Stepping Stones (Naruto ~ Kakashi/Obito ~ Pt 1 of 2)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Kind of a crack concept, general author insanity, English from a fairly rusty non-native, bad language, and porn.
Word Count: ~14000 asdfghjkl (complete)
Pairings: Kakashi/Obito
Summary: In a world where he didn’t die at the bridge, Obito is a loyal Konoha shinobi, even if his Konoha is practically gone. Rather than die at the hands of Orochimaru, Obito triggers an experimental time-space jutsu that sends him across dimensions, into a world where his counterpart went insane and Kakashi is mystifyingly different. KakaObi
Disclaimer: I don’t hold the copyrights, I didn’t create them, and I make no profit from this.
(Long-ass) Notes: Oh holy hand baskets. I’ll admit, this thing got…a little away from me. I meant it to be 5k word one-shot about good!Obito encountering twisted!Obito, but that somehow never happened, and it turned into 13k words of schmoopy angst with a big chunk o’ porn at the end.
I recently dragged myself back into Naruto specifically because I heard Kakashi Gaiden was awesome. It was. Is. Obito is my new favorite character, and his death literally made me cry. Argh. Anyway, this is mostly self-indulgent, because I adore time- and dimension-travel stories with the passion of a thousand burning suns and wanted to explore how Obito would have turned out if he had actually been rescued from that stupid cave by someone other than Madara (asshole). That said, I'm not a Naruto writer; this is my first venture into the fandom and I fail forever at characterization in general, so I apologize in advance.
(Also, on another note, who here hates Sasuke? I'm not one to blindly hate a character, and I used to think he was an okay anti-hero, but then he had the whole heel-face-revolving-door thing, and then he wanted to become Hokage after betraying the village? ARGH. Just go die already, damn it.)
Stepping Stones
There are footsteps among the ruins of what was once Konoha, carefully skirting the fires that have yet to fully die out. Obito stays where he is, though he opens his one remaining eye in the half-dark. The Memorial Stone is gone now, so much rubble amongst all the rest, and his friends have long since burned to ash or been taken for the Snake Sannin’s twisted experiments. Obito watched them fall before the army Orochimaru brought, Konoha still far too weak from Madara’s final attack, and he mourns them even though the proper place to do so has crumbled.
The footsteps pass to his right, in what once was the main street. Were he any less of a shinobi, Obito would tense and likely give himself away, but he’s been ANBU since he was seventeen, and long practice staying absolutely still keeps his muscles loose and ready to move.
He wouldn’t look, even if he could move without giving himself away. He doesn’t want to look into the red eyes of his only living cousin and face his abject failure once more.
It hurts, aches that Sasuke left the way he did, that Obito wasn’t enough to keep him in the village and tie him to an honest life as one of the last two loyal Uchiha. But Sasuke abandoned Konoha, abandoned his team and his sensei and his cousin for a path of bloodshed and revenge, and that will never not pain Obito to the very core. He had thought that with Sasuke supported as he grew, mentored and cared for and loved like the little brother Obito was never previously allowed to have, that it would temper his need for vengeance in time.
It’s been a long time since Obito was quite so wrong about something, and now Orochimaru is walking around inside of Sasuke’s skin. Now Orochimaru has used Sasuke’s hands to tear Konoha to the ground and kill all of his former friends.
Worst of all, Obito cannot say that Sasuke would not do the same, were he the one in control.
The steps fade into the fire-lit gloom and vanish entirely, and Obito breathes out slow and soft. There's a body in front of him, half-mangled and covered in tacky blood. If it were possible, Obito would seal him into a scroll, carry him far away until Tenzo could be buried with the honor he deserves and not left for Orochimaru to find and defile. But even dragging his fellow ANBU’s body away from where he fell-valiantly, gloriously, nobly, but in the end futilely-was a larger risk than Obito is entirely comfortable taking. As it is, he leans over Tenzo’s cold corpse and gently shuts his blank black eyes, bidding farewell to a true friend, a brave partner, and a one-time lover.
Tenzo isn’t the only friend and lover he’s lost today.
The grief is sharp and tearing, even more painful than the stab wound through his left side or the dislocated shoulder he hasn’t yet had time to set. Obito closes his eye and bows his head, silently offering up a prayer to whatever cruel god might be listening.
He should go, move on.
There are more bodies to find and hide as well as he’s able.
There are more comrades who deserve one last parting thought.
But for all his willpower, Obito cannot make himself move. He’s quite likely the last Konoha shinobi still breathing, more from luck than any sort of skill, and he despairs of it. Naruto, only recently named Rokudaime Hokage, is gone, the first to fall before Orochimaru’s treachery. The clan heads, the chuunin, the jounin, even Obito's fellow ANBU are all gone, dead at the hands of two traitors made into one.
Konoha has fallen.
Obito suspects that the rest of the Hidden Villages will not be far behind.
Perhaps, were he a greater man, Obito would run, flee to another village-Suna, Kiri, Kumo, even Iwa-and warn them. But he’s been all but broken by this, the next closest thing to shattered, and he can't bring himself to care. Temari will carry word of the attack to Suna, as Naruto sent her away before the Oto forces reached them, and Gaara will alert the other Kages. There is nothing left for Obito to do.
But…there is one thing he can do.
Obito's breath stills in his chest at the thought. It’s a long shot, a risk, something he’s only ever considered in theory and even then generally only when tipsy. Orochimaru or his sensor-girl will doubtless feel his chakra the moment he activates his Mangekyo, and the jutsu is a complicated one, its complexity helped little by the fact that it is Obito's own (untested) creation. Teleportation at its most difficult, with no way of telling beforehand where he’ll end up, or even if he’ll end up somewhere. Using it means abandoning Konoha and everything that he knows.
That, at least, is the simple part, because everything Obito knows is already gone, vanished in fire and ash. Obito raises his head, opening his eye and lifting one hand to touch the red patch that covers his empty left eye socket. The other one is gone, taken with Kakashi's (no no no no don’t think of that don’t think don’t think) mutilated body to be secreted away in a lab somewhere. But this one-
In theory, this one will be enough.
For all his boasting as a child, Obito as an adult tends to downplay his skills, largely because everyone already knows them. He’s the last loyal Uchiha, now that Itachi is dead and Sasuke a traitor, and he’s a late bloomer when it comes to the Sharingan. The first time he activated it, it was so simple, less a newly acquired skill and more a long-remembered old one. He’d killed the Iwa nin so easily, countered jutsus as simply as breathing, and he’s never lost that innate understanding of his clan’s dojutsu.
So he has power and skill and the experience of well over a decade as a ninja. But this jutsu-
As far as Obito knows, no one has ever even attempted something like this.
He takes a deep breath and then another, reminding his lungs to work once more, and nods to himself. Konoha is gone, shattered beyond all repair. The first and greatest of the Hidden Villages is no more, and Obito isn’t going to haunt its ashes like a ghost until his inevitable capture by Orochimaru. The Snake already has three Sharingan eyes in his possession; Obito is hardly going to provide him with one more.
His Mangekyo burns as it activates-unshed tears, perhaps, but Obito can't tell and Kakashi isn’t here to mock him for it. The world twists and warps just as running steps sound in the street, and Obito brings his hands up, flashing through a long chain of seals. He lands in his Kamui dimension, hands still moving even as his knees give way and his head spins with blood loss.
One more seal, one more sign, and the jutsu activates. “Phoenix Gate!” Obito cries, staggering to his feet, and the dimension burns away in gold and indigo and crimson.
Obito falls and falls and falls, Mangekyo spinning and head startlingly clear, and behind him is a dead world lost forever to the darkness of despair.
“Yo!” Kakashi calls cheerfully, hopping through the window into the Hokage’s office.
Sakura throws a chair at him.
“LATE!” she shrieks, hefting the other armchair in a way that is less threatening and more promising. “By THREE HOURS!”
Pertinently, Kakashi immediately takes refuge behind his other student. He’s not above using a meat-shield when faced with the wrath of Tsunade’s second coming. “Maa, maa, Sakura-chan, you see I was on my way here when-”
“SAVE IT!”
The concealing body in front of him vanishes half a heartbeat before the chair comes hurling across the room, and Kakashi only has time for a hissed, “Naruto, you traitor!” as he dives for the safety of the Hokage’s desk.
“Sorry, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto says with absolutely no sympathy, the brat. “But you should have been here-”
And then a surge of vermillion chakra bursts out of absolutely nowhere, engulfing the office. Sakura cries out as Naruto snatches her out of the way, even as a thick barrier of wood shoots out of the ground to cover them and Kakashi darts out from behind the desk. He spares half a glance to make sure his Hokage and Chief Medic are safe before spinning to face the flames.
They're already dissipating, though, swirling out of existence in a suspiciously familiar warping spiral. Kakashi wrenches his hitai-ate off, trying to pinpoint-
With a heavy thud, a body hits the ground. The flames vanish, the air stills, and everything is silent.
From the shadows, Yamato drops his wooden wall, revealing a steely-eyed Naruto and a tense Sakura. The ANBU glances at Kakashi, who nods shortly and darts over to the body, cataloguing details as he drops into a wary crouch beside it.
Male, he thinks. On the short side, standard Konoha ANBU uniform, jackal mask tied to his kunai pouch, clothes torn, bleeding stab wound on his left side, black hair kept long, smells of smoke and blood, katana sheath on his back, no blade, pale, likely blood loss and chakra exhaustion-
He carefully flips the man over, and then promptly forgets how to breathe.
The face is one he knows as well as he does his own, even a good ten years older than the last time he saw it looking so peaceful. Uchiha Obito, without a doubt, even though Obito died on a bloody battlefield, betrayed by his own ally.
But there are differences here, too, more than Kakashi can so simply write off. This Obito's scars are milder, less painful to look at, and he wears a red patch over his left eye socket-empty, by the flatness of the patch. He’s lean and muscled under the uniform, still skinny but more filled out, if less so than the Obito they faced in the war. His hair is still spiky, but long, hanging between his shoulder blades in a loose braid. And…
“A Konoha hitai-ate,” Yamato observes, “and he’s got a captain’s tattoo.”
