Title: Another Boy's Life
Summary: What if Kakashi had died instead of Obito?
He could see it out of the corner of his eye, just in time. The rocks were falling and Obito could see the tragedy unfold a split second before it even happened. But he couldn't move, and then it was too late.
Obito stumbled through the cloud of dust, staggering and tripping, falling to his knees next to Kakashi, who was breathing in short shallow breaths. He looked at his teammate's face – what was visible of it, at least – and swallowed the bile rising in his throat. Kakashi looked back at him. Blood had splattered all over his pale skin. Bright red that looked artificial like paint.
They'd learned something about what the colour of blood could tell you about the injury, but Obito couldn't recall it for the life of him. All he could remember was the way Ito-sensei used to shake his finger at them in that clichéd manner of his when he lectured the class about the war. Like he had time for his brain to come up with this kind of junk.
"Obito… Rin," Kakashi said softly.
"We're here." Rin took his hand. Obito hadn't even noticed her approaching. Her voice was gentle and reassuring, though. So there was hope. Of course there was hope. She was a medical ninja. They'd get Kakashi out of there and she'd heal him.
He put his hands on the cold surface of the rock and lifted from his knees like his father had taught him. Obito grit his teeth as the damp palms of his hands couldn't find proper grip and sharp edges bit into his skin.
"Stop!" Rin shouted, pulling on his arm roughly enough to make him fall back on his knees next to her. "You're making it worse!"
"We've got to get the rock off him!" How could she not see that? Wordlessly, she shook her head. He took in Rin's tear-filled eyes, her trembling lips… "We can't just leave him here," he half-whispered urgently.
"Obito…" Kakashi's breathless voice was barely audible despite their proximity. "I… It's… over."
"You can't just give up! You can't!" Obito knew he was doing this all wrong. He shouldn't be yelling at Kakashi, he should be saying encouraging things instead. Tell him it would be alright, they'd get him back to Konoha… But he could see it now, through the blur of tears, that it wouldn't be alright, that it would never be alright again.
"There's a scroll," Kakashi forced out. "In my apartment… I want you t have it. Ta..ke good care of…"
Obito waited for the end of the sentence. It didn't come, instead Rin drew in a ragged sob that sounded like she was being sliced open to her very core.
Obito screamed.
-x-
"I know a secret!" Rin sang and did a girly little twirl that looked so adorable, Obito thought he might just keel over from the sheer force of it. He hadn't seen her this happy and carefree ever since that day. Her giddiness was enough to make him smile as well.
"What's the secret?" he asked, exaggerating his curiosity a little for effect. In truth, he wasn't on for gossip, but he cared about Rin, and didn't want to ruin her mood. Seeing her smile had become a rare occurrence, despite the end of the war.
Sure, the war was over and the two of them were currently strolling through the peaceful streets of their home village, but the scene was missing something. Someone.
"I can't tell you," Rin said, still smiling. The strap of her backpack was slowly sliding down her shoulder. Obito had offered to help her carry her equipment, but she'd declined, saying that she'd have to carry it for two weeks so she might as well get used to it now.
Obito sighed. He didn't get girls. The older they got, the harder it was to understand them, it seemed.
"Then why did you even tell me you had a secret? Now I want to know!"
"I just had to tell someone!" Rin grinned, then frowned a little concernedly. "It's not really mine to tell. So just forget about it, okay? Besides you'll probably hear all about it yourself before I get back."
Obito shoved his hands into his pockets. Thinking about Rin's mission completely destroyed his good mood. She'd be gone for weeks, and every step they took brought them closer to the village gate where she would meet with her squad. He missed her already.
Rin cocked her head at him. "Oh, don't look so glum. It's a happy secret!" she said.
Minutes later she left the village.
He never saw her again.
-x-
Obito stared dully at the cenotaph. Years ago, he'd placed his goggles under the freshly carved characters of Kakashi's name, promising to become a better shinobi. Stronger, more dependable. He'd never be late again, he'd never be weak again, he'd never cry again. He'd kept his promise. Mostly. He'd still cried for Rin and he was almost crying now, for Sensei and Kushina-nesan… and the baby probably, too, if he thought about it.
