Obito Watches
Summary: It's amazing how much Obito can see with only one eye. OneShot.
Warning: … Woah! I don't remember this being so… deep. Okay, it has been some time since I wrote this. So… No major warnings except for my usual amount of angst and Team Seven. In two generations.
Set: Follows the story from Kakashi Gaiden to my last update on the Manga – which is: there is a war, Naruto fights, some dead people appear. Branches off there.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
It is amazing how much Obito can see with only one eye.
He does not feel pain. He is there, not alive but existent, and it is fine enough. A part of him will always continue living with Rin and Sensei and his family and, most of all, with Kakashi. Because Kakashi has his second eye, his newly acquired sharingan, and Obito can see it was the best gift he could ever have given the person that is his best friend in the world.
He does not, cannot, describe the place he is in now. It looks different every day and the people he asks agree on the fact that it looks different to every person here. Rin called the place Beyond the Dark Woods and the Silver Gate and the name is fitting because the entrance is a gate though it isn't silver. It shines in all colors and none and, once entered, there is no going back.
Obito doesn't need to go back. He left a part of him in the world of the living and as long as he is connected to Kakashi that way he will be able to see whatever Kakashi sees.
I.
Obito watched Kakashi and Rin break and mend and Sensei fall.
Kakashi visits the Cenotaph often. Too often for Obito's liking because he never liked the cold stone carved with hundreds of names. He prefers to remember the people the way they were, not the way they are now: cold and lifeless. Like stone. But Kakashi comes often and sometimes even talks to him. Obito can't answer – wouldn't it sound weird if Kakashi answered himself right back? – but he listens even more.
And he finds that listening reveals a lot more to the listener than he ever thought.
But he sees other things, too. Kakashi was twelve when he was promoted to jounin and, one year later, he joins ANBU. Precisely one year after Obito's death he puts on the porcelain mask for the first time and neither he nor Obito are able to miss the irony. Not surprising, it is a wolf mask. Kakashi, the loner. Kakashi, the silver wolf. Kakashi, the copy ninja with the one sharingan.
Obito watches.
In the year since his death, a rift has opened up between Rin and Kakashi. While Kakashi buries himself in work, Rin starts working in the hospital. Obito rarely sees her now. Sensei hasn't replaced him because both Rin and Kakashi refuse to have him replaced – but it doesn't really matter because their team doesn't really exist anymore anyway. Sensei is officially named the Yondaime Hokage and there is far too much work to do to take care of them any longer. (Besides, they aren't children anymore, they are soldiers.) Kakashi takes every A-rank mission he can get his hands on and Rin works triple shifts in the hospital and takes missions as field medic. Obito watches them and tries his hardest not to cry. They are barely thirteen, just children, for Heaven's Sake, they can't be treated as adults! But they aren't, and they are. And then Kakashi joins ANBU and it goes downhill from there.
For three months he takes one mission after another and returns home only to sleep restlessly for one night and to leave again the next day. Sensei can't talk him out of it because he knows there is no other way. Every single ANBU is needed; every single soldier is on the battle field that is their life. The short times Obito sees Sensei during meetings and mission debriefings, he looks weary and worn, tired and desperate. Rin looks small and tired, too, but he sees her far too seldom to say anything. He feels like screaming at Kakashi, like punching him because he has promised to take care of Rin and what is he doing instead? He refuses to see her, refuses to go meet her, doesn't even talk to her when they meet in the corridor. It takes a while for Obito to understand that this is the only way Kakashi can think of to protect her. After the realization has hit him he still feels like screaming but only because all of this seems so useless, so damn, damn useless. It isn't worth the price they are paying.
(The price is the heart and the soul and the innocence of Konoha's children.)
One night, Obito watches Rin and Kakashi meet on the battle field. Kakashi is a member of a team of ANBU operating deep undecover, Rin is a temporary field medic in a team of shinobi. Since everything is fair in war, the designated battle field has been mined by Konoha nin before the enemy is engaged and the screams, the stench of the burning flesh and the scraps and pieces of flesh and bone still make Obito gag. Kakashi feels sick, too, but he is fourteen years old and he has seen such things far too often.
