Kannabi Bridge AU: In which Fuuko 'awakens' as a child and stops Obito from being crushed by the rocks.
Kakashi froze at their words. It couldn't be. Fuuko had died during the mission of Kannabi bridge. She had been crushed by the rocks.
"Are you sure?" he heard Tenzo ask Obito.
He wouldn't, couldn't doubt Obito's words. If there was anyone else apart from him who knew the Hatake kenjutsu, it would be Obito. His sister was alive.
His sister was alive.
He clenched his jaw under the weight of pouring guilt. He felt his sister there under the rocks and she had lived. She could can recuperated had he brought her back, had he brought sensei to the rocks, had he…
Kakashi scrubbed his face angrily. He failed her once, he wasn't going to fail her another time. He spun around, vaulting across the railings and leapt across the roofs.
"Sempai!" "Kakashi!"
Orders could screw themselves. He wasn't going to sit around and wait for the Hokage to assign him a mission to find his sister. There were no delusions about it, he was too close to her to think clearly and the Hokage would never send him out. Not to mention his sister was in a master criminal organisation. He let out a mirthless laugh, the Hokage might not even want to bring her back. Dashing through the village gates, he ignored the ANBU that took off after him or the jounins. Short of Shisui and Gai, there was no one else faster than in brute speed alone.
The ANBU squad and the team of jounins eventually dropped back after several kilometres from the gates. There was no reason to pursue him. He hadn't committed a crime yet and Kakashi was a known loyal shinobi. There was no reason to doubt him.
\W/ \W/ \W/
The figure tilted her head at him, oddly reminiscent of how Fuuko used to do when she was a baby.
"Fuuko!" He called out again. She stood on the edge of the rooftop, like a startled bird, ready to flee. "Imouto-" Kakashi said, his voice ragged with emotion.
She lifted her head onto the mask, the orange curls paring away to reveal not the dark grey eyes he remembered by the red, shining sharingan. His sister couldn't have had the sharingan, it was impossible! His mind screamed at him, but even under the heavy disfigurement of her right side, Kakashi could recognise the face that she could have been. The jaw, the nose and even the left eye was all father's.
She was his sister.
"Hatake Kakashi." She jumped off the roof and landed several meters from him, not even the slightest displacement of dust to indicate her landing.
"I didn't know you- survived." Words that he had rehearsed in his brain repeatedly throughout the run failed him now. She blinked owlishly at him. "Please. Come back with me. To Konoha." He would not even dream of calling Konoha home for her. Ten years had come and gone. Kakashi struggled to find the sister he remembered in her and found almost none.
"Sempai!" Itachi called out from behind. He turned to see Itachi and Obito joining them.
"What are you doing here?"
"We couldn't let you face her alone." An S-class criminal. The unstated insinuation did not pass him by. Kakashi wanted to bare his teeth and declare she would not harm him, however that would only be lying to himself. The woman that stood before him was a ghost of his younger sister.
"I will not go to Konoha." Her face still blank like a noh mask.
"Then take me with you!"
"Kakashi!" Obito grabbed him and Kakashi wrenched his arm from his grip. "What do you think you're doing? Are you so sure that she's your sister that you'll become a missing-nin for her?"
"I'm her nii-san! I should have protected her. I should have been by her bedside when she was recovering. I don't care about being a shinobi if it means being without her."
She's the only family I have left.
"Yet you left me there, bleeding on the rocks." Her stock still posture, slouched forward in an arrogant manner that could have scraped the sky. "You left me there to die when I protected you two." She sneered at them. Her face, no longer the noh mask, was a mask of fury.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please let me have the chance to make up for it."
"I have no use for another Hatake. Maybe an Uchiha." She appeared beside Obito, sliding her finger down his jaw before he could even react. "Tell me Obito-kun, did you mourn for me? Did you cry for me? You did, didn't you? You were always such a big cry baby after all, "she whispered into his ear.
In a movement too fast, she leapt forward to Kakashi, her kunai on the vein of his neck. "A Hatake for an Uchiha?" Fuuko smiled at him. How could she have turned into this? He had abandoned her, he was lower than trash.
"Imouto…"
Her face spasmed, fingers releasing the kunai. Fuuko backpedaled, staring disgustedly at her hands. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she fell to her knees, clutching her face.
"Imouto…?"
"I can't stop it for long," she told him.
"It?"
"I was a bad girl. I wouldn't help him," she replied hoarsely. Kakashi reached for her hand, peeling it from her face. Where the rocks had landed was a web of white skin, her hands were equally discoloured.
"Who's him?"
"Him." She tightened her fingers around his. "Bravery is not the absence of fear-"
"-but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear," he continued. It was her, there was no one else who could have known it in that strange language she taught him. "Let me come with you."
"No. I can't protect you if you do."
"I'm your nii-san, I'm supposed to protect you."
"You don't know him." She pressed her head against his collarbone. "Besides, I need you to protect someone else more important in Konoha."
"No one is more important than you."
She looked at him and smiled ruefully. "There is someone always more important than a me and that is the fate of the world. You must protect-"
Her face drew blank again and she pushed him back, the kunai back at his throat. "So which Uchiha will it be?"
Itachi stepped forward. "Let him go. I'll come with you."
"Itachi-kun! No. What about the clan?"
"You'll protect it as I'll protect her." He crossed over to her side and inclined his head to Kakashi. A promise that would not need any words.
Notes: Not going to lie... Villain!Fuuko was fun to write.
