Chapter Text
Part 1
i. germination
Minato
The thing about his student, Minato knows, is that he has a kind, good heart that is only ever hardened against himself.
Lounging by the window in the Hokage Tower, Minato watches the torrential rain that keeps most citizens away from the usually busy streets. It’s only been a year since he started calling this office his. He hasn’t done much to the room. It still looks the same as it did in Sarutobi’s days. Clean, certainly, and mostly organized, but barren. Big, empty. There’s probably some symbolism there, Minato guesses, and not a particularly complex one.
Kakashi lingers in the back of his mind. Not only as a thought, but as a living presence. By now, Minato tracks Kakashi’s chakra as if it were second nature. Whenever Kakashi is close enough for Minato to sense him, as he usually is these days, he becomes something Minato keeps part of his awareness on, even without conscious effort.
Kakashi is on the roof, his soft but steady energy feeling healthy and strong even through the concealment. It has become a small moment of daily relief for Minato to reach for Kakashi’s chakra and find him close by, alive and well. In more ways than one, it has become almost a nervous habit.
The temperature outside is not freezing yet, since winter has not reached Konoha’s gates, but it’s cold enough to make the fine hairs on his arms stand up. The heavy drops storming down from the grey sky come with a cold wind. It’s already late. The cold will only deepen.
Minato sighs, mentally reaching out to the invisible, comforting chakra pulsing above his head. “Kakashi, come down,” he says quietly, knowing Kakashi will hear him anyway.
It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for his student to appear in front of him, kneeling on one knee. His hair is so heavy with water that it clings to the sides of his downturned face.
“You’re dripping wet,” Minato points out.
“It’s raining,” Kakashi replies flatly, as if they were simply stating obvious facts. However, for all that he clearly tried to suppress it, Kakashi’s voice carries a faint shiver. Minato tries not to let his heart squeeze too painfully in his chest.
“We’ve talked about this.” He sighs again. “Stand, Kakashi.”
Kakashi obeys immediately, like he always does. He’s so cold his bones must be aching, Minato can tell from the way his jaw is clenched, his shoulders hunched close to his ears. There’s already a puddle forming beneath his feet.
“I’m not in the habit of repeating myself to you, but it seems this time there’s no way around it. Take off your Hound mask, please.”
There’s stiffness in Kakashi's movements, but he obeys quickly and silently, removing the ceramic mask that marks him as Minato’s most important, faceless soldier. Minato steps closer, keeping Kakashi’s gaze fixed on his. Kakashi has never been good at eye contact, but as with almost everything in his life, it got worse after Obito and Rin’s deaths.
“I don’t want you outside when it’s raining,” Minato tells him.
“Sensei,” Kakashi mutters. A small, feeble protest.
“I won’t repeat myself a third time,” Minato says, his tone softer than his harsher words suggest. He reaches forward to give Kakashi’s arm a gentle squeeze. The ANBU uniform is so clammy it sticks to Minato’s skin. Kakashi tolerates his hand for reasons Minato has come to understand are a mix of respect for hierarchy and a softer blend of lingering affection and loneliness.
“No more standing out in thunderstorms. No more pretending your body is disposable, alright? You can and will get sick and that’s not an outcome I’m willing to accept.”
“I understand,” Kakashi says, lowering his eyes, but Minato suspects he doesn’t. Kakashi says many things in order to be obedient, to avoid outright displeasing his superiors. He’ll repeat words he doesn’t believe and act in ways that openly contradict his own morals.
Minato knows this and allows it anyway. It’s not like any of them has a choice. They are shinobi; first and foremost, they are soldiers, and their wants are Konoha’s wants.
But they are people too.
Minato saw Kakashi drunk for the first time in his life very recently. His student isn’t one to overindulge, so it ached in a particular way to see him emptying his stomach at the bathroom door, sickness rising so fast he couldn’t reach the toilet before the vomit came to his mouth.
They are people too.
“You’re coming home with me,” Minato tells him suddenly.
Kakashi frowns. “Sensei?”
“As you know, Kushina is away on a mission, and I’m a very good cook. A young shinobi like you wouldn’t understand, but it’s hard to come home to an empty house when you’re an old man. Especially when you’re used to cooking for two.”
“You’re twenty-four,” Kakashi says, predictably calling out Minato’s bullshit from a mile away. There’s a short pause before he continues, his voice slightly strained. “You don’t have to do this, Minato-sensei.”
Minato smiles, kind and sad, at his only student now. The only one still standing. The last piece of Minato’s aching heart.
He grabs Kakashi’s freezing hand, cold but alive, and transports them both directly to his kitchen. This way, Kakashi doesn’t get enough time to complain.
…
“I’m not a child,” Kakashi insists. As far as Minato understands it, at fourteen Kakashi believes himself to be an already failed adult.
He’s sitting in Minato’s chair, in Minato’s kitchen, in Minato’s house. The progression of thoughts gives Minato a small measure of comfort and peace of mind: Kakashi is safe and protected.
He’s still wet, but steadily warming up, his face turning slightly pink from how high Minato cranked the heater as soon as they arrived. Minato has yet to move to the Hokage’s mansion, delaying this move by choice, and it feels much more natural to have Kakashi here, in this worn-down but loved home.
“I know that.”
He serves Kakashi the grilled vegetables and pork he had cooked the previous evening. Purposefully, he had made considerably more than he knew he could eat by himself.
“I don’t need pampering,” Kakashi insists. There’s some annoyance in his voice that Minato pays very little attention to as he sits down, clasps his hands together, and says his prayers.
“Eat, Kakashi.”
There’s only a moment of hesitation, a stubborn glare, before Kakashi clasps his own hands together, conceding defeat.
“Itadakimasu,” he mutters, and after that they eat in silence.
Kakashi keeps his mask pulled down, resting around his neck, a rare sight even during private dinners, and a surprising one at that. Minato, usually very respectful of other people’s privacy, doesn’t look away as Kakashi stuffs himself with the food Minato cooked for him.
He’s hungry, Minato thinks ruefully, watching quietly as Kakashi takes almost desperate bites, filling himself with warmth and food. Long after Minato has finished his plate, Kakashi keeps eating. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes almost glazed over from the pleasure of being fed and warm, two basic necessities he clearly doesn’t indulge in very often.
“You’re not leaving tonight,” Minato tells Kakashi afterward while he washes their dishes. He senses the small movements from behind him and knows Kakashi well enough to understand what they mean. “You’ll sleep in the extra bedroom, so go shower.”
There’s a long pause. Without even looking back, it’s clear to Minato that Kakashi wants to argue.
“I’m not a child,” Kakashi repeats, but it lacks any real strength. Minato can hear the exhaustion in his voice.
“Shower,” Minato says, not budging, his hands busy scrubbing a cup with soap.
Another pause.
Then Kakashi’s light steps move away from him, away from the kitchen, but not toward the front door. Not long after, Minato hears the telltale squeak of pipes inside the walls bringing hot water through the house.
He smiles quietly to himself.
Kakashi
Kakashi wakes up in his own apartment, older than Minato ever lived to be.
It’s his twenty-fifth birthday.
Kakashi wakes up wishing he hadn’t, the sudden and uncomfortable realization of his own consciousness seeping unwelcome into his mind. He stares at the ceiling for what feels like hours, unmoving, before finally rising to brush his teeth.
His routine is just that: a routine. Something so ingrained and automatic that it feels easier not to resist it, even on his days off. He wishes he could be away, on a mission perhaps, deep in another country, or maybe even protecting the Sandaime inside the village. He wishes he could be anywhere but here, in his apartment, alone, turning twenty-five.
On days like these, it’s easy to kill time looking at his old team photo, perched in a wooden frame next to his bed. Obito, Rin, Minato-sensei. Dead, dead, and dead. In that exact order.
Next to it sits the only other photo in his house: a picture of his mother and father. They’re both so young there, newly married, smiling and holding hands.
Dead and dead.
Not for the first time, Kakashi wonders when his time will come. Whether it would really be so terrible if he tried to rush it a little. These five people, the ones he loved most in his life, are smiling at him kindly.
He doesn’t deserve it. Not even in the stillness of his own photographs.
They wouldn’t want to meet him so soon, he thinks. Not his mother, who died so he could be brought into the world. Not Obito, Rin, or Minato, who died so he could survive. Not his father, who would grieve deeply if he knew Kakashi was breaking in the same way he once had.