Kakashi manages to tear his gaze from that pale, worn face for just long enough to register the ANBU tattoo with its edging of red on the man’s shoulder, clearly not recent, and he sucks in a sharp breath.
Somehow, impossibly, this Obito is a Konoha shinobi, and clearly a well-respected one.
“How…?” Naruto breathes.
Sakura shakes her head, always first to answer when something delves into theory. “I don’t know,” she says softly, eyes fixed on the Uchiha in the center of the room. “Some kind of space-time jutsu? It should be…”
“Impossible,” Kakashi finishes for her, even as he pulls out bandages and makes to bind the weeping stab wound.
Briskly, Sakura pushes him away. “I’ll do it.” A quick check and she glances at Naruto and then Kakashi, eyes serious but steady. “Call a team of medics; we need to get this man to the hospital.”
Naruto nods and looks to Yamato and his two subordinates in the shadows. “I’ll stay with Cat and Bear. Call a team together and set up shifts-I want him watched constantly. Go.”
Yamato leaves, but Kakashi can't even spare him a glance.
Obito holds his entire attention, and he’s waiting on a knife’s edge for even the faintest twitch.
(There's none, but Obito keeps breathing. For now, that will have to be enough.)
Ah, is Obito's first thought upon his return to consciousness. Not dead, I see.
Of course, as a shinobi, not dead covers quite a lot of territory, much of it unpleasant. This time, however, it’s not so bad. His eye is aching from overuse, and chakra exhaustion weighs at his body like a lead blanket, but his shoulder has been set, he’s not missing any limbs beyond the pinky finger he lost three years ago in an interrogation, and the stab in his side seems to be mostly closed.
There's no moment of disorientation, even with the familiar disinfectant-and-new-grass smell unique to Konoha’s hospital hanging in the air around him. The loss of his Konoha is too great for him to ever forget, regardless of the two weeks he’s had to come to terms with it. But that means-
“It worked,” he breathes, opening his eye to see a plain white ceiling, and smiling because it shouldn’t be there, but it is.
A new world, then, just like he was supposed to find. The jutsu worked.
“Maa, really?” a familiar voice says in an entirely unfamiliar lazy drawl. “Mind sharing with the class, Uchiha-san?”
It takes far more effort than it should to turn his head-definitely chakra exhaustion, and a fairly bad case of it, too-but Obito does, because he has to see-
Kakashi, grey hair as gravity-defying as ever, hitai-ate tilted down across his left eye and mask pulled all the way up to meet it. The sight of him-alive, whole, here-is like a kunai to the chest, and Obito chokes on whatever words might come next, though really, what can he possibly say to a living dead man?
“Kakashi,” he says breathlessly, and can't help (doesn’t even try to fight) the wide smile that spreads over his face. “I did it. The jutsu worked.” Then the memory of flames and blood and bodies overwhelms him, and exhaustion or no, he jerks upright, grabbing Kakashi's flak jacket before the other jounin can so much as react. “Orochimaru! My dimension, he was there-Oto-he destroyed everything! Where is he, is he still alive? Is he-?”
“Dead,” Kakashi says simply, “or as good as.” He carefully detaches Obito's hand from his uniform before dropping into the chair next to the bed. “Tell me how you did it,” he orders, crossing his arms over his chest as he slouches in his seat. If Obito didn’t know him quite as well as he actually does, it would be impossible to see the defensiveness of that position. But Obito has long since made it his business to know even the smallest of Kakashi's tells, and this is definitely one of them.
And, of course, he’s asking what is likely the hardest question in this whole ridiculous situation. Obito sighs and scratches his head, somewhere between annoyed and amused. Strange mannerisms aside, this is definitely Hatake Kakashi.
“You're the genius,” he complains, fighting to regain his equilibrium, even though he already knows his protest is futile. “Can't you just figure it out yourself?”
Kakashi's visible eye narrows faintly. “Indulge me,” he drawls. “The Obito I'm used to was hell-bent on conquering the world after supposedly dying on the way to Kannabi Bridge. I’d like some assurance that you're not about to do the same.”
Well.
That’s…
Startling.
Closing his eye-and no, having an evil twin in another dimension is actually not cool at all-Obito casts around for a suitable metaphor. “Um…evil me could teleport, right?” At Kakashi's nod, he forges on. “Picture a river with two banks and a stepping stone in the middle. When I teleport, it’s like jumping from the right-hand bank-our dimension-to the stepping stone-my Kamui dimension-and then back to the riverbank, either further up or further down. I land in a different location, but still in the same world. Comparatively, it takes little effort-about as much as a civilian jumping over a ditch. With my Phoenix Gate jutsu, it’s…” He trails off, biting his lips a little.
Kakashi raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Obito rolls his eye at the prodding. “Well, this is where the metaphor gets complicated. Instead of one bank on the left side of the river, picture thousands, millions, all stacked one on top of the other. With the Phoenix Gate, instead of turning around and jumping back into the original dimension, I just…go forward. But it takes a lot of chakra-like a ninja trying to jump to the top of the Hokage Tower in one go. And then you have to sort through the other dimensions while you're still in the air, because if you land in one that’s too similar to your original universe, where the ‘you’ there is too similar to the ‘you’ jumping, reality rebels against the possibility of a paradox and boots you right back out. So you have to calculate momentum, necessary chakra, drag, direction, and speed, all while shuffling through infinite possibilities to find a destination universe that’s just different enough to accept you. It’s…complicated.”
Kakashi's silent for a long moment, his gaze distant, as though working through all the steps himself and making sure they're logical. (They are, or Obito wouldn’t have been able to do it; he’s clever, cunning, and has good instincts, but he’s never been smart in the way most people think of it.) Obito waits him out, studying the weave of the hospital blanket and wondering how soon he can get discharged-hopefully not straight to T & I, but at this point, he isn’t feeling too picky.
(Because it worked, and that is so simultaneously amazing and cool and terrifying, because Obito can jump through dimensions and he’s in Konoha and it isn’t destroyed. Freaking hell.)
After what feels like a damned eternity of silence (but is probably only a few minutes; Obito has never, ever been good at sitting still, and time has not changed much), Kakashi finally tips his head and nods. “Makes sense,” he says, and Obito's heart flutters a little, even though it’s hardly praise and this isn’t his Kakashi. Not that he ever had any claim to Kakashi anyway. “So the difference in your universe was…?”
“Me not being a psychopath?” Obito says jokingly, though he still can't entirely believe that in this universe, he’s the next best thing to an evil mastermind. It just…the mind boggles, really. He hurries on before he can look into that too deeply, because no, regardless of how exciting the thought of an evil twin would have been when he was a kid. “Well, you said I ‘died’ in that rock fall, right? When the Iwa nin started compressing the rocks, I'm guessing. In my universe, a backup team arrived-Shikaku, Inoichi, and Chouza. Rin had already transplanted my eye, but they took care of the reinforcements and got me out before I could be permanently hurt.” It’s automatic, at this point, for Obito to touch the deep scars on his right cheek, but he’s a shinobi. Scars are a part of life, and they certainly don’t affect his ability to fight, so they're not even worth mentioning.
Kakashi lets his eyes linger on them, though, and one hand twitches, a gesture aborted before it can become anything at all. He takes a breath, loud enough for Obito to hear even across the distance that separates them, and then rises to his feet. A moment later he’s at the window, back turned to the bed as he asks, “And…Rin?”
The name still hurts, as Obito suspects it always will, but it’s an old pain now, diminished enough for Obito to say with most of his composure, “We…killed her. After they tried to turn her into an unstable jinchuuriki to destroy Konoha. It…activated our Mangekyo Sharingan.”
Three short little sentences, a world of grief behind them. Obito closes his eyes as he feels tears welling up, the way they always do. But he’s cried too much for Rin already, far too much for any one person, regardless of how dear, and he chokes them back.
“It broke you, in this world,” Kakashi says softly, still facing away, and Obito absently wishes that he could see the other man’s face right now. “That was when you decided to change everything, because you loved her so much.”
Obito blinks. He replays that last sentence in his head one more time, just to make sure he heard correctly, and then blinks again.
Well. Apparently that’s the main difference here, then.
Because as far as Obito remembers, he’s always been in love with Kakashi.
“Um,” he manages after a second, feeling heat creeping insidiously up his face. “I… In my universe I loved you?”
It comes out as more of a squeaky question than an even statement of fact, but judging by the way Kakashi spins around, visible eye going wide, he gets the gist of it anyway.
There's a sound suspiciously like a quickly choked snicker from the shadow in the corner-the resident ANBU, undoubtedly-and Obito wracks his brain for a jutsu that will make the ground rise up and swallow him. There are a reassuring number, actually, and he’d use one in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the chakra suppression seals painted on his body.
“You…and me?” Kakashi sounds suspiciously squeaky, too, which is a relief.
Obito waves his hands frantically. “No! Well, you always-no! It was just me, completely one-sided, I swear. We were-” He cuts himself off, biting his lip to hide the pang of familiar, lonely pain that shoots through his chest, then forces composure and adds more quietly, “We…never really managed to become friends, and I didn’t want to do anything without at least a bit of solid ground between us, so…I just never said anything. You avoided me a lot, so I think you knew, but… Well, nothing happened.”
There's another stretch of silence, this one far heavier than the last, and then Kakashi nods just once. “I need to talk to the Hokage,” he says, and vanishes in a swirl of leaves.
Obito is left alone in a sterile hospital room with only his hidden guards for company, alone and so very, achingly lonely, the way he’s been for years now, even before Konoha’s fall. He closes his eyes, once more trying to fight the burn of tears.
If he fails, the ANBU are kind enough not to comment.
Kakashi lands on the roof of the hospital with a curse that’s more self-directed than anything. He tears off his hitai-ate despite the immediate drag of chakra usage, and presses a hand over the eye Obito so selflessly shared.
“How can you be so stupid?” he hisses at his counterpart in another universe, even as he recalls the deep, shiny-white scars carved into the right side of this Obito's face. Those are clear proof that Obito didn’t escape the rock fall unscathed, regardless of the front he puts up, and they should have been enough of a reminder for his fool of a double to realize what he almost lost. Surely the shared eye was clue enough. Surely he didn’t keep being an asshole after coming so close to losing everything.
