Chapter Text
It’s their first time in Kusa. As long as the Third War has drug on, Konoha’s still not desperate enough to send gennin teams too close to the thick of the fighting. Their experience of the war’s been from in-village: sugar rations, curfews, and hospital rotations. But Team 7’s an unusual team, with an unusual skew of rankings and designations. The Sandaime’s decided he can no longer allow Namikaze Minato to ride the sidelines training a team instead of ending the war for him.
The rescue/capture team is in Kusa, dodging around giant mushrooms that saturate the air with musty spores. Its humid enough to induce sweat despite the late season. The gennin are taking it well enough; the jounin are both long accustomed.
Sabotage is generally ANBU prerogative; Minato’s spent enough years behind a mask to guess at what’s keeping ANBU so tied up that they’re unavailable to blow a bridge supporting Iwa’s supply lines. They’re five years into the Third War and facing a gridlock as the winter months approach. Black Ops are increasingly desperate, and so are the atrocities that despair leads them to commit.
With two jounin on the team, one newly minted as he is, Sarutobi Hiruzen decides that even with two green gennin tagging along, Team 7 could handle the mission to sabotage the bridge. The mission is twofold: Minato clears the way messily enough to discourage any further encroachment into Konoha’s hard won battle lines while the others destroy the bridge itself.
“Are we close?” Uchiha Obito asks, wiping dirt off his orange goggles, tapping at a mushroom with a foot so it releases another dense cloud of spores. He makes a face at it.
“Quiet, we’re in enemy territory.” Hatake Kakashi says. He’s been promoted as part of Konoha’s wartime effort to pad the ranks and while he knows its not based on his own merit, its just made him more intractable, more determined to prove himself. He’s skilled, but the village isn’t generally in the habit of awarding jounin rank to children. The Hatake prodigy is intelligent enough to recognize that, and young enough that the acknowledgement makes him even more rigid, more desperate.
Obito makes a face at him instead in response, switching to clumsy Konoha Standard Sign, which he’s only just started to memorize after Minato’s insistence that if they’re in the field, they’re undetectable. He has to spell it out like a beginner, exaggerated for sarcastic emphasis: yes, Captain Buttface
The night before, Minato had told him the truth of the White Fang, about why Kakashi is the way that he is, in an effort to foster goodwill between the rival boys. But Obito’s just as stubborn as any of his clansmen and years into the habit of needling him. The jabs come easier than understanding. They’re all still so young.
Rin smacks him upside the head when she sees and he yelps, rubbing at his scalp with a frown. Out of all of them, she’s the most stubborn, the most desperate to prove herself. She’s got a kunoichi’s rage, heightened by her civilian born background. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do to prove her worth to a world that devalues her at every turn.
Before Obito can open his mouth to complain, Minato puts a finger to his lips. He’s been scouting ahead, removing teams of Iwa shinobi as he finds them. This area was supposedly clear of Earth’s influence; on paper, it made the C rank read like an easy in-and-out. The amount of resistance they’re butting up against puts a bad taste in his mouth. Its always the C ranks.
He signs but it’s too quick for anyone but Kakashi to read. At the gennin’s blank looks, he speaks with a low tone, “We’re coming up on Kanabi Bridge. We should split up soon.”
Rin shivers. “The Valley that the Gods Have Abandoned.”
Kakashi dismisses, “civilian superstition.”
Obito objects, loudly, and Minato runs their perimeter again, fast as thought. He’s civilian born, like Rin, but unlike her, he’s rather agnostic about the kami faith the civilian population favors. But even he must admit: there’s something ominous about the name of the bridge they’re here to destroy.
Minato finishes his loop and separates the boys before they start an all-out brawl. Jounin or not, Kakashi is only 12. Its easy to pick him up by the straps of his uniform and deposit him on the other side of the clearing before Rin gets involved. The boys might squabble but Rin’s prickly about her civilian born status and she usually ends squabbling with kunai.
Obito pales when Minato reminds him that this mission has the potential to shave months off the war. With Iwa’s supply lines disrupted, they won’t be able to wage an effective winter campaign and Konoha can retake all the lands they’ve lost in the center of the continent instead of the war dragging on into another spring.