Maybe you should have stayed alive then, Kakashi thinks bitterly, but his thumb strokes soft lines along the side of Sakumo’s face.
Minato was twenty-four when he had his first and only child. He had been Hokage, a reputable man, the husband of an outstanding woman. He died doing his duty: as a leader, as a partner, and as a father. He was so much more than Kakashi could ever hope to be.
At twenty-five, Kakashi is nothing but a shattered soul, held together by uneven stitches that do little to hide the glaring holes between them.
Rin and Obito didn’t even come close to reaching his current age. Maybe Kakashi should consider himself lucky, to have a decade of life on his fallen teammates, but he doesn’t. He finds that it isn’t much of a life when they aren’t around. When everyone else is dead, continuing to live starts to feel like a slow death.
ii. seedling
Kakashi
“In my dream world, I’ll make you Hokage,” Obito tells Naruto, and Kakashi’s lungs clench so tightly he loses his breath. He can’t breathe properly, his face slick with sweat, cheeks warm from the thunder of blood boiling beneath his skin.
Obito’s heart is still there. Kakashi knows this, because otherwise Obito’s face wouldn’t show pain, he wouldn’t try to comfort Naruto in his own fucked-up way. Obito is alive, Kakashi’s mind reminds him unhelpfully. Maybe it’s trying to burn that thought into him, because Kakashi still has a hard time believing it.
How the hell is any of this possible?
Years and years of idolizing a martyr, of crying over a stone carved with a dead boy’s name. Honoring your failures in a cemetery, Obito had taunted him.
He’d been watching. That much is clear. How many times had Obito opened a Kamui vortex just to take a look into Kakashi’s life? Just to watch Kakashi grieve?
The thought makes Kakashi deeply, horribly sick. The kind of sickness that you don’t feel often in a lifetime, the kind that starts low in your stomach and spreads and spreads until you can barely breathe.
He can’t believe Obito is alive, the thought refusing to settle properly in his mind. The whole thing feels sickeningly wrong.
Can this criminal really be his sweet teammate, the one who had been forced to die as a child soldier, who had pushed Kakashi out of death’s way? Can Obito really have grown older, meaner, turned into the man behind the orange mask, his face covered with severe scars exactly where Obito had once been crushed by the boulder—
Obito grabs him by the arm and teleports them both into Kamui.
Acting on nothing but pure instinct, Kakashi defends himself from the worst of the attacks, raises his kunai toward Obito’s heart, and finds that he cannot kill the image of the boy he once loved so dearly.
He can’t, he can’t, and the world will end because of another one of his failures.
“Kakashi,” Obito growls, and Kakashi hears the sound of his own pulse beating wildly against his sternum. Obito is tired and injured, but his eyes are bright and alive. “Let this end. You’ve suffered enough.”
Kakashi’s ears are ringing, his tongue stuck to the roof of his dry mouth. He can’t speak, feels completely tongue-tied.
“Why keep fighting for this reality?” Obito continues. “In your dream world, Rin will be alive. You’ll have your ideal version of me beside you again.”
Gods. It really is Obito. Obito’s heart is still there.
“Rin’s dead,” Kakashi manages to spit out. It hurts him and it hurts Obito, but he needs to make Obito understand. “You’re alive.”
Can’t this be enough? he pleads silently. Just you and me, mourning over our failures and stupid, stupid mistakes. Can’t I really be enough for you?
But he sees the pain in Obito’s eyes and understands that he’ll never be what Obito is looking for. The clearest emotion plastered across Obito’s face from the moment his mask broke is pain.
Kakashi is so tired, his chakra drained, bleeding heavily from the eye that is still his most precious gift. Obito had never tried to take it back. Why hadn’t Obito cornered him in any of the many opportunities he had over the last decade and driven a knife through his eye socket? With both Mangekyō, Obito would have needed nothing else.
Kakashi summons lightning to his hand, drawing power from the obedient soldier rooted deep inside him, dimly aware of how the blue light reflects across the broken blocks scattered through this half-lit dimension.
Wiping his mind clean, he drives his hand through Obito’s stomach just as Obito pushes his kunai into Kakashi’s.
They both gasp blood and remain alive, neither willing to strike a vital spot.
Minato
While Minato had seen one too many horrible sights in his life, Obito being mentally crushed by the Juubi was one of the worst.
Coming back to life to fight by his son's side wouldn't have been so bad if the monster leading the war hadn’t been the lovable student he thought he'd lost to a young and unfair death.
Minato had surely been a terrible teacher. He sees it reflected in the tears falling from Obito’s eyes onto his monstrous face. Kakashi is nowhere to be seen, previously dragged away by Obito himself into whatever reality only the two of them can access.
Obito was responsible for Kushina’s death, Minato’s mind reminds him over and over. But he can't help but turn and watch as Madara stops everything, even his attacks, to focus his attention solely on Hashirama. Minato watches as Hashirama, the god-like First Hokage, proves himself powerless to fully ignore Uchiha Madara, watches as their eyes meet with such intensity that it almost drags the world around them to a full stop.
He sees the same look being thrown back and forth between his own son and the boy called Uchiha Sasuke. He sees three generations of longing, grief, and earth-shattering pain. A pain so deep that, right now, it threatens to destroy their physical world.
How could he have missed that back when he was a Jōnin? He had had more than enough time to recognize that heated look between Kakashi and Obito, tempered by childish youth but still very much there.
The truth is that Minato had always meant well; he really thought, back then, that he was kind and responsible and overall a good man. The present proves, however, that he failed as a father, a teacher, a husband, and a leader. Quite literally failed at everything he once set out to succeed at.
He closes his eyes as Obito’s pained screams pierce his eardrums and tries to think.
Obito
Observing someone's deepest, most private wants and desires feels intrusive even to Obito, even now.
His hovering presence in other people's dreamscapes would not have been emotionally complicated had he truly become the god he once intended to be. He hasn’t, though. Despite everything, he's still Obito: not much more than the bitter, hardened shell of a human being. Human enough for his heart to falter as he watches what makes humanity undoubtedly the most cursed, stupid species to ever inhabit this world.
“You don’t have to worry anymore,” Sasuke tells Sakura, the gentlest smile lifting the corners of his lips. “Now that Itachi’s gone, I’ll stay.”
Dreams don’t respect reality. It’s sickening to watch words that would never leave someone’s mouth being spoken out loud. People don’t dream about other people, they dream about themselves. People only care about their own fantasies, their own perceived realities. Obito would know. It’s not like he’s any different.
Swallowing the bitter taste on his tongue, he grimaces and leaves Sakura’s domain.
In Sasuke’s dream world, he’s sharing a meal with his father and brother when Naruto walks through the door. Naruto’s carrying a hot dish in mitten-covered hands, helping Sasuke’s mother serve dinner. She murmurs a quiet thanks to what appears to be her son-in-law, her eyes dark, alive, and proud. Obito remembers those eyes; Mikoto had always been a remarkable woman.
Sasuke and Naruto carelessly hold hands beneath the table as Itachi, seated right beside his brother, gives him a poorly concealed grin that Sasuke immediately returns. It's all so very… mundane. It’s almost alarming to see Sasuke’s honest, happy smile. Obito had never seen it before, had even doubted it existed. It looks raw and vulnerable on Sasuke’s face, and Obito finds himself uncomfortable enough to leave this domain too, a sorrowful taste of ash on his lips.
In his own world, Naruto stands proudly atop Konoha’s tallest surrounding hill. He's alone, but Obito can hear voices coming from below him: Minato, Kushina, Kakashi, Sakura. There's idyllic laughter and a sense of utter peace in the village. The iconic wide white hat dips low over Naruto’s blue eyes.
“Come down, you idiot,” Sasuke says, and Naruto’s face lights up with unadulterated joy.
It’s overwhelming, really. Naruto is so bright it feels like Obito is staring directly at the sun.
Love is sickening, Obito thinks. A disabling disease, the ultimate weakness. People's reason to keep on living in such a cursed world. Obito is only human. He has loved before too. He's not stupid enough to fail to realize that he loves, even now.
With his chest constricted by what feels like the tight grip of his Mokuton roots, Obito gives in to his own deepest, most repressed desires and steps into Kakashi's dream.
