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Chapter Text

Sasuke was not proud of the way he died.

He tries not to think about it, but not because of the reason you'd expect.

You see, it had been a nice evening. The breeze was light and cool against his face, the shadows on the buildings in Konoha's residential district were lengthening, now more blue than brown, and Sasuke was sitting outside on his balcony to enjoy the sunset. He'd been feeling alright that day, which was an improvement from most days. He was getting used to Team Seven's particular brand of weirdness and even though he didn't exactly look forward to their meetings, they had fixed themselves as a reassuring constant in his life.

Sasuke breathed deeply and turned his face to the warm glow of the sunset.

He was seated on the balcony railing, something every good parent warned their kids about. But Sasuke's parents were six years buried, so he figured he could indulge himself in a childish whim if it meant the wind reached him more easily.

All it took was a misplaced distribution of weight and a slight nudge from the wind, and Sasuke fell.

He was so surprised that he mustered no coherent thought other than the image of a question mark in his mind until he fell past the flower box on the third-floor balcony. The geraniums have bloomed, he thought distantly, before the screaming alarm bells of panic registered. Every thought begged for attention all at once until they blended into white noise and one thought prevailed.

I am going to die.

He didn't know what to do with the revelation. The jumble of thoughts that resembled radio static likely did, but the first floor was approaching fast and Sasuke didn't know where to begin unravelling his thoughts. With the disconnected observance of 'well, this is going to suck' as his final thought, Sasuke met the pavement face-first and died.

And that should've been the end of the story for him.

Apparently not.

Sasuke opened his eyes again - something he was mildly incredulous about, as he expected to be in some form of the afterlife - and looked down at his corpse.

Blood lay dashed about the pavement like a stain from a dropped tomato, pooling around the mess of his body. Some of it even reached the wall of his apartment building, a morbid arc sprayed across the whitewashed wall that would now need a new coat of paint, because a bloodstain on a white wall would never wash out, supernatural influence or no. The Uchiha crest glared proudly up at the evening sky, the same brilliant shade of scarlet as his blood. There was a paste-like substance like bright red mashed potato where his body near merged the pavement.

Sasuke grimaced.

"I really could've died any way and yet I fell from a fucking balcony?" He groused to himself. He nudged his body with his foot in irritation - it went straight through. He frowned. "The hell?"

A scream rang out from behind him. Sasuke whipped around to find an elderly woman and her son staring - not at him, through him - at his corpse on the ground in shock and horror.

The old woman's eyes filled with tears. Sasuke remembered her; she was fond of him, having a better impression of the Uchiha than most by virtue of her daughter marrying one, and she insisted on giving him candy every time they met in between their respective apartments. Now, she stumbled forward and would've fallen to her knees by his body, sobbing and crying his name as her son pulled her back, face pale and grim.

Sasuke shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. He was right there, wasn't he? His body was dead but his ghost (?) was alive, standing right in front of them - couldn't they see him?

Unlikely, as the older woman - Akiyo-san - collapsed to the floor with her son an ever-present support at her side. They both continued to look through him, at the mess of his body. Should he say something? Could he say something? Would it matter if he could? They couldn't see him, and he couldn't touch anything. What good would being a disembodied voice do?

He stepped away from his body and stood off to the side, feeling a little awkward at being the subject of such grief when he was standing mere meters away. If Akiyo-san was so affected by his rather idiotic death then his team would be insufferable.

He stiffened.

Team Seven would be a mess. Sakura would probably bawl her eyes out for days. But Naruto and Kakashi?

He had grown a little closer to Naruto, perhaps, in the aftermath of the Wave mission. He had heard that his perceived death then had caused the blond to go berserk. But there were no enemy shinobi here, no one to rage at, just Sasuke and his dead body and the stupid method of death that had led to this. Naruto might be angry, yes, but once he found someone else to bicker with, he would forget. Maybe Kiba or Sakura, if Sasuke's death made her realise how foolish her crush was and let her focus on the boy who had devoted as much attention to her as she had to Sasuke.

Kakashi...was an enigma. Sasuke honestly didn't know how he would react. Maybe he'd be the one to realise it had been a stupid mistake, and he'd click his tongue and sigh or maybe chuckle a little at the antics of his dumb little genin. Kakashi always seemed so unaffected that Sasuke honestly couldn't see him reacting overly emotionally. He was a beacon of rationality in the mess of their team, even if he didn't seem like it at times.

Anbu seemed to materialise out of thin air, and Sasuke jumped. One ushered the weeping Akiyo-san and her son away as the other crouched by his body and nudged his head to the side. The crushed, red, pulpy mess of Sasuke's face tilted towards them, blood and brain matter leaking from what couldn't feasibly be called a face anymore, dripping onto the red-soaked pavement below.

Sasuke went cold.

His eyes.

They were looking for his eyes.

His next breath - if he was even breathing anymore - shook on the way in. Over and over again until Sasuke was laughing hysterically, hands clutching at his impossibly whole head and pulling at his hair until tears sprang to his eyes, safe in their ghostly sockets.

The first thing Anbu looked for was not whether he had been stabbed, poisoned, or killed otherwise, not whether he was somehow still breathing, not how they could peel his mangled body off the pavement before any more old women could see it - they looked for his precious eyes.

Sasuke felt a surge of vindication for his manner of death. They couldn't steal his eyes when they were indistinguishable from the smashed remains of his head, now, could they?

"You're fucking revolting." He said aloud, laughter bleeding through and shaking his words. "Disgusting. I'm dead and you still covet my blood? Well take a look!" He spread his arms wide. "It's everywhere! Take your fill, you scum! I can't even be at peace when I die." His laughter trailed off into a sob. He brought his arms in again and covered his face with his hands, sinking to his knees as his shoulders shook with repressed anger and despair.

"I can't even be at peace when I die because of you." He spat in a voice choked with sobs. The Anbu remained oblivious, focused on separating his body from where it nearly melded with the pavement.

Kakashi appeared in a swirl of leaves a while later, when the sun had sunk below the horizon and the Anbu had put his poor excuse for a body into a body bag for the mortician to deal with. Sasuke had long dried his tears and was conducting a fruitless experiment on whether or not he could kick an Anbu's head and have it be felt with enough rage and determination.

Frustrated and a little bored, Sasuke drifted over to where Kakashi was speaking urgently with the second Anbu who had comforted Akiyo-san and her son.

"...cause of death?"

The second Anbu shook their head. "It looks like a suicide as far as we can tell, but the other half of our squad is checking his apartment and looking for witness testimonies as we speak. If anything unusual appears, you'll be notified; but here is where your jurisdiction ends."

"He's my student." Kakashi insisted, and Sasuke had never heard him sound so desperate. He drifted in between them to get a better look at his teacher's face.

"He was your student." The Anbu corrected. "You have no other relation to him. Unless you are his family or legal guardian, you will not be informed of any more proceedings unless there is a funeral."

Sasuke watched Kakashi's face fall. This was the most animated he had seen the man since Wave, and he felt uncomfortable for causing such an emotive response from his normally unruffled teacher.

"I'm alright." He said, though he knew it was useless. "I'm still here. It was a mistake, Kakashi-sensei. It was my fault."

A thought occurred to him and Sasuke let out a cry of frustration. "I could've saved myself! I'm a shinobi, for Sage's sake. I could've stuck to the walls or used a jutsu. I'm so fucking stupid."

The Anbu disappeared, taking Sasuke's body with them, and left Sasuke and Kakashi alone beside the massive splatter of blood that had lain beneath the corpse. There was a bone-deep sorrow in Kakashi's eyes as he looked out over it that seemed to add to the weight on his shoulders.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, still slightly miffed by his own incompetence, and lightly slapped the man's arm. His hand phased through him again. "It was my fault, Kakashi-sensei. It was a stupid mistake. I'm right here." He said irritably.

Kakashi placed a hand over his eye where it was covered by his headband. "I'm sorry I failed you, Obito." He said quietly. "I'm sorry. You told me to see the world for you and all I can show you is where the last of your family died."

"I'm right here!" Sasuke insisted. "Why the hell are you talking to your dead teammate? What use is that eye of yours when you can't even see who's in front of you? Look at me!"

Kakashi crouched by the stain, visible eye downcast. Sasuke's anger surged.

"Look at me!" His shrill cry fell on deaf ears. "It's me! Sasuke! Not your stupid dead teammate! Stop looking at him! I'm right in front of you, aren't I?!"

As if in response, Kakashi shook his head mournfully. He got to his feet and shushinned away in a swirl of leaves, and Sasuke was left alone.

He screamed out his frustrations to the still night air, raising a chorus of barking dogs and hissing cats along the quiet neighbourhood. Those who walked down the street to yell at the animals or simply go about their nightly walk gave the scene a wide berth. Even if Sasuke was invisible to them, the unnatural behaviour of the animals paired with the massive stain of blood and the fury emanating from it was enough to deter even the hardiest of people. Sasuke screamed until his phantom throat was raw and he had no energy left to be angry anymore. For want of a better place, he lay atop his place of death and stared up at the stars until they blurred with tears.

He couldn't bear the thought of re-entering his apartment only to find it ransacked by Anbu and being unable to set anything straight. He didn't want to see the looks on his teammate's faces once they were given the news of his death. Kakashi's reaction had soured the thought, his blood rising to the boil again at the mere thought of that sorrowful eye looking down at the spray of red and mistaking it for someone else. Like the Anbu, he had looked at Sasuke's body and only seen the back, his crest, and his Uchiha lineage that connected him to Obito and gave him the same Sharingan eyes. What would Naruto and Sakura think of him, then? Would they even see him for who he was? Or would they be as blind to him as they were now?

More importantly, what could Sasuke do now?

Everyone would know of his death by the next morning, and he couldn't blame them - he was, for all intents and purposes, dead. But he was still there, just untethered from his body. His apartment was at the mercy of Anbu. His team - he didn't want to think about his team. Even as a ghost, he wasn't so desperate to live among the ones, real or imagined, that he thought haunted the abandoned Uchiha compound. And if they were real..., would they be as happy to see him as he would be, the Uchiha failure, spared on a whim?

Itachi.

Oh, Itachi.

His brother would rejoice at the news of his death, wouldn't he? All he would know was that Sasuke was dead and he didn't have to lift a finger. His only sadness would be at the fact that he could not harvest Sasuke's eyes to supplement his own for greater power.

Just like Konoha.

There was no anger left to shield himself against the great grief and loneliness that filled him at the thought. He curled into a ball and covered his head, burrowing his face into the high collar of the shirt he'd died in. The Uchiha crest felt more like a brand on his back than it had ever felt in his life, burning like a miniature sun and blinding the eyes of anyone who looked at him with delusions of grandeur. And himself, too, he supposed, in the small moment where his anger couldn't protect him and so he succumbed to self-loathing and despair. He too had thought of himself as better, thought he would be better, stronger, good enough to live up to his brother's expectations, right up until he'd fallen from his balcony as a result of a foolish indulgence.

It seemed the only thing he was good for was stubbornly clinging to life long after he'd outlived it once again.

What did ghosts do, anyway? The motives he'd heard of, curled up at his brother's side as they read ghost stories together because Sasuke insisted he could handle it, fell into two categories: revenge and love. Sasuke's death was an unhappy accident. There was no love nor revenge to be had there - even if there was, he had no power to interfere in the pursuit of either. He was, as Itachi had said, weak, pathetic, and powerless, even more in death than he had been in life.

Sasuke closed his eyes and hoped against hope that in the morning, something would've changed.

...

It hadn't.

The morning sun's beams fell through him rather than onto him, creating a very curious sensation as it blatantly contradicted his new form's naturally low temperature. He huddled into the shadow of the apartment building's wall and discovered that the blood had been washed off the pavement as he'd been asleep. The street before the building looked the same as it had before he fell - though still faintly stained - as if he'd never died at all. If it weren't for the fact that he could see the ground through his hands he wouldn't've believed it either.

Akiyo-san emerged from the apartment lobby, red-eyed and basket in hand. She looked down sorrowfully at the spot where he'd died, blowing her nose on a handkerchief as she continued her sad walk to the grocery store a few blocks away. Once again, she didn't seem to notice Sasuke watching her from the shadows. Nothing had changed.

As the sun continued to rise, Sasuke ducked from shadow to shadow, testing the limits of how far he could walk. Some ghosts, he knew, were tied to the place they died. That didn't seem to be the case for him, however, as he wandered into the main thoroughfare of Konoha's central shopping district with little difficulty. He tried to float like he'd heard ghosts could do and only succeeded in jumping around like an idiot and faceplanting into the road. Thank the Sage no one could see him, he thought to himself as his ears burned with shame and he hid his face behind the collar of his shirt. He wandered a little, trying and failing to interact with the physical world and discovering the disturbing ability to walk through people. It didn't cause them any discomfort other than a slight shiver, but it disturbed him to accidentally witness what exactly a person's skin was covering. Organs were covered by skin and only seen stationary outside the body for a reason, thank you very much.

He decided to leave the shopping district after that, favouring the quiet back roads where he wouldn't walk into anyone by accident. A thought occurred to him as he passed through a narrow alley, and he held out his hand towards the wall. The corridor wasn't wide enough for him to stretch it out to its full length, but when he did, it went through the wall.

Sasuke grinned.

After a moment's hesitation, he leaned through the wall and into the nursery room on the other side. The baby lying in the cot blinked up at him with big brown eyes. He waved to it, feeling rather foolish, and his eyes widened in surprise as the baby gurgled and waved its tiny fists at him. He walked across the room and the baby's eyes followed him as far as it could move its head. He walked back up to the cot and the baby continued to stare at him.

"You can see me?" He asked, confused.

The baby burbled nonsense at him and smacked at his hand.

Sasuke blinked.

It could see him. It couldn't touch him, and neither could he, but it could see him. He waved his hand in front of its face, and, sure enough, the baby watched it and tried to grab at it.

"Interesting." He mumbled to himself. He waved to the baby once more and walked away, through a kitchen and the master bedroom until he came out into the front garden.

No one else noticed as he cut a direct path through the houses to see where he'd end up, though he found that young children and sometimes the elderly could sense his presence.

He tried using his chakra to stick to walls and found to his delight he still could. His other jutsu had no effect, however, and his katon merely travelled through any nearby obstructions until it burnt itself out. Still, being able to walk on walls was achievement enough for the recently dead Sasuke. He hummed a tune he half-remembered as he ran across the rooftops for want of something to do.

His feet took him on the familiar path to Team Seven's training grounds before he could stop himself. He perched on the closest roof for half a moment, hesitating, before he decided there was little else for him to do and approached.

He heard them before he saw them.

Sakura was collapsed on the ground sobbing as if her heart had been shattered in her chest. Naruto was standing before a tree with a fist-shaped dent in its bark, shoulders shaking, fist riddled with splinters and a few stray rivulets of blood dripping onto the floor. Kakashi was standing in front of them, sombre, with his garish book nowhere in sight.

Well, Sasuke thought to himself, feeling rather discomforted by his teammates' reactions. As expected. He wandered around the clearing a little to get a better look at them. Tears streamed down Naruto's face unchecked as he glared daggers at the ground as if to blame it for Sasuke's death. Kakashi's one visible eye was clouded over in grief and likely a reminiscence on his former Uchiha teammate's death. Sasuke kicked him in the ankle for that, though the man couldn't feel it. When Sakura finally raised her head, her eyes were red-rimmed and raw, tears still falling down her pale cheeks.

"I thought he liked us." She choked out. "I thought he was okay with being with us. Why would he-" She broke into fresh sobs and dropped her face into her hands, shaking like a leaf.

There was a loud cry and a crash as Naruto punched the tree once more, cracking the bark until the middle of the tree could be seen. With an almighty groan, it fell backwards, and Kakashi yanked both Naruto and Sakura out of the way as it snapped in half, sending a hail of splinters into the clearing. Sasuke moved to step away before he realised he couldn't exactly die twice and so stood there, unaffected by the needle-like shards of wood, and wandered over to where his team had moved.

Naruto was screaming. Not unusual.

"We were supposed to be rivals! He was supposed to wait for me!" Naruto yelled, digging his nails into his scalp. "Why would he die so stupidly?!"

"Fuck off, dead last." Sasuke groused. "I don't want to hear that from you."

But Naruto didn't hear him.

"He killed himself!" Sakura shrieked, despair boiling over into anger. She shot to her feet and glared at Naruto with hands curled into shaking fists. "He chose to do it! It was his choice! You don't get to spit on it - Sasuke is gone, Naruto! Don't talk about him like that!"

"It's the truth!" He spat back. "Think about it! Why would Sasuke want to die?! We're his team! He can't just leave us behind!"

"He did!" Sakura screamed. "He did, he did, he did! Accept it!" Tears were pouring down her cheeks in earnest and Sasuke slowly backed away from the emotional scene. That, unfortunately, put him in a position closer to Kakashi than he would prefer. He swiped at the man again just for good measure.

"I won't!" Naruto howled. Orange chakra was beginning to cover his body and both Sasuke and Kakashi frowned, the latter in worry and the former in confusion.

Kakashi stepped between the remnants of Team Seven. "That's enough." He said sternly before things could escalate. "Sasuke is dead. The circumstances are currently under investigation, but other than that, his death is the only fact we know for certain. There's no use arguing over it."

Naruto was still simmering with anger. "If someone killed him, Kakashi-sensei, then we gotta avenge him!"

"We will do nothing like that." Kakashi said firmly. "If that is the situation then it's not something a genin could handle. Especially when we're missing a member of our team. Whatever the results of the investigation, we can do nothing. Do you understand?"

"But-!"

"I said, do you understand."

Naruto gritted his teeth and looked at the ground. Sakura began to cry silently.

"Good. My second announcement is that Team Seven is to be disbanded."

Naruto and Sakura looked up at Kakashi in shock. Even Sasuke was surprised.

"They can't do that!" Naruto cried. Sakura was shaking her head with wild eyes. Her trembling had intensified.

"They can." Kakashi said grimly. "We're missing a member. I have proven to be incapable as a sensei. You two can choose to either quit being shinobi and follow another career path or choose to continue and be drafted into another team."

"But they can give us another teammate, can't they?" Sakura asked quietly, desperately. "Or a new sensei. Right?"

"You can't replace Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto yelled.

Sakura was slowly shaking her head as if coming to the realisation herself. "No. No, they can't."

"I think replacing Kakashi-sensei would be a good idea, actually." Sasuke muttered to himself. It went unnoticed.

"That's another reason why Team Seven is being disbanded." Kakashi sighed, and he dropped into a formal bow. "I apologise for not being the teacher you wanted, but the teacher you ended up with. I hope your lives take a turn for the better after we part."

Without giving Naruto and Sakura the chance to even move, Kakashi disappeared.

Sasuke scoffed. "Prick."

"That's it, then." Sakura said in a shaking voice. Naruto fell to the ground, wide-eyed and pale as a sheet.

"Yeah." He murmured, still looking like he couldn't quite believe it.

They sat in silence for a moment.

Just as Sasuke had begun to contemplate leaving, Sakura dried her face on the edge of her skirt, rubbed her eyes, and got to her feet.

"Hey, Naruto. Wanna get ramen?" She asked softly, as if she was afraid he would reject her.

Naruto blinked, startled out of his thoughts, and nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, let's do that." He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. He and Sakura made a sombre pair as they left the training grounds and headed for the restaurant district.

"Maybe they'll end up together." Sasuke mused, and snorted at the thought. "And all it took was my death. Wow."

Well and truly disbanded, he thought to himself bitterly, and was surprised to see Kakashi reappear at the training grounds. The man looked after the two heads of blond and pink sadly before his expression turned serious.

"Whoever's there, show yourself."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. Kakashi was looking in his general direction, squinting a little as if unsure, and his gaze stayed fixed somewhat in Sasuke's direction as he moved about to see if it was him Kakashi was asking about.

"Show yourself or I will be forced to reveal you by any means necessary, and you will be taken into questioning." Kakashi announced coldly.

"I'm right fucking here, you idiot." Sasuke called out. Kakashi still couldn't hear him, it seemed. He walked right up to the man and watched him grow even more tense as he did. Sasuke waved a hand in his face.

"Oi. Stupid."

"Show yourself!" Kakashi barked. Sasuke jumped.

"What the hell do you want me to do? I can't!" He hissed. "I've tried! You're just fucking blind!"

Kakashi hooked a thumb under his headband and revealed his Sharingan eye. It spun red and Sasuke flinched, taking a step back.

The eye paused in its inspection of the clearing and focused intensely on him. Kakashi's eyes widened.

"Sasuke...?"

Sasuke looked at him with a healthy amount of disgust, shock and a hint of fear. "Fuck you." He spat, and if Kakashi still couldn't hear him the Sharingan could read lips rather well. For good measure, Sasuke flipped him a hand sign he wouldn't need his hearing to understand and ran.

Kakashi shushinned in front of him but Sasuke ran through him, shuddering as he did, and through the next house he could reach. He cursed the fact that the Sharingan could apparently see ghosts - how the fuck was he supposed to know that? How the fuck did that work?! - as he took the most roundabout, vague, directionless route to everywhere except where Kakashi was. He finally stopped inside someone's empty study, taking deep heaving breaths that he didn't really need. Once he regained his breath, he cursed Kakashi with every word he knew.

What better reason could he have, other than his newfound distaste for the man, to avoid him? He thought bitterly to himself. How dare Kakashi look at him, so lost, so filled with grief, and know he wasn't seeing Sasuke but someone else?

"I'd bet once he gets over seeing me, he'll see if he can find Obito next." Sasuke muttered.

He paused, then.

Could he?

If one Uchiha ghost could exist, could another? It should be plausible, right? Sasuke looked around the empty room uselessly. After a moment's hesitation, he activated his Sharingan.

Again, nothing.

But the compound-

Sasuke shook his head violently at the mere thought. He wasn't going back there. He couldn't. How could he face his family in death, being so useless a son that he couldn't even die properly?

He couldn't. Not until he figured out how he had gotten here and how to pass on to the Pure Lands as any good dead person should.

Could Obito help, then?

If Obito was an Uchiha who had died in unfortunate circumstances and had awakened his Sharingan before then - maybe he would know something. If anything, at least he would have more experience with being dead and generally existing in Kakashi's vicinity. Sasuke groaned aloud at the prospect of having to be near Kakashi again and continued to grumble as he walked through the house out into the sunshine of a Konoha morning once more.

Hopefully Kakashi was a competent enough jonin to be somewhat nearby, Sasuke thought moodily, looking left and right for the irritating tuft of grey hair that was his sensei's trademark.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and the world turned on its head.

In the moment between one blink and the next, Sasuke had been transported to a nearby roof and would've reeled forward in shock had it not been for the firm grip on his right shoulder.

So Sasuke did what anyone would in an unfamiliar situation with a stranger holding onto them and not letting go.

He turned his head and bit them. Hard.

They let go in shock and he stumbled forward, spinning around to glare at them in suspicion with his Sharingan active because people shouldn't be able to see him, let alone touch him, and the only one he'd known to do one of those things had been-

Kakashi looked at him with what looked like genuine shock, a bite mark just above his wrist and his Sharingan still exposed to the world. "Sasuke-" He began.

"I don't want to fucking hear it-!" Sasuke spat back, seconds away from working himself into a tirade before he caught sight of the girl at Kakashi's elbow.

She waved enthusiastically once she realised he was looking at her, not through her, and approached with a skip in her step.

"Hi! Sorry about Kakashi, but he's not exactly used to the whole 'seeing ghosts' thing. As you can probably tell." She offered her hand. "I'm Rin. Nice to meet you."

"Sasuke." He replied automatically. "You're...dead? Also dead?"

"Yup. You could say Kakashi's a bit of an old hand at collecting ghosts." She winced. "Which sounds kinda bad now that I've said it out loud. Whoops. You know what, disregard that."

Sasuke glared up at Kakashi suspiciously, but the older man seemed to have left his physical body in shock and was merely an empty shell staring wide-eyed down at them.

"Point is, I knew Kakashi when I was still alive, so I've kinda stuck around once I died. Not exactly much else to do, is there?" She chuckled and nudged Kakashi's side. "Someone's gotta keep an eye on this oaf."

Sasuke decided that Rin was a person worthy of respect. "Do you know how to pass on?" He asked, hope batting its ragged wings against the bars of his ribcage.

She shook her head and once again it died in his chest.

"Oh."

"Don't sweat it." She patted her shoulder and smiled sympathetically. "Being dead and alive can be kinda fun. You've discovered the whole impermeability thing, right?"

He nodded.

Rin grinned. "Then that means you know how to do this!" She headbutted him, which likely wasn't what she meant, and they both dropped into a crouch on the ground nursing their bruised heads with twin groans of pain.

"I don't think that went the way you wanted it to." Sasuke grumbled. Rin laughed.

"Nope! Sorry, never met another ghost before. But you know what I mean."

Sasuke grimaced. "Don't you find it gross?"

"You get used to it." Rin shrugged.

"Rin?" Kakashi asked in a shaking voice.

Sasuke saw her raise her eyes to heaven as if seeking patience. "Yes, Kakashi. It's me." She said sweetly as she turned to face the older man. To Sasuke, she said in a stage whisper, "Watch this, he's gonna think I'm a figment of his imagination."

"How long have you had to put up with this?" Sasuke whispered back.

"Over a decade."

Sasuke sucked in a breath through his teeth. "That's...a while."

"It never gets better." Rin muttered.

"But I thought you were..."

Rin gestured at a shocked and distraught Kakashi as if to say 'see?'

"Obito gave him his eye and yet he still has a problem with seeing people." Sasuke muttered, disgusted.

"Oh! You know about Obito?"

"The barest details. Do you...have you seen him? As a ghost, I mean."

"Wait. Stop. Hold on." Kakashi tried to put a hand on both their shoulders and looked surprised as they fell through empty air.

Sasuke bared his teeth at him. "Fuck off, sensei."

"Don't take that tone with me, young man." Kakashi said sternly. "Now, you. And... Rin." He hesitated. "What's going on?"

