Someone was calling her name, but she had been so desperate to block out the accusatory voice inside of her head that it took a rough jostle for Rin to snap out of her stupor. Her watery brown eyes clashed with worried cerulean eyes.
Minato. He'd see the wreckage, the dead bodies of Obito and Kakashi. Her sensei was too smart to not put the pieces together and then he'll know that she was a murderer, a monster.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Rin murmured through choked sobs. "I didn't mean to do it. It wasn't me. I'm sorry."
Confusion flickered across Minato's face. Rin couldn't understand why; hadn't he seen the wreckage? Hadn't he seen the mangled bodies of his other two students?
"What are you apologizing for, Rin? You don't need to take a reprimand for spacing out during a mission briefing so seriously."
"For-!" She abruptly stopped speaking when she finally noticed two figures standing behind Minato. With his short stature, Obito was wobbling as he stood on his tiptoes in an attempt to look over Minato's shoulders to see how Rin was doing. Kakashi was standing quite a ways from the rest of the team, arms folded over his chest. He was facing the other direction, but his head was craned slightly in her direction.
They were alive.
Tears pricked the corner of her eyes as Rin launched herself at Minato, wrapping her arms around him and holding onto him tightly while she cried her heart out. None of her teammates knew why she had broken down in the middle of the training field, but by the time the sun had risen and Team Minato waited by the front gates for their straggler, Rin was fine.
The tears had dried up. A faux smile of assurance was planted on her face the entire time. The butterflies in her stomach were ignored and forcefully tampered down.
The Kannabi Bridge mission.
The Sanbi incident.
Neither of these events were going to happen, not if Rin had a say about it.
This time, Team Minato arrived back at Konoha without any life threatening injuries. The worst of the injuries had been a few minor scrapes here and there.
Kushina's bone crushing hug had proven to be more deadly than the mission itself.
Rin made sure each and every mission their team embarked on after the Kannabi Bridge mission was completed without a hitch. A simple suggestion to take an unnecessary break or lead her team on an alternative route had taken care of most of the altercations that they had run into during those missions the first time around.
The ripple effect of these little decisions made her realize that each and every action could lead to significant ramifications for their future. Every change was slowly shifting the course of the future bit by bit, even if she was currently unaware of it. Yet having been given a third chance to try to save her teammates, Rin had become obsessed with crafting the perfect outcome. Even with the burden of the significance of her decisions bearing down on her shoulders every single day, every decision was for the betterment of her teammates' welfare.
Her choice was right, Rin tried to convince herself.
If it meant Kakashi and Obito could complete the mission without suffering a broken arm and having to be hauled back to Konoha, then not choosing to take a detour to save a civilian village from Iwa's suppression was right, wasn't it?
If it meant Obito would never have to experience the life threatening altercation that awakened his Sharingan, then choosing to delay their journey home was right, wasn't it?
If it meant Kakashi wouldn't lose an eye, and Obito wouldn't become crushed underneath a pile of boulders, then choosing to pull Minato prematurely from the battlefront and subjecting ten Konoha shinobis to inevitable death was right, wasn't it?
Even Rin had a difficult time convincing herself that to be the truth, but what else could she do? What other path could she take when her only options were to the left, where nothing was right?
Or to the right, where nothing was left?
Rin couldn't imagine a life where nothing was left.
So, she had chosen to be selfish instead.
Ameyuri Ringo. Over the course of the past year, Rin dug for any information on the mysterious famed Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. Despite being one of the most dangerous nins to come out of Kiri, there seemed to be little information on her fighting style other than a brief overview of her signature twin blades and her proficiency in lightning jutsu.
According to the wheel of chakra nature, wind was strong against lightning. Rin had drawn the short end of the stick, ending up with affinities in water and earth - both elements which were weak against lightning jutsus. Despite having few things in her arsenal to counter Ameyuri, Rin still put forth her entire effort into every training session.
Her offensive tactics increased from simply possessing the chakra blade to having the ability to execute water jutsus on par with that of the Kiri nins and some simple earth jutsus thrown into the mix. Numerous spars against Kakashi's tanto, and then against him while he trained himself to be well versed in handling two swords, had left her more equipped to fight a sword user. Her reaction time became much quicker, movements much more nimble; however, when it came down to it, Rin was still too weak.