Kakashi is alone in a graveyard, Sakumo’s grave standing proud, clean and well kept in front of him. Obito is stunned. Maybe Kakashi lost his father so early in life that he feels it’s too important to his story, too essential a pawn in the game of his life to be changed?
Nothing about Kakashi is ever easy to understand.
A delicate hand touches Kakashi's shoulder and Obito freezes in place, struck still by the thunder of his own heart.
“Kakashi,” Rin says softly, pulling him into a hug.
They leave hand in hand as Obito’s stupid, deadbeat heart picks up its pace. This isn’t what he expected. He trails like a ghost behind them, betraying his own instincts for self-preservation, or whatever remains of them anyway. There’s always a small sense of satisfaction in sticking a finger into a gaping wound.
He follows them to Minato’s house. This, at least, is predictable. Kushina is there too, with Naruto in her arms. He can't be more than three years old, young enough for Kakashi not to have failed him yet. A second chance of sorts, Obito assumes.
Obito’s feelings lodge themselves in his throat as they all hug and share warm touches and smiles. Minato ruffles Kakashi's hair, a fatherly gesture that speaks to the closeness of this chosen family. This is it then, he thinks. This is Kakashi's deepest desire. Not so surprising after all, even if it leaves Obito’s mouth tasting like bile.
Then there’s the sound of a cheerful knock.
“You're late,” Kakashi says, staring at the door with his arms crossed over his chest, making Obito's stomach somersault.
It's a surreal experience to watch himself walk through that door. His scars are still there, and a hitai-ate covers his damaged eye. The accident clearly still happened, but he came back to the village, to his team. In this life, his green Jōnin vest is partially covered by a white cloak with red markings on the back.
Rokudaime, it says.
That Obito, the Hokage of Kakashi’s world, smiles sheepishly at his teammate, the face of a man who knows he’s already been forgiven. Even from afar, watching them together, it’s as if there’s no one else in the room. Obito watches their slow reunion with an unnamed feeling gnawing at the lining of his intestines.
“The Hokage’s reputation would suffer if I suddenly stopped helping old ladies cross the street,” his other self says, much to Minato’s amusement and Kushina’s snort.
Kakashi's gaze softens even further. Obito has never seen that expression on Kakashi's face before, but he recognizes it from a mile away.
He leaves before he can see anything else.
Kakashi
The dream ends so suddenly it makes Kakashi gasp, as if he had been drowning in the ocean and had finally been dragged back to shore. The still image of a life that could have been is now imprinted behind his cornea, future nightmare fuel for sleepless nights.
He pushes himself to his knees, frantic, looking around despite the bottomless pit widening in his stomach.
Rin, he thinks, heavy with grief. Kushina. Sensei.
Sensei?
He twists around and Minato is there, without his two arms and in a reincarnated body. He’s kneeling beside Naruto, murmuring soft words that Kakashi can’t hear. That’s—
Kakashi can’t think about it right now. There’s another name. Another person. He stumbles forward, weak muscles faltering underneath him as his one remaining eye searches wildly for the one person it isn’t finding.
Until it does.
Obito looks dead. His remaining Sharingan is bleeding heavily and most of his bones are certainly broken. His Rinnegan is missing, stolen, just like Kakashi’s Sharingan. His hair is white, but he’s human again, fully human, and he broke the jutsu despite Madara’s efforts to crush them all like bugs.
Not far from them, Madara’s body lies stretched across the barren ground, the awkward position of his limbs hinting at his unconsciousness. Hashirama is at his side, pressing one palm to his bare chest.
Madara’s dead, Kakashi thinks, but his mind is numb and he cannot elaborate on the thought any further. He drops down next to Obito and starts gently carding his fingers through snow-white hair.
“He’s alive, Kakashi-sensei.” Sakura’s voice jolts Kakashi awake. It says a lot about his mental state that he didn’t even hear her arrive. His bones have turned to ice, or maybe stone, and he finds he cannot do much but watch as her hands turn bright green and she places them atop Obito’s heart. Healer’s hands. Hands untainted by murder, so very different from Kakashi’s own.
Obito’s alive, Kakashi thinks distantly. The thought is, once again, completely surreal.
“Madara took away the gift Obito gave me,” Kakashi blurts out of nowhere, unsure why he’s telling her this at all. Sakura looks up at him, frowning. She seems concerned.
“I think I’ll take it back.”
“Sensei—”
Kakashi gets up before she can say anything else. He stumbles toward Hashirama, who is hunched over Madara’s body. He has no idea what he’ll do; there’s too much fog clogging his skull for him to do much more than act on instinct. He just knows he needs Obito's Sharingan back. Obito’s eye, his beautiful, precious eye, won’t die with Uchiha Madara. Kakashi is ready to fight Senju Hashirama over this.
As he gets closer, it becomes obvious that he won’t have to. Hashirama looks up at him and smiles, so kind and gentle, the very personification of the fire spirit they all devote their shinobi lives to. There’s an aura of grief around him, grief for Madara, for the lives they lost, and maybe even for himself. And as Kakashi locks eyes with the Shodaime, he understands that Hashirama already knows what he’s come to ask for, and that Kakashi will find no resistance here.
How does he know? In their world, the impossible no longer holds any meaning.
“You’ve been given a second chance, young Hatake,” Hashirama tells him as he extracts the Sharingan from Madara’s eye socket. The process looks easy, impossibly clean, the result of medical ninjutsu so advanced it surpasses even Tsunade's. “Now it’s up to you to make sure you don’t end up like we did.”
Minato
Orochimaru looks at him with curious eyes.
“I need to stay around for a little longer,” Minato tells him. It’s almost a confessional whisper, and he can’t hide the shame that creeps into his words.
Orochimaru only tilts his head slightly. “It’s no crime to desire life, Minato.”
It is, when you defile a dead body through an impure jutsu that defies free will. “The dead shouldn’t meddle in the world of the living,” he snips instead. Then he stops and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Can you allow me a few more days?”
The corners of Orochimaru’s mouth lift, and he lets his gaze deliberately drift past them, toward where Minato knows Naruto is lying next to Obito, his student’s body a broken, bloodied mess. Naruto is holding Obito’s hand while Kakashi stands quietly beside them, in what looks like a severe state of shock.
“I could allow you a lifetime, if that’s truly what you wish,” Orochimaru replies casually, his voice sweet as honey.
Sage. This man really is very, very different from Jiraiya-sensei. Distantly, Minato wonders what would have happened if Orochimaru had trained him instead. Would Minato be willing to accept this offer then?
“I don’t need a lifetime,” he says politely. Besides, he doubts it’s true. Every jutsu has its limitations, and the unnatural cannot sustain itself forever. There is undoubtedly a limit to the Edo Tensei, and Minato has no intention of finding out exactly where that line lies.
“Very well,” Orochimaru says easily, and even gives Minato his arms back.
iii. vegetative growth
Minato
It’s not as though Minato was ever unaware that their world was a difficult one. He had seen many people broken by it, Obito being only the latest among the many figures that populate Minato’s memories. Still, among the good people left, the ones who for one reason or another managed to retain their good hearts, Kakashi is one of the most shattered souls Minato has ever met.
There is some objectivity to that, Minato knows. He himself did not fare very well, having lost his wife and his own life to a once-beloved student he failed to stop, or even recognize, on the day of his child’s birth. Many had fared even worse, losing everything and everyone within the span of a short lifetime that often ended in a regretful death.
Even so, Kakashi had particularly terrible luck.
Losing his only parent so young to suicide, of all possibilities. Watching the memory of his father become that of a pariah in social circles instead of the hero he had once known. Adopting ideals opposite to his father’s and distancing himself from that legacy, only to lose his teammate precisely because of it.
Back then, Minato noticed that despite their inability to get along, Obito and Kakashi truly liked each other. They weren’t friends, but their relationship was important to both of them. He certainly never saw Kakashi look at Rin the way he looked at Obito.
Obito’s death was earth-shattering to Kakashi. Minato remembers the devastation very well, because he witnessed it all while grieving Obito himself. Kakashi missed him dearly, that much was clear.
It really was the worst kind of luck that Kakashi would lose the last two people he cared about only a year later. Rin’s death in particular, the one that happened by his own hand, destroyed what little was left of him. Maybe, in Kakashi’s eyes, he had finally lost what little remained of Obito as well.