We…never managed to become friends.
But Kakashi knows himself, if nothing else-knows what it took to change, and how close he was to never changing at all. If Obito hadn’t died, if he hadn’t vanished from Kakashi's world forever, it’s very likely Kakashi would have turned out just like his counterpart, and that’s…
Frightening.
In my universe, I loved you.
Kakashi has never even contemplated such a thing. He’s never been one for romance beyond the omnipresent porn and a handful of one-night stands quickly forgotten. But-
Obito.
The Obito that lived in Kakashi's memory for so long, right up until Tobi’s identity was revealed, was an idol more than anything, a hero elevated by death. Kakashi hasn’t ever thought of him as anything beyond a crucible, a turning point of his life and the fulcrum on which his world shifted, the friend he could have had but for his ridiculous, painful mistakes. The Sharingan he uses is Obito's, the habits he adopts are Obito's, the first name on his lips every time he visits the Memorial Stone is Obito's. But…he’s never been human, not in any way that counts.
And this, this is undeniably, undoubtedly human. Kakashi knows grief and loneliness, understands them better than most, and he recognized the quickly-hidden expression on Obito's face when he spoke of the alternate Kakashi (not his Kakashi, because that man doesn’t deserve such sweet softness in Obito's eye) avoiding him.
“Damn it,” Kakashi breathes, yanking his hitai-ate back into place. This is all too complicated, so unbearably complicated no matter how much Kakashi wants to bolt back to Obito's room and make sure that this familiar stranger, so like the boy he knew rather than the crazed, overpowered madman this world’s version became, doesn’t disappear into nothingness again. At the same time, he wants to run, avoid the hospital and wherever Obito eventually ends up for the rest of his natural life, because he can't. He can't do this again, lose him again, look at that scarred face and that gentle black eye and that damned red patch. One loss of that magnitude was enough to break and entirely remake him, and Kakashi is self-aware enough to know that he won't survive another such incident.
“Damn it!” he repeats, slamming a fist into the low wall and watching it crack and crumble under the strength of the blow.
“You know, even if she’s not Hokage anymore, baa-chan will still break your face for wrecking any part of her hospital,” a voice informs him cheerfully as a figure in an orange-and-black coat settles gracefully on the edge of the wall.
Kakashi looks at his former student, his current Hokage, and normally he’d pull up a smile or whip out his book, but for once he can't make himself hide the pure, tearing uncertainty that’s eating at him like a parasite. Judging by the sympathetic half-smile on Naruto's face and the quiet understanding in his blue eyes, he recognizes both what he’s seeing and the reason behind it.
“He’s awake, then,” Naruto says, and after three days of Kakashi sitting immovable in that sterile room, it’s not a question. The half-smile changes to a thoughtful frown as he tips his head, and then he sighs. “Argh, geez, Sakura-chan keeps telling me to be tactful, but I can't figure it out! Would it be rude to ask what you think of him right now?”
That, at least, makes Kakashi laugh, because Rokudaime Hokage or no, most powerful shinobi of his generation or no, Naruto will forever be a loveable knucklehead. He takes a step back, still chuckling, and rakes a hand through his silver hair. “Maa, what kind of sensei would I be if I left my cute student hanging? What do you want my opinion on?”
“Can we let him out?” Naruto asks promptly, and that’s probably to be expected. He’s the type to put faith in anyone, and Kakashi has long since stopped being surprised when it pays off with interest. Gaara is just one example. If he didn’t know better, Kakashi would say it was some sort of bloodline.
But the question is serious enough, and Kakashi considers it carefully, turning the matter over in his mind. His kneejerk reaction it to say no-but that’s also paranoia and personal betrayal speaking, not just his instincts. He’s used to feeling a burn of entwined anger, guilt, and grief whenever he thinks of Obito, and it’s no different when he sees this version from a parallel universe.
Still, this Obito is everything that the other Obito should have been, would have been if not for a cruel twist of fate. He’s entirely honest, even to the point of blind faith, and Kakashi has still never met any shinobi who can tear up so easily. And the scars…
“He’s telling the truth,” Kakashi says eventually, taking a seat next to Naruto. “His Phoenix Gate jutsu legitimate, from what I know of his-our-Mangekyo, and he’s grieving. It fits with his story of coming from a world where Orochimaru destroyed Konoha. He’s…Obito.”
And that’s the entire, aching truth of it. Kakashi smiles a little to himself, helpless and wry. “He’s the Obito that I remember. I thought that Obito died under a pile of rocks on the way to Kannabi Bridge, but…he’s here, Naruto.”
His former student smiles at him, not the wide and overbearing grin he puts on, but something smaller, softer, and far more genuine. “I'm so glad,” he says, pushing to his feet. He touches Kakashi's shoulder, just a brief brush in passing as he heads for the stairwell. At the door, he pauses, half-turns, and gives Kakashi the same grin that Kushina once wore half a heartbeat before she dumped hot pink paint over his head. “Oh, yeah! I've told baa-chan to release Uchiha-san as soon as he’s healthy enough. You’ll put him up in your apartment, ne, Kakashi-sensei?”
Then the brat is gone, too fast for Kakashi to catch even if he wasn’t frozen in place, jaw gaping open in horrified disbelief.
The words take another six seconds to sink in fully, and Kakashi splutters, far too late for anyone to hear.
It takes another week before Tsunade-sama finally clears him completely, though Obito is on the strictest take it easy orders he’s ever gotten. He’s more than ready-after seven days of no company beyond the silent ANBU and the occasional wary nurse, the only reason he hasn’t gone entirely crazy is because chakra exhaustion makes it easy to sleep for thirty-six hours at a time. Still, when an orderly drops off his discharge papers and a standard jounin uniform, Obito is thankful enough to swear eternal servitude. He pretends he can't hear the ANBU in the green- and purple-streaked cat mask laughing quietly at him and pulls the clothes on as quickly as he can.
Just as he gets his sandals on, there's a knock on the door. Obito looks up, but the cheerful greeting catches in his throat when he sees the tall, lanky, brown-haired man standing there, a senbon in his mouth.
Shiranui Genma observes him for another long moment and then clicks his senbon against his teeth. “Guess introductions would be redundant, huh?” he says a little wryly. “Given the circumstances.”
Obito chokes a little on his laughter-because the last time he saw Genma was when he and Raidou were facing a team of Orochimaru’s experiments, Oto-nin all ridiculously overpowered and deadly, but Obito had had his own opponent and couldn’t stop to help them-and rises to his feet. “Still,” he says, dipping into a shallow bow. “Uchiha Obito, loyal Konoha shinobi with no plans to take over the world any time soon.”
Genma snorts, but returns the gesture easily enough. “Shiranui Genma, tokubetsu jounin. Hokage-sama booked you an appointment with Yamanaka-san. I'm here to escort you.”
This is entirely expected, so Obito doesn’t bother protesting. He just offers Genma a quick smile, following the tokujo down the clean white hall. “Well, I didn’t suppose it was a social visit.”
“Next time,” Genma promises easily, tucking his hands into his pockets and leading Obito towards the front door. Obito isn’t fooled, though-the more languid Genma seems, the more ready he is for something to happen. He tries not to be offended by it, because this isn’t his Genma, but-
The doors of the hospital swing open, and Obito freezes in place, confronted with his first good look at an entirely whole Konoha. His chest aches like he got kicked, and there are tears gathering in his treacherous right eye.
“Oh thank god,” he breathes, staring out over the streets and neat buildings with the hunger of a starving man. “It’s…”
Genma is still watching him, but now there's something softer in his expression, something very close to sympathy. “Still a little battered,” is all he says, though. “The village was nearly destroyed a couple of years ago, but we’ve got most of it rebuilt by now. Amazing what one guy with mokuton can do when he puts his mind to it.”
Yamato, Obito thinks with a sudden start, and has to close his eyes and shake his head once hard in order to banish the image of that battered corpse in the darkness. But Konoha in all her glory draws him back to happier thoughts, and he takes a deep breath of air that isn’t clogged with soot and smoke. It feels like bliss, like every euphoria-inducing drug in existence all tied together and injected right into his veins.
And there are people around, happy people. Obito can't do anything but smile at the sight of so many cheerful faces. It’s…
It’s good.
Genma lets him have a few more moments just to look, and then moves forward again. “Come on,” he says lightly. “Yamanaka-san will have my balls if we’re late, and I've got plans for them that don’t involve them being a wall decoration.”
“What, Raidou actually lets you top sometimes?” Obito jokes-sheer kneejerk reaction, truthfully, after so long being friends with both bodyguards, and being one of the few brave (reckless) enough to rib either of the men about their personal lives. A moment after he says it, he realizes his mistake with a wince. This isn’t his Genma, and-
Thankfully, Genma just lets out a bark of surprised laughter and swings a fist at his shoulder. “Ah, shut up, it’s not like that. We’re-”
“Just friends, yes, yes.” Obito repeats the mantra he’s heard so many times, grinning. Admittedly, Genma isn’t quite as much fun to tease as Raidou, who turns crimson and stutters wildly at the first implication of intimacy, but he’ll do for now.
“‘Least he’s not Kakashi,” Genma retorts, just as Obito's would have done.
Obito levels the tokujo with a narrow-eyed stare. “Who the hell told you that? I've been in Konoha all of a week!”
Genma just grins at him, wicked and sharp. “ANBU gossip worse than teenage girls,” he says cheerfully. “I'm pretty sure that by now the entire village knows that the madman who tried to take over the world has a good twin with a raging crush on the Copy-Nin.”
For a moment, Obito contemplates protesting, but then he just sighs and drops his head, raising his hands in surrender. “Argh.”
Like the ANBU, Genma has absolutely no compunctions about laughing at him, and try as he might, Obito can't fight a grin of his own at the open, carefree sound.
It’s good to be back.