Still a coward.
In the past year, running away had never crossed her mind. Yet the moment it had, a single fleeting thought that cut through her concentration as she worked to mend a broken arm, Rin had given into the temptation out of fear. After she finished healing the patient, Rin walked out of the medical tent under the guise that she was going to take a break.
With her chakra capacity still at the halfway mark, Rin had more than enough chakra to keep going for another hour. It had been an excuse, one that no one would question because everyone viewed her as the kid who put forth one hundred percent of her effort into everything.
What they didn't know was that Rin was a coward.
She left that medical tent with no intentions of returning.
No one paid her any attention as she walked to the outskirts of the camp. Once hidden in the safety of the obscurity of the shadows, Rin took off running away from the battlefield. The persistent thunking noise of her landing on one branch after another broke through the peaceful silence in the forest, but the distraction wasn't enough to stop the thoughts in her mind from going wild.
Sure, Rin was more prepared this time.
Sure, there was a chance that Rin wouldn't even have to face Ameyuri Ringo.
But there was also the possibility that her preparation still fell short, especially when she had no counter to her formidable lightning jutsu.
And there was also the prospect of fighting someone even stronger than Ameyuri Ringo.
While it hurt her to leave her comrades behind, knowing that they would likely end up dead in half an hour, brief flickers of Kakashi and Obito's bodies kept her resolve from crumbling.
If anyone knew, Rin would be convicted by Konoha for being a runaway shinobi. They'd call her an assortment of things, selfish at the top of their accusations.
All she ever wanted was for her teammates to live.
Why was that so selfish of her?
When the battle ended, Rin found her way back to the aftermath of the attack. Like she expected, the entire campground was completely flattened. The only movement that could be seen was a weak tendril of gray smoke that billowed into the air. Prone bodies were scattered all over the clearing, many of them turned face down into the ground. However, the few who laid on their backs…their empty eyes haunted Rin forever.
Their accusatory stares, aggressively demanding to know why she had chosen to run away, why she had left them behind, why she hadn't warned them. Rin didn't know; she had been too caught up in herself in that moment to even think about all of the other people that she could have saved too.
But what then?
If Rin had evacuated the entire camp, then wouldn't the enemy nins followed them deeper into Konoha territory to track them down? That didn't mean Rin couldn't have taken a few more people along with her; they didn't have to be the sacrifice for her escape.
But who was she to dictate who lived and who died?
Even without her interference, everyone had been bound to die. No matter what choice Rin made - to stay or to go - everyone would have died anyways.
Their deaths weren't on her conscience.
That didn't stop them from haunting her in her sleep anyways.
However, seeing Obito and Kakashi return from their battle weary, but mostly unharmed eased away a bit of the guilt that wracked her from the inside. The small group of survivors regrouped, receiving orders to retreat back to Konoha.
They had emerged victorious, yet it was such a shallow victory if it was in exchange for the majority of their forces being wiped out.
However, they would never understand the importance of this victory for Rin.
Obito and Kakashi alive.
No deaths by her own hand.
On their journey home, no one commented on the fact that Rin was the only one in the group whose clothes remained unmarred by a single speck of dirt.
They were eighteen years old when the last of Team Minato was finally promoted to jonin after passing a nerve-wracking jonin exam: her. Kakashi had been the first of their team, of their generation, to receive that promotion - the one that had led to the demise of their team the first time around. Under Minato's recommendation, Rin and Obito had taken the exam at sixteen; Obito passed and she failed.
The promotion itself didn't matter all that much to her; Rin had taken the exam with Obito out of solidarity. With her talent in the medical field, Rin had easily been promoted to special jonin and she was content to hold the title for the rest of her life. However, Obito's nagging insistence of how cool it would be if everyone on Team Minato had become jonins had broken through her defenses. Support from Minato and Kushina - and even Kakashi, in the form of offering to help her train - reignited her ambition to try for jonin once more.
After all, not just anyone could receive support from one of the strongest Uchihas of the generation, the youngest Anbu captain and the Hokage himself.
