Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
A/N: I'm following "The Great Naruto Timeline," which can be found in the Library section of the forums at Narutofan. "B.K." stands for "Before Kyuubi," and "A.K." stands for "After Kyuubi," referring to the pivotal point in time that the Kyuubi attacked the village.
Spoilers: …Everything (especially Kakashi Gaiden) except the new arc with Sai.
Chapter 1: Emergency Room / In which Rin reveals her love
"O, swear not by the inconstant moon, th' inconstant moon/That nightly changes in her circled orb/Lest that thy love prove likewise variable" (Romeo and Juliet II.ii.114-116).
------
March 28, 1 B.K.
------
A languid, lucid moon tailed the flash of silver hair tearing through the forest far, far below. Panting hard and harsh and heavy with exhaustion, the owner of the hair the same shade as its stalker was a fair-skinned boy no older than fourteen. From somewhere around his frantic feet came a whine. A grouch-faced dog nipped at the boy's pants with a gentle tug, and the boy halted; craned his neck and stared down at the lolling tongue.
"Kakashi," the dog growled. "The other way."
The boy nodded. He reached back to slide a kunai from his vest, and in an impossibly-fluid motion, pricked his finger without hesitation. Swiping the bubble of blood on rough bark that intensified the slight throb, he muttered a technique before blurring into the trees once more.
Behind him pitter-patted the steps of fleet hunter-nins a hairsbreadth away from the boy's speed.
------
Cherry blossoms drift in aching spirals. Beneath the shrouded moon, life is frozen. In the morning, lamb-soft leaves will unfurl and a stubborn shrub will add another hint of a millimeter to its height.
It's spring.
------
A pale girl flies to the Konoha Hospital, chakra in her bruised feet—they're aching from each anxious leap. Her face is thin with stress and her sleeves hang too loose on her wiry arms. She's one of two survivors of her old genin team—and very soon, if this next lunge doesn't bring her that much closer to the hospital, she may be the only survivor. It's a team that became "old" about six months past.
Her team had promised greatness. There had been the jounin-leader, a rapid yellow blaze that had inspired fear among Konoha's enemies. There had been the Uchiha, who hadn't been the most talented of that illustrious clan, but had been an Uchiha. There had been the Hatake, son of the White Fang—a man on par with the legendary Sannin. And there had been the pale girl, whose talent for medicine began rumors of "the next Tsunade."
The pale girl's name is Rin.
------
The emergency room's door slams into the wall and chips it. Rin stands in the doorway, eyes wide and voice lost. And then she reaches for the red-drenched figure in a mass of white sheets, sitting there with his hands folded and head down. Rin's strides are uneven and awkward, but she manages to be at the beaten form's side in an instant.
"Kakashi," she says. He doesn't look up. "Kakashi!"
Kakashi raises his head to peer at her, disturbing eyes unsteady. "Rin?"
The scene is wrong. Kakashi doesn't belong here. He belongs to winter's iciness, not here in his gashed, bitter state, where outside the walls blooms a serene spring.
Rin's close to crying—she bites her lip to stop its trembling—and the image in front of her stabs with less mercy than a kunai.
Red trickles down every rivet and facet of his body, escaping from the cuts that travel his body like a pattern. His hair's limp and matted, rain the scent of salt and something tangy—blood—dripping from each strand. The hands shake, and the fingernails are ripped and ooze black and raw. A bone protrudes from his left calf, and on his right knee the skin's gone, leaving only a dirtied kneecap. Kakashi, broken.
Rin clenches the fabric of her medic's apron and breathes in. Tsunade's not here to work her almost-magic skills. Shizune's not here either. It's as if there's been an exodus of Konoha's best—beginning with Tsunade and ending with Jiraiya, with the bastard Orochimaru taking his welcome leave somewhere in the middle.
Someone offers her a wet towel. She silently accepts and cleans her hands. There's nothing but the scent of antiseptic and metal—but she can't smell the metal carried on the red, she won't.
She dips her hands into the thick dark warmth and, praying for a miracle, jolts chakra through the torn body. The tattered form writhes with the impact, and the eyes snap open. A wretched wild cry emits from the cracked lips. Sheets rip. Bars shriek. Pans clatter to the floor, and the clanging draws medic-nins in like a bright red flower attracts a bee. Except in this case, it's the bees that will be stung.
Her medic's apron now splattered with the rust of death, Rin gasps at them to leave—but not before a shuriken is flung into an attendant's arm. He yells, more in shock than pain, and they exit in a hurry, but not before one casts Rin a nervous glance. They don't think she can handle the flailing person beneath her hands. She frowns at the woman and the woman leaves. They aren't capable of even a fraction of what Rin's doing now, and part of her wonders if she's capable. But all Rin knows is that she'll heal Kakashi (she tries not to let herself remember that there are some wounds she can't heal)—or die in the effort.