"What does it look like?" Sasuke snapped. "We're dead. We're not figments of your imagination or your old dead teammates - well," He glanced at Rin. "One of us is. But we're not anyone else. We're us, we're real, and we're dead. End of story."

"What he said." Rin added.

"So you're both ghosts."

"Correct."

"And you're both still here. And I can only see you both with the Sharingan."

Rin nodded. "That checks out with what we know. Do you have anything to add, Sasuke?"

"Walking through people is gross." He added. "And you suck. Big time."

Rin turned away to stifle a snicker.

Kakashi made a grand effort to stop himself from rolling his eyes. "Sasuke. Do you remember anything about your death? Was anyone there? Did you see anything?" He asked seriously.

Sasuke resolutely turned his head. "I'm not telling you anything."

"You'll tell me, though, right?" Rin asked with a conspiratorial grin.

Sasuke eyed her suspiciously. "Only if you don't tell Kakashi-sensei."

"Deal." She held out her hand, and he shook it.

Kakashi looked down at them helplessly. "Rin, please. Sasuke's died. We need information for the investigation." He coaxed softly.

Rin shrugged. "Well, he hasn't told me anything yet."

Sasuke glared at Kakashi as he turned back to him. "You looked at my dead body and called me Obito. I'm not telling you anything."

Rin grimaced.

"I was just talking to him. Sasuke, it wasn't how you're imagining it. I knew it was you."

"And yet you started talking about someone else like I didn't even matter." Sasuke snapped. "Like it was Obito who had died all over again and not me. Like I wasn't the one who'd just become one with the pavement. I've been on a team with you all this time and the moment I'm out of the picture I discover you haven't been seeing me for me but rather someone else. How many times have you had to stop yourself from calling me by his name rather than mine, huh, Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi flinched.

"Alright, let's stop while we're ahead." Rin held up her hands in the time-out gesture and stood between them. "Sasuke, you can tell me about your death later and I'll let Kakashi know if it's important to investigate or not, and we can go from there. Kakashi; yes, we're both dead, and yes, we're both still here. Deal with it. Now, can we do something else that doesn't involve verbal abuse and unaddressed past trauma?"

"I just want to pass on." Sasuke said obstinately. "That's it. And if I can't do that then I want to be able to hit people again."

Rin stared at him. "...We can workshop that." She clapped her hands and turned a sunny grin onto Kakashi. "What about you?"

"I think I'd like to sit down." He said faintly.

Rin nodded. "Finally, a sensible suggestion. Sit, sit." She continued to insist until all three of them were seated on the rooftop. Sasuke deliberately sat as far away from Kakashi as he could while still being part of the conversation. That left Rin as the mediator between the two since Sasuke was pointedly avoiding his teacher's eyes.

"I think hitting people - well, at least, interacting with the living world - could be something unique to you, Sasuke." Rin pointed out.

"But I tried kicking the Anbu's head in multiple times and it didn't work."

"Sasuke." Kakashi chided.

"They deserved it." Sasuke muttered.

"But you bit Kakashi."

Sasuke blinked.

Kakashi waved his forearm in the air. The pink marks were still visible on his skin. "You did. Which I commend you for as a shinobi but as a teacher, I should tell you that you can't go around biting people."

"So if people can only see ghosts with the Sharingan, and Sasuke, who has a Sharingan, could bite you when you haven't noticed me for years, there must be something to it." Rin nodded to herself. "It must be unique to the Sharingan."

"Does that mean that I might be able to interact with ghosts because of my Sharingan?" Kakashi asked. "Because I could grab Sasuke when he bit me but not when I saw him at the training grounds."

"What was different about those times, then?"

"I didn't have my Sharingan activated." Sasuke said slowly.

"And with that in mind, we can conduct an experiment." Rin rubbed her hands together devilishly. "Sasuke. Could you see ghosts before?"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Before my death, or before I awakened the Sharingan? Because both times would be no."

Rin waved her hand impatiently. "After your death."

"Not until I noticed Kakashi could see me only with the Sharingan. I thought if I did the same, I might be able to see other ghosts." He dug his fingernails into the back of his other hand. "...I thought they might be able to explain why I'm still here. How I could move on."

"Which is a completely valid avenue of thought." Rin patted Sasuke's shoulder solemnly. "We'll pursue it once we've gotten ourselves up to scratch, don't worry. Now, to conduct this experiment, we need a few more ghosts for a larger sample size, at least one more Uchiha ghost - preferably with an awakened Sharingan - and at least one alive Uchiha. Or someone else with a Sharingan eye."

"We can't conduct the experiment." Sasuke said sharply. Rin blinked.

"Why?"

"Most people who fit into those categories are dead, Rin." Kakashi said awkwardly when Sasuke was no longer forthcoming with answers. "Or they're sitting next to you. Let's just operate under the assumption that a Sharingan is required to see and at least one on both sides is required for interaction."

"I suppose." Rin acquiesced with a pout. "Despite assumptions being highly unscientific. Don't look so down, Sasuke. At least you can hit Kakashi."

Sasuke grumbled something under his breath and refused to elaborate.

Rin sat bolt upright. "Oh! What if we go find Obito?"

"Obito?" Kakashi asked, and looked around as if saying the boy's name would cause him to appear. "Haven't you seen him?"

Both Rin and Sasuke shook their heads.

"I haven't seen an Uchiha ghost yet." Sasuke murmured.

"And I haven't seen anyone!" Rin added cheerfully. "Well, at least, not until Sasuke. I'm just your average garden-variety ghost. It's a bit weird that Obito isn't here, though. I thought he would've stuck around at least."

"Ghosts aren't just tied to people, though." Sasuke mumbled to himself. Rin and Kakashi turned to look at him and he hid his face behind his collar. "Like in the stories. Some stay for people. Some stay tied to their place of death. Some are just angry."

Rin and Kakashi looked at each other. Rin clicked her fingers.

"The boulder." They chorused. Sasuke frowned.

"Boulder?"

"Obito died in a landslide." Rin elaborated.

"He was trapped under a falling boulder trying to save me." Kakashi added quietly.

Rin gave Kakashi a flat stare and aimed a slap at his leg. Her hand went through him instead. "Stop blaming yourself."

"It was my fault. I should've-"

"Don't care. Stop. It's bad for your health."

"How did you get his eye if he was crushed?" Sasuke interjected.

"We had a small window of time." Rin's mouth twisted into a regretful smile. "Unfortunately, it wasn't long enough for us to figure out a way to get him out. Iwa sent reinforcements before we could do anything else."

They all fell silent. Kakashi distracted himself by pulling out a small bottle and popping a pill.

"Need the chakra." He murmured by way of explanation.

"Boulders are traditionally used for containing spirits, so it's plausible that Obito could be stuck to his." Sasuke said slowly. "If we go find it, we might be able to - speak to him, or something. But if we want to get him free, it might be a different matter altogether."

"It's a start, at least." Rin mused. "I'm not expecting Obito to have all the answers, but it would be nice to see him again."

"It would." Kakashi agreed softly.

Rin clapped her hands to dispel the mournful atmosphere. "Okay! We've got a plan of action now. We go find Obito's boulder, find Obito, and bring him along if we can. We'll figure out the rest once we're back in Konoha."

Rin and Sasuke turned to Kakashi expectantly. He blinked. "I can't just up and leave. I have a team."

"Not since this morning." Sasuke reminded him. "You're a jonin. Take paid leave or something. Or unpaid. I don't care."

"Yeah! Use the leave you've got marinating in your files somewhere since you can't seem to take a goddamned break." Rin's playful slap would've been just as painful as Sasuke's words had it connected. "You probably have enough to cover three years and a half. At least."

"But..." Kakashi floundered uselessly. "I can't just up and leave."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "What's stopping you?"

"I need to apply for leave...get my things in order...empty my fridge...organise my house..."

"There's nothing in your house." Rin scoffed. "All the things you mentioned can be done within a day or two if you get off your butt and start doing them. Come on, chop chop."

"But what about Sasuke's funeral?" Kakashi protested weakly. Rin blinked and turned to Sasuke, who looked as surprised as she was.

"...They're having a funeral?" Sasuke asked suspiciously.

Kakashi nodded. "It hasn't been announced, but they will. If they let your death fade into obscurity it would sit badly with the rest of the clans."

"The other clans didn't give a shit when mine died. Why should they care if I get a funeral or not?" Sasuke sneered. "To them, the last Uchiha's out of their hair. Nothing more."

Kakashi decided not to address the issue. "They'll have one for appearances, at least."

Sasuke muttered something very unflattering under his breath. Kakashi and Rin pretended not to hear him.

Rin sighed. "We'll stay until the funeral, then. But in the meantime, put in your request and get your affairs in order. I won't tolerate any slacking off. Sasuke will smack you for me if I catch you."

Kakashi eyed Sasuke dubiously, to which Sasuke lifted his chin. "I will."

"You're both terrible." Kakashi said with a put-upon sigh. "But fine. I'll sort some things out. But only after the funeral, okay?"

"I'll take it." Rin agreed with a grin. "This'll be fun! A big ol' road trip with just the three of us. Ooh! We should bring snacks!"

"Maybe we can continue that avenue of conversation when I'm not actively being drained of chakra." Kakashi said drily, before Rin could ask for anything more. Rin pouted.

"I hate being invisible." She grumbled with a click of her tongue. "You're lucky, Sasuke."

"You think I want to be seen by this fool?" Sasuke grumbled.

"Why are you both so mean to me?" Kakashi wondered aloud.

Rin and Sasuke stared at him. "Because it's funny." They chorused.

Kakashi tried to ruffle their hair and shivered as his hands went through them again. Sasuke shared his disgust, wrinkling his nose at the sensation.

"Don't make me look at the insides of your hands ever again."

"Roger." Kakashi agreed faintly.

He pulled his headband over his eye and Rin and Sasuke vanished from his sight. Kakashi sighed.

"You're free to stick around if you've got nothing better to do, Sasuke." He said to empty air. There was no response, but he hadn't expected one. Kakashi got to his feet and cast his gaze over the seemingly empty rooftop once more before he turned on his heel and shushinned back to his apartment.

Later, as he sat on the couch staring blankly up at the ceiling, the abject strangeness of the entire situation registered and Kakashi mumbled "What the fuck?"

It definitely hadn't been some sort of grief-induced hallucination - Kakashi knew those, and they usually took a much darker turn than his conversation with Rin and Sasuke. Though they had begun to fade, the marks from Sasuke's teeth were still there as a testament to his continued existence.

On a whim, Kakashi activated his Sharingan and looked around the room.

Sasuke walked past him, raised an eyebrow, and vanished through the wall into the kitchen.

Kakashi rubbed his eyes and deactivated his Sharingan. Okay. Sasuke was still there, at least, and the Sharingan would've picked up if he was a genjutsu or some sort of transformation jutsu. It had not, meaning he was for all intents and purposes, real.

Ghosts existed.

Kakashi pressed his lips together as memories of the people he'd lost came to him unbidden. He'd seen Sasuke, talked to Rin - what about Minato-sensei? Kushina-nee? Obito? His fa-

Kakashi hunched over and covered his face with his hands. No. He couldn't do this. He couldn't face all the people he'd loved and lost no matter how desperately he wanted to see them again. What would they say? What would they think of him, a failed jonin-sensei who'd let his student die and was quite literally haunted by his mistakes? What would Minato-sensei and Kushina-nee think of how he'd let the village treat Naruto all those years? What would Obito think upon hearing that the only thing Kakashi had seen with his eye was death?

What did Rin think of him?

Kakashi's nails dug into his skin. Rin had been by his side ever since his death and she had seen everything. She had seen him fall into Anbu, into despair, into ROOT, and fall apart under the weight of the deaths on his shoulders. Her death, among others. She had been his first night terror and the reason he scrubbed his hands raw when he was too terrified to go back to sleep - and she had seen all of it. She had been there, she had seen ev e r y thi ng-

A presence seemed to materialise before him. Kakashi's head jerked up, Sharingan already active-

Sasuke stood before him with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. "Rin says you're bringing down the atmosphere in this apartment by seventy per cent. Stop ruminating."

"Sasuke."

The boy in question raised a derisive eyebrow.

"Can you activate your Sharingan for a moment, please?"

There must've been something in his voice, because Sasuke did and let him take his hand without question. There was something in his dark eyes as he watched Kakashi clutch onto him like a lifeline, but he didn't say anything and Kakashi didn't have the energy to contemplate it. After a moment's hesitation, Sasuke's fingers thread through his own.

"You're a fool." Sasuke murmured, and it almost sounded sympathetic.

Chapter Text

Dinner had been a sordid affair, with Kakashi trying to stick pieces of himself back together into something resembling a functioning human and both Rin and Sasuke politely not mentioning it. He strained his Sharingan for as long as he could just for the assurance that they were there even if it made him feel guilty every time he caught sight of the kitchen counter through their bodies. Despite their protests - well, Rin's, who bullied Sasuke into begrudgingly saying that they weren't strictly necessary - he burnt offerings for them instead of a meal. It made him feel better, at least for a little while.

Without the Sharingan, he couldn't see Rin at all, but he caught glimpses of Sasuke hovering around him in mirrors and reflective surfaces. His expression - what he could catch in the moments between seconds - looked very put-upon, so it was likely that he was there at Rin's behest and not his own. Or perhaps, Kakashi dared to hope as he caught Sasuke's eye through the bathroom mirror, he cared enough to go along with Rin's demands without much of a fight.

It was deeply disconcerting to try and fall asleep in an apartment he knew wasn't as empty as it looked. Especially since one of the people occupying the space was his former student; Rin had seen him struggle through nightmares before, but he couldn't let go of his pride as a sensei and let himself break down in front of Sasuke. Not when the boy was likely struggling to come to terms with his death by himself.

"Are you alright, Sasuke?" He asked the room at large as he lay in bed, dreading the moment he would close his eyes. For a moment, there was silence, and Kakashi exhaled quietly. He hadn't been expecting an answer anyway.

Something skittered across the floor.

Kakashi sat up and watched in apathetic fascination as a pencil was lifted off the ground and across the room. It was dropped unceremoniously halfway, and Kakashi didn't need to hear him to imagine Sasuke's frustrated curses as it was picked up again. It made the journey over to the wall facing Kakashi and slowly rose up it, twitching minutely as it began to write characters on the wall.

Rin says go to sleep

Kakashi huffed, a smile on his lips. "I asked about you, Sasuke. Don't change the subject."

The pencil jerked as if Sasuke were pretending to throw it at him, but his lack of control over his newfound ability to grasp things meant the pencil flew out of his incorporeal hand and would've hit Kakashi square on the nose. He caught it before it could connect and raised an eyebrow at the writing on the wall. "I hope that was an accident."

There was a tug on the pencil. Kakashi loosened his grip and Sasuke took the pencil back to write a response.

I wish it wasn't

"You really shouldn't be rude to your sensei, you know."

Not my sensei

The pencil jerked again and clattered to the floor. It rose up and began writing again.

Rin says you need to be quiet and go to sleep

Kakashi tilted his head. "But she hasn't said anything about you calling me names? I find that hard to believe."

The following words were short, sharp and silted.

She did

Kakashi snorted in amusement. "I'm glad. Just answer my question, and I'll go to sleep and be out of your hair, alright?" He wheedled.

The pencil paused in the air, surprisingly still, and didn't move for a long moment.

I'm fine

Sasuke wrote at last.

Now go to bed

"Don't think that'll put me off. I'll be asking about this later." Kakashi said mock-threateningly.

Whatever

Kakashi rolled his eyes and laid back down. "Don't forget to clean all that writing off the wall." He called over his shoulder. The pencil began writing again, stopped, and continued. Kakashi rolled over and caught sight of a caricature rolling its eyes at him. "Very mature."

Sasuke drew a hand flicking him the middle finger and placed the pencil back on his desk.

Kakashi dozed off to the sounds of Sasuke trying to figure out how to rub the pencil off the walls. He slept without dreams and woke not feeling rested, but rather relieved he hadn't conducted himself embarrassingly in his sleep besides the usual ending up in positions he swore he hadn't been in the evening before. The wall was clean, at the very least, and he caught sight of Sasuke's trademark fluffy hair in the metal insignia of his headband before he fixed it over his eye. "Morning." He greeted aloud.

Sasuke didn't write on the walls again - likely because he couldn't be bothered to clean them again - but the pencil moved on Kakashi's desk as Sasuke wrote an echo of his greeting on a discarded piece of paper.

"Glad you've found a better alternative to graffiti." Kakashi said cheerfully and was rewarded with the words 'I am rolling my eyes at you'.

"This reminds me of the games I used to see Academy students play with coins and Ouija boards." Kakashi mused thoughtlessly as he pulled a shirt over his head. "Kokkuri-san, was it? You're like a real-life Kokkuri-san, Sasuke."

The words 'I am rolling my eyes at you' were underlined. Kakashi chuckled as Sasuke wrote further. 'Rin says to stop dawdling and start doing what you promised you would.'

"Can Rin not write?" Kakashi asked curiously. Sasuke stole an eraser, etched 'no' onto one side, 'yes' onto the other and 'maybe' on the ones in between. He flipped it so it displayed the side with 'no' written on it face-up.

Kakashi hummed. "Are you using your Sharingan to interact with things?"

The rubber flipped to the 'yes' side.

'Rin and I have been experimenting with what I can do,' Sasuke wrote. 'But I can only pick up small objects so far. I'll get better - it just drains my energy like the Sharingan would've.'

Kakashi frowned. "What happens when your energy is drained?" He asked.

The pencil paused. It spun erratically in the air as Sasuke tried organising his thoughts.

'I disappear.' Sasuke wrote finally, and Kakashi's breath caught in his throat.

'I blinked, and I woke up on a mortician's table. It was morning, and I was lying inside of my corpse. I didn't know how much time had passed until I got out.'

"And you didn't see or hear or feel anything in the time between when you...passed out, for want of a better word, until the morning?"

The rubber flipped back to the 'no' side. Sasuke's next words were written in a firm, pressing hand as his dissatisfaction bled through his handwriting. 'I didn't even so much as catch a glimpse of the Pure Lands. There was nothing.'

"...Well, I'm glad you're still here, at least." Kakashi tried.

'I'm not.' Sasuke wrote shortly. The pencil fell onto the desk and Kakashi sighed.

"No, I don't suppose you would be." He murmured to himself as he dressed in his jonin uniform. A chakra signature prodded at his seals as he left his bedroom. He turned into the kitchen and was met with the sight of an Anbu operative crouched at his window. Kakashi frowned and let them in, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed as they stood stiffly to attention.

"The Hokage requests your presence."

"Now?"

"As soon as possible."

So now, Kakashi thought to himself moodily. Not even enough time to make breakfast. He glanced around the kitchen but didn't see either of his ghostly companions, and he couldn't risk revealing his Sharingan lest the Anbu assume he was threatening them.

"I suppose I could spare some time now." Kakashi sighed. The Anbu gave him a sharp nod.

"Don't be late." They tossed over their shoulder in lieu of a goodbye before they body flickered away.

"Rude." Kakashi grumbled as he eyed the open window balefully.

Something light fell onto the countertop behind him, and he turned to find it was the piece of paper and pencil Sasuke had been writing with in his room.

'You do that all the time.' Sasuke had written near the bottom of the page.

"Because it's cool when I do it. If anyone else does it, it's just annoying."

'I am rolling my eyes' was underlined for the second time.

"How cute. I assume you both heard what Turtle said?" Kakashi asked at large as Sasuke underlined 'I am rolling my eyes' for the third time. He hesitated. "...Are you coming?"

'Rin is.' Sasuke replied. 'I'm going to rearrange your sock drawer.'

Kakashi snorted. "Why?"

'Because you suck. Obviously I'm coming; what else do I have to do, you dumb-'

The pencil skittered across the page and rolled across the countertop. Kakashi caught it before it hit the floor. "I assume Rin wasn't happy with the end of that sentence. If we're all ready, let's get going."

He risked a glance with the Sharingan. Rin gave him a big grin and a thumbs up; Sasuke gave him a much less courteous middle finger and was promptly smacked by Rin. Kakashi chuckled to himself as he pulled his headband back over his eye and left through the window the Anbu had left open. The morning breeze had a bite to it, or maybe it was just long exposure to his ghostly companions. The sun was pleasantly warm as he left the shadow thrown by his apartment building, and as he crossed from the golden morning into the shadowed office of the Sandaime Hokage, he couldn't help but thoughtlessly ponder the change of atmosphere. It was warmer when Minato-sensei was Hokage, he thought to himself as he bowed before the Sandaime.

Hiruzen gave him a smile tinged with sadness. "Thank you for answering our summons so soon. I apologise for the urgency, but we have much to discuss."

"It's no trouble." It was, actually, but you couldn't say that to the Hokage's face no matter how lenient he was.

If he was aware of the insurgent atmosphere, Hiruzen didn't show it. "On behalf of Konoha, I express my deepest regret and heartfelt grief at the loss of one of our children and the last of the Uchiha clan. As his teacher, I cannot begin to fathom the anguish you must feel in the face of this tragedy. We have suffered a great tragedy."

"Thank you for your condolences, Hokage-sama." Kakashi murmured politely.

"I am aware they may seem merely empty words to you. But mere words cannot express the depth of my sorrow for this truly unfortunate situation we find ourselves in. Please remember that my door is always open if you wish to talk."

It really wasn't. "Of course, Hokage-sama."

"Your other students have been taken care of, rest assured." Hiruzen told him as he lit his pipe. "They have been given two weeks to recover. You may be surprised to know that they both chose to continue the path of a shinobi. It seems the death of their teammate has served to strengthen their resolve."

"They're strong." Kakashi agreed, blatantly contradicting his inner voice who wished Naruto and Sakura hadn't. "I'm sure that despite the loss they've suffered, they will rise above their grief and remember it as a cause worth fighting for."

"The death of children is a powerful motivator." Hiruzen said with a note of true sorrow in his voice.

Kakashi inclined his head, not trusting himself to answer. "Has there been any progress in the investigation into Sasuke's death?" He asked instead.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to share with the public until the results have been decided." Hiruzen replied apologetically. "But the funeral will be in two days. If you believe the process will be painful to experience, you do not need to attend, but I recommend you do."

Kakashi inclined his head stiffly. "I will take your advice into consideration."

"Of course. I assume you've already spoken with our T&I department about any extenuating factors you believe may have led to Sasuke's death." It wasn't a question - it was a statement, daring Kakashi to open his mouth and contradict himself. Of course, this wouldn't be a concern if Kakashi had nothing to hide, but he was acutely aware that the room wasn't as empty as it looked. He had felt an eerie sensation of being watched ever since he'd left the house and while he couldn't activate his Sharingan to check, it had been the same sensation that had led to him being able to see Sasuke the first time. He assumed it was Sasuke at least; he'd never felt anything like it before despite Rin being by his side since the day he killed her she died.

He knew the circumstances were not as they seemed, but he kept his mouth shut and said nothing of it.

He said nothing, only nodded jerkily and let his eye curve into a smile as fake as the Sandaime's condolences. "Of course, Hokage-sama."

"Good. It always saddens me to see one of Konoha's best shinobi struck by tragedy." Hiruzen smiled. "You may go now. I don't want to keep you for too long."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Kakashi bowed, and without ceremony, left the room with the feeling of eyes boring into his back. He let out a breath he didn't realise he was holding and began to walk through the halls of the Hokage Tower, looking for a window to leave by.

The quiet click of a cane against the floorboards was all the warning Kakashi had before he turned the corner and came face to face with Shimura Danzo.

"Shimura-san." Kakashi greeted as the temperature suddenly plummeted. The feeling of having an unseen presence by his side was no longer mere foreboding but now downright dangerous as the very air seemed to darken. Sasuke's influence, Kakashi thought to himself as his hands involuntarily curled into fists. But why?

"Hatake-san." Danzo greeted in turn. "I take it you've just met with Hiruzen?"

Kakashi nodded once. "I have."

"He spoke to you about Sasuke, did he not?" Danzo enquired, but he sounded like he already knew the answer and was merely asking for Kakashi's benefit.

"He expressed his condolences and informed me that there was a funeral to be held in two days." Kakashi affirmed. He didn't know if it was Sasuke's unexplained sudden agitation making him paranoid, but something seemed off about the councilman.

Danzo inclined his head. "Indeed. Though it is true that we are unable to share details of the investigation with outsiders," And didn't that sting. "I can reveal that enquiries are being made into possible suspects."

"So the investigation is proceeding under the assumption it was a homicide?"

"You can draw your own conclusions if you wish."

Kakashi pressed his lips together and looked at the floor.

Danzo placed a hand on his shoulder. "There's no need for you to concern yourself with such matters anymore. But if it is something you feel strongly about, don't hesitate to talk to me. My door is always open." Danzo said in a voice that was a thin degree of separation away from kind, unwittingly echoing the Sandaime's words from mere minutes ago. And yet Kakashi knew that he could not talk to either of them about what he knew, so once again he kept his mouth shut.

Danzo seemed to take his silence as understanding and patted his shoulder once more before he walked away in the opposite direction. The oppressive atmosphere shifted as he moved away, caught between following the councillor or continuing to mire Kakashi in the very discomforting feeling that something was deeply wrong. It stayed but wasn't happy about it, and the feeling of danger became one of fury. Kakashi watched the wallpaper begin to peel away from the walls with detached fascination as he hurried through the Tower and out through the nearest window. The sun had fully risen over the horizon now, yet Kakashi felt chilled to the bone. Still, something kept his hand from revealing his Sharingan to see why Sasuke was so agitated until he was back within the relative safety of his apartment.

Sasuke wasn't present - at least, not in the traditional sense. Kakashi caught a glimpse of dark hair, the Uchiha crest and redredred writhing and contorting as Sasuke flickered throughout the room and the lights turned on and off of their own volition.

"I think you'd better stop looking for a bit." Rin smiled, but it was strained, and she looked on the verge of vibrating apart at the seams herself.