Training to be stronger wouldn't hurt her anyways.
The five of them crowded in Kushina's living room. Baby Naruto had been sent off to Mikoto's house for the night as Team Minato hijacked the living room for their small, but quaint celebration. The table was full of each of their favorite foods. Minato had given her the same present that he had given the boys: one of his custom made three-pronged kunais. However, on top of that, Minato had also given her a promotion as head of the Emergency Room Team, the ones that healed shinobis brought into the hospital in critical condition.
Two promotions in one day?
What a day it had been.
Despite Obito and Kushina's over-exuberant nature quickly becoming almost unbearable as it seemed like they were trying to outdo each other, Rin wouldn't want to be anywhere but here. Minato weaseled his way in between the two of them, trying to prevent them from falling or face planting into a wall. Situated on the end of the couch with his arm thrown over the ledge and glass of water in the other hand, an unimpressed expression was etched across his features as he watched Obito make a fool of himself for the tenth time tonight.
Rin took a seat beside her stoic teammate.
"I'm surprised that you're still here." Not that she wasn't grateful he had shown up, but these types of rambunctious celebrations were hardly his type of scene. Two years ago, Kakashi had abandoned his own birthday party that Gai had thrown for him on the account that it was "too bright and too loud."
Kakashi shrugged. "Sometimes…these moments don't last as long as you anticipate. I want to savor them for as long as I can."
Right. Rin had almost forgotten that the wound of losing a teammate was fresh on Kakashi's mind. Kakashi had looked so desperate, so anguished when he hauled his comrade's body through the hospital lobby.
No medical professional was needed to know the man - no, boy - had long stopped breathing.
"Were you close to him?" Rin ventured to ask. Although two weeks had passed since, death was always a subject that Rin never had the courage to broach with Kakashi, especially not after knowing the truth behind his father's death.
Kakashi snorted, taking a swig of water so quickly that she hadn't even realized until the mask was already back in its rightful place. "Not really. Minato stashed him under my command and he was just like an annoying little kid, always following me around, always waiting for me to say something before he would do it."
Kakashi's voice dropped an octave. "But he was always there, you know? Now that he's not, it feels so…empty."
Rin understood the feeling. It was exactly how she felt in the year following Obito's death. It hardly helped that the people that she considered to be her support system had pulled away too: Minato to the battlefield and Kakashi back inside his own wallowing, apathetic self.
Rin wished she had something to say other than "sorry" at the tip of her tongue, but from her personal experience, she knew that was the last thing she wanted to hear. Sorry for what? Sorry that she had been too weak to save herself? Sorry that she had to endure his absence for the rest of her life? Sorry that she had been placed on the team in the first place, because if she hadn't, then he wouldn't have to die.
She swallowed her sympathy. "What is his name?"
"Was," Kakashi corrected. "His name was Tenzo. Do you know what still haunts me every night?"
"What?"
Kakashi looked straight in her eye, a harrowing reflection in his dark eyes, sending shivers down her spine.
"If I had gone back, he wouldn't be dead."
Rin tilted her head in confusion. "But, didn't you? You brought his body back."
"Yeah I did. After I completed the mission. When I got there, I watched them deal the fatal blow. I knew that the blow had punctured his heart. The entire way back, I just couldn't help but think about what would have happen if I had chosen to save Tenzo first. He would still be alive right now. The mission would still have been completed. I made the wrong decision."
"You don't know that," Rin tried to placate him, but it was hard when his admission was stirring up all of these feelings of guilt within her. "You can contemplate what-ifs all day long but at the end of the day, it's still nothing more than just a speculation. It's not your fault."
No, if anyone was to be blamed, it was her.
The first time, the importance of friendship was brutally taught to Kakashi during the Kannabi Bridge mission. The second and third times, all three of them had died too prematurely to truly understand the ramifications of the changes that had been made. Hearing Kakashi recount Tenzo's death made her realize that the changes made weren't always for the better.
Newton's Third Law: action and reaction to seek to maintain equilibrium. Obito lived. Tenzo died. She lived. Who would die in her stead?
If Rin had allowed fate to run its course, would Tenzo have lived past his teens?
