Chapter 18
"Sometimes to change the future, you need to change the past first."
"Dang it Bakakashi, just wait until I get the Sharingan! Then I'll be one hundred times better than you!"
Kakashi resisted the urge to sigh as his idiotic teammate slammed a hand on the table and pointed at him, bits of half-chewed noodles flying from his mouth as he ranted angrily. Next to them Rin's face contorted in disgust, quickly snatching her plate off the table before any could fall into her food.
"Obito, stop that! You're spitting crumbs everywhere!" Startled by her admonishment, the Uchiha sunk into his seat with a flurry of frantic apologies, making Kakashi roll his eyes. Team dinners had become a weekly tradition for Team Seven, but for the life of him the young Chuunin couldn't see why Minato-sensei insisted on it. They almost always devolved into arguing, especially when Obito's turn to host rolled around.
"The yakisoba is amazing," Minato-sensei complimented, ignoring the chaotic scene for the most part. "I feel like I could eat all day."
As if summoned by his words Uchiha Ryoko appeared at the table with a laugh holding a large, steaming pot. "Glad to hear someone appreciates my cooking," she commented as she set it on the table, using a wooden spoon to dole out another clump of noodles onto a pleased-looking Minato's plate. "Ryuusuke never compliments me anymore. He didn't even say thank you for the bento I made this morning for his mission."
"Then your husband is an idiot," Minato declared flatly, but he had a giant grin on his face that countered the serious tone of his voice, and he eagerly dug in. Dark eyes twinkling with amusement, Ryoko turned to look at Kakashi.
"How about you? Any seconds?" The stoic boy shook his head in silent refusal, but Rin and Obito happily accepted the offer.
Perhaps the only bearable detail of Obito's turns hosting the team dinners was the fact he usually had it at his cousin Ryoko's house. While she had retired due to an unfortunate but understandable mental breakdown, Uchiha Ryoko had not abandoned the shinobi lifestyle entirely and instead focused her energies into more academic pursuits. She had become the Uchiha clan's resident ophthalmologist in the process, using her own Sharingan and her intensive research into their doujutsu's mechanics to aid her relatives' eyes.
Her knowledge base included far more than just the Sharingan though. Usually she and Minato-sensei would engage in conversations about chakra theory or fuinjutsu so complex and technical Kakashi couldn't understand half the terms they used. Despite that he still found it far more interesting and useful than his teammates' inane chattering, and often preferred to listen in while ignoring them.
Today they wouldn't get a chance to talk about any of that though, because Obito turned to look at his older cousin with a wild gleam in his eye. "Ryoko-baa-san! You're, like, the leading expert in the Sharingan! When I activate it I'll be super badass, won't I?"
"Maybe," she replied, sitting across from him with her own plate of yakisoba. "It depends on how you use it, though. In the end the Sharingan is a tool. A nifty one that's built into our bodies and gives us an almost unfair advantage, but a tool nonetheless. It's still prone to flaws and user error, just like any other tool. Which is great for me," she added with a cheeky grin. "Keeps me in business."
"Ryoko-san," Rin grumbled, shooting her a reproachful look. As a medical ninja, she did not approve of other medical ninja treating the field like a business, even unofficial super-specialized ones like Ryoko.
"It's true though," Ryoko laughed, eating a quick bite of noodles before continuing. "People don't take care of their eyes properly, and in a clan full of arrogant idiots like the Uchiha they're too proud to admit there's anything wrong to an outsider. I swear, when word got out that I was just thinking of accepting patients, almost half the clan showed up in the span of a week."
"Well, clans are very protective of their secrets, and the mechanics of the Sharingan is a pretty big one," Minato commented reasonably, and Ryoko hummed in agreement as she began eating. Chewing thoughtfully, Obito seemed to consider something before swallowing and turning to her.
"When did you activate the Sharingan?" The question visibly took the woman by surprise, pausing in the middle of chewing. She swallowed and her lips ghosted into a small smile, her eyes growing distant.
