Title: "Lunar, Solar"

Author: Shaitanah

Rating: R (overall)

Timeline: 1 month after the Itachi/Sasuke fight

Summary: "…because Sasuke would be the moon, Naruto would be the sun, and during an eclipse..." Not much has changed: they just keep hurting each other. "Kakashi, I always wanted to be your friend." Sasuke/Naruto Please R&R!

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Story title from Pablo Neruda's Drunk With Pines. Lyrics from Incident by Norman MacCaig.

A/N: This is probably the most Obito-centric piece I've ever done so far. Not really any SasuNaru here, sorry, guys! Thank you for your wonderful reviews, fav and alerts! You're the best!

Chapter 14

No Soul To Sell

I look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
Ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible…

Obito's story provided little clarity. He had been found dead and revived by the man whom Kakashi recalled from the Akatsuki profiles provided by Kabuto. Obito had had a severe case of amnesia and had started hearing voices a few days after his recovery. There had been lengthy black-out periods which he couldn't recreate. Kakashi supposed that was how the Akatsuki got started.

Obito was as intractable as ever, recounting those distant, hazy events. His eyelid fluttered in some strange hectic rhythm; it seemed that he couldn't stop blinking as though that simple act made him feel more secure.

"Do you even know what it feels like to be torn between loathing and gratitude to a man who had saved you and then screwed you up in the worst way imaginable?" he hissed vehemently after he was done with his tale. "I'm so… so angry. It won't go away. You can't help me."

Kakashi leaned against the damp trunk covered in moss and shut his eyes. This was not the Obito he remembered. Embittered, soaked in darkness, this man would do anything to hurt – and hurt as hard as he could, just because he himself was hurting too much.

Kakashi clenched his teeth. He had to set things right before the process became irreversible.

"How's Rin?" Obito asked quietly.

"She, uh… She is missing. Presumed dead."

Obito's lips formed a silent 'oh'. He scratched the back of his head absent-mindedly.

"Guess you failed at keeping her safe, huh?"

"Yeah, I did."

Obito released a long sigh and wrapped his cloak around his shivering body. Fear, icy and uncontrollable and vast like a whirlpool, engulfed him.

"Where are you going?" Kakashi demanded when Obito prepared to leave.

"Anywhere. Face it, you can't help me. Why would you even try?"

Before he could fully grasp the meaning of the gesture, Kakashi ended up in front of him and gripped his shoulder tightly.

"Because it feels right. Because I failed last time. Does it matter? I'm going to save you whether you want it or not."

'Bloody hell…' Obito thought weekly – and nodded despite himself. And followed Kakashi numbly as the Copy Ninja led him towards their campsite.

As Sasuke dashed through the forest, keeping a little ahead of his teammates, a million uncomfortable thoughts had their dwelling in his mind. He was induced to trust Kakashi under the circumstances – yet it could be a fatal mistake.

He spotted Kakashi and the Akatsuki right behind him and picked up the pace. The Akatsuki was unmasked and limped heavily, clutching his mask in his hand. Sasuke squinted. So that was Uchiha Obito: sallow complexion, shortly-cropped hair, scars all over the right side of the face and one piercing furious Sharingan eye.

"I knew it!" Sasuke spat contemptuously and lunged at the man.

Kakashi blocked his way and parried his blow. They went still like a grotesque composition, their muscles hard from the tension. Behind Sasuke, Sakura called out to them. Naruto leapt next to the Akatsuki who shied away involuntarily.

"This is not the man you're looking for," Kakashi whispered in Sasuke's ear. Sasuke gritted his teeth. "I'm not asking you to relent. But I need to make sure he can or cannot be saved."

Sasuke relaxed. His wrist, clenched in Kakashi's grip, went limp. His former sensei was asking for the last chance. That silent plea, expressed in one brief look of his dark eye, frightened Sasuke. Kakashi could fight him; perhaps he might even have won and had things his way. Instead he chose to ask.

Sasuke nodded grudgingly and stepped away.

"Sakura," Kakashi said flatly. "Will you please take a look at… Obito-san?"