She is not going to be the only survivor.
"Don't," someone's hoarse voice says. Startled, Rin's eyes blink open. She's been closing them to block out the horrid sight, but she'll convince herself later that they were screwed tight in concentration.
"Not—worth it."
If Rin wasn't so intent on saving Kakashi, she'd slap him. But her hands are soaked in his blood and there's a stream of chakra running from her fingertips into his veins and is it too much to ask that she isn't the only one who makes it past thirteen?
Rin's not the type to swear, but she's damned near, and as Kakashi's eyes close and his head lolls back, she presses all the chakra she can muster into his limp body, a frantic curse screaming in her mind.
"Live, Kakashi," she pleads. The tears she's been straining to hold back shove through and soon her eyes see nothing but a death-smeared watercolor. There's an ache in her head, and the white walls turn gray. The gray edges on black. She's passing out. Minutes pass as her head falls until her hair mixes with his blood.
And with a sudden shudder, Kakashi's mouth opens and his lungs contract. He raises his head and stares at Rin. She holds her breath and waits.
"Don't ever do this again," he says.
Rin withdraws her hands and reaches over the wound she's just healed—now Kakashi's newest scar—for a cloth. Rin's silent; she doesn't know what to say. How do you apologize for bringing someone back to life? For denying a person's death wish?
Kakashi's eyes are red and black and they're not covered by his forehead protector. That metal object that shields Kakashi from reality sits on a metal cart. The cart those jittery medic-nins would've loaded the dead body on. Rin finds it hard not to look away from his steady gaze until he says,
"You don't need to feel obligated."
Just because I'm a teammate are the tacit words, and they ring low and harsh in Rin's ears like the voice of a cracked bell.
"Kakashi…" she says. She's begging now; begging this stranger whose eyes spin cold.
There's nothing else to do but to keen a desperate "I love you" to his stiff face. It's her only explanation for what she's done. If she were brave enough, she'd bend forward to kiss those bleeding lips and prove it to him, but she's not—she's just thirteen—and so she watches him and tries not to cry when his eyes arc in mirth.
Don't laugh, she wants to blurt, but it's too late. A weak chuckle comes from those lips she would've kissed.
"You're too young to know love," Kakashi tells her. "Go home and rest."
Is that anger in his voice? If there is, Rin ignores it. Instead, she remembers the way an enemy had looked after Kakashi's shuriken had neatly sliced her into symmetrical pieces. How that enemy's brother had whimpered like a dog after Rin had pierced his lungs and collapsed his trachea. Or even how it sounded when the last of the enemy's team had shrieked after Kakashi had torn out his spleen and wrenched out his heart and stabbed out his eyes. Rin recalls the blood-marinated feast that had lain there for scavengers.
"If we're old enough to maul other ninjas in battle, then we're old enough to love," she whispers.
Kakashi says nothing.
Rin's voice rises. "Just now, you were an inch away from death and no one could bring you back but a thirteen-year-old medic-nin who got her first period last month!"
There's no response. Kakashi's fallen back into his naturally quiet self, and Rin sees him studying her with that expression he wears when he's memorizing a complicated technique.
And Rin loses herself in despair that—He can't see. That he won't see because of the untalented Uchiha—Obito. Because it's that untalented Uchiha's eye he carries.
Rin strides out hiding her tears because she knows that that if Kakashi sees them, all he'll do is scrutinize her like she's a baffling specimen.
------
"I love him," Rin tells the Hokage.
The Yondaime Hokage is a man known as the "Yellow Flash" to his enemies and "that sweet dear" to his villagers. Rin knows him as her former teacher, the jounin-leader they'd had when her team had been mutilated beyond recognition. But that's wrong. Kakashi had been the jounin-leader for that particular mission. Everything leads back to Kakashi.
"I know," her once-teacher murmurs. His voice is clear and warm like a summer wind.
Rin's blunt nails dig into the desk at her waist. "But he doesn't."
There's a rawness cutting through her sweet tone, and it ages this girl by a decade.
Blue eyes widen and a hand extends towards her. Rin stares blankly at the half-moons she's made on the wood beneath her hands. She closes her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she says after a moment.
The Yondaime smiles, though there's worry in those new lines around his eyes. "Don't be."
Rin takes a breath. "Do you think he'll ever love me?"
Her former jounin-leader pauses, then says, "He already loves you." But it's a pause too long and Rin's too smart not to recognize an indirect answer when she hears one.
For the answer is no. Not the way you want him to.
"I see," Rin replies. She offers him a bitter parody of a grin, tears falling into her smile. "Thank you."
Rin turns and walks out the door.
The moon shone bright like the bloated belly of a pregnant woman. It was a night for lovers.
Questions? Comments? Reviews appreciated.