Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Minato has been hiding Kushina’s instant ramen packets, she just knows it. She storms down the street, uncaring of the rage she knows is radiating from her. It’s not killing intent, just plain anger, and the civilians that scramble to get out of her way are honestly being so overdramatic. 

Her anger worsens by the second, and by the time she reaches Team 7’s trainman ground, where she just knows Minato will be at this time, she has every intention of barging in and letting Minato know just what she thinks about him and his crimes—

“—need to focus on the way the earth already feels, and then pull that up to meet your chakra as you make the seals.” Minato’s stance is easy, form relaxed in a way shinobi so rarely get to be as his students focus on him as best they can—Kakashi’s attempt to make it seem like he’s not lapping up Minato’s every word is poor, Rin listens with calm intensity, and Obito looks about ready to leap out of his skin with how badly he’s fidgeting—as he continues to explain the theory behind the mud wall technique. With his cute little genin splayed out around him like a pack of loyal dogs, he looks like a real teacher rather than the twenty-year-old disaster Kushina knows him to be. It sends a rush of fondness through her, even if he’s explaining mud walls—a horribly simplistic jutsu that requires no knowledge whatsoever about how it works—in that shitty theoretical way of his that makes precisely zero sense to her. 

She remembers the first—-and last—time he tried to teach her anything, and the memory of it makes her crack a smile. It’s utterly unbecoming of her current vengeance quest, but she’s never been able to help herself when it comes to Minato. 

He’d tried to explain a shunshin via how it works gone so deeply into the theory of it that she doubted most jounin would understand him, and she’d gotten so frustrated she’d thrown a desk at him. He’d dodged, of course—he wasn’t called Konoha’s yellow flash for nothing, and he’d been terrifyingly fast even before his mastery of the hiraishin. It was sweet of him to try teaching her, even if he went about it in the worst possible way, so she’d taken him out for ramen afterwards. 

She’d gotten it shunshin eventually, by watching her classmates and then practicing until she’d been able to shunshin in her sleep. Her sunshine had far surpassed Minato’s, despite it taking him a fraction of the time to learn it. 

Her anger stalls in the face of the peaceful scene, of memories from before the war and her precious people safe. She allows herself just a moment to watch, to bask in it before she has her vengeance. It’s child’s play to melt into the surrounding forest, letting the branches support her as they always have. 

Kakashi, of course, is the first of Minato’s genin to attempt the jutsu. He’s got Minato’s brains, and were Minato not ten when Kakashi was born, Kushina would think Kakashi his illegitimate child. Naturally, his mud wall rises near-perfect from the ground on his first attempt—not that it’s all that surprising, considering his prodigious abilities. Still, he repeats the jutsu with laser-like focus, as he likely will until he’s dealt with every imperfection that only he can see.

Then, Rin’s hands form the seals carefully and her mud wall rises from the ground. It’s surprisingly decent, nearly as tall as Rin with near-vertical sides that have nary a crack along their surface. Kushina’s willing to bet it would hold up in an actual battle—it’s near-prodigious. Still, the strain leaves Rin bracing her hands on her knees, and it’s clear that just a few more of those would deplete her chakra reserves completely. 

Obito’s attempt is nothing short of disastrous. The ground barely rises, and what does is misshapen and lumpy. Kushina winces; that’s gotta feel like shit, especially when compared to Kakashi’s effortless, near-perfect one. Obito sags in tandem with his (rather pathetic) mud wall. 

Rin steps towards him, and though Kushina can’t hear what Rin’s saying, she can see the way Obito leans into it. Then, Rin steps back and creates another mud wall while Obito watches with rapt attention. Obito tries again, and though his mud wall isn’t nearly on par with his teammates’, it actually looks like a mud wall this time. Huh.

“Kushina!” Minato grins up at her, having finally caught on to her presence. 

She lands softly next to him, no longer bothering to try and conceal her presence. Kakashi gives her a brusque nod before returning to his practice, Rin gives her a small smile, and Obito doesn’t acknowledge her presence at all, too busy calling up mud wall after mud wall, each one marginally better than the last. She’s deeply familiar with that kind of focus, though, and she knows it’s likely he hasn’t noticed her arrival at all. 

That kind of lack of awareness is going to get him killed one day, her mind whispers, but she does her best to shove it down. Obito will be fine. Probably. 

She whirls to Minato, determined to not ponder the possibility of Obito’s death, finger pointed out in accusation; “you hid my instant ramen!” 

He smiles innocently at her, a twinkle in his eye that makes her want to kiss him—or punch him, which she’s honestly leaning more towards at the moment. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell you don’t! Nobody else can get through my damned seals dattebane; I know it was you.”

Minato gives a nervous little chuckle and hides behind Kakashi like the coward he is. Fucking geniuses, always unable to take the consequences of their actions. She leaps for him, careful not to hit Kakashi (she knows without a doubt that he’s innocent in this. He would never do something so heinous). Minato dodges (pussy), and raises his hand in a peace-making gesture that does nothing to appease her.

“Kushina, you have an addiction! You can’t keep eating ramen for every meal!”

“Like hell I can’t!” 

Kushina’s rage is cut off by a soft laugh, and she turns to where Rin and Obito are still practicing. Rin is smiling at the scene, and Obito’s grinning, his distraction worsening the quality of his mud walls considerably.

“Get his ass,” Is his only contribution. Kushina knew he was her favorite for a reason.

Kushina turns back to Minato, in considerably better spirits, “Yyou’re going to tell me where you put them,” she starts, and Minato looks hesitant at the same time as relieved she’s not too mad, “ and you owe me Ichiraku’s dattebane!”

“He was just teaching us—” Kakashi starts, but Kushina cuts him off. 

“Sorry kids, training’s ending early today, your sensei’s paying for my food in reparation for his crimes.” Kakashi’s the only one who looks truly put out by the prospect; Rin looks contemplative and Obito’s grinning from ear to ear. It would be relieving to be done with training, considering.

She forces the thought from her mind, turning decisively and dragging along a suspiciously compliant Minato. She glances over to find him with a light blush on his face and smirks. They’ve been dating for nearly a year, and he still blushes like a schoolgirl at the prospect of a date. Cute . 

Kushina stares at the ceiling as if it’ll give her answers. It’s not the date; the date went great , and Minato paid for her ramen and told her the location of her instant ramen, now sealed in a far more secure location with all the security of a clan vault. 

She can’t shake the look on Obito’s face when he realized training was over from her mind. She can’t help but to remember all the times she’s heard him referred to as unmotivated, or lazy, or untalented . 

Because now the pieces have clicked together, it’s become overwhelmingly clear that Obito is like her , but he doesn’t have the fallbacks she has. He doesn’t have the strength of being a jinchuuriki to back him up, or the chakra chains she’s had from the beginning. Worst of all, she thinks, he’s been pitted up against the most talented prodigy of his generation since day one, constantly compared and found to be lesser. 

And Kushina knows Minato, knows he’ll do everything he can to make his kids get along, to eliminate any rivalries that might arise in the name of teamwork. That’s all fine and good, she supposes, but it’s not what Obito needs . 

What Obito needs is a goal, something more specific—more quickly achievable—than being Hokage. It’s a good goal, one that he held for many years before realizing the amount of paperwork it would entail, but it’s not something he can reasonably achieve at his age. It’s not tangible , not in the way he needs. 

Kushina has a feeling she knows exactly the motivation Obito needs, and she has an inkling of an idea for how she can make it happen. 

It’s easy enough to conceal her presence and watch Minato’s teams’ next training session. Almost concerningly so.

What’s even more concerning, though, is the way Obito seems to sag in on himself with every jutsu he doesn’t get immediately. It doesn’t last long, quickly replaced with stubborn determination—this is Obito , after all, and the kid’s almost as stubborn as Kushina. Over the length of the session, though, Kushina can see the way it weighs down on him more and more. 

At the end of the session, they spar. Obito does fine against Rin, and though she does manage to beat him in the end, it doesn’t seem to demoralize him all that much. 

Against Kakashi, though… it's honestly painful to watch. Kakashi wins so indisputably that he doesn’t even have a scratch on him. Kushina can’t help her wince; that’s got to feel awful, and it does, if the way Obito seems to deflate afterwards means anything. He recovers, of course, declares that he’ll win next time, Bakashi, just you wait! To which Kakashi only rolls his eyes. Yeah, Kushina can see why there would be some resentment there. 

Minato looks discouraged at the exchange, tries to get them to get along, but it’s just—it’s like he can’t see the frustration in Obito, or sees it as irritation at Kakashi and nothing more. 

Maybe that’s the problem with being a genius , she muses, you become so distanced from the experience of others that you’ve no idea what it feels like to not be the best. 

In any case, now Obito just looks frustrated at his own lack of skill and guilty at disappointing Minato. Kakashi looks unrepentant, of course, and it irritates Kushina just how much potential the two of them have to be great . To bounce off of each other and use that competition to fuel them. It would give Kakashi something actually tying him to the team, rather than having the team just be a vague inconvenience of people holding him back. It would also, more pertinently, provide the fuel to Obito’s fire, allow him to be honed into sharp, tempered steel. As it is now, though, such a thing is like a distant pipe dream. 

She doesn’t know how Minato’s missed it, but she supposes that’s to do with his bullshit peace-above-all-else narrative. Useful in a kage, perhaps, and something she can’t help but love about him, but it’s also damn annoying , especially when it’s so blatantly getting in the way of his kids’ improvement. 

It’s glaringly obvious, now that she’s looking for it, that Obito’s a kinesthetic learner. It’s more obvious still that Minato’s no less knowledgeable about how to teach a kinesthetic learner than when they were shitty kids and he was trying to teach her to shunshin. 

Kushina’s busy enough with her jounin duties, it doesn’t make sense for her to be so preoccupied with someone else’ s genin team, but she’s always been a bit of a bleeding heart, and there’s something about the slump of Obito’s shoulders that reminds her distinctly of herself. It’s completely illogical, but she’s never been guided by logic anyway, and goddammit , she can’t leave him like that . She knows he has potential, knows he could be damned strong given the chance, but as it is now he’s being smothered, and she can’t just stand by and watch. 

It’s easy enough to corner the kid after training. Or, well, it’s easy enough to swoop in and drag him off to get ramen with her. 

It is admittedly a bit impulsive of her to approach Obito about this before she even has a proper plan for training him, but Kushina’s never been one for patience, and this has gone on long enough.

He looks faintly confused when she grabs him, but he follows along, which is all she really needs. Teuchi doesn’t even give her a second glance as she drags Obito in, which might honestly say something about Kushina’s habits that she should probably consider. Meh. Maybe later. For now, she’s got a kid to indoctrinate. 

“So, how’s training going?” Obito startles from his food, treating her to a bright grin that looks a little wilted around the edges.

“Sensei had me spar with Kakashi today, and I totally almost won, but Kakashi’s a bastard .” Obito had, in fact, gotten his ass beat into the ground by Kakashi, but Kushina’s not about to point that out. It only confirms her suspicions, after all: Kakashi will be the perfect motivation for the kid. 

Obito’s scowl says he knows he lost astronomically, too, which. It would be pretty hard not to know it; Kakashi’s a damned prodigy , and he doesn’t care to pull his punches. 

“Say, kid…” she starts, trying for subtlety, but then she remembers that she’s never been subtle a day in her life, and decides to hell with it . “How would you like to beat Kakashi for real ?”`

The response is immediate, Obito’s eyes blowing wide as his posture straightens and he jerks to face Kushina. There’s a hint of suspicion laced through the determination in his eyes, but she supposes that’s only to be expected. 

Kushina’s grin stretches wide; “You’ve got the potential, dattebane,” she starts, and quells the spark of rage at the surprise on Obito’s face, the hope and pain and wonder that tells her it’s something he’s never been told before. There will be time for anger later, when she doesn’t have a twelve-year-old hanging off her every word like it’s gospel. “I can teach you to be strong enough to beat him. What’d’ya say, kid, ya willing?”

“When do we start?” 

A Comprehensive Guide to the Shinobi Arts. Every jounin eligible to be a jounin-sensei is given a copy of the damned thing. In theory , it tells them a curriculum of all the things genin need to know before they’re chuunin, but in reality, it’s a pile of useless garbage . Honestly, Kushina would’ve been more than happy to let the damned thing rot in her closet for the rest of eternity. She’s teaching Obito now, though, and she’ll be damned if she’s not the best teacher the kid’ll ever have. 

Spite is a hell of a motivator, and it takes Kushina less than a day to get through it. The thing is, it’s… bad. Really bad. Not only that, its necessities include things she’s not had to use a single day in her life, and excludes things that’ve saved her life hundreds of times. Even beyond that, its teaching advice is utter bullshit , and would only even remotely help people whose minds work like Minato’s. 

She wants to march to the damned Hokage’s office and demand that there be a better guide than this , but, because she’s a mature adult, she stays where she is. Honestly, she deserves an award for it, she thinks. Strangling the Hokage would probably qualify as treason, even if he deserved it. Pranking him, though… well, there are more ways than just violence to make her displeasure clear, and hokage tower’s in need of some redecoration. 

It’s no wonder so many kids slip through the cracks and go missing-nin, if this is how they’re taught. 

She’ll just have to build the damned curriculum herself; let Minato flounder along using the information from that book, it’ll be a cold day in hell before Kushina follows a damn word from it. 

That being said, she doesn’t exactly need to keep the old thing around, even if she’s technically supposed to own it as part of her job. 

On the bright side, the damned thing is more than a little satisfying to cut to shreds with a kunai. 

Chapter Text

Obito shifts his stance slightly, wrapping his arms around himself to fight the early winter chill. It’s not that he’s nervous , per se, it’s just… no one’s ever wanted to train him before. 

Obviously Minato-sensei wants to train him; he wants to train all of them. It’s just very clear to Obito that Kakashi is, and always has been, their sensei’s favorite. It makes sense, of course; for all that Obito denies it, he’s well aware that Kakashi’s a damned genius. He improves in leaps and bounds while Obito’s left floundering, and it fucking sucks . At least Rin can try to keep up, but Obito just doesn’t get most of Minato-sensei’s lessons, and he can’t even get himself to pay attention long enough to hear most of them, anyway. Maybe if he could just focus—

“Obito?” Obito jerks back into himself, smile breaking his face automatically at Rin’s warm—albeit slightly confused—smile. 

“Yeah?”

“Are you not going home?” Her eyes are warm, concerned. Obito’s heart skips a beat. 

“Ah-no, sorry, um. I’m gonna train some more. I’ll beat Kakashi in no time!” He declares, resolve strengthening as he speaks. 

Rin lets out a little laugh, but it’s not mocking. Fond , he thinks, as she smiles softly, “Alright, Obito. See you tomorrow.”

It takes Obito a full five minutes to get his heart-rate down to a normal level after her departure, and even then he knows the flush on his cheeks hasn’t left. 

Five minutes more finds him flopped out with his back on the grass, staring intently at the reflection of his eye he can see in the goggles. It’s really strange looking, in striking detail that’s almost disturbing. He wonders if that reflection would look different through a sharingan. He reckons it would, but how much more detail could there be to its reflection? Will the world look different through his sharingan, showing him things he’s never seen before? 

Maybe the other Uchiha kids are right, maybe he’ll never unlock it. That would certainly be his luck, especially since he hasn’t gotten it yet. 

He shoves himself to his feet with a jolt; he can’t think like that. He’s going to be the Hokage, and he’ll be the best damned Hokage the village will ever see. He just has to unlock his sharingan first—he’s going to unlock it, and it’ll be super cool and awesome and all the other Uchiha will be incredibly jealous of him, and Rin will look at him like she does Kakashi, and Kakashi will look at him and see someone worth something, see someone—

A hand clamps down on his shoulder, and he definitely doesn’t let out an unmanly squeak. He’s far too cool for that.

“Wow!” Kushina says, brightly, “Your situational awareness is shit!” She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, just takes a step back and continues, “Come on, attack me, I’ve gotta see where you’re at. Aim to kill, otherwise you won’t stand a chance at landing a hit. ”

A part of Obito wants to very much not do that, because he’s just attacking Kushina? That doesn’t seem fair to her. But then he remembers Kushina’s last spar with Minato-sensei, and that she is both able and willing to kick his ass.

She’s just standing there as casual as ever with her hands on her hips and her posture lax, and usually when he’s about to attack people they at least look like they’re readying for a fight. Obito has no idea how to respond to that, so he settles for just charging her. In retrospect, it was clearly a terrible idea, and it is perhaps predictable that he winds up thrown into a tree trunk across the clearing without having landed a singular hit on Kushina.

He’s not going to give up, though, not going to fail this test so easily. She’s testing him, and if he fails this there’s no doubt he’ll lose all chance of her still being willing to help him, and he can’t let that happen .

He leaps forward off of the tree trunk with all the force he can manage, faints like he’s going to take a slash at her with his kunai, and goes for a katon no jutsu. 

The fire billows out from his mouth, huge and uncontrolled as his always is, and Kushina disappears in the resulting flash.

Obito smiles victoriously, only to find Kushina behind him. She doesn’t even bother to attack him, and he hates it.

He swings for her, but she steps back out of his range with an uninterested expression, his swipe sailing harmlessly through empty air.

He leaps forward, attempts another strike, she dodges again. And again. And again.

They fall into a rhythm; swipe, dodge, swipe, dodge, he lunges, she pushes him with a featherlight touch to his side that nearly bowls him over,  swipe, dodge, kick---

Kushina throws him back yet again, and Obito… Obito can’t bring himself to even move this time. He’s exhausted , worn out in a way even sparring with Kakashi never manages to make him. 

He tries to force his muscles into motion, but they refuse to respond. Come on, he thinks, she won’t train me if I'm weak.

“That’s enough.” Kushina flops down next to him, languid and relaxed.

“I’m not—I can keep going.” He can’t fail now. He can’t. Not when the key to his improvement is so close to his grasp .

“Kid,” Kushina ruffles his hair lightly, and he’s too exhausted to really stop himself from leaning into it, “you can barely move.”

It’s true, and that stings , because Obito needs to be better than this. Kakashi could probably land a hit , he thinks, and hates himself for it. Obito’s completely incapacitated, rendered nigh-immobile from just a couple hours’ training. 

Obito’s not sure how long they lie there, but by the time Kushina helps pull him to his feet it’s already dark.

“Alright,” Kushina grins, and there’s a wolfish edge to it, “wait here after training again tomorrow and we’ll get into the real training.”

“You’re… still taking me on?”

“Yeah?” She looks confused now, “Why wouldn’t I?”

Is that a trick question? “I failed. I didn’t even come close to landing a single hit.”

“Kid,” there’s an edge of exasperation in her words, “I’m a jounin . If a genin could land a hit on me, I’d fire myself .”

Oh. “Oh.”

She snorts, and ruffles his hair with just enough force to tilt his head down, “Go home, kid. You did good today.”

Obito feels like his heart’s about to explode, feels the grin stretching from ear to ear and can do nothing about it. 

“Okay, Kushina-sensei! See you tomorrow!” He turns and runs for home, and the world looks a little bit brighter.

Obito bounces a bit on his toes, fighting to contain the grin that’s trying to make its way onto his face. Minato-sensei’s talking, he knows, but Obito can’t hear a word of it. None of it really matters, anyway, because he has training with Kushina once the others leave, and she promised to buy him dango afterward if he could land a hit, and he’s damn well going to. He has a plan and everything, and there’s no way—

“What’s up with you, dead last?” Kakashi’s scowling at him (or at least, Obito thinks Kakashi’s scowling at him; after so many years, Obito likes to think he’s gotten rather good at reading Kakashi, but he can never be quite sure), eyes narrowed in even deeper annoyance than usual. 

Obito’s in too high of spirits to let it get to him, though, because he’s going to beat Kakashi in no time. He attempts a returned scowl but he can’t quite stop the way his mouth curves up at the corners. “What’d’ya mean, Bakashi?”

Obito’s attempt at a scowl clearly isn’t working, so Obito lets it drop and settles for a smirk. It’s close enough. 

“I—” Kakashi makes a choked off, frustrated noise—“You’re distracted,” he says, and it’s a statement of fact, “Why?”

Distracted ? Obito’s paying complete attention to Kakashi’s words, not that Kakashi’s currently saying anything worthwhile. 

“In training. Recently.” Kakashi says it like it’s being forced from him unwillingly. 

Was he? Obito realizes, suddenly, that he doesn’t know. “I am?”

Kakashi’s eye twitches, and Obito honestly expects to be tackled or scathingly insulted. Instead, Kakashi just… takes a single, long breath. 

“You are.” He bites out, and—this is his attempt at being civil, isn’t it? That’s—well, it’s amusing, for one, because Kakashi clearly has no idea what he’s doing, but it also makes Obito’s chest feel all warm, just a little, because Kakashi’s trying and he’s never tried with Obito before. “Why.”

Obito’s shock wears off a bit, enough for him to grin again, mischievous, “Secret.” 

Kakashi raises an unimpressed eyebrow, annoyance accompanied by a strange look in his eyes that Obito can’t quite place. 

Before he has a chance to decipher its meaning, Kakashi whirls around and storms off, leaving him utterly confused. What was that about?

Obito’s used to being confused, though, so the befuddlement still isn’t enough to pull the grin from his face. 

Obito hates everything. Why the fuck did he think letting Kushina train him would be a good idea? Does he really hate himself this much?

He forces himself to his feet, breath coming in short gasps as he clutches his aching side. Why , he thinks again, and curses Kushina-sensei’s name for good measure. 

The thing comes in for an attack that he barely catches on the edge of his kunai. He uses the momentum to slam his foot into the top of its head, leaping back off of it and sending the creature stumbling backwards. 

He overdoes it, though, and sends himself careening back-first into the trunk of one of the trees. He barely manages to stick himself to it in time, channeling chakra into the tenketsu in his back in a movement he’s seen Rin do a hundred times.

It leaps for him, and he lets himself drop to the ground. He stumbles, though, and barely throws himself to the side fast enough to avoid being shredded by its claws. Fuck , he thinks emphatically.

He’s never fought one of these things before—doesn’t even know what it is , so he doesn’t know any definite weak spots. 

It’s somewhere between a salamander and a snake—though those aren’t usually almost as tall as he is—and it’s fast . Another strike, another barely made dodge, and he finds himself quickly running  out of options. He needs to kill this thing, or at least incapacitate it to where he can safely get away, but it’s barely got a neck, and its skin is coated in a strange slime that makes his blows glance off of it.

He leaps upwards, grabbing at a branch above his head and pulling himself away from the ground. It can just climb up the tree after him, but he only needs a moment to—“Katon no jutsu!”

Fire shoots from his mouth, blazing outwards uncontrollably and lighting the leaf litter on the ground ablaze (oops). 

The creature’s completely gone though, which—maybe it was just really flammable?

Obito throws himself forward on instinct, no thought given to the fact that he was in fact in a tree , and plummets to the ground, barely landing unharmed. 

The thing was only a hair’s breadth behind him, though, so he whirls around, only to find it still sitting on that branch.

Well, Obito thinks sardonically, at least my senseless jump was enough to startle it .

It looks completely unharmed, though, so he curses himself—and Kushina-sensei again, for good measure, because who in their right mind would think l eaving him to fend for himself in the Forest of Death would be a good idea?

He mentally goes through his list of the weak-points he can remember of snakes and salamanders from when Rin was obsessed with cold-blooded creatures. Underbelly, maybe?

It leaps for him again and he hesitates a moment too long, which allows it to catch him along the side with the tips of its claws as he whirls out of its way. 

It overreaches, though, and ends up going past him. He doesn’t think—just ducks underneath it and sinks his kunai to the hilt in its underbelly, dragging forward and using the things momentum to rip it open. It lets out a blood curdling shriek that’s possibly the worst sound Obito’s heard in his entire life.

Then, he rolls away, leaving the blade buried in its flesh because ew . 

He half expects it to be fine, to brush it off like anything else, but when he whirls to face it yet again he finds it collapsed on its side with its stomach gaping open. I did that , Obito thinks, and it doesn’t quite feel real. 

Its form has begun to sizzle, and he decides that that’s enough, turning and running off into the woods in what he’s pretty sure is the direction of the village. 

The sun’s beginning its decent in the sky, so he has maybe six hours to get back to the village proper before he’s seriously in trouble—he knows for a fact that the Forest of Death is not a place he wants to be stuck in overnight.

If it does come to that, he’ll camp out in one of the trees or something and mask his presence as well as he can. (Kakashi’s able to mask his presence completely, so that he’s completely imperceptible from his environment, but Obito’s never been able to get it so well; Kushina says it’s because he has so much chakra he has to hide.)

But Obito’s hungry , and he didn’t even have a chance to grab a ration bar before Kushina was forcing him out of his house and into the woods. He’ll admit that that’s maybe his fault, just a little bit, for not properly planning and keeping everything he could need in his go-bag like Minato-sensei’s always telling them to, but he didn’t think he would need it so soon .

The sooner he gets back to the village the faster he can eat, he reminds himself, forcing his feet to move faster. 

He leaps into the trees, traveling from branch to branch in a motion that has become far more practiced since Kushina-sensei’s hellish training (was 5 hours straight of travel through the woods while she chased him really necessary?).

He has no idea how far from the village Kushina-sensei had dropped him; she was fast , and he’d been half asleep when she’d carried him out here. Hopefully close enough that he can make it back before nightfall .

Something curls around his ankle, and he finds himself flung against the trunk of one of the trees, feels the way the movement tears at the wound in his side.

He blinks the spots from his vision, searching desperately for an attacker and finding only the empty woods surrounding him. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck —-

Something tries to curl around his neck and he throws himself sideways as hard as he can, only for it to wrap around his upper arm instead, jerking him upwards in a movement that would likely have snapped his neck if it had caught it. 

As he’s dragged upwards, his arm moves through a patch of sunlight, and Obito can breifly see what’s ensnared him, and— what the fuck?

The vine flings him outwards again, and he crashes into another tree, letting out a cough. He’d at least had some time to prepare himself for the blow, though, so he’s able to recuperate fast enough that he can launch himself out of the way of the vine reaching for him again. 

He swings up his kunai as it strikes, slicing through it with a clean swipe. 

For a moment he thinks that will be it, but it doesn’t even hesitate, just comes for him again.

He tries to leap out of the way of it. But he finds himself restrained around his waist, and the vine ends up binding his arms to his sides.

“Fucking” —he spares a glance down, finds another vine wrapped around his middle—“ shit!”

It’s not just that, though; now that he’s looking for it, he can see the way the other vines on the hanging from the trees around him—and covering the forest floor, because fuck him, apparently— have begun moving, reaching for him like a thousand little hands. Oh no, he does not like that.

“Katon—” the vine around his waist constricts , pushing the breath from his lungs—“ Katon no jutsu!”

He blows outwards, and the vines shriek as the flames consume them. 

Obito allows himself a savage grin, reveling in the victory for a moment.

Before he can really enjoy it, though, he’s yanked backwards, and fuck, he didn’t get the one around his waist—

He scrabbles uselessly at it, but he can’t get a grip even as it continues to pull him backwards, trees rushing past as it pulls him who knows where . The trees seem to curl in around him, as if looking down with predatory eyes, and Obito thinks, with more sureness than he’d thought himself capable of, nope.

He curls his hand tighter around his kunai and slashes downwards, because to hell with his possible injury . He feels the blade cut into his stomach as he severs it, but he doesn’t care because he’s free .

In one desperate, unpracticed movement, he whirls on his strange opponent, bringing up his hands in a final—“Katon no jutsu!” And he sets the forest ablaze. 

The vines are incinerated in an instant as the flames consume them without pause, leaving only the ashes dancing in their wake as evidence they were ever there. 

Small patches of flame glimmer from where they rest among the leaf-litter lining the forest floor, struggling to maintain themselves against the dampness that seems to permeate everything in this god-awful forest. 

He wants more than anything to rest here, to take a break and properly patch his wounds, recuperate a bit, but if he lingers for too long, whatever those were might come back, or have backup, and he doesn’t know if he can handle that fight right now. Earlier, maybe, but now? Now even the thought of it makes him nauseous. 

So he cuts his jacket into strips (he is going to kill Kushina-sensei for this) with his kunai as he starts walking in the direction he was dragged from, wrapping it tightly enough around his middle that he’s pretty sure it will stow the bleeding—and it doesn’t restrict his breathing or movement. 

Neither of his injuries are bad enough that he’s in any real danger (he’s pretty sure—he’s gotten more than enough medically-inspired talks from Rin that he’s pretty sure his judgement is sound), but they still fucking hurt , and he wants nothing more than to collapse where he stands and sleep for the next 24 hours.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the luxury, so he takes to the trees again as soon as he’s bound his wounds the bare minimum amount.

The rest of his travels are startlingly uneventful in comparison, and by the time it’s dark, he can see the walls of Konoha looming ahead. 

He finds Kushina-sensei at Ichiraku’s, cheerfully eating ramen with Minato-sensei and Kakashi.

She doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised that he managed to make it back so fast, just gives him an innocent smile and pats the empty seat next to her. 

Actually, the only person who looks even remotely surprised to see him is Kakashi, who looks Obito up and down judgmentally before returning to his food. It only serves to aggravate Obito further. 

Obito turns to Kushina again, “You left me in the Forest of Death!” 

Kakashi chokes in Obito’s peripheral, but Obito doesn’t spare him a glance, too incensed to care. 

“I did!” Kushina-sensei says cheerfully, and Obito leaps to attack her with an angry sound that barely sounds human. 

She grabs him by the back of his shirt, hauling him over and plopping him into the chair beside Kakashi (and conveniently on the far side from where she’s sitting), before returning to her own seat. 

The moment Obito’s sitting down, his exhaustion hits him and he slumps against the table. He’ll get his revenge on Kushina-sensei, just… later. When he doesn’t feel like he’s about to collapse from exhaustion and hunger.

Someone sets a bowl of steaming ramen in front of him, and it’s the best thing he’s tasted in his life. 

Yeah, his vengeance on Kushina-sensei can wait.

“Obito?” 

Obito looks up from where he’s almost completely removed his hangnail with his kunai; “Hm?”

“You’re up.” 

“Oh!” Obito shoots to his feet, “Hell yeah!”

Minato-sensei’s slight exasperation with him is just fond enough that Obito can tell Minato-sensei’s not truly disappointed in him.

“Who won?” Obito asks, even though Kakashi always does. 

“You’re fighting Kakashi.” Yup, Kakashi again. Shame.

Obito gets into position for the sparring match, and… Kakashi’s just standing there. He doesn’t even look like he’s preparing for a fight, the asshole , just looks Obito up and down with an unimpressed expression and apparently finding him lacking yet again (shocker).

Obito looks at Kakashi there, and he wants to win , wants to beat Kakashi into the ground so definitively that even Kakashi will be forced to admit that Obito’s a worthwhile opponent. 

To hell with it , Obito decides, and charges Kakashi. Kakashi, predictably, dodges, and takes the opening to get Obito in the abdomen with his knee. 

The blow knocks the wind from Obito’s lungs, and he leaps backwards to give himself a moment to recuperate.

Kakashi doesn’t allow him that, though, pursuing him even as he dances backwards on his feet. 

Kakashi flashes out a kunai, and Obito barely manages to block it with his own. 

At least Kakashi’s human-shaped, Obito thinks, because he would very much like to never have to fight a giant salamander/snake hybrid ever again. 

Unfortunately , Kakashi being human-shaped does little to help Obito, because Kakashi is a little monster. 

Kakashi flashes forward, kunai swinging, and Obito leaps back. He over judges, ends up catching himself over his head with his hands, and just… keeps going. He uses the momentum from his overreach to propel himself backwards, bringing his foot up and feeling it connect with Kakashi’s chin. 

Obito’s knees hit the ground behind him, and he springs up, retreating a few steps to prepare for Kakashi’s inevitable retribution. 

Kakashi looks stunned , eyes wide as he touches a hand to his jaw where Obito knows his foot hit just a moment before. Obito grins , wide and triumphant and almost feral , but he can’t care past the victory of having finally actually landed a hit on Kakashi.

Kakashi makes eye contact with Obito again and his face contorts with an anger like Obito’s never seen before. 

Then, Kakashi’s in front of him, kunai poised to strike with deadly precision. Obito barely dodges, catching the blow on the edge of his own kunai, but Kakashi doesn’t even hesitate for a moment , shifting smoothly into his next strike. 

Obito finds himself firmly on the defensive again, blocking each strike by a hair’s breadth as Kakashi moves in a continuous stream, not a single movement wasted. Is this what Kakashi looks like when he’s really fighting?

With each blow Obito blocks, each barely escaped swipe of Kakashi’s blade, he edges closer to exhaustion. Then, Kakashi strikes forward and up, and Obito stumbles .

In an instant, Kakashi’s on him, hooking and twisting Obito’s kunai from his grip in the same motion he jerks a leg around and into the back of Obito’s knee, sending Obito careening to the ground. 

Then, it’s over, Kakashi’s legs pinning Obito’s, one hand pinning both of Obito’s wrists to the ground as Kakashi’s other hand presses a kunai to Obito’s throat. 

Kakashi still looks enraged, a kind of crazed madness in his eyes that doesn’t even seem to be directed at Obito in particular. 

Then, Kakashi’s gone, and Obito’s left to wonder what the hell just happened .

Obito can’t get that rage out of his mind.

It was like Kakashi’s careful mask of indifference had shattered , leaving behind only true, raw emotion , sharp and blazing and dangerous in Kakashi’s eyes. 

Obito’s wanted for so long for Kakashi’s acknowledgement, for something other than apathy and the vague annoyance from the other day, but now that he’s gotten it it’s not enough —

What does he look like when he’s happy? When all his stress and anger is gone and he just lets himself really smile? Lets himself laugh, really laugh, the kind he can’t contain?

Suddenly, it hits Obito that he knows next-to-nothing about his sullen teammate, that Kakashi’s almost as much a mystery as the day they met, despite being on the same team for years

With a sudden, overwhelming desperation, Obito wants nothing more than to know. 

  Needless to say, Obito has no fucking idea what to do with this information.

Chapter Text

Obito’s grinning, wide and true and obnoxious, and he looks every bit the idiot he is. He can’t seem to just stand still , and it’s incredibly distracting. 

Kakashi kind of wants to punch him. He can’t, though, because then Minato-sensei would give him that disappointed look, and that is distinctly something he would like to avoid.

Shame.

Obito brushes against Kakashi as he practically vibrates , and Kakashi’s mind zeroes in on the touch. 

Maybe if Kakashi just grabs him by the shoulders, he’ll stop moving. Minato-sensei wouldn’t even be able to be disappointed in Kakashi for hitting Obito because Kakashi will never have hit him. 

Kakashi tunes back in just in time to hear Minato-sensei ’s farewell as he turns to go home. Fuck , what did he miss? Damn dead last, turning Kakashi into a slacker. 

Before Kakashi can stop himself, his annoyance boils over—he’s nearly a jounin, he should be better than this by now—and he whirls to Obito, “What is up with you , dead last?” 

Obito visibly startles from his thoughts—he probably wasn’t even listening to the lesson, it wouldn’t be the first time—and his grin—

His grin doesn’t go away, not really, he just seems to try to scowl through it. He’s clearly failed, and he ends up with a strange expression that’s halfway between confusion and amusement. “What’d’ya mean, Bakashi?”