"I was about eleven," she mused. "Or, twelve, maybe?" She glanced to Minato for confirmation, and the blond slurped up the end of a noodle so he could answer.
"Yeah, it happened when we were eleven," he confirmed, and Obito and Rin glanced at him in surprise.
"Sensei, you were there?" Rin asked.
"So were Kushina, Mikoto, the Ino-Shika-Cho trio and Jiraiya-sensei," their teacher replied with a sheepish grin. Obito seemed a bit awestruck by the lineup of witnesses, his eyes widening.
"Wow, you guys must have been in the middle of a huge battle for all those people to be there! I bet you kicked butt and turned the tides all on your own!" Kakashi noticed the two adults in the room minutely stiffen at the comment and their eyes flit towards each other, some unspoken conversation passing between them.
"We weren't on a battlefield," Ryoko corrected, and Obito stared at her in surprise.
"Wha...? But, I thought the Sharingan usually activates in battle!"
"I kinda got the gist of that from everyone's reactions afterwards," Minato agreed with a sheepish smile, "But Ryoko activated hers here in Konoha, right in the middle of the street."
"What happened?" Rin asked, hesitating. "Did... did you get attacked?" Ryoko smiled faintly at the question, a touch of melancholy flickering in her eyes.
"No. My cat died." At this point the two genin gaped at her in utter confusion, and even Kakashi turned his attention to the exchange with mild curiosity.
"You activated it because of a cat?" he questioned bluntly, ignoring the irritated looks his teammates sent him. "How does the Sharingan even work?"
Before she could reply Minato quickly spoke up, offering him a pacifying and slightly scolding smile. "Ah, hold on, Kakashi. I get why you're curious, but I'm pretty sure that's a clan secret, so..."
"No, it's fine," Ryoko interrupted. Minato whipped his head to look at her in surprise and the Uchiha woman smiled softly as her gaze slid to Obito, making him stiffen. "Since you work with an Uchiha, it's better you all understand how it works so you can support Obito when he activates it."
"Support me?" Obito parroted, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "But, why would I need support? The Sharingan makes us strong, right? If anything, I'd be supporting them!" Ryoko smiled sadly, shaking her head.
"While the Sharingan does give you power, it comes at a price. There's a lot of medical terminology involved on the exact mechanics, but to put it simply, the Sharingan is directly connected to our emotional states. That's the reason most people activate it on missions, fighting for your life leads to some pretty powerful emotions."
"And yet a cat caused you to activate it?" Kakashi repeated his earlier question, ignoring Rin's scolding hiss and Obito's scandalized glare. Ryoko seemed unperturbed though, her smile never fading as she looked at her food with a wistful gleam in her eyes.
"His name was Shiro. He was almost completely white, but he had a single patch of black on his tail. I found him on the streets as a kitten next to his mother's corpse and nursed him until he could survive on his own. He never really lived at my house, he was more of a stray and wandered the village, but I'd say he believed he owned me. Whenever I'd see him in town he'd walk over to me and rub against my legs, and I'd break down and buy him a snack at the nearest cafe."
Her voice carried a warm note full of fondness that made Kakashi's teammates soften, looking at her with rapt attention and faintly sad eyes. "One day, a few months after I graduated, I was out shopping with Kushina and Mikoto when we heard this horrible cry from an alley. We looked inside and saw some boys from our class who didn't pass huddled around something red and white, beating it with sticks. And when I looked closer and saw this little tail with a black spot, well..."
She trailed off, and a somber silence fell over the table. Rin stared at her with tears in her eyes while Obito just looked at his dinner with a frown, and Minato-sensei frowned at her worriedly before sighing. "I was eating lunch with Jiraiya-sensei at a stand about two blocks away when we heard this unearthly screech. We found Kushina and Mikoto holding back Ryoko while she clawed at our old classmates and screamed threats. Her eyes were glowing red, and, well, I never felt so scared in my life."
