Present
Chapter Thirteen: Crossroads
Everything had changed.
Even if Rin found it in her heart to forgive Mikia, both of them remained guarded. Mikia was careful, too careful for Rin's tastes, to refrain from asking about Rin's whereabouts when she left as if she was scared of becoming the Uchiha's informant again. Conversations didn't flow the way it used to, Mikia often fell short of returning teasing jabs and offering her thoughts on the touchier subjects. Most of the silence was filled by Aiko's relentless chatter or Rin's awkward laughs.
Mikia even insisted that she didn't need Rin to watch the shop, even when she volunteered, going to lengths to coerce an unwilling Aiko to do so. Although Mikia never expressed it aloud, Rin understood.
She wasn't welcomed there.
Even with Aiko around to serve as a buffer, there seemed to be an invisible barrier erected between Mikia and Rin. Mikia still couldn't quite look her in the eyes after the first day of their reunion. Rin would often catch Mikia sneaking glances at her when she thought she wasn't looking: guilt was etched all over Mikia's features.
Every second that she saw Rin only reminded Mikia of what she had done. Rin knew the older woman was still torn up about it and often thought about leaving to give her some semblance of peace, but Aiko insisted that Rin stayed.
Upon Aiko's insistence, Rin stayed, not failing to notice the way that Mikia pursed her lips in disapproval, yet she was unable to voice her disapproval aloud.
Rin hated the feeling of having to walk on eggshells around a woman that she once considered to be an important mother figure in her life. Yet at the moment, they had been reduced down to nothing more than civil villagers.
They couldn't go back. The damage was done.
Rin stared absently at her packed bag, lying on top of her bed. It was well past midnight, both mother and daughter were fast asleep. Her fingers itched to reach for the straps of her bag, but her hand retracted once her fingers brushed against the fabric. Rin turned away, still unable to gather the courage to leave.
Slipping out of her room, Rin made her way to the rooftops. It soothed her to hear the familiar creak of the wooden ladder underneath her weight as she pushed open the window. Sticking her head through the window, Rin immediately felt infinitely better as she took in a deep breath of the cool night air. Hauling herself through the window, Rin clambered on top of the tiles, scooting over to lay down at her favorite spot.
It was the first time that she came to the rooftops since she came back and Rin found herself regretting not coming earlier. It felt like all of the air was let out of the balloon the moment she was on the roof; all of her stress, worries, burdens dissipated into thin air.
The relief was only temporary, but Rin relished in it.
The gust of wind pricked at her skin, forming goosebumps all over her arms. The chill in the air only served to harshly remind her that Rin had been running away for far too long. It had been hot and humid when she left the Senju's village and now, winter was rapidly approaching.
Rin had to make up her mind soon.
Truth to be told, Rin didn't have anywhere else to go. She had gone to all of the places that she could think of and prolonging her stay at Mikia's wasn't going to bode well for both of them.
Yet there were two more places she hadn't gone. And Rin was deliberately stalling because she simply didn't know which one she would choose.
The Uchihas or the Senjus?
On one hand, going to the Uchihas would give her a sense of familiarity as that was the village where she had spent most of her life. Obito was there and he had been nothing but kind to her, except when he sold her out to the clan.
Rin squeezed her eyes shut as the memory resurfaced, prominently displaying the Uchiha crest in her mind.
As quick as those memories came, Rin banished them, forcibly shoving them to the back of her mind.
It wasn't Obito's fault, Rin reasoned with herself. He was powerless. He even hinted it in our conversations and it was my fault that I was too dense to catch it. If I were in his position, I would have done the exact same thing.
But Rin couldn't shake the thought of hating him for allowing her to live in a lie for almost a decade. For the last nine years, Obito had been by her side. He had plenty of opportunities to undo the genjutsu on her, to tell her the truth, but he firmly kept his mouth shut.
To an extent, Rin could understand. He was loyal to his clan. But his clan…
The sound of her screams echoed through her head. Staring blankly up at the empty sky, Rin could picture her feeble thirteen year old self, curled up on the ground in the cold, dank cell. Dried blood clung to her pale skin. The colors began to bleed together, morphing into the shape of the Uchiha symbol.
This time, Rin didn't look away. She continued to stare at the Uchiha symbol as the scene changed. Now, she was staring at the back of an Uchiha, who displayed the crest proudly on his back. Even though she could only see the back of his head, Rin recognized the figure to be Obito, from his messy black locks and the band of his trademark goggles. In her imagination, she could hear him laughing with his other clan members.