Sasuke grabbed Kakashi's collar and snarled in his face. "He stole their fucking eyes." He spat with a gaping maw instead of a mouth, before he let go and reappeared in the centre of the room, whole and uninjured but still visibly shaking with rage. Deeming it safe to approach, Rin stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"What happened, Sasuke?"

"That piece of shit Danzo." Sasuke ground out. "Has my fucking family's eyes in his arm."

Kakashi went cold.

"How do you know?" He asked faintly.

"Because their ghosts are still attached to him!" Sasuke hissed. A sharp gesture nearly smacked Rin in the face. "They can't fucking leave because that bastard had the balls to steal their fucking eyes! They're stuck, they can't leave, and Shisui-nii and all the rest aren't even fucking people anymore-"

Sasuke dragged his nails down his face agitatedly. "They're just shadows." He choked out. "They're barely there. They can't even speak, they just make noises and it's fucking unbearable. I couldn’t even look at them for too long because I couldn't stomach it."

Kakashi's hand went to Obito's eye. "Then-"

Sasuke shook his head. "I haven't seen anything. I've looked. Maybe it's because it was a gift, and Danzo fucking stole theirs."

"Do you think he'll steal your eyes now that you're dead?" Rin asked quietly.

"I don't know. He might try, but they're smashed to bits so they'll be of no use to anyone." Sasuke began pacing. "I need to be cremated. Maybe that's why I'm still here. I haven't been buried properly yet."

"Would you feel better if we stole your corpse and performed the proper rites after the funeral?" Rin asked softly.

"Yes." Sasuke said empathetically. Rin turned to Kakashi, who, after a moment's hesitation, nodded slowly. "If it's after the funeral, we can give it a go. We don't want to attract too much attention."

"Whatever it takes. I don't want to end up like Aunty Sei and the others." Sasuke gnawed fruitlessly on his bottom lip. "Can't we tell someone that piece of shit Danzo desecrated my family?"

"It takes...a lot of work to accuse someone like Shimura Danzo." Kakashi said slowly. "And I can't do anything with only the words of a ghost as evidence. If I try accusing him without proof, it could put me in a very bad position."

"We know he was stealing clan children at the very least, because he created a sort of private army called ROOT with them." Rin added. "Kakashi nearly joined it. The Hokage tried to shut it down once, but if he couldn't, then this operation runs a lot deeper than we might be able to handle. It's not something to be taken lightly."

Sasuke dragged his hands through his hair in frustration. "So there's nothing we can do? That piece of shit is walking around the village with my clan's eyes in his arm and I'm just supposed to - what, let him be?"

Kakashi shrugged helplessly.

"You could kill him." Rin piped up. Both Kakashi and Sasuke stared at her. "We're dead, right? But you can pick things up, and if he's got Sharingan, it means you can touch him. Since we're already stealing your corpse, why not add another to the list? We'll steal his as well and give the eyes a proper burial."

"I don't think you should be endorsing that course of action-" Kakashi protested, but Sasuke was already nodding in agreement.

"I can do that." His lip twisted in a vicious smirk. "I can do that. It would be fitting for the last of the Uchiha to rid the world of a bloodline thief."

Rin thought for a moment. "Won't it look suspicious if Danzo dies only a day after you did?" She mused.

"What are they going to do, suspect a ghost?" Sasuke sneered. "Even then, I never had a reason to so much as speak with the man before I died. Once they find the eyes, they'll just assume it was an attack targeted at people with the Sharingan."

"But no one other than us knows he has them." Kakashi pointed out.

"No one knows we know, either." Rin countered, but hesitated. "But the death of a high-ranking man like Shimura Danzo, especially after your death, Sasuke, will cause unrest in the village. Especially if the news about the stolen Sharingan gets out."

"And it will draw unnecessary attention to me, since I'll be the only one in Konoha left after a rash of murders targeting people with the Sharingan." Kakashi continued. "That'll cause problems if we want to go find Obito. They won't let me leave the village - at least, not alone."

Rin clicked her fingers. "And that would suck because it would mean we would have to be real sneaky about communicating with each other. It might make explaining why we have the sudden urge to visit Obito's place of death harder."

Sasuke visibly controlled himself. "So we do nothing." He grit out.

"We wait." Rin corrected. "We plan. Revenge is a dish best served cold, after all. If we're going to plot a murder, we have to do it right and in a way that is satisfying for all parties. Well, except for the victim."

Sasuke didn't reply, his brow furrowing further as he digested Rin's words. Rin waited patiently and Kakashi took the opportunity to sink into a chair at the kitchen table.

"...Fine." Sasuke spat out eventually. "I don't like this. At all. But fine."

Rin placed a hand on his shoulder, and, deeming it safe, wrapped him in a one-armed hug. "Thank you, Sasuke. We'll get around to it soon enough."

She gave Kakashi a pointed glare and he held his hands up in surrender. "Hey, I haven't even had breakfast yet."

Rin sighed. "No, you haven't." She grumbled, and let go of Sasuke to herd Kakashi out of his chair and into the kitchen proper. "Go on, eat something. Then we'll make plans."

Sasuke continued to brood in the middle of the room until Rin pushed him into the seat Kakashi had recently vacated. She continued to flit back and forth between the two boys as she chastised Kakashi into choosing a healthier meal option and periodically checked on Sasuke to make sure he didn't become angry enough to mess with the lights again.

"I feel like you're abusing the fact that I can see you now to its fullest extent, Rin." Kakashi pretended to complain as he flopped down in another chair. His bowl of miso didn't even spill despite his seemingly careless actions.

"It's a dream come true, Kakashi." Rin replied breezily. "Watch what you're doing."

"Yes, Rin-sensei." Kakashi ducked to dodge a slap to the head, the action redundant as Rin's hand went through the top of his head.

"Don't you talk back to me, young man. Eat your breakfast." Rin huffed. "Sasuke, can you check on Kakashi's fridge to see what would go rotten if we left for a long time?"

Sasuke grunted and got to his feet, deigning to open the fridge door in favour of sticking his head through it. Kakashi hid a snicker in his bowl of miso at the sight and even Rin turned away to hide a smile.

Oblivious or perhaps just wilfully ignorant, Sasuke called back "You'd better finish the soup stock and the eggs soon. Everything else will be fine as long as we're back within six months."

"Alright." Kakashi replied as Sasuke pulled his head out of the fridge. "Now I know what I'm eating in the two days before your funeral, at least."

"Don't forget you need more food before we head out to Kusa." Rin added as she wandered into the kitchen to join Sasuke. "Preferably non-perishable. Sasuke, help me look for foodstuffs that fit that description, why don't you?"

Sasuke made a noise of acknowledgement.

Jointly, Rin and Sasuke went through Kakashi's cupboards methodically, throwing out what hadn't kept and manoeuvring tinned food and rations onto the kitchen counter despite Kakashi's half-hearted complaints that he hadn't permitted them. Both children ignored him, focused on making sure Sasuke didn't let anything fall through his incorporeal hands.

"It's kind of pathetic that you've got more non-perishables than fresh food, Kakashi." Rin announced as Sasuke set down the last can. "And even then, there's barely enough for a week. You need to take better care of yourself."

Kakashi ignored the last comment and sighed. "Guess I'm going shopping then."

"Are his weapons in order?" Sasuke asked Rin.

"Shouldn't you ask me?" Kakashi asked as Rin and Sasuke ignored him again. "Not that I'm aware of. We'll have to check." Rin answered thoughtfully.

"Why don't you two trust me to take care of my own things?" Kakashi whined. Rin and Sasuke stared at him, then looked pointedly at the small amount of food they'd collected on the table. Kakashi rolled his eyes.

"Okay, but that is another matter entirely."

"Sometimes small matters can be indicative of a larger problem." Rin said sagely. "Regardless. Check your weapons before we go shopping in case you need more."

"I was going to anyway." Kakashi told her. "Why am I letting two genin boss me around?" He muttered to himself.

"Because you love us. Don't forget to wash your dirty dishes." Rin said cheerfully. "If you tell us where your weapons are, we can check on them for you."

Kakashi snorted. "I'm not trusting either of you with the location of my weapons. Especially not since Sasuke can pick things up now."

"What, do you think we're going to attack you in your sleep?" Rin asked teasingly.

"I would."

Rin glared at Sasuke, who shrugged.

"At least you're honest, Sasuke." Kakashi hummed as he placed his bowl and chopsticks in the sink. "I'm going to deactivate my Sharingan to conserve chakra, so please try not to plot behind my back."

"You'd probably drop the kunai halfway. Your motor control isn't that good yet." Rin told Sasuke, and yanked his sleeve as he began to drift over to Kakashi unconsciously, a dazed expression on his face. "No." She said in the tone one would use when warning a disobedient dog.

Sasuke blinked, squinting at the sink suspiciously as Kakashi dutifully washed his dishes. "What the fuck was that?"

"Yeah, it'd be best if you steered clear of water. I get stuck to it on occasion, and I have it on good authority that is not fun trying to peel yourself away from it again. That authority being me." She indicated herself grandly.

Sasuke eyed the sink suspiciously. "Why?"

She shrugged. "Everyone knows that yūrei* are to water what moths are to lamps. Since water is believed to be a source of life, of course our base instincts would demand we stick to the closest source. Once you're aware of it, all it takes is ignoring the urge to avoid getting stuck, but you can get caught unawares if you're not actively ignoring the urge."

Sasuke grimaced. "That sounds..."

"Annoying? You have no idea. Or you will now at least." Rin sighed. "Just another downside of being dead, I suppose."

Sasuke swallowed in discomfort as Rin's face soured into an expression that wouldn't look out of place on his face but looked strange on hers, an almost apathetic expression of consideration as she ruminated in the thoughts of what she had lost the chance to experience upon dying. Clearing his throat, he asked, "...Should we go through Kakashi's things to find his weapons now that he can't see us?"

Rin blinked and gave him a sly smirk, though it looked a little forced. "Don't tell me you plan to make an attempt on Kakashi's life in his moment of weakness."

Sasuke shrugged. "I would, but he'd probably become a ghost just to spite me and then I'd never get rid of him."

Rin chuckled, the last of her sour mood fading from her face. "Well, I suppose I'll have to come with you just in case you try anything."

"If you must." Sasuke acquiesced, and made a great show of being very put-upon as he went to explore Kakashi's apartment with Rin only a step behind him.

"Rin."

"Hm?"

"If you...miss things, and you don't want to talk to Kakashi because you think they'll hurt him," Sasuke awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "You can. Um. Talk to me, if you want. I won't tell. Dead men tell no tales and all that. It might help, I guess."

His hand fell loosely to his side. "You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm just...offering, I guess. I don't know. I think it's polite."

There was a muffled sound behind him. Sasuke hunched his shoulders defensively - Rin wasn't laughing at him, was she? Kami, he was never opening his mouth again.

As if she'd read his thoughts, Rin replied "I wasn't laughing at you." in a voice that sounded like she, at least, had been trying very hard not to. Sasuke's ears burned with embarrassment.

"Whatever." He muttered, and Rin chuckled out loud as she grabbed his hand.

"No, really. I'm happy that you asked. Thanks, Sasuke. I'll keep your offer in mind."

Sasuke responded with the famous Uchiha grunt of noncommittal, and the two began to investigate the apartment together with the poorly masked intent of causing havoc.

Chapter Text

"Alright, what are you two - gah!"

Rin burst into peals of laughter as Kakashi ducked under a cup of paint with shuriken mixed in. Sasuke's smirk was impish as he lit a ghostly flame at the end of a string of wire which had several Icha Icha paperbacks hanging off it like party decorations.

"I kept that paint for emergencies - no! Not my Icha Icha!" Kakashi cried out despairingly as he lunged for the books. Sasuke danced out of the way as Rin darted around Kakashi, forcing him to instinctively dodge out of her way before he remembered she was dead and couldn't do anything.

"Almost...almost...yes!"

Both Rin and Sasuke cheered as the fire reached the first book, Kakashi's wail of anguish joining the curl of smoke that rose towards the ceiling.

"You're both terrible." He complained as he snatched the books back, hurriedly patting out the small flame before it could damage his signed copy of Icha Icha Paradise further.

"The day those books burn will be a dream come true." Rin sighed wistfully. Sasuke nodded in agreement.

"This better be the last of your pranks." Kakashi grumbled. He eyed the paint stain on his floorboards balefully. "That was housepaint, I'll have you know. Do you know how annoying it'll be to get off once it dries?"

"Best get to work then!" Rin grinned, entirely unhelpfully.

Kakashi turned to stare at Sasuke, who shrugged. "With your luck, I'll scratch the floorboards by accident. How many further problems do you feel comfortable dealing with?"

"None, thanks. You're both enough trouble as it is." Kakashi cast his eye over the mess they'd made of his bedroom and sighed deeply. "Did you two do anything productive at all?"

"Well, we found your weapons stash." There were, indeed, weapons strewn on his bed haphazardly. "Or some of. But we didn't want to mess with them too much, just in case we accidentally set off a bomb or something."

"I assume you both know that this was entirely unnecessary and a complete waste of time. If your goal was to get me out of the house faster, you've only succeeded in making me later." Kakashi sighed as he sorted the weapons into groups by type. "Now shoo. I'm going to get out my actual stash of weapons and I don't want you two seeing where I keep them. Especially since Sasuke has already threatened me with bodily harm."

"That's just Sasuke." Rin complained. "Come on, I'm trustworthy. you can show me."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her. "After you two both conspired to burn my precious Icha Icha? No. Shoo."

Rin threw herself on Sasuke's shoulder with a dramatic sob. "Sasuke! Kakashi hates us..."

He patted her back awkwardly. "There there. We can go mess with something in the kitchen instead."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Why are you both more trouble in death than you were in life?"

Rin sighed forlornly. "I suppose we could do something constructive." She squeezed Sasuke's shoulder before she got off him. "Come on. We can organise some writing utensils so we can keep in contact with Kakashi without using the Sharingan."

"Whatever."

Sasuke shrugged as he followed Rin out of the room. Neither bothered opening the door and merely walked right through it instead. Kakashi shook his head fondly. Evidently, he was better at teaching bad habits than anything else. Nothing else in his room seemed out of place, though a few items had been tweaked here and there. Kakashi made a mental note to ask Sasuke about the ghost fire he'd summoned to burn his precious Icha Icha as he detached the books from the length of wire Sasuke had taken. He had to twist his foot at the last second to avoid stepping in the puddle of paint and shuriken and sighed. He could only hope that his ghostly companions weren't arranging another nasty surprise for him elsewhere.

It didn't look like they did, since when he left his bedroom he could find nothing amiss aside from a notepad and pen lying neatly on the tabletop beside his rations. Rin and Sasuke were nowhere to be seen. He cast his gaze about the kitchen and dining room adjacent as he placed his fully stocked weapons pouch on the bench, yet found nothing, even with the Sharingan.

His paranoia was rewarded when he heard a shriek from the bathroom followed by the clatter of something falling. He darted down the hall and wrenched the door open to find Sasuke contorted in a strange position with various bottles in his hands and Rin on one foot with the sink protruding through her hips. Both looked extremely guilty.

Rin held out her hands placatingly. "We can explain."

Kakashi massaged his temples and sighed. "Please, just - thank you both for trying to help. But I feel like you aren't - please. Maybe do something else? Trust me to handle my own equipment, at the very least."

Sasuke straightened as Rin slowly placed her leg back on the floor.

"Alright." Sasuke said quietly. Rin moved out of his way, her expression subdued, as he carefully placed the bottles on the bathroom sink.

"I'm not mad." Kakashi told them both.

"Just disappointed." Rin finished with a quiet smile. Sasuke shrugged.

"Whatever. We'll find something to do."

The two vanished through the wall with one last apologetic look over Rin's shoulder. True to their word, Kakashi didn't see them again as he finished gathering his things and cleaning up the mess they'd made of his bedroom. He'd thought he was used to being by himself, but it felt...eerie, ironically, to be in his apartment void even of the ghosts he'd recently discovered that haunted him. He never would've noticed otherwise, but the loss of their presence genuinely made his world feel a little off-kilter. He kept squinting at shadows as if expecting to see a ghostly child materialising out of nowhere. They hadn't left entirely, had they?

With a sigh, Kakashi scribbled down the last of his shopping list and shoved it into his back pocket. He cast one last gaze over his apartment, and when no ghosts were forthcoming, he squared his shoulders and opened his front door.

Rin poked her head around the doorframe with a guilty smile. "Hi."

Sasuke was beside her with his arms folded, but he didn't look particularly angry or frustrated. He stared at Kakashi long enough to acknowledge his presence before he looked away.

Kakashi let his shoulders slump in relief. The prickling sensation of not being alone and Sasuke's particular aura of silent observation had returned, and it was almost comforting, in a weird, discomforting sort of way. He smiled at the two.

"Hello. Come to help an old man with the shopping, have you?"

Rin laughed as Sasuke failed to disguise an amused snort. "Sure! Just don't expect us to help carry anything. Sasuke and I are here for moral support!" She announced cheerfully, slinging her arm around the boy's shoulders. Sasuke rolled his eyes but didn't bother pushing her off.

"I feel better already." Kakashi cooed. "Come on. Let's go before my neighbours notice I'm talking to myself and stage another well-meaning but misguided psychological intervention."

"Well-meaning, yes. Misguided? Not entirely. Well-founded? Absolutely." Rin frowned mock-seriously up at Kakashi as they forwent the stairs in favour of a rooftop nearby. "You may brush it off, Kakashi, but talking to someone will do you a world of good. Consider it, at the very least."

"I'll go to therapy when Sasuke expresses an emotion other than rage." Kakashi replied drily.

"Very funny." The boy in question muttered. Efficiently distracted, Rin rounded on her new target with steely-eyed determination.

"You too, Sasuke. The only reason you're getting a free pass for now is because we're dead. Once we find a therapist who is willing to offer their services to a ghost...nothing will save you from my grasp. You're gonna talk about your feelings and work through them whether you like it or not."

Sasuke ducked out of her way as she made grabby hands at him with an evil grin. "Since I can count the number of people who'd be willing to do that on one of the grains in my thumbnail, I think you'd better give up while you're ahead."

"One in a million is better than nothing." Rin replied mulishly. "Free therapy and healthcare for all! That's my nindo!"

She punctuated the cheer with an empathetic air punch and a grin. Kakashi smiled at her.

"We'll be with you all the way, Rin. Both me and Sasuke." Sasuke swerved out of his way as he tried to rope the boy in. "Until it concerns ourselves, of course."

Sasuke sniffed. "I am perfectly capable of handling myself."

Both Rin and Kakashi stared at him with pity until he hid his face behind his collar. "Staring's rude." Was his weak defence.

Rin turned away to hide a grin. Kakashi didn't bother. Sasuke glared at them both and stomped to the edge of the rooftop. "Fucking terrible." They heard him mutter to himself.

Rin and Kakashi exchanged smirks as they joined him. "Maa, don't take it to heart, my cute little genin. You just have an underappreciated knack for comedy, is all."

Sasuke scoffed and batted Kakashi's hand away. "That's even more of a bullshit excuse than the time you told us you had to rescue a fish from a river because it was drowning."

"It's very important to care for the environment, Sasuke." Kakashi said primly as Rin doubled over in laughter.

Sasuke didn't even bother to deign the comment with a response beyond a scoff as he turned to look over the bustling market street. As Rin finished wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, Kakashi attempted to ruffle their hair.

"Well, since I would probably scare half the civilian populace and drain my chakra if I keep the Sharingan open to do some basic shopping, I'm afraid I'll have to stop seeing you both for a bit. Be good, and don't get lost, alright?"

Sasuke was running the risk of his eyes falling out of their ghostly sockets with the number of times he'd rolled his eyes during that day alone, but Rin gave Kakashi a thumbs up and a grin.

"We'll do our best!"

Kakashi smiled fondly to himself as he pulled his headband over his Sharingan eye. Rin and Sasuke vanished from his sight as if they'd never been there at all, but their presence remained as Kakashi dropped from the roof and gave a civilian passer-by an acute heart attack. He smiled at the poor woman as she took several heaving breaths and left her be to wander through the sea of people until he came across a grocery store. A bell rang out overhead to announce his presence so the store owner wouldn't suffer the same fate as the woman he'd no doubt traumatised. Rin and Sasuke's silhouettes flittered across the shop windows and caught on the reflective surface of a nearby display. Kakashi hummed to himself as he snagged a shopping basket and browsed the shelves, occasionally replacing the cartons of cup ramen that seemed to mysteriously disappear from his basket. Rin made her displeasure at his unhealthy choice of meals known by using Sasuke to unceremoniously dump a handful of tomatoes into his shopping basket when Kakashi was conveniently out of sight of the other shoppers, and then delivered a warning slap to his shoulder that nearly made him drop the basket in surprise.

"You're being very rude, you know." He murmured aloud. A man browsing the hair care products on offer squinted at him. Kakashi waved him off with a smile. Out of the other man's line of sight, a tomato waggled around in the air as if chastising him.

Kakashi took the tomato and put it back in the basket with a put-upon sigh. "Fine. Since you asked so nicely." And leaving a perturbed civilian behind, he wandered into the fresh produce section and lazily eyed what was being offered.

Rin continued to use Sasuke as her conduit to wiggle various fruits and vegetables at him until she was satisfied with the small pile Kakashi had gathered. When another moment passed without fruits shaking themselves at him or being actively thrown at his head - that would be a fun story to tell at parties, and had earned him a lot of confused stares - Kakashi paid for his purchases and swung the grocery bag idly back and forth as he walked back out onto the street. The next order of business was finding a weaponsmith. Kakashi took to the rooftops again and let his feet lead him down the familiar path to his favourite haunt, deeming the journey too short to risk exhausting his chakra for a conversation that would barely last five minutes. There was no bell on the door to his favourite weapons store, but the man who ran it was far too used to his sudden appearances to be surprised anymore. He grinned at Kakashi as he entered.

"Heyo, wolf pup. Haven't seen you around in a while."

This particular weaponsmith had also been a good friend of his father's. They'd been genin together before he'd left to carry on his family business, but the two had remained friends up until Sakumo's untimely death. Moyashi had remained Sakumo's most vocal defender despite the circumstances of his death, which was one of the reasons why Kakashi let him refer to him by the nickname his father had given him without reacting adversely. Kakashi ducked his head in greeting and smiled.

"Good to see you as well. I got myself stuck with a genin team, you see."

Moyashi made a noise of realisation as he turned away from adjusting a wakizashi on display behind the counter. "I remember now. You told me about them. The pink kid, and Minato and Fugaku's sons, right?" At Kakashi's answering nod, the older man's face twisted sorrowfully. "I heard about what happened to Sasuke. I'm sorry to hear it. It must be hard for you."

Kakashi would've felt worse if he hadn't seen a kunai beginning to rise into the air out of the corner of his eye. He slapped his hand on top of it before Sasuke could succeed. "It's been...a lot to take in." He managed as Moyashi frowned in concern. "I'm thinking of taking a short break outside of the village to clear my head and process. I've been told it's been a long time coming."

Moyashi nodded seriously. "It has. You should listen to whoever told you that, because they clearly know you better than you do yourself. I imagine you're stocking up just in case?"

"Yeah." Kakashi took his shopping list out of his back pocket and tore off the part where he'd listed the number of replacements he needed. He handed it to Moyashi absent-mindedly, keeping a careful eye on the rest of the weapons displayed throughout the shop in case Sasuke tried something else. Moyashi nodded to himself.

"If you wait a moment, I'll grab them for you."

Kakashi nodded distractedly as his gaze fixed on a kusarigama slowly and shakily being lifted off its shelf. "I'll just browse, then." He told Moyashi over his shoulder as he stalked determinedly towards the offending weapon. The weaponsmith chuckled.

"I see you've got your eye on something already." Moyashi called teasingly over his shoulder. Kakashi nodded absent-mindedly as he put the kusarigama back in its place with more force than necessary.

"Don't." He hissed to empty air, keeping his tone terrifyingly light and sweet as his eye curved into a malevolent crescent. The sensation of being watched lessened but didn't vanish entirely - they must've distanced themselves from him. Good to know I've still got it, Kakashi thought to himself cheerfully, and studied the blade. Sasuke had a good eye, at the very least; it was a good weapon, outstanding despite the already high quality of all the wares on offer.

Though Kakashi had been glad for Moyashi's lack of customers on more than one occasion, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of ill-placed guilt for the man's business. Moyashi was passionate about his work and put his all into every weapon he crafted, treating them almost as well as his adopted daughter, and his warm attitude towards the customers he did have was the other half of the reason why they frequented his store. Unfortunately, most of the older shinobi knew him as a defender of Sakumo and had abandoned his store until knowledge of his expertise was no longer mentioned except amongst other Sakumo sympathisers. It was no fault of Kakashi's; and though it had taken years to admit to himself, it wasn't Sakumo's fault either. Moyashi had remained steadfast on that point whenever Kakashi brought it up to him and refused to budge, laughing his concerns off and saying he would much rather keep the company of few but loyal friends than people who came and went like leaves in the wind. It was a quality that Kakashi himself could relate to, despite taking an embarrassingly long time to realise it. The deaths of his genin team had led him to isolate himself and thus concluded that he could no longer care for people at all, shutting out all aspects of his personality like the good Anbu operative he had been to numb himself to the pain.

But Sasuke's death had shown that was not the case. He hadn't had enough to process it fully - and if he had his way, he would never - since the boy's ghost had appeared, defying all logic and common sense, but he knew the moment his brain decided he had time to spare, there was a breakdown of continental proportions waiting with a very large baseball bat. He had cared for his new team seven far more than he would admit to out loud, and it had been genuinely heartbreaking to disband them after such a short time. Even his own team had lasted longer, for all the good that did.

If Rin knew what he was thinking, she would've been adamant about sending him straight to therapy as soon as he'd paid for his weapons. But as far as he knew, being a ghost did not come with the power of telepathy, though Rin did give him a look that promised a Talk after he'd reactivated the Sharingan, his shoulder still tingling from the hearty pat Moyashi had given him in farewell.