Remembering the moment, Ryoko's smile grew a bit more pleasant and cheerful as she bobbed her head. "Oh, yes," she chirped. "Those boys were so scared, they actually wet their pants. They lived all the way across town, so they had to walk home with this huge stain on their crotches for everyone to see."
The happy tone she used made Rin and Obito shiver, scooting away slightly. Kakashi however remained silent, his thoughts running wild as he eyed his half-finished yakisoba. Lazily pushing the noodles around the plate, he watched as the fried vegetable and pork bits tumbled into each other and idly noted they almost seemed to resemble the shape of a cat.
"You could have come to me, you know," Ryoko suddenly said. Kakashi stiffened and the cat on his plate turned back into random vegetables and pork, and he slowly raised his head to look at her.
She gazed at him with a neutral expression on her face as his team sat frozen in time, their eyes glassy and their bodies little more than still snapshots caught amidst animated gestures. Tilting her head placidly at him, Ryoko's black eyes seemed to bore into Kakashi and yet he couldn't glimpse any thoughts from her features, even with Obito's gifted Sharingan spinning wildly in his left eye socket and highlighting the most minute details in her expression.
"When Obito died, you could have visited," she continued, her voice blank and flat. "I would have looked at it. I would have helped you. I spent a lot of time researching transplants, I had a pretty good idea on how to help you."
Kakashi's jaw clenched as he squeezed his eyes shut, his hands rising to his head as he sucked in a sharp breath with a hiss. Peeking open his eye—his eye, the right one, the one he'd been born with—he found himself staring into pinpricks of black set against pear-colored irises.
The gray cat stared at him silently as it sat on his desk, its eyes blank and unjudging as he clutched the note with trembling hands. Gibberish characters decorated the page yet his mind translated the jumbled mess easily, the scrawled message so familiar he'd ingrain it into his memory even without the aid of the Sharingan.
"I was waiting for you to come to me, Kakashi," Ryoko's elegant handwriting (it should be elegant and smooth, not scratchy and scribbly like right now) said. "The clan would not let me go to you and offer help unless you asked first, but I honestly didn't care what this clan thought. I wanted you to be the one to take the first step, to gather the courage to push past your insecurities and seek help on your own. I had hoped that your friendship with Akari would help give you that push, but sadly, it never did."
He stood in a cemetery now, towering over a small stone bearing the name of an equally small body buried beneath it. The letter burned in his hands, his vision stinging with tears as he read it next to the grave of the author's victim. Indignation and grief churned violently and painfully in his chest at the injustice of it all, at the cruelty of the world that took this tiny ball of light and warmth, so young and innocent, and slaughtered it mercilessly.
"I am sorry, Kakashi. I know I will cause you more pain and sadness, but I have made my mind. The Uchiha clan has been on a steady downward spiral for years, and I know there is nothing left I can do to save it. I have watched my kinsmen seal our future in blood and hatred, and I am too tired to try to fight it any longer. As a mother I cannot allow my children to suffer for their arrogance, and the only way I can do that now is to take their suffering into my own hands."
Red chakra bubbled around an eight-year-old Naruto even as wooden pillars sprouted from the ground to wrap him in a restrictive embrace, tears streaming down his face as he screamed an agonized wail that resonated with Kakashi. All the pent-up frustration and despair from the past four months came rushing to the forefront of his mind and his head began spinning, a hand flying to his borrowed eye as he heard his comrades call to him in panic.
Crimson consumed into his vision and faded into a bloody void as he fell to his knees, releasing the heartbroken scream that had been building up ever since that horrible night in the house once full of fond memories of dinners with his team.
"I am so, so sorry, Kakashi. I do not deserve any forgiveness. I can only apologize for having to take another precious person from you."
oOoOo
Kakashi's eyes snapped open, his body jerking with a soundless gasp. Listening to his heart pound erratically in his chest, he swallowed the dryness in his mouth and slowly looked around, cataloguing his surroundings.
