In Kakashi's dreams, Minato's prophesy bore fruit. The war ended. Obito lived.
Rin knew she had to look away. Obito threw his head back, cackling at a private joke. With his back to her, she couldn't see the emptiness in his left eye or the ragged stump of his body. His face was scarred, whole, ruined, bleeding, where wet she stabbed her scalpel and dug deep.
The seven-year-war let its curtains down for intermission and she was wandering like a peanut vendor between the aisles. Her hands were scoured clean. Smoothed and lacquered in the style of the Land of Earth. Kakashi smelled like soap.
She told him. "Don't do this again."
Kakashi nodded in acceptance.
"You were always much better at this." He said with regret. "The Iwa chose wrong."
Their love wasn't a grand gesture, something born out of fairy tales. He couldn't make her blush. He didn't make her heart beat faster.
Obito called them boring and bought the first round.
She was happy; she accepted the frothy brew and drank until her throat burned.
"Rin." Obito hugged her around her shoulders and she pushed him away, repulsed.
She did not want him to touch her. She loved him for being alive and well instead of six feet under. She didn't think she could ever forgive the Iwa the insult of taking her teammate away. Yet, she did not want him to touch her. His hands were cold and white and full of worms. She thought if they touched, he might disappear.
Obito stared at her with a wounded expression.
"This is your fault."
He jerked backwards, features blinding like the edge of the sun. She could not keep her eyes on him. She could not tell if he had one eye or two, tall or short, living or dead.
"Kakashi!"
She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn't sure what she would see but knew it to be terror.
"Stop!"
Kakashi explained.
"Obito was the best of us, he cannot be anything else. That's why you and I will do the rest."
Rin blamed herself. Kakashi was her teammate.
"Let me help Kakashi. You can't do this on your own."
"It's too late."
"Why?!" She burst out. "Because I love you?!"
He did not react to her confession. Instead, he smiled. With his eyes. A foreign expression across his handsome face.
"Because I'm already gone."
+++++4+++++
Rin sat up in tears when her great-grandmother jerked on her big toe. She kicked and her great-grandmother glared back from under her many wrinkles and the large mole on her left brow before scoffing, always disappointed in her, disappointed what Konoha could offer.
He great-grandmother was a survivor. She'd seen friends, cousins, siblings forcibly conscripted as soldiers. Fields abandoned because there was no one to till the earth. Trees stripped bare from wars that stretched from end to end.
She had proudly seen her granddaughter, her only surviving family, married to a merchant with better prospects that eking out a living under the thumb of whomever drew a map of the river which brought more corpses than fish. Her great-grandmother knew war and was disappointed this was the best her great-granddaughter could manage.
"There are men outside asking for you girl. What have you done? The sun's been up past the fourth cock-crow and you are still in bed!"
Rin was in bed. She struggled to think. She came back from her mission two days ago. Yesterday, she had been at the Uchiha Compound. The fourth cock-crow. It meant that it was past eight in the morning. Surely her sense of time was off. She was used to tracking hours through the movement of the sun and there was no sun overhead, just a spackled ceiling. No stars to guide her by. She rubbed her eyes and peeled back her sheets. Her grandmother scuttled around the side of her bed and pinched the flesh of her thighs.
She yelped and fed chakra to the soles of her feet, balancing on the wall of her room. Her great-grandmother's chickens were outside, scratching dirt. Two chunin were watching them in disinterest. Her vision narrowed. The two chunin had been sent to collect her.
For a moment, she bristled at the insult. She had seen Kakashi cut throats for less.
She slapped her cheeks and her grandmother said sardonically, "I'll tell them you're getting ready shall I?'
"Yes please." Rin said with a hint of desperation and sniffed under her arm pits.
She was rank. Her great-grandmother grimaced at the way she smelled her pits. Rin had been outside. She had just left Kakashi's house. They were living together. They loved each other. It wasn't romantic but they loved each other.
What happened last night?
It was too late for a shower but a little dirt never hurt. While the two chunin were sufficiently distracted, she pulled chakra to her feet and launched herself out the window.