The baby… Naruto…
Konoha was little more than rubble, but instead of rebuilding people were busy arguing about Naruto. Obito felt his nails digging into his palm. Around him the air still tasted faintly of ashes. They said Naruto was a monster, that he'd be the end of the village sooner or later.
Most of them seemed to have already forgotten that he was the Fourth's son. The Fourth, Minato-sensei, who'd sacrificed himself to save them. No one wanted Naruto. Some even said he'd be better off dead. Sandaime would not tolerate that kind of talk, of course, but knowing that people thought like that was enough to enrage Obito.
Everything he'd done seemed pointless. He'd trained harder than ever, he'd improved, copied techniques, and, like a few others, had been appointed jounin in the aftermath of the attack. But, really, if he was honest with himself, he'd failed. He'd failed Kakashi, he'd failed Rin, he'd failed Minato-sensei.
He had made no difference.
"What should I do?" he asked the stone, the ghosts of Kakashi, Rin, Minato and Kushina. "What would you want me to do?"
The answering silence was deafening.
-x-
"I'll take care of Naruto." Obito had intended this to come out as a forceful statement, but his voice sounded weak even to his own ears. It was enough to stall Sandaime's brush, though, which came to an abrupt halt millimeters from the paper.
Sandaime looked up at Obito for the second time since he'd entered the slightly worse for wear office. He sighed long and – Obito thought – quite sadly. A drop of ink hung quivering on the brush's tip. "I had hoped to hear these words," he said. "But not from you."
Obito stood, stock still, arms at his side, determined to not allow himself to sag with relief. "There's somebody else who will take him?"
Maybe it was cowardly to hope for that option, but Obito was still a teenager, and he'd only just made jounin. Not to mention that he knew absolutely nothing about babies, except that they seemed to cry and poop a lot. What he did know, however, was that right now, apart from the Third himself, a bunch of older women took care of Naruto – because Sandaime paid them – and that one could often see them glare at Naruto while they rushed through the tasks they had to perform.
Obito knew that, if Rin were still alive, she would not allow this. She would have taken Naruto in a heartbeat. Because it was the right thing to do. He had said it himself to Kakashi, hadn't he? You don't abandon your teammates. And Naruto… In a way, he counted, too.
"No," Sandaime said, crushing Obito's hopes. "There is nobody else."
"Then I will do it."
Carefully, the reinstated Hokage put his brush down on his desk and directed an unnervingly searching gaze at Obito, who didn't falter. Kakashi would not have faltered.
Sandaime nodded as if to himself. "If you come to me tomorrow with the same determination, we'll talk about the details."
Obito bowed and left, not sure whether to be happy or terrified. Either way his heart was pounding in his chest loud enough to drown out everything else.
-x-
Obito hadn't talked to anyone about his plan to "adopt" – although he avoided thinking about it in those terms since he was way too young to be a parent - Naruto so far because a) it was his decision and he was the only who could make it and b) he had no idea who to ask about it.
This had been something for team Minato. There had been exactly two people in the world (apart from Minato and Kushina themselves, of course) who would have been in the same position as him. Kakashi and Rin, but both of them were long dead. Jiraiya might have been an option, but as far as Obito had heard, he had already left Konoha again.
So Obito had been the one left. Naruto, he figured, was his responsibility. He'd told his parents as much, but they had not understood his reasoning at all.
"The kyuubi child?" his father had asked incredulously and Obito had had to remind himself all of a sudden that he loved and respected his father. His mother had only shaken her head in a mournful manner. "It's very…" she had paused then, obviously grasping for a word – any vaguely positive word – in the dark, "…noble of you to care so much, but he is dangerous, you know?"
"He cannot live with the clan," his father had interjected, trying to smother the conversation with a simple statement of facts. "Fugaku-san would never stand for it."
Obito closed his eyes as if in resignation, but in reality he braced himself for his final word. "Then I won't live here either."
-x-
"You're moving out of the compound?"
"Yes."
"You're going to raise Naruto?"