As the soft, "Yes," reached him, Sasuke looked away. Naruto assaulted Kakashi with dozens of questions at once ('Serves him right,' Sasuke thought with a pale shade of satisfaction), and they left Sakura to her examination, and halted outside the forest at the divide between its dense black-and-green wall and the shimmering flower meadow. Sasuke could tell Kakashi kept watching the Akatsuki from afar and allowed his mind to drift away from the problem for the time being.

Obito found himself looking at the bright-haired kunoichi, unable to take his eyes off of her. Her skilled hands flitted along the length of his broken body, warm chakra caressed his scarred face, and the feeling of fragile, temporary peace, very similar to the one he had when Kakashi hugged him, was revived in his heart.

Sakura poked his vein with a small sharp needle. Obito gasped, unprepared, and bit the inside of his cheek.

"Sorry." The girl shrugged guiltily. "This might probably hurt again. Just about now."

Another poke. Obito shivered and tried to divert himself from it.

The girl had beautiful green eyes. He had never seen a colour so intense and vibrant and yet so indefinite. Turquoise? Aquamarine? Emerald? He could not say.

She caught him looking and smiled timidly. He could say she felt nervous; it was only natural. Unaccustomed to people looking at him with fear and uneasiness, Obito was embarrassed.

"I had a friend a long time ago," he said, not knowing exactly why he felt like telling her about it. "She was a cool medic-nin. You remind me of her a bit." Her cheeks flushed. Obito shifted uncomfortably. He hated himself for being eternally thirteen and so-not-Kakashi. "You're pretty cool at this stuff."

"Thank you," Sakura smiled. She examined him quietly for a few unnervingly long minutes and then asked: "So, uh… are you a friend of Kakashi-sensei?"

'Sensei,' Obito thought, not without a spontaneous chuckle. It sounded so weird. The Hatake Kakashi he used to know could hardly make a good teacher, certainly not the Minato-sensei level. Yet through Madara he had gotten to know Team Kakashi a bit. And it exceeded his expectations.

"Friend? Heh, no, I wouldn't say that. It's complicated."

"Friendship always is."

He glanced at her and fought a pang of sorrow at the solemnity that masked her face. 'Sasuke-kun,' he thought. 'And Naruto-kun.' He hated his sudden omniscience; it was Madara's knowledge. Tobi had been afraid of him and didn't try to accumulate that knowledge; instead he had silently pleaded 'Madara-sama' to get out of his head. Obito, on the contrary, persevered, grasped at this knowledge to learn more about his unwanted 'rescuers' and was inflamed with hatred for his ancestor.

"I need to run a few tests," Sakura said, collecting her kit, "and compare the results with Tsunade-sama's scrolls. I'm afraid she didn't teach me how to… well…"

"Tsunade?" Obito started. "The Tsunade? Tsunade-hime? Oh, wow! I guess I'm privileged."

Sakura's smile gave away mild playful reproach. "I'm not her, Obito-san. Hang on, I'll be right back."

Alone, Obito closed his eye to give it some rest and tried to sort out his feelings. He had never been particularly good at this, but it seemed like a good distraction and a nice way to get to know himself.

But all he felt was anger. Overpowering, aggressive anger filled him to the brim, creeping out of every corner and gnawing at the core, and he hated, hated, hated the day he'd come alive again.

Piercing pain shot through him, exploding in his skull, spilling forth from the eye where the Sharingan flickered to life uncontrollably. He clasped his temples and groaned in helpless terror.

Visions flooded his mind. Sparring with an agile boy with spiky black mane, much like his own, patting his back and teasing gently: "Soon you'll catch up with your big brother."

Cleaning blood stains off his cranberry-coloured armour, laughing at some joke the man with piercing eyes and sleek black hair had made.

Looking boldly into the red eyes blazing with hate. The eyes of a bijuu.

