Apple of your eye
Summary: Obito always thought that, by surviving the war, he had stolen the life that rightfully belonged to Kakashi. A look at what may have been had different eyes been exchanged.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: not mine, don't sue.
Pairing: no particular pairing unless you want to read into stuff (which is alright, I kinda do it too, that way everybody's happy).
A/N: Sorry if this has already extensively been done before; pretty sure this is not the first take on the "Obito survived" plot, but hopefully it will be original enough that it won't bore you to death. As for the writing style, this is a bit of an experiment. I'm trying to see whether one should abide by the saying "show, don't tell" in order to write an appealing story. From what I've read, showing indeed works better and can be more subtle, but telling leaves the reader with a detached feeling that has very interesting effects when the author aims for that. Let's see if it works here!
1. Burning the candle at both ends
Obito's sensei stood in the exact middle of the first row, his back straight, a hand on the head of each of his remaining students. Behind them was a second row of shinobi clad in black burial clothes.
No more than a dozen of people had come to the ceremony. It was rather significant of how little that particular boy was liked by his village, even though he had held it and its shinobi in the highest place in his heart.
A gust of wind passed by them and Rin shivered, letting a few more tears fall. Obito wondered if her crush on Kakashi was enough to survive his death - but he was not going to act on it.
If Kakashi had sacrificed himself for Obito's sake, then Obito was going to live by Kakashi's values. He was going to make his comrade proud.
Their sensei grabbed the two of them in a wet and sniffling hug.
It was not long before the end of the third great shinobi war, or however they spelled it nowadays. Obito was not too much of a rules-abiding guy. He stuck to laws because he lived to serve his village, and since Kakashi's death he even did his best not to be late all the time anymore, but there were still silly rules that he did not want to respect.
Language rules were important because language itself was important. A lot more than just words was said in a sentence. Thinking "the Third Great Shinobi War" made it sound terrible and awe-inspiring. People fell in a hushed silence that resembled a little too much that of graveyards in Obito's taste, reminiscing about their fallen comrades.
Obito was trying to forget about graveyards, dead bodies, and especially that of Kakashi's, reduced to bloody chunks underneath tons and tons of heavy rocks, barely breathing until that last boulder crushed his hea–
Well, it was not too long before the end of all-out war, and their sensei became the Yondaime Hokage. Obito was proud of being the student of such a prestigious man, who was admired by the village and feared in all the other countries. The new Hokage was made for his job: a confident-looking, handsome, straight-faced man, reputed for the firm power dissimulated behind his gentle demeanour. He was not afraid of doing what the people needed and wanted no personal retribution for his hard work toward the greater good.
However, if Obito understood one thing about being a ninja, and about humans in general, it was that one should learn to read underneath the underneath. It was easy in this case. Underneath his sensei's sunny disposition was the same deep ache that resonated in Obito's and Rin's heart, perhaps magnified by the fact that he had considered Kakashi his son.
Hidden beneath another façade, that ache throbbed whenever they had a conversation and his sensei avoided looking at Kakashi's eye on Obito's face.
Rin deserted in the middle of the night, without telling anyone. There was little doubt of her allegiances - her family had died in the war and she had no roots remaining in Konoha without Kakashi. She had always been a free spirit.
Obito loved her all the same.
Minato-sensei married a loud redheaded girl named Uzumaki Kushina in fall, somewhere in the year between Rin's disappearance and the start of Obito's obsessive tendency with order.
The wedding was short and to the point. Because Minato-sensei had no blood family, the man sitting at his left side was Jiraiya, the Sannin of the Toad, and facing him at the main round table was Obito, his last student. The Sandaime Hokage acted as Kushina's parent though there was no way that would be the case.
The bride had a plump belly. Their child was born only a month later, on the tenth of October. It was a pleasant day. Somehow, Rin had gotten word of the happenings and sent a scroll containing trinkets for good health that possibly originated from the Stone country, or possibly were meant to confuse them as to her whereabouts.
It was good to know that she still cared about them a little, even if Jiraiya's reports indicated that a girl with markings on her cheeks looking a lot like hers had recently joined a terrorist organization or something like that. But a shinobi must never show emotion, so Obito was neither happy nor sad about that.
Naruto's trouble-free birth was celebrated because much anxiety had been felt over the weakening of the seal on her mother's belly during the pregnancy. Minato-sensei had had Obito and other trusted shinobi guard the delivery room, the hospital, and Konoha's entrances in fear of enemies appearing to release the Nine-Tailed Fox at this most opportune time.
(It appeared that his suspicion had been founded when they captured a frail-looking old man with Sharingan eyes. Thankfully, they killed him before he was able to threaten the new mother and her child. To Obito, this deserved nothing more than a parenthesis in his memoirs if he ever decided to write them. That brief encounter with the man was so insignificant that he soon even forgot about those Sharingan.)
Naruto was not entirely aware of what her existence meant for her father, but her behaviour showed that she at least had a subconscious inkling of her importance. She was a snotty, bratty, cheerful beacon amidst a sea of depressed shinobi. Minato-sensei confided in Obito that he was glad of her existence. He had been afraid of forgetting Kakashi before she started reminding him of his son by being his exact opposite in terms of personality.