"Yes."
"How can you be so cool about this?"
Obito sighed. He wasn't cool. In fact, he might have described himself as scared shitless, but with his Best Friend, there was rarely room for such details. Everything and everyone was either hot-blooded or cool, it seemed. Well, what could you expect from someone who just showed up one day and declared himself your Best Friend? When Gai said it, you could hear the capitalization.
Not that it had been completely random. It had happened too close to Kakashi's death for that. Gai had wanted to share his grief, or so he'd said back then, and Obito had wanted to be left alone, which Gai pretended not to notice. They'd become friends somehow anyway, somewhere along the way, and Obito was grateful for that because Gai'd been there after Kakashi had died, he had been there when Rin had died and he was here now. With his jaw on the ground and his eyes bulging, pulling on his hair in a show of wildly exaggerated shock, but still.
Obito gave up his sitting position and lay back into the training ground's scraggly, mutilated grass – ninja training was not healthy for the plant life and Gai's was probably extra harmful – to gaze up into the starry night sky.
"What would you do if you were in my place?" What he really wanted to know, but didn't dare ask was "what would Kakashi do?"
Ever since the night of the kyuubi he'd been on Obito's mind almost as much as in the first few days after his death. How strong would Kakashi be if he was still alive? What could he have accomplished that Obito couldn't?
The guilt had begun to well up again.
Obito felt haunted and he knew for a fact that Gai felt like that too. Maybe as much as he did. Not that anyone could understand Gai's obsession with Kakashi – probably Gai himself couldn't – but ever since Kakashi had died, Gai had been chasing his shadow. By now it was the idea of Kakashi more than the real boy, who, after all had died at the age of fourteen.
Kakashi would stay the perfect teen genius forever, while they would grow older, make mistakes and lose their shine.
Then again, the Gai of now had to be stronger than Kakashi had been when he died. Obito himself had probably surpassed him a while ago, but they were stuck comparing themselves to Kakashi-if-he-had-not-died, and he was someone no one could compete with. The living could never live up to the dead.
Gai still talked about his Eternal Rival and trained to become as great as he was, whatever that meant. And every time they reminisced Obito found himself speaking about Kakashi with a fondness and admiration he would never admit he'd not actually felt for his teammate before he'd died.
"Hmmm," Gai rubbed his chin in deep thought. Recently he'd stopped bandaging his hands, and now, in the moonlight, the scar tissue on his knuckles stood out eerily against his darker skin. "I'm not sure…if my sensei had left a child behind, I would have adopted it as my own without a second thought, of course!"
Obito couldn't help cringing at the corniness of that statement. It certainly wasn't how he'd put it. He didn't see himself as Naruto's surrogate father, that much was sure. The only thing that made him think he had a chance of puling this off was the way his cousin Itachi cared for his baby brother. That was what he was going for, Obito thought. He'd become the Itachi to Naruto's Sasuke, the protective big brother. That much he should be able to do.
"But Naruto's different…" Gai's unusually soft voice sank down heavily onto Obito. During the last weeks, he'd heard a lot of that talk, enough to be able to guess where this was going. He hadn't expected it from Gai, though. Anger flared up inside of him, unbidden. Those words, those thoughts were a new form of betrayal, one that sometimes quite obtuse Gai maybe wasn't even aware of yet.
Anyway, it was unforgivable, and Obito was ready to spring into action, ready to punch Gai in the face and to be punched in return, except that when he jumped up, yelling, "What are you saying?" his friend just blinked at him and said, "Naruto is a special kid. He's super strong, right?"
Obito deflated, his fury evaporating as quickly as it had manifested, leaving him empty and weak-kneed. "Yeah," he said vaguely. Gai had a way of seeing things in a certain light, from a certain perspective, that made them sound a lot less horrible than they were. He called his problems "challenges"; fear was just an obstacle to overcome. Obito wondered how death fit into that equation.
Gai wasn't completely wrong, even if the way he put it made it sound like Naruto was gifted instead of cursed.