Obito gives up on the scowl, and ends up just smirking , a genuine joy in his eyes that defies any sort of true resentment, and Kakashi—Kakashi’s mind stops working completely. 

“I—” Fuck, what does he say? Why is this so hard, Kakashi was fine just a moment ago—“You’re distracted. Why?” He finally settles on, knowing he waited a beat too long to respond.

Obito’s head tilts to the side just slightly, “Distracted?” He looks completely puzzled, and it would almost be funny if it weren’t so frustrating (Kakashi still can’t think properly, and he still doesn’t know why ).

“In training. Recently.” Kakashi forces out, knowing he’ll get nothing out of Obito if he doesn’t explain and inexplicably wanting to know. 

Obito’s eyebrows furrow, “I have?” 

Kakashi wants to slap him.

Just a little.

(As a treat.)

“You have.” He settles on, because Minato-sensei may have gone home, but he’d still be disappointed if he figured out that Kakashi had started a fight. (Even if Obito would have totally deserved it.)

“Why,” he continues, and he can’t quite make it a question.

Obito pauses for a moment, but then a Cheshire grin grows on his face, eyes crinkling up obnoxiously at the corners. His eyes are alight with mischief, dancing in them like it has any right to, like he has any right at all to steal Kakashi’s breath away. 

“Se-cret.” He says, the word said in an ever-so-slight sing-song.

Kakashi’s mouth runs dry. 

Then, though, what Obito’s actually said catches up to him, and he forces himself to just raise an unimpressed eyebrow and then storm off to stop himself from attacking Obito like he so wants to.

Chapter Text

Sleeping seals are without a doubt the most frustrating seal to deal with. On paper, they’re simple; you just knock the person out, right? But the reality is so much more complicated (read: impossible and frustrating) than that. 

At its most basic, a sleeping seal heightens the amount of melatonin the body produces near-instantly by relegating some of the person’s chakra to the stimulation of the pineal gland. Of course, that’s a massive over-simplification that only works to explain it if the only thing you want with sleeping seals is to try and block the most basic kind. If you want to make your own, or try to block any sort of customized one, the bullshit you have to consider is so much worse .

For one, the stimulation of the pineal gland isn’t even the only thing necessary for melatonin production; the seal must also prevent the brain from stopping the pineal gland, as the pineal gland produces melatonin at a constant rate and is only stopped when that signal tells it that there’s light. Additionally, the seal must ensure that there’s enough tryptophan in the blood for the melatonin to even be synthesized from, and that there are enough enzymes to synthesize it. This only gets more complicated in the case of people with insomnia, who require different amounts of these adjustments in all areas.

Secondly, and even more infuriatingly, melatonin isn’t even the only major factor needed for people to fall asleep . Adenosine is a necessary part of the process to reduce the neural activity of the individual, causing drowsiness and inability to properly think. In theory, a sleep seal should only need to stimulate adenosine production, but things can never be so simple, and such a thing ceases to help at all should the individual have enough caffeine in their system to block the receptors, rendering it practically useless as anything but a backup. 

Finally, different people need different amounts of melatonin to fall asleep. This seems easy enough to solve, but as it so often is with these things, appearances are deceiving. Theoretically, one could just cause the seal to create the largest possible necessary dose, but if there’s too much melatonin, the brain freaks out and makes the person more awake than they were to begin with, as well as heightening their anxiety levels and causing headaches, nightmares, and flu-like symptoms, so… not exactly what one’s usually looking for in a seal to help them sleep (or put an enemy to sleep). Because of that, it’s always better to under-stimulate the pineal gland’s production of melatonin than it is to overstimulate it, though neither is exactly preferable . 

Therein lies the solution; each seal must be made to the individual it was meant for, and must only be used by or on those who are not caffeinated. Or at least, that’s how it’s usually done, but that’s completely bullshit, and Kushina hates it with every fiber of her being. It makes them practically useless in combat, negates their potential to be used as widespread ways to subdue without harm, or to be used as blanket “medications.”

Perhaps , she thinks dimly, looking out at the half-finished sealing scrolls holding her botched attempts, and the books on sealing and neurochemistry, it would have been better to not think about sealing ever again than to attempt this.

God she hates reading.

Theoretically, if she can make the seal run a brief diagnosis first, and use those results to calculate the required actions to balance their brain chemicals and induce sleep, she’ll void that problem completely. The only problem is how to fit that into a seal , because making a seal do multiple things in order is like trying to train squirrels to juggle. To top it off, if she fucks up this step she risks increasing rates of beta-amyloid build-up, possibly permanently , which has the teensy-tiny problem of causing alzheimers. So. Not exactly something she can risk getting wrong in an actual test. There is perhaps a reason things like this are unexplored, she supposes.

Kushina’s startled from her thoughts by a knock on her door. She frowns; only Minato bothers to knock on her door (because he’s dumb, and insists that it’s the respectful thing to do); Mikoto glides in like she owns the place, and Obito climbs in through the window like all Kushina’s shinobi friends (and any orders from the Hokage).

Kushina knows for a fact that Minato’s supervising a special training session between Kakashi and Obito (read: trying and failing to make them get along, and forcing them to work together as punishment); Obito’d been very vocal of his dislike of the idea. 

So who…?

She moves to the door in one smooth, silent motion. Then, she opens it wide, standing with a hand resting lightly on either side of the doorframe in a movement that she knows looks relaxed, but is in reality a method for keeping any enemies from barging past her. And—she blinks. 

Rin smiles nervously up at Kushina from her spot on Kushina’s doorstep, fidgeting lightly with her hands. Kushina blinks again. And again, just in case her eyes were still deceiving her. She considers throwing in a kai for good measure, but that seems a bit excessive when she can’t feel even a hint of a genjutsu on her. 

“Rin?” The girl in question shifts a little on her feet, but remains stalwartly silent, and Kushina can feel one of her eyebrows creeping up her forehead. 

“…What are you doing on my doorstep?”

“I-” Rin starts, the single syllable seeming to explode out of her before she hesitates, works her lip between her teeth in a nervous tick that’s far too obvious. 

Kushina may know little about Minato’s third student—beyond Obito’s mentions of how amazing she is, but those are hardly to be trusted—but she has more than a little experience working with children by now, so she remains silent. Rin will either tell her what she wants to say eventually, or give up and leave, and there’s nothing Kushina can do about either. 

“…I was hoping you could train me…” Rin finally says, quietly enough that Kushina has to strain to hear her. 

“Train you?” Kushina asks, not bothering to hide the bluntness.

Kushina’s pleasantly surprised when Rin straightens, a determination leaking into her expression that is much more Kushina’s style. 

“I know you’re training Obito, and—” Rin pauses for a moment, as if searching for the words, “Obito’s getting stronger at an unprecedented rate, under your tutelage.” A reader, then. That could be useful. Doesn’t tell Kushina why she should take Rin on as a student, though. 

“I’m weak.” Rin says, and Kushina starts. To admit it so off-handedly… but Rin’s hands have balled into fists at her sides, even as her voice remains steady and sure. 

“I’m not strong enough to protect my teammates, and it won’t be long before they leave me in the dust, like this.” She makes eye contact, at last, and Kushina can see that the edge of determination in her eyes has turned to steel. 

“Minato-sensei’s great, but he was selected for Kakashi, not for me and Obito. Whatever you’re doing, it’s working for Obito. I’m hoping it’ll work for me too.”

Yeah, Kushina can work with that. But first—“Kid, a large part of why I’m a good fit for Obito is that we learn the same. There’s no guarantee that success will translate over to your learning from me.”

“I know. But… I’d like to try, if you’re willing to help me.” She rubs a hand up and down her opposite arm, nervousness returning now she’s given her little speech.

Kushina lets her grin grow on her face. Yes , this will work out perfectly . Kushina looks at that steel in Rin’s eyes, that frustration at being weaker, and Kushina can’t wait to see this girl forged into the best weapon she can be.

She ruffles Rin’s hair—Rin startles, but lets it happen, which is good because she’s going to have to get used to it if she intends to be taught by Kushina.

“I know you’re not coming to me for general training, dattebane, so what exactly are you interested in learning?”

“I… I’d like to learn sealing, if you’re willing to teach it to me. I know it’s kind of a big ask—”

“Excellent!” Kushina bursts out, because the kid looked about like she was going to apologize for asking in the first place, and Kushina does not know how to deal with that. 

“We start now.” She continues, ignoring the wide-eyed look Rin gives her as she grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her into the apartment.

Kushina bypasses her splayed out research, dragging along her semi-willing pupil and sitting them both at the kitchen table. 

“So, what do you already know about sealing?”

Rin starts from where she was staring wide-eyed at the mess that is currently Kushina’s living room floor. “Uh… I know the basics?”

“O-kay,” Kushina says, dragging out the “o” dubiously, “I’m gonna need a little bit more than that; I have literally no fucking idea what the academy teaches on sealing.”

“Oh!” A light, embarrassed flush rises to Rin’s face. 

“I… I know that seals can be used to seal away things, both on a physical and metaphysical level, that they require a high degree of precision, and that they’re able to do a wide variety of things if properly applied.” She seems unsure of herself, seemingly realizing by the end that she knows basically nothing about seals, if the way she trails off is any indication. 

“ Right. Is that really all the academy taught you.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, “they don’t exactly care about sealing, since it’s not useful in a fight.” A spark of spite flashes through her eyes that’s gone as quickly as it came.

“ Not useful in a fight?!” Kushina stands from her chair, slamming her hands down on the table in front of her, “ Bullshit!”

Rin looks a little surprised at the outburst, but Kushina just leans closer to her. “I’m teaching you sealing, and you’re going to be terrifying by the time I’m done with you.”

Kushina’s relieved to find the undercurrent of excitement and wonder in Rin’s eyes the thought—she’d hate to have a boring student, after all.

Kushina relocates them to the living room, shoving her notes to the side to create room for her and Rin to plop down. 

Once they’re settled, they can begin. 

“For starters, do you know anything about how seals actually work?”

“Um… It’s probably a build up of symbols that have their own functions… or something…”

“You just made that up.”

“I- it’s a hypothesis ,” Rin huffs, and yeah, Kushina can kind of see the Obito’s-best-friend in her now. Kind of.

“Well, you’re not that far off”—The gleam in Rin’s eyes has an edge of smugness too it—“but you’re not exactly right either.” Rin’s eyes narrow, and while she doesn’t exactly look competitive , she does look discontented with that. 

Kushina sighs. Seals are more than a little hard to understand—especially on a conceptual level. For Kushina, learning them was almost wholly trial-and-error. 

“Think of seals like a language of their own,” Kushina starts, and she can see Rin’s hands twitching as if wanting to take notes. “Like you said, each mark has a function—or meaning—of their own, and by putting them together you’re able to create the completed seal.”

Rin’s eyes are positively shining as Kushina speaks. 

“Do you know the standard configuration for a smoke bomb seal?”

“Um… Kind of?”

“Great! Make me one.”

The panicked expression on Rin’s face at being thrown in like that makes Kushina’s day, and Kushina can tell that this is going to be fun .

When Obito knocks on the door hours later, coming over to complain about Kakashi and try to negotiate a training session out of Kushina even though it’s late, he finds Kushina and Rin splayed out on the living room floor and surrounded by half-finished, botched seals, Rin with part of her hair singed off and both of them with soot-stains on their cheeks, and he thinks, What the fuck.

…He doesn’t get his training session.

When Kushina arrives at the training ground, she’s pleased to find that Rin’s waited behind with Obito. 

She’d hate to have to track Rin down and drag her back here; that would be a real hassle. 

“So!” Kushina starts, clapping her hands together and grinning, “Today, you two are going to spar each other so I can see”—she points at Rin—“ your level, and so I can determine your levels relative to each other!”

They settle easily in preparation for the spar, turning from children to soldiers in an instant as their stances shift and firm.

She doesn’t bother to call a start; Obito at least knows to just start as soon as she tells him what to do, and she’s sure Rin’ll catch on. 

Hopefully quickly, Kushina thinks as Obito’s sudden leap forward startles Rin and causes her to stumble. 

Rin recovers fairly quickly, though, jerking back and bringing up a kunai. She blocks Obito’s attacks fairly consistently, attempts a few return strikes, but her movements are too stiff, each block and strike a slight overreaction to the one it’s countering. 

Kushina frowns. It’s the effect of being constantly pit-up against someone above her level, no doubt, and Kushina’s already had to train it out of Obito. It still sucks to deal with, though.

Even past that, though, her fighting style is… boring, for lack of a better word. Like plain rice, without any variation or interest to it, not necessarily obsolete but simply counter-able and predictable.

Jeez, Kushina had known Rin would be a paper ninja, but she hadn’t expected it to be this bad. Even if Rin would never be a taijutsu-based fighter, she needed to be able to hold her own, and she was already tiring after a less than 15-minute fight, which was not a good sign for her physical strength and endurance. 

“Alright!” She hops up to Rin and Obito, clapping her hands together once. They stop moving, and the difference between the two of them after the bit of exercise is glaring.

Obito’s slightly out of breath, grinning and ready to fight some more if need be, while Rin has her hands on her knees and is breathing heavily. In fairness, Obito’s endurance is as insane as Kushina’s has always been, but that shouldn’t be enough to warrant such a dichotomy between the two. 

Rin’s in need of some serious physical training, but Kushina’s not so sure she’s the right person to be providing that; Kushina’s always had naturally good endurance without having to train for it, has always been active enough in the interim to allow her the speed and strength she needs.

If only it were as simple as throwing weights on her like with Kakashi’s little friend. 

Gai, was it? Yeah, Maito Gai, she clearly remembers Kakashi complaining about him to Minato.

…Wait.

“It is a testament to your eternal youth that you would seek me out, Uzumaki Kushina!” Maito Dai cries out, tears streaming down his cheeks, “to do what is best for your student and disregard your own pride!”

…Kushina has no idea what is happening. She’s pretty sure this is Maito Dai’s way of agreeing to let Rin join in on some of his son’s training, though, so she grins, thanks him brightly, and makes her exit as quickly as she can.

Rin glares balefully at Kushina the next time they meet for training, weights strapped to her wrists and ankles, so Kushina’s pretty sure it’s working.

“You’re training Rin and Obito.” Minato says, solemn.

“Yeah?”

Something flickers across Minato’s face that she can’t quite identify, “You didn’t tell me.”

Oh . Oh, shit.

He looks up at her, eyes open and honest in a way that screams of betrayal, “Did you not trust me to teach them?”

Kushina softens, “Minato,” she starts, a small smile growing on her face, “you’re not going to be the perfect teacher for everyone.

“Obito—Obito’s a kinesthetic learner like I am. I’d be no better a teacher for Kakashi as you are for Obito.”

“I—I see. And Rin?”

Kushina’s smile grows, “A talent for sealing. I’m simply encouraging it.”

The guarded expression drops from Minato’s face, then, “You’re gonna make them into little monsters.”

“Damn right I am!”

“From what I’ve seen, you’re already well on your way to it; Obito’s already improved an insane amount.” He smiles fondly, speaking of his student like a proud father. 

Kushina grins , “That kid could rule the world one day, if he keeps it up. Against all odds, he seems to have a knack for strategy.”

“I hadn’t even noticed…” Minato’s smile turns sad, pained and guilty and everything Kushina doesn’t want him to feel.

Then, his eyes turn to steel and he straightens, meeting her eyes squarely, “How would you suggest I better teach Obito to help him succeed. Clearly, whatever you’re doing is working, and I want to ensure that I can help him along as well.”

She laughs, “Do you remember when you tried to teach me how to shunshin?”

He cracks a smile again, “You threw a table at me.”

She grins, because she stands by that choice, “I did.

“C’mon, let’s go for ramen, I’ll give you some advise over dinner; I’m hungry .” She spins on her heel, grabbing his hand and dragging him along (Not that he bothers to resist). 

“Addict” he quips, laughing the word out and forcing Kushina to focus on the road in front of them to hide her smile. 

They’d get there quicker if they took to the rooftops, but there’s something grounding about walking among the civilians, something that makes Minato’s hand feel warm in hers and her heart beat faster in her chest. 

Kushina’s called into the Hokage’s office approximately two months after she agreed to take Rin on as a student. 

“It has come to my attention that you’ve taken on Uchiha Obito and Nohara Rin as unofficial students. Is this correct?”

“Yes.” Maybe if she keeps her answers short, he’ll let her leave sooner? She was planning to show Rin how to formulate transformative seals this afternoon, and she would really prefer not to have to put it off—Kushina can’t wait to see the look on Rin’s face when she realizes the true magnitude of what she can do with sealing; it doesn’t seem to have quite clicked with Rin just how devastating even just her current mastery of seals can be.

“And you are teaching young Rin in the ways of sealing?”

“Yup! It’s really amazing how fast she’s improving, dattebane. It’s truly prodigal; she’ll be a master in no time!” Kushina gushes, before realizing that she was meaning to be concise. She snaps her mouth shut with a sheepish expression.

The Hokage just sighs, looks at her with too-wise eyes, “It may be wise… to be teaching the respected clan techniques of the Uzumaki to a child so soon after… there are many who would consider such a choice to be unwise.”

Respecting clan techniques? Respecting clan techniques?! She’ll show him respecting clan techniques!

“Are you kidding me?! Do not preach to me about respecting the dead when they are not yours to mourn!” 

Kushina doesn’t allow Sarutobi a chance to respond, just spins on her heel and marches out of the office. 

She has no destination in mind, just needs to get away from the fucking old man who thinks he can tell her about loss and respect , about how she should handle her clan’s passing, how knowledge should be spread, in stupid lineal paths only to die out with the clan. To hell with that. 

Her purposeless march is put on hold when she sees Obito. 

He’s sitting on the edge of the road where it dips suddenly, and when she steps closer she can see the pond glittering below, a family of ducks swimming in it.

A thought strikes her, and she’s moving before she can even think to stop herself.

“Obito”—he starts at her sudden appearance, whirling around to face her. She takes advantage of it to lean down and grab him by the shoulders—“Do you want to learn how to make chakra chains?”

Obito’s eyes blow wide, wonder spreading across his face in a way that warms Kushina to the core. He looks awed that she’d offer it, and he looks just like Kushina did when her mother offered to teach her chakra chains.

Then, though, the doubt creeps in. “I’m not—chakra chains are a secret technique of the Uzumaki clan.”

“They are,” she agrees, because it’s true.

“…I’m not a part of the Uzumaki clan,” he looks confused and self-doubtful enough that he seems to sag with it, slumping over and avoiding eye contact. She wants to kill whoever made Obito doubt himself like this, ever. “Why would you want to teach your family’s technique to me?” Their death will be slow and painful .

“Kid,”—she starts, realizing as she speaks that she should probably have planned such a potentially important sentence ahead of time—“you’re basically family at this point, dattebane.”

He jerks to face her again, a horrible hope in them that wipes all thoughts of murderous rage from her mind. Murder later, child now.

She’d sort of assumed he already knew she thought of him as family, but she maybe should have told him that, because she suddenly has an armful of crying pre-teen that she has no idea what to do with. 

“Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, teach me to use chakra chains,”

She grins, wraps one arm around her kid, brings the other up to ruffle his hair, and thinks, Suck it, Sarutobi.

“Alright! Your ninjutsu’s pretty good, but your chakra control’s pretty subpar.”

“My chakra control’s fine!”

She just raises an eyebrow at him; he has massive chakra reserves but minimal control over them, and he knows it. 

He sags slightly under her gaze like a sad, wilting plant. 

“Luckily,” Kushina starts, watching with amusement as Obito perks up instantly, “chakra chains aren’t so much about chakra control as they are willpower , and”—she ruffles his hair—“you just happen to be a stubborn little shit!”

He takes it as the compliment it is, grinning wide. Son, Kushina’s brain whispers, and she doesn’t bother to acknowledge it. 

“You do need better chakra control, though, and you know what that means!”

Obito groans, listing to the side. Kushina grins; she hates meditating just as much as Obito does, but the joy of torturing her student is enough to make it worth it. 

He acquiesces eventually, though, plopping down and halfheartedly getting into position to meditate. 

Kushina snorts, “The better you meditate the sooner you can learn to use the chakra chains,” and watches with amusement as he straightens instantly, holding himself in a perfect lotus position that Kushina has no doubt Rin forced him to learn.

While he meditates, she lays out a fresh scroll and gets to work drawing out more (failed) attempts at a universal sleep seal. 

She’s been forced back to the drawing board, to just drawing out random ideas and seeing if they have any merit she can take and apply to the final seal. In theory, she could block the photoreceptors in the eyes instead of simply stopping the signals from entering the pineal gland, but that would also have the effect of blinding the person as long as the seal is applied, and it wouldn’t set them to sleep any faster than just blindfolding them. She could probably seal away the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells ( why?) to different severities so as to stop them from sending signals that stop the pineal gland’s production of melatonin—but, further than beta-amyloid buildup, she would also have to worry about permanently damaging the person’s light sensitivity, and possibly blinding them completely, which isn’t exactly what she’s gong for. 

And that’s not even mentioning how she’d be able to power this.

If she added stimulation of the pineal gland on top of blocking the ipRGCs, though, she could—

Obito drops his meditative position with a frustrated noise.

“Obito?”

“I can’t do this anymore.” Obito says, “I’ve reached my limit for meditation today; I think if I meditate anymore my brain will turn to goo.”

“Alright, then, let’s work on sparring for awhile.” Kushina says, shooting to her feet. She’s more than a little thankful for the break from sealing theory . (Maybe she can offload this little project onto Rin; the girl would certainly have more fun than Kushina with the insane amount of theory and reading that needs to be done.)

Obito takes to the idea with zeal, springing up and attacking her with no hesitation whatsoever. 

She sidesteps it, taking advantage of his momentum to catch him around the ankle with a chakra chain and sling him around, sending him stumbling to the ground in front of her with little effort on her part. 

He shoves himself to his feet, wide-eyed and disgruntled-looking, and she grins, sharp.

His eyes narrowing slightly is the only tell he gives before he leaps for her, and Kushina feels a rush of pride at her student. 

She blocks him, of course, sends a chain out to catch on the back of his shirt and make him stumble his blow, blade missing Kushina completely. 

He twists, turns the failed strike into a kick, and she throws him back into a tree for his efforts. 

He doesn’t let up, though, rebounds into another—failing—strike, leaps and dodges her chains and strikes again and again, but he can’t get past them.

Finally, when he leap into the air and makes to strike down at her with a foot, she steps back, lets him fall, and picks him up from behind. 

He hangs from her arm like a disgruntled cat, grabbed by the armpits and deeply displeased with the situation, tries to flail himself from her grip and fails completely.

She lets him down after a bit, dropping him to tumble unceremoniously to the ground as soon as he goes still.

“Try and physically form your chakra into a chain and attack me with it,” she begins, letting their little sparring break come to a close. “Like this,” She forms a chain slowly, letting it slide from her skin easy as breathing, all while Obito watches in barely contained awe from his spot on the ground.

His eyes scrunch up, eyebrows coming together as he makes an expression she knows he thinks looks focused and cool, but which actually just makes him look kind of like a newborn pug.

Abruptly, his eyes shoot open and he rocks forward on his knees, “show me again.”

She obliges, watches as he studies her every movement intently.

“...Again.”

His eyes dart around her, as if searching for some sort of trick behind it. 

This time, his attempt results in a spark, white and bright and present, to appear from the tenketsu at his shoulder, just where she released the chain. Kushina grins .

He stagnates there, though, can’t seem to get more than a flash of light as he tries to form it and fails. 

“This isn’t working,” Kushina declares, grabbing Obito by the back of his collar like a kitten and ignoring his offended squawk as she lifts him into the air.

She sets him on his feet, yells “Field trip time!” and sets off for the woods at a run, not bothering to look back to see if Obito’s following.

Once she reaches a satisfactory clearing, she skids to a stop. 

A moment later, Obito crashes (rather conspicuously) out of the undergrowth behind her, gasping desperately for each breath. 

Hmm. Kushina might have overdone it a little bit. Oh Well. 

She whirls around, flinging a chain out and catching Obito by the ankle, hauling him upside down into the air.

“Focus on the way they feel ,” she says, and flings him through the air and into a tree. He goes with the force of it, gives just enough as his back hits the tree that he won’t feel it later, and leaps at her.

She sets a chain to each of his shoulders, spins him with them and laughs when he falls flat on his face with the change in direction.

This time, she doesn’t release him immediately, instead entrapping him around his arms and torso in her chains.

“Focus on them, Obito,” she says, watches his disgruntled expression as he tries to feel them, as he tries to do what she’s asking but can’t figure out the purpose.

A beat, two, and she releases him, falls easily into a lotus position.

“Try to form one again.” She commands, watches as Obito rushes to comply (cool-ass chakra techniques are a hell of a motivator).

She keeps her eyes carefully on him as he tries to force his chakra to entwine to make the proper shape, as sparks form above his shoulder but little else, as his expression changes when he finally gets it, when he understands why she’d made him focus on the way the chains felt .

His expression goes lax as his attention moves elsewhere, as he undoubtedly runs a spark of chakra over his tenketsu. He makes an understanding noise, shoots out another shower of sparks, only this time they entwine into each other, weaving and solidifying into the shape of a little chain, not made of many links but of thousands of strands of chakra, tangled and interwoven until they are stronger than the strongest steel.

It’s small, about the thickness of her little finger and just as long, links janky and melded, and it dissipates as soon as he shoots up in excitement. 

It’s faster than she’s seen anyone form their first chakra chain before.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

She lets out a bout of startled laughter as she stares at this kid, Konoha’s dead last, a failure in the minds of so many around him, who’s just figured out her clan’s oft-sought secret technique in only a few hours.

But he’s staring at her with shame in his eyes, as if she’s laughing at him, as if he’s somehow failed when it wasn’t perfect on the first go, when he shouldn’t have been able to produce one at all for at least a few weeks of training. She smiles mirthily at him, can’t quite keep the laughter from her eyes, “Kid”---she ruffles his hair, forcing his head down with the motion—”you’re a damn prodigy .”

He jolts to look at her, eyes wide in awe, in hope and pain and shock that she’d say it to him —-shit, does no-one ever tell the kid he’s done a good job? That he’s a fast learner when he puts his mind to it, with an eye for strategy and a will that could bend the world? Of course they haven’t, she realizes, he’s on a team with prodigy-of-a-generation perfect-first-try Kakashi, is a member of the Uchiha clan without his sharingan, why would they bother to notice? How could they, when he is outshined and a failure in the bullshit criterion with which they measure him?

She pulls him roughly into her, hugs him tight and sure. 

He lets out a sound not unlike a sob, cries on her shoulder for the second time in less than a week, heartbreaking and full and happy, and she can do nothing but grin into his hair until he’s ready to go home.

(And make him train with chakra chains so much in the ensuing days that he tries to lace her tea with melatonin so she’s too tired. She can also do that.)

Obito’s thirteenth birthday passes with little fanfare, his passage into teenagerdom left uncelebrated but by the five of them, who Kushina drag out to dinner (semi-willingly, in the case of Kakashi) to celebrate. 

The war starts picking up, then, Kusa posing a bigger threat than ever, and Kushina finds herself with far less time to spend with her kids. 

She tries to train with Obito and Rin as much as she can, tries to be there for her kids in between the constant flow of missions. 

She does what she can, assigns Rin reading and instructs Minato with how to teach Obito, with how to make him practice his chakra chains. 

It’s not enough.

Chapter Text

The dead last is improving. It wasn’t noticeable at first, just slight refinements in his techniques and more spacial awareness while sparring, but—

He caught Kakashi off-guard in their last spar. Kakashi had been sure that Obito would be forced to block his kunai, would leave his side open like he always did. Instead, Obito had leapt back and sprung forward at the last moment, while Kakashi had still been swinging the blade, taking advantage of that infinitesimal opening to land a hit . 

Obito never landed the hit. He just didn’t , and to have that changed… it shook something in Kakashi. He’d won, of course, but the careful control he held over himself had broken, and Obito had seen . (No one was ever supposed to see. A shinobi was meant to be cold, distant, and collected, and to be anything less than that was to fail . To be a disappointment . No one was meant to know that Kakashi was already a failure.)

Whatever this strange improvement was, it was the beginning of something , had been for the last few weeks, but Kakashi didn’t know what . Kakashi hated being out of the loop, and whatever was happening with the dead last—well, Kakashi certainly wasn’t in on it. 

He shouldn’t care. He’s better than Obito, stronger and more dedicated and more skilled, and it shouldn’t matter to him what Obito can or can’t do. He shouldn’t care about anything Obito does, and he doesn’t . (So why can’t he stop thinking about Obito?)

It is a painful thing, to be alone.

Kakashi has been alone since the day he found his father dead in a pool of his own blood.

Minato tries. Tries to pull Kakashi out of it, to be there for him when no one else will. It’s not enough.

Kakashi doesn’t need it, though, doesn’t need the help of the worry or the comfort, because he’s not weak . He’s strong, has always needed to be been, stronger than Obito and stronger than his coward of a father (He wasn’t a coward, though, was he? He was just someone who broke the rules and faced the consequences).

Obito wants to be strong, too. He isn’t. (Kakashi hopes he never is.)

“Kakashi!” 

Shit. Kakashi had been hoping to make it through his grocery run without being forced to interact with anyone, but it seems he’ll have no such luck today. 

Rin’s voice is cheerful, though, and she’s usually okay , so it could be worse. It could’ve been Obito.

He turns to her— what the fuck?

Rin’s positively drenched , wearing her normal clothes but dripping water like she just got dunked in a pond, aquatic plants hanging limply from her hair and shoulders. The only part of her that’s not completely soaked is the bag she’s holding, which is miraculously clean—and dry—in sharp contrast to the rest of her. 

She’s grinning, though, and Kakashi feels his dread inexplicably deepen as she approaches him. 

“Why.” Is all Kakashi can even think to say, because just. What. 

She grins, tells him that “I was practicing!” Like that explains anything at all. 

“C’mon!” She says, cheerfully, and before he knows it he’s been grabbed around the wrist and pulled along, “I need your help with something.”

He wants to protest, knows he could pull his arm away and be gone before she even had a chance to blink, but—

Pulling away would mean going back to his house, cold and empty as it’s been since the day his father—-

“I’m trying out this new sealing array,” Rin continues, apparently oblivious to his momentary plight, “but I can’t seem to get it to work,” Kakashi feels distinctly like he’s missed something yet again, and isn’t that just great?

“Sealing?” He questions, before he can stop himself. 

“Yeah! Kushina-sensei started me on it, it’s really cool— ah; here we are!” She announces, and Kakashi notices abruptly that she’s led him out of the village proper and into a completely unremarkable clearing in the woods. Yay .

Wait —“Kushina- sensei?”

“Yeah?” She blinks at him, as if she can’t see anything at all strange with that.

He just gives her an unimpressed, dumbfoundeded stare, tries to communicate the pure what the fuck he feels.

She tilts her head to the side, seeming to realize something, “Obito didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Kakashi asks dubiously.

“Kushina-sensei’s been training him for months. Surely you’ve noticed his improvement?”

I— the flash of a blade moving towards him faster than he’s seen Obito move before, the feeling of Obito’s foot colliding with his chin, the visible excitement that seemed to cling to Obito near-constantly, running deeper than even his usual cheer— “Yes,” He says gruffly, “I have.”

Rin gives him a look he can’t quite decipher the meaning of—“Right. Well, Kushina-sensei agreed to train me too, and she’s teaching me sealing.

“Anyways,” Rin cuts herself off abruptly, “that’s enough setup; it’s sealing time .”

She slings her bag to the side, produces a scroll from—somewhere, and flicks it open over the ground. 

Kakashi kind of wishes he went home when he had the chance (he doesn’t).

“This,” she starts, a triumphant tone in her voice, “is a seal designed to hold a pond.”

A… pond? Kakashi stares blankly at her. 

“Or at least”—she visibly deflates—“It’s supposed to be. Right now, I can’t get it to hold anything much larger than a puddle.” She scowls, staring at the scroll with an expression that screams ‘not good enough .’”

Kakashi feels for a moment like he’s looking in a mirror, sees a discontent in her eyes that reminds him a little too painfully of himself.

It’s not good enough , and it never will be.

She whirls to him, startling him from his thoughts, “So! I need you to help me figure out what I did wrong, because Kushina-sensei’s out on a mission and you’re good at picking apart flaws. Plus, I honestly just need a second set of eyes. ”

Kakashi wants to leave, to tell her that it’s not his problem, that if she’s failing it’s on her to make it better, but—but. He sees something of himself in her eyes, sees the same desperate need for perfection, and—and he does want to know his teammates, and this—this is productive , is something that will make the team stronger, so—

“Fine.”

Rin stares at him for a moment, as if expecting him to continue. He won’t.

She seems to realize this, though, and hurries to continue, “Alright, so this”—she points to a swirled tomoe-like shape—“is meant to regulate the seal’s intake, and stop it from distorting the thing it contains. Used in combination with this one”—a complex, jagged shape that seems to curl around the curve of the tomoe”—it should allow for the successful sealing of large or chakra-dense object. This—“

She runs through every major symbol within the seal and briefly explains its function, which is as foreign to him as it is boring.

Still, Kakashi agreed to help her, and he’s not going to go back on that.

His eyes rove over the symbols, picking out every similarity and looking for the flaws. His gaze catches on one of the jagged shapes connecting the tomoe; “Is that supposed to be more angular than the other side?”

“Huh?” Rin leans over the seal near him, eyes searching for the flaw he’s identified—“Well, shit.”

She stares at it a moment before letting out a long, distinctly Obito-esque groan and dragging a hand down her face. “I was really hoping I was just missing something; now I have to rewrite the whole seal.”

Kakashi’s unsure of how to respond to that, so he doesn’t.

She marches over to her back, tearing it open and shoving a—thankfully now dry—hand in, rummaging around. 

“Aha!” she exclaims, triumphantly extracting her hand from the pack with her hand clutched tight around a blank scroll. 

Kakashi frowns.

Rin pulls out a vial of ink and a brush as well, before marching back to the failed scroll, rolling it up as if it’s something precious rather than just a failure. 

She must notice his confusion, or otherwise feel the need to clarify, because she quickly explains that “Keeping the failed version means that I can take inspiration from it later, when I need to achieve something closer to what this ended up doing, and it allows me to log how different imperfections can affect the end result.”

Then, she unfurls the blank scroll and sets to work as Kakashi watches with careful eyes. Fuuinjutsu can be a useful skill, after all, even if he’s usually far more of a taijutsu-ninjutsu based fighter. 

Her strokes are lightning quick, hand gliding over the paper in sure motions that only slow when she reaches a particularly intricate piece. 

Slowly, the seal furls into life under her careful hand, symmetrical on two parallel axes that seem to curl in towards the central spiral.

“You’re too far to the left,” he comments dully, just before she can set her brush to the page.

“Thanks!” She says brightly, moves to mark the page in the correct spot, and he feels his lips curve unwillingly into a small smile.

It continues as such, with Kakashi watching with careful eyes as Rin draws out the seal, occasionally pointing out errors and potential mistakes she rushes to correct.

It’s… nice.

(When she’s finished and packing up to go home, she demands he help her again at a later date. He doesn’t mind.)

Team training is always boring. It’s basic fact that Kakashi’s been paired with a team of people far below his level, and being pitted up against them just feels like stagnation.