+++++4+++++
"Rin!" Minato greeted her in wide-eyed surprise. "Where's Ranka and Hijiri? I sent them to escort you."
"Sensei, what's going on?"
There were others in the room. She blushed, knowing how she must look. But she had followed the only chakra she recognized. Minato's chakra had been a beacon to her, a bright light at the center of a universe that had gone horribly awry. Obito was dead. She could not find Kakashi. But she saw him.
Slowly, the haze of early morning ebbed away. She was horrified to realize that her teacher was not alone. In the room with him, she recognized familiar faces. Faces she could not afford to insult. Jiraiya, the toad sage, Orochimaru, the brightest mind of his generation.
She winced as her knees hit the floor hard.
"Lord Hokage, I apologize for my rude interruption."
"Rin, why did you run?" Her teacher asked again, lifting her chin when she did not respond.
"Look at her eyes." Orochimaru said nonchalantly.
"What about her eyes?"
Her eyes were fine. It was stupid Kakashi who had an eye missing. It was the Uchiha who were obsessed with bloodlines and eyes.
"Kai!"
The unsealing was explosive and punched the air from her lungs. She crumpled to the floor, heart fluttering like a caged bird inside her ribs. Minato quickly swept her into his arms and threw Jiraiya an admonishing glare.
"Kakashi..." She sniffled. She wiped her eyes, gave up when the back of her hands became too wet. She dug her nails into the flame-patterned sleeves. "He left." She spat, like she'd swallowed something foul.
"Yes Rin. Do you know what happened?"
"He wanted to find Obito." There was an imperceptible flinch. "He went without me."
And the more terrifying thought. "He left me."
"We know."
Clearly there were matters more important than a girl's broken heart because a woman stepped forward with a condescending sniff, Rin blushed when she recognized the clan markings striping her face. Red tattoos in shape of fangs down each cheek. Unlike her purple stripes, the fangs held meaning. The woman was an Inuzuka, as wild as her hair and the monster that panted beside her.
She flashed her teeth in a chagrined grimace.
"We lost his scent near the Uchiha compound." The Inuzuka reported sourly, patting her monstrous dog on the back. She did not elaborate. Her clan dealt in information. Any informant worth their salt would not risk their reputation for anything, not even for the Hokage. In times of war, the Inuzuka had kept its children from the front lines by serving as spies. She suspected this wasn't the first time clan politics kept information from the Third.
"Thank you Tsume."
The bespectacled man shrugged when called upon.
"Aburame?"
The man shrugged.
"My insects were unable to penetrate further."
To prevent spies, there were several measures active ninja employed to keep others from listening in on them. But she had just been to the Uchiha Compound. No more than half of them could be shinobi. Even less as active members. Clans practiced secrecy. This was paranoia.
"You think they helped him?" She gulped.
"We can't rule anything out."
"It's a simple enough matter to investigate." Orochimaru pointed out. "If I were..."
"No." The Hokage denied him. "Matters with the Uchiha clan are delicate. We cannot afford to accuse them of treason."
"My student?" Minato asked inquiringly.
"I am sorry. From this day forth, Hatake Kakashi is a traitor."
+++++4+++++
Losing Kakashi was a hard blow.
With Kakashi gone, Minato locked in ongoing sessions to see to the end of the war, her duties as an individual became limited. She also had paid leave overdue. But she couldn't bear sitting around the house or at the market, selling spices for gossip that would drive her insane.
Instead, she volunteered at the hospital. She observed the increments of time in the layer of bandages, lost limbs and knitted flesh. Doctors praised her for her level-headedness and decision.
"Rin, can you..."
"Oh of course."
"Oh thank god." The doctor said before jumping nervously. She didn't blame him. The doctor on call was infamous for her prickly attitude. On her good days, it was much safer to hug a cactus. From what Rin had seen, Dr. Homura had no friends. She seemed to spend her entire time at the hospital, cussing out the patients and orderlies and nurses in the order of precedence.
She gulped a little. But Dr. Homura was a good doctor. Even great. Even without chakra, her hand seemed to seamlessly seal wounded flesh back in place. She would stop at nothing to get her patient well at that was something Rin couldn't help but admire.
"Dr. Homura."