She missed him. The silly excuses he always gave when he was late, the sheepish look when he got caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing like he was a ten year old kid all over again, the stupid jokes that he told in order to cheer her up.
Yet going to him meant going to the Uchihas...and that thought made her shudder.
That, and there was a certain enigmatic guy that she couldn't get out of her head.
Kakashi deserved an apology in person, but Rin was afraid of how he would react. She had briefly seen him when the Yamanaka interrogated her, but they didn't have time to exchange words before she was taken back to the village. Since then, Rin hadn't seen him once, partly because he was nowhere to be found. Word had reached her ears that he returned to the village. The only thing that was stopping her was her own cowardice.
While in the Senju's captivity, Rin overheard snippets of conversations that didn't really make sense to her. However, there was one thing that her guards had slipped.
"I heard that Hatake's mission was to kill the girl. With his prowess, it shouldn't have been any trouble, yet she's still alive."
"Tsk. He's a Senju traitor and now they're saying that he is our spy? I don't believe it for one second."
The guards had walked out of earshot so Rin couldn't catch the end of the conversation, but that was all she needed to know. Perhaps the revelation that Kakashi had been sent to kill her was what propelled her to leave the village the moment that she could. Anger and fury clouded her judgment then since she spent the entire time in captivity torn over for plotting against Kakashi, only to find out that he approached her with a motive.
Sometime during her escapade, reasoning found her. After going back through her memories, Rin couldn't recall when Kakashi had tried to kill her, save for his retaliation after she tried to hurt him first. He even seemed quite standoffish when they first met, but it was her persistence that led him to eventually warm up to her.
Kakashi was the first to verbally support her ambitions. He spent the time training her so she could work towards her goal. He was the one who foolishly threw himself in front of the Yellow Flash to save her from an imminent death even though in retrospect, Rin knew that Kakashi was his student so the Yellow Flash wouldn't have killed him. That left her with a burning question.
Why?
If his mission was to kill her, Kakashi didn't have to save her. Rin would have been just another casualty of war.
Upon realizing all of this, Rin only hated herself more for agreeing to scheme against him. Although it failed and Rin was finally free of the Uchiha's control and she was able to regain her memories and she was practically forced into doing it, a wave of guilt washed up inside of her.
What made her any different from Mikia or Obito or Itachi or Kakashi?
Nothing, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind.
Rin groaned in frustration, shutting her eyes firmly while she tried to clear her mind. She needed more time to think this through…
No, time wouldn't change a single thing. She would only continue to make up excuses.
Abruptly, Rin sat upright. Hands pressed against the tiles of the rooftop, Rin pushed herself into a standing position, clambering over to the window. She quickly descended down the steps of the ladder, shutting the window carefully behind her. Her feet lightly touched the floorboard.
Rin didn't dare to think about it. Everytime her mind strayed in that direction, her fingers would touch the pendant hanging from her neck and thoughts of her family would flood her mind instead. That plan worked, until Rin froze mid step when she passed by Aiko's door.
Slowly lowering her foot to the ground, Rin took two steps backwards. Pressing her hand against the doorframe, Rin gently pushed open the slightly opened door, wincing as the wooden door made a loud creaking noise. Peering into the room, it appeared that Aiko hardly even stirred. She let out a breath that she didn't realize she was holding as she stared at Aiko's silhouette, illuminated by the moonlight that streamed in through the window.
Rin was going to miss Aiko, someone who had grown to be a sister-like figure for her. Yet she couldn't say goodbye to her in person; Aiko would certainly convince her to stay and this time, Rin couldn't have anything or anyone to crumble her resolve.
Tears pricked the corner of her eyes as Rin softly whispered her parting words to the sleeping girl. Reaching for the door handle, Rin slowly pulled it shut.
She forced herself to walk away.
Packing didn't take long; her belongings easily fitted into one backpack. Shrugging the backpack on her shoulders, Rin ripped off a piece of paper from a nearby notepad, hastily jotting down her words of gratitude and farewell to the family. After laying the note right on top of her pillow, Rin simply stared at it from the doorway.
Then she found the courage to turn away, pulling the door shut behind for good.
As she walked through the quiet streets of Chusei, a small part of her wanted to go back, tear the note into tiny pieces, and pretend that she had never left in the first place. Yet there was an invisible force that propelled her to keep placing one foot in front of the other until she had long left Chusei behind.
The walk was long and boring, but Rin kept herself entertained as she practiced the words that she would say when she met Kakashi or Obito again. All of the rehearsed lines flew out the window when the sound of birds chirping jolted her out of her thoughts. Spinning around in a circle, Rin was finally made aware of her surroundings.