She never intentionally wanted to hurt someone else, but the decisions that she made six years ago had long spiraled out of her control. All of the things that she was hearing made her wonder how far she would go to keep saving Kakashi and Obito.
Was it time to let go?
Was Rin making everything worse?
Maybe there was a happy ending waiting for Team Minato far into the future and…she had just single handedly ruined it all.
It was four in the morning when Rin finally had a moment to collapse onto her chair in her office, head burying into her arms as she finally allowed her eyes to close. For what started out to be a quiet night shift had turned into an insanely busy night as one thing happened after another. Not to mention, they were extremely short staffed as one of their medics had been pulled for a field mission and another was coming down with a virus.
It was just her and Haburashi on staff tonight and last she heard, Urashi was still elbow deep into his surgery. Rin had just finished her third of the night, intending to doze off for a bit to replenish her energy and chakra levels, when the red alarms started flashing in the darkness.
Shit. Another emergency.
Rin shot straight up, grabbing her white coat from the rack as she briskly walked out of the office. One of the nurses found her, struggling to keep up with her pace while attempting to update Rin on the situation.
"Four, all heavily wounded. Lots of bleeding, broken ribs and limbs, and head trauma. All of them need to undergo immediate treatment."
"And Urashi san?"
The nurse shook her head. "He's still in surgery."
"Did you call the others?"
"Yes, but it will take them at least fifteen minutes to get here. We don't know if the patients have fifteen minutes."
They don't. Of course, they don't. Part of a medic's job was to decide who to save and who to die. It was the part of the job that Rin hated the most, yet a necessary evil until they were finally not short-staffed. That was a problem that wouldn't be solved in her generation though.
Rin reached the commotion, where a group of nurses had gathered around each of the patients to attempt to staunch the blood flow. That wouldn't nearly be enough, but that would buy them a few precious seconds.
"A group of Anbu," someone was telling her, but Rin wasn't listening.
No, no, no.
Her worst nightmare had come true.
On one bed, his complexion was frighteningly pale and his left arm twisted at an odd angle. From the babble of the nurse standing next to her, Obito also suffered from a punctured lung, the result of one of the many broken ribs piercing the organ. In that state, Obito wouldn't last long enough for another medic to arrive.
But on the other bed was Kakashi, his shock of white hair completely stained red. He was bleeding out from his stomach at an alarmingly fast rate…the gaping hole refusing to close no matter how many hands were on deck, pumping out healing chakra. On top of that, the nurse reported head trauma and the possibility of internal bleeding inside of his head.
No…
Rin hadn't even registered who the other two shinobis were. No, she was too hyper fixated on the fact she had to choose between Obito and Kakashi.
How could she choose?
Regardless of who Rin chose to save, she was a monster.
If she saved Obito, Kakashi died. If she saved Kakashi, Obito died.
Obito…Kakashi…Obito…Kakashi…Obito…Kakashi.
Someone jostled her shoulder, snapping her out of her daze. "Rin san, are you alright? You need to choose who you are operating on first; we're ready to assist you."
Rin nodded. Yes. Someone would inevitably have to die here today, but that didn't mean both of them had to die. The power to save at least one was in her hands…even if she so desperately wished that she could save everyone.
That was just the harsh cruelty of reality.
Rin pointed to one of the hospital beds, heart clenching in agony as she watched him get carted off to the emergency room. The other three laid utterly still, barely having any energy to fight back against the pain.
"When the other medics arrive, can you make sure that he gets tended to first?" Only after Rin extracted the promise from the young nurse did she head towards the operating room, hating herself for being stuck in this predicament.
Hating herself for having to make the decision.
Hating herself for having the heart to leave Obito behind.
Of the four shinobis that were brought in during the early morning hours, only one made it out alive: Kakashi Hatake. Rin barely managed to pull him back from the brink of death, working through the majority of the morning until she was certain that he was no longer in critical condition.
Now, he had been wheeled off to one of the patient's rooms, with dozens of tubes hooked up to his body.
Of the three shinobis that had been left behind, Rin heard from the nurses that Obito was the last one to go. He fought harder, fought longer than the others, living twice as long as they anticipated him to.