But he has not gotten used to it and the thought breaks Obito's heart.
Behind Kakashi's mask is a dark void where a soul should be and his eyes are dark pools of nothingness. Kakashi has locked his heart away when he entered ANBU but he couldn't keep it there. Obito feels every death, every murder, with the same intensity as Kakashi does, with the same hopelessness and resignation and helpless fury. And he cries when his friend can't, he feels sick when Kakashi cannot. But Obito tries to soothe, too, tries to block the nightmares and the guilt and the hurt and the loneliness. Obito, who has had a family, never would have thought being an orphan could hurt so much. Maybe, if he had understood earlier, when he still was alive, he would have been able to open up to Kakashi more. But now it is too late and he can only try to be there, especially since the one who has been something like a father to Kakashi is too busy to keep an eye out for them, the one who has been like a brother and a best friend is dead and the girl he somehow loves is in danger whenever he is close.
Medics look alike on the battle field. They wear the same, nondescript uniform every shinobi wears, the green vest and the Konoha hitai-ate on their forehead. Things like the color of hair, the shape of a face and of the ghost of a smile don't matter when everything is drenched in blood, dust and mud. Still, Kakashi recognizes her instantly, even faster than Obito does. She is kneeling next to an injured kunoichi who is barely as old as they are (fourteen or thirteen, even) and tells the girl she will make it through. Back home. Her hands glow with chakra while she promises the girl she will see her parents and her sisters again and everything in her lithe figure tells Obito she is doing more than her best and she will succeed. But Kakashi knows better. He has seen the girl's injuries and he knows everything Rin can do is not enough. The girl dies seventy seconds later. Rin curses – something Obito has never heard her doing – and continues to pour her chakra into her, all but screaming at her to wake up and live. She collapses forty-seven seconds later, weak with the loss of chakra, and sobs without shedding tears. Obito feels Kakashi's inner turmoil. He keeps silent while quietly raging at him, pleading, cursing, shouting at the top of his lungs to do something. And maybe Kakashi hears him. Maybe he feels Rin has finally broken down, on this muddy, still-mined battle field. Maybe he sees she is unable to go on like this. Maybe Kakashi feels the suffocating longing between the three of them, too, the pulling and pushing and yearning and the fear and guilt that covers everything like a thick, suffocating blanket. Obito can't tell. But Kakashi silently moves towards her, still in his bloody ANBU mask and uniform, and the red lines of the wolf face almost vanish underneath the blood he is splattered with. He carefully picks her up, fourteen years old and strong enough to carry a thirteen-year old girl. That moment, that very second,finally, Obito realizes they aren't children anymore.
They are older, so much older than him.
Rin stops in her raging and just sobs brokenly into Kakashi's shoulder. He lets her, and he takes her away from the battle field, far into the forest, where no sound of shinobi can be heard. Obito watches them cling to each other with a desperation he can't feel and still shares and something like jealousy rises in his chest. He tries to touch her – touch Rin's tear-stained face and her soft skin and her calloused hands – but he can't. Obito can only watch through his (Kakashi's) eye and he feels too far away and, at the same time, closer than ever.
Sensei finds them, hours and hours later. He finds them sleeping, Rin in Kakashi's arms, both their bodies touching as much as possible as if they keep each other from losing touch with reality. Both still wear their blood-stained uniforms but Rin's medic armband has been cast aside along with Kakashi's mask and they look young and innocent and so, so small. Sensei sits in the tree above them and watches the sky and Obito watches it along with him.
Another year later, the three of them who once were Team Seven come just in time to see Sensei die, Kushina-san in his arms, and before them lays a small child with a rune seal on his stomach. It doesn't make one sound.
II.
Obito watches a new Team Seven being born.
Kakashi has watched the first member of his new team for a long time. Sensei died to save the village and his son is supposed to be a hero but people are ignorant and forget easily. Uzumaki Naruto is a social outcast, disliked, ignored, unloved, and the only reason he survives his childhood is that Konoha's ANBU keep an eye on him day and night. Kakashi is his greatest protector – he has no hand for children but while Rin and others take care of him, Kakashi makes sure nothing happens to them. Naruto – what a name, Sensei! – grows up to be an annoying, loud, silly, obnoxious boy who practically screams for attention with his pranks but who is ignored and hated. But he's not stupid. He reminds Obito of himself, a bit: the potential is hidden but there.