He disarms Rin with a single swipe of his kunai, steps back and lets her attempted retribution breeze past him. She’s improved , no doubt Kushina’s apparent doing, but she’s still hardly a match for Kakashi. Her talent for sealing evidently didn’t transfer over to taijutsu.

He’s up against Obito next, finds his gaze lingering on the other boy’s now easy fighting stance, on the way he holds himself like he knows what he’s doing. 

Then, Obito surges forward, kunai in hand, and Kakashi is forced to block the blow with his own. 

Obito grins at him, and he uses the opening to kick Obito backwards.

Obito doesn’t hesitate, though, even though Kakashi had landed a solid kick to his gut, just counters with a kick of his own in retaliation. 

Kakashi dodges it, finds himself in the path of Obito’s kunai arm, and leaps backwards an instant before the blade can connect.

Obito’s improvement is glaring now that Kakashi’s been made aware of it, his every move practiced in a way they’d never been before, his every strike calculated and followed through without him tripping over his own feet. 

It’s thrilling .

Kakashi lets his movements blur, lets them smooth until they lead seamlessly into each other, leaps and dodges and strikes in a single continuous movement, not caring to pause or waste a fraction of the energy.

And Obito—Obito keeps up, or nears it, kept on the defensive but not allowing Kakashi any decisive blows.

Finally, though, Kakashi has Obito where he wants him, has victory within his grasp.

Obito knows it too, if the way his eyes widen is any indication. 

Instead of dodging Kakashi’s attack, moving back and taking the tactical retreat to keep fighting, Obito goes still. 

Just… stops, standing in the middle of the clearing and closing his eyes .

Kakashi throws a kunai, knows Obito will find a way to block it before it actually hurts him. ( Oh god what if he doesn’t, what if Kakashi kills—)

A glowing chain shoots from Obito’s shoulder, knocking the kunai from the air and racing towards Kakashi.

What the fuck?

Kakashi leaps backwards, dances and dodges to avoid being ensnared in the fucking chakra chain Obito ’s just produced. ‘Kushina-sensei’s been training him for months.’

And teaching him Uzumaki clan secret techniques, apparently, because why the fuck wouldn’t she?

In the space of a blink, the chain snares him around the ankle, pulls him towards Obito in a practiced movement. How long has he been training this? 

Kakashi uses the momentum to swing his body around and kick Obito square in the jaw, landing lightly on the balls of his feet and whirling to face Obito even as the chain vanishes. At least Obito can’t keep it up without concentration, or Kakashi would have lost to him. 

Obito pulls himself to his feet, breathing heavily and holding a hand on his jaw, but not giving up and not complaining. 

When he leaps, it almost startles Kakashi, so lacking in his usual tells it’s almost unpredictable. How the hell didn’t Kakashi notice this earlier?

The movement forces Kakashi backwards, forces him to leap to the side to avoid getting skewered on Obito’s blade.

Kakashi’s still reeling from the fucking chakra chain , though, and Obito catches him in the side with a well-placed kick that sends him stumbling.

Obito takes it as the opening it is to knock Kakashi to the ground, pinning him with the same startling efficiency he’d displayed throughout the fight.

They’re both breathing heavily, worn out from the fight, but Obito’s grinning, bright and full and victorious, and Kakashi’s heart seizes in his chest as he realizes that, like this, Obito’s going to win.

Obito’s distracted, though, so Kakashi slams his head sideways into Obito’s arm, forcing Obito’s elbow to give out and using the moment of Obito’s fall to flip them, landing securely on top of Obito with one leg pressing to hold Obito’s legs down at the thigh, holding Obito’s hands against the ground above his head with both his hands as he digs a knee into Obito’s chest to stop him from trying to rip free from Kakashi’s hold.

Kakashi barely hears Minato-sensei’s counting, ensnared by the fact that Obito’s still smiling , wide and full—even though he’s lost —because he almost didn’t. The smile hasn’t even lost a hint of its victoriousness, bright and full as a moment before, smug and flushed from exertion, eyes bright and—

Minato-sensei finishes the count and Kakashi leaps away from Obito, landing steadily on his feet. 

The rest of training passes in a blur, Kakashi unable to focus on anything but the sight of that stupid grin.

The morning they’re set to leave on the mission to destroy Kanabi bridge, he has a panic attack. 

It hits him hard and fast, knocks the air from his lungs and makes him struggle to regain it as the world seems to press in around him, the air suddenly too thin and the world suddenly too dark.

The floor’s covered in blood , he thinks dimly, and he can’t breathe.

Something’s wrong, and he doesn’t know what it is. 

Something’s wrong , and his body responds to it, forces the strength from his limbs and sends him careening to the ground, his hands coming up to scrabble uselessly at his throat as he tries to force breath into his uncooperative lungs.

His hands fumble with his mask, yanking it down in a desperate movement as he tries to breathe and can’t , because the air is tainted and his lungs cannot take it.

The world’s spinning, the ground beneath him red, red, red, stained with his father’s blood that will never come out. 

He can’t move , can’t even call for help—wouldn’t even if he could, because he doesnt deserve it .

The floor’s only stained because Kakashi let it be , because Kakashi wasn’t good enough for his father to live for, because Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to clean up the blood until a week after the ANBU had come to collect his father, because he let it sit there, stagnant, left pools of it on the ground where he’s laying right now.

Kakashi throws himself backwards on his hands, scrabbles with the back door until he can slide it open and force himself through it, tumble to the cold dirt and suck in gulping breaths of air untainted with his father’s blood.

(When he’s finished, when his energy has run out and he can panic no more, he stumbles back into his house to discover that it’s been five minutes, though it felt like hours he lay there dying.)

He’s on time for the mission. Arrives five minutes early on the dot time where usually he would be at least twenty, and Minato-sensei gives him a strange, worried look. Does he think Kakashi can’t do it?

Kakashi tries to force the thought from his head; this isn’t the time to doubt Minato-sensei’s trust, isn’t the time for nerves or panic or doubt. He’s a jounin now, is leading this mission, and he can’t fail his teammates now. Has to make sure everything goes to plan. Has to make sure his teammates follow the plan. Can’t let them suffer his father’s fate. 

The  mission will go fine, so long as they all follow the rules. ( Otherwise, what are the rules there for?)

Rin arrives approximately two minutes before they’re set to leave, and pulls out a book on sealing and a notebook. Before long, she’s nose deep in it, taking notes with her free hand without even sparing them a glance. Her focus is a little terrifying.

Minato-sensei is staring vaguely into the distance, and Kakashi honestly can’t tell whether his mind is completely blank or whether he’s deep in thought. 

The time they’re set to leave arrives and passes, but there’s no sign of Obito. 

Were Kakashi a lesser shinobi, he would hunt Obito down, but instead he follows Rin’s example and just pulls out a kunai to sharpen and tries to distance himself from his thoughts. He might as well use this time for something ; they can’t exactly leave for the mission while they’re missing a member. 

Kakashi runs the kunai he’s working on against his grinding stone once more, and puts it up to the light. There’s a nick on the edge he was hoping to get off, but it seems to have lingered.

He frowns; he doesn’t want to have to get rid of this kunai when it’s still in such good shape, but the nick will harm the blade’s ability to cut smoothly through things, which sort of defeats the whole point of using a kunai in the first place. 

He runs his grinding stone down the length of it again; if he’s going to have to get rid of it anyway, he might as well try sharpening it, and if it ends up ruining the weight distribution, it won’t really matter. 

It takes him a good ten minutes, but eventually the nick is gone and the blade cuts through paper with ease, so he turns it over and begins sharpening the other side; it wouldn’t do to have an imbalanced blade. 

Obito lands next to him with a thump, though Kakashi notes dully that he hadn’t even heard Obito coming—before Kushina’s apparent training, Obito’s attempts at being any sort of sneaky had been abysmal, and Kakashi could hear him approaching—especially if there was undergrowth for him to crash through—from over ten meters away.

“You’re late.” Kakashi says, voice set in its usual flatness.

“Sorry about that,”—Obito turns his blinding grin on Kakashi—“I had to help an old lady cross the road, and then she needed help getting her groceries home ‘cause they really were too heavy, and—”

“That’s alright, Obito,” Minato-sensei says with a smile, shutting Obito up easily. Kakashi’s glad for it; a moment longer and he would have tried to physically make Obito shut up. 

“Obito!” Rin calls, bounding over to them.

Kakashi becomes suddenly aware that there are far too many people in his space, and he steps away and starts towards the gates. 

“You’re prepared?” Kakashi asks, monotone.

“Yup!”

“Of course we are, Bakashi! We’re chuunin, and we’re not incompetent just ‘cause you’re a jounin now!” Obito moves forward into Kakashi’s personal space as he speaks, and Kakashi’s heart-rate picks up.

He rolls his eyes; a “Yes” would have sufficed. 

Obito looks like he wants to yell at Kakashi some more, face far too close, but then Minato-sensei’s pulling them all into a tight—and awkward—hug. 

Kakashi ends up with his side pressed against Obito’s, has a feeling in his chest not unlike panic at the contact. He debates trying to pull from the hug, but gives up on the idea because he won’t escape Minato-sensei’s hold anyway. 

When Minato-sensei lets the three of them go, he puts a steadying hand on Kakashi and Rin’s shoulders—he makes a brief face as he realizes he doesn’t have a third hand to put on Obito’s—“I am so proud of the three of you,” he says, and his voice is sure, and choked, and undeniably honest . 

“As is Kushina,” he continues, gaze focusing on Obito and Rin, “And she’d no doubt be here to send us off and to tell you that herself were she not on a mission.”

Kakashi’s chest feels just the slightest bit lighter at Minato-sensei’s smile, shoulders losing some of their tension.

Minato-sensei releases Kakashi’s shoulder, turns fully to Obito’s other side to face Rin before dragging her into another hug, which he holds for a beat longer before releasing her, “Rin. Your talent and skill in medical ninjutsu make you formidable in your own right, your sealing prowess only amplifying that tenfold. Since you started training with Dai, your taijutsu has shown marked improvement as well. I can’t wait to see the shinobi you’ll grow to be one day, and I hope I never end up on the wrong side of you.” 

Rin straightens under the attention, the pride in Minato-sensei’s voice, grins bright and proud in her improvement. 

He turns to Obito, then, dragging him into a hug just like the one he gave Rin, a beat too long and charged with emotion. “Obito,” he begins, laying his hands on Obito’s shoulders as Obito looks up at him like his next words will mean everything, “Your improvement in these last months Kushina’s been training you is unprecedented . You have always had the potential to be great, but seeing that realized has made it abundantly clear that you will be terrifying. I’m glad I’ll never be on the opposite side of a battle, because you will be amazing.” 

Obito positively preens under the attention, proud and triumphant and beaming with the force of it. Kakashi’s heart stutters in his chest. 

Then, Kakashi’s being pulled into a hug, tight and solid and warm, and the world feels okay for a moment.

When Minato-sensei pulls away, lays his hand on Kakashi’s shoulders and gives him a smile, Kakashi finds himself faced with eyes full of pride , of happiness and fondness and something like love , like a father watching his son succeed.

Centered in Minato-sensei’s caring gaze like this, it feels for a moment that things might actually turn out alright.

“Kakashi. You have always been formidable, have always been terrifying in a fight and improving by the day, but recently you’ve been able to work with your teammates, to help them and to know them. I am so glad to see you coming out of your shell like that, to see you working with them and collaborating. I cannot wait to see where those alliances will take you”—Minato-sensei glances up and over Obito and Rin as well—“will take all of you.” 

Minato-sensei returns his glance to Kakashi, “I cannot wait to see where your life takes you, Kakashi to see the person you become.” His voice reflects the softness in his eyes, quiet and proud and sure. 

Suddenly, the weight in Kakashi’s chest doesn’t feel so heavy, the weight of the world on his shoulders just a bit lighter for a moment as his teacher—his father in all but name—smiles at him and tells him he’s proud. 

Minato steps back from them, then, smiles fondly as Rin and Obito immediately leap into conversation.

“Did you read the book on sealing I lent you?” Rin asks.

“We need to head out. We’re already late in leaving”—Kakashi shoots a judgmental glance at Obito—“and we can’t afford to be any later.”

Obito makes a face and opens his mouth as if to counter that, but Minato speaks before he can; “Sorry Obito, Kakashi’s right. We have no more time to spare.”

Obito’s put out expression is almost enough to make Kakashi smile. 

As soon as they’re out of Konoha, though, “I got through the first chapter, but I got stuck on the section on chakra regulatory systems.”

“Yeah, chakra regulatory systems  suck ,” Rin says, apparent irritation dripping from her tone, “You’ve gotta take into consideration variable influxes in chakra output as they relate to the dynamic flow of the chakra matrices involved.”

“You do realize you sound insane, right? Like, that literally makes net zero sense.”

“It makes perfect sense! It’s just a furthering of the intramolecular chakra-coherence principle!” Kakashi can hear the grin in her voice

“It’s amazing that you can even begin to understand any of that.” Obito’s tone is full of admiration as he looks at Rin, and Kakashi finds himself inexplicably filled with irritation.

“Stop flirting ,” he bites out, unsure why the idea bothers him so much, “this is a mission , not some training session you can put minimal effort into.”

Obito sputters, face reddening dramatically, “I’m not—”

Kakashi raises an unimpressed eyebrow; figures that would be the only thing Obito took from his words. 

“Fucking Baka shi, I wasn’t flirting !” Obito practically shrieks, voice tilting so high-pitched Kakashi’s surprised he can even hear it at all. Maybe it’s like a dog whistle, and only he can hear it. Minato and Rin don’t even react to the horrible noise, so Kakashi can only assume that’s the case.

“Not well .” Kakashi counters, flat as ever. 

Up ahead, he hears Minato-sensei choke on a laugh followed by a probably-fake coughing fit. 

“Oh yeah ? You think you could do better?”

“So you admit that you were flirting.”

“Oh fuck you, Bakashi !”

Something in the air shifts, and Minato-sensei holds up a hand. The three of them freeze where they stand—even Obito, Kakashi notes with some respect.

The fight that ensues is a blur, Kakashi’s Chidori effortlessly destroying the enemy’s clones even as Minato-sensei calls it an incomplete jutsu.

Until it doesn’t, until Minato-sensei has to save Kakashi from his own stupid, stupid mistake.

Then, Minato-sensei leaves them alone, goes off to assist at the battlefront. 

It should feel victorious, to be wholly in charge of this mission. Instead, Kakashi just feels… lost. Off-kilter, like something has changed here, like their mission was doomed the moment Minato-sensei disappeared.

It’s… fine. Things aren’t supposed to happen like this, aren’t supposed to begin to go wrong so soon into a mission, and for them to be attacked and then have their most senior member leave for active duty… it can be nothing but a bad omen, and Kakashi feels dread sink like a stone into his gut, but it’s fine .

“Let’s go,” he says, continues their trek because he’s not a coward , and he’s not going to let nervousness get in the way of the mission. 

Is it really a surprise, then, when they’re attacked again?

Kakashi brings his arm up in a desperate block as the enemy nin’s blade descends on him, falters under the weight of the blow before their eyes go wide and they’re flung backwards, away from him, sudden distance accompanied by a flash of Obito’s smile as his chakra chain returns to him. 

A sound like an explosion and Kakashi whirls around, finds Rin gripping a sealing paper tight in her hand, facing down a large man through the smoke from whatever that was , as the enemy nin disappears.

Well that’s not good . 

Kakashi draws his tanto, manages a glancing strike to the brown-haired one’s shoulder before being forced to leap backwards to avoid their blade.

The enemy slips past his guard and Kakashi realizes almost-too late what they’re going for, sees the blow aimed for Obito’s back, the blow Obito hasn’t seen , the blow that will kill him .

Kakashi moves without thinking, forgoes all of the logic he clings to as he leaps, blocks the blow in the only way he can—

A searing pain as the blade goes through his left eye, whiting out the world and dropping Kakashi to the water. 

“KAKASHI!”

He slips through its surface, can’t scrounge up the concentration to water walk with his world cut in painful half. 

He wonders distantly if this is how he’ll die.

A hand wraps around his waist, pulls him from the water, and it is not Rin’s hand, or Obito’s.

Kakashi meets Obito’s terrified gaze at the last second, just long enough to see Obito’s eyes bleed red, and then Kakashi is whisked off into the trees, faster than Obito and Rin have any hope of following.

They stop in a rocking clearing, exposed to the sky and no less foreboding for it. 

“The black-haired one had the sharingan, didn’t he, Kakko?”

“Yes, very interesting. I do wonder what such a precious group were sent after.” Kakko ’s smile is predatory as he turns it on Kakashi, and Kakashi knows that he will not betray his teammates. Knows that he would sooner die , and knows that the man in front of him won’t let him get out of this so lightly. 

“We should get underground, then. Being out in sight like this will only make it easier for that one to spot us, and with the sharingan it’s likely he will, should he look.” Obito—Obito won’t. He’s smarter than he looks, his recent improvement is testament to that, and he has to understand that the mission comes first. Failing that, Rin is logical, will know which is more important, and with her asking, Obito will comply. 

“You’re far too cautious, Taiseki,” Kakko complains, voice irritated as he speaks to the one holding Kakashi, but he leads them to the opening of a cave deeper in the rocky outcropping nonetheless. 

The change is instant as they step from the daylight, the air turning dark and dank, cold in a way the sunlight had dissolved.

Yes, this is exactly the type of place one would die, Kakashi thinks somewhat hysterically as they lead him deeper, and deeper, and deeper. 

He tries to open his left eye, has to bite back a scream , because the blade went deep , and there’s no way that eye will be functional ever again. Shit, his situation is even worse than expected. Not only that, but they’ve put some kind of genjutsu on him, he thinks, or something , because he cannot move , and with every second that passes like this, every step  deeper they take, Kakashi’s chances of escape—and subsequent survival—deflate only further, until they are little more than a distant hope.

Taiseki drops him roughly to the ground, binds him quickly and efficiently. Kakashi can feel the rope digging into his wrists, knows he would not be able to move them even without the influence of this strange genjutsu. 

“Right, then,” Kakko says, stalking forward, and there is a part of Kakashi that screams that this man is dangerous , will do whatever it takes to get information out of him and then kill him even if he complies. Kakashi doesn’t waver, because mercilessness is the shinobi way, and if he has to face the other end of that so be it; Obito and Rin got out okay, will carry on the mission, will complete their task no matter what these two do.

There’s a sort of power in that feeling, that no matter what you do to me, you cannot stop this. There is a sadness to it too, because it means Obito and Rin aren’t coming for him, means he’s going to die here, probably horrifically, but that is a shinobi’s duty and he will carry it out even if it’s the last thing he ever does. (He doesn’t want to die.)

Kakko grabs Kakashi by his hair, forces his head up to meet his eyes. Kakashi meets them evenly, because Kakko is not an Uchiha and Kakashi is not a coward. “Let’s see what this one knows.”

“Kakashi,” his father’s voice is rough, bubbling and wrong as his corpse eyes stare at Kakashi, as he’s collapsed in a pool of his own blood, tanto in hand.

Kakashi is frozen, cannot move or speak or scream, because his father is dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead and it’s all Kakashi’s fault, and there’s nothing Kakashi can do to save him.

His father’s corpse reaches out, slow and soft, cups Kakashi’s cheek like he used to do, when Kakashi was little and still something precious , still something worth living for.

Then, the tanto is pressed into his hands, and his father’s corpse falls still yet again.

“Well, wasn’t that interesting?” Kakko sneers, grabs Kakashi roughly by his chin and forces his gaze up to Kakko’s face. 

“What found you little kiddies on this side of the border in the first place, huh?” 

Kakashi meets Kakko’s smirk with as much composure as he can manage, and stays silent.

“Well, if you’re going to be that way—”

Kakashi’s hand slips on something wet, bleeding through his shirt, and he looks down to find blood soaking through his own shirt, fingers gripping the bloody handle of the tanto he used to do it, to run the blade so deep that Konoha’s best medics would be unable to heal it. 

He coughs, feels the blood dribble down his chin, feels the tanto slip to the ground in a rush of blazing agony as he sinks to the floor, as his control over his body fades, and his sight, until all he can sense at all is the thick smell of blood in the air and the haggard, rasping sound of his own breathing as his body fails him.

So this is what dying feels like , he thinks, and the world fades to nothing.

“All you have to do to stop this is tell me what I want to know, you know,” Kakko says conversationally, as if Kakashi will comply, will ever do anything to jeopardize the mission (To jeopardize Obito and Rin’s safety.)

Kakashi is cold, cold, cold, sinking through his skin and to his bones , taking every hint of warmth in the world and whisking it away into nothingness.

He forces his eye open only to find himself in a room.

There is no exit, no window or door or crack in the smooth white walls that surround him, nothing in the room but himself. 

It’s silent, too. Silent like a corpse in a casket as it’s lowered into the ground, like the sound of a single pin drop will send ripples across the space. 

He looks down, because at least his clothes are—white. As white as the room around him, and as featureless too. 

This is… fine, he thinks, that they would lock him in here. It’s better than torture. He lets his back hit the wall, slides down it to wait.

An hour passes. 

And another.

And another.

And anoth—has it? Has an hour passed since the last? How long has he been here now, has it been an hour or three, has it been only seconds? Minutes, bleeding longer by sheer nothingness. Kakashi doesn’t know. 

He starts counting the seconds. 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5…he imagines he can see the numbers projected on the wall...58, 49, 60.

A minute, then. And then two. He thinks he really can see them now, reflected there, colorful and real and a figment. Three minutes.

Four.

Eight.

Eighteen,

Thirty three. 

Eighty eight. That’s a nice number, isn’t it? So symmetrical, so perfect . Shame it can last only a minute. 

One hundred and forty seven.

Five hundred and eighty two.

One thousand three hundred and twelve…

Where was he again? 

He… can’t remember. 

He supposes he’ll have to start over. 

One, two, three, four…

If he screamed, would anyone hear him?

Five, six, seven, eight…

“How long has it been for you, now?” Kakko asks, and it is so good to hear a person again, to hear a voice besides his own. “One day? Two?”

“Well, if you don’t want to tell me anything about your mission, I suppose I’ll just put you back.”

Kakashi has to physically stop himself from jerking , from begging for anything but, has to remind himself that he’s being tricked, and Obito and Rin are coming to save him going to complete the mission, safe so long as he keeps his mouth shut. 

That it doesn’t matter if he dies, if he suffers, because he’s a shinobi , a tool for the village and nothing more, will have died an honorable death in service to his village as he was always meant to.

He glares at Kakko with all the strength he can muster, and Kakko’s smiling face is the last thing he sees before the world is a small white room yet again.

He drops to the floor with a sigh, settles into the lotus position as if to meditate, and starts counting.

It would be easier to keep track if he had a clock, he thinks. One that ticks with every second, steady and consistent.

Yes, that will keep him on track. Tick, tick, tick , one on two on three on—. 

Tick. Two hundred and fifty thousand two hundred and two.

Tick. Two hundred and fifty—

“Ready to tell me what you know yet, brat?”

“Maa, who’s to say I know anything?” Kakashi asks, wants his captors angry. Wants them to scream, to shout, to hurt him. Anything but that horrible, horrible room.

“Don’t play dumb with me, brat,” Kakko jeers, but he hasn’t stopped talking yet, so Kakashi counts it a success, lets himself soak in the sound of someone’s voice, even if the person it’s coming from is the reason he craves it in the first place.

Kakashi can deal with it, whether Kakko sends him back or not. Kakashi has been alone before, spent weeks without speaking to anyone after his father, and he can handle the solitude, is more than familiar with suppressing the craving for contact. (Spent weeks doing it, before he gave in and let a boy in awful green spandex barrel his way back into Kakashi’s life, sat a little closer to a boy with orange glasses and words to spare.)

That doesn’t mean he wants to deal with it.

“Play dumb?” Kakashi asks, blinks up at Kakko with the widest, most innocent eyes he can muster in a mockery of a strategy he’s seen Rin use to annoy Kushina.

It’s effective, he finds, when Kakko’s fist connects with his face and sends him sprawling.

Kakashi steps up to the door of his childhood home, slides it open, prepares himself to deal with his father’s questioning about training.

Only… Only that’s not how the story goes, is it?

The floor is covered in red, the air filled with the sharp iron scent of blood, and Kakashi can do nothing but stumble forward, freeze in front of the person dying on the floor.

Minato-sensei’s eyes are empty and dead, dead, dead, bloody tanto sitting in his lax hand, resting there as if to mock him.

The blood leaks slowly from Minato-sensei, seeps into the flooring beneath him, stains Kakashi’s hands as Kakashi tries to do something, to save him, because Minato-sensei can’t die, Kakashi can’t lose another—

But Minato-sensei’s body is already cold, his heart gone still for the last time. 

Maybe if Kakashi’d been faster getting home, maybe if he’d shown he cares, if he’d been better he could have stopped this, could be looking at Minato-sensei’s smiling face and not the lax, waxy one of a corpse.

The blood seeps into the legs of Kakashi’s pants, staining him, ruining him, marking him a failure.

And then Kakashi finds himself staring into Rin’s concerned face, the world grounded in a way it hasn’t been since Taiseki grabbed him.

“Is he awake?” Obito whisper yells, steps in front of Rin as she steps easily out of his way.

Obito grabs Kakashi’s face tactlessly in his hand, and the contact burns.

“Are you okay?!” He asks, far too close.

Kakashi wants so badly to lean into it, to collapse bonelessly against Obito, but instead he forces the best glare he can (which is admittedly probably rather pathetic, because all he can think about is the relief of the warm touch, of the sight of a face so alive and full of expression).

“I’m fine, dead last,” he bites out, the words coming out croaked and raspy and holding none of the heat he’s trying for. 

Obito frowns suspiciously at him, looks about ready to tell Kakashi to stop being a stubborn bastard, but Rin cuts in: “He’s relatively physically unharmed.” She states calmly, and Obito closes his mouth but doesn’t drop the frown.

“You came for me.” Kakashi forces out, because he doesn’t understand why.

“Well yeah , we weren’t just going to leave you here,” Obito says as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. As if the very words aren’t treason.

“You should have stayed to the mission”—It’s true; Kakashi doesn’t matter in the long run, and the destruction of Kanabi bridge could turn the tide of the war—“The rules state that the mission should always come first, no matter of personal feelings.”

Obito sputters, enraged. “Like hell —”

“You don’t understand what happens to people who don’t follow the rules, Obito.” (His father’s too-cold hand, pressing the bloody tanto into Kakashi’s.)

“ I believe the White Fang was a hero,” Obito says resolutely, as if the words aren’t everything , “People are always saying that those who don’t follow the rules are trash, but I believe that those who don’t care about their companions are even worse trash.

“If caring enough to save you makes me trash, then I’d rather be trash!” He declares, and Kakashi’s heart thuds loudly in his chest.

“I’ll admit , you brats had me for a minute there,” Kakashi’s heart stops dead in its tracks at the sound of Kakko’s stupid voice, “But you’re still just brats, and you’re right where I need you.”

Before any of them can do anything, can run or leap to counter, Kakko slams his hand to the ground, yells “DOTON! IWA VADO KUZUSHI!” and backs into the shadows as the cave collapses in on itself. 

And Kakashi finds himself weightless, finds the force of something shoving him out of the way.

Kakashi falls to the ground, destabilized by his sudden displacement, and looks up as the cave seems to stabilize some once more—

Kakashi’s blood turns to ice in his veins.

Obito lays splayed out on the cave floor, only half of him visible as his other is crushed beneath hundreds of tons of stone.

“ OBITO!” Kakashi yells, because everything rests on Obito responding, on Obito not being—

“I’m”—Obito coughs, and it’s a horrible, broken sound, sending blood dripping out the edge of his lips. 

Kakashi rushes to Obito’s side, tries to free him, scrabbles his hands uselessly at the boulder as if he can lift it, as if it will fall apart under his fingers, as if it were just another genjutsu. “SHIT!” He falls to his knees beside Obito and—“Rin!”

But she’s already there, running diagnostic medical chakra through Obito in a practiced, mechanical movement.

She chokes on a sob, falls back onto her heels.

“I can’t—there’s nothing I can do.” Her voice goes flat, mechanical and cold and distant, “If he were to be transferred to a hospital, it is possible that something could be done, but—”

“It’s over for me.” Obito interrupts her, matter of fact at the same time it is broken, accepting of a fate he should not have to suffer.

“Kakashi—” He coughs again, and it hurts like a physical blow. “I never did… give you that gift… for becoming a jounin,” His smiling face goes hazy, Kakashi’s remaining eye unable to focus as Kakashi lets out a sound so broken he’s distantly surprised it could have come from him at all, because Obito’s talking as if this is the last time he’ll get to, as if these are his last words, and he’s smiling. 

Because Kakashi’s wished a thousand times that Obito would stop crying so much, but now he wants nothing more than to see tears leak from Obito’s eyes, to stop him from having to put on a brave face as he lies there dying . 

To stop this from being real, to have this be just another of Kakko’s genjutsu, because Obito is everything, is the good and the hope and the joy, and Kakashi needs him to be okay.

The yawning chasm in Kakashi’s chest grows as he watches Obito smile, watches the half of Obito’s face that’s visible from under the rocks and knows that Obito’s dying—

“Take my eye.”

“I can’t—Obito, you’re not going to—”

“ Please, Kakashi. You’re… a great jounin…”—Obito chokes, coughs, and Kakashi is frozen in place as even more blood runs down Obito’s face—“And I’m not going to be able to use it… it would be a shame… for such an awesome”—Obito’s voice cracks on the word—“sharingan… to go to waste.

It’s a pathetic attempt at a joke, at lightening the air, and Obito is the only one who chuckles. 

I love him, Kakashi thinks, and it feels like a damnation, I’m in love with him.

“ So—so take my eye… so I can become a part of you… so I can see the future with you. ”

Obito , please—

“ Please… accept my gift.” 

Kakashi chokes, can do nothing but stare wide-eyed at Obito, at—

“Rin? Can you… do the transfer?”

“I can,” Rin’s voice shakes at the same time it is edged with steel. 

This isn’t real. Please , don’t let this be real. 

(The world is in sharper focus, with Obito’s eye, defined in a way Kakashi’s not used to and perfectly cataloging every painstaking detail of Obito, crushed under the boulder and smiling as he tells them to leave him there .)

Chapter Text

“Obito—” Kakashi’s words are cut off by a choking sound, his voice carrying more emotion than Obito’s heard from him before. With a sudden desperation, Obito wants to see the look on his face, the emotion breaking that perfect mask as Kakashi stares at him with Obito’s eye.

But Obito’s given Kakashi the only eye that’s not trapped beneath the rock-fall, so he must be content with only the sound of Kakashi’s voice and the knowledge that Kakashi will use his eye to keep Rin safe, to keep both of them alive and well. (He’s always wanted to be strong enough to protect them—now he finally can, even in death.)

“ You have to—” Obito’s words are cut off by his coughing as he tries to force air into his lungs, as the blood tries to work its way from his mouth. “You have to go... get Rin out of here…”

“But—”

“ Go , Kakashi, before their…. reinforcements… arrive—don’t let my death… be in vain.” Because Obito’s going to die. He knows it with a certainty he’s never known before, strong and constant and overwhelming in its inevitability. 

He can hear Rin’s labored breathing a little farther away, exhausted from the sudden eye transplant on top of the strain of the mission, and it tears at him. He doesn’t want to die, not when things are just getting better. When Kakashi’s finally acknowledged him, and Obito finally has the potential to be great. 

“Obito, no , I’m not going to—We can’t just leave you here—” There’s something deeply broken in Kakashi’s voice, wrong in a way Obito can’t stand , but there’s no time to do anything about it, to waste on useless comforts when the cave could collapse in on itself and crush them at any moment. 

“Kakashi.” Obito hears Kakashi’s breath hitch, hears the all too familiar rhythm of breathing one uses when trying not to cry, and Obito’s sure that he’d be crying too if his only remaining eye weren’t crushed beneath a rock with the rest of him. 

He reaches up, finds Kakashi and uses his body as a guide to his face. He runs his fingers gently up onto Kakashi’s mask, cups his cheek gently. “Kakashi, I need you to live. Both of you—”

“ Well , would you look at that ? All three brats, still alive.” The sound of the nin’s crooning voice is a shot of ice to Obito’s veins. 

It’s the voice of the same one who collapsed the cave in the first place. Who trapped Kakashi in that genjutsu. 

He feels Kakashi tense beside him at the sound, and any other time, Kakashi might stand a chance, but right now? He needs to take Rin and run before the enemy’s reinforcements get here.

“ Kakashi, leave me.” He pleads, because they need to make it out of this alive , because he won’t but they might if they leave now. 

Kakashi disappears from Obito’s side, and Obito hopes for a moment that Kakashi’s taken Rin and is getting out—

The sound of metal on metal rings through the air, and Obito’s hopes drop like a stone. 

“You’re tenacious, but you’re still just a brat,” the nin mocks, “Shinobi don’t cry.”

Obito wants to laugh. To cry and to scream and to break apart, because that’s Kakashi’s line. Because Kakashi’s crying for Obito, and that’s—

He feels his consciousness threatening to fade, but he refuses to die yet. He can’t die until he at least knows his teammates will make it out of here alive. 

In the empty space, the clashing of the blades is almost unbearably loud, overtaking any coherent thought he might have had. It’s not loud enough that he can’t hear the cavern around them groaning, though, and he thinks again with desperation that Kakashi and Rin need to get out before it’s too late, before they’re crushed like him. 

Something shifts and the boulder digs harder into Obito, leaving him to choke out a bloody cough. 

“Obit—” Kakashi starts, but he’s cut off by a clang of blades as the enemy tries to take the opening. Despite himself, despite everything, Obito can’t help but be proud of his dickish teammate for being able to hold off a near-full strength enemy nin even under these conditions. 

“ Leave, Kakashi!” Obito begs, as loudly as he can even as it feels like the words tear at his lungs on their way out. 

“What was it you said, about people who leave their companions behind?” Kakashi says distractedly between the clanging of blades.

That wasn’t what he was supposed to take from that, dammit!

A foot lands hard on Obito’s already crushed diaphragm, and he suddenly can’t breathe at all, too busy choking up blood.

“ No !” He hears, dimly, but he’s too busy fighting his fading consciousness to pay it much mind. 

The weight is thrown from him, and he gasps in a gurgling breath. He wonders, distantly, why Kakashi’s trying so hard. Why he’s still protecting Obito when Obito’s going to die no matter what happens.

Then, there’s the sound of a blade ripping through flesh, and Kakashi lets out a cry. 

Obito’s blood turns to ice. No, he thinks, but his lips do not move. 

The sound of a body hitting the floor is the only response he receives to his silent plea. 

“Well that was easier than expected,” the shinobi sneers, “Now for”—

His words slip from Obito’s mind. All Obito can feel is the gentle wetness against his sleeve, seeping deep through the fabric of his shirt. 

“Kakashi,” is all he can choke out, the rest of his words coming out in a broken wheeze. Move , he begs Kakashi, get up . But Kakashi doesn’t, because dead people don’t move. 

Kakashi’s dead , Obito thinks dully, and it’s not enough to break through the fog that has descended over his mind. Kakashi died to protect me.

The shinobi laughs, clear and ugly, and Obito is filled with a hatred like he’s never felt before. He killed Kakashi. He killed Kakashi and he’s laughing . 

The world goes white with the force of Obito’s rage, and then he’s behind the enemy nin.