She didn't mention it in front of Sasuke, however, only asked "So, what next?"

"I was under the impression that you two had sorted everything out." Kakashi hummed noncommittally, mentally patting himself on the back for sounding like he hadn't been thinking very dark thoughts in the time it had taken Moyashi to prepare his weapons.

Sasuke scoffed. "You kicked us out of the house. We barely did anything."

"Besides staining my floorboards and making a mess of my medicine cabinet?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow as he did an unnecessary backflip over the gap between two buildings. "I agree, you two didn't do much."

Rin shrugged and smiled nonchalantly. "We're dead. Technically, we shouldn't be able to do anything at all."

"Be grateful." Sasuke tacked on as he folded his arms midair.

Kakashi sighed mournfully. "Unbelievable. The youth nowadays think it's below them to help the elderly... What is society coming to? I suppose I'll have to do everything myself, then." He added before Sasuke could say something no doubt very unflattering about the current government.

Rin made kissy faces at him and tucked a flyaway behind her ear. "Don't look so down, Kakashi. If you're so terribly inconvenienced, I suppose Sasuke could give you a hand."

"I don't remember agreeing to that." Sasuke frowned, and wasn't quite fast enough to dodge as Rin latched onto his wrist with a vicelike grip and reeled him in closer, a sickly-sweet grin on her face.

"Oh, don't be disillusioned. This isn't voluntary. You have no say in the matter."

Sasuke jumped back involuntarily and Rin let him go, turning a sunny grin onto Kakashi as if she hadn't just threatened Sasuke at all. "See? He'll help."

Kakashi wisely said nothing regarding her sudden change in attitude. "How nice of you, Sasuke." He told him, and Sasuke hissed at him irritably and quickly glanced at Rin.

"I suppose. Since I have nothing better to do." He grit out as Rin drew her finger across her throat, still smiling.

"What a helpful young man you are."

Sasuke looked a hair's breadth away from enacting his threat of murder, but the threat of Rin's retribution grinning eerily over his shoulder kept him moodily silent as Kakashi attempted to ruffle the boy's hair.

"I can't believe you don't even use your own door." Sasuke muttered as he and Rin phased through the window and waited for Kakashi to unlock it so he could shimmy through. Kakashi beamed at him as he set down his grocery bags and the scroll of extra weapons on the kitchen bench.

"Doors are for people with no imagination, Sasuke." To Rin, "What's next on the agenda?"

She snorted. "Finding the leave forms that have no doubt been gathering dust in some forgotten corner of your apartment. Honestly, it looks like I'll have to kick what little manners you had as a child back into you."

"Kakashi had manners?" Sasuke asked in disbelief. Rin nodded solemnly.

"You wouldn't be able to tell unless you were three glasses into a bottle of Merlot and higher than the Shodaime on his special brand of Mokuton, if you know what I mean - but he did...in some weird, twisted way."

"I am deeply hurt by your baseless accusations, Rin." Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her as he rummaged around in a cabinet over the stove. "And since when have you drank Merlot?"

She gave him a flat look. "I learnt from the best."

Kakashi turned away guiltily as Sasuke massaged his temples and let out a breath through his teeth. "Why are two genin who aren't your age even with both our ages combined more responsible than you, Kakashi? No - you know what? Don't answer that. I can't believe I respected you."

Kakashi wheezed, the aged leave forms crumpling in his grip. "You respected me? Oh dear. Sasuke, do you really mean that?"

Sasuke frowned at him. "Not anymore, that's for sure."

Rin patted Sasuke's back as Kakashi's shoulders shook with poorly restrained laughter. "Good. He's not a role model worth your respect."

"I'm well aware."

"Respectful..." Kakashi said in a whisper that sounded more like the ghost of a laugh.

Rin turned to Sasuke. "Kick him for me."

"With pleasure." Sasuke grinned. Kakashi yelped and danced out of the way, holding his leave forms out of Sasuke's reach.

"Wait! What did I do?"

"You got distracted again. Now go on, fill out the forms. Chop chop." Rin grimaced at the state of the papers. "God, they look positively archaic. Are we really that old?"

"Yes, judging by the colour of Kakashi's hair." Rin glared at him, and Sasuke stopped trying to kick Kakashi with a scowl.

"I'm not old." She harrumphed. "I refuse to be."

"You're eternally youthful, as Gai would put it." Kakashi said absent-mindedly as he began to write on the forms with a pen that looked as old as the forms were. Rin made a face.

"...I appreciate it?"

Kakashi lifted his elbow as Sasuke poked his head around him to squint at the forms. The boy wrinkled his nose. "Surely they're paying more nowadays. Even I have more to live off. Had." He corrected, and grimaced.

"Well, when I got these, it was during the Third Shinobi World War. I'd hope they'd be paying more now that they don't have a war to fund." Kakashi mused.

"I don't think it matters if you're getting paid bulk upfront. We're leaving the village, remember?" Rin pointed out. "Our only issue should be whether or not the lump sum will be enough to carry us to Kusa and back."

Sasuke nodded to himself. "Well, we won't have to worry about food or weapons unless something happens to make our supplies run out quickly all in one go. As long as it's reasonable, the money can just be used to buy us a room in an inn if need be."

"Look at how smart you two are. I'm so proud of you." Kakashi cooed. Sasuke scowled but Rin smiled and let Kakashi try to pat her head with resigned grace. "I'm going to go hand these in. Can I trust you both not to blow anything up in my absence?"

"You shouldn't, but you can." Rin smiled innocently. Kakashi pretended to place his hands on her shoulders solemnly.

"Rin, I'm trusting you to keep Sasuke in check and make sure he doesn't get up to anything while I'm gone. Can you do that?"

Rin saluted. "Yes sir!"

"I feel like a dog." Sasuke grumbled under his breath.

"You shouldn't. Kakashi trusts his dogs enough to stay home without leaving someone in charge."

Sasuke threw his hands in the air. "So I'm less trustworthy than a fucking dog?"

"It's your own fault." Kakashi chided teasingly as he hopped through the window again with a parting wave, leaving the two teenagers standing in the kitchen. "I'll be back!"

As soon as he was out of sight, Sasuke turned to Rin. "What should we mess with next?"

Rin hid her budding grin with a sigh. "Fun as that would be, we should probably do something productive this time."

"What else can we do?" Sasuke eyed the kitchen bench a moment before pulling himself on top of it and sitting triumphantly. "There isn't much we can do without going through his things again, and we saw how much he appreciated that earlier. What would you suggest?"

Rin shrugged. "Maybe write down a list of things to do when he comes back?"

Sasuke waved a hand dismissively. "That'll take five minutes tops unless we start messing around again."

"It's something to do." Rin said with a sigh. "Unfortunately, being dead means there's very little we can do with our scope of influence. Even the things you can do that I can't aren't much in the grand scheme of things."

"It is kinda boring, isn't it?" Sasuke hopped off the bench and picked up the pen where it had been lying neatly on top of the notepad they'd left out so Kakashi would remember to take it with him. "Tell me what to write."

"Organize a travel pack." Rin began listing activities off her fingers. "Check med kit is up to date. Empty the fridge - though that can be done in the two days before your funeral. Speaking of, find funeral clothes. Clean the house. Make sure his will is up to date. Organise anything necessary for travelling through foreign countries."

She looked at Sasuke. "Anything else to add?"

Sasuke tapped the pen on the bench idly. "Does Kakashi own any plants?"

"Not that I'm aware of, no." Rin snapped her fingers. "Oh, scratch that thought. There's Mister Ukki."

Sasuke stared at her. "Mister Ukki?"

"Don't look at me, I didn't name it."

"I'll write him a reminder to find someone to take care of it, then."

"You probably don't need to, since that thing has survived the Third War and months without water, but I suppose it's the thought that counts."

Sasuke snorted in amusement. The two fell into silence as Sasuke finished writing, and, for want of something to do, began tapping the pen on the bench again.

"We're going to leave soon."

Sasuke looked up to find Rin smiling at him. She looked almost a little sad.

"I'll be glad to see Obito again, but...it was nice teasing Kakashi with you, Sasuke. I hope Obito has what you're looking for, but I'll be sad to see you go."

Sasuke looked away. "...It was good. Being here with you two." He said eventually. "I hope Obito's still here as well. For both your sake and mine."

Rin nodded. "I'm not holding out much hope for Minato-sensei, but it would be nice to have most of Team Seven together again. Even if only one of us is still alive."

Sasuke stopped tapping the pencil. "My team seven won't be together again. Ever."

Rin looked at the floor. "Yeah. I suppose."

They went silent again.

"I didn't...hate them." Sasuke whispered. "They were annoying, and infuriatingly loud. But I didn't hate them."

He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "And I know it makes me weak to like them. But I did. I wouldn't call them friends, but...I would've died for them. I nearly did."

"Liking people isn't weak." Rin said quietly. "Letting people close to you takes a certain kind of strength. Nothing about you is weak, Sasuke, and you should be very, very proud of the man you've become."

"I won't ever be old enough to be called a man. Not really." Sasuke ran his hands through his hair. "I'm dead. There is no third teammate in Team Seven. There's no one living in my apartment. There's no one left to carry on the Uchiha name, no one left to treat our history with the respect it deserves. But I'm still here, and there's nothing I can do to fix anything except quietly disappear and pretend like the fact I can't do anything isn't eating me alive. I'm still here, but that means nothing."

"It means something to me."

Rin stepped through the kitchen bench to stand by his side and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "And it means something to Kakashi. You mean a great deal to us, okay? We love you, Sasuke. We're really glad you're here, even if you aren't."

A light flickered overhead. Sasuke gripped the pen so hard it cracked through the middle.

"Thank you." He said shortly, his voice as tight as the line of his shoulders.

Looks like that's as far as he'll let himself express anything, Rin thought to herself fondly. She gave him one last squeeze and drew back so he could ruminate in peace. Slowly, the light stopped flickering, and Sasuke let out a shuddering breath.

"We'll get you to what comes after this." Rin told him softly. "We'll do our best. And if all else fails, I'll be glad to spend time with you until the stars fall apart and reality bleeds at the seams."

"No matter what happens, remember we'll always be with you."

Chapter Text

Rin stared thoughtlessly up at the ceiling and sighed. Sasuke was pacing like a caged tiger around the kitchen table, and she caught his sleeve as he passed her again.

"Breathe. There's nothing we can do now. Worrying won't help you." She told him wearily.

He snorted. "We're dead. I can't breathe, and neither can you." But he stopped, though he continued to drum his fingers against his forearm with a frown. "I don't want my body to be buried in an obligatory ceremony. This needs to work."

"It will, it will. Trust Kakashi to do something right for once." At Sasuke's dubious look, she sighed. "He knows how much this means to you, so he'll take this seriously. Don't worry."

"I hope so." Sasuke grumbled as Kakashi entered the kitchen.

"All ready to go? He asked them both, running his hands down the front of his shirt to smooth out the creases. He looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable in his funeral uniform, but he still smiled as Sasuke gave him a sharp nod. Rin held up a thumbs-up.

"Let's go grave-robbing." She announced and tried to match Kakashi's smile.

The journey to the cemetery was eerily subdued. Neither of them spoke a word as they arrived. Kakashi hung back and watched the small crowd of black-clothed mourners mill about, unconsciously keeping their distance from the small coffin that lay on top of the dais. Rin tried to place a reassuring hand on Kakashi's shoulder. He shivered as her hand passed through him and gave her a wan smile. Beside him, Sasuke's gaze was fixed on the small coffin where his body lay. He didn't move, didn't look anywhere else, even when Rin caught sight of his former teammates amidst the mourners below.

Sakura and Naruto were standing beside each other in a group of other children their age. A girl with ash-blonde hair was rubbing Sakura's back and talking to her quietly. Naruto was missing his trademark headband and was leaning his head against Sakura's shoulder, worriedly silent.

"Shouldn't you go talk to them?" Rin asked softly, but she wasn't sure herself.

Kakashi shrugged. "I don't think they'd be happy to see me."

"You're their teacher."

"I was their teacher." Kakashi corrected.

There was no support forthcoming from Sasuke, so Rin sighed and let it go. She leant her chin on her palm and idly picked through the small crowd of people, looking for familiar faces. Asuma and Kurenai were standing together, watching the mob of children solemnly. They had been part of the jonin picked to lead genin teams that year - they hadn't known Sasuke personally, but their genin had. Asuma looked up; seeing Kakashi perched in a tree, unwilling to socialise, he raised a hand in greeting. When Kakashi didn't answer beyond a short dip of his head, he smiled sadly and turned to Kurenai. The woman looked up in their direction and disappeared after murmuring a reply to Asuma. As she reappeared next to Kakashi, Sasuke took that as his excuse to hop off the branch and make his way towards his coffin. Rin hesitated, deliberating whether or not to go with him, but Kakashi had deactivated his Sharingan when Kurenai had appeared so she couldn't ask. So she sighed and stayed. Surely Sasuke wouldn't get into enough trouble that it would require them to be at his side immediately. Right?

"...We're here if you need us. Don't be afraid to reach out, okay?" Kurenai was saying as Rin tuned back in to their conversation. Kakashi was wearing that fake smile that Rin absolutely hated as he nodded along.

"I'll keep that in mind." He said, like a liar. Kurenai seemed as convinced of his sincerity as Rin was, but she did nothing but squeeze his shoulder and smile. Rin supposed there was nothing else she could do - once Kakashi set his mind on something, any attempt to dissuade him would be about as successful as drawing blood from a stone.

Unless you were Rin, of course. As a medic and Kakashi's former, dead teammate, Rin knew a plethora of ways to convince the sentimental man to change his ways, by hook or by crook. And by the looks of it, she would have to use them to get him to accept support when he desperately needed it.

Kakashi seemed to realise this, however, because he didn't reactivate his Sharingan once Kurenai returned to Asuma's side. Rin gave him a fondly annoyed kick to the knee that he didn't feel.

Sasuke was still staring down at his coffin and hadn't moved since she checked on him last. He hadn't even seemed to notice his former teammates within the crowd of mourners - Rin didn't know if he'd even considered the notion that they might've been there. Tunnel vision does funny things to people, she thought to herself as she ducked through the crowd towards Sasuke. Though, those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones; she had been in a much worse state at her own funeral, and it likely hadn't helped Kakashi's own mood in the slightest. He hadn't participated in her funeral either.

"Are you okay?" She asked quietly as she approached. Sasuke didn't give away any reaction indicative of whether or not he had heard her; and as she came to stand next to him, the glassy-eyed stare with which he looked down at his coffin was worrying.

Rin shook his shoulder.

Sasuke came back to himself with a blink that slowly contorted into a glare as he turned and frowned at her. "What."

Someone's defence mechanisms were up. Rin sighed to herself. "It's a bit morbid to stare at your coffin, don't you think?"

"I'm guarding it." Sasuke said shortly. "I don't want that filthy bloodline thief to try anything before we can steal my body."

"I doubt he'd try anything in front of a mixed crowd of shinobi and civilians. Especially not in front of Kakashi or the Third Hokage when he deigns to show his face. He's got a modicum of sense in that twisted head of his, unfortunately." Rin drawled. "You've checked it already, haven't you? He won't dare to try anything until everyone is gone. We'll get to you first, though, don't worry."

Sasuke nodded sharply. "We will."

Sasuke's conviction reminded Rin of Obito, then. But Obito's scowl wasn't quite as dark, his eyes not half as haunted as the boy before her who looked down at his own coffin and glared. Rin wondered what kind of expressions Obito wore now. Would he be coldly determined, like Sasuke? Hiding grief behind his familiar cheer like Kakashi? Was he coping, moving ever forward, trying to bury a past that wouldn't stay dead like herself?

Sasuke wasn't receptive to physical affection; Rin knew that, and wrapped her arm around him in a half-hug anyway. Why was it that her boys were always targeted for the universe's amusement? Was death not enough for them to catch a fucking break? And why was the universe so intent on leaving her helpless to do nothing but watch?

"Rin."

"Sasuke." Rin forced herself to unclench her jaw. "We are going to steal your body. We are going to cremate you according to whatever rites you have, and if that doesn't work, we're going to find Obito, and he will help you. We are going to fix this. I promise."

"I know." Sasuke replied. As if it was that simple. As if his steely-eyed determination would see things through.

(As if Obito hadn't already tried, years before he was born)

Rin wished that intrinsic self-belief came to her as easily as it came to her boys, wished any sort of determination didn't have to be pulled out of her like broken teeth, catching on the threads of her self-preservation and grating against her desperate desire to keep everyone she loved safe. And her boys never, ever asked for themselves, so she took it upon herself to scream within herself at a god she didn't believe in, why them? Why can't they be soft, and why can't they be mine?

She squeezed Sasuke a little tighter before letting go. "Come on. Let's go back to Kakashi. If we're not within arm's reach at all times I fear he'll go and do something stupid if he thinks he's unsupervised."

Sasuke looked back down at his coffin and his face twisted.

Rin tugged gently on his sleeve. "He won't try anything in public. We've got everything under control. It's alright."

Sasuke cast one last lingering look at his coffin before nodding once and allowing himself to be led away.

Kakashi was still perched in the tree where they'd left him, his one visible eye clouded in grief. Rin tried to get his attention and wasn't surprised when he didn't so much as blink. She debated whether or not to ask Sasuke to bother him for her, but he was still staring at his coffin from afar as if he could burn it with his gaze alone. She sighed to herself.

My boys, she thought to herself as she placed a hand each on their backs, either to comfort them or herself, as the Third Hokage finally swept onto the podium. Sasuke tracked his path for half a second before his eyes locked onto the man half a step behind the Sandaime, his lips creeping up to bare his canines as if he was considering savaging the man's throat. Rin's hand moved from his back to his shoulder even as she felt her own lip curl in disgust. She hadn't been joking or placating when she had suggested they kill Danzo - truth be told, she would've done it herself if she had the ability. It brought her no small amount of vicious glee to imagine his death at her boys' hands, even if she could not take part herself.

But they had to be patient. She had to be patient, for Sasuke wouldn't, and Kakashi was too hesitant to stray from the path carved for him. It felt like she was part of Team Seven again, but the roles had been switched. She, now, had to act as the cool-headed strategist, as Sasuke burned with righteous determination and Kakashi hovered hesitantly on the sidelines. It was...disconcerting, to say the least, to look objectively at the roles they'd fallen into that she'd once thought were set in stone. But she wasn't like Kakashi; they didn't overlap to the point of indistinguishability. The thought merely invoked nostalgia, and an oft-wished desire for the return of times long gone. Both she and Kakashi were sentimental, perhaps in the same ways, but she hadn't let the past blind her to the present. Yet.

And so, she forced herself and Sasuke to stay where they were, though they simmered with anger as Danzo let his fingertips brush the lid of Sasuke's coffin as he passed.

"Filthy bloodline thief." Sasuke hissed with vitriol, and Rin couldn't agree more.

"Child-stealer." She added with the sharp edge of a snarl. "War hawk."

"Vulture."

"Manipulative, egomaniacal scum."

"Godforsaken wretch."

The Sandaime looked out upon the assembled crowd with sorrow and age etched into his face. Sasuke wasn't half as interested in him as he was in Danzo, but Rin folded her arms and glared at the old man as he addressed the crowd. After staying by Kakashi's side for as long as she had, she had a bone carved from the Hatake legacy and Kakashi's years in Anbu to pick with the Sandaime. While the actions he had taken - or rather, hadn't taken - weren't as drastic as Danzo's (that she knew of), she knew as a medic that some things couldn't be healed even by Lady Tsunade. That there was pain that went further than skin-deep to carve itself into the very marrow of a person's bones, and the Sandaime had done nothing as Kakashi had slowly lost bits and pieces of himself until there was very little left to resemble something human. Sasuke had that same pain, and she was angry at the Sandaime for that too - but Sasuke raged. Sasuke knew that he had suffered injustice. Kakashi had merely taken the pain and seen it as something unavoidable. Deserved.

And it made Rin furious.

If it weren't for her self-imposed duty to take care of both her boys, she would've happily let Sasuke off his leash to deal with Danzo as he pleased and perhaps nudged him in the Sandaime's direction to make him pay for his negligence. But no. Kakashi would feel undeservedly guilty, the stubborn loyalist as he was, and Rin wouldn't let him suffer any more for men who had done nothing to deserve his loyalty.

"Once this is all over, we'll get him. I promise." She whispered to Sasuke under her breath. Sasuke's clenched fists would've been bloodless with how tightly he was restraining himself if he had the blood to lose.

"He'll die slowly." Sasuke growled. "And when I'm done with him, the agony of his last moments will make death seem like a mercy. If he tries to come back, I'll kill him again. I don't care how many times it takes."

Rin smiled. "Leave a piece for me."

Sasuke's eyes slid to her dispassionately. "If there's anything left, you can have it."

"You're far too kind." She cooed.

"Far too kind." Sasuke muttered to himself with something like loathing. Rin squeezed his shoulder, and they watched in silence as a squad of Anbu lifted Sasuke's coffin onto their shoulders. They led the procession to the plot where a hole had already been dug, marked by a headstone engraved with Sasuke's name and the Uchiha crest. The only reason that the Hokage and Danzo arrived at the gravesite first was because Naruto still held the Hokage in high esteem and so kept at a respectable distance. Rin watched Sasuke's face for any reaction, but once again, he seemed far too fixed on his coffin to notice or care. Kakashi was the same, but for different reasons. No one spoke as the small coffin was lowered into the dirt.

Naruto leant into Sakura's side, sniffling a little, as she rested her cheek on his head and watched the coffin with red-rimmed eyes as it disappeared from view. Rin was sharply reminded of Obito's funeral. Kakashi hadn't been as free with his affections as he had grown to be, but he hadn't pushed her off when she'd unashamedly soaked his shirt with tears and snot. It was morbid to say that the death of their teammate had brought them closer, but it was the truth. Rin hoped that however painful Sasuke's death was to Sakura and Naruto, they would at least develop a better friendship with each other and gradually overcome their shared pain.

"They don't even have their teacher to rely on." Rin murmured to herself. "We, at least, had Minato-sensei. We had someone to tell us it wasn't our fault. That we ultimately did the best with what we had in the moment. They have no one but each other."

And so do we, she mused. One way or another, everyone here is bound by tragedy.

The ceremony finished in subdued silence. One by one, the mourners trickled away, with the children and their accompanying jonin-sensei being the last to leave. A squad of four Anbu remained behind to guard the fresh grave.

Though Naruto and Sakura had left the immediate vicinity of the grave, they still lingered within the graveyard proper. They sat on the steps before the Memorial Stone and talked quietly amongst each other. Even Naruto kept his voice to a reasonable volume.

Kakashi vanished. Rin startled and stared at the spot where he had been before she remembered they had a mission.

Well, we aren't going to get anything done by moping, and the most Sasuke can lift is a pencil. That isn't worth much. With that in mind, Rin didn't bother asking Sasuke for permission before she slung him over her shoulder and hopped from tree to tree over to where Naruto and Sakura were sitting, setting Sasuke down and dusting off her hands before he had the chance to complain. The glare she got in return would've sent shivers down her spine if she hadn't been on Stone-Wall Kakashi's team when they were younger.

"You can't stay attached to your body forever. Let it go. That's the whole reason we're here."

Sasuke scowled and looked away. "I'm guarding it. Is that so wrong?" He repeated agitatedly.

"Kakashi's got it in hand. He's a jonin. If you can't trust him as a person, at least trust in his skill." Rin crossed her arms and tried not to entertain the thought that had begun to stir again in the recesses of her brain. She had thought the same once, and if Sasuke's situation turned out to be like hers-

Her head jerked up involuntarily and she opened her mouth to ask him what might've turned out to be a very important question, but Sasuke was staring at Naruto and Sakura with a complicated expression.

Rin placed her hand on his shoulder. When he turned, she softened her tone and asked him "What's up?"

In her head, she clasped her hands together and hoped he was finally remembering that his teammates existed.

"Naruto's got a ghost."

Rin's dreams slowly wilted and died. She ignored them to latch onto the new subject with interest. "Oh?"

He looked over his shoulder again and nodded to himself. "He's got a ghost." Sasuke repeated. "She looks a lot like him. Maybe a relative?"

"Does she have red hair?" Rin asked with her heart in her mouth. When he nodded, she grabbed his shoulders in an iron grip.

"Go talk to her. Tell her Rin says hello. Please. Her name is Kushina."

Please let it be her. God, if nothing else, if she can have nothing else in her life, please let it be her.

Sasuke grimaced and tried to wiggle out of her grip. "We're supposed to be stealing my corpse."

"I don't care. We're not all the heavy lifting; Kakashi is. You can spare five minutes to talk to her."

His mouth tightened into a thin line, but he finally gave her a short nod. "Fine."

Rin let him go. Sasuke rubbed at his forearms reflexively and sighed. "Anything else you'd like to say while I'm there? Do you want me to grab you some snacks on the way back?"

Rin aimed a swipe at his head. "Don't get smart with me, boy. Go on. We haven't got all day."

With a grand roll of his eyes, Sasuke dropped from the tree and stalked over to his former teammates as Rin watched with bated breath. She couldn't see Kushina, but she hadn't been able to see Sasuke until he'd used his Sharingan, so maybe, maybe-

Sasuke stalked over to where Sakura and Naruto were talking quietly together and stood a little ways away from them like he wasn't sure whether or not he should go closer. Rin still couldn't see Kushina, but it seemed Sasuke could, because he stared vaguely at a spot in the air over his former teammates' heads before he cleared his throat.

"...Kushina-san?" He asked at large. Rin leaned forward and held her hands tightly to quell her nervous energy. She watched Sasuke startle at nothing and get scooped into the air by an invisible force that slowly gained form and colour. Vibrant red hair spun and bounced as Sasuke was set down without the chance to regain his dignity.

