There is a drumming in her head. It builds and it builds and it builds, constant, forever demanding her attention. Three beats, pause, three beats.
Tails on a shell.
Rin takes a deep breath, quiets her mind as best she can, and lets her hands glow green with the chakra of a medic.
(Her green is too dark. It does the work all the same.)
She had opposing chakra natures before; fire and water, chakra paper an ashy mush in her hands. Now, though, now she calls to water like she was born in it, feels it wash her free of her sins.
Of her curse.
Calm, the turtle grumbles, great shell heaving as they shift, just slightly. Calm, calm, calm. Too calm.
(There is no such thing as too calm.)
She's drunk, and she's tired—Obito is dead and Kakashi is throwing himself into suicide missions, and Rin...
Well.
Rin is tired, and she's drunk, and about to do something that is probably rather stupid.
"Do you have a name?" she says, to both an empty apartment and a half-submerged cage.
Isobu, the three tails responds, and Rin is drunk.
Rin is drunk, and she says, "That's a nice name."
Isobu says nothing.
They painted unstable seals on her body, unstable and broken and made of blood and still drying ink. Rin screamed and yelled and cried, let her hands light up green as she carved swathes out of the surrounding area.
And then a voice told her what to do.
(They shouldn't have let her go with the ink still wet.)
Medics always are the most dangerous.
Isobu curls around her, comforting, warm, lit up in beautiful shades of sea-green-blue. His massive shell shifts as he moves, shifts as he curls around her.
Comforting.
It's a cold version of it though, knowing that she has something to share this with; because they dig a red-tipped needle into her shoulder, hand her a porcelain mask, and they're quiet as they say, "Welcome to ANBU, Turtle."
She works with Hound, the most—works with Kakashi, really, and they know each other even if neither of them ever take their masks off. He's ozone and the burning tingle of electricity in her hair; she's grime and brimstone and water, topped with the precision-green of a medic.
"I never thought I'd be able to handle knowing how to heal and to kill," she admits, with Hound sitting high in the trees above her and Isobu curled around her mind.
You're doing fine, Isobu says, wraps his chakra around her like a hug.
"Why did you join ANBU?" Kakashi asks, because he's curious and he doesn't know, not really. No one knows—just another Jinchuriki and the Hokage; just Kushina and Minato.
"I didn't have a choice," she says, because she didn't.
"What was your family like, if you had one?" She asks, once. Isobu curls up, in that way he does when he's preparing to tell her a story. Rin settles in to listen.
A giant three-tailed turtle tells her about beings made of chakra, the sons of the Sage of the Six Paths, and how they are the remnants of a sealed monster's chakra, split so that no one could ever summon it again.
"Why did the Kyuubi attack Konoha, then?" Rin asks, because she's a child, misinformed, told history in a way only slightly like it happened.
"Because he had no choice," Isobu tells her, and he knows she'll understand.
When everything goes to shit, Minato sends her after Tsunade. It's the last order he gives her; as the Kyuubi rages and thrashes and Kushina lays, dying.
As they prepare to seal Isobu's brother in their son.
"They're going to hate him," she says, even as she runs and runs and runs, taking Isobu's chakra to push her faster, because people will die unless she gets back in time.
I know, Isobu says, because he watched from her eyes as people shunned her, shunned Kushina, shunned anyone and everyone who stood proud of something different and anyone and everyone who stood ashamed of the same. I know.
It's a two-day run to Tsunade's last known location, but Rin pushes herself and drags chakra up from the depths of her reserves, and she makes it in one. She finds her with a girl and a pig (which she hadn't expected), spending both what she has and what she doesn't as she gambles (which she had expected, sadly enough).
"Tsunade-sama," she says, keeps her voice steady even as she's panicking, because she's ANBU and she's trained for this. "There's been an attack. Konoha is in need of your medical skills."
Tsunade grunts, looks at her for half a second then looks back at her cards. "You're new," she says, "you weren't in ANBU when I was in Konoha."
"No," Rin says, "I wasn't." She makes no move to remove her mask, but she does let Isobu's chakra leak from her pores, lets Tsunade know there's more than one jinchuriki residing in Konoha. When dark eyes widen, when the Slug Sannin stands and storms out of the bar, obviously intending for Rin to follow, she knows she's succeeded.
"Okay," Tsunade says, whirls, stares Rin down now that they're alone. (Or, they would be alone, if not for Isobu curled around her mind, and the dark-haired girl with a pig cradled in her arms.) "How does Konoha have two bijuu now?"
Rin laughs, and it's something dark and deep and terrible, grating with Isobu's chakra. "Konoha isn't great at keeping track of their medic-nin," she says. "People could take advantage of that, if they wanted."
Tsunade looks at her, says, "If you're a Bijuu-powered medic-nin, why aren't you saving people yourself?" and Rin grins a grin that's all teeth.
"Because bijuu chakra is corrosive," Isobu says with her mouth, "and we would burn people alive if we tried."
Tsunade stares, and Rin slips back into herself, sighs at the silent shock. "Look," she says, "I'm kind of in a hurry, because I ran all the way here to get your help. Someone pulled the Kyuubi from Kushina and set on Konoha, and you're the best healer we have."
She looks up at that, just as Rin knew she would; not as worried about Konoha as she is about Kushina—as she is about the little Uzumaki, granddaughter of her mother's sister, ex-container of the Kyuubi no Kitsune. "Kushina?" she says, and Rin smiles, soft and sad.
"No jinchuriki can survive having their bijuu removed," she says, "I'm sorry."
