Chapter Text
There was something wrong with Kakashi Hatake. And no, for once he didn't mean the usual about what a cold, aloof bastard he was. This was something else, something more disturbing.
Perhaps the worst part was: he didn't even know how long it had been going on. Maybe it had been going on for years and he'd just missed all those signs. Only noticing now that it was clearly getting worse.
When he'd first noticed it—and when he'd first managed to successfully call someone else's attention to it—it had only lasted a few minutes at a time. Kakashi would fall silent, and just... stare at them, his eyes wide as if he were seeing something else other than what was there. But every. single. time. that Obito had tried to call Minato-sensei's attention to it, Kakashi had snapped out of it, back to his usual, distant self by the time Minato-sensei appeared to check on it.
Rin believed him, and was willing to vouch that something really was happening. But whatever it was clearly didn't want anyone but Obito and Rin to know about it. So Obito stopped after three tries. He took the hint, and just kept a watchful eye on Kakashi, and maybe tried to probe a bit into what was making him act so weird.
He didn't even seem to realise that Obito and Rin were there. Not really. He stared at them as if they were ghosts.
Or maybe it had started smaller. He remembered Kakashi occasionally going unfocused for seconds at a time a while back—had that been the same thing? Or had it been the mind's natural tendency to wander, or fatigue, or something else entirely?
Did he get to share this secret with one more person at some sort of interval as Kakashi's ailment—whatever it was—grew worse and worse?
Now, Kakashi was not Obito's favourite person—not by a long shot—but this was downright creepy. This odd behaviour of Kakashi's struck a deeper sort of chord, bypassing the usual unease or dread that came of being a shinobi in a world at war to thrum under his skin in a constant watchful sort of hair-raising chill like living in a haunted house.
He didn't even know why, but his intuition told him that it was important.
So he'd try calling Minato-sensei's attention to it again. Now it was lasting for hours it would be easy to tell one way or the other whether or not the supposed "rules" had changed. But he still reserved the first instance for his own sort of interrogation. Part of it he had to admit was a sort of petty revenge for how much Kakashi had made him... worry, the past few months. But he wanted answers, and he wanted to see how much he could accomplish just him and Rin, without involving Minato-sensei yet.
They started by counting down the minutes. It seemed to be longer every time, so it wasn't a surprise—he didn't know it was more than the usual time lapse until they'd passed the ten-minute mark. He and Rin sat there, occasionally glancing at each other as they counted down the time, Rin looking particularly distressed but medic determined.
It felt like waiting for some sort of an appointment, even if Kakashi was right there. Kakashi sat across the restaurant table from them, staring, eyes wide, but otherwise frozen as if he were nothing but a life-sized photo of himself.
But then (ten minutes): he blinked. "Hmm, that's odd. It's never lasted this long before," he said. He... smiled? "Haven't been able to move before, either."
This was really disturbing. He didn't even sound like Kakashi—Obito knew how Kakashi talked. Maybe Kakashi had been cursed or something during a mission years ago, and it was only now showing—
Kakashi carefully adjusted his headband to cover his left eye. That was when Obito first noticed that he'd even closed it. What was going on with him?
Kakashi stared particularly intensely at him for a moment. "I don't suppose you've decided to become evil?" he asked Obito in an oddly mild voice that just sounded wrong coming from Kakashi, even if you ignored the dissonance between his words and his tone. That meant it had to be fake somehow, didn't it—?
Obito leapt to his feet and pointed right at Kakashi for emphasis. "Don't give me that bullshit, Bakashi! You've been acting weird for months, and now you pull this weird shitty act on us? Well, guess what! No one's buying it! What the hell?"
A pause as he processed the words. "...Is that what happened to you? You decided to join a cult?!"
Kakashi continued to stare. He... he actually seemed to be waiting for an answer. The hell?
"No, of course I didn't turn evil! If any of us were going to turn evil, it'd be you, Mr. I'm-Better-Than-Everyone-Else-and-Don't-Need-Anyone!"
"Obito," Rin said, gently laying a hand on his arm. He felt himself automatically calm at her touch. He sat back down. Warmth began migrating to his cheeks. Kakashi raised his exposed eyebrow at them. Obito yanked his arm away.
