I'm back! I think this is the longest chapter I've ever written...
Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or alerted!


When whispers of Konoha's Red Fang (he honestly doesn't know if he wants to laugh or to cry when he hears, because at this rate he'll never escape his father's shadow)start to follow his trail, he decides to humor them by trading his green scarf—lingering bloodstains scrubbed away—for a red one in a village on the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rivers. It reminds him of his ANBU days, which in turn reminds him that even as a missing-nin, he needs to take missions to earn his food just like any other shinobi.

He just has no clue where to start.

It's not like there's a guidebook for how to live the life of a missing-nin, he thinks, perhaps just a bit hysterically. Then he realizes that that sounds like something Obito might have said were he in Kakashi's shoes, and wonders if he's letting his ghosts get too close. But then again, he always has been the type of person who holds his cards much too tightly to his chest—too closely, that to others it looks like he holds none at all.

Lack of a guidebook aside, he figures he'll start like any ninja does, and finds D-rank odd jobs here and there in whatever village he passes through. His world-class skills are now used to locate missing children, rather than to hunt down S-rank missing-nin. Oftentimes, villagers request something like painting a fence or weeding fields or promoting a store in exchange for not money, but for food or supplies, especially in the less prosperous areas he passes through. He accepts, because he just wants enough to get by, and experiences the same monotonous routine as he once did with the D-rank missions that his old team used to take.

Except now, he works without Obito's boisterous voice declaring a contest to see who could weed the biggest area, or Rin's exasperation when Obito inevitably spilled paint all over her, or Sensei's silent amusement as they ended up scaring away more customers than they brought in.

Sometimes, in his darker moments—which emerge more often than he likes to admit—he curses them for leaving him alone in this cruel, cruel world.


Crimson clouds that rain blood and a sky darker than midnight inexplicably haunt his dreams as he finally leaves the Land of Fire and crosses over into the Land of Rivers. He always wakes up covered in a thin film of cold sweat, the eye that isn't his—never will be, even after so many years—throbbing in time with his racing pulse. For a week, all he dreams of is the downpour of blood, and he wonders if Obito's eye is trying to tell him something.

35 days after he abandoned Konoha, he feels watchful eyes upon him in a land of flowing waters. He starts watching his back with even more caution than ever, but he can't shake the feeling that he's felt that gaze before, a lifetime ago.


As Kakashi is taking a break by one of the country's plentiful rivers, nose stifled with the scent of a looming rainstorm, he hears the rustle of riverbed reeds and instantly snaps up to his feet, chin buried in his scarf and kunai in both hands. Twenty feet away, the approaching stranger flails wildly and falls back with a thump, but despite that, Kakashi hadn't sensed him until he was that close, which means that this masked man is not as clumsy as he seems.

"Waah, don't kill me!" he shouts, wildly flinging his arms and legs out in a poor attempt to fend off Kakashi, who has not moved from his spot.

He ignores the pitiful defense attempt and takes in the orange, flame-patterned mask and its single eyehole, black full-length cloak, and wild midnight hair. There are no obvious signs of weapons, but he knows better than to underestimate someone who can sneak up on him.

"…Who are you?" he asks.

"M-Me? I'm Tobi! I'm just a useless grunt, so p-please don't kill me!" he wails, curling up into a ball on the riverbed.

Oh he's good he thinks, but he still refuses to relax in the presence of this stranger. Kakashi doubts Tobi will be dropping the act anytime soon, so he continues to see if he can get anything out of the apparent coward.

"Grunt? For who?" he probes.

"I- ohh, I see what y-you're doing here! But I'm a good boy, so I won't betray my organization!"

A twinge of pity rushes through Kakashi for whatever poor fools have to deal with this idiotic act. Fools, plural, because this "Tobi" revealed an organized group, not a single entity.

"Why have you been following me?" he questions on a sudden whim, because if this man can come within twenty feet of him without detection, it's certainly possible that he could have been following him this entire time.