“Can he even lie?” is Ino’s first question as she drops her report on the Hokage’s desk. “Really, that’s a serious question. I've been in a lot of minds, but Uchiha Obito is about as straightforward as they come. It’s almost…creepy.” Seeing Naruto's rather blank look, she adds, “Not to say that he’s going to blurt village secrets out the first time an enemy interrogates him. He’s got pretty exceptional compartmentalizing skills, even for an active, high-level shinobi. He’s just…”
“Honest,” Kakashi finishes for her, fingers itching to snatch the file away from his Hokage and read it for himself. “Even when he was acting like a loudmouthed idiot, Obito was always honest, at least to himself.”
Leaning forward in his chair, Naruto passes the file to Kakashi, apparently seeing his agitation. “So he’s telling the truth about everything? Konoha, Sasuke, Orochimaru? It all happened?”
Ino crosses her arms over her chest and looks down, expression troubled. Kakashi chooses to watch her, even over the lure of the file, because he’s seen Inoichi’s daughter with a lot of expressions in a lot of settings, but he’s never seen her look so…disturbed.
“Yes,” she says simply. “It was…horrible. Everyone was dead. Even you, Naruto. And Obito-san spent two weeks hiding from Oto’s forces, living in the ruins and hiding the bodies of his comrades wherever he could, in the hope that by the time Orochimaru found them, they’d be too decomposed to be of use.” She swallows, mouth tightening, and says softly, “Orochimaru was wearing Sasuke’s body. Obito-san raised Sasuke, and then he…”
Kakashi knows very well how he felt when Sasuke left, but he was only the boy’s teacher, not his guardian, and he’d only had Team 7 for a few short months. For this Obito, the betrayal must have been all but unbearable.
Naruto winces, but simply asks, “And if I was going to reinstate him as ANBU?”
Apparently, mindreading is a skill the Hokage has recently acquired, because he shoots a sharp look at the grey-haired jounin, even as Kakashi begins to open his mouth. “We need jounin and ANBU, Kakashi-sensei. The high-level shinobi suffered losses during the war, and while C- and B-rank missions are the backbone of a village, it’s the A- and S-rank that pay well. We need that, and if Obito was a captain in his world, he has experience.”
Even now, a year and a half after Naruto’s appointment, it still takes Kakashi entirely by surprise just how competent the knucklehead can be when he throws himself headlong into something with all of his effort. There were doubts, many of them from all quarters, when Tsunade declared her intention to pass on the hat and retire (more or less) to a position as head of the hospital.
There aren’t many of those doubts left now, if any.
Ino is shaking her head, too, a smile on her face as she watches the other blond. “He should be fine,” she says. “There aren’t any signs of trauma beyond what would be expected in a situation like this, and I’m marking him down for weekly psychological review, but like I said, Obito-san is good at compartmentalizing. He’s adjusting to the idea that Konoha is still here and whole, but that’s letting him push the bad memories back. Having missions to focus on will likely even help him.”
“Done, then.” Naruto nods and rises, heading for the messenger hawk perched on its stand by the door. “I’ll assign him to a squad and remove his chakra suppression seals. Ino-chan, is he still at T & I?”
“Genma snagged him once we were done.” Ino looks amused. “Something about showing him Konoha in all her glory. Knowing Genma, they’ll end up in a bar within the hour.”
Naruto answers, something long-suffering and dry in regards to his wayward bodyguard, but Kakashi can't force himself to pay attention any longer. He stares at the file for a moment, debating whether or not to read it, and then sighs. It’s about Obito, and he knows Obito-he knows this one very well indeed, because he’s practically the same as the Obito Kakashi lost so many years ago. No file, however carefully prepared, is going to have anything entirely new.
He looks out over the village, where the sun is creeping past noon and shadows are just starting to stretch. For a moment all he can see is the darkness of that cave, Obito on the ground and crushed by a fall of rocks-still smiling at him, still selfless, just like all those times he’d carry old people’s groceries and pull little girls’ cats out of trees.
"I'm about to…die…but I'll become your eye…and see the future with you."
And what a bleak future it was, without Obito there, even if Kakashi had never before realized just how important Obito was to him, to Minato, to the village as a whole. Kakashi closes his eyes and bows his head, bringing the folder up to shield his face as Obito's eye begins to tear up-but, for once, Kakashi knows that they're his own tears, shed not in sorrow, but in sharp-hot relief and aching joy.
Kakashi has been given more second chances than he has any right to, and this one is most certainly not going to go to waste.
“I think I’ll go get lunch,” he says out loud. “Later, Naruto, Ino-chan.”
“But-” Naruto starts; however, it’s that particular whine he gets when faced with unwanted paperwork. Kakashi doesn’t stick around to hear the rest, bailing out the window before Naruto and his terrifying ramen intuition can pick out that Kakashi's planning to hit Ichiraku. It’s the work of half a moment to find Genma's scent, long familiarity letting Kakashi trace him down the street from the hospital, to T & I, and then further into the village.
Genma and Obito are wandering, judging by the way the trail meanders from a weapons store window to a clothing shop to a fruit stand and then takes a loop around the park and heads towards the Academy. A few yards on, Kakashi can see a tall man with a bandana and a shorter man with a long braid of hair, and pauses on the branch of a convenient tree to simply watch them.
Genma leans against another tree, clearly amused if the smirk on his face is any indication. He says something and Obito laughs, dropping down to sit lotus-style on the ground. He’s a little pale, obviously not completely recovered, but his eye is bright with something like joy. Kakashi has to smile, because this isn’t his loudmouthed brat of a teammate, but it’s still Obito in all the ways that matter. The real Obito, and not some crazed copy twisted by Rin’s death and his own wounds.
The long hair is especially interesting, Kakashi thinks. For shinobi, long hair is a declaration of skill, an assertion that any enemy looking to get close enough to use it against them will be dead long before he can get a hand on it. The Hyuuga keep their hair long because of the Byakugan and its nearly inescapable field of view. Uchiha Itachi, Madara, Jiraiya, Inoichi, Kushina, Senju Hashirama, even Tsunade-they all proved in battle that they’d more than earned the right to wear their hair long. For Obito to do the same is a clear statement of ability, and the fact that he survived an invasion that killed off all of the remaining Konoha shinobi says that it’s not an empty boast.
It was clear, that day in the cave, that Obito was very, very good at using his Sharingan despite only just awakening it. And his Sharingan has the ability to use the Mangekyo without going blind (something Kakashi is unspeakably grateful for). So this Obito, with years of service as a high-ranking shinobi, is likely quite powerful.
Kakashi smiles again, because for all that he was a loudmouth, Obito was also right. He did become an amazing shinobi, and Kakashi only wishes that he had been there to see it happen.
He leaps down from the tree, hands tucked firmly in his pockets, and saunters over to the two men. “Morning,” he says cheerfully. Obito looks up with a wide, bright smile, painfully wonderful, and Kakashi feels his heart turn over in his chest.
“Kakashi!” the Uchiha says sunnily. “Isn’t it a gorgeous day?” He looks back, towards where children are just emerging from the Academy, flooding the grassy grounds, and Obito's heart is in his eyes, as ever. Kakashi can't bring himself to tease the man for it, though, just this once.
“Maa,” he says, nodding to Genma, who returns the gesture. “I was just going to get lunch. Up for ramen?”
Genma checks the position of the sun and winces a little. “Sorry, but I promised I’d check in with the Missions Desk before three. Apparently there's a batch of A-ranks they're trying to assign, and my wallet’s been getting a bit thin.” He pushes off the tree and nods to Obito. “See you around, Obito-kun. I look forward to working with you.” Then, with a wave, he heads back towards the Hokage Tower, dodging laughing Academy students.
Kakashi looks back at Obito, who’s watching him go. The Uchiha sighs softly and then pushes himself up to stand, stretching gracefully. “Ramen, you said?” he asks. “I haven’t been to Ichiraku in weeks.”
Almost in spite of himself, Kakashi pauses to study his former friend. Obito was always skinny as a child, under those baggy clothes he was forever wearing. Now, dressed in a standard jounin uniform with a tight shirt, it’s even clearer, especially given the hollowness of his cheeks that says food has been scarce for a while now. Two weeks in what was, for all intents and purposes, enemy territory, Kakashi thinks, and it hurts to contemplate Obito all alone among the corpses of his friends and comrades, trapped by an enemy army and driven into a corner to the point that his only viable choice was an untried jutsu that left his world behind forever.
Obito is watching him, Kakashi realizes when he returns to the present, lone eye carefully considering. He’s wary, and while maybe that’s to be expected, it feels like a damned kunai to the chest. Kakashi's never been one to talk about his feelings, even when he should-he still wonders, sometimes, if he could have made Sasuke stay by opening up to him a bit more-but here and now, faced with this second chance that seems entirely impossible, Kakashi isn't going to let that stop him. He takes a step forward, another, telegraphing intent because friend or not, Obito is a shinobi recently come from a warzone. Then he reaches out, snags an entirely uncomprehending Obito by his vest, and pulls him forward into a bone-crushing hug.
Obito goes stiff and startled in his arms, but Kakashi doesn’t let him escape. He ducks his head, wary of tearing up and the teasing it will undoubtedly bring, and drops his forehead onto Obito's shoulder, regardless of the difference in their heights.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, just loud enough for Obito to hear and understand. “For the eye, for being a friend even when I wasn’t, for pulling that stick out of my ass before I could get anyone else killed putting the mission first. You were right about my father, and about the rules, and-thank you, Obito.”
For a long, endless moment, Obito stays taut and unmoving. Then, slowly, he relaxes, and his arms come up to carefully circle Kakashi's shoulders. He chuckles, tipping his head to press gently against Kakashi's cheek, and his hair smells like hospital shampoo and Konoha sunlight. Another pause, and then he says softly, “You know, you’re never going to get rid of me now, Kakashi. If you’ve really acknowledged we’re friends, I'm going to stick to you like a really stubborn burr.”
Since Kakashi didn’t even know leaving was an option-though, of course, with that Phoenix Gate jutsu it’s entirely possible-and he very much doesn’t like it, he doesn’t argue. “Ah, well,” he says, pulling away just enough to clasp a hand around Obito's shoulder, “I suppose I’ll just have to bear it, then.” He takes a step back, though not a big one, and tucks his hands into his pockets again. “Ramen?”