Yes, Naruto was indeed special, but for that very reason everyone was afraid of him. They thought he was a ticking time bomb. The kyuubi had been sealed into Kushina before but she'd been prepared for that, she'd been chosen and trained for it, but Naruto… He was just a baby. What if he couldn't control it? What if something set him off?
No one wanted to see a repeat of the kyuubi rampaging. Yes, they, most people acknowledged that Naruto wasn't to blame for any of that, but that didn't bring the dead back to life. Innocent or not, Naruto was a threat to their lives, to their families' lives. He was a dangerous weapon and he was volatile. To Obito, though, he would always be Minato-sensei's and Kushina-neesan's baby first and foremost.
"Where will you live?" Gai asked suddenly.
Obito opened his mouth to answer before his brain caught up enough to inform him that he really had no idea. He stood there, gaping like a fish for a moment. He'd been too caught up in his feelings about the matter, he realized. He'd forgotten all about the i reality /i of the whole situation. Naruto and he would need a place to live, they needed food, clothes and all that everyday stuff that had seemed to materialize magically in his parents' cupboards. Obito would have to provide for Naruto.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach it came to him that he would also have to give up on most of his future plans. He wouldn't be able to join ANBU if he had to take care of the baby. Not only would he not have the time, the job was also too dangerous. His life wasn't just his own to risk any more if he died on a mission, Naruto would be all alone again. This decision would change everything.
Technically, it wasn't too late to rethink the whole thing again. This was why Sandaime had sent him away… He could change his mind now and no one would be mad at him. Hell, his parents would be relieved! They were good people and concerned about him. If he went back to the compound tonight and apologized, they would definitely forgive him. He could already see his mother's gentle expression when she told him how proud she was of him, that the mere fact that he'd wanted to help the child showed what a sweet and caring person he was, but that reconsidering was the mature thing to do. She'd use a word like "mature", he was sure of it.
It would be so easy to cave now. Everyone would praise him, too. For his good intentions, idealism and selflessness, all wonderful qualities as long as he discarded them along the way and ended up with a rational decision.
And he wanted to, desperately.
"What's wrong?"
Obito had, without really noticing it himself, been staring at the ground where the already flattened grass was given the rest by his shuffling feet. Now he jerked up, startled, to find Gai staring at him with narrowed eyes. Of all the moments to be perceptive, why did he have to choose this one?
"I don't think I can do this," Obito said. Somehow, the truth had made t out of his mouth before he had time to keep it in check. He sounded weak and spineless, he thought. Appropriate for somebody who was about to make a weak and spineless decision.
"Why?" Gai's stare could be quite piercing if he wanted it to be, it seemed. But his question was as dumb as ever.
Because Uchiha Obito was a failure. Yes, he had made jounin, finally, but everybody knew the reason for that promotion. Konoha desperately needed jounin and he'd been a chuunin with a spotless record and a bloodline limit in the right place at the right time, nothing more. He'd never been exceptionally talented, he'd never been especially intelligent, he'd never been as diligent or dedicated as them. Out of Team Minato, he was the least deserving. Why was he the last one left? He had been lucky, that was all.
And he'd failed them. How could he raise Naruto when he hadn't even managed to save Kakashi and Rin? During the kyuubi attack, too, he'd been useless.
Obito's eyes had begun to burn in a way he was shamefully familiar with. He bit his lip hard until he could taste the metallic tang of blood on the tip of his tongue. When Kakashi had died he'd sworn he'd become a better shinobi. Stronger. He wouldn't be the crybaby anymore. But what was one more failure at this point?
"I just can't, " he pressed out. Against his will he first tear treacherously slithered down his cheek, cold and reptilian.
"But you said you wanted to." Gai directed his gaze towards Obito's painfully clenched fists. The slight forward tilt of his face made it impossible for Obito to read his expression. He didn't know what Gai was getting at or why they were still talking.
"It doesn't matter what I want… if I can't do it," he said with a curt shake of his head. He'd have to pull himself together; there was no way he could have a breakdown like that in front of the Third the next day when he'd tell him that he'd changed his mind. Naruto would probably be better off without him anyway.
Surrounded by people who hated and feared him.