Everything’s in razor-sharp focus, and Obito can see the micro-gestures in the way he tenses, can see the way it’s futile as Obito slams a hand down on his neck and wishes fervently for him to be gone . 

In the next instant, he is, but it’s not relief. How could it be, when Obito’s greeted with the sight of teammate’s corpse ? When Kakashi lays dead at his feet and Obito can’t stop his working leg from buckling, sending him toppling onto Kakashi. 

He can feel the shape of Kakashi’s body under him, can feel the unnatural stillness and the blood that soaks into his shirt and makes him want to vomit. He wants nothing more than for this all to be a bad dream, to wake up in his bed and go to training and have Kakashi annoy the shit out of him again, but that’ll never happen again because fuck , Kakashi’s actually—

Kakashi’s chest is moving. Faint and stuttered, but there . He may be dying, but he’s not dead yet .

“Obito—Kakashi—” he hears Rin choke out, but he barely feels Rin’s hand on his shoulder, far to focused on listening for Kakashi’s faint heartbeat.

Obito can feel Rin’s healing chakra rushing through him, knows she’ll be trying with Kakashi too, but she’s already on the edge of chakra exhaustion and it’s not going to be enough.

He needs a hospital , Obito thinks with sudden clarity, he’ll die without one. And nothing’s okay, because Kakashi might not be dead but he’s dying , and Rin can’t heal this . Obito can feel Kakashi’s blood seeping through his shirt, knows it’s far too much. 

Kakashi lets out a pained little gasp, and it’s all wrong. No , Obito thinks, numb to everything but his own desperation. No no no no no no no NO.

The world shifts , and for a second Obito is left staring off into an endless void that seems to stretch in all directions, a vast nothingness broken only by an expanse of strange, otherworldly cubes. 

Then, the world is far too bright. The smell of antiseptic invades Obito’s nose, the only thing he can smell over the scent of blood, and the sound of the panicked yelling around them isn’t enough to pull his focus from the irregular rhythm of Kakashi’s heartbeat, even as unconsciousness drags him under.

Chapter Text

The world is filled with red, Kakashi’s vision consumed completely by the sight of the blood leaking from his father’s form. 

The only sound is the drip, drip, drip of the blood falling from Kakashi’s hand, because he killed him it’s his fault his fault everything’s—

“ Go , Kakashi.”

Kakashi’s eyes fly open, subjecting him to the sight of Obito, crushed beneath that boulder and dying because Kakashi wasn’t fast enough.

“ Kakashi— ” Obito coughs and a dribble of blood runs anew down his chin.

Kakashi collapses next to him, scrabbles to try to do something , to save Obito because Obito can’t die . 

His hands slip on the blood, and he freezes.

His arm is covered in it up to the elbow, dripping sluggishly from his fingers and staining Obito, like it wasn’t enough that Obito was dying because of him. 

“Obito, I’m—” Obito’s eyes are glazed over and staring blankly, cold and empty and dead, dead, dead.

Obito’s neck snaps up, too quickly to be natural, but his eyes are still dead , still void of any hint of the life that’s always defined him.

“Your fault,” Obito’s corpse says, and the words are a horrible croaking sound, like the death gurgle Kakashi’s father had made when he’d found him.

“Your fault your fault your fault your fault your fault YOUR FAULT !”

Kakashi gasps awake, throwing himself from his bed and out his window in a single, practiced movement. 

His mind is a stream of Obito Obito Obito Obito Obito he has to get to Obito Obito’s dead Obito’s alive Obito’s dead because of him——

Obito’s chest moves slowly with each breath, comatose form lax and expressionless and alive.

Kakashi lets himself go limp, slumps over in the chair at Obito’s bedside and grasps at Obito’s wrist with his hand. 

Obito’s pulse beats sluggishly under Kakashi’s fingers, but it’s there and that relaxes some of the panic lodged in Kakashi’s heart. He curls in around the hand, focusing on the heartbeat, on the warmth beneath the skin, desperate to remind himself that Obito’s still alive.

When Kakashi wakes again, his head is pillowed on Obito’s hospital bed where he’d lain it as he carefully watched Obito’s chest rise and fall, Obito’s hand still grasped tight in his. 

He sighs, forces himself to his feet. The sun is already peeking above the horizon, which means he’s late to the first mission they’re sending him on. He can’t bring himself to care. 

Hypocrite! Yells a voice in his mind that sounds like Obito, and he relishes in it. 

He’s greeted by the concerned, confused glances of his temporary teammates, two chuunin he’s never seen before, as they no doubt try to reconcile what they’ve heard of him with the rumpled, tired boy in front of them, over two hours late despite his reputation for punctuality.

(It takes them half the mission to decide that he’s just a bastard. He revels in it—it’s only the truth, after all.)

He has a panic attack on the third day. He’s on watch, stoking the fire and listening to his teammates’ snoring, and he gets stricken with the fact anything could be happening with Obito, back in the village.

He could be gone, could have awoken already without Kakashi there to greet him, could have died , passed away in his sleep like the doctors had been so concerned he would. 

It takes Kakashi an hour to calm himself down. His teammates don’t notice a thing, even when he wakes one to take their watch.

(He doesn’t sleep for the rest of the mission.)

He sends one of them to turn in the mission report, when they arrive back in Konoha. They think he’s just being a lazy bastard. He’s not. 

(Kakashi spends two days in the tree outside Obito’s window, just… watching. Making sure Obito’s still breathing, making sure his teammate—his everything— hasn’t become a corpse in the blink of an eye.)

When Kushina waves him down, when she makes him come for ramen with her, he doesn’t protest. He simply follows her lead, lets her drag him away from his walk to the training ground, hopes she didn’t notice he was heading from the hospital, knows she did. (Knows she notices every time, knows she knows he spends more time at the hospital than not, knows she’s noticed how acquainted he’s become with the tree outside Obito’s window.)

She orders him a bowl of ramen and tells him to talk. He doesn’t. That’s okay, she says, but it’s not. He can see the bags under her eyes, the exhaustion weighing down on her just as it weighs on him, knows she spends almost as much time at the hospital as he does.

It becomes a nightly thing, somehow. She drags him for ramen, orders him a bowl, and tells him to talk, no matter that he never does. Two people trying to hold themselves together and largely failing.

(And it’s good. )

Gai tries to get through to him, to pull him into challenges and away from the hospital window. 

Kakashi isn’t ready to face him yet, to deal with the fact that the world around him hasn’t changed , just like it hadn’t after his father. With the fact that the world hasn’t paused even though his has, that everyone else isn’t holding their breath, isn’t living in fear that everything could fade away in an instant. 

He’s not ready to face that yet. He’s just not.

So he doesn’t.

Rin approaches him with little chagrin, grabs him and drags him off as if he has no choice in the matter. He could pull away from her easily, shunshin back to his apartment until his nightly terrors drive him back to the hospital once again. 

He goes with Rin.

She makes him help her with sealing, with figuring out a new sleeping seal Kushina has her working on, and it feels almost like before the bridge. 

Except. Except neither of them are the same that they were, neither of them quite whole without the knowledge that Obito’s safe, happy, that they’ll all meet together as a team tomorrow and everything will be normal again. (With the knowledge that it never will be.)

It’s nice to pretend, though, that nothing’s wrong. 

(It’s all they can do.)

Whenever it gets particularly hard, whenever it’s the dead of night and even the sight of Obito’s breathing or the feel of his pulse isn’t enough to keep Kakashi from spiraling, Kakashi does his best to see the world through Obito’s eye.

The world is brighter, somehow, when it’s Obito’s eye he’s seeing through. It looks more alive , more hopeful and happy and worth something , and Kakashi wonders if this is how the world looks to Obito. (He thinks he might understand a little more, how Obito can look to the world and see something beautiful.)

Obito had been prepared to die in that cave. To have his last act be to give Kakashi this, to give him not only an eye with which to see the world but a lens with which to see the good in it. 

(To give everything for Kakashi, when Obito jumped in the way of a boulder just to save him.)

A week. A week more that Obito will be kept in that coma, will be kept small and quiet and unmoving so that his body can recover. 

He’s out of the woods, the doctors say, his odds above 50% for the first time since they returned from the bridge.

A miracle, they say, that they were able to stabilize him at all. That he didn’t die the moment the boulder crushed him, or before getting them to the hospital, or from the chakra exhaustion that resulted, heaped over everything else. That he didn’t die in surgery, or in the week that ensued, or the week after that. 

Practically unheard of, that he managed to come out alive at all. That the head trauma from being crushed like that didn’t affect his brain more than a mild concussion, that he should be anything more than brain-dead, even. 

A single change, a single moment gone any further awry, and Obito would be gone. They were lucky.

(This doesn’t feel lucky.)

Obito looks peaceful, in the hospital bed. Peaceful and calm and far too quiet. He doesn’t move, not any more than the slow shifting of his chest as he breathes, the movement of the blood through his veins as his body keeps itself alive. It’s wrong. It’s so, so wrong, and Kakashi can’t stand it. Can’t stand the blank expressionlessness that stares up at him from where Obito’s smile is supposed to be, or his scowl, or his crying face, or something , anything other than this nothing.

He’s warm, though. Warm and alive and safe, here in this bed, as the rest of them flirt with death on every mission. 

(It doesn’t feel like he’s safer. How could it, when it doesn’t even feel like he’s alive without the life that’s always radiated from him?)

The Sandaime retires five days before Obito’s set to wake, and Minato-sensei steps up to take his place. 

He’s barely been in the village since Kakashi’s been awake, sent on grueling mission after grueling mission past enemy lines. He is one of their best, and he cannot be spared just because one of his students is incapacitated. 

As Hokage, he barely leaves the office, barely takes a single moment out in the sun, too busy sorting out the mess the Sandaime left behind. 

Kakashi sees him only twice in that time, and both times it is in Obito’s hospital room.

Minato-sensei doesn’t flinch the first time Kakashi comes through the window to sit beside him, doesn’t look at all surprised at Kakashi’s chosen pass-time. 

He does hug Kakashi, though, pulls him in before he can protest to squeeze him tight enough that he can barely breathe, doesn’t let him go for a full minute, and pulls him back a moment after releasing him, because apparently one hug wasn’t enough. 

(Kakashi needs it, though, so he doesn’t say anything.)

He’s sent out on another mission, and he doesn’t protest.

It is his first time seeing the front lines, his first time fighting in a large-scale battle alongside his fellow shinobi. He can tell that Minato-sensei doesn’t want him on the front lines where he could be hurt like Obito. 

They are at war, though, and Minato-sensei does not have a choice. 

Kakashi makes himself indispensable the moment he Chidoris his first enemy in view of the chuunin he’s been assigned with. 

He works alongside them without complaint, listens and strategizes and fights with them at his side, and he hates it . Hates it because it is so wrong , because he shouldn’t be fighting with some random chuunin, should be fighting with Rin , who’s been deployed on the western front, and Obito, stupid, impulsive Obito who cares about his teammates too much and values his emotions above the rules they’ve all been ordered to follow. 

These people don’t look at Kakashi as anything more than the tool he has always claimed to be, and it is wrong , now, because Obito came back for Kakashi and it changed something in him, and maybe—maybe that makes him a defective shinobi, a failure of a tool, but it also puts him a little closer to Obito, and that matters far more to him now. 

If I were kidnapped , would they come to save me? he thinks, and knows they would not. It shouldn’t bother him.

(It does.)

Kakashi is not in the room, when Obito wakes, when Obito’s head jerks up and he gasps out Kakashi’s name with fear and desperation and hope, as if Kakashi’s worth something, as if the only thing that matters is that Kakashi’s okay. (Kakashi hates himself for the butterflies that raises in his chest, hates that he can find anything good in Obito’s suffering.)

He watches from afar as Obito recuperates, as he only calms with the knowledge that “ Kakashi’s safe. He’s alive, and he’s okay. ” It breaks Kakashi in the same moment it smooths his aching edges, to see Obito so distraught over him, for him. 

(Kakashi still can’t face him)

Chapter Text

When Obito wakes, it’s with Kakashi’s name on his lips, the sight of Kakashi’s injured—not dead, not yet—form burned into his mind. 

“Where is he?” Obito gasps out, uncaring of who he’s asking. 

“Kakashi’s safe. He’s alive, and he’s okay.” Kushina’s calm voice cuts through his panic, her hand resting warm against his arm. His vision clears with the grounding touch, allowing him the sight of the harsh hospital lights, of an exhausted Kushina sat beside the bed and looking to him with worry.

Obito relaxes back into the pillows at the sight; she looks stressed, but there’s none of the panic that would be present if Kakashi were still in any real danger. 

He tries to reach out and do—something, but his arm refuses to move . His leg won’t move either, on that side, and he supposes that’s to be expected, but—

“ Fuck , kid, if you do that to me again I’ll kill you.” 

He starts back to himself at the words, and the way her hand lightly squeezes his arm. His left arm, because his right—

“The doctors were barely able to save you,” Kushina states, and the brusqueness of it draws him back to reality, leaves him feeling less like he’s floating disconnected from himself. 

“Most of the ribs on your right side were broken, there was significant organ damage, and you had a collapsed lung. If the boulder had been an inch farther to the left, or you’d gotten here a second later—” Kushina cuts herself off, closing her eyes and taking a fortifying breath. 

She looks out the window, no longer meeting his gaze, “The arm and leg on your right side were practically pulverized. The bones were crushed, and combined with the irreparable muscle damage—” she squeezes his arm—“they couldn’t save them, Obito.”

Obito looks down, and his eye cannot comprehend what it’s seeing. He recognizes in a disconnected sort of way that what he’s looking at is a body, bound so thoroughly in bandages that barely any skin is showing. The right arm is cut off at the shoulder, the leg just below the hip. It’s hard to connect that the body he’s staring at is his, that it’s his limbs gone entirely. It’s a grotesque sight, no comfort provided by the bandages that cover every inch of—of what’s left. “What—” He chokes, unable to finish. He doesn’t know what he would ask, anyway, were he to continue. What did they do to me? What am I going to do now? What happened to me? He already knows what happened, knows—

Can see in the sharingan’s perfect recall the moment he’d decided Kakashi was worth it, the moment he’d moved , the feeling of throwing Kakashi out of the way and knowing he wouldn’t make it out himself. 

It’s worth it, this cost, to have saved his teammate, and he’d do it over and over again if he had to. But—Obito’s always wanted to be a shinobi, always known that’s where his life would take him, and he was finally getting there. He was getting stronger , was showing the potential to be truly great, to be the person he’s always wanted to be. And so Obito cries, shakes in the arms of his mother in all but name and allows himself to mourn what he could have been.

The day that follows is a flurry of doctors and nurses, of constant medical checkups and questionings and tests that make the doctor’s tongue cluck disapprovingly. These tests are capacity based, not the kind he can fail, but he still feels like he has.

He has never been more grateful for the constant steadying presence Kushina provides. Where the nurses hedge around the matter, try to introduce facts about his health kindly, in a round-about way that’s meant to soften the blow but only really delays the impact, Kushina doesn’t bother. Her bluntness is like a rock, something Obito knows he can always turn to when he doesn’t understand the nurse’s hedging words. She always tells things as they are, using no pretty language to try to make the truth less grotesque, and he is more thankful for it than he knows how to put into words. 

He was in a coma for three weeks, naturally at first and then medically-induced when he showed signs of waking too soon. Factor in the extensive reconstructive surgery on the vitals on his right side and some of those on his left, immediately followed by the amputations of his right arm and leg, and he was in surgery for nearly forty-eight hours. He’ll be in recovery for months—even with medical chakra, there was nothing that could be done to avoid it. If he recovers well enough, he’ll be fitted with chakra-wired prosthetics, but until then, he’ll be in a wheelchair once he’s allowed out of bed. 

In the time he was out, Minato-sensei was appointed the Hokage and saddled with all the responsibilities that come with the position. Kushina’d smirked as she told Obito that the piles of paperwork the Sandaime had left Minato-sensei had been taller than him . Then, she’d sobered some, and—“He wanted to be here when you woke up. Still wants to, but he’s basically the only thing holding the damn village together. He doesn’t even leave that office to sleep , and I’m pretty sure the sleep he does get is after he passes out from the exhaustion of it. He’ll be here, kid, but he has to get free of that first.”

As for Rin and Kakashi—he’s not seen hide nor hair of either of them yet. Out on a mission , Kushina had told him. Apparently Kakashi had been marked mission-ready a couple of days before Obito’s waking, and immediately placed back on active duty with Rin. 

There is a sort of melancholia that comes with the image of his teammates going on missions without him there, but he does his best to ignore it, because what else can he do?

Obito stares unblinkingly at the ceiling of his hospital room, wishing fervently for any break from the boredom. Kushina’s only been gone for a couple of hours, and Obito’s already bored out of his mind . He’s not even allowed to read —something about brain trauma—so he’s got nothing to do. The doctors want him to sleep, but how the fuck do they expect him to sleep more ? He’s done nothing but sleep for the last week — three weeks if one counts the coma, and Obito absolutely does— and there’s only so much a man can sleep in any given period of time. 

The door flies open with a bang, and Obito starts. On instinct, he turns as much of his body as he can toward the door, readies himself for a fight. It would be futile if it were an attack , Obito thinks sardonically, because even a genin could take out a bedridden chuunin missing half his limbs and an eye. 

Before he even has a chance to register who’s standing in the doorway, he’s being wrapped in warm arms and squeezed just-short of too tight. 

The only thing that prevents Obito from fighting the touch away is the familiarity of Minato-sensei’s hugs. As it is, he finds himself relaxing bonelessly into it. “Hey, Minato-sensei.” Obito scowls at the sound of his voice, still more a wheeze than anything else. 

Minato-sensei pulls back, grabs him by his shoulders and looks him in the eye. “Obito. Thank fuck ,” he says, eyes roving over Obito as if to reassure himself that Obito’s there at all. 

Obito’s pulled back into the hug, then, by a hand at the back of his neck. He would find it annoying if he weren’t so starved for the contact. (If he didn’t need the comfort it provided so badly)

“I am never letting you out of my sight again.” There’s a fierce protectiveness in Minato’s voice, and though Obito knows he’s exaggerating, he also knows that the words mean something, and he is helpless in the face of that care.

He wonders, distantly, if this is what having a father feels like. He doesn’t ponder it further, though, just wraps his arm around Minato and squeezes back as tightly as he can. 

Do trees have feelings? Everyone talks about how the first could control them, blah blah blah mokuton, but they don’t talk nearly enough about the ability to talk to them, in Obito’s humble opinion. Talking trees bring up several questions, each more interesting than the last. It’s truly a tragically unexplored area of study. 

Maybe when he finally gets out of the hospital, he can be the first professional diplomat to the trees. There would be several challenges associated with the position, not least of which the fact he can’t talk to trees and has no ideas on where to even start communicating with them some other way. It’s an important job, though, and clearly a necessary one.

If Obito were made of wood and couldn’t move or talk, he’d be pretty pissed. It’s clear the trees are at least somewhat sentient, if they’re able to talk, so it’s only a matter of time before they find some way to move, and when they do they’ll have enough built up rage to properly burn the world to the ground. (The trees in Konoha’s forests have been alive since before the founding; how much have they seen? How much rage could be built in such a long life, spent watching those who have so much more?)

Konoha will either be the first on the list of places to burn (or… maybe not burn, trees aren’t usually all that big fans of fire… hmmm) or the last, and Obito reckons the defining factor between the two would be the quality of Konoha’s diplomat to them. 

It’s not like Obito’ll be able to do much else, and the trees won’t care if he can barely walk. (“Chakra-laced prosthetics are relatively new technology, and there’s just so much we don’t know. The initial surgery to attach the socket has an eighty-five percent success rate, and, once fully healed, one should be able to use the prosthetics consistently for about two hours at a time, though any strenuous activity is not recommended. In the case of—”)

“Obito!” His thoughts return to the present at his name, and he’s greeted with the sight of Rin’s smiling face in the doorway. She looks tired, a little frazzled around the edges, but she’s safe , and seeing that eases an ache in his chest he hadn’t even known was there. 

He’s helpless, as he always is in the face of Rin’s smiles, to do anything but grin in return. Everything’s always so much easier , with her. “Hey, Rin.” Even with all he’s used it in the past week, his voice sounds awful , scraping raw against his throat and crackling strangely. 

Rin doesn’t seem to mind, just hops cheerfully to the edge of his bed and plops down in the chair beside him. “Sorry I didn’t come earlier, I wanted to be off the roster so I could be there when you woke up, but no such luck; I s’pose it makes sense, what with the war and all, but we’re so short on shinobi that they couldn’t spare us.”

“What’d they send you to do?” Obito asks, curious despite himself.

“Courier mission,” Rin responds wryly, “I dunno about Kakashi, but I’ve been sent on enough courier missions for a lifetime in the past couple of weeks.”

“Why?” Obito asks, genuinely curious; courier missions aren’t that common, even with how spread out their forces are.

Rin snorts, “Minato-sensei’s mother-henning, that’s why. I doubt any of us will be getting anything much more dangerous than a courier mission once the war’s done, considering he’s in charge of missions now.”

Oh . That—

“Kakashi’s worried out of his mind, you know.”

Wait, “ What?” The idea of Kakashi being openly worried about him throws him so badly for a loop that for a moment he can’t even think beyond that. But then he remembers the pain in Kakashi’s voice when Obito’d been crushed, the utter devastation after Obito’d given him his eye. 

Maybe I didn’t know Kakashi as well as I thought , Obito thinks, and it feels more groundbreaking than it probably should. After all, one of his biggest frustrations with Kakashi has always been Kakashi’s nigh-impenetrable walls, the way it’s seemingly impossible to actually know anything about him, even after all the years they’ve known each other. He’s always seemed so emotionless , so above it all in a way Obito’s never quite been able to manage. Untouchable , Obito supposes would be the word. It’s always been impossible to tell what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking in any given moment. 

Kakashi has always been everything Obito’s clan has expected him to be, and everything Obito’s never been able to. 

Kakashi’s always had everything Obito has ever wanted—the talent, the grace, the control, and the regard that comes with them—and Obito has always hated him for it. (Has always admired him more than anyone else.)

Now, though, Obito can’t quite fight off the sound of Kakashi’s voice as he broke , the desperation as he tried to defend Obito even when Obito was as good as dead, and he wonders. 

“ He blames himself,” Rin states, and Obito can do nothing but gape at her, because just—Kakashi never accepts blame for anything, ever. It just doesn’t happen. 

Rin gives him a soft look, one that would be pity on anyone else, “I expect you’ll be getting a visit from him soon, too.”

“Is he—” 

“He’s fine, Obito,” she says, smile soft and sad, “They wouldn’t have put him back on active duty if he wasn’t.”

“Oh. That’s—good.” It’s not much, but it’s all Obito can muster right now. He clenches his working hand in the sheets, wishes he knew what to say, wishes he understood —

Rin grabs his hand gently, pries it from the sheets and holds it between her own. He feels the heat rise to his cheeks at the contact, at the warmth in her smile as she looks at him before turning her gaze to the window. 

“He visited you every day while you were out. We both did.” 

And Obito—Obito has no idea how to respond to that, so he just—sits there. 

Rin, being the angel she is, seems to notice his predicament, and swiftly changes the topic; “I assume Kushina-sensei’s been around?” 

The look she gives him is downright impish, and he snorts. “You could say that.”

“Honestly, at this point she’s almost as much of a mother-hen as Minato-sensei. ”

“Lies and slander; no-one’s more of a mother-hen than Minato-sensei.”

“I said almost for a reason, dattebane.”

“Did you?” Obito can’t keep the teasing note from his voice, and Rin shoots him a glare that says she’s been spending far too much time around Kushina-sensei. He tells her as such, and she informs him that he’s an idiot, to which he can only grin, because he already knew that.

Kakashi looks awful. It’s the first thought to enter Obito’s mind when he sees Kakashi for the first time since Kanabi bridge. He’d feel guiltier for it if it weren’t true.

Kakashi’s hair is even messier than its usual disarray, hanging over his eye and almost hiding the darkness smudged beneath it. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks, the bag under his eye deep enough to make Obito wince in sympathy. He’s got his hitai-ate slanted over the left side of his face, where the eye that used to be Obito’s resides. 

Kakashi doesn’t say anything, doesn’t step any farther into the room. He just stares, something dark in his gaze, something between anger and sadness, and Obito has no idea what to make of it. 

“Hey,” he says, because he knows Kakashi won’t start a conversation, and he’s unwilling to wait in silence. 

“Hello.” Kakashi’s voice is far too quiet, and there’s something unsure about him, a hesitancy that Obito’s never seen from him before. Obito decides he doesn’t like it.

“Well what are you waiting for? Come over here.” Obito waves his good—only—arm at Kakashi in the standard move your ass gesture. (A favorite of Kushina-sensei’s.)

It’s only then that Kakashi moves, takes a single step forward before jerking to a stop. Obito waves his arm again, scowl slipping onto his face at Kakashi’s uncharacteristic hesitancy.

Finally, Kakashi sinks into the chair beside Obito’s bed, and he looks so lost, Obito can’t stand it .

“ You look like shit.” Maybe Kushina’s rubbing off a bit too much on Obito, but he can’t bring himself to care all that much. Not when it gets Kakashi to whip his head up in a glare that looks far more at home on his face, even as it lacks its usual heat. 

“ I’m not the one who’s still in the hospital.”

Obito can think of no better response to than to shove his hand in Kakashi’s face, so he does. It feels good, but it feels better when Kakashi’s face twists in the familiar bratty outrage Obito’s so used to seeing. 

It gets easier, after that. To talk to Kakashi. 

Easier than it’s ever been, really, like Kanabi washed away the line in the sand between them, took the bite from their bickering words.

Then, “Your eye.” Kakashi’s words halt, before he seems to force himself to continue; “Do you want it back?”

“I- what? ”

Kakashi flinches, pulls into himself a little more. “Do you want your eye back?”

He meets Obito’s gaze this time, resolve clear in his visible eye. It hits Obito, then, that if he asked for that eye back, demanded its return, Kakashi would give it without hesitation. 

“What are you talking about, Bakashi!” Obito looks away, hates the way heat rises to his cheeks. “It’s your eye now, stupid.” He mutters the last part, looking determinedly out the window. 

“ Oh.”

Obito wakes to the press of a warm weight against his side, grounding and real-feeling in a way the hospital never quite is. 

When he forces his eyes open, he’s greeted with the sight of messy silver hair splayed out over the sheet, Kakashi’s head nestled in the crook of Obito’s waist with his face turned towards Obito’s. He’s fast asleep, though, or at least he looks it, breath slow and even though he’s awkwardly splayed between his chair and the bed.

There’s something terribly peaceful about Kakashi this way, completely relaxed and totally prank-able. Luckily for him, Obito’s feeling merciful (read: doesn’t have access to anything he could have used to mess with Kakashi), so instead of taking advantage of Kakashi being unawares, he lets Kakashi sleep.

He looks exhausted even as he sleeps, and there’s a part of Obito that kind of wants to wrap him up in a blanket and never let him out, but that’s altogether a weird impulse that probably has something to do with the painkillers he’s on, so he brushes it aside. 

His hair looks soft, his mind supplies unhelpfully. It probably feels nice . Obito would very much like to shut down this line of thinking, but… but he would also very much like to test his theory. It’s undoubtedly the effect of the painkillers that gets his arm moving, slowly inching towards Kakashi’s head as if Kakashi were a caged animal. He supposes the comparison isn’t all that far off, considering Kakashi’s just about as likely to bite his hand off for trying. 

But when Obito gently rests his hand on Kakashi’s head, Kakashi doesn’t wake at the contact (or at least Obito’s pretty sure he doesn’t, but knowing him he might just be pretending to be asleep to wait for the opportune moment to relieve Obito of his remaining hand). 

His hair is soft. So soft, in fact, that Obito takes another stupid risk and cards his hand gently through it. In for a dime and all that. 

Kakashi makes a small sound, and for a moment Obito’s thoughts are just a string of I fucked up, but Kakashi doesn’t attack him, doesn’t even open his eyes. When he’s listened to Kakashi’s breathing for long enough to reassure himself that Kakashi’s asleep (or at least pretending to be), Obito continues slowly running his fingers through Kakashi’s hair. It’s an absolute tangled mess, but there’s a silky quality to it that makes the knots fall apart under Obito’s hand. 

It’s horribly satisfying, and Obito briefly entertains the thought of asking to play with Kakashi’s hair again at a later date, but then he remembers his self preservation and decides to just enjoy this while it lasts. He’s only even able to do it now because Kakashi’s fast asleep.

Kakashi should have woken up by now. He’s a highly trained shinobi, and he’s always been on constant high alert as long as Obito’s known him. How long has it been since he slept properly? Obito wonders, though he’s honestly not sure he wants to know. 

Even exhausted, though, Kakashi wouldn’t be able to sleep so soundly unless he felt safe, and the thought of that sends a jolt of something straight to Obito’s heart. He can’t help the gentle smile that grows on his face as he looks at Kakashi’s sleeping form. 

(He still kind of wishes he had a pen or something)

“..Can I see it?” Obito can’t stop the words from tumbling from his mouth, suddenly needs to know that Kakashi kept it, needs to see—

Kakashi reaches up slowly, hand pulling his hitai-ate into its usual place.

For a moment, he looks just like he did before the bridge, but for the scar running over his still-closed eye. 

Then, he blinks it open slowly, and Obito can’t quite contain his gasp at the sight, nor stop the way his own eye swirls into the sharingan in response.

Obito reaches up, brushes his knuckles along Kakashi’s face below the eye. He settles his hand against Kakashi’s cheek, thumb brushing beneath Kakashi’s sharingan. 

Obito’s heart feels full and light in his chest, like it’s swelled past the boundaries that were meant to hold it.

There’s something about seeing Kakashi with his eye that shakes him to his core, causes a smile to tug at his lips without his input. 

It feels like an acknowledgement, like physical evidence that he means something to Kakashi, and he hadn’t realized how important that was until the moment he saw it. More than that, it looks right there, like it was always meant to end up a part of Kakashi. (Like Obito was  always meant to end up a part of Kakashi, he almost thinks, but something tells him that pursuing that line of though will only lead him to ruin.)

Something calms in Obito at the sight, halts its panic and settles back into place, like the pieces of a puzzle clicking together. 

He pulls his hand back into himself, knows the smile he’s giving has lingered. Doesn’t care. 

Kakashi looks shell-shocked, doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. Obito lets huffs a laugh at the sight, and it comes out soft. Fond .

Kakashi’s gaze softens —and isn’t that a trip, to have Kakashi look at Obito with something warm in his gaze?—but then Kakashi hangs his head, shoulders shaking slightly as he stands there with one hand grasping at the sheets. 

Obito thinks for a moment that Kakashi’s laughing, thinks for a moment that—

The first tear hits the sheets. Surely Obito’s imagined it, because that doesn’t happen—Kakashi doesn’t cry .

But then another falls, and another, this time accompanied by a broken sound that’s almost like a sob. 

Obito doesn’t know what to do . His emotional intelligence isn’t that much better than Kakashi’s on a good day (that’s an exaggeration; Kakashi’s worse with emotions than anyone else Obito knows).

The only way he can even think of to comfort someone is physical comfort, and Kakashi’s never exactly been keen on that. 

Obito tries anyway because it’s all he can think to do, forces himself to sit up and wow, he didn’t think about how difficult that would be without his arms to support the movement , reaching his arm forward to grasp at Kakashi’s wrist and pull it gently from its death-grip on the sheets. 

He still can’t see Kakashi’s eyes past where his hair hangs over them, doesn’t care as he yanks Kakashi to him in an unpracticed movement.

He has to let go of Kakashi’s wrist to wrap his arm around Kakashi, and man things are harder with only one arm to work with.

Kakashi is tense in Obito’s grasp, still shaking with his tears, small tremors that feel like daggers to Obito’s heart. Obito just keeps holding on, doesn’t know what else to do.

“I’m here,” he says, “I’m okay .”

Kakashi lets out another choked sound, shudders and then goes lax in Obito’s hold, and Obito’s pleased to feel Kakashi’s arms wrap around him in turn.

Kakashi’s nose is digging into Obito’s shoulder, and he’s gripping Obito a little too tight, and Obito can’t help his smile, leans his head to rest against Kakashi’s.

With all of Kakashi’s talent, all of his easy success and pinpoint focus, it’s easy to forget that he’s eleven , that he’s barely reached the double-digits. (It’s easy to forget that Obito’s not much older).

Like this, it strikes Obito that Kakashi’s a kid , that they all are. (That Obito’s barely a teenager and he’s already had his future torn from him.)

He curls a little more into Kakashi, lets himself indulge in the comfort the contact supplies.

He needs it, he realizes. Needs it almost as much as Kakashi does. 

Chapter Text

Kakashi wakes slowly, with the growing awareness of something moving softly through his hair. Each stroke is smooth and careful, gently teasing out the tangles.

That feels nice , is his first coherent thought. 

He flutters his eyes open slowly, despairing when the gentle contact ceases. 

Obito’s eye is soft, the light flush on his face accompanied by a sheepishness he can’t quite seem to hide. 

“Hey, Kakashi…” He says, dragging out the ‘hey’ a beat too long as he shifts his hand farther from Kakashi in what he must think is a subtle movement. 

Kakashi forces himself to sit up from where his head had been pillowed on the hospital sheets, wincing slightly as his joints protest the movement.

Once he’s sitting upright and looking at Obito, at the arm Obito keeps slowly inching away from him, the pieces click into place. 

Kakashi’s cheeks warm at the realization, and he’s abruptly thankful for his habit of wearing a mask at all times. 

His mind replays the feeling of a gentle hand running through his hair—of Obito’s gentle hand running through his hair. Softly, like he’s something precious. Like he matters.

“Um.” 

They sit in awkward silence for a bit, and Kakashi does his very best to not think about the phantom feeling of Obito’s hand in his hair, deliberately keeps his gaze on the wall beyond Obito’s head.

“Can I see it?” Obito blurts out, and for a moment Kakashi has no idea what he’s talking about. Then, it hits him, and---

He reaches up slowly, almost hesitantly, grabbing his hitai-ate and relieving it of its tilt. 

The world through Obito’s eye is in sharp, perfect focus, brighter in a way Kakashi can’t explain. (Brighter in a way that has everything to do with the boy it really belongs to.)

Obito gasps, his eye swirling into the sharingan in a perfect mirror of the one he gave Kakashi. 

Kakashi holds himself carefully still as Obito reaches up slowly, runs the backs of his knuckles over the side of Kakashi’s face and lets them linger there.

Kakashi’s breath hitches at the touch, and he has to physically prevent himself from leaning into it. 

Slowly, gently , Obito’s thumb brushes under the eye, his expression open and full of wonder, and Kakashi can’t even bring himself to breathe.

Obito’s lips curve up into a soft smile, the wonder not leaving his eye at the sight of the other in Kakashi’s socket. 

His hair’s gone shaggy in the time since Kanabi, falling softly over his forehead and into his eye, framing the look of near- reverence he’s giving Kakashi.

He pats Kakashi’s cheek twice, almost absently, drawing his hand back into himself. 

Kakashi’s heart stutters in his chest, tries to go into cardiac arrest. That would be an interesting way to die. 

Obito laughs, softly , and Kakashi’s emotions seem to be ignoring the fact he’s being laughed at , because his chest feels lighter than it has in years.

I almost lost this , he thinks, Obito almost lost this. 