"I know, I know! But he has some nerve, getting everyone all worked up and then acting weird like this!"
"Obito, we don't know how long we have to talk to him before he goes back to normal. Don't waste it!" Rin begged him, and because it was Rin, he somehow forced himself back to the conversation at hand. Right. Right. Take advantage of this chance to ask questions.
Set aside his feelings somehow for once? Yeah, yeah.
"Kakashi, what's going on with you? As your friends, we want to know," Rin said gently, reaching out a hand to him. He stared at her for a moment, as if she were translucent, some sort of ghost. He seemed to look through her.
"Rin, I—" Kakashi began, but cut himself off almost as soon as he started. He shook his head. "I don't know what's happening exactly, but I think I don't have much time so I'll give you the basics. I traveled back in time from when I was thirty-one and seem to be now sharing time with my... twelve-year-old? self."
"Eleven," Rin said, as if automatically. "What do you mean—?"
"Oh, come on! You seriously expect us to believe that you managed to figure out time travel? Get real, Bakashi, and get your head looked at. If this is some sort of—" Kakashi didn't have a sense of humour. Never mind. Obito cut himself off.
Kakashi raised his eyebrow again. Obito hadn't been paying attention and didn't know when he'd lowered it.
"Well, you're definitely Obito and Rin. I didn't say that I was the one who figured out time travel," he said significantly, staring hard back and forth between Obito and Rin.
Obito's brows furrowed in confusion. "Who, then? Even Sensei can't—"
And now he was humouring Kakashi's delusions. But maybe there was no other way to get to the bottom of them. Kakashi seemed... sincere. More sincere than he usually was, and it would explain his odd behaviour—if he at least thought that he was an adult. (But then, hadn't he always, as long as Obito had known him?)
Kakashi gave a put-upon sigh. "Hmm. I guess not," he said in response to... something. He returned to staring at them. He hmmed again, as if that were his new favourite tic. "I'd forgotten just how much like Naruto you were. I suppose you'd gloat if I said that my own genin team was a lot like us. Or that the member I thought most like me went on to betray Konoha and become a rogue ninja."
Obito bit his lip and clenched his fists and somehow did not say anything at all. Self-control was not his strong suit. But Rin was right. If they wanted to get to the bottom of this, whatever was wrong with Kakashi, they'd better let him speak, even if he was talking nonsense.
He knew by the way Kakashi spoke, in a clear yet hurried way, that he was still giving them information that he considered "basic". They could pass on that "basic" information once Minato-sensei was willing to listen. And to anyone else who would be put in charge of Kakashi's care until he recovered. For now, he had to stay silent.
"Naruto's Sensei's son by the way," he said, as if trying to make Obito interrupt, and he did open his mouth, and then raised his hand to cover it. He did have some self-control. He did. Surely. Somewhere. He'd use it all up in the next few minutes, but at least Kakashi would have a chance to share the basics, surely.
"In the future, there's a criminal organisation called the Akatsuki," he continued in that same voice, now with an added dash of urgency. "Over the past two years, they hunted down and extracted the tailed beasts from all the jinchuriki. I—I don't remember if you knew this at this point in time, but jinchuriki die when their tailed beasts are removed, and—" He swallowed. "And Big Sister Kushina was one. She died seventeen years ago. Instead, it was Sensei's son—Naruto, my student—that the Akatsuki went after. All this to enact a plan that brings about the end of the world. Not that I think they knew that."
He blinked, looking around at his surroundings for the first time. "Probably not the best place to be saying all this, is it?" he asked, in a lighter tone. Casual, as if—
"Big Sister Kushina died? These... these Akatsuki guys went after Big Sister Kushina, and... and—" Obito's self-restraint broke the moment Kakashi added a bit of levity, such as it was, to their conversation. "Bakashi, that's not funny!"