"Wah, I'm caught! Oh no, now my senpai will know I wasn't following the mission! Noooo," he groans, hands covering his mask in supposed shame.

Kakashi is getting tired of the farce, but he's willing to put up with it if Tobi is in the mood for sharing more information. In a flash, he dashes up to him and holds both kunai crossed at his neck, two points wedged in just under the bright mask. Tobi, despite the cowardly demeanor, does not react at all, which understandably puts Kakashi on edge even more as he growls out, "What is your mission?"

"Nooo, I can't tell you! Boss will kill me dead!" he whines, even with very sharp blades held at his throat.

"What's stopping me from killing you right now, then?" Kakashi threatens.

And then his kunai are resting on air, the riverside breeze dying down, and Tobi is a good fifty feet away, almost in the cover of the forest that lines the river.

"Maa, you're faster than you seem, Tobi-san," Kakashi drawls in attempt to hide the startled flinch of his hand.

"Oh, wow, the great Red Fang of Konoha acknowledged my speed! Gosh, look at me blush!" Tobi exclaims from the shadows, hands cradling his mask as if to hide his embarrassment.

It's a moot point, of course, because the mask conceals everything that lies beneath it. Kakashi finally understands how people feel when they face him and his own mask.

"Is that name really catching on?" he mutters quietly to himself, but apparently not softly enough.

"Of course! Red Fang-san's tale of betrayal and carnage has spread across the nations!" Tobi exclaims. "Konoha has as many people it can spare looking for you!"

Well, then they're not trying very hard, he muses, ignoring the "tale of betrayal and carnage" part, if they couldn't find me with all the dawdling I did with my missions.

"And why were you looking for me?"

Because this man obviously knows who he is, and Kakashi likes to believe that he isn't that recognizable so that even the village idiots of the world can identify him. Tobi flails wildly again at the inquiry, shadows casting shadows over his figure even under the cloudy sky and the cover of the forest.

"N-No I wasn't!" he vehemently denies.

Kakashi edges closer.

"I think you're lying," he singsongs softly.

Once again he rushes forward, this time towards the trees, at the masked man, but this time Tobi chooses to dodge and dance around him as he stabs and slashes with his kunai. He's strangely graceful, careful spins and flips always taking him just out of Kakashi's reach even as he releases frightened shouts and flails of his limbs.

There's more to him than this act, he thinks, and adjusts accordingly by reaching up to slide his eyepatch off. However, in the split second that it takes to do so, Tobi disappears without a trace, only the whisper of See you soon, Red Fang-san! in the breeze.

Without hesitation, he quickly summons Pakkun and orders him to track the man, because his instincts, everything within him, are screaming at him to not let him go. But Pakkun, his best tracker, can't even pick up his scent outside of the patch of forest he'd been standing in and the reeds where he first stood, and announces that even those scents are barely even there. It's like he was fighting a ghost the entire time. A chill runs down his spine, because even Sensei's Hiraishin had left the tiniest paths of chakra and scent behind from seal to seal. If that technique truly was Hiraishin, the only reason that Pakkun can't track Tobi would be that he simply flashed too far away for even his ninken's powerful nose to pick up on.

How far can he go? That definitely didn't feel like Hiraishin.

The first drop of rain hits his forehead. He flinches, glad that only Pakkun is there to see how unsettled he is. With a quiet sigh, he allows his summons to disappear in a puff of smoke, because if he couldn't pick up a scent before, he definitely won't be able to pick it up in the rain.

That night, he dreams of blood red clouds again, but this time, they twirl and twist and collapse in on themselves just as he wakes up.


The masked man's last whispers ring true when Kakashi meets him again not two days later, when a shout of, "Woah, what a perfect cave!" echoes through his current shelter. He doesn't know whether he's relieved or annoyed to hear that voice again, because he's been both on edge and insanely curious since their first meeting. He also doesn't believe it's a coincidence that Tobi just happened to walk into this cave, out of all the hundreds of caves that dot the various riverbeds throughout the country.