Rin would never have allowed that. If she could see him now, she would be disgusted. She'd never forgive him. Minato-sensei would be disappointed – but maybe they wouldn't even be surprised. The thought of that – of them expecting no different from him - sent a tremor through his whole body.
Gai's hands closed around his shoulders in a painful grip. "If you want to do it, you have to do it!" He gave Obito a teeth rattling shake to go with that piece of barked out wisdom.
"Aren't you listening to me? I can't do it! I don't even know how!" Obito tried to wind out of the hold, but as usual with Gai, it was impossible. His spirit would sooner succeed in winding out of his body. "It's not that easy! Let go, you big idiot!" He hated the whimpering tone of his voice.
"You're a coward and a wimp." Obito stiffened, trapped for a second the terrifying fantasy that somehow Gai could see his thoughts and read them back to him out loud in a mocking voice. Of course, Gai had just taken a shot in the dark. Or maybe Obito's self-loathing was just that obvious. But what Gai said or thought about him didn't matter. None of this was any of his business he should have never talked to him about it, Obito realized.
"My Eternal Rival used to say so all the time."
Funny, how, all of a sudden, instead of seeing Gai's stupid face in front of him like a second before, it was like he saw them both, Gai and i himself/i from the side like he was watching something that had nothing to do with him.
He saw himself sag a little in Gai's grip like he'd been punched in the stomach, causing Gai to loosen his hold. Then the slightly shorter boy – Obito had trouble identifying with someone so feral -made a sound like a mix between a wounded gasp and a growl and launched himself forward like a human projectile.
Obito found himself kneeling on Gai's thighs, about to put his hands around the other boy's neck, yelling, "What the hell do you even know? Maybe he thought I was a coward, but he couldn't stand you!"
"At least I'm not a coward," Gai hissed and Obito unexpectedly went flying. He landed hard, the thinned out grass doing little to break his fall, and rolled back on his feet just in time to block Gai's downward kick.
"If you're so noble, why don't you adopt Naruto?" He pushed Gai, who was conveniently unbalanced, standing on just one leg, back and laid into him with a quick combination of punches. Which Gai dodged with an elegant back flip, of course, the unnaturally athletic freak.
Gai landed, sticking to the trunk of a tree in a squatting position like an oversized frog, his stupid haircut, shimmering in the moonlight all pseudo-mystically. A truly vomit-inducing sight. Obito threw a handful of shuriken at him.
Gai had vanished into the treetops long before they hit the spot he'd occupied with a dull thud.
"Naruto is not my responsibility!" It came from somewhere above, accompanied by an ominous rustle of leaves.
What kind of a lame non-excuse was that? Obito bristled and took up the chase. Gai wouldn't be able to hide from his eyes much longer. Pity that Gai knew that as well, though. Obito had made it halfway up a tree before a roundhouse kick out of nowhere hit him in the stomach with enough force to rearrange his organs into new and exciting patterns. That was more than the water clone could take, so it gave way with a splash.
Obito sincerely hoped Gai had enjoyed the cool spray of water because his next move would not be so gentle. He burst out of the foliage and breathed a fireball into Gai's general direction, preparing himself mentally to follow it up with a midlevel water jutsu, just in case. Gai was an annoying ass in need of a good kicking, but Obito had cooled down enough from his previous freak-out to keep himself in check.
Not that he really had to, since Gai had dodged in time and was already coming at Obito again, best fist forward. Great.
"You," Obito said, leaning away to avoid Gai's unusually sloppy right.
"Are, " he gasped when Gai's elbow narrowly missed his jaw.
"A." Obito hopped over Gai's scything kick. He'd seen this one coming from a mile away.
"Selfish." Gai's foot only grazed his stomach, but Obito threw himself down on the grass as if he'd been hit full force. Gai hesitated a split second before going in for the kill. Typical, the moron really thought he'd won.
"Prick," he mumbled when Gai ran up to him in order to claim victory by pinning Obito on the ground. As soon as Gai was close enough, Obito rolled and wrapped his legs around Gai's calves, tripping the idiot.