Kakashi stared down at him through narrowed eye(s). Rin laid a hand on Obito's arm again, and seemed to take Obito talking as permission to speak, too. "Kakashi, you have to admit it's a bit difficult to believe—"
Kakashi raised a hand to cover his face as if his mask weren't already doing that job perfectly. Hell, with that headband covering half of his face that remained, he was actually even more hidden than before.
"I know," Kakashi snapped, his voice almost a growl. "Do you really think I find anything about this situation funny?!"
Rin recoiled as if he hit her. Obito narrowed his eyes in a glare at Kakashi. Even if there was something wrong with his mind, he didn't have the right to make Rin cry. Then again, it was mostly incidental. It was Obito he was scolding, and Rin was just a witness.
Still... like this, something in Obito's stomach seemed to clench in sudden fear. This version of Kakashi seemed so much darker. Scarier. He swallowed, and lowered his eyes. He told himself it wasn't cowardice, that he just was respecting Rin's earlier request that he try to control himself. If unspoken words can taste like ash in your mouth nonetheless, these did.
It's not real, he reminded himself, to keep himself under control. Bakashi's just delusional.
What if he isn't? a part of him he rarely acknowledged asked. It came from a place of fear and loss and grief. Desperation, an unwillingness to lose anyone else he cared about. No more!
A shinobi did not let his fear rule him, and Obito shoved his aside. For the moment. He knew he'd come back to this later.
Then next time, Sensei will get to the bottom of it, he told that part of himself that was still just a little kid, grieving his parents.
"You upset Rin!" he managed to say, through clenched teeth.
Kakashi looked at him with an oddly... wild? expression. His eyes were very wide. There was an odd glint to them.
"I killed Rin," he said, in that voice Kakashi usually reserved for threatening enemies.
Just a delusion. But why would he have delusions of killing Rin? Who else does he think he killed? Did he... does he want to kill us?
Obito's heart pounded, because he knew that no matter how hard he tried, he'd never be a shinobi of Kakashi's level. Kakashi could wipe the floor with him and Rin. Obito yanked Rin to her feet and put her behind him.
"Relax," Kakashi said, slouching back somewhat in the seat himself. (Since when does Kakashi slouch?) "It was an accident. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. If I can."
That last sentence, spoken so quietly, might have been the most important part.
An accident. Obito relaxed a bit, but was still wary. An accident. It was an accident.
"What's the matter, Obito? Sit down. Or don't you trust me?"
Obito was going to remain standing, thank you very much. He and Rin had to be ready to make a break for it at any time. His gaze flicked to the door.
"No," he said. "First you start acting weird, and now you're talking crazy! To your mind, it's not like you're our friend or anything, and who knows what you might have become in the next twenty years?!"
Kakashi hmmed again thoughtfully, and raised a hand to his cheek idly. "Indeed. Who knows what you might become?"
"Kakashi! Obito! Please don't fight. Look, Obito, Kakashi's doing his best to tell us about this future so that we can avoid it. We should listen to him!"
Don't tell me Rin actually believes him?
Then again, in a situation as tense as this one had suddenly become, it was easy to get lost in the moment. Obito had, for instance, forgotten about the other customers in the restaurant, and the staff. He must look crazy himself, all ready to protect one of his teammates from the other as if Kakashi had drawn a kunai or something. Not that he even needed one.
Ignoring all his shinobi instincts, he sat down, and pulled Rin back down with him. He felt so hyper alert that he almost thought he'd unlocked his sharingan at long last, but he knew that that wasn't the case.
"Just... continue, please, Kakashi," Rin said, not seeming to notice that she had been dragged to her feet or that she was now sitting again, her gaze fixed on Kakashi's in an earnest plea.
Kakashi had to think about it again, or he was enjoying keeping them in suspense. "What can I say? I suppose I should mention the Kannabi Bridge mission, where Obito was buried alive. Or when you, Rin, were captured by Hidden Mist shinobi and had the Threetails sealed in you. And I should definitely mention the time that the Ninetails was released from the seal on Kushina's stomach and Sensei and Big Sister Kushina died. So much happened so fast... all that within only a couple of years. I was fourteen when they died."
It gave Obito chills, to hear Kakashi speak of being an age he hadn't reached yet (none of them had) in the past tense, as if it were so long ago that he were having trouble remembering.
