"She knows, doesn't she?" Black Zetsu's voice echoed as soon as he walked in. This one's spying abilities were good at times, but times like this...

"She's gone to the other teammate, idiot. That big mouthed one. As soon as that one knows, how much do you guess will pass until everyone else knows?" At that, Obito had to stop from walking away, ignoring the voice. That vicious voice of Madara.

"She won't...," he shook his head, also shaking off that possibility of her betrayal.

"Really? Why would she care for you and not much more for the boy she loves?" the voice sneered. The Zetsu said no more than that. He saw it coming. That anger in the boy that had almost killed him last time. Boiling inside. He was ready to get away as fast as he could, save his head, but the boy left the other way. He could follow him, find out what's on his mind, but better not: what if the mad teenager changes his mind?


Rin was simply turned upside down. Her mind was tumultous. Her thoughts and beliefs were fighting one another. Any guard to keep her from damages was vanished, so she felt each single hit, causing a hurt worse than physical. That one she could cure.

Halfway, she realized sue was heading to Kakashi's house. Why? No idea. She felt she needed help this time. After today, she needed some kind of protection. She would not tell anyone about Obito. Not to Kakashi. Not to Minato. But there had been enough silence and avoiding the subject. Enough! That Obito was alive, that was another matter, but they acted as if he had never died, even though each of the three carried the gravity of knowing he wouldn't be back ever again, either. Kakashi thought it was his fault, Minato-sensei thought of it as his fault, while she felt as the guilty one herself, but they never laid the cards down.

She walked in Kakashi's house (he had given her a key) and was surprised to find a place that seemed not lived in, not at all. Kakashi was not in any mission, that she was sure of. So the boy must have been in his room. Maybe sleeping. It was a late evening, after all.

She walked in, hoping to find him still studying some scrolls or anything, but, instead, she found Kakashi doing nothing. Literally nothing. He was laid against his bed, looking nowhere precisely. He just stared. His eyes looked somehow concerned, but the lack of object of concern made them look like madness. He seemed to find no purpose and no will to move from there. He was not wounded or something, from what it looked like. But he seemed as if he were happy if a train would hit him and be done with it.

"Kakashi...," Rin aproached him, not sure of what to say. He looked at her for a moment, careless, then looked back into his nothingness. "Kakashi, what's wrong with you?" she asked, worried. Kakashi was the kind with 'quiet and careless' status, but not like that.

She knelt next to him, checking him out. Yes, there was no outer damage. Then... "Kakashi, tell me, what's going on?"

"Just go away, Rin," he said nastily. At least he did aknowledge her presence.

"And you just get up and look alive," she couldn't help but add.

"Why? I'm tired. I'm only fifteen, but I'm already tired of going out there, killing people, because I have to, or only due to my damn mistakes!" he barely whispered, but so strongly spoken, it seemed shouted. "I'm just a piece of trash, Obito was right!"

"Kakashi..."

"I killed him, Rin..."

"Kakashi..."

"I got to worship this guy... And then he died to save me. He was a hero. And do you know what I am?" he got from whispering to shouting. "People get hurt around me," he whispered to himself, then shouted agressively to Rin, "Go away, Rin! LEAVE!"

She walked away, in an act of self-defense. She was not afraid. She was not selfish. Kakashi needed aid. But to help anyone raise, she had to not fall herself, first. "I cannot let myself down to the level you colapsed," she said to herself as she departed.


Obito saw Rin leave, after watching the whole scene. All throughout those minutes, even though Rin had the chance, she said nothing about him. So he could as well leave. But he didn't. He was staring at his old male teammate. And he realized, in frustration, that he was feeling sorry fir the scum in front of him. He fucking cared... Why? Why would he care?

Last time, when Rin was dead, he had closed his heart and mind from anything and anyone he had once cared about. He had seen Minato-sensei die, feeling nothing at all. Just a shadow of the past. But now, there was an opening. Unlike the other time, he had allowed himself feel. He had let himself in the danger of caring for one person, then two... And now it made him weak. A weakness Madara would have never allowed. But, despite the pretending, he was not Uchiha Madara...

Obito could tell Kakashi's state was miserable just as he jumped in. Not only that he lied there, gazing absently at the ceiling, but he didn't react anyhow to an unknown masked man entering his house.

"There, just lay in your bed. I might be an assassin asigned to kill you, but you just lay there," Obito snapped sarcastically. The one in front of him was a disgrace, just a shadow of the real Kakashi. He felt deep distate for the weak thing in front of him.

"Fuck you and everyone else. I don't care. I might as well die," the silver-haired one replied tonelessly.

"Look at me, idiot! Look at me!" Obito caught him by his shirt violently, with his both hands, holding Kakashi in the air. Kakashi didn't stand to it in any way. He was just hanging there, like a worn out paper bag. "We are both trash," Obito went on, remembering well his talk with the older Kakashi, "Trash like us are condemned to live, do you understand? The ones like us are bound to live in the misery they're made of, collecting 's who we are!" he shouted, throwing him into the opposite wall. Again, Kakashi did not react anyhow. He just let himself hit the wall, then fell to the ground.

"Who the hell are you to tell me what I have to do?" he asked bitterly, in a husky, poisonous voice, not bothering to move from where he'd fallen.