Minato wasn’t around to witness the aftermath of his own death in the course of his remaining student’s life, but the math isn’t so complicated that he can’t add two and two together: the adult version of Kakashi has grief printed across the lines of his face, visible in the purple bags beneath his eyes.
Now, the fourth war finally over, Minato’s hand rests on Kakashi’s hair, pushing it away from his face as Kakashi empties his stomach into the toilet. What comes up is mostly yellow bile, sharp with a sick, acidic smell. It must burn horribly, because numb tears roll down Kakashi’s cheeks.
“Breathe slowly,” Minato tells him.
Kakashi’s hair is damp with sweat, his eyes bloodshot. He stares weakly up at Minato, unseeing. Minato traces the line of his eyebrows gently with the pads of his fingers until the tension there begins to release. Kakashi looks exhausted beyond human limits, and Minato aches inside.
“Why are you doing this?” Kakashi mumbles, resting his cheek against the toilet seat, looking even younger than he is. Looking a lot like he did at fourteen, broken by Obito and Rin’s deaths, back when Minato had comforted him by stroking his hair in the same fatherly way.
“Does it bother you?” Minato asks gently.
Kakashi closes his eyes slowly. With his mask down, he’s unfathomably vulnerable in a way Minato doubts he allows himself to be in front of anyone else. “It’s going to hurt when you leave,” he whispers, voice quiet and rough. Minato’s heart clenches painfully.
“Then let me do this while I’m here,” he says, threading careful fingers through pale hair. “We’ll worry about the future later.”
…
Kakashi is losing muscle mass to the anxiety that visibly starts to devour him the minute they return to Konoha. He’d always been lean; there was never much body fat to spare while living the hard life of an elite shinobi. But now Minato looks at the jutting angles of his collarbones, the sunken lines of his cheeks, and tries very hard not to despair.
Minato cooks for Kakashi the way he once had for his pregnant wife, sneaking extra protein and calories into every meal. Kushina had been ravenous back then, though. With Kakashi, Minato is lucky if he manages to get half the food into him before Kakashi inevitably pushes it back up.
“You should be with Naruto,” Kakashi comments one night at dinner, toying with his barely touched noodles.
“I visit him,” Minato says, trying not to let the guilt creeping up his spine show in his voice. “Every day.”
Kakashi doesn’t look convinced, much less pleased about it. “He needs it less, is that what you’re saying.”
Minato stays quiet.
“Have you considered that maybe he deserves it more?”
Minato runs a hand across his weary face. He doesn’t get tired in this obscene, revived body, but his mind still weighs heavily on him.
“One of the things I regret the most is not working on your self-esteem when you were a child.”
That stuns Kakashi into silence. Minato gentles his tone.
“I wasn’t there for you back then. I didn’t work on your self-esteem, I didn’t talk to you about the repeated violence you lived through. I put you in ANBU, close to me, or so I thought, but it was a horrible place for someone as gentle as you. I kept you close, but still at a distance. I was an irresponsible teacher.”
Kakashi’s eyes are wide. Even when it had just been the two of them, when Minato was still alive, they never had heart-to-hearts the way Minato once had with Obito and Rin.
His tone of voice turns to almost pleading.
“Then I woke up in the middle of a fourth world war caused by Obito, of all people, and you were also there, but both of you were a mess. It broke my heart, Kakashi. I get to do this now, though. And it might be insignificant next to other achievements, like stopping the war and befriending tailed beasts, but it means the world to me.”
Kakashi stops playing with his food. His face is bare, just like it’s been these last few days. No mask, both dark eyes visible together, like they used to be when he was a child and never after that. It’s either a show of absolute, undying trust, or another sign of his current instability.
“Sensei,” Kakashi rasps. He lowers his eyes, ashamed.
“Eat your food,” Minato tells him gently, watching over him as Kakashi does what he’s told.
They don’t talk for the rest of the day.
Kakashi
“And what were you doing?” Naruto mumbles, the low sound so terrible that Kakashi wants to pretend he didn’t hear it. He turns his face toward the bright sky, wanting anything but to recognize Minato in his son’s big blue eyes.
“What were you doing,” Naruto repeats, his voice clearer now, rougher, “when I was being beaten and cursed and treated worse than a dog? Where were you when I was a child?”
Above them, the sky turns a horrible red, chakra red, crimson like the raw energy trapped inside Naruto’s belly. There’s a smile there, all sharp fangs and killing intent. Kakashi’s heart turns to lead, dropping heavily into his stomach. Minato will never forgive him. Kushina will never forgive him.
“Do you think I’ll ever forgive you?” Naruto bites out.
Kakashi wakes up in his bed, clinging to his hot sheets and covered in cold sweat.
Minato
“I can't find it in myself to hate you right now,” Obito says, propped up against his makeshift hospital bed. They're at the Hokage mansion, in one of the many bedrooms Tsunade has to spare, living in such a huge house all by herself.
Minato can sense at least four ANBU outside Obito's room. Tsunade herself is close by, always close by now, with his son's medic friend constantly trailing after her. Sakura is her name, if Minato recalls correctly, and the two of them are the only medical professionals allowed to interact with Obito in any way. Obito's mostly healed now, which is both a good thing and a dangerous one.
“I felt my anger shifting toward you during the war,” Obito mumbles, still looking slightly beaten up despite his improving health. There are shadows under his eyes. “But it's not what it once was.”
“Toward me,” Minato repeats slowly. He's sitting on the only furniture besides the bed: a simple wooden stool. “Away from Kakashi?”
A soft growl comes from Obito’s throat. His face looks pained as he presses his eyelids shut. “Away from Kakashi,” he agrees.
Minato pictures Kakashi vomiting himself hollow, kneeling on his bathroom tiles. “What about the world, Obito? Do you still feel anger toward it?”
Obito glares daggers at him. “Of course I still feel anger toward it.” If looks could kill, Obito wouldn’t have needed any of the bijuu after all. “I hate this stupid child soldier system. I hate that Kakashi put his fist through Rin’s heart. I hate that Rin chose that, and that soon after you forced Kakashi into ANBU. What the fuck were you even thinking?”
The sharp turn in the conversation leaves Minato nearly breathless. Obito’s mood swings keep being a constant challenge, one of the new changes in his personality that Minato finds the hardest to deal with. He’s a man of consistency, while Obito moves in violent ups and downs, like the hunting dives of birds of prey. Maybe Obito’s anger isn’t universe-crushing anymore - not after Naruto reached deep inside him and brought him back, not after Kakashi carried him home - but it’s still distressing to experience it so openly.
“That was one of my biggest mistakes,” he says, allowing himself this vulnerability, hoping it might calm Obito down. “I’m a product of this world as much as you are… and I died young. I made mistakes while trying to do the right thing. Those aren’t excuses, Obito, just— Context. To explain why I allowed myself to fail so badly, I suppose. I didn’t know I was failing back then.”
Obito shoots him another hardened glance, but Minato sees his breathing begin to slow, his shoulders slumping away from his ears. His dark gaze falls to his own hands, fingers tangled in the thin white sheet covering his lower half.
“You fucked us up so bad,” he mumbles, but it sounds more mournful than accusatory. Defeated, even.
“I’m sorry,” Minato says softly. “I really am.”
“Sticking around for a few days in a dead body won’t heal us, you know.” Obito looks at him with an almost wistful expression. The bright light entering the room through the open windows casts darkness beneath his deep scars. So many years after the incident and they still highlight the severity of his injuries.
“I know,” Minato agrees quietly.
“Then why are you here?”
Minato tilts his chin toward the ceiling and sighs out a breath of pent-up air. He doesn’t really need to breathe, but old habits die hard. “Maybe I just wanted a little bit of time with the two of you again.”
“Bullshit. You wouldn’t want that more than spending time with your own son.”
At that, Minato finds himself smiling a little. The spark in Obito’s eyes is cunning, intelligent.
“Alright. Sometimes I forget you’re not a child anymore. I’m sorry. The truth is that you and Kakashi might not be children now, but you’re still… students under my responsibility.” Obito scrunches his nose, but before he can interrupt, Minato continues. “I just wanted to take care of you a little longer, Obito. In a way I clearly failed to do before, as you’ve pointed out many times.”