"Ack! Red Fang-san!" he exclaims when he pretends to finally spot Kakashi within the shadows of the cave.

"Who are you?" Kakashi begins without preamble.

"Noooo, he's forgotten me already! Of course he has, I'm just a grunt beneath his notice!" he sobs exaggeratedly into his hands.

"Drop the act," Kakashi snaps, "and tell me who you are. Who do you work for?"

"I'm Tobi, of course! And you know I can't tell you who I work for, silly Red Fang-san!"

That name is really starting to grate on his nerves, and it's not just because of the way Tobi says it, all fake hero worship-like.

"Please?" he smiles—with his eyes, of course, all fake and no bite, because Tobi can't see his teeth grinding under the scarf.

He's silent for a second, which even Kakashi feels is strange after only knowing him for all of ten minutes. He really wishes he could strip away that mask so he could at least observe the telltale twitches that give every face away.

"Hmm, I wonder if Boss would let me…" he trails off with a hand on his masked chin, and Kakashi gets the feeling that that was more for his sake than Tobi's.

"Let you?" he prompts, hands twitching ever so slightly even as he slouches even further against the cave wall, seemingly relaxed.

Tobi hmms and ehhs out loud, pacing back and forth and effectively blocking the only entrance and exit of the cave. Whoever thinks this man is a simple fool fails to see underneath the underneath.

Tobi pipes up suddenly. "Hey, Red Fang-san? Why did you become a missing-nin?"

Dead silence fills the cave, tension swelling alongside the quiet, and somehow Kakashi knows that this is some kind of test. He's just not sure if it's the kind that he wants to pass. The silence stretches on for what seems like hours, but in reality Kakashi makes his decision in minutes.

"I… I failed my village, and it failed me," he starts, but falters because a spike of loss hits his heart and chokes his voice even as it struggles to emerge from his throat.

It's the first time he's talked to anyone about this, and to a completely suspicious stranger, at that. In the end, he can only add a quiet, "It's too cruel" because he just doesn't know how to explain the guilt and grief and loss and rage that storm inside him every second of every day.

A beat of silence, and then Tobi mumbles something, too quiet to echo in the dark cavern, but Kakashi catches the words fool and regret this. He scratches the back of his head—an action that can mean anything from annoyance to confusion—and, after a moment of silence, quips, "Ne, Red Fang-san. If you ever meet people wearing black cloaks with red clouds, tell them 'The sun only rises when the rain stops', okay?"

Black cloaks and red clouds. Kakashi is too stunned by the reference to his dreams that he misses Tobi's disappearance once more. And yet again, he summons his best tracking dog, but just like last time, the only scent Pakkun can pick up is the faintest of trails lingering at the mouth of the cave.

Once again, Tobi's presence is that of a ghost's.

That night he dreams of not crimson clouds but of his own hand carving its way through Rin's chest, even as he hears Obito's strained Promise me you'll take care of her resounding through the dream with the fury of an earthquake. His I promise is a lie, lie, lie, and then everything is bathed in a red light and the eye that isn't his cries tears of his teammates' blood. You could have stopped me says Itachi's soulless voice, just another tragedy he failed to prevent. Liar, liar, liar chant the voices of his teammates, his sensei, his father. And underneath it all, the whisper of a single crow slowly crescendos into the screams of a thousand until they drown out everything else.

When he wakes, panting harshly and dirt buried under his nails from clawing at the ground in his sleep, the Sharingan—not his, never his—burns like nothing he's ever felt before.


A few more days of mindless travel, and Kakashi finds himself stumbling from fertile river lands to parched desert. He veers south of Suna, because nothing good can come of an infamous missing-nin looking for work in a village full of shinobi. Even so, he runs into a patrol after a momentary lapse in caution, and wonders what he did to piss the universe off.

