"I didn't deserve this."

"No one deserves this."


They tell her she's on extended medical leave, but Rin knows that she's now Konoha's best kept secret. A second jinchuuriki and an accomplished medic; the world knows Konoha is home to the Kyuubi, but Kiri have not yet admitted to their loss of the Sanbi. They will assume Rin is dead, her body lost to the river or destroyed by Konoha-nin, and the Sanbi waiting to reform in a decade or so.

No one save the Hokage, the Council, her ANBU detail, Kushina and her team know the truth about what she is.

(And even then it isn't the full truth, because how could she possibly begin to tell the people she loves that they are alien to her? That she can't bear to see her foreign face in the mirror and feel nothing but detachment? That she knows when the Sandaime and the Yondaime will die, and that it will be at the hands of their wayward students?)

(Obito Obito Obito how could you be so cruel to this world?)

For all that she escaped death, Rin has forgotten how to live.


Everywhere, everywhere she sees ghosts and enemies.

She does not sleep.


It's Minato who comes to her first. They have all visited, of course, but there is something about his face, solemn and wrong, that tells her this is not just him stopping in for a check up.

"Rin-chan, you aren't well," he says, and it's strange to hear him so direct when usually he has such great concern for saying anything that will set her off. He really is worried.

And she can't lie, not to him, not to a man who before she thought of as a mentor and a brother but now finds can't fill the void left behind from her real brother who will cry and cry and cry when the police find her body and tell her family that she won't be coming home, that she was beaten and cut and whipped and—

Rin makes tea for them both, and they sit quietly for a while on her lumpy little sofa. She presses herself as far into the corner as she can.

"If—If you won't talk to me, or Kushina-san, would you talk to a Yamanaka? Inoue deals with the aftermath of these kinds of missions all the time, she's a very kind person, you—"

"Please, I—" She can't. She can't she can't she can't. Where would she even begin? How could she describe to anyone the experience of dying twice over and going from one living hell into another?

Minato moves to kneel on the floor in front of her, and she can't avoid his eyes. "You're a medic and for all the Sanbi can heal your physical injuries, what's up here," and he taps her forehead before she can jerk away, "Can only be healed by you, helped others if you'll let them."

Rin feels like she should tell him something. Feels like she owes it to him, just for the sake of giving Minato some peace of mind.

She opens her mouth to say something, maybe I haven't slept in two months, or perhaps I feel eyes on me everywhere I go, or even I have lived two lives and both should have ended already.

But the words die on her tongue.

Minato sighs slightly, but gives her a patient smile.

He drinks his tea and leaves with a weary line to his shoulders.


"You'll kill us both, carrying on like this."


Rin ignores the rumbling voice at the back of her head, and heads to the library. She picks up several books on code breaking, checks them out, and spends the next three weeks devouring them.


An innocent pink journal sits before her, and her code is fresh in her mind. She takes a pen and opens the book.

Rin realises she can't find the words she needs to even begin to describe what she wants to record.

This is her third month of living, and for the first time since waking in the rain Rin feels real, raw emotion in the form of anger.

She takes her frustrations out on herself, pounding at her legs and arms until she throbs and biting down on the screams that threaten to escape and alert her ANBU.

The journal sits empty.


Her reflections are wrong. Rin is average height for her age, slender and angular with hard muscle from training daily with Kakashi and Minato-sensei. Before she was tall and soft bodied, healthy from swimming and a good diet but little else.

Rin has brown eyes and short hair. Before she was blonde, with pale grey eyes.

Her face is prettier than plain, but not especially striking either, distinguishable mainly by the markings of a deceased clan. Before she was told she was beautiful and she knew it, and she owned it. Perhaps that was her undoing, or maybe it was just her carelessness.

Rin sees herself and sees a girl she has been all her life, and desperately misses the woman she had grown into.

She stares into the mirror and wonders when she stopped seeing the girl there as herself.

The scar on her chest is a badge of shame.


Kushina storms into her day like a hurricane, sweeping her up and quite literally carrying her out of the apartment and into town for lunch. They eat ramen, of course, Ichiraku's. Being here leaves Rin with a sense of both nostalgia and surreality and she finds she has little appetite at all.