"Aw, you look so much like Mikocchi, ya know? You even glare like her." A painfully familiar voice cooed. "How's it been? Hey, how are you talking to me? I haven't seen anyone since I died."

Rin didn't need to breathe. Not since she died at the tender age of thirteen. But it still felt like there was something stuck in her throat, something that tasted of salt and sunshine and bittersweet nostalgia that deafened the sound of her non-existent heartbeat with echoes of unbridled laughter. Though they were both ghosts, Kushina was strangely blurred around the edges, glowing softly as strange symbols rose from her skin and vanished into thin air. And Rin...

Rin was bleeding again. There was a hole in her chest, and she couldn't breathe. She wanted, she wanted she wanted she wanted she wanted she wanted to go home

Rin crashed into Kushina's side with all the force of a small hurricane. The red-haired woman laughed and caught her easily, lifting both children into her arms and spinning them around for good measure.

"Rin!" Kushina exclaimed in delight as ruffled their hair roughly. "I haven't seen you for the longest time! How are you?"

Sasuke caught Rin's eye and his look of exasperation drained away with what little colour there was left in his face.

Compose yourself, compose yourself, compose yourself-

"I'm so happy to see you again." Rin's forced smile stretched so widely she was surprised she could still speak as she beamed up at Kushina. "I've missed you so much, Kushina-nee."

"Me too, kiddo, me too." She glanced over the top of their heads curiously. "Is Obito with you both?"

Rin's smile faded. Something caught in her throat again as she fruitlessly inhaled and shook her head. "No. But we're going to go find him, I promise."

"Good!" Kushina patted her shoulder heartily. "I'm glad. It would be nice to see you all together again."

"It would."

Sasuke shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. "Who are you, again? How do you know my mother?"

Both Rin and Kushina blinked at him.

"She...didn't mention me?" Kushina's brightness dimmed with each word. Sasuke slowly shook his head.

Rin patted Kushina's back. "If he doesn't know you, that means he can get to know you without being disillusioned by your infamous reputation, Kushina-nee." She joked and smiled, hoping it would clear the now-maudlin air.

It worked: Kushina beamed and pulled Sasuke in again with an iron grip as he tried to back away.

"Who the fuck did I just make visible?" Sasuke hissed as horror seeped into his expression. "Rin, what the fuck did you do?"

"I did nothing." Rin enunciated innocently. "You did."

"Don't worry! I'm not all that bad. Unless you've heard of the great detergent incident. Then yes, I'm as bad as you're imagining." Kushina said with a careless attitude that did nothing to assuage Sasuke's fears. "I'm Naruto's mum, ya know? Uzumaki Kushina! I was friends with your mum, adorable little Rin here, and everyone on their team. Except for Minato."

Sasuke squinted at her. "What did the Yondaime do?"

"They're married." Rin explained with a fond roll of her eyes as Kushina cackled.

"My love gets all sulky when I put it like that. Yeah, we're married." The red-haired woman grinned cheekily. "I haven't seen Minato since we died, but if he thinks that will be enough to separate us, he's got another thing coming. We're together 'til death do us part, and I intend to keep that promise."

Sasuke stared at Kushina, and Rin could practically see the gears turning in his head. "Naruto's the Fourth Hokage's son."

Kushina nodded proudly. "And mine. He's our little ball of sunshine. Our little sunbeam. Our wonderful little sunflower. Our little dandelion puff. Our amazing ramen noodle."

"Ramen noodle?" Rin asked.

Kushina nodded again. "Ramen noodles are yellow, ya know. And ramen is amazing." She said matter-of-factly.

"Is that why he's named Naruto?"

"That...explains so much." Sasuke muttered finally. He nodded to himself. "Okay. Alright. Whatever."

"I think it explains less." Rin mumbled to herself.

Kushina pinched both their cheeks. "Don't end up like Kakashi, now, my little chickadees. Kushina-nee will look after you both. Speaking of which, where is my little moonshard? I haven't seen him ever since he disbanded your Team Seven and I want him to know exactly how I feel about that decision."

Both Rin and Sasuke shivered as Kushina smiled wickedly over the top of their heads and her hair began to move of its own accord.

"He's gone to steal Sasuke's body." Rin explained hastily before Kushina decided to do something drastic. "He's been...understandably affected by Sasuke's death. But I'm working on getting him to open up. I promise."

The aura of silent threat dispelled. Beside Rin, Sasuke let out a stealthy breath of relief as Kushina patted her head with a smile. "You always were the smart one of your team. Don't tell your teammates, though, or they'll feel bad about themselves."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Rin replied breezily. "I haven't told them for over a decade. The wise keep their cards close to their chest, after all."

"You won't tell either, will you, Sasuke?"

Sasuke startled and shook his head. "Anyone's smarter than Kakashi." He scoffed. "I'll admit you're smart, Rin, but being smarter than Kakashi isn't an achievement."

"Even though he's thrown you on your ass without looking up from that godawful book of his?" Kushina smirked as she leaned her elbow on Rin's head.

Sasuke flushed. "Skill doesn't require intensive thought." He grumbled and refused to meet their eyes.

"Of course." Rin lied, and held up her hand in front of Kushina's mouth before she could point out the clear dichotomy in Sasuke's words like she so obviously wanted to.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto and Sakura both shrieked suddenly.

Since it was the nature of the three ghosts to maintain an image - though the images they tried to portray were wildly different - all three of them jumped and then thought to themselves "If for some reason I have to recount this situation, I will never admit even under torture that I jumped." The truth of the matter, however, was that all three of them jumped out of their ghostly skins.

Kakashi looked as startled as the three of them would later refuse to admit they were, and promptly disappeared before Naruto or Sakura could ask any of the many questions caught on their tongues. Rin and Sasuke were yanked away without the time to say goodbye and shushinned somewhere deeper into the woods at the edge of the graveyard. Kakashi, ironically, looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"Was that Kushina-san?" He asked faintly.

Rin folded her arms and pouted at him. "It was. And it was terribly rude of you to leave without at least saying hello."

"Naruto and Sakura were there, I-" He scrubbed a hand through his hair agitatedly. "I'll apologise if I get the chance. Sasuke, I have your body. It's waiting at the shrine under layers of protective seals."

Sasuke stood up straighter and nodded once. "Good. Let's go before you commit any more sacrilege than you no doubt already have."

"Are you alright, Kakashi?" Rin asked with a frown.

Kakashi stopped and gave her a weak smile. "Peachy. I trust you both to find your way to the shrine without incident. I'll see you there."

"Liar." Rin muttered to herself as the clone dissipated. Sasuke was already striding onwards and hadn't heard her.

"Let's move." He said shortly with only the barest of glances back at her as he leapt into the trees.

With a longer lingering look at where they'd come from, Rin followed with discomfort swirling in her stomach and her lips pressed together. Sasuke was silent the entire way to the shrine but the fast pace he set and the recklessness with which he jumped from branch to branch spoke volumes. Of course he would hurry. If a proper cremation was how he could finally pass on, then why wouldn't he hurry to get it over with? He would want to see his parents, his relatives. It didn't matter if Rin didn't want him to cross over. He deserved it. Sasuke had suffered such a terrible experience and had lived six years with nothing but the bloody memories and the words of a murderer to fuel him - why wouldn't he jump at the chance to be free of the life he'd lived only because there was no other choice?

Why couldn't Rin feel happy for him?

Even though she kept pace with his stride, why did it feel like Sasuke was moving further and further away from her with every step?

Rin felt terrible, both at the prospect that she would lose Sasuke and the fact that every part of her wished wholeheartedly that he would stay. Her emotions tried to reason with her, saying that he was too broken to let cross over, that she should get him to stay so she could show him that there were upsides to being half-alive. That it was okay not to cross over, and that joy could still be found in the lives they'd left behind.

Or maybe she was trying to convince herself of the very same thing.

Rin covered her mouth with her hand and had a horrible thought.

What if she was jealous?

Like Sasuke, when she had died, she had wanted to cross over as well. Who wouldn't? It was a natural desire. She had been angry and confused and despairing and a whole host of other emotions that had done nothing but render Kakashi bedridden for an entire week and left her unable to change her appearance from the state in which she'd died. But she'd pulled herself together and focused instead on trying to help Kakashi in any way she could. She was, after all, a medic at heart. Through trial and error and the growing realisation that there was nothing she could do, Rin had persevered in what may've been the false hope that one day she would be of assistance. But was that her way of coping?

If a proper burial or cremation was the way to pass on, then Rin would never leave. Not if Sasuke's relatives could not pass on without their eyes. She certainly wouldn't be able to, not with the hole in her chest. Was she jealous that Sasuke didn't have to convince himself that staying was a positive thing because he knew he had a way out? Was she scared to admit to herself that she wanted to leave as well? That she didn't really want to spend her half-life following Kakashi like a shadow, being helpless to affect anything or even offer comfort?

If she had the choice to pass on like Sasuke, would she take it?

Chapter Text

Sasuke stepped purposefully through the hall with restrained haste. Rin had to lengthen her stride to keep up with him, half running, half walking, and acutely aware of the sanctity of the place they were walking through. She remembered a cool afternoon walking home with Obito, watching his eyes light up and his words twist his tongue into knots as he tried to convey the beauty of his clan’s shrine to her. He’d spun a small genjutsu to aid him when words failed, leaving her with vague impressions of the multitude of colours that she had never imagined could be contained in so dark a shade and the overwhelming feeling of love.

Love, carved into every decoration. Love, between the dark-haired people who she’d thought were so alike, but Obito saw as varied as the colours that light brought out of the stone the shrine walls were made of. Her eyes trailed over them as she hurried to keep up with Sasuke’s pace, over the chipped paint and the places where the elements had worn the stone smooth. She wondered at the history of the place, because unlike Obito and Kakashi and their dogged obstinance, she had always been the one to ask questions.

She looked ahead, to where Sasuke was striding purposefully forwards, and quietly mourned for the culture and history of the Uchiha clan that would die with him. He, and the name that burdened his shoulders, would cease to exist in their entirety. Would there be anyone left who knew the Uchiha like he did?

Would there be anyone left who knew Sasuke as he was?

“Sasuke.”

He didn’t respond. Rin hadn’t expected him to. She fiddled with her bracelet as she tried to commit the image of a building built on love to memory. Perhaps Obito would tell her about his clan again, if - when - they found him.

Sasuke strode through a wall and Rin stumbled on air as sunlight dusted over a mural that immediately drew the eye towards it.

A woman with dark rays streaming out from behind her head like streaks of sunlight stood bracketed by two figures, one in full Uchiha-style armour with their features obscured and their mouthpiece set in a snarl. The other on her right was painted in a style reminiscent of watercolour, with traditional ink that blurred any distinctive features they may’ve had. It looked intentional, as the vibrant colours on what could only be Amaterasu’s kimono and Susanoo’s armour looked as bright as the day they were painted.

Directly beneath Amaterasu was a man with wild hair and severe crimson eyes, holding a war fan before him that looked fresh and ready for battle, the image at odds with the gunbai that was displayed below with a much more aged appearance. To his right was a young man with a tuft of hair like Sasuke’s and a long ponytail like what Rin had seen Itachi wear back when Kakashi knew him. His expression was cheeky, lips titled upwards in a barely-there smirk and the curve of a kusarigama peeking out from where his brother’s arm obstructed it. The woman on the left’s eyes curved happily, her hair held back by senbon and more arranged around her neck in the world’s deadliest necklace. Small wisps of curls struggled free from her elaborate updo to soften her face and add to the charm of her dimpled cheeks. All three were dressed in half armour that looked to be more ornamental than practical and Rin had to consciously remind herself to breathe - not that she needed to anymore.

God, she wanted. She wanted to know so badly that she ached with it. But Sasuke was going, going, gone, and there was very little she could do about it.

So she set her jaw and hardened her heart as she slipped through the mural in the space between Amaterasu’s avatar and his brother. Her non-existent footsteps thudded in rhythm with her non-existent heartbeat as she searched the main sanctuary for Sasuke, a frown growing on her brow as she searched and found nothing but a thin layer of dust.

“Sasuke?"

Rin’s voice and sudden appearance broke the stillness that had descended upon the three of them when Sasuke had first locked eyes with his brother for the first time in six years. Kakashi's fingers twitched at his sides, unsure of whether to stay and guard Sasuke's body or to comfort the boy as he met his brother's wide-eyed, scarlet gaze with his own. Rin looked between them, shocked into stillness as they had once been, and turned her wide-eyed gaze on Kakashi.

Sasuke's lips slowly pulled back to expose his teeth and Kakashi made an aborted movement towards him as a sound like something heavy hitting rock broke the silence further with a sickening crack. There was a rush of air at Kakashi's side and he spun to find the altar to Amaterasu within the main sanctuary had split in two, the braziers on either side of it flaring to life despite the lack of fuel or tinder. Kakashi crouched and froze awkwardly as he hovered over the small coffin, caught between moving it out of harm's way and his unwillingness to contribute to Sasuke's ravings of desecration any more than he no doubt already had.

Kakashi looked up as Rin inhaled sharply and his eyes refused to comprehend what he was seeing.

The front half of Sasuke's body was now perfectly, unnaturally flat, skin and muscle and bone melded together by sheer impact as Sasuke's impossibly undamaged eyes seemed to protrude from his smashed and flattened skull to stare soullessly at Itachi. Blood and brain matter and other bodily fluids dribbled down his legs to form puddles around his feet. Sasuke moved what had once been his jaw and several teeth fell to the floor with a clatter; one skittered across the ground to settle a handspace away from Itachi's foot.

Itachi stumbled back and nearly fell over entirely as terror sapped the strength from his limbs. Kakashi swallowed and had to look down at Sasuke's coffin to stop himself from throwing up. Sasuke took a step forward, bones crunching under his own weight, and only paused when Rin placed her hand on his shoulder and whispered something to him. Only when he nodded faintly did she go to stand by Kakashi's side despite the dissatisfied twist of her mouth.

Itachi sat frozen before his brother's coffin and could do nothing but watch as Sasuke approached with slow, halting steps. The boy crouched before him and reached out what was more a mangled lump of flesh than a hand to touch Itachi's face, almost gentle as the touch left liquefied matter smeared on his cheek. Itachi flinched back, and shattered fingertips broke through the layer of formless flesh to dig harshly into Itachi's chin as Sasuke pulled back his other arm and punched Itachi in the face.

A sharp crack rang out across the artificial clearing. Sasuke's lungs pulsed against his ribs uselessly as he drew in a rattling, false breath that escaped from the holes where his ribs had punched through his lungs with a soft hiss. Itachi was forced to watch in horror as Sasuke's jaw broke itself free from where it had nearly melded with his skull to expose a maw of shattered teeth and jaw bone.

"Why is it always you?!" He screamed as the braziers roared in tandem with his fury and threatened to set the sanctuary ablaze. "It's always you! My father is dead! My mother is dead! My cousins, my aunts, my uncles, newborn Hiroto and old Kitayama - you even killed Shisui, you filth! Why is it always you?!"

Itachi jerked backwards. Sasuke rose to his feet and stalked after him as he scrabbled backwards on trembling hands.

"Not Shisui." Itachi choked out. "Never. I would never-"

"You lie!"

Sasuke's fist hit Itachi's jaw with another crack. "You do nothing but lie! Why are you alive?! Why you, and no one else?! What have you done to deserve life any more than anyone in my family?! Nothing! You have done nothing! So why?!"

"I don't know. I don't know."

Tears fell down Itachi's cheeks as his back hit a column. Sasuke didn't seem to notice or care as he advanced and punched Itachi in the face again.

"It's always you!" Each exclamation was punctuated with another strike. "You, and no one else! What did our family ever do to you?! What did I ever do to you?!"

Sasuke collapsed back onto his haunches and dragged his mutilated fingers through his hair. Dark strands fell out in chunks as tears began to fall from his shattered eye sockets. "It's always you! And I - what do I have? What have you given me? I'm dead. I can't pass on. You can't even give me that."

Itachi's face was a mess of blood and bruises. He sniffled - a quiet, muffled sound - and raised a trembling hand to touch Sasuke's face.

"I'm sorry."

Sasuke's face twisted horribly but Itachi swallowed back fear and bile and continued. "...I never meant for this to happen. I didn't...you were supposed to be a hero. To kill me and restore our honour. You were supposed to live."

Itachi's voice broke on the last word. Sasuke grit his remaining teeth and punched him again, but his heart wasn't in the blow.

"Did you ever stop to consider, even for a moment, that all I wanted was to stop being alone?" He hissed in a voice wet and cracked like mouldy plaster. "I wanted to live too. But now I'm dead and I can't even do that properly."

Sasuke took a deep, shuddering breath. “Why are you here, Itachi?” He asked bitterly. “Why here, why now? I could kill you now and you wouldn’t be able to stop me. Why now, when it’s all over and done with? Aren’t you satisfied with my death? What more do you want from me?”

Itachi lowered his head and was silent. As she came to stand beside Sasuke, Rin watched his jaw clench with the effort it took to find words to say.

“I don’t know.” He whispered finally. “I…hoped, maybe. That my information was wrong. That you weren’t…You, of all people…”

“Me, of all people?” Sasuke repeated mockingly. “Me, the mistake. Me, the afterthought. What, are you disappointed you couldn’t kill me yourself? You had such high hopes for me; soldier, murderer, avenger. Have I failed you, Itachi? Are you disappointed your plans didn’t work? Tell me, what did my death mean to you?”

Rin stepped back as Sasuke gestured violently to the side and would’ve smacked her in the stomach. “Is it me that you came back for, or is it your plans? Which do you care about more? Why is it that you people never seem to fucking care that I, a person, have died?!”

“It’s me! Sasuke! I am dead! I’m fucking dead, not Obito, not whatever expectations you had for me! If you’re here because you have somehow convinced yourself that you care about me after leaving me alone for six years, then I don’t want you here! I want to be remembered as a human being, not just someone that you branded your expectations on and expected to rise to meet them! How dare you assume you have a place here when you treated me like shit and left me to die!”

Rin grabbed Sasuke’s hand and held it, even when he jerked away, even when she had to suppress a grimace as she held the mangled appendage in her own. When he couldn’t pull out of her grip, Sasuke squeezed back until Rin felt her bones grind together under her skin.

She kept holding him until his breathing stopped wheezing through the holes in his lungs and he swept away from his brother’s shaking form, stomping over to the tiled platform in the ground in the clearing behind them. The time-worn mosaics gleamed through their incorporeal bodies and dulled as they approached the centre, blackening with soot that had never been cleaned away - a knee-high mound of ash remained in the centre, stirring listlessly with the breeze. Kakashi unstuck himself from where he had stood frozen throughout Sasuke’s outburst to follow them with the coffin, movements stiff as he placed it gently on top of the mound and watched as it sunk through the ash.

Itachi staggered to his feet as Sasuke stared down at his coffin as if he could set it on fire with his eyes alone. He squeezed Rin’s hand one last time before he let go as his eyes blazed as red as his organs and he breathed out a stream of green fire across his coffin. It caught and ate away at the wood with all the ferocity of real fire and none of the noise. The burning wood itself provided the noise, cracking and splintering from imaginary heat and sizzling as the fire crept inside and chewed on flesh. Kakashi turned his face away as the smell of burning flesh permeated the air and the flames dug deeper, past skin, past muscle to bone and further still. The body splintered, cracked and warped under an unseen onslaught of fire as its wooden cocoon burned around it and sank deeper into the mound of ash.

“Your clansmen?” Rin asked quietly in between the sound of splintering wood and splintering bones.

“There were too many for me to continue cleaning the ash away between cremations.” Sasuke whispered in confirmation, his eyes on the coffin as his skin smoothed back over his internal organs. He didn’t look at her.

Rin stepped into his side and wrapped an arm around him in a half-hug. He didn’t even try to push her away. His skin didn’t radiate heat anymore nor did he feel chilled through the shirt he’d died in, and Rin didn’t have the muscles to twist as she tipped her head against Sasuke’s temple. Absently, she ran her hand up and down his side in a soothing motion until he leaned against her as well.

With a sigh like the settling of an old house, Sasuke slumped against her; his eyes spun once, twice, and thrice more before he faded from sight entirely. Rin pressed her lips together and readjusted her weight. It had happened before, when she and Sasuke had been messing around in Kakashi’s apartment and he had used up his chakra trying to drag a chair across the floor, and therefore was not a reliable indication of whether or not he had truly disappeared. Itachi didn’t have the privilege of foreknowledge; the teenager let out a small, keening cry and slowly sank to his knees - Rin wasn’t sure if he realised he had collapsed - his eyes fixed on the bonfire as they slowly began to bleed.

Kakashi fared only slightly better, thanks to Rin and Sasuke’s mention of the occurrence, but he still looked hollow-eyed and haunted as the fire started to wane. Whether it was because Sasuke was no longer there to sustain it or it was running out of fuel were both equally plausible options. Rin drifted over to stand beside her last living teammate and wrapped her arms around his waist, ignoring his flinch and resting her cheek against his side as she closed her eyes.

The sun’s rays shone through her body, warming her chilled core as the last of Sasuke’s ghost-fire died. The canopy that hung back from the cooling mound of ashes and human remains rustled idyllically. It could’ve been a perfect day. Sasuke’s older brother had come home. She’d met Kushina again. Kakashi had met with his team again, however briefly. In a perfect world, they could’ve had a picnic, all of them. They all could’ve met under more fortunate circumstances, and there wouldn’t be three of them standing before an extinguished bonfire as the fourth slipped away.

In an ideal world, Rin and her boys would’ve never lost anyone at all.

She tightened her hold on Kakashi. Her arms pressed through his body, and he shivered.

“Is he…” Kakashi croaked out. He didn’t - couldn’t - finish the question.

“I don’t know.” Rin murmured into his side. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Kakashi’s shoulders slumped like a snapped bowstring. “I see.” He said quietly.

He remained standing for a few moments longer as the last of the fire flickered out, then shushinned away without so much as straightening his posture. Left behind and content not to follow for now - there was nothing she could do (there never was) - Rin turned her attention to the teenager who still hadn’t shut off his Mangekyou.

“You’re going to go blind.”

Itachi gave no indication that he’d heard her and Rin didn’t expect him to, so she stood directly in front of the mound of ash and waited until he dragged his gaze up to meet her face. He was still crying silently, but they were regular tears now, not blood - small mercies.

“He is gone.” Rin stated quietly but firmly. “You are doing no one any good if you run your eyes into the ground now. How will you pick out his bones from the ash if you can’t see well enough to tell the difference?”

Itachi’s face crumpled. “I don’t deserve to touch him. Not now. Not since…not like this. He’s gone. Dead. Because of me.”

“Kakashi isn’t going to do it.” Rin explained patiently. “Likely, he will never even consider the thought, much less any thought relating to Sasuke again. You’re right, he’s gone, which means he can’t protest if you pack away his remains. I certainly can’t do it.”

“I don’t deserve…”

“This is not about you, this is about Sasuke and his wish to be cremated properly. You know how to and are capable of doing so.” A little kindlier, she added, “If it helps, you can consider this as your penance. Helping him move on even though you believe it’s your fault.”

Itachi stared at her emptily. He took a great, shuddering breath and wiped away his tears, smearing blood on his cheeks and squeezing his eyes shut for a brief, painful moment.

“Okay.” He acquiesced. “Okay.”

On a whim (he had Sasuke’s eyes when he cried and that was so not fair, not fair at all), Rin used the end of her apron to better wipe the blood off Itachi’s face and supported him as he stood. His grip on her shoulder would’ve left bruises if she had skin to bruise. She waited patiently as his hand hovered over the cooling ashes and silently offered her empty weapons pouch to hold the shards of bone when he finally picked one out. He held it between his fingers for a long moment, just staring at it as tears fell down his face anew. The salt water hissed faintly as it hit the debris. Rin nudged Itachi’s shoulder once she decided he’d had enough time to grieve anew and he jerked back to himself, nearly dropping the bone shard as he did.

Rin accompanied him as he methodically picked more shards of bone out of the ashes and wondered to herself if Sasuke had managed to do the same with his many clansmen once he could no longer afford to keep cleaning the platform between cremations, if the shards of bone that Itachi handled so carefully were Sasuke’s at all or just another clansman. She wondered if that would affect whether or not Sasuke would pass on.

(She hoped-)

When Itachi stopped picking out shards of bone, Rin gently tugged him back towards the shrine to hopefully find a suitable urn to place Sasuke’s remains inside. Once within the main hall and with an urn in hand, Itachi took his turn to lead her to an underground chamber on the shrine grounds opposite where Rin and Sasuke had approached the shrine. A pulse of his chakra lit a line of lanterns at regular intervals along the short corridor to a room stacked wall to floor with pigeonholes with urns in them. He led her deeper still, past another floor onto the third that still had a few spaces free for urns. Itachi’s breath trembled on the next inhale; Rin recognised Sasuke’s sharp handwriting on most of the labels in the room.

“Go on.” She nudged gently. Itachi took a hesitant step forward and knelt before one of the openings. He knelt there for a long moment, just holding the urn and worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

“I want to keep him. With me.” He said eventually, just as Rin was about to prod him again. He hesitated, then looked over his shoulder at her. “Is that…do you think I could do that?”

Rin wished with all of her heart that she had never made the choice to kill herself, even if she had died later, if only for the chance that she could’ve been alive to help this emotionally inept boy, all of her socially inept boys; maybe, if she’d chosen to stay alive just a little bit longer, she could’ve done something. As it were, all she could do was bend down to hug this thrice-foolish boy as he began to cry again, Sasuke’s urn kept safely between them both as Itachi clutched at the back of her shirt and sobbed.

“It is not my place to say,” Rin whispered amidst Itachi’s cries. “But I don’t see why not.”

“I want him back.”

“I know.”

“It’s all my fault.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry, I really am, please-”

“I know.”

“I miss him. I want him back.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t deserve to die. I - it should’ve been me. Not him. Never him.”

“I know.”

“I want him back.”

“So do I, Itachi. So do I.”