The thought drops his chest like a stone, sickening him and choking the world with fear and desperation like seeing Obito crushed under that boulder had. 

If Kakashi’d been a second later jumping in front of that blow, if Obito’s mangekyo hadn’t swirled to life at that exact moment , had manifested as anything else —

Kakashi lets out a choked sound, hangs his head. Obito almost died because of him . 

Obito would have been gone , everything he was and could have been taken from the world in the span of a single thought. 

Kakashi brings up a hand, tries to stifle the tears because Obito didn’t die, Obito’s still here and alive and smiling—but he almost wasn’t, and that’s enough to make Kakashi feel like he’s about to shatter. 

Obito’s hand latches gently onto his wrist, pulling it from the sheets, and Kakashi is helpless but to comply, to let Obito pull him in, wrap an arm around him , as if he deserves comfort, as if he’s not the reason Obito only has one arm with which to hug him. ( The reason Obito almost didn’t even have that .)

“I’m here,” Obito says, his voice gentle next to Kakashi’s ear, “I’m okay .” 

And Kakashi breaks.

Chapter Text

Most shinobi hate the hospital, escape it at the first opportunity they get. Obito has never been one of them, has always been fascinated by the machines and the medical chakra, never been bothered by the smell of the antiseptic or the medics rushing around. He’s never understood how they can hate it so much when all it does is save their life.

He gets it now. 

He would literally rather be anywhere but in this horrible room, and if he has to smell even a hint of antiseptic for one more day, he’s going to shank someone. He would likely not have much success, drugged up and with half his limbs to work with, but that won’t stop him from trying if he’s stuck in this damn bed for another minute . 

When there are no visitors, they expect him to do nothing but sleep, allowing him not a single reprieve from the never-ending monotony of white walls, and sheets, and bandages. (It feels like the only real color in this place is the bright red of blood.)

The best he can do is look out the window, and that gets considerably dull when it’s all he’s been allowed to do for the entire week since he’s woken up.

He almost wishes they’d just kept him in the damned coma, if this is all being awake is. Well, not really; he can think of little worse than being completely unaware of the time passing, of Kushina-sensei and Minato-sensei and Rin and Kakashi not getting to see him for that much longer.

Or worse , his mind whispers, moving on without him. 

Why wouldn’t they? Months of waiting for someone to wake could be nothing but dull, their place in your life becoming obsolete and filled by other things. 

Hell, he was only out for two weeks , and he already feels like he’s missed so much . How much longer would he need to be out for them to move on completely? A month? Two? Would it be like he never existed by the end of the year? Like he was a dead man to be mourned instead of a living friend? A distant, fond memory they no longer had use for?

He doesn’t want to be forgotten, and he doesn’t want to be mourned. He’s alive , would be even in a coma. But he’s not in a coma, he reminds himself. He’s here , and he’s alive, and how should they move on without him when he’s right here ? 

But is he really? How can he be right there with them when he can’t even walk , when he’s confined to a hospital bed and can’t train with them, or go out for ramen, or—

Being shinobi was all that connected them, their little slipshod family held together by the glue of their duty and the sameness of their lives. Hell, they wouldn’t have spared him a second glance if it weren’t for his desire to be a shinobi. What does that make him now, when he’ll never be that again?

It’s only natural to drift apart from people with whom there’s no longer anything in common. It’s a part of everyone’s life, but the thought of it sends a jolt of terror flooding through Obito. He doesn’t have anyone left, aside from them. Moreover, he doesn’t want to lose them. Can’t lose them, or he doesn’t know what will happen. He needs them, needs them in a way that shakes him to his core. If they leave him, he doesn’t know if he can—

“Obito?” Obito snaps his eye open. He doesn’t know when he closed it, just knows that the sudden light exposure sends a jolt of pain through his skull. 

The heart monitor is beeping way too fast, the sound of each beat like a knife through his temple. He can’t fucking breathe, can’t even force himself to face whoever just entered the room, because he feels like his lungs aren’t there . He knows they are, knows they’re fully functional (or as functional as they’ll ever be again) because the medics wouldn’t permit anything less, but it’s like he can’t reach them, like they’ve disappeared and left a void in his chest where they should be. 

He lets out a choked sound, he thinks, as he struggles to inhale. He’s going through the motions that are supposed to bring him oxygen, but they’re not doing anything. 

His vision’s starting to white out, and that’s probably a bad thing, but he can only distantly recognize it as happening at all, much less whether it’s good or not. 

Warm hands grab onto his arm, and Obito flinches back even though he wants the contact more than anything, because he can’t stand it and he needs it and he can’t breathe.

Someone speaks, low and soft and near to him, but he can’t focus on the words nor even begin to understand them, because the world is washed out and wrong and and so far away from him.

He can’t even force his eye open, can’t tell whose presence is beside him, and suddenly he needs to know, and he reaches out .

Kushina-sensei’s warm, fiery presence beside him feels like safety , her chakra spiking anxiously as she tries in vain to calm him. 

Farther out, Kakashi’s there too, electric chakra paralyzed with indecision and fear, but most of all, it’s there .

Both of them are. He’s completely useless right now, can’t even breathe properly, but they’re both still here .

It snaps him from his blind panic, forces the ringing in his ears to recede as he holds onto the familiar feeling of his precious people nearby.

The sound of Kushina-sensei’s voice, slow and steady despite the worry present in her chakra, is the first thing that comes back to Obito; “…and you’re safe , kid, and nothing bad is going to happen to you ever again if I can help it, and if someone did something to you, I’m gonna kick their ass, and—” as Kushina-sensei rambles, reality slowly comes back to Obito, and when he reaches his too-weak arm towards her, she cuts herself off immediately, drawing him into a too-tight hug that he returns as well as he can.

When Obito’s calmed down, the only evidence of his attack the tear-stains on his cheeks, he looks up to find Kakashi. 

Kakashi’s not in the room at all, though, and when Obito reaches out like he had during his attack, he can’t find Kakashi at all. Did Obito imagine it? Surely not, but—

“ Fuck , kid, you ever gonna stop scaring me like that?”

Obito lets his head drop to Kushina-sensei’s shoulder, lets himself revel in the hug, in the knowledge that she’s here even though she doesn’t need to be.

Obito jolts to awareness with the keen knowledge that something’s wrong. The room is silent, though, dark and empty as it always is at this time. Something’s still wrong , though, so he reaches out with his chakra, and immediately regrets it when he’s hit with a wave of intense, panicked chakra, sparking and crackling like lightening in a storm, irregular and horrible and terrifying , because that’s Kakashi.

Obito shoves himself up on his arm, turning to the window. He can’t see Kakashi, but he can feel him there, so he activates his sharingan, the world sharpening into perfect detail and allowing him the sight of Kakashi in the tree outside his window, clutching a branch with his sharingan out, staring right at Obito. He looks terrified, and it shakes Obito to his core.

Obito fumbles with the window latch, slides it open. “ Just come in already, idiot!” he whisper-yells, glaring as Kakashi when he hesitates. 

Then, Kakashi’s landing on the window-sill, graceful even as his panic coats the room like a haze, and leaps down beside Obito’s bed in a movement too practiced to be anything but one he’s done a million times before.

Kakashi just stares at Obito, though, like a frozen deer, so Obito pats the bed beside him impatiently because holy shit Kakashi needs to calm down right now or Obito ’s gonna start panicking, too.

To Obito’s surprise, Kakashi complies, dropping to sit on the mattress like a puppet with all his strings cut. 

Kakashi grabs Obito’s wrist, pulling it into himself and curling around it. “What are you—” but Obito stops, because he can feel Kakashi’s fingers digging into his pulse-point, chakra still spiking in panic. “I’m fine , Bakashi.” Obito says, but his voice comes out far softer than he intended it. 

Kakashi just stays quiet, breathing slowly returning to normal, and Obito doesn’t know what to do .

“See, Bakashi? I’m perfectly okay,” Obito says, gives Kakashi the best reassuring smile he can. 

Kakashi’s looking at Obito like he’s everything, like the only thing that matters in all the world is that he’s okay , and it terrifies Obito even more than Kakashi’s panic had.

Then, Kakashi drops his gaze, pressing his forehead against the back of Obito’s hand and releasing a shuddering exhale. 

Kakashi’s calloused fingers are warm against his wrist, palm pressed to palm. Obito has to force his breaths to slow, his breathing even, staying as calm and steady as he can while Kakashi tries to calm himself. 

Eventually, Kakashi’s breathing evens completely and he passes out, face still pressed to Obito’s hand.

Obito finds himself bizarrely awake, despite it being hours before sunrise, so he just lets himself lay there, revel in the feel of his hand held loosely in a warm grasp. 

Eventually, though, he drifts off himself, and when he wakes, Kakashi’s nowhere to be seen.

It becomes a common occurrence between them, somehow, because now that Obito can sense his chakra, it’s becoming frighteningly clear that when Kakashi’s in the village, he’s at the hospital more often than not, sitting in his tree rather than coming in to talk.

Obito makes it a point to frown at Kakashi whenever he notices him there but not coming in to visit, because seriously? Is Obito that bad to talk to?

It’s not all that bothersome, though, so Obito doesn’t actually try to stop it. 

He can feel the panic, the thrumming anxiety that’s always present in Kakashi’s chakra when he settles in the tree, can feel it slowly calm as he sits there, and who’s Obito to judge the way Kakashi copes, really? 

Truthfully, Obito’s glad for it, because when he starts to panic again, when the worry swells up inside of him that his teammates will forget all about him, he can reach out and feel Kakashi there, can feel the comforting familiarity of his lightening chakra sparking undulled through the air. Because Kakashi’s there, and when he’s not, someone else is, and they wouldn’t do that if they were going to forget about him. Kakashi certainly wouldn’t, wouldn’t bother to spend any time around Obito if he didn’t care, much less so much of his time. (And isn’t that a trip, where the Kakashi Obito thought he knew wouldn’t have bothered to visit him if he were no longer fit to be a shinobi?)

It’s nice, so Obito doesn’t bother to stop Kakashi, beckons him in when it gets bad, and lets himself settle into this strange new routine.

Kushina drops into the chair beside his bed, watching amusedly as he tries in vain to keep his hair from falling in his face. It’s at an awkward half-length where it’s too short for him to tie it back but way too long for his comfort, constantly falling over his eye and obscuring his vision, and he hates it.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he grumbles, “I haven’t exactly had time to go get a haircut, or the means to try and cut it myself.”

She huffs a soft laugh; “You know you could have just asked me, right, kid?”

“What do you mean?” He asks, furrowing his brow at her.

“If you want a haircut”—she grins and pulls out a kunai—“I can give you a really shitty one.”

“ Yes, ”He agrees, not caring to consider the decision any longer. 

She has him sit on the bed with his leg crossed before him and his back to her. “You want it your usual shortness-ish?” She asks off-handedly.

“ Yeah; I don’t like it falling in my face like this,” he responds, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

“I could tell,” she says drily, and Obito feels the cool passage of the kunai near the back of his head, the weight released with the hair it fells. 

By the time she’s done, his hair is choppy and sticking up in uneven tuffs, and he feels so much lighter , more like himself without his hair falling over his face and down his neck. 

Obito’s counting the ceiling tiles of his room for the third time when he senses Kakashi moving down the hall towards him. 

Finally , he thinks, something to do .

Plus, he hasn’t seen Kakashi for three days, and he was honestly getting worried that Kakashi was avoiding him because of the falling-asleep-on-Obito’s-bed thing. Or maybe it was the Obito-grabbing-his-face thing? That he’d finally realized he’d shown genuine emotional vulnerability around Obito?

Kakashi bursts into the room, and… starts climbing onto Obito’s bed?

“What are you doing?!” Obito squawks, feeling distinctly like he’s missing something.

“Getting out of here,” Kakashi hisses, fumbling with the window latch. He flinches near-imperceptibly as he throws the window open, breath hissing out between his teeth.

Obito’s eye narrows, and he moves without thinking as Kakashi makes to climb over him and out of the hospital, pulling Kakashi down and hooking an arm around his waist to trap him against Obito. 

Kakashi goes stock still, face pressed into the fabric of Obito’s shirt and limbs splayed on the sheets around them. It’s oddly comfortable—until Kakashi starts squirming. Obito’s well aware that his one-armed grasp isn’t all that strong, so for Kakashi to be trapped in it points to the other boy being weak as shit right now—or unwilling to risk hurting Obito by really trying. Probably both, Obito thinks, and the thought makes his chest feel light.

“Let me go .”

“ No. You’ll just go worsen—whatever injury you have, and then Minato-sensei’ll blame me for letting you go.” It’s not untrue; a worried Minato-sensei is a force to be reckoned with. It’s just… not the entire truth. 

Obito can’t stand the thought of Kakashi injured at all , and the idea of him out there, worsening whatever injuries he has, is petrifying . 

“I’d think you of all people would understand not wanting to be here anymore,” Kakashi grumbles, finally going still against Obito’s chest, body relaxing in a way indicative of either surrendering or waiting for Obito to let his guard down. 

“ If I have to be stuck here, so do you. ”

Kakashi shoots him a glare that promises retribution later, but Obito can’t bring himself to care.

For one, it’s really funny, and for the other… the contact eases something in him. It’s not that no one touches him, not that he doesn’t receive hugs from Kushina-sensei and Minato-sensei, it’s just… everyone keeps treating Obito like he’s made of glass, like if they squeeze a bit too tight or lean a bit too much of their weight into Obito he’ll shatter and his remaining limbs will snap off or something. 

Kakashi’s… not doing that. It’s not that Kakashi’s careless, is clear in the way Obito’s not been mauled yet that Kakashi’s trying to avoid injuring him, but—like this, Kakashi’s practically lying on top of Obito, more on him than off. Most of Kakashi’s weight rests against Obito (granted, it’s mostly across Obito’s (relatively) uninjured side, which is probably a good thing), not even trying to be gentle. 

Sure, Kakashi still looks at him like he’s a ghost, sometimes, like he can’t believe that Obito’s real , like he’s afraid that he’s not . But Kakashi isn’t treating him like he’s fragile , like he could shatter with the slightest jostle, and it’s nice , not to be treated like glass. 

More than the contact itself, though, this allows him to feel Kakashi’s heartbeat hammering away against his chest, to feel that Kakashi’s alive and fine, that he didn’t die there after the rockfall. Obito can also feel Kakashi’s head against his chest, breath warming his skin even through the fabric between, the comforting weight of Kakashi pressed warm against him. It’s overwhelming after having every bit of contact since Kanabi be so careful , and it feels so nice, like a warm cup of tea after being out in the cold.

Then, the feeling of a nurse approaching, no doubt for lights-out, and Obito turns his wide, entreating eye on Kakashi, “If I let you go, do you promise not to make a run for it.”

“…Fine,” Kakashi agrees, and Obito lets go of him.

“There’s a nurse heading this way, checking in every room. If you stand over on the wrong side of the door, she won’t be able to see you.”

Kakashi jolts at the news, slipping gracefully to his feet (stupid perfect bastard) and to the space he’s been directed.

When the nurse has pokes her head in, she takes a single look around the room, and, satisfied that no visitors are present after-hours, she heads on her way.

Obito deflates as soon as she’s gone. 

“What’s wrong, Obito? I thought you had confidence in your plan.”

“Shut up, Bakashi.”

But Kakashi just curves his visible eye up into a cheeky smile—Obito physically twitches because what the hell?!— and plops himself down on the chair.

“How bad were you hurt?” Obito asks, voicing the question that’s been itching at the back of his mind from the start. 

“It’s not that bad; them keeping me in the hospital overnight was just an overreaction.”

Obito gives Kakashi an unimpressed look and he sighs, pulling his shirt up some to show the bandages wrapped around his middle. “I got stabbed”—Obito jerks up to a half sitting position—“ lightly,” Kakashi emphasizes, eyeing Obito nervously as if Obito’s about to leap from the bed and grab him again. 

“Lightly.” Obito says, even less impressed.

“ Lightly. ” Then, seeing the worry still present in Obito, “Seriously, Obito”—he grabs Obito’s shoulder in a comforting motion he definitely stole from Rin—“I’m not going to drop dead or something. Fully functional, really.”

Obito lets himself relax back into his pillows, “Fine.”

And Kakashi does end up spending the night at the hospital, but he’s not spending it in a room all his own, and Obito knows from experience that that’s what really matters. (And Obito gets to see that Kakashi’s safe .)

The sky rumbles, loud enough to feel as if the building itself is shaking. 

Rin looks to the ceiling as the lights flicker. “Never have I been so glad that a mission ended early,” she sighs dramatically, flopping back into the chair beside Obito’s bed. 

Obito agrees wholeheartedly, and she smiles at him when he says so, warming his heart in his chest. 

“Not that I don’t like thunderstorms, but man do they suck when you have to be out in them.”

“Eh. Honestly, I kind of wish I could go out right now,” Obito says wistfully, and Rin gives him a look like he’s insane. “What? They’re nice!” He defends, but the look she’s giving him only becomes more judgmental. “You can’t seriously tell me you don’t like the moment before it begins to rain, when the sky’s dark, and lightening flashes in the distant.”

She pauses consideringly. “That’s enjoyable well enough from inside, and that way I don’t get soaked when it actually starts to rain.”

“Oh, boo , where’s the fun in that?”

Rin snorts, “You are ridiculous.”

Obito smiles as innocently as he can manage.

Rin huffs a fond laugh, shifting her bag on her lap. 

Obito shifts towards her excitedly, “Did you bring my change of clothes?”

She grins, “Sure did.”

He pumps his fist in the air, “Hell yes! I’m never wearing a hospital gown again.”

“They’re practical, Obito.”

“They’re awful,” he counters, sticking his tongue out at her. 

She shoves a pair of his clothes at him with a smile, “Just change.” And then she’s gone from the room. 

Obito pulls the blinds closed. He usually doesn’t, for Kakashi’s benefit and because he likes to see outside to remind himself that the world isn’t four awful white walls, but he has to change, and he would very much like to maintain some of his dignity. 

Getting his clothes on is… tricky. He manages, though, pulling on his shirt just in time for the lights to go out. “Ah, shit.” Then, though, the emergency lights flicker on, leaving the room in a strange half-darkness.

“Obito?” Rin calls from outside his door, voice lilting with her concern.

“ I’m fine,” Lightening flashes bright through the blinds, thunder rumbling in its wake, “I’m done. You can come in now,” he adds, considerably happier now that he’s in his own clothes again. 

She opens the door as he reopens the blinds, stepping inside the room and slipping it shut behind her. “I didn’t think it would be bad enough to warrant emergency power,” she comments, face haunting in the low-light of the hospital room. 

The rain’s start is a sudden thing, from only the sound of wind whipping through branches to  the rain’s cascade. 

“Shit, it’s really pouring out there.” Obito turns to the window as he speaks, “Wait—” he reaches out his sense, and sure enough, Kakashi’s there, in his tree as per usual, even though he’s getting completely soaked.

Obito throws the window open, “Hurry up and get in here before you make yourself sick!” Obito says, has to yell it to be heard over the storm. 

Kakashi lands lightly on the windowsill, and as soon as he’s inside, Obito slams the window shut so no more water can get in. 

Kakashi looks like a bedraggled kitten, half drowned and with his hair plastered over his face as he drips over the floor. He tenses, muscles coiling as if to move—“Hatake Kakashi, you piece of fuck, if you shake yourself off like a dog in Obito’s hospital room, I will flay you alive.”

Kakashi freezes, moving sheepishly to a full standing position. 

Rin sighs, “I’ll go find you a towel.” And she’s gone. 

“It’s pouring out there, why didn’t you go home?” Obito asks, but Kakashi just looks away. “Why are you like this?” Obito asks the universe as a whole.

“You want the short version or the long version?” Kakashi responds drily, because he’s a little bitch. Obito frowns at him. 

He doesn’t get a chance to respond, though, because Rin barges back in and throws a towel over Kakashi. 

Kakashi just sighs, loudly, and starts rubbing the towel over his hair.

Lightening flashes through the window again, but now with the blinds open, it lights the room a brilliant white, eliminating all semblance of reality.

The room slowly fades back into realization, Obito’s mind focusing loosely on the hissing breath Kakashi lets out. 

Rin noticed it too, evidently, as the first expression Obito can see on her face is worry, her whole body to turned to Kakashi and a hand extended as if debating whether to help him. 

Obito closes the blinds as quickly and quietly as he can, “Are you okay?” He whispers-yells.

“I’m—fine.” Kakashi’s irritated voice is quiet, but not quiet enough that Obito’s genuinely concerned.

And then Obito sees from the corner of his eye as Kakashi gives a full-body shiver he can’t seem to suppress. 

“Did you just shiver?” He asks, because he’s never been subtle, and because Kakashi being quiet may not be worrying, but him actually shivering is another matter entirely, because Obtio’s been his teammate for long enough to know that him showing any weakness means the issue is far worse than it looks.

“I’m fine, dead last, I’m just—”

“You need to get out of those clothes before you actually make yourself sick,” Rin says, tone leaving no room for argument.

Kakashi tries anyway, because he’s a bastard like that, “Seriously, Rin, I’m—” He’s cut off, again, but this time by a particularly violent shiver. “Fine,” he bites out, and Rin takes it as an agreement. “But I don’t have anything to change into, either, so—” Obito nails him in the face with his bag of clothes.

“Go change, you big baby.”

Kakashi shoots him a murderous glare, but ultimately spins on his heal and goes to the bathroom to change. 

When the door shuts, “When did I become the responsible one?” Obito grumbles, crossing his arm. 

“Don’t worry,” Rin consoles, patting his shoulder, “You’re not.”

He frowns at her, and she grins right back, and how is he supposed to stay mad in the face of that, when it makes his cheeks feel warm and his chest light?

Kakashi emerges from the bathroom, now dressed in Obito’s dry clothes, and Obito can’t help but to burst out laughing, because—“Oh my Sage, Bakashi, you look so stupid!” he manages between guffaws, and Rin smacks him on the back of his head. “Ow! Rin, why would you betray me so?”

Rin doesn’t even look at him, “Better now that you’re dry?” she asks Kakashi, and Obito pouts at her. Surely she can see it, too, the way Obito’s clothes are too broad on Kakashi, drooping sadly from his shoulders, drawstring of the sweatpants drawn tight to keep them from falling.

Kakashi grumbles an agreement under his breath and Rin smiles sunnily at him. 

Another flash of lightening from outside, this time accompanied by the sound of rain falling even harder. Even Rin winces this time, probably realizing she has to go home in that.

“You know, you guys could just stay until the storm blows over,” Obito suggests, tries to hide his enthusiasm at the idea and largely fails, because he really doesn’t want to be stuck here alone again, with nothing to do.

Kakashi gives him a dead look; “Visiting hours end in twenty minutes.”

Obito scoffs; “You’re a shinobi, aren’t you?” It is perhaps a bit underhanded to make this a challenge so Kakashi has to choose between his pride and going home, but Obito is incredibly bored.

Rin laughs lightly at them, “We may as well stay, Kakashi, we’re not set for another mission for a couple days anyway.” Her eyes twinkle mischievously; “’Sides, you’ll get to spend more—” 

Kakashi slams a hand over her mouth, stopping her sentence in its tracks. “Fine,” he bites out, giving her a death glare. Her smile doesn’t even waver. 

Obito makes a confused noise, but neither of them even spare him a glance, just continue their little stare down. 

Eventually, Kakashi looks away, and Rin gives a little triumphant smile before plopping down to sit across from Obito on the edge of his bed. Obito scooches closer to the wall to make room, and Kakashi reluctantly clambers up beside him. 

Then, once they’re all settled, “A’ight,” Rin starts, “spill.”

“I—what?” Obito asks, flummoxed. 

“Spill. Something’s up with you lately.” Oh. Oh, she wasn’t supposed to notice. Obito’s bewildered sheepishness must show on his face, because she gives him a soft look. “We care about you, Obito, of course we’re gonna notice when you’re being odd. Now”—she waggles a finger in his face—“spill.”

“I just—” Obito tightens his fingers in the sheets, turning to the window because it’s easier than admitting this to their faces—“I’m… scared.” Obito huffs a laugh, dragging his hand through his hair and giving it a light tug—“It’s stupid, guys, it’s not—”

“If you say ’It’s not important,’ I am going to deck you in the face,” Kakashi says idly, grabbing his hand so he can’t tug on his hair anymore.

Obito groans; “You suck.” Obito turns his head as far away from them as he can, as if he can prevent them hearing the words, “ Why would you want me anymore, as broken as I am?” The words come out quieter than a whisper, barely ghosting past his lips. 

The room goes silent as a pin-drop, Kakashi’s hand freezing from where it’s loosely holding Obito’s own.

“…I know I call you stupid a lot, but this is a new level even for you, Obito,” Kakashi says, voice strangely stiff even as it retains its usual judgement.

“Rude!” Obito squawks, because he doesn’t know how else to respond to that, jerking his head around to look at Kakashi.

Kakashi just raises an unapologetic eyebrow, though. Obtio’s about to comment on it, but before he can he’s tackled into a fierce hug. “I’m gonna have to agree with Kakashi on this one, Obito,” Rin says beside Obito’s ear, squeezing him so tight he can barely breathe. 

And, sitting there with Rin hugging the daylights out of him and Kakashi beside him holding his hand tight, Obito breaks down. Knowing logically that they care about him pales in the face of hearing it from their (well, Rin’s, but he’s not asking for a miracle here) lips.

Obito sits up, frowns down at his sleeve as it flops sadly along the sheets. 

“Hey, Kakashi, hand me a kunai.”

“No,” Kakashi intones. 

“C’mon, please?”

Kakashi sighs, pressing a kunai into Obito’s waiting hand. 

Obito shoots him a sunny grin, “Hold my right sleeve out taut for me.”

“I’m not your nursemaid,” Kakashi grumbles, but complies. 

In a single movement, Obito severs the sleeve at the seam.

“What’re you—”

“S’not like I’m gonna need the sleeve on that side anyway, and when I get a prosthetic I can just get a new shirt.” Then, because Obito is the person he is, “Plus, sleeveless is a good look on me.” 

Kakashi gives him an exasperated look, but Obito’s smile doesn’t waver. 

“Hey, do you have a rubber band or string or something?”

Kakashi shoots him a suspicious glance but wordlessly hands him a hair-tie.

“Wait, why do you have a hair-tie?” Obito honestly thinks it’s a fair question, considering that Kakashi’s hair is definitely not ponytail-length.

“Rin always forgets them when she’s sealing, and then she bitches about her hair falling in her face the whole time.”

“Huh.” Mollified, Obito pulls his right pant leg taut and severs it across what would be mid-thigh, setting the kunai down on the sheet and gathering the remaining pant leg to tie it off like a ponytail. He smiles at his handiwork; it may not be the prettiest, but he feels much better, with his clothes actually fitting him. 

He turns his smile on Kakashi just in time to see the fond look in Kakashi’s eye before Kakashi turns to go. “I should be back by two weeks from now,” he says lightly, tapping a hand on the doorframe as he passes it, leaving Obito’s room bare in his wake. 

“Kakashi!” Obito calls out, before he can stop himself. 

“Hm?” Kakashi turns half to him, just enough to make eye-contact.

“Come back alive, okay?” Obito’s voice shakes as he speaks. “Don’t—” he cuts himself off before he an say don’t get injured like me , twisting his hand in the sheets.

“ I’ll come back fine, Obito,” Kakashi says, voice strangely soft, and then he’s gone. 

It’s been exactly a month since Obito’s woken up, and Minato-sensei can hold off his clan head no longer.

Fugaku’s chakra is cold as he glides down the hallway towards Obito’s room, tight with expertly leashed rage that chokes the air, sets Obito’s nerves on edge and makes Obito want to curl up in shame in penance for a crime he has yet to be accused of.

When he emerges into the room, though, Fugaku’s expression is strangely… polite?

“Obito,” he says, lips curling around the word as if out of disgust, though his tone remains civil. Dread settles in Obito’s heart.

“I must say, it has been quite difficult to get into contact with you.” The pleasantness in his tone burns like acid as it washes over Obito in tandem with the feeling of Fugaku’s rage.

“Well, I’m a busy man,” Obito busters, knowing full well that Minato-sensei’s interference at Obito’s behest was the sole cause of that difficulty.

Fugaku’s expression does not waive, but Obito can feel his annoyance clear as day.

Fugaku smiles, plastic and unnatural on his face. What the fuck is going on?

“It has come to my attention you awakened your sharingan and your mangekyo in the space of a single mission.”

“Uh… yeah…?” Is that all Fugaku’s here to talk about?

“Your mangekyo is quite powerful,” he continues, and is he really just jealous of Obito’s awesome sharingan?

“Sure is,” Obito agrees, because it’s true, and also because what the fuck is he even supposed to do in this situation?

“Two sharingan are better than one, though.”

Oh. Oh shit , Fugaku’s here to—

“Ah, I don’t care too much for susanoo anyway.” 

Fugaku’s eye twitches. Gotcha.

He pastes on a smile, though, doesn’t seem to understand that Obito won’t —

“It’s not even a choice you should have to make. I understand that you thought yourself dead when you gave” —Fugaku’s lip curls on the word—“Hatake one of your sharingan. It’s no problem; if you were to simply request it back, he would have no choice but to—”

“I’m not going to ask for it back,” Obito says, steel laced through the words and his veins alike.

“For a non-Uchiha to be in possession of a working sharingan is unacceptable.” Fugaku states, voice and chakra finally aligning in his immense displeasure with Obito’s refusal. 

“It’s my eye, not yours, and I gave it to him. ”

“If Hatake”— Fugaku spits the name as if it were something disgusting, as if Kakashi were the gunk at the bottom of his shoe—“is still in possession of a sharingan by this time tomorrow, you will be formally disowned by the Uchiha clan.” 

“Fine! I don’t care what you do, it’s his eye now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Obito is well aware that it’s childish to mock his clan head, useless and inflammatory and not helping his situation at all , but it’s where he stands, and he refuses to budge on it, because that eye is Kakashi’s now. (Because the sight of it in Kakashi’s socket makes him feel warm and safe and happy and everything the Uchiha clan never bothered to make him feel. Because it looks right , spinning there, feels like something connecting them, keeping them from being torn apart. Keeping Kakashi from drifting away from him, now that Obito can no longer be a shinobi alongside him, can no longer hold on to the reason they were ever associated with each other in the first place, the only reason Kakashi ever even spared him a glance. )

“It seems you are just as much a disappointment to the Uchiha clan as you were as a child,” Fugaku’s voice is thunderous, damning, and on any other day, the words would hurt, but right now Obito is furious, his rage more than tantamount to Fugaku’s, and they only provide fuel for the flames of it.

“Oh yeah, you sound so cool right now, bullying a fucking child like a real adult,” Obito spits, letting his anger boil over into his voice because he’s never cared to disguise how he feels, and he refuses to start now.

“ Insolent child,” Fugaku hisses, chakra roiling with his rage as he turns and practically vanishes from the room.

Obito lets his head drop back into his pillows, triumphant smile on his face. He is so going to regret this later. 

“You have to talk about it sometime, kid.”

“Do I?” Obito asks, determinedly avoiding her gaze.

She sighs. “ Yes , kid, you do. You just got booted from your clan because you wouldn’t take your eye back, and you don’t just get to pretend that’s nothing.”

“It’s Kakashi’s eye, now,” Obito says defensively, readying himself to argue that point if need be.

Then, though, he’s being pulled into a hug, “I’m not here to criticize your choice, kid, or its repercussions. I’m here to make sure you’re okay.”

Obito curls into her, fisting his hand in the back of her shirt as his vision goes blurry with tears. 

“I—they weren’t good to me,” Obito starts, hating how nasally his voice comes out, “Or even really close . They kind of just avoided me, for the most part”—she tightens her hold on him—“But they were still my family , and now—now I’m all alone.” 

Kushina squeezes him, “You’re not alone, and you never will be, kid,” she declares, “because you’re part of my family”—he lets out a sob, curling closer to her—“and Minato’s , and Rin’s , and Kakashi’s too , and none of us are going to leave you alone, even when you get tired of us, because families are meant to be there for eachother .”

And she holds him while sobs wrack his body, keeping her arms firmly around him until he’s calm enough to complain about her suffocating him. 

Chapter Text

Most shinobi hate the feeling of the hospital, the smell of the antiseptic and the lingering blood it can never quite cover. Orochimaru thrives in it. 

He glides down the halls, uncaring of the way nurses flinch away from him, scurry from his path like mice from a cat. It’s amusing, in a dull sort of way, and it’s certainly useful for a single glare to be enough to make any of them disappear near-instantaneously. 

Voices drift from one of the rooms as he passes, and he pauses . Normally, he wouldn’t bat an eyelash at voices in the hospital—those on their deathbeds often receive visitors, after all—but. 

But that’s the voice of the Uchiha clan head, and he sounds angry . Not just annoyed, or slightly aggravated—as is the best Orochimaru’s been able to get from him—but genuinely frustrated .

It intrigues Orochimaru, and his feet move towards the room almost of their own accord.

“For a non-Uchiha to be in possession of a working sharingan is unacceptable ,” Fugaku rages. The Hatake boy , Orochimaru’s mind supplies, because Orochimaru is not nearly out of the loop enough to have missed that little incident. It really is a shame the boy recovered so well; it would have been so easy to get a sharingan off the body of a non-Uchiha. 

“It’s my eye, not yours, and I gave it to him .” The boy—Uchiha Obito, presumably—is defensive, and there’s something in his voice that says he won’t be giving in. 

“If Hatake is still in possession of a sharingan by this time tomorrow, you will be formally disowned by the Uchiha clan.” Fugaku seems to have picked up on the steel edging the boy’s words, because he sounds almost desperate , now. He must be under considerable pressure from the clan to resort to a threat like that , and for that edge of desperation to show through . It’s almost enough to make Orochimaru laugh.

“ Fine! I don’t care what you do, it’s his eye now, and you can’t do anything about it .” The spite in the boy’s tone surprises Orochimaru; he’d been sure the boy would agree to take it back when faced with a threat like that—Uchiha aren’t exactly known for their lack of clan pride, after all—but there’s a smug certainty his tone as he all but seals his fate. There’s no hesitance there—it would seem there’s no love lost between young Obito and his clan.

Orochimaru’s sure Fugaku says something more, but Orochimaru’s already gliding off towards his lab; he’s well aware by now of when to vacate before things blow up and become a problem . He was teammates with Jiraiya and Tsunade, after all. 

-

In the days that follow, Orochimaru finds the Uchiha boy’s room a frequent visit on his route. 

It’s not every day an Uchiha—especially one with such a powerful mangekyo—is practically dropped in one’s lap like this.

He’s visited frequently by Uzumaki and the Nohara girl, and the Hatake boy practically lives in the tree outside the room’s window, but the Yondaime’s visits are far less frequent, despite the boy being his student. He has far too much on his plate with the war, even—especially—as the tides begin to turn.

Yes, Orochimaru thinks, gaze locked on the Uchiha’s prone, unprotected form, it really is a shame our new Yondaime has so much on his plate.

Chapter Text

Rin has never been strong. She’s trained, sure, gotten smarter and better at healing and sealing and taijutsu. It’s not real strength, though, not enough to keep her going when things got tough or to truly excel at anything. 