"Rin-chan? Something wrong?" Kushina asks, and there must be a very odd expression on Rin's face indeed if even Kushina has noticed.

She doesn't know what to say. There is happiness attached to this place, memories of laughter. And with that comes Obito, who is out there and suffering and ready to make everyone else suffer. And there is the knowledge that Kushina will die, and her son will come here as a safe place from a village that hates him, and Rin has seen all of this with her little brother by her side on rainy days when their parents had gone on holiday.

It's—It's just too much.

"Alright, come with me!" Kushina says, tossing some coins on the counter and grasping Rin's wrist.

She has to jog to keep up.


Kushina drags her to Training Ground Five.

"Listen I know being a jinchuuriki is a piece of work, but it's not the end of the world, dattebane! It's gonna take time for you to get used to adjusting your chakra outputs and stuff like that, but think how much stronger you're gonna be! Come on, Rin-chan, it's not all bad!" she says it like a jounin commander, legs shoulder width apart and hands on her hips as she glowers down at Rin as though daring her to tell her she's wrong.

Rin stays silent, and perhaps this is a mistake because a flash of concern cracks the stern mask, and Kushina tilts her head to the side and eases her posture.

"Is it the seal that's bothering you? Has the Sanbi been talking to you?"

"I ignore him. The seal's fine, Kushina-san," Rin says quietly, able to give that much at least.

Now Kushina really does look worried, and she crouches a little, reaching out to put her hands on Rin's shoulders but Rin can't have her that close, she can't deal with hands on her and especially not when she's staring a woman in the eyes who she knows is going to die.

Something must show in her expression, because Kushina drops her hands to her knees instead.

"Minato told me you don't want to talk to a Yamanaka."

Rin looks away. "I can't."

"They've dealt with much worse cases than you before Rin-chan," Kushina says gently, with a sad little smile nothing at all like her usual sunshine-grins.

Are you sure? If you knew, could you still say that?


Rin wakes in a cold sweat and stumbles into the bathroom to empty her stomach.

She scratches at the silvery scar on her chest, and wonders when her unconscious mind stopped being able to tell the difference between the gleam of a blade and a lightning flash.


She reaches for her journal, and still the words won't come.


Knives carve burning paths in her flesh, and the crack of a whip jolts her from sleep and into wakefulness.

Her heaving breaths choke off and die when she sees a lone figure at the window he's back he's back he's back I can't do it again and it takes her a solid minute to realise that it's Kakashi, just Kakashi and not— not some enemy Kiri-nin, not Madara, and not— not him.

Rin can't stop gasping, blood is roaring in her ears and as she raises shaking hands to her face she feels the wet of tears. The room is dark, she's sure she went to bed with the lights on but the room is dark and as she reaches over to switch the lamp on she can't choke down the panicked sob when nothing happens.

"The power in your building is out," supplies Kakashi, quietly.

Rin takes this in, takes deep breaths as she tries to steady her heart rate. Inhale, hold, exhale. Inhale, hold, exhale.

She barely has time to think why does Kakashi have to see me like this and she's staggering to the bathroom to vomit. Her knees hit the cold tiles hard, and she shoves her hair back just in time.

Rin feels Kakashi's presence hovering awkwardly in her bedroom and she's so damn tired she doesn't even have the energy to be mortified.

She's a twenty year old woman but she's also thirteen and can't get rid of that lingering sense of crushorsomethingstronger from her heart, and she wishes she didn't feel so crushingly alone even while her friend was so close.

Rin goes to lean back against the bathtub and shrieks slightly when she sees Kakashi looming in the doorway. She stares for a moment, short, quick gasps coming from her mouth as she tries to curb her panic because it's just Kakashi and it's not his fault he moves like a ghost. After a moment she finds it in herself to sag against the bathtub, knees drawn to her chest because the bathroom is cold and dark and she hates the dark, can't stand all these shadows and just waiting for the glint of steel or a cruel smile or a fist flying blindly towards her face.

She shudders and grips her knees tight.

Rin hears Kakashi leave, and she knows he's putting conscious effort into making noise around her apartment as he listens to him rummage through one of her kitchen drawers. He returns in less than a minute, and she stiffens when she feels rather than sees him kneel close to her on the bathroom floor.