She had done it. She finally arrived at the junction that would lead to the Uchiha and Senju villages.
The sun had already begun to rise over her head, going back wasn't an option. But in all the time that she spent lounging on the rooftop and during the walk to this point, Rin still didn't have a final destination in mind.
Rin couldn't make up her mind.
Her gaze slid to her left, the path to the Uchihas before slowly moving over to the right, the path to the Senjus. Glancing back and forth between the two paths made her feel even more conflicted than ever before.
Her hand reached under the collar of her shirt, grasping her mother's pendant.
Kaa san, what should I do?
Her mother didn't answer, not that she expected her to. Deep down in her heart, Rin felt reassured that no matter what choice that she ended up making, her mother would always support her.
Rin gave herself a small pep talk, running through the entire situation once more, giving herself a few assertive nods in between.
She wouldn't be bound by her option either way. Worst case scenario, Rin could always retreat and find refuge in a smaller village like she once did.
Rin nodded.
She had finally made up her mind.
She took a step forward.
Kakashi was a man of routine and that didn't change now that he was back in the village, except for the fact that his sensei disrupted his routine more often than he would have liked. A few times had been when Minato sent him on some inconsequential missions or roped him into helping him with paperwork. Luckily, Kakashi had gotten smarter after the first few times and managed to avoid the responsibility, for the most part. Another time had been when his sensei asked to spar with him, citing that hadn't sparred in well over a decade.
Minato was still as fast as always, but Kakashi found himself getting out of the spar with less scrapes and bruises than before. That and Minato was breathing heavier and sweating more than Kakashi remembered.
The family dinners were a must, so Kakashi found himself adding their weekly Saturday dinners into his routine.
And on one of those Saturdays, Minato randomly brought up the idea of Kakashi becoming a diplomat between the Senjus and the Uchihas.
"Our relationship is still fragile," Minato stated. "I think we should work towards fostering friendlier relations between our villages otherwise the peace treaty won't hold for long. Would you be willing to take on the position?"
Kakashi briefly wondered if his sensei had gone senile at his old age.
"Both the Uchihas and the Senjus think that I am a traitor. I'm probably the worst choice to be a diplomat."
"That's not true," Minato insisted.
"Fine," Kakashi conceded. "A portion of the Senjus think I am a traitor."
"Only a small portion," Minato corrected. "I'm sure they'll come around with time. As for the Uchihas, I think you're the perfect fit since you're familiar with their leadership."
"I wouldn't say that I'm familiar with them."
"I already discussed this idea with Itachi Uchiha and he agreed that you would be the perfect fit. Besides, I heard that Obito Uchiha will be the representative for their side. Weren't the two of you friends? Then it shouldn't be too awkward."
Obito, huh? It had seemed so long ago that Kakashi had seen him. In fact, Kakashi didn't even know what his reaction was when he found out that Kakashi was a spy all along. Had he known about it prior to the council meeting like Itachi and Shisui or had he been kept in the dark like everyone else?
If Kakashi had been a different person, he might have bravely confronted his friend, but the truth was that he was a coward. He had been too scared to even admit that he truly valued Obito's friendship; it made his time with the Uchihas pass by much faster and much more enjoyable than he had anticipated.
Any normal person would feel betrayed in Obito's position.
Perhaps Kakashi was better off not knowing.
"I'll think about it," Kakashi told his sensei, lying straight through his teeth. Minato nodded, accepting his response. Halfway through dinner, Kakashi promptly buried that conversation to the back of his mind and by the next day, Kakashi had forgotten that proposal was even on the table.
He went back to following his routine.
In the middle of training, Kakashi felt the sudden urge to take a walk around the village. He gave into the urge; after all, it had been so long since he returned and he decided it was time that he stopped hiding. Hiding was a sign of cowardice and Kakashi wanted to prove that he was anything but.
For the first time since he returned, Kakashi walked through the main streets, rather than taking the back routes or the rooftops. With his hands stuck in his pockets, Kakashi leisurely walked through the streets, stopping once in a while to take a look at the goods on display. At all times, there were multiple pairs of eyes on him at all times, seemingly drilling holes into his back. Judging from the various reactions from the shopkeepers, some were genuinely glad that he was back, while others remained more reserved.
It was mostly the older generation, his father's generation, that couldn't seem to quite decide whether to like him or not.
Yet the simple experience of strolling through the marketplace made Kakashi realize that he no longer cared about the glances or whispers behind his back. Being at the Uchihas had been worse, he was constantly ousted as the outsider and by principle, they hated him simply for that reason. The experience of traversing through the Uchiha compound had elicited an eerie feeling within him.