Obito has always been strong. Maybe he’s not all that strong in the shinobi way, but he’s far stronger in the ways that really matter. Even still, she hadn’t thought much of him at first. Had looked at the boy who was so late to introduction that she had to keep his materials to give to him, and had dismissed him just as everyone else had. 

He grew on her, though, and she came to appreciate how much more deeply he felt, so much more vibrantly than she could comprehend. How openly he felt it, uncaring that he was baring his neck for any to strike. 

Where her joy is quiet, unassuming, his exuberant joy is so overwhelming that it’s impossible not to feel happy alongside him. Where her anger is icy, calm, and leashed, his burns bright and loud and uncontrolled.

It’s a kind of strength she has never possessed, to allow oneself to truly feel , so fully that emotion fills the air around them. Kushina-sensei has that strength just as Obito does. That’s probably why they get along so well.

Staring at Obito in his hospital bed, still and small and blank , she feels her weakness with a burning clarity.

When the boulder fell, when Obito saved Kakashi at the cost of himself, Rin felt her world shatter. She transplanted Obito’s eye to Kakashi with a numb sort of dullness, unable to even feel panic as Obito tried to convince them to leave him. 

The transplant exhausted her, took every bit of chakra and her energy with it. Giving Kakashi Obito’s eye may well have been Obito’s last wish, and she was unable to do anything but wordlessly follow that request like an order. 

When that woman appeared, when she fought Kakashi, Rin hated with an intensity she never had before. She felt carved from ice, frigid to the core as she watched the woman strike Kakashi down too. Rin could barely move, could barely even lift her head as her exhaustion caught up with her, and she’d been unable to do anything but hate .

Then, the woman was gone and Obito fell from the air onto Kakashi, and Rin was unable to comprehend it. As she watched them lay dying, something in her snapped in a rush of dark, quiet calm. She doesn’t remember trying to heal Kakashi and Obito, barely even remembers appearing in the hospital or helping the medics using chakra she shouldn’t have had, chakra she couldn’t spare. 

She does remember waking in a hospital bed three days later, asking a nurse where her teammates were with a quiet steel in her voice that sparked fear in the nurse’s eyes. 

Something broke in Rin, when that rock fell, and it sent her two sides, so diametrically opposed as she’d locked the darkness in her away, crashing together and leaving in their wake a clarity she’d never known before. 

It had been easy, then, to pull her act back into place. To pretend that nothing had changed, that she was still the same Rin who’d left for Kanabi. (That she’d ever been that Rin at all).

When the med-nin on hand tells her that Obito would never be able to be a shinobi again, she wants to laugh. She thinks of her teammate’s ever-present cheer, that inner strength that neither her or Kakashi can begin to comprehend, and the idea that anyone so bright could be stopped by anything seems almost blasphemous .

When she sees him there, looking so small there in his hospital bed, she almost doesn’t recognize him. 

He’s covered in bandages, spanning half his face and winding down over the rest of his body. Or—over what’s left of it. The sight of her best friend prone in a hospital bed, too-pale skin barely visible beneath the bandages and missing two of his limbs—it fills her with a rage so strong it becomes clarity yet again. 

She’s released from the hospital approximately two days after her waking, five since their return to the village. 

Her parents maintain the same nervous hesitance they had in the hospital room, gazes full of it each time they flick to her. 

When dinner rolls around, when she’s sat at the table and eating hot, fresh-cooked food with them, she can no longer ignore the way they’re looking at her. (As if they’re worried that she’s not their daughter at all.)

“Is everything alright?” She asks, trying for cheerful and falling flat. 

“Rin”—her mother starts, fidgeting with the lapel of her blouse, “We’re concerned that—”

“Your mother and I don’t want you vying for a spot as a shinobi any longer. We understand that you’re a chuunin, that this is something you think you want, but we can’t stand to see you torn apart by the war like this—like that Obito kid.” Her father interrupts, as if reading from a script, and her mind is—static.

“ Yes. You’re children , Rin, you’re supposed to be giggling over crushes and worried about grades , not who’s going to be ripped apart next!” Just static. It’s nice, easier than dealing with the concern on her parents faces, with the way they pretend to understand , to know what’s best when they’ve never even seen someone die. 

(When they’ve never seen the intent to kill in their enemies eyes, never seen acceptance on their best friend’s face as he —)

She’s on Kushina-sensei’s doorstep . How did…?

“Rin?” Kushina-sensei’s voice is distant, distorted as if underwater, but that doesn’t make any sense because she’s not underwater, or—she shouldn’t be.

Kushina pulls her inside, gripping Rin’s hand. She can barely feel it.

She feels distantly as she’s shoved onto the couch, feels like a puppet with all its strings cut, like her body is an entity all its own.

Some time later—a minute? An hour?—a warm cup is pushed into her hands, vision filling with red. 

The cup is empty. What? She doesn’t remember…

“I need you—focus on me— breathe ,” Kushina says, voice distorted and strange. 

Rin sucks in a breath, lets it out even when it feels as if she hadn’t inhaled at all. 

Kushina’s hands move slowly up and down Rin’s arms, light and barely there. “In.” Kushina’s voice breaks through the water again, her hand moving up alongside the command.

Oh . She wants Rin to follow the hands. Rin can do that. She matches her breathing to their slow movement, slowly coming more into focus as her breaths match them. 

When the world has finally become real again, water receding from her ears, she opens her eyes—when had she closed them?—to Kushina crouched in front of her, worry clear in her eyes as they search Rin’s.

“Kushina—sensei?” Rin croaks, surprised to find her voice so grating.

“Rin,” Kushina-sensei smiles tentatively, “You back with me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m—I’m sorry”—Rin turns away from Kushina-sensei, suddenly embarrassed—“for bothering you with—”

Rin finds herself in a crushing hug, Kushina-sensei’s movement untraceable by her eyes. 

“Don’t you ever apologize for needing help, kid,” Kushina-sensei demands fiercely, pulling back just enough to meet Rin’s eyes. “If that ever happens again, or if you need me, whatever it is— come to me, kid.” The words sound like a useless platitude, the kind of thing someone says without thinking through, but there’s a fire in Kushina-sensei’s eyes that tells Rin that she means it.

The cold trail of a tear down Rin’s face, and she buries her head in Kushina-sensei’s shoulder. 

Kushina-sensei holds her back just as tightly, and Rin feels so achingly safe . 

There’s much she’ll have to work out, later, and she has to go back to her house eventually, but for now, she just lets herself indulge in this, because Kushina understands , would never try to baby Rin and yet is there to hold her carefully. (It’s a comfort Rin didn’t know she needed.)

Kanabi bridge still stands. Minato-sensei tells her in a calm voice, tries to lessen the impact because he cares , so much.

It’s unnecessary.

“I’m going back. To finish it.” Rin states, voice flat. Cold in a way she has not allowed herself to be. 

“Rin—” Minato-sensei starts, and she can see the despair in his eyes, the care and worry that she won’t come back, just like Obito and Kakashi almost didn’t.

“I’ll go with her,” Kushina-sensei interrupts, stepping forward to plant herself as a stable presence at Rin’s back. Rin hadn’t realized how much she needed the support until that moment, and she relaxes slightly into the weight of Kushina’s hand on her shoulder. 

Rin prepares herself to have to fight for his agreement, to have to—Minato-sensei hugs her.

He rests his head gently on top of hers, one hand rubbing comforting circles into her back.

She melts , the contact relaxing something in her she hadn’t realized she was holding taught.

She feels like breaking again, feels tears welling in her eyes. She thought she was over this, hasn’t cried once since her episode, but here, safe in her teachers arms, she feels like falling apart. 

Minato-sensei adds his hiraishin seal to Kushina-sensei’s already complex jinchuuriki seal, and Rin finds out Kushina-sensei’s jinchuuriki status. It’s less of a surprise than it probably should be. 

Then, she’s given an hour to get her stuff together and get to the edge of training ground seven to meet Kushina-sensei. 

That’s fine; she’s had her mission pack ready since she was released from the hospital, and it’s easy enough to leave through her window to not alert her parents. 

  They set out from the village  with little fanfare, avoiding the front gates so as not to draw any attention to their leaving—technically, they’re committing treason, acting out of the Hokage’s orders in an act of war.

Kushina-sensei is already in the training ground when Rin arrives, packed and ready to go. 

She grins when she catches sight of Rin, “You ready to go, kid?”

Rin smiles, “I am.”

“C’mon, then! It’ll be a long trip if we just keep standing around, dattebane!” Kushina-sensei leaps into the trees, moving over the village walls in a movement too practiced for this to be her first time sneaking out. 

The pace Kushina-sensei sets is fast, and Rin finds herself struggling to keep up. Have I really been neglecting my physical training so much? she thinks, frowning as she tries to force herself faster. 

She’d thought Dai-sensei’s lessons (torture. There was no other word for it, no matter what Gai thought) had been helping, but she hasn’t been to one since before she woke. She’ll have to ask them to let her join them again. 

For now, though, she has to focus on every step, every bound between the trees, try to make the  movements as waste-less as possible so as to use less energy. She hadn’t realized just how much energy waste her every step had, and she feels inexplicably shameful for her neglect of the value of her physical skills. 

She’ll have to remedy that when this is all over.

When it gets dark enough that the shadows from the trees feel like hands reaching for them, they set up camp.

“You’re different,” Kushina-sensei says, and it’s not a question. 

Rin pauses, but knows that she will not lie to Kushina-sensei. “I am.” Is her only response, simple and plain.

Kushina-sensei hums her assent, and Rin continues skinning the rabbit. 

“What changed?”

Rin sighs, “I saw my teammates die, and I could do nothing about it.”

Kushina’s hum is considering this time, “You snapped.”

“I did,” Rin agrees grimly.

“You’re not going to let anything happen to them ever again, are you?”

Rin stays silent, because it’s not really a question. Because Kushina-sensei had seen her cold, calm rage when she’d first seen Obito after waking. Because Kushina-sensei knows, for better or worse.

“Good,” Kushina says, final. 

They reach the bridge at the break of dawn. 

It looks different, in this light, the setting sun staining the ground red like blood. It’s oddly fitting, Rin thinks, as she and Kushina prepare for its destruction.

Such a place does not deserve to exist any longer, does not deserve to stand proud and strong as if their mission had never happened. As if Obito and Kakashi hadn’t almost died for its demolition.

The red light of the rising sun is fitting on the bridge’s pristine form, but it looks much better against the rubble they leave behind. 

Minato comes for them approximately three hours before the agreed-upon pickup time.  “Kakashi will wake soon,” he tells them, and hiraishins them to the hospital.

When Kakashi awakens, it is with a gasp and a broken “Obito.”

It feels to Rin like being pierced through the chest. She’s unable to move for a moment, watching Kakashi choke on a cry, watching the tears begin to fall. 

When she calls his name, he looks to her, and he looks so lost in that moment, so devastated . 

If that boulder falling broke me, she realizes, it shattered Kakashi.

“ He’s alive,” is all she can say, all she needs to. 

The hope on Kakashi’s face, the look like he’s been given the world, it—

It is the most emotion she has seen from him, displayed on he is face without any attempt to hide it.

Oh —The world crashes into perfect clarity for the second time that week, watching Kakashi’s tear-stained face as he realizes that Obito is alive , demands to know where he is— Kakashi’s in love with him.

Everything seems to align, then, her little realization putting the last pieces into the puzzle that is their team. (What a silly trio they are, all falling in love with each other and missing one other entirely, loving only the person they cannot have.)

“I’ll take you to him,” she says, and only wonders later why Minato and Kushina hadn’t said anything. 

She lets Kakashi stumble to his feet, doesn’t help him when he struggles to get out of the bed. Knows it will not be appreciated, knows that sometimes human contact can be too much .

The walk to Obito’s room is not awkward, but it is hampered by Kakashi’s newly healed-and-awakened body, weak from days on bedrest. 

When Kakashi sees him again, frail and too-still and held together by the bandages covering him, Kakashi nearly collapses in the doorway of the room. 

Wordlessly, Rin guides him to the chair at Obito’s bedside, allows him the illusion of privacy and does not comment on the way he desperately grabs for Obito’s wrist, holding tight at the pulse point.

After all, she did it too. 

When Obito finally wakes, he’s missing two limbs an an eye, covered in scarring and bandages, and he’s smiling . 

The ice in Rin’s chest begins to thaw at the sight. She hadn’t even realized it had begun to grow there, hadn’t felt the way it froze a little bit more with every glance of Obito’s too-still form, his expressionless face as he slept on, healing from injuries he never should have had.

It’s easy to smile, when Obito’s smiling at her in turn. When he’s warm and present and bright again, and the world can finally sit right on its axis. It’s easy to laugh, and tease, and let easy banter fill the silence. 

She feels a little bit more like the person she’s supposed to be, comforting Obito. ( And maybe a bit more like the person she is , too .)

When she shows up for her first training session with Dai-sensei and Gai since Kanabi, they’re (somewhat predictably) brought to tears, loudly proclaiming how youthful it is of her to be back to strengthen her eternal youth yet again, and she can feel nothing but warm. Thankful, for these people who are so weird and at the same time so wholly and undeniably good.

(She still hates taijutsu though. Fuck taijutsu.)

She never feels more alive than when the three of them are in the hospital together, when her most precious people are laid out in front of her safe and happy. These moments get rarer as the war rages, so she cherishes every single one. 

Even when it means getting hit in the face with a pillow. She sits up from the mattress, watches the boys tense when they see her eyes, leaning guiltily away from her.

They’re so cute , she thinks, nailing Kakashi so hard with a pillow that he nearly falls off the bed, and Obito hard enough to knock him back into his pillows. “ Stop fighting ,” she commands, voice steeling even alongside the amusement she feels watching them pointedly not fight , as if to not incur her wrath. 

“Now,” she starts, voice warm again, “Kakashi, how’d your last mission go?”

Kakashi shoots her a vaguely suspicious look but relaxes. “It was fine. We got the information without casualties, even though my teammates were barely competent,” he adds on disdainfully.

“ Damn ,” Rin says appreciatively, because the missions they have Kakashi running aren’t the kind that everyone comes back from. “I take it you were the one holding it together?”

Kakashi inclines his head.

Rin whistles; “A jounin for less than a year, and you’re already making waves. They’re still not putting you in charge?”

Kakashi shakes his head, unbothered. “Nah, they’re considering me for ANBU, though.” His practice laziness is betrayed by the sharpness of his eye, the ever-so-slight straightening of his spine displaying his pride at the feat.

“Wait, seriously ?” Obito cuts in, leaning forward with stars shining in his eyes. 

“No, I just said that for shits and giggles.” Kakashi rolls his eyes. 

Obito pouts, but he hasn’t quite managed to rid his expression of the excitement, so he just ends up looking like some sort of baby animal. 

“You think they’ll actually put you in?” Rin asks. Technically , they shouldn’t be speaking a word about Kakashi’s potential nomination, shouldn’t even know about it. That’s not how they work, though, and it hasn’t been for months. 

“They might,” Kakashi answers her, wry, “If Minato-sensei lets it through.”

Rin snorts at the same time Obito laughs, because there’s no way Minato-sensei would put Kakashi in ANBU except as a last resort. 

The conversation naturally runs its course, attention turning to other topics as the three of them do their best to catch up in the little time they have.

It strikes her again, watching Kakashi’s eyes stick on Obito as Obito says something to her, how strange a predicament they find themselves in, with Obito watching her and her Kakashi as Kakashi is hopeless but to watch Obito. But Obito has always been watching Kakashi too, hasn’t he? She thinks, as Obito turns to Kakashi to badger him, to break the boy’s attempted indifference.

(Maybe things aren’t so hopeless after all. Maybe the two of them have the chance of a lifetime—even if neither of them quite realize it yet.)

The war is coming to a close.

They all know it, Konoha and her enemies alike, can feel the way it lingers in the air and tastes of ash, of ending and beginning and the light at the end of the tunnel, seen from afar but no less bright.

It’s what they’ve fought for, what they lay awake and dream of across the battle’s lines. It’s what a shinobi fears the most, even as they want it more than anything. 

Rin finds herself out of the village more and more, separated from her team, respected and needed on the battlefield even as a chuunin, aided not least by her skills as a medic and her experience with seals. 

She’s promoted to jounin a month in, and it’s what she’s always wanted, what she’d dreamed of as a child, but it doesn’t feel like a victory, feels only hollow with the weight of her teammates missing from her side. Will only feel as such until she can fight alongside them yet again. 

When she arrives back in Konoha for the first time in what feels like months but which has in fact been only a matter of weeks, she does not rest. She stumbles her lonesome way to the hospital, despairs in the knowledge that she’s missed Kakashi—he’ll be out of the village for another week at least, for as much as Rin is an asset on the battlefield Kakashi is a game changer, ever stronger by the day and following doggedly in their sensei’s footprints to become one of the most dangerous pieces on the board.

The hospital is loud when she staggers through its doors, a rush of nurses and medics scurrying around to try and get to their patients in time. It feels like home to Rin, though she’s sure it’s meant to be quieter out of wartime. 

She slips through the frantic halls like a ghost, a single destination in mind that she will not be deterred from. 

It has become ritual, to her, to visit Obito as soon as she arrives back to the village. To see that he is alright and to remind herself why she is still fighting. 

The upper floors are quieter, for long-term patients and those in comas. It’s by design—it’s much easier to get emergency patients and those just in from the battlefield to the lower floors for treatment, and much faster for the nurses to get to them.

It’s lucky, Rin thinks, because it allows the upper floors to feel more isolated. To feel as if one may have some privacy as one speaks with dying loved ones or cries over their comatose forms. 

Obito’s room is on the third corridor to the left of the stairs, 515 written across the plaque on the door; worn, fading numbers that Rin spent long hours staring at when he was not yet stable enough to receive visitors. 

The room is situated between two coma patients with prospects to recover—they wouldn’t let the hospital put him with the dying ones, even when he could barely even be made to breathe with the help of the machines. 

The familiar steps comfort Rin as she goes, the same number each time, reassuring her that Obito’s as alive as he was the last time, and the one before, and the—

She reaches the door, smile already back on her face as she swings it open.

Only—Only Obito’s not there. 

“Obito?” She calls, cautiously. She takes a shaking step into the room, and—“Obito!” Louder, as if that will summon him. As if it will reveal that the sight of the empty bed at the foot of the window it just a mirage, an ill-advised genjutsu Obito has set over himself to avoid the medics’ prodding.

She kai’s in a furious, desperate motion, kai’s again when Obito does not appear.

There is a chasm in her chest, gaping wide and void-like, a little more of her falling into it with each second that Obito isn’t where he’s meant to be. 

For a moment, silent as a pin-drop, the world stands still.

Then, something snaps, and Rin tears through the room, searching desperately for a boy who is not there. 

The hospital staff is useless to her, staring wide-eyed and stammering in the face of her intensity. 

She searches for hours, sends a terrified nurse to fetch Kushina-sensei and inform Minato-sensei, but the hospital bears no trace of Obito. 

It’s as if he’s disappeared into thin air, taking with him every bit of light from the darkness. 

Chapter Text

Kakashi can’t breathe .

The enemy nin’s foot digs farther into his windpipe, and Kakashi knows that a couple more minutes of this will kill him. 

He wishes suddenly, desperately, that he weren’t alone. That Rin and Obito were here—they wouldn’t leave him for dead like the shinobi that were supposed to be his team . 

But Kakashi is alone, teammates injured and gone and fled, and he is going to die. 

No, he thinks with a desperation that overwhelms all rationale, He can’t die yet (He’s only twelve), can’t throw away Obito’s sacrifice so soon.

He opens Obito’s eye, sees the blurry shape of the shinobi standing over him, and he refuses to die.

The world surges into sharper focus (Obito’s gift to him)—the enemy shinobi’s eyes go wide a moment before they swirl out of existence.

Kakashi gasps, air flooding back into his lungs at last, choking him in its sudden appearance, leaving him hacking out harsh coughs. Every one sets his bruised ribs alight, deep and piercing in a way that suggests at least a few of them are broken.

When the coughing stops, he rolls onto his side, forces himself up on his shaking arms, and promptly throws up.

His stumble back to the camp is achingly slow and rather pathetic, and by the time he staggers into it, the sun has long gone down.

It’s good, he thinks, that he’s back eyesnow, vision already beginning to black out as someone calls out—something about a medic?

As if realizing that he’s safe (or whatever approximation of it one can be in an active war zone), his legs finally give out, sending him toppling to the ground. 

His last thought before unconsiousness claims him is of Obito, concern dancing in his eye as he made Kakashi swear to come back from the battlefield alive. 

Consciousness slams into him with all the subtlety of being lit aflame, leaving him gasping to awareness as his everything hurts. Then, he makes an effort to keep each breath small and controlled, because ow .

He wants to throw up with the force of it. Instead, he blinks open his eyes, wincing as the sunlight pierces his head like an icepick, because motherfucking ow . 

The harsh scent of antiseptic invades his nose, and he doesn’t need the uniform ceiling tiles to tell him he’s in the hospital.

That’s… odd. Kakashi was injured, sure, but not enough to be taken from the front lines, not enough to spare the resources to get him back to the village nor the time for him to return. 

He frowns, tries to sit up before realizing that fuck, sitting up is a terrible idea right now as his core burns and his head threatens to explode, vision blacking out.

His head falls gracelessly back to the pillow, leaving the world spinning for a bit before it can right itself. 

Fuck , he thinks, with feeling, and perhaps Rin and Obito aren’t the only ones Kushina’s been rubbing off on.

“You’re awake,” Rin says, and it’s a statement of fact.

Kakashi forces his eye open yet again (When had he closed them?), turns his head to the sight of her sitting at his bedside. 

Her gaze is sharp, the flatness of it setting Kakashi on edge. He hasn’t seen her like that since the first time she’d brought him to see Obito, and even then it hadn’t been so bad. 

“What happened?” He croaks out, rasping painfully against his injured throat.

“Obito’s gone.” She says, simple and so succinct as she shatters Kakashi’s entire world with just two words.

“I—what?” Surely, surely he heard her wrong, surely Obito can’t be—

“He disappeared three days ago. A messenger was sent to fetch you, got you here yesterday. You were out for the last one.”

Kakashi pushes himself up in a single, desperate movement, ignores the pain lancing through him and the world set spinning—it is insignificant in the face of Kakashi’s panic , in the knowledge that Obito’s gone , that he’s not safe anymore—could be anywhere.

“He can’t just be—”

“He is,” she says, hospital lights starkening the bags under her eyes, the cold rage in them. 

“I need to—” a hacking cough cuts off Kakashi’s words, tearing through his shaking frame.

She responds anyway, wordlessly pushes to her feet and helps Kakashi to his. 

She leads him to Obito’s room, and it’s just like when he first woke after Kanabi, only—only this time, instead of budding hope he’s filled with mindless panic, with the desire for this to be a bad dream Obito will tease him about.

Rin swings open the door that should be Obito’s , but the room is empty. Empty and completely destroyed , turned inside out by someone who clearly had not cared to preserve evidence. It could be the work of whoever’s taken him, but Kakashi glances at Rin, feels the tightness in the muscles of the hand that grasps at his upper arm, and knows it isn’t.

Kakashi chokes on a sob, chokes it back because he doesn’t need a release , he needs Obito back.

“ We’re going to find him.” There’s ice in Rin’s eyes, cold and sharp and cutting, and Kakashi lets it be the foundation for his belief. 

“We are,” He agrees.

She smiles, then, and it sets Kakashi’s instinct on edge, “Would you like to see what I’ve got so far?”

They wind up sat around Kakashi’s kitchen table, his early release curtesy of Rin’s influence in the hospital and the death stare he had given the attendant until they agreed to let him go.

Tea steams on the counter, the sound of birds chirping streaming in with the sunlight, set in cheerful opposition to their _.

“Whoever took him has an in at the hospital,” Rin starts, because they need to start with what they know.

“They’d have to, to vanish someone like that.”

“But that’s the thing!” Rin throws her hands in the air, sagging back into her chair, “This isn’t the first disappearance. In fact, a single glance at the hospital records tells you that these disappearances are practically commonplace. Thirty-six without a single action being taken. ”

Kakashi’s blood runs to ice, “Why hasn’t Minato-sensei been informed? That warrants a Hokage-level investigation.”

“That’s just the thing!” Rin says, running a hand through her hair, “He should have been.

“The reports were even drawn up, they were just never sent.”

“So whoever’s doing this is blocking communications.” Kakashi leans forward as he speaks, eye narrowing.

“And they’re damn good at it,” Rin agrees, “Which leaves the question of who has the skill and the motivation.”

They sit in silence for a while, mulling over what they know as the sun slowly sets. 

“Were there any connecting threads between the vic—the missing persons?”

“A little over half of them have no apparent connection whatsoever beyond being vaguely talented, as for the rest”—she takes a sip of her tea—“some sort of strong kekkei genkai or otherwise unique ability seems to be the key.”

Kakashi stares at the shinobi standing over him, desperation sharpening the world through Obito’s eye as the man vanishes.

“The only thing I could find that all of them have in common”—she hesitates, glances at Kakashi with a grimace—“None of them belonged to a clan.”

O h. K akashi grimaces ; It’s his fault Obito was severed from the Uchiha clan, after all. His fault Obito was ever put in danger of dissapearing at all, apparently. (When will he stop hurting Obito? When will his faults, his mistakes , stop putting Obito in harms way? Was it not enough that Obito’d nearly died because of him? That Obito’d lost an eye and half his limbs, lost his future to Kakashi’s faults?)

“Whoever’s behind this, they probably also have an ally on the council, to dismiss any reports should they make it through.”

“You think that the reports are being submitted and then just ignored?”

Rin grimaces; “I do.”

“Well, shit.”

So. The council being corrupt isn’t exactly new news, but it’s definitely not good . Especially if that disparage runs deep enough that it’s come to the point that dozens of kids can disappear from the hospital in a matter of months without a whisper, a word out of place. 

“Why are we doing this again?” Rin asks, and he doesn’t bother to answer because yeah, he absolutely would love to know that.

He shifts on his branch, just enough so the blood will continue flowing through his legs—them going numb would be less than ideal right now.

Obito’s sharingan cuts effortlessly through the darkness, allows Kakashi to see even the slightest movement in front of the record-room’s doors. 

Another kid went missing today, and that means another report to be filed. Someone will have to deliver it to the incoming files’ hub, to be looked over by a councilman, and, assuming they can confirm that the report is submitted, they’ll know for certain the existence of a corrupt councilman—and with that, will have the proof to justify breaking into the file rooms to look at confidential files that they definitely don’t have access to, and to determine who, exactly, has been dismissing—or disappearing—them.

The only problem is that, should they get caught, they could be accused of and put to trial for treason, and with the definite existence of their corrupt councilman, they will likely be court-martialed and sentenced to death. 

So… not exactly what they’re going for.

Hence the waiting. 

And waiting.

And waiting.

Kakashi’s glad he’s used to functioning on so little sleep, and glad for his chronic insomnia to boot, because they’ve been staking out this entrance since midday, and it is at least three in the morning (and Kakashi has had about three collective hours of sleep over the last four days).

“I’m taking a nap for a bit so I’m more functional if anything happens, wake me up if I go into REM, okay?”

“Sure,” Kakashi whispers back distractedly. And then he’s functionally alone at his post. 

He keeps his eye moving, roving over the entrance in a constant, patternless movement to keep his mind active and away from sleep.

He’s careful to move just often enough to keep his body fully functional, as well, to ensure that he will be fully aware and able to fight should need be. 

He checks their henge again, finds both his and Rin’s perfectly in place, her silencing seals around them still perfectly placed and secure.

Rin wakes within the hour, calmly taking post and telling him to take a shift of rest, because “ Dammit Kakashi, you can’t run on no sleep forever .”

Kakashi shoots her a half-hearted glare, and settles back to at least try , because Rin will kill him if he doesn’t, even though he’s perfectly capable of —

The world is murky and blurred, dark, undefined shapes moving around him. There’s light, he’s sure, but he can’t force his eye to focus, can’t muster the coherency to do anything about it. It’s fine, probably, and even though a deep dread is building itself in his chest, he can’t be bothered with it, can’t feel it as any more than a dull aching fear in the back of his head.

The pain’s distant, too, cold and burning and wrong feeling, as if it’s being forced from his brain, hazing the world and leaving him unaware.

One of the shapes moves closer, leans over him and lets him see a pair of slitted yellow eyes focused on him—

Kakashi is pulled into consciousness by a hand on his shoulder, shaking him lightly but insistently.

He slips into himself as if from underwater, senses sharpening and orienting him in an instant, bringing his muscles tense and ready to spring.

Rin’s eyes are warm, brown, nothing like those from his dream, and the sight of them calms the part inside of him that’s panicking at that feeling of repressed terror .

She turns her head sharply to the entrance of the storage center, to the person turning their key in the lock and entering, hospital report in hand. 

He slides up his hitai-ate, is able to see the uninterested expression on their face as they move through their no-doubt menial morning duties.

Rin makes the sign to follow , and he does so without question; she knows far more about the hospital procedes than him.

She’s already taken the silencing seals from around them, so they just slip from the trees and into the storage center after the hospital employee.

They’re civilian, doubtless why they’re saddled with these menial duties, and likely don’t even know the contents of what they’re carrying. They don’t even glance up as Rin and Kakashi slip into the building alongside them.

The facility’s low security, doesn’t have even the most minor of guards; all shinobi that can be spared are needed on the front, and guarding a files to-be-processed storage area is far from unspareable.

The employee is finished within five minutes, leaves even as Rin slips from the shadows behind them and motions at Kakashi to stay .

And then the door is shut yet again, locking off any of the daylight that might have slipped in past it. 

Kakashi wordlessly follows Rin to where the document was filed, watches as she pulls it from its slot and curses quietly.

The document is sealed to be opened only by a councilman, sealed not only with a wax seal but a chakra one, one that they don’t have the experience to foil.

“Ordinary hospital records aren’t usually bothered to be sealed so securely.”

“No,” Rin’s eyes are steely, “they’re not.”

“So we’ve got our missing person’s record.”

She nods, and it is final.

(They slip from the scene as effortlessly as they’d entered it, leaving everything exactly as it was and vanishing as if they were never there at all.)

“While we were unable to confirm the councilman responsible, at least we were able to determine with some certainty that there is a corrupt councilman.” Rin sounds like she’s injecting the cheer into her voice, but Kakashi lets her have it; it’s not as if he couldn’t use the reassurance, too.

“Could we not just break into official file storage and find the post-dismissal reports?”

Rin glowers at nothing in particular, “so long as they aren’t just burning them, sure.”

We’ll be executed if we’re caught, she doesn’t say. Kakashi hears it anyway. Is it worth the risk if they don’t even know they’ll find anything?

“It’s worth it,” he says, determination audible in his voice, “We’ll find him.”

She nods grimly. What does it say about them that Kakashi's playing the hopeful one ?  

Reports that have been dismissed would have the same—or less—security as those coming in, but instead they’re stored in the council building for convenience, with the rest of the records. The same council building that’s attached to the Hokage tower, and currently one of the most secure buildings in all the village. 

The building’s patrolled by ANBU at unpredictable intervals, making breaking in nigh-impossible.

Luckily, as jounin, their presence in the tower is far from suspicious, so in theory all they have to do is walk in and slip away to the file rooms, though there’s always the—very high—chance of getting caught by ANBU, and who knows how much control their councilman has, if it goes all the way up the ranks.

…Or they could just take a D-rank sorting them.

(It’s a pretty easy decision to make.)

“Hell is a stack of paperwork.” Kakashi declares, winces internally because he sounds like Obito.

Rin snorts.

“Most of these papers shouldn’t even need to be kept!”

“Oh but Kakashi, don’t you understand the importance of keeping the record of that time they requested a new toilet in the upperfloor bathroom five years ago?”

“How did it get so unorganized that that’s sorted in with disappearances and civilian murders? It’s a complete disregard for any kind of order,” Kakashi huffs, fingers twitching for a kunai to murder whoever was in charge of sorting these last.

Rin meets his eye with a grim expression; “It wouldn’t surprise me if our dearest councilman is having them intentionally disrupted to make it much harder to find any evidence against them without actually breaching protocol.”

Kakashi really didn’t think he had any faith in humanity left to lose, and yet. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised, but the idea that a councilman—Konoha’s government , for all intents and purposes—should be involved with something like this?

(Just how far does the rot go?)

It’s seven hours in when—“Yes!”

“Hmm?” Kakashi looks up from the file he’d been reading.

Rin’s holding a small stack of reports in her hands, looking down at them with shining eyes and a bright grin, before turning its near-blinding intensity on Kakashi, “They’re requests for the hospital’s records, thirty-six of them.”

“You mean—”

“Yup. It’s time we payed”—she sends a glance at the document—“Councilman Danzo a visit.”

They read through the forms in their entirety, none of them specifying the document requested, and all of them reporting the reasoning as data collection for ROOT. 

It’s not exactly a reassuring sign; ROOT isn’t exactly known for it’s lack of security, or its friendliness to outsiders. It’s possibly the only thing worse than it being the ANBU commander herself. 

They keep sorting, careful to ensure that every file is as pristine as they found it, albeit much more organized. 

It’s disturbingly easy to get ahold of Councilman Danzo’s files, his history, involvements, information on ROOT’s dealings. They’re top secret but far from protected; typically, when one is having truly secret dealings, they don’t leave documentation on them, especially alongside their legal dealings. Leaving documents that hold no harmful information just secret enough is a good enough deterrent when suspicious parties look into them. 

Rin runs a frustrated hand through her hair. “We probably won’t find anything in here, besides”—she makes a disgusted face—“ taxes .”

Kakashi doesn’t respond; she knows as well as he does that it’s their best—only — option right now. Or, it’s the only one that won’t lead to their untimely deaths. Better to exhaust other options first, and all that. 

It’s Obito’s birthday. It’s a stupid thing to be fixating on, but… it marks a month and a half from Obito’s disappearance, and for all they’ve discovered, they’re no closer to finding Obito. Logically , that’s not true—Kakashi’s well aware they’re far more informed than they were at the start, that they’re on the edge of some sort of government conspiracy—but they still don’t know where Obito was taken.

Kakashi sighs, sinks down against the wall. Rin shoots him a sympathetic look, but doesn’t stop sorting. “Anything?” Kakashi asks, because he knows she hasn’t, and because What if she has?

Her look turns decidedly less sympathetic. “Yeah, Kakashi, actually I have, in the whole two minutes since you last asked!”

Kakashi perks up; “You have?”

“ No , Kakashi.”

Kakashi shoots her a glare. A beat of silence, then—“It was longer than two minutes.”

(She kicks him out .)

Kakashi staggers back to his apartment, vision bleary with exhaustion even though he’s relatively uninjured. It wasn’t that long a mission—Minato hasn’t let them from the village (and his consequent sight) for longer than a week since Obito vanished. 

He’s tired enough he fumbles his key (If Obito were here to see that, Kakashi wouldn’t hear the end of it for days ), but he gets it eventually. He winces at the long creak of the door as he pushes it open (how long has it been since he came in the door? Has he ever? ), winces again at the sudden bright light of his apartment.

Did he leave his lights on…?

He blinks several times, eye adjusting slower than is should with the force of his exhaustion. His apartment is a mess , absolutely trashed, floor covered in scattered documents and old coffee cups.

He blanks for a moment before recognizing the cause of the mess; Rin sits in the middle of the blast zone, hair greasy and movements frantic as she hunches over one of them, cup of coffee in hand. 