Obito sniffs a little and takes some time to consider Minato’s answer.
“It won’t fix anything. You’re not our father.”
“Maybe not,” Minato concedes, noticing that Obito doesn’t look particularly irritated anymore. “I don’t have any pretense of fixing anything. I’m a dead man, Obito. I’m just here to make sure you both try to fix things with each other when I’m gone. Together, you might even think of a way to finally make this world better.”
Obito scoffs, incredulity written all over his face. “Him and me? Do you even remember what I’ve done? You think he’ll want to forgive me now?”
Minato remembers Kushina impaled on Kurama’s claw, pain gripping his lungs like an iron fist. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and pushes the thought away.
“He’s already forgiven you,” Minato says instead. “He loves you, Obito.”
Obito’s expression turns troubled. If Minato hadn’t sealed his eyes, he knows he’d be looking at two Sharingan spinning in frantic circles. “You can't be serious,” Obito says, eyebrows drawn together. “You know Kakashi only ever loved the idea of thirteen-year-old me. He didn’t even like thirteen-year-old me when I was actually around.”
Minato feels one corner of his mouth tug upward at that. This is why he asked Orochimaru to stay. Just a little longer. Just until he gets to do this one thing right.
“That’s really what you saw in his soul when you fought each other during the war?”
“A war I started,” Obito shoots back at him, as fast as one of Minato’s weapons. Defensive, deflecting.
“A war you helped end,” Minato replies softly but with certainty, leaving no room to argue. Headbutting Obito was the worst way to handle him in his current state, Minato had come to learn.
“He’ll never forgive me,” Obito says, quieter now, subdued. “In his place, I wouldn’t forgive me. Hell, I certainly didn’t forgive him for anything when it was my turn to, did I.”
There's so much Minato could say to him. He doesn't believe his words would fully reach Obito's heart, however, hardened as it still is by years of hate. He doesn't have the key to unlocking that mess. As far as Minato is aware, there's only one man still alive who does.
“You have time, Obito,” Minato says kindly. “You both have the rest of your lives to figure this out.”
Something in Obito’s expression shifts. His angry resolve crumbles slowly, leaving a raw, grief-stricken look in its place.
“I should be dead,” Obito insists, eyes downcast, pale knuckles gripping the sheets. “Fuck, sensei, I wanted to be dead.”
It hurts, in a strange and bittersweet way, to hear sensei from Obito's mouth. “Kakashi needs you alive,” he murmurs, and hears a choked sob, sees tense shoulders start to shake. It must be borderline painful to experience mood swings like that, and Minato aches with sympathy.
Obito doesn't shed tears, Minato had come to realize over these last few days, at least not in front of him. But once a crier, always a crier, and through tremors and shivers, Obito's body releases emotions in subtler ways.
Kakashi
Days and nights pass by in what feels like a blurry tornado, chaos breathed down from the heavens above turning into a thunderstorm that spins endlessly.
Kakashi lives one day at a time, barely leaving his apartment, feeling the sickest he's ever felt - with the notable exception of that awful day when he suddenly came to it and realized Uchiha Itachi had tortured his mind for an eternity.
He feels like he’s really been through it all.
Right at the end of the Fourth War, after Naruto and Sasuke’s bloodstained fight, a little after they walked into Konoha both victorious and defeated, Kakashi's body started to break down. The curtains shut, the play ended.
He’d attended the shared funeral held soon after the soldiers’ return to Konoha, sadly watching as grieving mothers mourned their children. He saw Neji's body being buried and stood by Gai's side as his friend openly wept, feeling both sorrow and guilt because, deep down, he was relieved that he wasn’t burying any of his own. Not only were Naruto and Sakura alive and standing proud, but Sasuke's trial began the moment he declared his wish to be accepted back.
Kakashi had a moment with him, locked up and blindfolded, while Kakashi's heart both ached and soared at seeing him - hurt, missing one arm, treated like a criminal, but also alive and home. It's one of the last things Kakashi's body let him do: sit quietly next to his student as he cried and cried and cried. Sasuke grieved openly for the first time, along with so many in Konoha, tears streaming down the cloth that covered his most dangerous weapon, while Kakashi said few words but stood by his side the entire time.
It was only later, hoarse and tired and leaning against the tall brick walls of the underground room he was confined in, that Sasuke asked, "Obito?"
It was just a name, but it clenched Kakashi's stomach into knots.
"I don't know," Kakashi replied honestly. He'd handed an unconscious Obito over to Tsunade's healing hands and had never asked about him again.
The last time he’d seen Obito's eyes open had been during the war, right after the Juubi had been tamed and two dark eyes stared at Kakashi, filled with pain and grief that mirrored his own. As far as Kakashi knew, they hadn’t opened since.
As he left the prison tower, Kakashi’s body started to weigh as much as lead. He'd done what he could. Sasuke had come back. Naruto and Sakura were safe. Madara was dead, the Akatsuki gone. Tsunade held power again and Obito was under her political and medical care. On top of all that, Minato, his mentor, his teacher, the one person who held him together after his father’s death, was walking around in what felt like an unending dream, for Sage knows how long, for Sage knows what, but he was back. Even if only for a little while, even if in a revived body. It didn’t really matter, because Kakashi could look him up and find spiky blond hair and warm, rounded blue eyes instead of a gravestone.
That day, Kakashi visited Sasuke and returned to his apartment. He hasn’t left it ever since.
People visit. Minato, mostly, sharing whatever little time of this afterlife between Naruto, Kakashi, and Obito. Minato even sleeps in his living room at times, but he's careful to give Kakashi space too.
It's a hard process and an incredibly embarrassing one at that. He cries without realizing he's crying. Vomits and doesn't get out of bed for days. Moves only to sit under the sun, Minato close by his side, then nearly passes out once he's back on the couch. He barely has time to question it, to understand what the hell is going on; his mind is way too hazy, too worn out.
"Sensei needs time to get better," he hears Sakura telling Naruto one day after they stay for dinner, but it’s not like he has any other choice. His body isn’t really allowing him to rush it.
At least they both do that, visit him, looking strong and healthy as they do so. It's awkward that Kakashi is so down while they are proud and risen, but he really finds it difficult to care. He loves them too much, respects them too much, for the comparison to be of any worth now. He'd much rather have them see him in this sorry state, oversized clothes hanging off his thinned frame, than not see them at all.
Naruto stops by frequently enough, brings him steaming ramen while talking about anything and everything from his perch on the bedroom windowsill. Usually, Kakashi can do little else but listen while lying down. Naruto talks often about Sasuke, light and bright, so hopeful it's sunny, rays of sunshine coming from his mouth and it’s—
It's nice to see him happy. It's nice to know that despite how much Kakashi fucked up, and how many unforgivable messes he'd accumulated under his name, this he could not touch. His shortcomings weren't enough to stop Naruto and Sakura, and eventually Sasuke, from figuring it out.
The only person he doesn't see is Obito. He can’t visit Obito, not really, not at this moment, not this fragile. He'd die, or something close to it, which only doesn’t happen because he doesn’t ask to visit Obito and knows Obito definitely can’t visit him either. It’s Minato and Tsunade who tell him when Obito wakes up - confused, angry, bursting with life - and Minato is the one who steps up, like a father would, like he should have, long ago, but. The past is the past.
Obito's alive now. He's awake. He's a criminal under Konoha’s care, awaiting his trial while held at the Hokage's mansion, a process much different from Sasuke's, who got released weeks after his imprisonment and needed no supervision after that. Obito is a much more complicated case, watched closely like a wild animal, a tailed beast, an unpredictable force of nature.
Kakashi longs, deep down, to talk to him. To ask him questions. But he can’t, not right now. Minato and Tsunade have it handled, and that needs to be enough.
His feelings bend to motion. There's the sickness that comes in waves that build up into tsunamis. And then there's the calming of the seas, lasting only until the ocean starts stirring again.
It takes a good while for the waters to be gentle enough to feel less threatening, for Kakashi to feel like he can breathe air without drowning again. It starts slowly, unpredictably, but he finally starts to eat more, to hold longer conversations and to sleep for more than two hours uninterrupted. Sakura even brings him books now, and he reads them without tiring himself out. It’s a relief knowing that reading is a pleasure he still gets to have in this life.