The woman scowled immediately.
"Good god, they gave me you? How did you end up in this clusterfuck?" She shook her head. "No helping it I suppose. How good are your hands kid?"
Dr. Homura was a woman in her late thirties. She wore a standard docs coat with shortened sleeves, a bright blue scrubs beneath paired with a tasteful skirt. She could have just come out of a surgery and not had a hair out of place. Her eyebrows lifted in jerky movements daring anyone to pursue that line of thought, a permanent frown marring her face and clear a room with the force of her glare. Despite her age, rank and gender, most doctors respected her decision. While she would never be called Tsunade's second coming, she came close. And for a civilian without talent in manipulating chakra, that was high praise indeed.
"I've been out on the field for weeks." Rin replied. "I can handle myself."
"Hmph, you haven't seen anything yet."
When she was a girl volunteering as an assistant, she'd never been allowed on the sixth floor. Logically, she knew where it was. She knew that the sixth floor was the fifth and the fifth floor was actually the fourth, right above the third, because superstition thought number four sounded too close to death.
When the door opened to admit her into the large reception area, she saw rows and rows of stretchers with people in them, moaning in pain or worse, catatonic with only a bedpan to keep them company. At her startled look, Dr. Homura shrugged "we ran out of beds."
"Ah, doctor!"
A teenager came up to them, her height, longer hair, and broad shoulders that made her eyes stray.
"Oh hello." He greeted, folding his hands into a reverse-dog. "My name is Kizaku Oban, pleased to meet you."
"Nohara Rin," She signed back. "The pleasure is mine."
"Now that we're all acquainted," The doctor drawled, "how is the floor?"
Oban was all business as he briskly listed the critical patients, problems that required attention and a list of patients to be discharged. Rin's head spun as she tried to keep track. She had an armful of clipboards by the time they had made the rounds around the beds and stretchers.
The patients on the sixth floor were hurt and fearful. They kept staring at her as though she'd draw a scalpel and steal their liver when all she wanted to do was check their bandages and redress their wounds.
They did not like to be touched. She understood their reluctance but it made her job nearly impossible.
"Fudou." Rin said in exasperation as the sandy-haired chunin wailed. He knocked her clipboard to the floor and at the clattering sound, groans rose from the neighboring bed.
"Enough." Dr. Homura said firmly, appearing out of nowhere. "Hold him down."
Oban pinned Fudou to his bed.
"Fudou-san, you're disturbing other patients." He admonished and with a brush of fingertips, diffused the chakra from the chunin's glowing veins.
Rin's hair rose and she unconsciously took a step back, left foot pivoting for easy movement as her hand searched for scalpels pinned in her sleeves.
Fudou settled down with a hiccup, curling up into a fetal position.
Homura huffed.
"Look kid, you're new so I'll let you off with a warning this time. We don't have time to coddle idiots."
"But."
She protested and swallowed the words as Homura's expression grew grim.
"We only have three doctors working this floor. Every second we waste, a patient loses a limb. We're not in the business of making them feel better. We're in the middle of a war. We're just here to make sure they're battle ready by the time their name comes up again in the roster."
"I understand." Rin said in defeat and Homura turned to attend the other patients, the clink of metal under the shifting cloth weighed with more promise than had her forehead been branded with a leaf. Oban gave her a sympathetic glance, his face infinitely patient and kind like a stone Buddha.
She kind of wanted to punch him a little.
"It's alright Nohara-san. Homura-san is really kind. It's hard for her sometimes knowing that they're going to end up back here. This is Fudou-san's fourth stay with us. He'll be fine."
"How can you say that?"
"Sometimes, this is all we have to keep going." He said gently. "May I?"
She nodded, not quite understanding what she was agreeing to. Oban gathered a ball of chakra in the palm of his hand and rubbed it, a bit like a salve, into her skin and her bones. Her flesh prickled like it had fallen asleep and was just beginning to wake. It was not unpleasant. But it was strange and unfamiliar.
"There." Oban said with a note of satisfaction. "I noticed um." He blushed, a rosy flush spilling down his neck.
"Yes?"
"Your arm, you should have gotten it checked out."