“Rin…?” She whips to him, eyes wide and crazed. He binks and she’s in front of him, and wow, her eye bags could almost rival his .

“I figured it out.”

“What?”

“I know who has Obito.”

Chapter Text

Obito returns to consciousness in a rush of agony, coursing through his very veins as if it makes him up. 

He forces his eye open, but the word remains dark. He tries to move, to call for a nurse or something, but can’t move anything but his eye. Can’t even force his mouth open to scream for help. 

What the hell?

He gets a flash of a memory, dull and undefined, the sight of slitted yellow eyes, focused on him. He’s been awake before, then. Maybe if he—

“Ah. Finally conscious, then.” The voice is triumphant, clinical, the sound of it sending a shiver down Obito’s spine.  

He tries to look at them, but they’re out of his field of vision. “Hmm,” they say, closer now, and Obito recoils even as his body lies unresponsive. Fingers run light over his arm, setting Obito’s skin crawling. There’s something stuck there, a line of them up his arm. Panic rises in him, some deep ingrained instinct screaming at him to run even as he can’t even twitch a finger. 

Same fingers, same route up his other arm—he’s not supposed to have that, is he?—but the flesh there is sensitive, and when one of the things is gently pressed more firmly against it, a whimper lodges itself in his throat. His legs are next, same process. Same horrible, foreign touch, dragging slowly along. It feels vile , feels even more so on the too-sensitive flesh of the leg he should not have. He wants to throw up.

The person steps back. Finally. Now, he just has to find some way to—

His left arm spasms , but it doesn’t feel like anything, just odd, as its controlled by something— pain sears through him, turns the world white. He can’t scream, can’t move other than the spasming, can only feel as the world burns, as his body moves without his input.

The pain cuts off, and he falls bonelessly back, phantom tremors running through his limbs.  “Well,” the voice says, distanced as if Obito’s hearing it through water. “There’s our control for trial one.”

They move silently from the room, the room lighter without the feeling of that awful chakra choking it, and Obito is left to his silence, to the sound of his ragged, broken breathing, the feel of his limbs twitching without input, of pain and exhaustion clouding his body and mind. He doesn’t—he doesn’t want to be here , anymore, and that’s a stupid thought to have given that he’s chained unmoving to a table, but he can’t—

The chakra’s back, and that means—that means that they are too. 

His right arm’s spasming now, and he can do nothing but try and brace himself for the pain. It’s worse, this time, when it hits, burns through him like liquid fire through his limbs, fading the world around him. A moment and he can’t feel it anymore. Can’t feel anything . That’s probably not good…

He comes to with yellow eyes staring down at him, a nasty, too-wide smile exposing teeth. “That’s trial one, then,” they tell him, and they’re gone. 

They come back the next day. It’s almost a relief, after a day of complete isolation, unable to move or see anything or really think. 

It’s the same. The shock, the pain, the utter revulsion. And the next day. Is this his life now?

On the fourth day, his captor announces that they’ll be testing something new, today. Obito doesn’t try to get away. It won’t do anything. 

A blade sinks into the meat of his bicep, pain white-hot. He watches the spots dance in front of his eye. At least he’s not spasming this time. The blade is twisted and oh, there’s the agony. He screams, but all that comes out is a whimper. 

He wants—he wants Kushina-sensei. She wouldn’t—she wouldn’t let them do this to him. She would—kill them, and then she would give Obito a hug and everything would be okay. He tells himself this, tells himself that she’ll be here any moment, and she’ll come with Minato-sensei and Rin and Kakashi, and then everything will be okay. Everything— the blade sinks into the flesh of his right shoulder— will be okay.

Chapter Text

“ Primary doctor… Orochimaru.” Kakashi shoots his eye up to meet Rin’s, because really, a sannin !?

“Is our team just cursed or something?” Rin grumbles.

“At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised.” They don’t—Kakashi is strong, and Rin is too, but Orochimaru is more than strong enough to kill them both without breaking a sweat. He lets his back hit the wall behind him, slides down to the floor. 

Rin’s fists are clenched tight at her side, her jaw set. She knows as well as he does that this is no better than a dead end. Worse, almost, because they know where Obito is, but they have no way of reaching him, no hope of getting him out. 

His head knocks back against the wall with a dull thunk . He would—he wants so badly to go to Obito, to find Orochimaru, but he’s not strong enough , just as he wasn’t at Kanabi. His desperate attempt would only end in his death, both their deaths if he told Rin what he was doing. He doesn’t care , wants— needs— with every fiber of his being to get to Obito now , fuck the consequences, he doesn’t care if he dies in the process. 

But the very last time Obito spoke to Kakashi, before he disappeared, was to tell him to stay alive. To come back to Obito, when it was over. And he didn’t , failed even that when it was all Obito had requested of him, but instead of Kakashi’s death, it was Obito who disappeared. He would be so easy to go after Orochimaru, to throw his life away in hopes of getting to Obito, but he cann’t break his promise to Obito, the last one he made. They will see eachother again, and they’ll both be alive , and they’ll be fine , too, and then everything will be okay. 

“Dammit.” Rin’s fists are shaking, now. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” She turns her wild eyes on Kakashi. “We need to tell Kushina-sensei and Minato-sensei.”

“We can’t.” Her face crumples, but he forces himself to continue. “You know as well as I do, with them having Obito…”

“They’ll kill him if they find out anyone knows,”  she finishes for him. She looks as hollow as he feels. 

He already knew it, was painfully aware of it, but the words still send a jolt of terror down his spine. Obito can’t die. He—he can’t. It’s just not—things don’t work like that. People as bright as Obito don’t just die . Don’t vanish into nothingness and turn up a corpse. 

Kakashi wants to throw up. 

“I have… an idea.” There’s something strange in Rin’s eyes, something wild. Focused on something that isn’t there. Kakashi doesn’t respond, lets whatever’s in Rin’s head run its course. When it has, she turns to him, focus razor-sharp. “There was this—this seal, that Kushina-sensei was trying to perfect.”

Kakashi furrows his brow, doesn’t see her point. “It—when she started teaching me sealing, she made me help her.” Rin pushes off from the wall, wanders towards the middle of the room and starts sifting through a particularly egregious mass of documents. “The first time I ended up with something that was actually a functioning seal”—she uncovers her bag and pulls a small box from it—“I fucked it up so badly I incapacitated myself for a week when I tested it.”

“So?” 

“ So”— she looks back to him, smiling wide and unsettling—“with a bit of work, we might be able to catch ourselves a sannin.”

“Is this a good idea?” Rin’s voice doesn’t waver, already decided even as they stare into the pitch-black tunnel someone’s carved out in the depths of the hospital. 

“Probably not,” Kakashi responds mildly, and she’s right by his side as they descend. 

The air reaks of sterilization and formaldehyde, not-quite able to hide the damp stone beneath, the blood and the acrid scent of death. It sets Kakashi further on edge, mixing with the racing excitement that they’re finally going to get Obito back. 

Someone hums, slightly, from ahead. Rin presses herself into the wall opposite where Kakashi does,  readying themselves to attack here if Orochimaru’s moving through. He’s not, though, the buzzing of machinery and the slow beep of a heart monitor the only indicators that they’re close to the main chamber. 

They proceed at a snail’s pace, taking care not to make a sound. Dim light begins to suffuse the air around them and then Kakashi’s gazing out into a wide room, Orochimaru’s form—turned away from them, thankfully—stark against pale hospital tile. Kakashi barely sees him, though, gaze caught on the pale figure on the operating table.

It’s only with the sharingan that Kakashi can tell it’s Obito he’s looking at. He’s drawn and pale from being trapped in this awful room for months, mechanical stitching and strange, white skin patched over him.

There’s a scalpel in Orochimaru’s hand, raised to make an incision. It sets Kakashi moving to attack, to fucking kill Orochimaru before he gets close to Obito ever again .

Rin’s hand on his shoulder stops him, and he whips his head to look at her, because can she not see Obito? 

Her face is resolute, though. Calm. Cold .

She presses a finger to her lips, pulls a slip of paper from her pocket.

Painted on its surface is the most intricate seal Kakashi’s ever seen, far more intricate than the original failure she’d shown him . Kakashi knows instinctively that there is something wrong about that seal, something they have no right to be interfering with the workings of. Something unnatural .

Orochimaru moves the blade down, and a moment before it breaches the skin of Obito’s chest, Rin gestures to Kakashi to move.

The sound of chirping birds fills the air as he appears behind Orochimaru, moves faster than he has before. 

His lighting-coated fist crashes through Orochimaru’s back, into his vitals in a move that should kill him.

Orochimaru splits apart , whirling to Kakashi and drawing his sword into a slash that Kakashi only even sees because of Obito’s sharingan.

What the fuck?!

He leaps back and away from Orochimaru, because at least if he’s moving away, he’s drawing the sannin away from Obito. 

“The other half of the mangekyo sharingan”—Kakashi throws a kunai at Orochimaru as he talks, but it’s flicked easily out of the way by his sword. He’s not taking this seriously —“come right to me”—He smiles, and it is a horrible, slimy thing—“how convenient .”

Shit.

Kakashi drops, barely avoids a blow that would have decapitated him, comes up under it and into a swing of his tanto, angled directly for Orochimaru’s side. Orochimaru grabs his hand in a bone-crushing grip before the blade can meet flesh, throws Kakashi backwards—the world goes white.

For a moment, Kakashi thinks he’s died, but then the glow fades slightly, blessing him with the sight of Rin standing expressionlessly over Orochimaru as Orochimaru twitches on the ground, chakra flowing in the shape of the intricate seal she’d shown him earlier. 

Kakashi forces himself to his feet, wincing as the movement burns his side, and oh look there’s a gash through him, isn’t that lovely?

He comes to stand besides Rin, drops into a crouch, and saws Orochimaru’s head off.

Rin doesn’t stop him, so he assumes it won’t mess with whatever the fuck her seal is doing. 

Once Orochimaru’s head is carefully sealed away and not coming alive again , Kakashi stumbles over to the operating table Obito’s chained to . 

Kakashi wonders idly if it’s possible to kill someone twice. 

Obito’s breathing, thankfully, all his limbs intact—“What the fuck?” How the hell did Obito acquire two new limbs ? But that’s not important right now, because they need to get Obito out of here.

Obito’s alive and in one piece, and his eye is open—his empty socket not even covered with bandages , because apparently their dear late sannin has no fucking decency, though that’s not exactly a surprise —but it’s hazed over with something that makes Kakashi think he’s very much not there. 

“Obito?”

Obito’s eye darts around, as if searching for him, but he doesn’t otherwise move.

“Obito,” Kakashi says, more firmly this time, shakes Obito’s shoulder gently—Obito whimpers, and it’s so wrong that Kakashi physically recoils. He pulls in a breath, steps further into Obito’s field of vision.

“Ka-kashi?” Obito’s voice is barely a croak, raspy and broken-sounding and horrible .

“Yeah. Come on”—Kakashi forces an arm beneath Obito, hates himself for the pained wince Obito gives at the movement—“We need to get you out of here.”

Obito gives a garbled noise of discontent at this, but Kakashi just hauls him to his feet, slipping one of Obito’s arms around his shoulders—Obito makes a sound that could almost be a scream , if it were louder. Kakashi wants to throw up—and almost falls over under the weight of him because fuck, Kakashi’s still injured, isn’t he?

Rin catches Obito by his other side, though—and he makes that awful sound , again, and Rin looks just as nauseous as Kakashi feels—before he can fall to the ground and take Kakashi with him.

“I’ll check the two of you over more thoroughly once we’re in a safer area, but for now you’re not on death’s door, so you can wait.” Rin sounds pained, but they both know it’s the right choice. 

Kakashi lets out a vague noise of assent in place of a response because fuck that hurts .

They get Obito up the stairs and out into the hospital at a pace that would be a hobble even in civilian terms, but they make it uncontested. It makes it no easier to bear the pained whimpers Obito makes with every jostle.

Rin leads them to the closest unoccupied bed, helps Kakashi lay Obito down carefully. 

Obito looks more aware, now, less unnaturally hazy and more like he just woke up from a long, vivid nightmare. 

Rin reaches over to check Obito over, but Obito shakes his head; “Check on Kakashi first,” Obito slurs, voice crackled and painful to Kakashi’s ears, “he’s bleeding.”

“I’m fine —”

“I could feel your blood, stupid.” 

Rin’s eyes lock onto Kakashi, gaze analytical. “Sit down, Kakashi.”

Kakashi sits reluctantly on the edge of Obito’s hospital bed, Obito warm at his back, and Rin presses a hand to his side. The sudden contact makes him wince, even as her healing chakra flows through him.

“ Fuck , Kakashi, your hand’s broken too, why didn’t you say something ?”

“There were more important things.”

Obito and Rin shoot him a disbelieving look in perfect unison, Rin returning her attention to his wounds while Obito continues his staring .

Kakashi is then treated to the horrible feeling of his muscles and bones knitting themselves back together, skin weaving together overtop in a process that should take weeks. He winces, grits his teeth to prevent any noise escaping.

When Rin is done, she sits back to check on Obito. 

“Shouldn’t you take a—”

“I’m a field medic on the front lines, Obito, I’ve healed worse wounds in quick succession in the middle of a fight. I’ll be fine.” Obito winces as the cuts across his chest knit themselves closed. 

Rin frowns; “What—”she shakes her head. “Your nerves have been damaged. I can’t—I can’t do anything about that; there’s nothing left to heal.” Her brow knits. “The new limbs are fine, but they’re also—”

“Not me,” Obito interrupts.

“I’ll find a pair of clean clothes.” Kakashi makes his escape as quickly as he can; he’d rather not take part in this conversation, and Obito really does need a change of clothes—his pants are torn and bloody and very much not belonging to him, and he is in desperate need of a shirt. He also smells awful , only more apparent now they’ve gotten him out of that lab. 

(Plus, Kakashi doesn’t exactly feel bad about stealing a pair of nurse’s scrubs, given they didn’t do anything about dozens of disappearances.)

The extra clothes are easy enough to find—and to take given the lack of shinobi training the vast majority of the nurses have.

He drops the clothes beside Obito, who takes one look at them and starts crying. Hmmm… no, Kakashi definitely doesn’t want to deal with that.

“Where’s Rin?”

“She went off to fix something,” Obito tells him, hastily wiping away the tears.

“Hm”—Kakashi slips his hitai-ate from his head to slide it over Obito’s empty socket—“ Get dressed; I’m not going to change you. ” Kakashi turns to leave—

Obito’s hand catches his arm. He turns back, but Obito’s looking determinedly away, a slight flush risen high on his cheeks. “I don’t—can you just”—his voice breaks—“not… leave…”

“Okay,” Kakashi responds quietly, flipping the chair beside Obito’s bed around and dropping lighty into it. 

He takes the moment it provides, listening to Obito’s struggle behind him and allowing his head to thunk dully into the chair-back, his eyes to slide shut, and just breathes. 

Obito’s safe now , he reminds himself, centering on the frustrated sound Obito makes behind him. It’s strangely soothing , to exist beside Obito like this. Calm, in a way few things are. It slows Kakashi’s racing heart, halts the pit in his stomach that’s been growing since he woke to a hospital room and Obito gone. 

“ Fuck ,” Obito hisses. It’s a pained sound, and Kakashi couldn't stop himself from turning if he tried. 

The shirt’s caught diagonally across Obito’s shoulder, and Kakashi would make fun of Obito for it if the sight didn’t make Kakashi want to cry.  “What did you do? ” The words come out harsh, all the cold of the last months freezing the words sharp enough to cut. Kakashi regrets them the moment they come out of his mouth, regrets them all the more with the way they make Obito curl in on himself. “I don’t—” Kakashi makes a frustrated sound, steps closer because he doesn’t know how to be soft, to smooth his jagged-edged words and sooth with them.

He telegraphs his movements as he reaches up to help Obito, knows Obito is watching him carefully. They don’t say anything as Kakashi pulls the shirt off of him and helps him into it properly, and Kakashi wonders if Obito’s avoiding looking at him just as he’s avoiding looking at Obito. Every hiss of pain makes Kakashi want to let go, to run away and retreat into himself, stay far away from Obito where he can’t be hurt by Kakashi’s broken pieces. 

 When he’s done, he takes a careful step back, prepares for annoyance, for embarrassed blustering. Tries to switch himself over, to shake the strange solemnity that’s suffused the air. He fails, and when he looks to Obito he finds that he’s not the only one who’s noticed it. 

Obito’s face is scrunched, the self-loathing in it enough to set Kakashi’s world spinning . Frustrated tears well in Obito’s eyes, his jaw clenched and eyes set on the sheets. Kakashi doesn’t know what to do . 

Kakashi has never known how to comfort people, never bothered to learn. What use does a soldier have for comfort, or for providing it? (What need, when he doesn’t deserve it?)

But Obito needs comfort—Obito deserves comfort — and Kakashi is the only one here who can provide it. He inhales sharply, steps forward on unsteady feet, and reaches out to Obtio. 

Obiot looks up when he feels Kakashi’s fingers graze him, eyes wide and tear-filled, and suddenly it’s easy as anything to pull Obito into him. The position’s a bit awkward, the edge of the bed digging into Kakashi’s side as he leans over it, but then Obito curls into him, buries his head in Kakashi’s shoulder and twists the fingers of his functioning arm into Kakashi’s shirt, and it doesn’t matter how uncomfortable the position is. 

Kakashi holds Obito as he shakes, buries his face in Obito’s greasy hair, and silently vows that he is never letting Obito out of his sight again. 

Chapter Text

“They’ll find him. They’ll—they’ll be okay.” Minato’s voice catches on the words, chokes on them as if they were too big for his mouth. It’s a poor attempt at comfort, at self-soothing as well as soothing her. She appreciates it anyway.

“They better.” Kushina growls, tries to force as much bite into it as it would usually have and fails.

She slumps violently into the wall of Minato’s office, sighs laboriously.

It was bad enough when it was just Obito missing, when he’d disappeared without a trace and they were left to search uselessly for him—

It’s worse now that Rin and Kakashi are gone too, leaving no trace , not even a note saying they’ve gone to get Obito back—because that is undoubtedly what they’ve gone to do—or that they’ll return soon. 

“How long do you think they’ve been planning this?” Kushina asks.

“Since the moment they realized he was missing,” Minato’s voice is resigned, guilty. “We should have noticed, should have guessed that—”

“We couldn’t have known they’d take action on their own, couldn’t have stopped them even if we’d tried.” Kushina’s never been more sure of something; Rin may not like Obito romantically, but she loves him—would kill and die for him—all the same, and Kushina has seen many a time the resolve to protect him in her eyes. Had seen the way she set Kanabi’s destruction, the cold surety of her rage in Obito’s defense. And Kakashi—Kakashi changed when that boulder fell, changed again when Obito vanished, and one doesn’t do that for someone that doesn’t mean everything.  

She doesn’t doubt that whoever’s behind this is going to find themselves thoroughly and painfully without their lives. (She’s so proud of her kids.)

The door to the Hokage’s office flies open with a bang, and Kushina snaps around to face it, knows the ANBU do the same above them—she freezes.

“Obito?”

Kakashi and Rin stand proud in the doorway, Obito slung between them and smiling lightly. “Hey, Kushina-sensei.”

“You—” she pauses, does a double take, “You…. have limbs.”

His scarring is still there, though it’s significantly (strangely) more healed than the last time she saw it, a hitai-ate tilted over his empty eye socket. His left arm is slung over Rin’s shoulder, his right arm slung over Kakashi’s as he supports himself with both of his leg s. 

“What the fuck.” It’s all she can think to say.

“Oh,” Rin starts brightly, “I almost forgot!” 

She pulls a scroll from her pocket, imbued with a storage seal she’d made, and releases it. 

A head comes out of the scroll, severed roughly at the neck and hanging limply from long black hair Rin has clenched in her fist.

It spins slowly around to face them, and—“ IS THAT FUCKING OROCHIMARU?!”

“ Was,” Kakashi corrects mildly, expression bored.

“ Why?!”

Rin’s eyes darken even as a smile curves onto her face; “Some people don’t deserve life!” she responds brightly, smiling cheerily in tandem with Kakashi.

Obito, oblivious to the terrifying expressions on his teammates’ faces, speaks, “I got kidnapped. Got better. Am now half plant. Questions?”

Kakashi huffs in what seems to be amusement, and he’s conspicuously missing his forehead protector, leaving his sharingan on full display. Huh.

“Many.” Says Minato from beside her, speaking for the first time since the kids entered the office. He stands, walks around his desk. 

“But first,” in a flash he pulls the three of them into a constricting hug, “I am never letting you three out of my sight again, holy shit—”

Kushina agrees with both the sentiment and Minato’s wording, so she reminds silent.

As soon as Minato steps back, she takes his place, but when she pulls away she  grinds a fist against the top of each of their heads, “You three are never allowed to do that again!”

She puts her hands on her hips and glowers at the three of them, who don’t even have the gall to look sheepish. 

Obito’s smile is a little closer to a grin now, twisting at his scars and the deep bags beneath his eyes, and Kushina feels a rush of pride, can’t do anything but smile right back.

“Right!” Minato gestures an ANBU forward to reseal Orochimaru’s head, “There’ll be time for more thorough ”—he shoots an amused side-eye at Obito—“explanations , but for now, let’s go home.” They’d have gone to the hospital, if this were a few months ago, to get Obito checked on. But it is not a few months ago, and he will not be going anywhere near it unless there is no other option.

They retreat to Kushina’s apartment, Obito collapsing onto the guest bed like it’s sage-sent.

Kakashi stands by the bed like a sentry while Rin checks Obito over, and Minato and Kushina fill the room with lighthearted chatter as best they can.

Obito relaxes more and more as Rin finishes checking and joins in the chatter. 

They drag in chairs, end up sitting around the bed—all but Kakashi, who remains standing stubbornly at Obito’s side. 

Finally, Obito complains that “ It’s creepy, Bakashi, you can’t just stand there for the rest of time! ” to which Kakashi looks like he would very much like to stand there for the rest of time.

He acquiesces, though, when Obito pats the bed beside himself and tells Kakashi to “Just sit down already, Bakashi!” 

Interesting. 

Long after Kakashi and Obito have drifted off, Rin shoots up in her chair.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot!”

She turns sharply to Minato, “I’d like to formally report councilman Danzo Shimura for treason, acting against orders, and attempting to undermine the Hokage’s power.”

“ What!?” Minato whisper-yells, glancing at Kakashi and Obito to ensure he hasn’t woken them. 

“He’s been working from within the council to fund—and to originally order—Orochimaru’s experimentation, and to excuse the reports about the missing persons from the hospital.

“Additionally, he has a plan in case of official investigation to set the whole thing aflame, including Orochimaru’s subject of experimentation.

“That’s why we didn’t tell you”—she shoots them both an apologetic glance—“if you got involved, he would have killed Obito immediately and burned all evidence.”

“So you handled it on your own,” Minato states, grimacing. “I understand the reasoning, but please”— he reaches forward to grab her shoulder so she meets his eye—“the next time something like this happens, at least tell one of us what you’re doing, or that you’ll be gone. Something, so we don’t think you’ve disappeared too.”

“I—” Rin curls in on herself, “I will. I’m sorry.” She looks so small , and Kushina’s suddenly hit with the fact that Rin is fourteen. That this is a child in front of her, not just a soldier or a doctor or Kushina’s apprentice, but her kid.

Kushina crashes into her, pulls this kid who’s basically a daughter into the biggest hug she can manage. 

“You did so good , Rin. I am so proud of you, of all three of you. We both are.”  Rin curls into her, so painfully small , and Kushina looks at Kakashi, at Obito curled up on the bed, clutching at his arms as if to protect himself from some unseen threat, and Kushina renews her vow to fucking eviscerate anyone who even thinks about hurting her kids, ever again.

Kushina and Minato take credit for Orochimaru’s death, officially declare him a traitor and a criminal. It’s satisfying, though Kushina rather wishes she had gotten to actually kill him.

As it is, their story is far more believable than the truth, than the idea that two children could take down a sannin . Minato’s ANBU guard is easily ordered to secrecy on the matter, all of them (thankfully) non-ROOT, all of them friends who grew up beside Minato and Kushina.

And so life continues, and it’s good now that Obito’s back, staying in her house where she can keep an eye on him and cussing out anyone who tries to baby him. (He may be spending too much time around Kakashi.)

“And let you go back to an empty apartment you haven’t paid a single utility bill for in months? Hell no!”

“Kushina-sensei, I don’t have anywhere else to—”

“I’ve got a damn spare bedroom for a reason, Obito.”

Obito’s eyes widen, breath hitching. Seriously, what is up with this kid that he’s still surprised whenever she shows affection? She’s already basically told him she thinks of him as a son, did he really think she’d let him suffer an empty apartment after being alone for so long?

She lets out a sigh. “C’mere, kid,” she says, pulling him in for a hug. 

She rolls her eyes, now that he can’t see her and misinterpret the gesture. She can feel Kakashi hovering outside the door, and she’s well aware that by inviting Obito into her home, she’s invited Kakashi’s constant presence as well, and Rin’s whenever she isn’t at her parent’s house. 

(Kushina doesn’t really mind)

So it turns out Orochimaru implanted the Shodaime Hokage’s cells into Obito to grow him new limbs made of mokuton , so. Yeah, Kushina’s not even going to try to understand the science behind that. 

When she hears the extent of what Orochimaru did, though, Kushina’s honestly kind of pissed at Rin and Kakashi for killing him; Kushina should’ve gotten to get least a few blows in, first, and then maybe killed him violently and painfully. 

Apparently , Orochimaru had forced Obito to undergo a series of tests to determine the effectiveness of the prostheses, including pain capacity tests.

Hearing that her kid was taken from under her nose by a slimy snake man and tortured doesn’t exactly sit right with her.

She has to be stopped from burning the damned hospital down in retribution for letting her kid be kidnapped by a fucking sannin and being none the wiser (which was, to be fair, a sentiment she had held since Obito’d gone missing in the first place).

“We can’t burn the hospital to the ground,” Minato repeats, and she winds up to argue with him—“But we can tear Danzo’s plans down and make him watch.”

Kushina grins at him, “I like the way you think.”

The raid will seem last minute, by all appearances. Sudden, on a whim, without much thought put into it. 

It won’t be.  

It’s just that only seven people will be aware it’s going to happen until the day-of. 

They spend a month on preparation alone, before even beginning the very first steps. Then, Minato orders more ROOT agents to the warfront, sights their shortness of soldiers and butters up Danzo with profuse compliments to the well-trained nature of his agents, and Kushina is sure they taste like ash on Minato’s tongue. 

He increases the amount deployed incrementally over the next few months, earning him high regard in Danzo’s eyes , and opening the path to Danzo’s downfall .

Watching Obito struggle to learn to use his new limbs is equal parts amusing and painful. Amusing, because his affronted expression when he tries to stand and ends up face-down on the floor is now one of her favorite memories. Painful, because there is a point where even Obito—her strong, stubborn kid—is ready to break. Painful, because there is nothing she can do but pull him to his feet and dare him to try again. Painful, because it takes longer each time, his eyes a little less bright. Because he flinches every time she pulls him to his feet, pain wracking him even though all his wounds have healed.

The turning point, as she should really expect by now, comes from Kakashi and Rin. Rin, for supporting Obito when necessary, and Kakashi, for sneering and being a brat and asking Obito if he’s really going to let himself fall behind again.  

When Obito gets it, when he gets to the point where he can walk without support on the good days, can throw a kunai smoothly with either hand, the rush of pride Kushina feels is incomparable to anything she’s ever felt before.

He grins, turns to her and looks proud of himself as he should , and she pulls him into a crushing hug, ruffling his hair and grinning wide and proud.

It’s the only result of Orochimaru’s experimentation that doesn’t make Kushina want to drag him back from hell to hunt him for sport; Obito can be a shinobi again, can walk and fight and run chakra through his new limbs with just as much—or little, really, because he’s still Obito —control as he can his natural ones. 

Danzo tells Minato that his students might find their place in ROOT, that with some real training they could be the best.

Kushina has to physically stop herself from ripping out Danzo’s throat the second Minato tells her, and Minato doesn’t look much better.

The four of them have taken the liberty of meeting every Sunday evening to discuss developments, under the guise of family dinners. The news of the offer is met with grim faces, but it’s far from surprising; Danzo’s a major creep, and these three have the potential to surpass even the sannin. 

Kakashi lingers, once their meeting is done. “Why don’t you put me in?” His eyes are steel. “You’d have a clearer avenue to information, it would earn you more of Danzo’s trust, and Rin and Obito wouldn’t have to be involved.”

“Like hell we’ll put you in ROOT!” Kushina retorts before Minato even has a chance to open his mouth, “We’re not letting Danzo get his slimy hands on another one of you, no matter how advantageous.”

Kakashi turns to Minato, clearly expecting his primary teacher to see reason—“ Minato-sensei—”

“ No , Kakashi,” Minato says, and his gaze is resolute. He rests a hand on Kushina’s shoulder, likely as much to stabilize himself as to prevent her marching the council room and tearing Danzo to pieces . “No possible gain is worth the risk to you.”

“But I —”

Minato switches tactics, clearly realizing who he’s talking to, that Kakashi’s regard for his own life is lower than dirt, “Would you want Rin to be the one to do it? Obito ?”

Kakashi flinches as though physically stricken, and Minato sighs, drops to his knees and gathers Kakashi up in his arms. 

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, kid, or think you capable, but that I care. That we care, and that we’ve already seen you hurt far too many times.

“It’s that your life, your happiness matters, and jeopardizing that isn’t worth the crumbs of information such a move might get us on Danzo. Isn’t worth it even if it were guaranteed to work, to give us the information we need to bring him down, because you are not an acceptable casualty. ”

Kakashi’s head is hooked over Minato’s shoulder, so it’s only Kushina that sees Kakashi’s visible eye blow wide, sees the joy and the pain and the change in it. Sees how much the words mean to the kid. (Kushina’s willing to bet Minato knows, though, can feel it in Kakashi shifting ever so slightly closer to him.)

“Oh my sage I hate you so much, why would you ever even introduce me to this awful seal, you fucking sadist —”

“Language,” Kushina chastises idly, ignoring Rin’s disbelieving look.

Rin takes a slow, irritated breath, “I have been more successful making abominations of hyper-complex seals than I have been in making a sleeping seal . Why would you ever set me on the path of something so horrible .”

Kushina just smiles, takes a page from Minato’s book and ruffles Rin’s hair. “If you’re so stressed about it, why don’t you join Minato and I making seals? You might learn a thing or two,” she baits, smiles wider when she sees intrest light in Rin’s eyes. 

“ Fine. ”

“Perfect! C’mon, then.” She grabs Rin’s wrist and drags her along, ignoring Rin’s grumbling. 

They find Minato on the couch having some tea with Obito, who takes one look at the grin on Kushina’s face and immediately evacuates.

It’s probably a good decision, given that the entire entryway is thoroughly covered with seals within the hour. Even Rin has taken to sticking to the sidelines, drafting out various ideas and noting down anything interesting they say. 

Kushina scrutinizes the explosion tag, painted with a specialized design that had been an “important clan secret” that she was to “guard with caution” and “keep close to her chest.”

“Y’know,” she starts, holding it out so Minato has a clear view, “this style of specialization relies on polarity to function—”

“—so if we invert the polarity array, we can create an im plosion rather than an ex plosion,” Minato finishes for her, and he’s so terribly pretty, ink smudged on his cheek and eyes bright and intelligent. Kushina doesn’t even try to stop herself from kissing him.

“ Eewwwwwww,” Rin protests from the sidelines, and Kushina dips Minato, just to make a point. Minato laughs against her lips, and Rin ‘ ew ’s even louder, and it is wholly worth it. 

Nearly six months from the day they got Obito back, and Obito still feels pain where there should be none, still struggles some days to even get up. 

“Sometimes I don’t feel like it’s my body at all,” he confides in her one night, frowning at the kunai he’s fiddling with. 

“What do you mean?”

“Like”—he makes a frustrated sound, runs a hand through his hair—“things feel—different. Than they did before. Stronger. And I don’t have the same control I had before, and—you’ve seen it, the things that shouldn’t hurt but do, and—”

“Slow down, kid, breathe ,” she tells him, tries to sort through the jumbled mess of his words. She reaches out, but he flinches away. “Okay,” she says, “okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, barely loud enough to be audible, and so full of guilt, of shame , as if he’s done anything wrong. 

“Obito,” she starts, softly, just to get him to look at her, “I don’t want to touch you if it’s going to hurt you, or if you just don’t want it.”

“I’m not—I’m supposed to like being hugged, I used to, and—and I still do, but sometimes—” he cuts himself off, drops back to lean against his headboard. 

“Sometimes things just change. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You’re not somehow worse, just different.”

“But this isn’t my change!” he bursts out, “ He did this to me, and now I can’t even enjoy the things I used to! I can’t even be the person I used to! He took that from me , and now I have to live with the consequences!”

“Obito—”

“ No , don’t say I’m just as good or whatever , I’m not! This isn’t okay , I’m not okay !” He scrubs at his eyes, and Kushina can’t tell if he’s trembling with the tears or the anger. 

“Okay.” Kushina sighs. “You—you’re allowed to not be okay, Obito. But—you’re not somehow worth less than you were before.” She holds up a hand before Obito can retort. “I don’t care what you can or can’t do, what you do or don’t want, I’m not going to love you any less. I want”—she runs a hand through her hair, tugging through the tangles, and tries to figure out how to word this. “I want you to be able to do anything, and I want you to succeed, and I want you to be happy, but those aren’t prerequisites to my love.” She makes a frustrated sound, because Obito just looks so confused, so deeply lost , like he can’t comprehend why she would . 

“If Rin got an injury while she was out-of-village, and it made her not want to be touched, hell, if it made it so she’d never be a shinobi, would you love her less?”

“ Of course not! But that’s—that’s—it’s different.”

“No, Obito, it really, really isn’t. You were—”

“ It’s different! ” Obito insists. “She would—I wasn’t—this isn’t some battle wound , I didn’t—I wasn’t fighting , I couldn’t even—”

“So what?” she asks. “The result is the same, Obito. There isn’t some—some moral difference based on who hurt you or how. Orochimaru hurt you, Obito, and yes things are different now, and yes that sucks ass, but you have people here who care.” She reigns her anger in, pushes it out with a sigh. This isn’t helping. This isn’t—Obito came to her for a reason. 

“You said your body doesn’t feel like your own anymore. That it’s different.”

“I—yeah.” Obito sinks into himself, now that he’s not trying to protest anything. Kushina wishes more than anything that she could just pull him into a hug and make everything okay, wishes things were simple again. They’re not, though, and she can only try her best, can only accept that it’s not enough, that it never will be , and do what she can anyway.

“I—I can’t say I understand.” Sage she’s so under-equipped for this, that stupid awful guidebook should have said something about handling emotional conversations. “But I want to. Can you—what does it feel like?”

He looks up at her, so much complex emotion she can’t even begin to untangle swirling in his eyes, but he takes the olive branch. “It’s like—like my body’s something else . Like Orochimaru fucked it up and now it’s against me, and I don’t know what to do .”