Peach-painted walls surrounded him adorned with paintings of sparkling ocean views, giving the small room an illusion of space and openness despite a lack of windows. A wooden desk pushed against the wall to his left with a comfortably worn chair next it, several books stacked atop the surface with a bright lamp glowing on the left side. Salty sea air wafted through the open doorway, mingling with savory, meaty aromas that made his mouth water and his stomach clench in longing for food.
All in all, Kakashi would almost call the room cozy if not for the leather cuffs restraining his ankles and wrists to a metal table.
Raising his head to study his restraints, he gave several tentative pulls and scowled at the resistance. Absolutely no slack, his limbs might as well be bolted down directly to the table. He rolled his head to the side to peer at the table holding him, and noted black marks etched into the steel forming an outline around his form. Kakashi couldn't recognize the full extent of the sprawling seal, but he recognized enough of the characters to surmise it had the purpose of suppressing his chakra, making him internally curse.
First he passed out from chakra exhaustion, and then he woke up captive to someone reasonably well-versed in fuinjutsu. Lovely.
Tentative sniffs at the air revealed no traces of the three scents he'd become accustomed to smelling almost daily over the past month, but Kakashi couldn't decide if his students' absence was good or bad. Good, because that likely meant they weren't captured. Bad, because they were still in hostile territory and he had a pretty strong suspicion Zabuza hadn't actually died.
Alternatively, they might be dead.
A-plus teaching there, Kakashi. Clearly, the fact he considered the scenario of his students left to fend on their own against an A-rank threat as the most favorable option spoke volumes of his incredible ability to care and protect three vulnerable genin.
If he died here, Minato-sensei and Kushina would murder him in the afterlife for putting their son in that position. Theoretically killing a dead person should be impossible, but impossible never stopped Uzumaki Kushina.
Footsteps drew his attention back to the present, and he closed his eyes and slowed his breathing to feign unconsciousness. Better to hide his consciousness for now and try to gather some information so he could analyze the situation a bit better. Kakashi listened as his captor approached the doorway and stepped inside only to pause, a long moment of silence following.
"Oh, shit," a voice groaned, and the footsteps hurriedly fled the room. Kakashi opened his eyes with a small huff. Looks like they noticed he was faking. At this point he felt it pretty safe to assume he'd been captured by Gato, and figured the visitor to be a lackey. Seeing as he lacked the physical energy or chakra to mount an escape attempt, he just quietly resigned himself to wait for the smug businessman or a burly henchman to show up.
Instead, a man in black clothing appeared in the doorway, adjusting a red mask over his face.
Kakashi's nerves instantly stood on edge at the sight of the figure, his eye narrowing. Inky black tendrils radiated from the right eye in a mockery of a sunburst, the lines curling across the mask in a web of wavy curves that petered into nothing. It looked more artistic than intimidating, perhaps even more so since it lacked a hole for a left eye which suggested a lack of depth perception. He didn't let that fool him though.
One look at him and he knew the stranger to be a different breed than the thugs who might work for a tyrant like Gato, or even a rogue nin like Zabuza. No, this man radiated a subtle sort of power, an ever-present one that radiated even while just standing there doing nothing, the kind that couldn't be cowed and tamed by money alone.
In other words, this guy almost certainly had nothing to do with the mission. Which made him an even bigger threat because Kakashi had no idea of his motivations.
"Sorry about that," the masked stranger said, the same voice he'd heard curse earlier. "I did not expect you to wake up so fast. Good thing you were playing dead, I didn't have my mask on." His voice carried a light and almost playful note, as if he were speaking to an old friend.
Too bad Kakashi's friends were dead.
"Who are you?" the captive jounin demanded. "What do you want?" Where are we? What happened to Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura? He shoved down the litany of other questions he desperately wanted to ask, because he knew that if he showed the man a sliver of vulnerability, a fraction of worry for his genin, the man would pounce on the weakness and use the three as tools against him. Kakashi had already failed them by getting captured, he would be damned if he put them in any more danger than he already had.