A match is struck, and Kakashi proceeds to light every candle she owns and place them around the bathroom. Nowhere is left dark, and he closes the door so she can't see the looming void of her bedroom. He doesn't sit beside her, or say a word, but rather sits on the side of the bathtub and within reaching distance.

And Rin is grateful.


"When my father died, I didn't speak to anyone about it. I don't remember if it was the shame or the guilt — both, maybe. But Minato-sensei came along and started checking up on me when he learnt I was living alone and— and I told him, and it helped. I haven't spoken to anyone about—about Obito. I…It took years for me to be able to even acknowledge my father's existence, and I don't know if I'll ever want to talk about Kannabi, but what happened to you happened while you were under my watch, in my squad, and that's twice now I've let you down, and—"

Rin wraps her arms around Kakashi's leg, pressing her forehead to his knee. "Stop. St—Just stop. Please. Please. It's not your fault. Kakashi, it's not it's not it's not—" she has to stop herself before she can start screaming, screaming about the demons in her head that have absolutely nothing to do with the Sanbi and everything to do with why she wants nothing more than to scratch at that awful scar on her chest but doesn't because Kakashi doesn't need the reminder of what she made him do.

"Rin—" Kakashi moves slowly, warily, and reaches out to place hands on her shoulders, every so light and careful. She flinches, but not nearly as bad as she would have had the room still been cast in darkness. "Rin, talk to someone, you need to talk about it. It sounds stupid from me, but you're killing yourself and I—"

It goes unspoken, but echoes loudly in the silence.

Neither one of us can lose the other now. Not when Obito is out there, suffering and waiting.

She grits her teeth, squeezes her eyes shut so that she might be able to ignore the stinging there. In the darkness she doesn't see knives or lightning, but rather an orange mask and a spinning Sharingan, and it is difficult for her to come to terms with this reality, to be able to relate this two-dimensional character of tragedy to the very real, so very kind boy that she knew not one year ago.

Yes, she owes it to Minato and Kushina to get better, but Kakashi… She owes Kakashi more than that, because while she loves her sensei and his future wife so much, they may die, and Kakashi will be left to pick up the pieces.

Not alone this time, for some awful reason I'm still here.

Rin owes Kakashi more than he will ever know, and so she vows, "I'll tell you."

She feels him tense slightly, and realises ruefully that he hadn't expected her to choose him to open up to. "Rin…? I'm not— Ah, I'm not very…adept at…"

"Not right now. Not now, I won't tell you now. I—" she thinks about the empty journal and the ghosts that haunt her every step, and the blades that shimmer in her periphery when she daydreams. "I'm not ready yet. But when I talk, it will be to you, Kakashi."

There is a long silence, but then Kakashi sighs. "Right. Alright."

And they stay sat in her bathroom until the light of dawn comes creeping through the bottom of the bathroom door and when he leaves to let her wash and dress, she emerges to find a flashlight and a new pack of candles on her bedside table, and the apartment empty but for her.


Rin sits at her desk, pen in hand and journals open. Code in mind, Rin begins to write.

"The Third Shinobi World War ends when Namikaze Minato wipes out the Iwa forces singlehandedly."

And she writes.


When Rin is finished with her journal for the day, she finds Kakashi sitting on her bedroom windowsill with his back to the room. She watches for a moment, then goes to the bathroom to dress for bed, makes a cup of tea and sets it beside him. He glances at her briefly, and then turns away completely.

Rin slides into bed, and when she glances over her shoulder the tea is in a gloved hand while the other is occupied with one of her medical texts.


The nightmares still come, but when she wakes to find Kakashi dozing in the window, she finds herself calming quicker than before.

She shudders as she gets out of bed and grabs the spare blanket from the sofa. Rin takes the book from lax hands, aware of Kakashi's chakra rousing as he wakes and completely ignoring it.

Rin throws the blanket over him, and returns to bed.


She sleeps until morning.

Kakashi is gone and the blanket is neatly folded on the windowsill, her book on the nervous system placed on top and the empty cup beside it.


And every evening, it repeats.


There are a thousand birds swooping at her, and they peck through her heart with razor beaks.

Rin is afraid of them, but vows she won't ever let the birds know.