Staying awake and present becomes more possible than it was before. His heart is numb, his mind hazy, but he keeps getting healthier nonetheless. He starts wanting to train again, to move his body, to lift heavy weights that challenge his muscles.
The outside world keeps being a challenge: a world that now holds Obito out there, so close to him it still feels unreal. Kakashi isn’t happy to admit to himself, much less anyone else, that he starts to think about Obito all the time, almost obsessively, but there’s no denying how much he now waits for Minato’s reports on him.
Kakashi yearns for the moment he’ll see Obito again, even if it all feels still too unreal, a little too much like mist which breaks down whenever he’s too close.
…
A knock on his door makes Kakashi drag himself up from his bed that he’d been lying on for too many hours, a headache pounding at the back of his neck, climbing the top of his spine like a spider with spindly legs.
“I’ll say this in the nicest way I know how,” Tsunade tells him when Kakashi opens his front door. She looks tired, serious, and slightly hungover.
Kakashi himself isn’t doing any better. His head hurts. “Alright.”
“You need to get your shit together. It’s been two months.” Tsunade says it the way she says everything: passionately, warmly, laced with strength. Her brown eyes are narrowed, one hand on her hip. It feels almost strange to be reminded of how much shorter she is than him, when it always seems as if she’s looming over him.
“Would you like to come in?” he offers, not really knowing what else to do. He’d much rather have this conversation indoors anyway.
At that, Tsunade smiles at him: all sharp teeth and that particular glint in her eyes returning in full force.
“No, brat. Put on some decent clothes for once. We’re going out.”
Tsunade
Kakashi loves Obito. Tsunade notices as much.
She's known Minato’s student longer than most and has had plenty of chances to observe the way his whole body broadcasts, in the quietest of ways, the consequences of repressed love. She sees Kakashi’s feelings, and she sees Kakashi’s mostly futile attempts to keep them properly buried inside himself.
“Drink, little brat.”
“Mah,” Kakashi says lazily, dragging his thumb along the rim of his glass. “Keeping up with you is no easy task, Tsunade-sama.”
Tsunade tsks and finishes her glass in one go. “Don’t be insolent. You look like you need it more than I do.”
Kakashi considers that for a moment before clearly deciding not to go down that particular path of conversation. He concedes with a small nod and swallows down his drink.
They have a moment of silence after that.
This little corner of Konoha is one of her favorites, from the colorful painted flags hanging from the bar ceiling to the worn but always clean tablecloth made from natural fibers. Tsunade orders them another round, settling into the cushions that make the privacy of the small booth even more comforting.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately,” she tells him eventually.
That gives Kakashi pause. “I’m… flattered?”
Tsunade rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t be. You’ll be the Rokudaime, and as I’m certain you know, we all need you in your right mind. To put it mildly.”
Kakashi’s attention is fully on her, although his posture remains slouched and unprofessional as always. His eyes, however, are his constant giveaway: sharp and alert.
“I see.”
“I’m well aware you’re looking forward to being Hokage just as much as I did, which is not at all. Also, you’ll love it just as much as I did, which is, once again, not at all. And despite all that, I’m certain you’ll fulfill your duty perfectly.” Tsunade stops there and gulps down half of her drink. “I’m gambling on you becoming a better leader than I ever was.”
“You’re known for being a terrible gambler, Tsunade-sama.”
Tsunade ignores him, settling her body against the padding supporting her tired back. “You’re calm, intelligent, and resourceful. You have close friends and allies in the higher ranks of Konoha. Shinobi from other villages respect you.” She takes a breath. “And you were Minato’s favorite. That meant something to Jiraiya, so it means something to me.”
Despite his stoic manner, Kakashi still somehow manages to look deeply uncomfortable. It’s pretty clear that either Kakashi isn’t complimented very often or that he doesn’t think much of himself. Probably both, considering how he lost Minato so young and likely never had anyone afterward who could offer some kind of fatherly praise.
“I don’t say this lightly, Kakashi,” Tsunade insists. “I’m saying it now because I trust you, but also because there’s still one thing that worries me. I’m sure you already know what that is.”
“Obito,” he mutters, and Tsunade nods. No need for preambles here.
“And your health, too. Right now, you’re emotionally compromised.” A statement, not a question.
Kakashi lowers his eyes. That flash of love-guilt-embarrassment flickers across his face quickly, but Tsunade knows how to recognize it now. Obito really did a number on Kakashi, didn’t he?
“I see,” Kakashi says, as if conceding a great defeat. The orange lightning of the bar doesn’t do much to take the pale sickness off his face. For all his reputation, Tsunade still can’t help but recognize the damaged kid underneath it all.
She stares at him for a few moments before sighing. “Hokage don’t do well at their jobs when they’re unhappy, I can say that much. To some it might seem contradictory, but what I’m about to say was decided for the good of the village: we’ve thought thoroughly about your request, and we’ll give you what you asked for.”
There are a few seconds of blatant confusion. Then she sees understanding pass through his expression; slowly, very slowly, like morning sunlight chasing away the night shadows.
Kakashi brightens with what looks like reluctant hope.
“You’ll let him live,” he says, soft incredulity dulling his voice. The words tumble ungracefully from his mouth.
Tsunade sighs again and waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t look so surprised. Would you have stood quietly if I’d told you I was going to have him executed?”
Kakashi holds her gaze. It’s still a bit unnerving to see both of his eyes uncovered. They always told a different, more honest story than his purposefully relaxed body. Not for the first time, Tsunade notices pure steel in them.
Then the dark gray of his irises softens slowly, hard metal melting away as Kakashi searches for words.
“Thank you, Hokage-sama.”
Tsunade brushes the thankfulness away with a flick of her fingers. “Oh, come on. Don’t give me that. Even if it gives me hell, it was bound to happen the minute you walked through my gates with him carefully protected on your back, wasn’t it?”
The look on Kakashi’s face tells her he wasn’t so certain of that. There’s something deep and painful etched into the lines of his face. It strains the corners of his eyebrows and lies heavy in the bags under his eyes. It hurts her heart a little to see him like this.
It’s not a novelty, Tsunade knows. Soldiers break often, all the time. She’s a doctor, she’s well aware of that. Still, for the first time in a long, long while, she can’t help but feel relief whenever she wakes up in the morning. After Jiraiya’s death, she would often open her eyes in bed and come to a sensation of dread weighing her down, gnawing at her insides. Back then, it felt like there was no way around it, like the heaviness in her chest was inevitable.
But now it’s a new era. It’s finally a new era.
She looks her successor in the eyes and fully believes the future will be lighter, brighter, and that Kakashi will be the one to start leading all of them there.
It’s an unshakable belief she holds very close to her heart.
iv. flowering
Kakashi
“They’ll let you live.”
He breaks the good news with no apparent enthusiasm, the monotone of his voice unwavering. Despite the soaring relief inside him, he finds he cannot swallow down the spiky, tangled ball of feelings that lodges in his throat now that he’s close to Obito. It’s a curious thing that devours him whole, leaving his palms clammy and his heart racing against his ribs.
Kakashi never learned how to truly listen to his emotions, much less how to properly work through them. It’s as if his body and mind are two separate entities that refuse to cooperate. Everything is stored deep inside him, but nothing leaks out through the many cracks he knows are there. To others, he comes across as empty, hollowed out.
“You don’t sound very thrilled about that,” Obito mutters quietly.
Kakashi blinks slowly, trying to calm his heartbeat. “I’m not very good at this. Sorry.”
Surprisingly, Obito doesn’t snort or roll his eyes. There’s silence again. Kakashi’s breath is shallow while a drop of sweat slides down the back of his neck.
They’re sitting on a bench in the Hokage’s exuberant garden. It’s one of the only places in Konoha where you can see plants from every corner of the continent. It’s extremely beautiful, almost unbelievable, even, but Kakashi can barely register the colors. Not even the strong, flowery scents quite reach him.
There’s only Obito sitting beside him, so close and yet not touching. Obito is wearing casual clothes, as if this were just any other day in their ordinary lives. It strikes Kakashi suddenly that now they know he might live long enough to actually have that.
An ordinary life.
“I’ve seen you get like this before,” Obito finally says with a sigh, stopping Kakashi’s train of thought. “You’re in shock.”