Kakashi found her again hours later, sitting on the floor of the Uchiha mausoleum with Itachi curled around his brother’s urn, asleep from exhaustion. Kakashi decided to leave him in the Uchiha main house and the trip there reminded them both of similar trips taken when Itachi had been in Anbu. Itachi was unwilling to part with the urn even when asleep, so they left it with him and made the solemn trek back to Kakashi’s apartment. Sasuke’s absence was prominent despite the scant few days he spent together with the two of them, and so Rin did nothing but sigh to herself when Kakashi immediately went to bed without so much as showering. He didn’t sleep, however, just stared at the ceiling blankly as Rin sat with her back facing the window and closed her eyes.

“Rin?” Kakashi whispered into the dark.

“I’m here.”

Kakashi hummed vaguely and twisted around so she was properly in his line of sight.

“I never should’ve gotten a genin team.”

Rin exhaled, long and slow. “You can’t run forever, Kakashi.”

“Of course you’d say that.” He muttered bitterly, his eyes sliding left so as not to meet her gaze.

“My choices are my own, Kakashi. I am giving you advice as your friend. I am not saying things just to beat a dead horse and impose my way of thinking on you. You know that.”

“No, I don’t. You died.” He still wouldn’t look at her.

“And here you are, stuck in the past and refusing to acknowledge the present when it is right in front of you.” Rin took a moment to cool her temper; he was goading her and she wouldn’t let him. “If you don’t want me to say anything, then fine. But if you speak to someone, you are going to get a response, whether you like it or not.”

Kakashi closed his eyes. Rin let the matter sit and continued to sit by his side, like she always had and always would. Itachi could have Sasuke; Kakashi was Rin’s.

In the grey morning, Rin opened her eyes to find Sasuke standing in the middle of Kakashi’s modest bedroom, his lips pressed firmly together and his eyes downcast. She opened her arms and he hurried forward, falling against her as he began to shake and she buried her face in his hair.

Chapter Text

In the end, everything was useless. Everything he did, everything he tried - he couldn’t seem to do a single thing right.

Rin’s shirt was stained with his tears and snot; Rin’s shirt was clean when he turned his face to hide in her neck against where her pulse should’ve been. She rubbed his back and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Nothing pleasant, anyway.

He knew he was a failure. He didn’t need it to be spoken aloud.

Kakashi frowned and shifted in his sleep. Rin eventually stopped rubbing his back though she didn’t have muscles to tire and instead leaned her cheek against his forehead and breathed.

It was redundant. Neither of them needed to. Rin had been dead for a long time and now he would be too, because he was stuck here. Not even death could prevent him from failing one last time.

Rin’s voice broke through the sound of his (non-existent) pulse in his ears. “One, two three, four, five. Hold for one, two, three. Breathe out, one, two, three, four, five.”

Her chest rose and fell exaggeratedly. In the quiet, the sound of his pulse faded and was replaced with Rin’s imitation of respiration.

“You gave him my ashes.” he managed. Rin fell silent.

(He wondered if she would lie to him. Horribly, he hoped that she would. That she would prove him right; that he could trust no one but himself)

Rin sighed. “You were the only family he had left.” She said quietly. “I couldn’t just leave him with nothing.”

“You could’ve left him a length of rope to hang himself with. Those are my ashes, my remains; they are me, Rin. They’re mine and you gave them to the man who left me to die.” He choked on a sign of weakness as Rin started rubbing his back again. But the originally comforting gesture now made his skin crawl and he deactivated his Sharingan, letting himself fall through her and almost through the floor. He climbed back onto the windowsill and glared at the wall.

“...Sorry.” Rin whispered. She sounded despondent enough that he risked a look at her and found her staring at her hands in her lap. “I just…Kakashi was his squad captain in Anbu, did you know that? Back when he was all bird-bone wrists and big doe eyes. That’s all I can remember him as and I…guess I forgot it isn’t the same for you. It doesn’t help that he…”

She shut her mouth and her hazel eyes dimmed further despite the lightening sky outside. Sasuke hated that he could finish the sentence in his mind.

He looks like you.

(He knew that. He knew that, damnit; all the broken mirrors in his house could attest to that. The way he glared was Itachi looking down on him on That Night and he had broken his fingers punching a training post after that realisation. He didn’t clip his bangs back anymore because the memories of both Itachi and mother doing so hurt - he’d hacked his hair off with a kunai when it had gotten long enough to tie up and it looked terrible but at least he didn’t look as much like Him anymore)

“He’s not my brother anymore.” His voice sounded hoarse. It was a step up from being choked. “I want my ashes back.”

The statement sounded more like a petulant demand. He bit down on his bottom lip until it would’ve hurt and wasn’t satisfied. He doubted he ever would be. There was a pit in his stomach the shape of a clan full of people (and an older brother) and until it was full again, he would never know peace.

“I can try to ask for them back.” Rin murmured. Both of them knew it would be a failed venture. Rin couldn’t lift things, Itachi wouldn’t give them back for some unfathomable reason and Sasuke would bite off his hand before he went back to the compound.

(They were all still there. Aunty Sei with her stomach ripped open and her eyes missing, Kira with a sword cut from her shoulder to her sternum and a bleeding throat, Shisui’s sister Asami curled around little Takahiro, both of them run through with a single strike, Uncle Shinichi stumbling down the main street with half his torso missing, calling for his sister-

Uncle Yuudai at the gates of the compound, his body collapsed in an awkward position that didn’t quite hide the small body of his infant niece-

His mo t h er, bloody and-)

Spiderweb cracks crawled up the windowpane.

“Kakashi could ask?” Rin tried again. She was grasping at straws. Sasuke didn’t want to ask himself how desperate he was to get his ashes back; he wasn’t sure he’d like the answer. He dragged his nails down his face and his mouth twisted.

“I’ll just-” You can trust no one but yourself. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Sasuke’s mouth dried; he swallowed uselessly. “I’ll get them.” He tried again. “I’ll get them.”

Rin frowned and looked up at him. He looked away so he wouldn't have to meet her eyes. “...Are you sure?”

He wasn’t. He didn’t answer.

“...Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” At the very least, that he was sure of. They were his family (despite what they were now), his ashes, (his brother) and it would be wrong for an outsider to impinge on Uchiha business.

“Oh.” Rin fell silent for a moment. “Okay.”

Sasuke took a deep breath that he didn’t need and left without a word of goodbye, leaving Rin sitting at the window of Kakashi’s apartment.

The sun had risen fully, painting the sky in Naruto and Sakura’s colours (blue yellow orange pink redredredredredred-) and warming the rooftops. Sasuke squinted against the glare and veered to the left, out of the sunlight and toward where the Naka River wound lazily through the village. The urge to give into the water’s pull and sink into its depths grew stronger as Sasuke ran over its surface, but even as a ghost, he was wary of the Nara Forest that grew close to its banks and refused to trespass to avoid the water. He wouldn’t be surprised if whatever dwelled in the forest was a danger even to ghosts. After all, there must be a reason why he couldn’t see any ghosts lingering near it, Nara or otherwise.

Sasuke slowed down as he approached the edges of Uchiha land. He was just as unsure as he had been in life about how he could pinpoint the moment he crossed an Uchiha boundary. It had been a common occurrence that had been much speculated about amongst the Uchiha children - Sasuke amongst them - but then they had all died and Sasuke had bigger problems to worry about. He’d just stepped onto the bank and was taking a moment to relish in the warm feeling of going home (not anymore) when a cold hand latched onto his ankle.

Sasuke went stiff.

Personinthewaterdontgetstucktheressomethingisthereitsdeadyouredeaddeadmotherdeadfatherdeaddeaddead-

Water splashed. Sasuke heard a heaving gasp and turned, eyes spinning and throat burning with fire at the ready as a shadowy figure with the Uchiha crest on their back dragged themselves out of the river.

“Who-” They managed before heaving violently, spewing water onto the dry sand. Sasuke pursed his lips and ignored his instinct not to deactivate his Sharingan so he could step out of their grasp.

Their head jerked up-

emptyeyesemptyeyestheyregonesomeonetookthem

“Hey, wait - who-”

Sasuke squeezed his trembling hands into fists. He could’ve moved. He didn’t.

Shisui scrambled to his feet and stood, swaying, his hands held in front of him to grasp for support that wasn’t there. “Hey! Don’t leave me here!”

There was a note of desperation in his voice that Sasuke had never heard before. He couldn’t reconcile this…weak, staggering figure of a man who looked like his cousin with the Shisui he’d known. One of his eye sockets was still red, not dark, and bled horizontally rather than vertically as it should. The deluge of water that dripped from his clothes and hair stayed constant as he carefully slid his feet forward, trembling unconsciously.

“...Shisui?” the name fell from Sasuke’s lips unbidden. Shisui’s head snapped up and he nearly fell over himself as he stumbled to and then through Sasuke. They both shivered.

“Who’s there?” Shisui called, looking left and right without eyes to see. “Come out, this isn’t funny! Who is it?”

Sasuke couldn’t find anything to say. Instead, he reactivated his Sharingan and placed his hand on Shisui’s shoulder.

The reaction was immediate; Shisui grabbed him back with enough force to bruise, an exhale hissing through his teeth as he patted the air until he found Sasuke’s face, cupping it in his hands and knocking their foreheads together as if he could see him through proximity alone.

“Who are you?” Shisui asked quietly. Sasuke didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, too busy trying to keep his breathing regular as Shisui traced the lines of his nose, his cheeks, his eyes-

hesgoingtotakethem

“Let me go.” Sasuke whispered. Shisui let go so suddenly he nearly fell over and carefully grasped Sasuke’s shoulders with his thumbs and forefingers to ground himself.

“Sasuke?” He breathed. “You…oh, Sasuke, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at home? Where’s your-” He cut himself off. “Itachi. Oh god, Sasuke; where’s Itachi?”

Sasuke felt cold.

Shisui squirmed as moments passed in silence. “...Sasuke? What happened?”

Sasuke heard himself speak as if from underwater, as if he were the one that had drowned. “We’re all dead.”

Before Shisui could even draw breath to ask, he continued. “You, me…everyone. We’re all dead. Itachi killed us. He stole my ashes and I’m going to get them back.”

Shisui inhaled sharply.

“Itachi? Killed - no. No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t’ve. Sasuke - he didn’t.” Shisui’s fingers dug into Sasuke’s shoulders. “Did he?” He asked quietly.

“We’re dead.” Sasuke repeated, and prised Shisui’s hands off his shoulders. “I need to go. I’ll leave you with the-” His tongue tripped over the correct method of address, and he swallowed. “...The others.”

“The others?” Shisui breathed - not breathed, neither of them breathed, they were both dead - as he trailed after Sasuke, one hand clinging onto Sasuke’s in a dead man’s grip. Sasuke didn’t bother trying to explain as anything he would’ve said died in its infancy as a small figure stepped out from behind a tree. Sasuke could see the grass behind them through the hole in their chest.

“I’ll take him, if you need someone to look after him.” The child offered with an open palm outstretched. Their hair and clothes looked damp, but they weren’t still dripping water like Shisui was. A hazy memory of a child looking at him unblinkingly from across a group of their cousins rose to the surface as Sasuke looked at the child’s face.

“...Okay.” Sasuke carefully guided Shisui’s hands to hold onto their cousin as the child let Shisui touch their face for reassurance. “You’re Shiko, right?”

Shiko nodded. “You’ve gotten taller.” They mused, looking up at him thoughtfully.

Sasuke swallowed. “You haven’t.”

Shiko shrugged. “I never will.” They said simply, and gently coaxed Shisui into keeping only one hand on their shoulder so they could walk without interference. “Will you be coming back, Sasuke-nii?”

Sasuke’s mouth twisted at the title. “I don’t know.” He answered truthfully. He didn’t even know if he would be able to stand being in the compound.

“You need to come back. I don’t understand what’s going on,” Shisui’s grip tightened on Shiko’s shoulders for a moment. “And you do. You need to tell me. I want to help.”

Shiko inclined their head. “We’ll be at my house if you change your mind, Sasuke.” They’d dropped the ‘nii’. It made his nerves settle, somewhat. “You know where it is, right?”

He did, if only vaguely. Shiko’s house was closer to the forest that bordered the Naka than it was to the other houses in the compound - less of a chance of running into anyone else. He could take the detour with little risk to his sanity.

Sasuke nodded. “We’ll see.” He said in lieu of a concrete answer. The day had already subverted his expectations, and he didn’t want to bet on being unpleasantly surprised for fear of being proven right.

Shisui reached out and pawed the air for a moment before he latched onto Sasuke again. “Promise me you’ll come back. Even if it’s only for a little while.” He hesitated as if there was more he wanted to say, but decided against saying it. “Please.” He added quietly.

“...I’ll see.” Sasuke murmured as he slid out of Shisui’s grip. Shiko inclined their head once and began walking away, leaving Sasuke standing by himself as the morning sunlight filtered through the trees.

He clenched and unclenched his fists. With a final exhale, he turned on his heel and continued his slow walk to the gallows compound.

…

He wakes.

It is grey, and there is an urn tucked protectively against his chest.

His eyes ache. Dimly, he can recognise the layout of his old bedroom around him, but the majority of his attention is on the urn.

It’s small. He almost can’t believe all that is left of his baby brother is in such a small container. Sasuke took up such a big space in his life (in his heart) that it is inconceivable that all that is left of him is small enough to fit in a container the size of his hand.

Tears prick at his eyes again. He blinks them away.

He will find Sasuke a nicer urn, he decides. Something he’d like.

…He doesn’t know what Sasuke liked. Did he still like tomatoes? Would that be too childish for an urn? Was his favourite colour still blue? The only Sasuke he knows is the one who used to adore him.

His little, little brother, made littler still. What’s left of him can fit within Itachi’s cupped hands. He remembers when he would cradle Sasuke’s face between his hands just to watch his eyes brighten, a gummy smile beaming up at him like he’d hung the stars.

(And he would’ve done it, too. He would’ve done anything for Sasuke)

“Little brother.” He says aloud. The word has grown cobwebs since he’d last used it - it no longer falls off his tongue as easily as his own name. It catches in his throat, dragging his breath into a rasp as if it is shackled to the depths of his stomach. He tries again.

“Sasuke.”

The word rots in his mouth.

Tears fill his eyes anew and he doesn’t have the heart to stop them as they darken the stains left by their predecessors the night before.

His little brother is so small.

…

Sasuke squinted against the golden glow of the rising sun. Raising his hand did nothing to block it as the sunlight shone through his body without care, and using the Sharingan would do nothing but burn the light into his memories permanently.

(He does not want to see his family. He does not-)

Left to its own devices, the Uchiha compound finally became a ghost town in truth. He did not stir dirt as he walked down the dirt path that divided houses from each other; cats hissed and arched their backs as he passed. The sunlight caught on a thin layer of dust that had gathered on houses he had had no thought nor time to spare for.

The main house looked markedly cleaner than the rest as he rounded the corner and faced it, but even it had not been left untouched in time’s crusade against the old compound. The paint was peeling away where wall met wood and the supports had begun to splinter without proper care.

Sasuke looked up at the house that had once been his home and just…stood there for a moment. He looked at the door frame that had been scratched by the raccoon he had desperately wanted for a pet, at the window he and Shisui had escaped out of after dirtying the formerly clean sheets his mother had just finished hanging up, at the engawa he had crawled under to look for bugs to surprise-

He took a step further before his mind could convince him away. Another. And another. And another, falling into the routine he’d had since joining the Academy, coming home to an empty house that remained so even when he reflexively called out “I’m home.”

Itachi stepped onto the landing from the stairs, cradling an urn in his arms.

For a moment, they just stared at each other, a dying boy meeting the gaze of a dead one.

…

“Sasuke.”

There - the name comes more easily to him now, falling from his lips effortlessly.

Sasuke is alive.

Ye gods, he is alive.

The empty space in his heart blooms with new life and settles into the cavity, just as it should be.

He is alive.

He is afraid, but that’s okay -  he can take the fear, endure the anger, the revulsion - anything, as long as Sasuke is alive to hate him.
There are so many things he wants to say - a hundred apologies, a thousand renditions of I’m sorry, I love you, please don’t go again- but they clog his throat and render him speechless, so he settles for a truth he knows as surely as his own existence.

“I love you.”

…

Sasuke’s skin crawled.

Why? He wanted to scream. Why would you say that, now, after everything you’ve done? Itachi looked at him like he had when he was young and his fever had broken, when his broken arm had mended, (like seeing Sasuke again was the best thing that could’ve happened to him) and Sasuke wanted nothing more than to tear out his eyes or slap him in the face or to do something, anything, to make him stop looking at him like that-

It ached. It was salt in a wound he thought had scabbed over. It was fingernails digging into a fresh brand.

It was repulsive.

“My ashes.” He choked out instead. “Give them back.”

Itachi hesitated.

“They’re all I have left of you.” He whispered.

“That’s your fault. You left me here. Give them back.”

Itachi’s fingers curled tighter around the urn.

…

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

I don’t want him to go

Please-

…

“I didn’t want to leave you.”

“You still did.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“So it’s okay if you leave, but I have to stay? How is that fair?”

Itachi’s mouth twisted. Anger warred with fear in Sasuke’s head.

“You left me.” He snapped. “You let me go first. You gave up on me. You have no right-”

“You’re my brother.”

“What good has that done me?!”

Itachi’s eyes were wide and red-rimmed. Sasuke inhaled through gritted teeth.

“So what if I’m your brother? You’ve clearly demonstrated what family means to you! If a ‘brother’ means ‘someone to torture within an inch of their life, and then some’ to you, then you’d be correct, if only by your own definition! If that’s what a brother means to you, then I wish my mother never gave birth to me.” He spat. “If you’re truly trying to make amends - which I doubt - then give me my ashes and never come back! I don’t want to see you! I’m sick of the sight of your face - I can’t seem to get away from you, can I, not even in death!”

“They killed you.” Itachi whispered.

“You left me to die.” Sasuke hissed.

Itachi’s face crumpled.

“Give me back my urn.” Sasuke demanded. “I am asking you for the last time.”

…

Baby Sasuke, blinking big dark eyes up at him from within his cot

Little Sasuke, slowly toddling his way towards him, his mouth curved in a smile with two small teeth poking through his gums

Little Sasuke, running away from him, laughing, his hair in disarray and trailing soap bubbles

Little Sasuke, tackling him on the couch, trying to take revenge for yet another forehead poke

Little Sasuke, draped over his lap, complaining about another classmate

Little Sasuke, his expression becoming more like their father’s as he was denied yet another training session

Little Sasuke, kneeling in the street, tears streaming down his round cheeks, anger and fear and one swirling tomoe where there had once been nothing but love-

…

Itachi held out the urn.

Like a cornered animal, Sasuke reached forward and snatched the urn back, suspicion carved into his face. He took several unsteady steps back and nearly dropped the urn when it thumped against the door he had phased through earlier. Itachi looked away as he scrabbled for the handle and pulled the door open violently, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to get out of the house.

He ran and didn’t stop running even as he took to the roofs to avoid the night parade of a hundred ghosts that turned their heads as he passed, reaching, calling his name-

Sasuke jarred his ankle jumping down from the last roof and limped the rest of the way to Shiko’s house, clutching his urn desperately.

Shiko’s house loomed out from the tree line like a worn sentinel, half swallowed by the trees at its back. Small plants curled at its base like sleeping cats. Sasuke stumbled heavily on the dark wood of the engawa and threw the old door open loud enough to scare Shisui out of the living room. Shiko poked their head through the wall a moment later.

“Oh. You came back.” They sounded surprised. Shisui sagged in visible relief.

“You came back.” He echoed. “I…I’m glad. Thank you. Thank you, Sasuke.”

Sasuke hugged his urn to his chest and just…breathed for a moment. The motions were comforting even if they were now redundant.

“I’m back.” He agreed as he let Shiko herd them back into the living room. Dust motes jumped and danced in the air as he sat, the only disturbance in the room despite the two other occupants and the trail of water Shisui left wherever he went. He held his urn close and rested his chin on its lid.

“So, Sasuke…” Shiko squeezed Shisui’s hand reassuringly as he struggled to find words. “What happened? I don’t get it. Why would Itachi…” He trailed off.

Shiko said nothing, but their eyes were bright and curious.

“...Itachi killed everyone a few days after you died. He left me alive, but I’m dead now.” Sasuke chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s been six years.” He finished in a whisper.

Shiko raised their hand like they were in a classroom. “I can confirm I was killed by Uchiha Itachi. I saw his reflection in the Naka when I fell in.”

Sasuke stared at the child, then down at the hole in their chest. Shiko shrugged.

“I don’t mind it. I kind of knew it was coming anyway.”

Shisui straightened. “You did?”

“...Did you?” Sasuke asked, feeling off-kilter. Had everyone known but him? Why had nobody told him?

Shiko kicked their feet absently. “I found your body floating down the river. Itachi appeared not long after. He was crying.”

Shisui inhaled.

“I figured it was only a matter of time. The Uchiha clan were being confined to the compound. Tensions were rising. Something had to give.”

Shisui slumped heavily. “Does that mean that I…” He slid his hands into his hair and pulled. “Was it my fault?” He whispered to himself.

Shiko patted his hand. “No one man is to blame for everything going wrong. That would be like blaming the White Fang for the Third World War.”

“Who knew?” Sasuke demanded. “About…everything. Who knew?”

“Me.” Shiko piped up.

“Me.” Shisui didn’t raise his head. “Itachi. The Sandaime. The Council.” His fingers tightened on his scalp.

“Shimura Danzo.”

So many people and yet… “Why didn’t the Hokage stop it?”

Why didn’t anyone think to stop the massacre?

“He tried. There was nothing that could be done.” Small purple insects crawled over Shisui’s skin as if mocking his freckles, swimming in the water that tied Shisui to the Naka. “...I don’t even know if he wanted to stop it. After I met him for the last time, Shimura-sama ambushed me and…” He touched the skin under his eye carefully.

“He stole your eye?” Sasuke hissed.

“An elder?” Shiko added, horrified. “That’s…So no one was going to help us.” They said in a small voice.

Sasuke tightened his grip on his urn. “He stole everyone else’s eyes as well. There’s a…thing behind him made of everyone whose eyes he took-”

Shisui, with his eyes missing, bleeding, drowning, being eaten alive-

Shisui, in front of him now, with his eyes missing, bleeding, drowning, being eaten alive-

Sasuke lowered his gaze to the floor and swallowed. The puddle of water that fell from Shisui had reached his feet.

“Is there anyone left if he’s taken all their eyes?” Shisui whispered.

Shiko leaned into his side and sniffled. “You’re here, aren’t you? Then the others must be here as well.” He peered hopefully at Sasuke. “I know you weren’t looking, but did you see anyone else…?”

“The others are still here.” Sasuke watched the water spread with apathetic fascination. “And some more too. I met Naruto’s mum and Kakashi’s teammate.”

Shisui’s head snapped up. “Obito-nii?”

Sasuke shook his head. “Rin.”

Shisui deflated. “Oh.”

“What are they like? Are they nice?” Shiko asked curiously. Sasuke slowly dragged his gaze up to meet theirs.

“Nice enough, I suppose.” He fiddled with the rim of his urn. “Kushina-san is scary. Rin is…nice. Stubborn. Cheerful.” He remembered the circumstances in which he’d left her and his brow furrowed. “I like her, but I’m angry at her right now.”

“Is it to do with your urn?” Shiko inclined their head at the object in his arms.

Sasuke felt unreasonably protective of it. “She gave it to Itachi.” He said shortly.

Shiko made a face. “I see.”

Shisui straightened again. “Is he here?”

Sasuke nodded once. “In the main house. Shiko can take you if you want to see him. I refuse to be near him any longer.”

“...It’s strange to hear you speak about him like that. It was only yesterday for me that you begged me to teach you how to braid so you could do his hair.”

Sasuke pressed his lips together. “A lot of time has passed for me.” He said roughly. He stood. “I should go.”

“Go where?” Shiko asked as they held onto Shisui to stop him from falling after standing so suddenly.

“To Kakashi’s house. I’m staying with him and Rin.” He hesitated before he took a step. “...If you need to find me, that’s where I’ll be. Or somewhere nearby.”

“Will you come back?” Shisui asked, a note of desperate hope in his voice.

“I don’t know.” Sasuke told him again. “We’re trying to find a way for me to pass on. If we do, I’ll tell them to tell you both as well.”

Shiko gave him a funny half-smile. “We appreciate the offer.”

Sasuke looked at them. “...Don’t you want to pass on?”

“I don’t know about Shisui-nii, but I’m content as I am.” Shiko shrugged. “I’d appreciate the choice, but I also wouldn’t mind just existing here.”

“I’d like to stay. I still have things to do.” Shisui unconsciously tightened his grip on Shiko’s shoulder. “Things I should’ve done when I was alive. I’ll try and make things right, Sasuke. I promise.”

Sasuke gave him a small smile, though he couldn’t see it. “...Thanks, Shisui-nii.”

“I’ll talk to Itachi. See if I can get him to see sense.” Shisui smiled crookedly at him. “I’ll tell him to stay out of your way if you don’t want him to be near you. You won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Thanks.” Sasuke repeated, a little more quietly. He cleared his throat. “I’m going to go now. I’ll see if we can drop by when Kakashi, Rin and I go looking for Obito. And…I’m glad you’re both still here.”

“We’re glad too.” Shiko beamed at him, exposing a missing canine. “Come by whenever you need a place to take a break. I won’t mind.”

“We’ve always got your back, Sasuke. Remember that.” The Shisui he knew grinned at him and gave him a goofy thumbs-up, still dripping wet but no longer looking like his own bloated corpse. Sasuke swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat.

“Bye.” He called over his shoulder as he fled the house before his emotions could catch up to him.

The sun had risen properly by the time he left the Uchiha grounds and leapt onto the rooftops, a mysteriously floating urn and the invisible boy carrying it. A chunin nearly tripped into an alley at the sight; Sasuke hunched further over his urn and hurried on.