Obito was promoted to jounin around the same time that whispers about the Uchiha began circulating in the higher circles of Konoha's politics. He was designated by the Hokage himself as his part-time guard. The other part went to being Naruto's official protector and caretaker.
Guarding the Hokage was no job for a fifteen-year-old unless that boy was the Hokage's most trusted student, and babysitting a child was no job for a jounin unless that child was the most prized girl of Konoha.
A shinobi must see the hidden meanings. Obito saw very well. It was both an aggressive and defensive move that proved its effectiveness in automatically shutting down the whispers. The clan heads and other political characters would be hard pressed to show wariness toward the Uchiha when the Hokage himself made it a show that he had absolute faith in one of that family. The Uchiha, who really had been fomenting trouble, were momentarily appeased at being recognized.
A shinobi must see the hidden meanings within the hidden meanings. Minato-sensei had noticed that Obito was clinging a bit too desperately to his last memories of Kakashi and had begun to emulate him in every possible way. He was not told as much directly, but Obito thought it was rather obvious that his sensei's main concern had been to give some meaning to Obito's life by making him a part of his family.
It did not really work as intended, but the thought was nice. Family was important.
Growing up, little Naruto had three teachers: Obito, Ebisu and Iruka. She made it no secret that her favourite of the three was the soft-hearted Iruka, who actually could handle her tantrums whereas Obito did not understand her and Ebisu had a tendency to spoil her rotten to make her shut up. Iruka, in her opinion, was a true teacher, instead of being boring like Obito or easily manipulated like Ebisu.
Obito was Naruto's babysitter and her oldest friend, or at least that was what she thought. Obito had long forsaken the idea of friendship. He understood family links, clan responsibilities, deference to the Hokage, but friendship was extraneous to a shinobi's way. Of course, Naruto made it her life goal to give him a change of heart and called him her friend anyway.
As it was, though he changed an outrageous number of nappies and sang her monotone lullabies for years, though he genuinely loved her as an older brother or young uncle, he never developed an ounce of authority over her. She liked him a bit too much to feel in any way as respectful of him as she was of her mother and father.
Naruto was turbulent since day one. She asked the most incredible questions... all the time... even repeating a few of them when she forgot the answers and was curious again... It was tiring. Obito's least favourite question, that came when she was four, was "why do you have a scar down your face?". After that incident, Obito took to hiding his left eye behind his ninja headband. She soon forgot about it.
By the time Naruto was old enough to understand about loss, Obito was so accustomed to seeing through only one eye that he did not even contemplate tying his headband elsewhere.
Because a shinobi must always put the mission first, Obito divided his days and nights cleanly between guarding the Hokage and guarding Naruto. There was little time for anything personal, which was fine with him. He learned to compartmentalize actions into boxes as small as seconds. Order and precision became his nindo so that he would not strive for Kakashi as much as he was afraid he would if he let himself room to breathe.
Mission first. Feelings later.
Naruto complained a lot about Obito when he babysat her. She said he was too strict, not funny, uptight, and oddly enough, she called him a walking rulebook. One day that Minato-sensei forcefully sat him down at the Namikaze dinner table, Obito learnt that Naruto also complained a lot about him when she was with her parents.
Her whining was cute and good-natured. Minato-sensei rolled his eyes and sent Obito a pointed glance with a small smirk, as if saying "look at that knucklehead", while Kushina pretended to listen but was hiding an amused smile behind her napkin. Still, there was a brief tinge of pain in Obito's heart. Why were they not defending him as they should? Why did they not tell her that a shinobi could not spend his or her time playing around but had a duty to honour? Why did they not explain it to her?
As weeks went by and Naruto grew at an age where she would soon enter the ninja academy, Obito became even more introverted, recited the shinobi rules at least once a day, and let his stern side take over to prepare her for her studies. Naruto reacted the only way she knew against what she perceived as unfairness: she defied him. She was louder and louder each day, acted rudely, talked back, refused to listen to his lessons or do the training homework he gave her, and once even kicked him in the chin outside of taijutsu lesson.
That painful prickle in Obito intensified until he felt the tangy taste of despair in his mouth.
Ebisu was Naruto's second teacher. She did not like him too much either at first, but Obito was confident that he would be better than himself had been for her. Obito's and Naruto's personalities seemed not to be compatible. Though Minato-sensei had looked disappointed, Obito knew that he had made the right choice in asking to be put on missions.
Konoha was a prosperous village. Because its Hokage was fair and strong, it knew no poverty, no inequalities, no social class clashes. Civilians and ninjas cohabited as peacefully as humans and human-tools could cohabit. There was thus no shortage of missions, as civilians did not hesitate to rely heavily on the shinobi system. Genin teams had plenty of D-rank missions to complete and grew to be competent ninja that would give their life for their village.
Obito managed his time so well that, between B-rank and A-rank missions, he could barely get a few hours of sleep. Again, this was what he wanted and needed. Little sleep meant that he did not have to suffer the scene of Kakashi's death every night. Were it possible, Obito would not have minded foregoing sleep as a whole if it meant never seeing Kakashi's bloody remains again.
As busy as he was with his missions, Obito missed the renewal of those insidious whispers that told of a brewing plot to betray Konoha among the Uchiha clan.