Kakashi’s eyes are hard when he rejoins the team. There’s the faint sense of ozone in the air, sharp and snapping. He resents being manhandled but Minato can’t help but think of him as a child still. It’s been two years since his inclusion on Team 7 as a stunted chuunin; Hiruzen’d washed his hands of him after he imploded yet another team assignment. Minato remembers standing in Hiruzen’s office, flipping through his earmarked file as the Sandaime says: you’re his last chance
As close as his other two students are, almost attached at the hip, it would’ve been awkward for anyone to seamlessly fit into their team dynamic. But Kakashi never even tried. Knowing his history, it makes a tired sort of sense. Its thanks to a bunch of ninken that the boy’s even willing to be on a team.
Minato was a child prodigy. He knows how it isolates you, but there’s only so much team building he can sanction while there’s a war on.
Even after two years, the team still naturally divides into two. Kakashi positions himself across from Obito and Rin, arms crossed, the hilt of a tanto peeking over his shoulder.
Obito and Rin have closed ranks in the face of Minato’s imminent departure, where leadership will revert to Kakashi in his absence. Its his first important mission without Minato there and the legacy of his father's leadership weighs heavy on his narrow shoulders.
“Behave,” Minato says, and the Uchiha rolls his eyes, already fidgeting. “I’ll meet you at the outpost.”
He mentally reaches for the jutsu formula inscribed on the calfskin handle of a custom three-pronged kunai, each marker like pinpoints of light in his subconscious, scattered all across Fire, the closest pinging from the kunai he’d given to Kakashi as a promotion gift, half present half disaster relief measure.
With a last look, he vanishes into Hiraishin, just a flash of yellow in the dim funk beneath the mushrooms.
Obito snorts. “Show off.”
Kakashi says, “He’s only going alone because you would slow him down.”
Rin says, reasonably, “Anyone would slow him down.”
They bicker back and forth before Kakashi pulls rank. Its not his first time, but it feels different to be doing it as a fully realized jounin, as a new captain.
He leads, because he’s the tracker, with Obito in the middle as a budding trap specialist and Rin following up as the support medic. Even though they’re both older by two years, they do fall into formation with minimal grumbling. Gennin or not, they’re trained shinobi with a job to do.
It doesn’t take long for the Kanabi Bridge mission to go pear shaped. The Rock nin team hits them quick and hits them hard. They’ve pegged Rin as the easy target; even under her shinobi-affective face paint, there’s something about her that reads civilian. She’s young, female, with no discernible clan markings or sigils, running in a support position behind a dead ringer for an Uchiha even without the wide uchiwa stitched onto his gear.
They take Rin.
In the aftermath of the short battle, Kakashi writes her off. He’s still got a mission to complete, and the mission comes first. It’s simply protocol, and easier to face than grief.
Obito is so furious he’s breathing in little pants, the air around him hot and blistering. He’s got an orphan’s greedy heart and his clan’s stubborn pride: an outcast’s unreasonable loyalty to anyone who’s ever shown him any kindness. He won’t let her go. “People who abandon their comrades are worse than scum.”
It’s the exact wrong thing to say. Team 7 fractures even more. Obito goes one way. Kakashi goes another.
Kakashi heads for the bridge. He’s certain he’s made the right call. Any jounin would prioritize the mission. Any competent shinobi wouldn’t let teammates distract him from what needs to be done, especially to prevent more war.
Obito’s words echo in him on a loop. Its antithesis of everything he refused to inherit from the White Fang. Wasn’t that failure why they were even in this mess of a Third War?
Regardless, the words don’t fade. Neither does his teammate's determination as he says it, his disgust at Kakashi for abandoning her.
Minato wouldn’t have balked at leaving a teammate behind. Its moot to consider; Minato would not have allowed Rin to be taken. He’d already kept Kakashi safe from his overeager takedown of an Earth team the day before. Even now, Kakashi’s sure he’s slaughtering his way through any Rock nin he can get his hands on this very second, and he also knows it won’t bother him none. Even the civilians are starting to pick up on it, on the ways that their up-and-coming contender for the hat is just a little off.
Kakashi emulates his sensei’s impassivity now. He’s got a bridge to blow up.