Obito rocked back and forth, hoping the freefall would end and there would still be a part of him left. He held on to it so desperately that the visions switched, and there he was flopping into a puddle in front of Rin (he was going to leap off a tall tree to impress her) and grinning to disguise his embarrassment. He was seeing a dream that had been haunting him since his early years with the team: he chased a faceless someone and upon approaching he recognized Kakashi, but no matter how hard he tried to catch up, he would only ever see his back.

The pain subsided as abruptly as it had flashed. Panting, Obito focused his gaze at Sakura's concerned face. She was kneeling beside him, fingers, enveloped in the bluish glow of chakra, stroking his forearm gently.

"I'm all right," he croaked. "You're scared of me, aren't you?"

"Not you," she replied after a while. "Him."

Her answer made him strangely confident. 'She'd do it with a medical jutsu,' he thought. 'No pain. I've hurt enough.'

"Sasuke-kun knows what to do," he said quietly. Sakura frowned. "But I'm scared. If I face Sasuke-kun, he will wake up and fight back. Help me."

"But what can I–?"

"You must take Sasuke-kun's duties," Obito cut her off. Her eyes grew wider. "Please." His voice became monotonous. She stared at him with glazed eyes, consumed by the hypnotic abyss of Sharingan. "Sakura-san, it's the only way to help us all."

Slowly the girl's hand rose, blue fire burning around it. The sound of a muffled heartbeat reached Obito's ears. He swallowed nervously as the hand drew near, reaching towards his chest. One strike to stop the heart, and his chakra would burn out, and everything would be over.

And it was.

It ended in a flash when Kakashi grasped Sakura's wrist firmly, and the girl snapped out of her Sharingan-induced reverie and eyed them both in shock. Obito's lips trembled.

"Sakura," Kakashi said in a low flat voice. "Leave."

He unclenched his fingers, and the girl staggered a few steps back, breathing heavily. The realization of what she was about to commit descended gradually upon her. She turned around and ran.

Kakashi had always been fairly good at expressing himself verbally. He never resorted to violence unless there was no other option. This time, however, he felt no words could be enough.

He hated Obito. He loathed, and despised, and hated him so passionately that a mere thought that he had wanted to save him now sickened him. He manifested it in a hard rainfall of punches, tossing Obito on the ground, kicking, hitting, hating him physically like that. Obito barely tried to resist. Kakashi suspected he wouldn't forgive himself later for losing his temper like that, but he simply couldn't stop. The hatred was intense and scorching, and he recalled that he had succumbed to something so atrocious only twice: when his father killed himself and when Team Yellow Flash had to leave Obito to die. That was a side of Kakashi even he didn't want to know.

Obito whimpered plaintively. His scars wrinkled as a grimace of pain obscured his face. It sobered Kakashi up a little. He grabbed a fistful of Obito's cloak and said in a steely voice:

"You filthy little coward! You're so afraid to look your past in the face that you'd rather turn a by-stander into a murderer!"

Obito's bloodied lips trembled. He was an Uchiha after all. Madara's pride spoke in him. He glared haughtily at Kakashi.

"It's not like she's never killed anyone before." Kakashi let go of his cloak, and Obito tumbled heavily on his back. "It's so very noble of you! You should know all about fears of the past; you who drops people off like useless baggage!"

A cold laugh escaped Kakashi's lips.

"You're one to talk, Uchiha Obito, the paragon of selflessness. Dying is undeniably easier than solving problems. But life shouldn't be too hard for someone who has been letting a parasite in his head make decisions for him for years, am I right?"

He knew he was being incredibly unfair. He had gone too far with that. Obito looked away, his face contorted with grief. Kakashi sat quietly beside him, regretting every word and not daring take them back. To his surprise, Obito whispered in a few minutes:

"I'm sorry."

Kakashi grew numb. The pause was getting unbearable.

"Can't hear you," he sing-songed finally, faking sarcastic indifference.

"I won't say it twice!" Obito snapped. He was quiet for some time and then uttered: "I always wanted to be your friend."

Kakashi sighed. "And I always wanted you to live."

"Heh… Guess we don't always get what we want…"

Sakura ran as fast as she could, tears prickling her eyes. Her step faltered; she fell on the ground and struggled to catch her breath.