"Hey, you! Identify yourself!" the first shinobi to spot him shouts.

He's glad for the dusty brown cloak that he received a week ago as thanks from a woman who had needed an escort from one village to the next. Not only does it protect him from the Land of Wind's scorching sun and sandy winds, but it also conveniently allows him to become just another vague traveler among the sands, identity hidden by the large hood.

Throwing his hands up, palms out at shoulder height, he calls back over the winds, "Maa, just a lost traveler hoping to find his way."

The patrol of four stops a good 40 feet away, eyes suspicious beneath an assortment of head wraps and goggles. A woman who Kakashi assumes is the leader takes a few cautious steps forward, sword unsheathed and loosely gripped to the side.

"Way to where?" she asks suspiciously, eyes still squinted as though she thinks that if she stares long enough, she'll be able to make out his face underneath the unmoving shadows of his hood.

"A place that offers food and fresh water," he replies.

He sighs quietly when she gestures for him to remove his hood, but then thinks screw it and, instead of complying, flies through the hand seals for Doton: Doryuheki. The patrol members cry out in alarm as a large earthen wall rises up before them, sand cascading down and desert shaking beneath them. He forgoes his usual bulldog ornaments, because the whole point of this is to avoid identification. He'd rather not have a contingent of Konoha shinobi on his tail, thank you very much.

He dashes away, hoping they lost sight of him due to the cloud of sand that his justu displaced, but the universe refuses to make things easy for him. All four chakra signatures chase steadily after him, and Kakashi groans internally as he senses them branch out with chakra flaring. It's in this moment that he hates the Land of Wind with all his being, because there is no cover to be found anywhere, no forest to lose his pursuers in, but simply barren, golden desert that stretches out for miles in all directions, everything in plain sight.

An hour into the chase, he refuses to turn and fight—because he's tired and hungry and therefore more likely to let something slip—but they also refuse to be shaken from his tail. He curses when he sees a mirage-like shimmer of cliffs off in the distance: they've been herding him towards Suna, where backup most likely awaits.

His chances are slim, but perhaps finding cover in Suna would be easier than continuing this pointless chase for kami knows how long. Unfamiliar enemy territory it may be, but his chances of losing the enemy amongst stone buildings and busy streets are much greater than in this straightforward desert chase.

Decision made, he allows himself to be herded towards the hidden village, nimbly dodging whatever weapons and ninjutsu they throw his way. As the entrance comes into view, so does another group of Suna nin. He veers sharply to the right, avoiding traps and slipping past weapons, and climbs up the cliff face instead of trying to barge his way past the more heavily guarded entrance between the two cliffs that embrace the valley of Suna. At least atop the cliff, he will have more space to fight if things don't go the way he plans.

A group of Suna nin await him at the top, but he expected them, and so throws a barrage of kunai their way, if only to momentarily distract them. It doesn't work, and now he has the full attention of the entire western border watch, as well as his faithful pursuers who are hot on his tail, scaling the rock behind him.

He decides to open his small scale invasion with a fuuton, because there is very little moisture in the air for him to pull out for a suiton and using the raiton that comes so naturally to him would be cutting it too close to his identity. It's too hot to bother with a katon, and also, he would rather not have yet another hidden village out for his head on account of destroying its best defense with an uncontrolled earthquake.

"Fuuton: Kamikaze!" he cries out upon completing the seals, a dozen small tornadoes spinning to life around him.

As gusts of spinning wind unleash chaos around him, he swiftly reaches up to uncover his left eye—still unseen underneath the cloak's hood—and activates a low-level genjutsu on the shinobi in the most immediate area. They whirl around, confused into thinking he's anywhere but where he actually is, and Kakashi rushes past them under the cover of one of the last tornadoes remaining.