She opened her mouth to argue. She had gotten it checked out. It was fine.
Except no. In the confusion of Obito's mangekyo, she'd satisfied herself by eyeballing it. She'd dislocated her arm trying to tear past the earth. She'd popped it back in when Kakashi was busy rigging the shack with explosives. It was sore. But that was to be expected. There was nothing for it except rest and painkillers.
"You're a ninja." Rin blurted out.
Oban laughed lightly. "I'm not. There are plenty of healers who can manipulate chakra."
"But you." She cringed, waiting for Dr. Homura to jump out and yell at her again. Noblemen did not fight. Children did not fight. But they were fourteen, almost adults in the eyes of the law. Clearly, Oban knew how to fight. She could read his movements. She didn't know why he was at the hospital when she could have been an asset to a team.
"I have no gift for war Nohara-san." Oban said softly. "My squad leader failed me. He saved my life. My parents, they don't want me to fight either. They are shinobi. I pray every day for their safe return. I want to help people and if it comes down to it, I will defend the people I care about. But this war is wrong."
"Wrong?" The thought startled her. "We're trying to defend ourselves."
"From whom though?" Oban asked frankly. "At what cost?"
She mulled over this.
"I don't want to hurt people Nohara-san."
But I do. She thought to herself. Startled when she thought it. Surprised that she had thought it. There were people she wanted to hurt.
+++++4+++++
In the morning, Rin cringed at her expression as she brushed her teeth. She could see that her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed even through the steam of the shower. She couldn't go in like this. It was unprofessional. She'd be laughed out of ER.
Spitting toothpaste from her mouth, she knocked the toothbrush in her cup. The great thing about being able to control her chakra was that she's never worried about a pimple on an important day. Yawning, she clumsily packed her lunch in a bag and sank into her boots. Sandals were a great idea until a patient puked or pissed all over them. Her grandmother glared at her in disapproval as her pet chickens pecked the dirt.
She waved.
+++++4+++++
At lunch, she sat next Oban. Oban's family had come from near the south of the border in the Tea Country. He stood out. But despite being an able-bodied fourteen year old, he was not a ninja.
"Are you sure you're not from Lightning?" She had seen lightning ninja. They were tall and muscular compared to the people in the lowlands. But their skins were dark while Oban was white as milk. She'd never met anyone like Oban before. He seemed so cheerful when everyone else seemed worn down, faces taut with apprehension.
Oban laughed genially, scrawling something down in a perfect script that might as well been printed. Scars scored his knuckles, his wrist corded with muscle and fingers thick with calluses that could have only come from shurikenjutsu. His hair was overlong which sat oddly, gathering in a wavy mane on the back of his neck. He looked nothing like Obito, whom, like all Uchiha, had been small for his age, fine-boned. But Oban reminded her of him.
"He's gay." Dr. Homura said disparagingly when she noticed that Rin was looking.
"Wha... what?" Rin stuttered. "You, you can't just...!"
"Oban is from a little island called Ryoku. They marry them off young there. Who knows, he might have adopted an orphan or two." Her smile was like a knife. "Boys like Oban, they need keepers."
Rin did not understand. Oban had been nothing but a perfect gentleman to her. At her baffled expression, Dr. Homura coughed a short laugh and said, "Nurses gossip as much as fishwives. Doctors are worse."
Expression softening, Dr. Homura assured her.
"Don't worry kid, you're not the first one to get caught looking at him."
Mortified, Rin squeaked "You too?"
"That would be telling."
Dr. Homura winked and handed her a stack of patient files. "I want these sorted by the date of admission. You have an hour."
+++++4+++++
Despite Minato's optimistic forecast, the world continued to shit on them.
The war dragged on. Just because the lands were depleted did not mean that people did not kill. Negotiations were ongoing. It took time for news to trickle down, longer for feuds to stop, for revenge killings and honor killings to end. Thoughts of Kakashi fell to the wayside. She only observed the passage of time in the knitted bones and flesh.
At the memorial stone, she didn't talk to Obito. What was the point? She knew Obito wasn't there. Obito wasn't where they had left him; she was allowed that much through a toad who'd coughed smoke into her teacher's face when summoned, arm hanging with bite marks.