"You don't recognize me?" the stranger gasped, a gloved hand fluttering over his heart as if offended. He quickly chuckled though, shaking his head with a large shrug. "Well I'm hardly surprised, since it's been a while. Kinda the point of the mask, too."
"We've met?" Kakashi hazarded, trying to gather as much information as possible.
"We worked together, actually," the man corrected, and Kakashi's eye widened a fraction before swiftly narrowing once more. A former Leaf ninja, then? But who? There had been only a handful of significant defections in Kakashi's life, and the stranger's attitude didn't seem to match Itachi and he never worked with Orochimaru. That meant the man must be officially dead. Unfortunately, Kakashi's career in ANBU had left him with a large number of tragically deceased allies whose bodies had never been recovered, so he'd need some time to sort through it.
"Well, I'd apologize for offending you," he remarked carefully, "but it's a bit hard when I don't remember you."
"Whatever makes you think you offended me?" The man sounded genuinely puzzled and curious.
In response, Kakashi just rattled his wrists and ankles with a deadpan stare.
"Oh, right. That. That's more to make sure you don't hurt yourself than to be menacing or anything like that. I know you don't react well to waking up around unfamiliar people, so I didn't want to take any risks." As he spoke he walked to the desk and lifted a notebook, casually flipping through the pages. That did not bode well with Kakashi. Notebooks usually meant research, and research made him think of Orochimaru.
Suppressing the urge to shudder, he plastered on a fake smile and lightly commented, "Well, I'm awake now, and you're not apparently not a stranger, so there's no need to keep me restrained, right?" The man hummed in faint amusement, not turning to face him.
"Sorry, Kakashi, I'd love to just let you up and maybe catch up over some lunch, but I know you, and you won't cooperate willingly." That did not ease the growing pit of dread in his stomach, his heartbeat picking up in pace. Experimentation seemed more and more likely with every passing second, and he tried to hide his growing dread and keep his voice light and conversational.
"Maa, don't say that. You haven't even asked. Maybe if I knew what you wanted to do, I would cooperate."
His words gave the man pause, slowly turning to look at him. "Kakashi, I am planning to perform a medical procedure on you," he informed the Copy-Nin blandly. "Do you know what your reputation at the hospital is? Nurses specifically tell parents 'don't let your kids become another Kakashi' because you're that bad about going in for necessary medical treatment."
At this point Kakashi's heart pounded even harder, because the man basically confirmed he intended to do something to Kakashi's body. "What kind of procedure?" he asked warily, his faux lightness gone and his voice dead serious. The man just turned back to the notebook, idly flipping another page.
"Technically, I guess it's not actually necessary, per se. But... it will help you, I promise. If all goes well, I'll be done in a day and then you should be able to heal anywhere from two days to, oh," he paused to consult the notebook, "Five weeks."
"Two days to five weeks?" He didn't bother hiding his incredulity at the range.
"Look, this isn't exactly standard, okay? You're the first one to go through this, I'm kinda playing this by ear and hoping this research is accurate."
"If you are trying to convince me you're helping me, you're doing a horrible job," Kakashi muttered weakly, honestly surprised at how calm he sounded considering the amount of mental screaming and panicking going on inside his head right now. His captor huffed a small snort of amusement as he glanced back at Kakashi.
"I am, aren't I?" he mused lightly, and set down the notebook as he turned to face his prisoner fully. "Honestly, I'd love to tell you who I am. I want nothing more than to rip off this mask and say, 'hey, look, I'm actually alive! One less person to mourn, woohoo!' But right now, I can't." His voice took on a hard edge, his head dipping slightly. "It's too dangerous. I am dead, Kakashi. And there are people out there who would prefer I stay that way."
Walking closer, the man stopped next to the table and sat on the edge and twisted so he leaned over Kakashi, his mask shadowed by the light behind him. Kakashi shrank back from the proximity, only able to eye him warily while every instinct screamed to run and get away. "I know you, Kakashi. You're loyal to the Hokage to a fault. The second you knew my identity, you would report it to him, and that won't do. There are people who absolutely must not know I'm alive."