Obito grins at him, bright and brilliant, and orders, “Lead the way.”
Warnings: Kind of a crack concept, general author insanity, English from a fairly rusty non-native, bad language, and porn.
Word Count: ~14000 asdfghjkl (complete)
Pairings: Kakashi/Obito
Summary: In a world where he didn’t die at the bridge, Obito is a loyal Konoha shinobi, even if his Konoha is practically gone. Rather than die at the hands of Orochimaru, Obito triggers an experimental time-space jutsu that sends him across dimensions, into a world where his counterpart went insane and Kakashi is mystifyingly different. KakaObi
Disclaimer: I don’t hold the copyrights, I didn’t create them, and I make no profit from this.
(Long-ass) Notes: Oh holy hand baskets. I’ll admit, this thing got…a little away from me. I meant it to be 5k word one-shot about good!Obito encountering twisted!Obito, but that somehow never happened, and it turned into 13k words of schmoopy angst with a big chunk o’ porn at the end.
I recently dragged myself back into Naruto specifically because I heard Kakashi Gaiden was awesome. It was. Is. Obito is my new favorite character, and his death literally made me cry. Argh. Anyway, this is mostly self-indulgent, because I adore time- and dimension-travel stories with the passion of a thousand burning suns and wanted to explore how Obito would have turned out if he had actually been rescued from that stupid cave by someone other than Madara (asshole). That said, I'm not a Naruto writer; this is my first venture into the fandom and I fail forever at characterization in general, so I apologize in advance.
(Also, on another note, who here hates Sasuke? I'm not one to blindly hate a character, and I used to think he was an okay anti-hero, but then he had the whole heel-face-revolving-door thing, and then he wanted to become Hokage after betraying the village? ARGH. Just go die already, damn it.)
Stepping Stones
There are footsteps among the ruins of what was once Konoha, carefully skirting the fires that have yet to fully die out. Obito stays where he is, though he opens his one remaining eye in the half-dark. The Memorial Stone is gone now, so much rubble amongst all the rest, and his friends have long since burned to ash or been taken for the Snake Sannin’s twisted experiments. Obito watched them fall before the army Orochimaru brought, Konoha still far too weak from Madara’s final attack, and he mourns them even though the proper place to do so has crumbled.
The footsteps pass to his right, in what once was the main street. Were he any less of a shinobi, Obito would tense and likely give himself away, but he’s been ANBU since he was seventeen, and long practice staying absolutely still keeps his muscles loose and ready to move.
He wouldn’t look, even if he could move without giving himself away. He doesn’t want to look into the red eyes of his only living cousin and face his abject failure once more.
It hurts, aches that Sasuke left the way he did, that Obito wasn’t enough to keep him in the village and tie him to an honest life as one of the last two loyal Uchiha. But Sasuke abandoned Konoha, abandoned his team and his sensei and his cousin for a path of bloodshed and revenge, and that will never not pain Obito to the very core. He had thought that with Sasuke supported as he grew, mentored and cared for and loved like the little brother Obito was never previously allowed to have, that it would temper his need for vengeance in time.
It’s been a long time since Obito was quite so wrong about something, and now Orochimaru is walking around inside of Sasuke’s skin. Now Orochimaru has used Sasuke’s hands to tear Konoha to the ground and kill all of his former friends.
Worst of all, Obito cannot say that Sasuke would not do the same, were he the one in control.
The steps fade into the fire-lit gloom and vanish entirely, and Obito breathes out slow and soft. There's a body in front of him, half-mangled and covered in tacky blood. If it were possible, Obito would seal him into a scroll, carry him far away until Tenzo could be buried with the honor he deserves and not left for Orochimaru to find and defile. But even dragging his fellow ANBU’s body away from where he fell-valiantly, gloriously, nobly, but in the end futilely-was a larger risk than Obito is entirely comfortable taking. As it is, he leans over Tenzo’s cold corpse and gently shuts his blank black eyes, bidding farewell to a true friend, a brave partner, and a one-time lover.
Tenzo isn’t the only friend and lover he’s lost today.
The grief is sharp and tearing, even more painful than the stab wound through his left side or the dislocated shoulder he hasn’t yet had time to set. Obito closes his eye and bows his head, silently offering up a prayer to whatever cruel god might be listening.
He should go, move on.
There are more bodies to find and hide as well as he’s able.
There are more comrades who deserve one last parting thought.
But for all his willpower, Obito cannot make himself move. He’s quite likely the last Konoha shinobi still breathing, more from luck than any sort of skill, and he despairs of it. Naruto, only recently named Rokudaime Hokage, is gone, the first to fall before Orochimaru’s treachery. The clan heads, the chuunin, the jounin, even Obito's fellow ANBU are all gone, dead at the hands of two traitors made into one.
Konoha has fallen.
Obito suspects that the rest of the Hidden Villages will not be far behind.
Perhaps, were he a greater man, Obito would run, flee to another village-Suna, Kiri, Kumo, even Iwa-and warn them. But he’s been all but broken by this, the next closest thing to shattered, and he can't bring himself to care. Temari will carry word of the attack to Suna, as Naruto sent her away before the Oto forces reached them, and Gaara will alert the other Kages. There is nothing left for Obito to do.
But…there is one thing he can do.
Obito's breath stills in his chest at the thought. It’s a long shot, a risk, something he’s only ever considered in theory and even then generally only when tipsy. Orochimaru or his sensor-girl will doubtless feel his chakra the moment he activates his Mangekyo, and the jutsu is a complicated one, its complexity helped little by the fact that it is Obito's own (untested) creation. Teleportation at its most difficult, with no way of telling beforehand where he’ll end up, or even if he’ll end up somewhere. Using it means abandoning Konoha and everything that he knows.
That, at least, is the simple part, because everything Obito knows is already gone, vanished in fire and ash. Obito raises his head, opening his eye and lifting one hand to touch the red patch that covers his empty left eye socket. The other one is gone, taken with Kakashi's (no no no no don’t think of that don’t think don’t think) mutilated body to be secreted away in a lab somewhere. But this one-
In theory, this one will be enough.
For all his boasting as a child, Obito as an adult tends to downplay his skills, largely because everyone already knows them. He’s the last loyal Uchiha, now that Itachi is dead and Sasuke a traitor, and he’s a late bloomer when it comes to the Sharingan. The first time he activated it, it was so simple, less a newly acquired skill and more a long-remembered old one. He’d killed the Iwa nin so easily, countered jutsus as simply as breathing, and he’s never lost that innate understanding of his clan’s dojutsu.
So he has power and skill and the experience of well over a decade as a ninja. But this jutsu-
As far as Obito knows, no one has ever even attempted something like this.
He takes a deep breath and then another, reminding his lungs to work once more, and nods to himself. Konoha is gone, shattered beyond all repair. The first and greatest of the Hidden Villages is no more, and Obito isn’t going to haunt its ashes like a ghost until his inevitable capture by Orochimaru. The Snake already has three Sharingan eyes in his possession; Obito is hardly going to provide him with one more.
His Mangekyo burns as it activates-unshed tears, perhaps, but Obito can't tell and Kakashi isn’t here to mock him for it. The world twists and warps just as running steps sound in the street, and Obito brings his hands up, flashing through a long chain of seals. He lands in his Kamui dimension, hands still moving even as his knees give way and his head spins with blood loss.
One more seal, one more sign, and the jutsu activates. “Phoenix Gate!” Obito cries, staggering to his feet, and the dimension burns away in gold and indigo and crimson.
Obito falls and falls and falls, Mangekyo spinning and head startlingly clear, and behind him is a dead world lost forever to the darkness of despair.
“Yo!” Kakashi calls cheerfully, hopping through the window into the Hokage’s office.
Sakura throws a chair at him.
“LATE!” she shrieks, hefting the other armchair in a way that is less threatening and more promising. “By THREE HOURS!”
Pertinently, Kakashi immediately takes refuge behind his other student. He’s not above using a meat-shield when faced with the wrath of Tsunade’s second coming. “Maa, maa, Sakura-chan, you see I was on my way here when-”
“SAVE IT!”
The concealing body in front of him vanishes half a heartbeat before the chair comes hurling across the room, and Kakashi only has time for a hissed, “Naruto, you traitor!” as he dives for the safety of the Hokage’s desk.
“Sorry, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto says with absolutely no sympathy, the brat. “But you should have been here-”
And then a surge of vermillion chakra bursts out of absolutely nowhere, engulfing the office. Sakura cries out as Naruto snatches her out of the way, even as a thick barrier of wood shoots out of the ground to cover them and Kakashi darts out from behind the desk. He spares half a glance to make sure his Hokage and Chief Medic are safe before spinning to face the flames.
They're already dissipating, though, swirling out of existence in a suspiciously familiar warping spiral. Kakashi wrenches his hitai-ate off, trying to pinpoint-
With a heavy thud, a body hits the ground. The flames vanish, the air stills, and everything is silent.
From the shadows, Yamato drops his wooden wall, revealing a steely-eyed Naruto and a tense Sakura. The ANBU glances at Kakashi, who nods shortly and darts over to the body, cataloguing details as he drops into a wary crouch beside it.
Male, he thinks. On the short side, standard Konoha ANBU uniform, jackal mask tied to his kunai pouch, clothes torn, bleeding stab wound on his left side, black hair kept long, smells of smoke and blood, katana sheath on his back, no blade, pale, likely blood loss and chakra exhaustion-
He carefully flips the man over, and then promptly forgets how to breathe.
The face is one he knows as well as he does his own, even a good ten years older than the last time he saw it looking so peaceful. Uchiha Obito, without a doubt, even though Obito died on a bloody battlefield, betrayed by his own ally.
But there are differences here, too, more than Kakashi can so simply write off. This Obito's scars are milder, less painful to look at, and he wears a red patch over his left eye socket-empty, by the flatness of the patch. He’s lean and muscled under the uniform, still skinny but more filled out, if less so than the Obito they faced in the war. His hair is still spiky, but long, hanging between his shoulder blades in a loose braid. And…
“A Konoha hitai-ate,” Yamato observes, “and he’s got a captain’s tattoo.”