He'll be a great shinobi once.
Uchiha Sasuke is a complete prick with a stick as long as the Third's walking stick up his ass. He's arrogant and icy and sometimes Obito seriously feels embarrassed by this member of his family. But seeing what he has gone through – his entire family slaughtered in cold blood by his elder brother in front of his eyes – he has every right to be. Obito watches him and smolders angrily at his cousin's arrogance, feels like crying at his fate and like laughing out loud because he is totally like Kakashi. Serves him right to now have to deal with someone who is exactly like he once was.
Haruno Sakura isn't anything like Rin. Obito has no idea why some people compare them because the similarities are marginal at best. Sakura is a girly, short-tempered, fidgety child who relies too much on her team-mates. In the beginning, at least. Her open display of affection for the last Uchiha heir is something Rin never would have shown. But she, too, has something, she, too, is a raw diamond waiting to be polished. There is enough potential in her to make her a great kunoichi – if she wants to be one. Both Kakashi and Obito wish Rin was still there because she would be the best teacher for Sakura once she reaches the appropriate age, and she would know how to deal with the girl. But Rin is gone, has disappeared from the face of the earth, and neither of them knows what has happened to her. Obito likes to think she's alive because he hasn't met her yet in the Realms. But not everyone comes to the Silver Gate. Some go right on, some stay behind, one never knows.
Obito watches them fail the bell test and Kakashi congratulate them on being Team Seven nevertheless. He feels as proud as his best friend.
Obito watches them complete their first mission in Wave Country, watches them take the Chuunin exams and watches them struggle and fight.
When they are in about as old as Kakashi, he and Rin where when they were sent out to the front lines, Konoha's children seem to be put on trial yet again. Though there is no sign of a war – thanks Heaven for that – The first falling leaves bring a snake, a collaborator and a traitor and call forth the best in all of the Konoha's Rookie Eleven. It isn't enough, though.
It never is.
Teaching Sasuke Uchiha was useless, Obito thinks, but Kakashi doesn't agree. He has failed, yes – he has failed Sasuke and Naruto and Sakura and he has failed Sensei and Kushina-san, too. But he has tried his best and he refuses to give up now. Naruto goes on a training trip with Jiraiya-san and Sakura finds a teacher in Tsunade-hime and Kakashi goes back to doing what he does best: he returns to ANBU. Once ANBU, always ANBU, Obito thinks and accompanies his friend. Their search, which has been laid to rest for a while, is now taken up again and Obito searches along with Kakashi although he knows it is futile: Neither Rin nor Sasuke will be found.
One year passes and their other two students return and best them in a training fight and Obito is as proud as Kakashi is.
III.
Obito watches a new war break out.
He has hoped – has desperately hoped – this might be spared to the children he loves like his own, like Kakashi does. Kakashi has grown up and somewhere along the line Obito grew up with him and even though he might still only be able to watch (and to talk to Kakashi, sometimes) he still is there. He never had the chance to grow up but Kakashi has and with him, Obito has, in a strange way. They are connected for as long as Kakashi has Obito's eye and Obito never thinks of asking it back. It's weird, watching through one eye, but Kakashi's other eye is almost Obito's as well by now, the same way Obito's is Kakashi's.
Obito watches Orochimaru and Pain attack Konoha. And he fights, too – he fights alongside with Kakashi and all the other shinobi from Hidden Leaf. As Kakashi, he wonders how far the young students have made it. Kurenai's Team Eight fights as hard as Asuma's Team Ten and Gai's Team Twelve. And Sakura fights, too – the last remnant of Kakashi's Team Seven. They all give their best and even though it isn't enough – it never is – they buy time for Naruto to return. Naruto fights Pain and defeats him, but he wouldn't ever have made it without the help of all the people who gave their lives for him to do so. Kakashi dies, too.