Obito tracks Rin to a cave in the backwaters of Kusa, doton rendered and a lighter stone than what was found around Konoha. He’s not the best tracker, but he’s got a trapper’s eye for hiding places. He’s fuming, but mostly, he’s terrified.
He finds the second Rock nin before he finds Rin. A duo then, one to interrogate, one to guard, maybe a hidden scout in a support position somewhere close by. He’s determined and he palms a kunai despite his fear. All his righteous anger isn’t enough to outmatch a brick shithouse of a Iwa jounin, laughing at the untried gennin from the safety of a camouflage jutsu.
He’s failed Rin. He doesn’t have the power to save her. He’s helpless and furious about how unfair it is that she's gone and he remains. He’s simply not strong enough. There’s nothing he can do.
Before the jounin can kill him, something intervenes. A gray blur appears out of a hasty shunshin in the path of the kunai, right between Obito and the Iwa shinobi.
Kakashi takes the blade meant for Obito. Outnumbered now, the Iwa jounin backs off to recalculate.
Obito gapes at Kakashi, at the blood running down his face. He’s a little sick at the sight of his missing eye. Its instinctual in him, the revulsion. Its every Uchiha’s fear.
Kakashi saved him. Kakashi came back. Kakashi sacrificed an eye for him.
“Behind you!” Kakashi ignores the blood streaming down his face, ignores the pain, and hauls Obito off the branch before another kunai can skewer him. The Rock nin’s back, thinking Kakashi’s too injured to be much of a threat, too tiny to be a ranked jounin.
He’s wrong. Kakashi’s a live wire; he earned his promotion, and if he can just figure out where the man is, he can prove it. But he’s dizzy from blood loss and its all he can smell, bright and tinny in his nose.
Obito’s got his own kunai out, clutching at it with white knuckles. He's not crying anymore. They’re back-to-back. Even now, Kakashi can’t ask for help, but Obito’s a true Leaf ninja; he’s got teamwork in his bones. He doesn’t make Kakashi ask.
He’s terrified, circling on the branch, trying to hear past the whiplash of Kakashi’s unsheathed chakra blade. Any second now, the enemy will realize Rin’s naturally resistant to genjutsu and Iwa doesn’t take prisoners it can’t ransom back. They’ll kill her. They’ll kill her, then they’ll kill Kakashi, then they’ll kill Obito and the mission will fail.
The terror’s building in him and every circle brings him to the bloodstain on the wood grain where Kakashi lost his eye. Its altogether too much. Too much sick, helpless anger, too much battered, desperate grief. He’s heading to some sort of eruption.
The camouflaged jounin sneaks up on Kakashi’s blind side, taking ruthless advantage of the opening he’d made.
Something clicks in Obito. Something vital shifts. There’s nowhere for this feeling to go, and then there is.
The anger and the loss ignite. Everything around him sharpens into terrible clarity. He catches the movement of a footprint in the moss, such a small depression, he’d never noticed it earlier, but now it’s all he can see.
It tells him everything he needs to know.
He spins and stabs with his kunai, knocking Kakashi out of the way. His chakra’s high and thready, eyes spinning and spinning, everything gone cherry red and crystalized. He can’t help but follow the blood when it spurts, the motion of it the single most compelling thing he’s ever seen.
Its hard to read Kakashi’s expression under the mask, but he’s pale from the blood loss and his single eye is wide in shock. “Your eyes.”
There are two black tomoe in each of his teammate’s eyes, spinning fast enough to make him dizzy. Two. He didn’t even know that could happen.
The sharingan.
Obito blinks, trying to calm down, almost lost in the incredible detail, the movement of dust motes and spore clouds and biting gnats, feeling his chakra draining away rapidly. The sharingan pulls from his reserves steadily, almost tipping him into depletion. Even then, the feedback is almost too much to ignore. Too much information, overwhelming in its minutiae.
But even the sharingan can’t distract him from Rin.
“No time,” he pants. “Let’s go.”
The wounded Iwa jounin retreats and they race him back to the cave. Kakashi takes down the distracted interrogator holding Rin under sustained genjutsu attack, but she’s fighting like a lion against it. They’ll get nothing from her.
When the technique shatters, she blinks back to reality. “Obito, your eyes!”