Taking off his mask, discovering a face that looked nothing but mad, Obito whispered, just inches away from Kakashi's face, "I am your biggest regret," showing something between a bitter smile and a distorted grimace.

Kakashi's eyes widened in horror. Sustaining himself in both his hands, he crawled on four, backwards, until he reached the wall, on which his whole body pinned with agresivity, shaking his head madly, "No, no, no... I'm going mental... I am mental...," he murmured, looking straight at the ghost in front of him.

Obito laughed and it was no humor or anything human in that laugh. "Now that that's clear," he spoke afterwards, "who the hell are YOU, lifeless puppet?" Obito caught his shoulder so tight, a sound of pain escaped the other one's lips. "So you do feel what's going on with you, trash," Obito sneered, with the same madness in his eyes, pulling Kakashi from the wall and into a chair. With dexterity, he pulled another chair for him, turned it around and sat on it like that, his arms laid crossed on the chairs' back. "I know, I know...," Obito continued in the same talking manner, "Seeing dead people and all... You do might be mental, Kakashi. So let me play the therapist: when did you first realize you're a fucking coward, Mr Hatake?"

Kakashi still stared at him unbelievably, "You do are him, aren't you?"

"What gave me away?" came the sarcastical reply, as the speaker's Sharingan turned off. Just then did Kakashi notice he had been placed strategically. As he saw Obito's Sharingan going off, he also saw his own doing the same, in the reflection of the window in the black-haired one's back.

"Where have you been?" Kakashi asked in a tone that sounded like pleading, intrigued, and more other confusing feelings put together.

"It doesn't matter where I was, am, or where I'm going," Obito got up already, picking up his mask, which has been thrown around quite a lot that day, "Just pull yourself together. Keep your promise. Don't do what you did the last time. I am enough of trash for the both of us."

"What do you mean by 'last time'?"

"Just know that I was there. The day you decided to let Rin die." And with that, he put back his mask and was out as easily as he came in.


"Just when will you stop this? I can't understand how, despite the state I saw you in (and Kami knows how much you've been this way) you are still thinking I am the one who needs attention and help." Rin just couldn't understand why Kakashi was so stuborn. She'd talked to Minato into letting her do the upcoming mission alone. She didn't give much details, there was no time. She had only let him know Kakashi 'could not' attend, period. If the Hokage wouldn't speak to them openly, why would she?

But as soon as she left the village, the silver-haired boy was right behind her. Kakashi had always been the hard to read, but if there had been a moment she really wanted to know what was on his mind, this was it.

"I cannot leave you alone, just stay there, waiting to find out if you're okay. I promised you WILL always be okay," he said while chasing her.

Sighing, she stopped. He did, too. Somehow, something about him surprised her. The lost look in his eyes was no longer there. He looked totally focused and determined. But after all, that's the way he always was on missions, no matter for how long had that departure from reality lasted. Maybe this was just a mask he wore when walking out the house. Like Obito's...

She shook her head. It was not the time to think about it. Somehow, it was never the time to think about it. This was stupid. This was so stupid! Why did he have to reappear and then just go away.

He was staying away from her. No matter how much nights she got back to her and the masked guy's old meeting place, he never showed up. Maybe he was there each time. Maybe he was hiding. At least, she hoped that. She hoped he missed her just as much as she missed him. Because she missed him a lot. She missed both her cheerful Obito, now more than never, and the quiet masked guy. Losing her friend, years ago, made a hole in her heart. Losing him the second time and finding out the boy's feelings for her, that one smashed it completely.

She did not know what she felt. She just knew that she missed him. And that she was worried for him. Where was he? Hell, he had said. Could it be as bad as he had said? And what was it he was doing? Was it too much for her to want to know if he was alright? If he was in danger, maybe?

And now here was Kakashi, reminding her of the promise, which immediately directed her thoughts to the boy who was in love with her. Fed up, she looked Kakashi with a bitter smile, saying knowingly, "Keep calm, Kakashi. Obito won't be walking around to check your promise anytime soon." The statement had double meaning. And she was sure Kakashi wouldn't ever know the one she meant.

"But the orange-masked is," Kakashi replied with the same bitter smile and knowing tone.

What did he mean? Did he know? Of course he didn't. She was sure Obito got away from Kakashi just as easily as from the guards at the village's gates, Minato-sensei himself and any others.

Kakashi, too, remembered the masked one that saved them two years ago, though. So has he just observed Obito following them in the years that followed, maybe, and that was all?

She looked up at him, stunned. They shared a look, and if it hadn't been obvious from the look, the next thing he said would have been giveaway enough, "You do know, too, don't you?" She didn't have to answer a thing. She guessed her expression must have been just enough, because he just shot her a look and nodded.

"You're right," he said as he walked ahead. "We should have stopped avoiding the subject long ago."


An orange masked looked out for them from a distance. That far, Obito had thought he wouldn't care if Kakashi would fall cut in five to the ground. Not as long as Rin would still be safe. But realizing his hopes for his male teammate's health, too, lately, well... Things turned out pretty much... How would that Nara Shikaku, sensei of that friend of Rin, Kurenai, refer to it? ...oh, right: troublesome.