“I don’t know that there’s anything you can do,” she tells him softly. He looks crushed , and she holds up a hand to stop him speaking and hurries on with her words. “ But , even if that pain never goes away, even if this is how it is for the rest of your life, we will find a way to make your body yours again, whatever that takes.” It’s a huge promise, not one she should make, but she means it, and she will make it so , through whatever means necessary, because she wasn’t enough to protect Obito and it is all she can do to help with the fallout, and damn if she won’t do everything it takes.

He smiles at her, through his tears. It’s only slight, barely there, as genuine as it is bittersweet. 

(And sage but bringing Obito into her life has caused more stress than she’d ever felt before, and she would do it again and again and again without hesitation, because the sight of that little smile is everything to her.)

Chapter Text

When Kakashi had come to him, after the bridge, when Kakashi had visited him often and spent most of the rest of his in-village time in the tree outside the hospital room window, Obito had thought it was the biggest change of their lives, thought that was Kakashi at his clingiest. He was wrong. 

Kakashi barely left Obito’s bedside, when Obito was recovering, when he hadn’t yet learned to walk again on his strange new leg. And when Obito had learned to walk again? Kakashi had been right there beside him, rude and horrible but there . Even now, if Kakashi isn’t on a mission he’s with Obito, and the missions Kakashi takes now are short, a week at most, only taken when he knows someone else will be there watching Obito. It’s like he thinks if Obito leaves his sight for a moment , Obito will be gone again. 

Obito empathizes, he really does, but—“ Oi, Kakashi!” he hisses. “What are you doing here?!”  

Kakashi blinks sleepily up at him from where he’s curled up in the chair he spends most of his time in. “Well,” he starts drily, “I was sleeping.”

Obito sputters. “In my chair? ” It’s a fair complaint, given that Kakashi’s curled up at an angle that’s painful to even look at—seriously, human beings were never meant to move like that —but it isn’t what Obito really cares about, because Kakashi had not been there when Obito went to sleep, and Obito had watched Kushina install her latest attempt at Kakashi-repellent seals just earlier that day. 

“Yes.” Kakashi’s face stays entirely blank. Or, well, his one visible eye does. It’s infuriating. 

“You’re going to give yourself back problems.” 

“I haven’t yet.”

“ That doesn’t mean —” Obito stops. Takes a breath because Kakashi is definitely provoking him. He still can’t help the spark of irritation, because fuck but if Obito were to curl up like that—if he could even manage it—he would barely be able to walk afterwords. 

He forcefully shifts his mind, pulling away from the self-pity and focusing instead on the fact that Kakashi really will fuck up his back if he keeps doing that, and yeah it sucks that Kakashi’s so openly—and probably unthinkingly, the bastard—flaunting his lack of pain, but Obito doesn’t want him to be in even a fraction of the pain Obito’s in. 

He narrows his eye at Kakashi. He won’t be able to convince Kakashi to go home to sleep, or even to go to the next room over, but maybe he could make Kakashi use the bed too? The thought of it makes Obito feel inexplicably warm, preemptively embarrased because he knows he would end up clinging to Kakashi. So no , definitely not an option, but—“Do you move around much in your sleep?”

Kakashi gives him a look , deeply unimpressed, and doesn’t respond, which. Fair. 

“You could—I mean, I’m not using—um.” Obito cringes, wishes he was good with words. Pushes himself up and pats the stretch of bed beneath his feet, unused and where he won’t end up latching onto Kakashi. “You can sleep here, if you want.” He feels heat rising to his cheeks, can’t meet Kakashi’s eye. 

Kakashi just stares at Obito for a long, long moment, and his heart is loud in his ears. 

Then, Kakashi stands, steps to the end of the bed and flops face-first across it. He turns his head just enough to look up at Obito out of the corner of his eye. 

It hits Obito, then, how close they are to eachother, when he’s leaned over like this. His breath catches and he shoves himself backwards, flops back onto his pillow and tries not to think about it.

“I’m going back to sleep, ” he says in a rush, throwing the blanket up over his head and doing his best to erase the memory of Kakashi looking back at him, hair falling softly around his eye. 

When Obito had first woken in a hospital bed, missing an arm and a leg and an eye and fresh with the memory of the then-worst pain of his life , he had thought that was the worst it could get. 

He doesn’t remember much of his months in Orochimaru’s labs, but what he does is—well. He’s mostly glad it’s all he remembers. (There is a part of him, though, that it terrifies. That says it is so deeply wrong that he can’t remember it, that says that he can’t let Orochimaru take that from him too , even if it will only make everything that much worse. That says that what he does remember can only be the tip of the iceberg, and if his brain will let him remember that , what worse did Orochimaru do, that Obito’s brain has locked it away? ) 

He remembers the pain, mostly. Remembers it, vague and cloudy, as Orochimaru had sunk a blade into one shoulder, twisted , and repeated it on the other. But even those memories are poor, spotty and unclear, as if someone had taken the contrast and turned it down. 

What haunts him, after it all, is not the memories. It is the aches he can feel even now, the phantom wounds where he cannot remember having any. It is feeling pain so intense it makes his knees buckle, feeling it and knowing that he was never injured there, but also knowing that—knowing that even his mind is not his own anymore, and he cannot trust his memory.

How could he trust his mind when he can’t even trust his body? He supposes it’s fitting, that Orochimaru would have taken his memories from  him, too, taken parts of Obito with them, made Obito wake up, cold and shaking with phantom pain and the aftereffects of moments he does not remember. 

It’s fitting, when he wakes sometimes and the thought of someone touching him is the most vile , when he’s always needed physical affection so badly and now the thought of it makes him sick.

He clings to the times that it doesn’t, wears through the times it does and holds back the flinches, the utter revulsion at the casual touch from those around him. Reminds himself that it’s not always like this, and that soon, he’ll be able to enjoy it again, and wishes he could just be normal. 

Because it’s not normal, to oscolate between craving physical affection and wanting to throw up from even the thought of it. Isn’t even normal to Obito , is just another thing Orochimaru stole. 

Kushina-sensei looks heartbroken, when he tells her. He hates himself for it, hates that he couldn’t hide it anymore, that it got out. He’s supposed to keep it hidden, not supposed to burden her with it when she already does so much for him. 

He tells her so, apologizes barely a day after their conversation, because he was too much of a coward to do it, then, was too much of a coward when Kushina-sensei was looking at him softly , like he was really her kid . 

Kushina-sensei sighs. “We’re all burdens, Obito. That’s just part of being human, and part of having people we care about.” Kushina-sensei’s lip is twisted in irritation, but her eyes are so deeply fond , and Obito finds himself hanging off of every word. “Everyone needs help sometimes, and caring about people will always inherently be a burden, if that’s what you want to call it. It’s like—when Rin comes and makes you let her test her seals on you, she’s technically being a burden—”

“That’s not—!”

“—But you care about Rin, so it doesn’t matter. Being a burden is subjective; you don’t get to decide whether you’re burdening me. I decide that, so when I say you’re not burdening me with this shit”—she waggles her finger at all of him—“I mean it.”

He can’t think of a responce to that, can barely process everything she’s said, but—well. He can’t help the little smile from curving at his lips, not when she’s so determined to convince him, so adamant that he come to her when something’s wrong. 

She doesn’t hug him, but she gives him a grin, a bit teasing around the edges, one that says I won at the same time it says I care . 

The idea of being touched still repulses him, and that still scares him, but… he feels warm , and light, and a bit like he feels when he’s not so touch-averse, when Kushina-sensei hugs him and he needs it.

Chapter Text

It’s Rin who discovers the discrepancies in the morgue records at the hospital, discovers how much deeper this all goes. (Who discovers nearly a dozen sharingan missing, never returned to the Uchiha clan.)

When Minato calls in Uchiha Fugaku to assist, it is with a scowl so full of distaste Kushina’s sure he’d rather take any other avenue. 

Frankly, she’d like to kick the man in his face and send him on his way, but she does understand strategy, even if she hates it with a passion. (Even if Fugaku kicked Obito from the clan just for giving his own sharingan and refusing to make his friend give it back. Even if Obito cried for days afterward, sobbed into Kushina’s arms because who was he, if not an Uchiha ?)

Fugaku looks just about as distrustful of them as they are of him, and it is not wholly unjustified. Nor is it necessary, though, so Minato cuts right to the chase. (After dismissing his ANBU from the inner office and sealing the room with a custom silencing seal, of course.)

“I would like to request the assistance of the Uchiha clan.”

“And why should our clan do anything to assist a Hokage who has not done the same for us?”

“Because I want to. Because it has recently come to my attention the depth of the atrocities that have been committed in Konoha’s name, and I will not sit by and allow them to proceed unreparated.”

Fugaku raises a single eyebrow (Kushina cannot believe Mikoto married this man. She could have done so much better), “These depths being?”

Minato sighs, scrubs a hand down his face, “First, I need your confirmation that the information I tell you will not leave this room.”

Fugaku gives Minato a suspicious glance, but acquiesces. 

“Councilman Danzo Shimura has been ordering—and funding via laundered state funds—illegal experimentation on first generation kekkai genkai wielders, and those clanless besides. Over the past years, thirty-six patients have disappeared from the hospital to this end, for use in experimentation by the Sannin Orochimaru”—Fugaku’s eyebrows shoot up as if he’s physically been shocked—“the latest and final victim of this being my own student and your former clanmate, Uchiha Obito.”

Guilt flashes in Fugaku’s horrified eyes for a moment before he manages to get it locked away again. So he does have emotions. Good to know, Kushina thinks, genuinely surprised.

“We suspect this to have been to the end of acquiring a working and operable ”—Minato spits the word—“mangekyo.”

Fugaku moves to speak, probably to say something about this not being a problem of the Uchiha since Obito’s not an Uchiha anymore, the bastard , but Minato’s not done.

“Orochimaru has been… disposed of. Unfortunately, with Danzo still in office there is no telling whether this should happen again, particularly where the information I was presented with this morning is concerned.” It’s a small lie, but a necessary one, because they waited precisely three days before initiating this conversation to maximize the chance they will come out of this conversation with the Uchiha’s help in the short term and the long term, but to imply that they didn’t immediately inform the Uchiha would only strengthen the divide between the Uchiha and the village.

Minato sighs again, and it is far too heavy for someone so young. Then, he looks up and meets Fugaku’s eyes, face solemn and sure. 

“Over the last four years, nearly a dozen sharingan have been unaccounted for within the hospital’s morgue, each and every one with Danzo’s grimy fingerprints all over them. We don’t know why he’s collecting them, what he wants with your clan and your kekkai genkai, but we do know what we think of bloodline theft , and that someone commit it should be dealt with immediately, before he can be allowed to do further harm, and should pay for his digressions against the village, and against your clan.”

Fugaku looks shell-shocked, and yeah, Kushina kind of gets that. 

He seems to steel himself, though, terror vanishing into the depths of his eyes, “You say you’re on our side, but what confirmation do we have that you won’t turn around and betray us as the Hokage of the past have?”

“Danzo kidnapped our kid and had him experimented on, we’re not exactly fond of him.” Kushina cuts in, because she may have agreed not to disrupt this, but the thought of even beginning to side with Danzo makes her blood boil. “Plus, Obito was raised an Uchiha no matter how badly you treated him, and he cares about the Uchiha clan.”—Fugaku stifles a flinch at that—“ And your wife is literally my best friend! Why the actual fuck would I betray her—or allow her to be betrayed, for that matter—like that?”

“Even beyond that, we want what’s best for Konoha, Fugaku, and what’s best for Konoha is that all its people are treated with fairness and not subjugation. A village like that is not a village worth having, and we believe that Konoha’s worth something—or should be.”

Fugaku takes a deep breath, closing his eyes as if to steady himself. “And what do we gain by staying with it, when it was your predecessor who ordered our dead be kept where their eyes could be taken in the first place? Who’s to say this won’t happen again with the next tyrant to rise to power? Danzo is just one man, and taking him down far from solves the problem.”

“You gain a security net, for one. Konoha is made up of many people working together, and to lose that would also lose you the resources and varying specialties that provides. Your clan is great in strength and strategy, but weak in medical knowledge and other infrastructure. 

“As for happening again? I’d like to give you back rights over your dead, for one. It’s more than clear at this point that my predecessor’s decisions were”—Minato’s lip curls in distaste—“clouded, and to have taken them from you in the first place is not a power he should have had.”

“So you would give up your own powers for this perfect Konoha of yours?” Fugaku asks, tone scathing though he’s clearly at least a little intrigued.

“I will do what is necessary to ensure that Konoha’s governing forces do not have the power to take away the rights of its citizens, and to ensure that they cannot secure that power again. Should that mean removing powers of the Hokage, then so be it.”

The three of them stand in tense silence for a few moments as Fugaku deliberates, turns over their words in his head. Should he find them lacking, that could mean the end of their takedown of Danzo—though it’s much more likely that the Uchiha will leave the matter alone, or else compose their own attempted takedown; Danzo’s actions—particularly those revealed within this meeting—haven’t exactly made the Uchiha fond of him. 

Should that be the case, should this fail, Kushina will go to Mikoto next. Mikoto is her best friend despite everything, and she will at least hear them out. She’s influential within the Uchiha clan as well, so she would be a considerable asset to their ends even past her strength in a fight. 

Kushina would hate to have to put Mikoto in that position, though, to drive a wedge between her and her husband—especially with little Itachi to factor in. 

“How would you have us… assist you?” Fugaku asks, shrewd, and Kushina has to stop herself from whooping. She can tell Minato’s doing the same from the light shining in his eyes, well-hidden but there .

“Backing, for one,” Kushina starts, “Taking out Danzo won’t exactly be a popular move, especially with the war to consider, and how integrated ROOT is into our forces.”

Minato, wonderful man he is, picks up the thread. “Additionally, we would request help in our initial raid of ROOT headquarters, in exchange for strong say in Danzo’s fate—I will, of course, veto any and all plans in which he is allowed to keep any power, or to be let free—though I suspect that will not be a problem.”

Fugaku’s eyes gleam with interest, and Kushina knows they’ve got him hooked. “And your suggested way to deal with Danzo?” He asks, to gauge where they stand.

Minato smiles, then, sunnily, and Kushina understands where Rin got it, “I want him to die, painfully and pathetically as he deserves. He kidnapped my kid, hurt him , and I have had to deal with him in a professional setting more than long enough to want to flay him even aside that.”

“Hn. And your raid plans?”

Minato’s eyes are steel as he leans forward over his desk, “We will strike an hour from dawn in thirty-three days’ time. ANBU and the jounin involved in the raid will be informed within the hour, to minimize the chance of Danzo catching on and preparing arms against us.”

“That’s why there have been so many ROOT agents among our frontlinesmen; you’re getting them out of the village to minimize the number you’re faced with in your initial raid.”

Minato gives a solemn nod in response.

“How long, exactly, have the two of you been planning this?” Fugaku asks, reluctantly impressed.

Kushina grins; “Seven months and twenty-seven days, give or take a few.”

And, as Fugaku leaves; “And… About Obito.” He pauses, turns back slightly, “I had not intended—” he cuts himself off, lets out a long, exhausted sigh, “I’m glad he has the two of you.” He vanishes down the hall.

Huh. Maybe Mikoto’s taste in men isn’t quite as awful as Kushina’d thought it was. (She still doesn’t like him, though.)

“Ah, Kushina!” 

Kushina blinks, takes a moment to take in Mikoto sitting at her kitchen counter across from an intimidated-looking Obito. “Mikoto? What’re you…?”

“I was just asking Obito here if he would mind babysitting Itachi while you and I have a chat,” Mikoto says softly, smile perfectly polite, and Kushina is granted with the ever-so-keen insight that she’s about to die. 

Self-preservation kicking in, she directs her attention to the wide-eyed toddler sitting politely at Mikoto’s side. “Hello, Itachi,” she greets, trying desperately to ignore the feeling of Mikoto’s eyes on her, like some sort of predator. 

“Hello,” he says politely, “you have a nice apartment.” Aw, he’s such a cute kid . She plants a hand on his head and ruffles his neat hair, leaving him looking ruffled and vaguely confused. 

“Right!” Mikoto stands. “We’ll be going to talk, now, then.”

Obito’s looking at Kushina with wide, pleading eyes, clearly not understanding that Kushina’s the one getting the short end of the stick here. 

And then Kushina no longer has the excuse of watching Obito, because Mikoto’s shut the office door behind them, and slapped down a silencing seal—“What the hell , Kushina!” she bursts out, whipping around to face Kushina. “ Why didn’t you tell me?!”  

Oh. Oh, that’s—“Mikoto—” Mikoto looks ruffled , her perfect composure broken, and it hurts to see. “We didn’t—I wasn’t trying to exclude you, just—”

“Did you not trust me to know?” Mikoto asks, and the flare of anger has died down to a controlled spark, but her voice wobbles a bit on the words, undetectable if Kushina didn’t know her so well.

“Of course not!” Kushina bursts out. Despite everything, she finds herself irritated that Mikoto could have that little faith in her. “With Danzo, we couldn’t risk anyone knowing. It might put Obito in even more danger.”

Mikoto scrubs a hand over her eyes. “I get that, but dammit, Kushina, you basically adopted one of my clanmates and you barely even mentioned you were training him.” Mikoto meets Kushina’s eyes. “You’ve barely talked to me at all for over a year, besides surface-level conversations here and there.”

Oh. “Oh.”

“That’s what changed, isn’t it? The kanabi bridge mission?”

“Yeah. I—when Obito—” When Obito had come back from that mission, nearly cut in half and barely breathing, the rest of the world had ceased to matter. Those two weeks, Obito in a coma with every doctor making it very clear that he wasn’t expected to make it, that even if he did he would likely have severe brain damage on top of the physical damage, Kushina’s life had been a rollercoaster of missions and desperately making sure Obito was still alive. 

It was an easy habit to make, she supposes, to lock the whole world off and put everything on hold when Obito was in the hospital and Rin was dissociating at the drop of a hat and Kakashi was barely alive, when Minato was a wreck and was appointed Hokage in the middle of it all. Easier still, when Obito was gone and nothing was sure. 

Mikoto sighs. “Look, I—I want to be there for you next time, Kushina; you can’t just hold everything together yourself. Tell me, next time, so I can be here.”

And Kushina can’t think of a better response to that than to wrap Mikoto in a too-tight hug, tears stinging at her eyes as she squeezes the life out of this woman who has done so much for her. “ Thank you, Mikoto,” she says, and it comes out a little hoarse, “Thank you.”

They talk for a while more, catch up and chat and laugh , and the world feels a little lighter by the time they head back out to the kitchen. 

Kushina can’t tell what Itachi and Obito are doing, at first, their focus intense enough that they don’t even look up. She does notice Kakashi, sitting smugly at the end of the table like he hadn’t had to break the wards to get in, but she chooses to ignore him for the sake of her own sanity. She’s getting rather good at that, these days. “Obito?” she asks, and he turns his smile on her. He’s lost any aspect of inhibition, and she can’t help but snort when she sees the crayon in his hand. 

Itachi hasn’t stopped drawing, radiating the same intense focus as Kakashi trying to perfect a jutsu, only Itachi’s drawn what looks like his family—plus one—in stick figures, and he’s surrounding their feet in flowers. It takes her a moment to realize that the fourth stick figure is Obito, standing next to Itachi with a smile wider than his face. It’s probably the cutest thing Kushina’s ever seen. 

Mikoto coos, rushing to Itachi. “That’s a beautiful drawing,” she says, and Kushina’s inclined to agree. In sentiment, at least, if not technical skill. Itachi smiles a bit at the praise.

“We do have to head home, now,” Mikoto says regretfully, and Itachi looks a little sad as he packs up his stuff. Obito doesn’t say goodbye, just focuses on his drawing, and Kushina frowns. Even Kakashi bothered to give a lazy wave. 

Then, though, just before the door shuts behind them, Obito shoots up and calls “Itachi!” He rushes to them, holding up his drawing. It’s Itachi, a little wonky, a small smile on his face. Itachi looks at it like he’s been given the world. “Here,” Obito says, and Itachi takes the cue to grab the drawing, holding it lightly like an old, important document he’s afraid will crumble apart in his hands. 

“Thank you, Obi-nii,” Itachi says quietly, though he doesn’t look away from the picture in his hands. Obito’s grin turns bright enough Kushina can’t look at him head-on. 

As soon as the door closes, Obito turns to her. “I would die for that kid,” he breathes, awed.

“No. You’re not allowed to die,” Kakashi cuts in, and Kushina had barely noticed him moving to right behind Obito . 

Obito shrieks, leaps nearly a foot in the air. “Don’t do that to me, Bakashi.”

Kakashi rolls his eyes. “Maybe you should be more aware of your surroundings if you don’t want to get snuck up on.”

Obito scowls at him. “Well maybe —”

“Enough!” Obito turns guiltily to her. Kakashi just looks slightly more sullen. “If you two want to argue, you can go somewhere else.”

“Sorry, Kushina-sensei,” Obito hangs his head sheepishly. 

“Right! If you two can manage to not for awhile, you’re helping me make dinner.” 

“Yes, Kushina-sensei.” Obito follows her into the kitchen, and Kushina snags Kakashi on the way when he doesn’t move to help. 

He glares at her, but it’s not like he can do anything about it when he’ s the one in her house. Of his own volition. Against hers. Evil child. 

Once she’s got them working, she lets herself relax a bit, centers herself, and lets herself feel more presently how much lighter the weight on her shoulders feels now that Mikoto’s promised to bear some of it. (And now that Obito’s there beside her, laughing and kneading dough and flicking flour at Kakashi when he thinks she isn’t looking.)

“Hah! I got you! That means I win!”

“I wasn’t even moving ,” Kakashi protests, and looks a bit like he would attack Obito if he weren’t currently restrained. 

“Again, Obito.” Obito reluctantly retracts his chakra chains with a pout. “This time, you get to move,” Kushina tells Kakashi, and Kakashi gets an evil little glint in his eye. 

This time, when Obito’s chakra chains shoot towards Kakashi, Kakashi dodges between them, leaping up and around and evading them easily. 

“And,” Kushina adds, “this time, you’re sparring.” Kakashi doesn’t waste a moment, shoots forward immediately through a gap in Obito’s defenses and sweeps the legs out from under Obito. The chains poof away, and Kushina snorts. “You’re allowed to move , you know.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to move while I’m keeping those things moving too?!” Obito shrieks indignantly, and Kushina feels a little smug. “I can’t do it. ”

Kakashi kicks Obito in the head, too light to actually hurt. “So what?” he asks, tactless as ever, “You’re always bad at things, what makes this any different!”

“That’s—” Obito pauses, his usual indignation put on hold. Kushina watches the gears turn in his brain, watches as he understands… something. Then, he’s hopping to his feet, looking renewed, like Kakashi’s given him some motivational speech instead of insulting him. Kushina feels a bit like she’s missing something, but given that Kakashi is involved, this is an outcome she should have entirely expected. She backs away slowly, lets them spar more, and very much tries not to understand anything going on with them.

Rin laughs at her, when she reaches the edge of the training field. “They’re pretty weird, huh?”

“So weird,” Kushina confirms, well aware it sounds fond more than anything. It’s a shame Minato’s too tied up with his Hokage duties to train with them, but when Rin looks at Kushina with big eyes and asks for help with the utterly horrific seal she’s drafting, Kushina can’t say no to that face. It’s a peaceful evening, overall, spent laughing at Rin and listening to Obito getting more practiced with his chains, getting to a point where he can snark back at Kakashi more often than not. It feels nice. Like home. Like the air before the storm rolls in, calm and peaceful and perfect to make room for what’s to come. 

Chapter Text

“Pacing’s not going to make this go any better, you know,” Mikoto comments wryly.

Kushina shoots her a frazzled glare. “This is a horrible plan.”

“It’s the best plan we have.” Minato sounds horribly pained, and he doesn’t look up from the paperwork he’s stress-working on. 

“But just leaving them there—”

“—is a horrible plan that puts them at too much risk and is going to go horribly and get them all killed. We know.” Mikoto raises a single judgemental eyebrow.

Why did Kushina ever date this woman?

“They’ll be fine ,” Minato stresses, unconvinced. 

“Look”—Mikoto sighs, sits up properly—“I get that you don’t like this, and I get that it sucks ass, but seriously , they’re not genin anymore.” 

Kushina drops into her chair, rakes a hand through her hair. She knows that, knows they’re stronger than they’ve ever been, knows the plan’s been ironed out more thoroughly than she’d known possible. It’s still a huge risk , though, and she trusts her kids, trusts Rin’s planning abilities, but—sending her kids into the ROOT facilities, letting Danzo believe for even a moment that he would get his slimy hands on them, leaving them alone there makes her want to rip her hair off, sets the kyuubi’s chakra boiling beneath her skin. 

It’s almost worse, that they can’t participate in the main raid. That they just have to sit here, so Minato can hiraishin them in when the kids give the signal. It’s the only plan they have, though, that can minimize possible casualties to such an extent. If it works, it will properly streamline the process and make detaining Danzo go as smoothly as it can, give them more than enough evidence to legally let the Uchiha do whatever they want with him. It’s the best way, too, to minimize disturbance to civilians. If all goes well, they won’t even know it’s happened. For all accounts, it’s the best possible route. 

It still pisses Kushina the fuck off , and she hates that it has to be the kids heading it. 

“ Breathe , Kushina,” Mikoto reminds her, and she becomes aware of the kyuubi’s chakra seeping from her, taking advantage of her antsiness to writhe in its keep. She listens to Mikoto, takes a deep breath and forces it to recede again. “They’re not even fighting, this way. They’ll be fine. ”

Minato’s hand on her shoulder is grounding, helps her properly lock it away. She cannot afford to let it compromise her, cannot afford to be anything less than entirely present, ready the moment they’re signaled. 

They’ll be their kids’ only protection against Danzo, after all.

Obito catches the kunai aimed for his jugular with on of his own, slits theirs with barely a thought spared. It’s almost rhythmic, downing the ROOT agents. There’s a part of Obito that feels a little sick, at the thought, at the idea of how easy it’s become to kill. There’s a part of him that relishes in it, too, that hates these people for being part of what happened to him, no matter how little they may have been involved. That part of him is hateful, and scared, and wants nothing more than to burn the world to the ground for what it’s done, for all the pain it’s so easily caused. 

It is the part of him he keeps locked away, the part that scares him, that whispers in his ear at night to remember , to think about what was done to him and to rage , to make the world pay . It is useful, though, in times like this, lets him retreat back into himself, and watch with a dull, strange sort of clarity as he downs agent after agent, as his hands grow bloodier than they have ever been. 

They don’t have a choice, can do nothing but survive until they get their chance, until they can get to the kunai Danzo had so easily taken. 

Kakashi chidoris an agent that was going for Obito’s back, and Obito blocks a kunai aimed for Rin. Then, at her signal, they drop, and Obito throws his arm over his eye as Rin slams her seal into the ground. The ROOT agents are far easier to take out when they’re still recovering from the light of Rin’s questionably legal seal-work. 

They were not meant to be a part of this fight, were not meant to be facing off against their village’s bogeyman et al., but Obito can’t think of anyone he’d rather face such impossible odds beside. 

The crack when Kakashi hits the ground reverberates painfully through him, sets his teeth gitted and him struggling to breathe. It’s just a moment of recovery, but it’s enough for the ROOT agent to drive a harsh kick into his side. Kakashi looks up just in time to see the end of a glowing chain run straight through their chest. He takes it as the opportunity it is to shove to his feet and slit their throat. 

Obito spares him a flash of a smile that makes his heart clench, and they return to the battle.  Few lower agents are left, now, and Danzo seems to have realized it, sending in the occasional wind-blades without bothering to step into the fight himself. 

Kakashi gives a fuuton jutsu of his own to catch Obito’s katon, turning what would be a simple jutsu into a deadly blast of directed flame—

Rin freezes behind them. Kakashi has to stop himself from turning, has to keep his focus to his front, to protecting Obito’s back and trusting them to be enough. He cannot give them that blindspot. 

“It’s a seal!” Obito calls, too loud even with the fighting, and Kakashi’s mind rests more securely on the fight. If Danzo bothered with a seal, he won’t have gone for something truly harmful—he’s likely reluctant to kill any of them, perhaps still hopeful to recruit them…? 

Danzo calls for a fuuton jutsu Kakashi’s never heard before—a sickening sound as Obito slams into the wall in front of Kakashi, and the world goes red .

Fugaku reaches the epicenter of the ROOT facilities just in time to see Obito hit the wall, and his first thought is that he’s fucked up, again , and Obito continues to suffer the consequences. 

And then the air is filled with unrestrained killing intent, and Fugaku’s gaze is brought to Hatake, to the rage leaking from him. To the chirping birds and the lightning gathering at his fingertips. Danzo doesn’t dodge in time, the lightning is through his chest in the space of a blink.

The body hits the ground, and Fugaku understands with a sudden clarity, recognizes the tenseness of Hatake’s shoulders, and knows that this kid did not have the capacity to manipulate Obito into giving away his eye—not with that much care for Obito. 

He steps closer to pull Hatake back— Danzo fades away. 

Fugaku grabs Hatake and throws him back, leaps back himself fast enough that the windblades only graze him instead of completely decapitating him. It’s easier than it’s ever been to bring forth his mangekyo, rage and horror and pain filling him at the bloodline theft he knew had taken place, but he’d still hoped—

He slams the ribcage of his susanoo down around them just in time to block the next few before they could reach the kids. Because that’s what they are. Kids.

Fuck , Fugaku thinks, with feeling. 

As the Uchiha clan head’s susanoo settles around them, Danzo’s seal wears off. Rin feels a spark of irritation alongside her freed movement; seals are what she’s good at, and she doesn’t much like having them turned on her. 

She brushes her ruffled pride aside, lets herself settle into the background, lets them ignore her as they have through the fight. She’s always known she wasn’t meant to be a frontline fighter, and this will be no different. She will fight smart, and planned, and using every scrap of advantage her enemy gives her. Cracks in someone’s perfect defense can become her blade if she can only sink her claws into them. 

With susanoo surrounding them, she lets an ounce of her attention slip to the hall the Uchiha head had come from, hears a silence that can only be a success or a damnation. She looks to the confidence the Uchiha head stands with, any uncertainty coming from the bloodline thief he faces, and knows that they are winning, that he felt confident enough to leave his clan to deal with the rest of the in-village ROOT agents—

The ground shifts, and she’s forced to rebalance, to return her attention to the fight in front of her. The moment of distraction would have cost her, if not for the Susanoo, would have left her at the mercy of the summons Danzo calls upon. It is large, and monstrous, and Rin has to resist the urge to falter, to yield to it. But Obito is behind her, and she would not leave his protection to even a susanoo. 

The beast roars, charges, and again Rin finds her attention drawn away. The cracks in the susanoo’s ribs become a secondary concern as Kakashi emerges from the ground behind Danzo, snatching the Minato’s kunai just as the susanoo’s ribs shatter. Rin can only hope it will be enough as the beast begins to warp the space, to pull them towards it. 

Kakashi throws the kunai in the instant Danzo catches on, and Danzo throws him backwards with a snap that can only signify the breaking of bones. 

And the world goes still. 

Danzo’s laughing. Obito’s down and Danzo’s laughing.

It’s the only thing Kushina can register when they land in the epicenter of ROOT. It sets Kushina’s world calm. Flat. A moment of quiet before the rage , rolling over her and consuming every waking thought. She barely feels herself summoning her chakra chains, has Danzo run through with them with nary a thought. Danzo reaches out, goes to attack Obito again, and the Kyuubi’s chakra explodes out of Kushina, coating the world around her with wrath like she’s never felt before. 

Obito pushes himself up on his hands, brings himself back to awareness. 

The first thing he notices, when the ringing recedes and the world begins to make sense again, is the silence. The world is quiet, still.  He looks around him and finds the devastation he’d expected, but… nobody’s moving . The remaining ROOT agents remain still, nothing of them moving but for a faint quiver. 

It takes him a moment to register Kushina. She stands in front of Danzo, hair flying out behind her and face twisted in wrath. There’s a cloud of strange, powerful chakra around her, swirling and changing, occasionally forming into the shapes of… tails? Nine of them, splayed and bubbling and radiating power , something other . 

Obito knows killing intent, he knows the feeling of it permeating the air, and the way it makes people freeze . Obito knows killing intent, and when he looks around he sees the effects of it surrounding him. He sees the tremour in those left standing, sees the people who’ve been brought to their knees by it, but he doesn’t feel it . Instead, he feels… warmth. Like one of Kushina’s hugs, like hearing her promise that she’s never going to let anything bad happen to him ever again. She’s protecting him , he realizes, and it only makes him feel all the warmer. 

“Kushina.” Minato can think of no other way to reach her, forces his feet forward through the sludge of the kyuubi’s chakra. The air burns with it by the time he gets close enough to reach her, and he has to limit his world, cannot focus on anything but pushing his hand to rest against her shoulder when every instinct screams at him to run . He can’t run, and he doesn’t want to, because this is Kushina , and because they need Danzo alive , no matter how much Minato would like to watch Kushina rip him to pieces. 

“Kushina!” She hesitates, this time, boiling chakra letting up for a moment as Minato’s voice breaks through to her. “We need him alive .”

“ Minato —” Her voice is underlayed with an unearthly growl , sending a chill down Minato’s spine and setting his hair on end. 

“Kushina,” he repeats, “we need—”

Danzo topples, and Rin standing over him, dirty and beat up but alive , is one of the best sights Minato has ever been privy to. She spits on him, crude and unladylike and perfect , and the kyuubi’s chakra recedes with a snap. The air of the clearing changes, lightens, and Minato stumbles slightly with the lifted weight, stabilizes himself on Kushina. 

“Rin!” he calls when he can breathe again, “Kakashi, Obito, where—”

“Sensei!” Rin jolts to him, as if snapping out of a haze, wide-eyed and innocent again despite the blood spattering her. 

She turns, abruptly, and Minato follows her gaze to—“ Kakashi! ”

He’s splayed on the ground, and when Minato gets close enough he can see the gouge across his chest, the awkward angle that says at least one of his arms is broken. 

Rin hits the ground a moment after Minato, running diagnostic chakra through Kakashi. 

“ Is he safe to move? ”

A beat of silence passes. Then, “Yes . He’ll be okay,” she tells him, and a moment later Minato’s setting Kakashi in the hospital bed while Rin calls for a doctor. He’ll be okay, Minato reminds himself, and really wishes he weren’t so familiar with the sight of one of his kids bloodied and in a hospital bed. 

The rumble of the kyuubi’s amusement is almost enough to make Kushina stumble, worsened when its chakra recedes, when it stops fighting to free itself from the restraints. 

Kushina barely feels Minato stumbling into her back, barely feels him run off with Rin. All she can think of is Obito, and that she doesn’t know if he’s even still alive. 

She looks around wildly—and he’s stumbling over to her, tired and dirty and whole , and the world falls back to its axis. “ Obito—”

He gives her a weak smile, more tired than anything though there’s a spark of satisfaction to it. “Hey, Kushina-sensei.”

She raises her hands in an offering, one he can ignore if he wishes, and he slumps into her arms, head falling to her shoulder. Sage , she thinks, realizes Obito’s almost taller than her now and knows he probably will be soon. So many times in these past years, she’s almost lost him, and Sage she wants to see her dumbass kid get to be taller than her. 

When Minato comes back for them, extends a hand with a smile, it’s the easiest thing to grab his hand, to pull Obito into the harsh hospital lighting he hates so much, and to relish in the five of them, alive and whole and in one place.