Tsunade sighs, closes her eyes; a silent moment of mourning for a girl she left too soon to truly get to know. But Rin doesn't have time for this—she's hyper-aware that for every second she's gone, it's likely more will die.
The dark-haired girl must see something in her eyes, through the holes in her ANBU mask, because she hesitates, steps forwards and says, "Tsunade-sama, are we going to help?"
Rin watches as one of the most powerful kunoichi of this generation stands up from where she's slumped against the wall, meets her student's eyes and says, firm and strong and powerful, "Yes."
And she grins.
They get back to Konoha in time for Tsunade to take the hat, in time to save half of those who would have died from the Kyuubi's corrosive chakra.
When it gets to the problem of Naruto, Rin slips from her position in the rafters as part of the Hokage's guard, removes her mask, and says, "Let me take him." Isobu rumbles his agreement, and Rin lets his chakra leak into the air, smiles the same way Kushina used to when the Kyuubi pushed at her bindings, leashed but still enough to scare.
Tsunade looks at her, the student of Naruto's father and a jinchuriki herself, and says, "Rin will take him."
The elders protest, clamouring to be heard, but Rin ignores them. "Thank you, Hokage-sama," she says, bows, "I'll do my best to take care of him."
"You'd better."
She has a kid, now, but she's ANBU too—an ANBU captain at that—and they can't risk leaving her out of the mission roster. So she takes missions when she can; leaves Naruto with Kakashi and his dogs, or with Shizune and Tsunade, and knows she can trust them to take care of him while she's gone.
It's on one of these missions that she meets Nii Yugito, a jounin from Kumo who makes Isobu perk up, more excited than she's ever seen him.
Matatabi, he whispers in her head, Matatabi, Matatabi, Matatabi.
Rin meets the other jinchuriki's eyes—and quietly, absently, notes that fuck, she's pretty—before she elects to just… not. Nope. Isobu pouts at the lack of contact, nudges her with his chakra, does anything he can to get her attention. She's used to avoiding distraction, though, and she ignores both the bright flare of the other jinchuriki's chakra and Isobu's nudging in order to continue the mission.
Akatsuki is—Akatsuki is a problem. They're coming for Naruto—for her Naruto—and they've gone for others as well.
And worse: Konoha only knows because they went after Kumo first; went after Nii Yugito first, who only survived because they went hunting expecting the Nibi and got the Hachibi as well.
And Yugito had run to her first, gone to the Raikage and gained permission to head for Konoha; to warn Konoha's jinchuriki. To warn Rin.
She's grateful—of course she is; this warning gives her time to protect herself and Naruto, and she's so, so grateful.
"Thank you," she says, and she's practically crying, because Yugito came for her.
Came to save her. Saw her once, felt the way Matatabi and Isobu's chakra resonated, just as Rin did, and then risked her life after being attacked to travel from Kumo to Konoha with a warning.
Personally.
"It was nothing," Yugito says, smiles with slightly pointed teeth—and wow, that's more attractive than it probably should be, bad Rin—and her voice is soft, kind, with a musical lilt. Rin loves it, both because it's the voice that carried the news of Akatsuki to Tsunade and because it's gorgeous; a voice she could listen to forever and never get tired of. "Matatabi would have torn me apart if I didn't warn you and Isobu."
"Still," Rin says, "You've brought us a warning. I can't thank you enough."
Yugito smiles, something slightly shy and completely adorable, and says, "You could get dinner with me?"
Rin chokes on her own spit.
They don't get dinner, but, well…
Rin invites Yugito around to her place. They have dinner, a dinner with Naruto chatting away and Yugito's sweet smiles and Isobu rumbling, more content than he's been in a while, because there are three bijuu and three jinchuriki in the same place, and strength in numbers is something he firmly believes in.
She's not used to this. Not used to the cheer and the comfort, not used to how Yugito's eyes fall to her lips sometimes, as she eats her food. She's ANBU, the Sanbi's jinchuriki; nothing that anyone would want.
But here—here with Yugito laughing as she ruffles Naruto's hair, with Kakashi's chakra lightning-bright as he walks in the door, with Isobu's contented grumble in the back of her head—here, she feels like she's finally found a home.
And she thinks she could get used to that.
Omake:
"Rin?" Naruto asks—because that's what he calls her: not mom, never mom, she couldn't take that away from Kushina, gods—looking up with curiosity in his eyes. She's wary, always, when he gets like this, even now, at twelve, because it almost always means he's going to ask some awkward or embarrassing question. "Are you and Yugito dating?"
She almost sighs, because that's normal, and answerable. Easily so, in fact. "Yeah, we are!" she tells him, smiles gently. Rin likes being able to smile at Naruto. It's a good feeling.
"But what about Kakashi?" he asks, and Rin tilts her head, confused.
"Aren't you dating?" he asks, and Rin closes her eyes as she feels her face start to burn. "Everyone else has a mom and a dad—except for Sasuke, the bastard—but I've got you and Kakashi and Yugito now too!"
"Here!" Rin calls through Kakashi's window, after dumping Naruto on his couch. "You can deal with his embarrassing questions."
"His what?" Kakashi asks, poking his head out of his bedroom.
"Kakashi!" Naruto yells, "Are you and Yugito and Rin all dating?"
Kakashi turns, betrayal visible on his face even through the mask, but Rin's already gone.
I'm going to go make out with my girlfriend and pretend I never had to deal with the mental image of Kakashi and me together, she tells Isobu. He just laughs at her, the bastard.