Is he? Somehow, shock doesn’t feel like the right word. Most likely, Kakashi feels like he’s been perpetually in a state of grief.
He came into the world grieving the loss of his mother. Soon after came the loss of nearly everyone he ever cared about. Grief is not so much an emotion anymore, not a phase one goes through, at least not for him. It’s an adjective: his name is Kakashi, he’s a shinobi, he covers his face with a mask, and he grieves.
“Am I?” It’s embarrassing, not being able to elaborate any further, but at this point Obito has seen much worse from him.
“Yeah.” Obito’s staring. Kakashi can feel Obito’s eyes on his skin, the intensity of his gaze. Kakashi keeps his own eyes cast downward. “After your dad, I remember. And after… Rin. And sensei.”
“You were watching,” Kakashi says ruefully, “all this time?”
In his peripheral vision, Kakashi notices the subtle, awkward shift of Obito’s knees. “It became a bad habit.”
Kakashi lets out an amused huff of breath. That’s a pretty gentle way of putting it, he supposes, but chooses not to press the subject any further.
“You didn’t see the aftermath of your own death,” he points out instead. It’s not a question. He knows Obito didn’t, probably couldn’t, back then, weak and sick and trapped in Madara’s tight grip.
“No,” Obito agrees. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t see the worst of it, then,” Kakashi murmurs quietly.
Another shift of Obito’s legs beside him.
Obito smells different now, Kakashi notices. Clean and green, with a faint hint of burnt wood. A little bit like Hashirama. It’s probably why he couldn’t recognize Obito behind that awful orange mask.
“Kakashi. Will you look at me?”
It’s surprisingly gentle, coming from this hardened, less polished version of Obito. Kakashi doesn’t find it in himself to resist. He lifts his gaze and focuses on Obito’s dark eyes.
With his Sharingan turned off and his whitened hair, Obito’s color palette is strikingly similar to Kakashi’s own. Except for their skin: Obito’s is tanned, darker. The only parts of him that match Kakashi’s paleness are the ones he inherited unnaturally from the Shodaime.
“I’m sorry,” Obito says. “I know it’s not enough just to say it, but I need to say it anyway. I’m really sorry. For everything.”
It’s hard, very hard, to keep eye contact, but Kakashi forces himself to the best of his ability. Just looking at Obito feels overwhelming. Ridiculously, desperately, he feels tears prickling behind his eyelids. He blinks hard, once, twice, keeping them locked in.
“Oh,” Kakashi says. It becomes too much too quickly to recognize the gentleness in Obito’s expression, so he gives in and looks away, his heartbeat fast against his sternum. “It’s okay.”
A raspy laugh comes from his side. “Only you would say that.”
Kakashi shrugs. “There’s no point in holding on to blame anymore. And you’re not the only one to blame, anyway.”
If he could, he would articulate it better: they’ve come to understand how Obito was groomed from childhood by one of the most powerful shinobi to have ever existed, how he was manipulated by careful hands into hating what he once adored and fought for. How the string of failures and disasters that led to this most recent massacre began much earlier, right at the beginning, with the first two Hokages and their Uchiha counterparts.
It doesn’t absolve Obito of blame, or of the consequences of his actions, but it’s an important factor Konoha took into consideration during his trial. One of the main reasons they avoided Obito’s immediate execution.
He thinks some part of Obito already knows this, from his prolonged exposure to the Fifth Hokage and her inner circle, but Kakashi would like to tell him himself someday. Just to make sure that Obito knows.
“I don’t think most people are as willing to forgive me as you are,” Obito says.
“Most people don’t know you like I do.”
Obito snorts softly. “Oh, really?”
This time, Kakashi looks up at him pointedly. “Yes,” he says without hesitation. “You might be different, older, but you’re still you. And I know you.”
Obito blinks. And then, unbelievably, he smiles.
Such a pretty smile, genuine, nothing like the ones he wore during the worst of the war, when he played the part of Madara’s puppet. Kakashi can only stare dumbly at him, at the way the late afternoon sunlight lights up the tall planes of his face, giving him a halo behind his head.
“Well, I suppose you’re right,” Obito says, looking up at the sky. He’s handsome like this, smiling, at peace. Free, or at least freer than he had been for decades.
There’s tranquility around them, interrupted only by the quick beating of Kakashi’s heart.
“You’re probably the only one who still knows the real me anyway.”
Obito says it so casually, as if they aren’t who they are, after all they’ve done. Kakashi breathes in the comforting, clean scent of wood and insists to his body that it’s really Obito sitting right next to him. He lets his shoulders sag and looks up at the same sky Obito is watching.
Never in a million years did he think he would get a moment like this. After decades, they finally inhabit the same moment, under the same sun.
“So they’ll let me live, huh?” Obito asks.
There’s no war around them. No emergency, no sense of urgency. It wasn’t like this even when they were children.
A ragged breath leaves Kakashi’s lips and he closes his eyes, feeling overwhelmed. Quietly, deep inside himself, he wonders if he’ll really be allowed to keep this.
“Yeah,” he says. “They’ll let you live.”
Obito
They are doing this too soon. Their bond still feels fragile, too fragile for them to stand together in front of Rin’s grave. At the same time, it seems like there is no other choice. This is their pivot point; their relationship had never belonged only to the two of them.
Rin had always been there.
If not for Rin and for the many times her story became entwined with their own, there would be Kakashi and there would be Obito, but there would never be Kakashi and Obito.
Obito feels the familiar sensation of crippling grief climbing up his ribs. He blinks, trying to push back the tears. Kakashi is silent next to him. He had always been a quiet kid, weighing his words before speaking, but there had been a fire in his eyes, in the scowl he would wear whenever he argued with Obito. None of that remains. He looks completely numb.
Inside Obito, guilt joins hands with grief, tightening around his throat. Rin’s death will always be one of the most devastating events of his life. He loved her so dearly that it would have been impossible not to be crushed by the weight of her loss, heavier even than the stone that fell on half his body when he was a child. And still, somehow, Obito managed to take this life-altering moment into his hands only to twist it, turn it, and make it even worse.
“I don’t blame you anymore,” he says quietly, staring at the stone in front of him so he won’t have to face the sorrow in Kakashi’s eyes. “I… don’t think I ever really did.”
When silence greets him, Obito lifts his head and chances a glance at Kakashi. Kakashi doesn’t look surprised or grateful. Obito swallows around the painful lump in his throat and tries again.
“Look,” he starts, then grimaces. The words don’t come easily. He never really talked about his feelings with anyone except Rin and Minato, two or more decades ago. “It was your fault as much as it was mine or Minato-sensei’s, in the sense that maybe, in another life, you could’ve prevented it. But none of us did.”
“My fist went through her heart,” Kakashi says flatly. “And neither of you were around. How is that even comparable? I know you don’t really think it is.”
Obito has to take a breath, count to five, and calm himself down. “Maybe don’t assume you know what I think better than I do, idiot.”
The stupid, heartbroken look on Kakashi’s face makes Obito want to kick him and then immediately kick himself. Gods. How can both of them be so terribly bad at this?
“Listen to me, alright? Rin made her choice. We can’t take that away from her. In the end, we were all played by Madara. Your role was that of a pawn, same as mine, same as Rin’s. And as a pawn, I did much worse than you ever did, Kakashi. But somehow your brain only works in double standards. You seem to have forgiven me before you even knew the extent of my crimes, Minato-sensei was right about that. And yet you’re stuck, never forgiving yourself.”
Kakashi’s eyebrows knit together as he passes a hand through his unkempt, silver hair. He’s wearing an oversized shirt above the mask, looking less like an elite Konoha soldier and more like a messed up kid who lived to see too much. “So what are you saying, Obito?” he asks, a certain amount of irritation in his tone. “That it’s alright? That you spent, what, twenty years thinking I’m trash to suddenly change your mind and grant me forgiveness?”
Obito wants to grab Kakashi’s shirt and throw him to the ground, so he shoves his hands into his pockets instead.
“I’m saying that I was wrong,” he grits out. “And I’m saying that I never really blamed you. If I had, I would’ve killed you the night Rin died. I was fucked up enough back then to do it, if I’d truly believed you had killed her with your own fist.”