Kakashi manages to tear his gaze from that pale, worn face for just long enough to register the ANBU tattoo with its edging of red on the man’s shoulder, clearly not recent, and he sucks in a sharp breath.
Somehow, impossibly, this Obito is a Konoha shinobi, and clearly a well-respected one.
“How…?” Naruto breathes.
Sakura shakes her head, always first to answer when something delves into theory. “I don’t know,” she says softly, eyes fixed on the Uchiha in the center of the room. “Some kind of space-time jutsu? It should be…”
“Impossible,” Kakashi finishes for her, even as he pulls out bandages and makes to bind the weeping stab wound.
Briskly, Sakura pushes him away. “I’ll do it.” A quick check and she glances at Naruto and then Kakashi, eyes serious but steady. “Call a team of medics; we need to get this man to the hospital.”
Naruto nods and looks to Yamato and his two subordinates in the shadows. “I’ll stay with Cat and Bear. Call a team together and set up shifts-I want him watched constantly. Go.”
Yamato leaves, but Kakashi can't even spare him a glance.
Obito holds his entire attention, and he’s waiting on a knife’s edge for even the faintest twitch.
(There's none, but Obito keeps breathing. For now, that will have to be enough.)
Ah, is Obito's first thought upon his return to consciousness. Not dead, I see.
Of course, as a shinobi, not dead covers quite a lot of territory, much of it unpleasant. This time, however, it’s not so bad. His eye is aching from overuse, and chakra exhaustion weighs at his body like a lead blanket, but his shoulder has been set, he’s not missing any limbs beyond the pinky finger he lost three years ago in an interrogation, and the stab in his side seems to be mostly closed.
There's no moment of disorientation, even with the familiar disinfectant-and-new-grass smell unique to Konoha’s hospital hanging in the air around him. The loss of his Konoha is too great for him to ever forget, regardless of the two weeks he’s had to come to terms with it. But that means-
“It worked,” he breathes, opening his eye to see a plain white ceiling, and smiling because it shouldn’t be there, but it is.
A new world, then, just like he was supposed to find. The jutsu worked.
“Maa, really?” a familiar voice says in an entirely unfamiliar lazy drawl. “Mind sharing with the class, Uchiha-san?”
It takes far more effort than it should to turn his head-definitely chakra exhaustion, and a fairly bad case of it, too-but Obito does, because he has to see-
Kakashi, grey hair as gravity-defying as ever, hitai-ate tilted down across his left eye and mask pulled all the way up to meet it. The sight of him-alive, whole, here-is like a kunai to the chest, and Obito chokes on whatever words might come next, though really, what can he possibly say to a living dead man?
“Kakashi,” he says breathlessly, and can't help (doesn’t even try to fight) the wide smile that spreads over his face. “I did it. The jutsu worked.” Then the memory of flames and blood and bodies overwhelms him, and exhaustion or no, he jerks upright, grabbing Kakashi's flak jacket before the other jounin can so much as react. “Orochimaru! My dimension, he was there-Oto-he destroyed everything! Where is he, is he still alive? Is he-?”
“Dead,” Kakashi says simply, “or as good as.” He carefully detaches Obito's hand from his uniform before dropping into the chair next to the bed. “Tell me how you did it,” he orders, crossing his arms over his chest as he slouches in his seat. If Obito didn’t know him quite as well as he actually does, it would be impossible to see the defensiveness of that position. But Obito has long since made it his business to know even the smallest of Kakashi's tells, and this is definitely one of them.
And, of course, he’s asking what is likely the hardest question in this whole ridiculous situation. Obito sighs and scratches his head, somewhere between annoyed and amused. Strange mannerisms aside, this is definitely Hatake Kakashi.
“You're the genius,” he complains, fighting to regain his equilibrium, even though he already knows his protest is futile. “Can't you just figure it out yourself?”
Kakashi's visible eye narrows faintly. “Indulge me,” he drawls. “The Obito I'm used to was hell-bent on conquering the world after supposedly dying on the way to Kannabi Bridge. I’d like some assurance that you're not about to do the same.”
Well.
That’s…
Startling.
Closing his eye-and no, having an evil twin in another dimension is actually not cool at all-Obito casts around for a suitable metaphor. “Um…evil me could teleport, right?” At Kakashi's nod, he forges on. “Picture a river with two banks and a stepping stone in the middle. When I teleport, it’s like jumping from the right-hand bank-our dimension-to the stepping stone-my Kamui dimension-and then back to the riverbank, either further up or further down. I land in a different location, but still in the same world. Comparatively, it takes little effort-about as much as a civilian jumping over a ditch. With my Phoenix Gate jutsu, it’s…” He trails off, biting his lips a little.
Kakashi raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Obito rolls his eye at the prodding. “Well, this is where the metaphor gets complicated. Instead of one bank on the left side of the river, picture thousands, millions, all stacked one on top of the other. With the Phoenix Gate, instead of turning around and jumping back into the original dimension, I just…go forward. But it takes a lot of chakra-like a ninja trying to jump to the top of the Hokage Tower in one go. And then you have to sort through the other dimensions while you're still in the air, because if you land in one that’s too similar to your original universe, where the ‘you’ there is too similar to the ‘you’ jumping, reality rebels against the possibility of a paradox and boots you right back out. So you have to calculate momentum, necessary chakra, drag, direction, and speed, all while shuffling through infinite possibilities to find a destination universe that’s just different enough to accept you. It’s…complicated.”
Kakashi's silent for a long moment, his gaze distant, as though working through all the steps himself and making sure they're logical. (They are, or Obito wouldn’t have been able to do it; he’s clever, cunning, and has good instincts, but he’s never been smart in the way most people think of it.) Obito waits him out, studying the weave of the hospital blanket and wondering how soon he can get discharged-hopefully not straight to T & I, but at this point, he isn’t feeling too picky.
(Because it worked, and that is so simultaneously amazing and cool and terrifying, because Obito can jump through dimensions and he’s in Konoha and it isn’t destroyed. Freaking hell.)
After what feels like a damned eternity of silence (but is probably only a few minutes; Obito has never, ever been good at sitting still, and time has not changed much), Kakashi finally tips his head and nods. “Makes sense,” he says, and Obito's heart flutters a little, even though it’s hardly praise and this isn’t his Kakashi. Not that he ever had any claim to Kakashi anyway. “So the difference in your universe was…?”
“Me not being a psychopath?” Obito says jokingly, though he still can't entirely believe that in this universe, he’s the next best thing to an evil mastermind. It just…the mind boggles, really. He hurries on before he can look into that too deeply, because no, regardless of how exciting the thought of an evil twin would have been when he was a kid. “Well, you said I ‘died’ in that rock fall, right? When the Iwa nin started compressing the rocks, I'm guessing. In my universe, a backup team arrived-Shikaku, Inoichi, and Chouza. Rin had already transplanted my eye, but they took care of the reinforcements and got me out before I could be permanently hurt.” It’s automatic, at this point, for Obito to touch the deep scars on his right cheek, but he’s a shinobi. Scars are a part of life, and they certainly don’t affect his ability to fight, so they're not even worth mentioning.
Kakashi lets his eyes linger on them, though, and one hand twitches, a gesture aborted before it can become anything at all. He takes a breath, loud enough for Obito to hear even across the distance that separates them, and then rises to his feet. A moment later he’s at the window, back turned to the bed as he asks, “And…Rin?”
The name still hurts, as Obito suspects it always will, but it’s an old pain now, diminished enough for Obito to say with most of his composure, “We…killed her. After they tried to turn her into an unstable jinchuuriki to destroy Konoha. It…activated our Mangekyo Sharingan.”
Three short little sentences, a world of grief behind them. Obito closes his eyes as he feels tears welling up, the way they always do. But he’s cried too much for Rin already, far too much for any one person, regardless of how dear, and he chokes them back.
“It broke you, in this world,” Kakashi says softly, still facing away, and Obito absently wishes that he could see the other man’s face right now. “That was when you decided to change everything, because you loved her so much.”
Obito blinks. He replays that last sentence in his head one more time, just to make sure he heard correctly, and then blinks again.
Well. Apparently that’s the main difference here, then.
Because as far as Obito remembers, he’s always been in love with Kakashi.
“Um,” he manages after a second, feeling heat creeping insidiously up his face. “I… In my universe I loved you?”
It comes out as more of a squeaky question than an even statement of fact, but judging by the way Kakashi spins around, visible eye going wide, he gets the gist of it anyway.
There's a sound suspiciously like a quickly choked snicker from the shadow in the corner-the resident ANBU, undoubtedly-and Obito wracks his brain for a jutsu that will make the ground rise up and swallow him. There are a reassuring number, actually, and he’d use one in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the chakra suppression seals painted on his body.
“You…and me?” Kakashi sounds suspiciously squeaky, too, which is a relief.
Obito waves his hands frantically. “No! Well, you always-no! It was just me, completely one-sided, I swear. We were-” He cuts himself off, biting his lip to hide the pang of familiar, lonely pain that shoots through his chest, then forces composure and adds more quietly, “We…never really managed to become friends, and I didn’t want to do anything without at least a bit of solid ground between us, so…I just never said anything. You avoided me a lot, so I think you knew, but… Well, nothing happened.”
There's another stretch of silence, this one far heavier than the last, and then Kakashi nods just once. “I need to talk to the Hokage,” he says, and vanishes in a swirl of leaves.
Obito is left alone in a sterile hospital room with only his hidden guards for company, alone and so very, achingly lonely, the way he’s been for years now, even before Konoha’s fall. He closes his eyes, once more trying to fight the burn of tears.
If he fails, the ANBU are kind enough not to comment.
Kakashi lands on the roof of the hospital with a curse that’s more self-directed than anything. He tears off his hitai-ate despite the immediate drag of chakra usage, and presses a hand over the eye Obito so selflessly shared.
“How can you be so stupid?” he hisses at his counterpart in another universe, even as he recalls the deep, shiny-white scars carved into the right side of this Obito's face. Those are clear proof that Obito didn’t escape the rock fall unscathed, regardless of the front he puts up, and they should have been enough of a reminder for his fool of a double to realize what he almost lost. Surely the shared eye was clue enough. Surely he didn’t keep being an asshole after coming so close to losing everything.