Despite his best efforts, the battle still fell five minutes short of what he needed to be saved. Rin stood in the doorway of the morgue room, leaning against the doorframe as she watched two other personnel haul his body up to his designated locker and slid him into freezer-like conditions.
A loud bang that stemmed from closing the metal door shut solidified for her that Obito was dead.
Obito was dead.
Rin could have saved him.
But she had chosen not to.
Minato didn't say much. He didn't need to. Rin could read the disappointment and pain written all over his face.
Rin couldn't forgive herself.
Kakashi was shouting so loudly that everyone in the hall could hear his anguished cries as he demanded to know why Obito was dead, why no one saved him, and why he was the one to live instead. Fearfully, Rin approached Kakashi's room, a dozen apologies at the tip of her tongue. Yet when she peered into the room and saw the crazed look in Kakashi's eyes, her courage dissipated.
Minato looked up, making eye contact with her. There wasn't a single trace of warmth that was usually present in his eyes. His lips were pressed in a thin line as he listened to Kakashi rant on and on about how it should have been him who died, not Obito. He was the team leader, he was the one who had gotten them into that life threatening mess, he was the one who made the mistake.
And he should have been the one to pay for it.
Each statement stabbed Rin straight through her heart. Tears flowed from the corners of her eyes. Had she made the wrong decision? Not only the one to save Kakashi instead of Obito, but every single one that altered the course of their lives, everyone's lives.
Should she have just let history run its course?
No matter how hard she tried, it seemed that some things just couldn't be fixed without making everything ten times worse.
When Kakashi finally noticed her presence, Rin couldn't find the courage to face him, to face his accusations, to face his courage to take responsibility for his actions - something that she had failed to do.
Rin fled. The soles of her feet slapped loudly against the tiled floor. Her sprint had garnered many confused looks from both hospital personnel and patients alike; that didn't break her stride. Those glances were nothing compared to how disappointed Minato was in her or how angry Kakashi was at her.
Everything was her fault.
Why had she been so stupid and naive to think that someone like her could change anything for the better? Of course, Rin made everything worse. People that weren't supposed to die ended up dead. And in exchange for what?
For the last six years, Rin could bury herself under the delusion that at least those sacrifices had been in exchange for Obito's life…but now that illusion was broken. She didn't even have another thinly veiled excuse to shield her from the harsh truth.
Everything was her fault.
Rin had been wrong to interfere with fate.
But the realization came too late. Her legs gave out underneath her, sending her into a heap as she sat on the cold, tiled floor at the very end of the hospital wing. Arms wrapped tightly around her knees, Rin rocked herself back and forth as she muttered nonsensical things under her breath.
Some point during her breakdown, Kushina found her. The older women sat down cross-legged next to her, patting her back gently while she muttered words of comfort. Rin leaned on Kushina's shoulder.
"It's not your fault, Rin chan. You may be one of the best medics in the village, but even you cannot save everyone."
"It's my fault," Rin repeated once more. Kushina didn't and wouldn't understand what exactly Rin had done. Everything happened because of her and this was just Kami's way of warning her of the consequences to altering history.
She had been too ambitious. Too greedy. Too selfish.
And too late to make everything right again.
What would it take for this nightmare to end? Rin wanted out.
Out of this perpetual loop of doom.
Hi again!
Not sure how well it worked, but I wanted to do a thing where each loop progressively gets worse despite the little bit of hope that's given each time. The first loop everyone dies, which was worse than canon, and then Rin accidentally kills both of her teammates, and then Rin knowingly has to make the choice to choose Obito or Kakashi.
Biisaiyowaq: Kakashi was already dead by that point in the last chapter, so didn't have that problem, but he does in this chapter haha. Yesss I love Rinchuuriki too - I feel like there's a lot of potential that can be explored with her as the Sanbi's host because she died so early on and no development was given. Maybe in a different fic I'll come back to explore the potential. :) Thank you for reviewing and reading!
JintoLin: Ah yes, a tad of hope was given and then it all gets ruined at the end hehe. Thank you for reading! Always love hearing from you. :)
One more chapter after this! Thank you for reading, until next time!
-MM