There was no eerie feeling this time around.
And now that he was older, the looks didn't elicit a prickly feeling in his chest. The insulting remarks didn't crawl under his skin in the way that it used to before.
Kakashi was finally at peace with himself.
In a better mood, Kakashi found himself at the front of the Academy. Leaning against the trunk of the tree, the tree that marked his and Asuma's childhood meeting location, Kakashi watched the children from a distance. Their shrieks of laughter pierced the air. Under his mask, his lips curved into a smile.
His eyes landed on a pink haired girl who had been running from a group of boys. He watched as the girl tripped, falling flat on her face. Bravely, the girl rolled over, pushing herself into a sitting position as she glared harshly at the guys.
Kakashi was too far away to hear what the boys were saying, but he imagined it wasn't anything good. The girl shouted back at them, clambering onto her feet in the process. The tallest boy shoved her by the shoulders, sending her sprawling into the dirt once more. Then the boy squatted down until he was eye level with the pink haired girl. The boy was saying something, jabbing at her forehead with his pointer finger as if to enunciate his point. The girl was trying her hardest not to cry while his friends bellowed with laughter.
Still, Kakashi remained rooted in his position. He wanted to see how the girl would handle the situation.
The girl bravely picked herself back to her feet, brushing the dirt off of her pants. When she turned to walk away from the boys, the tallest one reached out and grabbed her wrist. Kakashi would have stepped in at that moment if Naruto, who was flanked by two boys, hadn't appeared right then. Naruto forcibly shoved the taller boy's hand off of the pink haired girl's. Shooting a vicious glare, one that would make Kushina proud, at the bullies, the tallest boy's eyes widened in recognition. The three of them hastily scrambled away.
Naruto extended a hand down to the pink haired girl. The girl stared at his outstretched hand for a few seconds before hesitantly reaching for it. Naruto pulled her to her feet, jabbing his finger at the two other boys, introducing them. Much to Kakashi's surprise, there was a hint of a smile on the girl's face as she walked side by side with Naruto and his friends back to class.
Was that what he could have had if he didn't push everyone away?
Too bad Kakashi didn't figure out the importance of friends until he had absolutely no one.
With a content smile on his face, Kakashi turned to leave, only to abruptly halt when he rammed into an unexpected figure. His instincts took over, wrapping an arm around the woman's waist and pulling her close to prevent her from falling.
Kakashi found himself staring into a pair of familiar brown eyes.
Abruptly, he let go of her, automatically taking a few steps away from her while he tried to calm his racing heart.
Of all the people, he hadn't expected to see her again. Not when Minato had graciously informed him that she had left the village long before he came back; not that Kakashi cared to know.
Or at least that was what he had tried to tell himself.
"Kakashi," Rin whispered softly, extending her arm outwards like she wanted to touch him. Midair, her arm fell back to her side when she saw Kakashi take an inconspicuous step backwards just so he would be out of reach.
"Rin. I thought you left."
Translation: I thought you weren't going to come back. Kakashi wasn't sure if her sudden appearance was a good or a bad thing.
A forced smile appeared. "Yeah, I needed some time for myself, but I felt that we needed to clear the air between us."
Did they really? Kakashi felt that he would have been much better off if this conversation never had to happen.
There was a pregnant pause between them. Rin was struggling to find the right words to say, while Kakashi was reorienting his thoughts so that he didn't sound like a complete idiot. In the process, Kakashi was once again reminded that this was the girl that he tried to kill…
He wondered if she knew.
Kakashi had finally made peace with himself, but the moment that Rin walked back in his life, she had uprooted all of the progress that he had made. His fists were balled tightly by his side as he tried to find the courage to say something to her, to confess that their friendship was completely one sided.
He couldn't handle the pressure anymore.
"I'm sorry that I tried to kill you!"
"I'm sorry for betraying your trust!"
They blurted it at the same time. Kakashi stared wide eyed at Rin, who had clamped a hand over her mouth like she couldn't quite believe what had just come out of her mouth.
Kakashi was the first to break the silence after their outburst.
"What are you talking about?"
Rin couldn't quite meet his eyes. "I went along with Itachi's scheme to drug you."
Kakashi almost wanted to laugh. The sedative hadn't even been deadly. That was nothing compared to the things that he had done to her.
"You didn't have a choice," Kakashi told her. "You were under the Uchiha's influence. Even if you weren't, you were doing it to protect me, weren't you? Unlike me, I tried to kill you on multiple occasions."