We…never managed to become friends.
But Kakashi knows himself, if nothing else-knows what it took to change, and how close he was to never changing at all. If Obito hadn’t died, if he hadn’t vanished from Kakashi's world forever, it’s very likely Kakashi would have turned out just like his counterpart, and that’s…
Frightening.
In my universe, I loved you.
Kakashi has never even contemplated such a thing. He’s never been one for romance beyond the omnipresent porn and a handful of one-night stands quickly forgotten. But-
Obito.
The Obito that lived in Kakashi's memory for so long, right up until Tobi’s identity was revealed, was an idol more than anything, a hero elevated by death. Kakashi hasn’t ever thought of him as anything beyond a crucible, a turning point of his life and the fulcrum on which his world shifted, the friend he could have had but for his ridiculous, painful mistakes. The Sharingan he uses is Obito's, the habits he adopts are Obito's, the first name on his lips every time he visits the Memorial Stone is Obito's. But…he’s never been human, not in any way that counts.
And this, this is undeniably, undoubtedly human. Kakashi knows grief and loneliness, understands them better than most, and he recognized the quickly-hidden expression on Obito's face when he spoke of the alternate Kakashi (not his Kakashi, because that man doesn’t deserve such sweet softness in Obito's eye) avoiding him.
“Damn it,” Kakashi breathes, yanking his hitai-ate back into place. This is all too complicated, so unbearably complicated no matter how much Kakashi wants to bolt back to Obito's room and make sure that this familiar stranger, so like the boy he knew rather than the crazed, overpowered madman this world’s version became, doesn’t disappear into nothingness again. At the same time, he wants to run, avoid the hospital and wherever Obito eventually ends up for the rest of his natural life, because he can't. He can't do this again, lose him again, look at that scarred face and that gentle black eye and that damned red patch. One loss of that magnitude was enough to break and entirely remake him, and Kakashi is self-aware enough to know that he won't survive another such incident.
“Damn it!” he repeats, slamming a fist into the low wall and watching it crack and crumble under the strength of the blow.
“You know, even if she’s not Hokage anymore, baa-chan will still break your face for wrecking any part of her hospital,” a voice informs him cheerfully as a figure in an orange-and-black coat settles gracefully on the edge of the wall.
Kakashi looks at his former student, his current Hokage, and normally he’d pull up a smile or whip out his book, but for once he can't make himself hide the pure, tearing uncertainty that’s eating at him like a parasite. Judging by the sympathetic half-smile on Naruto's face and the quiet understanding in his blue eyes, he recognizes both what he’s seeing and the reason behind it.
“He’s awake, then,” Naruto says, and after three days of Kakashi sitting immovable in that sterile room, it’s not a question. The half-smile changes to a thoughtful frown as he tips his head, and then he sighs. “Argh, geez, Sakura-chan keeps telling me to be tactful, but I can't figure it out! Would it be rude to ask what you think of him right now?”
That, at least, makes Kakashi laugh, because Rokudaime Hokage or no, most powerful shinobi of his generation or no, Naruto will forever be a loveable knucklehead. He takes a step back, still chuckling, and rakes a hand through his silver hair. “Maa, what kind of sensei would I be if I left my cute student hanging? What do you want my opinion on?”
“Can we let him out?” Naruto asks promptly, and that’s probably to be expected. He’s the type to put faith in anyone, and Kakashi has long since stopped being surprised when it pays off with interest. Gaara is just one example. If he didn’t know better, Kakashi would say it was some sort of bloodline.
But the question is serious enough, and Kakashi considers it carefully, turning the matter over in his mind. His kneejerk reaction it to say no-but that’s also paranoia and personal betrayal speaking, not just his instincts. He’s used to feeling a burn of entwined anger, guilt, and grief whenever he thinks of Obito, and it’s no different when he sees this version from a parallel universe.
Still, this Obito is everything that the other Obito should have been, would have been if not for a cruel twist of fate. He’s entirely honest, even to the point of blind faith, and Kakashi has still never met any shinobi who can tear up so easily. And the scars…
“He’s telling the truth,” Kakashi says eventually, taking a seat next to Naruto. “His Phoenix Gate jutsu legitimate, from what I know of his-our-Mangekyo, and he’s grieving. It fits with his story of coming from a world where Orochimaru destroyed Konoha. He’s…Obito.”
And that’s the entire, aching truth of it. Kakashi smiles a little to himself, helpless and wry. “He’s the Obito that I remember. I thought that Obito died under a pile of rocks on the way to Kannabi Bridge, but…he’s here, Naruto.”
His former student smiles at him, not the wide and overbearing grin he puts on, but something smaller, softer, and far more genuine. “I'm so glad,” he says, pushing to his feet. He touches Kakashi's shoulder, just a brief brush in passing as he heads for the stairwell. At the door, he pauses, half-turns, and gives Kakashi the same grin that Kushina once wore half a heartbeat before she dumped hot pink paint over his head. “Oh, yeah! I've told baa-chan to release Uchiha-san as soon as he’s healthy enough. You’ll put him up in your apartment, ne, Kakashi-sensei?”
Then the brat is gone, too fast for Kakashi to catch even if he wasn’t frozen in place, jaw gaping open in horrified disbelief.
The words take another six seconds to sink in fully, and Kakashi splutters, far too late for anyone to hear.
It takes another week before Tsunade-sama finally clears him completely, though Obito is on the strictest take it easy orders he’s ever gotten. He’s more than ready-after seven days of no company beyond the silent ANBU and the occasional wary nurse, the only reason he hasn’t gone entirely crazy is because chakra exhaustion makes it easy to sleep for thirty-six hours at a time. Still, when an orderly drops off his discharge papers and a standard jounin uniform, Obito is thankful enough to swear eternal servitude. He pretends he can't hear the ANBU in the green- and purple-streaked cat mask laughing quietly at him and pulls the clothes on as quickly as he can.
Just as he gets his sandals on, there's a knock on the door. Obito looks up, but the cheerful greeting catches in his throat when he sees the tall, lanky, brown-haired man standing there, a senbon in his mouth.
Shiranui Genma observes him for another long moment and then clicks his senbon against his teeth. “Guess introductions would be redundant, huh?” he says a little wryly. “Given the circumstances.”
Obito chokes a little on his laughter-because the last time he saw Genma was when he and Raidou were facing a team of Orochimaru’s experiments, Oto-nin all ridiculously overpowered and deadly, but Obito had had his own opponent and couldn’t stop to help them-and rises to his feet. “Still,” he says, dipping into a shallow bow. “Uchiha Obito, loyal Konoha shinobi with no plans to take over the world any time soon.”
Genma snorts, but returns the gesture easily enough. “Shiranui Genma, tokubetsu jounin. Hokage-sama booked you an appointment with Yamanaka-san. I'm here to escort you.”
This is entirely expected, so Obito doesn’t bother protesting. He just offers Genma a quick smile, following the tokujo down the clean white hall. “Well, I didn’t suppose it was a social visit.”
“Next time,” Genma promises easily, tucking his hands into his pockets and leading Obito towards the front door. Obito isn’t fooled, though-the more languid Genma seems, the more ready he is for something to happen. He tries not to be offended by it, because this isn’t his Genma, but-
The doors of the hospital swing open, and Obito freezes in place, confronted with his first good look at an entirely whole Konoha. His chest aches like he got kicked, and there are tears gathering in his treacherous right eye.
“Oh thank god,” he breathes, staring out over the streets and neat buildings with the hunger of a starving man. “It’s…”
Genma is still watching him, but now there's something softer in his expression, something very close to sympathy. “Still a little battered,” is all he says, though. “The village was nearly destroyed a couple of years ago, but we’ve got most of it rebuilt by now. Amazing what one guy with mokuton can do when he puts his mind to it.”
Yamato, Obito thinks with a sudden start, and has to close his eyes and shake his head once hard in order to banish the image of that battered corpse in the darkness. But Konoha in all her glory draws him back to happier thoughts, and he takes a deep breath of air that isn’t clogged with soot and smoke. It feels like bliss, like every euphoria-inducing drug in existence all tied together and injected right into his veins.
And there are people around, happy people. Obito can't do anything but smile at the sight of so many cheerful faces. It’s…
It’s good.
Genma lets him have a few more moments just to look, and then moves forward again. “Come on,” he says lightly. “Yamanaka-san will have my balls if we’re late, and I've got plans for them that don’t involve them being a wall decoration.”
“What, Raidou actually lets you top sometimes?” Obito jokes-sheer kneejerk reaction, truthfully, after so long being friends with both bodyguards, and being one of the few brave (reckless) enough to rib either of the men about their personal lives. A moment after he says it, he realizes his mistake with a wince. This isn’t his Genma, and-
Thankfully, Genma just lets out a bark of surprised laughter and swings a fist at his shoulder. “Ah, shut up, it’s not like that. We’re-”
“Just friends, yes, yes.” Obito repeats the mantra he’s heard so many times, grinning. Admittedly, Genma isn’t quite as much fun to tease as Raidou, who turns crimson and stutters wildly at the first implication of intimacy, but he’ll do for now.
“‘Least he’s not Kakashi,” Genma retorts, just as Obito's would have done.
Obito levels the tokujo with a narrow-eyed stare. “Who the hell told you that? I've been in Konoha all of a week!”
Genma just grins at him, wicked and sharp. “ANBU gossip worse than teenage girls,” he says cheerfully. “I'm pretty sure that by now the entire village knows that the madman who tried to take over the world has a good twin with a raging crush on the Copy-Nin.”
For a moment, Obito contemplates protesting, but then he just sighs and drops his head, raising his hands in surrender. “Argh.”
Like the ANBU, Genma has absolutely no compunctions about laughing at him, and try as he might, Obito can't fight a grin of his own at the open, carefree sound.
It’s good to be back.