"I should definitely warn everyone about Madara Uchiha and Zetsu, but what about the Uchiha Massacre? If we prevent the Ninetails attack perhaps there won't be enough reason for the Uchiha coup. Hmm."
He was thinking out loud, or giving them a string of information and seeing what bait they took. It didn't matter which. There was so much that he'd already told them, and it was a fool's errand to try to gather and organise information that you didn't believe had any value.
Just Kakashi's delusions.
Still, not everyone had delusions about Madara Uchiha. Was he some sort of ghost that Kakashi thought was haunting him or something?
And: Uchiha Massacre? Uchiha coup? His clan might have a bit of a reputation, but they were all loyal to Konoha, or at least as loyal as any other clan in Konoha. That must mean that he was talking about some sort of infighting among the members of his clan itself. There were benefits to being the reject Uchiha. No one would involve him. But should he take a side? Of course he should. If it happened—well, Lady Uchiha was Big Sister Kushina's best friend, and Big Sister Kushina was actually more like a mother to Obito. She'd want him to defend the current power structure.
It didn't matter. It wasn't going to happen. Obito was making plans for things that weren't going to happen. He needed to bring himself back into the moment.
Rin glanced over at Obito and saw that he was out of commission from information overload. "Who's Zetsu?" she asked gently, glancing over at Obito again as if he had been authorised to lead this interrogation. He'd sort of volunteered himself before he'd known how this would turn out.
"Evil plant-monster god, as far as I can tell," Kakashi said wearily.
They both stared at him as blatantly as he had stared at them.
"I do wish you hadn't focused on that. I know how crazy it sounds, okay?"
He downed an entire cup of green tea. Neither of them tried to look. They barely even processed that he must have removed his mask.
"What do you need to warn us about him and... and Madara Uchiha?" She glanced back over at Obito, who felt somewhat dazed.
"Well, Madara Uchiha is still alive. I even have some idea of where he's living. Something about Zetsu prolonging his life somehow. I wish I'd asked more questions, but I hadn't expected... this."
"We weren't expecting you, either," Obito managed to say, albeit weakly.
"It's good to see you both alive and well," Kakashi said warmly. So that's what warmth sounded like in Kakashi's voice. It's sort of nice.
Too bad that it was only there because Kakashi was crazy.
"For almost twenty years I blamed myself for your deaths. But I can change that now. I will."
He probably actually was talking to himself. He'd said something at the start about actually being able to move "this time". And since Obito had definitely seen him freeze for minutes at a time before, that must mean he'd been watching them but unable to move. That sucked. He'd probably gotten used to the idea that no one could hear what he said and he could say whatever he wanted because he couldn't move.
"Careful, Bakashi. The people here might think you actually cared about us," Obito said, with a grin that was less mocking than he intended.
Kakashi stared a moment at Obito, and then at Rin. And then back to Obito. "Of course I care. I should have told you this before you were crushed by boulders on the Kannabi Bridge mission and it was too late, but I've always considered you my best friend, Obito. Good luck convincing my present self to do that, though. It's... difficult. I suppose I thought you both would always be there, and then you... weren't."
Obito swallowed. His grin was gone. What can you say to a confession like that? Because it had to be taken as a confession of friendship either way, whether he was just delusional that he was thirty-one or actually was, he's saying that present him considered them best friends, which—how the hell was that even possible?
He narrowed his eyes at Kakashi. "You'd better not be messing with me here," he said. "You're always calling me loser and talking about how I'm a worthless shinobi and an idiot who should never have graduated from the Academy."
Kakashi whistled. "Wow. I really was quite insecure and stupid, wasn't I? Was I really once dense enough to think you were stupid? Look, Obito: you're one of the smartest people I know, and one of the best shinobi. I believe that you can become Hokage someday. If you live."
Right. He'd died, hadn't he? In this delusion of Kakashi's (unless it wasn't) and that was bound to colour his perception of Obito. Before he could press Kakashi for clarification (or ask him to repeat himself, because the Uchiha-petty part of him definitely liked hearing that) Kakashi turned his attention to Rin.