Obito doesn't see what Kakashi sees in those few minutes of hovering between life and death. He closes his eye and deliberately refuses to peek. It's a private conversation between father and son that takes place and Obito knows he has no place here. He can close his eye, but he cannot stop listening to Kakashi's heart. He learns a lot during that time, he learns what Kakashi learns and they both keep it in their hearts forever. If anyone would ask, Obito might admit (although it would have to be someone he trusts with everything he has) that he is waiting.
Waiting for Kakashi to die and join him.
But Naruto defeats Nagato, and Nagato revives the fallen, and Kakashi and Obito wake, as well.
The fights don't end here. Danzo is chosen as new Hokage and Obito silently rages while Kakashi smiles crookedly but he isn't able to hide his thoughts from his best friend. And the summit of Kages takes place and Danzo is assassinated by Sasuke and Tsunade-hime wakes and all the shinobi countries go to war against Kabuto and his army of dead. Kakashi fights, and Obito fights alongside him as they always did. They meet many people – dead and unforgotten and dead and forgotten alike. They watch from far as Sakura and Naruto fight, as well, and pride is mingled with fear for them. And Sasuke appears again, as well, and Naruto almost dies fighting him and Sakura offers her life in exchange for Naruto's.
Sakura dies and Sasuke returns to Hidden Leaf and Kabuto is killed by his own puppets. It all comes down to fairness, Obito thinks, satisfied, while Kakashi feels the loss of his next student. He loses them all to something, he thinks, Sasuke to the quest for power (and to Orochimaru and Itachi), Sakura to love (so she did love Naruto, in the end) and Naruto to bitterness (because he only now realizes a person never can have everything one wishes for). Maybe Naruto's loss is the least one because Naruto lost illusions and now sees reality. He lost Sakura in exchange for gaining a thoroughly broken Sasuke and everyone in Konoha is of the same opinion.
They'd rather kept Sakura than have Sasuke instead.
Sasuke might be broken, disillusioned, abandoned, bitter and empty, but he isn't stupid. He knows exactly what people think about him. But he keeps his mouth shut, rarely shows himself in public and slowly starts to take up life again.
Obito rages, in between fits of justified grim and hysterical laughter. He does so because Kakashi cannot. Obito blames Sensei for not being around when they needed him. He blames Rin for leaving and never returning. He blames Kakashi for being blind for too long time and for not having been able to save his students. He blames the Uchiha for being traitors, he blames Kushina Uzumaki for having been the kyuubi's host, blames Danzo for having been a thoroughly twisted visionary idiot and Naruto for being Naruto and Sakura for being exactly like Rin, but only during her last breath. Rin, too, in the end, has given everything for the two men she loved and even though nobody can tell she probably has died for it. Sakura has died for Naruto and Sasuke and left two broken shells without apparent souls.
And Obito blames himself for only being able to watch.
IV.
Obito watches the world continue to turn.
It does so. It really does. Summer turns to fall and fall to winter and when the first spring flowers bloom, Kakashi and he look outside and see Naruto and Sasuke spar.
They do so with great care. They haven't spoken much since last fall, when Sakura died to save them both. Konoha has been rebuilt (still is) and the war has ended and slowly, oh-so-slowly, peace starts to feel normal again. Team Ten goes back to meeting on a hill on the outskirts of Konoha to watch the clouds and share a cigarette instead of doing so on the battle field. Team Eight celebrates the Hyuuga heiress' official nomination. Team Twelve goes on a training trip to Wave and returns bruised and bloody and laughing like idiots. Even Hyuuga Neji grins. And Team Seven – the last remaining members of Team Seven – begin to feel again. Naruto casts aside duty and work as the official future Rokudaime for one morning and Sasuke leaves the Uchiha estate for more than a mission the same day and they meet on the training grounds like they have nine years before. They test each other, test boundaries, never really seem to hit. Naruto doesn't touch Sasuke and Sasuke doesn't seem to know how to react. They barely speak. From a tree, Kakashi and Obito watch and silently discuss whether to intervene or not. Obito want to, Kakashi refuses to, and Obito calls him a hopeless fool and eternal optimist. Kakashi turns out to be right (and he never lets Obito live it down): Finally, Naruto lands a solid punch and Sasuke hits back and they somehow ruin the entire training grounds. Thanks God it is early morning and nobody witnesses their Hokage scream at his oldest friend and enemy like a madman, and, sadly, nobody witnesses the last Uchiha heir having the ground wiped with his ass. And he does fight back and Naruto has to pack his share of punches and in the end, they part without once looking back. But Obito has the feeling that they just might be able to get over Sakura's loss and Sasuke's betrayal and that probably is more than anyone could say about them. Kakashi feels… confused, perhaps, and thankful and a bit relieved. Obito feels hopeful. Maybe life can go on.