The look Kakashi had given her… She shuddered at the memory. He would never forgive her.

She got up, brushed the dirt off her grazed knees and walked slowly towards the clearing.

Tears obscured her vision. When a bright flash of orange loomed ahead of her, she sprinted towards it without ratiocinating and flung herself in Naruto's arms. Abashed, Naruto put his arms around her, feeling her tears stain his skin.

Sasuke watched the scene with tired, unblinking eyes. Then he turned around and walked back to the meadow. Tears were something he really could not stand. Besides, he couldn't be there for Sakura now: his thoughts were occupied with Madara, yet he couldn't even bring himself to ask what had happened between them. Let Naruto handle it.

Sasuke despised himself, running away like that.

Itachi's image flashed right before his eyes. He had seen him like this many times, clad in his regular Akatsuki cloak, standing with his back on Sasuke a few paces away. Sasuke knew he was a product of his imagination, a manifestation of his taunting inner voice, but there were times when he seemed so real… It alarmed Sasuke that he was beginning to see him more clearly these days.

"Were you afraid to die?" a barely audible murmur came.

"Hmm. Where did that come from?"

Sasuke inhaled shakily, uncertain if he might get closer. "Just answer the question."

Itachi kept silent for a while, then replied: "No."

"You lied to me."

"Many times."

Sasuke closed the distance between them. "You lied to me when you said you didn't love me. Why?"

Itachi chuckled mildly. "Think what you will. Who am I to dispel your illusions?"

"This wouldn't be the first time," Sasuke snapped. "I want the truth."

"Truth is what you make of it."

"You tried to tell me something important! What was it?"

Sasuke blinked. Itachi in front of him vanished; another one ended up behind him. The youth turned round agitatedly. His brother's eyes sparkled with poorly disguised taunt.

"How would I know?" Itachi remarked. "I'm dead."

By nightfall the panorama before Kakashi's eyes was next to idyllic. Obito fell asleep, exhausted by the trials of the day. Sasuke kindled the campfire and retired to rest under the dense shade of a huge tree. Naruto soon joined him. It gladdened Kakashi immensely that the boys now stood each other's presence much longer.

Sakura sat by the fire, uncharacteristically grave and solemn. Kakashi fixed his gaze on her absent-mindedly; it hit him after a while he was looking at her knees, two patches of white lined with reddish scratch-marks. She must have fallen. It seemed bitterly ironic that she avoided being injured in combat, yet simple scratches off the battlefield made her feel so uncomfortable.

She looked lonely. Against his better judgment, he felt guilty.

He shouldn't have blamed her for what Obito had made her do.

Kakashi cast a wary glance at the boys and lowered himself on the brittle undergrowth next to Sakura. The girl tensed; it was too noticeable for him to let it slide.

"What are you thinking, Sakura?" he asked sympathetically. Better start from afar.

She tried to dismiss the question with a vague wave of her hand, but Kakashi continued drilling her with a hard look.

"Just… stuff, you know," she uttered, doubtful. "I'm happy that Naruto and Sasuke-kun get along. But… What do you think will happen when we're done with Madara? If we're ever done with him… Sasuke-kun will leave again, won't he?"

"Why don't you ask him about it? You two have something to talk about."

Sakura glanced at Sasuke over her shoulder. He was sitting by a big tree, his eyelids heavy with drowsiness. Naruto blabbered something, fidgeting around him, kicking the blade of the Kusanagi sticking from the ground with his heels absent-mindedly from time to time. Sasuke seemed unperturbed by it. Sakura smiled softly: he had become a lot more tolerant than she remembered.