"Rin, you've always been like a sister to me. I never appreciated your skills until you were gone. I'm not sure I ever appreciated you as a person at all. At least not until after Obito—" He cut himself off. "Obito asked me to protect you with my life. He only asked one thing from me, and I blew it. I know how you feel about me, and trust me I speak for both versions of myself when I say: not interested, find someone better. I'm thirty-one years old anyway; some people might consider that creepy. But the fact is: I would have let you die. Even after you'd saved my life hundreds of times. It was never about you, Rin. But this time, I'd like it if we could be friends."
He paused. "How strange. Maybe I'm here to stay this time. Doubtful. I think I'll know it when I feel it. Still, I'll leave you two to digest what I've told you, hmm?"
He stayed with them for dinner, and a bit beyond that, and they talked about lighter matters even as memories of Kakashi's words reverberated off the back of Obito's mind.
Then, his old self returned, looking a bit peeved at how much time he'd lost. Obito and Rin decided not to tell him what the other?-Kakashi had said.
***
As time passed, they became accustomed to this new Kakashi, and the patterns involved. He'd show up once a week, but never on a schedule, stay for about an hour unless interrupted, and then went away without warning. Kakashi didn't freeze up anymore when it happened, so their warning that it was the "future" Kakashi was the way he pulled his headband down over his left eye. There had to be a story behind that, but given the rest of the shit he'd been telling them Obito was sure he didn't want to hear it.
They were allowed to tell Minato-sensei about Kakashi's strange behaviour, and even Kushina. Any attempt to get anyone else involved met with failure. Kakashi would just... go away as if his time had been cut short. Whatever had caused his time travel seemed to be protecting knowledge of it, or staggering the flow, or something.
Future Kakashi was at least a lot more fun to hang out with. This was what Obito supposed he had to look forward to, if he could just keep from dying on this Kannabi Bridge mission. And maybe it made it a bit easier to go easy on the Kakashi he knew.
The first time Minato-sensei had witnessed this phenomenon, he'd impulsively called in T&I. "I don't know anyone but a Yamanaka that I'd trust with something as delicate as a mind!" he'd protested afterward. "I didn't expect them to try to interrogate him!"
Kakashi of the present had been understandably snippy about this, even lashing out at Minato-sensei a bit for this violation of his trust and genuinely confusing behaviour.
The next time, Minato gave strict orders that this was not an interrogation, but merely an attempt to figure out if something were damaged in Kakashi's mind.
They told him there was nothing wrong with Kakashi, so maybe they just didn't know anything about not-breaking people.
Minato gave up on that course of action, but didn't seem to know what else to do. Obito and Rin had filled him in on everything they remembered of Kakashi's warnings. There was so much more to discover, however.
He focused on the Akatsuki. But Kakashi didn't seem to know much about them, especially not anything that would help them fight back. Led from the shadows by a mysterious figure who never introduced himself by name, the crimes the Akatsuki had committed weren't all known even in Kakashi's time. He did know a couple of them, but not enough data to be useful, he claimed. He'd fought some of them, but couldn't guarantee that they weren't holding back. Their goal was the jinchuriki: why would they bother showing someone like Kakashi all their tricks?
He was hiding something. Obito was sure of this with no justification. It was just something in Kakashi's behaviour that he couldn't pinpoint. Obito liked to think that he was good at reading people, even if he couldn't put everything he observed into words. Something felt off when Kakashi talked about the Akatsuki when Obito was around to listen, at least. He hoped that Minato-sensei noticed the same thing, but figured that if he pointed it out without any evidence Minato-sensei would think it was just his bias against Kakashi at work.
Kakashi had fought eight of them, but was only willing to name four of them. The names slid through Obito's mind like water. None of them sounded familiar.
"Not all of them were bad people," Kakashi said defensively. "Some of them were even forced to join the organisation, or misled about its true intentions—at least what the leader thought were the true intentions. There's no sense in punishing them for crimes they won't commit in this world. Naruto would never forgive me."
If Minato-sensei pursued this matter further, it was in a session that Obito wasn't privy to.