A kunai comes from nowhere and he manages to fling himself out of its direct path, but it still grazes his arm with vindictive force, tearing through cloth and skin and leaving a trail of blood that flings itself into the dying winds.

Nevertheless, he hurls himself into the valley below, rocks and wind summoned by the border guards flying after him. Air whistles past his ears as he performs a quick henge under the cloak. Without pause, he leaps from rooftop to rooftop, clay dust kicking up under his feet. He sends another strong gust of wind at those in pursuit, and then takes the momentary distraction to duck into an alleyway and throw the cloak into his ever-present backpack.

Seconds later, a nondescript, brown haired man casually emerges from that same alley, bag lazily slung over one shoulder. Kakashi looks and acts appropriately alarmed along with every other civilian on the street when the patrol blows past him to hunt the clone he left still jumping atop the earthen buildings, leaving dust and wind it its wake.

Allowing himself a quiet sigh of relief, he ducks his way back into the alley to roughly wrap the graze on his arm, disguising the ripped sleeve with another layer of henge, then ambles his way towards the market street he had seen a couple of jumps back. He hadn't been lying to the very first patrol, earlier—he really can use some fresh food and a clean source of water to replenish his supply.

As he makes his way to the market through unfamiliar roads, his disguised face smiles back at the few who nod at him in greeting. When he approaches his destination, he hears frenzied whispers of Kazekage's children ripple throughout the busy street. However, excitement rapidly dissolves to fear and disgust and fear as onlookers point out that monster with quick darts of their eyes.

An eerie feeling of déjà vu sinks into his gut as he cranes his head to see the subjects of such whispers. Three children, who Kakashi assumes to be the Kazekage's children, make their way about the stands like every other shopper on the street. What's different about them is the way that two of them glance around with wary eyes, while the youngest—and, judging by the fear direct towards him—stares straight ahead with dead blue-green eyes. Kakashi takes in the red hair—what is it with the red hair, these days, he wonders—unfitting tattoo, and gourd too large for the small body before turning to the most loose-lipped looking lady around.

"Who are they?" he whispers, voice full of a traveler's curiosity.

The middle-aged lady glances at him and does a blushing double take, quietly bringing a hand up to her cheek before lowly whispering back, "Oh, dear you must be from out of town! Well, the girl and the boy with the darker hair are the Kazekage's children. And well, that… thing," she hisses, part fear and part disgust, "is… well, he's the village monster."

She nearly shrieks in fear when said boy's eyes flick straight to them, but Kakashi stiffens as his instincts scream up a storm. This child is not one to be taken lightly. And yet... he recognizes those eyes, different as they are, because he's seen them before. The image of a young blond child's expression when he thinks he's alone comes to mind, and something in his gut aches at the reminder of yet another soul he's failed.

But the longer he stares, the deeper Kakashi looks, and recognizes those eyes on a more personal level: he sees them every time he looks at his own reflection.

They're the eyes of a soul who's lost all hope, all faith, in his own village. They're the eyes of those have lost, lost so much that they've retreated within themselves, an empty shell of grief all that's left in their place. And, like him, this boy's shell is obviously filled with bloodlust and carnage to quash the grief and hurt that is buried somewhere deep, deep inside. I know you, he says to the boy in his mind, because I know myself.

They stare at each other for a split second more, as if to acknowledge a kindred soul, but something in the child's eyes changes as soon as Kakashi shifts from one foot to the other when a slight breeze picks up. He uses a shunshin to flicker away immediately, because something tells him detection by the Suna guards would be better than becoming the target of that dangerous gaze.

He misses the whisper of blood and the tiny trail of sand that starts to snake its way after him, unnoticed.


FINALLY Tobi is here. Kinda unsatisfied with their first meeting, but maybe that's because I couldn't show his point of view.
**Should I take a break from Kakashi's POV next chapter? Let me know what you think!

Also, I'll be away from my laptop next week, so I'll try to get another chapter in this week (but no promises).