The streets came alive beneath his feet as he steadily made his way to Kakashi’s apartment and scared the wits out of the man as he knocked on the window.

“I got it.” He told them, breathless, as Kakashi opened the window. “I got it. Hold this.”

He handed Kakashi his urn and deactivated his Sharingan, rubbing his eyes as he stepped through the wall into the apartment.

Rin squeezed his shoulder. “I’m glad you did.” She told him warmly, and it sounded genuine.

Chapter Text

“...That’s a lot of ghosts.” Kakashi told Sasuke, if only for something to say after his former student had recounted the events that had transpired in the Uchiha compound in gradually shorter sentences. Sasuke had fully retreated into himself once he had run out of words, curled up on his seat around his urn as he stared sullenly at the table.

“There’s always a lot of ghosts. However, you only know they’re there if they’re intensely emotional.” Rin commented idly. “Though I suppose they stop being ghosts at that point and become more poltergeists. The ones I’ve seen are more monsters than anything."

Kakashi tipped his head back to look at her. “I thought you hadn’t seen any ghosts other than the ones Sasuke’s interacted with.”

Rin booped his nose. “‘Ghosts’ implies they were human at one point. To me, they don’t act with enough intelligence to qualify.”

Kakashi scrunched his nose, his mouth quirking into a smile under his mask as Rin giggled. “That’s very mean of you, Rin. How come I haven’t seen any, then?”

She made an obnoxious kissing sound just above his forehead. “I’ve scared them all away from you, of course.” She told him sweetly. “But I think that’s enough scary talk on an empty stomach. Come help me make breakfast, Sasuke.”

Kakashi blinked at the ceiling as Rin stepped away and a quiet thump signified Sasuke putting his urn down so he could get off his chair. “What does that mean, Rin?” He asked the roof.

Rin didn’t answer and began to hum as she poked through his kitchen drawers.

“Rin.”

Sasuke skulked around the table to join Rin in the kitchen.

With a sigh and a mental note to investigate the matter later, Kakashi let the front legs of his chair fall to the floor as he sat up straight and got up to help. Sasuke proved reasonably - and perhaps unsurprisingly - skilled with a frying pan, while Rin hovered between them and coached him through making an omelette with rice. The spring onions were a bit stringy, but the egg and rice were well-cooked. Perhaps good cooking was an Uchiha trait. Itachi had been the designated cook during his brief stint with Team Ro, after all, once the team had realised how well he could make mission rations taste. Speaking of which…

Kakashi swallowed a mouthful of rice to smother the lump in his throat before he asked “What happened to Itachi?”

Sasuke’s suspicious squint at his mouth smoothed out until his face was as blank as he could make it, though the tightness of his mouth and the furrow between his brows betrayed him. “I don’t know.” He told him shortly. “Shisui-nii said he’d talk to him. I’m not going to have anything more to do with him going forward. He can rot for all I care.”

“...I see.” Kakashi said quietly after a moment of silence. “I don’t suppose Shisui and your cousin would want to join us on our morbid road trip, would they?” Shisui had been a good partner in ANBU - having his assistance, even blind, wouldn’t hurt. Besides, it might do Sasuke some good to interact with some of his family. See, Rin, he could come up with healthy coping strategies. He should tell her when he got the chance.

Rin lit up. “Ooh, Shisui! He was funny. We should definitely bring him along. It would be nice to meet him in person.”

“You only think that because he managed to convince me during an ANBU mission that a squirrel was our client.” Kakashi told her dryly as he placed his chopsticks back on his plate. She grinned at him.

“And to this day, that remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed. Your face when common sense kicked in and you realised you were speaking to a squirrel was another.”

“I was high off painkillers, blood loss and adrenaline. He was taking advantage of a sick, wounded person, Rin.”

“If you weren’t so stupidly self-sacrificial, you would’ve been clear-headed enough that you would’ve realised he was taking the piss out of you.” She snarked as she ineffectually pinched his nose and pretended to wiggle it. “You completely deserved it, and I’m going to get Shisui to show it to me again because he had his Sharingan on and recorded the whole thing.”

Kakashi’s eyes went wide. “What?! He told me he didn’t-” He put his head in his hands and groaned. “But he swore-!”

“I’m embarrassed for you.” Rin told him snootily. She turned to Sasuke as Kakashi groaned again. “Please say they can come. Pretty please? The instances in which Kakashi has been embarrassed are sorely lacking nowadays.”

Sasuke frowned at her. “How do you two know Shisui?”

“ANBU.” Rin waved her hand as if that explained it. “I'll ask myself if you don’t want to go back to the compound. Just make sure Kakashi doesn’t trip and crack his head once I’m gone. It’s easy enough…in theory.”

Sasuke grimaced at the thought. “I'm not sure that's a good idea.”

“You'll be fine. I believe in you. Kakashi's a grown adult, so that should count for something, right?”

Both Sasuke and Kakashi looked at Rin doubtfully.

“I wouldn't trust Kakashi with a blunt kunai.” Sasuke muttered to himself.

Kakashi utilised his ultimate weapon - the kicked puppy face. “But Rin, how would I be able to cope for a minute without you since you've always been by my side?” He asked plaintively, a single tear glimmering in his eye as he sagged into his seat.

Now it was Sasuke and Rin’s turn to look at him with matching expressions of revulsion.

“Never open your mouth again.” Sasuke told him empathetically. 

“You kicked me out of your apartment when we were messing with the house paint and now you tell me you can't live without me? What is this, one of your shitty Icha Icha plotlines?” Rin looked horrified at the very thought.

“Hey. Icha Icha is fine literature, I'll have you know.” Kakashi replied defensively as he wiped the tear from his eye. “Damn. I think I actually cried a tear.”

Rin snapped to attention like a shark scenting blood in the water. “Are you expressing emotions in what you feel is a safe environment?”

Kakashi eyed her warily. He was starting to get an inkling of how she'd managed to scare off any poltergeist strong enough to manifest near him. “I don't think I feel very safe anymore.”

Rin ignored him and repeatedly slapped Sasuke’s shoulder, not once taking her eyes off Kakashi. “Sasuke. Sasuke, go get a treat. Good behaviour needs to be rewarded or there won't be incentive for it to happen again.”

“Am I a dog?” Kakashi wondered aloud as Sasuke scowled and stepped through the table, out of Rin’s reach.

“Watch your hands.” He hissed, arms wrapped around his urn protectively.

Rin scoffed. “Of course not. That would be an insult to dogs.”

Sasuke snorted in amusement despite himself. “That's a good one. I should remember that.” He muttered to himself as he wandered back into the kitchen to find a safe place to put his urn.

“Look what you're teaching him.” Kakashi gestured at Sasuke as he turned beseeching eyes on Rin. She stared back at him, unimpressed.

“That's more than you've ever taught him. So, Sasuke, can I go?”

“Only if you take Kakashi with you. I don't want to deal with him alone.” He called back.

Kakashi dropped. “Maa, my student is so mean to me…” His expression sobered as a thought occurred to him. “Would it…are you okay with me walking around the Uchiha compound without you, Sasuke?”

Sasuke attempted to lean against the doorframe, fell through the wall, and righted himself with a scowl. “Do I look like my father to you? Do what you want. I don't care.”

“Thank you very much.” Rin sing-songed, and blew a kiss that Sasuke pretended to dodge. “Hold the fort for us. I'll forgive you if you arrange a prank for Kakashi again while we're gone. Thanks again!”

Rin gave Sasuke an exaggerated wink and pushed Kakashi out of the door before he could protest.

“You're terrible.” He told her as he locked his front door. She grinned up at him. 

“You love me anyways.”

And yes, he supposed as he sighed to himself, he did. He absent-mindedly passed a hand through her hair before he leapt onto the balcony railing and up onto the rooftop. He gave his neighbour a nod as she passed him, looking utterly hammered despite the early hour and unhappy about it. She nodded back and stumbled as she landed on the balcony behind him, clutching at her head.

“I wish that were me.” Rin commented wistfully. “Living next to you…drinking until I can't walk straight…that's the dream.”

“I thought your dream was free healthcare and therapy for everyone?” Kakashi mused, ignoring the drinking comment for now. 

“You can have more than one dream. What are you, the dream police?” Kakashi chuckled as Rin tried to shove him. “Besides, free healthcare and therapy is an attainable goal. Being able to live with you and have fun is a dream.”

Kakashi swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. “And the drinking?” He asked, hoping his sudden melancholy didn't bleed into his voice.

“Who doesn't want to forget their worldly troubles with a good stiff drink? I missed out, not being old enough to be served at bars. I want a good drunk story to brag about too.” Rin pouted.

“You've got all of mine to bully me about.”

“It's not the same.” Rin sighed and made a passing chunin seize in fright as she jumped through him. “I missed out on so much. It's nice to still be around and watch you go through all your embarrassing moments, but I wish I'd been there to experience them with you, you know? It's not the same.”

“Mm.” Kakashi turned away to hide his expression.

Of course it wasn't the same. While it was a comforting thought knowing that Rin had stayed by his side throughout the years, it still didn't change the fact that she was as good as gone. He'd still experienced those years alone.

Rin stepped into his side like she was trying to hug him, leaned in further and - vanished. Kakashi's heart stopped; but not the creeping feeling of ice infiltrating his veins. He stumbled and caught himself - but his hands didn't move the way he expected them to. 

“Rin?” He asked quietly, placing his hand against his chest as if he expected it to betray him again. A chakra that wasn't his burned warm and cool and comforting within his pathways and soothed the continuous ache in his transplanted eye. And he remembered-

Lying in the dirt as grass smouldered around him, bleeding, wishing, hoping that he would just die - his fingers digging into the dirt, pulling himself across the ground, dragging his broken leg behind him - the scrape of his vest across the ground, flashes of hot and cold running through his body, a blinding light obscuring his vision that may’ve been tinted green - waking up at the base of a tree, his leg aching but no longer broken, an old memory receding into the depths of his regret

Another long night, the moon in the sky, his gear strewn on the floor - sagging into his bathtub, the water stained pink, bruises on his skin and exhaustion in his bones - slipping under the water, air leaving his lungs without a fight, the blurring of his vision - jolting out of the water with a gasp and a choke, throwing up onto the floor of his bathroom, smears of purple in his watery reflection - waking up on the floor in a towel, his bruises gone, the water drained

And Rin was suddenly there again, like she always had been, even when he had been too blinded by grief to see her. She passed him, leaping forward onto the next rooftop and looking back as if to say ‘Aren’t you coming?’, with a wistful smile on her face.

What was that she had said about expressing emotions in an environment where he felt safe? He jumped forward to be by her side and endured the stinging pain in his eye to wrap an arm around her shoulders and rest his head on top of hers to hide his watery eyes.

“You're wonderful.” He told her, and meant it sincerely. He could hear the smile in her voice as her arm snaked around his waist. 

“So are you.” She told him. “And I will always stay by your side, no matter what; because I love you, you idiot wolf. Now let's get you some friends to talk to other than me and Sasuke, ne?”

Kakashi hid his face in her hair and pretended for a moment that she was alive, and everything was fine. “Yeah. Okay.” He took a steadying breath. “Let's do that.”

“Precious.” She crooned, part affectionate, part teasingly. “Come on. I'm not carrying you all the way to the Uchiha compound.”

Kakashi chuckled despite himself. “Weren't you the one who said she'd be even better than Tsunade-hime?”

“In medic stuff, not carrying men. Tsunade-hime can carry all the men she wants; I'm of the opinion that they can damn well carry themselves.” Rin sniffed.

“‘Medic stuff’. Such a broad vocabulary you have. I'm in awe of the breadth of your linguistic knowledge.”

“No one who reads Icha Icha unironically can criticise me on linguistics, thank you very much.”

Kakashi grinned at her good-naturedly. She smiled back, and they both pretended that they didn't see the remnants of tears in each other's eyes.

“Race you to the Uchiha compound?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

…

Rin maintained that she won despite Kakashi not seeing her at the property line until she popped into sight from behind him. He thought she was just saying that because he couldn't exactly prove that she hadn't been there, as is the nature of ghosts; that, and he had deactivated his Sharingan to conserve chakra for the race. 

Here, with his Sharingan active and Rin by his side, he saw his first instance of a haunting.

The grounds were clogged with ghosts so thickly that the very air seemed weighted down by their presence. One crawled through the roof they were standing on, half his face shorn off and his remaining eye bleeding sluggishly - Rin flickered at his side, and the Uchiha fell back into the house. Rin looked perfectly normal, if a bit too smug, when Kakashi looked down at her again. 

“What?” She asked innocently. “Don't worry about them. Just worry about finding Shisui, or Sasuke’s other cousin.”

“You worry me sometimes.” He told her. Her grin widened a tad too much to be comforting.

“It's never purposeful, I swear.” She replied, like a liar.

Another ghost heaved herself up onto the roof. Kakashi swallowed thickly at the sight of a bloodied police uniform and the hole through her torso where her guts hung out like butcher's meat. Rin flickered again warningly, but this ghost didn't react. 

“Hatake? Nohara? What are you two doing here?” The woman asked. 

Rin was surprised enough at the recognition that she didn't try to do whatever horrible thing she'd done to scare off the other ghost. “You know me?” She asked, as confused as Kakashi felt. 

The woman nodded distractedly as she waved at the street she'd come from. “Yeah. You were at the trial where those bitchass elders were arguing whether Hatake got to keep Obito-chan’s eye, right? Oi, Tadao, hurry up. It's Hatake and Nohara.”

“Visitors!” A man called back more gleefully than was warranted. A child's face peered up at Kakashi from through the roof as two men joined them on the rooftop, one leaning heavily on the other. 

“Hatake! Hi! Long time no see!” One man gushed, shoving the man he had been supporting onto the woman. Kakashi was reasonably sure he had never seen him in his life. 

Rin stepped in front of him as the man took a step forward. “Back off. How do I know you haven't gone mad?” She asked sharply.

The man who was now leaning against the woman scoffed heavily. His eyes were two empty sockets dribbling blood down his cheeks, his right shoulder and arm missing completely. “Yeah, Tadao. Don't be ridiculous.”

Tadao turned sharply on his heel to yell something in return that Kakashi missed, distracted by the child climbing out of the roof in front of him. 

“Papa's screaming again, so I'm coming out here so Toki-nii doesn't go all flickery. He does it when he's worried.” She told him matter-of-factly. She looked back down at the roof to help who must've been “Toki-nii”, who looked at him distrustfully and curled around his sister once he was fully seated on the roof. 

“Is your father scaring you again, Tomo-chan?” The woman asked. A crown of horns flickered out of view above Rin’s head as Kakashi looked up. 

Tomoe shook her head. “He's scaring Toki-nii. I'm not scared.” She corrected. Toki-nii’s brow furrowed, but he didn't argue the point.

The woman's answering smile was grim. “Of course. I'll sort him out after I figure out what's the deal here, don't worry.”

“What is happening here, Aunty Sei?” Tomoe leaned her head back against her brother's shoulder so she could peer up at Kakashi curiously.

Her gaze then flickered to Rin. “Whoa. What are you supposed to be?”

Rin's answering smile was strained. “What's that supposed to mean, huh?” She asked with a false lightness. 

Tomoe tilted her head. “Hm. Not sure.”

“Can someone tell me who's here?” The blind man asked irritably. “There's me, my sister, Tadao - regretfully - Tokito and Tomoe, Nohara - whoever that is - and Hatake, who I haven't heard from. Is that all?”

“I'm here.” Kakashi breathed, as Tadao loudly demanded what the blind man meant by “unfortunately”. “Uh…we're here to find Shisui. Uchiha Shisui.” He winced at the redundancy of confirming his last name in front of the boy’s family.

The five Uchiha looked at him like he'd grown a second head. 

“Well…if you find him, let us know.” Tadao told him, sounding baffled. 

Sei’s brother snorted. “We'll even help you look.” He snarked. “No one's seen Shisui, not since he apparently killed himself and didn't even bother to leave us a body.”

Sei sighed and hit her brother upside the head. It made a wet smacking noise. “And this is why you never lasted more than a year in the force. What did Fugaku-tan tell you about personal biases, Shin-chan?”

“If he'd actually come out of his house instead of moping because his pride and joy ended up killing all of us, I might interact with him long enough to remember.” Shin-chan hissed. His sister hit him again more forcefully.

“Don't.” Sei told him sternly.

Tadao folded his arms. “It wasn't Fugaku’s fault that Itachi snapped and killed us all. If anything, the blame lies with all of us. Just because you've disliked Itachi from birth, doesn't mean you have to take out your anger on his immediate family. Shisui didn't even have a part in this.”

He caught Tomoe’s eye and regret visibly dawned on his face. “Er. That is…adult stuff. Don't worry about it.”

Tomoe blinked innocently. “I have no idea what you mean. In fact, I didn't even hear what you said.”

“Brilliant job, Tadao.” Sei sighed. “This is why you didn't last more than a year on the force. I swear, sometimes I see why Fugaku-tan always looked so stressed when he had to work with you two.”

Rin waved her hand in the air before another argument could start. “Can we get back to how no one's seen Shisui since he died?”

“He was murdered.” Shin-chan muttered venomously. Sei raised her eyes to heaven. 

“Susanoo preserve us. Yes, no one's seen him since he died, or after the fact. Why? Why are you looking for him?”

Rin looked back and exchanged glances with Kakashi. “Um.”

“Apparently, Sasuke has seen him. We need to ask Shisui something.” Kakashi explained for her. 

The five Uchiha snapped to alertness so suddenly at the sound of Sasuke’s name that Rin bristled on principle.

“You've seen Sasuke-nii?” Tomoe asked, a gleam in her eye. Even Tokito seemed more invested in the conversation. 

“Tell that fool of a boy to get his shitty brother out of the compound before I do it for him.” Shin-chan snarled. Sei let out a sharp exhale. 

“Alright, that's enough. Go yell at Kensuke since you want to be negative and unhelpful. Tadao, take him down.”

“Tadao, if you so much as touch me, I will find a way to kill you again.” Shin-chan snapped. Tadao rolled his eyes as Tokito covered his sister's ears. 

“If anyone could do it, it would be you.” He grumbled as he pressed Shin-chan into his side, ignored the violent attempts to get him off, and dropped through the ceiling.

“It’s going to get a bit loud around here,” And as soon as Sei mentioned it, a noise like a shrill scream played on a broken radio rose from within the house. “So let's take this elsewhere. Toki-chan, Tomo-chan, do you two want to go see Granny Hibari?”

“Wherever Toki-nii goes, I go.” Tomoe said as her brother nodded into her shoulder. “And Granny Hibari’s nice. Do you think she still has the candies she used to give us?”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to eat them, Tomo-chan.” Sei gathered the children to herself and jerked her head in a gesture for Rin and Kakashi to follow.

Tomoe shrugged regally. “It’s the principle of the matter.” She declared with the confidence of a child using the most intellectual-sounding phrase they knew.

“Sei. I think…have we met before?” Kakashi hedged. Sei let out an amused huff that made Kakashi’s stomach twist into knots with embarrassment.

“I’m Fugaku’s sister, Sasuke’s paternal aunt. I was sitting at Fugaku-tan’s left during the elders’ bitchfest. I don’t blame you for not recognising me; it was a pretty rough time for you, and definitely not something you should’ve had to go through. Alas, the elders have to do something to fill their time.”

“Is Hibari-san the one that made everyone shut up at the end?” Rin asked neutrally. Her previous defensiveness had calmed, but she remained alert and wary of the situation at hand. “If so, good for her. We owe her a lot for letting Kakashi keep Obito’s eye.”

Kakashi reached for Rin’s hand as the five of them crossed the compound across the rooves and over the heads of the other Uchiha ghosts, most of which had not retained their sanity in death and sobbed without eyes to see as they wandered the streets. She startled, if only out of surprise at the unexpected touch, but didn’t hesitate to grab his hand back twice as firmly and pull him along behind her.

Sei chuckled as she bounced off the edges of roofs over a more tightly packed residential area, Tomoe and her brother in her arms. “Yep, that’s Granny Hibari, all right. She’s been around since the end of the Warring Clans era, so she’s got twice the wisdom of all the fuddy-duddies that sit on their laurels on the council. May Susanoo preserve her for many years to come; honestly, all we need is her advising the Clan Head. None of those senile idiots.”

“Granny Hibari is great. She was making Toki-nii and all his friends their own weapons before we died.” Tomoe added. “She told me that she knew the Shodaime and Nidaime when they were alive. Do you know how cool that is?”

Toki-nii muttered something as they descended from the houses and Sei let them down. Tomoe leant her head against her brother’s shoulder as the group began walking up an overgrown path and listened to him repeat it.

“Toki-nii says that Granny Hibari is really nice because she got our father to let him apprentice under Grandpa Soma instead of being a shinobi.” She nodded decisively. “She’s even better than I thought.”

Sei huffed out a laugh as she led them through the trees. “How good did you think she was, initially?”

Tomoe shrugged. “She’s old, and you and Uncle Tadao always say that old people are terrible, so I thought she was the same.”

“That certainly seems to be a trend.” Rin muttered. Kakashi squeezed her hand comfortingly.

Tomoe straightened in her brother’s arms and grinned at Rin sharply. “Right?”

“Not all old people are bad.” Kakashi wasn’t sure when he had become the voice of reason, but it was worrying. Only Sei nodded in agreement.

“The Uchiha Council of Elders are just an extreme example. There are perfectly nice old people, they just tend to go unnoticed because no one complains about them. Like Grandpa Soma. Grandpa Soma is nice, isn’t he?” She asked the children.

“Soma-jii is nice.” Toki-nii agreed in a hoarse voice. His sister patted his head as if he were a frightened animal.

“He is. Remember when he let us hide in his house when Papa was yelling at you again?”

Sei’s shoulders tensed at the mention.

“Mm.” Having said all he wanted to say, Toki-nii fell silent again.

The five of them unconsciously straightened their postures as the house and its owner came into view. Kakashi’s breath caught in his throat because those messy spikes of hair were so painfully Sasuke’s that he had to take a moment to remind himself that she was merely a relative and not the boy himself.

Hibari was a proud woman with a shock of messy white hair that denoted a strong relation to Sasuke and a kimono that remained vibrant even in death. Her eyes were a few shades lighter than the true black of her relatives, a side effect of lifelong Sharingan use, and the most prominent wrinkles on her face were the worry lines on her forehead.

Tomoe scrambled out of her brother’s arms and paused long enough to give Hibari a deep bow before running up to her with her brother only a step behind.

“Toki-nii says you helped him get the apprenticeship with Grandpa Soma. Is that true?” She demanded.

“Tomoe!” Sei hissed and started forward to pull the girl away from the old woman. “Show some respect!”

Hibari raised an elegant eyebrow. “The correct greeting is ‘hello, how are you, Hibari-obaasama’? Tokito-kun, hello. Don’t feel like talking today?”

Tokito shook his head.

“Okay. I’ve got some paper and writing utensils inside. Sei-chan, to whom do I owe the pleasure of company?” Hibari looked up from talking to the children and furrowed her brow. “Feel free to come and join me, dear guests. My eyesight is not as forgiving at my age.”

Kakashi and Rin exchanged glances and tentatively joined the Uchiha, Rin placing herself between the group and Kakashi.

“Greetings to Uchiha Hibari-sama.” Rin announced cautiously, bowing almost as deeply as Tomoe had. Kakashi followed suit, feeling vaguely foolish. “I am Nohara Rin, and my companion is Hatake Kakashi. We’re here to find Uchiha Shisui on Sasuke’s behalf.”

Hibari inclined her head. “The Hatake and the Nohara. Welcome. You’re looking for Kanon’s boy, hm?” She absent-mindedly patted Tomoe’s head as she pondered an answer. “None of us have seen him since before he died, so unfortunately, I don’t know how much help I would be. I can keep an eye on the children, at the very least.”

“Ah.” Kakashi sagged a little in disappointment. Sei grimaced in solidarity. “I see. Well, thank you for telling us.”

“How is Sasuke-kun, by the way?” Hibari gave a passing wave to the children and Sei as the woman herded them into the house.

Kakashi let Rin handle the explanation because he still wasn’t ready yet to admit the truth to himself.

“He’s dead.”

Okay, maybe he should’ve handled it, because what the fuck, Rin? That’s not how you announce someone’s death, he tried to implore her with his gaze alone.

Hibari, to her credit, only sighed. “I see.” She murmured. “I suppose it was to be expected.”

Rin frowned at the comment but said nothing.

“Do you know if he plans to return to the compound?”

Kakashi shifted uncomfortably. “I…ah.”

Hibari looked at him for a long moment. “Very well.” Was all she said on the matter.

“We’ll ask, but I don’t think he’s comfortable with the idea right now. He only returned recently to cremate himself in the hopes it would allow him to pass on.” Rin told her. Hibari inclined her head.

“Thank you for trying. I know trying to get men to question anything they’re already convinced of is like pulling teeth. Uchiha men in particular.”

Rin nodded so seriously that Kakashi felt mildly offended. “Men are obstinate idiots.”

“Indeed.”

“Should I leave?” Kakashi asked with a put-upon expression. Rin’s grave demeanour melted into a grin, and she nudged him playfully.

“Naw, you don’t count.” She thought for a moment. “Never mind, you do. But I love you anyway.”

“I suppose it’s the thought that counts.” He grumbled petulantly. Rin laughed aloud, and even Hibari cracked a smile.

“I’ve never known a Hatake to be anything other than decidedly stubborn, so I won’t fault you for that. You’ve done well for yourself, Kakashi-kun. I’m sure wherever Obito-kun is, he is proud of you.”

She sounded so sure of herself that Kakashi almost believed her. “I could only hope.” He murmured with a shallow bow.

“So you’re sure no one knows where Shisui is?” Rin asked.

Hibari shook her head. “No one even knows where he died. All we have of his is the suicide note Itachi-kun wrote for him. Perhaps you should try asking him; I know the boys were close when they were young.”