"He will not talk," she sighed. "It's too personal. You know Sasuke-kun. It's funny…" She hugged her knees and stared solemnly at the glimmering fire. "I never understood him well enough. I never understood Naruto either, or even you. I've never lost a precious person. I can't…"

"Say, Sakura," Kakashi wondered, as if having recalled something. "Did he treat you well in the morning?" The girl knitted her eyebrows, then nodded curtly. Kakashi's visible eyes curved into a cheerful crescent. "I believe Sasuke understands he's been alone long enough. The people we lose are irreplaceable, and it's very hard to cope with the loss. It's like you have to relearn to live in the world without them." His face darkened slightly. "Sasuke was running away from the bonds he'd formed with you two. He fears you'll never truly accept him… and he's trying his best to get used to you again."

"But… he's wrong!" Sakura protested passionately.

"Deep inside he might even be scared," Kakashi went on gravely. "That's why he keeps building up these walls and rejecting you. It was hard enough for him to reunite with Naruto after all these years. And now you're back in his life too. He must start over, learn to function as part of a team or at least say hello in the morning."

Sakura wondered if the sensei had had the same bitter experience. She squeezed her eyes shut and released a slow breath she didn't realize she had been holding.

"Kakashi-sensei... Do you think I mean anything to him? Not as his teammate, but as a… friend."

"I don't know how he feels about you. But I'm sure he values your friendship. He trusts you; otherwise you wouldn't be here."

Sakura blushed faintly. Kakashi watched her attentively, wondering somewhere on the periphery of his mind why she hadn't brought up the accident yet.

"He trusts you," Kakashi spoke again, "with Naruto. And Naruto is…"

"…everything." Sakura's lips barely moved. Kakashi chuckled.

"When a person trusts somebody with something important – be it to heal his injuries, or to keep his moments of weakness in secret, or to protect the ones he loves… You know what that means, right?"

Sakura looked directly at him; her lips were trembling.

"Kakashi-sensei! Please forgive me!" She tilted her head humbly. "I didn't mean to–."

There.

Kakashi risked patting her shoulder affectionately. Sakura tensed, unusually apprehensive, but then her muscles relaxed as she gave in to the warmth of his touch.

"No reason to apologize. It wasn't your fault in the least. And to be honest," he snorted sardonically, "each member of Team Yellow Flash had to fight periodic desire to kill Obito. Me, I had it every day."

Sakura giggled and covered her mouth with her hand almost coquettishly. Kakashi chuckled.

"It's about time for a little medical lecture, don't you think?"

Ten minutes later Team Kakashi gathered by the fire to discuss Obito's diagnosis. The man himself, roused urgently by Kakashi, sat a few paces away, looking highly uninterested. Kakashi spared him a single look to make sure it was simply bravado, and gave Sakura his full attention.

"Cellular memory," Sakura said. "This is what we apparently have here."

Kakashi and Sasuke waited for her to continue; Naruto goggled his eyes in confusion and blurted out:

"Erm, Sakura-chan, what's that!?"

"The body here belongs to Obito-san, but there is a foreign spirit within it. Usually when a soul-transferring jutsu is performed, a supplanting effect takes place instantaneously. However, in this case the process of subjugation apparently hasn't been completed. The body sort of repels the implant, and the genetic code preserves some remnants of the original spirit. That's basically what cellular memory is."

Naruto hemmed unenthusiastically, indicating he didn't understand a word. Kakashi cocked his head and wondered:

"So is there any way to get Madara without having to kill him?"

Sakura sighed.

"Obito-san's original spirit, or soul, or whatever term you prefer, isn't strong enough to function on its own. Madara sustains life in the body. Without him… At this rate, I'm not sure they can be severed. The only person known to have ever gone that far in his research of soul-transferring jutsu was Orochimaru."

Sasuke clenched his fists. Kakashi's unfocused case slid over him and returned to Sakura.

"We could take him to Tsunade-sama," she said doubtfully. "But this field of science is poorly explored. It's still considered immoral and illegal by most medic ninja. I don't think Tsunade-sama would go against her convictions even under such drastic circumstances."

Obito didn't budge. Silence fell. The air suddenly seemed hot and viscous to Kakashi: he couldn't just give up on Obito like that. Not after everything he had promised!

"She might not help," Sasuke said all of a sudden, looking up at the sky. A tiny smirk graced his lips. "But there's someone who might."