Caught completely off guard, Gai fell with an undignified squawk, landed face first on the ground and hopefully got a well-deserved taste of dirt while Obito disentangled himself.
"Looks like you still have some fire left in you!" Gai sounded all cheerful as he rolled on his back and folded his arms behind his head as if he'd planned to lie down like that all along.
"Oh, shut up," Obito said without heat. To anyone passing by they would look like best friends again, with Gai lying around all relaxed and Obito sitting on the ground next to him. But Obito wasn't ready for that quite yet. It was true that they got into fights all the time because of their matching short tempers and stubbornness. This, however, had been different. It couldn't be forgiven as easily and certainly not as quickly as their other fights.
"Why the hell did you say that to me?" Obito asked, hoping that his tone made it clear what he was waiting for. Gai owed him an apology if nothing else.
"You were crying," Gai said to the night sky.
"So? Like you never cry." His anger was still there, he realized. Like a hard little seed it sat in his chest, and Gai had gone back to watering it.
"There's crying and then there's crying."
Obito almost laughed, "Oh? Like Naruto isn't your responsibility but mine? Sounds really convenient."
"I didn't say he was your responsibility. He's not." Gai was completely oblivious to sarcasm, Obito should have known that by now. But that was crazy.
"So what? I should just forget about him and pretend nothing happened?" he hoped his voice conveyed his underlying real question, i Are you insane? /i
"If that's what you want."
Obito gaped. He had no idea what to say to that. How could Gai not see the cruelty in what he suggested?
Gai wasn't finished, though.
"But if you don't want to do that, then stop pitying yourself and just take Naruto! There's no point in going back and forth on the matter; if you want to help Naruto, then help him! If you don't want to do it, then don't. But don't back out of it because you're too afraid to try. That's pathetic. I couldn't be friends with someone that cowardly."
Obito looked over at Gai's dopey face and wondered if he had hit his head at some point during the fight because what he'd just heard had almost made a weird kind of sense.
-x-
Obito stood in the doorway of his – their- new home, Naruto in one arm, a bag of groceries in the other. The talk with the Third had gone without a hitch. Not only had Sandaime agreed to Obito's proposal, he had also mentioned an open position in the guard division. That meant regular working hours in the village and decent pay. It also meant that Obito wouldn't be going on any exciting missions for a good, long while, but he'd made his decision and he knew that he had to make sacrifices.
Obito had spent the previous week visiting Naruto regularly, so the baby could get at least a little used to him and Obito got a few lessons about how to take care of a baby. He'd still have to hire one of the older women to come in and babysit Naruto while he was on duty.
This was it then. Obito entered the two-room apartment, and tried to suppress the sudden but sadly familiar onslaught of panic. The big moment. Naruto and he were on their own from now on – except that wasn't really true. Sandaime had made it clear to him that he and Naruto were always welcome if they needed any help. Despite that it still felt a little like it was them against the world.
Between finding the apartment and moving out of his parents' house Obito had encountered no small amount of hostility. No one had wanted to let a place to him when they'd realized which baby he was talking about. Apparently nobody in the village could accept Naruto as anything but the kyuubi's host. The Hokage himself had had to step in for this one.
And when he'd cleared out his old room his, own father hadn't even looked at him. His mother hadn't been quite as cold, but he could tell that she had no idea what to say to him. She just couldn't understand why he was doing this. It made no sense to her.
She wasn't the only one either. Most of his friends – or former friends in some cases – treated him either with contempt or avoided him at all costs. Even those who were close enough to him not to judge him on the spot, and even the very few who didn't hate Naruto by default, were still awkward around him. The only one whose behavior hadn't changed at all was Gai.
But there was no turning back now, and when he looked at Naruto, who was currently fast asleep on his arm like he didn't have a care in the world, Obito realized that he didn't mind all that much.
-x-
A.N: At the moment this story is unfinished and may remain that way. It was written as a reply to a prompt, and I started to feel that I didn't do the prompt justice. Plus, I think that if I had continued, it would have strayed into Obito/Gai territory pretty quickly, which the prompter probably would not have wanted.