Rin's eyes widened. "But you saved my life!"
Kakashi held up three fingers.
"The first time was on our trip to Oto. I debated killing you and plotted three different ways to discard your body." Kakashi lowered a finger.
"The second time was at Obito's send off dinner. While you took Obito to your room, I poisoned your glass of water." Another finger fell.
"The third time was on the battlefield. When I saw Sensei moving to kill you, I hesitated whether or not to save you."
"But you did," Rin pointed out.
"I didn't know what I was thinking."
"You knocked over the glass of water before I could drink it."
"The glass had my fingerprints all over it. Everyone would know it was me."
"You didn't kill me on the way to Oto."
"It would have been too obvious that I had done it and I hadn't gathered enough intel at that point."
"You helped me train and even encouraged me to follow my goal."
"If you were on the battlefield, it would have been easy to write off your death as a casualty of war."
"Then when you found out that I was still alive after the injection, why did you take me to the Senjus? Why didn't you just kill me?"
"You had valuable intel."
"Why are you lying to yourself? You spent enough time around me to know that I don't know anything of importance. Even you knew more than I did!"
"I don't know. All I know was that I was supposed to kill you, but I couldn't bring myself to kill you, so I handed you off to my sensei so I didn't have to deal with it anymore," Kakashi confessed. "You don't know how scared I was when I realized that I jabbed the needle in your neck. I thought I had done it for real that time."
"I'm sorry."
"No, I should be the one who is sorry. I'm sorry that I had a motive for approaching and that our friendship was one sided."
"Was it completely one sided? Was there ever a single instance where you were spending time with me because I was your friend and not because I was a mission?"
Kakashi shook his head sadly. "I...I don't know."
Rin flashed him a genuine smile. "Thank you for your honesty." Then she stuck her hand outwards, nodding at him to take it. Kakashi shot her a questioning look, slowly slipping his hand into hers.
She shook his hand.
"Let's start over then. Hi, my name is Rin Nohara. I'm a war orphan, not affiliated with the Uchihas or Senjus. I'm an aspiring medical ninja."
Kakashi could only stare at her, utterly speechless. A few moments had passed before Kakashi cleared his throat.
"Kakashi Hatake. Student of the fourth leader of the Senjus. Uhm...I'm a shinobi." If Rin was put off by his lackluster introduction, she didn't show it.
She was still smiling by the time that she let go of his hand.
"What is this for?" Kakashi asked.
"You said you didn't know if our friendship was genuine or not, right?" At this, Kakashi nodded. "So let's start over. If you don't want to, here's your chance to back out."
Starting over… sounded nice.
"Are you sure?"
Rin nodded vigorously. A small part of him still held onto the irrational fear that Rin hated him even with all of her reassurances. But the other part of him wanted to stop avoiding all of his problems, like they would simply cease to exist if he ignored it.
And finally, Kakashi nodded.
"Come on, I'll show you around the village."
A/N: Hi again (for the last time)!
So glad that you've made it all the way to the end. Hopefully the ending was satisfying; I tried to tie up all the loose ends regarding the characters on the Senju's side, with the exception of Kurenai because I didn't decide what happened to her. If there's anything else that you've noticed that was left open ended, let me know and maybe I can address it in the sequel!
Thank you all for following me on this journey and I hope that I'll see you all at the sequel. It will be called In the Name of Freedom. Here's a horrible summary, but I didn't have the time to come up with something better before I posted. It should be posted by the time this chapter is up, but it might take a little while for it to show since new stories take longer to publish.
In the 253 days since the end of the war, Itachi worked tirelessly to dismantle the Uchiha's tyranny for once and for all. Time was rapidly ticking away and all he had to show was one failure after another. Absolutely nothing had changed; Itachi only had 7 more days to remediate that...because in 7 days, he would be publicly executed for treason.
Fair warning: It is Uchiha centric. There is quite a bit of focus on OCs because I switch between multiple POVs to tell the story. For me personally, I don't like that story as much as this one, but I still think it was an interesting enough premise for me to explore. Having said that, I don't know if you are still interested in reading it, but I'll still post for the few people who are. :) I'm about 11 chapters in for a 15-18 chap story, so I'm pretty confident that I will be able to finish it, so no worries about an abandoned story!
Once again, thank you to everyone who read this story, especially those who left me reviews along the way! Those really made my day and motivated me to write the sequel! Special thanks to my Beta LMCuba, who caught all the stupid grammar mistakes I made throughout.
See you around!
-MM