“Can he even lie?” is Ino’s first question as she drops her report on the Hokage’s desk. “Really, that’s a serious question. I've been in a lot of minds, but Uchiha Obito is about as straightforward as they come. It’s almost…creepy.” Seeing Naruto's rather blank look, she adds, “Not to say that he’s going to blurt village secrets out the first time an enemy interrogates him. He’s got pretty exceptional compartmentalizing skills, even for an active, high-level shinobi. He’s just…”
“Honest,” Kakashi finishes for her, fingers itching to snatch the file away from his Hokage and read it for himself. “Even when he was acting like a loudmouthed idiot, Obito was always honest, at least to himself.”
Leaning forward in his chair, Naruto passes the file to Kakashi, apparently seeing his agitation. “So he’s telling the truth about everything? Konoha, Sasuke, Orochimaru? It all happened?”
Ino crosses her arms over her chest and looks down, expression troubled. Kakashi chooses to watch her, even over the lure of the file, because he’s seen Inoichi’s daughter with a lot of expressions in a lot of settings, but he’s never seen her look so…disturbed.
“Yes,” she says simply. “It was…horrible. Everyone was dead. Even you, Naruto. And Obito-san spent two weeks hiding from Oto’s forces, living in the ruins and hiding the bodies of his comrades wherever he could, in the hope that by the time Orochimaru found them, they’d be too decomposed to be of use.” She swallows, mouth tightening, and says softly, “Orochimaru was wearing Sasuke’s body. Obito-san raised Sasuke, and then he…”
Kakashi knows very well how he felt when Sasuke left, but he was only the boy’s teacher, not his guardian, and he’d only had Team 7 for a few short months. For this Obito, the betrayal must have been all but unbearable.
Naruto winces, but simply asks, “And if I was going to reinstate him as ANBU?”
Apparently, mindreading is a skill the Hokage has recently acquired, because he shoots a sharp look at the grey-haired jounin, even as Kakashi begins to open his mouth. “We need jounin and ANBU, Kakashi-sensei. The high-level shinobi suffered losses during the war, and while C- and B-rank missions are the backbone of a village, it’s the A- and S-rank that pay well. We need that, and if Obito was a captain in his world, he has experience.”
Even now, a year and a half after Naruto’s appointment, it still takes Kakashi entirely by surprise just how competent the knucklehead can be when he throws himself headlong into something with all of his effort. There were doubts, many of them from all quarters, when Tsunade declared her intention to pass on the hat and retire (more or less) to a position as head of the hospital.
There aren’t many of those doubts left now, if any.
Ino is shaking her head, too, a smile on her face as she watches the other blond. “He should be fine,” she says. “There aren’t any signs of trauma beyond what would be expected in a situation like this, and I’m marking him down for weekly psychological review, but like I said, Obito-san is good at compartmentalizing. He’s adjusting to the idea that Konoha is still here and whole, but that’s letting him push the bad memories back. Having missions to focus on will likely even help him.”
“Done, then.” Naruto nods and rises, heading for the messenger hawk perched on its stand by the door. “I’ll assign him to a squad and remove his chakra suppression seals. Ino-chan, is he still at T & I?”
“Genma snagged him once we were done.” Ino looks amused. “Something about showing him Konoha in all her glory. Knowing Genma, they’ll end up in a bar within the hour.”
Naruto answers, something long-suffering and dry in regards to his wayward bodyguard, but Kakashi can't force himself to pay attention any longer. He stares at the file for a moment, debating whether or not to read it, and then sighs. It’s about Obito, and he knows Obito-he knows this one very well indeed, because he’s practically the same as the Obito Kakashi lost so many years ago. No file, however carefully prepared, is going to have anything entirely new.
He looks out over the village, where the sun is creeping past noon and shadows are just starting to stretch. For a moment all he can see is the darkness of that cave, Obito on the ground and crushed by a fall of rocks-still smiling at him, still selfless, just like all those times he’d carry old people’s groceries and pull little girls’ cats out of trees.
"I'm about to…die…but I'll become your eye…and see the future with you."
And what a bleak future it was, without Obito there, even if Kakashi had never before realized just how important Obito was to him, to Minato, to the village as a whole. Kakashi closes his eyes and bows his head, bringing the folder up to shield his face as Obito's eye begins to tear up-but, for once, Kakashi knows that they're his own tears, shed not in sorrow, but in sharp-hot relief and aching joy.
Kakashi has been given more second chances than he has any right to, and this one is most certainly not going to go to waste.
“I think I’ll go get lunch,” he says out loud. “Later, Naruto, Ino-chan.”
“But-” Naruto starts; however, it’s that particular whine he gets when faced with unwanted paperwork. Kakashi doesn’t stick around to hear the rest, bailing out the window before Naruto and his terrifying ramen intuition can pick out that Kakashi's planning to hit Ichiraku. It’s the work of half a moment to find Genma's scent, long familiarity letting Kakashi trace him down the street from the hospital, to T & I, and then further into the village.
Genma and Obito are wandering, judging by the way the trail meanders from a weapons store window to a clothing shop to a fruit stand and then takes a loop around the park and heads towards the Academy. A few yards on, Kakashi can see a tall man with a bandana and a shorter man with a long braid of hair, and pauses on the branch of a convenient tree to simply watch them.
Genma leans against another tree, clearly amused if the smirk on his face is any indication. He says something and Obito laughs, dropping down to sit lotus-style on the ground. He’s a little pale, obviously not completely recovered, but his eye is bright with something like joy. Kakashi has to smile, because this isn’t his loudmouthed brat of a teammate, but it’s still Obito in all the ways that matter. The real Obito, and not some crazed copy twisted by Rin’s death and his own wounds.
The long hair is especially interesting, Kakashi thinks. For shinobi, long hair is a declaration of skill, an assertion that any enemy looking to get close enough to use it against them will be dead long before he can get a hand on it. The Hyuuga keep their hair long because of the Byakugan and its nearly inescapable field of view. Uchiha Itachi, Madara, Jiraiya, Inoichi, Kushina, Senju Hashirama, even Tsunade-they all proved in battle that they’d more than earned the right to wear their hair long. For Obito to do the same is a clear statement of ability, and the fact that he survived an invasion that killed off all of the remaining Konoha shinobi says that it’s not an empty boast.
It was clear, that day in the cave, that Obito was very, very good at using his Sharingan despite only just awakening it. And his Sharingan has the ability to use the Mangekyo without going blind (something Kakashi is unspeakably grateful for). So this Obito, with years of service as a high-ranking shinobi, is likely quite powerful.
Kakashi smiles again, because for all that he was a loudmouth, Obito was also right. He did become an amazing shinobi, and Kakashi only wishes that he had been there to see it happen.
He leaps down from the tree, hands tucked firmly in his pockets, and saunters over to the two men. “Morning,” he says cheerfully. Obito looks up with a wide, bright smile, painfully wonderful, and Kakashi feels his heart turn over in his chest.
“Kakashi!” the Uchiha says sunnily. “Isn’t it a gorgeous day?” He looks back, towards where children are just emerging from the Academy, flooding the grassy grounds, and Obito's heart is in his eyes, as ever. Kakashi can't bring himself to tease the man for it, though, just this once.
“Maa,” he says, nodding to Genma, who returns the gesture. “I was just going to get lunch. Up for ramen?”
Genma checks the position of the sun and winces a little. “Sorry, but I promised I’d check in with the Missions Desk before three. Apparently there's a batch of A-ranks they're trying to assign, and my wallet’s been getting a bit thin.” He pushes off the tree and nods to Obito. “See you around, Obito-kun. I look forward to working with you.” Then, with a wave, he heads back towards the Hokage Tower, dodging laughing Academy students.
Kakashi looks back at Obito, who’s watching him go. The Uchiha sighs softly and then pushes himself up to stand, stretching gracefully. “Ramen, you said?” he asks. “I haven’t been to Ichiraku in weeks.”
Almost in spite of himself, Kakashi pauses to study his former friend. Obito was always skinny as a child, under those baggy clothes he was forever wearing. Now, dressed in a standard jounin uniform with a tight shirt, it’s even clearer, especially given the hollowness of his cheeks that says food has been scarce for a while now. Two weeks in what was, for all intents and purposes, enemy territory, Kakashi thinks, and it hurts to contemplate Obito all alone among the corpses of his friends and comrades, trapped by an enemy army and driven into a corner to the point that his only viable choice was an untried jutsu that left his world behind forever.
Obito is watching him, Kakashi realizes when he returns to the present, lone eye carefully considering. He’s wary, and while maybe that’s to be expected, it feels like a damned kunai to the chest. Kakashi's never been one to talk about his feelings, even when he should-he still wonders, sometimes, if he could have made Sasuke stay by opening up to him a bit more-but here and now, faced with this second chance that seems entirely impossible, Kakashi isn't going to let that stop him. He takes a step forward, another, telegraphing intent because friend or not, Obito is a shinobi recently come from a warzone. Then he reaches out, snags an entirely uncomprehending Obito by his vest, and pulls him forward into a bone-crushing hug.
Obito goes stiff and startled in his arms, but Kakashi doesn’t let him escape. He ducks his head, wary of tearing up and the teasing it will undoubtedly bring, and drops his forehead onto Obito's shoulder, regardless of the difference in their heights.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, just loud enough for Obito to hear and understand. “For the eye, for being a friend even when I wasn’t, for pulling that stick out of my ass before I could get anyone else killed putting the mission first. You were right about my father, and about the rules, and-thank you, Obito.”
For a long, endless moment, Obito stays taut and unmoving. Then, slowly, he relaxes, and his arms come up to carefully circle Kakashi's shoulders. He chuckles, tipping his head to press gently against Kakashi's cheek, and his hair smells like hospital shampoo and Konoha sunlight. Another pause, and then he says softly, “You know, you’re never going to get rid of me now, Kakashi. If you’ve really acknowledged we’re friends, I'm going to stick to you like a really stubborn burr.”
Since Kakashi didn’t even know leaving was an option-though, of course, with that Phoenix Gate jutsu it’s entirely possible-and he very much doesn’t like it, he doesn’t argue. “Ah, well,” he says, pulling away just enough to clasp a hand around Obito's shoulder, “I suppose I’ll just have to bear it, then.” He takes a step back, though not a big one, and tucks his hands into his pockets again. “Ramen?”
Obito grins at him, bright and brilliant, and orders, “Lead the way.”