She began a count of limbs she'd hacked off since the start of the year. Thirteen was a magical number in which the village laws told her she was fully grown, no longer a child. At fourteen, she did not feel any different. She did not feel stronger or confident. In contrast, she'd grown complacent, allowing Kurenai to get a drop on her.
The kunoichi seemed unruffled to have a scalpel lined against her neck. In contrast, she seemed almost impressed that Rin was able to counter at all. The red in her eyes swirled like the pinwheels of a sharingan. Inwardly, Rin shuddered.
"Nohara-san, are you alright?!"
In the year they've worked together, she could not get Oban to drop the honorific. The door folded inwards with a mighty shove. Splinters sparked in the air and Kurenai jumped back, wide-eyed.
"Oh, um, hello." Oban immediately blushed. No one could have guessed that the mild, bookish nurse had folded the door with his bare hands. Kurenai narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Oban, Kizaku Oban. Nice to meet you."
"It's fine." Rin told Kurenai. "He's a friend."
"I'm sorry, it's just that I felt your chakra." Oban helplessly drew a shape in the air.
"Do you always keep such close eye on your comrades?" Kurenai asked.
"Only when they need it." Oban answered honestly.
Rin rolled her eyes.
"Come on Kurenai, you'll make Asuma jealous."
Kurenai blushed like a tomato. Before she could make denials, Rin lined her soles with chakra and launched herself into the air.
+++++4+++++
Rin had visitors. Sometimes. Some were social calls, little gossip and tidbits of information spread around like a bowl of sweets on Shichi-Go-San. Others were necessary like when Asuma broke both his ankles and was hobbling around on his knees against medical advice.
"That the dragon lady?"
"You cannot be serious."
Asuma's gaze was admiring as he watched Dr. Homura chew out a colleague over a patient. She threw her hands up in disgust and Kurenai, who had come bearing well wishes, was terribly upset.
"Don't worry." Rin assured her year mate. "Dr. Homura has a keeper."
And she was pretty certain it was true. Doctors, as a rule, did not wear jewelry. It simply got in the way. But Dr. Homura worse a beaded bracelet around her wrist, worn to shine, clumsily made as though it had been stuck together by a child. It obviously meant something to her. Maybe from a sweetheart. Rin decided it was a promise.
+++++4+++++
She stood behind her mentor as Anko did hers, spine straight and her feet evenly placed apart. They shared a brief look before staring ahead. They didn't know why they had been summoned to the Hokage's office but they could hazard a guess. Sarutobi Hiruzen was old. He had been thinking of retirement long before the Third War started.
Rin knew that Minato had been tapped as a candidate. From water-cooler gossip, she knew that so-and-so and such-and-such had also been in the running before they were killed in action. But she hadn't known Orochimaru had been considered. There was Lady Tsunade who was a direct descendant of the first Hokage, Senju Hashirama. Her teacher's teacher was the Toad Sage Jiraiya. Orochimaru had always seemed, slimy.
The Hokage cleared his throat.
"You have both done well. Your students have contributed greatly to the war effort. Without them, critical battles would have been lost."
"You do us much credit." Minato said sheepishly. "But I'm grateful for my team. I couldn't ask for a better one."
"Indeed." Orochimaru rolled his eyes. "One student killed, another turned traitor."
Rin bit her tongue before she could say something she might regret.
"Enough." The Hokage rebuked. "That is not why I have summoned you today."
Even the Anbu seemed to lean in to hear what the Hokage had to say.
The Hokage said finally, "I am thinking of stepping down."
Minato put up a token protest. Orochimaru did not bother which drew a faint smile from the Hokage's wizened lips.
But before he could continue, a jounin landed at the window surrounded by an entourage of Anbu and security who seemed to have been dragged through every tree between the Hokage's tower and the village wall.
"I have news!" The jounin gasped, wrestling free of Bear's hold and falling on one knee. "Inoki has sent word."
The air seemed to compress inside the Hokage's office. Ready to go off at a moment's notice.
The jounin wheezed, blue eyes wet with tears.
"The war is over."