“And all the recent times you told me the life of a regretful failure was the right one for me? What was that, just some gentle teasing?” There’s sharp frustration in Kakashi’s voice. Obito doesn’t think Kakashi would use this tone with his three brats, with Minato-sensei, or really with anyone else. It’s raw and vulnerable, and it makes Obito press his eyelids shut.
“I’m saying,” Obito starts slowly, trying to drill his words into Kakashi’s thick skull, “that you were a symbol to me, and I used your memory to fuel my hatred. Have you ever heard of the term scapegoat, maybe? Just. Just get this through your head: I don’t blame you. I don’t hate you. And you know what’s worse? Even though I tried really hard to turn you into the worst man alive in my thoughts, I never stopped fucking missing you.”
Obito feels warmth creeping into his cheeks. He sighs, trying very hard not to pout, and tilts his head toward the sky so he can look at something other than Kakashi’s face and his oldest friend’s grave.
“Obito,” Kakashi says. It’s almost a silent plea. For what, Obito doesn’t know.
He looks back into Kakashi’s dark eyes, noticing the scar he got saving Obito so long ago, when their feelings toward each other were complicated but maybe less complicated than they are now.
“I miss my eye on you,” Obito blurts out.
Kakashi blinks at him, surprised. “It wasn’t mine to keep.”
Yeah, well. Now that Minato’s sealed Obito’s sharingan, neither of them got to keep it anyway. The wind rustles through the trees around them. There’s not much noise besides that and their quiet breaths.
“I never wanted it back,” Obito mumbles, then sighs. He crosses his arms, suddenly defensive, trying not to think about how despite not being able to fire his Sharingan into a spinning red anymore, it still feels pleasantly intimate to have an eye that has seen so much of Kakashi’s life.
This is too much. He’s thinking too much, feeling too much. Exposing himself too much.
“You know what?” he says, turning on his heels. “It’s getting late, we should probably leave.”
Kakashi looks uncertain, as if he doesn’t know what to do with the feelings Obito so carelessly threw at him. For a moment, Obito thinks he might argue, might say something reckless and too honest and impossible to take back.
But then, Kakashi just nods. “Okay.”
Neither of them moves right away. The wind rustles through the trees again, and the sound of it fills the space between them. Obito stuffs his hands into his pockets and walks away first.
They leave Rin there together.
Obito
Minato does leave eventually, if what he does can even be called leaving. He dies for the second time in his life, with more agency now, choosing when and where and with a ridiculous smile on his face.
Obito knew it couldn’t last, this small idyllic bubble that brought him back to Konoha under the wings of his old sensei. Still, he had almost… gotten used to it. To Minato’s visits to his room in the Hokage’s mansion. To his blue eyes, his quiet, peaceful energy. To his reports on Kakashi.
He’s doing better now. He misses you. He loves you, Obito.
It’s not without irony that Obito realizes he is indirectly murdering this man for the second time. If not for Obito, how different would the world really be? Certainly better, he thinks, and doubts anyone would disagree with him.
He wonders if Minato’s stay truly made any sort of difference. For him, not so much, at least he doesn’t think so. He wonders if it’s the same for Kakashi, or if Minato’s recent departure will finally break him or make him.
Kakashi has been… not really fine. Not in the way Obito isn’t fine; he doesn’t look angry or rebellious, doesn’t act on impulse. There’s this ongoing numbness about him, though, a cold one that makes Obito’s heart freeze inside his chest.
“Can I see him?” he asks the Hokage, meeting her eyes.
Obito’s an open book to her by now. He’s been her patient for weeks and has been living under her roof at the same time. In a way, they’ve gotten used to each other, even if Tsunade frequents her so-called home alarmingly little.
Tsunade doesn’t ask who he’s talking about. There’s quite literally only one possibility.
Obito notices a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
“What a coincidence,” she says. “He asked me the same thing.”
Kakashi
Kakashi hugs Minato when Minato leaves. When Minato dies.
Kakashi isn’t in the habit of hugging anyone. If possible, he avoids touch altogether whenever it isn’t strictly necessary. His students are a bit of an exception to that, maybe because they were twelve when they met and Kakashi still sees them as children. He’d hug Naruto back after a successful mission, and he distinctly remembers the quiet embrace he shared with Sakura after her chūnin exam, when it had been just the two of them left in Konoha.
He doesn’t remember ever hugging Minato before. He does it now, initiates it, breathing in the familiar, comforting scent at his sensei’s neck. Blonde hair tickles his nose and he does his best not to cry or throw up.
“Thank you, sensei,” he whispers next to Minato’s ear.
Minato’s arms are tight around him. He hugs Kakashi like he’s hugging a son.
A gentle hand brushes sweaty hair away from his forehead. Minato’s eyes are soft and he looks too young. Way too young to be taken away from this life for a second time, surely. And yet the edges of his skin and clothes are already blurring into nothingness, devoured by white light.
Orochimaru has released the Edo Tensei.
It’s a strange contrast, the peaceful look on Minato’s face and the pain taking over Kakashi’s insides. He tries to push it down, though, because that’s why Minato stayed, to help, to try to dissolve the grief and shock and pain sitting in his student’s gut.
This is Minato’s last goodbye. Obito and Naruto already had their private moments with him. And it still leaves Kakashi speechless, how Minato has been so incredibly dedicated to him, how taking care of this broken shell of a grown man became his top priority. There’s a guilt that hasn’t left Kakashi since the war, the guilt of breaking down, of needing help, of needing his dead sensei, who has a son he should be looking after instead of him—
“Come back to me,” Minato says, startling Kakashi out of his spiraling thoughts. His voice sounds distant. “Breathe, Kakashi. Remember you’re not alone. You don’t need to feel guilty about that, alright?”
Kakashi nods numbly, stepping back. He tries to offer his heart through his eyes, since his voice won’t help him.
“Promise me, Kakashi,” Minato insists gently. “Promise me you’ll take care of each other.”
There are way too many things that Kakashi would never do for himself, but would do for a promise.
“I promise,” Kakashi dutifully reports back.
Minato smiles, letting his hand fall from Kakashi’s forehead to his shoulder. He squeezes once, twice and Kakashi doesn’t know if there’s a third time. The boundaries of Minato’s body dissolve into light.
And then he’s gone.
Tsunade
Tsunade sees them from a distance, grieving their mutual loss.
They’re in her garden again, their newly chosen meeting spot, and alone, or as alone as they can be.
Kakashi’s face is turned away from her, his cheek pillowed against Obito’s shoulder. Obito’s fingers card softly through the white strands of Kakashi’s hair and his mouth opens and closes as he says something next to Kakashi’s ear, whispering words he knows the wind won’t carry.
It’s not like either of them to display this much vulnerability, even in relatively private quarters. Obito’s snarky attitude seems subdued, as if Kakashi’s distress is mellowing him out, bringing to the surface something he’s never shown Tsunade before.
Obito’s not a bad person, Tsunade knows this. She made sure she was certain of that fact before she vouched for his life. Still, he’s a soldier, a war criminal, and a killer. He’s a hardened man, and a particularly difficult specimen at that.
So it’s a relief to her, really, to see his hands being gentle. To see the tenderness resting at the corner of his half-closed eyes.
They’re certainly aware of her presence inside the house, of Sakura in her office, and of the numerous elite shinobi who still trail Obito’s every move. They’ll stop doing that soon, when Kakashi assumes his new position and, consequently, the obligation to take full responsibility for Obito. That was part of the deal.
It’s an unfair burden, but it’s one only a Hokage can take, and Kakashi is unlikely to see it as a burden at all. If it means Obito will stay alive, it will be worth more than anything to him.
Their closeness stirs a particular feeling in her chest, one she can barely name. It’s very intimate, a moment just between the two of them, even if others are close by and even though Tsunade herself is watching.
An unwelcome image of another white-haired boy rises in her mind. Jiraiya held her close whenever she was suffering too, one of the only times they ever shared that kind of closeness.
That idiot, she thinks sadly for the millionth time.
There’s nothing quite like missing someone who’s gone.
She sees that reflected in Obito and Kakashi. They lost each other once. Maybe twice, or even three times. There was certainly more than one moment when they looked each other in the eyes and had to say their goodbyes. It’s healing in a way, even for her, to watch their kindness and forgiveness toward each other. It eases a few of the painful knots inside her chest.
It feels like she can finally rest her heart and peacefully retire her hat.
I hope you’re watching this, Minato.