfectly healthy.”

Takato-san sends him a baleful look, “You’re underweight and short as hell. Also don’t get me started on your mental health.”

“Maa, you’re not that kind of doctor, Takato-san.” Kakashi tilts his head, legs swinging.

Takato-san snorts, “Brat.” He grouches, and Kakashi giggles.

He walks over to his desk and stashes the fruit tarts away before heading back over to Kakashi and bending down to his eye level. He fishes a penlight out of his pocket just as his eyes begin to bleed from dark obsidian to crimson. 

“How’s the eye?” He asks, as he brings the penlight to shine in Kakashi’s right eye, “Move your hair back a bit and peel that left eye of yours open if it already isn’t.”

Kakashi obeys and swipes a hand to move his bangs away, Obito’s Sharingan already open.

“I’ve kept it open for the same amount of time this week while increasing my reserves and there’s less of a drain than there was at the start,” He says, trying not to blink as the light moves to Obito’s Sharingan, “It’s a work in progress. The occasional black spots and pulsing aside, it hasn’t bled since the first time I tried to use it for longer than I could.”

Takato-san retracts the penlight and pockets it back into his coat.

“No ruptured vessels at the very least. I’d say I’m surprised about how responsible you’re being with this but I’m not,” They don’t need to have another conversation about how much Kakashi treasures his dead teammate’s legacy more than he did his own life, “I want to test if that eye’s neuronal link to your brain hasn’t degraded. Asides from black spots, have you experienced any loss in vision?”

Kakashi blinks to clear the few stray tears that had sprung up in his eyes and shakes his head.

“No,” He says, before tilting his head and admitting, “Well, it’s sometimes blurry but - more Sharingan blurry. Like what normal eye vision would be if I didn’t have Obito’s Sharingan.”

Takato-san snatches his wheelie chair and a clipboard and plops down in front of Kakashi with a thoughtful frown, “From your medical exams, it’s more to do with your chakra pathways than your eye’s vascular system. Rin did an exceptional job at making sure that your recipient nerve cells regrew to ensure that your vision is working as properly as it can, but considering that she’s non-Uchiha, tenketsu wise, it leaves much to be desired. The connections to your body’s chakric gland aren’t complete and it’s causing too much chakra to leak out of your damn eye.”

“Is that what the surgery is for?” Kakashi asks, because Rin had been terribly guilty when Kakashi collapsed from chakra exhaustion, the problem largely attributed to the way Obito’s eye had been transplanted. Kakashi tries to remind her that she’d been working on pure adrenaline and fear while gouging out their dying teammate’s eye to replace his own except it only serves to make Rin cry so Kakashi gave up in trying to comfort her in that department. 

“Yes,” Takato-san says, “We’ve been monitoring your eye’s state for almost two months now and it’s healed enough for me to properly assess your pathways. One thing I’m really curious about is your chakra,” Takato-san scribbles something down before flicking his gaze back up, “Cover your Sharingan for me and read the words adjacent to you on the wall.”

“What about it, exactly?” Kakashi asks before doing just what he’s asked.

“There’s a reason why no non-Uchiha has ever survived a transplant before. We have about three times more chakric veins in our eyes than the common person and the type of chakra needed to activate it and then allow the user to benefit from all of its capabilities is unique to us alone,” Takato-san tells him to cover his right eye this time, “A transplanted Sharingan, especially an active one, in an average shinobi needs that chakra in order to sustain its form and function and when it doesn’t find it, it begins eating through the recipient’s system. A fail safe if you will, to prevent bloodline thiefs,” There’s a tense silence for a moment before he continues, “Can you see any additional characters on the wall?”

Kakashi swallows the lump in his mouth and nods.

Takato-san, sensing his discomfort, sends him a dry smile.

“Don’t think about it too much kid,” He says, and places a hand on Kakashi’s knees in an uncharacteristic act of sympathy, “You’re alive and that’s all that matters. My interest in the Hatake Clan chakra is purely educational.”

“Right.” He whispers, trying not to remember Minato sensei’s words and how transplanted doujutsus killed lesser men and that Kakashi was really, really lucky to be alive. 

He doesn’t regret being entrusted with Obito’s legacy, but it’s chilling to think that if he hadn’t been a Hatake, he might have died along with him.