Kakashi pulls her up and she goes even paler when she sees him, the empty socket weeping red. “No time, move!”
Rin springs up but outside, the last jounin’s reached the cave and he’s pissed. He’s not as slow as they’d hoped. His hand seals, when he starts forming them, aren’t slow either.
Doton rumbles underfoot as the technique activates. Rin’s already far enough away, but Kakashi’s woozy, his reaction time slower than it should be.
Overhead, the roof crumbles, breaking into massive chunks of pale stone. It’s all Obito can see.
Obito’s panicking, but he’s bigger than Kakashi by over a head. Its easy to pick him up by the straps of his uniform like Minato had earlier, to pick him up and throw him bodily out of the cave.
The cave-in comes thundering down. Rin’s shrieking but she retaliates, driving the injured jounin into a retreat, but its Kakashi with the secondary in doton. His hands are shaking when he forms the signs to clear the rubble.
Rin skids to Obito’s side, her hands lighting up with a green glow. Kakashi’s no medic, but he’s seen enough people die to know the truth of it.
Obito’s a goner. It’s a miracle he’s even conscious, but shock is a hell of a drug. Half of his body is smashed under a boulder too big to move. There’s no sense of his chakra at all. He’s already going cold.
Rin’s more stubborn than all of them put together, but she can barely heal scrapes and bruises. She’s just started her iroyonin training, but even a seasoned medic couldn’t fix this. The damage is too severe. He’s going to die.
Even dying, Obito’s too kind. Too forgiving. Somehow, he finds the words he hadn’t had earlier, when he didn’t recognize all the ways Kakashi didn’t know how to express his grief.
Rin cries when he asks. Kakashi can’t say anything at all. There’s no objection that survives in the face of Obito’s sacrifice. It’s his dying wish. He can only accept.
Rin’s crying, but her hands are steady. She’s singing to him as a distraction, some civilian hymn neither of the clan born know but it’s easy to recognize the cadence of prayer.
Obito’s fading fast. It won’t be long now.
Kakashi doesn’t want to see it. Everything’s limned in red in a way he knows he’ll never be able to forget. He drags Rin out once Obito stops responding to her increasingly desperate verbal prompts. They leave him blind to bleed out in the rubble.
Minato meets them at the rendezvous. He takes one look at them and his expression doesn’t change. Rin’s crying a steady constant. Kakashi’s swaying on his feet.
Minato only unties his hitai ate and reties it over Kakashi’s face in a slanted eyepatch. “Don’t let anyone see,” he says, then picks him up. They run back to Konoha with only Rin’s misery keeping time with the beat of Minato’s feet over in the canopy, a steady tempo that’s all Kakashi can feel as he’s carried back.
It never gets any better.
A month later, Uchiha Obito wakes up to giggling singsong ghosting through his thoughts. There’s something thick and white covering him. When he tries to escape, dragging himself by his chin when his legs won’t hold him, that mingling of an Uchiha’s potent anger and a gennin’s helpless fear makes a third tomoe swirl to life in his single eye sunken into a nest of deep scars.
In Konoha, the memorial is quick and precise. They’ve got mourning down to a science. This is the fourth funeral they’ve had today; the lack of a body is only a small hiccup in the proceedings, but its one that make the Uchiha titter and frown.
Rin dresses all in black, hugging her parents and avoiding the Uchiha in the crowd who’ve only shown up out of obligation. They never acknowledged Obito before. Up behind the podium, Minato tells a small anecdote about when Team 7 first got together. Its short, devoid of personality, and at the end, Minato tells a joke, as if to lighten the mood.
There’re a few halfhearted laughs, just as obligatory as most of the audience in attendance. Rin is suddenly full of so much rage; rage matched in intensity only by her misery. She knows, as only civilians can, how dreadfully swift and terribly pointless death can be. Shinobi are convinced people die for missions, for measurable goals. But civilians know people just die. There’s rarely any sense in the wars between Daimyo.
From the distance, where he’s hiding from the Uchiha Clan, Kakashi watches his sensei make light of Obito’s sacrifice and the hurt in him is suddenly so urgent and desperate that under his new headband, his sharingan, Obito’s sharingan, spins with three tomoe.