For a horrifying second Kakashi half-expected the man to start rubbing circles in his cheek with his thumb or something, because his voice had that sort of gentle and intimate quality to it that fit such a gesture. Who are you? How do I know you? He mentally screamed the questions in a desperate bid for answers, but he didn't bother voicing them out loud. This guy just made it pretty clear he wouldn't be answering that anytime soon.
Shrugging lightly, the man straightened up a bit and turned forward, his hands splaying on the table on either side as he swung his legs. "Honestly, I am happy to see you again, Kakashi. I really did miss you, you're the first friendly face I've seen in years, second if you count—well, no need to share that. I really would like nothing more than to just have lunch and chat like old times, but, well... Life's a bitch, you know?"
He slid off the table and walked back to the desk, slipping a storage scroll from his pocket and spreading it open. "I promise you right now though, I have no evil intentions. I am one hundred percent on your side." A puff of smoke appeared and revealed several vials along with a syringe, making Kakashi physically recoil. "I already finished most of the setup while you were unconscious, so I just need to put you under and put together the final touches. Hopefully I'll be able to finish by dinner, and then we can have a nice, big meal together."
He loaded one of the vials into the syringe and Kakashi flinched, giving up on any semblance of composure. "Don't do this," he pleaded, struggling against the restraints. "If we're really allies, then just let me go. I don't know what you're planning, but I can guarantee forcing a medical procedure on me won't make me trust you!"
"I know it won't. But if I tell you what I plan to do, then you'll really start to fight back." Approaching him once more, he reached under the table and lifted the end of a bulky leather strap, pulling it across Kakashi's torso and buckling it to a strap on the other side. He tightened it like a belt and Kakashi's back pressed uncomfortably flat against the table, too tight to raise it any more, and the man gently pressed his palm onto Kakashi's forehead to keep his head still.
Kakashi's blood ran cold as his captor leaned over his face, and though he couldn't see anything through the black void in the eye hole he could sense that the man was looking him straight in the eye.
"Before I put you under, I'll tell you now your team is okay." His gentle words made something snap in Kakashi, stilling his frenzied struggles and ogling his captor in wide-eyed shock. "I've been keeping an eye on them, and I made sure they know about Zabuza. They got to the client's house safely last night, and they're holding up fine so far. Naruto's helping build the bridge with shadow clones while Sasuke and Sakura train and play bodyguard.
"They're good kids, Kakashi," he continued, soft and reassuring. "They have good heads on their shoulders, whatever you've been doing so far is working. Have some faith in them. If you're not recovered by the time Zabuza goes after the old man, I'll help out myself. So for now you can rest easy, okay?"
With those final words he plunged the needle into Kakashi's neck, and his world turned black.
This is probably one of my favorite chapters to date. I wrote it in one sitting at like 3 AM one night and I love how it turned out. This chapter reveals a lot of small details, especially the flashback/dream at the start. Writing the dynamics between Kakashi's team and Ryoko was fun, and you get a glimpse at Ryoko's history and Naruto's first encounter with Kurama. Not to mention the letter from Ryoko, which, if it's not clear, I will confirm was actually delivered after the massacre. There's all kinds of delicious details hidden in the first half of the chapter, so I'm curious how much you guys will be able to pick up!
And that's all before we get to his captor. I love scenes like this for some reason, just the psychological stress on Kakashi's end while trying to figure out his identity and motive, the nonchalant and upbeat attitude of the super-friendly Kakashi-napper... Ah, I just love it all so much~
As always, please leave a review! Reviews are honestly so encouraging to me and while I'll keep writing and posting regardless of how many reviews I get, there really is nothing more motivating than that. I'd especially love to hear any speculation you guys might have. Also, a big thanks to everyone who submitted names for the Chuunin Exam arc! I've used a bunch of suggestions and no longer need any new names, I'll credit the commenters when the time comes.
Next chapter will be out Sunday! See you then!