Kakashi is marking off on him. It seems Obito's becoming the same eternal, hopeless optimist.
Obito watches Team Ten laugh again and Team Eight have a picnic in the Hyuuga Estate's gardens and Team Twelve enjoy a training match all-out against their teacher and Team Seven build bridges. After two years of cold silence, Naruto and Sasuke talk to each other again.
Which is just as well. The Rokudaime must be able to talk to his strongest jounin.
V.
Obito watches Kakashi die.
It's an odd feeling. One second he is there and here, a piece of him alive, another piece extent, and he feels the kunai pierce Kakashi's lungs and torso. Because Kakashi is Kakashi, he continues fighting and by the time the porcelain mask has fallen to the ground no enemy is alive anymore. The wolf mask cracks but does not break and both smile at the fact that Kakashi lived as a loner and now will die as a loner, alone in the woods of Konoha. But he dies a good death, Kakashi reckons, he has fulfilled a mission and has brought down a terrible enemy and the Rokudaime and the people of Hidden Leaf will be safe. Maybe the Rokudaime shouldn't be in the first place in his mind but Naruto is Sensei's son and his legacy and the only one left of what once was Team Seven.
The next second, Obito is standing next to Kakashi, looking down on him.
The forest floor underneath them is wet and cool and familiar. Kakashi dies in the place he loves most: in the forest, near the outskirts of Konoha. Above the still-leafless branches of trees, the bright-blue spring sky is visible. What is it like? Kakashi asks and Obito needs a second to realize he is really talking to him. It's beautiful, he replies, and he feels happiness spark inside of him. Kakashi will join them now, will join him and Sensei and Rin and Sakura and all the ones who have been waiting for so long to see him again.
Obito has waited, too. Watching isn't the same as seeing.
Kakashi does not die a quick death but he does not feel pain. His eyes do close, though, and suddenly Obito is blind. There is nothing he can see, nothing he can feel, and he panics. The connection he and his best friend have shared for the past thirty years is gone, suddenly severed by death. Obito fights the urge to claw at his eyes but cannot stop his hands from desperately grabbing for something. He buries his nails in his fists and tries to breathe deeply and controlled.
His eyes are there. He opens them carefully.
The first moment, he is overwhelmed by what he sees. Seeing with two eyes is so different than seeing with one eye. He feels complete again and, at the same time, terribly incomplete. Kakashi isn't there. He can't feel him. Kakashi is dead.
"Stop pulling faces," a voice tells him and Obito looks up and sees Kakashi. The silver-haired man smirks down on him. "Obito, you're a grown man now. Haven't you learned not to sprawl in the dirt?"
And even though Obito has had thirty years to grow up, even though Obito has had thirty years to prepare for this moment and thirty years to think about what he would say, he has no idea what to do. He reacts instinctively and bites out a retort and Kakashi's face crumples into a smile. Not his forced smiles he learned when he had to. Not the arrogant smiles he has given Obito so many times before. But a honest, a small, a real smile, and Obito grins back.
It feels so familiar.
"Come on, let's go see them."
He gets up from the ground and almost falls over his own feet. Kakashi grabs his arms to steady him. The world has suddenly gained a new depth, Obito thinks and he can read in Kakashi's eyes that he thinks the same. They both stare at their surroundings for a while. They both need some time to get used to the fact that they now can see, see clearly with their two eyes. Obito only sees what is in front of him. Kakashi suddenly sees without the red haze of the sharingan. It's an entirely new perspective. Something lost, something gained.
"I never thought there'd be so many surprises in death," Kakashi muses. Obito laughs out loud. "That's what I thought, too."
On the other side of the Silver Gates, the others wait.