Kakashi grimaced at the thought. Rin shrugged.

“I suppose if that’s all we have to go on, then we may as well. Kakashi, if you don’t want to see Itachi, I can go ask him by myself.”

Kakashi shook himself. “No. No, I’ll come with you. It’s okay.”

Rin frowned. “Are you sure? He won’t be able to do anything to me, but he could hurt you. Shisui and I can meet you here, and we can all go back to your apartment together.”

“I’m coming with you.” Kakashi repeated. Hibari’s earlier words about Hatake stubbornness resurfaced in his head.

Rin sighed deeply. “Alright, you fool of a man. Hibari-sama, thank you for all your help. Please thank Sei-san for us as well.”

Hibari inclined her head. “If you can, bring Shisui-kun or Sasuke-kun around sometime. I would love to see them again. Now that we can no longer talk to anyone but each other, I would like to use the opportunity to get to know my great-nephews better.” Something playful entered her gaze. “And if they refuse, I’m sure you know a great many ways to wrangle obstinate men, Nohara-chan. I trust you.”

Rin smirked and rolled up her sleeves to flex her underwhelming muscles. “You can count on me, Hibari-sama.”

Kakashi grabbed the back of Rin’s shirt and began dragging her away. “Bloody hell, Rin. Let’s go before I die of cringe.” He stopped as a thought occurred to him. He turned back to Hibari, bowed, and continued dragging Rin away.

“Oh, so you respect her, but not me? Blatant favouritism.”

"I'll respect you when you live through three world wars."

Chapter Text

He should’ve expected this.

Hiding in his childhood bedroom like he’d just been shown a battlefield all over again, avoiding the living room and its stained tatami like the plague; he should’ve known that what he’d done would eventually catch up to him.

Shisui-

Someone had once called him a control freak. And maybe he was.

But he could’ve never thought to control for meeting his mother, who he’d killed with his own hands, in the kitchen where he had gone to mourn.

She was as beautiful as the day he killed her. They were of a height, now; perhaps he was even a little taller. She still had the same fall of dark, glossy hair that he’d inherited from her, the same gentle indentations of crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes and lines of worry above her brow. He would’ve thought she was still alive if it weren’t for how the sun fell through instead of against her. The gentle smile she gave him made his skin crawl like he’d dug himself out of a shallow grave, covered in dirt and ants and the shame that he wore like a second skin.

“Itachi.” His mother’s voice was the ring of a clear bell, softened by time but just as clear as the day he’d first heard it. The curve of her smile is so painfully Sasuke’s-

“It’s good to see you again.”

He couldn’t do it. He took a step out of the kitchen, out of the light, retreating to the relative safety of the corridor. His breathing shouldn’t’ve been so noticeable. He’d trained himself out of the habit, hadn’t he?

He’d also thought he had trained himself out of crying, yet here he was. His eyes still ached and he couldn’t tell whether it was from overuse or tears.

His mother remained at the sink she had been standing at when he’d first walked in, a gentle smile still on her face. She didn’t move, she just waited. The perfect predator. He’d admired that about her when he was young and unknowledgeable of the implications of the danger his mother could pose. It was a whole different thing to have that danger pointed at him.

People tended to forget that his mother was Madara’s direct descendant until it was too late.

“Mother.” His voice startled even himself. Did he even have the right to call her that? What had once been a comfort to say now chilled him to his core. He placed a shaking hand on the doorframe to steady himself, an action that did not go unnoticed by his mother. Still, she didn’t move.

“I am not going to hurt you.” She told him mildly. Jonin had been deceived by less. “I’d like to know how you’ve been going. I see you’ve been eating your vegetables - you might even be taller than me, now.”

The sunlight dulled in the face of her amused grin. Itachi let out a shaky breath.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate.” The admission made his chest ache. Or maybe it was the cough he’d caught recently. Truly, he couldn’t remember. It must’ve been some time before he found out that Sasuke-

He wasn’t done crying, it seemed. The tears caught him off guard and so did his mother as she used the blurring of his vision to step into his space and wrap her arms like he was a child. She had to reach upwards to embrace him fully, but otherwise, it was as if he was five years old again and suffering from nightmares with his only safety being his mother’s arms. There was no comforting warmth left in her, but he could pretend that there was.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate.” He repeated through a blockade of sobs. He sounded pathetic even to himself. Words poured out of him in a nonsensical stream. “I left him here and he’s gone but he’s not gone and he doesn’t want to see me and he won’t let me keep him and it’s all my fault and-”

“I know. I know, Itachi.”

And that made it worse, didn’t it? His mother knew. Knew of his failings, knew of what he continued to do wrong and yet…

He didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve an ounce of love from his mother, from Sasuke, from anybody. Yet here he was, selfishly taking what was not his to take. Not anymore.

Just when he thought he had become the worst of the worst, he found new ways to sink to new lows.

“It’s all my fault.” He whispered as if it weren’t already a known fact. His mother’s fingers carded gently through his hair. She drew a breath to speak and Itachi braced himself for an awful affirmation when his father stepped through the wall.

“Miko-”

The look on his father’s face burned itself into his brain.

He’d severed the ends of his father’s hair when he’d cut into his cervical spine. Blood stained the back of his yukata so thoroughly that the back looked as if it were a separate piece of fabric. He looked washed out and frazzled, the deep shadows under his eyes in stark contrast to the sallow pallor of his skin.

He didn’t wait for his father to continue. Both his parents faded into blurs smeared across his vision as he threw himself through a shoji door in his haste to get out of the house, staggering uninterruptedly up the hill that led to the Naka Shrine. His heartbeat and his breathing pounded in his ears like ceremonial drums as he stumbled through the proud, weather-beaten torii gate. Small buzzing insects hovered over the hand basin that now held green, stagnant water where it had once been clear, a quiet monument to purity. He ignored it. There was no amount of water on the earth that could wash him clean.

Amaterasu and Madara stared him down as he dodged the open doors and stepped doggedly into the coolness of the main hall. He stole a moment for himself in the darkness and waited for the bright white glow that obscured his vision to fade, breathing heavily. He’d felt the weight of their disappointment before, but he didn’t like the way Madara’s gaze looked almost commiserating now.

Yes, they’d both lost their brothers and it had been their fault but it wasn’t - he wasn’t anything like-

“What did my death mean to you?”

He inhaled shakily.

He did not kill his brother.

(He left him to die)

He did not conspire to steal his eyes.

(They were already missing)

He would not forgive the people that took his brother from him. Not even himself.

He plodded over to one of the columns that lined the walls of the main hall and leant against it, sliding to the floor with his back to the mural so he wouldn’t have to meet the ever-present painted eyes. Whether or not he went mad over his brother’s death remained to be seen, but he judged it was only a matter of time.

He let his head fall until it bumped against his chest. Perhaps if Sasuke killed him, they would both find peace. He wouldn’t mind. Would welcome it, even, he mused despondently as he leaned his head against his shoulder. He had no intention of living now that Sasuke was gone.

He is not like Madara. He never will be. That, and Sasuke’s continued existence, were his only comforts.

…

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, staring dazedly at the gap of sunlight that slunk into the hall through the gap in the doors. The lengthening shadows crept up his back like many cold hands; and perhaps they were. The horizon that he could see through the gap in the door was a blur of brightness with no distinguishing features save for a dark blur.

He blinked languidly. The blur grew.

The light did not change as a dark shape slipped through the door and startled as it noticed him. As his vision adjusted to the difference in colour, he distantly recognised the white and red folds of a miko’s uniform and the shaved head.

Uchiha Yae looked down at him, her gaze indiscernible in the darkness. “Itachi-kun.” Her voice rang out clear and even and devoid of inflection in the otherwise empty hall. “What are you doing here?”

She’d died with a clean slice through her neck, he remembered faintly. It was the cleanest decapitation he’d done that night. Her body had almost forgotten to bleed.

“I don’t know.” He told her in a rasp. He couldn’t look up to meet her eyes.

He didn’t know if he heard a rustle of cloth because he could see her kneel to look at him or because his mind pretended he did.

She grabbed him by the top of his head and forced him to look at her. “Look. I don’t like you, and that’s kinder than what half the compound would say about you. I quite frankly don’t care why you’re here, but you need to go. This is the only warning you’ll be given.”

He watched the sway of her earrings instead of meeting her gaze. She’d commissioned them from his great-uncle to look like the fires of Amaterasu; pure, delicate obsidian curling around her ears and tongues of flame hanging down on either side of her face.

“What will happen if I stay?” He whispered. Her red-painted mouth pressed into a grim line.

“Everyone who’s been waiting to tear out a part of you will come for their pound of flesh. You’ve made many people angry, Itachi-kun, and your parents can only protect you for so long.” She let his face drop and stood, brushing imaginary dust off her hakama. “If you are going to stay in the compound, do not bleed all over the shrine. You’ve caused more than enough trouble as it is.”

With that, she swept past him further into the shrine. He didn’t hear her leave.

He was reminded, then, of her grandfather and great-uncle. Baru and Rai. The two names mentioned alongside Madara and Izuna, Naori and Naka, to warn against turning on family for power. Her grandfather had turned on his twin out of greed, thinking he would simply take his twin’s place like they had been known to do, and had been executed by his clansmen in disgust after his greed made him into a kin-killer. He wondered what she thought of him now. He wondered if she thought his death at the hands of his family would be deserved.

He stood. The brightness of the day made his eyes water as he stepped past the door and into the light once again. His legs felt weighted down with lead as he walked out of the shrine grounds down the dirt path to the compound where his family drifted between sunbeams like self-contained black holes.

Cicadas droned in the trees to his right like TV static. If he turned off his Sharingan, he wouldn't be able to tell the leaves apart from the mass nor the distance between trees. He felt aged, brittle, hollowed out; a sacred well empty of even stagnant water in the space where there had only been Sasuke.

He sensed more than saw the approach of two of his family - not from the houses like he’d anticipated, but from the tree line - and he exhaled quietly as he came to a stop and steeled himself for a fight. Just because Yae-oba had been cordial enough to let him go, didn’t mean the rest of the clan would be so kind. He doubted a clan that felt as deeply as the Uchiha would forget a transgression of his magnitude so easily despite the six years that had passed.

His eyes picked out the details of a child’s face as they turned back to lead someone else with scarred, long-fingered hands. He knew that face. And as they noticed him by chance and froze, mouth still partially open to speak, he knew they recognised him as well.

It would be even more dishonourable of him to forget any death he caused, but he remembers this one in particular because of the child he had killed. A strike through the chest with his tanto, because a katana would’ve been overkill for someone so small - and the fall headfirst into the Naka River.

That same child had been with someone’s body when he’d finally managed to catch up with it after someone’s suicide. He’d never found out why they’d happened to be in the river on that night of all nights, nor why they had told him with no uncertainty that they were all going to die (and they had been right) and he had killed them before he could ask.

But what he does know is that this child would not hurt him, so he lets some of the tension bleed from his shoulders. He’d seen them before, watching them both (who? No one) train in the clearing they preferred to frequent away from prying eyes, but they had never approached.

He didn’t know if someone knew them; maybe that’s why they were in the river that night. He didn’t know much about someone at all.

“Itachi-san.”

The child’s voice startled him more than it should have. He hadn’t been expecting them to speak.

“Shiko-tan.” He replied evenly. The pair of hands holding Shiko’s own twitched.

Shiko inclined their head. “Good. We didn’t have to go far to find you.”

We?

He recognised the star chart of scars and callouses on the hands of the hidden second person a moment too late.

He later wondered if Shiko was perhaps some sort of herald of someone’s appearance. Once is chance, twice is coincidence, but a third time is-

He was still dripping river water.

The water did not weigh down the grass or sink into the dirt, because it did not exist. He did not - should not - exist. He was still dripping river water and it was as if he’d taken the whole river with him when he ◼️◼️◼️◼️

The leather of his chest guard was dark and waterlogged, his hair and clothes plastered to his washed-out skin and his headband gleaming wet and metallic on his forehead. Sightless eyes searched without seeing, the eyelids raised to reveal nothing but dark pits within an otherwise healthy face leaking blood in two conflicting directions that defied physics.

Someone’s painfully familiar smile played about his lips, more expectant than mirthful as he carefully slid his feet forward and kept a firm grip on Shiko’s hands.

“Where’s ‘Tachi? Is he nearby?”

He had imagined his regrets coming back to haunt him, but never like this. Not like this.

His mother had been an extraneous variable, his father even more so. But-

Sh - someone-

Shisui had been an impossibility.

The need for movement doesn’t even register in his mind, not even the inflation and deflation of his lungs. His heart might’ve stopped too; he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. His fingers twitch at his sides for a brief moment before falling lifeless again.

Who among them is dead, again?

“He’s right here. I’ll lead you to him.”

Shisui’s nose was wrinkled in disgust as his face emerged from the tree Shiko had led him into. “Did I just walk through another tree? Don’t do that again, please. Do you know how weird that feels?”

“It’s faster than going around them.” The smile in Shiko’s voice and the fact that they hadn’t walked through the tree themselves betrayed his misstep as intentional. Shisui could tell even with his eyes missing and stuck out his lower lip petulantly.

“Fine. Then I’ll get ‘Tachi to lead me around, since you clearly can’t be trusted. Itachi! Where are you? I’m being bullied by a midget!”

Shiko looked up at his face and grimaced at whatever expression they saw. He wasn’t sure what kind of face he had been making, but it was unlikely to be anything good. A shrill ringing in his ears drowned out all thought.

Something dripped down his face. It might’ve been river water.

“Um…Shisui-nii, I think something’s wrong with Itachi-san.”

“Wrong?” Shisui cocked his head. The movement dislodged a spray of droplets that fell to the ground and ceased to exist. “What’s wrong? Is he bleeding from anywhere?”

“He’s crying.” Shiko led Shisui towards him at a more careful pace, watching him with wary eyes. He couldn’t blame them.

Shisui straightened his posture and nearly pulled his hands from Shiko’s grip as he did. His hands scrambled against empty air for a moment - Shiko reached out to reclaim them, but he had stepped forward without conscious thought and grasped them in his own. Shisui jerked in surprise and he almost let him pull away again, his hands now slick with nonexistent water, but Shisui readjusted his grip with a newfound determination and beamed up at the vague direction of his face.

“Hey, Itachi.” Shisui said quietly. “I would say it’s good to see you again, but…”

He was taller than Shisui.

Older than him now, too, as he drank in his dampened features with a desperate sort of nostalgia like a dying man. He had never even considered the possibility, too busy trying to block all memories of Shisui from his mind to avoid the heartache, the weakness of remembering him because doing so meant he had to face the fact that his best friend was dead.

And he still was, but he was there before him then, with the same familiar grin even if he would never see the cheeky gleam in Shisui’s eyes again and water continued to stream down the younger boy’s face unendingly. He looked like Sasuke - because to him, Sasuke was his point of reference and the first thing he looked for in any face he saw - in the round of his cheeks and the ache in his own chest that his smile inspired. Or maybe he was sick again. His head hurt and his eyes sat like raw bruises in their sockets. His grip on Shisui’s hands trembled.

Shiko ducked out from between them and stood within arm’s reach, watching them both carefully. Shisui’s smile sobered the longer he remained silent.

“I’m sorry, ‘Tachi.” Shisui whispered. He continued to search for something to say and came up blank.

“I shouldn’t’ve left you like that. It was my mistake, and the fact that you felt you had to…” Shisui swallowed. Water spilled down his chin and slid down his neck to sink into his shirt. “It should’ve been me, not you, who had to make that choice. I know you probably noticed and wondered why, but I also kept the news of the coup from you initially. And it was not because I thought you would do something like this - I never thought that of you, Itachi, and I don’t think you would even now - but precisely because I never wanted you to have to make a choice like this. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I’m here now, and no one’s gonna get rid of me anymore no matter how hard they try, okay?”

And there was that smile again, like the blooming of a flower, the rising of the sun, the fall of rain on a land parched by drought. He thought it was just as beautiful and as damning as Sasuke’s.

His sob surprised them both.

Shisui immediately reached out a hand in what he must’ve thought was the direction of his face - one of his fingers nearly poked him in the eye, and two others jabbed themselves against his nose and cheekbone - and Shisui immediately moved his hand away again. He choked out a laugh through his tears and reached for Shisui’s wayward hand to cradle it gently in his like it was fine porcelain as he guided it to touch his cheek. His tears joined the stream of water that ran over Shisui’s skin as if he were still in the river, an amphora of fondness spilling over with no end in sight as Shisui carefully swiped his thumb over his cheekbone.

He felt Shisui trace his face with his fingers and felt no fear even as they traced his eyes - Shisui could’ve taken them if he wanted to, he would’ve given them willingly if he had asked - and moved up to his bare forehead and the unwashed hair that hung limp about his face. Shame curdled in his gut and kept a tight grip around his throat. He sniffled; Shisui began to hum nonsensically as he tucked his hair behind his ears and wiped the tears from his face as they continued to fall.

He had to bend down just to close the distance between them enough to press their foreheads together. Shisui’s skin was cold and damp; the breath that came from his mouth was more of a small breeze than the exhale of anything living, but the proof of existence was there all the same.

“You’re okay, ‘Tachi. Hey? I’m here, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay.” Shisui murmured. “It’s alright. Breathe with me, okay?”

“Why are you here?” He whispered. “You…you say you know what I’ve done. I killed the child with you. I put my tanto through their chest and let them fall-” He took a sharp breath. “I watched them fall into the same river you did, and then I turned around and killed the rest of our family without remorse.”

“No no no.” Shisui immediately rebuked him with a shake of his head. River water slid down his hair. “Not without remorse, ‘Tachi, don’t lie to me. I know what you’ve done. Shiko and Sasuke told me.”

Sasuke.

Of course Sasuke would tell Shisui - when had they met? How did he not know about this? - he had every right to. A child that angry would spare no detail and he hadn’t given Sasuke any reason to think he was anything other than the monster he must’ve been described as to Shisui. He wouldn’t contradict the perception - he thought of himself the same.

He pressed his lips together and closed his eyes to focus on his breathing and nothing else. Shisui kneaded his fingers into the tense line of his jaw and smoothed a hand over his hair, returning to his humming as he struggled to keep his crying inaudible. 

“Hey. I know, I’m here, and I’m not angry at you, okay? I’m not angry. I’m not angry at you.”

“I’m not angry either.” Shiko piped up. He startled at the sound of the child’s voice - he’d forgotten they were there. They stepped into Shisui’s side and leant their head against the older boy’s shoulder, blinking guilelessly at him as if their chest wasn’t a gaping wound.

“It was bound to happen. You just happened to be the one to carry it out.”

“I didn’t even stop to think about it.” He retaliated, his voice still heavy with tears. Shiko meets his gaze over Shisui’s shoulder without a hint of fear - he felt the irrational urge to summon all his might in genjutsu and put the fear there himself. “You say you don’t believe me, that I killed them all without remorse; but what I did left no room for mercy. Whatever Sasuke told you I am, he was right. There is no point trying to sugarcoat it.”

He couldn’t meet Shisui’s eyes as he spoke. It was one thing to admit guilt aloud and it was another to admit it directly to the one person whom he had hoped would retain the knowledge of who he had been before he went and poisoned the memories of everyone he had known and loved before their deaths. At least with their foreheads pressed together, he wouldn’t have to look at the expression on Shisui’s face.

“What you are does not always dictate how people think of you.” Shiko replied. “You cannot force someone’s opinion. You can lead someone to a certain way of thinking, but in the end, their perspective is a nuance of who they are, not what you think you have manipulated it to be.”

They shrugged as much as they could while still leaning against Shisui as the older boy finished wiping the tears off his face and set about corralling the stray hairs that had fallen from behind his ears. He wasn’t very successful, considering the downward tilt of his head, but he endearingly did his best, humming all the while. “In the end, people will always have their own opinions. That’s not something you can control.”

He stiffened at the notion. Shisui finished his thought.

“And you’ve always been a bit of a control freak, ‘Tachi. Right?” Shisui was smiling; he heard it in the way he spoke. He squeezed his eyes shut again.

He heard a soft grunt of impact and his eyes snapped open again as he felt Shisui’s body slam into his. He’d wrapped his arms around his friend’s shoulders before he had even realised what he was doing, stepping away with the same jutsu Shisui had been famous for and keeping him close as he observed the scene before him with aching red eyes. He needed to deactivate them soon, but doing so would mean that he would lose Shisui again-

A young girl with brown hair and face contorted in a vicious snarl tried to unsuccessfully pry Shiko off her leg. Shiko, to their credit, held onto the girl’s leg with surprising tenacity as she pushed at their face with a growl.

“Get off, Shiko-tan - I don’t have time for your games.” She spat. “Do you understand who that is?”

“It’s not your place to judge.” Shiko told her. He watched her lips tighten further with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Shisui, ever loyal, ever trusting, merely mumbled into his chest, “Is that Kira-chan?”

He didn’t even try to pull away.

His next breath didn’t quite make it out of his mouth.

Akira had been Shisui’s third cousin with grand dreams of becoming the next Chief of Police. He’d slit her throat as she stood in front of her older brother’s bed and left her choking on her own blood as he’d driven his tanto through the boy’s eye socket until he pierced his brain. Her brother hadn’t stirred once, but she’d been awake when he entered the house and had done everything in her meagre power to stop him from approaching them. From the curl of her lip and the anger in her eyes he’d seen in that split-second when she’d spotted him, her sense of retributive justice hadn’t been dulled even in death.

Again, he wondered, he thought himself into spirals of catastrophe - why didn’t Shisui hate him? He had killed Shisui’s cousins, their family, had spared not even the smallest child (it still made him sick to think of Fuka-oba, seven months pregnant and eyes filled with a desperate sort of terror as her fingernails raked across his face and his blade plunged and twisted in her stomach-) He was scum, the lowest of the low; Sasuke was correct to hate him so why couldn’t Shisui stop hurting them both and just stop-

Akira finally managed to shake Shiko off her leg and flickered towards them. He pulled Shisui with him as he dodged out of the way into the trees, but Akira simply followed them - he’d forgotten there was no point putting obstacles between himself and an opponent who could simply walk through them.

Shisui moved his head enough to speak clearly. “Kira-chan, it’s fine. I approached him myself.”

“You being anywhere near that kin-killer is not fine, Shisui-nii.” Akira’s voice echoed darkly between the trees with no clear origin. He couldn’t even feel the slide of a genjutsu over his senses; and of course there wouldn’t be, Akira had no chakra anymore because she was dead,

Shiko hurried into the forest after them, his eyes flickering about for any sign of the girl. He sensed more than saw the blow aimed at his head and threw himself to the side to avoid it. Shisui stumbled and nearly tripped them both; he picked him up and kept his face pressed in his shoulder as Akira landed squarely on her feet and chased after them.

“Let Shisui-nii fucking go and I’ll make your death quick.” Akira hissed. The crows he summoned with the blood from a bite through his cheek flew through her once and refused to do so again. He let them dispel themselves and kept retreating backwards with Shisui still wrapped around his torso.

“Akira.”

Shisui’s sharp reprimand stopped them both. Only Shiko remained mobile, seizing the opportunity to jump onto Akira’s back and squirmed until they were wrapped around her and pinning her arms to her side with their legs.

He saw traces of his father’s - whom Akira had idolised - expression in her face. It was the downturn of her mouth, the sharp click of her tongue and the wide-set, solid stance even as Shiko clung onto her like a limpet. Sasuke was in the line of her brow, the set of her jaw and in her eyes. He felt his own mouth twist in response to the observations.

Her throat was whole now and he was cruel enough to think that she should’ve stayed where he killed her.

“Why are you still hanging onto him? What the hell did he say to you to convince you that he is anything other than the fucked-up piece of kin-killing shit that he is-”

“That’s my business, not yours. Leave us alone, Akira-chan.”

“He killed you! I’m not letting him anywhere near you-!”

“I’d like to think that I know how I died.” Shisui told her frostily as he lifted his head off Itachi’s shoulder. She grit her teeth, and he continued a little more gently. “You’ve got every right to be angry, and I won’t ask you not to be. But don’t tell me what I’m supposed to feel, and please leave ‘Tachi alone, at least while I’m with him.”

“We’ve left him alone for the past few years because he was too cowardly to come back and look us in the face.” Akira made a move as if to gesture wildly and muttered a vicious curse under her breath as Shiko’s grip remained unmoved. “Our deaths are not something you can just handwave because you’re not angry, for some reason; because we are. You say I have every right to be angry, and I fucking am - and now you’re saying I can’t do anything about it? We’re Uchiha, Shisui-nii, in case you’ve forgotten that - we do not forgive what cannot be forgiven, and he’s committed a greater crime than I ever thought was even fucking possible! How do you expect us to forgive someone who redefined what we considered the worst crime among us? He didn’t even have the decency to steal our fucking eyes and left us for vultures!”

“I’m not asking you to forgive, Akira-chan. I’m asking you to defer your anger while I’m with him.”

“We’ve been deferring our anger for the past six years!” Akira yelled, taking an unconscious step forward. He took a step back.

“Then you can defer it for a few more hours.” Shisui snapped back. “That kind of thinking is what got us killed in the first place. We’re not animals, Akira - we don’t just react when something doesn’t go our way.”

“Oh, so him killing our entire fucking family was a rational decision? Being angry that he did so is just reacting poorly to something that ‘didn’t go our way’?!”

“Don’t rephrase my words out of context to suit your point of view. I’m saying that you should not immediately default to violence to solve your problems.”

Akira wrenched her arm out of Shiko’s grasp to gesture furiously at him. “Do you not understand your hypocrisy?! How the fuck do you justify his actions, then?!”

”There was no other choice!”

Akira shut her mouth with an audible click of her teeth. Shisui's next pointless exhale was strained.

"I would've done the same." He spat. "If I hadn't died first. I would've done the same. If you can't set aside your hate for Itachi for one fucking minute, then you can go ahead and hate me too. Because if it wasn't Itachi, It would've been me."